Pop's Garage Progress

Hi. I'm done, a couple of ways. I am tired beyond description, emotionally and intellectually, and yes, physically (my aching back), but am smiling. Why? Because the Garage is done! Maybe not to a casual onlooker but to the trained eye, wow! Progress.

Just the first floor though, and we now move to the dreaded mezzanine, then the attic and the Shed of Horrors, but ... we finished the Garage.

People can lose themselves in a big project, and forget that each major step accomplished is a reason for celebration. Maybe not champagne and caviar, but a celebration nonetheless. It is important to acknowledge success, even if the final goal is still aways away.



It is confusing times at Acme, for the newly-hired staff as well as for Dick. He needs to find small items, goals, reasons to communicate that Acme celebrates success. Staff work harder when they know their efforts are rewarded, even with a pizza and soda lunch on Friday.

My reward for reaching the milestone? Well, there is that nice bottle of red wine downstairs, and today was payday so the wife is in a good mood (it is hard when you sleep with your accountant), so ... maybe we'll stay up later than usual tonight, and sleep in tomorrow. Doesn't sound like much? Trust me, every time the alarm does not ring at 5am is a reason to celebrate.

To the wine, Tally Ho.

Pop's Garage On Speed

Have you ever been in such a hurry that you missed a step, brought the wrong file, cut the wrong branch or, and this is my particular Hell, tried to carry so much that you drop most if not all of it. More than just another Murphy's Law manifestation, going so fast that it ends up causing you to lose time is one of life's ironies, a Catch 23.

Pop had a pithy saying for this (too), that you should take time make nice. I've always added less haste more speed to the equation (not a Pop saying). So, what do these four-word English Haiku mean in the real world. Lots actually. Let's start with Pop.

What is the goal of any action? To achieve the required result. Secondary goals include doing it quickly and properly, the twin Es of Quality Management, efficiency and effectiveness. Now Pop was always looking for the easiest (quickest, cheapest) way to get something done (and here's the important part) without sacrificing the intended result.

Pop was always about the final result. Take/Make means that taking a little more time up front to get X done is better than shaving time that causes poor results, so poor that you have to fix or redo them (both adding to the cost). A direct segue into Less/More.

Haste and Speed describe different parts of an action. Haste is how you try to go fast (how you move, prepare etc.), and speed is how fast you actually go.

Chaucer wrote in 'Canterbury Tales' (c. 1387), 'In wikked haste is not profit.'. When you try too hard you begin to focus on the how--can we go faster?--and forget (pay less attention to) result quality. Trying to be super efficient hurts overall efficiency. Here's an example from the dust.

My sister was helping. An ex-public health nurse, Sis is a bulldozer (which I mean in the very best sense), all about Get The Dam Work Done Now! I pointed her towards the black hole of tools under the stairs, which she attacked even before my sound waves reached the wall.

I took a short break and came back to ... No Time Taken, No Nice Result, to ... Much Haste, No Speed. Why? Because in her hurry she only thought about her step, separate the tools, and by focusing on just that one step she was causing unnecessary steps down the road.

Sis separated the tools in record time, laid nicely in a row. See pic.

Great, except that there were more tools than she imagined, tools that defied categories, and, of course the inevitable happened. The neat row turned into a messy mound that split the garage in two.

I then took an entire day to arrange the tools how I wanted at the start, into great bug tubs (I'll take some pics today). Could they have gone straight from the black hole to the tubs, missing the entire "messy mound" step? YES. It was what I wanted.

It didn't happen because it took more time up front to find, empty and label the tubs, and Sis wanted to Get The Job Done Now. In other words, Haste = Waste(d) time and effort. Taking the Time would have made Nice, less Haste would have meant more Speed.

Now sometimes you have no choice but the Get The Job Done Now; sometimes haste is the only option left open. Fine. Go ahead, sprint. Just try to keep the intended final result in mind, and where you can take the time to at least point your actions in that general direction.

Here is a great lesson for Dick and Acme. Like all entrepreneurs, Dick is frantic (figuratively: he is not frothing at the mouth) for revenue, any revenue. I emphasize "any" because easy money ("This is generating revenue!") often leads down wrong roads. Dick should seek revenue (duh) but should take the time (now when he has time) to make sure decisions made today will give his plans a good chance of success tomorrow.

The old saw about career choice is that you don't actually make a conscious career but rather realize 10 years later that life chose one for you. The same can happen in business. Maybe the new gig is great, and should become your business, but it behooves you to Take Time, Make Nice.

++++++++++++++++
Dick is in India, hiring more people. I wanted to writ about that, about Acme (and I will, soon), but am being consumed by helping my parents downsize. Dueling Alzheimer's: screaming arguments and 80 year old-tantrums over words that quite possibly were never even said, only imagined, or said but then forgotten, totally.

Mom was rushed to hospital mid-week, chest pains: oh no! Luckily it was just exhaustion and angina, this time. So I apologize for no emphasis on Acme. Adding to my confusion is their asking me, rather formally too, if I would take responsibility for disposing of their ... stuff. (Of course I said Yes, with a silent "about bloody time" under my breath.) So I will continue to serve two (?) masters for a time yet.

Pop's Garage Philosophy 4

Warning: possible bad words ahead.

Get's 'em every time. But seriously, on the theme of projects and results and all things profitable, I have to start with a Pop's crude wisdom. Manys the times when the chips were down he'd say with some enthusiasm, "you have to **** [urinate] with what **** [penis] you have." Two four-letter words, already.

So in polite company it's, "you have to pee with what dick you have," i.e., use what you have to do the job, and forget what you don't have." I call it the "never" rule. It goes

projects never have enough time/resources but must find a way anyway

It's true in decision making, you never have enough information to make a decision; there is always more you can get. All decisions are based on insufficient knowledge. So? Even procrastinators run out of time--we all have to make decisions, or what become decisions.

Too many people moan about what they don't have. Missing something? Run out of time. So? What can you do with what you have? Then do it. You'll be surprised what happens.

And they say that optimists live longer. Bliss. But it isn't really optimism, it's realism. As long as there is any hope at all, you do whatever you can with whatever you can. Your chance doesn't end till the fat lady sings.

Pop's Garage Philosophy 3

Phew. More work on Pop's Garage (and Mom's dragon hoard of ceramics and porcelain supplies, fabrics, patterns, knitting machines and materials, stained glass, dishes, pots and pans, towels and cloths of every type, size, color and fabric, and of course a TON of part-finished projects). Carol and I walked, er, hobbled out of there last evening with a full minivan and Intrepid's worth of ... stuff. And I'm back there in, let's see, about 90 minutes. Another fun day approaches.

An old family friend showed up while my brother and I were up to our elbows in Garage ... stuff the day before yesterday. Once I again I heard the semi-rhetorical question, "How did you know where to start: I wouldn't have been able to." Oh?

A lesson from Pop's Garage is never let yourself defeat yourself. If you start off by thinking you can't win, well, you can't, and won't. Sure, some things are harder to do than others, and some you might never have the talent/kill/knowledge to do--like for example, I am totally fascinated by space and various space programs, but at my age I will never, no matter how hard I try, be a rocket scientist--but that has nothing to do with defeating yourself. A given in project management, personal, team or corporate, is that the goal has to attainable ... without using magic.

The Chinese often use a phrase, mei you ban fa, which translates as "there is no way [to do or achieve or succeed at the issue in question]." Whenever I hear it (and it is appropriate, always a consideration) I answer, "If you think there is no way then I guarantee there will be no way. But if you start by saying/thinking 'maybe there is way,' then you know, maybe there is a way." In other words, don't defeat yourself before you even start by saying that you won't be able to ...

Anyway, this is what this video is about. Was I nervous about the Garage job? Sure: I am not a fool. I knew how tough it would be. Did I fear the Garage job? No. Fear? As Aldous Huxley wrote in novel, Island (years before it became famous in the Dune novels by Frank Herbert),

Fear is the mind killer.

Well, fear is the mind killer. In the case of the friend's comments on cleaning Pop's garage, it was fear of complexity. Because something looks difficult you fear it, from there a very short move to defeating yourself.

Dick will encounter many "garage" jobs as Acme grows. Many will be the time he, and his team, shies away from certain tasks. That's okay (being nervous is actually a good thing: continued later). But fear the task? Never!

Pops Garage Philosophy Too

Now Saturday evening. Daughter's piano test today, so no go parents. Phew. I needed a break. The downsize saps emotional, physical and intellectual (what do I do with that?) energy, and all with family, who love each other but daily contact ah, not so much. Sigh. Oh, and the test went well, tears before, tears after, and fears for the next two weeks.

Video Too continues my lessons from Pop's Garage, about results and accountability.

Pop's Garage Philosophy

Tried to post this last night when I got home, but ... was too tired to redo it after the software -- made by a famous guy named Bill -- crashed at the end of my first attempt.



Hope to shoot more today, but we have arranged a truck today, so it's off to the dump, a couple of times anyway, and also to load some of the bigger tools for my place (router, chop saw and planer, each mounted on movable dollies ... made by Pop).

Anyway, enjoy.

Lessons From Pop's Garage

My brother phoned last night, saying he would take the rest of the week off work (W-F) and help me excavate Pop's garage. Here is what it looked like:
Bad doesn't even begin to describe it. I had help from my nephew on the weekend, then have spent 2-3 hours on my own each day since. Two days ago I attacked the table saw, covered as it was with ... stuff, with more ... stuff piled under and around it. Yesterday was the radial arm saw, more of the same ... stuff.

I am now having breathing problems, so much dust. I started wearing a mask yesterday, a couple of days late. But on to the story.

On the phone my brother confessed that he stayed away from the garage on the weekend because he looked and looked but couldn't figure out how to start. The job was just too big. Too much ... stuff.

Then in rapid succession my sister then my mom phoned, both saying basically the same as my brother, that they were unnerved by the sheer size of the garage job, sheer immensity of the ... stuff. Like my brother they thanked me for getting the garage job started, and wondered how I was able to get the job started when they couldn't.

"Naivety" I told them, "I just didn't know better, " but there is more to it than that.

Every decent-size project, in any type of business, is complicated. Immense size and mind-numbing complexity are givens. If it is worth doing it will be hard to do. Lots of ... stuff to deal with. So? Should that stop you?

It can, but shouldn't. The trick is look at your ultimate goal, in this case a clean garage with an inventory of all the ... stuff, then to forget the goal and look at the parts or steps that have to be done to accomplish the goal. Don't get lost in the strategy (clean garage) but instead focus on the tactics (steps to take).

Project management 101. Break big jobs down into little jobs, then tackle each now-manageable job one-by-one. Sure it is nice to have a PERT analysis of the critical path and Gantt charts to help you know which small jobs are key to overall success and which should be done in what order, but hey, we are only cleaning a garage, not Boeing building the Dreamliner. Yet no matter the size the steps are the same: know your goal, break big job down into manageable smaller jobs, then do these smaller jobs in a step-by-step, systematic manner.

Another angle: look like fun?

That is what I am doing this morning. As soon as I post this I am rushing to the garage to get there before my brother. Why? So I can plan out the next few steps, making it easy for him to pitch in and help (this a lesson from Situational Leadership).

Finally, before I go, let me try to tie this into earlier themes and to Acme. Re: themes, the process I am using to clean the garage is a good example of my dreams-reality theme, that you can't achieve the dream (clean garage) by dreaming about it, but only by living and working in gritty (and dusty!) reality. You must manipulate reality to achieve dreams. Just dreaming more (or worrying) won`t do it for you.

Re: Dick and Acme, everywhere Dick looks he sees huge challenges, immensely complicated tasks, all needing doing now, all SHOUTING for his attention! He must resist the urge to drink: it is fun, but doesn`t help.

Dick must start with a clear description of a goal, then work backwards from it, step by step, milestone by milestone. Once he has a map (or list, chart, path, whatever) he can describe the smaller jobs to people, again starting from a clear description of the goal to be achieved, and get them started.

Truth be told I was terrified of the garage job. I really did not know where to start, but I knew where I wanted to end. Fine. I looked for low-hanging fruit, some smaller jobs that could be easily (sic) accomplished. Nothing breeds confidence more than success. Now I am on a roll, all but the bench and shelves under the stairs. I can not even look there, yet.

Plans Are Decided By Customers

Who really runs a business, the CEO or the customer? Time was when the answer was easy: the CEO. Companies decided what to make, a process devoid of customer input. As Henry Ford famously put it, "Customers can have [a car of] any colour as long as it is black." From the time of James Watt taming the steam engine until early-middle last century, customers bought what companies made, period.

Then General Motors ate Ford's lunch by offering cars in a rainbow of colors, the visible start of companies paying attention to customer tastes. Yet this was still CEO-driven: customers could only choose from among the offerings previously decided on by the CEO. It was the illusion of choice, not the real deal.

Prahalad and Krishnan in their new book, The New Age Of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value Through Global Networks, make a clear case for the next paradigm shift, where CEOs strive to offer what customers want, what each customer wants! Not the check-list customaization now available, customers selecting from a CEO-chosen set of choices (like buying an new car and selecting color and options), but full-blown, customer-driven choices.

Whoa. What does "customer-driven choice" actually mean? Consider shoes. The authors describe a Finnish firm, Pomarfin, who offer totally customized shoes, going Nike one better by not just letting customers choose design, color and such, but also offering sizes customized exactly to the customer's feet! You go to the store, get your feet scanned, choose design, style and color, and voila, in ten days you have the best-fitting shoes of your life. No need for scans for your next pair(s) either. Neat.

Neat and unique. A company's production totally customer-demand driven. CEOs now work to build and manage a company that can do what the cusomer wants, period.

Straight line extropolation--assuming the future will be basically like the present, only with fancier clothes, a common boomer conceit--will kill you in business. Trends don't come from middle aged fatties, but from lean and hungry youth. Prahalad and Krishnan posit that those formed and inculcated by Facebook, My Space and instant gratification, will

grow up expecting to be treated as unique individuals, and they will have the skills and the propensity to engage in a marketplace defined by N=1.

What's N=1 you ask. The principle/rule/postulate that "each person is treated as unique." It is half of what drives their thesis, that after deciding what market areas you want to play in, your job, from CEO to clerk, is creating business processes and relationships that allow customers to get what they ask for.

Through my daughter (and coaching her fastball team) I spend a fair bit of time with the new-teen generation. Weaned by Google simplicity--answers and information are there for the typing--and Things Just Being Like This, methinks the youth of 2008 are going to demand more from businesses than my hippie generation did. At least nicer shoes.

What does this mean for Dick and Acme? I'll explore that as I continue reading about what global supply chains, outsourcing, high speed internet, search engines, and Web 2.0 youth all using global resources to buy/sell in a global market all means. For now I'd say that knowing is half of solving.

Dick knows (as far as anyone does: flee from those who say they know) that his customers will increasingly demand N=1 services. Building resources, relationships and strong but flexible business processes must be with N=1 in mind. It's a start.

I'll follow up on that soon.

Father's Day Dust

Yesterday was Father’s Day. A Milestone day, where I became the Head of the Family. Or at least my house did.

Both my parent’s owned small businesses, my father (step father actually, but I never let that get in the way of being brought up) owned an electrical construction company, inside wiring—houses and such—and line construction—power poles. My mother owned a ceramics wholesale operation and taught china painting and ceramics. Both were on the property, Mom’s in an old turkey coop and Pop’s, well, everywhere else. (We had 6 acres.)

You might say I learned “doing business” early, like the absolute importance of taking messages clearly and accurately, and politely. I was up my first pole at 13, wired my first home at 14 (all but the panel). I hated it, working weekends and summers for nothing while my friends gamboled as young teenagers do. It was heaven whenever he “lent me out” to one of his friends: the same work but a princely $3 per hour!

Yes, I hated it, and never thought much of it after escaping into freedom (sic) by leaving home at 17. Imagine my surprise when I discovered 20 or so years later just how well I’d been taught. It was the late 80s and I was starting my management consultant career on the mean streets of Taipei, Taiwan.

I had impressed the Dutch GM of a Swiss drug/chemical company through teaching his top Chinese staff my 3-day Logical Thinking and Communication workshop, and himself and the top Westerners my Wearing Chinese Glasses seminar. After proving my cross-culture chops of course I had to know more, so he asked me, “Can you teach Quality Management to the top managers, and help us create and install a company-wide QM program?” I said Yes.

I don't remember much of our meeting after that, but can still vividly recall the elevator ride after it, my stomach falling from the 14th floor faster than I was. I had only the sketchiest idea what QM was, only that some author named Cosby or something was popular.

His name was Crosby, Philip B. The new guru of the quality movement of the day. I went to Caves (the only real English books store in the country) and, phew, bought a couple of Crosby books. Time to learn what it was I had just agreed to do.

It was a magical experience, literally life-changing. Reading the book was like my old man talking to me, the identical principles: how many times did he tell me, do it right the first time, and here was this guru saying the same words. Crosby went on, that a “quality job is the customer getting exactly what they wanted to get,” an almost word for word missive from my past.

Of course there as more to it, more to learn. But it all came easy, based as it was on bedrock principles written into my genome. I have used lessons from my old man many times since in speeches, workshops and exhortations to teams I was leading. The key principles from both father and guru, that results matter and you have to make yourself accountable for results. Everything else I did, business process improvement, reengineering, performance management and balanced scorecard, all were based on the importance of results and on accountability.

(Not to say I didn’t learn from Mom, far from it. My success as a human being is owed in large part to her examples. That you can do anything you want to as long as you try hard enough. That you owe those around you as much as you owe yourself. Lessons on how to be a good human, those were from Mom. But the business stuff came from Pop.)

Now, to bring this all together. I apologize for the lag between posts, and for the personal nature of the last couple of posts. The lag is because I’ve been so damn busy. My folks, now 88 and 86, retired 20 or so years ago, to a gorgeous 3,500 sq. ft. spectacular waterfront home that they built themselves. A FULL home.

Both inveterate pack rats, neither believed in throwing anything of any possible use away. Each had hobbies, passions actually, and each passion, woodworking or stained glass (to name just two), needed equipment and supplies, more crap into the house. It was getting hard to walk around, for example the huge garage and mezzanine floor were full of tools, hand and power, wood, and … things. Mom’s areas were as bad.

Pop has been sick. In-and-out of emergency and hospital five times from February to May, and … the experts, family and friends were sure living at home would kill him, and Mom. The problem was, we were sure he would never leave that house, or, to use his words, “would only leave it feet first.”

But, surprise of surprises, in just the last two weeks he and Mom decided they had to move, found an assisted care facility and take occupancy of their little, 750 sq. ft. flat July 1. To a person we are all amazed, but it turned out he loved life more than where he lived. I am still shocked.

And shocked at the crap they’ve accumulated. Wow! They must downsize, a word that pays little respect to the size of the down. I’ve spent the last week excavating the garage, and am now sick from all the dust. Tomorrow I wear a mask.

The job explains where I have been, awash in childhood memories made worse by my always-before invulnerable parents hovering on the sidelines, frail, weak, watching the accumulations of a lifetime casually sorted and tossed, often, into the disposal bin. While hopeful for the future—I thank Mom and Pop for my optimism: no pessimist ever starts a business—the days are seen through a melancholy sepia, from tears that don’t form and fall but are real nonetheless. The damned dust explains my sore throat and self-imposed laryngitis (my daughter loves it).

Making it even more a Milestone Father’s Day was what it all means to my family. Mom and Pop are still alive, but their house, the natural gathering place for family rituals, is soon gone. My sister is in the process of downsizing her life; smaller house, no husband and a soon 18-and-gone teenage son. My brother’s house is too small. My other sister has a big house but even bigger extended, and mostly alien, family. Leaving my house, which meets all the conditions: size, location and, dare I say, hospitality. Fitting, the oldest son and all that, but still a surprise.

Though not as big a surprise as when I discovered what I had learned during all those hated days in the dust, either digging pole holes by hand, bar and shovel six feet deep, or in an attic or crawlspace doing a rewire, big spiders and asbestos insulation. Damaged lungs aside, I had learned how to be a business.

This accounts for the personal nature of the last posts. I’ve been adrift in nostalgia, and am still far from shore. Nonetheless I have beside me a box from Amazon, unopened but sure to contain a book Dick recommended, The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value Through Global Networks, C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan,. As soon as I post this I open the box and get back to Acme business. A "no dust" business. Wonderful.

Can You Dream Your Way To Success?

In my hippie youth I used to write poetry, or something similar. Mostly a waste of ink. One time though, I got it right, a poem that included this line:

You don't use dreams to achieve reality, you use reality to achieve dreams.

What does that mean? Simple: you can't achieve goals (what you dream of) by dreaming about them ("how wonderful it'll be ..."), you achieve goals in the dirty, gritty world of reality. You manipulate what is (reality) to achieve what might be (dreams).

Dick needs two types of plans, a strategic plan (dreams about where he wants to go) and many tactical plans (this is how to manipulate reality to get there). Both are crucial: Dick can't reach his dreams by dreaming about them (making more strategic plans), but must instead get his metaphorical hands dirty mucking about in the world as it is. Reality.

Both types of plans are needed. Without the strategic plan the company can easily lose focus, ending up with a hodgepodge of services and capabilities each going in their own direction. Part of building a company is creating synergy between disparate business units, and synergy depends upon a clear vision --
This is where we are going/what we are doing.

As much as I disliked spending hours during the 80s and 90s wearing my consultant power tie helping bored managers create a "mission statement" for their unit, it actually is--can/should be--a crucial part of unit success. Dick needs a Mission Statement plus, a clear description of Acme's objectives, for the company as a whole and for each business unit within.

Yet as each group of frustrated managers would complain, a grand Mission Statement doesn't help reach their monthly objectives. MBO demands action, now! This is where the tactical plans come in, a Sales Plan for this item, a PR/Marketing Plan for introducing "new service A" into that market, a HR Plan for how to hire 500 people in three months, then how to mold them into Acmers, then how to manage and measure their performance.

Done properly a marriage of dream and reality occurs, a way to judge whether "new service A" should be offered in "new market X." How? By going to the Strategic Plan and asking a simple question: does introducing new service A in market X move Acme closer to achieving the overall strategic goals? If yes, do it (or at least build and analyze a business case for doing it); if not, then forget it (sell it to someone else if possible).

There are shelves of learned texts about planning and decision making, and while a lot of it is useful, much of it is verbiage making a simple process complicated. No one can know the future. Every plan, every goal, is a guess. I contend that the ultimate test of whether you should strive for a goal is whether achieving the goal gets you closer to reaching your dream.

You must know where you are going in order to know whether what you are doing is moving you closer or farther from your destination.

I wrote the poem to help a dear friend get over a bad breakup, but ended up with far more, a principle I have used throughout my life (business and personal). Start with a goal then do things that help you get there. Life and business are not as complicated as both appear to be, or as we make them. Strip everything away and you are left with basic rules and principles, simple in appearance but powerful when used properly.

Planning is a Process, Not A Result

In February (2008) Dick phoned; he was starting his company (finally!) and wanted to talk about some of the ideas I'd mentioned over the years of beers we'd shared. Maybe we could cooperate.

I thought about it and early March sent him a well-considered 2,238 words. What and why what would work. In early April we met in Vancouver. He went over his ideas, mine, and how the latter might fit the former. It all sounded great with big glasses of dry red wine and thick slabs of marbled beef; even better, it still sounded good with hungover eggs and coffee the next morning. "Okay Greg, send me a proposal."

Mid April it was in the digital mail, 2,811 words and embedded excel spreadsheet segments, then ... nothing. Dick was in Europe, family business. (I understand as we both are of the age where we are buffeted on both sides, by teenage children and aged parents, both who want what they want when they want it, period.) Then India for a week of intense interview and hire.

Who We Are, What We Are Doing II

When Dick first mentioned the blog to me we both were not sure what to expect. To start making sense of the project I made the following list, my first cut at issues I expect to find.

1. Why start a company
* Be own boss
* Have idea that must be moved on quickly
* Monetary upside
* Doubts/fears/apprehensions as well as dreams/plans/expectations

2. Spending my money/paying the bills
* Difference between overspending department budget and not having enough money to pay the bills/make payroll
* Cash flow issues (cash flow kills companies)
* Company expenses become personal issues

3. Not my department
* Doing jobs you were never trained for (decorating an office say, or accounts receivable)
* The engineers report to you now; they are not just another department to complain about

4. I have to decide what?
* The entire “buck stops here” issue
* The no-doubt humorous (in retrospect) stories of decisions you had to make (color of uniform buttons, office layout or typeface used on brochure)

5. How do I know what is going on?
* What metrics to use? How to measure success?
* Building a reporting system: can’t miss MIS (Management Information Systems)

6. Global strategies, local tactics
* Marrying local tactics to global strategy
* Creating a global “corporate culture”
* Should be lots of good stuff here

7. What time is it? Where am I?
* The joys (sic) of travel
* Should be lots of good stuff here

8. Killing a favorite idea/delegating a favorite job
* The inner turmoil of realizing a favorite idea won’t work
* There will soon be jobs Dick likes to do that are the first he will have to delegate: how Dick will end up doing the “shit” jobs

9. I am “become company” (from the Will Smith movie)
* How entrepreneurs end up sacrificing self goals and subsuming personal issues (family, health) to the needs of the company
* How the company becomes as precious as a child you raise

There will be changes, some new categories, some dropped and all altered as time and events make their inevitable effects upon plans. For as Moltke the Elder, Chief of Staff for the Prussian Army for 30 years wrote,

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

So these are early days yet in Acme, and in this blog. Time and events, or as the logic teacher in me thinks of it, cause and effect, haven't had a chance to alter much to date. Hell, I haven't even explained the company name yet. So ...

As Dick wants to maintain confidentiality for now, but I have to call the dang company something, I went back into "boomer" past and, voila, we have the Acme Pewter Tuning Fork Corp., or Acme for short. That done, it still remains to be seen whether Dick and Acme are the Roadrunner or Wily E. Coyote. Beep Beep

Who We Are, What We Are Doing I

Take an experienced manager/executive, add ambition, sufficient founder- and friend-financing and a great idea and what do you get? Dick (not his real name), an experienced middle/senior manager/executive with a vision: start a global high tech corporation from the get-go.

The goal is simple: grow big, quickly.

The rules are not so simple: weave the customs, habits and laws of the three divergent socio/economic/cultural forces driving the world (Western, Chinese and Indian) into one company, pick the right technologies and content areas, and deliver the how and what at the right time in the right way to the right customers.

The means are brutal: hire and manage a team to hire and manage a team to … in a half-dozen or more countries spanning the globe, travel 200 or more days a year while living in a 24/7 on-call lifestyle, and keep family happy and health good while continuing to do his exacting day job.

Can it be done?
Can he do it?

This blog is his story.

I am his coach. My job is to help him keep things in the proper perspective. Perhaps the biggest challenge Dick faces is finding time to think. When every day is too short to handle Urgent let alone find time for Important, it is frighteningly easy to lose sight of the Big Picture. Perspective used properly is better than liquor or drugs, usually anyway.

Issues, problems, decisions will come at Dick in waves, with no escape. No “quiet time” in airports and airplanes: on phone and crackberry until takeoff, email, spreadsheets and the ubiquitous bad PowerPoint presentations until battery dies (making a seat 110V outlet a curse.) A drink(s), some food and fitful dry-air sleep, then it's crackberry on on touchdown.

We plan to use the full panoply of modern tech to communicate: VOIP, telephone, email and fax as well as webcam video and … who knows what else. I am a soon double nickle (55) and ... I recall the first calculator, $100 bucks in 1973 dollars and the size of romance paper back. I have given up guessing what happens next, only that if it involves a remote my teenage daughter will have to teach me how to use it.

Secrets will be kept secret, duh, but you can expect commentary on a very broad range of subjects, business, personal and just plain bizarre. We hope this blog is much more than a simple record of events, but more an ongoing classroom where we examine, analyze and understand the inevitable stones in Dick’s road to success. By understanding the past, what worked, what didn’t and why, we hope that future stones become more akin to pebbles than boulders.

A quick peek at Amazon shows a host of books about entrepreneurs, so why read this blog? A closer look shows that books fall into two main categories, starting a small company/niche firm or raising money money money. None (?) touch on building a global corporation from the get-go, or even building a global corporation at all. In this “flat world” (thanks Tom Friedman) the gap between local and global is small, and if not every budding entrepreneur has Dick’s ambition, more each year will look beyond the physical walls of geography to the greener pastures of their imagination: in barely more time than it takes to read this sentence global will become the new normal. We hope the lessons we learn will help budding captains of global industry skip the mistakes we made (sigh).

Remember, learning from experience actually means learning from making mistakes, and mistakes at this level are damn expensive. There are two choices: learn from your own mistakes, or learn from ours. I will try to blog interesting, informative, and heck, even humorous stuff at times. It’s been known to happen.

Learned While Laughing

No work today. My 12--going on 35: sigh--daughter plays fastball (bigger ball and underhand pitching: wicked), and the team went 4 for 4 today, now first seed in tomorrow's playoffs. I'm a coach. Nice weather but a longgg day.

Our competition is heavy with Grade 8s, 14 year olds, where we have two Grade 5s, a Grade 6 and the rest Grade 7s. Only 4 or 5 are even 13. We started playing the season as the ages suggest. Helping, or mainly watching, the girls grow individually and come together as a team is a treat. I am one lucky father. Tired father, and I was thirsty when I got home.

But methinks there are some bigger messages in the girl's trip from cannon fodder to cannon, and when I feel better ... we'll see.

Anyway, win, lose or draw tomorrow the players are winning one of life's treasures, useful knowledge about self and life (and even baseball) learned while laughing, scaped knees and all.

Go Sooke Strikers!

First Post

Is there a more important sentence than the first? I hope so.

Everything has a start. As I sit here waiting for Skype to ring so I can talk to Dick about what is going on, I marvel at it all. What exactly? I thought it would be good if I recorded Dick and my chats. A few keystrokes and wham, I'm ready to record. Start a blog? Open my existing blog, culturalglasses.blogspot.com, go to Dashboard, see my choices, a decision or two and a few keystrokes and wham, I have this blog. Talk to my friend across the ocean? A few keystrokes and wham, let the call begin. This is nothing short of magic.

Start a global company from the get-go? Ah, more than a few keystrokes are required. And real, not virtual, magic will be required.

Talk again after Dick and I talk.

Cheers, Greg