Labour Day Long Weekend

The Labor Day long weekend (first Monday in September is Labor Day) is the strangest holiday for those with school-age children. For 10 weeks the little hellions run free, staying up long past the parents' bedtime, and sleeping in ... until noon, if not later.

Then comes this long weekend, Saturday is fun, Sunday is fun, Monday is confused, as Tuesday, bang, back to school. The school bus comes at 08:15, so out of bed before 8am, well before.

Am I describing just my daughter's experience (and my wife and my loose parental practices), or is this "run wild" situation widespread? And just what the heck does this personal tale have to do with this blog?

Good questions. For the first, I know there are families that program their child's summer, from this camp to that activity, from learn this to practice that, for 2.5 months. No real time off (as in nothing to do), just a reduced schedule spent in non-school locations. This approach to summer "vacation" is common in Asia, at all family wealth points: only the nature and cost of the chosen activities differs from rich to middle class to poor, not the principle that a "vacation" is a time for extra schooling, not for goofing off.

Do I think this is wrong? Not necessarily: my daughter would have benefited with some more summer structure than when One Tree Hill or Friends reruns were on. But I also strongly feel that if children are not allowed to have unscripted "fun" they will grow into adults who just do not know how to have fun. Maybe we Western slackers know too well how to have fun, maybe, but I have always thought of life as more than just work and duty.

And have always thought of work as more than simply doing what you are told.

While not a development psychologist (phew), I use common sense glasses to see a relationship between creativity/initiative and unscripted fun, and between (whatever the opposite of creativity/initiative is) and scheduled and supervised activities.

Children left on their own have to use their imagination to make up things to do, make up games to play. Children who enjoy (sic) only scheduled and supervised activities learn to follow the rules and to wait to be told what to do.

Hey, following rules is important, and there certainly is a place for waiting to be told what to do, yet if this is all children learn they end up being good followers, not good leaders. From where I sit, we have sufficient followers, perhaps too many, but not enough leaders.

Singapore's celebrated founder and Prime Minister for 31 years (elected, not like Mugabe), said argued that (and I can't find the quote: sigh) Singapore needed to enhance student (hence worker hence citizen) creativity, and to do that must change its top-down, scheduled, wait-to-be-told school system; must adopt the Western, subjective, teach students to think model.

Did my daughter's unscripted, unscheduled and unfocused summer teach her to become a leader, teach her to be creative and to use her imagination? Not that I can see, so far anyway, but I wager it put her closer to that path than a scripted and scheduled summer would have.

That's the point actually, that all we can do as parents and managers is to point children and staff in the "right' direction, to give them the environment within which such growth is likely. Nothing we do will create a certain outcome, but our actions do make some outcomes more likely than others.

Back to work. I contend that companies need more than a good system and staff who are good followers, they also need change leaders, staff/managers who see different possibilities and are not afriad to try them, or at least argue for them.

Staff development is too much about "do this when that happens," too much about following the rules and waiting to be told. Sure this is absolutely essential, especially with a lesser-educated workforce, yet it alone it not enough to make a company grow to its full potential.

Somehow companies must learn how to encourage creativity and to allow mistakes. Often this means letting staff enjoy non-scipted training, dare I say "fun" training.

In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn's description of the Soviet labor camp system, he writes

If, in order to live, one has not to live, then what is life for?

I take the first "live" to mean be alive, the second "live" to mean not have fun (or be in chains, or suffer, or ... you get my drift). In plain language, he asks that if we have to suffer to be alive then what the heck is life all about?

(Please, even though this is Sunday, no religious arguments.)

Turned to the office, if we have to follow someone else's rules and to wait to be told what to do to be successful, then what the heck is work all about?

Do Something ... even if it is wrong

As a callow youth, 19 or so, I worked electrical construction (think poles and power lines, not Glen Campbell's "Whichita Lineman"), the lowly driver-groundman. My foreman used to tell me,

Do something, even if it is wrong, do something.

Huh? I wondered what he meant, really meant. Did he want me to make mistakes, want me to get in trouble? Was he setting me up?

He wasn't. He believed that the only true way you learn things is by trying, by doing. He believed that you never really learned much if all you did was wait to be told what to do. It took me a few years to realize that I believed it too.

I also believe there are four indispensable things needed to build a company: an idea, enough money to implement (start to implement) it, a system or process and people who can do the required tasks. If you have a good idea, enough money, a good system/process and talented people you have a chance: take any away and you don't. Period.

Not many things in life are more Darwinian than building a business: no one outside the company cares if it lives and plenty want it to die. Only the strong survive.

I can't help Dick with the money, and, at least initially, can not help much on the idea. (Besides I don't think he needs help in these areas anyway.) I can offer a lot of theory about SOPs and business processes, and metrics and such, all good stuff, but believe the best I can offer is manager/staff development.

Oh, and dealing with the "gulp" every entrepreneur gets when s/he lets him/self realize just how enormous the task is. Dealing with it without whiskey too.

So expect many more development posts with process/system posts thrown in. And more videos from Greg's office. I hope to improve lighting, focus and sound. But I refuse to wear a wig.

Pop's Garage: Mistakes Are Good ... Sometimes

No one likes making mistakes. But managers make a mistake if they don't see staff mistakes as an opportunity, not a problem.

There are two broad types of mistakes, those made out of ignorance and those made for any other reason (laziness, lack of attention, attitude, whatever). The second type of mistake is bad, the first type isn't. Below I talk about the "good" mistakes, those out of ignorance.

The holy grail of training is learning from experience, to learn by doing. All good, but what is left out is that "learn by experience" actually means "learn from making mistakes." Okay, not always--it is very important that we learn from our successes (which we don't do often enough, a point continued later). But the truth is that most of the time we learn how to do something correctly by first doing it wrong. By making a mistake.

The rule I live by is, The First Mistake Is Free. No one should get in trouble for a mistake made out of ignorance. In fact managers should treat such "first" mistakes by staff as a positive. Why? Simple: because now the manager knows exactly what staff need to learn.

A huge part of a training budget is wasted in two (only?) ways: by training people who already know the stuff, and by training people in skills they don't need to do their job. One of the most critical jobs for managers, HR and trainers is to identify who needs what training.

Looking at mistakes made is perhaps the clearest way to answer the "who needs what training" question. If John makes a mistake then John's manager knows what training John needs. Making this even better is that the manager now knows that John can do the task. Nothing is better than certainty, or more elusive.

(When I led business process improvement/reengineering projects one of the first things I did was to survey staff and customers to find out where the mistakes were: the survey results were always my starting point.)

To complete the circle, treating mistakes as a negative, getting angry and/or punishing staff for "first mistakes," is one of the worst things managers can do. Staff will not only try to hide their mistakes--which always leads to a bad result--they will stop trying new things, stop showing initiative. The latter is death to staff development.

It is not always easy to smile when staff make a critical "first mistake." Yet smile a manager must, saving the grimace, foul language and physical reaction (punching a wall was my favorite) for when no one else is around.

Once again I retrun to the principle that training staff and developing staff into managers requires the ability to accept the inevitable mistakes as a necessary part of the process. Doing otherwise is a true mistake.

Being Selfish To Find Time To Think

To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Use time wisely, they are not making any more." A subject touched on in an earlier post, how Dick deals with the pressures on his time will go a long way to determining how successful he and Acme are.

A recent conversation between Barak Obama and (British Liberal leader) David Cameron sums up the point well, that:

Mr. Cameron: You should be on the beach. You need a break. Well, you need to be able to keep your head together.

Mr. Obama: You’ve got to refresh yourself.

Mr. Cameron: Do you have a break at all?

Mr. Obama: I have not. I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who — not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process — said that should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be ...

Mr. Cameron: These guys just chalk your diary up.

Mr. Obama: Right. ... In 15 minute increments and ...

Mr. Cameron: We call it the dentist waiting room. You have to scrap that because you’ve got to have time.

Mr. Obama: And, well, and you start making mistakes or you lose the big picture. Or you lose a sense of, I think you lose a feel ...

Mr. Cameron: Your feeling. And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions.

Mr. Obama: That’s exactly right. And the truth is that we’ve got a bunch of smart people, I think, who know 10 times more than we do about the specifics of the topics. And so if what you’re trying to do is micromanage and solve everything then you end up being a dilettante, but you have to have enough knowledge to make good judgments about the choices that are presented to you.

Okay, maybe putting Dick in such lofty company isn't fair ... to Dick. He is, after all, a business person, a creator of services, products and jobs, not simply a generator of words, positions and headlines. But the principle is the same: if not careful Dick can find himself consumed by the daily management minutiae.

Dick's job (any entrepreneur's job) is to do what managers can not do: offer a vision, set strategy and see how all parts of the company and environment fit together. Do the Big Thinking. And to do that requires time: quality time, alone time, reflective time.

But how? In a Blackberry, connected-24/7-world, how can Dick escape? How can I, in one post, say that Dick's key job is hiring and training and developing managers, a very time consuming process, then argue that Dick needs to find time to do nothing but think? The cute answer is that I can make contradictory arguments because all I do is offer advice: I don't have to take it.

The real answer is that there is no contradiction: Dick needs to do both, and other tasks as well. How? Well, cloning himself, even though a father-through-passport of Dolly the cloned sheep, won't work ... fast enough anyway. Dick has to learn to manage time, not let time manage him.

Linda Stone makes an interesting distinction, that we should manage our attention, not just our time. Rather than slaving ourselves to a never-ending list of jobs to do, Stone argues that we must create chunks of time where digital, analog and human inputs are blocked, time where we can focus attention on few but key things.

Sounds a lot like the money-making Time Management mantra, of seeing the difference between "urgent" and "important," then ensuring you spend time on the latter each day. Sounds good, as all platitudes do, but the question of how to do it remains.

The web today abounds with personal-productivity resources: sites like Lifehacker, blogs like 43folders and gurus like David Allen (not in any way a definitive list). All good, but all suffer IMHO from the same fault every time management system has: somewhere, somehow, the person must actually "do" the steps, and that requires being selfish.

Personal productivity, "getting your head together," requires two necessary qualities: ability to say No and willingness to focus on personal needs instead of the never-ending wave of requests from others.

Neither are easy. In future posts I will look closer at some of the most popular personal productivity sites and methods (I'd like to call them fads, but ...). In the end however, the most important step is allowing yourself to be unavailable.

Years ago, when cell phones were just becoming popular (yes, I am that old: I also recall when computers were not personal, but that is another story) I asked a senior Western executive of a Chinese high tech firm why he refused to carry a cell phone. "Because if they can find me to ask what they should do they always will, and so they will never learn to do it themselves."

Great advice. I've repeated it for years to explain why I didn't carry a cell phone. Inside the advice is a greater truth though, that being selfish and finding time for yourself inevitably means allowing subordinates/peers to make mistakes. If you are not there and instead off somewhere alone thinking Big Thoughts, well you can't stop them from doing the wrong things, from making mistakes.

And thus the great bugaboo of developing managers, allowing managers to make mistakes, rears its head here as well.

I know from personal experience, in life as well as work, that allowing someone to make a mistake that you know you can prevent is incredibly difficult to do. But if I want my daughter to ride a bike by herself I have to take off the training wheels and let her ride around the corner without me. Same is true in managers. Getting time for yourself means taking off their training wheels and letting them steer by themselves.

Gulp. We'll talk more about this later as well.

Managers don't work, workers work

Managers don't work: workers work and managers manage. Beyond semantic accuracy, this bromide is actually true.

How do you measure a manager's performance? You start with what a manager is tasked to do (international sales, video editing, accounts payable, whatever) then compare what is accomplished in the area with the objective or target the area should reach. Yes, there is more to it, but at the most basic level it is that simple: compare what is done with what should have been done.

The international sales manager does not visit every customer or close every deal, s/he manages sales staff who do these tasks. If staff achieve their goals then the manager achieves his/her goals; if staff do not achieve goals the manager does not meet his/her goals. The manager is responsible for international sales, true, but his/her performance (total sales) is the sum total of the performance of the staff s/he manages.

Staff are tools used by a manager.

One way to look management is that staff are tools the manager uses to achieve a goal. Don't like that? Not politically correct? Sigh. Fine, then how about this: managers work for their staff (not the other way around), providing staff with everything needed to achieve individual objectives ... which added up equal the manager's performance. I like them both, especially "staff are tools." People who brindle at that just do not understand tools, or tool culture (an argument for another post).

If you accept that managers work for staff then what work do managers need to do? What does "give staff what they need" mean? It means more than physical and financial resources: staff need more than a desk, chair, computer and budget. At minimum staff also need the right skills, clear objectives and sufficient time to accomplish them. They may also need encouragement, direction and continuous feedback. There is no cut-in-stone rule that "staff need X:" what each staff needs depends upon the situation.

One of the most useful (if not the most useful) principles I've found is "situational leadership" (who owns the concept is confusing: see here and here), the simple idea that how you lead a person depends upon the experience and confidence the person has in doing the specific task. An experienced person only needs the bare minimum, a goal to be achieved and a deadline to achieve it in; a true rookie would a heck of a lot more. Maybe a clear description of the task and what "done" looks like, clear instructions about how to do it and hand-holding along the way.

The experienced person would think getting what the rookie needs a waste of time, and it may affect performance; the rookie would be lost only getting what the experienced person needs, again affecting performance. The job as a manager (leader, supervisor, whatever) is to see where the person is along the experienced/confident continum in that specifi task and then to adjust leadership/management style accordingly.

I thought of this principle over and over as I worked through problems all dragon boat weekend. The top festival leadership had given the job of Site Manager (an difficlut and complicated job) to a true rookie, 21 years old with no relevant experience, then had disappeared. Of course the inevitable happened: things were not set up right, key materials were missing or in the wrong place. The chaos made two already-long days seem even longer.

I put the blame squarely on the people who selected the rookie then disappeared. The previous Site Manager was a greybeard with years of experience managing projects, including 10 years experience in the festival. Giving him the position then disapperaing made sense: he would get angry at micro-mangaging. The rookie, well, he needed to be micro-managed.

I've often seen this mistake, leadership filling a position on a organization chart with little or no regard to whether the "name" could do the job. It feels good to have the org chart filled, and, so they think, "hey, if the "name" doesn't perform then that is his/her fault. Nothing to do with us."

I am now waiting for the festival debrief. Knowing the personalities involved I expect blame to go to the rookie, at which time I will interrupt and ... heck, telling the nabobs that it was a failure of their leadership will make it an interesting meeting. Not the first (or likely the last) time I've let my loose-cannon loose.

This issue is critical to Dick and Acme. Dick is furiously building the company, hiring managers to hire managers to hire workers ... to fill the org chart. All fine--it must be done--but it must be done with an eye to what each manager needs to succeed, and that requires time to stop and learn more about each manager's experience and confidence in doing the specific tasks hired for.

It is both time consuming and a job that never really ends. Developing managerial talent is absolutely crucial for business growth (sustainable growth that is: it is always easy to grow fast by putting "names" in empty boxes, but this is growth that doesn't last). Often (always?) it is necessary to let a manager try and fail before you get a good grip on his/her useable experience and confidence level. Again that takes time.

To summarize this rather-rambling post, I've argued that:

1. managers are measured by comparing objectives to accomplishments
2. a manager's accomplishment is the sum total of his/her staff's accomplishments, thus
3. a manager's true job is helping his/her staff achieve their indivdual objectives (managers work for staff)
4. staff need more than physical and financial resources: they need a certain amount of direction and help
   
5. the amount of direction and help staff need depends upon experience and confidence in the specific task at hand, thus
   
6. managers must adjust management (leadership) style to match the needs of each employee doing each task

Phew. Developing managers and staff is a (or the) crucial aspect of Acme's growth, and one of Dick's most important jobs. The principles of managers working for staff (or speakers working for listeners) and of needing to adjust styles depending on who you are managing (or communicating with) will be examined again, and often. Each are keys to my personal beliefs in managing, communicating and, dare I say, life.

Life? Yup: I believe that the only real way to get what you want is to help the others around you get what they want. Another time.

And I will let you know what happens in the dragon boat debrief. All I know now is that I will be wearing my bullet proof underwear.

Dragon Boating mea culpa

Sorry for a week of no posts. Adding to the downsize nightmare was volunteering for the Victoria Dragon Boat Festival, a yearly event that features 90 teams (of 20-25 paddlers plus coaches, managers, friends, family and groupies) from as far away as LA and Toronto. It also features me exhausting myself, every year, and losing my voice, every year. Here are some pictures; here too.

I am the Crew (or Race) Marshal, in charge of getting the right teams lined up in the right order with the right equipment on to the dock at the right time. Every twelve minutes from 8am to 4-5pm. Standing on hot pavement the entire time, in the hot sun.

I do this a LOT!

I am also on the Race Committee and privy to the inner workings of the festival. I commit my time, energy and increasingly-frail body to the festival not because I like dragon boating. Fra from it: the one and only time I was in a dragon boat was in my student days in Taiwan, on the Danshui River. I looked at the black, fetid water and decided d-boating was not for me.

I participate because of dragon boating's association with breast cancer. Huh? Breast Cancer? That's pretty much out of left field I admit, so let me explain.

In the mid-90s a Vancouver cancer doctor in wanted to help his breast cancer patients exercise., so he started a dragon boat team of patients and survivors. Before this the conventional wisdom was that sufferers should stay away from exercise, but his team exploded that myth. The rest is, as you say, history. Read more here.

There are now many breast cancer teams, worldwide, and even breast cancer d-boating world championship festivals. The effort and spirit from the ladies is remarkable, palpable, uplifting. They know I am there for them, and we now have a special bond: I cheer for them and they rub, pat and kiss my head for luck. This also has become a ritual for most teams. Sigh.

"Don't forget to rub his head for luck."

I offer all this info about dragon boating for two reasons. First, and least, to let you know where I was when I wasn't posting. Second, and key, is that I saw things during the festival that fit right into this blog. Two areas stand out, leadership and business processes.

But for now describing the festival and uploading a few pictures is all I can do before my energy level drops and a nap beckons. TTFN.

Legacy Problems

The easiest way to build the newest, best, most-efficient anything is to start with a blank page, with no constraints from what came before. Sure, knowledge and experience are also important, as are learned skills and skinned knees, and can`t forget deep pockets. But Microsoft (to cite just one case) has all these things in abundance, but to no avail. Or at least no efficient avail.

Gate's gang, er, Balmer's bunch, have to use their skills, experience and dollars building upon an existing system, Windows, an uncertain vista if there ever was one. Indeed, Windows is perhaps the best technical example of a black hole (the opposite of a blank page), where new applications and features must be built upon and made compatible to whatever was done in the past, going back even to DOS.

(That would be a Disc Operating System, the first computer universe for everyone, Windows on just 64K; no mouse, no hard drive, just strange commands like autoexec.bat and configsys, where everything you did started the same way, with c:/ -- the command prompt.)

It is frightening to think of the total of all IQs at Microsoft, a giant, ferocious brilliance in one company. Yet projects arrive late, programs arrive bloated, not because of a lack of anything but because of too much of something: legacy. businessdictionary.com defines a legacy system as

obsolete computer system that may still be in use because its data cannot be changed to newer or standard formats, or its application programs cannot be upgraded.

Windows adds a third issue, that of creating new features or processes while simultaneously insuring that prior features, processes and programs, even from 3rd parties, still work. In other words if a mistake was made in the past you must continue using and building on the mistake. The legacy system is the environment within which you must work. It is the reality.

I am neither a hard nor soft computer professional (or even gifted amateur), so I mention this not to discuss computers in general or Windows in particular, but to introduce the problems of legacy systems. Why? Because of the N=1, R=G world described by C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan's in their book, The New Age Of Innovation.

P&K describe a world where services, products and delivery systems are customized at the most basic level: the individual. This is the N=1. (R=G describes a focus on access to resources--on a global scale--not ownership of resources.) All fine stuff, yet something kept me coming back to their ideas. Eventually (yesterday actually) I realized it was legacy systems.

P&K use medical insurance and diabetes in India as an example of N=1. Diabetes sufferers pay a unique-to-them premium based on their individual behavior and lifestyle. They argue that

This could be achieved (and the technology is already in use) via remote monitoring of blood sugar and other vital statistics, once a day at random, based on sensors attached to that person's watch or cell phone.

Through this data, the insurer, doctor and patient--based on the patient's full consent (italics added)--could assess the level of compliance of that person to a recommended regimen of medication, diet and exercise. <snip> If, however, the person refused to change her lifestyle and did not comply, the ... premium would then go up.

Personally I have no problem with this. I am a strong believer in user pays and being responsible for your own actions. I believe most obese people are not victims of the fast food industry but are simply lazy, and should have to pay more for health insurance (and for airplane seats, a pet peeve of mine when I fly). I would of course agree to a safety net for true victims and the truly disadvantaged, but for the most people, you do the crime you do the time, period.

Back to P&K. Such personalized N=1 service requires sharing information, personal information. Possible perhaps in India and other communal/collectivist-societies, would it be possible in individualistic-societies like the US or Great Britain? If there is a difference, and I believe there is--check a column by David Brooks in the Aug 11 New York Times for a good description of the differences--what do these differences mean for the N=1 service model?

I will continue this theme and what it might mean for Dick and Acme. In one sense Dick has the best possible position, a blank page upon which to build a company. Many questions arise though: how will his plans and structures fit into different societal types? Will Dick be forced to do N=1 on a macro scale, offering different service models to different locations? If so, what does that mean to business plans? How can Dick create a blank page environment in a dark hole area?

That's enough for today. It is now off to another day of downsize hell. Sigh. I'd much rather sit here and write all day. Heck, I'd much rather do anything. But I was (and still am) influenced by a quote from R.L. Stevenson, that (paraphrasing) "The true measure of a man is not in how well he does the things he likes to do, but in how well he does the things he does not like to do, but must do."

Helping my parent's downsize is a good example of the latter: So far I've done a pretty good job. I think.

Amazing How Time Flies When ...

Amazing how timew flies when you are waist-deep in problems. My "soon over" was woefully wrong. The auction guys showed up Tuesday as planned, filled at 21 ft. (6.4 meter) truck with "stuff" and left, saying, "We'll be back tomorrow for the rest."

A FULL Truck

note large garbage bin at right

Waited, and waited, left message, waited, and waited, until a brief call at 4PM saying they'd now be there on Thursday, early. "How early?" 7AM. Okay.

Was there at 6:45AM, and waited, and waited, and left message, and ... they showed up at 9AM. I was in a good mood, but kept my tongue. Again they filled the large truck, saying they'd be back later that afternoon for the rest.

Received call at 5PM saying there was miscommunication (gee) and actually they'd be back next week (!) for the balance. I was real happy.

Never could get the boss, the man who'd sold me on using the auction service, on the phone. Had not received a copy of the inventory of all they took, the catalog that accompanies the auction. A big selling point to me and Pop, he said numerous times that, "I email it to 1,300 people." But not 1,301 evidently: I still or do not have a copy, even after leaving more messages. Sigh.

Today is auction day however, and wife daughter and I will make our pillgramage to the site, to say goodbye to the "stuff" ... and see just what the heck they are selling, and for how much. It has become a tiny bit of a trust issue, damn, something always bad for business. Especially as he told me, again numerous times, that "Maybe best not to come to the auction: it is hard to see your stuff sold." Hmm.

Maybe true, but as I told him, numerous times, "It is not my stuff." And besides, if they were planning to do a fast one (remember that small "trust issue") the best way would be not to send me a inventory/catalog and then not have me at the auction. Damn, more stress.

What did I do while waiting for the auction truck and messages? Oh, I rested, laid on the sofa, had my naps. Not! I helped mother and sister arrange the Garage Sale From Hell, a title that deserves italics, bold face and underline to go the capital letters.

The sale was yesterday (and today). My daughter and I were out at 10:30PM Thursday night nailing signs to telephone poles. I was there until 11PM Friday night then back at 6:15AM on sale day, putting up signs, blocking of areas with orange tape and generally getting all the "stuff" ready. Once customers started arriving I quit.

And went home? No. Had a nap? Something to eat? No and no. I started working on the garbage.

From 9Am until 3PM I worked, non-stop except for "natural breaks," filling at huge garbage bin with garbage.

Quality garbage: strips of solid oak, half-sheets of plywood, damaged but fixable equipment.
Ugly garbage: bags breaking when lifted, spilling out slimy sloppy "stuff"
Smelly garbage: rotten food and chemical smells, soggy rugs smelling like wet dog.
Dangerous garbage: Cans of oil and kerosene and paint and thinner and creosote and ...

I still hurt, though a shower stopped me from smelling. Methinks I should burn the clothes I wore though. But EUREAKA, the garbage is gone, or loaded anyway. Yesterday was the hardest day yet; one of the hardest days of my life actually.

Physically of course, but also emotionally. I love my siblings, but don't always love to work with them. Then there was Mom, wandering around in shock all day, seeing her treasures priced at ridiculously-low prices of 2 and 3 dollars--and still not selling! Yesterday was a non-stop kick in her guts, as was the $195.25 total sales at the end of the day. Is that all her"stuff" was worth? Mom definitley should not have attended the sale.

So much work for so little. The house is still full, but that's okay, at least in my narrow, selfish view: what doesn't sell ("stuff" I don't have move, again) goes to charity and their big truck and young backs (more "stuff" I don't have move, again).

Truly sorry for not posting this week. It was my 9th, ninth, NINTH! week waist-deep in their "stuff," and I'm ready to quit. Luckily the job now becomes an order of magnitue easier.

I hope.

Pop's Garage - Finishing Projects

Phew! Hot times at the parent's old house. The temperature was high too.

Today's post is about finishing projects, or the last steps before the ending. I call it preventing the three Cs, conflcit, confusion and chaos.

For years I led performance improvement-type projects (quality management, reengineering, performance management, balanced scorecard), the kinds of projects that cause big changes in how business operations are run (new SOPs) and/or how performance is measured (affecting salary increases and promotions). Implementing the project team's plans often caused conflict and chaos, or at least confusion, amoung affected employees. But that is not what I care about, now anyway.

Today I care about preventing conflict inside the team itself.

Projects go through phases. One of the most dangerous project phases is near the end of the preparation, just prior to implementation (or presentation to the powers that be). After geting past the initial confusion at project start teams settle into a routine, almost a boring, "we are doing this to achieve that mentality. Nothing dangerous there.

One day though, all the datum has been collected, the possibilities brainstormed and implementation plans made, almost. It is the almost part that triggers the problems.

By now the team has been together for a while, and routine datum collecting and idea bouncing has shifted to data analyzing and idea hardening. It is a confusing time, bringing everything together. Not just that choices must be made (making some winners and most losers) but that project ennui is at a peak, "won't this damn project ever end?" a common feeling.

Now is when frustrations built up over time are no longer are quite-so-easy to dismiss. Tempers fray, words are said and arguments take place. When implementation starts team members have other, "new" things to think about and do, but in the dog days just before implementing there are only old jobs to do and old ideas to discuss. Again. And again.

Now is when the team leader truly earns his/her salary. Why? Because if team members have a frustration level of X, leader's frustration ix X+10. Or +100. The easiest thing to do is to give in and when team members offer up frustration to answer them with frustration +10. The urge to lash out, to say things you've thought and felt for months, is string, a seductive siren calling you to, paraphrasing Nancy Regan, just let go.

Don't! Now is when project managers need to be calm. If you are calm they will be, or might. If you show you are frenzied, harried and frustrated, they will be too. No fun, for anyone.

Pop's Irishman's Armful

Well, almost done. Soon (day after tomorrow!) Pop's Garage will return to where and what it should be, a subconscious set of principles, a memory with substance. Phew.

So, what's with the Irishman and his armful? I have no idea: the video explains the multi-pronged, fruitless, search I've made to find out.



(The video also talks to the issues the Politically Correct Police will undoubtably make. Sigh.)

Once again I use pithy sayings from my childhood -- adulthood actually: he said both phrases to me last week while I moved them into their new home -- that shaped my life and gave me the foundation of my work, and life. Today's phrases deal with carrying things. Kinda.

"Don't go empty handed" is the first of the two associated phrases. It can, but doesn't have to, refer to carrying anything. More it explains a principle of efficiency, that each step in a process should be productive. Maybe an historial explanation, China, the English and opium.

In the late 1800s Britain was importing a huge and growing amount of "stuff" from China, silk, porcelain and the new hot drink, tea. English ships would leave China full, sail to England, offload the tea and load British manufactures, then sail to India. The manufactures would be offloaded, then ... nothing was loaded. The Chinese didn't want anything English (except silver). Ships would thus sail from India to China empty, and every shipper knows you don't make money with empty bottoms.

This was inefficient: ships had to go from India to China, but were going "empty handed." Making a long story short, to fill these ships (and stop the drain of silver) the British East India Company came upon a brilliant (as far as business is concerned) strategy: fill the ships with India opium to sell to the Chinese. This began the famous triangle trade--British goods to India, Indian opium to China, and Chinese goods to England. Everyone is happy, or at least the British were, especially economists.

That is what "don't go empty handed" means: never waste a step. If you are already gpoing to be doing something, see what else uyou can do to make the thing more productive.

I will add more about the Irish and their armfuls later. Right now I must be off to Pop's Garage. I have help today, and can't be late.


try to make sure you

Wham, it worked!

"Even pyramids erode," a pithy comment from a friend about the fight (cage match actually, or a battle royal) between my work ethic, the work I have to do, the time I have available, my skills and my body. Normally my work ethic wins, my skills running roughshod over physical limitations and stretching time just enough to make the impossible possible.

Not this time. My body won. The day after the last post I put photos online of some choice items and sent the url to the world. Wham, it worked! The next day an auction company expressed interest in my parent's dragon hoard, and arranged to visit the next day. Phew.

I pulled out all stops (seems to be a cliche day) getting their "stuff" ready to be seen. Marketing 101: make the product appealing to potential customers. Think what a customer likes and work backwards to create that. Wham, it worked!

The auction company will brings trucks and strong backs on Tuesday morning, and by that evening Pop's garage will be ... EMPTY!! Yippie. The auction will be next Sunday: I will post the email promotion (describing all the goods so I'm told: a long list) later this week to show what I have been talking about.

Yet success comes at a price. Not always, but often. Usually. It did here: my back, neck and shoulder went on strike, insisting on rest, ice, heat and massage. While normally I'd pay there demands no attention, this time I had no choice. The Boss (wife) laid down the Law--no work, including computer, for, well, almost three days.

So, that's why no posts for a few days. I am pretty much back to normal (sic) now, and have a couple more Pop's Garage videos mentally prepared.

Not much relevance to Dick and Acme, sorry. Relevant to me, Dick's Boswell, though. I hope that is enough.