Entries from February 2008 ↓

What is the biggest secret to successful business? Why there are extremely successful businesses and pure failures? Why some businesses on stagnation and others skyrocketing?

by ninjapoodles

I recently stumbled on Book Review: The Goal. I’ve read this book long ago but the content is timeless. Really.

I liked how Mike King distilled the essence of the book:

“…the goal to be; to make money. Its not to cut costs, reduce wages, increase efficiency, or any of the other traditional measures that were in place. Its about balancing 3 critical areas of the plant’s operations in order to make more money, regardless of those other measures. These three components need to happen simultaneously in order to have any significance and these are:

• Reduce Inventory
• Reduce Operating Expense
• Increase throughput “

Reduce inventory

I strongly believe that in order to grow the business one needs to focus and Grow Quality - Not Quantity. Tim Ferriss Dedicates whole chapter for E [stands for Eliminating] in his “The 4-hour workweek” book. Focus on small set of great products or services. And deliver the best quality. The more products and services the more friction and operations costs.

Reduce Operating Expense

Overwhelmed with billing, forecasting, reporting, and other operations related stuff? Your team needs too much managerial attention? That is how investment beats the return on it. What is your goal? Writing complex reports, updating redundant systems? Or produce value? Can you estimate your investment and the value you make? The rest is pretty simple math…

Increase throughput

This is where personal and team’s productivity kicks in. Do more with less. Be productive and efficient. Apply Personal Performance Engineering Practices.

Hit your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, lifetime goal.

Got goal?

How to maintain acceptable weight without limiting food assortment and amount? How to keep alert after lunch time? How to keep high energy throughout the day?

DISCLAIMER: below is my personal practice. I am not physician or diet specialist.

by 46137

Morning - high energy

Morning meal is most important one. It should provide me the energy to survive high rhythm from 6:00 AM to 13:00, 6 to 7 hours of morning pressure - getting kids to school, getting through heavy traffic, planning the day, finishing unfinished work from yesterday, completing current work items. I consume carbohydrate rich food for breakfast - cereal, bread, chocolate, honey. Food that transformed directly into energy to start and keep my engines moving.

Morning anti-patterns

• No breakfast.
• Deep fried food.
• Protein rich food (consumes more energy to process it).

Lunch time - supporting energy to move on

Short break to refuel. Feel hungry. I tend to eat either easy-to-burn sea food, which is protein rich or no protein rich ingredients at all - salad and potatoes, pasta, or rice. I am not vegetarian, love meat, but not for the lunch on work day. My body consumes more energy to burn meat than it generates to keep my engines moving. That is why I feel sleepy when I break this rule, when I eat meat for the lunch. In the case when I do eat red meat I mix it with vegetables only, lots of veggies.

Lunch time anti-patterns

• Meat mixed with carbohydrate rich food like rice, potatoes, bread.
• No vegetables.
• Fast/Junk food.

Evening - low energy, recreation

Time for recreation, no energy needed, no carbohydrate rich food allowed. Meat and wine time, fruits and veggies too. Water, just water, lots of water.

Evening eating anti-patterns

• Carbohydrate rich food.
• Lot’s of any food.
• Snacks.
• Alcohol.

The result

I maintain acceptable weight, I did not change my jeans size for last 15 years. I feel good level of energy throughout the day. I breath with full chest. My mind is clear and not overwhelmed.

Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food - Hippocrates

Thinking to quit your day job and kiss corporate life goodbye? Want more excitement, money, influence, freedom? Think quitting corporate life and entering freelance theatre of operations will get you it all? May be… May be not.

Why just not having it all while keep kissing your corporate life?

by Peter Kaminski

I was freelance trainer during .Com euphoria around 2000’s and I was doing really good numbers, having lots of fun, enjoying freedom and influencing lots of folks. I kissed my freelance life goodbye in sake of corporate life. Why?

Excitement

Training was about showing the world how to do things generally. I was in search of real world challenges. My desire was to find work place choked with software technologies. The ultimate goal was being responsible for solutions that make these technologies friendly each to other and to people too. And so I did. I got hired as a developer with technology department at one of the nation’s largest financial institutes. What I realized that there were many fantastic professionals who were ready to share their experience. I also found out that these professionals were great in their areas but when it came to communications, no one understood each other well. Opportunity smiled at me with its big smile. I found my niche - technology and human integration. Database and network professionals, Mainframe personnel and Web developers, and few more all knew I know who could know. I was known to know who knows, few times I even provided solution myself, few of them in production even today. Is not it exciting helping people solve their day to day problems?

Lesson I learned: every corporation is full of opportunities and potential. Look around, spot your niche, and offer value proposition - you will be rewarded by self realization. Exciting enough for you?

Money

What is money for you? Income or revenue? To me it is the bottom line - income minus investment plus excitement. When your offer is time based as with the case of training and consulting, time ultimately influence your bottom line. Corporation removes many of the operational costs - marketing, sales, billing, and much much more. Freelancer must invest resources in it, either his own time or outsourcing it. That does not add to the bottom line. You can bring your brilliant idea to live inside the corporation - make sure it is aligned to corporation’s vision and strategy and that your management buys in.

Lesson I learned: establish your start up inside the corporation and enjoy its operations services while focusing on what you love and getting paid strictly for that.

Influence

How much influence can be achieved if you are start up or freelancer? I mean in short term, like 6 months. I doubt if any. How about changing the development process organization wide? 1000 developers start developing the way you defined. How about changing the whole offerings lines and marketing process by only adding new angles to it?

Lesson I learned: when you spot your niche, make sure it has great impact. Once done, work hard to achieve real results. Nobody can argue with facts.

Freedom

I think it is all about your manager. I hardly believe that your manager loves micro-management. If she does - quit your job now!The only thing your manager wants from you is having you hit your goals. Proactively showing constant progress is the way to make it.

Lesson I learned: help your manager to free you. Agree on clear goals, strategy, and guidelines. Once agreed - achieve incremental results and proactively report progress on timely  basis.

I am not a millionaire, but I think I am well off. I am full of passion with what I’m doing, I breath with full chest, I have my circles of influence. I am Alik, the-average-corporate-worker, former freelancer.

Want to be in control of your relationships with your boss? Want to be praised? Want to anticipate critiques and make most out of it?

Here is my take – manage your manager.

Why you need a manager? Why is she calling your desk all the time? Why she constantly sends tons of emails? What does she want from you? The only reasonable answer I could come up with is “she wants you to accomplish your tasks so she could hit her goals”.

Understand you manager’s goals

Do you know you manager’s goals? Clearly understand the goals. Save your manager and you from wasting time and resources on something that is off track to your manager’s goals.

Agree on course of action

Make sure the course of action toward the goals is clear to both you and your manager. There are way more aspects that should be taken into account while trying to accomplish your tasks. Let your manager oversee it. Present your approach, let the manager correct it and then execute it exactly as it was agreed by both parties. Executing exactly the way it was agreed saves your manager from surprises. Managers do not like surprises.

Timely mutual feedback

How do you know you are on track? Feedback is the primarily tool for that purpose. Beg for the feedback. Provide timely feedback to your manager too. Ask for help when hitting road bumps. Help your manager helping you. Agree on timely feedback. Agree on the channel for the feedback – in person, email, or phone. Proactively provide progress status on timely bases you agreed. In case you are late with deliverables – report so, proactively. Do not wait for your manager to ask. She will ask in any case. Be the first one, anticipate. Avoid surprises. Managers do not like surprises.

Get rewarded

How do you know you excel? How do you know you should expect rewards – either vocal or material? Execute to exceed what was agreed during clear goals setting. Stay on track and execute to hit the goals. All that with minimum managerial efforts from you manager’s side. I am sure your manager will be happy to see you doing your job and helping her hit her goals above the expectations. Expect to be rewarded. In case you are not, managing your manager you reward yourself with less micro-management, achieving more with less efforts, getting home at 5 to spend more time with your family.

“I’m not the manager because I’m always right, but I’m always right because I’m the manager.” - Gene Mauch

More resources on how to cope with bosses

• Monthly Results
• Fundamental Do’s and Don’ts for a Productive Relationship with Your Boss
• Five Conversations to Have with Your Boss
• Checking Whether You’re On Track

How to improve your response times to overwhelming events and stay calm? Are there proven techniques to respond to avalanches of events fast and peacefully?

Caching, well known technique in software engineering, can be successfully applied in day-to-day duties to cope with stressful situations fast and peacefully.

Wikipedia on Caching:

…a cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access…

… Cache have proven to be extremely effective in many areas of computing…

J.D. Meier on Caching threats (as a result of improper use or lack of caching):

… Increased memory consumption, resulting in reduced performance…

Scenarios

What falls under "frequently accessed data" category? Daily to-do tasks and related information, thoughts, meeting summaries, follow-ups, blog drafts. When coping with all these ineffectively I feel stressed and as a result my productivity is way far from peak performance.

Following is simple design and implementation of my personal caching practices to improve my responsiveness and thus my performance.

Design

There are few requirements to successful cache implementation:

• Must be easy and fast to access.
• Holds only recent, not stale, information.
• Must be disposed or filed when no more needed.

Implementation

I use Outlook 2007 to manage my cache, the items I use frequently.

Tasks. My inbox is my primarily cache of incoming tasks. I never use Outlook’s Task’s functionality since it violates requirement of simple and fast access. Task can be incoming mail or self post (Ctrl + Shift + S). When the task is created in My Inbox I tag it with one of my life projects - the categories. When the task is completed it is filed and disposed from the cache.

Meetings. For each key person or role I have designated Outlook folder. My manager, sales guys I work, finances, HR. I collect asks and request in the folders and then when I meet them I have ready to go agenda. After the meeting each agenda’s item becomes task and shows up in my Inbox tagged with proper life project.

Blogging. Create designated Outlook folder for blogging. Collect there ideas for the next possible post. I have way to much items in the folder. To mark the item I want to use for my next blog just flag it hitting "Insert" key. In order to focus Create search folder that picks only flagged items. When I finish authoring the post I mark it with check mark - hitting "Insert" key. In short, have one folder called "BLOGGING PIPELINE" where all possible topics to blog are collected, and the other folder called "Next to BLOG" that holds only items that are in works. When the post is published it just disposed from both folders releasing the room for more current once.

To make these caches easily accessible drag these folders into "Favorites" area in Outlook

Summary

Using caching technique I improved my response times dramatically. I also never get stressed when asking myself what’s the next action when:

• Preparing agenda for the meeting with my boss or either colleague.
• Working on specific project.
• Authoring next blog post.