Category Archives: Accountability

Quiet Meetings

It seemed that just the other day that the self-quarantining directives were starting to be relaxed. Stores and restaurants were starting to function at less than total capacity, but they were open. Then cases started to spike again as people either relaxed from, or just got tired of being careful. Many if not all business offices are still closed, and it appears that will be the case for a while.

The result is that travel and face-to-face interaction will still be severely curtailed. This was going to happen anyway as part of an on-going drive to reduce costs. Virtual and video meetings were already making their way into standard corporate operating procedures, particularly for internal meetings, and even some customer meetings. It is just that the current health concerns have significantly accelerated its adoption and implementation.

The “virtual” meeting is now and will be going forward the norm.

It used to be that when a business held a review all aspects of the business were gathered, the door was closed, and nothing was off-limits for the discussion. There was give and take. There was open challenge and discussion. There were questions by superiors, subordinates and peers. Despite the seeming acrimony, there was eventually resolution and alignment. And a stronger team usually emerged.

Afterwards, everybody would then usually go out for a team dinner, and possibly even a team building exercise.

Now we all get on “the bridge”. If the numbers are not large, we can have video, but a small number of attendees does not usually associate with a business review. Also, since it is now a “call”, almost anyone, and usually almost everyone attends since there are no travel and budget issues in play to reduce attendance.

With the increase in attendance and the now virtual nature of the meeting, these meetings seem to have gotten much quieter. If you are not presenting, you are usually on “mute”. If you are on mute, you are also usually multi-tasking and doing something else while listening in. The amount of contribution, questions and challenges has significantly been decreased. Everyone seems to just listen to the speaker, look at the slides and move on.

This concerns me. I think it should probably concern others as well.

I believe that there are very few concepts, ideas, programs and products that cannot be improved by an aligned, yet challenging team. This is the very idea and basis for much of the drive for diversity in the business environment. It is the idea that different people, with different experiences and different points of view can get together and make use of these differences to create a stronger solution.

However now, with the rise of virtual meetings and large audiences, it seems that this challenging aspect of the business process has been fading away. Our meetings are invariably quiet. The presenter presents their charts. They either read them to the audience or read their notes. With so many now online the objective is to stay on the meeting schedule so as not to take up too much or, or even possibly waste the audience’s time.

Nobody wants to challenge because it can be seen as being an obstruction. People are not usually looking for a better solution. They are looking to get through this meeting, and on to their next meeting. Whether they agree or not, their silence is deemed as agreement, and everybody gets to move on.

I know I can sound somewhat like a broken record when it comes to discussing process, but when the process indicates that a review is to be held, that is just what happens. A review is held. The reason for the review is now to fulfill the process, not to work at generating a better capability. In this instance to challenge anything would be seen as challenging the process, and no one wants to be seen as doing that.

It used to be everyone’s responsibility to try and improve the business. Now it is the process’s responsibility. Where it used to be that former president Harry Truman, as the leader of the United States said: “The buck stops here”*, now we must develop matrices so that we can understand who is Responsible, who is Accountable, who must be Consulted and who must merely be Informed

*For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Term: Buck passing, or passing the buck, or sometimes (playing) the blame game, is the act of attributing to another person or group one’s own responsibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_passing

This now begs the questions: If your meeting is quiet, and no one is challenging what is being presented, why are you even having a meeting? Wouldn’t it just be easier, not to mention a better use of everyone’s time, to just send out the charts and invite individual input? Instead of having everyone in attendance multi-tasking on something else while the charts are being presented, wouldn’t it be better to allow them to fully focus on what they are doing anyway?

The process of challenging in a meeting needs to somehow be reinstated into the meeting. If everyone is just going to present the charts that they submitted, why have everyone sit through that? They can just as easily read the charts on their own. What value is gained?

I think this is where leadership comes in. Much like Harry Truman ultimately decided that he would make the decision, so must the leader decide to start returning value to the meeting. If the leader starts asking appropriate questions, this will be seen a signal that others, who may have had appropriate questions that they would not have asked in the past, to ask appropriate questions.

If it evolves that too many questions are being asked, and not enough is getting accomplished in the meeting, this is not an indication to stop asking questions. This is an indication that the number of attendees at the meeting is too large, and the meeting should be broken down in more, smaller meetings in order to accommodate the questions.

Conversely, if too many questions are asked during the meeting, it might mean that the topic being presented has not been thoroughly thought through and vetted before-hand with the appropriate people. Either way it would indicate that more work would be required on that specific topic.

The next time that you find yourself in a quiet meeting, listening to someone present their charts, ask yourself “Why are you there?” If you are not there to provide input, or challenge the input provided by others, why would you attend? Meeting charts and meeting notes are usually distributed after the meeting and you could just as easily obtain the meeting information that way.

If you are the leader of the business that the meeting is associated with, and you notice that it is quiet, you should start asking yourself why. If the only one providing input to the meeting is the person presenting, that would indicate that everyone else is somewhat disengaged. If you are the leader and are not asking questions, can you truly say that you are fully engaged as well?

Regardless, the buck does indeed stop with the leader. If they do not challenge, few if any others will challenge. And the meeting, and the business will be diminished in value because of it.

Deadlines

We live in a deadline-oriented world. There can be little question about that as we are hit with that fact since well before we are born. While it may be your “birth-day”, prior to that it was your mother’s “due-date”. When we have talked in the past about the three basic resources, Time, Money and People, it is only Time that we can not get more of. Throughout our lives and careers, we are given targets and times that we are challenged to hit. We are then measured, reviewed, graded, etc. on how we did and then progress accordingly. Or at least that used to be the case. Has it really changed?

As is typically the case, I read an article that got me thinking. This one was by Jessica Hartogs, an Editor at LinkedIn, titled: “Workforce Less Forgiving than School” (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/workforce-less-forgiving-than-school-4509203/). It was a very short blurb where she cited a Wall Street Journal article titled: “Young Workers Seek Mental Health Accommodations, Employers Try to Keep Up” (https://www.wsj.com/articles/managing-mental-health-at-work-is-a-juggle-of-rights-and-realities-11581523201?mod=business_lead_pos5).

As you might guess the gist of the topic is that we as a society are making progress with coming to grips with mental heath issues associated with our members. We all understand and try to make accommodations for mental and emotional disabilities, just as we do for physical ones. This is obviously done with varying levels of focus, and success. We have seen this with the evolutions and accommodations that have occurred in our institutions of learning.

Students with these types of disabilities and disadvantages are given the accommodations of extra support, extra time, etc., when it comes to delivering their assignments or taking their exams. I don’t think there is anyone who could or would argue with these accommodations for these students to assist them in their studies.

Now let’s shift to business and organizational environment. Here again we will find a situation where deadlines and demands will be placed on all participants. However, most of these deadlines and demands are usually created as a result of an interaction or demand by a customer, or some other external entity. I think we all understand and agree that when dealing with a customer, we will usually find ourselves in a “competitive” situation. When we are dealing with a customer-imposed deadline, there is usually little that can be done in the way of addressing accommodations.

This is just one example. Marketing programs have launch dates where everything must be in place before they can go live. Finance and accounting have rules, some of which may be mandated by regulation, where books must be closed, and reports issued by certain dates or time intervals. The list can go on and on.

The point here is, are we putting businesses into a no-win situation when it comes to providing accommodations for these disabled / disadvantaged individuals?

I am by no means qualified to make any judgements as to what or how any such accommodations should be put in place. I will say however that in the global competitive environment there are many competitors that are not even contemplating making any such accommodations. They are in the competitive environment and are subscribing to the adage “the early bird gets the worm”.

They have recognized that rightly or wrongly, customers will accord some advantage to those that are first on the scene and able to deliver on their requirements. This is part of the “Fast, Good, Cheap” trio of criteria in the customer decision making process. The usual addendum to this trio of criteria is that you can only “Choose Two”.

I have written in the past of how the importance of “Good” has fallen over the past while. We are in a disposable environment for both consumer and business purchases. “Good” now no longer seems to carry the weight that it once did. All quality levels are viewed as somewhat the same and are viewed more in the context of what is paid for them. We seem to now expect Superior / Good / Quality as table stakes for even playing, and will only pay more for it for our “luxury” purchases, and even then only when we are truly looking for and willing to pay for it.

This leaves fast and cheap as the primary customer decision criteria. How cheap is it, and how fast can the customer get it? No business wants to ask for extensions or miss any deadlines when it comes to dealing with customers. What’s more most customers do not well tolerate vendors who either cannot or do not meet their desired deadlines. I think that we all can agree that businesses that are slower to meet customer deadlines and demands will be at a competitive disadvantage.

It is against this backdrop that we seem to be requesting some businesses to make accommodations for those with disabilities and disadvantages, for the one item that up to now customers seem to have been unwilling to grant them, more time.

While it may be reasonable to make special accommodations for those with these types of disabilities and disadvantages in the university environment, where all members will be equally governed by the same accommodation rules (by the university representatives and professors), it may be entirely something else when the same accommodations are expected to be implemented in the open market environment where all do not have to play by the same rules, and the ultimate arbiter, the customer, gets to make their decisions based on the criteria of their choosing, which are usually price and speed.

This is a topic that I really don’t have an answer for. I believe we all wish to be socially conscious, but at what price? It is also obvious that we also live in a global, ever more competitive business environment. I have only touched on the competitive issues and disadvantages that could arise in certain situations. Many companies find themselves on the global stage competing against other organizations that may not have as strong a sense of social responsibility.

And all are dealing with customers who for the most part do not bring social consciousness or social responsibility into their decision-making criteria. They are dealing with customers who again, for the most part are concerned about their financial bottom lines, either corporate or personal.

It seems that adapting the rules of competition to accommodate those with disabilities and disadvantages can only work well, when everybody abides by the same accommodation rules and criteria. When it is attempted to be implemented unilaterally in an uncontrolled competitive environment, it would seem that it only passes the disadvantages along to those that make the accommodations.

While the article that got me started on this may have been titled “Workforce less forgiving than School”, it may be better stated that when it comes to deadlines and demands, customers are the least forgiving of all.

Pressure is a Privilege

Most roles in business come with a certain amount of pressure. This is normally in the form of pressure to perform. This is the implied nature of the employment contract. They will give you money, and in return you will perform certain duties, jobs and tasks. Keep in mind that there are usually time constraints applied to these functions such as “it needs to be done by…”. Get used to it. In this instance, pressure is the requirement to perform or deliver on those functions associated with your professional position.

Stress however is a different story. No job comes with stress. It is not inherent to the employment contract. It is something else.

Let’s start (as usual) with a definition:

“Stress is the body’s reaction to any change that requires an adjustment or response. The body reacts to these changes with physical, mental, and emotional responses. Stress is a normal part of life. You can experience stress from your environment, your body, and your thoughts. Even positive life changes such as a promotion, a mortgage, or the birth of a child produce stress.”

(https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/11874-stress)

This is a crucial distinction between Pressure and Stress. As I said, pressure is the requirement placed upon you to perform those requirements and functions associated with your job. Stress is how you (and your body) respond to those pressures. As you might guess different people react to different situations and pressures differently.

I’ll illustrate with a typical sports analogy. I watch professional golfers and I am usually in awe of them. Their job is to hit the golf ball, as few times as possible while putting it into the specific hole. It is not just their abilities, but also the level of their performance, and the stage on which they perform this job. It is not uncommon to see them standing on the green, alone with the entire tournament riding on their ability to make a single putt. Make it and they win, miss it and perhaps someone else wins. Hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of dollars ride on a single swing of any club.

Talk about pressure.

But that is what their job description entails. It is what they signed up for. Every stroke counts. At the end of the tournament you total them all up. Three hundred-yard drives and three-inch tap-in putts. They all count the same. The one with the lowest number wins. It is the most quantifiable of any job performance review. And they all want to be in the position where they control their own destiny with that one last swing of the putter and take home the trophy.

As a side note, there are no “participation trophies”. It’s quantitative as I said, in the extreme. You get what you earn.

Lee Trevino was a competitive professional golfer with his hey-day back in the 1970’s. He won twenty-nine professional tournaments during his career. He is famously quoted as saying “Putts get real difficult the day they hand out the money.” He also tells the story of how he personally learned to deal with that pressure.

He tells the story of standing over a putt and realizing that if he made it, he would win half a million dollars. And his hands started to shake. He stepped back and realized that if he missed the putt, he would still win a quarter of a million dollars. He then realized where he had come from and the heights that he had risen to, were a blessing. He had worked his way into the position where he got the opportunity to make a putt like this.

He also famously remarked that even if he missed the putt, winning a quarter of a million dollars was still pretty good, all things considered. I guess he made the putt since he never said in the story.

He put voice to what most golfers and people who work in general should feel. He was fortunate to be in the position to be under that type of pressure. He had worked hard for that opportunity.

However, this is not always the case in golf, or in business. There are many instances where professional golfers lose that innate ability to deal with the pressure. They begin to dread having to make “that putt”. In many of these instances this pressure manifests itself in the form of something called “the yips”.

“”Yips” is a term most often applied to a putting problem that afflicts some golfers. The term describes a nervous affliction in which the golfer putting cannot make short putts due to the inability to create a smooth putting stroke.”

(https://www.liveabout.com/what-are-yips-1561044)

It is symptomatic of a golfer who cannot, for whatever reason deal with the pressure of that situation. The pressure to perform has now become a stress.

It is when one begins to question their ability to perform and deal with the pressure associated with a situation that stress can occur. Just like some golfers who seem to thrive on the pressure of the big stage and the destiny defining putt, there are business people who also thrive under the pressure of the business opportunity. We all know them. The sales person trying to make the big sale before the end of the year, or the executive making the difficult decision on what to do next.

And there are those that for whatever reason, the job, the position, the situation, the boss, etc., who can struggle in those situations. Many times, it is not the job level or the responsibility. It is something else. The internal mechanism that handles the pressure of the role isn’t working.

The privilege of pressure in the role, the opportunity to get paid to do something they want to do, has become the curse of stress. It is usually associated with the fear of no longer being up to the task. All the training, preparation, and experience are sometimes not enough.

Pressure is something we all must live with, to one level or another. It can be as large as life altering events such as marriage, the birth of a child, or finding a new job, or as seemingly small as just staying in the appropriate lane on the road. Expectations and the pressure to perform and react accordingly accompany all of them.

I remember my parents telling me that driving was a privilege when I first got my driver’s license (a long, long time ago…). I also remember them telling me that if I didn’t perform appropriately on the road, I would not get to enjoy the privilege of driving for a while. After a while they realized that the loss of the driving privilege was a pressure they could apply to other activities and behaviors as well.

Like many other things in life, and on the job, it might not have seemed fair at the time, but it was the reality that had to be dealt with. Needless to say, I tried to modify my behavior (within reason of course, I still had to try and get away with some things) but by and large I did not find myself overly stressed associated with the added pressure associated with the privilege of driving. It was not an entitlement. It was indeed a privilege.

Pressure is always present. The pressure to perform. The pressure to get to work on time. The pressure to achieve. I have seen some managers who have elevated the application of pressure to their teams to a high art form.

I don’t think highly of this technique. And I really haven’t met any team member that has functioned in such an environment who thought highly of it either.

I think the key is to understand that pressure can be used as an internal motivator, as opposed to a stress generator. The new phrase to define this type of approach is “Lean Into It”, and it is defined:

“The act of embracing something, or a situation, by using it to empower yourself. To “lean into” something is to own it, to cast off disparagement. You move forward and deal with it with unhindered confidence, casting off concerns and cares.

Instead of letting a shortcoming hold you back, you find acceptance in the situation, perhaps even going as far as to pride yourself on it. “Leaning into it” may even imply doing more of the “thing” in question, or highlighting it, as a means to overpower it and have it no longer be deemed a weakness or unfortunate hangup.” https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lean%20into%20it

I understand that it is far easier to say than do, but I keep coming back to what Lee Trevino said about missing the big putt. He had worked hard to get to where he was, and that despite missing, he still did pretty good. The best hitters in baseball still miss twice as often as they hit. Out of the one hundred plus golfers competing, only one wins on any given week, and half don’t even get to play on the weekend (they miss the “cut”).

Almost everyone has worked and performed under some sort of pressure to get to where they currently are. Because of that they get to continue to have the privilege of continuing to feel that pressure. I guess the key to it is to not allow it to stress you, but rather use it to drive you. You have to learn how to embrace it, because it is probably never going to go away.

Working From Home……and Dilbert

Let’s get one thing clear up front. I don’t like working from home. I don’t even particularly care for the idea of working from home. There are many who think that it is the absolute best idea since sliced bread, but I am not one of those. Yet it seems that situations and events have conspired in such a way that I now find myself working from home. However, it is pretty clear to me that when I take all things into account, that working at home is the best alternative for me right now. I’ll talk about the things that I have learned that I need to do to be as effective as possible in working from home.

I guess I may just be a creature of habit, but I have always “gone” to work. You know. Got up. Cleaned up. Went to the office. Just like I had “gone” to school. I didn’t “go to school” at home. I went to the then appropriate institution of learning.

This was back in a time before technology enabled “working from home”. In fact, it was not uncommon for people to have to relocate to different cities if their responsibilities changed, and they found themselves with a job in another location. This was what is now referred to as “the dark ages”….

Back then teams were not virtual. People actually had to be in the same place in order to work together. True synergies were achieved because everyone was in the same room when a meeting occurred. It was a time when process was not as dominant as it is now. Individual knowledge, experience and judgement were sought after to create the most effective team dynamic. It was all about finding the best and most efficient way to achieve the desired goal.

But I have digressed in my remembrances of those bygone times.

Times have changed. Companies now get merged and purchased with significantly increased regularity. The pendulum of workplace office arrangements has swung from the highly structured shared office environments of the 1950’s (where everybody had an assigned workspace within the shared space) to the cube farms (where everyone had there own individual work space and everyone measured their progress by cube square footage and wall height) of the 1980’s and 1990’s, to the current iteration of the 1950’s model where no one has an assigned work space, but they all work together in the shared environment, and you have to put everything away in your locker at the end of the day.

The last time I had to have a locker to put my things away in at the end of the day was when I was back in school.

Against this backdrop of office moves, business consolidation and “new and improved” office environments, should you find yourself with a pretty lengthy commute to get to a new office location, with the new shared dynamic seating environment, you might choose to give working at home a try. When I did this a few weeks ago I found out a few things that I needed to do to help with my effectiveness, even though I was no longer in my preferred working environment.

I also recalled several Dilbert ® cartoons by Scott Adams. I like to follow him because he appears to be scarily prescient when it comes to most interesting work topics. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he has been addressing the work at home topic for over thirty years. Talk about being ahead of your time.

As I mentioned earlier, part of going to work was the process of getting ready for work. The getting up and cleaning up. I am an early to the office person. Since I have worked with several groups internationally in the past, I got it the habit of coming into the office early in order to facilitate communications with them. If I didn’t have calls or meetings scheduled early, I used the early quiet time to get a jump on the requirements of the day.

I also liked the idea that for the most part, my working time and my personal time had two fairly specific delineators; namely the commute to and from the office. There was a defined “starting time” when I got to the office, and a defined “ending time” when I left the office. Obviously, there were situations where calls, meetings and work would and could cross these thresholds, but for the most part, there was a beginning and an end to the work day.

When working at home the “start” and “stop” lines seem to begin to blur. There is no longer is any appreciable commute to the office. You can get up and walk into the home office and just start working. When working at home it is easy to say that I’ll go through the preparatory activities later. The idea is that you could just get up and go into the “office” without any preparation. This didn’t work for me. I found that the “ritual” of getting up and preparing to work helped me get into the proper frame of mind to do the work I needed to do. Needless to say, Dilbert recognized this activity as well.

As a side note, the above comic strip is from 1995.

I also found that I worked and concentrated best in a professional environment. That meant no turning on of the television to see what was on the news. No turning on of the stereo to create background music. These are distractions that do not normally exist within the business environment, and if you are going to extend the business environment to the work at home structure, they shouldn’t exist there either.

And again, Dilbert has addressed this very issue:

And again, this comic is from 1995.

Finally, despite all the assurances to the contrary, access to the corporate network, which is required in order to work from home to be viable, can be somewhat challenging. There are usually specific secure remote access applications that must be present and mastered in order to access the network. The issue usually arises in the form of needing access to the secure corporate network in order to request support in order to get access to the secure corporate network. There have definitely been improvements made in this area, but as I have noted, it can still be somewhat challenging.

Usually what happens here is that a trip must be made to the new office where access to the corporate network is available, in order to contact the Information technology group that is responsible for simplifying remote access to the secure network. This then ends up creating other issues since the remote access issue can no longer be replicated because you are no longer using remote access when requesting support.

The result of this interaction with the Information Technology support group is then the closure of the trouble ticket reporting the remote access issue, since the issue seems to have rectified itself by your coming into the office.

And you guessed it. Dilbert has also recognized this as an issue facing many today.

I have found that the best way for me to work at home is to make sure that I am preparing for and acting as though I am going to work in the standard office environment. Waking, preparing, dressing, etc., as though I were going into a standard business office helps me make sure that I am in the “work” mind set, as opposed to the “home” mind set. This of course is referring back to the time when home and work were indeed two separate entities.

Working at home does present its own set of unique challenges. It is almost too easy to fall into a new set of behaviors that may not be as conducive to creating a good work environment as many expected. While it is convenient, for me it doesn’t match the energy of the collocated team. I understand the value of the virtual team, but for me, it is hard to measure what was given up in exchange for what is hoped to be gained by the new.

Maybe it will just take some more time for me to get used to it.

More Lessons Learned Starting a Business

A while ago I wrote about starting my own small business. It’s a really small business. Just me in the garage evenings and occasionally on the weekend. It’s now about eight weeks in and it might be a good time to go through some of the simple lessons that I have learned and, in some cases, relearned during this process. I have to admit that many things I knew, learned before and even suspected, still hold true.

The first thing that was reinforced was the decision as to whether or not this was to be a real business, or what I would call a “hobby”. The baseline for this decision is how Cash Flow is treated. A hobby is something where you are aware of your expenses, but do not fully track them, as the difference between personal and business expenses can be somewhat blurry. In a hobby you know you are spending the money, but you’re not so worried about it as it has an entertainment value as opposed to a baseline for profitability.

For the business, I chose the tactic of keeping all receipts and tracking them (and revenues) via a spreadsheet. I set aside my initial cash investment for equipment (saws, sanders, grinders, etc.), as well as the initial payments for the raw materials that I would need to make the product. I viewed this as my Class “A” funding, to use entrepreneurial lingo. I didn’t want to have to go back to my investor (me) and explain to myself how my initial business case was flawed, if I in fact ran out of cash.

Fortunately, actually not fortunately, it was according to plan – orders did start to come in quickly.

Now came the balancing act of trying to grow. That meant ramping up production, which in this case meant making a couple more game boards than I actually needed each week, in order to build a little inventory. It is October, and the gift giving season will be here soon. It does take some time to build the products, and I am planning on a continued sales ramp through the end of the quarter. I would like to have some products on hand to turn into revenue as quickly as possible.

I don’t however have the ready cash, as part of my plan, to be able to just start producing fully in anticipation of such demand. Such is the balancing associated with cash flow. How much can you spend and how quickly can you get it back.

Another topic was quality. As I continue to produce the boards, I get better at it. I not only get better, I also get faster. I have gained confidence. I began to think I had it figured out. It took one inferior product produced to bring me back down to reality.

I am my own best, or in this case worst critic when it comes to what I produce. If it is not good enough for me, then it doesn’t get sold or shipped to a customer. Those resources, time and materials spent on making that inferior product were wasted. I will not get them back. It brought home the cost of quality, or in this case non-quality very quickly.

Speaking of manufacturing, as I mentioned I continue to learn how to manufacture better and faster. The old adage “practice makes perfect” does have some application here. I have gotten faster and more accurate at the measurement and cutting aspects of the process. I have learned that it is faster and easier to cut, and recut a straight line, than it is to try and sand a straight line. I have refined, changed and in some cased reduced the amount of raw materials required to manufacture. As might be expected it has had a beneficial effect on my bottom line.

As an aside, I have also learned that as soon as you bend what was once a straight piece of metal, it will never be straight again, no matter how long or hard you work at straightening it. Just a tip for those who may also decide to try and work with metals.

The value of having some inventory, as opposed to only starting to build when an order came in has shown its value. I have already mentioned the balancing act between tying up a lot of cash in inventory versus having it available for other expenditures. But it turns out that customers are actually pleased when they get their desired product faster than when it is promised to them. I recently had my first return customer (he originally bought a small board, and he came back to buy a large one). He mentioned that it was both product quality and the fast shipment that brought him back.

Imagine that.

Next comes looking for opportunities to expand both the market for the existing products and looking for new types of products to create. As I said, I am making metal game boards (and game pieces) for Chess, Checkers, Go, Pente and the like games. They seem to be pretty well accepted, at least initially by my go to market channels (in this case on-line purchasing sites eBay and Etsy).

The questions are:

Are there other board games that may be readily adapted to a metal platform?

And

Are there other channels to market for the existing and potentially new metal boards?

I am currently working on a potential backgammon board as a product platform expansion. Backgammon is an older and widely played game. I will not make many boards to start as it will be a much more involved manufacturing process (involving much more difficult angle cuts as opposed to the current right angles I use now). It may actually require outsourcing to a machine or cutting shop, at least initially to get it done. I will see how this goes.

As to expanding channels to market, on-line still appears the way to go for now. It continues to provide the broadest market coverage, while still providing the lowest investment associated with merchant systems and the like. I will continue to look at other artisan and mercantile type sites to see what it may cost to put my products up on those sites. That way I will be able (hopefully) to continue to expand the number of people who can see and purchase my products.

I have looked into attending trade and other types of craft shows, as another channel to market. These may be viable channels in the future, but I am not so sure right now. Almost all of these events require a registration fee of some type. Applying this fee against the margin I get from each product sale tells me how many boards I must sell during the course of the show (usually two days over a weekend) in order to just break even. It also means that I would have to probably invest a little more heavily in inventory as customers who attend these shows normally like to go home with the products that they buy at these shows. Not having available product to deliver would probably limit sales success here.

Most importantly, the weather is still nice, and I would like to golf at least once on the weekends as I continue to work at my chosen career during the week. Once the weather changes and it begins to get a little colder and a little less desirable to play golf, I will probably revisit the trade and craft show decision.

Did I mention that priorities are a must when starting your own business?

Finally, I come to marketing. I have the website up. It can be viewed at https://metalgames.biz/. I have the purchase and merchant systems working on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/MetalGames?ref=seller-platform-mcnav. I have started to get customer reviews (all positive so far) and am making sure that they are visible on both sites.

The next step was to create a site and presence on Facebook. It seems to be the granddaddy of all social networks at this point. Again, this is a relatively simple process. Facebook has all the required information to quickly lead you through how to set up a page for a business. Mine can be viewed at fb.me/MetalEnterprises. It seems that “Metal Games” was already taken by someone. Such is life.

I am looking into other media sites such as pinterest. I was actually just out there looking and trying to quickly understand their process and methodologies for getting “pins” out there. I will see if I can get that social media capability up and working in the next day or so.

Several things are similar for a one-person garage shop and a ten-thousand-person multi-national company. Knowing where your cash is and how quickly you can get back what you have spent dictates what your cash flow is. Profitability is great and will ultimately dictate longer term success, but cash flow is what allows you to keep the doors open. Product quality is a premium. “Good Enough” is not anywhere near good enough. Set your personal thresholds high and do not compromise. It matters. Continuing to seek out new customers and being as responsive as is possible to those you find will always be the keystone for business success.

And, as is the case for me at Metal Games (as in most of the work I do) have fun.

When to Say When

Blog 395 – When to Say When

Nobody likes to admit defeat. Nobody enters into a deal expecting to lose. Nobody starts a project that they don’t expect to complete. But sometimes, unexpected stuff happens. Partners don’t live up to commitments. Suppliers can’t supply. Developers forget how to develop or run into unexpected issues. It happens. The question that is now faced is, when do you say “enough” and cut the loss?

First and foremost, this is a time for a “business” decision. Pride and emotion should not come into play. Multiple issues and disciplines need to be reviewed. Prioritizations need to be made and weighted values need to be assigned. There will always be multiple stakeholders in the decision that will believe that their specific issue should take precedence and be the basis for the decision. There will also be those who are probably best ignored in the greater scheme of things. I’ll try to sort through some of the various topics and inputs that should go into this decision.

The first input is one of the most critical inputs of all: Time. No one immediately finds themselves in a failure situation. It is usually the compounding of many items over time that causes the “Ah Hah” moment where the issue manifests. It must be understood that “All errors are Additive”. Two wrongs do in fact not make a right. It is usually a series of small errors or issues that add and multiply to create the failure state.

If you are interested, there is a Harvard University paper on error propagation that can provide you the mathematical foundations of this idea at http://ipl.physics.harvard.edu/wp-uploads/2013/03/PS3_Error_Propagation_sp13.pdf.

The business equivalent here is that there are usually many disassociated errors across time that add up to what can be viewed as a non-recoverable situation. Always correlate all error or issue reports, then review how long the failure condition really existed before it was noticed.

The second is based on the business nature of the issue: Is it an External – Customer Related Issue, or is it Internal to the Business itself? If it is a customer related issue, then the loss of business, both current and future should be the deciding factor. If the customer is committed and dependent on the product, good or service at question, then there probably is no alternative than to continue to commit resources (money, people, components) until either a resolution or work-around is achieved. Here the pain of the customer must outweigh the pain to the business. Effectively, the plug cannot be pulled.

If the customer has recognized the issue and has taken steps to mitigate their exposure, or made other plans based on expected non-compliance, move quickly to achieve an appropriate solution (give them their money back, substitute other products or solutions, etc.,) and move on quickly. The same would apply if the effect on the customer’s business can likewise be minimized.

Understand that engineers will always say that with a little more time and budget they should be able to find a solution. Developers will always say with a little more time and budget they should be able to get the solution working as desired. All will point to the amount that has already been spent and how with just a little more it should be possible to recoup it.

Personally, I have yet to see this work. This argument usually results in an incrementalistic approach that ends up costing more people, time, money, with little more in the way of deliverable results to show for it. One thing to remember here is that if you have hit the point where you have to examine the business case for continuing on along a certain path, then you have probably already passed the point when it was appropriate to stop doing whatever you were doing.

Internal programs, projects and developments are far easier to analyze. The question will always be: Is it strategic to the future of the business? And of course, the answer to this question from those responsible for the topic in question will always be “yes”. Just remember that strategic topics and programs usually encompass years on the timescale and similarly large values on the funding scale. A good rule of thumb is: If multiple years have not already passed by the time you are examining the “Stop / Continue” decision, then it is probably not a strategic topic that is being discussed.

There will always be those that want to continue whatever program, project or development that is being reviewed. These will be the people and groups that have budget and resources stemming from the program. There will always be those that will want the program to be stopped. They will be the people and groups with competing programs that want the budget and resources. These groups can also almost always be immediately discounted as input into the decision.

The internal stop / continue decision must be taken out of the hands of the technical groups (engineering, research and development, etc.,) and put in the hands of the financial and business management teams. How much more will it realistically take to complete? How much revenue or cost reduction will be foregone if not completed? How much longer will it take? What is the project’s trajectory? Will it take a restart / rewrite, or is it truly a defensible incremental piece of work (be very careful here)? It is here that the money should talk, not the desires or beliefs.

Occasionally a business may find itself at the mercy of another business group or supplier as the cause of the program, project or product delay. Instead of a stop / continue decision, you will be faced with a “wait / continue” decision. This means instead of stopping permanently and moving all resources to other projects, the decision is now do you stop temporarily, move resources to other projects and await the outcome of the delaying party, or do you continue with your piece of the project and just hope the offending party will be able to catch up?

Almost every time when presented with this decision, those associated with the project in question will want to continue on and hope the other group or supplier catches up. From their own budgeting and staff assignment point of view, this is the best and simplest solution for them. They will always try to justify this decision by stating that it will be more expensive to stop, reassign the resources, then reassemble them and restart the project at a later date.

Most of the time, since they are the technical resources associated with generating the costs associated with this decision, their assertion is not questioned.

This is a mistake.

Always question, quantify and justify costs to both stop and restart a project. Stopping should usually be nothing more than the cessation of charging to the project. Starting may require some re-familiarization with the project but should not entail significant time. What this means is that from a business and financial point of view, it will almost always be less expensive, and better for the business, to pause all efforts on a third party delayed program or development than it is to continue to work while the third party is delayed.

It may add complexity to those groups whose budgets are now in somewhat of disarray due to the pause and inability to keep charging, but it is better for the business overall.

The only potential mitigating circumstance is how long the third-party delay is forecasted to be. If it is on the order of days to a few weeks (less than four as an arbitrary limit) than continuing may be the right solution based on future resource availability. If it is on the level of a month or more, the decision starting point should be biased toward stopping the costs and investments until such time as the third party has caught up.

So, summarizing the decision tree associated with when to say when on failing or delayed programs, projects and developments:

If the customer business is dependent on the commitment, then whatever it takes to complete is required. Not only current customer business, but potentially all future customer business is dependent on competing the deliverable.

If the customer business is not dependent on the commitment, then the business case for stopping, substituting or finding a work around should be examined. Only the current customer business is dependent on completing the deliverable.

For internal programs and developments, the question of how strategic the program or development is will be key. We all know that nothing ever fully goes according to plan. For those strategic topics, requiring large budgets and long time-lines this is even more evident. Those that are truly strategic it may be best to continue to push on through, but with significant monitoring to make sure further issues and delays do not continue to show up, causing incremental failure.

For those non-strategic programs and developments, it should be a financial / business case decision based on the cost to complete versus the foregone revenues or cost reductions associated with a successful completion. Question all inputs and let the numbers fall where they may.

Finally, when the decision to wait or continue when a contributing entity is the cause of a delay, it is almost always a financially better decision to reassign resources and wait for the third party to complete their work than it is to continue to work in the expectation that they will catch up. It may be more complex and disruptive to those entities assigned to the program, but it will be better for the business.

Finally, understand that any time you ask for the inputs on the decision from the groups that are directly involved with the program in question, they will almost always declare that the program should continue at current funding and spending levels. While this may be beneficial and easier for them, it is the least financially viable approach to the decision in question. Always question inputs and justifications from all parties. Remember, when it comes to money, either internally to the business, or externally from the customer, there will be those that want it, and those that want to spend it.

Starting Something

I have been blogging for a while (has it really been 10+ years?) about business and sales and the situations that arise in both. It’s been fun. I figured it was time to actually listen to some of the things I was saying and put them back into practice, again. As time passes and our work evolves it is easy to leave some of those things that we learned and enjoyed behind. To wit, a couple of weeks ago I opened my own little sole proprietorship business. I’ll spend a little time talking about it, what I learned, and what I relearned in the process.

First off, for those wondering, I didn’t quit my “day job”. I still enjoy it and need it to pay the bills, or more importantly pay for the medical insurance that helps pay for my son’s insulin for his Type 1 Diabetes. In case you were not aware, the price of insulin has increased one thousand percent in the last fifteen years. Yes, that means that insulin now costs ten times what it did then. But it’s actually cheaper now to make. Make of that what you will.

Without insurance it would be a significant financial hardship in addition the other problems it presents for him going forward.

In any event, I am still in the technology and services industry. I find that even though we can and probably should apply many of the things we learned before, to today’s issues, our new processes, outsourcings and corporate structures may make it a little more cumbersome to do so. We seem to have less and less capability to provide input into our own business decisions and directions in today’s process driven business environment. This is part of the reason I have taken on this additional endeavor.

The first order of business (if you pardon the blatant pun) was to get all the state licenses, company names and banking accounts set up. This is the equivalent of starting your company, putting your sign out on the door, and setting up the place where you get, and send your money. It needs to be separate from your personal finances. It would have been easier to just use the accounts we had, but if you are going to do it, do it right. It also makes it easier to keep score on how well, or poorly you are doing.

The business I chose was probably at the other end of the business spectrum from technology equipment and services. I wanted a full separation of functions. There can’t and shouldn’t be any conflicts of interest. This is strictly an after-hours business. I’m making game-boards and games out of various metals in my garage. I don’t think I can get much further afield than that from my day job.

Setting priorities and remembering whose clock you are on at any given time is a requirement. You cannot cheat those who are paying you when you are on their time, and you cannot cheat yourself when you are on your own time.

Like any good Product Line Manager, I had done my market research in looking at what types of similar products were out there (you truly can get just about anything from China, or eBay for that matter). I also looked at the relative prices to make sure that I could actually make a profit at the then going rates for competitive products (another business case). Finally, I looked at the various types of suppliers that I would need, both local and on the internet, for my piece parts. Thank goodness for Home Depot.

The next was acquiring the raw materials I would need to create the goods I would sell, as well as the equipment I would need to make and finish the products. These would be my sunk costs. Regardless of my success or failure, I will not get my money back from these expenses, unless I earn it back.

This brought up the first set of business cases. Do I go for the high-end expensive equipment that could make the work easier and help generate a higher quality product, or do I go a little less expensive, take a little more time, and rely more on my skills to save money, at least initially? I didn’t choose either end of the spectrum of equipment but did tend to go toward the less expensive brands and platforms to start.

I felt that these would get me started and reduce both my capital risk as well as my breakeven point for the business.

Then came the learning process. Just because I thought I had a good idea and a plan didn’t mean that I had it all figured out. As I started producing products the learning curve kicked in. I learned which components were better than others. I learned which manufacturing techniques worked best for me. After a few tries, I started to produce some products that I thought were of an acceptable quality level.

Now that I had products that I was happy with, it was time to see if customers would be interested in them as well. There were essentially two discrete paths to market for the products I was creating: Face to Face (F2F) at business and craft trade shows, and over the internet on the various electronic market places that were available. To start I selected the internet / electronic marketplace approach.

I made this selection for a couple of reasons: The start-up cost of this approach was minimal (basically the cost of creating a product listing on existing market place web sites), the charges were directly proportional to the amount you actually sold, there was a predisposed customer set that used them, and the mercantile systems (Credit card, charging, collection, payment) were already in place. The two I started with were eBay and Etsy. Both well known and respected

Trade shows require an investment / entry fee up front, regardless of whether or not you make any sales, as well as the investment of real-time attendance at the show in order to make any sales. I did not feel I could make these overhead investments at this point in time for the business I had chosen. They would also require some sort of Point of Sale (POS) system in order to conduct business with credit cards, the now preferred way for most to do business. I have signed up with one (Square, mainly again because the upfront investment was minimal, and the expense would only grow as my sales grew), but am still not fully operational yet.

I will continue to prepare and will eventually go to some of these F2F shows for a couple of reasons. One is to get the direct feedback from dealing directly with a customer. The other will be to test this channel to market for profitability. Could I actually sell enough at one of these shows where the profit (not the revenue) generated would cover the upfront costs of entry, and time spent and again provide profitability?

In addition, I needed to create a web site where I could both tell my story and display my products. This blog has been and is hosted by GoDaddy. I have written in the past regarding the quality of their service and support. Please look up “A Great Service Story” (March 7, 2019) for my views on them. I used them to create https://metalgames.biz/. They had some great tools to aid in the rapid set-up of the site.

Again, I held off on creating the commercial system for taking orders directly from my website due to the upfront costs associated with setting it up. Instead I opted for links from each product page to my Etsy site (https://www.etsy.com/shop/MetalGames?ref=ss_profile ) where I could take advantage of the existing commercial system. There may come a time where I do set up the Point-Of-Sale system on the web site, but for right now, I felt managing the business’ cash-flow was a little more important.

So, there we go. I’m now in business. https://metalgames.biz/ and https://www.etsy.com/shop/MetalGames?ref=ss_profile are both live and believe it or not doing business. It may be primarily for personal enjoyment, but that doesn’t mean I will not take it seriously. To date I have received two orders from eBay and four orders from Etsy. I don’t think that is too bad for having been up and operational for approximately three weeks.

This has brought up the next several issues associated with Inventory and Fulfillment when it comes to getting the product into the customer’s hands in a timely, efficient and economic manner. With such a small number of orders one would think that this would not be a significant issue, but it actually is. In fact it is a bigger issue than I had expected.

Marketing and Advertising will also be interesting topics for discussion.

All costs affect margins and profitability. Being a small business means that you cannot take advantage of any volume-based efficiencies, for either the components associated with production, or the costs associated with shipment and delivery.

I will go into these topics (and others) and what I learned about them some other time.

The bottom line is, that it is fun. Even though I am making games, I don’t want to treat it as a game. If it is going to be a business, even a very small one, it deserves the attention and respect that is required to make it successful. I’ll keep you all posted as this evolves.

Models

Automation has been a catch word in business for a long time. It has been and continues to be viewed as one of the best ways for businesses to go faster and to save money. I can remember when “office automation” was the automation or application that was the driving force for business. Now it seems to be words like “robots” or “self-driving / healing / whatever” or “artificial intelligence” and the like are the automation applications de rigueur. With this in mind I’m going to talk about models. Not the kind that walk down the fashion runways and seem to dominate all forms of social media (for reasons that I still can’t quite fathom), but the kind of models that can continue to help simplify and speed up business, in the face of an ever more complex environment.

I first learned about the value of models in the Economics courses that I took in college. It was put forth that the best way to learn about the various specific market forces was to create simplified models of the complex real environment. Once the various specific forces were understood, more and more complex models could be created where the primary and secondary interactions between these forces could be estimated or observed. Regardless of how complex you tried to make the model, it was always simpler than the real environment. It was also shown that a relatively simple model could provide a very accurate representation of the system and environment as a whole.

This drove the idea that you could create a model that could very closely approximate the real world. In this way you could get a very good answer to your economic question, without the significant over-head complexity, time, effort, etc., of trying to account for every possible detail. The most recent utilization of models for the representation of a complex system that I have seen are the various models that meteorologists use for weather prediction.

What I haven’t seen in quite some time is the use of models in business.

We are all aware to the “Fast, Good, Cheap – pick two” scenario of business. With continued focus on quality and costs, I get the feeling that “Fast” is paying the price (if you pardon the pun) in the equation. If you don’t believe me, just ask, or watch how long it takes to get a quote or price for any sort of technology product that you are either selling or buying.

I like to joke about “Gobeli’s Laws of Business” in positing how things should be. Sometimes it gets me in trouble. Sometimes it gets me ignored. Occasionally however, sometimes someone listens. This is similar to my wife’s reactions to my “Gobeli’s Laws of Domestic and Marital Tranquility”, except for the occasionally having someone listen part.  

My position for business is this, if it takes more than a business day – that’s eight hours, not twenty-four hours, to either create or receive a quote, it’s taking too long. You will find yourself at a competitive disadvantage. You had better find a way to speed up your quotation and pricing process. Because, while coming in second in a multi-contestant race is admirable, it is usually only the winner that gets the customer’s order.

As technology continues to be one of the primary drivers of product, business and market evolution, the ability to configure this new technology into usable customer platforms and applications continues to grow in demand as well. Again, if you don’t believe me, just look at the number of engineers that are involved in both the quotation and evaluation processes for any technology-oriented businesses. Engineers seem to be taking on a bigger and broader roles in the commercial process.

Needless to say, this concerns me.

In addition to the “Good, Fast, Cheap” product output trade-offs, there are also a couple of other business trade-offs to be aware of. They are the “People, Time, Money” input or resource trade-offs, and the “Sales, Finance, Engineering” internal business forces trade-offs. Strangely enough they all seem to be interrelated and roughly align as well.

“Cheap”, “Money” and the driving force “Finance” are obviously all related. This is a pretty simple one. “Fast”, “Time” and the driving force “Sales” are also related. Since sales is indeed a competition (for the customer’s order) getting there ahead of the competition can be seen as an advantage. That leaves “Good”, “People” and driving force “Engineering” as the third relationship. That also seems to make sense as it is the engineers that are concerned with the accuracy and “correctness” of how the technology fits together.

Now a days it seems that you cannot get a project started, a bid created, or a proposal reviewed without direct engineering involvement. This direction has the effect of creating a business bottleneck based on the number of engineers you have available for any activity at any point in time. It also limits the options available to business leaders.

In the “pick two out of three” business trade-offs listed above, if you have always chosen the “Good”, “People” and “Engineering” business force (for “correctness”) then you can only choose between “Speed” and “Money” (read profitability) as your second choice. While going fast is nice, making money is not negotiable. Without it you won’t be in business long. Hence “Money” is usually chosen over “Speed” in these trade-offs.

This is my long-winded, round about way of getting to the topic of models. Current mathematic and modeling techniques can be used to predict the location of a single electron (the sub-atomic, negatively charged particle – you didn’t think I would ignore physics entirely for this article, did you?), with respect to a single proton (the sub-atomic positively charge particle) at any point in time. With this kind of modeling capability and technology available, getting a price, or creating a quotation should be as simple as creating a few salient entries into the appropriate model.

Remember the Economics analogy. Models can be created as complexly, or as simply as desired. Also remember the goal of a quotation or pricing model: to create a price for a good or service, not to specifically engineer and configure that good or service. Up to now most businesses believe that the good or service must be engineered (and costed) in order to create a price (with acceptable / appropriate margin) for the customer.

Also remember that by and large customers do not care what it costs the business to deliver the desired good or service. As an example, I don’t think many people care what it costs an automobile manufacturer to create the car they purchase. They just want to know what the price is in relationship to the features and capabilities of the car.

Price modeling versus cost engineering can and would significantly speed up the quotation and pricing process for businesses and their customers. It would enable the customer to ask for several “what if…” prices and configurations. It would make things easier and faster for the organizations responsible for providing the price. It would simplify the process.

So, why isn’t this the usual case? Why does it seem that everything must manually pass through engineering, in some way, before it can be approved or released?

I think the answers are relatively simple, but the solutions are not. Change of this type, moving from an ingrained engineering process to the utilization of models for customer prices and quotations involves not only change, but the relinquishing of control at such a level as to cause some discomfort to the overall organization. No group knowingly gives up control of a process, even if it is for the betterment of the overall organization.

On a related issue, models are always an approximation of reality. There will always be small variances present between what the model generates, and what the engineer will manually create. This will always generate a certain amount of uncertainty, and no one wants or likes that.

Engineers will always argue that their manual engineering is always more accurate than a model’s price prediction. In some instance this may in fact be true. But one of the issues with manual engineering is that no two engineers do it the same way. If they did it would be much more easily modeled. So, despite arguments to the contrary, even manual engineering injects inconsistency into the pricing equation as well.

This is why most changes must be driven from the top down, as opposed to the much talked about, and often desired bottom up approach. Creating a modeled approach to engineering and pricing goods and services to customers will need to be driven from outside of the group that is currently responsible for performing these functions. Remember, that given their choice, an engineer will always search for a way to engineer a solution, regardless of the commercial ramifications of that approach.

Utilizing a price modeling approach to generating customer prices and quotations will re-inject “Speed” back into the business output and business resource trade-off equations with a minimal effect on the accuracy and quality of the price generated. With speed, comes a competitive advantage that should be translated into more orders, without incurring incremental costs or reduction in quality.

And isn’t that what automation is supposed to be all about?

Getting Angry

I was recently asked why I was such an angry person. This question caught me off guard and surprised me greatly as I had never thought of myself as an angry person. Others may have, but not me. Before answering, I asked why it is that they thought I was so angry. They responded by saying that they thought I had become angry during the last project review we were in. I said they were incorrect, I did not get angry during the last project review. I had quickly and directly responded to what was unacceptable performance as reported in the review. I explained that I am not generally an angry person, but that I can get very direct, both with myself and with others, and will challenge unacceptable behaviors when commitments are not honored, and responsibilities are avoided.

I also said that one should not confuse the immediate and direct challenge to unacceptable performance, with anger.

I have mentioned before that my preferred method of leading is to focus on, and address the achievement aspect of performance. I tend to look at what has been done well and what has gone right, far more so than what has gone wrong or needs to be improved. But that doesn’t mean that failure to deliver on commitments, or objectives can be excused or ignored. And depending on the reasons for that failure to deliver, occasionally they must be dealt with directly.

I have found this to be the case more and more often in the matrix structured, process driven organizations of today. This is the structure where members of the “virtual” team actually report up through separate organizations, and where authority and accountability lines can have a tendency to blur. In this type of structure, it is not uncommon to find that it is felt that the process is the responsible entity for the project’s performance, and not the people that operate within it.

It is true that sometimes events occur that can make it exceedingly difficult if not impossible to honor our commitments. It happens. However, that does not remove the responsibility. Even with mitigating circumstances, the responsibility to try and deliver on agreed commitments, to the then best of an individual’s capabilities continues to exist. And most of the time I think everyone tries to operate in this manner.

However, occasionally, such as the afore mentioned project review, that was not the case.

When you are told that someone did not honor their agreed upon commitment because “they were busy”, that is an excuse, not an acceptable reason.

We are all busy.

I mentioned this this to the person who thought I was angry.

I also mentioned that I did a little further exploration during the project review before truly engaging on the failure to deliver on such a direct level. Were there unexpected issues or circumstances that arose? Were there other activities that got reprioritized, and if so why were this project’s commitments the ones that were deprioritized? In short, why did this happen?

If there had been reasonable responses to those questions, it would have resulted in the creation of a mitigation and response plan to try and recover from the missed commitment. There wasn’t. They just said they were busy.

Sometimes a direct and focused response to unacceptable performance can be perceived as anger, since it seems to occur less and less these days. The idea of individual deliverable ownership can have a tendency to fade in a large process driven project. If the process is the preferred methodology, and something is not achieved, how do you directly address the process? You don’t. You address those that are responsible for executing the process.

Anger in general has no place in the professional environment. When commitments are not honored and there are no acceptable or mitigating reasons, an immediate and direct response to that level of performance can be called for, not anger on a personal level. It is in short one of the best methods to communicate that the performance and the excuse are not acceptable.

The fact that it was so memorable by the participants in this case was because it has become such a rare approach to performance. As I said leading from an achievement focus usually provides the required drive to achieve the desired goals. The fact that the response in question was such a departure from the norm is what made it so memorable.

My litmus test for if the reason presented for missing a deliverable acceptable is very simple: Would it be acceptable to senior management?

It has been my experience that some of the best leaders are also some of the busiest people. The demands on their time and the breadth of the decision responsibilities require a continued focus on the objective and the components and deliverables that will be required to achieve them. Will telling them that you were too busy to get something done be acceptable?

The short answer to that question is “No”.

There is a fine line that should not be crossed in instances such as this. The focus needs to be on the performance, deliverable or objective, and not directly on the individual. Direct responses to performance issues cannot and should not become personal attacks.

In our now process driven, performance interdependent business world, any individual failure to deliver has a far broader affect that on just the specific individual in question. Knock-on delays and other dependent deliverables will also suffer. Everyone’s performance can and will suffer to some extent.

As we become more “PC” (which in this instance means “Process Correct”) in the business world, we tend to attribute both the successes and failures in business to the process and not the people. Performance issues become obfuscated as process issues. And as a result, we have a tendency to try and address the process instead of the performance within the process.

In the past direct and immediate feedback, both positive and negative was viewed as a cornerstone of a strong performing team. It is now difficult to single out an individual’s performance, either positively or negatively without the interaction being construed as either lavish praise, or anger. Neither of which are particularly conducive to positive team alignment or performance.

We all can be and should be sensitive to a certain extent about the feedback we receive. It should help and serve to drive us forward. We also need to understand that it is our own individual behaviors and performance that serve as the baseline for whatever feedback we receive. We also need to understand that while the feedback may be specific to an individual, it must be focused on specific performance items and cannot be construed as being personal in the way it is delivered.

Anger is a personal thing. It doesn’t belong in the professional environment. We are all human and sometimes it is hard not to get angry. Still we must try to maintain our focus. The focus must always be on the performance of the individual, and not the individual themselves. When dealing with performance we must stay at the professional level and not the personal one.

Shorter Meetings

I’ve been trying something new lately when it comes to meetings. I started by looking at the number of meetings I attend. I don’t think I am too far outside the norm by saying, I seem to attend a significant number of meetings. I think I have said this before. We may have hit the point where we seem to establish our credibility and measure our value contribution by the number of meeting we attend. We have now associated attending meetings with making progress.

I then started looking at what actual portion of the meeting was I actually engaged in or contributing to. I am sure there are those that would question my engagement or contribution to any meeting I attend or participate in.

The point here however, is that I found that there were specific portions or times during meetings where the topic being discussed was germane to me and I needed to be fully engaged and participative. The rest of the time, maybe not quite so much.

When I looked further at this relative “down” time I would experience in a meeting, I found that a significant portion of it was associated with what I will call “related” meeting topics, not the specific meeting topics. I’ll give an example.

I was in a project review meeting where the objective was to detail the status of the project. An issue was identified. This is a good thing. But it quickly caused the meeting to go off the rails. Instead of identifying the issue, and assigning those responsible to work out a resolution, those responsible for working out a resolution proceeded to try and work out their solution – during the review, with everyone else waiting to contribute their portions of the review.

The issue was important. But more so specifically to a subset of all those in attendance. The rest of the meeting attendees (myself included) time was less than efficiently spent listening to the attempted resolution of a topic that may not have been completely defined, or fully germane to their areas of focus.

In other words. We sat there on the call.

The meeting dragged on. Another issue was identified which created another attempt at an on-line resolution.

The meeting ran out of time so that those at the end of the agenda had to curtail their reports.

The meeting ran over the allotted time.

Parkinson’s Law was reaffirmed.

For those of you that are not familiar with Parkinson’s Law, according to Google, it is as follows:

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. A proverb coined by the twentieth-century British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson, known as Parkinson’s Law. It points out that people usually take all the time allotted (and frequently more) to accomplish any task.”
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=BhmlW5GQIsvzzgLem5qABg&q=work+expands+to+fill+time&oq=work+expands+&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0l2.1768.4291..6750…0.0..0.86.947.13……0….1..gws-wiz…….0i131j0i10.QQZmraKUhpQ

It seems that it may have its roots in science (Physics actually, and as we all know I am extremely fond of Physics).

”This law is likely derived from ideal gas law, whereby a gas expands to fit the volume allotted.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

And as we all know, if it is science, it must be true.

As with any scientific theory, several corollaries have been created as a result.

“The first-referenced meaning of the law has dominated, and sprouted several corollaries, the best known being the Stock–Sanford corollary to Parkinson’s law:

“If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

Other corollaries include Horstman’s corollary to Parkinson’s law:

“Work contracts to fit in the time we give it.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

All of this got me to thinking. And, as we also all know, this can be a dangerous situation for not only me, but all those involved or effected. It seems to me that meetings have taken on a status where it’s okay to ramble and take extra time, because invariably we make excuses for, or accept this kind of meeting behavior. The end result is that the meeting does achieve is goal, but it takes far more time than anyone is comfortable spending, and no one feels a sense of accomplishment when it is done.

My answer to this issue was pretty simple.
I made my meetings shorter.

Instead of having a one-hour review, once a week on Wednesdays, I scheduled two – one half hour reviews on Tuesday and Friday. I didn’t reduce the agendas or topics either. We covered everything in each meeting.

You might ask how this is possible? The answer is really very simple.

I became ruthless in cutting non-specific meeting discussions off.

If the meeting is a review, then it was a read-out, or reporting delivery only. If an issue was identified, it was immediately taken off-line, with an action item and an owner identified and would be resolved so that it could be read out and reported during the next half-hour call.

No exceptions.

It took a couple of meetings for the team to understand and get the rhythm of the approach, but the results have been very apparent. The project is moving faster. Ownership of issues and their resolution is much clearer. Progress is accelerated.

Just to review: we are spending the same total amount of time in meetings on the project reviews, but we are making more, and faster progress toward our objectives.

Looking back at Horstman’s Corollary to Parkinson’s Law, meaning if work expands to fill available time, that it should also contract to fit available time. Parkinson’s Law would mean if we schedule a one hour review we will conduct the meeting in such a way as to fill the full hour (and then some). Horstman’s Corollary would say that if we reduce the available time from one hour to a half-hour, we should be able to get the work done in that interval as well.

They both seem to be correct.

The issue is changing what were full hour meeting behaviors to the now necessary half-hour meeting behaviors. That means:

Ruthlessly staying on topic.
If it is a read-out meeting, read out only. Issues need to be taken off line, resolved and then read out at the next read-out meeting. If it is an issue resolution meeting, resolve the identified issue only. Don’t read out. Don’t work on other, related issues.

Cutting them off.
Many times, presenters do not know how to end their presentations. Sideline discussions, anecdotes, stories and all other manner of communications needs to be curtailed. Then move on.

Action Items.
Just because non-germane topics come up does not mean that they are not important topics. Clearly note them. Assign an owner and a time for resolution – and move on. Do not allow the group to lose focus on the topic at hand. This will keep everyone engaged.

Own it.
If it is your meeting, then it is your responsibility not to waste everyone else’s time. Stay on topic. Cut them off if necessary. Assign the action items. Publish the meeting minutes.

I didn’t set out to prove what are widely regarded as accurate, if not tongue-in-cheek axioms regarding how time is spent in business. I actually set out to see if I could start to reduce the amount of “down” time I was spending in meetings in general.

I am reasonably well convinced that the reason we have so much multi-tasking during meetings is due to the length and engagement requirements we now seem to expect in our meetings. We know the meeting will be longer than we want. We know that we will really only need to be fully engaged and aware for a relatively small percentage of the time that the meeting is conducted.

We know we will be bored the rest of the time.

The alternatives are to either multi-task, or to reduce the total time of the meeting in order to reduce the down time. Multi-tasking is the meeting attendee approach to solving their individual wasted meeting time issue. Reducing the actual meeting time is the meeting owner approach to solving everyone’s wasted meeting time issue.

Conducting shorter meetings will take significantly more effort on behalf of the meeting owner, and by extension some of the attendees, but I have found that you can actually get more done in the meeting by taking this approach. And I think that everyone in the meeting appreciates that, since that is supposed to be the objective of the meeting in the first place.