Leadership Bliss

It’s been a while.. I know.  Hope this post is the beginning of a new rejuvinated, rested blog.

I always heard the phrase “there are No wrong questions, only wrong answers”.. well, but there are dumb questions.. However, there are good dumb questions that you should not feel bad asking.. As a matter of fact, you NEED to ask these questions, to ensure success of projects:
The top 10 dumb questions a PM should ask, (thanks to ReformingProjectManagement) :

10.  Is that so?9.  What are the facts that back up your statement?
8.  Is that what the client wants?
7.  Why do you say that?
6.  Who has a different opinion?
5.  Where will you find the time to do that?
4.  Can we still finish when we promised?
3.  Are we making money?
2.  Can we trust her?

and the # 1 dumb question to ask:
1.  Is that legal?
Continue to ask these dumb questions, and you’ll be one smart PM.What other dumb questions do you typically ask?

The momentum is building for Earth Hour—8 to 9 pm, March 29, 2008—the global movement to shut off the lights for one hour to make a bold statement about climate change. More and more individuals, businesses, and even cities are planning to participate. Together, we’ll deliver a powerful message to the citizens and leaders of the world about the need for action on climate change.

Earth Hour is an opportunity for each one of us to take action, influence others and start a wave of change that alters the course of climate change. But turning off your lights is just the beginning. What can one person do in the face of a global challenge? Here are some easy tips to help you make a big impact:

Make it Happen
It’s easy and free to be part of the Earth Hour movement.

• Be sure to be counted. Sign up for Earth Hour (www.earthhour.org) and commit to turning off your lights on March 29 from 8 to 9 pm local time.
• Urge your friends, family, colleagues and contacts to show their support. It’s easy to engage and inspire.
• Blog about Earth Hour. Add an official Earth Hour web banner (http://www.earthhourus.org/downloads.php) to your blog, website, or online page.
• Spread the word. Earth Hour could be just the excuse you’ve been waiting for to knock on doors on your street or in your building. Ask them to go dark. Create your own event, such as a neighborhood Earth Hour celebration.
  

Reach Out, Speak Out, Go Out
Shutting off non-essential lights for WWF’s Earth Hour on March 29 will give you some time to think about how you can be smarter about the Earth’s resources.

• You don’t have to sit alone in the dark. Talking about protecting the planet for future generations can make for a very pleasant evening. Couple your conversation with some organic chocolate (dark, of course!) and make Earth Hour a night to remember.
• Earth Hour is on a Saturday night. If the weather’s good, try a picnic under the stars. Ask your favorite restaurant or bar to dim their lights and participate in Earth Hour. And if you’ll be at work, take a look at our tips for businesses and restaurants.
• Plan a get-dark party for Earth Hour. The younger crowd can host a slumber party complete with scary stories, hold an acoustical jam session or bring friends together to do some dancing in the dark. Don’t worry about decorations—it will be dark!
• Check in with a local astronomy club about star gazing events. The night sky provides its own light show and here’s your chance to take a break and soak up the view.
• You can still text in the dark. Make a list of all the ways you are going to reduce your energy consumption: unplug unused appliances; change to compact fluorescent bulbs; properly inflate tires; adjust your thermostat. Text your list to others and challenge them to make their own lists. Check other lists for ideas you may have forgotten.
  

The Earth Hour idea has captured the hearts and minds of people all over the world and I hope that it has captured yours. I look forward to participating in Earth Hour at the same time as thousands supporters like you. Thank you for being a part of this amazing event.

Whether you’re a leader or striving to be one, interviewing is a skill you’ll need to master.

We’ve all been there, probably on both sides of the interviewing process. Surprisingly, however, not all of us prepare the same, and some are not even sure how to prepare for an interview.

Maybe you’re new to the country and applying for your first professional job, or maybe you’re trying to be as prepared as possible. Not sure what to expect? Not sure how to answer the tough questions, or what those tough questions may be?

Maybe you’re struggling to hire the perfect employee, consultant, or subcontractor, but you don’t have the luxury of time, resources to help you, or even the ability to conduct a face-to-face interview. What questions should you ask? which areas should you focus on?

In the past few years I collected a few resources for interviewing tips, questions and answers..
This maybe a short (but very good) list that I’ve used personally. I welcome anyone else’s additions. If you know of other good sites or links, feel free to add to this list so everyone would benefit.

• 64 Interview answers you need to know
• WSJ Career Journal’s How to Answer Any Interview Question
• Interviewers’ favorite Questions (and Answers)
  
• Collection of excellent Job Interview articles - covering multiple situations
• Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (old, and new version) good read for managers
  

So, what does it take to be a leader? We talk a lot about that on this blog, and today I saw (and liked) this simple list of 101 common-sense tips for managers (and really can apply to just about anyone in leadership position).

They broke the list down into different categorizes, and gave reasons behind most tips.

Here are 10 tips I liked from the list of 101 tips, which I encourage you to go read:

1. Only promise what you can realistically deliver. Don’t create deadlines that you know you can’t meet. By only promising what you know you can do, you’ll be able to finish on time.
2. Delegate tasks. Spread work among your employees in a way that doesn’t leave anyone overburdened while also allowing the project work smoothly.
3. Give credit when it’s due. Don’t take credit for your employees’ ideas or hog their limelight. This action not only fosters resentment but also makes you seem untrustworthy.
4. Do only what is necessary. There are times when going above and beyond works, but doing so on a daily basis can derail your progress on more important issues. Get the key things done first, then see if you have time for additional things.
5. Do your least favorite tasks first. Get your most tedious and least desirable tasks out of the way earlier in the day. After that, everything else will be a breeze.
6. Remember that the customer is the boss. At the end of the day, your job is to make the customer happy. Act accordingly.
7. Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. It’s OK not to know the answer to every question. It’s better to say you don’t know and get back to a customer than to try to bluff your way through a conversation and have to backtrack later.
8. Keep an eye on the competition. Don’t let the competition get the best of you. Keep up-to-date with what they’re doing and use it to your advantage in managing your business.
9. Be empathetic to personal problems. Whether it should or not, what happens outside of work can have a big affect on the quality of work produced. Be sensitive if employees have personal issues that keep them from concentrating on work.
10. Remember that ethics matter above all. Be honest and reliable in all of your business and personal relationships.

This is the first article in a series on relationships. I decided to write on relationships due to recent work-related examples that I just went through, and I truly believe relationship management is an essential part of leadership. It’s all about Keeping the Customer Happy…


Trust and Responsibility

I was amazed when I read Seth Godin’s article about the Dabbawalla. They are delivery people who deliver thousands of lunches daily - barefoot - in Mumbai, India.

They are so accurate that the reported error rate is 1 per 6 million deliveries.
They never even miss a delivery during the worst weather (monsoon season)!

How is this possible? How do you create and run a service with thousands of employees, no technology and a poorly-educated workforce and have better than six sigma quality?

Here’s why, according to Seth:

Simple: the dabbawallas know their customers. If they rotated the people around, it would never work. There’s trust, and along with the trust is responsibility. By creating a flat organization and building relationships, the system even survives monsoon season.

Can we learn from the Dabbawalla phenomenon? We better.. But here are other questions around this topic of building relationships:

1. Do you know your customer well and their needs?
   
2. Do you know HOW your customer wants to be dealt with? their style, their pet peeves ?
   
3. Do we invest in our customer-facing individuals, to invest in the relationships?
4. Would retention of customer-facing individuals affect our quality, relationships, success?
   

Thoughts?

We know about them, yet we choose to ignore them.

In an article by Computerworld, Bart Perkins lists 12 things that can kill projects. Unfortunetly, we sometime choose to ignore them for the sake of getting our projects off the ground.

Some are:

• A poor business case
• The business case is no longer valid
• The project is too long
• betting on a new unproven technology
  
• No contingency
• An arbitrary release date
• and more…
  

Do you remember the last Icebreaker you participated in?
You probably do, specially if you had to come up with it :)
Regardless, so you don’t need to search a lot, I’ve compiled a huge list for you. Next time, come back to this post and pick from the links.

Here are some Icebreakers you may need to use sometime in your career:

• Top 10 Icebreakers (from Coachville top10 resource center)
  
• Icrebreakers (from Leadership Development program at UK)
  
• Icebreakers and Energizers (from BusinessFundamentals.com)
• Educational Icebreakers (from Teacher’s Toolkit at About.com)
• Icebreakers for your next Nonprofit Meeting (from suite101.com)
  

So, find out what you want to use an icebreaker for in your meeting, and choose an appropriate one based on your needs.

There’s always a list of Top 10 or Top 50 out there. Maybe in your industry, maybe within the company or even in your own department. How much you strive to make it to the top is an indicator of your drive to excellence, and how much you strive to put your Organization in the Top10 list, is an indicator of your drive in Leadership..

However, most of these lists reflect Last Year’s accomplishments. If you simply “follow” what they did, then where is the innovation in that? and why would you deserve that spot?

Learn from HOW they got there, and work on what could put you and your organization at the top THIS year, with TODAY’s technology and innovation…

Here are two examples of “Top 10” or “Top 22” lists to motivate the leader in you:

Top 10 Companies where SOA made a difference in 2006

Top 22 Churches in America

I’m not sure how many of you saw the recent “It’s a jungle out there” commercials on TV from careerbuilder.com on the brutal culture of the work office. Go to the link and watch “Donuts” if you have not seen it. Really funny, and somehow I can relate to those “pointless meetings” they depict.

Can we ever avoid the pointless meetings? Not sure. But we can make a difference, one presentation at a time.

I just read Guy Kawasaki’s “10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint”. If you’ve not read it, I encourage you to read his straight-to-the-point post on the topic.

Simply stated: 10 slides, 20 minutes, and 30-point font !!

Try it in your next meeting.

In our pursuit of innovation and bringing value-add to our clients, we find ourselves asking our customers “What do you want? What enhancements would you rather we spend our time on?”

So they tell us. and we build it… was that innovative?

Anthony Ulwick says in a Harvard Business Review article titled Turn Customer Input into Innovation, that when you ask a customer what they want, they end up describing solutions - products or features, out of what they’ve experienced before. They can’t imagine what they don’t know about new technologies. So they end up suggesting things other vendors already offer, and thus you end up with the “me-too” products or incremental enhancement that others can do as well. So, you didn’t get rid of competition, and you’re not really that innovative if you’re giving them what others can give.


Anthony gives a five-step plan (and much more) to turning customer input into innovation, but the nugget behind it is translating the customer/interviewee’s solution statements into outcomes—by asking why customers want the stated solutions.

Along the way, you end up collecting information about what the customer truly wants.

It’s not the “extra fields to save and view customer inquiries” (solution), rather it’s “provide quick turnaround for customer inquiries”, for example. When the customers go ahead and rate each outcome based on importance and satisfaction, you have a much better chance at innovating, because now you know what they really really want..