Project X Discussions

How We Use Our Time

How we use our time is so critical.  I have found that making lists is a very important tactic.   When I make a list, I make a point of crossing off the list things I have done.  If I do something not on the list, I put it on so I can cross it off.  Just a little trick.

Another trick is to distinquish between things that are urgent and important.  We often confused urgent things with important items. 

Here is an exercise to help you understand the distinction.  Make a list of all the activities you did yesterday.  Anything that took 15 minutes or more.  Now draw on a peice of paper four quadrants.  Label on the left side, bottom non urgent, top urgent.  Label on bottom, left side non important and right side, important.   Number the activities on the list and put each item by number in one of the three quadrants.  Have a look at the pattern.  If you are only doing things that are urgent and  none of the non-urgent but important items, you likely do not have control of your time.  You are letting the outside world control your time.  Think about ways of changing the mix.

So who is controlling your life?

Time Management Effectiveness

Some time ago,I found myself very busy and all my time was filled.  I wondered if I was doing the right things but decided that I should just hope that I was doing well.  Later I realized that I was very productive and getting lots done but I was not being effective.  

Stephen Covey talks about the seven habits of highly effective people.  I initially read that as successful people but later realize he meant something else.  

The key for me is to decide what are my most important priorities and make sure that I am working on those.  I think I was filling my days with busy work as opposed to working on the important things. 

To be effective we must be working on the right things not just doing things right.  When I want to determine the right things, I work on setting my priority goals.  I use a twenty minute brainstorming approach to develop my goals.  The procedure is as follows:

• Have a time piece in view, and spend four minutes writing down as many as possible long term goals.

Review for one minute and edit.

Spend four minutes writing down your goals for next five years, and one minute editing.

Spend four minutes writing down you goals if you knew you were going to die in six months and one minute editing.

Next rate In two minutes three from each list A Priority.  Then rate three more B's.

In the next two minutes, write the nine A's and decide which are the A1's, the A2's and A3's.  You can have three of each.

Spend the last minute, revising the A list.

Leave the list for a day, and revisit and revise.

Keep this list near at hand and read it everyday for three weeks.

This technique will give you a list that will permit you to be aware of how effective you are being with the use of your time.  The amazing thing is how many of you goals you will have made significant progress on in three months.  I think this is the true measure of being effective.  You are working on the right things.

OK, take out four sheets of paper or open a Word Document and spend the next twenty minutes doing this exercise.  You will become much more effective.

    

Time Management Part 1

Are you controlled by your Blackberry or Iphone?   Are you governed by your meeting manager?  Are you feeling productive?  Do you work in an open environment?  Do you feel you life is out of control?

Most of us these days are really controlled by our email, text messaging, instant messaging, and our calendar.  Most of us are distracted by these things and find it difficult to do much focused productive work that requires continuous concentration.

Can you avoid answering the phone or looking at an email or text message on your wireless device?  The challenge of time management is becoming increasing difficult as the sources of external distraction multiply.  In addition the pace of change is accelerating. 

Several years ago I really needed to clean up my garage but the task was overwhelming.   Although it was very high priority, I found myself busy on many other things.  I decided to use a different strategy.  I decided to spend one hour on Saturday cleaning the garage and then reward myself doing something I really liked.  I was absolutely amazed at the amount I accomplish in one hour.  I then decided to spend another hour on the next Saturday.  You would be amazed how quickly my garage got cleaned up.  This technique is the "Swiss Cheese Method' because to poke holes in the task until it is done.

Another time management principle that is very disarming is that if you have a high priority item that you do not want to do, you will become productive at everything else.  I guess that is call busy work.  I think we all have been there.

In order to make the best use of our time we need to use this valuable commodity wisely.  We all have twenty-four hours in every day and the challenge is how to use them to our best advantage. 

I will continue this discussion on future blogs.

Do You Have a Business Intelligence Strategy?

Most businesses these days get some sort of reports on how you business is performing.  However with things changing rapidly, different information is often needed.  What business questions do you have today?  Do you have a strategy for how these new questions will be addressed.  At Project X Ltd., we think that every organization needs a business intelligence strategy.  This strategy should answer the question about the approach to be used to answer new questions. 

This strategy must address the issue about how to respond quickly to changing business issues and provide timely answers to business questions.   Every organization will have a different strategy because of many factors.  The maturity of your infrastructure and the volatility of your business will be two key factors.  In addition to internal operations, the strategy must also address accessing external data about your customers, competitors, and suppliers.

Do you know how you are doing on a trip by looking in the rear view mirror?  Every organization needs to know how it is doing.  When I ask many business people how do they know how they are doing, I either get a blank stare or I am told about that their financial reports tell them all they need to know.  I think to have a business intelligence strategy based on financial reports is like looking in the rear view mirror.  I suspect each person knows much more than just the financial reports but maybe they have nothing formal. 

I think most of the business intelligence that we get is based on our knowledge of our business and our experience.  Even if we have this approach to business intelligence, I suggest we should have this formulated as a shared strategy.  

Clearly every organization wishes to be profitable but our day to day decision are based on an informed strategy about our position in the market.   An amazing amount of intelligence and information is out there and ways of sharing this information with key people is part of a business intelligence strategy. 

Every organization has a need for more business intelligence and has some degree of readiness to improve.  Project X Ltd. is ready to help any organization to develop a strategy to improve their business intelligence.  We strongly recommend start with some rapid results in the context of a longer term strategy.  As the strategy demonstrates return, then you can invest more.  If you do not get return, revisit the strategy.  Too many people create a big project that goes well beyond the readiness and capability of the organization. 

A critical component of a successful business intelligence effort is a sound and realistic strategy.  One important factor is the readiness of the organization.  We often hear that the technological challenge is the key.  I think that the organizations readiness to share information and act as a team is far more important than the technical issues.  However both are important.  A good business intelligence strategy must be careful not to take te organization to a place with technology that the business is not capable of using intelligently.  (pardon the pun)

    

Readiness

I mentioned previously how important high quality documents were for us at Gellman, Hayward.  However to our great frustration, we would produce a high quality report for a client and receive high praise but nothing would change. 

In the mid 70's  Harvey discovered an article by Bob Schaffer and showed to me.  Having read it, I flippantly said “Clearly he does not understand consulting he does not talk about ‘the report’.”  However the article was very profound and insightful.  The basic theme was that nobody does anything they are not ready to do (Readiness).  Thus the praise we received for our report was a method the client used to putting distance between himself and us.  We then realized what we really wanted to deliver was change, not a high quality report.  The report could be a tool but not the product.  Readiness is a simple but very profound concept.  The concept applies to the consultant as well as the client.  Many consultants have difficulty with their egos and really want praise even though they know it likely means a failed consulting job.  I always had difficulty with that aspect of readiness.  This event dramatically changed the way we delivered our consulting services.

Although we continued to produce quality documents, we paid much more attention to the consulting dynamics.  I was so excited about this new revelation that I decided to make a readiness assessment at the first opportunity.  I was asked to propose on a piece of work and set about to assess readiness.  I discovered the assessment was much more difficult than the concept.  I did not have a clue and realized that there is more to this concept than a simple idea.  

Over the years, as I attempted to apply the concept, I realized the difficulty of making a readiness assessment.  I have many stories of readiness assessments and my lack of readiness to accept the reality of many situations.  In the process of assessing readiness, the readiness of the consultant is just as important as the readiness of the client.  So many times, I want to apply a previous experience to a new situation and do not pay attention to the specific details of the current situation.

One of the things that I look for in any consulting situation is early successes for the client.  I believe early success increases the client’s readiness to take on more change.  I think that is true but often the client wants a proposal for the big fix.  Often I will try to propose both, a longer term strategy and some early wins.  I suspect in some circumstances the idea of early wins scares the client particularly if the readiness for change is low.   A better strategy might be to propose what the client wants and as the work progresses, I can find some early wins in the context of the longer term strategy.  These early wins will give the client courage to tackle some of the more difficult changes.  Once we are into the project, we can much more reliably assess the client’s readiness for change.

A simple of example of a statement of lack of readiness is a person saying “I should …….”   One of my teachers taught me that that is a statement of bad intentions.   He taught me to hear an additional phrase at the end, “but I am not gonna.”   Another fellow said, “People are full of shoulds.” 

Over the years I have learned not to jump to conclusions about readiness and remain skeptical.  One of my rules of thumb is to watch the feet, not the words.  Readiness is demonstrated by actions, not words.

Everybody Deserves Respect

One of the things that was special about Harvey was his respect for everybody no matter what their role or station.  He believed that everybody had a special role.  He felt very passionately about this and my first experience with this was with the support staff.  He watched very carefully how people treated support staff and demanded they be treated with respect.  He certainly modelled this behaviour in everything that he did.

I am sure all the support staff at Gellman Hayward felt very important and special.  He also demonstrated this with the maintenance staff in the office building.  They had such a positive feeling for him they came to his retirement party in the office.  He also knew about all our children and my children all remember Harvey. 

This characteristic is most interesting because Harvey was not a warm and demonstrative person.  However there was no question he was quite fanatical about everyone deserving respect.

All the support staff in our office building experienced the respect of Harvey.  The cleaning and the maintenance staff in our building all knew Harvey and he knew something about each one of them.  For many of us, these people are transparent but not for Harvey.  He knew something about them all.

When a reporter came to interview Harvey, one thing I noted is that Harvey would find out something about this person was and established a relationship with them.  He sincerely took and interest in each and every person he came in contact with.  He was always ready to help and support people. 

One lasting image I have of Harvey, the President of our firm, is him cleaning up the coffee stains and coffee mugs in our kitchen in the office.  He was a man of service with respect for others

Future Open Source Economics and the Web

Just looked at an interesting TED presentation by Yochai Benkler on open source economics.  Little dated but interesting. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html

What is in your EDW?

I have been discussing with Graham the problem of finding out what information is in the data warehouse.  The general solution is to store some information about what is in the warehouse somewhere.  This data about the data is often called Metadata.   Often no rules exists about the structure of the metadata and people construct metadata using spreadsheets which help them find the data in the warehouse and provides definitions of the data.

The difficulty with this approach is that it is often designed by the person constructing the metadata.  I am a firm believer that we need to have some rules and structure around the metadata.  Also we need some simple ways of searching the metadata.

The first step is to propose a standard way of describing the metadata.  The format of the metadata needs to be very flexible to allow for different descriptions for different types of data.  A simple design is really key and one that the business analyst and business user will understand and be able to use.  Another key factor is ease of maintenance.  The data stewards should be able to maintain this metadata easily.  The next factor is to find a simple search tool, like Google, to search the metadata and return back the information quickly in an accessible form.

The big effort is to populate the metadata repository.  I suggest that initially new data being added will be the first in the repository.  As the metadata repository evolves and is being used by more data stewards, the older data will gradually be added.   One other route would be to extract data from metadata spreadsheets and populate the repository.

The major objection to starting to construct the metadata repository is the size of the effort in describing everything in the data warehouse.   I strongly suggest that you start with one project and, instead of a spreadsheet, populate a metadata repository.  Once we have this repository, test the concept and the design and only move on when the repository is working well.

Hidden Factors

In my search for the meaning of life, the universe and everything, I must keep reminding myself that things are not always as they appear.  This fact is really evident in business and I refer to them as the "hidden factors".  These are the items that people do not reveal but are major influencers.  These are both personal things and broader issues. 

If a person has a substance abuse problem or marital difficulties, you may never know but the issue will affect everything.  If the person is about to lose his job or had a seriously bad appraisal by his boss, how might they behave with you?   If the person has had bad experiences in dealing with other people in your role, for example salesperson or consultant, they will be very guarded.  Underlying prejudices of all types can be very insidious.  What happened just before you met with this person?   Things are often not as they appear. 

I find that if I keep this idea in my awareness I am less likely to jump to conclusions that might lead me down the wrong path.  This idea brings to my mind one of Harvey's favourite saying, "I am confused, help me understand."  It works miracles if the statement must be authentic expression of your feelings.  However if we remember the hidden factors, we are often confused. 

One of the dangers in coping with hidden factors is our discomfort in dealing with uncertainty.  The main coping mechanism in dealing with uncertainty is to fill the gap with speculation and guesses.  The strategy works as long as you are ready to change your mind as facts appear.  I notice often I get so attached to my guesses that I disregard facts.  Ignoring reality is never a good consulting technique.

Why Jim Blogs

I expect many people who read my blogs wonder why I write what I write.   For sometime I wondered myself and did it because it felt right.  I think I now know why.  I love to help people and guide them along the path to effectiveness and success.  My intention is provide as much help as possible from my many years of experience in the IT consulting business.  I started consulting in the late 60's as a programmer and learned from my experience and other people lots of lessons.  I would like to share these lessons with as many people as possible.  The Project X Ltd. blog is a great opportunity for me to share.  The idea fits perfectly with our values.  Project x Ltd. believes that if we work together and cooperate everybody wins.  I think we are very special in that way. 

I am reading a book called "Love is a Killer App" by Tim Sanders which helped me understand why I blog.  He really takes a quite a different philosophy towards business than most people and it really resonated with me.  The idea is that love in business is defined as all the things you do to help others grow and be effective.

One of my credo's in my business life is always answering the question "What have you learned lately?"  I love learning new slants on old ideas and new approaches to common problems.  I also know that the best way so solidify my learning is to share these ideas with others.  If you can explain the key ideas to somebody else, my knowledge becomes more solid.  I find that knowledge and useful ideas are expanding rapidly and so many ideas are so much more accessible these days.

I belong to business book discussion group called the Senge Group.  We meet each month to discuss books that one of us thinks would be interesting.  We started the group many years ago discussing Peter Senge's book "The Fifth Discipline", that still remains as one of the best business books.  The discussion really helps us all understand this important book about creating a learning organization.   We have read and discussed many books since and I find the group very stimulating and helps expand my understanding.  I strongly recommend we all form such groups and commit to meeting regularly at a time convenient to the members.  The members need to give the group some real priority in their lives because we all very busy people.  I suggest you form a group of like minded people who do not work together and meet to discuss the concept of a discussion group.  If you cannot form a group, find at least one other person you can share good book titles.

I blog because I want to share my ideas and experiences, expand and consolidate my own ideas.  

I would welcome comments and feedback.