Archive for the ‘Collaboration’ Category

Does it not?

Read Dan and Chip Heath’s article in Fast Company today, “Team Coordination Is Key in Businesses.”  Quick overview, they used three real-world examples emphasizing their point.  In short, while you can do brilliantly, alone, for an organization to be successful you simply must work together.

It’s likely you have experienced situations where, even when individuals performed their roles just fine (admirably even), the main activity itself failed.  If everyone ‘did their part,’ the odds are it was a lack of coordination causing the failure.

This is something hard to teach, often learned only through painful experience.  Early in my professional career, I strived to be the brightest star, or the shiniest tool in the tool bag.  As my horizons moved beyond being an individual contributor, it quickly became clear how important coordinating with others was to my—or my teams—success. How often do we each tend to work hard at being the ‘star’ rather than making sure we fit well with others?

Which is more important? The saw or the saw’s tooth?

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Even though I’ve had my iPhone for quite a while now, I continue to be amazed at the sheer range and depth of application offerings available for it.  Even when there were ‘only’ 20,000 apps available, there was always something available to solve the need of the moment.  Now there’s over 133,000 apps, the sky’s the limit.

One of my favorite examples was while having coffee with my friend and minister.  He was bemoaning the fact he had the Bible installed on his smartphone, but that it wouldn’t let him read anything past about Matthew or Mark.  Sure enough, I was able to find, download, install, and show him a copy of the Bible on my iPhone, with 6 translations, in about 2 minutes.  There really is, an app for everything!

So here are some of my own ‘top’ apps for the iPhone, based on my current activities:

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Monday night I had the opportunity to attend an Agile Groupies meeting.  It’s a semi-regular gathering of folks (developers, business analysts, product managers, etc.) interested in a specific approach, Agile, toward software development.

For those of you not familiar, Agile development focuses on smaller development teams, working on smaller deliverables, in highly iterative, somewhat less structured approach.  Part of the thinking is that if you are delivering in smaller, more discrete ‘chunks’ of working product, that the overall process will be more ‘agile,’ more adaptive to ongoing change during a product’s overall life cycle. The idea is to move away from ‘heavy’ less flexible disciplines, and back toward lighter, freer, approaches. Read the rest of this entry »

Leadership opportunities can be found in all kinds of places. Sometimes they pop up in the most unusual of circumstances and you adopt the role without even thinking about it.

Not too long ago, I led a group of motorcyclists on a ride. We started out in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. Traffic was heavy enough that even with GPS, safely and correctly leading the group through the lump of spaghetti masquerading as a series of closely clustered interchanges proved challenging.

15 minutes, and I’ve already had to make a half-dozen impromptu leadership decisions—each one with 5 friends mentally critiquing my every move.

So about 10am in the morning, we’re somewhere north of Asheville, as our small group begins to work its way westward. We’ve left the big city rush well behind us, we’ve unwound ourselves, and eventually roll into a small town that the crush of time seems to have left alone. It’s the sort of town where everything’s almost sleepy, peaceful, with that small town ‘clean’ about it.

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This paraphrases the situation a friend of mine, selling a sophisticated yet simple product, frequently encounters.  The fact the company he’s selling for can’t get past the objection reflects an indifference to customer sensitivity.  A lack of customer-centricity.

The question today is how to compete moving forward.  If you’re in a market like the U.S., Western Europe, or Japan, you face a mature slower-growing economic environment—current economic challenges notwithstanding.  Using the automotive industry as an example, growth of 20, 30% annually is considered good.  In North America, 2-3% is considered good.

So if your market is mature and you can’t count on a rising tide to float all boats, how do you prosper?

The days of competing primarily on product and price, particularly for commodity-oriented offerings, are dwindling.  If you’re selling a car, there are numerous ‘family sedans’ with almost identical feature sets, for nearly identical prices.

This suggests a new way of competing must become prevalent.

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Ok, so you have just read the title. You know what the article is about. Your expectations have been set. And, it has been pretty straight-forward thus far hasn’t it?

Over the past few months there have been a number of different articles debating whether we (in the US) are getting better or worse in our writing. The debate is often pretty black and white. One side cites examples of how Twittering (with its 140 character limits), SMS (phone texting with its 160 character limits), Instant Messaging, and the like are all promoting poor writing. The other side cites examples where people (particularly our younger generations) are incredibly effective at adjusting their messaging to suit the medium, and, how with all these new mediums—we are writing more than we ever have.

Regardless of Read the rest of this entry »

This is a question that shows up in discussion periodically. For moto-enthusiasts, it’s about the same as starting a discussion on tire pressures, what oil to use, how often to change it, and so on. There are countless answers, an endless number of experts to given them, yet they all fall short. The reason is that there is no absolute answer. It is akin to asking, “…what should be in my resume?” Once you’ve decided what it is you want to do, then what you put in the resume starts to speak for itself. Read the rest of this entry »

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to hear David Chinsky (David Chinsky & Associates) speak at this month’s CEO Connect. As a practitioner, and student of, effective business leadership I found his presentation very positive. His comments resonated strongly with me; enough so I wanted to expand on one topic:

“More than anything else, employees seek clarity from their leaders”

Call it what you will Read the rest of this entry »

When was the last time you asked, “Why?” Has it been awhile? Reflecting back on some of the more confrontational issues I’ve been involved in, it occurred to me that the one question often not asked is simply, Why?

If you have studied Six Sigma, you’ve heard about asking the 5 Whys. Taiichi Ohno, father of the Toyota Production System, is said to have liked using the 5 Whys. The intent is to repetitively ask questions until you understand the simple, core reason, underlying an otherwise seeming complex problem.

Consider this example Read the rest of this entry »

This item’s a bit granular compared to most of my posts. But since the topic came up today, using email to sent to a recipient’s mobile phone, I thought it was worth sharing for you.

The first thing, is that unless there’s a specific restriction on doing so, most mobile carriers will support receiving email addressed to their mobile customers and converting to SMS for transmission to their phone. For instance, if you’re with AT&T, you can simply send an email to 1231231234@txt.att.net, and AT&T will transmit the message as desired.

Of course, the question you may need to think through, Read the rest of this entry »