JT Pedersen » Leadership

Costa Concordia: Lesson In Failed Leadership

JT — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:26:37 +0000

By now, if you’ve tapped into almost any media source, you’ve heard of how the Costa Concordia ran aground, sank, and created a world of mayhem for all involved.

The initial cause as I read about it in the media, is,”…made an unauthorized, unapproved deviation from its programmed course, a “human error” that led to the grounding of the vessel…,” says the chief executive of the ship’s Italian owner.

We all make mistakes. To do so is to be human. And, while tragic, that mistake is not itself where the real failure of leadership was demonstrated.

Here’s the initial sequence, and thoughts, as I first learned of the event:

A ship, Costa Concordia had run aground.
Thought: Ship’s Skipper’s responsible for everything involving the ship, what could’ve happened?
Heard the, “…the command and crew were sluggish in responding to the crisis.”
Thought: Slow, disorganized crew response…the crew was properly trained, educated, prepared for such an eventuality. Making sure the crew’s ready is one of a ship captain’s primary responsibilities.
Various reports have alleged the captain abandoned ship hours before the evacuation was complete.
Thought: Not present!? Absolute dereliction of duty…whether you’re Captain or not, the crew is responsible for the welfare of its passengers.

As this story continues to evolve, I am really surprised that though there is a preponderance of evidence, no one has picked up on this seemingly complete failure of leadership.

We will continue to learn more. We need be careful not to prosecute the Captain and his crew in the media inappropriately: the black box recorders’ contents have not yet been revealed; the Captain has not spoken publicly; and, even the Costa Concordia’s owners are providing inconsistent stories. For instance, Costa Crociere chairman and CEO Pier Luigi Foschi, “…praised the crew for its handling of the crisis.“ Sorry, it doesn’t work both ways.

Whether your job is to run a ship, or run a business, leaders have certain responsibilities. Chief among them is to:

Remain committed to your cause (no abandonment);
Ensure your crews, your teams, are prepared for the task at hand;
Be accountable, see it through to the end, whatever that end may be; and,
Above all, provide leadership, direction, and ensure execution.

My condolences go out to everyone involved. This has certainly been a tragic event and lives have been irreparably harmed or lost. However grim, this event will serve as a leadership case study for decades to come.

source image credit: Bloomberg
modified image: JT Pedersen

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Product Visioning—How Often Do You Do It?

JT — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:25:11 +0000

Product Managers need to define, own, and communicate the dream they have for their product(s). The process they go through in developing the dream, can be referred to as Visioning. Earlier this week, Dr. Jim Anderson discussed the process in, Why Product Managers Need To Learn How To Do Visioning.

The question was then asked, how often should you go through the process? In discussions that followed, it was interesting to see the range of responses. Some suggested quarterly, others more frequently.

Visioning, defining the dream, for me is a function that varies by product, by industry. Moving at different rates, some demand change more quickly than others.

A well-described vision defines a clear focus. As I discuss in Picked Your Fencepost Yet?, If you’re in the middle of a field and want to get out, you need to pick a point on the fence, any point, and keep heading toward it. Getting out of the field is your vision, your dream. Working in the software industry, I have found formal visioning works best as an annual process.

Changing industry or market conditions are key factors suggesting more frequent visioning exercises. However, Organizational size often acts as a throttle, retarding your rate of change. Changing product vision too significantly, too often, creates havoc and/or disengagement in larger organizations.

Imagine an organization with 2,500 sales people globally, along with tens of thousands of partners (e.g. dealers, distributors…). It takes a while to communicate the message; to get everyone to simply understand the vision; to feel good about it; and, then be motivated to support it. Change your product’s vision more than once a year and they’ll wonder if you’ve a clue what you’re doing. Worse, they’ll get frustrated, demotivated.

Of course, on the way to your chosen exit point, you’re going to find rocks to avoid, creeks to ford. How you choose to deal with these impediments are your strategies, your tactics. These, may end up being reviewed weekly (or however often). Strategy and tactics are never to be confused with your dream, your vision.

To go through the visioning process too often, suggests the original focus was not set out far enough. Remember, the vision is not to move forward 6′. The Vision is to exit the field—via the point you picked—way over ‘there.’ Discounting the obvious impact of a game changer (e.g. earthquake destroys the fence), the ‘general direction’ you want to head in, shouldn’t be changing all that often.

image credit: Jef Bettens

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Create a Culture of Greatness

JT — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:07:41 +0000

One of the books I am currently reviewing, is by Jon Gordon. He’s an international bestselling author and contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Reviewing his work, I found a mindset and approach that I like. And, as a reader of my blog, I suspect you will as well.

Jon extended the offer of a guest post to me, and I thought it a good idea. This is also the first guest post I’ve permitted until now. Let me know what you think, about future guests posts, as well as your own thoughts on Jon’s article…

By Jon Gordon

“To build a winning a team and a successful organization you must create a culture of greatness.”

It’s the most important thing a leader can do because culture drives behavior, behavior drives habits and habits create the future. As the leaders at Apple say, “Culture beats strategy all day long.”

When you create a culture of greatness you create a collective mindset in your organization that expects great things to happen—even during challenging times. You expect your people to be their best, you make it a priority to coach them to be their best and most of all you create a work environment that fuels them to be their best.

A culture of greatness creates an expectation that everyone in the organization be committed to excellence. It requires leaders and managers to put the right people in the right positions where they are humble and hungry and willing to work harder than everyone else. A culture of greatness dictates that each person use their gifts and strengths to serve the purpose and mission of the organization. And it means that you don’t just bring in the best people, but you also bring out the best in your people.

If you are thinking that this sounds like common sense, it is. But unfortunately far too many organizations expect their people to be their best but they don’t invest their time and energy to help them be their best nor do they create an environment that is conducive to success. They want great results but they are not willing to do what it takes to create a culture of greatness.

A culture of greatness requires that you find the right people that fit your culture. Then you coach them, develop them, mentor them, train them and empower them to do what they do best. As part of this process you develop positive leaders who share positive energy throughout the organization because positive energy flows from the top down. You also don’t allow negativity to sabotage the morale, performance and success or your organization. You deal with negativity at the cultural level so your people can spend their time focusing on their work instead of fighting energy vampires. And you find countless ways to enhance communication, build trust and create engaged relationships that are the foundation upon which winning teams are built.

If creating a culture of greatness sounds like a lot of work, it is, but not as much work as dealing with the crises, problems and challenges associated with negative, dysfunctional and sub-par cultures. While most organizations waste a lot of time putting out fires you can spend your time building a great organization that rises above the competition.

About Jon Gordon:

This post is a guest post by Jon Gordon. Jon is the Wall Street Journal and international bestselling author of a number of books including The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team with Positive Energy, and his latest, The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work. Learn more at www.JonGordon.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonGordon11 or Facebook www.facebook.com/jongordonpage .

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Social Media & Product Management (Pt. 2)

JT — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:39:10 +0000

(Part 1, 2, 3, 4 See also, supplement)

Continuing the discussion of employing social media as a component of the product management toolset…

For most people, ‘social media’ tends to be synonymous with ‘social networking.’ You’re familiar with many of them already, whether you personally use them or not: Facebook for most; LinkedIn for the career-minded; Flickr for photographers; or, perhaps Google+ if you’re really on top of things. These site are largely consumer oriented, letting individuals socially interact with others directly, forming their own communities while engaging with others.

Social networking is but a subcomponent of social media though. As Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner write, "…most writing about social media focuses on how to use it for marketing, we believe there’s a larger story to tell." Social media is certainly very useful to help companies build relationships with their customers and, in turn, promote themselves.

Using this new medium primarily as a push tool, is very short-sighted.

The New Tools

Social media is an incredible intelligence gathering solution as well. And, specific to product managers, an established social network is also a powerful source of input; one that can be leveraged to garner product-minded input—much less expensively than, say, a focus group.

There are uncounted numbers of publications discussing social media. If you are looking to study its depths, dimensions, and gnarly innards, one example is presented by J.H. Kietzmann et al. in their ScienceDirect publication, and their honeycombs of social media (pg. 243, 248).

Simpler is better whenever possible. For our purposes here, there are four buckets that social media components fall into. They are Media, Analytics, Advertising/Marketing, and Platforms.

Media

Media encompasses a number of different forms. In general, it is the mechanism enabling interaction between participants. Whether it is video, blogging, or social networking, it is the means by which you convey your message to others, and for them to respond.

The tools you choose might be Facebook for B2C (business to consumer); and, LinkedIn, Google+, Slideshare, or others for B2B. As I write this, Google+ has the potential to work equally well for primarily consumer and business interests. How it ultimately develops remains to be seen. Regardless, the tool you use is tied to your comfort level, available time to invest, and most importantly—where your audience(s) typically exists.

Analytics

In social media circles you will hear reference to using ‘analytics.’ Typically the discussion gets shunted off to the side which is unfortunate. Tools like Google Analytics are free to use, easily installed, and provide a wealth of information.

For the non-computer minded product manager, tools like Google Analytics populate a database with information each time someone visits your website. Depending on whether you’re using a free or fee-based analytics tool, there is a range of data captured, such as:

Location
- Country
- Municipality
- City
Visitors
- # Return
- # Unique
Device
- Screen Resolution
- Operating System
- Browser type & version
Platform
- Mobile
- PC
Source, where’d they comefrom
- Direct (they typed it in, clicked your email sig link)
- Referral (via LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, or other social network)
- Search (via Bing, Google, Yahoo!, and what it was they typed in to find you)

The usefulness might not be immediately apparent. Here are a couple things analytic data can help you uncover:

Where do you customers tend to come from? (e.g. is where you think?)
Who sends you most of your traffic? Does it reflect your activity on social networks, your blog, or email efforts?
How long did they stay on a particular page? Which pages did they navigate from/to? Are specific product features capturing extra attention?
What OS, Screen resolution, or device type did they use? Useful for software developers, UI design, etc.

In the next piece, I’ll round out the 4 buckets. We’ll also discuss the constraints you can face using social media in product management. Subsequent parts will discuss Benefits as well as why it doesn’t work for everyone.

(image credit: Jacek Brams)

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Social Media & Product Management (supplement)

JT — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 22:52:45 +0000

(Continuing on from Part 1)

New Tools in the Bag

In Part 2, I will discuss the ‘new social media tools’ available to the Product Manager. However, consider this segment a ‘supplement,’ or an appendix, to the overall discussion.

Why? Because I continue to run into a tendency that needs to be addressed, without unwittingly diverting the larger topic’s focus.

Time and again, I go to social media friendly events and hear the same comment. It goes something like this: Everybody is using…(take your pick). Well, it still isn’t true. Speakers, marketers, developers, and yes bloggers, need to take care to avoid an assumption of widespread social media literacy.

For many people, their understanding does not extend past posting what they just had for lunch on facebook. In the November ’09 issue, Fast Company discussed Twitter, saying,’…69% of U.S. adults still have no idea what it is.’

We tend to assume everyone else is ‘just like us.’ And why not? For each of us, our closest friends, colleagues, and acquaintances generally tend to reflect, well, us.

According to Pew Internet Research (August, 2010), 66% of American adults have broadband internet at home. The University of Maryland’s R.H. Smith School of Business, partnering with network solutions, released a 2011 report pointing out that 56% have a website and almost a third use social media.

Flipped the other way, that means 44% of small businesses have no website. And, more than two thirds do not use social media at all.

It is easy to be dismissive of ‘small’ businesses. Before you do, consider the following. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small firms with fewer than 500 employees represent 99.9 percent of the total. There were 18,469 large businesses in 2008. (source: SBA FAQ)

So, what does this mean? After all, the numbers can seem to be swirling about us like snow flakes in a blizzard. The short take is this:

Product managers need to make use of social media. It represents a family of tools with incredibly broad reach. Knowing its limitations is important though.

At the same time, it is incredibly important to understand its limitations. If your focus is consumers, and your target customers live in outlaying areas (think farmers), then maybe its worth knowing 34% have no broadband and won’t view your beautiful, large, promotional videos. Or, if your focus is B2B (other businesses), there just might be a reason why you can’t research your target customer online (hint: they don’t exist there).

This post is a bit ‘dryer’ than my usual fare. But rather than continue to propagate unsubstantiated myths, I wanted to give you some hard numbers, with their reference points, so you can go poke around. If nothing else, if you’ve been afraid you’ve fallen so far behind that you can’t catch up, you can now see it probably isn’t true. Well, unless your neighbor the Jones’ have internet and you’re stuck with smoke signals. Then you probably are:)

(image credit: Julia R.)

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Social Media & Product Management (Pt. 1)

JT — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:54:06 +0000

(Part 1, 2, 3, 4 See also, supplement)

This marks the start of a series on Social Media as it relates to Product Management. Social Media has significantly matured, particularly over the past three years. Yet, given its relative ubiquity, just how to leverage it productively, let alone understand it effectively, remains something of a bugaboo for many.

And, why is that? What is social media? Who can use it? What are the benefits? Why might it work, or not, for different people. These are a handful of the questions I’ll look to address.

Lets Get Started
For today, let’s take a look at what I mean, by, social media for product management? Fundamentally, I’m talking about how product managers, those responsible for charting the course of a product, can use social media to improve their efforts.

Social media enables the building of effective relationships with an interested audience, enabling you to better guide your product through it’s entire lifecycle.

Common Ground
Let’s step back a moment, and clarify the context of ‘product manager.’ The reference to a ‘product manager’ can vary significantly from one company to the next, as well as one industry to another. In some cases, ‘product management’ is undertaken as a team activity.

The team might include, or reside in, Marketing, Sales, Development/Engineering, and Project Management organizations. Each team member may be viewed as having equal responsibility in bringing a product to market. In other contexts, perhaps most common, the product manager is viewed as owning the ‘dream,’ yet without direct resource control, relying on his or her ability to selltheir dream to the other team members (including senior management).

Regardless of how your organizations defines a ‘product manager,’ for our purposes here I ask you to think of this person as the product owner, the person (individually or collectively) who needs to collect feedback and morph it into a dream.

A Traditional Approach
A traditional approach to product management often depends on someone who is a SME, or subject matter expert. The ‘essence’ of what a product is, or will become, is tightly tied to this individual’s sense of what the market needs. Along the way, they will engage various consultants, authors, customers, and internal staff (e.g. Sales, Marketing, & Support), as they pick and chose their path.

The product manager, depending largely on their own expertise, solicits input from various knowledgeable sources. It’s a very demanding position. All these input sources end up funneling their views of what the market needs into a single person.

A key challenge, is that this is only so scalable. At some point, you can only take so many calls; meet so many customers; read so many email; or review data on defect reports and customer issues. Yet, the breadth of input—despite the deluge—can be relatively narrow. Support provides input from your existing customers. Sales provides feedback based on the shifting sands of their daily competitive landscape filled with prospective customers.

As a product manager, I know I am always trying to capture as much input as possible, while also balancing it against all the other input. So, yes, I can hear you now, thinking something like, “…uh, yeah, and he’s about to suggest I spend an extra 3 hours a day twittering away.’” Uh, no. Bear with me, we’ll get there.

The New Tools
With the next section, we will start to look at some of the relatively new tools available. We’ll also spend some time discussing current constraints, such as corporate policies, comfort levels, and yes, the ‘time suck.’

(image credit: Colin Brough)

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Fires! They’re Everywhere!

JT — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:29:43 +0000

As leaders I think we all find our teams besieged by fires at one point in time or another. Sometimes it seems they’re simply building one atop another and, unless you can do something, you risk being over run…your core mission compromised.

In a corporate environment the fires can seem to come at your team from every direction. The President pulls on your strings, Sales is pulling on Development, Projects demand ECOs (engineering change requests) be done ‘today,’ and then there’re the ground-level things like equipment needing attention. I’m sure you can add the 35 things that happened to you today, to the list as well.

One thing is clear: If you cannot get fires under control, you mission will be compromised.

So, what do you do about it? You have likely survived day-to-day by putting out each fire as quickly as possible, as they crop up, one by one. Most likely, and unfortunately, you are most likely treating the symptoms and not the core problem(s).

A few years ago, I found my team increasingly buried in fire fighting issues. It reached the point that it impacted out ability to move regular business forward.

I pulled my managers into a room and we started by building a matrix. Down the left side were the Top 8 issues repetitively causing fires. Horizontally, we ranked each issue based on its impact on things like team resources, frequency, sources of problem,…,finally giving each item an overall ranking.

What we found, the items that seemed most likely to be the biggest violators, weren’t. It was almost a complete opposite of what we expected—yet made perfect sense as we thought it through. We started to specifically tackle the main trouble makers, like how engineering change orders (ECOs) were handled, with a goal toward eliminating them.

As I told my team at the time, “…we may not feel we have time to do ‘this’ right now, but if we don’t, we’ll still be in the same mess another 6-8 weeks from now.” (And maybe worse…)

So, I was particularly pleased, having rolled out new processes, to be able to see initial adoption and improvement inside 6-8 weeks, and noticeable overall improvement within ~10 weeks.

The before/after contrast was dramatic enough that I’m sure the lesson was appreciated personally by each manager.

My preference is for simpler whenever possible. It doesn’t always work out that way of course. In this case, we were in the midst of what felt like a raging forest fire. We needed to do a quick, broad assessment, make a decision, and move.

(image credit: Billy Alexander)

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Innovation—Pre-Engineered Data Centers

JT — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:54:46 +0000

Funny, one of the things they don’t tell you as a Cloud service provider, is that the boundaries of the Cloud aren’t white, fluffy, and ambiguous. Quite the opposite as a matter of fact. They’re cold, rigid, and expansion can be expensive.

Certainly, from the consumers’ perspective, that’s exactly what the Cloud is. But use a leaf blower to clear away the puff ‘n fluff, and you’ll find there’s something rather solid inside. And, it costs money.

In a past role as a Software as a Service (SaaS) product manager, data center health, capacity, and durability were daily concerns. On a micro level, tactical activities, day-to-day, stood atop a three-legged tripod: RAM, CPU, and disk capacity.

The macro level, strategically, concern focused on the data centers housing my systems. The common chair legs here were Wattage (electrical service capacity consumed|available); HVAC (air conditioning capacity); physical space (can we add more servers and/or storage); and, backup generator/UPS capacity.

Eventually, we outgrew our own data center. We physically were out of space for new servers; backup systems were beyond capacity; and, our HVAC couldn’t handle the load in the middle of the summer.

Alarms tripped. Beepers buzzed. Staff scrambled. Ugly.

The potential solutions available were ugly as well. Most likely, we were going to undertake expansion of the data center; bumping-out into the rear parking lot; consume precious parking spaces; and with ugly cost. And, there was no guarantee by the time it was completed, that capacity would be on track with our needs.

Ever have to discuss with your CFO, why you had (unwittingly) over/underbuilt your $15M data center, that took 18-36 months to complete?

There’s a better way!
Pre-Engineered Data Centers

Not quite two years ago, I had a meeting with Steve Jacobs regarding a new idea in data center development. In short, deliver to the market a pre-engineered data center, that can be quickly deployed, cost effective, and support incremental growth.

Now, the idea is reality. Steve’s the CEO of Velocity Data Centers, anchored in the Chelsea/Ann Arbor area (Michigan, USA). He gave me a tour of their new prototype.

When I encountered Steve’s efforts, I immediately saw the value. HP and some others have some very specialized ‘shipping container’ type solutions, but they’re not the most attractive long term alternatives.

The basic description of the unit I’ve included pictures of, can be found here. He confirmed the unit is currently powered for 100kW, but can be easily bumped to 200kW if desired (in the power room, I saw there’s clearly room for a second set of Liebert units).

In the data package room, there are 2 AC units (cold aisle) already placed, with room for 5 cabinets per row as configured (20 racks total, this design).

Groundwork for the design (foundation, slab, etc.) is conventional. The building itself is a specially formulated 4-6” thick concrete. The structure even has a ballistics rating and can withstand a Category 5 hurricane!

If you are not responsible for data center operations or management, this may be so much ho-hum. If you are responsible for paying for one, here’s how it boils down…the business case.

At this point, I’d like to point out that I have no legal or monetary relationship to Velocity Data Centers. I simply believe in their approach, a lot, and am happy to evangelize.

Consider, building out a 10,000 square foot data center can range between $10-15,000,000 dollars, and take 18-36 months to complete. Depending on external developments along the way, you may find your needs have substantially changed.

Here’s what I really like about this solution:

Overall package (building and fenced area) foot print: 3,200 sq. feet.
Cost – Under $1,000,000 for a 100kW, 20 rack data center
Design—Everything pre-engineered as a package
Time—70 days for functional unit (this includes the learning curve for the prototype. It will be interesting to see how quickly production units can be deployed)
Placement—Can be deployed anywhere, parking lots or vacant property, with suitable services.
Investment—Sized to meet your needs. Add additional units (collocated or dispersed) to meet increased demand, or for Tier 1+ needs.
No disruption to current operations until you’re ready to ‘flip the switch.’ Though life’s rarely that simple.

At the end of the day, even though many may choose to transfer corporate services to the Cloud, somebody has to actually run the Cloud. If you’re somebody, where time, money, and availability are all pressing concerns, this is an innovative approach you owe it to yourself to take a look at.

Thank you to Steve Jacobs, Velocity Data Centers, for the tour.

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Do Your Followers Have a Role in Strategy?

JT — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:29:32 +0000

Absolutely.

Your followers have a significant role in -executing- strategy. Teams are chartered to execute a mission, objectives, and goals. The underlying strategy defining these activities need to ‘harmonize,’ to some minimal degree, with your team(s) or they will not be executed, or executed ‘fully.’

Followers are not just ‘employees,’ showing up for a check, to be led around by their noses. In today’s world, given the rate of change, disruption, and ambiguity, require team members with some level of autonomy. They require a level of independence and, yes, trust, that would not have been considered permissible even 30 years ago.

With such autonomy and independence, let alone geographic dispersion, your strategy needs to remain true to the organization and why they joined it. Things do change, but if your strategy goes too far afield, does not harmonize or resonate, productive execution will falter.

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The Fourth Thing a Leader Should Focus On

JT — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:40:05 +0000

Well, I might have made the count ’4,’ with the latter being Communication. I’m referring to a recent post I discovered, “The Only Three Things a leader Should Focus On—Brains, Bones, and Nerves.” The article’s primarily about what the leader must do, how the leader should do it, what the leader should be thinking about. Surprisingly, it seems to boil down to the equivalent of me, me, me.

The article covers a lot of important ground, ground worthy of thought and discussion. Yet I was surprised at what I felt was an extraordinary treatment of the leader’s underlying, foundational team, as nameless automatons.

While one-to-one relationships may not be possible with 200, let alone 30,000 employees, it is still important for there to be effective, quality, communication. Communication is more important than the one paragraph attributed toward discussing it specifically.

Without diminishing the rest of the article, Communication is at least equal to the three core concepts discussed. Numerous studies and books have attested to the fact that companies with effectively communicating leadership can easily demonstrate double-digit productivity compared to peer organizations. HBR’s had some articles to this effect in just the past 6-8 weeks.

Communication also needs to vary based on the receiving audience. Who needs to know what, when, and with as much transparency as possible, drives choices in message content, delivery mediums (not just all-email, or all-PPT, or…), and frequency.

To not plan to effectively communicate is tantamount to putting blinders on.