Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

The Consultant says, "I really love consulting, but I hate dealing with clients."  The Doctor says, "I really love medicine, but I'm not a big fan of patients."  The Realtor says, "I love selling houses, but it sucks dealing with buyers."  It may not be that you are in the wrong profession. It may be that you are dealing with the wrong types of clients, patients, and buyers. If you are just starting in a profession, then the statements above make sense. And if that's the case, take your lumps, get the experience, and move on.  If you love what you do and you are good at it, there are customers out there that will appreciate it.  You won't find them if you continue pandering or catering to the crazies. 

Bob Ross - You know who he is One of the biggest things lacking in enterprise software development is creativity.  I'm not talking about creativity during implementation. If there is one thing that all successful IT managers are good at, it's getting creative at getting their project plans executed in corporate bureaucracy.  I am talking about creativity in design and end user usability.  Since when did corporate IT become about compounding solutions that are good enough into solutions that are even more good enough? (And by good enough I mean that it simply works). What I've discovered in the last two years of IT project management is that IT departments in big companies have a mission to "keep the lights on."  Imagine you buy a new Honda Accord and your mission was to keep that thing running for as long as it can go. At some point, you'll upgrade it- but instead of upgrading to a Tesla, you'll upgrade it to another Honda Accord; maybe a few...

"You got to coordinate ..."  I am rereading "The Machine That Changed The World" at the recommendation of a friend.  The book, for those of you that haven't read it, is the story of the rise of Lean Production. It was published in 1990 which for me doesn't seem like a long time ago - but it was - 23 years and change to be exact. As a Consultant turned Contractor, Advisor turned Project Manager, I've been having a hard time making the adjustment to each role. In the book, where it talks about the four basic differences in design methods employed by mass and  lean producers, it says this about leadership, "In Western teams, the leader is more properly called a coordinator, whose job it is to convince team members to cooperate. It's a frustrating role, because the leader really has limited authority, so few team leaders report enjoying it." I wasn't sure what was worse. That this problem existed 23 years ago and hasn...

The path from being a Manager of one to Manager of many to Leader of many is not an easy one. I believe it was Marcus Buckingham that said that if you told someone that becoming a Manager meant, "listening to and dealing with people's problems for most of your day," there is no way anyone would sign up for it. And yet the backbone of corporate America is middle management. Dilbert and The Office aren't parodies of reality - they are reality in many cases. If I had to do business school all over again, I would have taken psychology, neuroscience, and perhaps a hypnotism class. Finance, Operations, Business Law, Marketing -- whatever. Being a successful Manager requires an ability to manipulate other people without them even knowing it. (i.e., the Jedi Mind Trick) It requires an ability to get people to do things that you wouldn't even do yourself-- or possibly can't do. It requires an ability to "manage" your mindset so that the irrita...

The world of staff augmentation is a highly competitive one. The reason is because everyone "has a guy." Just like the Girl Scouts, someone will come knocking at your door wanting to sell your cookie of choice. True advisory services, however, is more of an art.  There may be cookie cutter approaches to accelerating the work, but providing advice that someone will listen to takes as much emotional intelligence as it does academic intellect. So don't confuse "contracting" with "consulting." Contractors have a skill that you need to build something - the project manager, the business analyst, the application developer, etc...  Consultants, real management consultants, have contracting skills , but they would never define themselves by that skill. Too many people get this confused and fool themselves into thinking that they are consultants. I'm guilty of it as much as the next person.  In the words of the great orator, The Rock, ...

In general, a good management practice is to utilize checklists. I remember when I switched companies, I ran across a Manager whose core competency was Checklist Management. He had a checklist for on-boarding clients and projects. He had a checklist for rolling off of clients and projects. He had a checklist for engaging with new hires. Hell, he probably had a checklist for interacting with people in general. You get the idea. If you want to take it to next level, you take the number of checks and turn them into a metric. As an example, I am requiring you to take 5 classes. I'll check off each one that you take and then measure you on how many you've taken. I'll completely disregard how those classes added value to you or to others around you. Therefore, it's in your best interest to attend all of the classes. Here's the thing. By overemphasizing checklists, you are encouraging the automation of a human beings. I like routines just as much t...

Organizations that are in hyper growth mode put the pedal to the medal when it comes to hiring. If you are cranking out widgets, that means you hire more widget crankers.  The more specialized the widget, the more specific the skill set has to be for the widget cranker.  A lot of companies grow their employee base through referrals.  You have friends. Then there are friends of friends. Then you have friends of friends of friends.  But honestly- how many of us can vouch for the friends of friends of friends?  Would you really go to bat for the 1,000th friend on Facebook?  I'm not even sure I would vouch for my 10th closest friend.  I love when companies run referral campaigns without: Vetting the quality of the employee that made the referral; and  Conducting pre screens, screens, and interviews without identifying the standards that are in place What you end up with is a whole lot of people trying out for the NBA...

Organizations reorganize once every few years. Sometimes it's a regime change that instigates it. Maybe the founder of the company or office wants to shake things up. Many times Consultants will come in and recommend that changes need to occur for an organization to be more effective, agile, innovative, or efficient.  More often than not, it's a sticks and boxes exercise. Just as it's easier for me to change the folder structure on my computer - it's just as easy to move sticks and boxes around on an organizational chart in PowerPoint or Visio. Changing  behavior within the organization  so that the intent of the reorganization is realized is an entirely different story. Every organizational change starts with passion, optimism that changes are afoot, and the intention of change for the better. The majority of organizational changes end up in people reverting back to the behavior that got them to where they are-- playing a game of office politics and by rule...

For those of you that are trying to get more done in the time that you have - we all have 1,440 minutes a day - below are a few productivity resources to help you out.  I'll be completely transparent and tell you that I am not the most productive person in the world. In fact, I'm just as distracted by the Internet as are most people. But if you have the feeling that you could accomplish more, then here are some resources to guide and motivate you.  Extreme Productivity - When Robert C. Pozen lays out everything that he's accomplished, you will immediately feel like you haven't accomplished anything. The book is pragmatic and a good first book to read. It covers all the bases.  The Power of Full Engagement - Tony Schwartz takes his experience with working with world-class athletes to lay out what it takes to accomplish peak performance. This is what productivity is about, right? It's not just about the shear number of widgets you can crank out, it's the im...

"I've come to realize that, in the face of a significant change initiative, emotional reactions fitting a standard bell curve will likely never create lasting change. You need the energy from the edges, not the middle." - Richard Sheridan, Author of Joy, Inc. I first read about 'edges' in Seth Godin's post on Edgecraft instead of brainstorming. In all honesty, I sort of got it and I think the gist is to not be afraid of pushing the envelope- don't be constrained by the limited beliefs of the organization, or the lizard brain as he calls it. Incremental improvements are okay - but it's not how you become legendary. That's how I'm going to interpret the whole concept of edges. The people that are going to make changes in an organization are not the ones that fall in the middle of a bell curve. They are the ones that sit on either end. I'm not talking about the performance review curve. I'm talking about the attitude and employee...

It's been a long time since I've been to a professional meeting or networking event.  The other evening I attended one in order to get a feel for a community or 'tribe' that I may be interested in joining. I didn't bring any business cards.  Just a notebook and pen to record what I was thinking or capture any information of value. What I discovered is that there is a fine line between selling, self-promotion, and having an interest in the other person that you networking with.  Jeffrey Gitomer says, "People don't like to be sold, but they like to BUY!"  Any astute person knows when they are being targeted for a sale. Any intelligent person knows when they are being hustled.  I get the fact that many people use networking events to make new connections and perhaps find potential customers, referrals, or clients.  But I think a networking event is more effective if the intent is for people to genuinely learn about other people's inte...

A Pole In management consulting, the clients that you actually  work with are not the ones that agreed to your services. A typical scenario is that a senior leader has made the decision to conduct a "study," and then that leader tells the consulting firm to talk to all of his/her direct reports and others to gather all of the information required to conduct the study.  Unfortunately, the common reaction by all of the direct reports (and others) is one of fight or fight - because flight isn't really an option.  What I've discovered in working for multiple professional services firms is that there is a market in working for clients that nobody wants to work for.  If you are a consultant with values and are doing it because you genuinely want to  help your client get something accomplished, working for these types of clients becomes an opportunity or challenge -- like in a climbing Mt. Everest sense of accomplishment kind of way.  More often t...

Burr Puzzle For one of our Krypton classes, I had an idea of bringing in pieces of a puzzle, handing them out to each member, and before every meeting, having everyone put their piece in to create the puzzle. The idea was to 1.) Enforce commitment from each team member to attend; and 2.) Send a message that all of us together was stronger than the whole.  So I bought a Burr Puzzle.  The rest of the story is that the Burr Puzzle took an ungodly amount of time to put together and I could see the group spending more time trying to put the puzzle together rather than focusing on getting insight out of the content.  And then two people pretty much dropped out which would have made the whole point of using the puzzle fruitless.  Let's take the puzzle analogy a bit further. Each one of those puzzle pieces not only fits, but it  belongs in a specific location.  Many of us put on a persona to try and fit within the groups, organizations, and socia...