Are we falling or flying … and will we ever know?

Life, the universe, technology, project management, and why change management is so incredibly hard.

Posts Tagged ‘work life balance’

Glassdoor’s 25 Worst Rated Employers…

March 9th, 2010

…even in this economy.

fine print: Ratings are based on a 20-question survey that evaluate eight key workplace factors including: Senior Leadership, Communication, Employee Morale, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, Compensation and Benefits, Recognition and Feedback, and Fairness and Respect. For reporting simplicity, a company’s rating on the Glassdoor website and this list is limited to one decimal space although the actual calculations extend infinitely to determine final rank order.

Read the full story here.

Tags: workplace factors, employee morale, leadership communication, work life balance, question survey

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Posted in Theory, Unique Job Opportunities, Work

Tags: compensation and benefits employee morale fairness leadership communication question survey rank order work life balance workplace factors

Scrum IS Fun.

August 21st, 2009

I’m now a Certified Scrum Master (and certifiable ;) ) - and really look forward to implementing the Agile Development framework into my work and my daily life … more on that to follow after I finish designing and implementing my personal scrum based task board. Stay tuned.

In the mean time, thank you Tobias Mayer & Matt Smith for opening this door for me and others in our CSM class.

Tobias-Matt-Seattle-2009

Systems Thinking in the Real World

July 12th, 2009

The more I read about Steve Jobs, the more I want to work for Apple; except for the work | life balance, he really, really gets it, and on so many levels – about people and about products.

The good and bad of thinking in terms of systems is not many people view the world that way, even though the world is a very large system; if/when one component changes, that change will influence other components within the system. Innovation does parse a leader from a follower. Not enough people value quality, are not used to an environment where excellence is expected, and then don’t try.

I thought I could change the world by helping hiring managers hire A+ players; and to some extent, the world did change, and in a good way; “the journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.”

This year I began the journey to move into a technical project management role. Now I’m learning and integrating many new business rules, best practices, processes, methodologies, and tools to enable me to GTD on a more global scale, and from the business side.

I earned my PMP certification in June; now I’m heavily focused on improving my requirements engineering skills; becoming a certified scrum master (CSM); and refreshing my knowledge of SQL and XML (which needs to be a seperate blog posting; watch for the upcoming “Getting By With a Lot of Help From My (new and old) Friends”).

Last week I was fortunate to learn requirements engineering from Earl Beede of Construx Software; and highly recommend Earl, Construx Software, and its Requirements Bootcamp. I learned a lot from Earl: best practices; new methodologies; and tools and techniques. Equally valuable was his insights and advice for implementation and change management; including the heuristic “it’s not a technology problem, it’s a people problem.”

I think Steve Jobs best captured this key to project success:

“Hiring the best is your most important task.

No major work that I have been involved with has been work that can be done by a single person or two people, or even three or four people. Some people can do one thing magnificently, like Michelangelo, and others make things like semiconductors or build 747 airplanes — that type of work requires legions of people. In order to do things well, that can’t be done by one person, you must find extraordinary people.

In most things in life, the dynamic range between average quality and the best quality is, at most, two-to-one. For example, if you were in New York and compared the best taxi to an average taxi, you might get there 20 percent faster. In terms of computers, the best PC is perhaps 30 percent better than the average PC. There is not that much difference in magnitude. Rarely you find a difference of two-to-one.

I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Go after the cream of the cream. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.

After recruiting, it’s building an environment that makes people feel they are surrounded by equally talented people and their work is bigger than they are. The feeling that the work will have tremendous influence and is part of a strong, clear vision — all those things.

Recruiting usually requires more than you alone can do, so I’ve found that collaborative recruiting and having a culture that recruits the A players is the best way. Any interviewee will speak with at least a dozen people in several areas of this company, not just those in the area that he would work in.

When you’re in a startup, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is 10 percent of the company. So why wouldn’t you take as much time as necessary to find all the A players? If three were not so great, why would you want a company where 30 percent of your people are not so great? A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does.”

I really, really want to spend an afternoon with Steve one day, do a Vulcan mind-meld, then integrate and build upon his really great ideas.

In the meantime, I just ordered Leander Kahany’s book “Inside Steve’s Brain.” But don’t worry, I promise never to wear a black turtleneck.

Customer Experience, Part II

July 1st, 2009

A t-shirt popular within the Apple Computer team building v.1 of Quicktime read “Apple: 80 hours a week, and loving it!”

So much for work | life balance.

At the same time, I think Steve Jobs gets a lot of things right – including not making decisions for the short term without fully understanding the long term implications of those choices.

Jobs also knows loyalty is a two way street; customers and employees will forgive an occasional misstep or two if they feel a product and company are worthy and relevant for the long term:

The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.
You hire good people who will challenge each other every day to make the best products possible.
When I got back, Apple had forgotten who we were. Remember that “Think Different” ad campaign we ran? It was certainly for customers, but it was even more for Apple. That ad was to remind us of who our heroes are and who we are. Companies sometimes do forget. Fortunately, we woke up.

I’m not yet ready to move Cupertino, especially since I think the Northwest can – and should – do better. After all -we’re also

“…the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Or – innovate or die.