Work

business & working

How does an unknown student get published?

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Mr. McNamar, a teacher with a blog – The Daily Grind, has just read an excellent essay from one of his students and thinks that it is of a quality to be published, but he doesn’t know who to contact. Can you help him?

“I read an essay, the likes of which I have never read in a Pre-College class. This essay has a future, should it find its way into the right hands. It is an essay that, when I finished reading, I felt like I had just finished reading an essay in a respected magazine or anthology. I once had a professor tell me a sermon I wrote for a Homiletics class could be published, but he never helped me. I want to help this kid. If you know of a way to get work published, please let me know. Here are some excerpts:”

Black community–grammatical error, or bad combination of words?

“Imagine taking a one thousand piece jigsaw puzzle nearing its completion, and wiping it clear off the table, sending the pieces scattering–in other words, imagine the Black community. A group of people who once shared, participated, and had fellowship, now kill the memebers of their own communit at extreme rates–the Black community is imploding. Once a group that would fight against all odds, they now will fight anyone who doesn’t wear their colors. During the Slavery Era, these traits could breathe, create beautiful music, and throw a knockout punch; it acted as a true community.”

With the Web and blogs, this student has a better chance of getting exposure than in the days of mass media control of the electronic medium. That’s a good thing :-)

Let workers manage themselves

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The Future of Work [link broken] refers to a CBS TV report on how people work in this 24/7 world, with computers, cell phones, and all those other gadgets. Jim Ware states that:

A world of “any time/any place” work may be wonderful for those of us doing the work, but it’s sure as heck going to complicate the world of management (final point: in spite of those complications, I think it’s well worth it).

I would go a step further and say that in a ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world, we need less management, not more. If organisations become more transparent in their requirements, such as clear deliverables or outputs, then less management is required.

My advice – give workers a job worth doing, the tools to do it, recognition of a job well done and then let them manage themselves.

RESPECT

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When the sales rep is giving you the specs on the steel pipes or the consulting services, challenge him. Ask hard questions. Figure out what he knows. If it’s worth you having him come over, it’s worth discovering what he knows.

When the sales call is over, tell the truth. Don’t say, “we’ll get back to you,” unless you intend to. If you’re going to meet with your boss on Friday, tell him. If it’s not your decision, tell him.

So says Seth Godin on Going to Meetings. Just like Aretha sang, it’s about RESPECT.

Blogging is about being open, exposed, or naked, and so is any long term business relationship. To keep things open, I’ve used a form, built on the Performance Technologist’s code of ethics and guidelines in Strategic Planning for Success, to try to start business relationships on a common understanding of responsibilities. Sometimes it opens up conversations, other times I get blank stares and am told to stick to the company’s contracting guidelines.

Here they are, and feel free to modify them to your own circumstances.

My Responsibilities, as the consultant

  1. Base recommendations and actions on an objective needs assessment conducted in partnership with the client.
  2. Define, justify empirically, and achieve useful results that can be aligned with both the client organization’s mission,
    objectives, and positive contributions to society.
  3. Focus on results and consequences of the results. Measure performance based on results, not on procedures performed for the client.
  4. Set clear expectations about the systematic process to be followed and about the expected outcomes.
  5. Add value by serving the client organization with integrity, competence, and objectivity.
  6. Respect and contribute to the legitimate and ethical objectives of the client organization.
  7. Help the client organization move to where it needs to be in the future.
  8. Prevent problems from occurring rather than solve problems that could have been predicted and avoided.

The Client’s Responsibilities

  1. Provide adequate expert knowledge on the client organization.
  2. Arrange for direct access to the information, people and resources necessary for the project.
  3. Make no changes to the procedures recommended without taking over responsibility for the results.
  4. Have the final decision on implementation.
  5. Make explicit the turnaround time for approval and/or negotiation of any changes to the project plan.
  6. Not insist on any solution, process, intervention or method when there are no performance data to indicate that these will not measurably add value to what the client organization uses, does, produces and delivers to external clients and stakeholders.
  7. Publish or print all reports regarding the consultant’s work in full, and not omit any parts without the consultant’s consent.
  8. Be willing to terminate the contract with the consultant if there are any deviations from this conduct agreement that the consultant cannot, or will not, remedy.

Knowledge Work and Schools

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I’m finally reading the book Nine Shift after subscribing to the blog for the past year. It’s one of my preferred reads and the book puts much more of the blog in perspective.

One reason it has taken so long for me to read the book is that my local bookstore gave me a price of $(CA)90.00, which I confirmed two weeks ago at Amazon.ca as $(CA)89.00. I finally checked Amazon.com and the list price was $(US)18.97, so I purchased the book from the USA. When I received it, the jacket price was “USA $29.00 – Canada $34.00 (go figure).

I won’t do a complete review now, but I highly recommend this book, which describes how 75% of our working days (nine hours out of twelve) will radically change by the year 2020. The signs are all here.

Shift One is that “People Work at Home”. As we shift from the Industrial Age to the Internet Age over the next decade, there will be more knowledge than manufacturing workers. I really like the definition of a knowledge worker, as it does not equate to someone working in an office.

Knowledge workers:

1. Are paid by their outcomes, what they produce, not by the time they devote.

2. Are only paid for products or projects that are valuable to the organization for which they work.

3. Bring something unique to the organization for which they work. Their value is not in being like other workers, but in being different.

4. Have a marketable set of skills.

If this shift to knowledge work is a certainty, and I believe it is, then our education system is woefully inadequate for what will be the majority of the workforce. Our schools are still designed for declining and soon-to-be-obsolesced factory workers. Teachers and students are not rewarded according to measurable outcomes; if they were, many teachers would not get paid, some students would graduate in less than 12 years and others would never complete their schooling. Students are not valued for being different but for conforming to the standard curriculum. Many, if not most, teachers are fearful of Internet technologies even though most high-paid work already requires Internet savvy. This is most evident with boys:

The Internet terrifies most teachers, and some boys know more about the Internet than do many educators. Boys also exhibit those accompanying attributes which go with a future dominated by the Internet, like taking risks, being entrepreneurial, and being collaborative. Thus they are leading society into the Internet age.

The one-size-fits-all school is a twelve-year sentence with no eligibility for parole, but the good news is that as the workforce changes there will be demands for more relevance in the education system and it will change. Unfortunately for those with children in our current outdated education system (as the one room schoolhouse was outdated 100 years ago), we have to work with what we have. So how do we keep our children motivated and help them develop skills for the Internet Age, when we all know that the education system is obsolete?

Estimating the Performance Situation

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Last week I mentioned a few communication tools that I learned how to use in the Army. One of these is the Estimate, which is a problem-solving tool. As young officers, we were constantly told to “estimate the situation and never situate the estimate”. In many cases, when training is prescribed for a work performance issue, it is a case of situating the estimate. I can think of two recent examples in my own business experience.

In one case, e-learning was prescribed to address the performance needs of nurses changing to a new nursing care methodology. In that instance, I was able to convince the client that a quick performance analysis could be used to confirm the assumption that e-learning was the solution. As a result of the analysis, we changed the intervention to the development of an online diagramming tool, because we determined that nursing staff already had 80% of the necessary skills and knowledge, but they didn’t know how to use the new diagramming and reporting procedures. The initial e-learning program was greatly reduced.

In another case, training was prescribed in order to get staff up to date with a new organisation-wide policy. Each person received an average of 17 days classroom training. As an observer for part of the training, I would estimate that all of the training could have been done in less than a week, had the new procedures and some job aids been first developed. The total cost of training approached millions of dollars, plus the cost of missed work.

Recently, David Maister stated that training is often prescribed in the “hope” that performance can be improved, when a few pointed questions might better get to the root of the issue:

The correct process would be to sit top management down, ask: What are people not doing that we want them to be doing? – and then figuring out a complete sequence of actions to address the questions  – how do we actually get people to change their behavior? What measurements need to change? – what behaviors by top management need to change to convince people that the new behaviors are really required, not just encouraged? – what has to happen before the training sessions to bring about the change? What has to be in place the very day they finish?

A more detailed process is shown below. It shows that training only works in certain circumstances and that there are a number of other factors to look at first; such as barriers to performance and mismatched rewards & consequences.

A macro view of this process is that triage (sorting out priorities) should initiate the process, followed by a diagnosis (analysis), which can be as short as Maister’s questions, before prescribing some kind of treatment which may or may not include training. Using this method, I continue what my instructors told me many years ago – don’t situate the estimate.

performanceanalysis.jpg

Finally, here’s a job aid that I use in determining what the causes to performance problems may be:

  • Causes, Enablers and Obstacles:
    • Question the assumptions and potential solutions.
    • What is causing the problem?
    • What will prevent a solution?
    • What will make a solution easier?
  • Focus on Key Sources:
    • Find and focus on the people who are close to the problem and have perspective on the issues. Don’t try and reach everyone, especially in an initial performance analysis.
    • Focus on facts and results
  • Look for data, through observations, records, experiences:
    • What evidence is there?
    • Is it consistent?
    • What does it tell us?
    • Is there more?

Communication Tools from the Army

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During my Army service I learned many things that I have already forgotten, such as the composition of a Soviet Motor Rifle Regiment, and a few things that I could never forget. Three tools that I used extensively during my military career were 1) the Estimate, 2) Battle Procedure, and 3) the Orders Format. All of these are communications tools.

The Estimate is a logical way of analysing a situation and making a plan. Battle Procedure is a logical method to get you on the road to your next mission, and the Orders Format is a standard form of conveying the details of your plan to those who are going with you.

Some specifics of these three tools have changed over the years, but these combat-tested tools for effective communication remain in use. If you strip away the military specific stuff, they are quite practical for civilian applications as well. The Combat Estimate is a short version of the detailed Estimate and is based around seven questions, which I have slightly revised:

  1. What are competitors and clients doing and why?
  2. What have I been told to do and why?
  3. What effects (these can be described as your specific tasks) do I want to have on the competition and/or my client?
  4. Where and how best can I accomplish each effect?
  5. What resources do I need to accomplish each effect?
  6. When and where do the actions take place in relation to each other?
  7. What control measures do I need to impose? (e.g. what detail of project management is necessary)

Here is a revised Battle Procedure, in non-military form, geared around a client project:

  1. Get a warning that a new project is going start.
  2. Pass this on to your team.
  3. Do some quick research into the sector, the competition, the client and the opportunity.
  4. Get the official go-ahead for the project [probably not as much detail as you would get from a military superior, but then your boss doesn’t know the Orders Format].
  5. Conduct a detailed analysis and research based on the available time.
  6. Figure out what you have to do, by when [do this by working backwards from your critical deliverable dates/times].
  7. Write a detailed message (see next paragraph), with your time estimate, to your team members and partners.
  8. Advise anyone else from whom you may need support during the project (printing, translation, etc.).
  9. Sit down with the whole team (or virtually) and ensure that everyone understands the project, the constraints, the deliverables and who is responsible for what.
  10. Ensure that all activities are coordinated (remember, it’s your project).
  11. Get going.

Finally here is a civilian version of the Orders Format, used to communicate your plan to others:

  1. What’s going on
  2. What we’re going to do and how success will be measured
  3. Who is going to be working with us
  4. Who has to do what and by when
  5. How we’re going to communicate over the course of the project
  6. Who’s responsible for making decisions

If twenty years of military service can be summed up by the mastery of three communication tools, I think that it shows the importance of effective communications in organizations. Since retiring in 1998 I have had three jobs — university-based researcher/consultant, dot com executive, and now freelancer. On reflection, I can say that almost all of my projects over the past 8 years have been about communication, such as:

  • explaining how to conduct training
  • coaching how to use technology
  • communicating through design
  • selling an idea through a business plan
  • telling how I would do a project through a proposal
  • putting together diverse opinions into a cohesive vision
  • connecting people through conversation

Basically, as more and more of us connect in our work, we need effective ways to communicate. Though not perfect or comprehensive for all business needs, these military tools have stood the test of time.

Writely now in Google Camp

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I’m sure that almost everyone has heard that Writely has been purchased by Google. I’ve been using this wiki-like program for a while and have found it very practical for collaborative word processing. It sure beats sending huge files around by e-mail and trying to figure out five colours of track-changes plus a bunch of comments in Word or even in OpenOffice.org. Writely is basically a wiki (multi-editor web page), but has a simple word processor interface and imports/exports from popular file types like .doc and .pdf.

So far I’ve had little luck in convincing many others that Writely is a better tool than “Word + e-mail”. People are stuck in their old habits and with the first sign of difficulty they revert to their comfort zone. Now that Writely has some street cred from Google I’m hoping that it will be easier to convince others to try it. The interface has been steadily improving and I’m sure that Google cash will help it even more. New users may have to wait, as Writely seems to have temporarily closed the door on new accounts. Existing users can add only four new collaborators. I’m sure this will change shortly.

Personally, I see the move of word processing to the Web as a real productivity advance for what used to be known as CSCW (computer-supported collaborative work).

Entrepreneurship

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I attended a local business gathering last night and the government-sponsored economic development folks gave a briefing on their programs and support (So Patrick & Isabelle, here are some articles that may be of interest; if you get to this website).

First of all, especially if you are looking at entrepreneurship as an early career option, I would recommend Dave Pollard’s list of reasons Why Young People are Afraid to Start their own Business and would call this Understand your Market for the economic developers. Reasons include:

Can’t handle failure
Don’t know the process
Can’t handle the stress
Can’t handle loneliness

For further background material I would read all of Dave’s work on Natural Enterprises, which will soon be a book. I’ve used much of this material with my own clients.

For those who are supposed to be preparing people for entrepreneurship, take a look at Jeff Cornwall’s post on Entrepreneurship Can, and Is, being Taught:

I believe there are two critical aspects of entrepreneurship education that increase success rates. First, we teach them what deals not to go into through the process of opportunity assessment. We teach them how to “fail on paper.” They learn how to create discipline around their instincts and drive to move ahead blindly into the pursuit of their ideas. Second, we teach them about how to manage growth effectively. Any banker will tell you that this is where most businesses fail. We teach them about the challenges that success can create as their ventures grow. As one banker likes to say, “Too much success leads to failure.”

Finally, I would recommend the Bootstrappers Bible to get a fresh pespective on starting a business with little money.

8.01.BootstrappersBible.pdf

Copyright – a model for a previous era?

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I’ve been reading the OpenBusiness blog for a while, trying to get a handle on copyright, which I’ve previously described as being important for our society and our economy. This article, via OpenBusiness, in The Times, is a good start in describing the big issues:

Economists tell us that, as the marginal costs of reproduction shrink, so should unit value. People still want physical books, but the only reason to restrict the digital reproduction of music and film today is to support artists, or — more to the point — to make money. The attempt to use restricted access as a business model in the face of this gigantic change seems not only unethical, but increasingly impractical.
…
So we need to examine new models for funding creative works — to address the question of how cultural producers will survive under the new paradigm. New approaches to copyright and reproduction are not just necessary, but inevitable. Copyright — the right of a creator to control the reproduction of a work and to sell this control to others — is a legal device that was designed for an earlier social/technological moment.

Life as a Free Agent

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I read Dan Pink’s Free Agent Nation just before I started working for myself and would recommend it to anyone else looking at making the leap to freelancing.

After almost three years, here’s a partial list of what being a free agent means to me:

10. Doing my own tech support

9. Only working seven days a week

8. Paying cash & avoiding monthly payments

7. Time for exercise and reading

6. Lots of short breaks, but no long holidays

5. Getting asked to volunteer more

4. Seeing more of my banker

3. Seeing more of my family

2. Looking forward to Mondays

1. Creating my own opportunities