Procrastination!

From Kevin Dee here in town of Eagle Professional Resources. He wrote a while back about Procrastination. I had taken a note to re-visit that post, since for me in my day to day procrastination is a constant fight. For Kevin to get over it is about telling himself "FULL day of work, for every day AT work". For me his motto sums it up and this is what I aim to do everyday, but if I'm to stop there it won't work. Take cold calls for examples, we all have tasks we don't particularly enjoy doing, but we do them to get to our goals. For me when it's time to cold call during the day the handset any given day will weight from a few grams, to 50pounds.

What works best for me is the way we were taught to program back in University. I decompose the problem in smaller pieces, and after decomposing for a while I always come up with an action that I feel is not difficult to do, and I strictly focus on the task at end, then on the next one, but not before the previous one is finished. In the case of the cold call - it's start with pick up the darn head set, then dial, wait for pickup, then put a cheerful tone in your voice and off I go with the flow.

What would an A player do?

Too often I find myself puzzled by a situation. Asking questions is not always easy either.

Often I hear: "You don't know what an A player is until you've met one" Ok that's not useful right now for me. What is useful though is I can ask myself what would an A player do in the situation I'm in, I know this may sound corny, but I find it helps me.

The A player varies with the situation. The one constant is - "What would so and so do in this situation? What would be the next step according to him/her" and then I go and execute. Putting myself in someone else's shoes for a short period of time to analyze or action on something I have to do - helps me and reduce my overall procrastination ratio! I don't know why, but when I do this, I always have the feeling I gave it my best shot, and this feels good going home at night.

Product development outsourcing - close to home

We've all heard those short sentences or short statements from people, and too often I think well what an obvious thing to say "Of course I'm thinking, thanks you for repeating the obvious" kind of thing, not meant in a rude way. One day though this little sentence comes back and hits me in the face.

So my father in law always use just enough words, not too much, not too little. So when Nathaniel was born, he said "Only sleep will get you through", hmm - yeah right... I'm thinking I understand what he means. After 3months oh man! I can't complain much because Manon is the one up every night, but he is so right - Sleep is the only thing that really matters. See the guy has had three kids too, and he knows that at one point they will be getting on your nerves so bad, and if you're not well rested, everything gets very painful, the kids crying, the diapers change, taking one to school, not getting all greens for behaviour at school etc... The worst - supper time, just after a good/bad day at work, it can ruin you, one is talking to you, the other wants to jump off the high chair, and the little one is screaming his lungs out, so you gobble up the food in record time - running for the hills is the only thing you think about. So my point is you can hear something, think you understand, but not fully grasp the depth of what you just heard. We always say Communication is important, and this is a strong point at Macadamian. When it's time to innovate, time is always of the essence, so getting it fully is a matter of success or death. If the type of misconception above can slip in between two people in the same family, can you imagine what can happen when you insert, distance, culture, timezones, etc... Can a company who wants to be successful at creating new products afford to not deal with a team of designers, architects, experts close to home? For more on this please read our analysis about Outsourcing Strategy

CEBIT - strategies!

If you have a booth, giveaway big big bags - this way people walk around with the bag hanging off their shoulder advertising whatever you want all over the place. Intel got that - the bag is bigger than my 8yrs old son, it's a huge back, and people are stuffing it with all sorts of things.

Is using a process making you less creative or innovative?

The story is often about getting push back about how a process hinders creativity. Somewhere along the way I think we're getting confused. As long as what a company has in place process wise always encourage the attitude "Do the Right Thing!" I'm all for good processes and automation.

My thinking is that only then can we get people to focus their creativity on what matters most, the mundane and repeatable stuff is taken care of. We're in the business of software creation, innovation - I have to make sure the intelligence of the team is put toward the creation, and whatever else is distraction.

Whatever can be de-risked through a risk assessment - then do it, so that the team focuses on solving the real problems, knowing very well the alarm bells will go off at the right time should they need to. This gives us all the peace of mind to focus and do on what is important.

Can you imagine how fast you would be driving in the city if your car didn't have breaks? One of the reason one can drive at the speed limit, is the fact you can get the car to accelerate and slowdown at will.

Time Management - Weekly Review

I'm stressed all the time, and one great way to get rid of a lot of stress at once, is to know that things are taken care of. I don't mean knowing what my team is doing in this particular case, I mean all the stuff I'm supposed to be doing, I need to know it's written somewhere so that I can forget about it, and reminded in due time.

So reviews are a great way to catch things, weekly reviews are recommended by all time management consultants to improve your organization level and decrease your stress.

For me they decrease stress because I get to look at my todo, my calendar, notebooks, you get the picture all the places where I enter information throughout the week to review what's in there. The review process is simple it's all about gathering the items into Outlook, so that then I know it's been processed, and will be "actionned" eventually when it needs to. The freedom I feel when I have done this right, not more than 60min, when I strickly stick to review/manage, and not do or think, is tremendous. I hit the weekend light as a feather.

So why if I think it's so important, and the results are so good on my stress level, do I only get to do my weekly review one week out of three? I keep on booking myself meetings or call during the time I have set aside for my weekly review. It's easy to book there because when I don't have access to my agenda, I know I don't have anything else booked during that time.

I need to get better at getting the review done weekly, it will help me spend better weekends with the family, and help me do my job better. This time I reserve for the review, has to become non negotiable.

Anyhow try it out, let me know. For references on Review, I'm a big fan of GTD as you know already!

Time management

A great quote from Robin Sharma - "Every time you say yes to something unimportant, you say no to something that is important". What a great way to put that if you don't prioritize right you will not get there. I need to be a little more brutal about my time management. Time is a finite resource and I'm spending mine as if I had a limitless supply. I will have to remember that quote to help me make the right decisions when I get pulled into a meeting or I make a phone call assuming I know what is important!!!

Knowing what is important means I have spent a decent amount of time understanding where I want to be and what it will take to get there. That's another one that is no picnic.

if business is like hockey, a good team knows how to get the puck out of the corner!

Last week I posted my impression of doing business in Canada,  and that to be in business you have to want to run fast and want it bad.

Another article along those lines from Pat DiPietro the fact that we may not play to win, we like being liked! and then he goes to explain that when we play and compete in hockey we're a totally different beast, we play to win, we do what it takes to win. So his answer, imagery is "Let's do business like we play hockey. Play to win, expect to win". I like the image.

Business is no picnic, and it's not about being liked, alright I get that. It's also very much about knowing what to say, how much to push, what to ask, and not being afraid to take a chance. So to use the hockey analogy, you have to have the guts to go get the puck in the corners.

I think other cultures like the US are much better at going in the corners to get the puck. I think it's about being decisive, it's clarity over certainty. If I want to be certain, it will take time, and I will probably miss my window. Clarity is about everyone on the team having clear marching orders, and executing. Ok but what if I make the wrong decision, and we're all marching the wrong way - well let's change the decision fast, so being able to revisit and having the robust dialog that goes with it. And this is another thing that the US I think do best, anyway from my experience in the valley, they don't mind being wrong as much, and changing their mind.

Canada Needs to Realize The Technology Business is a Race | StartupNorth

Read this post from StartupNorth, running a business is no picnic and starting on even less so. Whatever the market, whatever the business - it's a competition.

It's about outmanoeuvring, being smart, and being able to run fast! I like Donovan Bailey's quote the day before the race against Johnson in Toronto back in 1997, he was bragging about how he was going to leave him in the dust - it went like this - "what he[Johnson] is my butt getting smaller and smaller"

Yes you loose some, but to go back to my top 10 - I make sure I learn and move on, cause tomorrow is another race!

Top 10 con't

Continuing from my initial Top 10 post on what I have learned in 10years at Macadamian, working with leading companies in the world delivering great software products

#3 - People - a second one - communication, transparency, feedback loop. I try to make sure that people know where I stand clearly. I find people appreciate knowing about it. It opens the door to good discussions and get to understand respective's perspectives. When in the unknown, its human nature to assume the worse - so it's important that there is as little unknown as possible

#4 Don't take no for an answer - ok I get to be told no more than my fair share, that's part of the job when selling or in potential partnerships. Well now what I understand is that for all the effort I have put in getting to that no, my counter part owes my an explanation so that I can get better for next time.

#5 Being a start up is no excuse for not making money - as they say rule #1 of business is to be in business. I'm very proud of the fact that we have been profitable since day one at Macadamian. We manage the bottom line, it's not only top line. Even if I'm a startup, what I do has value and there is a price to that.

#6 Being fair (from the one minute manager and Setting the table). Good things, just like not so good things deserve feedback, and quickly, then move on. Supporting a customer, and employee, and team member is to be able to talk about the good and the bad, all the time. Yes there will be conflicts - sort it out and move on.

#7 Stress - oh my Stress - it is stressful, just ask my family I really don't handle stress well, my face becomes expressionless, and my mood in the gutter, and my jaw constantly blocked. For me if things are not organized I get stressed - and it's a big source of stress - so I'm a huge fan of the Getting Things done system, it works for me, and it helps me focus and feel good about what I get around to do during any given day.

#8 Getting involved - I have contacts, I know a few people in and around town, it can be useful to more than business. I'm only starting on this aspect, but I like it.

#9 getting the customers on the bus - this is more or less from Good to Great. The bus is about the team composition, who should be on the team, is like a bus, and if they are in the right seat. Well User Centric Design is taking more and more importance, and it's becoming more and more a factor of success nowadays, so we need to make room for our customers in our bus whatever business we're in.

#10 dealing with problems - there are always problems small and big, it's part of the job. I like the quote "Problems to a business are like waves to surfing" for a canadian version just replace the last part with " snow to ski!"

10 things I know after 10years

Well I have been in business for 10years this year. I co-founded Macadamian in September 1997. I was asked recently to put a top 10 of valuable lessons I have learned over the years. Let me just say I felt very young and green to be putting this kind of list together. Here we go, I want it down, so that I can comeback to it later.

1. Understand what I stand for, and where I stand on issues. In other word where I can, and where I can't compromise - my priorities and my goals have to be clear to me so that my decision making is more efficient and so that it's clear to everyone I'm working with how I come about with my decision. (Learned in Debugging the software development process)
2. People
   1. The saying that A type people hire A type, and B Type hires B type, and that C Type people hire - you don't know what they will hire - it's is true
   2. To Be continued!! - got to go!