Entries in Career insights (18)

Monday
Jul052010

Being Innovative - It Takes Less Effort Than You Think

DateMonday, July 5, 2010 at 7:46AM

Over this Fourth of July weekend I was fortunate to spend at least one day with many colleagues and professionals whom I respect. After the discussions about family, finances and global topics ran dry we moved along to "shop talk" of sorts focusing on the various trends, market dynamics, technology and talent changes we have seen recently and what they meant to individuals.

One of the most common topics happened to be innovation. The general view was that innovation was seen as very complex and difficult concept to implement in any organization. Many of these individuals were seeking my advice on how to best innovate within their organizations or for themselves.

In my experience innovation means many things to people. A rather simple and easy way to be innovative in my experience is to see and act differently. This sounds easier than it really is for most professionals since most subscribe to a set of rules and conditions that have been honed through years of experience in the industry. For example, many professionals learn to look at options that they think can be delivered. This is pretty normal; look at your toolbox containing items such as budget, time, talent, material, etc. and then come up with a plan that is well known and has a high rate of "predictable success". 

"Predictable success" is a term I use as a measurement that most businesses use on tasks that they have a need to feel "good" about. It is something that you see project managers measure, directors use on pretty slidedecks, and investors look at with interest. This is not to say that this is incorrect or not needed, rather this measurement is not the kind used for innovation.

I want to point out that innovation is about failure. Not just once or twice but a lot of the time. This is one of the most singularly frightening aspects about innovation to an organization and individuals. Failure is not considered a good thing. It is considered a weakness. So rather than fail, most companies will put out solutions that are "good enough" based on what they think their customers want. This is where things get really fuzzy. Most companies are really bad at figuring out who their customer is, let alone what they want.

For example let's look at the iPhone. When it first came out many in the telecom and handset industry thought it was "just another smartphone". Sure it was pretty. However I had heard numerous professionals with decades of experience saying things like "I looked at it. Not impressed." or "Nothing new there. It will not do well." or "I do not think this thing from Apple is going to do well." Several years later the iPhone is a huge hit and considered highly innovative even in spite of the fact that many of it's features are not really that new.

Innovation is not about being 100% new, but rather doing something in a new way that delights people. That is why the iPhone does better than other smart phones. It is also the same reasoning that can be attributed to FaceBook or Google. I call this being "delightfully different". It also sounds like a characteristic but it is really an intrinsic measurement, one of the most visceral. If you do something that people really like it shows on satisfaction, engagement levels, commitments, sales, etc. If not, then these remain relatively flat.

For most professionals adhering to "predictable success" in delivering solutions means not being "delightfully different" and vice versa. Again this is mostly due to their years of indoctrination. However being innovative does not take a lot of effort. It does take an effort on the part of the professional to be open-minded. Closing off any avenue of thought means eliminating whole realms of possibilities. This is not what people have to foster. Rather they have to look at the challenge, then determine an ideal way to deal with it, then using their toolbox find a way to make their idea a reality.

A case in point happened on a recent project where we were assigned a proprietary toolset from a vendor. All the normal approaches were not delivering results and jeopardized the entire project. I and a few others looked at the problem differently. We totally ignored what the toolset was capable of doing. We instead focused on what we needed to get done. The basic problem was that what was in place was not capable of doing the required workload in the time we needed. The answer was simple from that view, get the stated units of work to complete in the timeframe requested. The challenge: the current vendor toolset did not do this. The solution was easy once framed in this light: extend the vendor toolset to do what we needed. The end result was a deliverable capable of not only meeting the initial expectations, but delighted the business, technology and operational folks since it met all of their requirements under huge growth expectations with minimal time and money. Where almost all professionals get stalled is not looking at the problem in the most basic of forms and being open-minded about how to solve it.

This is where I explain to professionals those "fancy" management concepts about innovation apply. Once the challenge has been identified the organization needs those "innovators" to come up with solutions. It may fail once, twice, a dozen times before the ideal solution is delivered but it will be delivered. 

Being innovative from a professional standpoint is as varied as their career objectives. I usually pose thought-provoking questions. For example: "Why use a document library? Why not a wiki?", or "Why use a file folder? Why not create discovery?", or "Why delete data, why not keep it all?" The answers are startling in terms of how engrained they are in tradition as opposed to possibility. 

So why be innovative at all? As I point out to so many of my colleagues it is about their career. Times have changed so much that what they consider normal is now obsolete. For example most system administrators within a legacy organization are used to dealing with maybe a dozen servers where their counterparts in more innovative companies are used to dealing with hundreds if not thousands at a time. The mindsets, the skillsets, the possibilities for businesses even in this narrow area is huge. Mobile development is totally different now than it used to be. Android and iPhone are now whole new career options as are the user design experience, application domains, and many other dimensions to mobile. It is so new, most being less than 4 years old, that one would think that being "new" would be a liability, but in fact the opposite is true. Those with more experience are finding it hard to adjust with their more innovative counterparts growing at the expense of their counterparts.

Professionals may not like the change in the market, however it is now an expectation from many employers. To compete now and in the future, professionals will now have to be innovative and the first step in that new world is with their own mindset.

 

 

AuthorAltan Khendup | CommentPost a Comment |
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Saturday
Jun262010

Leaders vs. Managers - Very Different Terms

DateSaturday, June 26, 2010 at 7:59AM

One of the more recent discussions I have been involved in with my colleagues has been the concept of leadership, in particular one of our professional comrades had been recently appointed a management position with leadership responsibilities. While many of us congratulated their accomplishment a few were quite cautious about it, one even citing their "youth" not just as a fact, but actually as a weakness or liability to the appointment. I responded that "youth", "time in grade", or any form of seniority-based promotion is only one form towards a leadership position. Another far more common approach especially in innovative and transformational organizations is achieving the position via merit; where one works consistently and continually demonstrating value.

At the core of the promotion happens to be the difference between leadership and management. Managers are mostly the ones given appointments usually based on seniority-based systems; time-in-grade, years of service, etc. Leaders on the other hand have earned their appointment via merits that which are generally achieved more quickly regardless of their tenure within an organization. In innovative companies, management positions are awarded via deeds and accomplishments based not only the past accomplishments but continuing accomplishments and future expectations.

Most organizations make the mistake of making their management appointments with the expectation that managers make good leaders. In truth this is rarely the case. Managers tend to be very involved in the day-to-day operations, rarely trusting those that report to them to actually get things done without their direct involvement. This results in a higher cost and ineffective solutions to an organization. Leaders usually assign tasks and let their teams get them accomplished with very wide latitudes and operational freedoms resulting in lower cost and transformational solutions that provide definitive competitive advantage for the organization.

Leaders with good teams demonstrate significantly different characteristics than managers with good teams.

Team Characteristics

Managers Leaders
  • Traditional
  • Follows Orders
  • Slow Infrequent Iterations
  • Meets plan objectives
  • "Asks for permission"
  • Innovative
  • Takes Direction
  • Fast Multiple Iterations
  • Exceeds business objectives
  • "Asks for forgiveness"

 

While it is quite possible to see some behaviors that appear to be similar, these are from my experience infrequent. Characteristics are usually commonly found through the individuals within the designated teams. The differences when compared are quite stark. Some more common industry comparisons help. One example would be comparing say Slideshare.net with say an internal group within a larger company tasked with sharing documents. Slideshare is in fact much smaller personnel wise than some of the divisions within larger companies yet they deliver a far better experience than anything an internal team can do generally speaking. At this point in the analogy my point is usually proven in that professionals quickly point out "budgets", "different mission statements", "different goals", etc. In truth the only things that matter are that both entities have missions, they both have budgets, they both have goals. The only difference happens to be the characteristics of the teams and the culture they create to develop these teams. This is not to say the environments are not challenges but in essence, teams under great leaders are in fact very similar to entrepreneurs yet being on the inside of an organization rather than being on the outside and on their own.

In the end leaders are made not appointed. They are born through alignment of words and deeds that focuses not on the past, but the present and future. Every organization has managers to get the day-to-day done, but they often seek leaders to take them to the next level in the marketplace.

AuthorAltan Khendup | CommentPost a Comment |
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Friday
Mar192010

Do You Speak Techie? - Why Leaders Love/Hate Techies

DateFriday, March 19, 2010 at 8:33AM

For most of my career I have been a success bridge in organizations able to speak to many different levels and groups, getting them to understand one another, and ultimately working together towards goals. What is fascinating to me is how often being a bridge starts with a manager or leader in an organization asking a question similar to this "Can you do the technical secret handshake with the various groups? We really need that." No matter where I go, the size of the company, the type, or products that they make, technology and those who work in that area are both loved by their leaders and hated at the same time.

Most leaders see technical-based professionals as valuable assets, able to shape technology into powerful services and products that an organization can use. At the same time, they hate these same assets because generally speaking they are very demanding and potentially costly. Generally speaking the problem from an organizational level can be in fact replicated with just a simple conversation between a techie and a non-techie. One person simply has no idea what the other one is saying. An exchange on a challenge such as "I need a way to track certain web page responses more accurately for better reporting purposes" can suddenly lead into a whirlwind of well-intentioned, but meaningless technical explanations. 

At such a personal level, the exchange may seem very confusing. However the parties involved follow very basic principles common to even the largest organizations. They speak about what would be delivered, what would it look like, how long would it take, how much would it cost, what happens when it is available, and how fast can changes be made. However this type of exchange assumes several critical things such as the two parties mutually respecting one another to have this exchange and trust in one another such that their discussion actually is valuable.

In many organizations both of these are fundamentally missing. I cannot tell you how often I hear phrases from professionals within an organization resembling "Our technical staff is great, but..." or "They deliver excellent solutions, however..." or "That group takes a certain type of personality to deal with them." and the list goes on. These concerns can be voiced from chief executive officers down to group managers depending on the size and type of organization. 

Yet is very true that in almost all cases, the techies deliver great solutions and often times valuable ones to an organization. However that world is as foreign to non-techies as being out in the of the Gobi desert would be to most people on the planet. 

Individuals that can bridge this gap always have the same general characteristics that tend to make them successful in their roles:

  • Hands-on experience with technology. Most techies have excellent filters in place to determine whether someone they are working for really understands them or not. It is based on technology prowess. While at times techies can get along with non-techie leaders, this is not very common.
  • Excellent communication. Most bridge leaders are in fact excellent communicators. They are able to speak to any person effectively and with empathy regardless of their position within an organization. 
  • Consultant-like skills. Most bridges have many attributes related to consultants in terms of compromise, scheduling, scoping, flexibility, adaptability, and diplomacy so that they can work with may different groups that they have not worked with before to gets things accomplished. These skills are not typically the forte of true techies as their focus lies else where.
  • Leadership. This is a nebulous quality that while well defined varies from professional to professional. Essentially the bridge has to act a lot less than their title and more like a leader being able to earn respect as appropriate, instill a sense of purpose and vision, and inspire others to reach for and realize their potential. Doing this "quickly" is a matter of perspective as each leadership style has it's own timeline.

In my role as bridge at any level in an organization, the issues with techies/non-techies is essentially communication, and mutual trust and respect. Techies love hard and challenging problems. They love delivering great things to people that can not only appreciate their work but actually use it. What frustrates techies are things very similar to non-techies. They dislike vague terms, they dislike dragging things along, they want to present things as quickly as possible as often as possible iterating along the way, they appreciate planning so long as planning does not become something unto itself, and they dislike vague or hidden deliverables. They want things as open as possible including the good, the bad and the ugly so that they can understand what they are operating against.

In the end, most organizations while improving their relationships between techies and non-techies are quickly finding themselves at odds with a more tech-saavy workforce that while not necessarily being technical in the purest sense, have an understanding of the techies enough to be effective bridges and ultimately leaders. 

AuthorAltan Khendup | CommentPost a Comment |
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Wednesday
Mar172010

Being Good at Many Things

DateWednesday, March 17, 2010 at 2:46PM

In my professional career I hear time and again how the best way to "find" an opportunity is to explain or brand oneself as being good in one thing. I understand the argument. It is always good to put the one single most significant label that you are good at first and foremost. Most people cannot really focus in on more than one thing at a time usually. There are many what I call "tag lines" that people use: genuine innovation, integrity-because it matters, etc. While at times they can be somewhat corny, they are also truthful.

What is very frustrating however is how often business leaders put what I would refer to as blinders on when it comes to the variety of value an individual can bring. In working with start-ups, they have very lean and multi-talented individuals who tend to cover more than a single area at one time. Admittedly necessity requires this, but the fact that they are able to do it is very refreshing. As companies become more mature, I do tend to see less value suddenly being placed on this flexibility with many corporate cultures starting to expect employees to "focus" or become more specialized. In time, these larger corporations suddenly have employees who can do only a single function well, but very little else.

This evolution while commonplace has had in my opinion a tremendous detriment to organizations being able to adapt quickly to marketplace changes. When they have such specialized viewpoints on what people can or cannot do for such a long time, it becomes tremendously challenging to adjust to significantly different operating environments such as the latest recession.

More agile organizations, one that sees their employees as valuable contributors, tend not face this issue. They respond quickly to changing times with products and services that resonate with their customers. From one perspective they are true to form in that they focus on core products/services. However this by no means limits their vision of the future for their company.

The most public example of this is Apple. By all accounts, most people know the company more for computer products and services until very recently with the introduction of the iPhone. Most people have forgotten how much of a difference in vision the iPhone is for that company. It is a wonderful product that has changed how smartphones are viewed, but Apple changed direction filling a need that it noticed among it's customers. That action illustrates and demonstrates the challenge in looking at a company's future with more than a single view. Apple could have remained a personal computing company. Instead it chose to reinvent itself into a mobile computing company. Very few companies have made such a shift.

Still in light of that success, most business leaders still see it as an exception, an aberration. Something that does not fundamentally mean anything to "business as usual". Yet from companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, HTC, and the like "business as usual" has changed. It has changed from a single focus on the here and now, to a single focus of what a company can be. That shift in attitude is obviously heavily influenced by the recession, but as more companies start to adopt this position being able to look at the future compare it with what an organization is doing now, and how to change it, requires an acceptance that things have to change. This means any number of things from being innovative, agile, lean, creative, etc. Yet what it fundamentally means at the core for businesses and professionals within businesses, is that they have to look at things in a broader more holistic sense, not with singular, narrow-focused blinders.

AuthorAltan Khendup | CommentPost a Comment |
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Tuesday
Mar092010

Why Companies Lay People Off - Preparing for that Possibility

DateTuesday, March 9, 2010 at 8:48AM

Through my long career losing one's job is a very traumatic experience to anyone the first time around. It actually gets easier subsequent times since much of the initial shock and pain found in the first layoff has taught a professional how to be better prepared for it.

In the recent economic turmoil many more professionals have found themselves on different paths than what they thought they would experience. For many it is their first time or so long since they have gone through the experience that their pain, confusion and angst is understandably high. Even the most seasoned professional looks at the situation with some degree of frustration and confusion. After all they were doing fairly important work and now suddenly they are out of an organization they have given so much of their efforts to.

I often find myself giving advice to many professionals in these situations from my own personal perspective in that I have gone through it myself several times. Many have found my advice useful so I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the subject:

  • Why is a company laying off? Answer - economic reality bites. Let's face it, many companies are not necessarily well prepared for change especially rapid, downward changes. So when they do take actions, it is often more of a reaction than any truly planned action. This is not to say that any organization releases employees lightly. Quite to the contrary they are loathe to do so. However it is not something that they adequately prepare for nor practice until times call for it. Quite simply it is beyond an organization's control on when they lay people off. It just happens.
  • So why am I being laid off? Answer - it's nothing personal, it's just business. Most companies view their employees as valuable resources not necessarily as individuals. Even in the most individual-oriented company, everyone has a value that has to be weighed by the company process in terms of being retained or released. For example younger more agile individuals even those who have contributed significantly to a company can find themselves released while others are retained. Why? The company weighs their value to the company. If a person only contributes in a certain way that can be more or less valuable to a company versus others who do more. To be honest there is no real "formula" or "scientific process" being applied. It is matter of perception by decision makers beyond an individuals control.
  • Was it something that "I" did to get laid off? Answer - Plain and simply no. In almost all instances of being laid off I can personally recall every "mishap" that might have caused my being released. From personal experience that is the wrong avenue to take. While it is true that one might have made mistakes, if they had been heinous enough to cause a layoff more than likely one would have been released due to disciplinary actions prior to being laid off. One of the biggest wastes of energy is looking at a company and imagining any number of scenarios as to why one was laid off. It ranges from "so-and-so was out to get me", "I should have explained my value more", "I should have done more tasks", etc. I have seen executives of profitable divisions who did outstanding work, engineers with PhDs and patents, and sales personnel who brought large deals to an organization released in the same wave as other professionals who were not as well known. It is never one's fault for being affected by a layoff in such dire economic times. 
  • What do I do now? Answer - Simple. Find a new opportunity. Note how I always call it an opportunity and not a job? This is an important distinction. An opportunity is something that interests you whereas a job is something that does not. It is the passion driven by interest that attracts employers. If you are interested in doing something it shows.

One of the major perspectives someone being laid off tends to forget is how their departure among the number of their fellow employees impacts their organization. I am not merely talking about immediate work efforts but rather morale as a whole. How an organization deals with a layoff is not only important to those leaving, but those staying as well. While it is true that many employees will react out of fear of losing their positions, energy that is fear-based lasts only a short while. Employees will become resentful, fearful and stressed resulting in any number of issues to an organization ranging from late projects, to health-related absences, to a poisoning of the company culture - just to name a few. Essentially when a lay off occurs, it erodes the goodwill between employee and employer. How well the transition is managed determines how much erosion occurs and how soon the healing process begins. I often advise those who are let go that their worries are over and their course of action is clear. Those that remain behind are the ones that need sympathy and support as their turmoil will take a long time to settle down.

One of the greatest lessons being laid off teaches a professional is how to be entrepreneurial - to find opportunities, to network, to grow, to find business own their own, to face repeated rejection with optimism and enthusiasm, and to ultimately believe in themselves. As companies continue to lower their costs by letting employees go, they are in my opinion inadvertantly creating a newer, better workfoce that will have several traits:

  • More self-reliant and self-motivated.
  • More focused on doing what they themselves are capable of doing for others both inside and outside of an organization.
  • More confidant in their capabilities and values in delivering quality, affordable and effective solutions to customers.
  • More capable of making significant decisions that affect their lives with greater clarity and determination than before.
  • More unwilling to "settle" for something as opposed to going out and "making" it happen.

These are not bad traits to have in any employee. It is just that employers will find a more mindful, independent workforce than they previously thought. This workforce will not only have the talent but the the motivation to focus on what interests them. For any professional going through a transition focus on the future, not the past. Trust me, it helps.

 

AuthorAltan Khendup | CommentPost a Comment |
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