New Site Theme!

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So I got a little bored with the old theme and decided (with the awesome help of a good friend) to change it up.  I think this layout is happier and will generally allow me to evolve and update (images, portfolio pieces, etc) with a more regular frequency.  If you notice anything off a bit while I’m still semi “under construction”, please pardon my progress!

Hope you enjoy it!

Til Next Time,

Michael

The Case For: Celebrating Successes

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I really like celebrating success.  I think if we don’t take the time to reflect on our accomplishments and tell our story, we are missing a huge opportunity to grow our own personal brands.  I know in some office environments, it is a little more black and white and tooting your own horn can often be taken the wrong way – but that’s no excuse not to get a pat on the back every once in a while.  As an old boss of mine once said, self-promotion is an art (side note: she also said you should find a coat tail and ride the sh*t out of it; equally-sage advice I will reflect on at some point down the road I’m sure – but that’s neither here nor there).

Simply put, by celebrating your successes you will:

  • Capitalize on a huge opportunity to build your own personal brand
  • Develop personality traits and tendencies that skew towards the happier side of things
  • Breed future success by allowing yourself to truly taste and enjoy what success feels like
  • Boost your team’s morale and desire/willingness to go the extra mile for the greater good
  • Raise the bar for future accomplishments
  • Position yourself for bigger and brighter (and, likely, more financially-rewarding) opportunities

So cheers to everyone starting to celebrate their success a bit more!

Til Next Time,

Michael

The Case For: Post-Merger Integration Olympics

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As promised, a follow up to how I would handle the Comcast/TWC merger and integration of the two companies.

DISCLAIMER: this is 90% satire, 10% real.  Keep that in mind.

Imagine this…  In order to peacefully unify two disparate companies practicing in totally different geographies, what if we used gamification (buzzword alert) to resolve the unsettled differences?  It would be great.  Not only would it be fun, lighthearted, and keep everyone optimistic about the integration.  It would rapidly accelerate the implementation timeline.

Here are some sample games that could be employed to define path forward for integration points:

  • CEO’s could compete in a decathlon of events to determine who takes point of crafting the mission/vision statement for the unified company
  • The VP’s of finance could play a game of checkers to see which company’s accounting or book-keeping software was used
  • Marketing departments could compete in a 24-hour marketing challenge (independently judged) to see which team would run point on the new company’s campaigns
  • Teams of front-line call center agents could play in a 2-on-2 basketball tournament to identify which team’s call scripting was used
  • Housekeeping staffs could participate in a giant tug-of-war to see which role description and responsibilities were claimed
  • Administrative assistants could participate in a skills competition in order to have higher placement in the draft to select the executives they are paired with

While quite rushed and void of much original human thought, this method would at least ensure both sides had a “fair shot” at being represented in the future state company.  Plus it could be really fun and build a great team chemistry/camaraderie.  I think a lot of times the post-merger integration of disparate sides is done way too methodically in a way that is painfully exhausting and lulls the sides to sleep (And do you ever do good work when you’re asleep?  Me either).  There is so much time wasted on figuring out who’s right, who’s wrong, which way is the best, etc.  At a certain point, you have to just make a decision, move on, adapt and sustain, or continue to operate differently.  Not every situation has a winner and a loser.  Sometimes we’re all right; and that’s alright.

Til Next Time,

Michael

Client Comments

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A quick break of humor for you…  Having been on both sides of the desk in these situations, I can appreciate these from both sides.  Check them out.

Enjoy!

Til Next Time,

Michael

M&A: The New Tech Arms Race

I have been wildly intrigued lately  by the volume of mergers and acquisitions going on across the technology landscape.  Whether it’s Facebook buying WhatsApp or some of the other smaller deals (Facebook/Titan Aerospace, Intel/Basis, etc), the amount of money being spent to acquire other companies is nothing short of mind-boggling.  I’m not sure who’s building the business cases or whether this is truly just an old fashioned arms race between the tech giants (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Intel, etc), but it’s fascinating all the same.

They all generally raise some of the same questions though, which I don’t know are being answered in full at the time of the deal:

  • What is the long term strategy for integrating company X and company Y?
  • What is the expected Return on Investment over defined periods (3 year, 5 year, etc)?
  • What happens to the market position of company X+Y when the two sides are joined?
  • What is the transition timeline (if any) for company X and company Y?
  • What is the human capital impact by the deal?
  • What would company X be foregoing if company Y were not in the picture?
  • What is the expectation from a headquarters/workplace setting standpoint in the future?

What do you think?  Is this just a short term trend or more of the “new norm” in the tech space?

Til Next

The Case For: Being Positive

A good friend of mine came to me with a logical idea the other day…  Spawning off my “Case Against” Rant Series into a “Case For” Rave Series.  He thought I may be coming off a bit too negative or contrary (me?  never!) and this would give me a good chance to come back with more of my ideas on how to improve things that I think need improving.  As this is a blog dedicated to my meanderings and “thought leadership” I am continuing to aggregate over time – I said why not!

So I present to you: the case for being positive!

As much as this blog may make me sound like a Negative Nancy, I really do try to see the positive in all that I do.  Especially in the workplace.  A few quick tips on what I do to exude positivity and remain calm/optimistic even in the face of the toughest adversity:

  • Smile.  Yes – this sounds easy – but it’s so easy to tell the people who hate their jobs simply by their facial tones.  Even if you don’t love what you do, the power of positivity and kindness is contagious and sometimes just smiling will put everyone in a better mood and make the situation a little less poke-my-eyes-out unbearable
  • Spend some time every day reflecting.  The more you can step back from a situation and think about something other than work, the more your work body will respond in the times you really need it to
  • Let the little stuff go.  Some people have an innate ability to make the smallest things seem like monumental issues.  Ignore them.  Or, at a minimum, confirm for yourself that it is not that big of a deal and make sure your peers and superiors know that you aren’t blatantly ignoring something to cover yourself
  • Make an effort to map out your colleague’s personalities.  Spoiler alert: we’re all different!  This will help you react more positively and appropriately when your colleagues encounter tough situations or times when their buttons/triggers are pushed (because they may very well react in a certain way that is in no way a slight to you, but as long as you can understand reactionary tendencies, it will help you be more calming and accepting)
  • Every time you feel like your blood is boiling or that you want to scream, find some quiet space and take a deep breath.  Not only will it help restore your heart rate, but it will also help you think more clearly and establish better perspective of the situation
  • Before you hit ‘send’ on any e-mail that could be taken the wrong way or has any element of bad news, RE-READ IT!  In most cases, it would behoove you to tone down your language or make your statements in less incendiary language; people prefer to deal with level-headed individuals and will be more receptive to your points

Til Next Time,

Michael

Traveling on a Budget

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This is a topic with which I am wildly fascinated.  It’s no secret that I love to travel.  However, money is kind of important and doesn’t grow on trees.  So I have to be judicious about my personal travels.

A great friend sent me this article today on 25 secrets for traveling courtesy of some of the industry’s experts on cost-conscious travels.  It’s a great article with several links to other sites and areas to learn a wealth of further information about traveling on a budget.

Enjoy!

Til Next Time,

Michael

The Case Against: Comcast + TWC

I realize this is old news.  However, I was on vacation for a few days since then, and really needed some time to let the gravity of it all sink in.  I think this deal is absolutely horrible for the consumer.  I know I’m not alone in that sentiment (99.9% of consumers likely agree), so let me give some deeper perspective.

Here’s what I think will happen as a result of this joining of forces.  Papa Bear (Comcast) will:

  • Bring in Consulting Firm ABC* because they have “wealth of knowledge” of TWC infrastructure
  • Allow ABC to do 12-18 months of “current state analysis” to isolate gaps, dependencies, or similarities
  • Bite off on ABC’s recommendation to let ABC chew over the fundamental differences for another 18-24 months and conduct mass quantities of stakeholder interviews
  • Receive a proposal for how the new landscape should look and where the key integration points (people, process, technology, etc) are
  • Receive a (similar) proposal for the number of dollars it will take for ABC to “help along the way”
  • Altogether (~4 years later at this point) pay ungodly sums of money for implementation/integration of the companies to never come to fruition
  • Keep the companies operating as virtually-separate entities, with shared processes for minute activities where consolidation was a no-brainer
  • Pass on costs directly to consumers who will be handcuffed to Papa Bear’s services

In an upcoming post I plan to give a brief, humorous idea I have on how this Post-Merger-Integration could work better.  It’s 90% sarcasm, 10% truth.

Til Next Time,

Michael

*I have a feeling I know who firm ABC is too, and in my opinion: Uh Oh.

New York City

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Wanted to share a great article a friend forwarded me yesterday regarding New York.  Oh – by the way – it’s satire courtesy of the Onion and has lots of extreme foul language (par for the course – but adds a fantastic comedic effect in my opinion).  Still a tremendous set of prose and will resonate with any of you who have spent any time there.

Enjoy!

My own personal thoughts…  New York City is great.  In doses.  Lots of opportunity, tons of money, great sights, incredible food.  But – lots of cost, tons of trash, horrible weather, and people everywhere.  Literally, everywhere.

Til Next Time,

Michael

The Case Against: Traditional Project Management

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not have a PMP certification – so you may not think I’m the right guy to talk about this topic.  For that matter, I have no classical training in Project Management.  Sure, I have learned the ropes by living in a project management driven world since my beginnings back in college as a part-time custom software developer testing manager.  But I don’t have any certifications, degrees, or really any preferred methodology to tackle “project management”.

That being said, I have been around it enough to know that there is something about traditional project management that really bugs me.  Additionally, the concept that PMP certifications make someone a “better project manager” is farcical at best in my experiences.  Let me explain why.

Traditional project management, at its core, is not a bad thing.  It’s absolutely necessary, and delivering projects would be impossible without some form of ground rules or marching orders.  Effectively, the concept of project management is pretty simple and I believe very sound in its guiding principles (I’m taking some creative licensing with my concept of these principles, so don’t nail me if I’m overstating or miss a few):

  • Projects should have defined scope, schedule, and budget that the manager should monitor and report against
  • Projects should have a detailed work breakdown structure or project plan
  • Project plans should have clearly identified dependencies and the ability to discern critical path for project completion
  • Project managers should proactively and continually identify and mitigate risks according to a defined target date
  • Projects should engage all appropriate stakeholders (on internal teams as well as from boundary partners) and include them on project execution dialogue
  • Project managers should alert stakeholders of issues and organize the necessary parties to resolve any issues (i.e. risks that miss mitigation by deadlines)
  • Project reporting and communications should occur at defined intervals
  • Projects should have an executive steering committee and some form of governance to quickly and rationally work through any major decisions during the project lifecycle

And this all sounds great.  I don’t have an issue with it.  Where my proverbial beef comes in is when you dig a bit deeper into some of these principles.  The major risks (no pun intended) I see with these guidelines is that they can very easily lead to poor execution based upon the “hiccups” that happen.  For instance, just a few of the speed bumps that projects run into which are extremely difficult to navigate because traditional project management ignorantly expects only sunny day scenarios:

  • Scope, schedule, and budget are all forecasted at some point in time with only a minor portion of the information available; hence, it should be expected that these “forecasts” will prove wrong in at least one of the areas at some point in the project – and that shouldn’t be a bad thing (but too often is a major indictment to the manager or the whole team)
  • Dependencies are a beast and should never be reduced simply to a line in a project plan; as much as you plan for them – the fact is you are handcuffed to someone else, an external process, or something totally out of your control
  • Project plans, when managed diligently, leave project managers with no capacity to think about the “bigger picture”; the inability to step back and look at the plan from the outside often leads teams to continue towards “the plan” when in reality – the plan may very well need to change because of several factors (new business direction, corporate strategy differences, or updated market/financial dynamics)
  • Along the lines of scope/schedule/budget/status/project plans – people resent status monkeys; when you reduce the project manager to being a status monkey that is responsible for organizing a whole team’s worth of updates on individual project line items, you are not using that manager to their full potential (and are turning them into an administrator for electronic information aggregation – something these computers we have do quite well already without a human behind the keys)
  • Project reporting and communications get stale and people become numb to them; the real challenge is to define a cadence where everyone gets timely and pertinent information for them – the right people get the right information at the right time to act upon it
  • Most executive steering committees are not engaged in the right situations to earn their keep; executive steering is one of the most important components for any major project because at least once, you should expect to have to engage them for a very important decision (e.g. delaying a launch, limiting scope, requesting more budget)
  • Change Management is almost always afterthought for the “project team” (even in the projects where it is assumed/expected that Change Management will be executed by project personnel); the inability to proactively manage change implications and promote awareness across the whole corporation for major changes is an area where I see projects turn South far too often because the critical change functions are simply a line item in a thousand-line project plan
  • ^Speaking of, thousand-line project plans make projects too black-and-white; if everything is just a check box, how easy is it to just go off into a dark room and check the box?  (answer: way too easy, and the results usually reflect the quality you’d expect by someone doing something just to check a box)

I’ll put it a different way…  You’ve probably heard it before: everything that can go wrong will go wrong.  I’m not trying to keep this post overly pessimistic, but it amazes me when I so often see managers encounter a road block and get paralyzed by their inability to react to the situation.  It’s almost as if they didn’t see it coming.

Maybe I’m jaded.  Maybe I have been on too many projects that weren’t set up for success from the start.  There’s one thing I have observed over time though – great managers aren’t great managers because they deliver in good times.  When the going’s good, everyone’s an all star.  Rather, they’re good managers because they manage the hell out of difficult times.  And, if you don’t expect that some things can (and will) go wrong, you are less likely to be able to course correct, employ contingency plans, or dig out of the ditch.

I don’t have anything empirically against the PMP types and traditional project management.  I just feel like they are touted a bit too much as being some form of end-all be-all.  It’s about time we revisited project management excellence and realized that we should probably develop a specialized construct for each situation (given the corporate landscape, project complexity, amount of time/energy available from resources) in order to prepare for project delivery success.  I have always hated trying to put a “one size fits all” approach on to any situation*.  It’s not fair to anyone involved and is blatantly ignorant to the uniqueness and intricacies that will always be present from project to project.  We are living in a digital/social age.  People will tell you immediately what they had for lunch on Facebook.  Why can’t we turn that active engagement into something useful to help with project delivery?  Maybe it’s better collaboration tools, maybe it’s gamification of project delivery – I don’t know.  But we need to make a change.

*On that note, I promise a “Case Against” post soon for stock methodologies, generic templates, and “reusable” processes.  I’m sure you can guess my opinion.

Til Next Time,

Michael