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Dirty Jobs

For those of you who don’t know Mike Rowe or have never watched his show on The Discovery Channel, he essentially profiles some of the “dirtier” jobs in America by shadowing as an apprentice to learn how tasks are accomplished for the typical laborer.

Back in 2009, Mike was invited to do a TED Talk on his profession and reflect on what it has meant to him.  While the story he uses to open up the conversation is a bit grotesque (it wouldn’t be a “dirty” job if it weren’t though), the message he provides and the lessons he shares are really remarkable.

We are entering an age where the value of previously-considered commonplace jobs (e.g. electricians, carpenters, plumbers, welders) has almost been forgotten.  I completely appreciate his sentiments on the need for a PR campaign for work.  Trade school enrollments and skilled labor training remains at an all-time low.  Our infrastructure is rapidly declining and the American Society of Chemical Engineers has stated time and time again that we have drastic investments in our infrastructure required just to keep things like roadways and bridges passable.  I know I have talked previously about the value of work of all kinds.  And while I generally push more for technology skills/training/jobs, his presentation is a calm reminder that we need to encourage people to enter into professions of all kinds if we want to continue to remain a viable world power.  The time is now; let’s all get to work!

Hope you enjoy it!

Til Next Time,

Michael

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The Value of an Excellent Colleague

I work at a company that places a huge emphasis on the value of people and collaboration. Naturally, a lot of my colleagues have (since we started working together) morphed into friends. Which causes me to continually assess my professional network and understand what value my relationships, colleagues, and network bring me (and, converesely, and value I am making sure I bring them).

Just the other day, I asked a few people to take a peek at my site and offer some feedback. Of course, I didn’t expect a 100% take rate. I knew that some of them would punt it because they were too busy, some would give me the bare minimum to make sure I knew they valued our relationship, some would go over the top and give way too much, etc. Such is life.

An excellent colleague is irreplaceable. I don’t know about you, but I really enjoy finding someone that I work well with (inside as well as outside of work) and aligning myself with them in future endeavors, even if they aren’t project or work-related. You know they have your back and will always go to bat for you or help you in a pinch. Largely, the people I sent the michael-wiggins.com survey to were those people. But it’s still intriguing to see how much time and energy some of them have dedicated to ensuring that I am fulfilling my goals with the site and helping add further value by offering suggestions on my next post or helping point out grammatical issues/typos (even if, as much as I hate to admit it, imperfection in my original drafts has somehow unsuspectingly entered a post – kidding). I truly value those kinds of feedback and it is my goal to always make sure I am giving them the same type of help if asked.

Another Public Service Annoucement: the holidays are rapidly approaching for most of us. Be sure to recall those excellent colleagues and do something special for them. A bottle of wine, a hand-written note, a $5 Starbucks card. No gift is too small. But also be sure to remember them at other times of the year. If you ignore those relationships, there’s a chance they will move on from you because you aren’t reciprocating their energy and collaborative spirit. Don’t be that guy. Nobody likes that guy.

Til Next Time,
Michael

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Company-Issued Devices

I bet you get where I’m going with this already… But before I go into a massive rant that leaves you nodding your head saying “Yeah, but so what? Nothing’s gonna change it”, let me first warn you that a lot of this post will be just that. BUT – I am hopeful that sprinkled in here somewhere are some decent thoughts and ideas of measures we can all take to fight back against the system.

Now that I’ve got all that out of the way (phew!) let me say that I think the way companies typically approach issuing devices is a complete joke. I’ll try to limit this post to laptops and phones, but the extent of this widespread indifference obviously reaches much further beyond this. Speaking of phones – remind me to opine someday on the joys (read: agony) of corporate mobile plans and procurement. They single-handedly have taken two years off my life*.

I’ll start with laptops. I totally understand that it’s a numbers game and that most major corporations have to employ cost control measures in order to ensure they are not giving away the warchest every time Pete, the VP of accounts, decides to fumble his new laptop down a flight of concrete stairs. I get that the easiest way to have a front-line hardware support provider for onsite helpdesks is to align yourself with another big shop that specializes in specific brands and detailed troubleshooting procedures. I know that these partnerships with companies like Lenovo allow for us to obtain crazy good deals on laptops. Side note – I saw my EXACT laptop on 1saleaday.com yesterday for $350. $350! Felt like I was stabbed in the heart. Actually – I rescind that comment – the one on the site had more RAM… And, believe me, I get that aligning ourselves with “proven” software like Microsoft/Windows allows us to engage in a lot of critical processes like remote device wiping, quickly replacing or deploying system images, and controlling privacy and security.

All that being said though – these devices suck. I know no other “intelligent” or politically correct way to say it. Yes, it’s childish of me to put it in that sort of tone. But tell me you didn’t nod your head. You did! I saw it! They are too slow, they don’t have enough memory, can’t support multi-tasking (e-mail and Powerpoint at the same time doesn’t count), have horrendous batteries, and are generally reluctant to see two New Year’s Eves without at least one (or ten) blue screens of death.

To those forward-thinking companies who decide to issue better equipment (Macs, etc), I commend you. You are recouping your investment not only by having to replace devices less frequently, you are also reaping the rewards in terms of your personnel productivity (one time it took me 3 reboots and 2.5 hours just to fill out a timesheet – seriously). To the rest of you though, I highly recommend sitting in a focus group with your front line to hear the horror stories. I do focus groups all the time, and I promise they work. You just have to listen.

Moving on to phones – it’s more of the same. My old boss still has a Blackberry. RIM has already scheduled their own funeral, and our mobile plan is still providing Blackberries. Now the fact that my colleague hasn’t moved on yet is largely their fault (get on with the times, I’m sorry for your loss), but it’s still ridiculous that the carriers are providing these low cost devices and, furthermore, that my company is actually promoting us using them. I, personally, have moved up in the game. I am now the proud owner of an iPhone 3gs That’s right – not the 3g – the 3gs. I can think of a few things the ‘s’ stands for. I’m sure you can too. The bigger picture here? i need a reliable phone to do my job. I can’t have a phone that freezes or requires reboots every couple hours, or one that loses battery after 30 minutes of light use. The ability to make and receive calls from my clients and colleagues is probably of second importance only to my ability to read e-mail (see above – this is not always a given either). Figure out a way to get our carrier to give us serviceable options for decent prices. I know how much we pay for the plan – I promise there is someone in a procurement or supply chain department who has to have taken Negotiating 101.

So what? This is the part where I ditch the soapbox and try to get back to reality, offering my insights and opinions on what we can all do to help fix the problem:

  • SPEAK UP – Be it employee opinion surveys, focus groups, town halls, at the bar – wherever – let your leadership know. If they only hear the complaints from Richard (nobody likes Richard anyway), they’ll assume it’s not that big of a deal. When 80% of the front-line screams loud enough, though, results will happen.
  • Have an honest dialogue about BYOD (no, not bring your own beer – although that could help in worst cases I suppose?) – Bring Your Own Device is something that is a bit of a compromise and, when administered correctly (i.e. subsidizing employees for buying devices, having approved device lists that you will support for placement on internal networks, etc), can be a huge win for both the employees and the company. It is not a silver bullet though as there are many formalities to be worked through and I am not sure anyone has physically validated the business case yet, although I imagine 3 or 5 year success stories should be hitting just about any day now.
  • Rig your own device regardless – I’m probably a huge liability for saying this, but it’s really not that difficult to add your own device to a network. For instance, my company has an Apple exchange server in the UK which is extremely easy to configure and allows me to do the majority of my work tasks through my own device and ditch the company-issued for most other tasks. Let’s be honest, it is so rare for most of us to work on something that is so secret that there are massive data integrity/security implications that it really shouldn’t be a big deal to have external devices pinging a company-hosted server presuming you are appropriately obtaining credentials. Pretty sure my own Corporate Security department has probably already red-flagged me just for typing this. Oops.
  • Help someone in supply chain or procurement read the Cliff’s Notes on Negotiating 101 – Remember me stating above that it isn’t rocket science? Well, it isn’t. It’s also no cakewalk though. So volunteer to help them with some of the research or due diligence on new providers, new devices, typical market prices, and ways to investigate feasibility of wholesaling or obtaining seasonal/promotional pricing on devices. If you are able to do something, anything, for the greater good – not only will you help yourself, you will be a knight in shining armor for all your colleagues.
  • Stop multitasking – Listen, I’m the worst about this one; I need to look myself in the mirror and repeat this 10 times. If we know our devices have deficiencies, sometimes we just have to let them play to their (incredibly) limited strengths. Do I really need to have email open while editing PPT, on a webex, running scripts on a Remote Desktop, blogging on our own site, drawing critical path in Visio, updating Sharepoint with the latest status, etc? In some cases, maybe. In most cases, I can probably sequence my work so that I only have to do a few things at once. And, truth be told, my computer and phone can generally handle a few (2-3, let’s be realistic) things at once.

Another time, I promise to revisit BYOD in more detail (I’m honestly not a huge proponent – but the pros and cons are absolutely there) and more on this subject. But I just had to get this out there while on my flight out seeing as my laptop died (battery life = 46 minutes on a good day) and I had nothing better to do than break out another (more reliable) device to pass the time.

So – what do you think about company-issued devices? Feel free to sound off or offer your own suggestions/best practices for staying sane in the company device game.

Til Next Time,
Michael

*by conservative estimates (my doctor who is actually medically-licensed to make these statements may cite the number as higher)

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Elon Musk – Soliciting Negative Feedback

After my colleague read my piece yesterday, he pointed me towards this TED Talk from Elon Musk (of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX fame) who talks late in the video about the value of embracing and demanding negative feedback from friends/colleagues and how it has been fundamental in his innovation.  He is, of course, talking about it more in the creative landscape, but I think the message still resonates.  As an added bonus, this video gives some tremendous insight into his inspiration for Tesla/SpaceX and will let the nerds out there (like me) geek out on some basic science and engineering principles as seen by a visionary. If you’re not interested in the science, you can forward to the 18:30 mark to hear his perspective on gathering feedback.

Til Next Time,

Michael

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Guest Posts!

receiving-entertaining-thanks-ecard-someecards

Hey,

I’ve had some inquiries about guest posts and decided that more content to react to is generally better than less content.  SO – in the interest of driving more dialogue and eyes to the site, I have decided to let some of my colleagues and friends join in on the fun.  Don’t mind them; they are generally harmless.  If we need to smack them on the hand or kick them out later, there’s always that choice.  In the mean time, though, I look forward to welcoming them to the party.  Hope you enjoy their insights!

Michael

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Soliciting Feedback

As we head into the end of the year, it’s a great time to motivate ourselves to reach back out to friends and colleagues to look back on the year and also solicit feedback for use in personal development and reflection over the holidays.  I find this to be a really valuable way to keep yourself properly networked and shepherd actionable feedback from your colleagues and friends, so that you ultimately avoid the tendency many of us have to not show substantive improvement in our capabilities or skills year-over-year.

Good questions to yield healthy dialogue as part of a feedback session:

  • What do you feel my major strengths are with respect to my current position/role?
  • What are two or three key areas you think I could improve personally in order to add more value or drive better results for the team?
  • How would you describe my morale around the office?  My work ethic?
  • In what area (of the business overall or within our functional space) should I spend more time and energy next year in order to grow?
  • In what ways do you feel like we best collaborate?
  • If you could describe me as any type of animal, what type of animal and why?

OK, so the last one was a bit of a joke and kind of “out there”, although I have been known to ask interviewees about themselves likened to an animal (for no other reason than to chuckle – I’m really not psychoanalyzing the answer I swear).  But, as you can see, I generally try to avoid common “Yes/No” answers, and aim to capture feedback that is both positive as well as constructively critical.  That is because it helps me continually develop a healthier internal personnel profile, letting me know who my advocates could be for future opportunities, as well as the areas in which I could stand to use some development or practice.  Selfishly, it also lets me establish a baseline with the reviewer so that I can come back to them over the course of time and do a temperature check on whether I am making progress (e.g. “Hello Jill, I know you had previously mentioned that I could possibly stand to do better grammatical reviews in my summary reports; I wanted to see if you feel as though the last few have been going better?  It is something I have been working on in recent months.”).

As far as whether these should be conducted in-person, over the phone, or through an electronic source (email/Survey Monkey), I typically adjust based upon the personality of the person from whom I am seeking feedback.  You will hear “experts” in strategic communication or feedback processes tell you it has to be in person – but I don’t think that is far to the feedback giver (and, ultimately, will net you a diluted or watered down version of the truth in many cases).  Either way, as long as you are making an effort to capture this sort of feedback with a regular cadence, you will ensure you are setting yourself up for personal or professional success in whatever endeavor next year may bring.

Til Next Time,

Michael

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Happy Veteran’s Day!

Just a quick note out to all our country’s service men and women, past and present. Without your hard work, dedication, and tireless pursuit of freedom, the rest of us would not be able to enjoy everything we have at our disposal. I hope one day that I can repay you. You are an important reminder to us all of what the power of collective effort and collaboration can yield.

VetDay

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Scope Creep

One of the things that has long bothered me about the consulting and professional services space is the concept of scope creep.  Before I dive in, let it be known that I fully understand the intent behind it and believe that properly-executed contracts must be followed in order to fulfill legal, financial, and personal responsibilities that were agreed to at the outset of a project.

But hear me out for one minute.  When’s the last time you said “I’m sorry, I cannot do that, because it is not in my scope” and a client reacted happily or respected you more for that?  At the end of the day, you are in the client services industry.  Happy client = happy bosses.  Happy bosses = happy company.  Happy company remembers consultants that made life happy.  Consulting firm wins because they’re not the weasels disagreeable folks who decided to call the client out on not being able to 100% define their scope day one out of the gate.

So how do I approach it?  Simple.  I have what-I-refer-to-as a “goodwill bucket”.  Client is allowed to make withdrawals from this goodwill bucket from time to time so long as a few criteria are met:

  • The request is not going to impact the budget by more than roughly 5-10% (variable based upon size/original scope)
  • The request is not going to impact the schedule by more than roughly 5-10% (variable based upon size/original scope)
  • The request is not going to ruin me or my people emotionally, physically, or mentally
  • The request is not one that follows immediately on the tail of a similar request
  • The request can be offset by (potentially) re-prioritizing other in-flight activities

If any of these criteria are not met – then you can’t make a withdrawal from the goodwill bucket.  I have actually found this to be a rather effective process, because it establishes credibility with my clients, but also lets them know that there is a line in the sand so they can’t treat me as a complete pushover.  And you know what?  A lot of times, the “perceived impact” (which most people and firms would scream “SCOPE CREEP!” to) is much less impactful than the opportunity cost of delivering a crappy product.  Crappy product = cranky client.  Cranky client…  You get the picture.  I’m not one for trying to overwhelm my team by bringing on additional items to turn their 45-hour week into a 60-hour one, but prefer to keep it more of a negotiation with my clients so they start to understand what it does to the process (The conversations are rather easy, actually, something like “by doing this one originally unscheduled ‘nice-to-have’ for you, I want to make sure we can de-prioritize something else in order to make sure we are not running over capacity and can hit our original deliverable timelines”).

I’m not saying this is a foolproof method or one everybody should follow.  I know that we are also all responsible for driving results, and results can’t be achieved if there’s no governance for the process, the schedule, the scope, or the budget.  It just makes my blood boil that so many consultants have gotten so complacent with themselves and their contracts that they are forgetting the real reason you’re out there – to provide a professional service to achieve a desired outcome.  If someone changes their minds and asks me to mop the floors instead of configure their Salesforce – guess what?  I’m grabbing the mop.  Because that’s what drives incremental and follow-on business.   Not being the guy that says “Sorry, that’s outside of my scope”.

Til Next Time,

Michael

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Technology in Society – the Importance of Coding & Engineering

Be warned: this post may sound slightly complacent, mildly pessimistic, and altogether like a bit of a rant on the current state of our society in America.  But – hey – isn’t that why I started my own blog?  To allow myself an avenue to opine on real issues facing ourselves and the next generation of people to roam this great Earth?  I run the show around here; the choice is yours if you want to read it. 🙂

In short, I am wildly concerned about the state of technology awareness and technical intelligence in our American society.  And, no, I don’t mean the ability to use an iPhone or knowing how to start a group message on Facebook.  Because, last time I checked, there are only extremely narrow windows of opportunity to capitalize on those skills.  The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook is already published, sorry.

What I’m talking about is our country’s seeming indifference towards teaching children the value of technical skills.  For instance, I firmly believe that everyone in their lives should be required to take at least one course on coding and engineering in their academic careers.  Not because I think we’re severely lacking coders in America (side note – we most definitely are), but because learning to code teaches someone several valuable skills that ultimately leave oneself better off and more marketable in their career.  Before you say it, it’s true, not everything draws back to your career; but I think we have started to undervalue people’s ability to provide for themselves and earn a decent living (maybe that’s the Midwestern blue collar seeping out of me).  I am not going to use this post or this site to go into any economic lessons or discuss the value of money and whether or not it buys happiness – but rather I do want to speak for a brief moment on the value of technology awareness and skills in 2013.

So why should everyone learn to code or start to brush up a bit on technology and spend more time in the Engineering building at school?  Simple:

  • Coding, at it’s quintessence, teaches people to be problem solvers: Whether it’s the process of debugging some “cranky code”, or following a process to create something as simple as “Hello World”, coding forces you to work through problems and setbacks.  Be it through consulting electronic/external sources (e.g. Google) or friends/experts – you will have to figure out a way to get past roadblocks.  This is a skill that I think we can all agree is highly valuable whatever your walk of life may be.
  • Technology is the wave of the future.  Everything is going mobile.  We are all strapped to our devices as is.  Why shouldn’t we embrace that and start to learn more about it?  It’s our only chance to remain viable in a global marketplace.  And, as Americans, don’t we generally like to win?
  • Engineering is all about how things are built.  It’s about process.  Starting with a rough concept, investigating feasibility based upon organic, material, or dynamic qualities, developing a design, prototyping a design, testing it, and eventually finalizing a buildout…  These skills are not only useful in buildings/bridges/cars/planes, but rather in your traditional life as well.  Think about the ability to build a relationship and take in/analyze information that is given to you to further enhance that relationship.  It’s all an exercise in engineering.
  • Technology and Engineering are what drives innovation and are uniquely responsible for most of the great inventions since the start of time.  Be it the automobile, the airplane, or the telephone – behind most of those great inventions was someone hopelessly dedicated to science and engineering.  And who doesn’t love cool new toys?

I could go on all day, I really could.  But I won’t.  I hope you get the picture.  And even if you don’t agree, I just ask that you consider the risk if we refuse to refocus our energy towards technology, engineering, math, the sciences.  I am incredibly alarmed at American society’s refusal to take these areas more seriously.  I love the arts – I really do!  I think having a portion of our population dedicate their time and energy towards creating wonderful works or art, literature, or performances for the rest of us to enjoy is a fantastic thing.  I would be lying though if I didn’t say I am worried that we have overcorrected in these areas over the past couple of decades.  In my personal opinion, spending six figures on a French Art History degree for most people just may not pay off.  Ever notice that in other developing countries (e.g. majority of Asia), the percentage of graduates with technical/skills training versus other language arts is substantially higher than here in the U.S.?  Wait, where are all of our technology jobs in America being lost or offshored to again?

Listen, I know it’s not all about what “pays off” from a financial perspective.  But at the end of the day, money makes the world go ’round.  You need it to eat, need it to sleep (comfortably), need it to get around.  So give technology a chance.  I think you’ll be amazed at what we are collectively able to create and how quickly we can innovate if we start to drive more of our talented youth (and even aging professionals – you’d be surprised at what great resources are available for out-of-school or on-the-job skills training!) towards technology, engineering, math, and science.

Til Next Time,

Michael

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The Unicorn Club

Remember all of that talk about the 1%?  Here’s a fascinating piece on the 0.07%…  I have always had an affinity for technology and venture capital.  Probably because when I was growing up, my father did venture capital, and I was interested in technology.  I think deep down, most of us are allured to one of our parents’ professions by nature just because we often idolize our parents and want to grow up to be like them (until we get old enough to realize the traits of theirs that we absolutely do not want to mimic – alas I digress again).  Regardless, I am fascinated to this day by technology venture capital and hope one day to be in a position in my career where I can contribute to this exciting community.  Maybe even one day consider myself part of the “unicorn club”.

Hope you enjoy the article!

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/

Til Next Time,

Michael