The winding workflow

April 19, 2010 — andrewnim

I have been thinking a lot about distraction and workflow of late. You may have noticed, its got me posting again. If you visit any freelance web site there are pages and pages donated to the ever sought after perfect workflow. The ultimate task management system. Its a bit of a holy grail for some. Others seem to get it early and keep it. My wonderful hard put upon wife has one called “write it down” she puts her tasks on a piece of paper and crosses them off. eventually a new piece is started and anything outstanding carries across. It is simple and it works for her. It does not work for me, because I need my work items in my work space which is firmly on the email/ messaging side. Paper just becomes disconnected.

I have spoken before about allowing people a great deal of flexibility to use systems which work for them and allow them to collaborate fully with the team. Its not easy to achieve and because of that all too many organisations dont seek to do so, imposing a system which suites the top and then blaming everyone down the chain for somehow failing to achieve.

When I served in the British Army I was lucky enough to be in a unit which valued individuality yes it did. I was once told by a senior officer that in respect of equipment we could wear what we wanted as long as we could do the job. He understood that a lot of the kit the army gave us was actually sub standard and made it hard for us to do the job. He knew there was better equipment and methods available and that given the chance we would grab them. We did. Our performance was better because we where comfortable and dry.

So if the army can allow its soldiers leeway to create their working conditions and their work flow as long as they can do the job, why cant a business?

Some would say its about control, like the CEO who micro manages or the Manager who is scared a subordinate may do a better job. I say its worse, its  a lack of value.  When you restrict your employees and do not allow them to take ownership you show how little you value them. When you do not value them you cannot then complain that they are disengaged from the job at hand.

If you value them, you trust them and that means you know that they have different ways of doing things but that it will get done. In time they will work out how to ensure they work together as a team. That may take some nudging and guidance, which is what managing is really about, not bossing.

So you can have a winding work flow where they try to get around your system or a smooth one where you work with theirs and direct them to achieve your outcome.

Posted in Collaboration, Doing Business, people. Leave a Comment »

Busy Time

April 18, 2010 — andrewnim

I have not posted for a while, I seem to have been too busy with other things including a rather secret project called Suggler. The names not secret, just what we are doing. All will be revealed in time. I have also been attending events like Cloud Camp Auckland and talking to lots of people. Working on my business model some, and looking for opportunities. And as ever learning.

I dont think you should ever stop learning or seeking out and discussing new ideas. But some times you need to work out what you should be listening to and what you should filter out. Reading a blog entry by Seth Godin ( incoming ) I use the phrase ” The  Distraction Age”  which is a direct output of the silicon age and the communications age.  Too much too often and still too little. We place ourselves at the mercy of the marketers and lots of well meaning people and then expect to hear every thing they have to say and still manage to do what we need to and have coherent thoughts. Its like filling our heads with foam and trying to listen the the muffled voice of our own mind.

We will soon be at a point where we need a U Shadow. An almost AI which runs as a personal assistant and filteres everything, presenting us with only those things which we actually need to respond to and act on, yet still able to pull up relevant material we will need before we need it. And it will need to be mobile and siting close to us, or in the cloud and connecting to our mobile. That way we might not be so busy being distracted and more busy doing.

Until then its up to us to keep control and be our own filtering systems.

Posted in Ideas, Knwoledge, people. Leave a Comment »

Seth Speaks about engaging innovators

December 2, 2009 — andrewnim

Interesting and useful list from Seth Godin

It is a great list below are a few items which jumped out at me,

  • Simplify the problem relentlessly, and be prepared to accept an elegant solution that satisfies the simplest problem you can describe.Hire the right person. Don’t ask a mason to paint your house.
  • Part of your job is to find someone who is already in the sweet spot you’re looking for, or someone who is eager and able to get there.
  • Pay as much as you need to solve the problem, which might be more than you want to. If you pay less than that, you’ll end up wasting all your money. Why would a great innovator work cheap?
  • Cede all issues of irrelevant personal taste to the innovator. I don’t care if you hate the curves on the new logo. Just because you write the check doesn’t mean your personal aesthetic sense is relevant.

That last one is great, don’t tell the person you hire how to do the job you hired them for.

But you should read the full list over at Seth’s

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Google Social Search

October 27, 2009 — andrewnim

Its all the rage this week as its due out for the masses on Monday. Sites all over the web are discussing it and telling us all how it will work and how great it will be. Google have released videos telling us how they envisage it and how it will build us a circle of “friends” around our Google Profiles. Each time you search and are logged in to your Google profile it will begin matching and building your network. Connecting with your other social media activities.

I see a glitch, user names and email addresses are often very different. My twitter name is not the same as my Google account name and my business email is not @gmail.com. As a freelancer I work under other email addresses as well, reflecting the branding of the client.

So the picture which Google social search is going to create is not going to have me at its true center. It is more likely going to look like a Venn_diagram . Now this may turn out to be very valuable in the long run as the connections who reside within the overlap are possibly identified as the most meaningful. But how will they get their if you are not logged in to a specific Google account at the time?

It will be interesting to see if it works in practice and proves to be more than a gimick to get us all building our Google profiles. Which is the only way it is really going to work, with Google as the center of our online lives.

Posted in Collaboration, Marketing, people. Leave a Comment »

Free range ideas

July 29, 2009 — andrewnim

One expression I really don’t like hearing is people extolling others to “think out side of the box”. It’s often too late for that by the time this is being requested. It’s usually said to people who have actually been trained by school, parents, work and their peers to think in certain ways and do certain things. Fit in, do as you are told, be part of the gang, do it this way, do it our way. Some of this is needed, it gives us grounding and allows us to achieve as a society. But it needs to be offset by encouraging freedom of inquiry and analytical skills. We need to encourage young people to do what comes naturally: to question.

But that’s for the future, that may help our companies in a few years, but not now. Now we need to think about the staff both present and future. When you are next looking to hire a new employee what will you be looking for? Someone who will just fit in or someone who will stir things up a bit? I don’t mean hire a work place psycho, I mean someone who is free- range rather than battery reared. Some one who does not want to be a wall flower, but who is actively going to suggest new ways of doing things and is going to challenge when it is needed. Some one who is not afraid to say NO!

Not every organization wants or needs a blue sky thinker and i’ts the last thing you need in a small close knit organization. But you need someone who is happier with open fields and green pastures. However, and this is an important however, this one person is not going to be a catalyst for change unless you allow and encourage it. Which means you also need to encourage your other staff to do the same. It will not happen over night and does not need trips away for team building. You just need to get them to start thinking about how they do their jobs and give them incentives  if they come up with an idea that boosts your business. People generally are happy to tell you what is wrong with a process they are involved with, if it is one they have been given to follow. They are quiet happy to make improvements. You just need to encourage them. When people criticize see it as constructive.

If you want free range ideas you have to create a free range enviroment, not a box you then have to get them to think outside of. It means meetings which are informal and without hierachy; it means subtle continual changes in the way you interact in your company. You have to be brave and you have to learn to listen- really listen, in the same way you should be listening to your customers; customers you will get more of as your staff start solving customer problems and giving great customer service.

Posted in Collaboration, Ideas, people. 1 Comment »

Training, Training and Training

July 19, 2009 — andrewnim

I am a technology fan. I love technology. One of my favorite TV programmes as a kid was the  BBC’s Tomorrows World which showcase new tech every week. I enjoy trying new things and finding out what works but strangely I am not addicted to gadgets! I like to try things out and see if they will make a difference, not just get it because it’s the hottest new  item. Maybe this is because for me there has to be a point to the technology, it has to answer a need, or create it. The point’s always the same: does it make my life easier? does it make my work easier?  The new thing may be a great idea, but if it’s  badly implemented it is going to increase my work not decrease it and chances are no amount of training is going to change that.

But if it has been well thought out and implemented the new tech- say a web based accounting package for monitoring your bank account, some training is going to mean you are able to get the maximum use very quickly. My advice to anyone developing an application of this nature is spend at least 25% of the development time ensuring your user -experience is geared towards training simplification and that your training material supports it.

My advice to the user, whether an individual or a company installing a new system, spend at least 25% of the first month of use in training. Many companies often  spend thousands on a software package and not a cent on training, then wonder why they are not attaining the desired ROI. Outlook is a great example of the failure of companies to ensure optimum use of a man tool of the company.

Here is a scenario which is played out in hundreds of companies all over the world: It’s Monday morning and the new employee arrives, straight out of college and eager. They get a desk, they get a computer, they get a login and email via Outlook. They may get asked if they have used it before and about five minutes help logging in and they are off. Well not quite, what’s missing here is that they may know how to use outlook to some degree but do they know how to use it the way the company does? So, now the company has someone who is learning as they go and making mistakes which need correcting by another member of staff who is then taken from their work.

Now think about implementing a company- wide CRM or accouting package and not providing any training, just letting the staff teach themselves. Just how inefficient would that be? Sounds like madness when you see it written down here like this doesn’t it? Yet it happens.  Dont let it happen to you, use good change management techniques. Ensure you understand what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how you are going to do it. Make new technology work for you and remember that your new technology is only going to work as well as the people who are using it.

Posted in Doing Business, people, systems. 2 Comments »