Sorry, That Was My Fault

That can be so hard to say.

Fingers point, blame shifted where ever possible.

Mistakes should be a learning opportunity.

Practice saying it, practice accepting it – you’ll be better off

Sorry!

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Photo Credit spud murphy via flickr

Are You Being Nickled And Dimed?

Unfortunately this is all to common, you have that new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software or some other software tool.

You make the capital investment, go through a long and painful installation, configuration and training process and then;

Finished right?

Maybe not!

Once the software is installed the change requests start coming in.

Some of these changes will be great – they will add value, or improve decisions. But some of them won’t.

Every change has a cost. Both in time, and possibly work flows and training. Not to mention Quality Control and testing.

Do you manage these changes?

Do you understand the value equation in these change requests?

If it takes ‘x’ hours for one particular change, is there value there to be received?

One small change may not seem like much – but add them all up and the costs start to rise.

And when it seems that money is already spent – it can be difficult to see these operational cost leaks.

The SMB Takeaway

Nickles And Dimes

You have spent money, and time on that software implementation.

But you can’t consider it ‘complete’.

Put all changes through the same value ringer that the initial project went through.

As the old saying goes; Watch the nickles and dimes, then the dollars take care of themselves.

Photo Credit stargonautone via flickr

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Don’t Forget the Basics

I had a tech support issue that made me think of this – more on that shortly.

Lets imagine something!

In the developed world, we are all familiar with the automobile. Even if you do not have a driving licence, you know what a car is, and some of its basics. 

So when we teach a new driver, we impart knowledge of the rules of the road, and the physical skills necessary to move 2 tons of glass and steel safely down that road.

But if we imagine that we were parachuted into a country where the only vehicles ever seen are UN relief convoys and military vehicles?

Can we still teach someone to drive using our familiar methods?

Maybe someone who does not even know that you have to unlock the door to get into the car?

Perhaps they have never seen any key – let alone an ignition key?

I think not.

You have to back up, and go back to the basics.

My Support Issue

A business that we purchase a hosted online service from did a significant upgrade, or rewrite, of the web based administrative tool used to manage the service.

With the new interface I could not find the procedure to do a particular administrative task.

So I sent an email to their support.

The response?

It was 1 line with 2 three letter acronyms and an obtuse phrase. My reponse was basically ‘what the hell does that mean?‘

It turned out that the 3 letter acronyms were the first three letters of the particular web pages I had to use.

The SMB takeaway?

This is not just a tech issue, perhaps your sales staff considers parts A, B,& C of your offering so obvious that it does not get mentioned.

But it may not be that obvious to your customer.

Communication does not happen until the receiving party understands what you are saying.

I think that if you took a hard look at what you are saying, you may find that forgetting something basic leaves room for error and mis-understanding.

Have you ever come across one?

Photocredit mtlin

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Book Review; Disrupting Class

Disrupting Class

Being a member of a family of past and present educators, I picked up Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn.

If you have any responsibility for learning, inside or outside of the education system, (i.e. Human Resources or training staff)this book is worth a read.

The text applies Mr. Christensens’ disruptive innovations theories to the (primarily Western) education system.

The book does not require familiarity with his previous books on disruption, but I found knowing them was beneficial in understanding – in depth, the disruptive innovation context that the authors are describing.

My only issue would be that major projects are often late and cost more than they should. So in the student centric timeline estimated by the authors, I would extend that timeline until all boomers are retired, and even the first waves of Gen-X retireing.

Maybe then we see the much needed context changes described by the authors.

Sharing Network Accounts, Don’t!

I have written previously on the security dangers of your staff sharing each others network and computer user names and passwords.

Lets add another reason not to do that.

Untold hours were wasted looking for the reason that a database of certain transcript records was not being updated properly.

Hmm, why is Jane there twice? and Jim swears he completed it as well?

You can guess.

Jane had shared her user name and password with Jim.

For Jim, the fact that ‘Welcome Jane’ was sitting on the computer screen was not enough of a clue.

The Takeaway?

Your user name and your password are yours, and yours alone.

As a manager in the SMB space, actively ensure that this type of sharing does not occur.

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Getting Rid of the Rules

An excellent post by Mike Moran on his Biznology blog titled; Losing the Web Standards War? Tools, Not Rules

…What each of these techniques have in common is that they make following the rules easier than ignoring them

I actually read that post a few months ago, printed it and stuck it on my wall.

The same advice works in many places in the small business / medium business space.

Because as Mike elaborates, it may be a policy, a guideline, a process, a procedure; basically any method that we use to provide a framework for getting work done, or to use as a tool to improve consistency and reduce training costs.

In the SMB space, the harder we make it to screw up. The less screw ups we have to fix.

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Skills Shortage? or Training?

OK, CIOInsight had this article on the IT skills shortage. The IT skills shortage, IT worker retention, recruitment etc etc is all over the technology press. Call it the hot button of the decade.

Of course the article drew the predictable rants – and, well, I couldn’t resist – I had to add my own comment as well. (with just some typo and grammar fixes) For non technology managers that may see this, the tech domain is getting a little too notorious for body shopping. Forget training someone on this years technology changes, just dump them and get a new one.

Its funny,

You know, I never see an advertisement looking for automotive technicians with skills on next years model.

I mean really, the guys fixing last years cars may as well be COBOL developers right??

When the IT programming language or process of the year comes along, everybody will be advertising and looking for 10 years advanced experience with a 6 month old technology.

Come on!!! – can the auto industry be so out of date? forget training those service techs! – just fire them all, and hire new ones! Surely there are already techs learning how to fix all next years cars right now!

Oh yes, wait – there are – the Automotive industry is preparing for the training their techs need for the 2009 model year as we write these words.

Maybe we are the ones truly out of date

As with any thing, it is never “that” simple. But it is a problem never the less.

UPDATE: timing is everything right? I had barely published this when I read an article in the March 01 print edition of CIO regarding server virtualization.

“… it can be hard to learn as you go with virtualization…a consultant can help you avoid blunders…”

Uh huh – training can too …..

my 2 cents

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