Musings on management, technology, and the science of making work and workers happier and more productive

Monday, April 29, 2013

Starting 10 failed businesses in 10 years, or 5 failed businesses in 5 years does not make you a serial entrepreneur.

Constantly looking for opportunities to create higher value in the world, delivering that value, and then moving on to create higher value with your learning, by addressing current market and technological needs takes consistent, intelligent hard work. Pivoting, too, is a scientific process. Just running around pretending to be one thing today, and something else next month does not make you a serial entrepreneur. Squandering your team’s talent and your investors money while you collect a paycheck, and then rinsing and repeating, is not serial entrepreneurship.

Reminds me of when i went to a talk in 2008, my companion was an attractive female friend. A gentleman at the table was regaling her with stories of his serial entrepreneurship while I was refilling my plate. He was “a CTO at a solar startup”. A wise old man at the table asked him “So, what did you do before this?”. He replied “I was the CTO of a green energy company”. And before that? “I was the Founder of a networking company”. Wise old dude “Wow, that is a lot of different technology areas, isn’t it?”.

Some at the table understood.

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Monday, April 22, 2013

ETL. Extract, transform, load. Properly understand the structure, sources and means of acquiring data. Filter and pre-process the data. Process it based on priority, squeeze out information and insights to present meaningful formats, action and retain these insights, throw away used data.  Without ALL these steps, you will build a “data landfill” not a “data warehouse”.

I love how this philosophy applies to Big Data in the corporate world, information gathering in the intelligence community, student learning, and even interpersonal relationships.

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“There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, “Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,” and an optimist who says, “Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.” Either way, nothing happens.
- Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia”

— Not reacting to clear calls to action is irresponsible, lazy, and an act of fear. Jim Collin’s “Stockdale Paradox” is about quiet, unwavering confidence, not inaction. 

This social sharing shift will change the way businesses hire, who they hire and how they compensate workers, said Rometty. Employees will be rated by bosses, colleagues and even customers on the value of the information they create, she said, which could impact compensation. A one-star rating would result in a one-star compensation range, just as a five-star rating would ensure five-star compensation. Like data analytics, more and varied input on each employee’s performance may create more objective pay models.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

You are about to start a new job. Your current employer was nice sometimes, nasty many times. Do you finish your obligations to the current employer to the highest possible level and then start at the new employer? Or, do you run for the new job that seems to have greener grass i.e. nicer people, more interesting work? Is running to the new employer ASAP smart and pragmatic? Or is leaving your current job with a 7 star rating more important ethically?

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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Yet Clare’s sharp questions must I shun
Must separate Constance from the nun
Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
A Palmer too! No wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye

- Marmion, by Sir Walter Scott

Conniving, duplicitous people will always try to avoid the insightful eye of the intelligent, abet the corruption of contemptible collaborators, and fear the glare of the virtuous.

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Friday, February 1, 2013

If you have two potential solutions to a problem, a simple rule of thumb is: if executing one of the solutions repeatedly does not solve the problem, it was not addressing the root cause, and was at best, an interim solution, and at worst, a waste of time. It was just addressing a proximate cause.

If executing a solution “kills dead” the problem, it addressed the root cause. Why it was not readily apparent that it was the best solution: A mix of fear, inexperience, incompetence, politics, cost, time to implement, and so on.

When faced with a range of solutions, SWOT analysis is commonly used, but it often yields similarly weighed options. Use the test outlined above to eliminate options “If I repeated this solution over and over again, would it kill dead the problem?”

Where to use this: If you have to get back to a customer while you are busy fixing their problem, do you focus on informing your management and the customer, or on deep troubleshooting unknown unknowns?

  • The best answer is both. But if you had to choose only one due to time constraints? Obviously, if the customer is an external, paying customer, keep them informed. Customer satisfaction and revenue are the larger problems here.
  • If the time to solution is long, send regular updates as you keep working.
  • If the customer is internal, and the demand for frequent updates is more due to a middle manager or gopher trying to suck up to his management, trying to add “value” by showing he “drives” projects? Politely point him to this post on proximate cause vs root cause. Frequent updates, no matter how many, will not fix the problem. Troubleshooting will. (Exceptions do apply where updates yield additional expertise or resources)

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