Stress in the Workplace

Our modern – get it done yesterday – world is really kind of a sham.  Very few products are really thought out and built out as well as they should be and everyone suffers.  From the customer who pays their hard earned money for something that does not work as advertised to the employees who hurry to rush something out the door in order to make artificial deadlines set for economic reasons.

We all end up suffering, the deadlines, the public bitching and moaning about: “Why is it taking so long?” and the stress that the developers of the products incur all add up to a situation that can only implode.

If the demand is overhyped and the company overproduces, they run the risk of being stuck with a huge bill and a huge stock of worthless product.

If consumer demand is not managed, the consumer will be let down by the reality of the product and the company again risks failure.

When companies fail, their support structure fails.  The customer has no one to turn to for help when the product stops working or when they need more.  Then they run to risk of failing in whatever they were using the product for.

The risk oriented economic culture that we have in place is to blame for the current economic downturn. 

Had the automakers taken the time to design and build their cars right, they would not have lost business to the import cars coming from Asia and Europe. 

Had the financial institutions taken a conservative approach to investments, they might not have needed bailouts from the government.

More importantly, had we, the consumers, not forced companies to push products outs before they were fully baked and vetted, we would not end up owning junk.

We all just need to take a step back and think about the choices that we make. I remember seeing a diagram that described software development.  It was a pie chart with three equal slices: good, fast, cheap.  Underneath, it said: Pick two.

This is not just true in software development, but in all product development.  You can have a car designed and into production cheaply and have it well made, but you better be patient and hire people who are willing to work for less.  However, those people might need a lot more time than their higher paid counterparts to design the car.

On the other hand, you can have a really well made car, and you can design it quickly.  It’s called rebranding and technology leasing and high end car manufacturers do it all the time.  If you know of a good engine, lease out the technology and have someone else do it for you.  It’ll cost you an arm and a leg, but at least it will be fast and good.

I think we all know what fast and cheap gets you.  Every Pinto, Aztec, and HHR built stands as an example of rushed decisions. Focus groups are great, but the do not read the market.

So, for all of our sakes, slow down, think about what you are doing and do not commit to thing that are nigh on impossible to achieve.

Communication

We all know that communication is the driving force behind business successes and failures.  Great communication will make your team/company a winner, while poor communication will render you a failure or in the best case an also ran.

I have come up with a theory on how to communicate properly and have distilled it to a few easy to follow steps:

1. Figure out what the person you are communicating with needs from you.  Be as anal-retentive as possible here, because a simple oversight can cause a week of lost productivity and major losses.

2. Give the person what they need. This requires some analytical thinking because sometimes you cannot divulge certain information and in that case you have to give the person you are communicating with an answer that is palatable but not full of crap.

3. Follow up to make sure the person has accepted the communication and that they are content with its contents.  This does not mean that they need to be happy with what they received, just that they do not require any further information.  You could be telling someone that their family just died and that they owe you a lot of money for burial costs, but the important part here is that they know where to send it and by when.

4. Empathize or at least sympathize with the other person.  They might be saying that they understand the information when they really do not.  Make sure that you are getting through and try to see things from their point of view.

If you do this, then you should get somewhere in your communications and they will not be the cause of your failure (heck, you might not even fail).

SmartPhones: The Future or a Fad?

SmartPhones are everywhere, whether it is a the latest version of the iPhone or the latest iPhone killer, bombarding us with their shiny screens and “power-features”.   What do we actually use them for though?  What does a phone do and why do we even use such a device?  Will the future be bright for the SmartPhone or will it be just another stone in the road to the future?

“I need more minutes.”

“Call me after 7.”

“Don’t text me, I don’t get texts.”

We have all heard these comments and many more like them.  These days, all those things are just bits in the giant stream of information that circles the globe and connects humanity in a way nothing else has before.  All SmartPhones are internet capable and all modern mobile networks are cellular, so at the end of the day whether you are looking for movie show times or talking to you parents across the country, you are using data.

Data is cheap, and frankly should not distinguish between internet browsing, calls, text, mms or streaming media.  You should be charged to access and if access is such a scarce resource, then charge per megabyte or GB (seems more fair with the proliferation of data hungry services).

I have a SmartPhone and hardly ever use the Phone feature.  I browse the web, play games, watch movies, stream music, I’ve even used it as a digital cue card during a presentation.  The Phone part of the SmartPhone is quickly becoming just another app.  Frankly, I pay for the phone service so that I can get data with it, I could really do without for the most part.

The future cannot be stopped and business models never survive if they do not adapt to the changing market. The market is moving toward a data driven model where the devices become transient and the data becomes the permanent thing that we anchor ourselves to.  More importantly, companies that want to succeed should understand this and move away from the X minutes + data charges and simply do what the ISPs are doing: Give people access at a given tier of bandwidth and only overcharge for excessive abuse.  Sprit is already moving in this direction and I applaud them for it.

Centrism: The Answer to Politics

How many times have you heard someone say that the other side will be the end of: the Country, Western Civilization, Civilization in general, or mankind as a whole?

I know that every time I hear such arguments, I think that this person simply lives too far to the side they have chosen (and this applies to both the left and right) to see the big picture.

No one wants to end the country or world or mankind.  People generally all want the same things: food and water, a place to sleep, someone to share it all with and in some cases power over others. This seems like one of those power crazed aspirations, however power comes in many forms.

Power can be political, such as our elected officials.

Power can be influence based, such as organized crime.

Power can be respect, such as the power a great coach has over their players.

Power can be love, such as the power a parent has to teach their children right from wrong and raise them to be functional adults.

And last but not least, power can be fear, such as the power terrorists have over those that they terrorize.

Whether you are a politician, parent, terrorist, coach, teacher, or whatever else you may be, you want power on some level.  We all become upset when someone else wrests power away from us and uses it in a way that we would not.

You might be wondering where I am heading with all of this and frankly it is a rather obvious place, empathy or at least sympathy. In order to bring the world together and achieve a more prosperous and peaceful existence for all, we need to empathize with one another or if we are not capable of that, at least sympathize with one another.

I may not be able to understand a man’s ability to strap explosives to their body and explode for their belief, but I can at least comprehend it and try to figure out what to do to allow that person’s needs to be met while my own are also met.  This does mean that we would all have to compromise and not simply act in a manner that only benefits ourselves, but this does not mean that we should let other walk all over us.

Moderate views are the glue that allow for civilized discourse and bloodless debates to occur. It is debate, comprehension and a conscious effort to work toward a tolerant and understanding world that will bring humanity into the future we see in sci-fi movies and TV shows.

Leave the hate and warmongering where it belongs, in the history books.

The Paradigm of Cost

“You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”

We have all heard this expression uttered regarding political choices, professional sports, and a plethora of other things.  However, lately I have seen situations where it has been applied to business more than anything else.

Business is a fine balance.  On one side you have operating costs and on the other you have revenue.  On one side you have business beating down your down to give you money for the thing you sell, on the other you have the possibility of a dry spell ending your company.  Quality too is a fine balance, you either cut corners by having too few resources on staff, or you end up overstaffed and you bleed money.

How does one weigh this balance?  Where is the line drawn?  All business wants to grow, but growing too fast can cause a bubble to form and pop, causing everything you’ve worked for to come crashing down. Stagnation is also a worry, do you invest time and money into every new productivity enhancing product on the market or do you let things continue working as they have.

I have a few thoughts regarding this and I would like to share them with you.

First, the idea of understaffing and overstaffing is a concept that was invented by someone with a good understanding of numbers and little knowledge of the intangibles.  You should always have at least one resource on deck to help wherever help is needed.  Also of note is that not all resources are at the same level so simply hiring on help when you have more business is not really feasible as everyone has a learning curve.

Second, technology pays for itself, always.  This statement has a caveat that the Return on Investment for a piece of technology always has to be based on time.  Time is the most valuable thing a company has and if you can save your employees time by giving them faster computers, streamlining workflow, simplifying processes, then do it.  It saves time and that time can be use for other company related activities (you know, working more).

Third, more hours DOES NOT equal more productivity.  Well it does in short spaced out bursts, but not on death-marches.  People are not machines (and even those wear out).  A person might be getting the sleep and food they need, but they will wear out mentally after a while and either quit, do their job poorly or simply crash at a critical moment.  You hope that the work load returns to a normal load before these happens, but hope does not build multi-billion dollar enterprises.

Finally, I want to encourage all business owners to not nickel and dime themselves today in order to supposedly stay afloat while sacrificing the future.  Products do not progress evenly, those that pour time and money into their product will end up with something that is easier to market and sell.  So, does what Google does and push the envelope on technology and be better off for it.