Quick Tip - The Manager as a role model

The ethic of reciprocity "Treat others as you would like to be treated" is an understated gem when it comes to management. To put it into the management context "The way you act as a leader (Manager) will dictate the way your team acts". If you don't run your meetings to an Agenda, nor will your team? If you don't set a consistent example of how to approach problems or scenario's within your group nor will your team.

I've experienced this first hand on a couple of occasions, and have suffered the consequence. On one occasion, shortly before a two week absence I was visibly frustrated with the organisation I work within. By the time I returned from my sojourn, feeling chipper about the situation I had to go into damage control and remediate morale in the team.

With that in mind, if there are behaviours occurring in your team that you don't like. Have a quick look at yourself, you may in-fact be role modeling these behaviours.

Cheers

Andrew

How Win Friends and Influence People

A very quick review. Dale Carnegie first wrote this book back in 1936, since that time a few revisions have been published and the editors of these books have worked to modernise the stories/case studies on a regular basis. For example the copy I have was last printed in 1999 in the Harper Business Classics series.

Now I have read this book cover to cover, and I can confirm it has some tremendous points in the book. Just that reading the book really did feel like reading one of the classics. It was a bit tortuous at times and as you can imagine written in 1936, it has a very "Gentlemanly" tone to it.

I can recommend buying this book - it is quite an asset to have on your bookshelf. For now though I've included a summary of the principles from each chapter below. Simply considering these principles at face value provides some benefit. Be aware though - putting them to practice is much harder.

Note this summary comes from a Dale Carnegie Page at:

http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/carnegie.html

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. Don't criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six ways to make people like you

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
6. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Win people to your way of thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
A leader's job often includes changing your people's attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Cheers

Andrew

5 Why's Interview Tips

Here is something that is reasonably topical for me at the moment, Interviewing! What is the best way to go about it? How about some simple tips or advice in regards to how to handle yourself? As I am asking these questions myself I thought I would share with you some of the answers I have found of late.

To provide this information I am going to draw upon a number of resources ranging form cio.com.au through to TSI (Targeted Selection Interview) and my own personal experience and observations. The point is the tips here are non-specific to any one circumstance. In fact the tips here can be used by both the Interviewer and Interviewee.

That is if you are the interviewer the tips below may give you some perspectives on questions you could ask or the approach to take. Alternatively the tips could help you to identify a way to challenge the norm and really stretch your candidates. For the Interviewee the advice will be quite straight forward.

So what are the key points to an interview that you should be aware of?

Be Prepared. This will involve everything from looking at the company website, annual reports through to chasing context specific Knowledge. In reality the website will give you the public face of the organisation - that is press releases, vision statement, community involvement etc. This public face gives you the opportunity to cast your research a little further afield; a given press release may indicate partnerships or supply relationships that may be of interest and relevant to you depending upon the nature of the role you are going for.

In addition to this there is one source of information that you should never overlook. Your network!! Based upon what you have learnt during your research of the company, check for links to your personal network. Interestingly, and not that I have done it yet this may be where sites such as linked in may come into their own. Go an meet with your contact, openly tell them what you are up to and you will most probably be pleasantly surprised. It goes without saying it pays to pick up the bill in such encounters.

Finally on preparation - don't be overly prepared, or obsessive about it. Going in and showing of your knowledge of the annual reports or any other obscure data isn't really going to help you with your interview. If anything you may cause some concern in your interviewers.

Think of the first 100 days. The first 100 days is when all of your peers form their opinion of you, you'll identify all of the key stake-holders, opinion makers and allies, as well as start to identify your workload. So what has that got to do with the interview? Quite a lot really. Basically you should behave in the interview as you would in the first 100 days. Finding answers to above questions by asking your own:

• Who are your stake-holders?
• What relationships are important to the role? How are those relationships running today?
• Down to detail of the nature of the work and how it is currently carried out?

Interestingly this is a really easy way of breaking the ice. As Dale Carnegie, of "How to win friends and influence people" fame suggests "Talk in terms of the other person's interests". This in fact will put you into a consultative frame with the interviewer and make you both more relaxed.

A word of warning though - don't try to solve their problems during the interview. This will in fact get your interviewer on the back foot and a bit defensive. If you find an interviewer is being a little evasive or unclear, now is not the time to go for the real answer. This is definitely one time you do not want to put the 5 Why's technique to work.

Success Stories. Have them at hand, Martha Heller who inspired this particular post suggests at-least five, each supported by three bullet points. I think this is a good idea, but what should the points be? I suggest aligning your success stories to best fit the job description, and then the three supporting points to align with strengths or requirements identified in the advertisement or as advised by the person who has organised the introduction.

The final step in your preparation is having a clear and constructive answer to one of the most often asked questions in an interview, although it can take many forms. "Why are you interested in working here at company BLAH?". Interestingly, having a great answer to this particular sort of question will allow you to fend off other questions such as "Why do you want to leave your current employer?", "Why did you leave?", "How come your not currently working".

So now that you are prepared, what other things should you think about? What type of interview is it going to be? Is it a free flowing interview, a Targeted Interview or even a technical interview?

Free flowing interviews are most probably the hardest to have a prescriptive response to. They are normally quite a good indicator of how the organisation or individual interviewer operates, and they do offer you an opportunity to lead the way and get your value onto the table. The difficulty is that a good amount of objectivity on the interviewers behalf may be lacking. Therefore make sure you are very attentive to the conversation.

Targeted Selection Interviews (TSI). Personally this approach to interviewing is great, both as the interviewer and interviewee. The questions in a TSI interview traditionally revolve around experience or scenario's. e.g. "Tell me about a time when...." or "If you were to find yourself in... what would you do?". This is where your preparation above starts to become an asset.

The key suggestion here is that the interviewer is looking for detail & insights into your experience and persona. If the interviewer is having to dig to find out the intricacies of a project or scenario you have been involved in, you may come across as vague or evasive. Also do not give text book answers to scenario questions. e.g. "Tell me about the time...?" Well first I would.... You're wasting your time. Give them specifics, talk in the first person, tell them the process you used and finish by indicating the outcome you achieved.

Technical interviews - Conceptually easier as you are not dealing with any of that vague management scenario type stuff. Problem is they may ask you to do things you have not done in a long time. This can be particularly stressful if you have not done your homework and identified the technology or products the company uses. There is nothing more frustrating than being handed a page of code and asked "Tell me what this does".

Of course the Alpha Geek of the office has been at it, selecting the most difficult obscure code they could find and removing any type of descriptive variables etc. Of course we all know this is not how you normally write or read code. In short, if you are applying for a job in a technical role or company, ask your recruiter (or the person introducing you) to provide you with some insight on what to expect. Then go freshen up on the technology or approaches as required.

Finally you've done your preparation, you know the interview style that is going to be used and no-one has ever answered the "work here" question as well as you have planned. What else do you need to know? Two more things!

On completion of the meeting don't go for the Close. You could ask the what next question. I definitely wouldn't go for anything stronger than that. Don't ask how many others are going for the job? who you are up against? how you compare? etc.. Confidently thank the interviewer for their time, let them know that you enjoyed the interview (if you did) and look forward to meeting them again (if you do) in the future. You're job is now done, go and relax.

Finally, remember until you've got the job offer, you've got nothing. Going out with a swagger and declaring success to all your mates can have some painful repercussions down the line. The team at Manager-Tools state this quite clearly in their video "Horstmans first law of interviewing". They make a really good point at reminding you why you've read this post in the first place.

I hope you've found this information useful and good luck with your next interview.

Cheers

Andrew

Apologies - More Soon

Apologies for the absence of posts at this time. I've been away at the 10th Annual ITSMF Conference in Melbourne.

I will be out with more soon.

Cheers

Andrew

FreeMind - Product Review

I had the Freemind application recommended to me by a friend as an effective brainstorming tool. He was spot on - it is a tremendous tool. I've been using it in my workplace over the last couple of weeks and have found it a valuable asset not only for creating a broad perspective on a problem I am solving, but a great tool for communicating to others and having them contribute to my thought process.

Freemind is "FREE" software. I can confirm this through the licensing panel when using the software. Of course this means credit should be given to Joerg Mueller and the rest of the open source project team that worked on this product. It really is quite a sweet little application.

So What makes it so sweet? The simplicity and ease of use and in particular the way you can actually use your keyboard to do most things such as expanding and collapsing branches, creating new Nodes or simply navigating around your mind map.

Freemind does not try to be anything else but a straightforward mind-mapping tool. Once you have made a mind map you can then export it into a few mediums e.g. HTML page, JPEG, XHTML or open office writer document. Note I've not had a pressing need to do this at all and have only tinkered to see how it would look. The HTML/XHTML appears to be the most effective approach at the moment.

Another point that has been quite appealing for myself personally is that the freemind application is available in two versions. One for both Windows XP and Mac OS X. This has allowed me use both my work laptop (xp) and home system (Mac OS X) to mature the mind-maps I have been working on.

From a collaborative perspective I have used the application at my desk with peers and also in open meetings with the map projected onto a screen for the whole room to contribute. Talking your way through a mind map also provides a great medium for explaining a broad range of perspectives to your audience, and as it is quite interactive in the participation levels are quite good.

Overall - a very handy application and one that I have already started handing onto peers.

Cheers

Andrew

Note - clicking on the freemind links above takes you to http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Late Addition: Here is a screen capture of Freemind on the Mac.

InBox Zero

Is your e-mail plagued by an InBox out of control?

It appears that e-mail assumed to be the predominant method of communication in todays corporate workplace. In fact it has become so bad you could start to argue that e-mail is now becoming ineffective. People in fact are starting to walk away throwing their hands in the air.

Merlin Mann of 43Folders has a massive amount of material on this issue with some tremendous and practical suggestions. You can get these at http://www.43folders.com/izero/
The google presentation which is his latest addition is well worth a watch.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=973149761529535925&hl=en

Some of these points have helped me achieve "InBox Zero"

Cheers

Andrew

The Process Approach

Now this is one of the most useful tools I have come across as a manager. I've used it on a regular basis, from taking over a team in turmoil through to simply thinking through how something should work within my existing environment. I first discovered the Process approach in the appendices of the ITIL Support Services book. As per usual I took it out of the ITIL context and applied it to my own immediate needs.

The Process approach is a simple diagram that identifies some of the high level considerations behind identifying and defining the processes that you may need to work with at some point during your career. It is in no way a substitute for more robust approaches such as Six Sigma, or even Lean Six Sigma. In fact I often use these more robust methods when I have the luxury of time on my side. The Process approach often acts as an input to these more robust considerations.

The Process approach introduces the three core considerations in process design; that is process control, process flow and finally process enablers. By focusing on this approach you will ensure you:

1. Consider inputs and activities beforehand
2. Measure and steer process development/improvement effectively
3. Assess the success of the process and confirm if your needs have been met

As shown in the diagram below each of these sections contain two to three further points.
Process Controls

Often overlooked in process definition is the concept of controls. This includes clearly defining what the process is meant to do, who is accountable for making it happen and how you are going to measure the success of the process. In ignoring this people jump straight into the process flow which may work in the short term but will cause the process to atrophy over a period of time. By focusing on and defining the following three points first you will improve the chance of process success.

Process Owner - This is the person (preferably defined by role) that is accountable for ensuring that the process is running effectively and all those responsible for acting/working with in the process are doing exactly that. In addition to this the process owner would take on the role of periodically reviewing the process they own and driving continuous improvement.

Process Goal - What exactly are you looking to achieve through defining and implementing this process. The goal should be referred back to during the development, the defining of the performance indicators and the ongoing management of the process.

KPI (Key Performance Indicators) - These are the quality parameters and metrics relevant to the operation of the process at hand. Examples may include speed and quality of processing, number of rejects, deviations or even knowledge accumulation.

Process Flow

This is the meaty part of the approach where you actually get to do stuff such as define the activities, flows and all that sort of wizbangery. This is in fact what everyone charges into. My advice is don't, at-least get some of the Process controls defined. Once you have done this you can start to play with the process quite effectively.

Inputs (& Input Specifications) - This will seem blindingly obvious, but as you go through this you will successfully define 80% of your inputs up front. Whilst working the process you may identify one or two additional items or specifications. If it is a physical process you are defining the input's may be easily identified. e.g. building a table. This can be considerably different when defining a knowledge based process. You will find that you may refine the specifications as you proceed. Interestingly considering the inputs may start to help you define some of the resources you need to consider in the process enabler section.

Process Flow - The core activities and subprocesses that make up and represent the core output of using the process approach. Writing good process is key. Some reasons as to why you would create a process flow are:

1. Describe how activities are being done
2. Identify where modifications to an existing process might best be made
3. Investigate where problems might occur
4. Identify how, when, or where we should measure an existing process to confirm the process goal
5. Process flows Aid in driving continuous improvement

Teaching yourself how write a good process is critical here. Here are some basic guidelines to consider:

• All process maps start with identifying stakeholder needs and end with satisfying these needs
• Use either Horizontal or vertical swim-lanes to represent areas of responsibility
• Align activities to area of responsibility by placing in the appropriate swim-lanes
• Use standard symbols within the Process Flow

Output - This is the final part of defining the Process flow, and is representative of the outputs that are required to meet the overall process goal. These could be stand alone products, resolution of customer issues, or in-fact inputs to another process. The key thing to consider here is that the outputs are most probably closely tied to the Process Goal as well as being one of the key performance indicators, both of which have been defined in the Process Controls mentioned above.

Process Enablers

This final section of the Process approach has most probably been taking form as you have defined the elements of the previous two sections. It in fact is representative of all of the supporting components of a process. These may take the form of an individual role within and organisation through to a piece of mechanical or technical equipment. These two categories become key when starting to implement the process you have defined.

The process enablers consist of the following two categories:

Resources - This is anything from a request slip (piece of paper) through to an computer based system to manage the process. Any physical resource required to support the process is defined here.

Roles & Responsibilities - Roles may be anything from a machinist, call centre agent through to a management role. It is at this point that you detail the role and some of its primary responsibilities.

How to use the Process Approach:

As stated above this is not a completely robust approach and definitely does not substitute for more in depth methods when you have the time. I have traditionally used this within groups when I need to get some quick re-mediation work underway, or to provide one of my team members with some initial guidance on process implementation.

A common way for me to personally use this approach is as a bit of a brainstorming tool, either individually sitting on a train, at a coffee shop, or during a facilitated session with my team. This initial work often forms the basis for more detailed work to be carried out. On other occasions when coaching graduates or wishing to empower team members I have simply walked them through the above diagram and then asked the individual to go away and define the process.

Once you have finished considering the elements within the process approach and put them into your preferred medium - be it a populated diagram through to a powerpoint following the same structure you can start to identify the tasks or activities that need to be undertaken to make the process a reality. It is at this time that the process approach becomes a real asset as it gives you a sound medium for communicating to all of the participants involved with implementing the process.

One further perspective to this is that the process approach can help you achieve a standard documenting approach that can be used as a central point or method for communicating the way things are done within your group. Something which can be an absolute asset when moving on from the role and handing over to your successor.

What next/if/else?

Feel free to copy the above image, or make your own. The process approach is actually a public domain item, as much of the information provided within the ITIL framework is. It is a very simple tool that can you provide you with some tremendous outcomes when used properly. I have used this method a number of times within my career with considerable impact. It allows you to achieve some quick wins using an approach that provides sustainability of process into the future.

I hope you have found this post of interest.

cheers

Andrew

Create & Communicate Direction - a simple tool

The method/approach I am about to describe is an approach that I came accross during a leadership training course through the company I currently work with. This particular training focused on using the "Create & Communicate Direction" tool for doing exactly that with the team you managed. My finding is they obviously had taken a really handy tool and contextualised it to their local leadership needs.

My view is that this approach can be used in pretty much any communication scenario you can think of. In fact it is really handy when dealing with individuals or groups that are hard pressed for time.

What is the Create and Communicate Direction (CC&D) Tool?

CC&D is an approach to preparing structured communications. This preparation is carried out through answering four simple questions, Why? What? How? and finally So What (Next/If/Else)?

Why are you communicating? Why are you in the room, why did you are you taking up your audiences valuable time? Why is it important that you need to get the message through? What is the detail of the Why? What are the key points you need to convey? The Quality, Cost or time considerations etc.

How do you want you audience to respond to this message. Do you want them to simply be aware of your message, learn from it, make a decision or even pay for it. So What? Is the next activity? what if we don't take the advice or What else do we need.

How do you use CC&D?

I have two uses for CC&D, the first use is my personal use of the tool. This predominantly involves the use of a pen and piece of paper. Divide the page into four sections, title each quadrant appropriately. That is Why? What? How? (Next/If/else). Once you have done this work through and answer each of those questions.
Once you've run through answering the questions you can now decide on the medium that you wish to use to convey your message, is it an e-mail, a meeting a presentation or simply a chat over a coffee. You could also socialise this piece of paper with a peer or other interested parties to mature the message before you decide on the medium you will use with your target audience.

The second approach to using CC&D is as a coaching and consistency tool. by coaching your team to use this approach you will find a number of benefits. Firstly the communications you receive will become more consistent and clear. This approach to communicating within your team will subsequently extend to your teams interaction with other groups, business units, companies and customers.

So What Next/If/Else?

Put the practice to work, experiment within your day to day job. Remember the four questions Why? What? How? and So What? I suspect if you give this a go you will be pleasantly surprised. If you look back you'll find I've eaten my own cooking by applying the approach to this post.

Cheers

Andrew