Verizon Wireless

I have been a longtime supporter of Verizon, and I use them as my preferred wireless carrier. However, I still feel they are wrong in this action. If Verizon Wireless wants to target hardware resellers then it certainly can charge a termination fee that is equal to the retail list price of the hardware device minus the amount paid at the start of the contact for all contracts canceled in the first six months. If the contract is canceled after the first six months, then the hardware cost should prorate to the end a life of the agreement. Alternatively, they can simply collect the hardware from the consumer and not charge any termination fee. This would give them additional hardware to certify and resell at a discount.

It certainly seems to me that Verizon Wireless is looking forward milking the consumer for more money and is using the hardware resellers as an excuse to do it. Maybe the model of subsidized hardware sales through wireless service contracts is fundamentally broken and the wireless carriers need to develop a different business model to meet the needs of their business and consumers. The wireless carriers need to stop punishing their customers and start delivering on quality service and treating the consumer with respect.

Legacy systems are the bane of most IT organizations. They handcuff us to the past and burden of our staff and budgets. The only problem is that we cannot ever seem to let them go. Do IT organizations suffer from some strange variant of the empty nest syndrome?

Let us face it, Windows 2000 is very old in the computer world. I know many of you still have an old Windows NT box still hanging around. It is not easy to get historic systems out of the production environment. After all, if it is not broken then why fix it. However, the modernization of legacy systems must be done before it creates a serious burden on the organization.

The mainline hardware manufacturers are not making the drivers for the older operating systems. We all have older systems operating just fine and meeting the needs of our users, but what happens when the hardware dies? I know some friends have purchased spare servers from eBay to self insure against hardware failures. This is not a good long-term solution. A self-supporting hardware depot may work for another year or two, but companies need to develop real plans for the regular upgrade or replacement of legacy systems. I would encourage my IT brethren to take an inventory of their systems and look at how they would complete a full hardware replacement if required.

I helped a friend complete a review a few months back, and we were both surprised that he had a single system that was not upgradable to Windows 2003 and had a peculiar hardware requirement. He went to eBay to make sure that he had parts for the next year, and is now making the case to management for a replacement platform.

Hardware changes but legacy systems rarely do. Make sure your assets are not hanging out to dry when that old system will not turn on one morning, and you have no plan.

Email as a medium of communication has leaped from purely business to a social communication vehicle. Corporations must deal with excessive amounts of spam, personal and business related e-mail that all directly impact employee productivity. A study found that ”nearly a quarter of all corporate e-mail is personal in nature“.

Frequently checking new email messages breaks concentration, changes focus, and elevate new e-mail messages to the highest priority task regardless of what is, or should be, the actual highest priority task. Under most circumstances email should be checked once an hour to once every other hour.  Making this change will have a huge impact in employee productivity.

Most people should not fear making this change. Email is a tool and should not become the master of employee days. Management should set an acceptable response or review time for email throughout the organization. If issues are critical in nature, then colleagues can contact one another by phone or in person.  For critical issues this would be the preferred communication method anyway.

A research study, “Case Study: evaluating the effect of email interruptions within the workplace“ authored by Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University found that 70% of arriving emails were reacted to within 6 seconds. Once the email was addressed, it took an average employee 64 seconds to resume working at the same rate they were before the interruption. 

Think about how many messages are sent and received in a company each day. It would not be uncommon for the  multitude of managers, middle, and senior management to receive hundreds of messages each day. This can be a dramatic draw on managements time and attention.

If an employee has set up the email application to check for email every 5 minutes then it is possible, if (s)he is a heavy user of email, that there could be 96 interruptions in a normal 8-hour working day. However, if the email application was set up to check for email every 45 minutes then the number of possible interruptions is reduced to 11 per day.

Think of all the lost productivity with 96 interruptions in a day. Did all those interruptions warrant an immediate response? Were they the highest priority task that should have been addressed or did they reduce employee effectiveness? Changes in email habits are never easy in the age of instant response expectations, but setting a regular schedule of checking e-mail can increase employee productivity significantly. For a company wide change to be successful the full management team must be supportive of the new standard. If it is implemented correctly, the company should achieve higher levels of productivity and better communication between employees.

I have yet to be impressed with any blog editing software that I used. Most blog editing or authoring applications do not see to offer much in the way of new or additional features that is not contained in the  default WordPress. However, my opinion may be changing now that I have been playing with Microsoft Live Writer. Microsoft Live Writer is not perfect, but in several ways Live Writer is better than the default WordPress post editor.

Live Writer connected fine to my self-hosted WordPress blog and downloaded my tags and categories. I edited  an old post as well as create a new post and page. I liked that I could save posts and pages as drafts both locally or directly to my blog to finish of with the WordPress editor. Live Writer supports scheduling posts for future publishing and posting live to the site. The built in spell check worked well and allowed me to add words to the dictionary. The post images were uploaded correctly to the server and Live Writer allowed me to change, and standardize, the size of my blog images. The application supports plug-ins to extend the functionality, and it appears to have a decent development following with over 100 plug-ins available for download.

I had some display problems with right justified images, but they posted correctly to my blog. This was my only gripe with the software so far and may have more to do with my theme than the application. That is saying something.

So far, so good on the basics.  Now for the more challenging features.

One of the challenges working with the default WordPress editor is html tables. You need to use  a plug-in or code tables by hand. Microsoft Live Writer makes working with tables a snap. You enter the number of rows and columns you wish in your table, and you are done. You can customize the table with boarders and spacing as you need from the table properties. For me, the easy of working with table is the single greatest advantage of the application and why I will be using it for a while.

Microsoft Live Writer will not make you a better writer, nor will it save huge amounts of time, unless you are working with tables, but it is a solid blog editor. It is feature rich and easy to use. Live Writer is an improvement over any default blog editor that I have ever used.

Do you have a great blog editing application that you use that I should check out?

Texting and other distracted driver situations seem to be catching the spotlight these days as news agencies continue to report on accidents involving distracted drivers almost daily. Not too long ago the big story was a train driver who killed himself and 24 other people in Los Angles while texting. Earlier this year a study from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis was getting attention because it estimated 6% of accidents might be related to mobile phone and texting. Now a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study that used cameras mounted on long-haul trucks found that texting increased collision risk by 23%. The data is seriously starting to mount up for a nationwide ban on the practice.

Several states have already banned texting while driving and more are on the way. States like California are looking forward to smacking a first offense fine of $20, token albeit, in an attempt to change driver behavior. Alone these insignificant punishments are not going to change usage patterns significantly. Fines will need to be increased and law enforcement must make it a priority before meaningful changes in behavior will occur.

Washington and statehouses across America are looking only to legislation as a change agent when they should be employing multiple agents. Corporate America should be mobilized in this charge; after all, it is in their best interest. When companies put policies around usage in place, and back them with enforcement, people will change quickly. A fine of $20, $50, or $100 is not a motivator, but losing one’s employment will move people to change quickly. It is obvious that 99.9% of companies can live with the productivity reduction that will come from bans on phone, e-mail, or texting while driving. It seems that management in most companies have yet to fully realize the risks and put their full force behind the message to employees.

Companies have more to lose than individuals do from distracted driving accidents. It is simply the law of deep pockets. The deeper the corporate pockets, the bigger (and more frequent) the lawsuits. The bad public relations may ultimately even be more costly than the out-of-court settlements in the end.

The tides are changing as seen by the recent policy change that banned employees from using mobile phones or texting use while driving at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. It will take time, but even government agencies are realizing that lawsuits and bad public relations are not worth the risks associated with the minor connivance of mobile phone and texting usage while driving.

We will see an increase in corporate bans on mobile device usage while driving over the next few years. If nothing else, it will be legislated, and then companies will comply because the failure to do so is a gift to the opposing counsel.

Today, you have to earn your place and then continually earn the right to stay. A little harsh you might say, maybe, but for upwardly mobile individuals it is reality. Anyone who wants a permanently position in a company, or to cement their current position, must demonstrate commitment to the company long before they should expect to be on the receiving end.

Commitment to the company is demonstrated everyday and mainly in small ways. Many of the below suggestions are just common sense, but we all know that common sense is not so common.

• Always complete work deliverables with high quality and slightly ahead of schedule if possible.
• Show up to meetings on time or a couple of minutes early.
• Whenever there are lulls in workload, help someone else on their assignments and offer to help peers with their projects.
• Be proactive about job assignments and do not be afraid to suggest new projects or assignment.
• Show up to work a few minutes early and stay a few minutes late.
• Keep long lunches or time spent time on personal activities (calls, e-mail, shopping, etc.) for at least the first six months to an absolute minimum. During this time, you are setting people opinions of your work habits, so set them with care.
• Be enthusiastic about job assignments even when they are brain numbing and always look for ways to shine or improve the process. Do not engage in negativity or complaining about assignments.
• Minimize taking any time-off, but when needed, give your manager as much notice as possible. It is also very wise to “ask” and not “tell” when it comes to taking time-off. This is the time to lock in the impression of dependability.
• Confidential information should be kept confidential and information security taken seriously.
• Ask questions about the company and its direction. Ask your manager, HR, and when appropriate at any company meetings. This will demonstrate that you are engaged and looking to the company’s future.
• And express appreciation for the opportunity the company has provided.

Commitment is a two-way street, but it will not be the employer who starts the ball rolling. They want to know for sure that they have the right person before they commit. We show our commitment, effort, and desire in order to earn our position, and then continue to give it on a perpetual basis to demonstrate that we can be trusted with even more responsibility.

When you started you latest position, how did you show commitment?

No strings attached! I will delete the registration information after the winner is selected, notified, and sends me a valid address for delivery.  The book will be sent directly from Amazon.com. If the winner does not respond within five days of notification another person will be selected. Since I am paying for this out of my own pocket, the shipping is limited to the continental United States.

Register now for the giveaway!  The winner will be chosen on September 30, 2009.

Some people will excel and move up to higher levels of achievement and others will remain in entry-level positions their entire career. Many factors come into play when determining who will be successful and who will be mediocre or unsuccessful their entire lives. I, for one, have always desired the path of success. To that end, I use KPIs to track performance each month.

Good KPIs are not subjective but objective. They are very black and white and do not leave much in the way of wiggle room to debate their meaning. This is their power. As KPIs are tracked over time, the ability is gained to see how performance stacks up over prior months and years. Almost all of my KPIs I graph year-over-year. This allows me to compare performance over the last few months and the prior year. When I see something that is not within an expected range, I am able to look into it immediately and take action, including rewards for achievement, if needed.

In order to define good KPIs, I need a good understanding of the vision, mission, and goals of the company, department, or individual. Yes, I do believe that individuals need vision and mission statements and clearly defined goals to be successful.

Once I understand where the department or individual is coming from, and where they need to go, I can start working on KPI development. I follow a pretty basic and easy method for determining KPIs.

1. Brainstorm to capture everything that can be empirically measured. As with all brainstorming, do not evaluate the quality of feasibility of the suggestions at this point. You want a complete brain dump of everything that can possibly be measured.
2. Review the mission, vision, and goals. If working in a team, everyone needs to have a clear understanding of the mission, vision, and goals. If working on personal KPIs, also review job descriptions, annual reviews, and peer feedback.
3. Group and rank each of these possible KPIs by their relevance and ability to provide clarity on the mission, vision, and goals of the company, department, or individual.
4. Review the possible KPIs for feasibility of tracking. We may have some very good ideas for KPIs that are not realistic because the tracking mechanisms are too burdensome or simply unavailable. These KPIs go off on a separate list for possible future consideration or implementation of a tracking mechanism.
5. Add the tracking frequency for each of the possible KPIs: Again, this is a second way of looking at feasibility and clarity the KPI will provide. If the KPI has to be tracked in a way that is prohibitive to implement it should be moved to the second list.
6. Remove all possible KPIs that do not add value, provide clarity, or cannot be successfully tracked. If the list is still too long, I simply take the top X number of items per grouping.
7. Develop a work plan to capture the KPI data points based off the data capture frequency.
8. The first week of each month, compile all KPI information and generate Excel charts and summary tables. I review this information closely and look for any outliers. Anything that is above or below expectation is investigated and understood. While investigating unexpected improvements, always look and see if the source of improvement may be applicable to other areas.

As an example of KPIs for an IT department, they can track the total number of closed support tickets, initial response time, response time to close a ticket, recurrence rates, failure rates, up-time percentages, support hours, etc.

It is also very common to combine KPIs in your charts and tables. Using the above example, you could graph support hours and total number of closed tickets. When looking at this year-over-year, you should be able to see the effect of support hours on ticket closure rate. Furthermore, looking at these graphs, you can see if your team is closing support tickets at a faster or slower rate than prior periods.

Charting various KPIs are powerful tools when requesting additional resources or policy changes. This single activity alone has allowed it to influence policy and staffing decisions because I had the data to back up my requests.

I would challenge everyone to develop KPIs. Track them regularly and review the results monthly. After just a few months of tracking, you will be able to see patterns and start adjusting to further increase productivity an 

I have had this discussion with friends, colleagues, employees, clients, and countless others over the years, and my core belief has never changed. IT environments must stay reasonably locked down. It protects the employees and the company from the evils in the wild and from the good intentioned but uninformed masses. Common sense and reason must rule every IT decision, but employees must also understand that not every request is reasonable when taken into consideration for the entire company.

Slate ran an article on this topic, and I love this quote, “Here’s why: The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively.” The author, Farhad Manjoo, was riled against the controlling forces of the IT department. He touches on a few of the arguments for the IT restrictions, but I do not believe he has a true understanding of the implications. He also seems to think that all employees are “power users” and employees have lower job satisfaction because they are not running FireFox. I do not think either belief holds any value.

I am not going to trying and the make the point that all unmonitored employees will run amok, that is an unrealistic generalization. However, I have had some experience with clients in a totally open IT environment, and it taught me that the lack of automated controls increases management’s supervision burden. In one of the worst cases, I was requested to put in a Web filter by the CEO of a company because he was concerned about the amount of time being wasted each day on the Internet. We ran a report after a week of monitoring and found that the average sales department employee was browsing the Internet for four hours a day. They were not browsing competitor sites or industry information but pursuing personal interests. Obviously, there was a big shakeup in the department and the worst offenders were ousted.

In that particular case, the company set sales expectations based off of past performance, industry trends, marketing efforts, etc. and the basic assumption that employees were motivated and on task.  These employees were meeting sales expectations. However, just because they were meeting sales expectations, does that give them a license to waste half their day? If they were fully on task, could they have been beating their expectations by 50%? I have heard many times quoted that most industry groups estimate that employees waste on average 25% of their day on non-corporate Internet activities. For some companies in the software, Internet, and media business this makes sense but not for most other companies.

IT departments frequently hear in new software requests that the software is free. I am still amazed at the number of people who do not realize that software installed on their office computer may be licensed differently then when it is installed on their home computer. In an open IT environment the company would need to train all employees to read licensing agreements and know the difference licensing methodologies. What happens when the employee gets it wrong? Who pays the costs if the company is audited by the BSA and they find software license violations?

What about when employees have questions about one-off software applications? The IT department is “supposed” to know how to answer them. Is it even reasonable for the IT group to have that kind of collective knowledge about every application that can be downloaded from the Internet? Even if you doubled or tripled the IT budget, I am not sure the requirement could be met. In the end, IT would have to spend time and money researching how to use non-standard applications to support the user base. But the cry we hear is that the software is free so we should be able to use it. . .free software is not always free.

I was recently lamenting with a friend about a spat he got into over software compatibility. I honestly believe that many people think this is our way of blowing them off. A few years ago, we found particular printer software caused a conflict with our phone system software. When these two applications were loaded on the same computer, it corrupted the OS within a few days. At that time, we allowed employees to install printer software on their corporate laptops for use with while at home. About 25% of those employees had their computers reimaged multiple times. This amounted to a large loss in productivity and cost to the IT department. No one should expect the average employee to be aware of these issues, nor is it reasonable for a company to run continuous training sessions to keep everyone updated on these topics.

And of course, those crazy lawsuits keep popping up all the time. People find some of the strangest reasons to sue other people and their employers. One of the saving graces that companies use to defend themselves is “standard practice”. In any open IT environment, you do not have enforceable standard practices. I have seen some employees accuse their employers of singling them out for recreational web surfing, and not other employees, when confronted about their job performance. When employees are confronted about productivity issues, they tend to redirect the criticism into anything and everything else but themselves. It is sad, but the courts often agree with the employee in these cases if the company does not have policies and standard practices they follow.  

I understand that some large corporations have rather open IT environments. When you peel back the onion a bit, you will find that the environment is not as open as most people believe. Filtering and active monitoring still take place and management will step in when needed.

I do think some of my IT brethren take it a bit far and lock down the environment to the point of reduced productivity. This issue is a trade-off between productivity and security. I am a cautious individual and lean towards security, but I am always open to suggestions from my user base. Viruses, spy ware, ad ware, and data mining are real threats and must be prevented. The vast majority of this “stuff” enters computers by the users own actions. Yes, IT must guard against these threats, and some freedom is part of that cost. 

Some employees would “get” all the training IT would need to provide for a secure open IT environment to exist, but others would not and that would risk a data breach or worse. I could not justify it in my own mind much less sell it to management.

I do not always agree with employee suggestions, and I try to lay out exactly why I would not allow a particular application or process. Most people think this method is fair and reasonable. I want everyone to be as productive as possible but operate in an environment that is easily supported and that controls costs. I do not want the organization to face frivolous lawsuits or be compromised in any way.  Simply put, I want a stable secure environment that is always available to meet the needs and challenges of everyone. This is why the IT environment must remain reasonably locked down for the foreseeable future.

In today’s marketplace, many people do not realize their destinies are in their own hands. Sit back and observe how a consultant treats their clients. If they have achieved even a modest level of success, you will see strong relationships being forged with each client. This is how consultants eat. If they do not maintain relationships, then they do not maintain clients. No clients equal no billing, and no billing equals no food. The consultant’s life is focused on relationship building by fulfilling the needs of their clients and maintaining a high level of respect, understanding, and courtesy.

Many employees do not bring this attitude into the workplace, and they are doing a disservice to themselves. No matter where we work inside of a company, we have clients. Our clients may be our fellow employees or the actual customers of the business. Having a consultant’s mindset of relationship building with clients will lead to greater success and achievement. Focus on client needs and help them to achieve their goals. This increases your value to the organization and creates strong relationships that will benefit you throughout the years to come.

Nobody knows where they are going to be in ten years or even in six months in this wonderful economy. Your network will grow as time advances and building strong and lasting relationships can lead to tremendous opportunities in the future. I see many people that focus on building relationships either up or down the corporate ladder, or worse yet, believe their technical skill is sufficient for advancement. This is incredibly shortsighted and can be lethal to ones long-term success. Relationships should be built at every level of the corporate ladder and technical skills are frankly the entry ticket to the modern workforce. Relationship building and solving client needs is the mechanism of advancement.

The wise career minded person stays focused on the needs of their client and helps them to succeed. This mindset will lead to lasting success, and remember when somebody succeeds everyone who assisted in the success will get credit for the achievement.

For me, blogging is as much about my enjoyment of writing as it is about learning new technologies. When I started my blog, I did not have great wisdom or insight that I felt I needed to share with the world. I wanted a venue that I could write my thoughts, interact with others, and learn. I am very pleased that I have achieved my objectives. My writing has gotten substantially better, and I have learned much about blogging, SEO, and other kinds of “techie” stuff.

I wanted to get my website to in the most optimal condition, and with a little searching, I found much in the way of improvements. There is actually nothing original in this post. I must give all the credit to the quality bloggers, techies, and software developers that have worked diligently to improve their own sites, write great software, and share information.

I started by running Firefox with the Firebug and YSlow add-ons. These two add-ons work great together and give you a good overview of what is going on with your site. YSlow grades your site based off of several criteria. I started with an “F” grade, how pleasant for me. By the time that I was done, I had my grade to a “B”.

Most of my improvements can be attributed to the fine folks at AskApache.com. I have included links to the relevant sections of their website.

• Turn On Compression
• Add Future Expires Header
• Add Cache-Control Headers
• Turn Off ETags
• Remove Last-Modified Header
• Use Multiple SubDomains

I added a database management plugin that optimizes, among many other things, the SQL database that WordPress utilizes. The plugin is called WP-DBManager and can be downloaded free of charge from the WordPress plugin site. The other plugin, W3 Total Cache, looks very promising, but I am waiting for some information from my host on support for APC or memcache before I proceed. I have also removed some of the elements off my blog. Frankly, I just had a little too much on the homepage.

I completed a few additional adjustments and tweaks that involved my WordPress theme. I took the extra time to  test and document these changes very carefully. Any time the theme is updated by the developer, I will have to implement these last few optimization changes. I only wanted to go through the discovery and testing pain once, so good documentation on my part was required. These last few changes were theme specific, so  I did not list them. Yours will be different then mine, so you need to go through your YSlow output carefully and do some research. Be aware that some changes can improve your YSlow grade but only trim off a small fraction of a second of page load time.  As always, you need to look at the time it take to research and maintain the change, against the improvement in page load time. Frankly, some changes may not be worth the time and effort.

According to websiteoptimization.com, I still have a bit much on my homepage. This is a great site for looking at load times of your site by object type. It performs a pretty thorough analysis of your site and should be read in conjunction with the YSlow output. I have a lot of images on my homepage, and I pay the price for that in download time.

When I started, my site fully loaded in about 22 to 27 seconds on a T1 (1.44Mb) Internet connection. I am currently running about 11 to 12 seconds to fully load. I would like to get this down to the 10 second mark, but it would involve me having to remove additional images off my homepage and make additional theme changes. On my home broadband account, which is much faster Internet connection, my site currently loads in about 4 or 5 seconds.

Hope this is helpful and will spur you into looking at the load time of your site.

Within a few moments, the gentle rumbling of “damn, what just happened” started to echo among the IT staff. It did not take very long to track down the problem as the core network switch was in an error state. This is a bit problematic as most of our network traffic flows through our core HP Procurve 5308xl switches. We are small shop with a relatively simple infrastructure. These HP Procurve switches have done exceedingly well for us over the years and have been absolutely bulletproof. That is, until now.

We had just completed a firmware upgrade on one of these devices with no problems, but now it was unresponsive. The console port told us to reapply the firmware or replace the chassis. This is not the type of device that you just go to Fry’s and pick up.  This is the ‘Oh Crap’ moment that IT managers and staff dread.

We were fortunate, after an hour and half we had the firmware updated and the switch resumed normal operation. It was a tense hour and half while we waited for the firmware to load and then did our best to make the switch fail.

While we were waiting, I reviewed our networking fail over plan.  I wrote this plan a while ago and thought that it was still accurate.  Fortunately, the plan was still spot on with what should be done if the switch had failed the second update. Unfortunately, the assumptions of the plan were not so accurate. They referenced standby equipment that had been disposed of or decommissioned due to age.After a bit of scrambling, I had identified equipment that could be re-purposed, counted needed ports, identified the ports that needed certain classes of service, and felt comfortable we could be fully operational in a few hours. I cannot express my delight when we realized we would not have to implement our fail over plan.

It is important for any IT group to document their fail over plans and regularly review them to make sure that they can actually be implemented. One of the challenges in working in a small environment is you tend to feel like you are “all knowing and all seeing.” Unfortunately, there are too many moving parts, even in a small network, to remember everything. This is why fail over plans must be documented and reviewed at least semiannual. My fail over plan had not been reviewed in the last year, and that was my failure. Let me tell you that Sunday was a fun day as I dug out much of our documentation and started reading and reading.

A while ago, I wrote a couple of posts about how social-networking could get you a pink slip, and how it could hurt or help you in your next job.  Several months later, and completely unrelated to my posts, a CIO.com blogger, Meredith Levinson, wrote a piece basically telling employers to stop snooping into the online lives of job seekers.  Her article made some very good points and is very well written. However, it is not very realistic.

Employee behavior directly reflects on the image of the company. This is a valid consideration that every company, and candidate, should take into account. It is perfectly valid for potential employers to exclude candidates that routinely display behavior and conduct online that is dangerous, inappropriate, or would be considered unwise by most people. Basically, if a candidate cannot exercise reasonable judgment online, then how can they be trusted to exercise reasonable judgment in the workplace?

Can a potential employer abuse access to social my working sites? Of course, a hiring manager that disagrees with political or social commentary by a candidate can, of course, make it impossible for the candidate to be hired. As a candidate, this is the dangerous side of opening your personal life and opinions to the World Wide Web.  Remember, only your resume is speaking for you during the first initial cut by HR.

As a candidate be aware, it is really as simple as that. Your potential employer, if not your current employer, will research your online identity. Be sure you know, and are comfortable, with what they are going to find. If you do not like what you find, then change it. This is the beauty of the information age.

No strings attached! I will delete the registration information after the winner is selected, notified, and sends me a valid address for delivery.  The book will be sent directly from Amazon.com. If the winner does not respond within five days of notification another person will be selected. Since I am paying for this out of my own pocket, the shipping is limited to the continental United States.

Register now for the giveaway!  The winner will be chosen on August 31, 2009.

Congratulations to Sarah in Los Angels, California! She won the book this month, and her copy is on the way.

Register for the current book giveaway!

People spend many years of their career with their noses down and doing a good job but very few people will ever notice. This is an unpleasant but an accurate look at today’s workplace. Your coworkers and management are focused on their jobs and their own problems. If something is working well they are just pleased that they do not have to deal with it is a problem. This goes up and down the entire length of the corporate ladder.

Once I realized that I needed to start promoting myself internally, life started to get better. Advancements started happening, and I was assigned to more challenging projects. I wish I could take credit for this marvelous realization, but it was really just an observation that I made of some of my peers.

I made it my mission to have a conversation with as many executives as I could each month. I tried to bring them some little nugget of information or ask them a question that I thought was insightful. In conversation, I would bring up a recent success, we had achieved that may have had some loose bearing on the executives department or initiative I heard about the halls. I made sure to praise and thank, both publicly and privately, those people who helped me on any project. On the rare occasion, I received public praise, I would thank the person for their kind comments and immediately give all the glory and praise away to my team. This sounds counterintuitive, but works very well. The more you give heart-felt praise and glory to your team, the better you shine.

Once members of the organization were comfortable with me, I started to find about additional projects that other departments were planning. I made appeals to manage them with my department head. Most of the time my requests were denied, but again, I was setting a mental impression of my desire to grow and learn new areas. Slowly, I started getting more unique and fun assignments. This created some positive momentum that I capitalized on to my advantage. I remembered something I read in a book once that went roughly along the lines of always building on successes so you may achieve another success; this is momentum and it has a tremendous upward spiraling effect.

I have never been a flamboyant self-promoter. I find these people do not tend to get the results they are attempting to achieve. Be subtle and calculated in your self-promotion.  Pass praise and glory to your team and make sure they get the recognition they deserve. Remember in management’s eyes, any success or failure the team experiences will always be attributed to the team leader.

PC World

…every story written by professional journalists who don’t think like you are totally “teh biased”, “on the take” or “in the back pocket of [Insert your least favorite company here].” –Darren Gladstone, PC World

…you feel utter contempt not only for Mac and Windows users, but for users of any Linux distribution other than your own. –Steven Gray, PC World

…you believe that the world is divided into a force for good, as embodied in Steve (Ballmer or Jobs), and a force for evil, as embodied in Steve (Jobs or Ballmer). –Steven Gray, PC World

A few of my own definitions of a fanboy/fangirl:

• Anyone that is not able to engage in actual conversation with another human being about any topic other then their pet company or product
• People who take shorthand or vernacular from one media, like a video game, and use it in daily conversations and/or writing (this one really bugs me)

Overzealous fans are not limited to the tech world, just look at the nut jobs that obsess about Hollywood celebrities. So many people need to unplug for a while and take a serious assessment of their lives. It is crazy some of the discussions I have gotten myself into with over obsessed people. You can find the same kind of blind allegiance in extremes of both political parties. Those ones really keep me up at night. . .most people in the world need a serious vacation.

Jared Newman at CIO.com wrote a piece titled “Five Netbooks Microsoft has Crushed” and outlines some of the netbooks that are being discontinued because they are too good to qualify for the discounted Windows netbook price. If these devices are forced into notebook classification, they will no longer be able to compete on price against either netbooks or laptops.

The major appeal of a netbook is the size and price. I do not begrudge Microsoft for making a profit or maximizing it revenue opportunities, but the company was built on innovation. Frankly, it seems Microsoft  is cracking down on that which made it great.  In order for the OEM manufacturers to hit a competitive price-point, they have to curtail features in order to avoid higher operating system licensing costs. This practice does not encourage innovation, it smothers it.

Gregg Keizer at Computerworld.com has a piece talking about Microsoft’s position on netbook pricing. Simply put, Microsoft wants to move consumers to its more expensive versions of their operating system. The below quote is from Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and was taken from a recent analyst meeting.

“We want people to be able to get the advantages of lightweight performance and be able to spend more money with us, with Intel, with HP, with Dell and with many, many others,” 

Microsoft is missing the point on netbooks. Netbooks are not desktop or notebook computers; they are niche devices that are growing in popularity. I do not believe that netbooks are reducing the full priced operating system sales. The reduction in OS sales has a lot more to do with the economy and the marketing problems of Vista. Consumers know Windows 7 is right around the corner, so why buy Vista?

Netbooks are a new market with new potential customers.

Multi-computer owners own at least one desktop or laptop. As a group, their computers tend to stay relatively modern, and they purchase upgrades when needed. Netbooks appeal to this group because they do not want to lug the larger laptop when going to the coffee shop to get some work, or recreational surfing, done. Additionally, a desktop computer does not move around the home much so it limits its utility. The small size and aggressive price of a netbook are highly attractive to this group.

It is my understanding that the multi-computer purchasers are the predominate consumer of netbooks. I have yet to meet a first time computer owner who purchased a netbook. I have also never spoken to a netbook owner who replaced their only full featured computer with a netbook. However, I have met a couple of dozen netbook owners, and the netbooks were always the second or third computer.

Microsoft should be looking at netbooks as an opportunity for additional incremental OS sales. By embracing netbooks and encouraging the OEMs to build the best possible devices for the $199-$399 price-point, Microsoft could reap larger OS sales and further solidify its market dominance.

It is conceivable that Microsoft could be left in the dust if they allow other operating systems to move into the netbook space. Consumers will move to an alternative operating system from another big name, like Google, if it has innovative features and the right price-point. Google will encourage innovation and push the boundaries of what a netbook can do; Microsoft should lead this charge, not resist it.

Microsoft has recognized the threat of Google Apps and has started to move in its lumbering pace towards a confrontation. Look at the deployment options consumers will have in the next release of Microsoft Office. Office 2010 will have a web-based version similar to Google Apps, mobile device support, and a full-blown application for local installation. Microsoft has even announced that it would have an ad-supported consumer version of Office Web Applications, the web based Office application.

I have been using Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace for several months and it is a great service. It is web-based collaborative storage service that integrates very well with Microsoft Office. This foundation is a glimpse of the future Office Web Applications.  Additionally, the Microsoft Web Applications will not have some of the document conversion issues that are encountered when working with Microsoft Office files in Google Apps.

Google Apps is a quality application suite, and I have written positively about my experience with the suite.  I still use Google Apps to host my personal e-mail domain. Even though the applications are well designed and feature rich, they are not Microsoft Office or even Open Office. I am reading and hearing of more deployments of Google Apps in education and at municipal government level.  This has the potential to save these institutions substantial amounts of money, but I am not sure how they are addressing the inherent security issues that come with Internet based data storage.

For me, I have to question Google’s focus. Google is moving forward on many different fronts and against large established competitors. Below is a list of a few Google products and the associated competitors. The more I think about it, it does seem like Google has a target in mind.

Microsoft and Google know the value of business consumers, and they will fight long and hard for their dollars. Office productivity is a core technology suite with large budgets in most corporations. In Microsoft’s latest 10-K filing, they report the Microsoft Business Division annual revenue at $18,894,000,000.  Microsoft Office systems generate over 90% of Microsoft Business Division revenue; this is serious business indeed.

No one will argue that Microsoft does not have the strongest brand and market penetration with Office. From a typical business professional point of view, and given that the access methods were similar, which would you choose Microsoft Office or Google Apps? I am betting that it would be Microsoft Office. To the majority of users, it is a known application interface and the file format is globally supported in the business community. Especially when you take into account that under the new Office 2010 business software licensing agreements that employees working from their non-primary computer, like from home, will have access to the non-ad supported web version at no additional cost. This is reminiscent of the good old days when the 80/20 software deployment rule was standard.

Both programs are going to get even better and the product offerings will only improve under stiffer competition. Microsoft should come out on top as long as they do not rest on their laurels. Ultimately, the consumer will have access to better applications no matter where they are located and at lower cost.  Will this application access freedom be an IT headache? You bet it will, and I can see the arguments brewing now.  In fact, I have already participated in a few.

The back-end updated was my first chore and that has finally been completed.  WordPress is running the current release, plugins are updated, and all is running happy. This had me a little stressed as I was more then a few releases behind. I just knew that I would have a database issue, but I am most happy to report that all went well. I will give kudos to the kind folks at Wordpress.org.  The documentation was excellent and the upgrades completed with zero issues.

Next, I am turning my attention to site design.  This is going to take a bit more time then the back-end updates. I have downloaded the latest version of the theme from the nice person who created it, but I have made several tweaks here and there.  I have it loaded on a test site, but I need to document my changes (this time) before I move it into production.  Some of the spacing and glitches on the current live site will just have to live here for another week or two.

Well, all in good time.  I am happy that this is the way of the computer world, if it was not constantly changing, then people would not need us techie people.

A big thank you to the Robb who worked very diligently on the problem with Microsoft.

The Problem: The network shares were lost (disappeared) on a volume that was hosted on a SAN when the host server (Windows 2003 in our case) was rebooted.  It happened every time when the server was rebooted from script, but only happen occasionally when the server was rebooted via a logged in console. So each time we rebooted the server from script, we had to to recreate the network shares.

A Solution: We made sure that we were using the latest version of the Microsoft ISCSI client and configured it correctly per the Microsoft documentation.  We completed all the steps in setting the ISCSI dependency (MS Knowledge Base: File shares on iSCSI devices may not be re-created when you restart the computer)

Open Registry Editor

Disclaimer: This worked for us in our particular situation, and it should not be completed by anyone without an understanding of the impact of these changes. This may not help you in your situation, and it could even make your problem worse, so use this information as a discussion topic with your SAN vendor or Microsoft. It is highly recommended that you consult with your vendor and Microsoft before making changes to your registry. You should always backup up your entire server before making any modification - as well as making an extra local backup of your registry – just in case you OS is damaged or rendered inoperable. Remember Andy Grove’s book, Only the Paranoid Survive.

This is for Windows 2003 server and I have no idea if it applies to any other version or release of Windows.

Navigate to the following registry sub-keys and create the following DECIMAL values if not already present:

1) HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ISCSI\Discovery
VolumeRetryCount REG_DWORD 160
VolumeRetryTimer REG_DWORD 1100

2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E97B-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
MaxRequestHoldTime  REG_DWORD 120

3) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Disk
TimeOutValue REG_DWORD 60

4) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
ServicesPipeTimeout REG_DWORD 60000

Reboot via your preferred method and hope for the best!  It worked like a charm for us, and we have had zero issues with shares disappearing after a manual or scripted reboot.

I can not take credit for any new insights in to this area.  These are just couple of thoughts and regurgitated learning from the past several years.  I give the professional writers and management gurus their all due respect, for they have taught me much about life and how to be successful.

I have always told my staff that our goal is to be come critically valuable to a company.  In the past, my team would often ear me going on and on about one of my favorite phrases.

“We must get our claws so deep into our clients, that it is incredibly painful for them to be extracted.”

This roughly translates to the idea that I want to be considered so valuable that a client (or employer) would not even image replacing me or my team.  I want all aspects of the company to become reliant on the services that we provide.  That is not to say that we to do not train and empower people to become self-sufficient.  Trust me, I have been there and done that…it is no fun.

I want the company to be able to count on us to get a job done no matter what the odds that must be overcome. I want my team to go the extra mile every single time.  We always over deliver, and when we have a problem, we are the first to identify it, accept responsibility (regardless of who/what is at fault), and develop the plan to solve the issue.  I want the company to see us way more then just “IT”.  Our goal is become integrated into every department and as many aspects of the business has possible.

We listen, anticipate needs, and come up with good solutions on short notice.  We can not be prepared for everything that will come our way, but how long it takes us to respond to a new challenge goes a very long way in peoples mindset.  We strive to always manage client expectations and come out slightly on top. 

I do not have an issue with keeping what we do a bit of a secret.  I want accountants to be accountants…not spending time trying to understanding how to deploy a Storage Area Network.  We are happy to train staff on how to use the systems provided, but I do prefer that IT is a bit of a mystery to them.  I liken it to a car, most people know how to drive one, but a relative few understand how to build or fix it when they have problems.

Ultimately, I want our team to be considered vitally needed. We do what it takes to drive that message into our clients’ minds by delivering on what they never thought we could, and by helping them achieve their highest priorities.  Many times, this is done by just making their jobs a little easier.  The value of that little effort goes such a long way.

I would challenge every single person to think about the concept of their long-term value and look at how valuable they really are to their organization.  What could you do to make yourself more valuable and get your claws in just a little deeper?

Update:  When I got back to a computer and checked the post, I found that it looked fine. The application worked just as it stated. But I just had to fix some of the typos, wording errors, and add a link.  My writing is bad enough without all the extra damage the little keyboard and my big thumbs were doing to the English language.

Note: This post is being created from my Blackberry Storm. Oh how I miss spellcheck right now.

I found an application on the Blackberry online store that says it is for “mobile blogging”. It is called CellSpin and it is free – you just got to love that price!

The download and setup was quick and easy. The application allows you to post pictures, video, and audio directly to your blog or other social sites.

Text editing is a challenge on a Blackberry Storm, as moving back and forth in text is just plain hard. I never thought I would say that I miss the scroll wheel.  This is one feature of the Blackberry Curve that I miss so very much. The text navigation problems of a Storm will reduce my desire to write “on the run”. It is not a short fall in the application, but with the device. The lack of a spellcheck solution is a shortfall of the program. As you can see by now, I have a hard time spelling kat without a spellcheck program.

Is mobile blogging useful? Sure, for the right type of blog. CellSpin allows for postings to multiple sites, which I found impressive. I can see this being very popular for Facebook and Myspace users. They can snap some video or picture and post it in seconds with the appropriate commentary. That is a very cool feature. 

But I must say that it has more limited application when you leave the social site arena, unless you are very good at writing on your mobile device.  I am not, so I will have to give up on mobile blogging or get an fold-up keyboard for my Storm.

Extreme views attract extreme people, and dumb things get said and done.  I live and work on the Microsoft side of the world, and I make no apologies for the support I give the company.  I am not an Apple or Mac hater, just a realist. Microsoft is the dominate OS provider in business and will remain so for the many years to come.  I need to work and support my family, and I want my skills to be in the area with the highest demand.

Now that I have clearly stated by bias, I have been disappointed with Microsoft’s marketing department for a long time.  They seem to have gotten so over confident in their market position that they forgot how to compete for the hearts and minds of their consumers.  This has been the problem with Microsoft for a long, long time. And it seems to me that it is a common failing in most companies that reach a market dominating position.

The recent “Laptop Hunter” ads, I believe, will prove to be one of the most effective marketing programs that Microsoft has engaged in to-date.  Apple has the upscale, artistic, image locked in and I am not sure what could be done to change that consumer mindset.  That being said, Microsoft is targeting the other 98% of people who make up the rest of the world, and cost is a key driver for most of them.

This is a bit refreshing from Microsoft.  It goes directly to a key issue for most consumers – cost.  The average laptop will work great for the average consumer.  Is it the latest and greatest?  No of course not, but then again, most people do not need cutting edge performance levels, not to mention the cost that exists at the bleeding edge.  People need their computers to work at a reasonable performance levels to get the tasks they are working on done. More features or performance than that is hardly ever used.

Does Mac have a role?  Absolutely, just not the dominate one.  If I was interested in video production or other artistic endeavors, I would seriously look at a Mac.  I do not have desires in that direction, and neither do my children at this point.  I want my children to work on PCs because they need the skills that dominate in the real business world.  If they change to more artistic endeavors, then we may change our position.

I saw the new Mac ad the other night and found it be a bit petulant.  I find it amusing that Mac attempts to portray their computers as worry free.  No viruses or crashes..really…never??  That is truly a bold statement.  And what is wrong with the large choices in PCs anyway? 

What is your take on the Mac ad?

Enter Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com)

Is it different from the rest?  From what I can tell so far – Yes! 

How is it to be used in relation to other search engines?   Not a clue yet…

Update 1:

I have been doing some additional searches on Wolfram Alpha and I have found some interesting results.  So far one of the best has been putting two stocks in as a search query and seeing the quick comparison.  This is very cool.

This site will require some getting used to, as far as learning how to write great search statements, but do not let that be a deterrent.  The examples sections is very helpful for getting started (http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/). 

Wolfram Alpha is worth checking out, but it is not a replacement for your daily searches at Google or Yahoo at this time.

Update 2:

I am not the only one who likes it for investing…”Using Wolfram Alpha in researching investments“

Check out the book giveaway detail page to enter.

(I will only contact the winner of each drawing, and then I delete all entries.  This is not to build any kind of lists or get people to subscribe to anything.  I just want to share good books.)

What does that say about the value we place on superficial first impressions?

I have been doing a little reading about her, and she is not your typical 40 something.  I found many stories posted online, many from major publications, which go a bit into her background.  Do a Google search and read a little bit about her. 

Watch Susan Boyle on YouTube

As of this posting, the video had been viewed over 16 million times on YouTube.

I sleep better knowing that my documents are stored on some of the best storage arrays, operated by some the the best admins, located in good data-centers.  If my house burns down, or is broken into, my data is safe and accessible.

It is critical that you practice very good password management and keep your computer clean from (x)ware.  I do understand that these large companies can loose data as well or even shutdown the service all together.  It is just a lot less likely they will suffer a loss verses an individual person.  As a precaution, every other month, I change all of my passwords and download all my files that I then burn on to a couple of DVDs.  I trust the platforms of Google and Microsoft more then I trust any single computer.

I have moved all of my “Office” type documents to Microsoft Office Live Workspace.  I was using Google Docs for a while, but I did not like some of the minor formatting changes that happened to my historical Microsoft Office documents.  I still strongly feel that Google Docs would make a good choice for a smaller start-up that had limited resources.  That being said, I have found that Office Live Workspace is really suited to my personal and family needs.  I use Microsoft Office extensively and it integrates perfectly with Office 2007.  I can see many uses of Office Live Workplace in smaller companies that have investment in Microsoft Office, collaborative groups, or companies that have a field presense.

I have access to all of my documents no matter where I am or the computer that I am working on, obviously Internet access is required. I can use a web browser or access documents or right from the open menu in Office.  I may not be able to edit some of the documents if I am on a computer that does not have Microsoft Office (or OpenOffice) installed, but I can certainly view them all.  And really, this works just fine for most situations.  

Microsoft recently increased the storage of Live Workplace to 5 GB, and this easily handles all of my personal documents.  You create document workspaces, folders, and can share the workspaces with other people.  Right now, my wife and I share a couple of workspaces that contain the common household documents.  I have other workspaces for personal research, blog ideas, old work files from my consulting days, etc. 

This is by far one of the most productive, FREE, services that Microsoft has released.  If you take Office Live Workspace with Microsoft’s SkyDrive service, which includes 25GB of free storage, you can really start storing massive amounts of information online. Obviously you want to use some common sense about what you store online, but I have found it to be incredibly useful.

I am about simplifying my life, and my computing needs.  This is just one person’s honest appreciation for quality services.

1. The World Trade Center has a whole new meaning now that I have seen the sights.  The last time I was in New York, they were still standing.
2. I am glad I picked a good hotel (Marriott Downtown), the stay has been great!
3. I like taking cabs. We had some bad drivers, but we also had some great drivers that were very interesting.
4. The flowers in Macy’s were impressive.
5. Lunch at Maxie’s deli was huge!
6. Virgin America is a good airline and the entertainment system makes these long flights go by in a snap.
7. I do not think that I have ever walked so much in my entire life, I am beat.
8. This place is crowded

I know, a lame post, but I am on vacation…

This is the first time the girls have been to the “big city” and they are looking forward to it.  I must say that I can not wait to go as well as it has been a long, long, time since my last visit.  We do not have family, or any other personal tie to the city, but a desire to see the sites.

In the wonderful world of IT, sales must seriously be slowing if the volume of sales calls I am receiving is any indication.  Talk about the desperate calling…and calling. If it is not someone calling to sell me something, it is a recruiter calling, near begging, me to interview their candidate.  I am not currently hiring, or considering hiring, but that does not seem to matter that much to the callers.  I guess they need to show some sort of action to their clients and any interview, even an unproductive one, is action.

<<A bit of a rant>>
I think what is bugging me the most is the attitude that I get from sales people that I owe them a return call, or 5 minutes of my time.  I love the calls that start out with “I am not calling to sell you anything, but I just want to get an understanding of your internal structure to see if we have a possible fit.”  Let me see, I do not know you from Adam, and you want to me to go into detail about my internal operations and configuration…ya, I will get right on that.  Wait, how about I just send you all of our internal documentation as well.  They just want to understand my operation so they can determine if they can sell me something later…hmmm.

I understand they have a job to do, and are stressed about their own sales quotas, but I have a job to do as well and can not do it if I spend all day chatting with sales people. I am not sure that the average sales person realizes that they are one of many people who call each day trying to get me to “setup a time” to chat with an account manager about xyz product or service.  It has got to the point that the phone is clutter, and the communication is noise most of the time.  Sales people do not spend 5 minutes pre-screening targets, and all that does is waist time.

OK, I am done ranting about something I can not change…

•  First off, I am not going to post daily.  I just do not have the time, but I should post a couple times a week.
• I am going to post about a greater verity of topics that interest me.  It is my blog after all.
• I am not going to be monitoring the web stats as much and try hard to drive traffic.  This is going to be fun…and stay fun.

Oh, and this is test as I had to get Wordpress and all assoicated software updated and happy.  I have to upgrade the theme, but I am no rush as it does not appear to be broken currently.

Life is good.

Below is the dialog box that appears when you click “New” from the “Office button” menu.

When I selected the “New blog Post” document a wizard opened for me to register my WordPress, or other blog provider, account information. I have a self-hosted WordPress site and had no problems with the account setup. I was surprised that I did not have to make a single change in my WordPress admin panel to get this to work correctly.

Current, Microsoft Word 2007 supports the following list of blog providers. I have only tested it with a self-hosted WordPress site.

Once you have selected your provider, you will need to enter your blog URL and log-in information. Be sure to change only the “<Enter your blog URL here>” text. Then enter your blog’s username and password.  This information is passed in clear text to the blog.  If you have concerns about your blog’s security, you should consider setting up an SSL certificate as the default log-in is most likely completed in clear text.  I have not set my blog to use SSL, but I see no reason why I would not be able to use SSL with Word 2007 by simply changing the “Http” to “Https” in the below URL.

I left the “Picture Options” information as default and had no problems have my images being displayed correctly or having Word 2007 automatically uploading the images to my server. Click “OK” when you have filled out the information, and If it is able to access your blog, it will give you a conformation dialog box.

Outstanding! You are now able to create posts and publish them directly to your blog from Word 2007.

I was able to add multiple categories from the “Insert Category” icon on the Word 2007 Ribbon menu, but not post tags. You are able to open and edit prior posts using the “Open Existing” icon in the Word 2007 Ribbon. The “Manage Accounts” icon will allow you to setup multiple blogs to work with Word 2007.

Once I completed my post, I publish it to my blog by simply using the ”Publish” button. I opened the post in the default WordPress editor and added image titles and post tags. I will look around to see if i can find a way to do this from Word, but so far, no luck. 

I was surprised by how clean the code was in the HTML view.

This is not a bad option for creating posts for a blog. Most of the more advanced formatting worked just fine, which I was very pleased about. Even my image placement worked as designed.  While this is the not the prefect blog post publisher, it is one of the better ones that I have used.

What do you use to create your blog posts? Have a recommendation for an alternative software?

The results from effort that is put into self development are greatly improved by adding a feedback process. When the feedback process is completed correctly, it will be provide valuable insight and be an important skill builder. However if it is not done correctly, it will have the effect of reinforcing wrong messages all the way to completely demoralizing a person.

People, especially in management positions, can directly ask for peer feedback.  I have found this process to be enlightening, and hard to hear at times. No one is perfect, and we all have areas that we need to improve; it is just unpleasant to hear about them in a direct, matter-of-fact, manor. However, if I do not know the areas of weakness then how can I improve?

When asking for peer feedback, I explain to the person, that I am requesting feedback from, what are my goals of the conversation, and I ask them to be completely honest with me. 

I start off by asking what they feel are my strengths, and what aspects of my responsibilities I truly excel. With every topic I ask for examples to make sure I have a reference to draw upon, and to be sure that I really understand what they are saying in real-world context.

Next, I move to aspects of my leadership, management, and job responsibilities that they feel I operate at an average level.  These are areas that are most easily improved upon with just a little bit of additional focus. I ask for more examples and their input on what/how I should improve.

Lastly, I want to know the areas that are below expectations. This is the hardest to hear, and the hardest for most people to give.  As the recipient of feedback, I make an earnest effort to instill trust, security, and be non-confrontational. I detach from my emotional side, the best that I can, and embrace my logical side.

I inquire in non-threatening ways to better understand where I have not met expectations.  Examples are important, and I ask for input on specific situations so I can get their perspective on what must be improved.  It may take effort and coaxing to get them to open up, but it is well worth the effort. It is very import not get defensive or engage in ‘setting the record straight’. This will lower trust and reduce the likelihood anyone will participate in the process in the future.

Working with peers to get direct feedback takes effort and trust. If you are not accustomed to hearing direct feedback, then the first few times will be uncomfortable.

Everything that has worth has a price, and self development is no different.

Don’t like reading? Read on…

• “Just because you don’t enjoy reading a good book, doesn’t mean there aren’t many other uses for all of those books piled up in the attic.”

How to Win Friends and Influence People

•  ”This is Dale Carnegie’s summary of his book, from 1936″

Be creative with Sumo Paint

•  A free web-based image editing software

How to Write With Style

•  ”Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers.”

10 (More) Bizarre Deaths in History

• “If you find the first part interesting, here are 10 more unusual deaths that have occurred throughout history.”

Did you find an interesting site or post this week that you would like to share?  If so, feel free to leave a comment with the link and tell us a little bit about what you found.

As part of a mentoring program that I am participating in, we completed a survey that helped to identify our individual strengths.  The timed online survey is part of the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton.  I am still reading the book and it has been enlightening.

I must admit that the survey was spot on in its assessment of me, and I am not sure how I feel about how it was able to summarize aspects of my personality so quickly.

Here is what the survey identified as my top five strengths with abbreviated versions of the supporting text.

•1.    Focus

…Guided by this theme of Focus, you need a clear destination. Lacking one, your life and your work can quickly become frustrating. And so each year, each month, and even each week you set goals. These goals then serve as your compass, helping you determine priorities and make the necessary corrections to get back on course. Your Focus is powerful because it forces you to filter; you instinctively evaluate whether or not a particular action will help you move toward your goal…

•2.    Achiever

Your Achiever theme helps explain your drive. Achiever describes a constant need for achievement. You feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself…It is the power supply that causes you to set the pace and define the levels of productivity for your work group. It is the theme that keeps you moving…

•3.    Responsibility

Your Responsibility theme forces you to take psychological ownership for anything you commit to, and whether large or small, you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion. Your good name depends on it…

•4.    Significance

You want to be very significant in the eyes of other people. In the truest sense of the word you want to be recognized. You want to be heard. You want to stand out. You want to be known. In particular, you want to be known and appreciated for the unique strengths you bring…

•5.    Connectedness

Things happen for a reason. You are sure of it. You are sure of it because in your soul you know that we are all connected. Yes, we are individuals, responsible for our own judgments and in possession of our own free will, but nonetheless we are part of something larger…

I find the whole process of self discovery intriguing and empowering. If you have never completed any personality, strength, or weakness surveys, I would encourage you to complete one or two.

The information these tests can give you is priceless, if you use it wisely.  I have found these types of tests have given me a foundation by which I can make improvements in my life, and have helped me to better understand the people around me.

If you have any personality tests or surveys that you have taken, please leave a comment with what your thoughts were about the test and results –Thank you.

Time, but not the theoretical Steven Hawkins type of time, but instead a detailed inventory of how time is spent.  Once this information is accurately captured, it allows an individual to make evaluations on how time was spent.  Hindsight is not 20/20 when trying to track time, only a real-time capturing will be accurate enough. 

A time log is incredibly revealing, and an accurate log with show exactly the time and activities spent throughout the day.  This is one of the most critical pieces of understanding needed to help one get organized, and reclaim that sense of control.

A simple log, like a tablet with the date at the top of each page will do just fine.  Write the start, stop and actions for all time spent.  Track time 24/7 for 2 weeks, two or three times per year to really keep yourself on track.  Do not review the logs until the two weeks have passed, and then take a real hard look at where all the time was spent.

The magic comes from the realization of how much unproductive time was spent on low priority activities, or activities that should have been delegated.  We often work on tasks that should be completed by someone else; we tell ourselves we can do it faster or better, but look at what we gave up.  All that time is now lost forever.

What is worse, we see time spent on tasks that did not provide long-term value.  These actions should have never been completed at all.  How much of the time spent could have been re-purposed to more productive long-term value building actions?  Serious questions must be asked and answered.

The process is not easy, but the rewards are well worth the irritation of writing down every little bit of time.  I mean, every little bit.  Take an inventory of time and understand it.  It will provide the foundation to make serious choices about how, what, and where time is spent.

 Time is a resource that once spent can never be recovered.  Use it wisely.

I do not profess to be all knowing or all seeing, so I trust they have more information than I do to come to such a conclusion. It does not matter if it is in politics or business; most decisions are late in coming and go to one extreme or another. As a whole, we are lacking good quality decision makers and those that prove they have this skill are rewarded hansomly for it.

Many sources are available to assist you with making good decisions. I found consulting companies, seminars, courses, books, articles, and software in abundance with just a few Google searches.

I scraped my article I wrote on this topic because of the sheer amount of information that I found in just moments. I really did not have anything new to add after I spent a few hours reading.  I must admit this was a humbling realization.

I have included a few links to some of the better articles I found.

• Leadership Decision Making
• Beyond Data: Bringing judgment, intuition, and gut to the workplace
• Decision Making Techniques

Related Post: Everything starts by making a decision

Last month, I wrote a post discussing the potential dangers that social-networking sites can have on future employment. 

In my morning reading, I came across the below news story written by Nate Anderson on ars technica.

Every teacher wants to be the cool guy, the Robin-Williams-in-Dead-Poet’s-Society friend to students, but a court case from Connecticut offers a lesson to teachers-in-training: be careful when you buddy up to students online. While sites like MySpace make it easy to engage in casual contact with students, they also make it easy for the contact to cross professional red lines.

While this teacher clearly stepped over the line with his students, it does illustrate some of the dangers of social-networking sites and conflicts of interest that may have an effect on employment status.

The greater position of authority, or likely hood of promotion, that someone is in, the greater the level of scrutiny that people will be under. If someone is going to be considered for promotion, management and HR will review not only the work ethic and achievements of the candidate, but may review public information to be sure that the person is truly ready for the position.

It is simple, people checkout the people that are in positions of trust. At the beginning of each school year, I search the Internet for any information about my daughters’ teachers and principal. As a parent, I want to “know” the people that have influence over my children. I am fortunate that I have never found anything that was disturbing, but that does not mean that I do not continue to check. And if I find something, you bet I will bring it to the attention of the principal or school board.

Be aware of your online identify – It Matters!

I have always tried to keep the performance reviews as honest and fair as possible, all the while knowing they are inevitably biased out of the shear human condition. With my last team, I completed mini review sessions quarterly, and after every major project.  This kept the dialog going, and I tried not to spend the majority of time focused on areas of weaknesses. I would address weaknesses only if they caused department/productivity issues, or were preventing the individual from moving forward with their career plan.

The below excerpt is an article from the Wall Street Journal written by Dr. Samuel Culbert from UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles, and he has an interesting take on the annual review process. It is worth a read.

And yet in a performance review, employees are supposed to be measured along some predetermined checklist. In almost every instance what’s being “measured” has less to do with what an individual was focusing on in attempting to perform competently and more to do with a checklist expert’s assumptions about what competent people do. This is why pleasing the boss so often becomes more important than doing a good job. Create a positive impression and the boss will score you high on any dimension presented.

Worse, bosses apply the same rating scale to people with different functions. They don’t redo the checklist for every different activity. As a result, bosses reduce their global sentiments to a set of metrics that captures the unique qualities of neither the person nor the job.

The process he is a proponent for is proactive and continual throughout the year, which is very positive. It focuses on the strengths of people, and places management in a more accountable and active role in the success of employees. However, I have concerns around the potential lack of accountability this model has for the employees who under-perform.

The article’s model would work great in an ”Ideal” world, but humans are far from ideal. I believe, from what I have read and my personal experiences, that it would work for most employees, but you would have abuses on both sides that would be difficult to manage. Very clear policies around corrective action plans would need to be developed and enforced. Management would have to be truly accountable to their peer group to ensure compliance in the feedback and support mechanisms.

This type of process would take dedication and serious effort.  I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who has seen this type of management style put into practice.

The lack of decision making and follow-through hold many people back in both personal and professional life. It is a “career killer” for anyone in management.

Good quality decision making starts small and is developed over time by frequent use. People do not become great decision makers overnight. With each decision comes increased confidence and comfort at being near or outside their comfort zone.

At the core, a decision is choice to engage, or discontinue, an action, or series of actions, in order to generate a desirable result. Simply put, a choice to do something, even if that something is to stop.

Two areas come to mind when thinking about successful decision making. The first is follow-through, and the second is making quality decisions. Follow-through, in many ways, can be more critical then quality decisions. An “OK” decision that is implemented produces some positive results. A great decision that is never acted on does not produce any positive results, but instead produces lower credibility and destroy trust.

Follow-through: Making a decision requires action.  If no action follows a decision, then nothing really has been decided. The only thing that has been achieved is the abdication of free will to someone or something else.

Failure to follow-through on a decision lowers credibility and motivation. People are judged on their ability to follow-through on a decision, and it can be a huge team motivator or moral killer based on the follow-through, not necessary the results of the actions. Follow-through demonstrates consistency and engagement.

One method to assist in creating the motivation, and the energy required to start the action phase of a decision, is to create a contract. When I have made a decision, that I was not extremely motivated to carry out, I would hand-write (never type) a contract with myself. I would then sign the contract, and leave it on my desk. I start each week by reading through my contracts, I tend to have a few, and this helps me in my weekly and monthly planning.

My contracts are short in length, but clearly state what I must do, or not do as the case may be, and why I need to do it. If the method of execution is critical to the decision, I will include it the contract. A good contract should include what must be done and why.

If a decision requires a longer series of actions, always include revaluation points. Decisions are not set in stone and should be evaluated throughout the action, or implementation, phases. New information and changing conditions require changes in positions all the time, and being flexible in decision making is critical to long term success.

It really does not matter what the decision is, it can be large (such as goals), intermediate, or minor. All decisions require actions and follow-through. Start small and follow-through with whatever is decided. This will build confidence and integrity.

Related Post: Making Quality Decisions Takes Effort

If you are giving your product away free, while incurring costs, how exactly is this great for your business long-term? The only thing I can think of, is that you use the consumer base as a breeding ground for future business or complementary product sales. This strategy seems risky to say the least. Consumers will move to free online applications over paid applications, and will then move amongst the various free applications at will. I do not believe in consumer online loyalty in the software space, as everything is just a click away. 

Companies that move in this direction may be protecting their brand and customer base, but if the customer base does not generate revenue, are they really worth having? The idea of “making it up in volume” or “ad revenue” is a design for slowly going broke. Intuit is no Google in regards to PPC revenue sources.

I came across a review of Quicken Online and Mint.com on ARS.  This is worth a read and made me think about if I am going to upgrade my local Quicken installation or move to a free online product.

“Online financial organization have just grown more robust as Mint.com and offline incumbent Quicken both introduced new features to their web-based products. Since Mint.com and Quicken Online have similar purposes and functionality in mind, we thought it was time to take a comparative look at how a company from the new social media realm stacks up against a desktop software giant when it comes to online money management.“

Both retail and business consumers are expecting more for less, and sooner or later this will bring the downfall of many smaller companies.

I have been a huge fan of VMWare. This company sold its Virtual Server software (called GSX at the time) for over a thousand dollars per license. Microsoft reduced its product to free, and VMware had to respond in kind. Now they have moved the ante up again with VMWare giving away one of their enterprise solutions.

I do not know if the model of giving software away free and making it up in service or complementary sales will survive. I feel this trend is terrible for the long-term health of the software industry. We may end up with Microsoft and a few other huge corporations, as the small developers will be priced out of existence.  Venture capital will only last for so long before the small companies will have to find a way to make a profit or discontinue opperations.