The Many Faces of Mike McBride

Remote Worker and Part of the Team

Mike McBride — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:39:05 +0000

One of the biggest adjustments to working from home, or remotely, for me has been the struggle to feel like you’re “part of the team”. Obviously, you are part of the team, and you are doing the work that has been assigned to you as you go through your days, but it can be difficult to have a connection to the other members of your team when you don’t really see them often. Luckily, for me, our annual user’s conference was this past week in Vegas, which gave me a chance to be in the same place as many of the folks I come in contact with on a daily basis.

It was a good chance, not only to meet some of the same people I communicate with internally and put a face to the voice and/or email address, but also to work side by side on a massive project. (Putting together the labs and conducting the training lab sessions at the conference is quite the team effort!!)

In a nutshell, whereas a week ago I was still feeling my way around the organization, and finding my place in it, now I know I’m part of the team and exactly who I’m working with. Nothing brings out that knowledge quite like being thrown together into a stressful project. It’s bonding, if you will.

On the other hand, it also shows me exactly how difficult it is to find those sort of bonding moments when you are working remotely all the time. As a manager of remote direct reports, I might try to make it a priority to get my team together for projects like this every once in a while. There are no team-building exercises that can replace the bonds that are forged in the midst of a large, stressful, project.

Links (weekly)

Mike McBride — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:31:02 +0000

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links (weekly)

Mike McBride — Sun, 06 May 2012 23:31:22 +0000

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Internal Networking Matters

Mike McBride — Thu, 03 May 2012 03:31:44 +0000

I’ve talked frequently about the need to network and build relationships within your own organization. I’ve posited that it will make your life easier if the people you support see you as one of “us”, as opposed to one of “them”, and the best way to do that is be friendly with the people you work with. Now, a study by CNN Money shows it also increases the likelihood of getting a promotion.

Of course, now that I work remotely, this takes even more effort!

Links (weekly)

Mike McBride — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:31:05 +0000

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

ReadyConvert is Free Today Only

Mike McBride — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:09:50 +0000

Granted it’s only a 6 month license, but if you ever wanted to see what ReadyConvert can and can’t do when it comes to converting load files, this is a great chance to do just that!

http://www.prlog.org/11860274-free-downloads-of-readyconvert-discovery-software-available-this-friday-april-27.html

Going to Training

Mike McBride — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:39:49 +0000

I really enjoyed this post by Kevin Eikenberry yesterday. Read This Before You Attend Your Next Training Session

It reminded me of many of my pet peeves when doing training internally, let alone now that I’m an outside trainer. See if this sounds familiar:

You send your folks out to a day of training on some software tool. They are very excited to be out of the office for the day! They spend an inordinate amount of time planning their lunch trip, or maybe their post training class group outing. On the day of the training, they are mostly concerned with getting done early. They don’t ask questions that might drag the class out longer, despite the fact that the instructor is now 5 steps ahead of them and there’s no hope they’ll ever figure out what they are talking about. Or, they spend half the day looking at their blackberry, keeping up with what’s going on at the office instead of the training you’re paying for, because you keep sending them messages.

Then they come back to use the new tool, only they really don’t know much more about it than they did before. At this point, two things happen. They decide the training was bad, and they hate the new tool. Your group never, ever, recovers from this and you wind up with a very expensive tool that your staff simply works around as much as possible.

I’ve seen this in my IT experience as well as in law firms. One of my first IT jobs as working for a small office that had spent a significant sum to implement a customer management database system about a year before I started. I soon discovered that everyone in the office hated it. They had organized training classes, and for whatever reason, everyone disliked the trainer, decided they didn’t want to pay attention any more, never learned how to use the system, and therefore they decided it sucked. I spent almost 7 years in that job, and never, ever overcame that with the folks who were there before me. I was successful, as we had new staff come in, in training them and getting them to actually use it more, but there was no overcoming the first impression of the others.

Now, as a trainer, I keep that experience in mind when I start with a new group. I don’t want to be the reason they hate our product.

The thing is, I have no idea whether the trainer they had was any good or not. I wasn’t there. It’s possible that this is all that trainer’s fault, but I can’t help but feel like the people who got the training, and the management of the organization also hold some responsibility. When you’re sent to training, you are there to learn. Be professional and put aside your personal feelings about the training and learn what you can, regardless of how much you may not like them.

Likewise, when you send people out for training, look for well-qualified trainers and demand they train your people. If there are problems, talk to someone and get them corrected. Secondly, if there aren’t problems, and your people come back without any evidence of having actually learned anything, hold them accountable as well. Find out why they didn’t ask the instructor, if the class was not structured to fit your needs, etc. It hugely inefficient to have expensive tools that your staff is doing everything they can to NOT use. There was a reason you made this investment, shouldn’t you be getting the most out of it?

Links (weekly)

Mike McBride — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 23:30:53 +0000

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Branch Out

Mike McBride — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 01:54:11 +0000

So I’ve been getting a boatload of app requests on Facebook from this BranchOut service. Apparently they are using Facebook for professional networking, but in all honesty I haven’t been keeping up with all the new social networking stuff. Busy with the new job and all.

Is anyone out there using it? Anyone want to volunteer their experience so the rest of us can decide if it’s worth looking at, or is this another case of an app sending requests to all of your friends without your knowledge and that’s why I seem to get a new one every day?

Thanks in advance!

Links (weekly)

Mike McBride — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:30:54 +0000

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.