Monthly Archive for: ‘December, 2008’

This morning, as I was sorting through the mail that has been piling up on my desk I found a briefing on team management. A colleague of mine had left this document thinking I would find it useful.

The document is an 8-page summary of “management strategies to build, manage, and motivate your team“. There are over 30 sections presenting topics such as “confronting poor performers” and “mastering meetings“. As I glanced through the publication to see if I could learn something, I was surprised to see how little content there was in the publication. Do I need to know there are “21 ways to say well done“?

As I closed the publication to toss it in my already over-loaded blue recycling bin, I noticed the special introductory rate of $119 for 12 issues.

What? What am I missing here? Why would I pay $10 per issue to receive content that is readily available on the web. I asked myself, why would someone subscribe to summaries of content that are so summarize that they become generic and empty?

How much would someone learn from reading the following statement “when a team member comes to you with a problem, you don’t have to deal with it on the spot“? Wouldn’t it be worth spending a bit more time in order to better understand team dynamics?

It seems to me that the business model behind these briefings is to provide useful information to time deprived managers but giving them over 30 summarized topics in 8 pages might be pushing it. Trying to condense so much content doesn’t provide value anymore. I’ll save my $120 to buy a few books.

During a recent gathering, a friend of mine asked me “why are you posting book reviews on your blog“?

Since he asked, I thought others might also want to know.

There are a couple of reasons why I’m sharing my book reviews:

• To initiate discussion. As in every day conversations, having similar reading interests is great way to start a discussion – “I noticed your also read … How did you find it?“
• To capture and document the central themes of the books. A few of us are working on a collaborative project – writing a book – and through our research and reading we want to keep track of central themes we are covering. The book summaries are used as anchors in this preliminary phase of our project.

If you are interested in joining our collaborative effort, drop me a line.

On this Christmas day, what better topic to discuss than giving. I’m not thinking of giving in the context of unwrapping gifts but giving to those who in need more specifically I’m thinking of charity.

Every so often we receive mail from non-profit organizations asking for our help – for donations. Don’t get me wrong, donations are a great way to help those in need. Donations support organizations fighting illnesses, protect the environment and animals, promote art and many other very noble causes but there are also new ways to help.

A while ago a friend told me about kiva (from their web site: Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world). The concept behind kiva is to empower people by giving them the mean to earn a living.

Earning a living is a fundamental and universal way for people to meet their basic needs. Although this is not the only solution to solving poverty, interest-free micro loan do help people generate an income. This is a nice way to help those in need.

What does this have to do with leading teams?

I believe we could draw a few parallels. As with the people helped by kiva, team members want to be empowered and have the ability accomplish their goal. They don’t expect their leader to write them a blank cheque and ignore them. People want to be given freedom to operate in order to earn the trust of their colleagues and managers. Most of all, at the end of the day they want to go home with a sense of accomplishment.

My Rating: 7/10

Another book in the Web2.0 category, Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message categories Internet content creators into 4 groups: Filters, Fanatics, Facilitators, and Firecrackers. Throughout the book, the authors use many examples and anecdotes to demonstrate the growing power of content creators.

Although I could summarize the content of the book, you will certainly find more details on the book’s official web site which presents a great summary, chapter by chapter. I encourage you to read the summary as it clearly presents to main ideas of each chapter and the book overall.

If you don’t fully understand what citizen marketers are about, you can also read about each example given in the book on the book’s web site. Some of the examples are more interesting and more impactful than others.

I enjoyed the book mostly for the anecdotes and examples but felt it was missing a key central message – besides the fact that citizen marketers are a growing force on the Internet. The book is certainly interesting to get people familiar with the concept of citizen marketers but doesn’t go much further than introducing the reader to this growing trend. It is still an interesting read if you have some time to spend.

Once again, I’m getting the opportunity to assess the quality of an idea simply by letting time going by. Like many people, once in a while I get an “ha-ah” moment, an idea that makes me stop and believe this could change the world… sort of. Sometimes, I get excited – really excited – about the potential of the idea. I stay up late in the evening and put down some thoughts on paper. After days, sometimes only hours I evaluate the excitement level associated with the idea. If the excitement remains above a certain level I add content (screen mock-up, documentation, etc.) and let it simmer some more. After a few iterations, something happens. Either the idea still floats and there is enough excitement around it to officially move forward or I abandon the idea altogether. In most case, the latter happens. When it does, I ask myself what originally triggered the excitement and why it so quickly faded. I realize there are many reasons why an idea doesn’t float for more than a week (too complex to explain, too few people would be interested, too expensive to launch, too expensive to maintain) but these reasons are self-assessment.

The real test is when you present your idea to people, sometime only 1 person will help you get a reality check. Other times you might need more perspectives but the point is that the more input you get, the better the quality of the idea will be.

A few of us at Pyxis are working on a pretty good idea and the ‘test of time’ seems to be telling us the idea has merit. After an initial brainstorming session, we asked ourselves if we still thought we should continue with the idea, we agreed so we had another brainstorming session.

We waited a couple of days to re-open the discussion and assess viability of the idea. The excitement level remains high as we are fine tuning the idea. Since we are so excited about the concept we decided to ask someone to join us for a ‘black hat’ session.

We were happy to realize that after the session the idea was still very valid and we had a few questions to answer before moving it forward.

For most people, I believe creative exercises are very exciting and when people see their ideas grow the willingly participate and contribute their energy to bring it to conclusion. Why do so many organization deprive employees of this process? Idea creation is such an exciting process that companies could easily benefit from that process instead of insisting on a top down approach for idea generation. It’s really too bad.

Here’s another interesting situation. As with many companies, a friend of mine conference called in to a meeting. Except for her, all the other participants were located in a conference room gathered around the phone.

She dialed in to the meeting before most participants entered the room. Except for herself and her manager, there was only one other colleague in the room so the three of them started sharing project updates. While her colleague was presenting some minor issues she remained quiet and listened carefully. In the meantime, other participants trickled in the room.

After a few minutes, the official meeting began and since no items were assigned to her, she put her phone on mute while she continued typing on her laptop. She has enough experience to keep paying attention to the conversation while working in order to avoid potentially tricky situations.

The meeting went on for an hour and in his typical fashion, the chair person thanked everyone for attending and left the room with his colleague.

My friend stayed on the line waiting for someone to end the conference call but that didn’t happen. Instead, it appeared that everyone in the room ‘forgot’ she was on the phone and started talking about her manager and her colleague – the comments were not flattering!

There she was hearing a conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear. What should she do? Should she stay on the line and listen in the conversation or hang up?

What would you do?

She realized that eavesdropping was entertaining but wouldn’t contribute any value to her work so after a few minutes she decided to hang up. Although nobody ever brought this situation to her attention, she keeps wondering if anybody noticed her presence on the phone. Especially when she hung up and the people gathered in the room heard the sound of a phone hang up…