Note: This article originally ran on September 6 2007, is slightly edited for reprint in an effort to share previously published ideas with new readers.

I have been assimilated.

Lots and lots of people have recommended David Allen’s productivity bible,  to me over the years, but I kept thinking, “I’m already pretty productive, I don’t need that.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. Over the past several months, Allen’s techniques have made a noticeable impact on my day to day life that I didn’t think was possible. Instead of doing a traditional review of his material, I thought I’d walk through what I’ve done with it over the past few months that has changed the way I approach my job.
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This month’s Wired has a cover story featuring Shai Agassi and his new company Better Place.  As a general fan at observing the creativity in other industries, I was completely fascinated by the idea of applying the cel phone business model to the problem of electric cars.  At first, that makes no sense but if you think about it, it actually is a neat way to do it by inverting the solution to focus on the stations instead of the cars.
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Technorati Tags: better place, creativity, electric car, inverting solutions

I am at the tail end of work on the HP-EDS merger, which consisted mostly of being part of a team that decided how to consolidate IT assets that both companies had down into one in the combined company.  The deliverables for my part of it were a set of project estimates that are now in the process of being funded, which will then be staffed properly and executed over the next few financial quarters.  If you get the estimate wrong, the project doesn’t get the staffing it needs and either gets delivered late or with reduced scope.  No pressure though.
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Technorati Tags: estimation

“Dress for success” is among my least favorite phrases, so I took particular glee in the fun my friend Jason Alba had today with his article entitled “Dress for Failure“.  My favorite:

“4. Tie your tie so the front, fat part is HIGHER than the back, skinny part. I was taught your tie (the front part) should fall a few fingers below your belt.  Not higher than your belt, and not much lower.  Definitely NOT higher than your belly button.  Bonus, have the front fat part higher than the back skinny part. My seven year old son has to tuck the back part of his tie into his shirt, because the tie is to long for him… but the point is, the back part is supposed to be out-of-sight.”

I’ve worn a tie exactly twice in my HP career, but in the part time job I had in college as a DB administrator for Unisys, I had to wear one every day.  Being a tall guy,  the tie problem I run into is the opposite of this one in that with a standard length tie I run out of skinny part in order to have the front part be long enough.  Believe me, that’s just as bad.

Technorati Tags: clothing, jibberjobber

Much has been made the last week or so about John McCain’s choice of Vice President and whether or not he and his staff properly vetted Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  This is a specific instance of the broader problem of how far do you go in order to determine you are hiring the right person?

My uncle made a career in the printing business and served as an executive for several companies in that industry.  Last year, I remarked to him that I was having trouble finding someone to fill a particular position.  I was finding plenty of candidates that had the right skills on paper, but having been burned on team chemistry in the past I was struggling to find a good personality fit.  He then shared with me his #1 hiring tip:

Have the candidate drive to lunch.
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Technorati Tags: hiring, palin, vetting

I hate it when I go through the express line at the grocery store and throughout the course of the transaction, the checker never acknowledges my existence except for handing me my receipt.  I’m not looking for a neck massage or a moist towelette here, but is a “hello” and a smile really that much to ask for?  Apparently so, more often than not, and when this happens I don’t walk away having a favorable impression of the store or the employee, which can influence my future purchasing decisions.

Now flip that around onto yourself.  We all interact with many, many people throughout the course of a day.  Phone calls, meetings, emails, IM’s, purchases in stores, it adds up to a lot.  With each of those encounters, now think about how favorable an experience all those people have with you on a given day.  Did they find you friendly or cross?  Were you polite or did you brush them off?  All of these interactions, both big and small, are what the rest of the world bases its impression of you on and since you never know who the next person is going to be that has influence over you it’s a good idea to have really good personal customer service.
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Technorati Tags: customer service, politeness

I have a better story than this one about making bad assumptions, but it involves the HP-EDS merger and that information is confidential.   I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you and I might get fired regardless.  So, I’ll save that for another time.

It’s relevant, though, because I made an assumption at work that almost got me into trouble when that assumption was wrong and then two days later discovered that another one did get me into trouble in my personal life.  In both situations, I was slammed in the face with the fact that assumptions can be bad, bad things when they are incorrect.
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Technorati Tags: assumptions, PODS

Note: This article originally ran on July 6 2007, is slightly edited for reprint in an effort to share previously published ideas with new readers.

Every once in awhile, it happens. You are in a review meeting of some kind with your boss or, worse, your boss’ boss. The topic is some contentious issue your group is having with some other group and inevitably the big question comes from the most important person in the meeting and is directed to you:

“Can you come to the meeting I have with the other high level manager on this as my back up?”

That knot you feel in your stomach as the question hangs in the air is the realization that you are pre-whacked out Tom Cruise as Maverick and you’ve just been ordered to go after Soviet MIGs as Val Kilmer’s wingman.

What this manager has asked you to do is come to a meeting with high powered people and make sure he or she doesn’t make a fool of themselves because you understand the details that nobody else does. While you can turn this into a positive, it puts you in a very difficult situation because the stakes are usually higher than you are used to in meetings like this and there is a probability you can inadvertently make somebody responsible for your raises look like an idiot. That’s bad.

Here are 5 tips to consider when being put in this situation to help insure your continued employment:
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Jeff Atwood had an interesting post over the weekend entitled “Quantity Always Trumps Quality” where he quotes a story from a book called “Art and Fear”, a curious scenario from a pottery class: (more…)

Technorati Tags: coding horror, learning, mistakes

You’ve finished your day’s work, about to leave your desk, only there’s a reporter in the hallway who has an audio recorder or maybe even a camera crew and wants a few minutes of your time. “How did it go today?,” she might ask. “Do you think your manager made the right decisions today to make your team successful?,” might be another inquiry. “What do you really think of your upper management and the company strategy?” And so it could go.

Among the reasons I like writing about pro sports in this space is that many of them rely upon cohesive teamwork in order to achieve desired outcomes, just like most project teams in other businesses. A big difference is that the interactions among the people in pro sports is extremely public. It’s one thing to trash your boss on an email where you accidentally press “reply all”, it’s quite another to have a poorly thought out sound bite replayed on SportsCenter for days on end.

It is from that perspective that I find the Brett Favre saga especially interesting because it asks a basic question that plays out in lots of other companies today:

Is there such a thing as loyalty between an employer and an employee?
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Technorati Tags: favre, loyalty, nfl