The End Of The Job
Funny how things change over time, not funny HA HA but more in a amuzing curious way. The landscape has changed dramatically, the Internet has given us a new kind of freedom but not unlike Moses crying ” Let My People Go”! There has never been anything quite as liberating as the Internet, where else can you actually have true freedom of speech, the Internet that’s where. You can go anywhere you want for the most part and get information you could never get before. The Internet has allowed the Good, The Bad & The Ugly to flourish, it has also made it possible for you to consider the End of your Job.
On September 19th, 1994 Fortune Magazine released a William Bridges article called, ” The End Of The Job”. It was in the October edition. He was ahead of his time sort of, there’s no way he could see what is happening with a thing called Social Media today. And I quote from the heading of his article:
” THE END OF THE JOB As a way of organizing work, it is a social artifact that has outlived its usefullness. Its demise confronts everyone with unfamiliar risks – and rich opportunities”.
He could never have known how partly right he was back then 15 years ago. But he was also very, very wrong, technology (computers) didn’t save us time at all, they merely made it possible to get more done in a day. Hence, we work longer hours and we try to increase productivity or results, but have we? I’m not certain we are that much better off, we still don’t have the lifestyle he claimed back then, so what happened?
One thing technology or the Internet has done, it gave us a platform to truly see the end of the job come to fruition. The rules of success haven’t changed, you still have to work hard and invest the time to see the results you envisioned, and the lifestyle you dream of. But do we really stop working a job, or do we just trade one work for another? Is it possible to truly do nothing and feel fulfilled, actually know you contributed, were useful, and felt utilized by something meaningful. Social Media environments have opened the door for all of us to make a difference and have a voice. You may even be able to change what the end of the job means to you.
I shared this article back in 2002 to a large crowd and they thought I was nuts, so I directed them just like I’m directing you now…go read the article and form your own opinion, what does the article say to you?
Here’s the link: THE END OF THE JOB
Best Buy Your Customer Service Sucks!
Yet another example of how the little things drive me nuts when it comes to customer service. This may not be a big deal to you but I think it is from a customer service perspective.
I had the privilege of taking a young lady out to buy a brand new Laptop, her old one decided to sleep full-time so a replacement had to be found. I took her to every computer store in my community and we also stopped at the Brand New Best Buy store, it’s only been open for a couple months. We found a cute little Mini HP, it was pink and she just loved it, had to have it. We stood around for at least 10 minutes before I finally flagged a young fella down and asked if they had this model in stock. We waited longer as he had to go back to check, then he got snagged by another customer. By this time a different sales rep asked if we needed help and I told him that guy over there was helping us but he appears to be busy. He went over and was told they did not have the computer in stock, they only had the demo available, I said no thanks I want one out of the box please. He said sorry we don’t have one and started walking away. I asked, does one of your other stores have this model in stock? His response was I don’t know, I said, can’t you call them? He said sure I can do that.
As you can see this is starting to go down hill. He left and we walked around for another few minutes, he came back and said the line was busy and he would try back in a couple minutes. No worries I said. Then 10 minutes went by and he was nowhere to be found, I went back to where we last talked to him and he came out of the stock room and I snagged him again. He said, OK I’ll try again and left us again.
A short time later he stumbled out and told us that the Langley store had three in stock. You can guess my next question, great, can you have one shipped here for us? He said, we don’t do that. WHAT! I exclaimed, your kidding right? He said I would have to drive to Langley to buy the Laptop. Stunned by this news jokingly I said thank you for nothing. The other store is 40 minutes away so we decided we would go the next day but still couldn’t believe that they won’t do a small thing like send a Mini HP Laptop to another store. Is that not supposed to be good customer service, go the extra mile and all that stuff. I know they have inter store courier service, why not put a computer with the same courier?
The next day I was still miffed, the story is, I drove to Langley and bought the Laptop. I still have to buy an external Optical Drive for this laptop, but I won’t buy it from Best Buy for fear I might have to drive to another town to get it.
Best Buy Your Customer Service Sucks!
P.S.
Be sure to Read Danny Brown’s article here!
Do Something That Matters
It’s easy to get caught up in the Christmas Spirit, we suddenly get nice and more helpful at this time of year than any other time, why is that? I know, I know, don’t get your stuff in a knot. I’m generalizing but let’s be honest, we tend to focus on ourselves or our immediate families most of the time. I want to share a true story with you, no it’s not the story of how I met your Mother. I will try to protect the innocent.
Once upon a time…… there was a girl, she was 13 and was very confused, she was being abused in all the ways you can possibly imagine. She ended up living on the streets, selling drugs, doing drugs, and prostitution became her daily routine. This little girl found herself at the age of 19 and nothing had changed, no prospects of anything changing. That was until someone took a vested interest in her, saw someone desperately wanting something very different than what she dreamed of living.
This someone told her about a program to get her straight and on the right track. This little girl didn’t believe it and didn’t think she was worth it. Imagine going through life thinking that what you were doing was as good as it was going to get.
I have found, that when life gets to be too much, you have to give back more to life and to those around you. To put things into perspective, LIFE is not a thing on a shelf, life is more about the people you associate with, it’s the people you chose know. These are people you carve out your life with, sometimes we make poor choices and sometimes we end up somewhere we didn’t have a clue we were going to happen. Sometimes, we choose to carve out a life with the wrong people, people that aren’t healthy for us. That’s what happened to this little girl, she trusted people she thought her friends, people that were to be her guardians. They didn’t, they abused her, got her hooked and messed up, took what was to be a great future and the kind of life she was hoping to have.
Without going into details I’ll tell you where this young lady is at today. Three years ago she entered a Program, she became a Christian and has been clean for those three years. Not only has she been clean, she has been loved and treated like someone special, that never happened before. Through her walk with God, being off drugs and not selling her soul to strangers, some new challenges arrived and give her more work to do. She has A.D.D. and is struggling with temptation, to do things that are not good for her. You are getting the picture now aren’t you?
Today this young girl is now living with a loving, caring family, they are giving her what she has never truly had, a Mother & Father. I told you this story because I wanted to make you stop and think about others. Think about them all the time not just at Christmas.
You may not be in a position to take on someone who has gone through a rehabilitation program or is in need, but, you can always help by donating your time and money. I encourage you, no, I implore you to do something that matters, make a difference in someones life and in the life you were born to live. Don’t just wait for Christmas to do it, make it an ongoing mission.
You’ve heard me say it and I’ll say it again, How many people are better off because you lived?
Measuring Business Processes
Last year I wrote an article called ” I.T. Decisions – Who Makes Them In Your Organization? “. Often the wrong people are making these decisions, they aren’t bad people but they should rely on those who work with Technology and understand the implications of making the wrong choices. One of the best ways to prevent the wrong people from making I.T. decisions is to make sure all business processes are well documented and measured (weighted). Why you ask?
- If all subject matter experts in your business were to document their business processes, you would know exactly what each staff person has to do each and everyday to get the job done.
- You then have a foundation to measure the right software applications for your business
- These business processes can now be measured and weighted to help make I.T. decisions for your organization
Those are just few but you should be getting the idea.
There are many ways of handling the task of measuring business processes but I’ll try to keep it simple for you. There are two things I would recommend:
- Build a Database (MySQL or SQL) to store your business processes & the weighting
- Build Excel Worksheets to enter & pull these processes and weights from the Database
Years ago I had a couple of really sharp guys working for me, they built a nifty application (system) for us to measure our business processes against features in software applications. We wanted to have a snapshot of how each application matched up against each other, the problem is we didn’t have an easy way to see all our requirements on one page. We also didn’t know which processes were more important than others.
The first step is to pull your key subject matter experts together, get all business processes documented for each role in the organization. This ensured you knew what tasks had to be completed each and everyday to do business. Depending on your business this can be an easy job or a labour intensive one. I highly recommend this gets done regardless of how hard or how long it takes, because it makes future upgrades and or the decision to change a core application in your organization much easier.
Once you have your business processes documented you have something to work with when deciding what software or ERP systems implement, this job takes time but it’s well worth it. Enter these processes into your database, then build spreadsheets to pull that data out for review.
In your database you want to also store a measurement we’ll call weighting for this example. Why? When you sitdown and have software demonstrated you can ask key questions, does this software do this and that from your database. Afterall, you are asking directly from how you do business (your documented business processes). You now want to be able to give that process a score or measurement when sitting in these demonstrations. Your scale might look like this:
1 – Does it well and is easy to use
3 – Does it but not well – not easy to figure out or use
5 – May need to be modified
9 – Not sure – need more information
0 – Doesn’t do it at all
In your spreadsheet you would use the above scale to measure the software you are looking at on a business process by business process basis. Sounds tedious doesn’t it? It is when setting things up the first time, after that it gets much easier because you don’t need to build it again.
This is just one way of measuring your business process against software, you could and should group your business processes by importance as well. That way you know exactly what you MUST have and what the NICE to have’s would be.
I hope that helps, feel free to conatct me if you have questions or wish to go through this process for your business.
I would love your feedback, what do you think and do you have a better way?
My Goals for Owen Greaves Consulting in 2010
I spent many years just winging it, just responding to what felt right and mostly what felt good, sound familiar? I have found that there are more business owners, check that, most people were doing the same thing. As I mentioned in my previous post, we spend more time planning a two week vacation than we do our careers and our lives. Why is that? I suspect due to a lack of knowledge, a poor understanding of what’s at stake here….it’s your life and you only get one chance to do it. Enough about that, I want to share with you what drives me and what my vision for Owen Greaves Consulting is for 2010.
I have met and worked for many, many business owners, CIO’s, COO’s, and they all struggle with the same things for the most part. They know what they want to do, but don’t really know how to build and implement a strong I.T. Plan. I.T. visionaries are way ahead of the rest of the organization, think of a funnel, you have a narrowing in the middle, a wide open area at one end and small opening at the other end. The visionary is out in the wide open section and instructs back to the small opening at the other end to do this or that. A short period of time goes by and he / she is frustrated because what they saw and instructed is not done. Why?
The workers back at the small opening can’t see the big picture through the narrow opening in the middle, they don’t see what the visionary see’s way out there, they can’t even see where he is. The problem is at the narrow opening in the middle right? There has to be someone there that can clearly articulate what the visionary wants done back to the people (workers) in the small opening at the back. You might say things get lost in translation, it can happen if the person in the middle does not clearly understand what the visionary wants!
So what does this have to do with my vision for 2010. It’s obvious to me that there is a bigger problem than the funnel, it’s the man in the middle. Having someone who can build the plan so the workers can get done what the visionary wants completed. My vision, to help that person or organizations with a simple way to build that Strategic Technology Plan and to ensure that all businesses indeed do have a plan. Most don’t, they rely on internal staff, staff that don’t know how to build a plan because they are frankly too close to the problem(s). Most business owners think they know how, but they all too often are using the wrong filters to truly understand what the I.T. Plan should look like and be. Some of the smartest business people in the world don’t fully understand what needs to be in the I.T. Strategic Plan, hence they should hire the right people and or consultants to help build that strategy. No matter how big or small your business is, you should have a good plan on how technology will drive your business.
Most organizations have not documented what thier business processes are! How could they possibly know which software application, payroll, HR, CRM software and what have you to implement if they don’t know each and every process it takes to get the job done in a day. My goal is to ensure as many businesses / owners as possible have a good I.T. Plan. This has very little to do with Social Media but it has much to do with Technology overall. Social Media happens to be a large part of my work at the moment and it’s the hot topic of discussion everywhere I go.
My Plans for 2010:
- Increase Public Speaking Engagements – on The New Technology, I.T. Strategies / Planning
- To educate and teach 100 businesses develop an I.T. Strategic Plan. (roughly 8 new businesses per month)
- Develop a video series on developing I.T. Strategic Plans. ( The I.T. Strategic Planning Series)
- Continue working on my next eBook, The New Technology Pt 2. (hope to complete by end of 2010)
- Write more often on my Blog. (daily if possible)
- Get more subscribers on my Blog.
- And of course, increase revenues ( I have to put that on here)
If you don’t have a list of items or targets, stop right now and make one…make two! What are you aiming for in 2010 and how do you plan to hit your targets? Better yet, what’s your I.T. Strategy for 2010?
I can see a problem with my list already, if I want to be successful, I have to find a few things to not consider doing. I may have to hire or partner up if I want to achieve all my goals.
What’s On Your List?