Rob's a blog gin'

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 2nd January 2009

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 23rd December 2008

Finding a synergy between leadership and its workforce is a vital component in the success of the enterprise. What vital factor will forge a lasting successful bond that will project your business revenue.

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 21st November2008

Rock in tune

It was a few years since I was at the original Isle of Wight Festival (in around 1970), and to some extent the format of music hasn't changed since. With The Rolling Stones heading the bill in 2007, you might be forgiven for believing that the festival had entered a time warp that was difficult to get out of.

One thing that does strike you when you listen to either the acts from yesteryear of those which are contemporary that it wouldn't take very much for the audience to recognise that the act is out of tune.

Reducing the confusion

These are the faithful, and they will have memorised, and will sing along to, each of the popularised melodies that the main stage is belting out. It's also surprising that they have competition, since the festival provides a second arena where alternative bands are playing. There's no doubt that there is plenty of competition.

Even in this confused cacophony of sounds each group of people can tune in and recognise the group of their choice, but if they get it wrong by even one note, then some 60,000 people will know and wince at the thought.

Back to business

Isn't it the same in business? We expect a team of people to deliver the goods and the leaders stand on the stage belting out their own 'music' to stimulate and energise our achievers. But if we play enough bad notes, then you can be sure that the audience will become disenchanted and start to wince.

Yes, you've got a business to run and that is paramount in your mind, but the people who deliver profit for you must believe in the act that is centre stage.

Musicians get to know each other and are economical in the time they take to practice together. They use music scores to record how they and their band will play together and they are expected to practice on their own. But if they don't know what their paying audience are likely to buy then all of their efforts are in vain.

Listening and learning

In business we have more than one audience, the customers and clients who sustain the business and the workers who deliver our promises. Most businesses attend quite closely to being in tune with their customers, because its obvious that business is won by matching their aspirations, but I wonder how many businesses do the same for their workers?

By listening to what those who deliver your product have to say, not only will you understand what makes your team tick, but also you will learn how to energise them and make them perform.

...From Marks and sparks

In their heyday Mr Mark of 'Marks and Spencer', a chain of stores in the UK, would spend just a little time walking around his store chatting to his workers. He learned what his customers wanted from the people selling his goods, but also learned what his workforce were thinking. The good news was that the message spread, that Mr Marks cared about the workers who delivered his product, which helped to make the firm a runaway success.

Conflict between the people who work for you is counter-productive
because it drains resources builds bulletproof barriers and diverts
enterprise effort from its primary objectives. Explore the problem with
me and learn how to defuse the situation.

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 14th November2008

Demilitarising ladders

The first time I climbed a ladder onto a roof was
when I was very small and I remember being very apprehensive and
perhaps a little scared,. My Dad climbed up behind me, with his pipe
billowing out its noxious fumes, coaxing me all the while and
reassuring me that with him behind me I would always be safe. Patient
as ever; he would sit beside me a while, drawing my attention away from
the gargantuan distance between me and the ground (for me as a boy
anyway) towards the rooftops and the skyline beyond. After a while my
fear subsided, and encouraged once more by my Dad, we set about working
on the roof alongside my brother and my Uncle Bill.


After a time, I skipped quite quickly up ladders, and almost ran across the tops of the roofs until my Dad gave me a small talk about being overconfident.


What happened here was that I was placed in an environment that I was uncertain of,
and in which I feared the consequences of my action. My Dad had given
me confidence, had encouraged me with enough information to get through
my fears and had calmed the situation when it was needed.


What he also provided was a demilitarised zone.

Conflict and the buffer zone

Let's translate this into the commercial workplace, and at the end, if you haven't already worked it out, I'll tell you how my Dad's demilitarised zone worked.


Take an eclectic mix of people, shuffle
them like a pack of cards and deal them out to the various departments
in your organisation. It might seem a little more organised than that,
but in reality most organisations hire people on their skills and what
their character is perceived to be.


In fact both the organisation and the candidate are both
on their best behaviour, and the relationship between the prospective
employee and the people they will work with will develop over the
period after they are put together.


Conflict grows between employees for a number of different reasons.
One worker may be struggling to get to grips with the way the culture
works in an organisation, and their co-workers may misinterpret their
actions. Teams of workers tend to band together, defending their
position against all comers. In all of these cases the conflict comes
from intimidation.

Defusing conflict, the easy way

People become intimidated because someone else is using jargon or
use superior knowledge. People become intimidated because they are in
a new environment and know nothing of the history that everyone else is
engaged in. People take a defensive position in groups because they
feel that strength comes from consolidation rather than isolation. If
one person speaks out against the crowd, then they'd better have a good
reason, because they are about to become cannon fodder for the erudite
culture vultures amongst them.


This phenomenon happens at all levels in the organisation.
Even the top people are put in environments where they feel unsafe and
then they, just like everyone else will fall back on safe defensive
strategies.


If you don't know an individual or group that well,
then it's impossible to guess what will make them defensive, so it's
easier to make it clear at the outset where the demilitarised zones
are. Demilitarised zones is neutral ground where people can get to know
each other and perhaps understand each other's viewpoint without being
in a position of conflict.

Breaking up is hard to do


A simple example of this might be
declaring that the next tea break will take place when progress start
to stall, and that everyone will mingle in the tearoom to have a casual
exchange of views. That particular situation needs some managing; just
to make sure that the warring parties don't just form their own clique
where they will re-confirm their commitment to the cause.


You might have to break up a group by asking one of them to come over and meet one of the others that you're sure they will want to talk to.


Demilitarised zones need to be declared up front,
so that people get to know what is expected of them, and the casual
negotiations that follow are there to break down barriers and get
people with different views to interact.




Just
because the force of opinion is with them, it doesn't mean that the
strongest side will necessarily have the best way forward.



By
stating up front what the demilitarised zones are and how they are
triggered, potential positions of conflict are nearly always avoided.


And as for my dad, well his demilitarised zone was sitting on the roof with me, whiling away the precious time at work, and just talking about the really best reason for being on the roof. The view!

Confusion is one of the biggest product killers
and it starts when decision makers are bombarded with a number of
disparate views. Difficult as it might seem, a successful outcome is
critically aligned to the way in which the wheat is separate from the
chaff. This article considers how to filter out the chaff.

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 7th November2008

Contact!

Networking
is one of the most important business activities you can do to improve
your business, and that means conferences, meetings and large
gatherings at which you hope to float through the crowd to make new
contacts.


You
arrive at one such function; you enter the room, and are met by a
cacophony of noise. Now you know that you have little chance of
understanding even a tenth of the information that is being transferred
across the room, and in fact the vast majority of the information is
intended for small close-knit groups.


But
you can pick up the odd conversation, just as if your ear was RADAR
that sifts out key directional information and leads you to a certain
conversation. Of course once you're in the crowd then you are focussed
on one conversation alone and the background chaff is filtered out.


From
experience, this analogy works in business. Worker involvement is
important to your profitability, and you know that you have to trust in
others to help you to make decisions. After all you can't be expected
to know everything can you?

Sift that chaff

You
call a meeting and invite a wide number of people just so that you can
get a good feel for how the organisation as a whole is thinking. But
then as the meeting progresses so a number of views come out of the
woodwork. Some are fed by the fuel of feuds between different
individuals whilst others are a passionate cry for you to listen to
what they are saying. By the end of the meeting you are feeling like a
punch bag, and the voices are merging just like the crowd you went into
at your networking function.


It's a fair bet that someone's voice will
just manage to pierce the general hubbub of views that are floating
over you, and just like in your networking crowd, there is a great
tendency to zone in on one viewpoint, just because it seems more
intense and directly addressees your concerns.


But you wouldn't make a business decision on just one conversation in a crowd. You would drill down and understand the detail below.

Drill down for clarity


Breaking down the problem into smaller pieces
doesn't mean that you have to be competent in every field, just that it
makes it easier to filter out the detail that is important and the rest
which is chaff.




Bring that cacophony to a halt,
because in this case you can. Pick out the individual threads and
examine each in more detail. Break them down into smaller manageable
pieces and as you reach the bottom there will be obvious chaff, some
wheat and a few grains that are difficult to identify.



People
have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to. This
is because it increases the importance of their contribution, and
because they need to know that every corner has been covered.


The cacophony we hear at a networking function or
in a meeting has a direct analogy with PowerPoint. How many times have
you suffered 'death by PowerPoint' from someone who is trying too hard?
They may know their own subject, and they believe that by flooding the
audience with information that they will impress on them the level of
commitment that they have put into this work.


It does, of course, have the opposite effect
because much of the detail is irrelevant. By following the presenter
down to the detail and sifting out what is relevant much of the
presentation will be discarded.


Do the same in your corporate meetings.
Follow the participants down to the detail and then dismiss the chaff,
leaving only the key information that you need to make a decision.

Have you ever had a project where one team makes a change in their work that has a knock-on effect in other areas of the project? That might seem unavoidable, but in this article I explore the world about us for inspiration that will improve your business.

 

Rob Wendes Business solutions and advice 31st October 2008

It's easy to create a business solution that has a number of elements that are tightly coupled
to each other. One element may be tightly dependent on a home brewed
protocol, which then influences how another element will be designed. When the protocol changes, so other parts of the system are affected, making development and maintenance expensive and difficult. This article explores an alternative.

Rob Wendes Information Technology Solutions 24th October 2008

Everyone must have felt that the breaking news regarding the housing market in America was somehow a remote event that would have no effect on the rest of the world. That was certainly the propaganda that was flying around in the past, where American Economists were assuring the global economy that anything that happened there would have no effect on the rest of us.

Freddie May Fannie Might not

With breaking news that Freddie Mack and Fannie May were sailing down the river without a paddle, it was easy to sit back, think how sorry we were for those poor people over there and get on with our lives.


As was to be eventually demonstrated, the Tsunami grew in force, until the true excesses of all financial organisations across the world became apparent. Many economists have bugled the veracity of their earlier predictions and have cautioned that 'decoupled financial markets' just don't work and that these events just prove it.

Squeezing too much together is bad news

Tight coupling in any environment means that one element has a direct dependency on another, and when one changes the other must change with it. Loose coupling (or decoupling) is when these two elements know about each other, but they have the tight dependencies designed out. What has happened in the Financial Sector, is that the have believed that the economies of the world are loose coupled, whereas in fact the design is flawed!



In Software and Technology, experience over the years has demonstrated that a good design, which loosely couples the elements of a system, is a truly successful formula. In near history, Software developers took no regard of loose coupling, and found, just like the banking system, that different parts of system were so dependent on each other that they use a lot of resource to maintain them.


When there are many tight dependencies across a system, you can bet that a chain reaction starts when a change is made in one element of the system.


Careful design using loose coupling takes away these dependencies and allows each element to act independently.


When Economists tell us that decoupled economies do not work, what they really mean is that they haven't designed a loosely coupled system. Avoid your own technology meltdown by making sure your systems are decoupled.

Fear and caution are the main reasons that business owners and decision makers fail to innovate and exploit their market completely, and it's often left to the young to take new risks. This article examines how fear affects us and makes businesses tend towards a cautious approach. Fortune favours the brave.

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 17th October 2008

Shooting off of Shuter's hill



Shuter's hill was a busy place in the 1960's with plenty of cars threading their way around narrow streets around and up a hill towards a busy junction. It wasn't the easiest of places to have to work especially since this job was the re-roofing of a house that was shedding its welsh slates, and for anyone who doesn't know about welsh slates, they are a pretty heavy object to be flying off a roof and into a busy street.



Care was obviously needed and the work was to be conducted from scaffolding with a circular chute tied to the side of the scaffold that fed into a large rubbish skip. The idea was that workmen on the roof would tear off the old slates, throw them down the chute and fill up the skip at the bottom. Both the slate and wooden battens onto which they were nailed were duly ripped away by our two diligent workers, so that within a few hours one side of the roof was entirely bare, except for the rafters that formed the skeleton that supported it.



Understanding Bobby



The owner of the building firm returned, having organised the asbestos slates, battens, nails and copper tingles that would form the materiel from which the roof would be re-constructed. On the back of the lorry he drove was rolls of roofing felt, which would be used under the slates as an extra protection.



For the time being it would be laid out on the roof and held with temporary battens to stop water until the rest of the materials arrived.



It was as this point the owner of the building firm descended down the ladder attached to the scaffold to where a British Bobby (policeman) was waiting for him. There was a short discussion that the workers on the roof couldn't hear, but at its conclusion he re-ascended the roof to talk to the workers.



He explained that the Bobby was very concerned about the workers, who seemed to have a flagrant disregard for their own safety, but the builder had clearly asserted that these two workers were very experienced and that there was no need to fear. Those were different times. The builder was my dada and the two workers were my brother and I. We were respectively 8 and 7 years old.



The young have no fear



I meet many older people who have never been on a roof, and because of that have extreme fear of climbing ladders and dealing with the insecurity of sitting on a ladder perched across a roof whilst you are working. They have no particular rationale for hating the roofing experience, and when it comes down to it the fear has built up from when they were small.



Youngsters have little fear, and although it could be argued that is because they can't evaluate the danger they are is, I would argue that they learn to handle danger and accept and manage it. As we mature into adulthood the act of evaluating danger persuades us not to take risks and consequently we are less likely to be able to manage and control our fears. It's easier just to accept the fear as a limitation and to just not go there!



But to me, working on a roof is just natural. I was brought up on it and everyone around me worked on roofs for at least part of their lives. I didn't have the opportunity to build up a fear of falling of a roof, and never questioned my ability to stay on one.



It's only when you start to question the situation as you gain more wisdom and experience that it becomes difficult to justify the way we worked, at the age we were.



In essence, if you are brought up with and are comfortable with an activity it will seem entirely natural to work without fear.



Leave fear behind



It's the same with businesses and technology.

Many business owners and decision makers have no alternative but to work with technology. They don't have first hand experience technology and so they tend to build barriers to protect themselves against the dangers that they fear.



How can a businessman ever have exposure to their nemesis to an extent that they are able to control and exploit technology? Many don't, and so just like we at our tender working age drew on our fathers experience and trusted in his confidence in us, so the enterprise must also rely on trusted people from outside.



By using specialists who have been immersed in the area of expertise you need to exploit so it will seem entirely natural to embrace change and the tools that go with it.



Control risk



If you only take one thing away from this post then just remember that no one made a fortune without conquering their fear and taking a risk.



The steam train wouldn't have happened if Stephensen hadn't taken a risk.

Flight would not have happened if the Wright brothers hadn't taken a risk

The Internet wouldn't have happened if Berniers-Lee hadn't taken a risk

Google would not have happened if someone hadn't taken a risk.



Control your risk with a technical consultant from tactips.com

It's difficult to reconcile the reasons that customers don't continue to do business with you, especially when you are trying to balance the needs of your own enterprise with those of someone else's'. Fundamentally organisations that trade together do so for a reason. This article examines the chemistry that makes it work.

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 10th October 2008

Quilted tissue shop


I went shopping with my wife last week. Now that's a thing that I don't do as often as I should, I know but I suppose the male of the species has a habit of following a different path.


I wandered around, and I was feeling not quite as well off as in the past, most probably because at this point in history there is huge turmoil in the financial markets. Was capitalism teetering on the brink of destroying itself? I hope not.


When I looked at the shopping trolley at the end of our shopping spree I noticed a few things that confirmed that my wife as was as I was evidently affected by all of the propaganda that we had heard on the radio and television.


The toilet tissue that we normally buy is quilted and printed with a pattern, but I noticed the more austere basic roll that was not conveying opulence. As I scanned the trolley I picked up a number of other goods that were not our normal upbeat purchases and then on gazing around the supermarket, I realised a subtle change in the distribution of quality versus basic products.


Atissue atissue we all fall down


It seemed to me that the supermarket may well have adapted to the change in market climate and had adapted by making sure they had the right goods for the customers they serve that reflect their mood and how the economy is affecting then. We usually shop at the same supermarket, and have done for many years, and I wondered if in fact the supermarket was doing nothing more than feeding its customers with what they want.


The example here is that if our supermarket had only stocked the quilted toilet tissue we would have probably bought it this time, but as our shopping mood swung more firmly towards a more austere lifestyle, so many more of their products would no longer meet this culture swing until we would eventually shop elsewhere.


Big bucks from going down


This was confirmed today; when I heard on the radio that Tesco (now worldwide, not Justin Britain) earned £1.3 Billion gross profit in six months, which most business leaders would be satisfied with. Their CEO was interviewed on Radio 4, and made great play of telling us all that they were at their best in difficult trading conditions and that they stocked the products that reflected the market and its economic conditions. He confirmed that buying habits had changed and that there was no doubt that their customer's needs were different from a year ago.


By finding out how their customer's buying habits were shifting they are able to improve their profits in difficult market conditions.


Profit boost


Isn't there a lesson to be learned here? If you deliver anything other than what your customer wants then when your market enters a downturn, then they are unlikely to buy from your company. Isn't it really the truth, that in an economic downturn it is more imperative than ever to ensure that you know what your clients want before they know they need it themselves?


Use specialist consultants' services to help you position yourself at the head of the market so that, just like Tesco, your profits will leap by 12.4% and you deliver exactly what your clients need.

Some organisations elevate and select a special few individuals to the level of icon, and they are held up as pillars or the organisation. This article examines the positive and negative sides of hero worship in organisations.

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 3rd October 2008

Stadium Fever

The huge stadium was stacked to the brim with young people mainly women who had queued for hours for the chance o get in. There was a steady murmur across the crowd as they waited for something to happen, and as the time approached the level of expectancy increased. As the appointed hour approached some of the women could hardly contain themselves and the murmur rose to a higher pitch as more and more people competed for the airwaves around them.

Getting Electrified

The feeling was electric as a man strode onto the stage and picked up a microphone. He announced that the newsreel men had to go, because they had not signed up to an intellectual property rights contract. There was mayhem in the crowd, as it seemed that they would lose out unless these half a dozen people left.



The newsmen stood fast, and then at last a police captain took charge of the situation and he and his men bundled the cameramen out of the stadium. The crowd roared and the excitement rose to fever pitch. There was a blur from the sidelines as the crowd almost wept with the fever of the moment.



In the centre in what seemed to be like a wrestling ring they picked up their instruments and sang. 'She loves you yeah yeah yeah..'



I was the Beatles at the Gator Bowl Jacksonville Florida.

Hero! We all have one

We all have our personal heroes, and in general that's not a bad thing. Nurses may hold up Florence Nightingale as their heroine whilst the engineers amongst us may point to Isambard Kingdom Brunel as the greatest hero of all time.



But a recent paper in the Journal of Nervous and mental disease suggests that Hero worship can have both a positive and negative side to it.

Heroes in Business

This brings us to the central issue for businesses, where organisations put themselves in a situation where individuals are relied on to reliably deliver a product. You may be familiar with the situation where a project seems to be going well, then hits the buffers where it always seems that only one person ever manages to dig you out of a hole.



On the positive side, at least your business has been able to survive, and it could well be that this individual deserves their hero status. On the negative or darker side, your business is so committed to this individual that if they were to leave or even worse they walked under a bus, then your business would go under. On the ugly side, who is to say that the delays and crisis are not caused by the individuals themselves? Not a happy thought!

Over the years I have worked with and in teams with widely varying capabilities and sizes. One of the important impressions that I have been left with is that a team becomes less effective as it grows. There is an optimum size beyond which the team is a disruptive element within the organisation. This article examines why.

Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 26th September 2008

Chopper's eye view

Look down from a helicopter into a crowd and its difficult to identify any individual. You might be lucky if the person you are looking for happens to be wearing a certain jacket or colour of hat, but you couldn't be entirely sure that you had a positive ID.



If you were a member of that crowd you might feel one of the following emotions. Some people find that embedding themselves into the crowd makes them feel safe, whilst others feel that the crowd is restrictive and that they loose their individuality. Most of us would feel some emotion somewhere between the two.

Exposure is bad for you

If you reduced the number in the crowd, then at some stage those who felt safely cosseted would begin to feel exposed and open to the outside world, whilst those who felt crushed by the crowd would feel that they had more exposure and were able to express themselves more effectively.

Get the team spirit!

It's much the same in teams. The bigger the team is, the more people there are across the spectrum who feel buried and who need to contribute. Larger teams will have a number of members with these characteristics who will begin to compete against one another so that their contribution is noticed. Conflicts arise within the team, which are difficult to resolve and lead to the work that is being undertaken being derailed and incomplete. Members become disillusioned with the project and feel that their contribution is not valued. The team enters a downward spiral where it becomes difficult for the group to arrive at answers to difficult problems, and a great deal of bickering and micro politics comes into play. As a group this team ceases to function and it is a self-destructive force.

But get the team size right

When the team size gets too small the weaker members become exposed and fail to make a contribution. The stronger outgoing members dominate the team and force decisions through without regard for the other members. This too can be damaging, since the solutions that the team have arrived at will not have taken into account the views of many of the team. There is no weight behind the work that is being undertaken, and a few people become responsible for implementing an unpopular solution.



When the team size and composition is just right, there is healthy exchange of views, which helps to moderate strong opinions. The weaker team members feel confident in a team size that minimises their outside exposure, whilst the dominant members have sufficient voice to feel they too are making a difference.

Or nearly right

Whilst neither extremes in size is healthy, a team size that is slightly too small is more likely to survive that its larger counterpart.



Choose team sizes wisely to ensure a successful project.