It should come as no real surprise to anyone that knows me that I a big Macintosh enthusiast and that perhaps what I appreciate most about the "Mac Experience" is it’s "usability" so when I spotted the article Top 10 Usability Highs Of Mac OS article this morning that Juul Coolen wrote for Smashing Magazine (a recent mac convert) you had to know I was going to post a link to it.
by: Jerrald Hayes
Wow! Benjamin Zander (co-author along with his wife Rosamund Stone Zander of the great book The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life
(via LifeHacker)
If the words "classical music appreciation" make your eyes glaze over, conductor Benjamin Zander will change your mind in this short talk from the invite-only TED event. Zander connects music to leadership to possibility to passion and ties it all up in an insightful commentary on life in general. I just finished Zander’s book, The Art of Possibility (highly recommended), but seeing him deliver just the few of the book’s points in the flesh is a special treat…
At 17:20 Zander gives us an amazing piece of information on Leadership:
"…I had an amazing experience, I was forty-five years old. I had been condcting for twenty years and I suddenly had a realization,…the conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. My picture appears on the front of the CD (audience laughs) but the conductor doesn’t make a sound. He depends for his power to make other people powerful. At that changed everything for me. It was totally life changing. People in my orchestra came up to me and said "Ben, what happend?". That’s what happened. I realized my job was to awaken POSSIBILITY in other people. And of course I wanted to know if I was doing it and you know how you find out? You look at their eyes. If their eyes are shinny you know you are doing it…
…If the eyes are not shinny you get to ask a question. And this is the question: Who am I being that my players eyes are not shinning?
And…
So now I have just one last thought which is it really makes a difference what we say,… the words that come out of our mouth. I learned this from a woman that survived Auschwitz, one of the rare surviviors, she went to Auschwitz when she was just fifteen years old. And um…. her brother was eight. And the parents were lost. And um….she told me this,…she said "We were in the train going to Auschwitz and I looked down and saw my brother’s shoes were missing. And I said why are you so stupid, why can’t you keep your things together for goodness sake." The way an elder sister would speak to a younger brother. Unfortunatly it was the last thing she ever said to him because she never saw him again. He did not survive. And so when she came out of Auschwitz she made a vow. She told me this,…she said "I walked out of Auschwitz into life and I made a vow and the vow was, I will never say anything that couldn’t stand as the last thing I ever say." Now can we do that? No, and we’ll make ourselves wrong, and others wrong, but it is a possibility to live into.
Just great stuff! Entertaining, informative, and inspiring.
by: Jerrald Hayes
Just the other day I was checking in to one of the environmental blogs I read and ran across an interesting post about “An insanely clever bike-advocacy ad from the U.K” : Do the test | Gristmill: The environmental news blog
I actually knew as soon as I saw just what the test was going to be all about in that I had seen it use before in a Discovery Channel television program that was about our brains and cognition but I still almost missed ‘it‘.
Beyond the message regarding bicycles I think the actual ‘test’ has so very interesting and poignant management implications and lessons in it.
In talk and discussions on management, notably Tom Peter’s 1986 article What Gets Measured Gets Done we often hear the expression:
“What Gets Measured Gets Done”
While that is so very true and a very valuable tool in and of itself it comes along with the caveat we see and learn about in the Cognition Test. While what’s measured sure enough does get done can we be too focused on our measurements that we miss other important data and information that is flying right in front of our noses?
by: Jerrald Hayes
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by: Jerrald Hayes
I’m very happy to announce that Patrice Hanigan, PMP® has joined the Paradigm-360 team.
Patrice is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP®) having earned her credentials from the Project Management Institute . With Paradigm-360 Patrice uses the expertise she’s gained to integrate Professional Project Management techniques and practices into the training and programs we develop for contractors and other building and remodeling professionals.
Back in college Patrice began her education as a Psychology major before switching over to Business Management & then Computer Studies. In a 26 year career working for a company with one of the one of the most widely recognized names in computer services she has worked in the realms of help desk management, information technology deployment, and most recently Patrice has spent the last eight years of her career working as a Project Management Executive in the field of Customer Relationship Management.
Patrice is also now involved with our 360 Difference line of FileMaker Pro software solutions working on our plans for a SaaS deployment (Software as a Service) and the further development of the Production and CRM modules as well as a new 360 Difference product we have in the pipeline that will allow Homeowners to better plan and track their project ideas and it’s progress.
by: Jerrald Hayes
Cleaning up and tossing some old files from the late eighties and early nineties I had stored in the basement I found this quote written on a scrap of paper at the bottom of one pile.
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
- Will Rogers
by: Jerrald Hayes
Mark Hayward from a blog article on Self Branding -
"Branding can be described as the symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a particular product or company.
Effective branding serves to create assumptions, excitement, associations, and expectations that are ingrained in consumers and generated with the mere mention of a company and its goods or services (think GOOGLE, NIKE, Jet Blue)."
In the article I quoted from he talking self branding in a context of making money just writing a blog but the comments and ‘rules‘ of branding ring true no matter what your product is.
One of the superficial shallow things I often see in the online construction forums I sometimes frequent is the chant of branding, branding, branding, focus on you brand with little to no substance or discussion of just what a brand is or how effective branding is accomplished.
We’ll be introducing our own online forum here perhaps even sometime later this week to hopefully get the real discussion on branding underway,
by: Jerrald Hayes
In the Critical Chain Project Managment Yahoo group that I am subscribed too I just read a great post by Michael Carroll that I thought everyone here might benefit from reading. The topic his post was in response to was How common is it to have "No plans"? (The emphases placed are mine.)
I have been helping my son train for his swim team. Most local high school teams follow a tradition of generating what you might call brute force to achieve their results by what would seem to be a wise strategy to work harder, faster, and longer than the other teams. Yet this approach is a tad bit frustrating for both the coaches and swimmers as academics standards must also be met. In each of these swim programs you will always have a few swimmers who are naturals and rise to the top and yet the rest of the team struggles. You can observe all of the other swimmers putting their might into swimming with poor technique struggling against the water going home each day discouraged because the long hours, hard work and efforts are not paying off. To make it worse the coach is sure to let all know that to be more like the top tier swimmers you must have a better work effort, more drive, and more dedication.
Why do I bring this up when talking about project plans? I do so for three reasons: Time, perspective, and tradition.
Time - The more pressure and organization has to perform a given task the more apt they are to roll up their sleeves and re double their efforts by working harder, faster, and longer. Why? Mainly because the technique has worked in the past. Yet on the other hand I think it would be fair to say business managers are wise and know that they need to think things out and generally will agree that planning is as equally important as taking immediate action. So attempts are made to plan. Often these show up as the daily stand up meetings like swimmers meeting with the coach each practice to get pumped up about how hard they are going to work, how they are going to change, and to discuss the upcoming meet. Fortunately swimming has an off season and the coaches will have a few months to create next years winning strategy. Unlike swimming teams most businesses don’t get an off season. More often then not, serious deep strategic planning is done in a shoot from the hip manner, for time pressures do not allow much of any thing else.
Perspective - Coaches study the tapes of Olympic swimmers over and over again looking to help their swimmers mimic the gold medal winning strokes. However there is a serious flaw in this. Swimmers swimming at max speed do not display perfect technique because they are swimming close to being completely out of control. Yet watch the great Alexander Popov and his practices sessions look nothing like his racing because he swims only fast enough to make his technique perfect. Yet watch most high school swimmers and they practice poor technique and swim at max effort. So when they get to race day and they push the engines hard they cross the line and the extra effort at race day only buys a minimal improvement in performance. Yet the great Popov’s muscles remember the perfect technique and allow him to stay in enough control to devastate the competition. Similarly in business, our perspective on the most successful companies is distorted because we watch the great organizations without seeing the disciplined approach to planning, training, and methodical execution. Additionally add in time pressure and inadequate training and the only thing left is the strategy of harder, faster, longer.
Tradition - Swimming has a long history of tradition and so do businesses. In fact most business leaders gained their first lessons in leadership in the sports arena. Most swimmers who make it to college level swimming are almost impossible to retrain. If they have defects in their stroke it can take years to erase because of muscle and nerve memory. The problem is even greater for men than women because of the tradition of using sheer strength to solve stroke problems. Do we not see the same thing in business?
As I apply these lessons to my own companies I am cognizant of how important disciplined project planning and execution is. It takes a conscious effort to set aside the appropriate amount of time to not only plan, but to build solid systems that allow business execution to occur not only during the slow cycles but to do so at race time when customers are knocking at the door in the up cycle and to do it without going over the edge of control.
Regards,
Michael Carroll
by: Jerrald Hayes
Neil Patel and Internet marketing consultant very effectively visually illustrates The Difference Between Marketing, PR, Advertising, and Personal Branding .
For the past few years whenever I talk about branding with other contractors I try to emphasize something a quote I picked up on regarding Branding in a Remodeling Magazine article two years ago (Brand Aid Remodeling Magazine
October 1, 2005):
“It’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room,”
I think a lot of contractors instead confuse Branding with hype and what is in essence self-aggrandizing blatant self-promotion and the lesson we get from Neil Patel’s illustration is that your pitching that message over and over again isn’t really Branding but is instead what we call Advertising. Hyping to a client what a "great" contractor your are (a great lover) doesn’t really come off as authentic and genuine when it’s coming out of your own mouth.
However when that potential client hears that message coming from someone else it it does comes off as authentic and genuine and strikes a cord and helps build your Brand.
Tags: Advertising, Branding, Branding, Marketing, & Advertising
by: Jerrald Hayes
Relative Income, It’s a great concept so what is so many of us don’t seem t get it.
As I was working today I was re-reading the The 4-Hour Workweek , by Timothy Ferriss by listening to the audio book edition as I was working today I was reminded of a passage I really enjoyed when I read it the first time through.
Two hard-working chaps are headed towards each other. Chap A moving at 80 hours per week and Chap B moving at 10 hours per week. They both make $50,000 per year. Who will be richer when the pass in the middle of the night? If you said B, you would be correct, and this is the difference between absolute and relative income.
Absolute income is measured using one holy and inalterable variable: the raw and almighty dollar. Jane Doe makes $100,000 per year and is thus twice as rich as John Doe, who makes $50,000 per year.
Relative income uses two variables: the dollar and time, usually hours. The whole “per year” concept is arbitrary and makes it easy to trick yourself. Let’s look at the real trade.
Jane Doe makes $100,000 per year, $2,000 for each of 50 weeks per year, and works 80 hours per week. Jane Doe thus makes $25 per hour.
John Doe makes $50,000 per year, $1,000 for each of 50 weeks per year, but works 10 hours per week and hence makes $100 per hour.
In relative income, John is four times richer.
… The top New Rich mavericks make at least $5,000 per hour.
The other day I was in one of the discussion forums and I heard one contractor telling another fellow that was getting set to start out on his own that he could expect to spend
"…65 hours working [in the field], another 20 for office crap"
…and I thought that was just insane. That’s not a life , it’s a self imposed prison sentence and in my estimation evidence of poor business design. To his credit the guy who was putting the pieces together and doing the planning to go out on his own wasn’t buying into any of that insanity. The insane guys who work that kind of schedule (and there are lot of them out there) are often the ones who don’t have a decent or respectable Net Profit margin in place and try to make up for that lack by doing it "in volume".
Generally speaking contractors need to work smarter learn to substitute that for working harder and longer.
Perhaps the key central premise of the booke The 4-Hour Workweek is that you are only “rich” if you have leisure time to enjoy yourself. It probably should go on the contractors required reading list.
Tags: getting a life, lifestyle, making a buck, net profit
by: Jerrald Hayes
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