When I started this blog post, I didn’t know what I was getting into. The concept of social media includes an ever-increasing hodgepodge of methods for keeping in touch with people you know, getting in touch with people you don’t know, and renewing old acquaintances. Social media allows individuals to “broadcast” thoughts and ideas to an audience that may be very small (like this blog), or very large (like the Huffington Post). Social media can interact with mass media to aggregate opinions (as happens on American Idol) or raise money (as happened during the Hope for Haiti concert, which reportedly raised $66 million, largely by donations received via cell phones).
Social media runs the gamut from blogs, to social networking sites like Facebook, to “microblogging” applications like Twitter, to collaboration tools like wikis, and multimedia sites like YouTube for video, Last.fm for music and Flickr for photos. How on earth is a typical non-profit, already working 48 hours a day just to keep the doors open, supposed to make sense of this landscape and actually use it to produce something valuable for the organization?
I asked Jane Kuechle to give us some answers.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The convergence of opportunity
If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.
I was fortunate enough to visit the Boeing Museum of Flight twice in the last month. The Personal Courage Wing of the museum houses artifacts from World War 1 and World War 2, and it was very interesting to see the great difference in how the two wars were portrayed.
The museum describes WW1 in the same way the popular literature does: as a messy, ugly conflict with mud, trenches, poison gas, and much unnecessary death and suffering. WW2, on the other hand, is displayed as an epic battle between good and evil with brave infantrymen, sailors and flyers courageously defending their countries while civilians and government officials banded together in sacrifice for the common good.
Why the change? One could argue that the two wars were fundamentally different because of how and why they were fought. A more interesting case can be made that World War 2 happened at a unique time in history when the elements of public information sharing were for the first time in full blossom. Newsreel coverage for the first time could manage the public perception of grand sacrifice, and triumph.
Newspapers and radio reinforced the message in the United States, where the experience was easier to absorb at a distance from the fighting. Millions of children played with toy soldiers, built model fighter planes and relived the battles they saw in the movies. There were War Bonds, Liberty Ships, and Victory Gardens. Never before or since has a war captured the imagination the way World War 2 did. For those whose goal was to capture public support for the war effort there could be no better time, when all the elements for creating a shared experience were available. We should not be surprised that the same collective sense of purpose has been missing in wartime ever since.
In a business context, the book Outliers makes a similar argument about the inflection point between opportunity and success. Success, the author says, never happens in a vacuum. It is the result of hard work, for sure, but also the luck of being in the right place at the right time.
Would Bill Gates be Bill Gates if he had been born 30 years earlier, or 20 years later? Probably not. He (and to the same extent Steve Jobs) took advantage of the unique circumstances at that particular moment in time to create a business built on the very young market for personal computing. Personal computing was brand new and software was almost nonexistent. The software that was available was limited in usefulness and only the truest of the true hobbyists could work with it to produce anything helpful. By recognizing that the future was in personal computing and focusing on making the software available to solve real world problems, Bill Gates and crew made the very best of an opportunity that had been presented to no one before and to very few afterwards.
Today, in the technology field, there is hardly anything more interesting than the promise of Cloud Computing. If you’re on the inside it is easy to see the promise that the Cloud holds for the future. There will be those who will take advantage of the Cloud while it is in its early stages, when their impact will be the greatest.
Finding those points where circumstances come together in such a way that the truly distinctive can be created should be one of the primary missions of leadership. The most successful entrepreneur, or business person, or non-profit professional, will watch for those opportunities that are unique to their industry, or geography, or community, and use them to their best advantage.
I was fortunate enough to visit the Boeing Museum of Flight twice in the last month. The Personal Courage Wing of the museum houses artifacts from World War 1 and World War 2, and it was very interesting to see the great difference in how the two wars were portrayed.
The museum describes WW1 in the same way the popular literature does: as a messy, ugly conflict with mud, trenches, poison gas, and much unnecessary death and suffering. WW2, on the other hand, is displayed as an epic battle between good and evil with brave infantrymen, sailors and flyers courageously defending their countries while civilians and government officials banded together in sacrifice for the common good.
Why the change? One could argue that the two wars were fundamentally different because of how and why they were fought. A more interesting case can be made that World War 2 happened at a unique time in history when the elements of public information sharing were for the first time in full blossom. Newsreel coverage for the first time could manage the public perception of grand sacrifice, and triumph.
Newspapers and radio reinforced the message in the United States, where the experience was easier to absorb at a distance from the fighting. Millions of children played with toy soldiers, built model fighter planes and relived the battles they saw in the movies. There were War Bonds, Liberty Ships, and Victory Gardens. Never before or since has a war captured the imagination the way World War 2 did. For those whose goal was to capture public support for the war effort there could be no better time, when all the elements for creating a shared experience were available. We should not be surprised that the same collective sense of purpose has been missing in wartime ever since.
In a business context, the book Outliers makes a similar argument about the inflection point between opportunity and success. Success, the author says, never happens in a vacuum. It is the result of hard work, for sure, but also the luck of being in the right place at the right time.
Would Bill Gates be Bill Gates if he had been born 30 years earlier, or 20 years later? Probably not. He (and to the same extent Steve Jobs) took advantage of the unique circumstances at that particular moment in time to create a business built on the very young market for personal computing. Personal computing was brand new and software was almost nonexistent. The software that was available was limited in usefulness and only the truest of the true hobbyists could work with it to produce anything helpful. By recognizing that the future was in personal computing and focusing on making the software available to solve real world problems, Bill Gates and crew made the very best of an opportunity that had been presented to no one before and to very few afterwards.
Today, in the technology field, there is hardly anything more interesting than the promise of Cloud Computing. If you’re on the inside it is easy to see the promise that the Cloud holds for the future. There will be those who will take advantage of the Cloud while it is in its early stages, when their impact will be the greatest.
Finding those points where circumstances come together in such a way that the truly distinctive can be created should be one of the primary missions of leadership. The most successful entrepreneur, or business person, or non-profit professional, will watch for those opportunities that are unique to their industry, or geography, or community, and use them to their best advantage.
Friday, July 16, 2010
2011 Issaquah City Council Goals and the Human Services Campus
On June 28th I spoke before the Issaquah City Council with a request that support for the Issaquah Human Services Campus be included in their 2011 goals. The Issaquah Press followed up with the Mayor, who indicated that the Campus is baked into City plans and the Administration intends to continue supporting the concept.
This is a positive development because the Campus Feasibility Study will be delivered later in the fall and a $1M earmark for the project is set to expire at the end of 2010 unless the Council extends the deadline during 2011 budget deliberations in October.
This is a positive development because the Campus Feasibility Study will be delivered later in the fall and a $1M earmark for the project is set to expire at the end of 2010 unless the Council extends the deadline during 2011 budget deliberations in October.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Making choices in projects and in life
A while back I worked as a programmer for a retail software outfit that is no longer in business. Its name lives on as an Amazon storefront, but the original model it used to sell product couldn’t survive the ubiquity of the PC.
But that’s a story for another post. I bring it up here because it was at this company I was first exposed to a concept that is now commonly used in project management.
One of my coworkers laid the concept this way, on a whiteboard outside his cubicle: “You can have it fast, you can have it right, you can have it cheap. Pick any two”. Think about this for a moment, and relate it to just about anything on your to-do list. If it must be done fast, and must be done right, it will likely be expensive (example: your furnace fails at 11:00 p.m. on the night before your extended family shows up for Thanksgiving). If you want it done right and it must be done cheap, it’s going to take a while (example: growing your own vegetables). If you must have it fast and cheap, the end product will probably be less than ideal (example: the Happy Meal).
This is commonly referred to as the “Magic Triangle”, and it basically says that in any project there are tradeoffs between these three variables and that those tradeoffs must be known and accepted by all stakeholders.
We can think of some examples where time and cost are not constraints to a quality output, but they are few and far between. If my father-in-law (ret.) wants to build a bookshelf, for instance, he can take as long as he wants. And assuming that he doesn’t want it festooned with gold leaf, he can choose whatever building materials suit him because nothing that he would typically build a bookshelf out of is cost prohibitive. The result is a really, really nice display for trinkets (because nobody reads books anymore, do they?) that will last a lifetime.
Much more common is to choose which of these three constraints is the most important and then make decisions around that choice. For leaders, this is a crucial conversation to have at the beginning of a project so that all stakeholders agree on the most important criteria to drive delivery. What is the one thing that can’t change? Is it budget (cost), schedule (time), or scope (quality)? Don’t let this question go unasked, or unanswered, and be prepared to trot out the agreement later on when one of your project stakeholders refuses to let the schedule slip and demands additional tasks be delivered without more budget (called “scope creep”).
As you can see, even though this is called the Magic Triangle there is nothing magic about it. It gives you a way to explicitly consider tradeoffs and decide the criteria for project success. It will also make your team think about whether it really is or is not critical to meet the proposed schedule, or whether a requirement for zero defects is necessary or puffery. The most important point about the Magic Triangle is that it describes physical constraints. Stakeholders with integrity will accept that rather than accuse you of offering a preemptive excuse for failure to deliver.
The Magic Triangle works at home, too. Use it sometime when the family doesn’t agree about a fundamental choice (like a big screen TV or vacation plans). Having everyone be clear about the relative importance they put on time, money and quality should prompt some very interesting and very open discussions.
But that’s a story for another post. I bring it up here because it was at this company I was first exposed to a concept that is now commonly used in project management.
One of my coworkers laid the concept this way, on a whiteboard outside his cubicle: “You can have it fast, you can have it right, you can have it cheap. Pick any two”. Think about this for a moment, and relate it to just about anything on your to-do list. If it must be done fast, and must be done right, it will likely be expensive (example: your furnace fails at 11:00 p.m. on the night before your extended family shows up for Thanksgiving). If you want it done right and it must be done cheap, it’s going to take a while (example: growing your own vegetables). If you must have it fast and cheap, the end product will probably be less than ideal (example: the Happy Meal).
This is commonly referred to as the “Magic Triangle”, and it basically says that in any project there are tradeoffs between these three variables and that those tradeoffs must be known and accepted by all stakeholders.
The Magic Triangle
We can think of some examples where time and cost are not constraints to a quality output, but they are few and far between. If my father-in-law (ret.) wants to build a bookshelf, for instance, he can take as long as he wants. And assuming that he doesn’t want it festooned with gold leaf, he can choose whatever building materials suit him because nothing that he would typically build a bookshelf out of is cost prohibitive. The result is a really, really nice display for trinkets (because nobody reads books anymore, do they?) that will last a lifetime.
Much more common is to choose which of these three constraints is the most important and then make decisions around that choice. For leaders, this is a crucial conversation to have at the beginning of a project so that all stakeholders agree on the most important criteria to drive delivery. What is the one thing that can’t change? Is it budget (cost), schedule (time), or scope (quality)? Don’t let this question go unasked, or unanswered, and be prepared to trot out the agreement later on when one of your project stakeholders refuses to let the schedule slip and demands additional tasks be delivered without more budget (called “scope creep”).
As you can see, even though this is called the Magic Triangle there is nothing magic about it. It gives you a way to explicitly consider tradeoffs and decide the criteria for project success. It will also make your team think about whether it really is or is not critical to meet the proposed schedule, or whether a requirement for zero defects is necessary or puffery. The most important point about the Magic Triangle is that it describes physical constraints. Stakeholders with integrity will accept that rather than accuse you of offering a preemptive excuse for failure to deliver.
The Magic Triangle works at home, too. Use it sometime when the family doesn’t agree about a fundamental choice (like a big screen TV or vacation plans). Having everyone be clear about the relative importance they put on time, money and quality should prompt some very interesting and very open discussions.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Build to Last
Back in 2006 an effort was started in my hometown to build a Human Services Campus. It is an ambitious undertaking that has had successes and setbacks, and while the effort is still in the concept stage almost four years later, it is important to remember that building things to last takes time and the process can’t be rushed. I will be devoting many posts to the Human Services Campus because we have and will continue to use all of our leadership skills not only to make our local site a reality but to turn our experience into a repeatable process that can be used wherever the need for a facility like this one exists.
Today I will provide some background on what a Human Services Campus is and why it is such a compelling idea. Future posts will cover the history of the effort, the tools that have been used to move it forward, and how the experience will be captured for use by others.
What is a Human Services Campus (HSC)?
Studies on those who use social service agencies to bridge the gap between their monetary resources and their physical needs consistently draw a couple of very interesting conclusions.
The first is that users of one service typically need two or three others as well. For example, someone who visits a food bank because that is the only way to ensure the family does not go hungry may also need help paying rent, or counseling for a child having difficulty in school, or job training, or help with a family member who has drug or alcohol dependency. The list, as you can imagine, goes on.
The second conclusion is that the referral network between agencies is not very good. Because this sector is so fluid, agencies go in and out of business very quickly. A referring agency can’t be expected to keep up with the status of all potential providers and their effectiveness, so referrals may be difficult.
That’s from the agency side. How about the client side? A perfectly good referral can go to waste if the clients can’t get where they need to go. Imagine having to visit three geographically dispersed social services providers using public transportation. Weekly. Good luck.
For these reasons, and many others we will explore in the coming weeks and months, a central location with a variety of human services agencies is a very good idea. The providers can get space to suit their needs at typically below market rents, and clients have a much easier time getting multiple needs satisfied on a single visit to the campus.
The effort to site such a facility in this community has looked to a model that is already in place in Redmond, Washington. The board and staff of The Family Resource Center have been very helpful in guiding the City of Issaquah and local community and non-profit leaders to see how we can turn our vision into reality.
When we first gathered these leaders together I was able to help keep the momentum going in my role as member of the Issaquah City Council. My term has since ended, but I’m very fortunate to have been offered a seat on the Family Resource Center board, where a committee now looks at how to replicate the Human Services Campus model with an emphasis on bringing the model to Issaquah.
Creating a repeatable process for creating such a facility is the core mission of this committee, and I look forward to sharing our work with you as we continue on our journey.
Today I will provide some background on what a Human Services Campus is and why it is such a compelling idea. Future posts will cover the history of the effort, the tools that have been used to move it forward, and how the experience will be captured for use by others.
What is a Human Services Campus (HSC)?
Studies on those who use social service agencies to bridge the gap between their monetary resources and their physical needs consistently draw a couple of very interesting conclusions.
The first is that users of one service typically need two or three others as well. For example, someone who visits a food bank because that is the only way to ensure the family does not go hungry may also need help paying rent, or counseling for a child having difficulty in school, or job training, or help with a family member who has drug or alcohol dependency. The list, as you can imagine, goes on.
The second conclusion is that the referral network between agencies is not very good. Because this sector is so fluid, agencies go in and out of business very quickly. A referring agency can’t be expected to keep up with the status of all potential providers and their effectiveness, so referrals may be difficult.
That’s from the agency side. How about the client side? A perfectly good referral can go to waste if the clients can’t get where they need to go. Imagine having to visit three geographically dispersed social services providers using public transportation. Weekly. Good luck.
For these reasons, and many others we will explore in the coming weeks and months, a central location with a variety of human services agencies is a very good idea. The providers can get space to suit their needs at typically below market rents, and clients have a much easier time getting multiple needs satisfied on a single visit to the campus.
The effort to site such a facility in this community has looked to a model that is already in place in Redmond, Washington. The board and staff of The Family Resource Center have been very helpful in guiding the City of Issaquah and local community and non-profit leaders to see how we can turn our vision into reality.
When we first gathered these leaders together I was able to help keep the momentum going in my role as member of the Issaquah City Council. My term has since ended, but I’m very fortunate to have been offered a seat on the Family Resource Center board, where a committee now looks at how to replicate the Human Services Campus model with an emphasis on bringing the model to Issaquah.
Creating a repeatable process for creating such a facility is the core mission of this committee, and I look forward to sharing our work with you as we continue on our journey.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Managing across the generational divide
It’s a whole new world out there for seasoned managers leading younger teams. The standard style and method of communications has radically changed in the last 20 years. Men and women entering the workforce out of high school or college face different challenges than their parents did, and their definition of success is quite different too. More experienced managers (and older workers generally) are not only called upon to absorb technology changes at an ever increasing rate, but also to collaborate with peers and subordinates who grew up in the internet age and expect their workplace to operate at hyper speed.
How smart is your phone? Do you text? Tweet? Are you available by email 24x7? You posted what on your Facebook page? Just keeping current is a challenge for everyone. Understanding how to maintain workplace productivity and reacting to the business risks posed by social networking and always-on communications are some of the biggest challenges for managers, but they are also great opportunities to share the wisdom born of experience. Here are some things managers can do to get the best out of a younger workforce.
How smart is your phone? Do you text? Tweet? Are you available by email 24x7? You posted what on your Facebook page? Just keeping current is a challenge for everyone. Understanding how to maintain workplace productivity and reacting to the business risks posed by social networking and always-on communications are some of the biggest challenges for managers, but they are also great opportunities to share the wisdom born of experience. Here are some things managers can do to get the best out of a younger workforce.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Tips for effective meetings
People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
Thomas Sowell
I just heard about a new toy we’ll be getting at work. It’s a videoconferencing system that will “allow for virtual meetings that look, sound, and feel as if colleagues are just across the table.”
That sounds interesting.
“The pilot project aims to reduce travel costs, improve work-life balance, and lessencarbon footprint.”
That’s all well and good, but can it accelerate the speed of business?
“It accelerates the speed of business, letting you connect at a moment's notice when you have to meet eyeball to eyeball. I think what we'll find is that it will be justified if for no other reason than that."
If your organization is like mine you live and die by meetings, and anything that makes that process more effective is welcome. But getting people together is only the first step towards a successful meeting. Many people think of meetings as a necessary evil. There are too many of them, they’re too long, they don’t get to the point, there are too many of the wrong people in them, there are too few of the right people in them, somebody always does all the talking, the donuts are stale. The donut problem is beyond the scope of this post, but the rest of these complaints are easily fixable with a few helpful tips. Apply these basic principles and you may even start to find meetings… valuable!
Thomas Sowell
I just heard about a new toy we’ll be getting at work. It’s a videoconferencing system that will “allow for virtual meetings that look, sound, and feel as if colleagues are just across the table.”
That sounds interesting.
“The pilot project aims to reduce travel costs, improve work-life balance, and lessen
That’s all well and good, but can it accelerate the speed of business?
“It accelerates the speed of business, letting you connect at a moment's notice when you have to meet eyeball to eyeball. I think what we'll find is that it will be justified if for no other reason than that."
If your organization is like mine you live and die by meetings, and anything that makes that process more effective is welcome. But getting people together is only the first step towards a successful meeting. Many people think of meetings as a necessary evil. There are too many of them, they’re too long, they don’t get to the point, there are too many of the wrong people in them, there are too few of the right people in them, somebody always does all the talking, the donuts are stale. The donut problem is beyond the scope of this post, but the rest of these complaints are easily fixable with a few helpful tips. Apply these basic principles and you may even start to find meetings… valuable!
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