Welcome
Welcome to the Foresight Newsletter, a free monthly publication by Patrick Gray, president of Prevoyance Group Inc. This newsletter shares tips for high performance IT organizations and observations that we hope will prove informative and enjoyable.
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Contents
CONTENTS
Foresight is published by the Prevoyance Group, and this month contains four sections:
Work
Life
Heard in the Hallways
Travels with Patrick
Work
Prevoyance Group was originally started to help companies manage large strategic projects, and while we have expanded our offerings, I still keep an “ear to the ground” in the project management arena. Like many specializations, it seems to have gone from an informal skill to a near-religion, complete with gurus, esoteric jargon, strange designations and rituals, and increasingly complex formulas and calculations for the conceptually simple. Perhaps it is time to push the pendulum in the other direction.
I recently spoke with one of the purported gurus, who had a slew of initials after his name to denote his status in the project management mafia, and we were discussing the concept of burn rate. He was explaining the new “thinking” on burn rate, explaining complex formulas that produced a number like this: 0.348. What further confused the issue was that this number was not comparable like for like between projects. A 0.348 might be fine for one project, and a danger signal for another. What struck me most was that the outputs of this calculation are meaningless without interpretation from a project management witch doctor.
I have always seen burn rate as a simple number, the money you spend each day, week or month to keep a project or process operating. The subtle nuance is not in the formula that produces the number, but in ensuring you gather all
Project management, like any other business function should produce tangible benefits and help streamline the management of your organization. Good ideas, from Agile to Six Sigma have become a distraction when they morph into a religion within your company, demanding attention and homage at the expense of what should be your corporate “true religion:” your customers, products and markets.
Life
As the accoutrements of life become increasingly complex, so too does their maintenance. In a recent bout with Murphy’s Law, the old adage that notes that anything that can go wrong generally will, many of the machines that assist in my everyday life have had some warranty-related issue. From the microwave over, to keys falling off my laptop computer, my desk has become littered with post-its with service depot phone numbers, return authorization numbers, and various other esoteric codes that I furiously scribbled while on the phone with a company that now seem meaningless.
An interesting aside to all these calls is noting how a company and its people deal with problems. I can only imagine that the average customer is fairly irate after spending several moments listening to “Press one for…” and starting at their shiny, yet dysfunctional gadget. While it seems a thankless job, it certainly does separate the wheat from the chaff from a customer opinion perspective. GE, who made our microwave that recently went haywire had a simple form on their website, which prompted a service call and repair, requiring a fairly painless experience. A broken network component however required multiple calls, finally resulting in a replacement part being shipped after much deliberation and approvals with various managers and departments. The only problem being that the wrong part arrived in the eagerly anticipated FedEx envelope.
The after-sales process at some companies appears to be an afterthought, while at a few corporate gems service is built into the fabric of the company’s existence. Few realize that as the customer stares at his or her wounded machine, their opinion of its manufacturer deep in negative territory, offering the manufacturer an opportunity to rise from the dead or seal their fate with that customer forever. My own warranty experiences have caused me to swear off future purchases from a given manufacturer in many cases, and made me a lifetime customer in a select few. When looking at your company’s warranty and service processes, never forget that within customer adversity lies opportunity.
Heard in the Hallways
I have been working with a client in France for the past few months, and have been greatly refreshed by the lack of any language “barrier.” The company is a global one, and as such it has standardized on English worldwide. While this makes communication easier as my French is barely capable of ordering a meal, what I have found quite novel is the lack of posturing and obfuscation in my dealings with those that do not speak English as their mother tongue.
One can easily perfect the art of bloviation in their native language, spending five minutes giving an answer to a yes or no question, and leaving the listener no closer to her desired outcome at the end of the tirade. When I float a difficult question to my French colleagues, mentally bracing to ride the tidal wave of hogwash, often a simple yes or no is offered, with no waffling, backtracking or “covering the rear guard.”
While English speakers are constantly admonished to learn another language, perhaps those that speak English as a second or third could teach us something about our own!
Travels with Patrick
One of the things I have quite enjoyed about our recent move to the Carolinas is the proximity of the “country” to the more urban areas. When we lived near Manhattan, it literally took hours to make the transition from the urban, to the slightly less urban, to the dense suburban and industrial areas, to where you could drive for more than a few seconds without passing a home or business.
Near our new house, this transition can be instantaneous in some cases. I have been exploring on my motorcycle, delighting in getting lost, safe in the comfort that my GPS unit will eventually get me home. I will find myself riding past a massive shopping complex one minute, than passing rolling hills, farms and gravel roads the next.
As I delight in this transition, I lament the years I have spent living and working in various cities, oblivious to what might lay around the nearest corner. As I have recently discovered, an entirely new world might be just around the corner.