"How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything" - Book Review

I was lucky to receive a copy of  HOW by Dov Seidman.

The read was really inspiring. 

I'll try to share just a few important concepts of the book. 

The basic idea is that how we do things matters today much more than what we do: In the highly transparent and interconnected world we live in, there is small room for secrecy and coercion. Leaders need to generate power through people and not over people. Corporate cultures matter more than ever, much more than rules. Corporate values are what make companies and individuals succeed no matter how difficult the situation is. 

The TRIP acronym: Trust leads to Risk leads to Innovation leads to Progress. There is no progress built on innovation if risks are not taken. In order to chose people to work with, vendors and clients and take risks together, trust needs to be there. Your behavior means everything. 

The Wave concept: a wave is a powerful analogy of how we can share, communicate, relate to other people. A simple email or message can start a wave that could sweep old behaviors and build new type of relationships and collaboration environments. 

The surrounding of our personal and professional worlds is dependent on trust, values and relationships which need to be based on sustainable values. We are all part of a global supply chain. In order to "outbehave" competition, we need to consistently exhibiting the values and principles that differentiate us. 

These are just a few of the interesting ideas expressed in the book. 

Go to sleep

We sometimes want to do our best to help.

But there are moments when you really need to stop. Moments when you need to go to sleep, moments when you better go for that run, moments your mind needs to switch tasks or an error can happen.

Know when you really need to take a break.

Three (3) lessons from the Life Science Industry

It's funny when you need to work in projects related to different areas. 

Life Science industry has a few crucial lessons we can learn from.

1. R&D is everything: The core of the value is in Research & Development. New products are what preserves and prepares the future of the company. 

2. Focus on the core: Life Science companies focus on what they do best and outsource the rest.

3. Precision & Documentation: Processes need to be documented. Traceability is key. No sloppiness allowed.

Right people and opportunity to spread their wings...

"If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don't have to manage them."

Jack Welch

Expectations influence behavior?

Mass psychology always puzzles me. I'm sure team psychology works the same: If you have low expectations, you will get poor results. If you have high expectations, you may find diamonds where you are not expecting them and enthusiasm from your team colleagues. 

We are starting a Year of the Dragon: a positive year is expected. Dragon embodies passion, independence, and ambition. 

To lead is not to order

Complex projects require complex solutions and coordinating all types of resources.

Authority is an easy solution, but never provides good results. 

Leading is listening, setting the rythm, but never imposing.. 

Professional associations. Does it make sense?

When advancing in your professional career opportunities to meet peers and professionals from your same sector come.

Professional associations are great opportunities to share knowledge, information and specially to network.

The thing here is that, in order to get a return, you need to give. If you are not participating actively I don't see what could be the point of being part of anything.

Another important idea is to find associations and groups where you can contribute but not necessarily focused solely on your exact same field. For instance if you work in language outsourcing, join groups that work in other services outsourcing, if you coordinate vendors of whatever type, join project management associations with a general focus.
Learning from other industries, seeing different approaches in action, will help you be a better professional and apply original methodologies.

On ethical behavior

Being fare in difficult times is actually much more important. 

I don't believe there is a balance to reach: if you would not like someone to do the same to you, simply don't do it. 

Respecting others time, respecting others decision, is part of the deal; in business and life. 

As soon as possible

There are basically two ways you can deliver faster.

CRASHING
Putting more resources on doing the job... as simple as that. If 1 can get 3 in a day, 2 will in principle get 6 in a day.

FAST TRACKING
Getting things done in parallel.
Phase 2 might not need for phase 1 to be completed in order to start.

Both strategies have their own risks and advantages. Cost and quality have their saying in the equation.

World wonders: interconnection

I was reading about how China's growth has been affected by the lowest demand of the European economy, its main client.
We are all interconnected and information is crucial to take decisions. But you can't control everything. You might be affected but a decision a client made 2 years ago and immersed them in debt, or rewarded by a friend who loses its +10 year job, actually gets a better one and needs to buy your service.
The only option is to keep doing good work. Things might not turn out as expected... and actually even turn out better.

Brand Management for everyone

Brand Management is one of the most difficult topics a professional, freelance, company or corporation needs to face.

Concentrating exclusively on professionals and freelancers, the issue is not simpler, actually even harder to tackle. Should you have a brand name, is it a company name, is it a name you give to a specific service only? What if you provide more than one service? What happens if you have clients that want to buy from a person and clients who prefer buying from a brand?

What is your identity?

Maintenance of different  brands for yourself can easily become too troublesome to be manageable, but what other options do you have?

The "one size fits all" is under my point of view the easiest and ERRONEOUS way to approach the issue. You can't be everything for everyone. In the services market this automatically means you are part of the average and will not stand out.

For professionals and freelancers, having a personal brand is definitely the first step. You need to be yourself: an individual who learns, is active and grows. By establishing relationships with the "YOU" brand you will be able to communicate, share and discuss on your different capabilities with your different stakeholders.

If you are part of a team or company this statement is still valid. Even in the business-to-business world, it is still people who buy and sell. Companies need their teams to be composed of valuable, respected and experienced professionals to succeed in today's ultracompetitive market.

Never give up...

"You just can't beat the person who never gives up."
Babe Ruth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babe_Ruth

Flexible schedule: 9 to 5? No thank you!

Working in a global environment forces you to be flexible.
Does this mean you need to be completely dedicated to your projects and forget about having a personal life? Not at all, but it forces you to organize your day wisely.

One of the things I usually do for instance is to have a work period after I put the kids to bed. This allows me to make some calls to the American continent, organize tasks for the next day, therefore getting things in motion much quicker in the morning.
Same thing if need to work with Asia: get up early, answer emails to keep things rolling and then brings kids to school.

Data to take decisions

How is your project doing?
What savings do you get with your new strategy?

Rumors, impressions, gut feeling... can be replicated with data.

Figure out what you really need to know and make your math.

Not everything is fun

You might love your work, what you do. But that does not mean that you are having fun all the time.

There are stressful moments, hard moments where not all the team is happy, moments you need to live and go through.

It’s unavoidable, not everything is fun.

Do what you need to do. And the fun will come back!

The extra mile

Is it possible to give your client something that no one else will offer or provide?

Maybe trying to run that extra mile is enough, just the commitment to do it is enough... 

We need to find ways to lead the pack and differentiate us from the rest. 

Attitude & Performance

Your attitude is transparent to the rest of the team. No matter the management skills, if you don't have the correct mindset, it would be complicated to get a performing team.

Multitasking, Multiclient, multischedules

Working in multiple projects for multiple clients is perfectly possible. You need to work hard on your personal management skills.

Your personal schedule/agenda becomes your essential tool. Check and recheck every commitment against your agenda. If you organize yourself smartly you won't get surprises. It is crucial to know your times, the time you spend on each task. When planning try to log the time you expected to spend on a task and the time you really spent. You'd get better and better at it.

Balance and maintain a continuous flow of advancements in the diverse projects. Get one task done after the other, but never postpone a project until the previous is done: that is simply not advancing in the project you postponed and the client for that one won't be pleased if you are not doing the job.

Two Outsourcing strategies to differentiate

When in need to externalize or outsource work, there are different types of outsourcing you should be careful to differentiate in order to suceed in your strategy. 

The first type of externalization is the outsourcing of a very specific and repeatable tasks. In fact outsourcing these type of tasks can be a very clever thing to do. If the scope of the task is very limited, there are no decisions to take on the side of the vendor, but a simple script to apply, the thing you should concentrate is indeed to clearly define the scope and monitor the execution. For this type of outsourcing you should also pay attention to provide the necessary information, software and hardware requirements...but only the bit that is needed and not more, basically to protect your service and IP (Intellectual Property). 

The second more complicated type of outsourcing is what I call "partnership outsourcing". You need a partner to handle a part of your business, like a project manager for a specific project for instance, or a partner in another part of the world to handle distribution in a market you are not established in. In this type of outsourcing, trust is the essential part. If you don't find a partner you can trust, one that you could consider as a real part of your team, keep on searching, going ahead because of the pressure with doubts will only lead to problems in the future. 

 

 

 

On the Globalization of Power: a must see talk.

From Ted.com: Paddy Ashdown claims that we are living in a moment in history where power is changing in ways it never has before.

Spend 20 minutes on this...

 

 

 

 

No man is an island

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne

 

Excellence is your only objective

"We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, therefore is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle

Are you consistently aiming for excellent performance?
We can fail, but if your aim was at all times to do your best, the perception of the possible fault would be very different.

Perfection is a different thing. Not sure if we can deliver perfection, but trying to get close to it will make a better deliverable for sure. Your attitude towards your projects could mean a big difference.

Don't get too comfortable

Don’t get too comfortable.

You have a good client, you work on interesting projects, but are you preparing the future?

Same goes for professionals well established in a company: are you prepared to move-on whenever that is needed?

The good part of being prepared, of working on finding new clients, on leveraging efforts, on learning and working for learning all the time, is that even if you maintain your client for life, even if you work on the same company for life, you will be a better professional, you will evolve and grow.

If you simply take advantage of the actual situation, if you stand still and don’t try to grow, you are condemned to stagnation (if you are lucky).

Could translation be a QA method to check how good is your content?

Your content may be relevant, interesting.
But, is it well organized, easy to read?

One of the ideas I propose is to check how easily your content translates in another language.

Does your content flow?
If the content is easy to understand, then translation flows naturally. Of course some content could be more difficult, but you should detect unbearable sentences quickly.
Actually well written technical content (no matter how complicated the subject) usually does not have this problem.

Under my experience non-sense writing style is more popular in a content type that should in principle be immediately understandable: marketing material ;-)

Stick to it, you decide.

Who is driving your decisions and strategies?

Is it the latest news about upcoming chaos? Is it the new oil price increase? Is it one specific client who decided to cancel a project?

You can't base your decisions and strategies on decisions you can't control.

As a professional, as a business owner, your responsibility is to keep on driving in the path you designed towards attaining your goals. You need to read the signs, listen, but don't take shortcuts based on ... nothing...

You have important decisions to take. Have a conscious and strong strategy to base them on.

Humans first!

Never forget it's the human team who is running your project, your company.

Hardware, software and facilities could be very important, but all this would mean nothing if there was no people making your project run. 

Whenever you need to take project and business decisions, never forget about this. 

Bobsleigh Project Management lessons

Bobsleigh is a spectacular sport (not that I ever practised it :-) ). Analyzing the principals of the sport and listening to experts in the field, parallelisms with Project Management can be spoted.
- 30% preparation rule:
According to Bobsleigh experts, at least 30% of the race is in the initial pushing phase. If that preparation is not done properly you have no way to improve your speed during the race.
- Once race starts there is no way to stop...to arrive safely you need to reach the finish line:
As in projects, there is no way out unless you decide to completely blow the project and abandon it.
- Piloting is essential... at the right moment!
Piloting skills are essential in curves. During straight lines there is little you can do but let the machine advance. In projects once the plan is launched you need to control, evaluate and replan during the "curves" too... let the team do their part of the work.
- Team work is essential:
Power is esential, strengh is essential, but skill and rythm are crucial. Team training efforts focus on synchronization, communication, a real choreography: four team members trusting each other and giving the maximum to achieve the best results for the race, sprint, project.
Interesting concepts to analyze and apply in your projects.