Thought this was funny at work.
One person writes:
Be Happy. Have Fun.
Another chimes in:
Ok, I will!
And finally a 3rd person writes:
Me too.
Smiley faces and all.
Never take yourself too seriously.
It’s true–try to enjoy the ride! 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Every manager is rightly taught to underpromise and overdeliver.
It’s sound planning and good risk management to plan for contingencies–and certainly these do happen.
Build in some buffer time and resources into your estimates, because reality bites and you need to have the ammunition to respond.
My father used to tell me:
“A word is a word!”
When you say something, promise something, commit to something then that is it!”
To do otherwise is to have no honor, no character, and no fear of G-d.
Similarly, when you overpromise and underdeliver, you fail yourself and your customers.
People commit time, resources, and faith in you, so you owe it to them to set realistic goals and plans to accomplish them.
To do otherwise, you risk damage to the longterm relationship, you hurt your credibility, and maybe most importantly, you hurt the chances of genuine progress.
The philosophy that I believe works best is: Be thoughtful. Be strategic. Be direct. Be honest.
That’s what I would want from others and that’s also what I strive to be. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So I had the opportunity to sit in on a colleague teaching a class in Performance Improvement.
One tool that I really liked from the class was the Impact-Effort Matrix.
To determine project worth doing, the matrix has the:
Impacts (Vertical) – Improved customer satisfaction, quality, delivery time, etc.
Effort (Horizontal) – Money, Time, etc.
The best bang for the buck are the projects in upper left (“Quick Wins”) that have a high impact or return for not a lot of effort.
In contract, the projects that are the least desirable are in the lower right (“Thankless Tasks”) that have a low impact or return but come at a high cost or lot of effort.
This is simple to do and understand and yet really helps to prioritize projects and find the best choices among them. 😉
(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
This was sort of a funny scene in a project meeting.
One person describing the challenges at one point, spontaneously and dramatically motions to take a knife and slit both wrists.
This absolutely got people’s attention.
Understanding the struggles the person was expressing, and trying to add a little lightheartedness to the situation, I say:
“This is a tough project, pass around the knife.”
This got a good hearty laugh around the table, with one person saying that this was the quote of the day.
Anyway, we want to make operations as effortless as possible on people, but the project work to get there is definitely making people work for it.
Let’s avoid project or people suicide–be supportive of each other, pace ourselves, team together, and problem-solve to get it successfully over the finish line.
Soon we can celebrate all the challenges we overcame together and from our determined efforts, all the wonderful results. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
While some politicians are hard at work to create jobs, revive our manufacturing, and expand our economy…
…Others like NY Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are busy destroying jobs from her city.
After a grueling competition for the Amazon HQ2 with 200 cities offering incentives to land one of two 2nd Headquarters for Amazon, the winners were Arlington, VA and Long Island City, NY.
These lucky cities were to divide 50,000 new jobs and $5 billion in investment by technology and e-Commerce behemoth, Amazon.
Instead of thanking G-d for their good fortune and celebrating their win under the political savvy of New York’s Governor, Andrew Cuomo and NYC’s Mayor, Bill de Blasio, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez railed against the “corporate welfare” and basically killed the deal.
What should be critically noted is that incentives for Amazon were based on meeting their performance benchmarks for NYC and Arlington and were not corporate charity or handouts.
What Socialist, Ocasio-Cortez failed to understand is that Capitalism is successful precisely because of competition and incentives for performance, and that capital is ideally allocated to where it can get its highest return.
In short, New York and Virginia weren’t giving away the farm, they were competing for great jobs and investment in their cities–and that’s what 200 cities recognized from Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.
Aside from AOC’s blatant bigotry and Anti-Semitism so far, she has goofed with a Green Deal that promised income security (socialist handouts) to those “unwilling to work” and sought to get rid of everything from “farting cows” to Airplanes, and now she’s lost 25,000 jobs in NY.
Voters in NY and Democrats in Congress should be paying attention to their new Socialist champion and one of its extremists in chief.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
At one time, it was considered a great honor to work for the Federal government, and people fought for the jobs and to take the civil service exam.
The Civil Service was not only a term, but also a reality filled with honor, dedication, and devotion to one’s country.
Working for the Federal government meant interesting and exciting work opportunities not only defending our great nation, but in making it just and prosperous, and literally a beacon of freedom for the world.
While no one became rich working for the government, you could make a stable living, build tenure over your service, and finally receive a pension upon retirement.
Over the course of almost 20-years of my federal career, I have had the opportunity to serve in positions that I only could have dreamed about as a child, and to feel such pride in serving.
But it seems like times have taken a turn for the worse either willfully or through neglect:
– From Capitol Hill to the Executive Department, we see the extremus of polarization and endless obstacles to getting anything done.
– With each change in administration, aside from a change of leadership and direction at the top of each Department, the workforce is seemingly accused of subversion for the other side and turned on itself.
– Just recently, we’ve seen the longest federal government shutdown lasting 35 days and with hundreds of thousands of Federal workers required to work without pay at the time.
– We have also seen many years of pay freezes–with not even a meager cost of living adjustment (COLA), while the overall economy is booming!
– The pay for grades at the upper levels are hitting up against the Congressional limits with multiple pay steps being the same pay and no increase for career advancement or growth of responsibilities.
– Employees have been forced to endure the A-76 outsourcings, threats of disbanding entire agencies, demands to reduce the size of government, and hiring freezes even while serving a larger population requiring ever more services.
– There have been limitations on the power of employee unions, and an ongoing series of tightening of benefits from CERS to FERS and continuing thereafter requiring greater employee contributions and what feels like ever less benefit payouts.
– Staff are threatened with firing in a short(er) period of time for making a small number of mistakes to a host of “conduct” issues that may or may not be true, and may at times be the outcome of poor leadership rather than problematic employees.
– The system for employment grievances and judging these has gone without a quorum for the longest period on the books and the backlog of cases continues to build.
While no system is perfect, and there are bad apples on every side, there clearly seems to be a devolution of the federal service, and what this means for governing and for our defense and prosperity is yet to be fully felt.
For me, serving the Federal government has been one of the greatest honors and has been many of the best years of my life. My wish is for others going forward to have a positive and productive experience as well.
Perhaps with an appreciation and true respect for the millions of good men and women that serve our country–from the front lines to the back offices–we can once again create a system that is equitable, fair, and just and that inspires the world-class results we needs for our nation and our people.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Managing IT projects is no easy task.
You’ve got to get the requirements right.
Technical issues need to be resolved.
Dependencies have to be lined up.
Integrations need to work.
Design should be user-friendly and intuitive.
Change management takes real leadership.
And so much more.
A lot needs to go right for the project to be a success.
While of course, just one or two bad apples in the project equation can quickly make for a failure if not controlled for.
But you can’t let it…the show must go on, progress is waiting to be made, and the systems need to be delivered for the benefit of the organization.
This is where real strength and determination by so many good people come in.
Keep moving things forward–one step at a time–don’t stop!!!—another step and another–heave ho, heave, ho–until one day soon a beautiful and efficient IT system is born. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So one lesson of life that I have learned is about criticism.
It’s easy to criticize, but tough to come up with real solutions.
Criticizing someone else, does not usually provoke a good response.
UNLESS, you can provide a bona fide better alternative in a loving way.
It’s important to solve problems and not just create new ones.
Criticizing without an alternative just causes anxiety and frustration in the other person.
But when you says something isn’t right and why, and provide a better alternative, now the other person can see concretely what you are talking about, and they know they have options and that you are trying to help.
No one wants to be told they are no good or their choices are no good.
But people don’t mind and perhaps may even embrace being told that there is even something better for them out there.
Don’t criticize, instead give alternatives that are good for the other person.
That’s real love without being a jerk. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So a colleague said something interesting to me about project management:
The best day of project management is usually the first day, but I want to show you that the best day is really the last day of the project.
And as I thought about this, I sort of starting laughing to myself and thinking, you know what, I think this guy has something here.
– Day 1 of a project, everyone is usually all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
We’re embarking on an adventure together to build something new for the organization and our customers.
We’re going to team up and everyone will contribute.
And out of the project sausage maker–poof!–like magic comes a new system or product.
– But as we all know, things don’t always go so smoothly.
With some projects, the pretty smiley faces of day 1 may quickly turn to ugly frown faces.
There is analysis paralysis, scope creep, conflicting or changing priorities, resource issues, technical challenges, or the sausage just doesn’t come our right–oh sh*t!
Thus, many projects end up going bust in terms of cost, schedule, or performance.
That is, they end up costing too much, being delivered behind schedule, or just not meeting the performance requirements.
You have some projects that never even truly get off the ground, have multiple resets, or get dumbed-down or even cancelled altogether along the way.
So by the time you reach the last day of the project, many people seem like they’ve been through the project ringer.
I’m sure that I’ve heard more than one project manager say:
Just take me out back and shoot me!
So when this colleague said that he wants the best day of the project to be the last–in terms of satisfaction with the project (not that that pain was finally over!)–I really appreciated this as an awesome goal.
We should all look to the last day of our projects as the best–one where we can look back and say:
Wow, great job everyone! We really got something great done here–and we did it right! 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Sometimes, others can get negative at you in life.
People are unhappy.
Complaints are rolling in.
It seems like you can’t do right.
But you have to have a thick skin or as one colleague told me:
You need to be like Teflon and have it all just roll off you.
And this book title reminded me of this:
“The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck”
Yes, we do have to care about doing good in what we do.
It’s just that we shouldn’t “give a f*ck” when others are just wanting to tear us down and enjoying it.
Constructive feedback is good.
But destructive negativity at every turn is just hurtful.
It’s also a way for others to not take ownership.
We all need to do our part to make things better in this world.
Sure, no one does everything right and no one is perfect.
But everyone needs to try their best, and when others just want to beat on you…
That’s a completely appropriate time to not give a firetruck. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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