Which trap do you fall into?
In the world of Higher-Education summer is a time of reflection on the past season, and planning for the new college year (all too rapidly approaching!) My own reflections this year are getting some inspiration from a recent CIO Magazine editorial: A Simple Scoring system for Complex Times. How does your organization score accomplishments and initiatives? In the article it is suggested that doing the expected – like maintaining system uptime or performing regular software upgrades – gets a 0. That zero. Why? In part because users don’t give us much, if any, credit for doing these things. And these items don’t actually add any value to the organization – we maintain existing value, but aren’t adding anything. Clear wins – projects that are noticed by users as generating new value or improvements – get a +1. And clear losers, where people notice and are unhappy, get a –1.
How do you take time in your busy day to just think and plan? Especially with the constant stream of operational demands – the weeds – knocking on your door and appearing at the email in-box. A recent article in CIO Magazine suggest tactics such as staying focused, setting aside scheduled non-operational time during the day, delegating to staff and outsourcing commodity work. I find blogging is a really helpful exercise, allowing me to pull together ideas I’ve gathered from various sources and think through how they relate to my own experiences. Conferences and workshops are always a great way to get out of the day-to-day and gain some perspective – particularly if you are also contributing through a presentation to your colleagues. It is all too easy to allow time to get eaten up through many small needs and distractions. We all owe it to ourselves to make a conscious decision to create time for planning, general information gathering, and strategic thinking.
“This is a point of confusion for many of our customers.” So began a tech support response that was the latest in a string of messages. The good news is that this was the message that actually helped me solve the problem. The bad news is that came at the end of almost a day and a half of frustration and confusion on my part. I searched the help system. I consulted knowledgeable colleagues (and got them confused and frustrated too.) This was for an initial setup of a new system, so I expected there to be some annoying setup issues. But I’m left wondering “If so many customers have the same issues, how about altering things so we don’t all experience this problem.”
I just finished The Craftsman by Richard Sennett. I don’t quite remember how I came across the book, but I’m glad I did. It is a thoughtful and well presented work on the concepts of craft and craftsmanship with much application to our modern work lives. I see his presentation as breaking down into two broad categories – management and teaching. Here I’ll talk on the management side.
I just finished reading Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s new book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. I highly recommend the book. It was written in an enjoyable and engaging way, while also well presented with the points well argued. Examples from real business situations nicely compliment the explanations. And it provides a very practical framework to apply when working on any change issue. A couple of elements of this: Read the rest of this entry »
Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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