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11/18/2008
Every single day, a new line is drawn between generations. When it happens you don't know that it happened because it often takes years to identify. And by then, it's too late.
Sometimes finding the generation gap can be humourous (like watching my kids try to change the channel on a "pre-remote" TV at a family members' rarely-visited and rarely-updated summer property). But more often it's a sad reality because it's one more reminder of how old you've become.
Some weeks ago it was suggested that each EPC employee start their own blog. My first thought was, "You better do this before they draw another generation line on the Michael Molek chalkboard... uh, I mean, WHITEBOARD!"
I still can't figure out why anyone might find any interest in my "blogs" but we'll see. I can't figure out why anyone might still be reading this post for that matter.
You there? Hello?
O.K. Every new project needs goals. My goal is that you take a small nugget of my day-to-day as a consultant and use it to your advantage somehow in your professional or personal life. If nothing else, I'll try to make you laugh (mostly AT me... which shouldn't be too difficult) and that alone has benefit.
Not knowing much about blogging, I followed the "getting started" link on our portal and one of the first pieces of advice for the prospective blogger was that "blog entries consist of frequent, short postings".
Anyone who knows me and my e-mails knows that I'm gonna really struggle with the "short postings" thing. So, I better end this maiden post NOW!
There. Done.
I'm officially a blogger and feeling younger already!
If only I had a floppy disk handy to save this thing.... 10/24/2008
Recently I was sent to Poland to support the GTS portion of a full ERP implementation. I flew in on Friday night so that I could spend the weekend sightseeing in Krakow before heading to the small town about three hours away.
Traditionally the go-lives I've supported are a healthy level of stress, long days, and lots of exercise running around desk to desk, not getting the chance to work out any system issues that have surfaced until after the GTS users have gone home for the night.
However, traditions are meant to be broken. The support team arrived at the plant at 7am on Monday morning to an empty factory. Not only did they give the plant workers the day off (because they knew it would be awhile before the work would flow out to the floor in the new system), the headquarter site in the US decided they wanted to go live first and therefore made the decision on Sunday night to lock out all users until 11am EST Monday morning (5pm in Poland).
On Tuesday the first POs started to flow through. And by Wednesday we finally had our first delivery that required a military license! On Thursday, our GTS user took a vacation day....
Despite how uneventful the go-live was we still had to work long days since the morning shift started at 7am and the meetings with the US folks weren't until 7pm Poland time. However, we did get to sit down almost the entire day. And, it was definitely stress-free! So now I'm wondering if I might be one of those people that actually like brief periods of chaos???
9/16/2008
As a consultant, I don’t often get the best working conditions. Once, I worked for three months in a conference room where the only chairs were the stackable kind with the plastic shell. I used to have to get up and walk around the building just to wake up my gluteus maximi. On the other hand, one petroleum company provided me with a 15th floor office with a mahogany desk, credenza and a view of half the county. Of course, that gig was a scoping exercise that lasted 3 weeks. Hey, it comes with the territory.
Currently I’m in an ergo-friendly cubicle about 3 units down from the copier-slash-printer room. When I click the print icon on my laptop, I count to two and hear a sharp clack, some gears grinding followed by whirring noises that finally die with a whisper. Around 6:45pm yesterday, that was the most beautiful noise in the universe to me. Worth more than six months in a plush office. Believe it.
See, our team had been working on a configuration issue for over a week. It really was one of those Kepner-Tregoe type problems in which the final solution was so fundamental it was almost not funny. We had been ‘blinded’ by a previous incident that led us to believe we couldn’t change one setting without causing a ‘duplication’ error message – followed by a slew of misdirecting error messages and vague log file entries. One guy on our project team spent the better part of an afternoon trying some different settings with no luck. A programmer here set some break points in the program and tried to find the root cause through debugging. I hosted a “Go To Meeting” session with a colleague in another city who has worked in this area before, only to have him declare that my configuration was on target so he couldn’t figure out why we were still failing to print. The network guy validated the printer settings and the software’s ability to spool output to the printer. Several others played email tennis with us, asking and answering questions to try and expose the “real” problem. We even consulted the online developer network and some previous customer messages by other clients with similar problems.
Nothing worked.
Then, today, just as quickly as we had stumbled into this problem, I found myself back in that place where we thought we couldn’t duplicate an entry. I asked, “What the hell do I have to lose? It will be just one more item I can cross off the list as ‘proof positive’ that this is not the cause.” Well, guess what. One minor change and a few seconds later I pressed the ‘print’ button. Clack – grind – whir – whisper and suddenly a piece of paper was lying in the hopper. I’m grinning from ear to ear. Problem solved. Client happy. Weight lifted off my shoulders and tension easing from my upper back. Sudden desire to go celebrate with a beer and recount the entire episode to some stranger at the bar if I had pitched a no-hittter in some major league game. “Solved it all by myself,” I could say to anyone who would listen.
When I emailed my boss it was solved, he replied with three simple words: “growth through pain.” And I remembered that I didn’t solve this problem alone. I had lots of help. Others had been “not too busy” to take a moment with me or answer an email or chat on the phone for a few minutes. Others had actually cared whether or not my little problem got solved. Others had looked at this as a challenge or a puzzle to be solved. Others had shared in the pain of a problem that had dragged out for a week. And now others will share in the satisfaction. I’ll take some screen shots of the solution and email them around so some future group of “others” will not have to go through the same pain. We all shared the pain, so we’ll all share the relief too. That’s what makes this job so much fun to me. Growth through pain is right, but I’m thankful that pain can be spread around a bit. And I’m just a little sad that all those “others” couldn’t share in that feeling I had when I heard ‘clack – grind – whir – whisper’ coming from that printer room just down the hall from the cubicle of joy. 8/6/2008
That is a line from one of my favorite TV shows in recent memory - “Fast Eddie”. American cop goes to London on some assignment. He isn’t a favorite of his boss anyway and the Brits need a spot of help so he is sort of ‘volunteered’ to stay in GB a while. Anyway, whenever he encountered someone a second time, he often asked his sardonic question, “How do you like me now?”
I visited a dentist’s office in Chicago last year while on assignment there. The pain in my jaw was unbearable and I was ready to tie one end of a string to a car bumper and the other to my tooth. Anyway, they called today to remind me of a checkup. Before I could respond, the lady on the other end of the line suddenly noticed my home address is in Texas and guessed that I was no longer in their neighborhood.
“Should I remove you from our call-back list?” she asked.
“Yes m’am,” I replied. End of call.
I’m glad that she failed to take that opportunity to ask me how things were working out for me. No, Dr. Phil, not in general, but specifically related to their dental work. I would have politely told her that the filling just fell out one day and the tooth has cracked even further. My home dentist has estimated almost $5K of implant work for that tooth and another one that they didn’t think was a problem when they were in there poking around a year ago. Oddly enough, when I left their office in Chicago last year, I was pleased. No loss of teeth and my wallet was only $350 lighter. I liked the dentist’s demeanor and everyone in his office was friendly. If they had called me a week later I would have given them a gold star.
What happened between then and now? I did not abuse that tooth. I don’t crunch ice. I don’t drink hot and cold liquids in succession. I brush pretty regularly and I know how to hold floss – I even use it sometimes. The filling simply fell out one day while I was eating. The pain didn’t return because it hadn’t been related to the tooth in the first place. Coincidentally, I had a sinus infection that somehow telegraphed pain through my tooth (dentist’s speculation), but the tooth required some work anyway, so I got the new filling even though I had been on antibiotics and was not in pain when I arrived at the dentist’s office.
So if the tooth lady had asked me today how I felt about their work, I might have made her cry. But she didn’t and I didn’t and I won’t go back and I cannot recommend them now. What does this have to do with Fast Eddie?
At EntryPoint Consulting, we make a point of asking Eddie’s question. We follow up with our clients on multiple occasions. My boss calls my clients a week after I’m on the job and asks them how I’m doing. At the end of the project, he gets another report. Six to twelve months after that, our office calls and emails everyone on all the projects where I was involved and asks each person a few questions. This program is called NPS – Net Promoter Score and my bonus is tied to it. No kidding. Now ask my why I love it.
Because I have a direct effect on whether my clients glow like a firefly’s bottom on a June night or they grunt like hogs on an acorn hunt. If they are so satisfied they are willing to have us back, or even to ‘promote’ EntryPoint to another company, well that is great for my bank account. If they are okay with my work, but aren’t itching for a return engagement, that is sort of neutral. If they are as unhappy with my work as I am with that Chicago dentist’s craft, then I have to tell my wife that we’ll be giving each other socks for Christmas this year. Not good.
Okay, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. So far, I’m doing pretty well. Hey, I’m not bragging! A client I worked for last year actually referred our company to a nearby firm and now we have partnered with them. That sort of saved Christmas, huh? But don’t get the idea that I just bend over backwards and say yes to everything just to make people happy because that isn’t what makes people happy. That is what causes fillings to fall out. My job is to advise my clients based on my experience and skill. I don’t mind telling you when I think something is against your best interests because they are not in my best interests either. I don’t claim to get along with everyone, but I also try not to throw salt in anyone’s eyes.
It’s a simple concept – if my client is pleased enough with my work to recommend my company, I’ve done all I can do for both of us. And here’s the best news. Our company’s overall NPS score has been increasing over the past 3 years. Yeah, I’m bragging now.
So if you ever partner with EntryPoint, remember that and six months or a year after we’re gone, someone will call or send an email with a variation of Fast Eddie’s line: “How do you like us now?” 8/4/2008
EntryPoint Consulting held its bi-annual company meeting last Friday. Lots of great stuff going on in our company and our future looks very bright. I'll write about some of that in future posts, but one topic was raised that I just had to comment about because it reminded me how short-sighted decisions are made that seem like a good idea at the time and usually prove to be disastrous.
Apparently companies (in general) are beginning to complain about increased travel costs related to hiring consultants - specifically, airfare. This topic hits close to home for me because I have to fly to almost any client location. There are some routes in Texas where you can begin your automobile trip at sunup, end at sundown and never leave the state. By the way, I wasn't born in Texas so I'm not bragging about how big it is - I'm just telling you from first hand experience that some folks have to ride a pregnant mule to the mailbox so they can have something to ride home.
On one hand, I have to agree with these clients. What DOES 'airfare' add to a GTS or CRM (et al) implementation? Anywhere from $200 - 700 per week, depending upon how many miles are involved and how far ahead the tickets can be purchased. If our consulting fees are competitive, we can't start giving away portions of that to compensate. How do we help clients overcome this issue?
What bothers me is the reaction some companies will have. I'm not speaking here about EntryPoint clients specifically, but about companies in general. I have lived and worked in the real "Dilbertian" world so I know these things from experience. Some project managers will award their contracts to 'local' consulting firms to eliminate travel costs. That's going to look good on the overall project budget, right? Save $500 a week on a 16-week project, and you can walk into your boss's office with a grin like that guy "Bob" on the Enzyte commercials?
But are they getting the best consultant? The whole point of hiring consultants is to gain expertise, not to simply outsource a labor cost. What happens when you're into the 10th week of the project with the sinking realization that the consultant is just not cutting the mustard? Worse yet, they are learning their craft on your dime. The downside risk is to cut 'em loose, adjust the project schedule, find another consultant and oh, by the way, wipe that grin off your face.
A healthier solution for you (and your boss) might be to focus on getting the best consultant first. Then be up front with them about travel costs and ask what they can do to help. Most of US are in the business of improving YOUR business. If this sounds like a sales pitch - hold on - the juicy stuff is coming next.
I was on a project last year in which the client had a specific amount for the overall budget of the project. Things were going well, but travel costs were still a bit above their original estimated levels. I did three things as a personal contribution to the project. I switched to one of those 'extended stay' hotels. I stayed over a few weekends (not successively) to cut airfare. And, since my new hotel digs had 'kitchen' facilities, I stopped eating at restaurants and started tossing some salads and heating up Lean Cuisines in the microwave.
What was the downside for me? Well, I'm sure the extended stay hotel purchased their sleep sets from Bedrock Mattress Supply (for all you 'Flintstones' fans), but it didn't kill me. My wife wasn't extremely happy about me staying away for two weeks at a time (about once a month), but she does understand the direct deposit concept and how my clients’ satisfaction contributes to sustaining cash flow.
Were there upsides? Of course - or else it wouldn't have made sense. The hotel was closer to the client's office so my fuel bills were lower each week. I cut air travel in half on the weeks I stayed over and since I was getting a weekly rate at the 'extended stay' hotel it only increased the hotel bill marginally. No increase on rental car because I was getting a weekly rate anyway. Drastic reduction in my food costs and actually healthier for me anyway because restaurant meals are so loaded with calories and the ultimate enemy, ‘salt’.
At another client, I started coming there every week in the beginning, but after they had a 'warm fuzzy feeling' about my level of competence and my level of commitment to their project's success, they 'wondered' if I had ever tried doing work remotely. I couldn't have been happier. No travel costs whatsoever, no granite mattresses, no surly flight attendants, no sudden flight cancellations, well you get the picture. I get to work in my gym shorts with my dogs around for occasional stress relief. Did you know that rubbing a dog's belly for five minutes will reduce your blood pressure 10 points? I'm no doctor, but I would bet money on it.
I hope just one "Bob" out there reads this, even if he isn't hiring an EntryPoint consultant. I'm truly committed to the concept of improving business and I'm so lucky as to get paid for doing that. But I've been doing it for years before becoming a consultant and it has sort of gotten into my DNA. So one of the main reasons I'm writing this blog, apart from the fact that it is a better use of my time than watching a TV reality show or surfing YouTube videos, is I get to share my views on how to improve business. So stop worrying about jet fuel and focus on getting the best consultant. The truly good ones may be able to find ways to make the jet fuel costs vaporize. 4/4/2008 To begin using your site, click Create a Post under Admin Links to the right.
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