QuickBits
QuickBits are nibbles of wisdom from Terry White on a wide range of topics. They are intended to stimulate thought and discussion.
HBR How to battle job boredom
It's easy to blame your company, your boss, or your colleagues when you feel bored with your job. But it's up to you to turn things around. Here are three ways to stop the boredom:
- Turn off autopilot. Think about new ways of doing work and try new approaches to what may seem like old problems.
- See change as possible. When you first started, you likely saw things that needed to change. After a few years, and perhaps a few setbacks, you started to see change as too difficult. Remind yourself that change is possible, even if it's slow, and vow to find ways to make the impossible possible.
- Renew your leadership agenda. Think about what you wanted to accomplish during your first 90 days on the job, before you got bored. Renew your energy and commitment to make change happen.
Will social replace e-mail for businesses?
I hate quoting Gartner. One because they are follwed so blindly by technologists in general and two because there are often better sources of research, particularly with relevance to Africa. But heres one prediction I actually agree with. “By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.” Read more
Conjoint Analysis
Conjoint analysis is a technique that allows managers to analyze how customers make trade-offs. It can be used to understand how customers make trade-offs in benefits (and thereby can be used to ultimately segment a market) or understand how customers make trade-offs in attributes, and this can be highly useful in designing products (say, for helping to calibrate the precise level of an attribute that customers desire), understanding price sensitivity, and other practical issues. Read more
"Do more with less!"
Dean Meyer speaks the truth: You can't keep promising to do more for less! And he explains how to make the antidote — demand management — work.
Watch his video here...
Executives demand that you cut costs, but they expect you to go on delivering all that you have in the past.
Challenge
Cost cutting may be necessary. But you're set up to fail if you're expected to deliver all the same things with a smaller budget.
To expect you to "do more with less" presumes that you've been wasting time and money in the past, and can now become more productive by edict. Read more
Business gist - pay attention
Herbert Simon said, A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
In 2010, we are going to focus on what business should pay attention to about Information and Communications Technology (ICT). So not just what are the technology trends and which business trends have technology implications but what do these mean to business? What is the gist from a business perspective and what could be the business consequences. We want to do this to make business sense of all the hype and to identify clear and simple opportunities for Africa.
We invite you to keep us honest. Test
and challenge us. Ask us anytime when we publish anything on this site, what does this mean for my business and in an African context. We'll try and pre-empt your information needs and keep the focus on the things that business really need to pay attention to, but again challenge us if you will!
What IT people don't do well
The definition of an outgoing IT person is one who talks to your shoes, not his own. That’s an unfair generalisation, but I like the joke anyway.
IT people often get into IT because they are not people-people. So don’t expect a wonderful bedside manner from the techie who’s there to fix your PC. Also they don’t communicate, which is weird given that they’re responsible for your network and information. I have only come across one organisation in ten years who’s IT department has a communication role defined. They don’t suffer fools gladly, and in the IT world, we’re all fools. (“User” is a rude word in IT).
So what to do? Support them. Help them with communications skills. Help them understand how people think and work. Often they have justification for their superiority – I’ve seen users do really silly things with computers, and it requires a special kind of patience to deal with this. IT people don’t have this patience.
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Say It With Pictures
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It's a new year! Time to take a fresh look at your strategic plan for the year ahead. What do you hope to achieve by December 31, 2010? Better customer service? Stronger branding? Greater social-media buzz? All of the above? And just as important: How will you convey that plan, once it's developed, in a clear and concise way to your team?
Ben McConnell at the Church of the Customer Blog says the best way to keep employees in tune with a customer-relationship plan is to map it out. Read more
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Work out!
"Operate on the premise that things are going to work out, and they usually do." ~ John Kehoe
IT people are not just a silicon-based life-form.
Let’s talk about the BOHICA effect. BOHICA means “Bend over, here it comes again”. I came across this in an academic paper that talked about IT people and motivation. This is how they feel a lot of the time – shafted. Whether they’re right or wrong, this is how they feel.
Business tells them to provide stable and available systems and infrastructure. Then they get told that business wants to change their systems. Change and stability don’t mix – ask any IT person.
Then business asks for a new system... Yesterday. It’s rush, rush, rush! Then when the system is ready, business either says they’re not ready, or they’ve changed their mind. Or deny they ever asked for it in the first place.
The people management issue is this: IT people have to delicately balance constant change with deep stability – it’s enough to make you schizoid. Also they have to work on different cycles from business – they need to plan three-years ahead, while business needs to react to market forces in months if not weeks. Read more
What motivates IT people?
Professor Tampoe, at Henley Management College, surprisingly found that they are not particularly motivated by money. Certainly they need to be earning enough, but they are motivated by three other factors: Firstly, they need to have a degree of autonomy. Give them a task, then let them use their intellect and skills to solve it. IT people don’t need close management, mentoring, or nurturing. Secondly, they need to be given a ‘do-able’ task. Something which has boundaries and specified goals. Not for them the endless cycle of activity and meetings which seem to go nowhere. Thirdly, they need to have a say. They need to have their opinion heard and respected.
What Tampoe doesn’t say, but what appears on their hierarchy of needs way before money, is that they need to stay current. That’s training to you and me.
If any of these motivators run counter to how your organisation treats people, don’t expect to keep your IT people for long.