Time to Rethink Compensation

You might have seen or heard some of the headlines about outrageous bonuses being paid to executives of companies that the taxpayers have bailed out and all the outrage this has caused. I'd be surprised if you have managed to avoid this with all that is going on at AIG and FannyMae and FreddyMac on the way, but they certainly don't have a corner on the market for outrageous bonuses.

In the last couple of decades the CEO and other top level executives have become the star athletes of the business world. Do you remember some years back how professional athletes salaries skyrocketed. I don't know that I can pin it all on one athlete but Dave Winfield sticks in my mind, putting some context behind the contract he had with the New York Yankees, he made on average of $600 everytime he went to the plate, regardless of if he hit a homerun, got on base, or just plain struck out. While many of the professional athletes contracts did have various incentives for the players to perform well, many didn't, and some would argue that the contracts have helped put many professional clubs on the verge of bankruptcy (especially in the smaller markets). It could be argued that the star players put the fans in the stands (of course this really needs to be seen) and that they bring championships and better play by their teams (all with no guarantee, there are tons of stories out there about the prima dona athletes that are more trouble than their worth and the ones that have been injured or just don't pan out). Getting back to executive pay, many are paid high salaries (especially compared to the money that a average employee takes home) and given bonuses that aren't really based on performance or at least seem to be encouraging performance that hurts the company and the economy in general.

With the AIG bonuses, the argument has been made that the company was legally bound to pay the bonuses, but companies are always changing the rules and making it harder for their rank and file employees to see any more real compensation, so why does AIG have to pay those bonuses? I can see paying some of the bonuses where "real" targets where made and met, but you have to wonder how many of those bonuses would actually fit into this category? As far as being legally bound to pay the bonuses, many companies don't seem to have any problem using creative accounting or other games to tell their average employees that their is no profit (or their isn't enough) , so they're be no profit sharing (or canceling incentive programs altogether), so why would AIG have a problem in not paying the bonuses or scaling them back. Why not have those executives put a little more skin in the game. One member of congress suggested that the bonuses could be made double of nothing, so when AIG is profitable and has paid back the government, it could double the bonuses that are currently scheduled, certainly it would help to scale back some of the public outrage.

A point that seems to be lost on a lot of executives is that they live in a world far removed from their employees and the average taxpayer (and maybe even many of their clients and customers) and many don't seem care about anyone but themselves any longer. I'm reminded of how Marie Antonette was told that the French people were starving and didn't have any bread and she said "well, let them eat cake". The story goes that she was far removed from the public and didn't realize that the public didn't have the option of eating cake instead, that they really didn't have enough money to buy bread. Many people have lost their jobs in the last few months or are in fear of losing their jobs and many people have lost their homes or are on the verge of losing them, you can see why people with multiple homes might think well, they can just buy a new one now can't they. It kind of makes you wish that some of those executives would do a "Trading Places" ala Dan Akroid and Eddy Murphy, to appreciate what everyone else is going through.

The CEO of a well known IT company decided that they needed to respond to the weakening economy and a drop in profits in the last quarter, he said that he would take a 20% pay cut and was going to "request" that employees took paycuts ranging from 2.5% to 5%. When you look closer at the cut the CEO is going to take, he'll reduce his base salary by 20%, but he'll still get all his other bonuses and perks, resulting in less than 1% drop in pay and if enough of the regular employees accept this "voluntary" pay cut, he would likely seen some bonus for this. For the average employee, there are no other bonuses to be added to their compensation, so a 5% or 2.5% drop in pay is just that. Also to be noted is that this CEO saw his pay rise 68% from 2007 to 2008, you know that most of the regular employees didn't see anything near that. This CEO saw $42,514,524 in total compensation in 2008 (yes that is 42 million). He exercised $10 million worth of stock options and $15.7 million worth of company stock vested during 2008. He received $256,000 for personal and home security, use of the company jet was valued at $135,734, and there was $71,000 in mortgage subsidy he is guaranteed for relocation expenses. This company also bought another company last year, so as part of the integration going on now, there are and will be a lot of job loses at the company they bought (many of the jobs being moved to India, China, and other lower labor cost countries), which was healthy at the time of purchase and made a profit in the last quarter (this company that they bought actually improved the company's overall figure in that quarter). 6 people at the top of this company's executive leadership received $142,774,325 in compensation in 2008. Doesn't that seem a tad bit out of whack?

From the same company, I've heard that they're planning to cut pension contributions. If companies are cutting (or eliminating) pension contributions, employees are making less money (less money is going into social security, reducing future payment eligibility), an unbelievable amount of money in 401ks has been lost, and the employees (who manage to keep jobs) don't have a chance to really build any kind of retirement. You have to ask, how on earth are these people going to be able to retire?

I had a professor at school that said that one day it would be entirely possible to build cars with robots, but who would have the money to buy the cars then. While there currently are a lot of robots used, it seems that companies are going more and more in the direction of replacing higher paid workers with people in lower labor cost countries, so the once higher paying jobs are disappearing in alarming numbers and you don't really see jobs popping up that pay anywhere near the jobs that were lost.

When all the money stays at the top of the food chain with company executives, how much of that really makes it way back into the economy and into taxes? People in these kind of tax brackets tend to save more and use accountants to avoid or limit tax exposure. In general, these people aren't putting that much back into the economy with their money. When the money flows down to the regular employees, they're able to make their mortgage payments, are likely to spend the money on their necessities and consumer goods (read, put more money into the economy) and some money is likely to make its way back to the government in the form of additional taxes.

Once upon a time, America (and much of the developed world) took pride in developing a growing middle class. In post World War II period and especially since the end of the Cold War, we've seen the world economies being driven by the consumer. There are more and more products produced that are bought by the consumer. When the consumers don't have jobs or don't have a lot of money to spend, many of the markets for products will eventually dry up. Many of the emerging markets aren't as materialistic and aren't as likely to buy all the consumer goods that were bought in the past (read selection will greatly decline with entire industries disappearing). You have to ask, what is wrong with a middle class that can afford to live above the poverty line and actually spend money (driving the economy)?

Henry Ford is reported to have wanted his employees to be able to make a living wage. It seems that that this isn't shared by much of management today. Employees tend to be looked as as a liability instead of the asset that they should be. People tend to look after there basic security first (shelter, food, and other basics), when people are so worried about living paycheck to paycheck (as so many are now a days) they don't tend to be as productive and creative as they are when they don't have to worry about their basic security. Management is so focused on cutting costs, that they don't see that their employees are often full of good ideas and probably know lots of ways that things could be done better or about new services that your company might be able to offer that would make it more competitive. As more and more people are unemployeed or forced to accept pay cut after pay cut, you have to think about the possibility of "the people" being more ripe for sabotage, revolution, and other things that might have seemed crazy in the past.

Since so many of the big companies around today aren't being run by the people/families that started them, and most of the top executives are more like guns for hire, then really tied to their companies, the entrepreneur spirt of the founders is gone as is their tie to the company. When you own the company, the company's long-term longevity, prosperity, and success tend to be more centered in all that you do, while the hired guns are often looking only to reap that big bonus before moving on to the next gig and it doesn't matter if the company falls apart after they leave or if the company gets taken over and dismantled, they didn't create it and don't have that bond.

Let us issue a call to action to all the corporate boards and top executives out there...

• No more bonuses for dismantling the company's workforce. If more than 1% is made redundant, there should be no bonus paid to anyone for this.
• No more bonuses paid to top executives when the company loses money. Full stop
• No more bonuses paid that encourage the emphasis on the short-term to the determent of the company's long run viability and competitiveness (especially all the focus on extreme cost cutting)
• No more golden parachutes. We've all seen executives leave with huge payouts only leaving carcasses of once strong companies behind
• If management is going to degrade benefits being offered and paid to employees, they must be willing to accept this themselves at levels that correspond to that faced by average employees. If you're going to cut retirement or health care coverage, then executives should have to try to live with corresponding coverage and see if they can truly accept that
• If management is going to reduce pay of employees, it should be as a last resort and not because profits weren't as high as they would have liked in the last quarter. Management should be willing to take pay cuts that match or exceed the regular employees are being asked to do and not the smoke and mirrors suggested above that resulted in less than a 1% pay cut for the CEO
• Return to a long term vision for the company and not the quarter to quarter focus we have now
• Look at ways to grow the company instead of shrinking it. Look for other vertical, horizontal, and out of the box directions that you can take the company. Look past the trends that are in your face and look for further emerging trends. There is lots of opportunity out there if leadership can only look for it.
• Be good corporate citizens and look after the areas that you do business and think about giving back, maybe in areas where you don't now do business
• Remember that the employees are an asset. They know the business often better than management and they generally want to see the company succeed (often even more than management). They're a wealth of ideas, some of which aren't all that crazy. Remember that some of the the things that we can't now live without were someone's crazy idea
• Encourage all the board members and leadership to remember that they've been entrusted with the stewardship of the company and should always keep this in mind
• Why not have targets for increasing headcount (especially where it makes sense). If your company could hire 1000 people in 2009 can you imagine the positive multiplier effect at work?
• If things are looking dire for the company, leadership and the board should be willing to step out there and say that they're willing to forgo such and such of their bonuses until things are turned around, when they'll receive bonuses for their concessions. Can you imagine how many employees can be retained with the crazy salaries and bonuses that some of these executives have made?
• Bonuses can and should be paid, especially when earned, but lets have some common sense in their administration and creation

Photo credit: Credit Crunch 2 courtesy of woodsy.

5 Things The NFL Has Taught Us

Super Bowl XLIII is now history. While it was an exciting game (especially the last few minutes) it goes to show that the N.F.L. has taught us some things.

• Its not over till its over. When your goal is in sight do not let up and watch it slip away.
  
• Even talented people need luck to succeed. Sometimes a little luck can catapult your success.
• You have to manage your clock or it will manage you. In American football if the game is close, and you manage the clock properly, you can still win, but if you don't manage the clock properly, those close games will often be lost.
• Be strong in the basics. When you're playing a good game and not being sloppy you can succeed, but if you get sloppy, it'll be that much harder to succeed.
• The little guys can win. The Green Bay Packers are one of the smaller N.F.L. markets but they've managed to not get left in the dust by the larger television market teams and have won a few Super Bowls. They're a community owned team, so they can't be moved by a greedy owner looking for a better stadium deal. In business most of the big guys started out at little guys. Sometimes they need to be knocked down a notch or two by an upstart with a new idea or two.
• A bonus lesson. If you know what you're going to do, you can run the no-huddle offense.
  

Sports can teach us some valuable lessons. Are there any lessons that you've learned from the N.F.L.?

Photo credit: Passing the Ball courtesy of mrwrite.

Before You Offshore Your Business

So you've been thinking about offshoring parts of your business. Often these decisions are rushed and not properly thought through. If you make the decision without proper considerations it could end up a lot costlier than than you think, so here are some things to consider before you offshore your business.

Do you know the reason that you want to offshore parts of your business? What is it that you hope to accomplish by doing this? There is a widespread belief that by moving work to lower labor cost regions of the world that it will save companies tons of money. In some cases this is true, but the actual cost of doing this is very often not properly calculated (it is often not even in the same ballpark). Some business functions and types of work lend themselves more to offshoring than others, but as you move into unchartered territory the risks become higher and higher. I would make the argument that merely wishing to save labor costs should not be your only reason for doing this. If you're wanting to break into markets in India, China, and so on, then actually performing some type of work there is probably something that you want to do, but even cracking those markets is not a simple task (especially China). Your reason(s) should be compelling enough to deal with the complexities of offshoring.

Touching on the labor cost item again, when you first look at it the inital difference in what is being paid per hour can be very alluring. Depending upon the field and market conditions, the difference in going labor rates can be very large. One of the biggest factors of the wage rates is the cost of living of your labor force. Wages in California (i.e Silicon Valley) have been higher than elsewhere, but when you look at what the real estate prices had been and what it actually costs people in that area to be able to live (factoring out a luxurious lifestyle for the moment), you could buy an awful lot of property and live like a king based on this salary in much of the world. It is exploiting this difference that is at the heart of off-shoring. In classic economic theory, in the long run, the labor rate will eventually reach a market equilibrium. Meaning that for the same position, the wage rate would eventually be the same in California and India. As time goes on labor rates do rise in popular offshore locations as more companies do this and there is more competition for the "cheaper" resources. As other companies move in, they're willing to pay higher wages which can lure away much of your workforce and drive up your costs. Companies can move their work from country to country as the labor rates rise, because there are a lot of countries that will continue to have "attractive" rates for years to come as the labor market continues to move to equilibrium, but there is always the cost associated with making the move.

Your communication costs and effort will rise and chances are that your calculations aren't even close in this front. At the very least your telecommunications charges will need to accommodate lots of phone calls between far flung project and work teams. You'll need to make sure that your phone service will accommodate calls to and from your offshore location. There will be lots of questions by your offshore location as they do work that they're not familiar with, sure they may be experienced in the type of work that they're doing but there will be the natural need to clarify what it is that you want from them. This can be harder because they won't have the same cultural references and many things won't mean the same to them. You can spend a lot of time and effort dealing with false assumptions. In the beginning (anyways) there will need to be a lot of supervision, so that you can "see" that you're understood and that what is being delivered is truly what you want.

Training costs are likely to be a lot larger than you anticipate when you factor in what I've said about communication. Because your new workforce is not familiar with your company, they don't know your history (really know it) and likely don't share your "vision". These are things that will need to be trained. At the very least, they're going to need to know about your product and how what they're doing fits into the big picture. With many non-native English speaking cultures there is a tendency to agree and not ask questions. Maybe this is to save themselves embarssment, but you can't assume that what you've said is understood. If they're not asking questions, there is a very good chance that they don't understand.

Your travel costs will rise. Many companies will offshore to cut costs allowing for the necessary travel within their budgets. Without allowing enough travel, you're setting yourself up for failure. There is no subsitute for people being in the same room. You can see by the look on people's faces if what you've said makes sense and you can get a feeling if your message is at least being heard (if not understood). It is a lot easier to clear up problems face to face that might take tons of email and phone calls otherwise. Face to face meetings also build a relationship that doesn't exist over phone calls and email. It can also help to build more of a team feeling.

When you move jobs offshore, those jobs are then gone from your local economy. You're likely to be putting people in unemployment lines at a time when it isn't so easy to find work. If the displaced workers do find work, it is often a far lower rate than they were paid before. The wage differences might be enough that they're not able to pay their mortgages and provide for their families. If you then factor in the other jobs lost offshore the overall local economy is dragged down that much more. These displaced workers are now not likely to spend like they did before, further dragging down other businesses. Various trade agreements were pushed through saying that manufacturing jobs will be lost, but other good paying jobs will replace them. This hasn't happened on a large scale yet, maybe it still will.

Your former employees might have been a big consumer of your product and now they're less likely to be in your customer base. G.M. employees have bought a lot of G.M. cars and trucks (albeit often at a discount) but when the work is moved offshore, how many of the new workers are likely to buy the more expensive vehicles that the former G.M. workers bought? Chances are that the new employees won't be paid enough to really buy your premium products. There is something to be said for companies where the employees buy and use what they produce. Maybe it was an urban legend, but I heard that their were such good incentives for Mercedes employees that the workers didn't know if they were working on their own car, which gave them more incentive to produce a better quality product and take pride in what the produce.

How will your customers be effected and what are they likely to think? If you're operating a customer facing call center that is being offshored, how is this likely to be received? I've read stories about these things being moved back to the country of origin. What is often forgotten is that the people answering the phones might be the image of your company to your customers, it might be there only experience with people of your company. Bad experiences drive customers away like nothing else. Sometimes the various accents within our own countries are hard enough to understand when you're native, let alone when the people in the call center aren't native speakers. How receptive are your customers likely to be to this? I've seen that there is sometimes extensive cultural and language training to help these employees do the job, so this is not to say that it can't work but should be thought about.

There is also more and more pressure on governments to put pressure on businesses not to offshore. If you're selling something to various governments there is a greater chance that there will be provisions to require various aspects of the product you're providing to be "produced/serviced" within that country or continent. As time goes on, your company could take a bad public relations hit for offshoring. There could be a public backlash, with boycotts and so on. You might find yourself having to move some or all of the work back. Keeping jobs in your local economy could be a PR card that you can play to your advantage.

One of the lures of offshore locations is that there are less regulations to deal with. Many of the offshore locations are happy to get factories and work created in their countries but they're not really ready to deal with the by-products of this work. Many offshoring locations don't have environmental regulations to the extent of that the more developed countries have in place. While this might seem like a true benefit that you don't have to deal with the same waste disposal regulations as back home, but the waste now becomes a problem for the offshore country that probably doesn't have the money and experience to deal with it. Who is to say that there won't be litigation later on to make you pay for clean up costs or for lawsuits from people claiming injury from your waste? I imagine that if you think about it, you don't really want to pollute these offshore locations (or any other location).

Much of the work now being offshored is totally new and businesses are taking big risks in areas that they don't know if it can really successfully be offshored. A lot of I.T. companies are making offshoring such a big part of their business plans and they're taking huge risks in areas that they don't know if offshoring can even work. They're moving work areas where the potential employees might have learned about the subject in school but they're certainly not experienced with the complexities of doing the work and some things, try as you might, can not be offshored, there will still need to have a certain proximity to the work that needs to be preformed. Not all data center work can be done remotely, some local support is still needed.

My competitors are doing it, so I have to do the same. When you move in the off-shore direction you're also taking your business in the "commodity pricing" direction. When businesses get caught in the "cheapest" price mode, it is hard to win. Someone can always come along and beat your price, it is a hard war to win. There is a great deal of complexity in a lot of businesses that doesn't lend itself to a lot of movement of labor, and all the training, retraining, and reorganizations that are needed don't happen quickly. If your product becomes a commodity, then your customers can buy from anyone, why should they buy for you? While it is not always possible, focusing on a quality product and a good reputation is a better route for the long run. The big mega deals are rare (if not already dead), so finding niches and going after smaller clients is probably a better direction. The big mega deals are more often than not, smaller and smaller with companies wanting to spread their risk over multiple suppliers, so the "big prise" is not so big.

Focus more on the long run. Many companies are so focused on this quarter that they're not willing to take the hard decisions that might not yield results in a quarter or two. The Big Three are a good example there, they put so much focus on SUVs when gas was cheap, looking at the longer term picture you knew that gas wouldn't stay cheap. Restucturing and Offshoring are so often about seeing quick returns, saving money, and not about having a solid company that will be around for your kids or grandkids to run (if they're able and qualified that is).

Cultural differences can not be overlooked. I've had a lot of experience with one country in particular and it is very hard to find people there that are able to show the drive needed to get the job done. They are very good at doing "exactly" as they're told, but they're not comfortable "thinking outside of the box" when problems arise. It is also very hard for them to admit when they don't understand something and ask the proper questions. After a longer period of time, some of the traits that you're looking for in employees are likely to appear, but you can't expect them to be there day one.

It is your business, livelihood, reputation, and legacy that is at stake. Is offshoring a direction that you really want to take your company, going back to my earlier question about the reason that you want to offshore. If you don't see the results you're expecting, the stakes can be pretty high and they might not be fixable. It is time to be a leader, if offshoring isn't a strategic part of your company's future, then take a stand.

Are you ready for the infrastructure problems that you're likely to face? In many of the emerging enconomies the infrasture is not in place to support your company. Are you willing to help build the infrastructure that you need via taxes and so on?

There is an element of policitcal instability in offshoring. When you look at all conflicts going on in the world, almost every area that you might think about going has its problems. India has problems with Pakistan that have recently raised their head again. China is a Communist country that has more recently welcomed more and more of the market economy, but they're still a Communist country. Are you willing to let your company fall prey to all the political struggles that you probably don't understand.

The idealist in me would like to see all parts of the world raised out of their proverty with everyone able to earn a living wage and be able to support their families. Offshoring does not usually lift the people of the country where the work is being done out of poverty. We've all heard stories about "slave labor", do you want one of those stories to come back an haunt your company? The argument is often made that some money is better than none, but so often people take jobs that pay "something" because it is what they can get. If you truly want to lift the opressed people of the world out of poverty that is very admireable, but this is generally not a goal of Offshoring.

The days of company and employee loyalty appear to be a thing of the past. Businesses have grown too big and become to corporate and the feeling of family that existed in the past is more or less dead. So many corporations are so far flung and widespread that many employees don't really even know their managers. The Japanese used to offer "lifetime employment", an alien concept to many corporate types today. It used to be that the company looked after its employees and the employees looked after the company both felt a sense of responsibility for each other, both were proud of each other. All the redundancies that we see today in favor of Offshoring, see how far we have come. You can debate corporate responsibility if you like, but shouldn't companies find that being responsible and a good citizen yields long term benefits that outweigh the costs today?

Offshoring can work. Many companies have seen some success in Offshoring. I don't wish to indicate that it can't ever work. One area where companies should probably give some thought to this is where you have the goal of being in close proximity to a key client, so it might make sense to set operations so that you can better support your client. As stated earlier, if you're really trying to break into a market, you'll probably want to perform some sort of work there. Company sales are often helped by having a local presence (being more than just a sales force and marketing unit). If you're providing a quality product and a good employer, you can be accepted and welcomed by the local community.

Offshoring is a passionate topic, but I've tried to show some of the things that are often not considered enough when companies are deciding if they should take the plunge or not. Offshoring can work, but you do need to consider a lot more than the difference in labor costs. Do you have anything to say about Offshoring? Civilized discussion is welcome.

Photo Credit: people 5 courtesy of erwinbacik

The Triple Constraint

The Triple Constraint or Project Management Triangle

A few weeks back when I was in Amsterdam for some training, I was reminded that I wanted to write about the Triple Constraint. What is the Triple Constraint you ask? Put basically, it is a term that is often used in Project Management to describe the tradeoffs that have to be made between scope, time, and cost within projects. While this is very important to running projects it is also one of life’s key principles as well.

The Triple Constraint is often times called the Project Management Triangle. In the picture above you’ll see a triangle formed between scope, cost, and schedule with quality being in the middle of the triangle. Scope is what you plan to do or deliver. Cost is often viewed as the effort needed to do whatever it is that you’re doing, this can be monetary (dollars, euros, and so on) and can also be the resources used to deliver what you’re doing. Schedule and time are often used interchangeably; this is how long it will take you to do what you’re planning to do. The reason that they form a triangle is that it isn’t possible to change one of these items without adjusting the other two. This is often where projects fail. You can certainly do a task faster (time or schedule) but you might have to hire someone else to help you do it (more money and effort) or you can deliver less (you might adjust what it is that you’re going to deliver), and in the middle of the triangle is the quality of what you’re delivering, so maybe what you’re doing doesn’t need to have the highest quality but it is certainly effected by scope, time, and cost.

When you think about it, most everything that you do in life is affected by the Triple Constraint. You have to make a trade off between all of these things. A while back I saw a picture about service that you could receive at a motorcycle shop, that said that you could receive three types of service good, cheap, fast, and that you could pick any two, this is another way of stating the Triple Constraint that is easily understood…

If you have good service fast it won’t be cheap

If you have good service cheap it won’t be fast

If cheap service fast it won’t be good

Projects are often failing because they don’t properly adjust when there are changes to any of these things. Projects’ scope often grows (they take on more work or what is being delivered expands) but then the cost (effort) and/or schedule (time) are not properly adjusted. Using effort and cost interchangeably can confuse some people but just realize that there is a cost that goes along with additional effort (maybe hiring additional people to do more work). If you’re costs have gone up from taking on more work and not adjusting the time needed to deliver that work, and not adjusting other work being delivered; this means that if you don’t increase your prices (to correspond with your additional resource costs), your revenue and profits might not be sufficient to stay in business. Another thing that often happens is that, if you don’t bring on more resources, your resources are now pulled from other work, so that other work now takes longer to deliver (time or schedule), which delays that work.

I have not mentioned skill and efficiency to this point. If something is being done by more experienced resources, they probably cost more (hourly rates, salary, and etc.) than less experienced resources, this is part of your cost (effort). While your more experienced resources tend to cost more because they’re more likely to know what needs to be done and how to do it, they can complete the work quicker than the less experienced resources, which means that it takes less time to do the work and they might be able to do other tasks. Having more experienced resources does not guarantee that they’re efficient or that they have good work habits. Skill and efficiency should not be overlooked.

If you look around in your everyday life, you’d be amazed at how often you can apply the Triple Constraint. If you have any comments, I’d love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about…

• The next in my series of weight loss strategies
• My next Spotlight on the web.
• The next of my dating and relationship tips
• More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, and other things that you can use.

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• Make Better Use of Your Subject Line
• The Customer Is Always Right
• Lessons Learned
• GTD Overview
• Tips for Working on International Projects
• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
• Why Aren’t You Working Your “Someday/Maybe’ Projects?
• Why Not Create Tasks Right From Your Inbox?
• Heart Check
• Who Mentored You
• Treat Others The Way That You Wish To Be Treated
• Easter Greeting…14 Principles for Dealing With Other People
• Are Your Assumptions Holding You Back?
• A Good Breakfast Is A Key To Your Weight Loss Success
• 7 Tips to Reduce the Amount of Sugar in Your Daily Diet
• 12 Tips to Help You Drink More Water
• 7 Tips to Help Stop Eating Before You Feel “Stuffed”
• 10 Tips for Reducing Fat in Your Diet
• 12 Benefits of “Letting Go”of Your Diet
• Why Not Have A Fruit Day?
• Gift Ideas for Those That Have Everything
• Teaching Our Kids About Money

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Using Microsoft Project in Multiple Sessions

Microsoft Project open on one monitor while Microsoft Outlook is open in the other

Are you familiar with the multi-session functionality of Microsoft Excel and Word? That is where you can open up different files in different sessions allowing you to compare them from one monitor to another. For those of you that use M.S. Project, have you ever tried to get multi-sessions to work within Project? After surveying a few colleagues, checking help, and Google, it seemed that nobody had done it before. This seemed rather odd to me.

Why would you want multi-sessions in M.S. Project? I had several different template schedules that I wanted to use to incorporate tasks into one schedule and this was my first thought of how to do it. It seems that a lot of people that are working with Project are only using one monitor, so they haven’t thought about having more than one session open. I’m usually working with my notebook’s screen as my primary monitor and I have an additional monitor, so I make use of two monitors. If you’re only using one screen or monitor then multi-sessions for Project probably doesn’t give you a lot of benefit. Within a normal single session of Project you can arrange multiple schedules vertically, horizontally, or in a tiled manner, in addition to looking at a single schedule at a time. Within a single session of Project, when I view multiple schedules at the same time they appear to small and you have to constantly dart around to see what you need to see. If you're only looking at one schedule at a time, then you have to jump from schedule to schedule. The problem that I saw with using a single session of Project was that you spend too much time going back and forth between schedules as opposed to comparing what you actually want compare.

One session of Project stretched over two monitors

After discussing my problem with one colleague, I tried stretching the Microsoft Project session across my two monitors. This ultimately was the answer to my problem. Now I could have the schedule open that I wanted to adjust open on one monitor, and look at another schedule for tasks that I wanted to add on the other monitor and I had the other schedules that I wished to look at in a smaller size that I could expand as I needed them. While this was not the multi-session solution that I was looking for, it did serve my purpose.

To set this up, you’ll need two monitors or screens. I’m currently using Microsoft Project 2003, so I have not tested other versions to see if they’re able to do this as well. Open Project up so that it is not maximized, then stretch it out over both screens. I would suggest that leave a little space on the bottom of your monitors, as a safety measure. Now you can put the two schedules that you wish to compare on separate monitors. See the second picture for an example of this in use. If you want to have other schedules open, reduce them so that you can easily grab them to expand as necessary. Note if for some reason you need to use another application while you have this set up, you’ll probably have to do some fine tuning to get it working properly again. I recently tried this Microsoft Powerpoint and it works there as well.


Using the expanded Project Session (my terms) allows you to quickly compare multiple schedules and to make changes to your schedules with more ease than the trying to cope with just one session on one monitor. Do you have any other tips for handling M.S. Project or schedules in general? If you have any other comments, I’d love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about...

The next in my series of weight loss strategies

My next Spotlight on the web.

More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, photography and other things that you can use.

Other Posts That You Might Also Like to Read…

• GTD Overview
  


• Tips for Working on International Projects
  


• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
  


• Why Aren’t You Working Your “Someday/Maybe’ Projects?
  


• Why Not Create Tasks Right From Your Inbox?

Make Better Use of Your Subject Line

Composing an email with Gmail, from my account

As I get more and more email (especially at work) I have come to appreciate better use the “Subject” line. The subject line is one of the first things that people notice about your email and so often it is filled with subjects that barely even relate to what needs to be done with the email or the theme of the email. You can get a lot more response from your emails when you make better use of your subject lines and it can help to make your emails shorter, which most people will appreciate.

The subject field is one of the places that you can easily build credibility with your readers. Since this is one of the first things that people usually notice about emails (probably right after who sent it), why not make the subject actually fit the “subject” or theme of your email? If your email is about an important or “hot topic”, then your subject line should say so. This will help your email stand out from all the other emails received by your readers and will help it to get noticed. It is also a criteria used by many people to determine what order they read (or don’t read) emails.

Try to indicate any action that is needed within your subject line. You can do this any number of ways but the simplest way it to state what is needed from your readers? You can also state something like “ACTION REQUIRED…”. This helps to set expectations of your readers, because they know right up front that they need to do something and what they need to do. This can also get the attention of your readers because some readers will scan for emails that give cues that something is required of the reader.

Do you have a question to ask of your reader(s), why not ask it in your subject line? Your readers will see your question quickly and can respond quickly because they know that an answer is needed from them. If it is a simple question you can put in the subject line and end it with “…? EOM”. “EOM” stands for end of message. This tells the reader that there is nothing to read in the email. This allows you to write quicker emails and get your answer quicker because you don’t need to put greetings and some of the other things that you might usually include in your email. It is short and to the point. If you need to explain your question, this can be done within the body of your email. How many emails have you sent where you only needed the answer to a simple question?

I’m sure that you’ve probably received emails with subject lines that looked like this “FW:FW:FW:FW:….” or maybe “RE:RE:RE:…”. With these emails that have been forwarded or replied to many times, why not remove some of the “FW:”s or “RE:”s? You only need to leave one in to make the point that this email is part of a chain. While you’re at it, why not clean up the email a little bit and remove parts of the chain that don’t add value to the discussion that has already taken place. Most email programs will indent each time the email has been forwarded or replied to, so that it is easy for people to see that your email is part of a chain. You can take out a bunch of the forwards or replies so the email is shorter and easier to read, especially if this allows you to keep the contents of the email within a normal computer screen or monitor and the reader doesn’t need to scroll through the email. The more the reader has to scroll, the less likely they are to read emails. The only time to remove forwards or replies that don’t and any value to the mail is based on who the people are that forwarded/replied were. If your department manager or a company executive is in the email chain, you want to make sure that people see that.

Sometimes you’ll send emails that don’t require any action from your readers. In these cases why not indicate this in your subject line. You can write something like, “FYI:…”, this tells your readers right away that they email is for their information and that you don’t require any action from them. If you do send a joke of funny email that you can also do something like “HUMOR:…”, this will help your readers to prioritize their inbox. Try to develop your own cues that you can use to get a good deal of your message across within your subject line. If there is a social event, how about something like, “SOCIAL EVENT:…”, this lets your reader know that this isn’t the standard meeting that should probably attend.

In a world where so many of us are deluged with email, better use of your subject line will be appreciated and is more likely to get you the results that you seek. Do you have any special way of using your subject lines? If you have any other comments, I would love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about…

• The next in my series of weight loss strategies
• My next Spotlight on the web.
• More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, and other things that you can use.

Other Posts That You Might Also Like to Read…

• Does Your Approval Process Work For You Or Against You?
• The Customer Is Always Right
• Lessons Learned
• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
• Why Not Create Tasks Right From Your Inbox?
• Treat Others The Way That You Wish To Be Treated
• Easter Greeting…14 Principles for Dealing With Other People
• Are Your Assumptions Holding You Back?
• Who Mentored You
• GTD Overview
• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
• Why Aren’t You Working Your “Someday/Maybe’ Projects?
• Is It Time To Review Your Insurance Coverage?
• Should One Parent Stay Home After Your Child Is Born?
• Teaching Our Kids About Money
• Heart Check

Does Your Approval Process Work For You Or Against You?

"Computers" courtesy of coolpix

I know that many of you have seen the drill before, the forth quarter comes and all of a sudden it is time to cut costs, so the approval levels are clamped down air tight so that no money is frivolously spent and your balance sheet looks better. Now all of a sudden procurement approvals go all the way to corporate vice presidents, travel requests need to be approved at high levels of a geography, region, or even higher, and classroom style trainings are all but eliminated. This is a reactionary device that seems to happen all too often. What is generally given little (if no thought) is the effect that this has on your overall approval processes as these short-term solutions tend to become the defacto policy and become harder to change (for the better anyways). This leads to the question, is your department’s or company’s approval process working for you, or against you?

In this bottom line and reactionary focus some other items that contribute to the true cost of these things are often neglected or not given enough consideration. Buying that server now doesn’t truly cost you the $5,000 listed in the purchase scenario, nor does the plane ticket cost you the $2000 that the travel agency or airline wished to charge you. The true cost is now the time of all the people involved in the approval work flows. The person raising the request must now keep track of “where” their request is in the approval process, this can be very time consuming and costly as surely this is not what most people were hired to do. Because of the use of various workflow management software programs and offshoring of many back-office functions, it isn’t always clear with which approver the request is now sitting. It is now very likely that you have to originate your request via email to a group mailbox or a web form before the request actually gets into your workflow management program, so you are not the originator (in that system anyways) and don’t have visibility of what approver your request is with and more than likely if you can see who the current approver is, you don’t see all the approvers that are needed. These vice presidents and other high-level managers are often not available and have other things to do beside approve our petty requests. Add to this, that these upper level managers will often decide that they will approve such request only once or twice a week, making the approval process that much longer. Because these managers need to quickly make decisions, they now require some sort of clarification about the request when it is their designated decision time, this often means an email is required from the original requestor or perhaps there is a nice excel or word template that now needs to be filled out, requiring more time from some employee (be it the original requestor or someone working in the back office). Very often these forms are not easy to understand and it is not very apparent how to fill them out. Because the manager doesn’t see the information they “need to see” the either reject the request or delay approving it, this might mean that request’s approval now needs to wait for that manager’s next approval cycle, which might be a whole week later. If the process is even documented, it is buried in an email somewhere or lost in the bowels of your company’s intranet, which means that you’ll now probably have to spend some quality time searching for it. I think that you get the picture, you now need to really calculate the time of everyone involved in the process. Factoring in all these people and their time could easily mean that the server is now actually costing your company over $100,000 or worse! Now imagine that the request got all the way to the top and that vice president said that this item was too expensive and not justifiable, rejecting the request. Your company might have just spent $95,000 to save $5000! The expression about being pennywise but pound foolish seems to apply here. The corporate world seems to have taken a page from the playbook of many national governments is buying ridiculously expensive/inexpensive items (remember all those stories about the military spending ludicrous amounts on hammers and so on?)

Another cost that is harder to quantify is your department or company’s loss of flexibility and its affect on your projects, operations, customer relationships, and employee morale and motivation. It could very well be that “the process” does have a provision for emergency situations. If a server breaks and your warranty won’t cover the immediate replacement of it, you probably can not wait a few weeks for all the approvals needed (service level agreements could be broken resulting in penalty payments due a customer(s) far in excess of the $5000 server). Even the fast track process is still probably not flexible enough to give you the speed needed. There are also those impromptu or emergency customer or project meetings that require travel but lining up the pre-approvals can require time that means the bargain rate you saw on the internet is no longer available when you can finally book it, making hotel stays and airline tickets more expensive than they need to be. There are many visits and meetings that had to be canceled because the travel couldn’t be arranged in time. The relationship with your customer could be impacted because you’re very restricted in your ability to travel. Having face to face meetings can strengthen relationships and raise the level of cooperation that is not possible with a million emails and telephone conferences, not to mention that level of understanding that can be reached when all parties are in the same room. When the approval processes become so inflexible, complicated, and bureaucratic, employee morale is affected, often adding further to the productivity loss, some of your more talented and valuable employees may decide to leave your company in part because of such short-sighted policies and procedures!

What is the solution? First of all the process should be reviewed from end to end, not just bitts and pieces of it. Maybe some of the management approval levels can be removed. If you truly want the final approval to come from a vice president, why not route it to the v.p. earlier in the process and eliminate some of the middle management? The request would still get review by the v.p., but some of the time and expense can be cut out. Also, is the v.p., in all honesty, going to give the request the review that was originally intended? They might look at it for all of 5 minutes before making their decision and there is all the expense of getting the request to them for this 5 minute review. How about raising the authorization or empowerment levels? Chances are that your v.p doesn’t need to be involved in all those approvals; this demotivates the other managers in the process, that they have such little authority. There could be periodic reviews of approval decisions that are made and these levels can be modified as necessary. The simpler the process, the less costly it will be to actually use it, so the process should be only as complex as it needs to be and not more. Looking at the situation a little deeper, you’ll probably find that the budget crisis faced in Quarter 4 is only a symptom of the problem. Travel, procurement, and training should all be covered within respective budgets for departments, business units, and regions; as long as the items requested are within the proper plans and are truly allowed and planned for, they shouldn’t be the problem, but they do need to be budgeted for, so when that budget is used for other things the problems occur. This can often be the result of some systemic problems that need to be uncovered and dealt with. Such complicated procedures and processes, often give employees the sign that they aren’t trusted, probably not a signal your department or company wants to send. Lastly, in reviewing the process, you should try to look at things from the outside in. Can you explain the logic to someone with little knowledge of your department or company? You just might find that logic needs review and adjustment.

Have you given any thought to how your company or department manages these approvals? Has your department or company come up with some creative solutions to these problems? If you have any other comments, I would love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about…

• The next in my series of weight loss strategies
• My next Spotlight on the web.
• More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, and other things that you can use.

Other Posts That You Might Also Like to Read…

• The Customer Is Always Right
• Lessons Learned
• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
• Why Not Create Tasks Right From Your Inbox?
• Treat Others The Way That You Wish To Be Treated
• Easter Greeting…14 Principles for Dealing With Other People
• Are Your Assumptions Holding You Back?
• Who Mentored You
• GTD Overview
• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
• Why Aren’t You Working Your “Someday/Maybe’ Projects?
• Teaching Our Kids About Money
• Heart Check

The Customer Is Always Right

"Sign" courtesy of Thadz

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages. Henry Ford

A merchant who approaches business with the idea of serving the public well has nothing to fear from the competition. James Cash Penney

I’m sure that you have heard that “the customer is always right”, I have tended to look at things more along the lines of “the customer is not always right, but the customer is always the customer”. I don’t wish to take credit for that quote but I don’t remember where I first heard it from. People often have crazy requests, thoughts, beliefs, and demands; certainly it is not always a good idea to honor everyone of these things, but by taking them into proper consideration you just might be surprised by multiplier effect. Your customers will value your services more, possibly giving your more business directly or indirectly through word of mouth advertising that you can not buy. Customer service is just good business and should be a way of life for all of us. Much or our frustration in the course of our days come from the customer service that we receive or don’t receive.

It is the service we are not obliged to give that people value most.

James Cash Penney

America has long had an image in the world of providing excellent customer service. I have a somewhat unique position of being an American living abroad, so I can often see things from the outside looking in. A couple of years ago, when the family and I were in the U.S., my wife remarked that the customer service mentality seemed to be gone or had gone down hill, from her previous exposures to it. I’m constantly amazed by the way businesses treat their customers or let their employees treat them, while this might not be the same thing, this is how people view your business, and it manifests itself into the customer’s view of your business and becomes their reality. You can be sure that dissatisfied customers will often abandon ship at the first chance they can or if they have no other chance to do so, will only buy the bare minimum. Without service there are only products and there are a lot of products sitting on shelves waiting to be picked up.

A store's best advertisement is the service its goods render, for upon such service rest the future, the good-will, of an organization. James Cash Penney

Without customers you wouldn’t have a paycheck. As stated in the Henry Ford quote above, employers only handle the money. Even if you work for the government, you do have customers, you just might not think of it that way. If your customers don’t feel that their patronage is valued or they feel mistreated, eventually, you’re likely to lose some or all of them. If you lose all of your customers, then your business won’t be able to sustain operations and profitability (note that government services and monopolistic companies don’t necessarily follow this pattern but they still need to worry about satisfied customers because there or other outcomes that could be just as unpleasant, if not worse, for them) and will eventually have to shut your doors. We all have our jobs or functions to do, but it is because there is a customer that we are able to do these things.

A customer service attitude should be adopted; it should be at the center of all we do. Think of how much better the world would be if more people developed this developed and lived this attitude. Darryl Heron

Unless you’re a hermit or a recluse, you have many customers in your daily life, you just don’t realize it. If you work for a company of almost any size; you have bosses, co-workers, other departments, and clients that make requests of you. They are, in fact, all your customers. How often have you asked a colleague to do something for you, something that might have even truly have been part of their normal job responsibilities, and they treated you like you were an annoyance. Maybe, you have even been the one looking at your colleagues as an annoyance. The bigger the company, the harder it is to really maintain a true team spirit that is so often “pushed” by management. In a lot of companies there are OLAs (operational level agreements) between departments that describe service levels and so on, this is especially true if they’re more mature in doing Service Management (a foundation in I.T.I.L.), but this doesn’t really regulate the relationships between co-workers. Treating your colleagues as valued customers, showing them courtesy and working with them, can only help move your company in a positive direction. By showing respect and courtesy to your co-workers, they’re more likely to do the favors that you ask of them, this is especially true if you aren’t in their reporting line.

Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement. James Cash Penney

In an era where everybody is always trying to be the cheapest, customer service can differentiate your product or service from your competitors. It is hard to always beat the competition in price and if your product becomes a commodity in the minds of your potential customers, they will surely buy the cheapest product unless they’re convinced that there is real value in your product. Aside from quality that stands out from your competitors, customer service is one of the biggest things that can add value to your product in your potential customers’ minds. As long as there is still the possibility to readily move production and service to off shore locations where the labor markets are perceived to be lower cost, then it is harder and harder for your product to win the cheapest category within your field of competition. Furthermore, the higher the profit margins in your field, the more competitors will be drawn in, further pushing the “cheaper” envelope.

The Golden Rule finds no limit of application in business. James Cash Penney

Providing excellent customer service can help you to build your product or service into a brand that people know, trust, and buy. Many companies spend a lot of money on advertising, marketing, and trying to build “brand” awareness and image, but if the customer service isn’t there, most of this effort is wasted. It is far cheaper to maintain customers than to reach new ones, so if someone is already using your product or service and are happy with it, they’re more likely to continue. If they are enthusiastic about your product or service, they’re likely to “sell” your product through countless endorsements to family, friends, co-workers, and people they meet on the street. You just can’t buy that kind of advertising and promotion. Your satisfied customers are more likely to try out your new products or services, and are often good candidates for add-on business, without the need for as much advertising and promotion. Good customer service can even promote new products and services. Happy and satisfied customers can be used in advertising and marketing campaigns and they’re more likely to come off more genuine than some high paid celebrity that is only “paid” to be a spokesperson.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own. Henry Ford

Remember that customer service doesn’t end with a sale or contract signing. Many products break, there are problems or questions in their operation and use, customers would like the opportunity to provide feedback on the product or service, or any number of other things can happen after the point that the customer has bought the product or service. It is in providing this outlet that many companies fall down. Calling your company’s hotline and looking at things from a customer standpoint can be an eye-opening experience! If your hotline is staffed by a call center, this might be become the image of your company in the eyes of many of your customers and potential customers, so this needs to be a pleasant experience. Sadly, more often than not, it isn’t. Between confusing voice menus and agents that don’t know how to interact with real people, don’t speak clearly, and don’t care about the customer, you might be driving your customers to your competition. Don’t neglect servicing your products, regardless of if your products are serviced by your company, franchised locations, or dealerships; bad experiences here can drive your customers away and you might not even know it is happening.

There are probably a million (or billion) reasons why you should provide good customer service. Certainly, if you can become excited about your job and show interest in your customers, it won’t hurt your company’s bottom line and you just might find after a while that you enjoy the relationships that you build with some of your customers, they might even become your friends. Do you have any positive or negative stories that you want to share about service that you have received? Do you have any tips to those responsible for providing customer service? If you have any other comments, I’d love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about…

• The next in my series of weight loss strategies
• My next Spotlight on the web.
• More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, and other things that you can use.

Other Post That You Might Also Like to Read…

• Treat Others The Way That You Wish To Be Treated
• Easter Greeting…14 Principles for Dealing With Other People
• Are Your Assumptions Holding You Back?
• Who Mentored You
• GTD Overview
• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
• Why Aren’t You Working Your “Someday/Maybe’ Projects?

Lessons Learned

Girl pointing at monitor courtesy of Chance Agrella

Within the project world, somewhere before you shut down a project, you should have a least one lessons learned session, where you capture items that have been learned from the project. This is something that can and should be applied in other areas of your life as well. The lessons that you learn in life are a big part of your never ending life’s education. Your own life is probably full of them, things that you have learned from experience. They can be as simple as don’t cross the street before looking both ways.

A famous quote once went (before being “modified” by a recent president) “Fool me once, same on you, but fool me twice, shame on me”. So while it is human to make mistakes and it is even expected that you’ll make lots of mistakes in your life, you should avoid to keep making the same mistakes. One version of Hell, must be a person doomed to eternally making the same mistake(s), realizing that they’re making the mistake and doing it anyways.

Within the project word, you try to get key project members together for at least one session where they discuss lessons learned from the project. This doesn’t have to be negative, it can be positive lessons or things that we did right that we should do again. Some projects do periodic sessions to make sure that they capture more of the lessons and that they can apply them before the project is over. Discussing and communicating lessons learned is all that more important in those big projects/programs where communication can be an issue, certainly efforts need to be made to make sure that the left side knows what the right side is doing, the more people involved the more likely it is that someone has learned a lesson worth sharing. It is most certainly a crime when a project makes the same mistake twice (or continues to make the same mistakes) because lessons weren’t learned or communicated. Often times projects/programs and companies keep reinventing the wheel when they don’t need to (and it isn’t one of their deliverables)! I have thought for several years now that every company should create a lessons learned database that is highly visible within their company. While it might not need to be right on their intranet homepage, there should be a highly visible link to it from there. Everyone in the company should be able to see the lessons learned by projects in the past so that they can avoid making the same mistakes. Within the operations and ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) they will often already make use of a Know Errors database, companies might also consider that their employees have read access to this as well. Maybe a wiki might serve this purpose, but the point is that the information is easily accessible and can be leveraged by your company.

Within your work and personal life, you should be recording your lessons learned. If you’re working on some project or activity, before you walk away from it, never to look back, do your own review. Ask yourself…

· What did I do right? You’re looking for things that are repeatable in other contexts. You do want to keep in mind that you’re not writing a manual (that could be goal of a different activity).

· What went wrong? Please remember this is not an exercise aimed at placing blame. This is only to identify where things could be done differently if given similar enough circumstances.

· What can I, or should I, do differently next time? If it seems like there a lot of ideas for one item, you might want to think about have a brainstorming session (where the goal is to list as many ideas as possible without judgment and they’re evaluated separately so that innovative ideas aren’t discounted or dismissed)

This is a really good exercise, especially if you have experienced failure in something you attempted or did. It can help you to receive some closure and to move on. Before wrapping up your session, you might ask other people whose opinions you value, how they have handled similar circumstances or what they might have done in your shoes. You might just be surprised to see how many other people have faced similar circumstances.

After you have recorded your lessons learned, don’t horde your knowledge and experiences, be willing to share. You might be able to share this with other family and friends. Maybe you can share it with colleagues at your company or within your industry. You might even think about being a mentor and sharing it that way. I think that it is really tragic that mankind can’t harness the knowledge of our species, so that we don’t keep making the same mistakes. Certainly some things we all have to learn for ourselves, but there are so many others where we could benefit from someone else’s lessons learned.

So next time you’re getting ready to end an activity or project and you think that there are some things that could be learned from it, why not do your own lessons learned session? Have you made use of lessons learned?If you have any other comments, I’d love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about…

• The next in my series of weight loss strategies
• My next Spotlight on the web.
• More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, and other things that you can use.

Other Post That You Might Also Like to Read…

• Treat Others The Way That You Wish To Be Treated
• Easter Greeting…14 Principles for Dealing With Other People
• Are Your Assumptions Holding You Back?
• Who Mentored You
  
• GTD Overview
• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
• Why Aren’t You Working Your “Someday/Maybe’ Projects?