Employee Morale

Cains Brain (http://www.cainsbrain.com/a-guide-to-employee-morale) not too long ago posted this cartoon, only recently brought to my attention by Guy Kawasaki and the folks at HolyKaw and Alltop.com.

Enjoy.

Telecommuting: is it a good idea

As a consultant, employee, and manager I have often struggled with the topic of Telecommuting. Working from home was one of the "perks" of going independent for me years ago, the result was mixed: days and weeks cut off from humanity, with a dash of inefficiency, mingled with guilt and resentment on the part of my colleagues. 

Credit: Gawker.com via Lifehacker.com

In my own experience I had one job where the office was 4 hours drive from home, and I was the only employee who lived outside the city, state/province, country boundaries. Typically my job involved me calling on our customers on-site, performing training on-site, and supporting sales on-site. This was mostly a 3-4 day per week activity, with general administrative labor and follow-up being done from a "home-office"-the basement in my suburban rental home.

Credit realsimple.com

Other office staff resented the fact that I worked from home rather than and "office". The Solution? The Self-proclaimed-die-expert and Techni-ho was asked to drive from home to the office on the off days. Not just AN office, but THE office. So the policy was that if I had an off day, i would rent a car, drive to the office and "work" and leave when time allowed me to complete by drive before the end of the work day.

Correct. If I had one day off, I would rent the car, drive-in, walk-in eat lunch (on expenses) and leave for home (it made for just over a nine-hour day. Efficient? No, did it put an end to the debate over home-offices? Not really. It did put an end to my willingness to stay at that company, but created my first consultancy, once I was a consultant they no longer cared what I did on off days.

As we weigh the possibilities of allowing our staff to work from home one could unilaterally make an edict (usually not constructive) or just roll with it. In either case we might pay a price later. The Infographic below sums it up all very nicely (a little bit snarky but for the most part on the mark).

Credit: Mindflash

When you make the decision to either work from home or not, or to create an open policy for Home office hours. Be sure to have rational reasoning behind the policy. It can succeed, but only if you create the environment for it to work.

Treat your employees like grown-ups and they might prove worthy; treat them like children who can't be trusted you most definitely get what you expected. 

Streetwalking, trolling and phishing: Getting the freelance gig

Getting yourself out "there" is a constant challenge for the full-time Techni-HO. Sure there are Social Media outlets like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. And of course we keep up blogs, journal articles, and public speaking events. But for day-to-day promoting yourself or finding other like minded "HOs" where can we go? In the realm of selling your time for money--Techni-ho fashion--word of mouth alone will not put food on the table.

Elance provides ways to create and manage your "e-presence" team

Elance offers a solution-and I hope they don't mind the allusion-to become your TechniPimp. As mentioned in earlier blog posts one of the downsides of going fully Freelance is not only finding the work and doing the work, but getting paid for the work. This also means negotiating and collecting fees.
Elance offers an online solution to many of those growing pains.

By offering a single storefront wherein "Johns" can cruise for talent, and the "Hos" can show their wares. Elance provides a method by which Techni-Hos and Johns can meet up, set up the commercial aspects of the job, and even ways to manage the project-by allowing for reviews of "Work-in-progress".

Start by creating a Free Account and first Free Job posting.

Looking for work? Sign up at Elance and search over 30,000 jobs today.
Find a world of talent online at Elance. Post your job today.

From there you can access all the of the services that Elance offers. As a contractor all the fees will be paid by the Johns as is right. The fees for the Johns to pay are very reasonable for role that they pay-as far as techni-pimps go very reasonable. 6.75%-8.75% as far as mark-ups go is very reasonable.




Unlike many contract houses they are not trying to get ungodly mark-ups on the talent the offer, after off the value-add for most contract houses is exceptionally disproportionate to the mark-up factors. I once worked with a Pimp who charged a 3x markup for a proposal that I wrote, filling a niche that I uniquely fit, with 0-zip-nil value add; when the client puked on the price they had the gall to tell me that my rate was too high.

Careful the legacy you leave

Here's a funny story with only a small moral:

The engineering director of a medium to large tool shop paid a call on his former employers, now customers. He stopped by the desk of the administrative assistant to ask if she would note his arrival for his appointment which was set to start in 15 minutes, and if possible announce his presence to the Mr. Big the chief of this operation.

The conversation went a little like this [slightly altered to protect the ignorant]:

"Hi, I'm Bob Namechanged. I'm here for an appointment with your boss, Mr. Big."
"Oh? And where should I say you are from Mr. Namechanged?"
"Tool and Dieshop Inc."
"Oh, good. Be sure to mention that you are from Tool and Dieshop Inc. Because we used to have a guy here named Bob Namechanged too. But nobody liked him. Apparently he was a bit of an A-Hole."





What on earth did Mr. Namechanged do while at his former employer to earn this reputation?
How surprised he and his new colleagues must have been to find that his relationship with the old shop was not rosy; no doubt expectations of a healthy relationship may have even been part of his hiring at "Tool and Die Inc."

We must all be careful of the legacy we leave behind. The world is getting flatter and as Kevin Bacon will attest we are all only 6 degrees of separation from anybody else.

Performance Measurement

It is a painful period in the growth of youngish companies, from that of a start-up to that of a SME (Small Medium Enterprise). With this transition come many growing pains come many challenges:

• how do we measure ourselves toward our goals?
• what goals are worth following?
• what happens if people don't meet these goals/expectations?
• are the people who go us this far still the people we need tomorrow?

Plainly, you get what you measure and you measure what you get.

If your goal is not measurable it probably is not objective (knowledge, faith, confidence are all highly subjective but too often in peoples goals).

Goals should link to our bottom line, short, medium or long term. After all, if it doesn't help us ,make money it can't really be that strategic (I recently heard a person remark that strategic is often used as a euphemism for not profitable).

Have to be willing to call people to the carpet if the goals are not met, and that includes making very hard decisions linked to the last question.

The people who may have gotten you out of the gate might not be the people who should take you all the way into port. Just like the people who you need right now, might not have been the right people when you were boot-strapping the business.

One of my acquaintances, recently on noting that many of their companies technical staff might not be up to snuff on some of our more recent offerings, asked what would happen if we were to institute a "testing" or "assessment" of skill and capability. Unfortunately, my answer was that we would first have to decide what we should measure, what would make a good technician? And for that the company is still, not out of the dark.

My Grade Point, and S.A.T. Scores? REALLY

While trolling about the internet and the number of Social Sites I use: LinkedIn, FaceBook, Buzz I stumbled upon a job listing for Google. Looking for somebody in the Sales Department in Mountain View to do Partner Sales-Technical Account Management.

I followed the link and filled in my first GoogleJobs application/resume/posting. Now I am a little disappointed that I did find that I had to post my G.P.A. which is really quite poor (2.72 I think I actually have long forgotten what my G.P.A. was) and My S.A.T. Scores (I recall that I had an 1100 +/- 50 points), but that was 15 and 22 years ago.

Just how these metrics track to the potential I have to support a company like Google, is well beyond me. In fact, I am quite certain they are well beyond relevancy. The only interesting thing about my grades in University is that I got them, and they let me out anyway; And that since then I have been employed, despite them, and succeeded well beyond what some people would have assumed possible with those types of numbers.

Maybe more important would be the trend (not visible in a single number) of the Grades:

1. 3.0 freshman
2. 2.0 sophomore
3. 1.2 sophomore
4. 2.2 junior
5. 2.7 junior
6. 3.1 senior
7. 3.2 senior

But then I would have to expose that I was a really poor student at first, then a lost student for a few years, but finished (a miracle on it own) and actually finished strong, once I found my niche--Technical Training and Communication about Technical Content. Oh and yes, that is just under 7 full years to graduate from Michigan Tech (which in my defense has accepted the fact that they are a 5 year school, and that explains at least 1 of the extra years).

What makes good employees after all?

• Grades? (not good for me)
• Test Scores? (not great, but not bad)
• Good looks? (Rats!)
• Height? (Ouch, that would suck)
• Ability to survive adversity? (Hey, I used to suck but look at me now!)

I hope that Google, or whoever we try to find work with in the future, will recognize whether or not they are creating for themselves a "quarterback problem" when trying to fill their jobs. At least long enough to get our foot in. At least then the rest is up to us in the present--just how it should be.

Leadership Equals:....

Simon Sinek posted recently, Re:Focus: The Best Leaders Teach Others To Lead.

In too many places management has replaced leadership as a value. To manage implies that those around you require outside influence to do even the most ordinary and mundane things (i.e. shepherds have to manage their flock. If not the sheep wander off, fall down holes, and get eaten by wolves).

Leadership, implies that the "flock" chooses to follow. Leaders are often selected by the "lead". So when we build a culture around leadership, the leaders as well as the leader should aim to do the right thing and go the right way because it is just that the right way. Leadership, is not a carrot and stick mentality but one where-in the motivation comes from within.

Ideally, the leader inspires the lead to become the next leaders. Managers, never inspire little else but dissent.

What motivates employees?

RSA animates video, discussing motivation


Around 6:00 into it runs into some very valuable example of how a software company increased motivation and spurred innovation.
Autonomy day = 24 hours of free reign for the developers to work on whatever their little hearts desired, so long as they shared what they worked on during that period in a special meeting at the end of the 24 hours.

Result??? New ideas, fixes to old ideas, high  performance.

Lesson, Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose.
Great video. Now i need to figure out how to put it into action.

Organizational dynamics, the Techni-HO and an awkward analogy about religion

Let's see if we can stir the pot a little bit.

I have noticed as i ventured from company to company interesting trends among the employees and employers of the various places i worked. This one I will call "Finding ones religion". When many a re born they enter into religion (not by their own choice but by the choice of their parent, community, or national standards). This is much like your first job. You have a traumatic and disorienting experience (birth=college graduation), and leave the isolated and protected environment you knew (womb=university) and enter the WORLD.

In this world you find shortly after birth a community of seemingly welcoming individuals. These individuals follow some sort of code, or tenets, or dogmatic teachings that as far as you know are the way of the WORLD. There is no other way, why would there be, this is how it is. For a great many people this world order is great, there is no reason to challenge it, and we work and work happily in this our natural born religion/company.

It may happen the over time we either leave the "church" or it leaves us (down sizing = excommunication, quitting = schism/reformation). Left without the grounding of this religion/job we are forced to find another way in the world. This new found job (born again = rehired) offers for us a new salvation from doom and destitution. And we welcome the new teachings of this place as mighty and righteous as it is clear that this is the path to salvation. Born Again.

Perhaps here we find long lasting peace and tranquility. However, for many the possibility still exists that we have not found our home. And again either through heretical thought or action, or ostracism by the organization we find ourselves out in the cold with neither faith nor community. Yet all is not lost and we again can find something to believe in (or at least something that we can latch onto). But now wiser and perhaps a little jaded we learn to live with the imbalances brought out by the dogmatic beliefs of those around us, we learn which ideas or thoughts will not spark heretical criticism, and we take what we can from the experience (nirvana, enlightenment, independence).

What does this have to do with being a techni-HO? Being a former trainer (and a damn good one at that) i tend to speak in analogs; this is no exception. These i hope can serve as archetypes for learning how to deal with those we work with/for out in the world. There are the neophytes (those born into religion/company), the born-again, the pilgrims, and the missionaries. Techni-HOs tend to be missionaries, who after years of pilgrimage will amass the wisdom of the Buddha and be able to bring the light to the neophytes. But their really is nothing more difficult than the born-again who believes they have seen the world and know what time it is.

we'll see where this takes us? (actually just me, since nobody really reads this blog)