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.

Delta: WTF?

Every travelers down day: Getting their reservations hosed up when the agent at the check-in F***s up.

Thank you Delta Airlines check-in staff at Detroit Wayne International Airport McNamara terminal for messing up my travel arrangements that I had made MONTHS in advance. First off, even if when I check in you see a duplicate record for the same flight, same seat, same day .... don't try to clean things up by deleting one of the entries. You'll leave me in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport again not knowing if I have a flight anymore. Since you essentially deleted me off the plane.

Next, why bother having twitter if you don't check your @delta or @deltaairlines tags/replies/mentions. After all i was stuck in the airport due to your foul-up.

Finally, thank your partners at KLM and the kind staff at the desk who did help me get on the plane. With a business upgrade.

And please whatever you do, don't forget to credit me my miles for that flight. I don't want to have to recall any part of that trip.

Consulting: Failure is an option!

Pretty poor paraphrasing, but still on point. When outlining a project with your clients one must ensure that any "failure" is, in fact, success. A common mistake that dooms many engineering consulting projects is the failure on the part of the Techni-HO in question from recognizing that sometimes they may successfully arrive at an answer of "NO".

This is different from prior discussions on the concept of "Shooting the Moon" Guarantees earlier mentioned here. But instead a need for you the Techni-HO to be able to recognize a no-win situation long before it ever happens.

For example, a common engineering problem in my other life as a Self-Proclaimed-Die-Expert is Formability and Springback. I'll pick on formability since it is the easier one. Some of the early tricks in my career relied on my forming "expertise" to identify and correct forming issues. These forming issues were usually automotive sheet metal parts (big body panels, exterior and under body) that split. Of course, producing fenders for Cadillacs and hoods for Oldsmobiles that had big splits in them was totally unacceptable.

The idea was to make the splits go away. It was our roll to make them go away, but here is the trap, what if the splits can't go away? What if there is no solution to fully resolve the failure? We always had to be careful not to take too much ownership in the absolute execution of the solution. For if the suggested solution does not resolve the problem then what do you do next?

We tell them that to make the splits go away they need to reduce the strain in that area x%. By definition in sheet metal the split is an indication or symptom of excessive strain. It would be a mistake to point out that they need to increase or decrease some specific variable to fix the split. (unless you are very good at recognizing the "moon-shot" opportunity).

Carefully craft your solution. The good news is that many of your customers won't recognize restatement of the problem, as a failure to solve the problem.

Return to profitability, by bringing revenues and expenditures in balance. (no shit!?!)

The "HOW" is for the process stakeholders (your clients) to decide and implement. Help them use process to identify potential solutions, help them to implement, then be ready to be the one to measure the success of the change. Just be smart enough to say, "that didn't do it, but we are headed in the right direction. Or that was wrong, now we know it is not related to [yada yada yada]."

I hope you never promised that a specific implementation would achieve the required end. After all, a plausible solution might not exist for their given parameters. However, we may eliminate a plan that did not work, and that has value.

You TOO, can be a Techni-HO

(from despair.com)

We embark on the Techni-HO journey for many reasons:

• Downsized
• Desire for independence
• Desire to go broke
• Hubris
• Ego
• Fired for inability to conform to authority
• We don't fit in anywhere else

Couple this with a belief that what we have to offer is of value and we are on our way. My personal journey into Technical Consultancy was perhaps destiny or purely accidental. I am an engineer of low-regard who barely scraped my way through engineering school in 7 years (without a Masters or PhD). During my senior year I took a job with a technical training company as an engineering Co-Op student. The attainment of this job taught me the first of many lessons that I plan to impart to any viewers of this blog (once we get enough traffic, clicks and impressions).

Lesson 1: There is value in being a Bad Engineer (or insert your profession here)

As a poor engineer I had lots to offer to my prospective clients:

• I learn slow (so I have to ask lots of questions)
• I am accustomed to failing (a needed skill for consultants people who succeed often never adapt to the idea that their ideas might flop and are often afraid to suggest things)
• I have the ability to overlook seemingly important details (a skill that all successful consultants must have).

In the realm of technical training, where I got my start into consulting, one learns quickly that you don't need to be very smart to be a highly successful trainer. No on the contrary we learned that in order to be good we only had to know more about the defined training topic than the students. Now we find that good engineers (or technicians) tend to have broad working knowledge of the systems in which they operate. Which can be very threatening to the consultant, but have no fear. Because you will be able to dazzle them with your brilliance in ONE or TWO areas of discussion. Which fortunately, is why they hired your or signed up for your class, or contracted your firm.

The take-away

The consultant Must be singular of focus, they must be willing to put aside other performance attributes for the SINGLE thing the customer asks (pays) for. Good engineers, or technicians, under the employ of the customer might accidentally see the shortcoming of a decided course of action as detrimental to the larger organization. But a consultant (being unburdened by this knowledge or moral compass) will determinedly pursue defined objective even if the long term benefit might not be there. After all that is what we hire them for. Short term gains. That after all is why we hired the techni-HO and that is what we can get from them. 

So, don't be afraid to take the leap (or perhaps the decision to go independent was not yours). After all, in the valley of the Blind the one-eyed man is King, and you my friends could very well be the just the one-eyed techni-HO that those blind Techni-johns are looking for.

(props to Eddie Murphy and SNL for the "Velvet Jones" line I am appropriating for my own use)