lessons learned
The Downside of Easy (or, the Upside of a Good Challenge)
As a young boy, I was “that kid” who would take everything apart, often leaving a formerly functional alarm clock in a hundred pieces in a shoebox. I loved figuring out how things worked and how components worked together as a system. When I was 10, I spent one winter completely disassembling and reassembling my Suzuki TM-75 motorcycle in my bedroom (my parents must have had so much more patience and understanding than I do as a parent). I rebuilt it by spring, and it ran like a champ. Beginner’s luck?
By then, I was hooked – I enjoyed working with my hands and fixing things. That was a valuable skill to have while growing up, as it provided income and led to the first company I started at 18. Learning always involved a fair degree of trial and error, but experience and experimentation led to simplification and standardization. That became the hallmark of the programs I wrote, and later, the application systems I designed and developed. It is a trait that has served me well over the years.
Today, I still enjoy doing many things myself, especially if I can spend a little time and save hundreds of dollars (which I usually invest in more tools). Finding examples and tutorials on YouTube is usually easy, and after watching a few reference videos, the task is generally manageable. There is also a sense of satisfaction that comes with a job well done. And most of all, it is a great distraction from everything else that keeps your mind racing at 100 mph.
My wife’s 2011 Nissan Maxima needed a Cabin Air Filter, and instead of paying $80 again to have this done, I decided to do it myself. I purchased the filter for $15 and was ready to go. This shouldn’t take more than 5 or 10 minutes. I went to YouTube to find a video, but no luck. Then, I started searching various forums for guidance. There were plenty of posts complaining about the cost of replacement, but not much about how to do the work. I finally found a post that showed where the filter door was. I could already begin to feel that sense of accomplishment I was expecting in the next few minutes.
But fate and apparently a few sadistic Nissan Engineers had other plans. First, you needed to be a contortionist in order to reach the filter once the door was removed. Then, the old filter was nearly impossible to remove. Then, once the old filter was removed, I realized the width of the filter entry slot was about 50% of the filter’s width. Man, what a horrible design!
A few fruitless Google searches later, I was more determined than ever to make this work. I tried several things and ultimately found a way to fold the filter small enough to get through the door, and it would fully open once released. A few minutes later, I was finally savoring my victory over that hellish filter change.
This experience brought back memories of “the old days.” In 1989, I was working for a marketing company as a Systems Analyst and was assigned the project to create the “Mitsubishi Bucks” salesperson incentive program. Salespeople earned points for sales and could later redeem those points for Mitsubishi Electronics products. It was a very popular and successful incentive program.
Creating the forms and reports was straightforward, but tracking the points (including generating past reports and adjusting activity from previous periods) was a problem. I finally considered how a banking system would work (remember, there were no books on building banking systems readily available before the Internet, so this was essentially reinventing the wheel) and designed my own. It was very exciting and rock solid. Statements could be accurately reproduced at any time, and an audit trail was maintained for all activity.
Next, I needed to create validation processes and a fraud detection system for incoming data. This was rock solid, but instead of being a good thing, it became a real headache and source of frustration.
Salespeople would not always provide complete information, might have sloppy penmanship, or engage in other legitimate but unusual practices (such as bundling and adjusting prices among items in the bundle). Despite that, they expected immediate rewards, and having their submissions rejected apparently created more frustration than incentive.
So, I was instructed to turn the fraud detection dial way back. I let everyone know that while this would minimize rejections, it would increase the potential for fraud and the volume of rewards. I created a few reports to identify potentially fraudulent activity. It was amazing how creative people could be when trying to cheat the system, and how quickly you could identify patterns based on similar activities. By the third month, the system was trouble-free.
It was a great learning experience from beginning to end. It ran for several years after I left – something I know because I was still receiving the sample mailing with new sales promotions and “Spiffs” (sales incentives) every month. Later, I wondered how many things aren’t being created or improved today because it is easier and less risky to follow an existing template.
We used to align fields and columns in byte order to minimize record size, overload operators, and other optimizations to maximize space utilization and performance. Our code was optimized for maximum efficiency because memory was scarce and processors were slow. Profiling and benchmarking programs brought you to the next level of performance. In a nutshell, you were forced to understand and become proficient with the technology used out of necessity. Today, these concepts have become somewhat of a lost art.
There are many upsides to being easy.
- My team sells more and closes deals faster because we make it easy for our customers to buy, implement, and start receiving value from the software we sell.
- Hobbyists like me can accomplish many tasks after watching just a short video or two.
- People are willing to try things they may not have tried before if getting started were not so easy.
However, there may also be downsides for innovation and continuous improvement, simply because ‘easy’ is often considered ‘good enough‘ so people do the minimum required and move on.
What will the impact be on human behavior once Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes a reality and is in everyday use? It would be great to look ahead 25, 50, or 100 years and see the full impact of emerging technologies, but I think I will see many of the effects in my own lifetime.
What do you think will happen?
Lessons Learned from Small Business Ownership
I learned many valuable lessons over the course of the 8+ years that I owned my consulting business. Many were positive, a few were negative, but all were educational. These lessons shaped my perceptions about and approaches to business, and have served me well. This post will just be the first of many on the topic.
My lessons learned covered many topics: How to structure the business; Business Goals; Risk; Growth Initiatives and Investment; Employees and Benefits; Developing a High-Performance Culture; Marketing and Selling; Hiring and Firing; Bringing in Experts; Partners and Contractors; The need to let go; Exit Strategies and more.
In my case, these lessons learned were compounded by efforts to start a franchise for the consulting system we developed, and then our expansion to the UK with all of the challenges associated with international business. Each new effort built on the success and lessons learned from those previous efforts.
It’s amazing how more significant those lessons are (or at least feel) when the money is coming out of or going into “your own pocket.” Similar decisions at larger companies are generally easier, and (unfortunately) often made without the same degree of due diligence. Having more “skin in the game” does make a difference when it comes to decision-making and risk. I believe that this experience has made me a better leader, custodian of business, and employee – all because of this newfound understanding.
Businesses are usually started because someone is presented with a wonderful opportunity, or because they feel they have a great idea that will sell, or because they feel that they can make more money doing the same work on their own. Let me start by telling you that I believe the last reason is usually the worst reason to start a business. There is a lot of work to running a business, a lot of risk, and many expenses that most people never consider. You start a business because you are running toward something big, and not because you are running away from something.
I started my business because of a great opportunity. There were differences of opinion about growth at the small business I was working for at the time, and this gave me the opportunity to move in a direction that I was more interested in (shifting away from technical consulting and moving toward business/management consulting). Luckily, I had a customer (and now good friend) who believed in my potential and the value that I could bring to his business. He provided both the launch pad and safety net (via a three-month initial contract) that I needed to embark on this endeavor. For me, the most important lesson learned is to start a business for the right reasons.
More to come. And, if you have questions in the meantime, just leave a comment, and I will reply. Below are some of the statistics on Entrepreneurship that can be pretty enlightening:
Bureau of Labor Statistics stats on Entrepreneurship in the US
Diamonds or just Shiny Rocks?
During a candid review years ago, my boss at the time (the company’s CEO) made a surprising comment. During an executive meeting, he called a break and invited me to get a coffee with him. He said, “Good ideas can be like diamonds – drop them occasionally, and they have a lot of value. But sprinkle them everywhere you go, and they just become a bunch of shiny rocks.” This wasn’t the kind of feedback I expected, but it turned out to be both insightful and valuable.
For a long time, I have held the belief that there are four types of people at any company: 1) People who want to make things better; 2) People who are interested in improvement but only in a supporting role; 3) People who are mainly interested in themselves (they can do great things, but often at the expense of others); and 4) People that are just there and don’t care much about anything. This opinion is based on working and consulting at many companies over a few decades.
A recent Gallup Poll stated Worldwide only 13% of Employees are “engaged at work” (the rest are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged”). If true, this is a sad reflection of employees and work environments. Since it is a worldwide survey, it may be highly skewed by region or industry and, therefore, not indicative of what is typical across the board. Those results didn’t completely align with my thinking, but they were interesting nonetheless.
So, back to the story…
Before working at this company, I ran my own business for nearly a decade and consulted for 15 years, working with large corporations and startups. I am used to taking the best practices learned from other companies and engagements and incorporating them into our business practices to improve and foster growth. Efficiency was the key to growth and profitability.
I take a systemic view of business and see the importance of optimizing all components of “the business machine” to work harmoniously. Improvements in one area ultimately positively impact other areas of the business. From my naive perspective, I thought I was helping everyone by helping those with “easily solved problems.”
My perspective lacked one important thing. These were not easy problems to the other business leaders. They were struggling and asking for help. By providing an answer off the cuff, it made them look and feel bad in front of the rest of the team.
I learned that while trying to be helpful, I was insensitive to the fact that my “friendly suggestions based on past success” stepped on other people’s toes, creating frustration for those I intended to help. Providing simple solutions to their problems reflected poorly on my peers.
Suggestions and examples that were intended to be helpful had the opposite effect. Just as bad, it was probably just as frustrating for me to be ignored as it was for others to have me infringe on their part of the business. The resulting friction was very noticeable to my boss, which led to our unscheduled coffee break.
Those ideas (“diamonds”) may have been considered had I been an external consultant. But as part of the leadership team, I came across as someone only interested in myself (leaving “shiny rocks” lying around for people to ignore or possibly trip over).
Perception is reality, and my attempts to help were hurting me. Luckily, I received this honest and helpful feedback early in this position and was able to turn those perceptions around.
What are the morals of this story?
First, engaged people have the greatest potential to make a difference. Part of being a business leader is making sure you have the best possible team and creating an environment that challenges, motivates, and fosters growth and accountability.
Disengaged employees or people who are unwilling or unable to work with/collaborate with others may not be your best choices, regardless of their talent. They could actually be detrimental to the overall team dynamics. Understanding what drives someone from one category to another is a great first step in being sensitive while still staying effective.
Second, doing what you believe to be the right thing isn’t necessarily the best or right way to approach something. Being sensitive to the big picture and testing whether your input is being viewed as constructive was a big lesson for me. If you have good ideas but are ineffective, consider that your execution could be flawed. Self-awareness is very important.
Third, use your own examples as stories to help others understand potential solutions to problems in a non-threatening way. Let them connect the story to their own problems and find their own solutions. This helps them become more effective and allows them to save face. It is not a competition. And, if someone else has good ideas, help support them through collaboration. In the end, it should be more about effectiveness, growth, and achieving business goals than about who gets the credit.
While this seems like common sense now, my background and personal biases blinded me to that perspective.
My biggest lesson learned was about adaptation. There are many ways to be effective and make a difference. Focus on understanding the situation and its dynamics to employ the best techniques, which is ultimately critical to the team or organization’s success.
What’s the Prize If I Win?
In consulting and in sales, there is a tendency to believe that if you show someone how to find that proverbial “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” they will be motivated to do so. Seasoned professionals will tend to ask, “What problem are you trying to solve?” in order to understand whether there is a real opportunity.
Sometimes a mere pot of gold just isn’t enough to motivate. Usually the motivation is something very personal. What’s in it for them? Not, what’s in it for me?
The skill is determining what is really important to the decision maker and in what order, then showing how the proposed solution will bring them closer to achieving their personal goals.
Case in point. Several years ago, I was trying to sell a packaged Business Intelligence (BI) system developed on our database platform to customers most likely to need it. Qualification performed – check. Interested – check. Proof of value – check. Quick ROI – check. Close the deal – not so fast…
This application was a set of dashboards with 150-200 predefined KPIs (key performance indicators). The premise was that you could quickly tailor and deploy the new BI system with little risk (finding and validating that the needed data was available to support their KPIs was the biggest risk, but one that could be identified up front). The business impact and ROI were there, and we could deliver tangible value at half the cost of a typical similar implementation. Who wouldn’t want that?
I spent several days onsite with the prospect, identified areas of concern and opportunity, and used their data to quantify the potential benefit. By the end of the week, I could show the potential for an 8x ROI in the first year. Remember, this was estimated using their data, not random or industry figures. Being somewhat conservative, I suggested that even half that amount would be a big success. Look – we found the pot of gold!
Despite this, the deal never closed. This financial services company had a lot of money, and the CIO had a huge budget. Saving $500K+ from this project would be nice, but was not essential. While the impact was there, the urgency was lacking.
I later learned that this person was pushing forward an initiative of his own that was highly visible. The new system I proposed could have become a distraction, and he did not need that reputational risk. Had I made this determination sooner, I could have easily repositioned the offering to better align with and support his agenda.
For example, the focus of the system could have shifted from financial savings to project and risk management for his higher priority initiative. The KPIs could be on earned value, scheduling, and deliverables. This probably would have sold, as it would have been far more appealing to this CIO and supported what was important to him (i.e., his prize if he wins). The additional financial savings initially identified would be the icing on the cake, to be reinvested later.
Several lessons emerged from this effort. In this instance, I focused on my personal pot of gold (based on logic and common sense) rather than on my customer’s priorities and prize for winning. That mistake cost me this deal, but it is one I have not made since – helping me win many other deals.
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Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 