Open Or Complete?

I read a lot of commenting from open source enthusiasts about the disadvantages of what is not “open,” which frequently gets into philosophical concepts.

I don’t derive much value from philosophical working. I work for successful completion. And I use open tools and other tools, often measuring one against the other.

There is a difference in completion between between “open” products and that other stuff, which I would like to define in this post.

For starters, I say the opposite of “open” is “complete.”

The old joke is, “A man is incomplete before marriage. Then he is finished.” Be careful what you wish for.

When I sit down to write, I start from a variety of templates, which I have developed to speed the writing process. Whether it is code, a web page, report, spreadsheet, brochure, presentation, or post, I have specific templates. And when I start something new, the first thing I do is reason out my template. I write against time, so working freehand is not an option.

Following the smartphone “open vs Apple” discussion, the beauty of the Apple product is that it executes almost everything it is designed to do with wonderful ease. If you want it to do something it is not designed to do, well, you’re out of luck. Ask the guys who would like to Skype on their iPhones. So as long as you stay within the parameters handed to you by the designers, that is the phone for you.

If, you have some strong feelings about what you want your phone to do for you, with different software or connected to different hardware, then open software is easier to bend to your will. Apps are increasingly easier to write, and I know people who are running custom apps they built for themselves, to shave some time off here, alerting them to something there, watching their television using their phone as their remote.

The question is, “How involved do you want to get?”

The first question when writing your first app is, “What do I want it to do?” That gets easier by the fifth app.

Over time, leading thinkers get more involved in improving their experience with their tools, shaving off some time here, automating a process there.

To me, that is the purpose of “open.” Getting leverage performance with minimum understanding is the purpose of “complete.”

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

SalesLab’s next Rainmaker, (Number 8!) is Google + Your Personal Website, Fast, Free, and Findable! the first 300 seconds of the Capital Technology Management Hub, at 6 pm, Tuesday, October 11^th. The headliner is Overcoming Mobile Challenges in the Federal Government - Sponsored by TeqCorner, featuring Ferhan Hamid, CEO and Vikrant Binjrajka, CTO of INADEV.

Are Businesses Run By Idealists or Crooks?

Neither, with a few exceptions.

Businesses are run to meet buyers' needs and to make a profit. How they behave is subject to the urgency of the buyer's need and the value the buyer places on satisfying that need.

To illustrate, let's look at two ice water stands set up by some neighborhood kids.

Scene1: The local marathon finish line is in the neighborhood and the two ice water stands are set up by the finish line. Stand One is at the finish line – ice water is 25¢ per glass, and Stand Two is 20 yards past the line – ice water is15¢ per glass.

Which stand gets the runners business? Stand One get the business because the buyers urgency is to satisfy the thirst not shop for a 40% discount.

Scene 2: The popular local park attracts a lot of visitors and the main park trail ends in the neighborhood. Stand One is at Trail's End – still charging 25¢, and Stand Two is 20 yards further – charging 15¢.

Which stand gets the park visitors business? The urgency of satisfying the thirst is significantly less for the visitors than the marathoners, consequently, the value of a glass of ice water is lower and a majority of visitors will seek out the lower priced water of Stand Two.

Scene 3: The local road cuts through the neighborhood with few cars per hour. Stand One is located at the speed bump and Stand Two is 20 years further up the street – no change in the pricing by either stand.

Which stand gets the drivers business? Probably neither since there is no urgency of need and many other alternatives the driver can seek beyond the two local stands.

Is Ice Water Stand One being mercenary for charging a high premium because of its prime location in Scene 1?

Is Ice Water Stand Two being predatory for discounting prices significantly in Scene 2?

Probably not – the stands are responding with their approach to meeting the buyers' need-value proposition and to market competition.

While Stand Two may have set prices based on a “fair profit” as an idealist, the more likely reason is the discount is an attempt to influence the buyers' need-value mix to attract sales. Similarly, the premium charged by Stand One is recognition of the urgency of the buyer to satisfy the need while recognizing the buyer has a competitive choice is value takes precedent over urgency.

Do these principals scale to other businesses? Yes, and they become more complicated as new variables are added which affect cost, output, and regulatory or social restrictions.

Buyers won't buy unless they believe the need will be addressed by the seller's solution and the price is compatible with the perceived value.

Is this why organizations with money in the coffers but few customer sales are not interested in buying services to improve operations or upgrade technology – and won't invest in improving the sales process?

What are you seeing?

 SalesLab’s next Rainmaker, (Number 8!) is Google + Your Personal Website, Fast, Free, and Findable! the first 300 seconds of the Capital Technology Management Hub, at 6 pm, Tuesday, October 11^th. The headliner is Overcoming Mobile Challenges in the Federal Government - Sponsored by TeqCorner, featuring Ferhan Hamid, CEO and Vikrant Binjrajka, CTO of INADEV.

Your Electronic Personality

I was leading a workshop on blogging and had the opportunity to listen to some fans. They had some strong ideas about me that didn’t have much to do with the guy who uses my desk.

Then I thought about my teachers, John and Suw and Eric and Marc and Will and realized I have a strong idea of who they are, based on what they write, not on any face to face observation.

Well, maybe video, but look at what you see on TV!

Think about it. Your electronic personality is a do-over! You don’t get many of those.

To close the opening thought, I was cheered to learn my electronic personality apparently is a lot nicer than the guy who uses my desk!

Thoughts?

Google Event

We have been using Google sites and other features to great success. We would like to share with you an event for business taking place on Tuesday September 20^th. Using Google Sites and other Google tools participants will leave the session with a website and their business address registered with Google Places, which is searchable on Google Maps. Check it out if you are in Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland – it's located in Manassas, VA, and it is $0 cost.

The event:

Google and friends are coming to town to get your business online!

Virginia Get Your Business Online events are completely free. Space is limited, so we highly recommend that you pre-register online to reserve your spot.
If you don’t have a website or Google Places listing, you’ll find everything you need to get started – web professionals at your side every step of the way. We’ll also provide the computers or a plug-in for your own laptop.
If your business is already online, you’ll find tools and resources to help your business succeed online.
At these events you can:

• Get a free website and Google Places listing
• Get 1:1 advice and tips
• Learn more about online marketing
• Network with your fellow small business owners
  

Manassas - Tuesday, September 20th

Register for 9/20

Hylton Performing Arts Center
10960 George Mason Circle
Manassas, VA 20110
Doors open 7:30 am - 7:00 pm

For more information and to register for this free event go to: http://www.virginiagetonline.com/index?utm_source=g-feet-invite-tracking

Google + Your Personal Website

Google+ offers users an opportunity to create a personal website that is fast, free, and available to anyone on the internet.

Fast – Your third attempt and after takes less than ten minutes to make major revisions or start a new site. First and second attempts are about learning the tool.

Free - Google+ works off your Gmail account, Google’s free email service with superior spam protection.

Already have another email address?

I have six email addresses plugged into my Gmail browser. Postini spam protection brought my spam-zombie AOL account back to life.

Available – LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networks require the viewer be a member of that network. Google+ is visible to anyone with an internet browser. Better still, if they don’t have your internet address, Google Search does!

Google+ Parts

Let’s look at a Google+ site.

I use a custom URL shortener, bit.ly/DicksProfile so viewers can get there without using search. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google says they want products that have at least a billion users, so their URLs are built for quantity. You can do cute on your own. Googling “Dick Davies” will also get you there.

The Edit Profile button opens you to editing your profile. Before Google+ I had built the forerunner, a Google Profile. When I showed it to Jack, he said it was the most efficient use of web real estate, better than our four websites, LinkedIn, Facebook, three other social networks, and three blogs.

Let Google do the organizing. If it wasn’t about you, you would be impressed.

Owner Picture – People want to see a picture to make sure they know you. Last week I put in a new seersucker picture, which took less than a minute.

My name and tag line are fully configurable.

Photos – Mine are from Yahoo’s Flickr, since I was using that before Google’s Picasa, and these are images from my blog posts.

Links

To the right, the Links Section is one of the strongest features. This allows you to showcase your best work on the web.

As you can see, I have organized my links to interest potential clients.

Google Guys put up their technical presentations, bit.ly/BruceWon has his blog posts.

If you want to post a page, put it in Google docs (part of your Gmail) and connect that link to the name you choose for it in the Links Section.

Capability Paragraph (center)–I pasted mine from my LinkedIn page.

Employment – Please be interesting! Note that they want your current interest. No details about past employers, so much better than a resume!

Map – Was you dere?

Telephone numbers, email, birthday, gender I hide. You can do what you want.

Other Pages

My Buzz was strong before Google+. Viewers see a strong list of my publications. I see publications from my five favorite writers.

Posts is where I can put out things I like, whether I write them or not. I have 56 people who I know who have Google+ pages and see whatever I post there.

Some n00bs come on and post 50 times a day. Or they used to. I don’t see them anymore.

A lot of my favorite bloggers are posting other things on their Google+ pages. I got back to following Eric Raymond, the guy who invented open source, though Google+.  

What can you add? 

Update - Infographic: Killer Facts About Google Plus



 SalesLab’s next Rainmaker, (Number 8!) is Google + Your Personal Website, Fast, Free, and Findable! the first 300 seconds of the Capital Technology Management Hub, at 6 pm, Tuesday, October 11^th. The headliner is Overcoming Mobile Challenges in the Federal Government - Sponsored by TeqCorner, featuring Ferhan Hamid, CEO and Vikrant Binjrajka, CTO of INADEV.

Thank you!

New Normal – Asynchronous Collaboration

When we were all physically located in the same building collaboration was a collection of meetings to reach the stated goal. First to flesh out the details of the project – go from concept to specific, consensus from contributors, logistics & interim deadlines from participants, and collective review of it all. Meet and work together – or go away and work, come back & share.

The outcome was labor intensive and time consuming – all these people meeting together for all those meetings – to satisfy the original purpose or charter of the project. The initial development and interim refinement of the project was a function of the participants' ability to articulate ideas and persuade others to adopt them – the result was often consensus conservatism or the leader's fiat.

Innovation is difficult in such an environment – it's hard for an innovative thinker to convey a new idea or approach verbally and achieve the needed consensus – even with visual or written aids. Collaboration was often just the same old work with a rotating resource pool. Breakthroughs and radical new approaches or products were rare.

In the environment of the New Normal the model is changing (or has) with a number of independents or small firms coming together from different locations to collaborate on a project. Once the initial discussion of the project vision, the goals, the time line, and the assignment of responsibilities has been completed – usually not with all participants physically together in the same room – the work begins. Under the New Normal there is a shift in the method of approaching the work, however.

It is common for one of the contributors to work up a high-level but detailed view of some or all of the project outputs and send it to the other collaborators for review and comment. During this process, the contributor has fleshed out specifics, relationships of components, design strengths & weaknesses, and alternative or innovative approaches to achieving the project goals. With focus comes learning, with application comes understanding.

The other collaborators review what's provided and offer feedback and alternative ideas. Adjustments are incorporated as necessary and the next contributor takes this work to build on for the next level of forward progress in the project.

I am part of an asynchronous collaboration project to develop a software tool – one contributor wrote descriptions of what the tool is intended to do, how he would use it, and an outline of the output to the user. From these documents, I developed the design architecture for the tool and noted additions needed, and interrelation ships in operation. The third collaborator coded the software from the design diagram and added several additional items while streamlining access to the different elements. Between each stage was a brief conversation and agreement on changes & additions.

Each of us learned more about the tool and discovered element to add or modify for greater effectiveness, while gaining a deeper understanding of how best to support the end user. We have also noted that this approach does not add to each person's 'hands-on' time, but it significantly eliminates the non-productive meeting time of the past collaboration process.

With collaborators today in many different locations and organizations, balancing multiple projects, and being compensated on results rather than time spent, the New Normal asynchronous collaboration is a more practical approach to working together. In addition, innovation is built in to each stage – it is implemented and can be reviewed in practice, not just talked about in concept.

Share your experience with asynchronous collaboration by commenting on this post.

SalesLab’s Rainmaker series returns to the Capital Technology Management Hub, Tuesday, September 13^th with 300 seconds of Mark Your Territory. The featured CTMH speaker will be Professor Steve Gladis, author of The Agile Leader. Come join us!

The Ratchet Effect

...occurs when two or more competitors are frequently matched against one another.

When one develops an advantage, the others develop counter moves. The overall result is that the whole group becomes continuously better.

Continue this through several generations of improvement and the whole group has a marked advantage over others who started at the same baseline and didn’t get better.

When I was younger, the ratchet effect was a key component of sports excellence. Now I see it working in technical and social skills development.

Improvement seldom occurs in isolation.

SalesLab’s Rainmaker series returns to the Capital Technology Management Hub, Tuesday, September 13^th with 300 seconds of Mark Your Territory. The featured CTMH speaker will be Professor Steve Gladis, author of The Agile Leader. Come join us!

Rope Leadership

Peter Drucker wrote, “You manage things, you lead people.”

I’ve nothing against management. The Army taught me “All computing is logistics.” Of course file cabinets mostly stand there and hold stuff.

Took a quiet minute to think about the leadership phrase, “Asses and elbows.” Conjures what I see of someone in a crouch moving forward in a motivated manner.

Rope Leadership is a useful concept. Ever try to push a rope? Or lead from behind?

How can you further develop this meme?

SalesLab’s Rainmaker series returns to the Capital Technology Management Hub, Tuesday, September 13^th with 300 seconds of Mark Your Territory. The featured CTMH speaker will be Professor Steve Gladis, author of The Agile Leader. Come join us!

Lessons from the Field

There are 3 sales that need to be made from the perspective of arranging a 3rd party sales organization.

First, the company to be represented needs to be sold. This can be a bit sensitive on a couple of fronts. The first is in making realistic projections without overstating the projected sales, keeping ramp up in mind, and at the same time the projections need to be enticing enough for the company to want to have a 3rd party sales force. It is likely to be a bad relationship if the company doesn’t have a realistic idea of what to expect, or if they won’t accept projections or ramp times that are realistic.

Second, is to sell the idea to your reps in order to develop a strong sales team. Again they shouldn’t be oversold or they will be lost quickly. The ability to make money in the long run and be a primary influence of the company’s success is often quite enough to interest good people into coming on board.

The third sale is the one to your customers. While this is in the hands of your salespeople and they may be remote, constant and consistent communication both ways is vital to the maintenance of momentum in your sales. Salespeople need to feel supported and important and they are. Keep reminding them of what they are working for and how important they are and they will step up to the plate and keep swinging until they and you are successful.

Feel free to add your tips for making these sales!! What else would you do?

SalesLab’s Rainmaker series returns to the Capital Technology Management Hub, Tuesday, September 13^th with 300 seconds of Mark Your Territory. The featured CTMH speaker will be Professor Steve Gladis, author of The Agile Leader. Come join us!

Observer or Leader?

I go to a lot of meeting about leadership and similar topics and sometimes I get a flashback to the high school dance – where a few folks are dancing while others are looking on trying figure things out (and even practicing some moves) so they can join in. Leaning against the back wall are the cool kids – they claim to know the latest dances but just talk about it rather than actually hit the floor.

The dance image is a pretty good analogy for people in the practice of leadership – the Doers, the Pupils, and the Observers.

The Doers are engaged in actively executing the role – learning from the experience.

The Pupils are soaking in everything they can to master the tools of leadership – learning from others' experience.

The Observers are watching and reporting on leadership activities – recounting what others have learned and experienced.

Leadership requires doing, learning, and working on how to do it better. It is a continuous process because leadership is not a formula, it's not a set procedure, it's not a few rules printed on a flash card – successful leadership is dynamic and is adaptable to changing circumstances. It strives for results and points everyone toward the same direction to achieve them.

I once had a boss who refused to listen to a problem brought to him unless a solution was also offered. He gave me a valuable lesson in leadership – be a doer, be a thinker, and be engaged. This approach encouraged innovation and got rapid results.

An innovative approach to an issue requires more than simply creating new-speak by redefining key terms, or imposing a raft of new rules – often this creates churn but not movement, and can delay real doing. Observers can be guilty of offering such solutions in their quest toward how things should be, which supports their reporting about leadership.

Which approach – Doer or Observer – fosters results and movement toward the stated mission – the hallmarks of a leader? So, by extension, does it come down to a choice between being a Leader or being an Observer?

How do you feel about this distinction?

SalesLab’s Rainmaker series returns to the Capital Technology Management Hub, Tuesday, September 13^th with 300 seconds of Mark Your Territory. The featured CTMH speaker will be Professor Steve Gladis, author of The Agile Leader. Come join us!

Two Choices

Rick Phillips, owner of Arena Technical Resources and host of the Rick Phillips Open, was looking across his desk fifteen years ago and said, “You have two choices. You either recruit smart or manage hard.”

Never seen Rick manage hard.

I used that line a half dozen times in the past week. I wonder if it’s something in the air?

SalesLab’s Rainmaker series returns to the Capital Technology Management Hub, Tuesday, September 13^th with 300 seconds of Mark Your Territory. The featured CTMH speaker will be Professor Steve Gladis, author of The Agile Leader. Come join us!