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Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

The other way the future is changed forever

Posted by admin on February 20th, 2011 No Comments

There has been several stories, books and movies, where the US is turned upside down by a plane flying into a major political gathering. Ending that complete level of government at least for the while of getting new representation in from other states. Even though the spots can be billed though, the mind set and flow is broken till the new group comes up to speed. Most likely, taking the future in a different direction.

A friend pointed me to a article on TechCrunch talking about a get together that the President did. Inviting many of the top minds in high tech to chat and have lunch. From their post: “the star studded invitee list included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, Cisco’s CEO John Chambers, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Genentech Chairman Art Levinson; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; former state controller and venture capitalist Steve Westly Doerr, and Stanford University President John Hennessy. The event was held at Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr’s home.”

What if a plane hit that room? Politicians are representatives of a state or country. They have been elected to help get done what is best for us and do the arguing and reasoning for us. The tech group in the lunch do not do that. They are where they are now because the think outside of the box. And then, they convince others to see the vision, encouraging people to go beyond their limits to create the future. They are driven by their idea, building their business and creating something great. Most importantly though, they are gifted at taking their vision and getting others to join in.

Due to their thinking, we no longer have the need to have an agent in a bar in Cuba, getting people excited. Now, a individual on the street can spread the word of an injustice they just saw to millions with only a couple taps. Never once actually speaking to anyone, their message is gathered by others and spread around the world. Of course, like whispering in someone’s ear, the message can get twisted to an individual’s own purpose. Beyond the few unexpected paths, the real message is received, people gather, and a government changes. Or, a business will win or loose.

Whether we are talking about the device the person used or the system that others joined in together to make a difference, they are both creations of someone in that room’s idea being ‘sold’ to others to build on. If any of those, or worse, all of those in the meeting stopped coming to the office tomorrow, the world will change it’s direction forward. There are people that are good at giving speeches and those that are good at coming up with ideas. The group in the room are particularly good at coming up with ideas with others and pushing them to become our reality mind set going forward.

Posted in Life

Can ‘doing the right thing for others’ do anything for you?

Posted by admin on December 9th, 2010 No Comments

Everyone around me knows my mode of operation is to always promote people’s efforts and successes. I work their names into meetings and fully expose their delivered work. Presenting the wins as how they will help many rather than just a project done and behind us. This is not only for their ears when the hard working individual is in the room, it gets done if they are present or not. It’s a matter of giving credit so that later when their name comes up, people automatically associate a winning attitude with them.

When things go horribly wrong, those same team members know that it doesn’t do anyone any good to get called out in a meeting as at fault. It isn’t often that there is a single point of failure either so naming names only does harm. We as a team win, we as a team must answer for issues. The team has a tendency to help guide individuals that may put them in the position of failure.

Of course, win or fail, it does come down to the leader and their ability to both guide and forecast. Attention must be given to the what-ifs and the whys as a project moves forward. I usually stand alone in the meeting to answer for any issues so I push the other managers and team members to do the right thing. Take pride in their work so their name is mentioned… yearly reviews go much better for those that had their name mentioned with a win-win.

Team members learn to trust that their name will be inserted when ever possible for maximum credit. They see results when Sr. Management comes through the offices and thanks the team, pointing out wins for individuals involved.

It is interesting that most managers try to look for an hidden agenda for why they are being given credit in a meeting. They keep waiting for the follow up, ‘but’, and then the blame game. Although that never happens, many continue to question the motivation of pointing out other people’s efforts rather than have the manager take full credit. Usually these individuals will accept the credit when their name is called out and take over the meeting with great detail of their efforts. Missing the point that they are diluting the credit and generally causing the meeting to go in the wrong direction, undoing all the positive attention.

The path does require upper management to understand that by giving credit to individuals, you are pointing out the quality of the team members. They must not loose site of the guidance given and the planning that must be done to help make individuals shine. Some, let’s call them ‘weaker’, upper management, will think that unless you take credit your not a key player. They are destine to fail… but you may want to work your own name in there as a direction giving team member.

Lastly, the hope of this method of credit giving, works best if people across the team share in the same mind. When asked, does the individual you gave credit to mention your name as being a good leader? Does the team get referred to as your (enter your name here) team? Do other managers give credit by name to your team individuals or to you?

Just amongst the Business groups I work with now, I find it interesting how they can be so radically different. It helps if upper management believes in the same credit giving. But, if a group is being led by management that spends their time promoting themselves, they most likely wont want to give you credit. It’s a tough field to plow, but I’m going to stick with it. The folks that do the work really need to be called out for their efforts, it helps makes their day job something to be proud of rather than just a paycheck.

Posted in Lessons Learned, Life

Living forever… or until the money runs out

Posted by admin on November 28th, 2010 No Comments

When you get old… will you live with your kids? Maybe you have a big retirement fund set aside so you don’t ‘have to’.

While not so much with our parents, we only have to go back to their folks’ time to find the days that when parents got old they went to be with the younger family members. There is some question around if that was less popular in the US than other countries. This is most likely due to how many generations were actually living on the Continent.

Also going back just a couple generations, we find a time when there were limits to what could be done to prolong a person’s life when there were issues. Food and living habits have changed so that weight issues ripple to health issues more so today than yesteryear. People are getting ill with life altering health issue earlier today.

Medicine, doctors and technology is proving to add a new level of length of life that was not possible a generation or two back. Now, it is possible to medicate or replace body parts that are giving up. People can be kept alive well past the point that quality of life is a factor.

As current generation parents start to get to their elder years, even if they do not live with their kids, they will still impact their kids. Unless there is a dramatic and tragic body failure, parents are faced with a choice when they will pass. For a price, doctors can keep our moms and dads alive past their point of being able to function and most often recognize their kids.

Faced with this fact, kids are needing to support the system of care financially since it is no longer acceptable to do nothing. I’m not saying that it has been the history of parents to move in with their kids and their kids did nothing for them. I am saying that it used to be that a parent moved in and had an expect life expectancy, beyond that there was nothing that could be done. Now, there is something that can be done but it comes at a financial cost. And, for most modern families, that expense if life changing for them too.

Recently I have been hearing more and more conversations amongst the 50 somethings talking about how to fund the care needs of their parents. Unless parents won the lottery or put millions away for a rainy day, there are very large expenses outside of what insurance pays to keep loved ones amongst us for another year. I don’t see the government changing policy to take on more of the family financial responsibilities when faced with bills to keep a parent alive.

I’m not talking about a life support machine for someone unconscious. I am talking about a parent reaching the point of declining health where they need full time care beyond what a family can provide at home. There is no ‘plug to pull’, it is more likely the cost of a assisted care facility. Any of which will go through a parents savings in a year yet hopefully they can live for many more.

The questions I wonder is;

What is the long term impact to people living longer when it directly hits a family budget… do kids not see their folks as they work extra hours for extra income or does it impact future generations from being able to afford school?

How will kids cope with not being able to financially support keeping a parent in a quality of life living arrangement? Both short and long term mentally.

Living longer and being able to keep people alive for things that ‘would have killed us’ before comes at a cost. How do we plan for a future both financially and mentally, it’s a whole new level of responsability and stresses.

Posted in Life

Well son, it used to be normal to store things on spinning plastic

Posted by admin on November 14th, 2010 No Comments

I’m sitting in a meeting where the only person using moving hardware is me. I look around the room and see a couple netbooks with solid state memory, as well a couple iPads and MacBook Airs. No kidding, my year old MacBook Pro is the only hardware here that has something moving in it. And that movement is a couple pieces of a plastic like discs spinning at 10,000 RPMs on a cushion of air. What will our grand kids think?

About the same as the current kids when you explain we used to listen (I’m only going back one generation here) to music on round flat discs of vinyl spinning at 78 (or 45 or 33) RPMs. On that disc was a thin wiggly line that when you placed a tiny crystal in would produce the recorded music. Of course, vinyl can scratch pretty easily so you would carry the 12 inch discs in a paper envelope inside of a cardboard folder. If a scratch did happen, depending on the direction of the scratch relative to the rotation of the ‘record’ your music would repeat a few seconds over and over or you would jump ahead a couple songs. That’s just crazy talk!

Of course music went the direction of the lazer CD where dots and dashes where burned into the surface that a lazer would ‘read’ and play the recorded music.

As we started to want to store more than just music, there became a need to store our spreadsheets and documents… and family pictures. So, we went back to the spinning disc world and put the data on ‘platters’ of magnatizable materials. The data gets picked up by a arm swinging back and forth across the disc. Need more memory, compress the data or start piling up the platters. You will need more arms so you are now swinging that ‘actuator’ arm between the discs. Need to get to the data fast, just spin the whole pile of platters at 10,000 RPMs.

Wait, it get’s better… lets put that whole little spinning platic, metal, magnatized opject in our pocket and run around (that would be the early iPods).

Money and technology and the need to get to our growing data faster is driving the world to solid state memory. What is next? Technology we dreamed up many years ago will find it’s way into our pocket devices… water memory may have been laughed at in the move Roller Ball but we may just be going there. Like driving a car without seatbelts, or even cars that had no seat belts, we scratch our heads over how obvious it is now but yesteryear it was common place.

No message here, just thinking about what we think is normal and trying to explain that to someone who didn’t live it how we got to where we are going.

Posted in Life

I make recommendations through project success

Posted by admin on November 5th, 2010 No Comments

I received a few emails from friends after they read my post about my not doing endorsements. To keep with full exposure on this site, I thought I might explain how/where I speak to the value of folks which they can use to their advantage to promote themselves as needed.

As you may have started to understand. I have a full time ‘job’ working for a larger corporation which had many years back brought me on to assist with several open issues. Having closed those out, I have stayed on to help put out fires and creating new solutions. Along with the ‘day job’, I maintain my software business and do a variety of other ventures with individuals and groups of individuals. Occasionally the need arises for me to partner with other companies as well.

Because there is many more ideas and opportunities than there are hours in a day, I have to select projects and partners very carefully. Many ideas never make it past the initial outline and planning stage. More than three quarters of my projects requiring finding key individuals to partner with. People with talents outside of my own and who will share the passion in a project can be a difficult last mile that can cause a project to never become a working reality.

When the team comes together, the ideas are flowing, people go off and do their part and we roll out something we are proud of. I then tell the world about what incredible people I’m working with along side of promoting the project. I can understand that the location and time of the endorsement may not present a way for my partners to use as a stepping stone so I’m adding a tab to the site here. It’s light in detail right now but I will be filling the area in with past and current projects. Due to the level of secrecy around new projects that hope to be ‘first to market’, I can not go into detail on many projects in the early stages.

Several projects, like movies and books in play right now will be listed prior to going live since we always want more press for those in advance of releases.

I hope that this will provide a bit more information about the key individuals I have had successes with. Those that are strong in their fields and you would do well to partner with when the need arises.

Posted in Lessons Learned, Life

Will ‘Big’ Software be ready for App Stores and Inexpensive Solutions?

Posted by admin on October 26th, 2010 No Comments

In my previous post, I mentioned the many ways our information may be kept off our our local computers. Saving on space and making it accessible through a variety of tools. Also, I ran through the thought of lite version of software on your notebook/mobile devices with more robust software being online.

There was a surprise result of the iPhone in the hands of the ‘end users’. The need for inexpensive mobile solutions to do research and create/edit files. There has long been mobile software for the Newton and Palm devices but the software options where and still are, through a variety of sources and not very well quality controlled.

In our Newton days, we used to show our solutions to a couple key Apple programmers to see if they felt we had done anything hacky. It wasn’t required, but we were concerned about our software being around a long time and not broken in a future OS update. Oh, and our clients feeling it all ‘just worked’ was important to.

With Apple’s iTunes App Store for the iPhone, Touch and iPad, we live in a world of lite and affordable software. People spend a lot of money, a few dollars at a time, to get a solution to their problems or needs. Google and Mozilla are on their heels with their own ‘app stores’.

Recently, it was announced that the App Store will be able to distribute desktop software as well. A lot of teams are scrambling to makes sure their software will be on the early list of options when the service goes live. It will mean a single spot to go for all of your software needs. While there is already many sites that list out software for your particular device, they do not control anything more than how the software is listed. They do nothing about checking to make sure that app follows any rules, passing the risk of crashes and conflicts onto the purchaser.

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Posted in Life

Our electronic futures are forming

Posted by admin on October 24th, 2010 No Comments

There are many global issues, be them hunger or terrorism or privacy. I wont attempt to explain why how we work will effect thing apparently unrelated, but they do. The old butterfly flapping it’s wings is true today. A seemingly simple change in the way we work might free up cash to be spent on a charity or a purchase to bolster the economy. Most changes are offerings from those we trust and we hope they have really thought everything through when it comes to exposing our personal information. Some large corporations release things they hope you will buy so they make their numbers this year… others release items as a stepping stones to an end game many years in the future.

Today is the 9th anniversary of the introduction of the iPod where it was promised we would have over 1000 songs in our pocket. It started as a little device that felt right in your hand and was easy to use. There was many other options on the market but they stopped being supported or went other directions. The iPod grew in features to be a storage device, then a movie player and now a connected game machine. It could stand on it’s own but wasn’t expected to as a accessory industry grew around it and the manufacture updated other hardware and software solutions around it. Those being desktop software that managed your music, photo and movie libraries as well as expanding on the hardware to be a smartphone and another to be a larger tablet like device.

Looking back at the mid 80′s, we had keyboards and monitors that were basically just an external monitor to one 286 computer that many people shared. It was fine with everyone running the same program. When we got our own desktops we were running many different programs amongst us without the need of each other. Online services have grown, but we are not truly going back to a dumb keyboard/monitor world.

The services being offered online are getting close if not passing the desktop ‘office’ software solutions. But, does anyone want to do all of their work online? If you at the office and always connected, would you notice a difference between if the software was on your machine or not? Looking at what is being used in the current Word and Photoshop by the masses most often, it is a very small set of features. Would it be acceptable to have very lite versions of software locally installed for general day-to-day work and then use a more robust tool online? The online software would become a service that could be charged monthly or per use.

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Posted in Life

“Can you endorse me?” Sorry, do I know you?

Posted by admin on October 6th, 2010 No Comments

Do I know you? I mean, the real you? The one I know is the one that has represented to me the image they wish me to know. That may not be the face you show to others. Thus, the danger of endorsing anyone.

For many years, I owned and opperated a large group of Auto Quick Lubes. I was successful in execution, getting large quantities of cars through and maintaining a very healthy happy customer relationship. Due to this, my reputation grew in the industry where others lube owners would follow when I took on a new product or process.

One day I was invited to a meeting with the franchisor and a oil company. I had been very happy with my current one (“P”) but would never turn down a chance to meet and listen to what is being offered from another (“V”). The V oil provider presented a nice range of products and services. Not enough for me to switch my chain of stores but could be a nice option for new entrants to the industry.

As the meeting was wrapping up, we gathered at one end of the conference room table to look over a layout of ads being proposed. A month later, the company newsletter came out with a snap shot of the end-of-table gathering with text representing a new deal being signed. Many lube owners must have gotten the newsletter at the same time because all lines in the office lit up and kept going for hours. The callers wanted to know what motivated me to switch, which was not the case.

This is just one example from the many I have over the years. There was pictures of me wearing a tshirt showing through my race uniform and the company representing I was joining forces with them. The list goes on, the short lesson being that a picture or text can be represented as anything when it is out of your hands.

I have felt bad not endorsing the many people that have requested my doing so. My arguement is that I can only represent how you have acted around me. And, in our time together, I had a part in shaping the relationship. Your time working with someone else or in a different environment will cause you to deliver at a different rate or represent yourself differently. I can only explain how we worked or didn’t work together. If the endorsement is placed in front of someone else, they may expect the two of you to enjoy a similar relationship. Since I know each relationship is unique to two parties working together, the person basing a decision on how we worked together would be setting themselves up for a disappointment. Not that anyone delivers less when working with folks other than me, they may actually deliver much better. In every case though, it will be different.

In the end I have to turn down the endorsing requests. Please understand, I’m not turning you down, it’s the other you I don’t know.

Posted in Life

Does anyone hear past all the talking?

Posted by admin on October 5th, 2010 No Comments

In my racing days, I partnered with a very smart sales person to open a high performance auto shop. The very first day we were opened he said, “He who speaks first, looses”. Prior to our time together, he was one of the few folks in the NW who actually made money selling copiers. He said his success was because he qualified the customer by asking questions about what was important to them, handled any objections, made an offer and then shut up.

McDonalds has long been known as the most successful up selling companies. They got that reputation because every employee on every order asked for the sale of another item beyond what was ordered. You ordered a burger, they asked if you wanted fries with that. You order a burger and fry, they asked if you want a cold softdrink with that. You order all three and they ask if you want a apple turnover. They always have one more thing they can sell you so why not ask. The employee really doesn’t want to be troubled with the additional sale so if you buy, they are done… if you pass, they are done. Either way, they make a single offer and move one.

Today, we seem to have lost both of those successful techniques. Sales folks almost never qualify, they just assume (there is a process called ‘assumptive closing’, but you have to be pretty good to pull that off) and head down their script. They feel that if you say no to something they should offer the next item in their list. And, they don’t read the environment around the sale to know when to not be the last person talking.

The A/C repair gent returns… it was Monday since they don’t work on the weekend unless the hot house is an emergency. He against suggested replacing the A/C unit with the much larger one since we could get half of the difference back as a refund next year. I asked if there is any chance that a 10 year old system can just loose a tiny bit of coolant and we should add a bit. His answer to me was to cover the different financing they offer. I asked if it was possible to see where a leak might be. He replied with an explanation that replacing one part would be money thrown away when we replaced the whole system.

He finally went upstairs, returning with a mention of a leak in the one part that is very expensive and thus we really need to replace the whole system… “interest free for a year”. Never did he look around and notice a whole family at home in the middle of a week day. Could it be he was dealing with a family that had been hit with downsizing? They would be more concerned about keeping the house than going into debt for 10 grand. He did end up adding a bit of coolant and said he felt bad for us throwing that money away since we really need to just replace everything.

During a recent visit to Starbucks, I grabbed my bag of beans and headed to the register. As I approached the checkout area, a employee put down his broom and came across the store, stopping between me and the register. He asked what beans I had chosen and what I had planned for them. He then explained the flavor of six other bean offerings and why he liked each one. No matter the response I gave, he continued. I had to make a very agressive move to get around him, only to find the person at the register had moved on. The gentleman that had stopped me before went around to take my money. Not before he explained how I should buy a gift card so I could earn points. I explained we had a bad experience with the Starbucks Gold Card… he offered that I should read the pamphlet available on the stand about the new offerings and started to head over to get it for me. What drives an individual to that level of non stop effort to get a customer into something additional?

Did both of these individuals act on their own? Do they believe that I ‘need’ their services and must drive me to them? Or, should we direct the attention to poor training? Did they only get half the message about how selling works so they don’t understand that the best path forward is to work towards a win-win ending?

Posted in Life

More effective marketing through quality service – fail

Posted by admin on September 4th, 2010 No Comments

I mentioned in a previous post a way of doing Business for a local plumber (The most effective marketing is the quality of your service), on that same day I had the same company come out to see what was wrong with my A/C.

Wednesday night, our A/C downstairs started to not stay ahead of the heat so my wife scheduled to have a A/C specialist come out (provided by the same company that sent the plumber the same day) to see what could be done. A year ago, this company replaced our upstairs A/C and did a fan/capacitor in the downstairs unit so the visit was a no-charge inspection.

The technician checked the basics quickly and found ice on the outside unit’s pipes. Coming inside, he said the air filters were plugged up and needed replacing. I questioned it a bit as they were just replaced three months prior. He pulled the two for downstairs out and showed how they were gray. He offered to show next to new, I pulled out a couple I had in the closet (bought a bunch a year ago so they would never be blocked and the air would be clean). He held the two up so the light from the window could come through to show how the one, even though there was no dust bunnies on the surface it was blocked. I found this interesting since I know in the automotive world, it is not legal in most states to show old vs new for auto air filters – they go off white a mile down the road if they are working.

We put in my new filters.

Since the pipes outside where frozen, he wasn’t able to check anything else. He turned everything off, requesting we turn it back on in four hours after it defrosts. If there is no cold air, we should call his cell and he would come out and check the freon. He went out to his truck, returning with a sheet of quotes to replace the whole downstairs A/C system. His feeling was that if my system was low on freon, it must have a leak, and if there is a leak the rest of the system must be wearing out too.

His quotes where on several 13 ton options in the $6k range and 16 ton options in the $8k range. A selling feature of the 16 ton was a end-of-year $1500 tax credit. I asked if the 16 ton would make that much difference over the 13 ton I have now for cooling vs monthly power bill. He let me know I actually have a 10 ton and that a 16 ton for $8,000 to $9,ooo would save me a lot every month.

As I mentioned, this was Friday. When the four hours was up, we turned on the A/C. Cool air started coming out and since it was so hot outside I thought it would take a while to come up to maximum coolness throughout the downstairs so we didn’t ask for the service gentleman to return. Saturday morning, we found the A/C frozen again… as luck would have it, to have the system checked on Saturday would be an emergency call and there would be a charge.

Unlike their plumber with a couple hundred dollar up-sell, I can see how the profit from selling everyone who calls a whole new A/C unit does pencil out to pay for marketing. I might just mention them by name to my local social group…

Posted in Lessons Learned, Life

Thoughts by Gary

Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Can ‘doing the right thing for others’ do anything for you?

Living forever… or until the money runs out

Well son, it used to be normal to store things on spinning plastic

I make recommendations through project success

Will ‘Big’ Software be ready for App Stores and Inexpensive Solutions?

Our electronic futures are forming

“Can you endorse me?” Sorry, do I know you?

Does anyone hear past all the talking?

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