The First 90 Days

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael Watkins.

My newfound commute to and fro work has granted me the wonderful gift of having plenty of time to read. ;-p I picked up this book after seeing that J.D. Meier recommend it (http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2008/01/17/success-strategies.aspx) just around the time that I was looking to transition to my new job. Overall the book is pretty good. Akin to the situational leadership approach, Watkins breaks the environmental situation into four core types (STaRS), each requiring a different approach. Each chapter ends with a quick list of questions that try to get you to think about the your situation in regards to the topic of that chapter. If there was on thing I didn’t like is that it was too easy to read. I found myself reading through the chapters without stopping to reflect and really process the material and concepts. I think this is a common problem with these declarative leadership/business type books.

The big takeaways for me (in the context of starting a new job in a new organization) were

• Accomplish as much as you can early on. But make sure those quick wins are aligned with your long term goal.
• Focus in on what you can do early on. There probably is a lot that needs fixing, don’t spread yourself too thin.
• Figure out the best way to communicate with your new boss. You need to make sure you keep them in the loop/in the know. That’s really hard to do if you don’t use the medium they are most confortable with.
• Related to the item above, negotiate success. Make sure you clear up expectations on what and how you will be judged on with your boss. For me (in the geek context), this was a really good point. Back at UofM I was really working to automate IT solutions and get vision/scope defined for projects. It would be a bad assumption to go into this new job thinking I would be evaluated against how well I achieved those things (and some related others). If documentation isn’t important at this new place, and I spend a lot of time writing up/pre-planning, even though the end result is the system deployed it might seem like it “took to long” to my new boss.
• Take 100% responsibility for making the relationship work [with your boss]

On interesting thing about the book (admitting it could just be biased from my point of view) is that although the book was intended for “new leaders at all levels”, it seemed like the major focus of the book was about how to deal with the people above you. The implied hidden subtext seems to be that leadership is the ability to get things done despite the powers from above.

Technorati Tags: Business,Books,Leadership

The Cluetrain Manifesto

I’ve been delayed on getting some more posts up (I think I’m still meeting my original goal however). I had like four new blog topics that I started writing about. Unfortunately I wrote them offline on my old personal computer which is now packed up and 510 miles away from me back in Michigan.

In the meantime I’m working on finishing up the last couple chapters of The Cluetrain Manifesto which is an amazing book I started reading over the holiday break but didn’t quite finish. There are a great many ideas this book has either inspired me to talk about or given me ways to articulate ideas of my own. Despite its ambiguous title and its implied category of a “business book”, I highly recommend it for anyone who’s fulfills the following criteria a) has had a job b) has ever participated on the Internet. its truly revolutionary and an amazing read for reflection. It was written in 2000. After eight years of social evolution, the concepts that are discussed are much more than just radical observations of the time, but now so truisms for survival.

I recommended this book to some of my colleagues just before leaving UofM. I hope that it spreads. That it can help be part of the catalyst of change for the institution that desperately needs it. There were so many great area’s of potential at UofM, but sadly many went unrealized. I think a lot of it has to do with the institution being complacent with “business as usual”, ignoring that the rest of the world is changing around it. The Cluetrain Manifesto speaks directly to these misconceptions, which is why the book really resonated with me. I felt I did my best to move improve as many areas as I could.

Despite my somewhat negative tangent, The Cluetrain Manifesto is [in my opinion] a positive and uplifting book that energizes the mind. It is a quick read, after you get through the first couple chapters (I found myself stopping every couple paragraphs in the beginning thinking about what I had just read). Once you get past that it goes real quick and is definitely worth the time invested.

Decision Making

A situation came up today that I ended up going over my approach to decision making/critical thinking. Since I wrote it up once, I figure I should turn it into a blog post. The context for this was whether to pursue purchasing a home or not.

People are event driven. Events illicit responses. Most people don’t notice the event (or under play it) and typically focus in on the solution/response first. i.e. I need to buy a house”.

Whenever I do anything, the first thing I figure out is what is causing me to want to do that?

So what is the event? What is the event that is triggering my response to seek out the purchase of a house?

• My current living situation is cramped and far away form where I work, so I need to get a bigger place (response)
• Or I think the housing marking in this area is going to “pop” (event), so I need to get into something now (response)?
• Or I’m sick of “losing” money on rent (event), so I need to buy a place (response)
• Or I’d like a place that I can call my own, and work on it
• Or something else.

Note: these are all good potential reasons for buying a house. I purposely laid all these out because they are all good reasons, but there really is only one event that is currently causing this motivation to buy a house. For example, you may have been sick of losing money by renting before, but what caused you to want to act on it now? It might have nothing to do with “loosing money on renting”. The trigger might be something different all together.

The primary activity is to find the event, otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed in reasons. This is why a list of pro’s and con’s isn’t very effective for evaluations. It really doesn’t help get anywhere, since the longer you stare at that list, the more items you’ll add to the list, and the more you’ll just end up going for what your gut reaction was in the first place.

Once you have the event, you can start a good evaluation.

The precursor to this evaluation is; Does this event really need a response? Basically you need to challenge the assumptions. Sticking with the “losing money” event, we need to look ask, Are you really “losing” money by renting?

Sometimes events are self-created based on assumptions that might not be true. (Are you really “losing” money by renting?)

[Changing gears a little, I used my recent choice to change jobs as an example]

This is what I went through when thinking about accepting the job.

For example:

• Better pay is nice, but was it the event that made me tell my friend that I was interested. No. I was certainly satisfied with my current pay. I’d certainly take more money, but pay was not the factor for looking elsewhere. If it was just about money, there were other options I could look at while staying at UM (or in the state).
• Career advancement is nice, but was it the event that made me tell my friend I was interested. No. I knew I wouldn’t get that here, but I was already working on my MBA. Etc, etc.
• Opportunity to make a bigger impact on the world. I do feel that my ability to achieve that is certainly stifled here, but arguable there are better ways for me to achieve that (like starting my own company).

So, if I was on a path that I was satisfied with, why in the world would I seek this opportunity out?

When I was first told about the job, the part that I latched on to was that it was out in DC. Now there are all sorts  of reasons for me to want to work out in DC. However, at the root of it, I wanted out of Michigan because I wanted to start over (a change).

It was only when I got to that core event that I could start to evaluate whether I should take the opportunity. [As you might see, all those other reasons, everything outside of the core, are just manifestations of the burden of  past success.]

Only once I had isolated it down to that, was I able to make progress towards a decision (evaluation).

Whenever I evaluate anything (i.e. just about everything I do, large and small) I ask myself 3 questions contrasted against the event/problem I’m trying to solve.

1. What’s it worth (not only financial value, potential capability/ability)
2. What the cost (again, not only financial, but opportunity cost, but rule out sunk costs)
3. Am I willing to pay (reconcile the difference between the two)

After doing all that I am able to determine yay or nay.

…Hopefully that made sense. Part of the reason I’m blogging things like this is so that I can become a more effective communicator. Cheers to that.

Technorati Tags: Guidance,Leadership,Decision Making