I just wrapped up the first read of a book a friend of mine gave me - called Raving Fans. This is book about turning good customer service into Raving Fan service. Here’s a quote that really struck me,

What we have are systems. Not rules. Rules create robots. Not systems. Systems are predetermined ways to achieve results. The emphasis has to be on achieving the result, not the system for the system’s sake. That’s the difference between systems and rules. With a rule the emphasis is on the procedure, not necessarily the result. We have rules about smoking within ten feet of a gasoline pump. We have systems for delivering service.

The purpose of of systems is to ensure consistency, not create robots. Rules do that. Our team members have to create the Raving Fanexperience for our customers every time. Systems give you a floor, not a ceiling…

I know I have been guilty of allowing a system to turn into a procedure, a rule rather than a reason why. You must understand that vision helps you keep perspective. Systems have to be flexible because the world is always changing whether you like it or not. The system helps you keep consistency and deliver a consistent service level - the system itself is NOT the service level; That is an important distinction.

Vision is the first thing I think every person must have; I call it “walking your critical path“. By soul-searching, goal-setting, learning yourself, or whatever you may call it, you learn those things that you put first - those things most dear to you. Is that enough?

No, I don’t think so. In life, I believe there are 5 truths that really make a person strong - 5 resounding principles that make you, well -  YOU!

About 10 days ago, I posted on 1 of them: Vision. So the next, natural question involves commitment. Are you committed to walking your critical path - your vision?

I have been practicing a form of Aikido for almost 2 years now. Aikido is a very subtle martial art, very unlike Karate or Thai Kick Boxing. It involves reading your opponents movements and redirecting the energy they offer in the attack - not combating it force-on-force.

One of the key things I am taught is to move, to enter, to commit to action and pursue an outcome of my choosing. I’m still learning how to get to that outcome and expect many more years of practice before I can expect the door of wisdom to crack open. What is important, however, is that I commit. I commit to pursue an outcome and move accordingly. If I falter, or pause (and I have faltered and paused), the attacker almost always demolishes me - seeking their own outcome.

The same is very true in almost every aspect of life, and especially in business. Business compels you to act, yet I see so many choosing to stick their head in the proverbial sand. What are they afraid of? What is it that makes them take pause?

Laziness, stupidity, stuck in a rut, closed-mindedness, [clinging to] tradition, fear of the future, bullheadedness, pigheadedness, noheadedness? - Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles.

All of these things are reasons (admitted or not) that give individuals and companies pause - that cause them to falter. Lack of vision, and lack of commitment to that vision, is a killer.

You will have peaks and valleys in business, and in your life. The view at the tops of the peaks are spectacular and don’t take much energy or commitment to sustain. However, the valleys are riddled with doubts and fears. It is your commitment, and clear focus on your vision, that allows you to climb back up your next peak. When you loose either, you risk falling down - or worse - settling.

Almost overnight, Microsoft SharePoint 2007 sold more than $1 billion since its release, according to the March 31, 2008 issue of NetworkWorld. Mike Gotta, an analyst with the Burton Group goes on to say,

I have not seen anything like this since the early days of [Lotus] Notes… The talk [around SharePoint] is getting strategic now, and people are talking about it as a middleware solution”

In my March article, Are You Getting Schooled on SharePoint?, John Mancini, president of AIIM, went on to say:

1. The entry of Microsoft SharePoint as a serious player in the document and records infrastructure marketplace.  This is one of the most important developments in evangelizing these technologies that we have ever seen. Suppliers and consultants will debate what MOSS can do and what it can’t.  But it won’t matter; it will spread like kudzu through the end user community.

I said it then, and I say it again, John is right on. Without even trying, Microsoft has sold over $1 billion (that’s with a “B” folks) in licensing. This isn’t even including the WSS rollouts, and third-party revenues being generated. John Fontana had this to say:

…[It's the] prototypical Microsoft tool - good enough for small-to-midsize businesses; adaptable to large enterprises; and most important, having plenty of financial opportunities for third-party ISVs and systems integrators.

One of the big tricks for Microsoft is that it’s SharePoint solutions are so tightly integrated with it’s own unified communications stack, Exchange servers, and Office application suites. Simply put, it is extremely flexible for workgroup and small company collaboration opportunities.

However, it has its limitations. Those thinking it is the end-all-be-all of document management, are sorely mistaken. It does not scale well, according to Fontana. Simply put, Microsoft stores everything in “what amounts to one universal table”, to include the documents themselves. This is a nightmare to manage with large amounts of content.

However, Microsoft is expected to fix this in its next version, rumored to be shipping in 2009. What does this mean for the competitors? Watch and see!

My suggestion would be to acquaint yourself with the solution now, and either begin offering solutions with this in mind, or partner with a company that understands it and can work symbiotically with your company.

I was meandering around the web, and ran across this really great little site. I have some more investigation to do, but I thought I would share this. It’s called Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam. There is a great little flash presentation on the site. 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe that any problem can be solved with a picture. And that anybody can draw it.

Several years ago, WatchGuard Technologies was recommended to me to manage our SMB perimeter security. I did some homework, and found that it had an attractive user interface, great reviews in business journals, and had a competitive pricing module. So I bought one for our firewall defense. I also began recommending and selling these to a few of my consulting clients - and everything went fairly well.

This was until I needed service. WatchGuard had just recently off-shored their support and I evidently didn’t buy gold support - which really slowed down my response time to issues. It was taking me days to get technical issues resolved and weeks to get contract issues resolved. The service was horrible.

I was just about fed up with their whole organization and lousy customer support. There were times when I felt like I was trying to throw money at them and they just kept putting up more walls. Something changed… About 18 months ago, it was like a light started going off.

I started getting calls back from the helpdesk within minutes instead of hours. I could not only get expert advice from sales engineers, but advice from multiple levels of individuals, and best of all - when something got goofed in my order they made it right and quick.

On Monday I had the most amazing experience, and I’m hooked. I had been going back and forth with technical support via their interactive ticketing system online, and got to a point where something had to be done. Out of the blue, almost as if the engineer had felt my frustration and concern through the web portal,  he simply offered an RMA.

I was used to having to go through a battery of tests to PROVE it was their issue. I mean, the problem might have been a half dozen other things, but it almost seemed as if my experience had reached some predetermined, internal threshold at WatchGuard, and they quickly moved to intercept mounting frustration.

I felt a little guilty of not conducting my technical due dilligence, and the engineer did offer a utility to conduct some testing. However, after reading some of the documentation, it was going to require some travel to our branch office 2 hours away to run. I responded back that it would take me a couple of days to schedule the visit, and to my surprise, the engineer simply authorized the replacement right there. Wow!

I am scheduled to replace Tuesday, and even though it is a minor irritation to have to go through the swap out, it’s man-made and things like that do break. I wouldn’t have a job if not, right? (that’s rhetorical, by the way).

Let me tell you above all else, I am impressed with the dramatic turn around in WatchGuard’s focus on their customer. They got back to the basics that made them what they are, and I highly recommend their offerings for the SMB, but make sure you get their gold-level technical support. Overall though, I would give WatchGuard high marks for customer support and focus.

Update: April 29, 2008

I thought I would post this update. I drove out to our branch office today, and within 20 minutes had a fully operational system, and this even included an .1 upgrade to correct some security issues. … WatchGuard, you are making things too easy on me. Pretty soon, I may just end up like the Maytag repairman!

In some recent posts by Robert Scoble and Mary Jo Foley, they outline the launch of Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie’s make-or-break project. Expect some posts on this as I read through all of the material…

Are you a glass half empty of half full kind of person? Do you seek answers or offer excuses? I can throw a stone and hit someone that is giving excuses instead of solving problems - and I used to be one of them, too.

A couple of days ago, I started talking with someone who seemed very bright, confident, and seemed to bring a lot of experience from past positions. This person commented the training program was far less than expected and in fact didn’t think one even existed.

I paused a moment, and asked a question, “With whom have you spoken about your concerns? What types of training do you feel you were ‘promised’ but have not received?

I listened intently for a period of time. I heard things about needing to know how to show features of systems X, Y and Z. I heard things about filling out leasing paperwork. I heard things about sales training.

And you know what I heard loud and clear? This person was feeling a little deflated and had allowed some obstacles to get in the way, I heard reasons “why not”, but not “how can I…?” questions. Basically, being brutally honest - I heard excuses.

As a manager, I do not wish to deflect any blame either. We are responsible for creating training programs for our teams. To be quite fair, I could lob out a whole slew of excuses as to why I’m not very good at this, but suffice it to say - I’m not. What I can say is that I look at life as a great proving ground. There are all sorts of lessons to be learned, and if I am asked I am always more than willing to stop and explain something - in particular why something works the way it does.

So you better be listening, and you should be expecting me to tell you why. I expect you to reason out the rest and ask me questions if you are unsure. You are an adult, as am I, and never want anyone to feel like a problem is bigger than they are. It’s all a perspective game… a game of how to eat an elephant.

If you want to succeed in life - not just exist - you must have a seeking heart and set your mind about reaching your goals. Don’t allow obstacles to turn into excuses of “why not” and the stand in your way.

According to an article posted on Netcraft via Techmeme, presidential hopeful Obama’s campaign website was redirected to rival Clinton’s website.

A security weakness in Barack Obama’s website has been exploited to redirect visitors to Hillary Clinton’s website. Visitors who viewed the Community Blogs section of the site were instead presented with Clinton’s website as a result of a cross-site scripting vulnerability.

Per the article, evidently a native of Liverpool, IL was able to exploit commonly used vulnerabilities within Obama’s code to force users to be redirected to the site of his choosing.

Mox plays down the matter by saying that all he did was exploit some poorly written HTML code before suggesting that it was a cross-site scripting vulnerability that had been exploited. By allowing users to enter characters such as > and ” into their blog URLs, JavaScript could be injected into pages in the Community Blogs section and would be executed by subsequent visitors.

It’s really too bad, this would’ve made a wonderful April Fool’s Day prank.

I was reading some of my RSS feeds tonight and happened across a blog post from Dan over at BizTechTalk featuring a link to a nice slide show discussing “online community design patterns”.

Slide 38 really got my attention after some traffic I ran across from Scoble and his followers on where the dialogue needs to happen:

The conversation flows within communities, however the community itself only facilitates the conversation [through] its interfaces it should never try to control the conversation!

Link to presentation in trackback, and here.

Do you find yourself often looking for more time in the day to do the things you need to get done? With competing interests and a growing plate of responsibilities, it has become rather difficult to effictively “juggle” your responsibilities. Family, work, honey-do’s, fun stuff, not-so fun stuff that you have to do - it all adds up and begins subtracting your time, your focus, and your energy reserve.

A simple question I have begun to ask myself, “Am I walking my critical path?”

The critical path is not a bad thing; the critical path, or Critical Path Method (CPM), is a project management tool used to define the total time it will take to complete all tasks in a project, as well as whether this project is on target, in jeopardy, or behind schedule. If the project is on-schedule to be completed in the desired time, it is considered to be on the critical path.

CPM has been taught to me time and again in both project management and personnel management. However, applying this to your life can be a real eye opener - IF you allow it to open your eyes.

Let’s say your life is the project. Generally speaking, none of us really know when we are going to die. However, many of us expect to live some period of time before we do, so this is where the Critical Path becomes important.

The key to this exercise is remembering your time is finite.

First, we must choose to do those things that are most important to us first and foremost. For instance, I do have to go to work everyday, but my top priority is to come home and be with my daughter at least 2 nights a week, have a date night with my wife 1 night a week, spend all day on Saturday with my daughter, and spend all day Sunday with my whole family. These are not flexible. If one has to be taken by some work priority, then it is replaced immediately with time from another of “my other days”.

When I ended my tour of duty with the USMC, they offered exit training. This was geared to help Marines, young and old, make the transition into the civilian sector more prepared. I must say, this was some of the best career advice I ever got.

First thing I was asked was to evaluate what was important to me. I thought it was money. So the trainer asked me how far would I ethically go for money? Would I move to the Middle East? Would I live on a submarine for 6 months at a time? Would I leave my family for a year at a time to follow the almighty dollar?

“Well, of course not.” was my reply. He then leaned in a little close so I could smell the coffee on his breath, and whispered, “So money is not what is most important to you then.”

This created the first, recurring task on my critical path - my faith and my family. Next, came my career goals , followed by my other goals such as education and fun.

My critical path became filled with goals that I “backed into”. I knew I wanted to make a certain salary figure before 10 years, I knew I wanted to finish my BS degree in 6 years, I knew I wanted to take a beach trip in 2 years. Those became goals I then turned into sub-projects and established milestones to accomplish - all keeping these in relation to my primary goal.

As I have reached the end of my 10 year goal setting exercise, I have found myself meandering a bit. I have allowed the noise and static to fill my head on more occasions than one, and have now began to reassess my critical path.

Here are some tips I have learned that I wanted to share:

1. Know yourself: Do you know what you want in life and how you are going to get it? Are you a student of life?

2. Know your goals: Which are set in stone and which are flexible?

3. Know how to achieve your goals: This requires integrity, resolution, patience, and empathy for others.

4. At the beginning of your day, write a list of what you have to get accomplished and what can wait if need be.

5. Allot time to put out fires if you know fires will come up. Do not begrudge the fires as they are another method of defining your critical path.

6. Seek out mentors and try to learn as much as you can from their wisdom (remember: mentors can even offer painful lessons of what not to do as well).

7. Seek out colleagues to share ideas and bounce ideas off of.

8. Set aside some self-reflection or meditation time in your daily routine. This will help you stay centered.

9. Find something that you can be the best and and be the best at it, but do not let it consume you.

10. Do not stress about the things you cannot control. Either focus your energy on the things you can affect, or create a resolution to put yourself in a position to affect the situation.

So, the critical path you must find is within you. It does not come in a wave, but in fits and starts at first. Then, like the rising of the tide, your critical path brings you a quiet power that cannot be stopped and a fulfillment no person can take away.