• Running

    You can learn a lot about how people approach their careers by looking at how they approach their hobbies. Running is such an important part of my life that I have created a separate blog for it, Predawn Runner. Whether you are recreational or competitive, I welcome you to join me there in discussing how we fit running into an already-full life.

Cogitation across the Nation

By Greg | Published: February 25, 2010

I have recently been honored by having the opportunity to guest post on some blogs of particular interest to me due to their focus on topics that are important in my life.  Please take a moment to not just skim over the posts that interest you, but visit the blogs and consider adding them to your reading list, as they have some top quality content.

The Lean Startups Blog – One of the leading blogs in the “real world” startup arena, Apollo Sinkevicius cuts to the chase with his views of what it takes to run a successful startup.  This post discusses lean marketing strategies for startups and small businesses, emphasizing the importance of starting good habits early, establishing a customer-focused message, and driving consistency in not just image but behavior across the organization. My thanks go out to Apollo for the opportunity to contribute.

The International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) Blog – As an exhibitor in the biggest and most significant manufacturing show in the world, I have a particular interest in executing a successful event.  This post discusses the process of selecting what to exhibit at such a major show and how to go about making it memorable for your visitors. Look for potential future posts I may submit to this blog, as the show planning process continues. Special thanks to Lee Anne Orange for inviting me to join the bloggers for IMTS.

The Be More Productive Facebook Fan Page – Claudine Motto is a productivity coach who is full of useful advice, and I have a particular passion for finding ways to get more done in a day.  In an interview on her fan page, we discuss using Microsoft Outlook as a task management system.  In a related post on this blog, I share some helpful advice Claudine has provided on better prioritizing some of my tasks. I am grateful to Claudine for our ongoing dialog on new ideas and the opportunity to share some of my Outlook techniques.

Career Life Connections – Leanne Chase has made a business out of helping people cope with work / life challenges, and I was happy to have the opportunity to share my view on making smart sacrifices as part of your work / life strategy.  Leanne and I have discussed before how erroneous it can be to think of it as “balance” (because it never is), so I fastidiously attempt to avoid using that word (I hope I succeeded?).  There are a lot of great stories on the blog, and Leanne has some unique experiences of her own, so I feel humbled to have the opportunity to contribute to such an important dialog.

I’m happy to guest post on other blogs covering topics related to Constant Cogitation, so please let me know if you have the need for a new perspective.

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Tweaking GTD for Better Weekly Task Prioritization

By Greg | Published: February 18, 2010

As a practitioner of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach, one of the biggest challenges I have faced was balancing when to set a due date for a task, and when to leave it in the great mass of things that must be done (organized by context, of course) but with no specific requirement on timing.  I often found that once items made this list, it was tough to actually get them done; it was simply too intimidating when faced with free time to look over a list of 50-70 (or more) possibilities and make a good decision on what to do next.  However, I didn’t like artificially assigning due dates either, as this put undue pressure on some tasks, which often slipped as more truly important priorities arose. This made the weekly review frustrating, as I couldn’t decide how to handle those “in-between” tasks.  I largely avoided doing a rigorous weekly review, thus hurting the overall quality of the process.

As a bit of further background, I use the Netcentrics GTD Outlook Add-In to manage my tasks and Projects.  This Outlook plug-in is a great tool, as it makes it very easy to assign contexts to tasks, and organize tasks by context (action) or project, in addition to traditional Outlook task views (such as Next Seven Days).  There are other ways of organizing tasks using the GTD approach; one good approach is discussed in Michael Linenberger’s Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook.

When I mentioned this quandary in a discussion with Claudine Motto, a productivity coach and professional organizer with her own business, Vistal Norte, she came up with a recommendation that I definitely felt was worth trying.  Her advice was to create a separate “@Week” category in Outlook, complementing the contexts available via the NetCentrics software.  She then recommended taking 10 to 20 tasks that were relevant and manageable and put them in this category during the weekly review. The number to choose would depend on other commitments for the following week, specifically fixed meetings or tasks with due dates. Then, when the opportunity to look for a new task to accomplish arose, I would have a more concise list to consult.

To help with this process, I created a new view in the Outlook Task Manager (Weekly To-Do), filtering the total list using to the “@Week” category, and grouping by context (@Computer, @Office, etc.).  Context still matters, so I didn’t want to lose this element in the new view.  This allowed me to jump back and forth between my most common “Next Seven Days” view and the new “Weekly To-Do” I found time to take on a new task during the day.

Having done this now for two weeks I can say the results are significant.  I am far more motivated to check the “Weekly To-Do” list for tasks to work on next them I am to look at the lengthy undated list.  In addition, I am more motivated to execute a weekly review, and it seems that the review goes more quickly because I have a specific objective to work towards.  I didn’t finish all “@Week” tasks in either week, but this didn’t create stress as I simply rolled them over into the next week.  I would estimate that I completed 5-8 more tasks in each of the first two weeks using this approach than I would have under my traditional, unstructured process.

There has been a recent post on the Manage This! blog on this topic of late (after I received the advice from Claudine).  The concept is similar, but less specific as to how to implement it into Outlook task management.  But the point is the same; it is far less intimidating (and therefore faster) to choose from a list of 10-20 tasks than one of 50-70.  I am grateful to Claudine for the suggestion.

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Building a Better Business Sense

By Greg | Published: February 16, 2010

In his excellent blog, All Things Workplace, Steve Roesler recently discussed Talent for the Long Run, posting this chart describing the core talents required to build a successful leadership team for the future. While many of the values are self-evident, the one that stands out as unique is “business orientation”, or as I like to call it, “business sense”.  Steve points out that he has run across many outstanding functional specialists (such as researchers, programmers, etc.) who end up providing disappointing results because they lack a “business mentality”.  I’m sure we have all run across the innovative genius or process guru who is difficult to work with because, while they are brilliant, they can’t recognize that their ideas are unviable or impractical when explored in the context of the business case.

Steve Roesler’s Graphic on Key Talents and Values for Future Business Leaders

This leads me to wonder, is business sense purely a natural talent, or can it be developed?  Even if you believe the former, I prefer to think that any skill can be built through practice and discipline (for example, you can be a competitive marathoner even if you are not a naturally gifted runner). With that in mind, here are a few suggestions on how you can improve your business sense.

Get comfortable with finance. And I don’t just mean being able to read an income statement.  Build an understanding of how your activities will impact the income statement, balance sheet, and, especially, the cash flow statement.  Get comfortable with project finance as well – how to calculate a return on investment (ROI) and the concept of the time value of money.  You can do this through formal education, self-learning online, or by hanging out with your finance team and asking questions.

Seek to understand the world around you. Global political, economic, and business news sets the environment in which you make strategic decisions; focusing on your local or entertainment news just doesn’t really help.  Sources like The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and McKinsey Quarterly provide you with the latest trends and thinking in the business world, and help you gain a sense for how global events impact the conditions for business decisions, such as demographic shifts, currency fluctuations, resource restraints, and regulatory trends.

Learn basic pricing theory. There is no more important variable in determining a business’s success or failure than its ability to appropriately price its products.  Getting pricing right involves understanding the concept of customer utility (in other words, the value you are providing to the customer) and how it translates into how they perceive your product.  Obviously you then need to learn how this applies to your business.  Look for future posts on this topic, but one book that I recommend for anyone involved in pricing is The Price Advantage.

Get a sense of what things cost. Obviously the other element in the margin equation is cost, and it is helpful to be able to create ballpark estimates.  You can do this by understanding the cost of common items like electronic circuits (think of what a cell phone sells for), common materials (the price of steel, plastics, etc.), basic capital equipment items (machine tools, cars, etc.) and, maybe most importantly, the cost of labor.  You can then build analogies for the elements of which you need to assess the cost. Having this capability will allow you to quickly think through the rough cost of a new product or project, helping you gain a sense of the potential profitability or ROI of an idea.

Those are the skills that occur to me when thinking of someone who possesses a good “business sense”.  Obviously, some understanding of organizational dynamics and psychology may be helpful too.  What other ideas do you have on how one can improve their business orientation?

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7 Steps to Prepare an Engineer for a Sales Call

By Greg | Published: January 29, 2010
Step away from the customer. Photo courtesty of www.jimwnelson.com.

If you work in a company providing technical solutions, your engineers can be a great asset in building relationships with customers.  They bring more credibility in discussing potential solutions and come up with better ideas to address a customer’s challenges than most sales or marketing professionals can.  A good engineer can in turn gain insight into how the products they design are used, which helps feed future improvements.

Unfortunately, there is the occasional (hopefully) engineer without a commercial bone in his or her body.  This engineer can take many forms. For example, some characterized by a closed-minded “not-invented-here” mentality (i.e., no one outside the organization can possibly have a better solution).  Others are exceedingly cautious and emphasize a solution’s limitations more than its advantages (so as not to avoid any risk of issues with the solution).  Or they may be more interested in looking like the smartest person in the room than they are in actually landing the sale. And finally, some just lack the social skills necessary to manage a productive conversation with a customer.

At times, however, such an engineer may be critical to involve in the sales process, perhaps because they are the true expert in the solution you offer, or they really do need the experience of seeing their products in use.  When facing this challenge, here are some tips for making the most of the situation.

Communicate the objective of the meeting. You must set the expectations on what the meeting is to accomplish, whether it’s to address a customer’s concerns, uncover their latent needs, etc.  Emphasize the reasons why you feel this engineer can bring value to the meeting, and make them feel an important part of the whole process.  It is important to communicate to the engineer whether this is an information-gathering or question-answering session.  Engineers by their nature feel a need to provide answers, when at times it may be better to say, “let me do a little more research on that for you.”

Emphasize the importance of preparing for the meeting.  Hopefully you are doing this yourself – researching the customer and the contacts you will be meeting with, reviewing the account history, and planning the approach for the meeting.  Involve your engineering colleague where you can, or at the minimum send them the appropriate materials to review.  A good rule of thumb is that each hour of meeting time with the customer requires three hours of preparation.

Make sure that the engineer isn’t over-scripting the meeting. Engineers like to be precise, and many will head into such a meeting with a checklist of questions.  This risks missing the opportunity to let the conversation flow in unexpected directions and uncover latent customer needs or alternative ideas for solutions.  Having some questions planned is good, but remind the engineer that this is a conversation, not an interview.

Communicate a dress code. What may be obvious to you is not so to those who spend their day in front of the computer or in the factory.  Be clear and specific, avoiding such broad generalities as “business casual”.  And you may wish to remind them that their clothes should be pressed; I know of a sales manager who once had to take a visiting engineer to a clothing store after his flight arrived to buy new clothes because the engineer was so disheveled.

Review how to discuss competition. Every engineer wants to believe their solution is the best, and hopefully it is.  But even so, addressing competitive offerings in a positive manner, but emphasizing your “points of difference”, will help maintain credibility and make your company appear to be a helpful resource (look for a future blog post on this topic).  Also, make sure that your messages are consistent; if you have stated a specific advantage of your solution previously, make sure the engineer knows this so that they don’t contradict your prior statements.

Lead the meeting, but subtly. You want the engineer to be the source of the technical information, but you need to take charge of setting the meeting objectives with the customer, introducing the engineer, and watching for the conversation to shift off course.  You must also intervene if the engineer is becoming, to put it mildly, a know-it-all, or is talking over the customer.  Some engineers do believe that they have nothing to learn from a customer, and these are the ones who will take the most coaching.  One last thing to watch for is whether the engineer is asking too many questions, so carefully monitor the customer’s body language and responses during these interchanges.

Document commitments and ensure follow-through.  This is basic meeting advice, but you need to make sure that the engineer does not feel their job is “done” after the meeting, if there are responses due to the customer.  Spend some time with your engineer going over the takeaways from the meeting and identify actions required.

Again, many, if not most, engineers either naturally have or have developed good communication skills with customers.  For those that don’t, hopefully following the above advice will make for a productive engagement, turning your engineer from a liability to an asset.

I’m eager to hear of your experiences (especially horror stories) and what you’ve learned from them: do you have any additions to the above list?  And if you work with this guy, please keep him away from your customers

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Developing Good Sleep Habits in Autistic Children

By Greg | Published: January 26, 2010

It is not unusual for children with autism to also have sleep issues.  In many cases, this compounds the challenges the child faces in attention span and development, and adds stress and fatigue for the rest of the family.  It is not clear why children with autism also tend to have sleep disorders.  Possibilities include their increased response to outside stimuli, inability to read social cues (i.e., not being able to tell from others’ behavior that it is night time), irregular melatonin levels, and other theories.

Photo courtesy of WatchMoto.com blogs

Regardless of the cause, there are steps you can take to help establish good sleep patterns in your autistic child.  Let me first state that I am not a psychologist or a physician, and if sleep issues present a major challenge for your child, you should seek professional help.  We have worked with a psychologist and behavioral therapist in overcoming our son’s sleep issues, and he now uses a sleep medication to help him get to sleep. This medication helps some with sleeping through the night as well, but we are convinced that our improved efforts to establish good sleep habits are more responsible for these gains.

Before discussing what you should do, let me share some of the mistakes that we made through the years (our son is now seven).  Perhaps you will gain from the comedy of our errors and avoid repeating them.  In most cases, we tried to give our son what he asked for in order to calm him down and allow him to go back to sleep. Of course, since communication is a major challenge for autistic children, our son didn’t really want what he was asking for, he was only applying what limited vocabulary he had.

  • Reading the same story over and over to him until he fell back asleep (after having read it to him over and over to get him to sleep in the first place)
  • Putting a TV in his room so he could watch Sprout® at night and stay in his bed (as if he would stay in his bed)
  • Allowing him to come into our room to watch Sprout (I can’t tell you how greatly the middle-of-the-night shows on Sprout now irritate us.)
  • Allowing him to come into our room to go back to sleep (which may or may not eventually happen after 2 hours or so of tossing, turning, and occasional jumping)
  • Sitting next to his bed until he fell back to sleep (often with one arm on him to hold him in his bed)

I’m sure there are a few other errors I have blocked from my mind.  Let’s move on to what we should have done (and now do) when he woke in the middle of the night.  The concept is that the actions you should take to help the autistic child develop good sleep habits are the same you should use for any other child.  These may be more challenging for autistic children due to the social and communication hurdles, but when followed, they should yield improved behaviors.

Establish a consistent bedtime routine. This routine should start the same time every night, with consistent reminders that night time is approaching and that is the time for sleep.

Practice good habits on getting the child to sleep. This includes maintaining a routine as mentioned above and allowing the child to fall asleep on his or her own. If you usually stay in their room until they fall asleep, gradually remove your presence from their room.  Minimize your interaction with them should they continually get out of bed (put them back to bed with no talking). If you need help on this, simply watch almost any episode of Supernanny.

Keep the child in their own bed. Like with any child, allowing them to sleep with the parents just provides an attractive alternative to learning to fall back asleep on their own, thus encouraging them to repeat the behavior.

Remove as many stimuli as possible. No toys should be allowed in the bed (except for comforting items like stuffed animals), and there should be no TV or extraneous light in the room (again, other than a comforting night light if needed).

Work to gradually remove yourself from the room. Depending on how significant the sleep problems are, you may need to start with sitting in the child’s room, but over time (either that night or the next time) move closer to the door, then outside the door with the door open, and eventually outside the door with the door closed.

Be persistent. Correcting sleep behaviors can be very stressful, but any backwards step and set back weeks of effort.  This adjustment may have a negative effect on your family in the short term (such as waking up other children due to the noise) but will have an incredibly positive effect in the long run.

Again, should sleep issues be a major barrier in your child’s development or well-being, seek professional help.  It is my hope that our experiences will help you address occasional sleep issues in your autistic child, or at least serve as the starting point for discussions with such a professional.  Our child now sleeps through the night at least 95% of the time, and on the nights he doesn’t he typically just plays (if loudly) in his room with no intervention from us. If you have any tips that have helped your child sleep better, I’d be happy to learn of them in the comments.

Authors Note: As I post this early on a weekday morning, our son has been awake since at least 3:30, but playing contentedly in his room for over two hours.  This is the first night he has been up so early in over three weeks, and we have to at least take satisfaction that he has needed no intervention this morning to keep him in his room.

Sprout is a registered trademark of Children’s Network, LLC

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