Giving Thanks and Finding Meaning Over the Holiday

The Thanksgiving holiday in the United States is a strange time for business professionals. Most of the year, the company instructs us to sacrifice for our careers. The holiday arrives, and we slow down for a few moments to enjoy the company of family and friends. Only then do we understand the cost of our sacrifices at the office. Children grow up becoming people we do not recognize, and our romantic partners may be distant and alienated because we prioritize work. The messiness of our family life is a world away from the orderliness of budget reports and status updates. It is the tradeoff we made to provide for our families. 

I experience these feelings as much as the next person, but I always look forward to the holiday. Since childhood, I have treated the four-day Thanksgiving weekend like a small vacation and a chance to reset myself. It is a strategy that serves me well because spending time with family at the dinner table is much better from my perspective than sitting at a conference table with people pretending to be masters of the universe. Along with family time, part of my reset is expressing gratitude for what makes life meaningful. Today, I am going to take some time to do that. 

With the change of season, I read Viktor E. Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Frankl gives a blunt and unflinching look at his experiences as a concentration camp inmate at Theresienstadt and later Auschwitz. Frankl lost everything during the Holocaust. His wife, mother, father, and brother all died by execution or illness. Frankl himself suffered starvation and beatings daily until he was near death before liberation by Allied forces in 1945. He has spent nearly four years in the concentration camps. 

What makes his story is the little details he reveals about life in the camps. The inmates treated their captivity like a full-time job and survival as a principal metric of success. Time would squash and stretch weirdly, with days becoming endless slogs of toil while weeks and months would drift by without consequence. It was looting the bodies of dead comrades for shoelaces, belts, and cigarettes. Captives looked forward to being last in line for soup because they would get a chance to receive a vegetable or scrap of meat in their bowl. Finally, Frankl observed that hunger and deprivation forced people to become their most essential selves. People who were decent and empathetic became more so, while selfish and cruel people became obvious. Confronted with death, humans are both the best and worst examples of how to be alive. 

Frankl does not consider himself morally superior and attributes his survival to chance. He uses his experiences to form his understanding of psychoanalysis and philosophy. It is that understanding that is the basis of a form of treatment called logotherapy and Frankl’’s observation that three things give people meaning even in the darkest circumstances. These three things are:

• Creating work or doing a deed.
• Experiencing something or encountering someone else.
• By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. 

The categories are deliberately vague because each person must discover what the work gives us; meaning or encounter provides value. What unites all humans is unavoidable suffering. People we love die from cancer. Old friends drift away, and the indifferent forces of the global economy can turn any of us into homeless beggars. We must find meaning in our world by being creative, loving someone or some experience, and finally learning to transcend the pain of unavoidable suffering. It is a blueprint for our absurd postmodern age. 

This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for everything that helps provide meaning to my life. 

• I am grateful to Capco for allowing me to help clients be more successful. 
• I am grateful to my peers in the Agile Reformation, including Dimple Shah, Thomas Meloche, and Diana Williams from Project Brilliant, who supported my efforts to make business more sustainable, sane, and satisfying. 
• I am grateful for my parents, who I can still enjoy time with and who encourage me the way only parents can. 
• I am grateful for a woman who loves me despite myself and has become my partner in this chaotic life. 
• The strange business environment of banking in 2023 has shown me who the saints are and exposed the sinners in a clarifying fashion. I am grateful for this moment of clarity. 
• Cancer caused plenty of pain and unnecessary suffering and exposed me to what mattered, which was the people around me that I loved.
• The war in Ukraine and violence in Gaza have clarified how I feel about violence and authoritarianism. I am grateful for that lesson. 
• Finally, I am grateful to the people who follow me on this blog, via social media, and in my video feed. Thank you for allowing me to share myself with you each day. 

Any comparison of being a paid professional in the twenty-first-century global economy with the experience of prisoners in the extermination camps of World War Two is ludicrous and stupid. I can gain wisdom for my world from the experiences of another. Frankl feels like a person from a different time who has something to teach us today. So, as I survey my family and the tradeoffs I have made to support them, I am grateful that I can rely on the wisdom of the past to make sense of the present. In 2023, the sacrifices were worth it. 

Now, pass the cranberry sauce, and see you next time. 

A Few Life Lessons for the Class of 2022

I take a great deal of pride in what I do.  Over the years, I have gained competence as a scrum master, product owner, and agile coach.  It is not an easy path to follow.  My professional life contains many failures and setbacks, but it makes me better at my job.  Each day, I attempt to help others avoid the struggles and mishaps I experience in my life.  I am a veteran technical professional, and it means you take pride in showing off your earned scars. 

This week my alma mater, Illinois State University, is having its commencement ceremony.  I walked during my graduation for my parents being proud of my accomplishment and feeling overwhelmed by the rush of final examinations.  I was twenty-two years old and one hundred and fifty pounds lighter when I made that walk.  Today, I want to share a thing or two I have learned along the way with the class of 2022.  

Never Quit Learning – 

Technology moves so quickly that you will become unemployable if you do not keep your skills current.  Successful technology professionals must relearn their careers every eighteen months.  I seek out books, experts, and blogs when I don't understand something.  I still practice coding and the forbidden secrets of open source like .git source control.  

A man I respect, Craig Cutbirth, says that everyone should have an intellectual curiosity about the world.  Curiosity should guide you in your learning and your career.  Soon you will develop a humility about your knowledge and expertise.  At your worst, what you have gathered in your head is what makes you valuable to your fellow humans.  Never squander the gift of learning.  

Be Yourself –

The most surprising thing I have discovered working as a business professional is how much people sacrifice to seek the approval of others, especially those with power.  I have seen people change how they dress to better conform with others in the office.  Moral principles and values are sacrificed for promotions.  Finally, I have seen individuals kiss up and kick down to get ahead.  We have a word for people like this, who are called assholes.  Be yourself at work and be your whole self at work.  Some people may not understand, but it is their problem, not yours.  

Leaders are beginning to understand that bringing your whole self to work makes you happier, more productive, and provides value to the organization they could not imagine.  Ignore the trolls who say otherwise; diversity of background and perspective is a force multiplier in business.  I am very proud to work for an organization, CAPCO, which understands this and supports it at every organization level.  

Say No –

Many people in the business world want to exploit your youth and enthusiasm to bolster their wealth.  Taking on an additional thirty hours a week is wage theft, and a promotion is often an empty promise.  Say no, and say it to set clear boundaries.  Answering e-mail on your phone over the weekend is a symptom of a business that does not respect the people who work for them.  

If you are not learning and feel disrespected by your employer, say no and quit.  Life is too short to work with jerks and organizations who treat you like dirt.  The great resignation is the realization that work must provide financial and personal compensation.  Businesses that do not understand this reality are discovering they are having difficulty finding employees. 

Failure Happens –

Young people, since middle school, are taught that we must pursue success at all costs.  The reality is the business world is going to humble each of us.  Each of us will fail, which is the actual test of who we are.  Failure is pure, and it educates like no other experience.  When you fail, you will do everything not to repeat the experience.  Failure provides you with an incentive to show the people who witnessed your collapse that you are tough and can overcome adversity.  

My failures were like bruises that healed over time rather than tattoos which were marks of shame.  Each of us will fall down, but how we get up is more important.  

Currently, the world is unequal, cruel, and uniquely stupid.  I am doing my part to make it a better place, and I hope you join me in this endeavor.  Enjoy your graduation and take some time to think about what you believe and value.  The real journey begins now. 

Until next time. 

Being Grateful is Part of Leadership.

It is Thanksgiving week in the United States, and it is a uniquely American holiday with its origins in the American Civil War.  The family gathers together to have a big meal and make plans for the Christian holiday in December.  The Thanksgiving holiday weekend is also a great opportunity to emotionally reset and take stock of the things in life which make you grateful.  In the lonely world of leadership, gratitude is the only thing that can keep you concentrating on long-range goals. 

General Collin Powell died this year, and this imperfect patriot had plenty of things to say about leadership.  I have plenty of respect for Powell and his style of leadership.  One of the things he says in his book on leadership is being in charge is a lonely activity with others second-guessing decisions.  A leader deals with negativity, hostility, and apathy each day, and it can make even the most enthusiastic to a cause feel crippling levels of exhaustion.  In those moments of fatigue, being grateful for even the most minor things in life make it possible to move on to the next day.  

Even in the dark moments, it helps to take time to show gratitude for what good you can find in the world surrounding you.  First of all, I am grateful to the CAPCO organization.  I was feeling discouraged about my career, and they hired me as a Senior Consultant.  Since I have joined the organization, I feel like I now have a tribe of people as my colleagues.  We are eccentrics, innovative, and want to make a difference in the business world.  Being the lone agile person in an organization is isolating.  To be part of a group of agile professionals going through the same struggles make the fight worth it. 

I am grateful my parents are alive, and I get to enjoy them in their old age.  Life expectancy has doubled in a century, and my family has benefited.  I see my mother and father grow old together.  Our family will spend the Thanksgiving holiday together, and we will catch up and love each other as an immediate family can.  I get to enjoy the wit and wisdom of my parents for a while longer.  

Four years ago, a woman entered my life, and I have been a better person for the experience.  My partner Carol is warm, empathetic, and kind.  She puts up with my crazy career and the emotional ups and downs which come with it.  She is a teacher of young children, so I am learning how to relate better to small children.  She and her grown children have accepted me into their family, and I am grateful for that acceptance.  

I could go on, but I am most grateful for many things.  It helps push away the despair and darkness.  It is a chance to reflect on gratitude which helps make our workday struggles seem less consequential.  I am grateful to you, my readers and I look forward to more agile adventures in the future.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  

Until next time.

Constant learning begins with you.

It is never too late to learn

I have spoken before about how technology changes quickly and that to be successful you need to be a continuous learner.  A software developer has to relearn their profession every eighteen months.  When you lead these individuals, you should foster an environment of constant learning.  The global economy and technology field depends on the forward momentum of learning. 

The world we live in today is radically different from the start of the internet era.  Do it yourself videos are everywhere on YouTube.  Today, anyone with a video camera and an opinion can behave like a network pundit.  In the world of technology, the hacker ethos and open source community have won the debate about how enterprise systems should operate.  It is a world of open source, cloud computing, and mobile devices.  Business leaders are struggling to understand these changes.  

With change happening so quickly, it is easy to see how people can fall behind.  It is why there are so many training conferences, continuing education courses, and ongoing programs in business to keep the skills of professionals up to date.  It is why I continue to dabble in software development even though I spend the majority of my time in a coaching role.  It allows me to understand the challenges and opportunities that developers face each day.  It also gives me a chance to kick off the rust and stretch myself creatively.  

I am working with .NET Core technologies for the past week, and it has been a valuable learning experience.  Instead of XML configuration files, .NET Core uses JSON.  The Bootstrap CSS system is now on version four, and communicating with Restful APIs is like connecting to a database.  I felt like a child learning to program again.  I watched a few training videos on YouTube and made the typical mistakes someone learning does.  I also had the experience of satisfaction of getting something to work correctly hours of tinkering.  

Now when I am making technology decisions, I can make a more informed choice because I have worked with the systems in question.  It is a better approach than sitting passively behind a desk and waiting for a consultant to whisper something in your ear.  It is my experience that the best leaders are the ones who lead from a position of expertise and empathy.  These people understand the day to day struggles of the business and market forces they are facing.  

It is why I attempt to kick off the rust and do some programming.  I learn new things and do some programming.  I know new things, and it provides me with insights into how people I serve work.  To foster an environment of learning, you must be willing to learn new things.  

Until next time. 

Acknowledgements for the Christmas Season

My Christmas Card to you

The Christian holidays are always tough; you are preparing for gatherings of family and friends.  Free time is spent shopping, and disposable income comes and goes faster than a drop of water in the desert.  In the middle of this frantic scramble, I was looking for work.  I am happy to report I am returning back to work on January 3rd.  Adversity has a way of revealing the kind of person you are and this week I wanted to set this aside and thank a few people who have helped me over the last year.

I am deeply grateful for the support I received from my colleagues at LCS communications as I decided to pursue other ventures.  Wayne Reno was a great mentor and I hope someday to develop the emotional intelligence he possesses.  Thomas Collier was my partner in managing a chaotic software development process; he was both a voice of reason and experience.  Finally, I have to extend a hand to Kedar Godkhindi who was both a technical lead and a friend.  I could not get through this hardship without their support.

I also had plenty of former developers and colleagues come forward and pick up my spirits.  Larry Gasik is the curmudgeonly guy you always want in your corner during a rough patch.  I also want to recognize Gene Stetz who is never at a loss for words and has plenty of wisdom to share.   Michael Kappel is an eccentric and artist who will always inspire me.  Finally, I have to recognize Daniel Porrey who took a chance on me five years ago and thought I would be a good scrum master.

The agile community has been great particularly, Kat Daugherty who inspired me to submit my first white paper to a major conference.  I also need to recognize Anke Maerz who has been a pillar of support during the last six months.

I have plenty of people to thank but I don’t have enough room to recognize you all.  As we slide into the holiday and New Year, rest assured I am deeply moved how everyone had supported me over the last year.  2019 is a clean slate and I look forward to filling it with more learnings, news, and wisdom.  Happy Christmas and a joyful New Year.

Until next time.

Listening, Compassion, and Shared Context make coaching rewarding.

Healthy Ownership requires plenty of tools.

I have spent a majority of my life around educators.  I have family members who were teachers and administrators.  Many of my peers in college are teaching at the university and high school level.  I also spend my time on social media following teachers, trainers, and educators of all stripes.  A common refrain I hear from all these people in my life is satisfaction they receive when students they serve understand a difficult concept or master a skill.   For many of them, this feeling of satisfaction is why they got into education.  It is the same reason I am an agile coach and why I am championing the notion of “Healthy Ownership.”

My attendance at the agile coach’s retreat earlier this year was an awakening for me.  I spent time with other coaches and learned some valuable lessons about myself.  I also worked closely with ten gifted people who held each other accountable and created something called “Healthy Ownership.”  Born out of frustration in my agile practice, “Healthy Ownership: was an opportunity for me to learn better techniques of coaching. It was also a chance to step aside and learn how others lead and motivate teams.  It is surprising what I learned. 

The most important lesson is to listen to what people are saying.  I struggle with this ability at work.  Put me in front of a PBS documentary, Anime show or Kaiju film, and I am perfectly attentive.  In work situations, I struggle to listen.  My inability to pay attention to verbal and non-verbal cues hurt my coaching.  Thus, I am committing myself to be a better listener, so I understand the hidden and apparent challenges to the teams I am serving. 

After listening, I need to work on guiding others to have more compassion for their colleagues.  You cannot fundamentally change how empathetic a person is but you can help someone it is their self-interest to help others. Ayn Rand speaks about the “virtue of selfishness.”  I consider her thinking to be an alibi for callousness and contempt which will undermine any team attempting to succeed.  It is why everyone needs to understand they are working together.  You may not be able to increase team empathy, but by reducing callousness and contempt among team members, a coach will have a better success rate. 

Finally, after guiding others to help team members, it is essential to create a shared context.  It means a product owner, developer and scrum master should understand how to better focus on what they need to do together to be successful.  For instance, my teams discuss technical debt daily. The purpose of the discussion is for product owners to understand the obstacles the teams need to overcome to deliver the product.  The mindset of continuous improvement seeps into everyone’s mindset, and during sprint planning, we have frank discussions about the amount of refactoring we need to accomplish.  The shared context is building quality for the customer faster.  If the product owner sees how hard it is to get stories finished, they pay attention to technical debt. 

I am going to be in San Diego as part of the agile coaching exchange talking about “Healthy Ownership” and how it has changed my perspective.  As you can see, I am going to be talking about it for the remainder of my career. 

Until next time.

Break out of your rut!

I have been thinking about my craft.  A scrum master is a coach, therapist, and advocate for their team.  We have emotional ups and downs in the profession.  We are also fortunate enough to make a difference in the organizations we work.  It is rewarding but filled with the trade-offs professionals are confronted.  This week wanted to discuss a constant force in the life of a scrum master continuous improvement.

As a professional, it is easy to get into a rut.  Decision fatigue sets in and so you order the same thing for lunch or manage how you deliver software.  Routine and inertia are comfortable because it provides a false sense of security in an uncertain world.  Your heart could stop from a simple blob of cholesterol or the company share price could crumble overnight, but thanks to the routine we ignore these catastrophes.  Inertia is safe and secure.  It is also the enemy of continuous improvement and agility.  It is why scrum requires retrospectives.  The feedback allows everyone evaluate how to improve. Development includes the product owners and the scrum master.

I was doing a product increment planning meeting for the product owners to coordinate releases and plan for the future.  On a whim, I decided to include a retrospective of the last quarter to get a sense of where we are and where we are going.  A tense hour later a few lessons were learned.  Using a four “L” retrospective, I wanted to understand how as a product development team we were doing.  The answer was unambiguous.  Some things which we could control had to change.  The retrospective included passive aggressive conduct, and a few choice criticisms pointed at me.  It was worth it.

Based on what I learned, I am going to conduct retrospectives differently with the development teams.  I am going to work with the product owners more closely to help them manage their work more closely.   Finally, I am going to try and break out of my decision fatigue.  Continuous improvement matters, and if you expect it of others, then you should expect it of yourself.

Until next time.

A Little Gratitude this Thanksgiving.

Mmmm Pie!

If you are working as an agile coach or scrum master you spend plenty of time working in negative situations.  Continuous improvement means finding things which are not working and helping others fix them.  It is an often a thankless process filled with personal and professional frustration.  This week I want to take a step back from my day to day struggles and reflect on the things which make me grateful.

I am grateful for the people who work with me.  I have developers spread over two continents, and they are smart and hardworking individuals who make my day easy.  The team accepts my faux cheerfulness in the early morning during stand-up calls.  The team also put up with my grumpy admonitions to follow good code practices.  The development teams I work with are a pleasure to work with, and any scrum master would be honored to work with them.

Next, I am deeply grateful to LSC Communications for allowing me to lead agile initiatives.  It has to be strange having an entrepreneurial person in your cubicles asking awkward questions and shaming individuals to do better work.  You embrace my enthusiasm and flakey nature to help make the organization better.  The world of business moves at the speed of the internet, and I am glad you allow me the opportunity to guide the firm in that direction.

I have an understanding group of friends.  I do not spend as much time with them as I should.  We play cards, board games and plenty of military simulations.  They keep me grounded.  They keep me clean and sober.  They have supported my professional decisions, and they have been there for me throughout the inevitable ups and downs of my career.

My family generates a fountain of gratitude.  As my parents have grown older, I have become close to them.  They show me the kindness and support that is sorely lacking in the other areas of my life.  In the aftermath of my divorce, they have prevented me from wallowing in loneliness and made sure I bought groceries.  I wish I were half as good as my parents.

In spite of all the difficulty of my career, I have a lot to be grateful; my colleagues, my company, my friends, and family make life worth living.

Happy Thanksgiving until next time.

When your office resembles high school

We grow up but never out of high school

When I was a high school student, I had an irrational fantasy about being an adult.  I truly believed when I left school, I would enter an adult world and be surrounded by grown-ups acting in grown up ways.  In the thirty years since high school, I have been bitterly disappointed. This week a few thoughts about how your office resembles high school.

Any American who attended a public high school knows that the students live in a social and cultural limbo. Over achieving strivers are wedged together with cheerleaders.  Hard rock students in black concert shirts walk the hallways with people into hip-hop wearing track suites.  The public high school is one of the few places where people from different economic circumstances, races, and levels of educational acumen are forces to interact with each other.  Naturally, they self-separated and create tribes.

As a dorky kid, I was both outcast and court jester for the insular and sad world.  Eventually, I found a niche in forensics to develop my public speaking and in JROTC to improve my self-discipline. The formative time shaped me into what I am today.

To my surprise, the mean girls who tormented me in school would resurface as marketing, human resources, and project management professionals.  The homecoming kings and athletes would transform into sales professionals and executives.  The dorky people who said not to drugs, studies hard, and developed insane technical skills.  We still answer to these monster in corporate environments.  No wonder so many of us become entrepreneurs.

The first thing I have learned is that mean girls grow up to be mean woman.  I have also learned that mean people are not worth your emotional energy.  They are going to remain mean so the best strategy is to ignore them or treat them with the contempt they deserve.  Telling someone they are being a jerk is the first step in getting them to change.  It is also good to point out to their bosses that the mean person’s attitude is why projects are not getting done on time or on budget.  You will be pleasantly surprised what happens next.  A good leader will fix that situation immediately.

As for the athletes and popular people who become executives, I have found listening to sports radio and watching ESPN sports center gives me enough knowledge to talk sports without sounding totally clueless.  It also allows you to use sports metaphors to describe technical situations.  For instance, I was building a web site and running into problems with the corporate active directory.  I told a boss that the situation was like a basketball team with a player who won’t pass the ball.  A few phone calls later my issue was fixed.

I am not suggesting that you become a tattle tale but I have discovered that when interpersonal issues prevent a project getting completed leaders behave like a high school principle and step in.  It is not pretty but in a world where dollars and cents count.  The person who gets work done is always going to receive preferential treatment over the person preventing that from happening.

So none of us really escape high school but hopefully as adults we can deal with the people who act like they are still in it.

Until next time.

No More Heroes - Why?

Their is a difference between fast and agile.

I hit a nerve last week with my blog.  I spoke about the quite heroism that goes into keeping the global economy running.  It was greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm but I also received some push-back.  Someone I respected, Geoffrey Dunn, mentioned that he didn’t want to work for firm which expected heroism from its employees.  He preferred boring work days punctuated with routine successful software releases.  He even put together a hashtag stating that we need #nomoreheroes in the world of software development.  After some thought, I realized he had a point.  The global economy must also be sustainable where heroism is not necessary.  

One of the most important principles of the Agile Reformation is:

Agile processes promote sustainable development.  The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.  

I think that this is one of the most overlooked principles of agile.  Work that requires attention to detail, creativity, and intellectual muscle power just isn’t successful when it is being rushed.  Psychologists, describe a period where we are most productive as a state of “flow.”  This is a state where we have focus, and complete immersion in what we are doing.  It typically requires being well rested, limiting distractions and having the opportunity to do something which is intrinsically rewarding. 

Sadly, most companies do not see software development and technology as a “force-multiplier” for their business but as a cost center to be controlled.  Thus, they try to jam as much software development into as little time as possible with employees they consider expendable.  The worst example of this is in the computer game industry. “Crunch time” and “death marches” have become synonymous with software development because many people who control businesses is have no understanding how software is built and who does the work. They just think software is magic that can be conjured up in a moment’s notice. The reality is that human beings require sleep, food, clear goals, and empathy to accomplish goals. 

The global economy is moving very fast.  So fast that it is hard for business people to stay ahead of the decision curve.  This means they make unrealistic demands on the people who help keeping the business running; the software developers and engineers.  This is why they are being asked to work long hours.  This is why they are under so much pressure.  It is also why there is so much desire for outsourcing and contract workers because in a “gig economy” workers need to be added and removed from projects at a moment’s notice.  

I want to argue there is a difference between fast and agile.  A fast workplace grinds out work at a blistering pace but it may be of questionable quality and utility.  An agile workplace delivers on a constant basis and it is high quality and provides value to the business. A fast workplace burns through its employees like they are fire wood.  An agile workplace treats its people like the skilled artisans and helps them grow and develop.  A fast workplace is moving quickly but has no idea where it has gone and where it is going.  An agile workplace knows where it has been and where it is going to go next.  When plans change they easily make changes.  A fast company will crash in a spectacular way and then make a course correction.  

I agree that companies should have #nomoreheroes.  If firms are led correctly and with attention paid to more agile means of doing business success should be a routine activity rather than the result of heroism.  

Until next time.

Focus and Flow

Success requires focus

The biggest challenge I have had as an entrepreneur is staying focused on what needs to be done and ignoring the issues which might get in the way.  This has been a bigger problem as I spend more time at home thanks to a hoteling scheme for all the software developers and project managers at my day job.  That is why this week I wanted to provide a bit of a meditation on one of the most important agile values I know: focus.

Working as a software developer is a very creative pursuit.  You take a few rough sketches on the back of a napkin, the nebulous promises of a sales person, and the direction from your architect and transform it into living breathing code.  It is not easy and requires a tremendous amount of skill and concentration.  This is why software developers crave solitude so much when doing their work because they need to get into a state of flow.  By being able to focus, a developer wants to get into a state of flow.  By being able to be in a state of flow a developer feels more productive and capable of getting work done.  This is why you see developers warring headphones and trying to block out the outside world when they are doing their work.  It is not because they are trying to be anti-social but rather block out distractions so they can get into a state of flow.

Unfortunately, there are many things in a contemporary office which discourage focus.  First, open office plans set up to encourage collaboration usually lead to distractions as people get involved in ancillary discussions, overhear personal conversations, and distracted by colleagues.  Next, demands from upper management and sales forces for reports and status updates means that instead of focusing on the tasks at hand they have to be managing correspondence with others.  Finally, social media and the web provide constant hours of distraction when someone should be focused on their work.

I think the biggest obstacle to focus is other individuals who cannot focus.  Usually these good folks wind up in leadership roles.  The inability of these people to set priorities or focus on one task then trickles down to their subordinates and you are left with a situation where people are juggling multiple tasks and getting none of them done with the quality and speed the business requires.  Often when confronted with the question, “What is the top priority?” these people will answer with “All of them.” This in my estimation is a recipe for mental illness and failure.

So what is a person supposed to do?  I have tried as best I can as I focus on my home business to set priorities and get them done.  First things first and last things never, as the old project management slogan says.  Next when confronted with an individual who can’t set priorities, I attempt to teach them how to set priorities.  This may explain why I have been rolled off so many projects over the years because people who hire consultants don’t like to be told they are managing projects incorrectly.  I also tell people who can’t set priorities that they abdicate their responsibility to me.  So I will do tasks in the order which I see fit.

Focus is not easy to achieve in a modern work place.  The physical conditions make it hard to focus.  The interference of e-mail and instant messages get in the way of concentration.  Finally, leaders who cannot set priorities make it impossible to focus.  This is why it is important for people like myself to create the conditions necessary to allow people to focus.  If we don’t then flow is impossible and high performance is a fantasy.

Until next time.

The first customer

We keep on trucking.

As an entrepreneur, you face plenty of discouraging feedback.  The website is too wordy.  The blog only comes out once a week.  I should hire a staff of 24/7 sales people.  You name it and I have heard plenty of unsolicited guidance.  This week, I want to share some direction I received from a friend.

This life of an entrepreneur is lonely.  You spend most of your time pitching your product and chasing your dream.  People at parties get tired of you making elevator pitches.  People who you call regularly get fed up and stop returning your calls.  It is a life of rejection.  I would be lying if I said that it did not affect me.  This weekend I was spending time with friends and one of them who owns a small print show said which made a world of sense, “The first customer is the hardest.”

My doubt fell away and I understand; the first customer is always the hardest.  I am going to fail and make mistakes.  In the end, it will not matter because it lead to that first customer.  We hope you are interested in being that firm.  We offer two exciting tools Sully 2.0 for warehouse management and Tony for fleet maintenance.  Contact us today if you would like to know more.

The road of an entrepreneur is lonely but for a brief moment it did not  feel so bad.  I look forward to the journey.

Until next time.

A Bootstrap World

Bootstrap makes us better.

You might have noticed some changes to the web site.  This week I pushed some changes into production and it reflects some of the newer technologies on the web.  We are now using MVC5 and Bootstrap web to provide a consistent experience for people using the website on a mobile device or web browser.  This week on the blog I want to talk about Bootstrap and how it fits in to our mission to provide web applications which work any time and any place.

I believe that I am a late adopter of Bootstrap.  The first open source version was released in 2011 and it became the most popular download in the GitHub development project in 2012.  I stumbled upon it in 2013 when I was about to change the careers.  Another developer had exposed me to it was some kind of revelation.  Now there was a way to build web sites which looked good on small browsers and that functioned well on full screens.  It was a revelation but it did not seem like something that would work with the Microsoft technologies I was working with.

This changed with the release of Visual Studio 2013 who used Bootstrap 3.0 as its default tool to manage the look and feel of web pages.  When I saw how easy it was to work with, I quickly became a convert.  Instead of noodling around with web pages and cascading style sheets, I had a built in tool to help build web applications which scaled from the mobile phone to the big screen.  It was also great that Microsoft included tools like LESS to create my own styles and to add tweaks to my layouts.

For you the consumer this is a big deal.  Now, you can rest assured that there is an industry standard way to make sure that your web site looks good on a small browser or on a giant screen.  In addition, your web applications will now work anywhere you have a connection to the web.  This gives you significant power managing your business processes because you can look up inventory on the phone, tablet or laptop with no major interruption of service.  This is the cloud based connectivity that we boast about.

All of us at E₃ systems are excited about this technology.  It is nice that the collective wisdom of the world wide web has embraced this approach and that just means that you the consumer now have an industry standard to measure progress against.  Contact us today and find out how we use Bootstrap to help you.

New technology is fun and using a new technology to solve a business problem is even more fun.  Bootstrap is one of those technologies which does both and you are going to see more of it as time passes. It is a bootstrap world and we are living in it.

Until next time.

Graduating from BizSpark

Proud to have graduated from BizSpark

This week marks a special anniversary of sorts.  Three years ago I became a Microsoft BizSpark member.  This week I graduate from the program.  It has been a peculiar journey but I feel that I have learned a great deal.  I would like to discuss my experiences with the program.

I was between consulting jobs and was attending an ALM conference in Chicago when I asked if there was a program for a Microsoft professional to get Visual Studio in order to start building a software start-up.  I was quickly directed to the BizSpark program and I have not looked back.  I was provided with software licenses for Office and Visual Studio.  I was also given a network to share ideas and solicit for help.

It has not been perfect.  Sometimes I have felt alone in the wilderness of business.  The clients I thought I would get just by putting out a shingle have been elusive.  Still, I have been able to migrate from Visual Studio 2010 to Visual Studio 2013 and keep up on all the latest technologies.  I am now comfortable with MVC thanks BizSpark.  I have embraced Microsoft Tag until Microsoft decided to abandon the technology and thanks to NuGet was able to generate my very own QR codes to manage my business.

Plenty of ups and downs and BizSpark has been there for me.  Now I am officially an alumni of the program and I hope that I get an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of another member WhatsApp.  I understand that this is pie in the sky thinking but that was why I wanted to be an entrepreneur in the first place.

Feel free to contact us and learn more about our business.  I want to take time out to thank Doug Crets and the BizSpark team for sharing my work with others and keeping my focused on the end goal which is quitting my day job and putting other people to work.  I look forward to letting everyone know when that happens.

Until next time.

We were mobile before mobile was cool

The future is mobile computing

Last week, I discussed a few trends you missed. I want to follow up on that blog post because we are depending on technology more.  The technology with the most influence is mobile technology and it grew last year by 115%.  This week in the blog I want to remind you why you should pay attention to this.

In 2013, mobile application use increased by 115%. The use of smart phones and the dominance of data means that as a professional and business person your business is going to depend more on how you view your information.  This means, that systems should not be tethered to desk top computers and clunky systems.  Today, it should be possible to follow up on invoices, bills of lading and other important activities inside your organization via your mobile device.  So software vendors who sell you solutions which do not work on mobile devices are not doing their job correctly.

At E₃ systems we have two major releases which work on both a laptop, tablet, and mobile device.  Our Sully 2.0 system helps you keep track of bills of lading, invoices, and purchase orders from the desktop to the phone.  We have also made the transition from Microsoft Tag to QR coding which gives us way to connect pieces of paper to the web.  We are also proud to announce the release of our Tony software which makes managing your fleet of vehicles easy.  Now drivers and upload documents via their phones, receipts are accessible and you can track the maintenance of your vehicles.  This will help you with your insurance premiums and when accidents happen protect you from liability.

At E₃ systems we saw this trend years ago and it has shaped how we have created software ever since. Contact us today and find out more.  This is one trend you should not miss.

Until next time.

Light Out of Darkness

We chase the dream to find light in the darkness.

The life of an entrepreneur is lonely and filled with rejection.  I spend my time alone working on products and placing the finishing touches on code.  I find myself using my free time to solicit customers and finally I am making hard business decisions which I thought I would never make.  It is a life of sacrifice which often ends in failure and only a rare few make it.  I would not trade it for anything in the world.  This week our blog post is about why E₃ systems continues to chase entrepreneurial dream.

If you have been following the blog the last few weeks, you might have noticed that we have had to overcome several obstacles.  First, we decided to push back the release date of our Tony product and then the news that Microsoft was going to stop supporting their Microsoft Tag system.  Setbacks like that could kill a smaller business but I am proud to say that we are not dead yet.  We are currently looking for a new vendor for QR coding services and we will be releasing our Tony product this month.

It took personal sacrifice and hard work but I think that we are going to be in a very good position for 2014 providing three services for our customers to subscribe to.  Sully 2.0, Tony 1.0, and our continuing services make it possible for us to help the small to medium sized business achieve its goals.  We also have plans in the near future to continue development on our ever expanding line of products.

We also had a very good conversation with a local enterprise customer and hope that this will expand our exposure with business people in more rural communities.

We started this firm to chase a dream.  That dream was to help small and medium sized businesses grow and reap the benefit of cloud based computing.  If you would like to know more about us contact us here.  We think that we are close to meeting that goal.  When things are darkest is when people discover the light which will guide their way.  We have endured the darkness and we are ready to light the way.

Until next time.

Making No Little Plans

Greatness means making no small plans.

Being an entrepreneur feels like being a wall flower at your high school dance.  You are lonely standing on the sidelines while everyone else is out on the dance floor having a good time.  More aggravating is that when you ask someone to dance they politely reject your advances or insult you for being so bold as to imply that you even had the right to dance with them.   By the end of the evening you have a sugar high from drinking too much from the punch bowl and your self-esteem is about two sizes smaller than the start of the evening.  I seems like it takes a little courage to show up at your high school dance.

This week’s blog post I want to talk about why we keep dealing with the setbacks and challenges to try and build this business.  I hail from the Chicago metropolitan area and one of the founding fathers of this city is Daniel Burnham who was an early pioneer of skyscraper construction and chief architect of the 1893 Colombian exposition.  He said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized.”

I was and am tired of making small plans in my cubical.  I want to help other small and medium sized businesses leverage the power of the web and cloud based computing.  I want to get involved in philanthropy and help others with the opportunities I was fortunate to receive.  I want to be able to own my own office and lay it out the way I want.   Some of this is ego driven and the remainder is motivated by a strong desire to make the business community in my local corner of the world better.

We think that we have the tools to make that happen.  Our Sully 2.0 software makes managing inventory and bills of lading twenty four hours a day seven days a week.  We have a broad knowledge of agile management and we have the people who will help your organization manage the transition.  We are putting the finishing touches on the Tony fleet maintenance system. Finally, we can put together QR codes for you to help drive more business to your organization and web site.  This makes us poised for growth and greatness. No little plans indeed.

Contact us today and we will tell you more.

Until Next time.

Our Direction.

Hard work and we are ready to help you rock your business

We are currently in the middle of an upgrade and finishing up a major release which we are going to unveil next week.  I am pretty proud of the direction we are heading.  This week’s blog post we talk about some of those changes.

I founded this company because I wanted to provide tools for small and medium sized businesses to help them run their businesses for effectively. This meant web based systems where you could track invoices, inventory, and manage bills of lading.  I worked my day job and at night and weekends began building my software empire.  It was really just a software developer and a dream.  That was nearly three years ago and I am just as dedicated to the cause now as I was then.  Our Sully 2.0 system is a fine cloud based platform to make it easy for you to have a state of the art shipping and receiving system for the price of cable television.  We have mercilessly tested it with professionals inside and outside the trucking industry.  If it can meet their approval then we are sure it will meet yours.

Next week we are unveiling the release of Tony.  This software helps you track the vehicles in your fleet and the maintenance they have undergone.  No longer will you have to rifle through piles of paperwork or try to sift through receipts to know how many times you changed oil or had to repair breaks.  Now you have a simple means to view the information with your smart phone, tablet computer, or PC.  We have also folded Microsoft Tag technology into the system so you can place a simple bar code on the dash of the vehicle and scan it to receive up to the minute information.  We think that something like this is going to make life much easier for your safety and compliance departments.

E₃ also offers other services.  We will be happy to provide agile project management training for your organization.  We also offer web site design and construction to make your company web sites respond to the mobile web and drive more business to your organization.  Finally, we can consult on how to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to spread your message.

We offer all of these services and as we head into our third year we are looking forward to a break out year with customers, new challenges, and lots of stories along the way.  Contact us today and find out how you can join us.

Until next time.

We upgrade so you do not have to

Pay attention! We are upgrading.

This week we are preparing for the launch of our new software product nicknamed “Tony.”  We are also upgrading our servers from Windows 2008 to Windows 2012.  This made me think about why you the small business person should care about all these behind the scenes moves.  Today’s blog post will cover the reason we upgrade at E₃ systems.

One of the important powers of the web and cloud computing is that as a consumer of cloud services you do not have to worry about software, server space, or even operating systems.  All you have to do is open your web browser use the software.  It is up to the loud service provider to make sure that its systems are up and running rather than placing that burden on the consumer.  This is why we are upgrading.  We upgrade so you the consumer do not have to go through the experience.

It is up to us E₃ systems to make sure everything works in a safe and secure fashion.  It is up to us E₃ systems to bring you the latest technology including responsive websites which look good on tablets, mobile phones and regular PC’s.  It is up to E₃ systems to fine tune those systems for maximum performance.  For our customers, they can worry about their business and leave the upgrades to us.

This is not the most glamorous thing about being a cloud based company but I think it is the most important. We do upgrades so you don’t have to.  Manage your business we will worry about the upgrades.

Until next time.

Worry about Where and Not What

It does not matter what you use it is where you use it.

If you have not been paying attention to the news, the Personal computer is dying.  In the same breath other experts are saying the Personal computer is alive and well.  This kind of schizophrenic punditry is common in the technology business.  For a person like me who has spent over fifteen years in the business, I take these contradictory signals in stride.  The breakthroughs are never as big as advertised and the setbacks are never as dramatic as they seem.  Let me try to impart a little sane and sober guidance for you.  Where you compute is more important that what you compute with.

Frequent readers of this blog know that I have been discussing two major trends in computing where we are engulfed.  The first is cloud computing.  The second is the rise of mobile computing.  These two trends together are changing the nature of technology.  So it really does not matter what you compute with but where you are doing the computing.

If you are working in an office or need significant computing power then you will be using a PC.  If you are on the go but still need a significant amount of power then a laptop may be what you need. For the casual consume of web content and information, a tablet is all you need.  Finally everyone is getting a smart phone whether they want one or not.

The reason I am giving you this simple rule of thumb is because thanks to widely available access to the web via wireless networks and the access to cloud based system what you use is irrelevant compared to where you use them.  All you need is a connection to the cloud.

So, am I endorsing one kind of operating system or technology? No, I am not.  I am one of those weird people who believes that technology people should set asides our differences and work together.  As you can see in this video by Nokia that is wishful thinking.

What we specialize at E₃ systems are cloud based systems which work on any device.  So if you are an Apple iOS person or a Microsoft person you should have a reasonable expectation that your systems should work.  These systems should work any time at any place.  Finally, these systems should be easy to use and understand so that you can run your business more efficiently.  Anything else is just a wast of your time and money.

So remember where your compute is more important than what you compute with.  Drop us a line and we will explain it to you.

Until Next time.