Many businesses strive to chase the numbers by offering a number of products and services. Piles of bread, hundred different types of sandwiches.

Doesn’t matter if their product X is almost similar to competitor’s  product Y – they try to win over the price war. And its okay even if they don’t conquer the whole market, they are satisfied with just 3% of the overall market share.  It’s just one of the many product offerings they have.

Doesn’t matter if a customer gets frustrated with their services and leaves for the competition. He anyways represents a segment in which they’d find two more like him.

For a few businesses, only for a few, the opposite is true.

For one customer, one sandwich at a time, prepared and served with great care.

Freshness of the bread, quantity of cheese, quantity of ingredients, amount of sauces, time spent on backing and smile on the waiter’s face while serving – each detail is taken care. Not surprisingly, such businesses flourish regardless of the type of sandwiches they sell.

Not serving anything is a better choice than serving mediocre sandwiches.

See Also:

1. Two Simple Yet Rarely Practiced Secrets of Managing a Service Business
2. If You Want to Have a Great Project Team
3. Great Leadership Insights By Dan McCarthy
4. I’m not a project manager. Why do I need to learn project management?

1. Two Simple Yet Rarely Practiced Secrets of Managing a Service Business
2. If You Want to Have a Great Project Team
3. Great Leadership Insights By Dan McCarthy
4. I’m not a project manager. Why do I need to learn project management?

It is simple like hell.

1. Care about details.
2. At least don’t deliver bad experience.

Amazing thing is how little attention is paid to these two, how often we encounter service businesses who just don’t get it.

You can easily find a web hosting provider who guarantees 99.99% site uptime and you’ll find at least two instances in a month where your website is not functional. On asking the hosting support, the answer would be something like this: because of some blah blah blah, it is not up. It should be live as soon as the problem gets resolved…Vague answers. No attention to detail. No care about the customer.

You can easily find a restaurant whose mission is to serve and make customers delighted but after organizing a group lunch of 50 people, when you discover that the invoice is 25% higher than what was agreed, the restaurant manager would say: Maybe it is mistake of my staff maybe yours but nothing can be done once the invoice is prepared. Let me act as a third person. I can give you a good advice: You should have taken the order details in written! Which experience can be worse than this in hospitality industry?

In today’s business, real product or any product or service is:  Great user experience.

Overwhelming Google ads or Twitter marketing campaign can’t undo one bad experience. Don’t forget that customers’ public testimonials are just one tweet away.

If you can’t deliver great user experience, you don’t get paid. If you get paid for less than great user experience, you’ll not last longer in the business.

See Also:

1. Disaster-Prone Business Organizations 30
2. Simple 4 Step Approach Towards Success
3. Little Known Secrets of Performing Self-Retrospectives, The Agile Way!
4. Your Business Is Thriving If…10
5. Seven Simple Ways to Start Making Your Life Better

1. Disaster-Prone Business Organizations 30
2. Simple 4 Step Approach Towards Success
3. Little Known Secrets of Performing Self-Retrospectives, The Agile Way!
4. Your Business Is Thriving If…10
5. Seven Simple Ways to Start Making Your Life Better

Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.  ~ Tony Robbins

In today’s fast paced world, project and lives are getting more complex and continuously changing. What used work twenty years ago, is no longer effective.

For example, in the Non-Google days just the  knowledge of information had given an edge to some people over others. Now, that skill has been replaced with an ability to query Google (Well, this example is little hyperbole but you got the point).

To get an edge, ability to look at the things from the right perspectives is required.

When you execute projects (or take ownership of making arrangements of your sister’s marriage), what’s the most important goal that you want to achieve?

Serve the stakeholders and achieve expected results, isn’t it? Still most projects fail and (many marriage arrangements suck). Alas!

What if you are provided with a different perspective of managing the projects? Possibly, it might be the most effective tool in your project management toolkit.

A new book by H.W SIT and Ling Bundgaard, “Lateral Approach to Managing Projects: Simple Principles for Achieving High Customer Satisfaction and Mutual Profitability” offers insights on a different approach to managing projects.

Here’s the highlight of what I’ve learned by reading the same:

1. New approaches of meeting contractual agreements.
2. Overcoming problems caused by ambiguous terms.
3. New disciplines for creating and increasing the value of your services and deliverables.
4. How to overcome hurdles and speedup customer acceptance even when conditions are less than ideal.

It also includes structured, rapid implementation methodology with four powerful exercises:

1. Exercise to create your own success
2. Exercise to empower your client
3. Exercise to assert your authority
4. Exercise to carrying out your leadership role

It also talks about creating value in small chunks, that resonates well with the very approach that I advocate –  Deliver early, Deliver often. This not only helps in managing projects but in living the life that matters.

This 165 page book is presented in a short story form and it’s very easy to follow. Indeed, a worth to have book to excel your project management abilities (and your life too).

See Also:

1. Basics of Projects In Controlled Environments Using PRINCE2
2. Four Characteristics of Typical Projects
3. Do You Want to Win the Battle or the War?
4. How Team Relationships Are Affecting Your Ongoing Projects?
5. Five Chronic Problems With Failed Projects And How To Overpower Them With Common Sense

1. Basics of Projects In Controlled Environments Using PRINCE2
2. Four Characteristics of Typical Projects
3. Do You Want to Win the Battle or the War?
4. How Team Relationships Are Affecting Your Ongoing Projects?
5. Five Chronic Problems With Failed Projects And How To Overpower Them With Common Sense

1. Your business consistently gets more leads than your current business capacity;
2. No matter with which project team your customers interact, their delight level is almost the same;
3. You take 4 week summer vacation and do not get any ‘urgent’ call from the office;
4. You have generally happy employees. Their lives are balanced, they are able to produce their best and enjoy their life at fullest;
5. ‘Department Wise Headcount’ report is topped by Operations department (not support departments such as HR, Admin or accounts);
6. You don’t think to open new geography every quarter – percentage of your repeat business is very high;
7. There’s only ONE version of mission statement across the organization;
8. Consistent Organization specific Enterprise Environment Factors – that extends sense of predictability in projects execution;
9. Even if you pay similar to what market pays, people are thriving to join your organization. Keywords here are culture and experiences;
10. People in the organization prioritize their work by ‘Importance’ not by ‘urgency’.

See Also:

1. Distinguish the Distinctions of Your Business
2. Disaster-Prone Business Organizations 30
3. Do You Manage Your Offshore Software Solutions Business This Way?
4. You Don’t Need Your Own Business to Become an Entrepreneur
5. Two Simple Yet Rarely Practiced Secrets of Managing a Service Business

1. Distinguish the Distinctions of Your Business
2. Disaster-Prone Business Organizations 30
3. Do You Manage Your Offshore Software Solutions Business This Way?
4. You Don’t Need Your Own Business to Become an Entrepreneur
5. Two Simple Yet Rarely Practiced Secrets of Managing a Service Business

Though it brings rewards in the end, most of us are afraid of challenging our own thought patterns as if it were an invasive brain surgery.

We’re designed this way, right?

Wrong.

But yes, we’re conditioned this way.

Few weeks ago I had a weekend discussion with one of my friends who shares a rare frequency and runs a successful design firm.

We talked about building the business, creating a-list teams and providing a-class customer service.

He was discussing with me about a customer feedback: designers working with his firm were otherwise very good but lacked innovation. He said that it was true for even their Chief Designer who had experience as little as 18 years in the design industry.

Conclusion was to hire a fresh (but brilliant) design graduate whose job would be to passionately challenge each one of the designs that the design team come up with.

Last week, I meet my friend again to hear the good news that his customer is very happy with recent design innovations that his team produced.

It worked like a charm. Why?

Because the beginning of the end of any great endowment is: “Falling in love with your own creation”.

Sure, you’ve to believe in yourself, your vision and your abilities. But, at the same time, following the same way of thinking just because that’s the way you’ve always done it, is the sure-fire way to attract devolution at the lightning speed.

The decision of bringing in fresh talent to challenge generated healthy conflict. The conflict was to challenge their designers’ fixed way of being and to ensure that only best comes out in the end.

Sometimes, it’s better to have someone in your team who has eyes to look at the things from fresh lens.  Maybe it’s good to have ‘No, but, Can we not…?’ kind of people rather than yes-men.

Photo Credit: livingonimpulse‘s Flickr Photostream

See Also:

1. What’s better? Being able to be specific or being able to do the work?
2. The Guaranteed Way To Best Manage A Project
3. 10 Peaks For Creating Performance Focused Teams
4. Contribute Beyond Your Title With Assumed Responsibility And Take The Right Decision!
5. 10 Signs You Are Happy At Work

1. What’s better? Being able to be specific or being able to do the work?
2. The Guaranteed Way To Best Manage A Project
3. 10 Peaks For Creating Performance Focused Teams
4. Contribute Beyond Your Title With Assumed Responsibility And Take The Right Decision!
5. 10 Signs You Are Happy At Work

… if you do things differently. For example, consider the following conversation:

Photo Credit: Maveric2003

Client: I need to implement XYZ feature on top of agreed upon requirements. I would expect that the deadline is not changed.  Your team is working on my project for last 6 months but now the business dynamics have changed so this feature needs to be accommodated.

Project Manager: Well, this feature does not fall into the project scope.  Theoretically, we should not do any changes in the agreed upon requirements if we want to meet the deadline. If you are ready to change the deadline, I can analyze its impact, raise a ‘Change Request’ and send it to you for the approval.

Client: Agree, but this feature is very important from the business perspective. I cannot afford NOT to have it by the deadline.  Can you not add more resources and get it done?

Project Manager: Adding resources will take time. I need to contact the department that controls resources and that will take some time. It cannot be added overnight.  I can request some of the resources to work overtime however then the additional rates will be applied for this change request.

Client: You do not understand my problem. I have a specific budget and I cannot afford it at this much higher rates. Can you not do it in the normal rates?

Project Manager: Of course I would do it if I could however it is beyond my control. Please put your legs in my shoes and look at this situation from my perspective.

… and the contract negotiation goes on.  Here, Project Manager and the client are on opposite side. They are fighting for their own interest. That’s not agile.

In agile, there is no push. People are on the same side; working towards achieving the same goal. Agile focuses on client collaboration. You agree to work upon a fixed amount of time and allow the client to change the scope for all the items except work-in-progress.

You deliver early. You deliver often. You keep improving. You retrospect and keep aligning your skills and strategies with business expectations.

Clients love it. Suppliers love it.  People love it.

Contract negotiation is a great skill practiced by many project managers. Agile has easier alternatives which ensure win-win. Choice matters.

See Also:

1. Work To Be Done 7
2. Are You An Offshore Software Project Manager From India?
3. Project Manager Who Loves Chatting with the Client At Her Convenient Time
4. Dependable Project Manager, A Pen and Few Papers
5. I’m not a project manager. Why do I need to learn project management?

1. Work To Be Done 7
2. Are You An Offshore Software Project Manager From India?
3. Project Manager Who Loves Chatting with the Client At Her Convenient Time
4. Dependable Project Manager, A Pen and Few Papers
5. I’m not a project manager. Why do I need to learn project management?

Even today, many companies focus on looking-good kind of practices than actually being good.  For example,  read this mini-saga.

Photo Credit: mikebaird's Flickr photostream

Doing Rather Than Being

Tactically lionized Steve joined a company as a VP, Sales and was on his first sales call. He had to win over an old client to initiate a crowning deal. The client was happy with the presentation but enunciated, “You can’t paint over a bad experience with good Sales efforts.”

But now the age is changed, the customer mindset is changed, they have become smarter, sharper and declared that now such companies can not keep making chump of them anymore. Either be able to add value – by bringing in Linchpins or doing whatever is necessary  - or get lost.

See Also:

1. Mini Saga – Decision Making
2. Mini Saga – Lights, Camera…Action!
3. Mini Saga – Focus
4. Mini Saga – Limitationless Elisha (And The World, Too!)
5. Mini Saga – Executing The Dream

1. Mini Saga – Decision Making
2. Mini Saga – Lights, Camera…Action!
3. Mini Saga – Focus
4. Mini Saga – Limitationless Elisha (And The World, Too!)
5. Mini Saga – Executing The Dream