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

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

… then focus on having a great project team. You can learn about how to have a great project team may be from a book or a senior colleague but the best way to truly learn it is to start building one.

Photo Credit: rkramer62's Flickr Photostream

Focus on learning by doing. Read on for some tips on the same and start building a great team.

1. Have A-grade or potentially A-grade people in your team. Also make sure they’re coachable. If not, they should not be in our team.
2. Consider attitude first, skills second. In an interesting analogy, skill is just like an important software while attitude is like an operating system. If you don’t have reliable operating system, how can you expect your important software to be reliable?
3. Make sure that your people focus on one thing at a time – inspire them to become world-class in whatever ONE thing they do. Multitasking is a big excellence killer.
4. Mentor, coach, train and arise your people because quality of your project is a reflection of the growth of your people.
5. Take care of people and they’ll take care of your project (and the business at large).
6. Make sure your BEST team member works on the MOST valuable part of the project.
7. Inspire them to take massive actions and fail fast. Deliver often. Get feedback of their work. let them learn from mistakes. And, get it repeated what they do best.
8. Perfection is a myth; what matters is excellence. Excellence comes only when they do something excellent…and to do something excellent it is very important that they do ‘something’ and then seek to understand client’s feedback on whatever they’ve done. Then empower them to improve in whatever areas they need to.
9. Connect your team with a more meaningful purpose. For example, if you’re building software for doctors; make them aware that what they are building is going to help save thousands of lives. It is more motivating than  ”I’m building a data-form to capture some patient data.”
10. Inspire them to start small, deliver early; deliver often. Inspect and adapt.

See Also:

1. How To Inaugurate Effectiveness In Your Project Team
2. I’m not a project manager. Why do I need to learn project management?
3. Dependable Project Manager 9
4. Prevent Your Project from Collapsing
5. The Inordinate Team Member

1. How To Inaugurate Effectiveness In Your Project Team
2. I’m not a project manager. Why do I need to learn project management?
3. Dependable Project Manager 9
4. Prevent Your Project from Collapsing
5. The Inordinate Team Member

Photo Credit: kchbrown's Flickr photostream

When you were a child, your grandmother told you, “You’re special, you possess a unique charm; you’re like a hero!”

First, you laughed…then you consciously started liking it and eventually started believing that you’re a hero… someone very special.

Then, after years of education, you became a software professional and got a good job with one of the top IT organization, but still, in the back of your mind, you have treasured the old image, “I’m a hero!”

That’s where the problem rests for many software teams.

Since you consider yourself a hero, you inevitably strive to reinvent everything. Right from what other team members should have done to organizational processes or what the customer should have expected instead.

Your coarse argument would be, “No one in this organization can work like me. If I were not in that team, that big problem could have never been solved.” Or “People out here do not know even 10% of what I know and I don’t think they will be able to perform the task so effectively when I am not in the team.”

Instead of being open and learning from past mistakes of colleagues or everything else around, you insist on doing everything on your own; at the cost of the client or the organization.

You spend most of your time in beautifying your own code, debugging your less experienced colleague’s code or re-creating architecture of half-developed business application.

You need to understand that you’re not a hero. At least not at the workplace. If you become one, it is not going to give you benefits after a certain point. Reserve that narcism for your visit to your grandmother’s house.

Be less heroic. Be less special. Be more agile.  Focus more how your team can add value. Ship early; ship often rather than investing your time in less necessary artifacts in order to build a product or a service that works. Inspect and adapt. Remember, none of you is as powerful as all of you.

See Also:

1. Stop Talking
2. Stop using Instant Messenger

1. Stop Talking
2. Stop using Instant Messenger

When the performance appraisal happens and one colleague is promoted,  many of his co-workers don’t feel good. They compare themselves with him and conclude that their boss favors only who flatters her. Always, that may not be the case. For example, read the below story called Navigate Without a Map.

Photo Credit: David Masters’ Flickr photostream

Navigate Without A Map

Background
Peter and Scott – both joined the company on the same day as Analyst Programmers. Both were coming from different background but have two qualities in common. Both were hard-working and committed to their work.

Promotion of Peter
After a couple of years Peter was promoted as a Lead Programmer while Scott did not get the promotion. Scott got very upset with this, drafted the resignation letter and went to Stella, his Department Manager. He complained that Stella does not value hardworking staff and promotes only who blandishes her.

The difference
Stella knew that Scott also worked hard for past two years but she had a point to address and make Scott realize the difference between him and Peter.

So, she discussed a scenario with Scott, “While working as a dedicated developer with an offshore client, if you reach a limbo stage when there is no work for couple of weeks. How’d you proceed?”

“I’d call the client and ask for the work”, was Scott’s reply.

Stella explained further, “The client responded that he needs to send you some task specifications but he would be able to send it only after two weeks when he’ll return back from the vacation. So the limbo stage continues. What should be the next step?”

Scott said, “Well, since I have no work, I’ll work on my pet project or do something else. May be I will also take some leaves. Given it is a Dedicated Developer Contract, client is going to pay for the two weeks anyways so he can’t blame it on me or the organization.”

“Well,” said Stella. “Let’s discuss the same scenario with Peter and ask what would he do.”

Peter responded, “Well, first of all I won’t come in the limbo stage because I keep communicating with the client very frequently and always make him aware about the work status. But still if that stage comes and I do not have anything on my platter, here’s what I’d do:”

1. Optimize the code for performance – I’ll utilize the knowledge I’ve gathered in Application Performance Improvement classes I attended in the last weekend of April.
2. Recheck the code comments and take it to the next level. I understand that there is no comparison between well-commented code and just the code.
3. I’ll do some research and learn more about my client’s business. I’ll also prepare a document which will outline the knowledge I’ve gathered by performing the research. I’ll share that with the client also.
4. I’ve some high level idea about what changes he wants to make in the software I’m working on. So I’ll make some draft user interface and modified architecture diagram with added application scalability.
5. I’ll record such additional activities and submit a report to the client such that he can know how I’ve utilized my time for which he is paying.
6. I will do…

“OK, Great! This information is sufficient for what I was looking for. You may go and continue your work, Peter.” interrupted Stella.

The realization
Scott soon realized the point which Stella wanted him to understand. He understood that Peter has an edge over him. He observed that:

1. Peter has absolute clarity about where to go and how to proceed even when no path is given.
2. Peter has invested his time to learn different technology verticals which are even indirectly related to his core strength by investing extra time over the weekends.
3. Peter is a true servant leader. He’s willing to learn his client’s language (business) so that he can serve his well.
4. Peter does not need a map to navigate. Instead he is willing to travel when there’s no map. He will try hard to improvise application’s architecture and would work on making it still better.
5. Peter utilizes the information in a way; it becomes meaningful to the client and the organization. Most important is that he keeps all the important information in the written form.

“I want to take back my resignation,” were Peter’s words. “I’ll learn from him and be an equal or better version of Peter.”

Only hard work and commitment are not sufficient. You need to develop an ability to navigate without a map (Yes, wordings are taken from Linchpin by Seth Godin – a great read, indeed.)

We’re in a different age where rulebooks are not matching pace with the changing demands of the workplace so start thinking beyond the rulebooks, take personal risks and excel at what you’re doing. Remember, observation power is a big differentiator. And, excellent use of observed information may take you a long way.

May be that’s the reason we are blessed with two ears and two eyes but only one mouth. So speak less, observe more. Maintain a mental database of observed information, index it often and use it to navigate when no map is available.

See Also:

1. Mini Saga – Focus
2. Contribute Beyond Your Title With Assumed Responsibility And Take The Right Decision!
3. Waiter vs. Grabber
4. Are You Proud of the Email that You Just Wrote?
5. Contrast Thinking

1. Mini Saga – Focus
2. Contribute Beyond Your Title With Assumed Responsibility And Take The Right Decision!
3. Waiter vs. Grabber
4. Are You Proud of the Email that You Just Wrote?
5. Contrast Thinking

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