Amid the Noise and Haste

Graduation Day from Pace University...it finally happened!

I haven't posted in a long, long time.  For the past 23 months, my time has been filled with papers and projects and teams and conference calls.  But it paid of nicely.  I just graduated with my MBA from Pace University's Executive MBA program. 

I can't say enough about how much I got from the program.  It taught me about cohorts, team work, myself, and of course business principles and practices which were immediately practical and useable.

Cycle 9 starts Aug. 16th, and they are always looking for more good applicants. By the way, Module 8 has a record-breaking 28 enrollees. Now's the time to get an MBA! To find out more about Pace's eMBA program, visit www.pace.edu/emba or contact Jim Parker, Director - Executive MBA Program and Adj. Assoc. Prof. of Marketing for the Lubin School of Business, directly at (212) 618-6653 or jparker@pace.edu.

Google Helps Sort Through the Noise and Haste

Google is a handy resource and we are pointed to some of the helpful tools you can use on a daily basis by two of my favorite blogs, Common Craft and Business Opportunities Blog.

First, Common Craft has released their video about using Google Docs, Google Docs in Plain English which you can watch here:

Click To Play

Next up, the folks at the Business Opportunities Blog gives us a list of 15 iGoogle gadgets to help with productivity.  Here are the first 5 gadgets provided:

1. Today List
2. iReminder
3. Time sheet recorder
4. Google Analytics
5. Google Services

To find out more about these tools and to read the rest of the list, visit the Business Opportunities Blog.


Technorati Tags: tools productivity Google

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Seth Godin on Labor Day

Well said Seth.

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Test Your Company's Customer Focus

From the department of common sense:

Shannon Holman over at If You See Something Say Something points us to A Three-Question Test of Your Company's Customer Focus from John Hagel of Edge Perspectives.  As yourselves this:

1. Who in the organization holds real decision-making power? Is it the organization that manages relationships with the customer or is it some other group?
2. What are the primary measures of performance for the firm?
3. What is the primary focus of the brand promise of the company?

From John:  "The companies that really succeed in the customer relationship business will have no trouble meeting this test.  All the rest had better decide which of the other two businesses they really want to focus on."

ALM sold to Incisive Media

The company I work for, ALM Media was sold, as announced last week. Our new parent company will be London-based Incisive Media, a rapidly growing international business-to-business publisher with a firm focus on the financial and capital markets, good reporting, and research and information.

News reports have picked up in the last few days (see sampling below), but amid the noise and haste, the opportunity to expand internationally and on the Internet is a great deal for both sides. Incisive Media has operations in London, New York, and Hong Kong while ALM has publications in DC, Miami, NY, San Francisco, Dallas, Philadelphia, Fulton County, GA and more. In the deal, Incisive was represented by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and ALM by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

News reports:
The American Lawyer
WSJ Law Blog
Shore Communications

NY Times

PaidContent.org
Crain's NY

Reuters

Folio

Press Releases

ALM Media: http://www.alm.com/pressRelease.asp?record=285
Incisive Media: http://www.incisivemedia.com/public/showPage.html?page=456433

2007 LSSO RainDance Conference Wrap Up - Part 1 of ???

I wrote a while ago about the 2007 LSSO RainDance Conference.  This year's RainDance was the best ever and it can be summed up in one word:  LISTEN! 

Amid all the noise and haste of the law firm business development RFP, client pitches, client development, selling - but not "sales," what we all tend to do is forget to, as my co-panelist Charlie Miller from Patton Boggs put it, "shut up and listen."  Quite simply, how will you know what your client wants if you don't stop talking about your firm and let them tell you what they need...enough about me...what do you think of me? 

As John Klymshyn so daftly put it in his keynote address, Moving the Sale Forward, "YOU" are the center of YOUR universe.  But that applies to the client as well.  THEY are the center of THEIR universe.  If you don't step into their universe to get to know their needs, wants and issues, they won't care about your firm and all your great lawyers.  Listen to your clients.   

I moderated a panel entitled "Capturing the Voice of the Client" where Charlie Miller, Kyle Volluz from Goldman Sachs Specialty Lending Group, and Roberta Montafia discussed different ways to hear your client's voice.  So often these days we hear about client interviews and formal surveys, but sometimes just picking up the phone (off the clock) and checking in is just as, if not more, powerful than sitting down once a year to ask how things are going.

Remember, we were given two ears, but only one mouth so we could listen twice as much as we talk.

There were so many more great speakers and presentations that I will have to cover more in future posts, but to get a glimpse of what was covered, here is the schedule from the conference.

Common Sense isn't so common...

I really love coming across smart, simple, common sense logic.  The folks at Trizle recently wrote about how to finish big projects.  How do you finish big projects?  Adopt agile development...here's an excerpt:

You start focusing on the most important sucka in the project — get that out of the way, then fill in the other parts.

That way, you allow yourself (or your team/business/yadda) to use the magic right away — instead of waiting for a completed product with lesser important parts.

Remember, in whatever humongous product you’re building, keep this in mind:

• 20% of the project serves 80% importance.

Likewise, regarding that above ‘twenty-percent’:

• 20% within the twenty-percent serves 80% importance within the twenty-percent.

In other words, completing 4% of the project (i.e. 20% * 20%) serves as the absolutely-freakishly crucial role in the project’s success, which you can complete within weeks (or days/hours).

1. So, instead of aiming to complete 100% of your big-frickin’ project, complete the crucial 4%.
2. Then, build outward with successive releases.

They make it sound so easy...sigh.  There's a lot more to their post too.  I suggest everyone read it.  In summary, sift through the noise and haste of the project to find the most important pieces to focus on first, then build outwards.

Tribal Wisdom and Corporate America

In searching for a project, I came across a little site with a ton of information...but this struck me as "oh so true..."  I have to hand it over to Alan Chapman who adapted it - the true author is not known, but I am happy to credit them!  Here is the information mostly in whole from http://www.businessballs.com/quotes.htm:

Tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

However, in the corporate world, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Giving horse and rider a good bollocking.
4. Re-structuring the dead horse's reward scale to contain a   performance-related element.
5. Suspending the horse's access to the executive grassy meadow until   performance targets are met.
6. Making the horse work late shifts and weekends.
7. Scrutising and clawing back a percentage of the horse's past 12   months expenses payments.
8. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
9. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride   horses.
10. Convening a dead horse productivity improvement workshop.
11. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
12. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
13. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
14. Outsourcing the management of the dead horse.
15. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
16. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead   horse's performance.
17. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve   the dead horse's performance.
18. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less   costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to   the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
19. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses. And   the highly effective...
20. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

I think I have seen quite a few of these "strategies" employed in my experience so far in the corporate world.