Entries tagged as ‘Problem Solving’
This past weekend at the beach once again we were faced with a pigeon problem. The pigeons used to be our neighbor’s problem, but they have migrated over to our place over the last year. It isn’t pleasant, they make a stinky mess. Why are pigeons at the beach anyway? Don’t they belong in Trafalgar Square in London?
A few years ago we watched our neighbors battle the roosting pigeons and laughed. Their house has (ummm, had) a lot of little nooks and crannies under eaves that were perfect perches for a pigeon or two and their little nest. Our place didn’t have the amenities that they provided. Slowly but surely the neighbors had carpentry work done to deter their feathered squatters. They also acquired a couple of little dogs that like to bark at intruders. I’m sure that helped expedite the move.
Now, the pigeons are roosting at our house. Last year we put up bird netting to block the holes they used. They’ve managed to wiggle past that. This year, we moved on to aluminum screening. We’ll see. I hope we don’t have to resort to carpentry. I suspect we might, but we keep trying to fix the problem as cheaply and as quickly as possible. I’m getting sick of the mess on my deck.
There are a lot of “pigeon problems” in business.
- Competitors… just like neighbors, they can turn a pigeon problem into your problem. A well timed release can make the press or your customers poop all over your product. Sometimes a media darling can make your life very difficult as you’re always asked when you’ll be able to match their features.
- Customers… sometimes they ARE the pigeon problem. There are customers that you want to hold on to, and there are customers that you want to fire. You know the ones – they cost 10 times as much as a comparable firm in support and maintenance costs. They keep coming back for more. Over the long term you keep having to make concessions (repairs) to keep them happy.
- Employees…if they are doing a half-assed job. I hope this isn’t a reflection on our pigeon wrangling techniques, but fix it once, and fix it well. Don’t just cobble it together or the pigeons will come back – in software pigeons can be bugs and they can be performance problems.
Categories: Corporate Strategy · Personal · Uncategorized
Tagged: Problem Solving
Today I am going to do something that I’ve totally shied away from while I’ve been looking for a job. I’m going to write about an interview that I had this week. Yes, really. Part of my brain is still screaming “NOOOO don’t do it!”, but I’m going to override that. Hopefully that’s not a bad idea, but here goes.
First off, this is a position that I really, really want. Since I’ve been interviewing it is one of only a very few that I have been very excited about. This isn’t pretend excited, this is chomping at the bit to get started excited. I was beginning to wonder if such a job exists or not… well, it does.
The reason for this post is because I learned something completely new and different. I’ve done a lot of interviewing. I mean a LOT. I’ve probably personally interviewed well over 100 people. I’ve asked technical questions, I’ve asked behavioral question, I’ve made people really squirm. On the other side of the interview table, I’ve learned to answer questions with stories about my past rather than general feel good statements. This week I learned an interview technique that applies extremely well when you are interviewing for a role that has many different interpretations. Ask the interviewee to present what the role means to them in 10 minutes or less. SO Simple. Duh! I should have thought of this!
Actually, it’s a little more than that:
- Describe what you think that this role is
- Describe how you’d approach this particular role in this company
- Describe what makes you uniquely qualified for this role
So simple. But yet, so effective. I put together 8 slides and presented them to a panel of interviewers who then asked me questions about my background and my presentation. It was a quick, effective way to get to understand how a person would approach a job. I’m going to remember this for when I am interviewing to fill positions again.
So, you’re probably wondering… how did my interview go? I’m cautiously optimistic. My one regret is that I wasn’t able to sit down with everyone individually. It is much harder for me to make a connection with people when I am talking to a roomful. I don’t know how much that hurt me.
Categories: How Tos · Personal · Tactical
Tagged: Communication, Culture, Job Search, Problem Solving, Public Speaking
February 25, 2010 · 1 Comment
Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick.
What’s that noise? Well hello – it’s our 13 year old tank water heater. My friend, your time is almost up – you’re well past your expected lifetime you know. You’re the time bomb in my attic over my master bedroom suite. Tick tick tick. I’ve been eying you suspiciously for a while now, waiting… wondering… when are you going to leak? Will it be when I am at home? Will it be when I am out of town for a week? Will you ruin two stories of dry wall and insulation? Well, I am not going to let you rain on my parade.
I’ve been procrastinating on this, but one of my neighbors came home to water streaming down the outside of their house recently. Their old water heater blew. Yikes! I didn’t want that to happen to me too. Time to get proactive.
Boy there are a lot of choices out there for water heaters! I would love to do a solar one or maybe a tankless. Unfortunately those are about $3,000-$7,000 installed and even with the 30% federal tax credit that’s a bit painful. I don’t know if I’ll find a new job outside of NC so I can’t justify that kind of expense for a house I might wind up selling. Tank water heaters have gotten a bit more efficient as well, even if they aren’t quite as good as the solar or tankless models. My target was a nice energy star tank water heater that was about the same configuration as my old one to facilitate easy installation. Why you ask? Because my husband and I were going to install it ourselves. In this land known as Frugalistan you never pay someone to do something that you can do yourself.
My job was to pick out the water heater, arrange for delivery, and make sure that I bought enough parts to do the installation without multiple trips to Home Depot. (there are a lot of things to consider – let me tell you!) His job was to wield the propane torch for the copper piping and to provide the brawn to break the seal on the gas line. Oh, didn’t I mention? Yes, we have a propane gas heater! There’s nothing like playing with highly combustible materials on a Friday night. Together we were responsible for getting 175lbs of new water heater up two flights of stairs. I got the job pulling on the handles of the appliance dolly. Hurray! Those things are big and it sure isn’t easy maneuvering up two staircases each having a quarter turn. Good thing I eat my spinach.
I have to say – this was a surprisingly *easy* job. Cutting, fluxing and soldering copper pipe is a no-brainer. The gas line was a little disconcerting, but we reused all of the black iron pipe, so that wasn’t an issue either. The worst part of it was moving the water heater vertically. Down for the old one was easy, up for the new one was the hard part.
New water heater – $675, plumbing supplies – $100, the satisfaction of a job well done – priceless.
What is wrong with this picture? Nothing! New water heater installed and running on the left, old water heater on the right ready for its trip to the dump.
Categories: Personal
Tagged: Collaboration, Confidence, Financial Prudence, Problem Solving
I finally got around to reading this book – “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker after hearing it recommended time and time again for dealing with potentially dangerous situations and to help determine if a relationship is abusive.
This book has been on my list for a long time, but it has always been a lower priority, in the context it usually is recommended (or that I’ve seen it recommended) it didn’t apply to me at all. How wrong I was. This book applies to everyone. I was amazed at some of the common sense advice that can be easily applied to many situations at work and in your personal life.
One of the key messages that hit me revolves around how do you fire someone, and when do you do it. If you are going to fire someone for reasons other than pure performance – for example due to behavior that is threatening or otherwise intimidating you need to do it as soon as possible. This doesn’t mean that you don’t tell the person directly why their behavior is inappropriate in order to remedy the situation. The problem is that most people are loath to approach someone like this in the first place. They wait and wait until a seemingly small infraction becomes the straw that broke the camel’s back. This is bad news. First off, the behavior has been implicitly condoned rather than immediately addressed. Secondly, the perpetrator has become more and more invested in their job over time. And third, since the firing appears to be over a small matter it may be taken badly since the person knows they have done more egregious things in the past.
Another key point of this section is to make sure to treat the person with dignity. If you’re afraid of them, don’t bring muscle into the meeting. No security, no cops, no escorts. This is counter intuitive, but showing your fear and the expectation of a bad outcome actually empowers the person to create one. You are showing that this is what you expect, no? This doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be available if a situation escalates, but this backup should not be visible.
Clearly another key item is to not beat around the bush when you tell someone they are fired. Be clear. You don’t want them to assume that it is just another performance appraisal and a request for change. Also do not negotiate. I loved the boomerang line – “If you had made the decision to leave we would have respected it, and we expect the same from you.”
There are many more lessons in here that can be used in running a successful business. I’ve also added more intuitive skills to my arsenal due to reading this as well. As a woman who has extensively traveled, I’ve become accustomed to late night arrivals and dark parking lots and garages. This book helps me to be better prepared to recognize a situation before it becomes a bad one.
Categories: Book Reviews
Tagged: Attitude, Performance Reviews, Problem Solving, Stress, Women in Business
Every now and then I notice that my weight has gone up by 2 or 3 pounds. This usually happens after a vacation or the holidays. Unfortunately it never wants to go back down on its own, so I figure that it’s time for a tuneup. The best way to do a tuneup is to do a diagnostic to figure out what is going on. Right now I’m in the middle of a tuneup and its not been a lot of fun, but I know I can do better.
First off, I take a look at my exercise program and determine if I’ve been lazy. Am I skipping the hardest exercises? Have I reduced the number of days I lift or my reps or weights because I’m not feeling strong? The worst for me is aerobic exercise. I hate it. Have I been avoiding running or getting on the stairmaster? Exercise is pretty easy for me to address. Food is always harder. I think this happens to everyone. You eat healthy but eventually you sneak in a cookie, or maybe some cheese, or some chips, or what about pizza and beer after volleyball? After a while you get used to that and you add something else. Before you know it, you’re eating a lot more calories. Time to start weighing and measuring. My favorite site for calorie monitoring is fitday.com. It’s free and easy to use and it makes it painfully apparent when I’ve been adding “snacks” to my diet.
This approach can be used on your business as well. Have you examined your costs lately? You don’t want to be cheap, but being frugal sure can help in this economic environment.
- One of the easiest ways to cut costs is to look at your broadband, telephone, and wireless expenses. If your contracts are up you will almost always be able to find a better deal. How do I know? I’ve done it. Actually I cut costs *and* I tripled the bandwidth of a company I worked for by doing a little comparison shopping.
- Does you company have multiple sites? Do you do a lot of travel between them? Do you have a corporate discount at a local hotel? Check out the competition. There is sure to be someone who wants to undercut your current deal.
- If you’re doing a lot of travel – don’t underestimate the savings you can obtain by planning in advance. Short notice flights will cost you dearly.
- If you’re really small do you negotiate with vendors to cut training costs? I’ve managed to secure free conference attendance for my team – something that should have cost $800+ a person. I’ve done this in two different companies.
- When you buy a new hardware or software platform do you ask for a discount? You’d be surprised what you can get if you just ask nicely. I’ve managed 10-35% discounts pretty easily by asking.
This isn’t rocket science, it’s just a matter of paying attention to what you’re doing. Whether is what you put in your mouth at meals or what you spend on an ongoing basis – the solution is the same.
Categories: Corporate Strategy
Tagged: Financial Prudence, Goals, Problem Solving, Taking Responsibility
Having held both product management and product architecture roles I’ve had a lot of experience determining product requirements. One thing that I’ve learned is that there are never enough hours in the day to implement everything that you’d really like to deliver to your customers in the time frame expected. Releasing a product can be compared to a 3 legged stool. You have the requirements or content, you have the amount of resources available (people and machines to do the work), and you have the amount of time it will take. One or more of these has to give in order to ship a product.
In this economic environment adding resources is unlikely – companies can’t afford to add to their payrolls. Many are reducing them. Adding too many resources really doesn’t help anyway. We’ve all seen the impact of too many new hires – everything actually takes longer to get done because of the ramp up time and the rework.
Typically a release is scheduled to occur at a set time as well. Many industries have large trade shows at which you want to demonstrate your product’s new features. Sometimes you have a large potential customer with a tight deadline and that will drive a release as well.
The one thing that is left is winnowing down the product features or content. How do you do that? Well, you have to prioritize and decide what is “good enough”. This can cause a lot of friction in organizations.
A lot of arguments over “good enough” are a symptom of a fragmented corporate culture. Disagreements about what is really necessary come about when the various teams involved have completely different understandings of what the customer’s needs and wants are. This usually happens when information coming directly from customers either wasn’t obtained at all (so the teams were making it all up on their own), or the information wasn’t disseminated throughout the organization in the form of priorities.
Questions to ask in prioritization:
- Is the functionality an integral part of the product as a whole? Is it a way to showcase the product and sell it? Is it the “hook” to get customers with?
- How frequently will the customer use this particular feature or bit of functionality? Always, frequently, often, sometimes, rarely, never(!!!)?
- If this feature fixes a problem, how likely will it be that the customer hits it in their use of the existing product?
- How difficult is it to access this feature or functionality? Number of screen traversals? Clicks? Custom programming or scripting? Does this make sense based on how often a customer will use it?
- Do competitors have this functionality? If so – is it a major selling point of their product? Is this a feature that the company wants to compete with? (or is this not an area of focus?)
- Are there standard performance requirements for the functionality that must be met? (UI, networking) If not, what will the customer tolerate? What will delight the customer? How hard will it be to delight them vs satisfy them?
- Is this a feature multiple customers are begging for? (might be a reason to give them an unpolished version for feedback)
- Is this a feature that your biggest and best customer (or potential customer) really wants?
- Is this a problem multiple customers are complaining about? (and how vehemently? Might be a reason for some extra polish)
Product roadmaps and feature prioritization are living documents. As you learn more about your customers and competitors your product has to change and grow. Make sure you concentrate on the right things first.
Categories: Corporate Strategy · Tactical
Tagged: Priorities, Problem Solving, Productivity, Taking Responsibility
Thanks to The Mad Peacock’s Is It Safe? post for my inspiration today.
In small companies there isn’t a lot of focus on redundancy and reliability in personnel nor in infrastructure. How many people have worked for a company where the corporate e-mail system has gone down for an entire day – or more? I have. Has anyone had a failure in their source code control library that lost a day or more of work across an entire engineering organization? Yup – been there too. Have you ever had someone quit on the spur of the moment and someone else had to figure out what they were working on and what it did? Oh yeah.
Companies are running lean these days and that means that every penny is scrutinized. Unfortunately a lot of times decisions are made that can lead to catastrophic consequences. Consider this scenario – due to budgetary reasons you determine that an automated $40,000 backup and restore system is too expensive, so you have IT run scripts to backup critical data on a weekly basis. Near the end of a weeks worth of work, a critical server goes down. That means that every bit of work your 20 person engineering team introduced has to be mentally recalled, reimplemented, and retested. If your average loaded labor rate is $100k (very low) your average weekly cost for those engineers is ~$38,000. One outage would pay for the entire system – a system that could protect not only engineering data but other corporate data as well. You may argue that a server failure is unlikely, but do you really want to play Russian roulette with your information – especially if it is the intellectual property that makes your company valuable?
There are certain areas that should never be single points of failure.
- Product Development Repositories
- Gold Masters for Released Products
- Financial Records
- Customer Contracts
- Customer Support Issues
- Expertise in Crucial Systems Development
You may be thinking that I am focused on redundant data. That is key, but I believe that the last item in the list is the most important. It is expensive to have two people know exactly the same things – most times it just isn’t feasible. However, through careful dissemination of information through design and code reviews (and the associated documentation) you will be able to piece together developer intent and methodologies much faster than if someone comes in completely cold.
Remember to consider the opportunity cost of NOT protecting your resources, not just the outlay for the processes and tools to do it.
Categories: Corporate Strategy
Tagged: Financial Prudence, Priorities, Problem Solving
I recently read the Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. 
Some parts of this book feel a little bit outdated due to the primary case study that is used: sustaining vs disruptive changes in the hard drive industry from the 1970s until the 1990s and how the companies in the industry coped with the changing business landscape. However, the messages that are represented are still valuable.
Key points for me include:
” Most managers learn about innovation in a sustaining technology context because most technologies developed by established companies are sustaining in character. Such innovations are, by definition, targeted at known markets in which customer needs are understood. In this environment, a planned, researched approach to evaluating, developing, and marketing innovative products is not only possible, it is critical to success.
What this means, however, is that much of what the best executives in successful companies have learned about managing innovation is not relevant to disruptive technologies.”
In a nutshell, if you are going after the same customer base or market segment you always have – with a known set of needs you won’t get any market research information to help you create disruptive technologies. In reality this data will discourage your attempts.
-and-
… the vast majority of successful new business ventures abandoned their original business strategies when they began implementing their initial plans and learned what would and would not work in the market. The dominant difference between successful ventures and failed ones, generally is not the astuteness of their original strategy. Guessing the right strategy at the outset isn’t nearly as important to success as conserving enough resources so that new business initiatives get a second or third stab at getting it right. Those that run out of resources or credibility before they can iterate toward a viable strategy are the ones that fail.”
Here, the message is that no one gets disruptive technologies right on their first attempt. Make sure to conserve resources and iterate repeatedly until you find that market or that strategy that works.
-and-
Not only do you need the right people to be able to develop your disruptive technologies, you need the right processes, and you need the right values or priorities. This is what makes it so hard to succeed in large companies which have qualified people and the money for the resources. However, the bigger the company, the more rooted in existing processes it is, and the more likely that the priorities of the organization as a whole are tied to large percentage gains in revenue which a new disruptive technology in a nascent industry is unlikely to provide.
Categories: Book Reviews
Tagged: Creativity, Innovation, Management, Priorities, Problem Solving
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience article research showing that having a positive attitude improves problem solving through the use of insight.
“The distinction between insight and analytic solving has been anecdotally recognized for millennia and has been the subject of scientific inquiry for nearly a century (e.g., Duncker, 1945; Maier, 1930; Kohler, 1917). A plethora of behavioral evidence details how these two solving processes differ. Analytic processing involves deliberate application of strategies and operations to gradually approach solution. Insight, which is considered a type of creative cognition, is the process through which people suddenly and unexpectedly achieve solution through processes that are not consciously reportable. Insight solutions tend to involve conceptual reorganization, often occurring after solvers overcome an impasse in their solving effort, and are suddenly able to recognize distant or atypical relations between problem elements that had previously eluded them (Gilhooly & Murphy, 2005; Smith & Kounios, 1996; Schooler & Melcher, 1995; Weisberg, 1994; Schooler, Ohlsson, & Brooks, 1993; Metcalfe & Weibe, 1987; Metcalfe, 1986). When solution is achieved, these factors combine to create a unique phenomenological experience, termed the Aha! or Eureka! moment.”
The study is pretty dry – and goes through how the experiment was setup in detail. However I think the outcome clearly is expected. I don’t know about you, but when I am in a positive mood and not anxious I am able to do much better at making cognitive leaps. The more stressed out I get, the more I fall back into “brute strength” mode and use analytical capabilities to solve problems.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Attitude, Problem Solving, Stress
Or better known as – what can go wrong will.
Those of you who know me well, know that I have a need for speed. I like fast cars and fast jet skis. I’m not so much about top end as the fun of getting there. I’ve earned the name “Linda Leadfoot”. As I’ve gotten older I’ve really really REALLY tried to ditch the car problem and drive like grandma. Cars are great toys. Cars are EXPENSIVE toys. That money can always go to a better place.
However, we still have one very fun very fast little car in the family. It’s an Audi S4. It’s not a new one, and it is coming up on the 100,000 mile mark, but it still looks and runs like new. 2.7 liters of 250 HP twin turbo joy under the hood, a 6-speed manual tranny, and quattro all wheel drive. My baby is as surefooted as a mountain goat in snow and ice and hugs turns like nobody’s business. However, we’ve been seriously debating selling it because we don’t need it and I’m unemployed. We inherited a nearly new car that gets great gas mileage from my dad and sadly the Audi sits in the garage more days than not. I think that the S4 knew we were going to try and take it to a dealer this week that is running a special “buy your car” promotion (limited time only! – uh yeah, right) to see what they will give us…
Yesterday while rounding a turn and doing some fancy footwork I was alarmed to find the (ABS) and (BRAKE) lights coming on along with a very loud warning beep. Uh oh. What was that? I wasn’t going that fast. REALLY – remember – GRANDMA! I wasn’t sliding and the (ABS) didn’t engage. Then, a little closer to home on a straight approach to a stop sign… there it went again. This can’t be good. This is not something you can have going on when you are thinking about selling a car. It’s like I have Herbie the love bug living in my garage throwing a fit.
I spent this morning diagnosing the problem with a little prodding from my husband who was at work. Gotta love him. He never says – “oh honey I’ll look at that when I get home – don’t worry about it.” He always says – “why don’t you see if you can figure it out?” He expects me to be able to do all of the mechanical and electrical things that he can do. Sometimes I can and sometimes I really screw things up – but that’s a story line for a different time.
So, this morning found me crawling around under the dashboard looking for the connector plug for the VAG so I could hook the car up to my PC and get the diagnostic codes out. Yikes. ABS controller problems. The bad news is that there really is something wrong. It is fairly common. If you take it to the dealer it will be about $2000 to fix. Double YIKES! The good news is that there are aftermarket solutions available that aren’t anywhere near that expensive.
I don’t get it. Why do cars decide to break down precisely when my severance and vacation time pay ran out? Murphy. Good old Murphy. Always have to watch out for that guy.
Categories: Personal
Tagged: Personality Types, Problem Solving
