If you want something done right, do it yourself. That may be your mantra today. If you ask for assistance you may find that your would-be helpers do a half-hearted job at best. For a variety of reasons, some of your friends and associates just aren’t fully present today, so you will have to rely on yourself to get things going. But don’t worry – even though you may feel let down at first, the help you need will be there in due time. Meanwhile get started and move forward with determination, and you will set an excellent example.

I don’t put a lot of stock in horoscopes. I consider them to be silly entertainment at best, but this one was appropriate for a number of reasons. First of all, I didn’t read my horoscope until AFTER I had decided to “do it myself”. Today I started power washing our sidewalk and driveway and that is a job I really am not feeling happy to do. This came about after receiving a $1600 quote yesterday (holy crap!) to have someone else do it. Ouch. We rarely pay anyone to do anything, but we thought just maybe if it was cheap enough we’d pay someone to power wash. Eh, not so much. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to do this chore again. I did it once before a few years ago. Our driveway is 250′ long and it can take 3-4 days to power wash the entire thing. It’s a cold undertaking when the weather isn’t downright hot out. Besides, it is an awfully dirty job. The vibration also leaves me with the grip strength of a 3 month old baby. Ah well, one day down, maybe I can pawn off the rest of the work on my husband. My horoscope did say something about help arriving when I need it – didn’t it?

I’m finally addressing a space in my house that I have been turning a blind eye toward for the last 13.5 years. Yeah, it really has been that long. It is a closet that has developed a life of its own. When we built our house we didn’t put any shelves or clothing rods in it. We wired it with 220 so that “someday” we could put in a sauna. In the meantime it has become the junk collector. Too big to fit elsewhere? Stuff it into the closet. Boxes, suitcases, a monstrous wall hanging bookshelf was even sitting on the floor (sadly, it was filled with books).

This weekend I came to terms that the day when a sauna gets installed sadly will never come. We already have a hot tub, and we don’t use it as much as we could, I can’t imagine sinking money into a sauna too. Besides, we are getting close to pulling the trigger on selling our home and moving to something that requires less maintenance. No point in spending a boatload of money.

I managed to talk my husband into building out the closet from scratch. He did a wonderful job. Once the shelves were in place I took over. All that stuff has a shiny new coat of white paint on it now and the caulking is done. Tomorrow I’ll hopefully be able to paint the walls and then we can move all of his clothes out of the closet we are currently sharing. Wow, we’ll each have a closet of our own. I guess once we do that I should paint “my” closet too – it hasn’t been done for 13 years either and I don’t want something else that I am turning a blind eye toward.

The funny part is that I’ve been ignoring this for years and it has been grating on me. I should have the situation resolved within 4 days of being at home. It didn’t take 4 days – in fact it only took a couple of hours each day (except for Saturday when the emptying, building, and installing occurred). It is amazing how much of my energy was spent elsewhere when I could have fixed the situation with a few well chosen hours of work.

Now. How does this apply to work? A lot of times there is resentment and frustration when a team member habitually expects others to pick up their slack. That’s the worst case scenario – and probably is very similar to what happens in a bad relationship.

I’ve been continually impressed with my “new” (ok, not so new anymore) team. Everyone is self directed and very motivated. When someone is out for personal reasons, others just pick up the slack. It isn’t a big deal. Nobody complains, they just work on whatever is the highest priority at the time. It’s great!

I wish I could find the source for the original quote – “you can never be too kind of too fair.” It’s a unique work environment where you see this in action almost every day.

I knew going into this that my new manager was pretty hands off. Personally I like it that way. I have had managers that were in my back pocket and quite frankly I find it irritating. Leave me alone, I know what I am doing. I will get done what you need me to do, just make it clear what my priorities are (and if you don’t, I will – so don’t be surprised if I don’t do what you think is the most important thing first). I’ll come to you if I run into problems that I can’t solve by myself. If I don’t ask for help, please stay out of my way. I’ll tell you what you need to know so that you don’t get caught unaware.

I guess what I am trying to say is that even if you have very independent people working for you remember to acknowledge what they are doing. They may not need guidance to get their job done, but an occasional pat on the back to let them know that they are on target is invaluable. Some of the folks that report to me have been working some crazy hours lately. It was pretty obvious based on what was accomplished over the last week. I’m hoping that my couple of words (thank you) meant as much to them as my manager’s meant to me this week.

The difficulty factor of this rescue clearly was high, so we didn’t take any pictures while it was in progress. We figured we had less than a 50% chance of success and didn’t want any reminders of a botched attempt. Besides, time was of the essence, the poor little fellow probably had been stuck there overnight. First step – remove the wood frame from the house. This had to be done blind, my husband had to lay face down on the deck with one arm stuck through the railing with a crow bar. I leaned over the railing from the top and helped guide him so that he could pry off the frame without hurting the snake. Once that was done, the “snake in a frame” was lowered 3 stories by a rope to the ground below.

This is where I stepped in with a pair of scissors. Luckily the bird netting was easily snippable and i started to free the snake from the tail end up. As I cut him loose he started to wiggle, which made things a bit harder to deal with and he kept trying to insert his tail back in the netting. Silly snake, stop that. At this point hubby had to hold him still. Snakes are strong, even little skinny ones like this guy. Corn snakes are constrictors so they can be tough to straighten out. I wasn’t convinced that he would be ok, there were parts of him that were protruding and bulging through the netting, but as I carefully unwrapped him and clipped the tight spots he started to look like a regular snake again. Whew! It was such a satisfying feeling to put him on the ground and watch him happily slither away. He was such a beautiful creature.

My husband and I have a habit of being in the right place at the right time to save critters in distress. We have two cats that surely would have died if we hadn’t rescued them as kittens. The youngest one was trapped (and howling) in a storm drain. It took us two days, some tuna fish as bait and a squirrel trap to get her out. We also learned the delicate art of getting a hummingbird out of a garage. That could have been a disaster, because they beat themselves silly against ceilings and can die in a few short hours without nectar. Untold numbers of turtles have been rescued from the roads in our area. Neither one of us can stand by and watch an innocent animal in trouble. It just isn’t in our nature.

So, we saved a snake, but we gave the pigeons a great access hole. DOH! It was time to fix the pigeon problem correctly. Down came all of the aluminum screening. I washed all of the guano out of their favorite roosting location. That in itself was an hour long miserable, dirty, smelly task. Out came the mitre saw and up went custom cut and fitted pressure treated wood barriers. We will never have a pigeon problem in this spot again. We should have just fixed it right the first time. Less time, less money, and no traumatized snake would have been the result. Ah well, another lesson learned.

One of my dreams is to own my own business. I vacillate between a high tech business and one that is not. There are benefits and detriments to both. I’ll touch on the non-high tech options a bit. There are a lot of costs. Here are but a few.

• Loss of salary – ok – I’m already there, starting a business now doesn’t mean I will lose anything. However I might delay how long it takes to get back to a good salary.
• Loss of identity – I’ve lived and breathed high tech my entire career. It is part of who I am. That would be gone. This one really hurts. I have a strong resume and I would be turning my back on it.
• Loss of stability – I’ve always had a “job” working for someone else. This is all up to me!
• Loss of expertise – Time to learn something new – and not be an expert anymore.
• Closing a door – Once you leave high tech, it is almost impossible to get back into it because the technology changes so quickly. Is it worth it?

What’s the cost of your dream? Do you think it is worth it? I’m still trying to figure that out.

If you want to get a feel for what this book is like – check out an adaptation from the book on his website. How Do You Know If Your Dream is Obtainable?

I’ve never read any of his books before and I just happened upon this one in the library while I was in the throes of navel gazing about my own future. These last 9 months (nine!! where does the time go?) of job searching and soul searching have been both good and bad. At first I really needed the time off but more recently I’ve determined that it is time for me to *DO* something productive. The question has been: “what?” Do I want to keep doing what I had been doing? Or do I want to try doing something completely different with a huge learning curve and a higher likelihood of failure? I’ve gone back and forth from one day to the next. I’ve been on interviews that seriously felt like my soul was being sucked out of my body… and then I’ve regretted not being more enthusiastic about the position! Well, maybe my gut was trying to tell me something. I think that it is time for a change. I am always happiest when I am learning something new. The bigger the learning curve and the more support I have while learning, the better off I am.

This book really helped me put my dreams about the future into better focus. I think that my favorite question is “The Ownership Question: Is my dream really my dream?” Who hasn’t said that they want to do something because it’s what they are “supposed” to do? Clearly that’s not your dream. Or maybe you are doing something for someone else… that too, not yours. Sorry. How about you want to keep working on something because you’ve been doing it for all of your career but it isn’t fun anymore? hmmm. Sounds like that isn’t your dream anymore either.

I’m all for leveraging strengths and I know what mine are. I connect with people and I like to think that I bring out their best. I don’t lose sight of the big picture. I am extremely organized and I can be detailed oriented when necessary. I can run a complicated project like no ones business. I just need to apply all that to something a little different than what I have been doing.

I leave you with this final thought:

“Think of your comfort zone as a prison you live in – a largely self-created prison. It consists of a collection of cants, musts, must nots and other unfounded beliefs formed from all the negative thoughts and decisions you have accumulated and reinforced during your lifetime.” Jack Canfield

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.

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.

When I was younger my teacher once asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. Over the years there were a lot of different answers, but this one I distinctly remember. I told her that I wanted to have enough money to build a community where people who weren’t as fortune could live and get educated so that they could break the cycle of poverty. I haven’t done that – it takes far more money than I will ever have. I know there are many issues with that plan, but I think that it speaks to my ideal of “doing good”. Who wouldn’t want to do good daily in their job?

I don’t think that I could live with being the person who created the atomic bomb – no matter how amazing that discovery was. I’d rather be the person that made nursing homes just a little safer for seniors, or maybe someone who found a way to make green technology really affordable on a mass produced scale. What would be better than saving the planet one kilowatt at a time?

I don’t need to be famous in the good I do, I just want it to matter to someone even if it is in the littlest way. I believe that if enough people are doing good it provides a mechanism for all of the little things overcome the bad. I expect the best from strangers and treat them with kindness (still working on occasional bouts of road rage, but hey, I’m only human!). I’ve recycled since I was a child – before it was fashionable. I’ve carried reusable shopping bags for more than 10 years – who needs plastic. I buy produce, meats, cheeses, and bread from local farmers and bakers. I never buy pets, I always adopt from no kill shelters. If you come to my house in the winter – better bring a sweater… In the summer prepare for a heatwave. I do these things in my personal life, and I want to do them in my professional life as well.

I’m still searching for my next opportunity and I prefer it to be a “good” one.

Don’t you?