Adrian Trenholm

You’ll never work alone

Dwayne ( ), Bren ( Slacker Manager ), and Skip ( Random Thoughts from a CTO ) just launched a really interesting blog and Google group today, called Never work alone . Here’s how they explain it:

What’s Never Work Alone all about? We’ve all been through “trial by fire” management situations, and have faced difficult management and leadership dilemmas at various points in our careers. As active participants in the brain trust on the internet, we also understand the tremendous power of Community. The goal of Never Work Alone is to provide a community for managers and leaders to share their experiences and challenges, help each other grapple with issues, learn from each other, and advance the state of the art in enlightened leadership.

Basically, once you have join the Google group , you can e-mail in any management dilemma with which you would like some help. Dwayne, Bren and Skip will select one e-mail per week and put it up for discussion on the Google group. Anyone in the group can respond with anything he or she thinks might be helpful and the bloggers will then summarise the group responses on the blog.

Years ago I read Tom Peters’ and in almost every chapter he suggests that getting together with kindred spirits is a great way to learn and develop. I really love the way Dwayne, Bren and Skip are providing online facilitation for that meeting of minds.

Unfortunately, the name also makes me think of the football (soccer to the Americans). So, with apologies to Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Anfield kop :

Work on
Work on
With hope in your heart
‘Cos you’ll never work alone
No, you’ll never work alone

Great project - good luck with it, guys.

Add comment October 10th, 2005

Leadership focus: do or delegate?

Phil Gerbyshak pitched in with a super comment on Make things better: aphorism or action item? :

… it may be something that you’d really rather not do, or something that really doesn’t make things better…at least not in the moment. I think the key is to focus on the big picture and see how this fits overall in your life. If you can find a way to fit it in there, it’s often worth doing.

The other thing that I find that often helps is finding someone else you can energize, because it’s more her/his strength than yours… .

I think Phil’s comment is right on the money: “do X” can be reframed as “delegate the doing of X to the most appropriate person.”

For example, after each meeting of the City of London Toastmasters Club , I used to help our Sergeant-at-Arms rearrange the chairs, take down the club banner and generally reset the room. It’s a mundane, but vital thing, because if we leave the room untidy, we might well lose our venue. But this year, I am President of the club. Is it right that I roll up my sleeves and move chairs? Or should I be talking to our guests and signing up new members?

I took the view that my role now is to represent the club with professionalism and show our guests the warmest possible welcome, not snub them because I am busy with heavy lifting. But what an uncomfortable transition. Those chairs need shifting, after all.

In the end, I reframed: instead of shifting the chairs myself, I remind our members to assist the Sergeant at Arms, leaving the VPs and me to talk with our guests and sign up those who wish to join.

Sometimes, leadership focus is as simple as turning “do” into “delegate.”

1 comment August 19th, 2005

Make things better: aphorism or action item?

Marshall Goldsmith , via Lisa Haneberg , extols all leaders to “Make things better”:

Real leaders are not people who can point out what is wrong. Almost anyone can do that. Real leaders are people who can make things better.

Lisa says:

I know that I have poo-poed to-do lists in the past, but I also know you all still have them. So put this item on your to-do list every day.

Make things better.

In a thoughtful comment on Lisa’s post, Bob Ashley suggests that “Make things better” is simply an aphorism not an action item, a triumph of form over content.

All three of them have something - let’s fit it all together:

1. Leaders do make things better
2. Make things better is too generic to go on any to-do list (sorry, Lisa), but
3. Make things better is a great standard by which to benchmark your to-do list

Thus, at your next planning session, review the projects and actions on your lists and think: does this project or action make things better? If it does, great; keep that item on your list and get busy. If it does not, can you reframe the action item so that it does make things better? If you can’t reframe it, purge it from your list, then focus on those actions which do make the leadership grade.

I wonder what Phil Gerbyshak from the Make it Great blog makes of all this?

3 comments August 14th, 2005

Music isn’t a loaf of bread… and consulting ain’t stationery

Johnnie Moore has posted a fascinating little snippet from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy , regarding the free online distribution of Wilco’s latest album. Says Tweedy:

A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that’s it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it’s just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.

To which Johnnie says:

Big message here, and not just for the music business. Do you want to treat your customers as collaborators? If so, you have to let them make their own meaning out of what you say and lighten up around “owning” ideas. (It’s called conversation).

Spinning off from that, my thoughts turned to consulting. Too many people - both clients and consultants - treat consulting like stationery, to be bought, used up and replaced.

For clients, the problem with this approach is that when all your “thinking” is outsourced, your staff don’t learn anything new. So when more thinking is required in the future, you have to get another agency to do the work instead of doing it in-house. In the end, those people who do have a mind to be creative will get bored and leave your firm.

Consultants and other external advisors have done much to encourage this situation with “proprietary methodology,” the consulting equivalent of Tweedy’s “pieces of plastic, packages of intellectual property.” But so much good quality business education is available now, so freely, on the web and elsewhere, that this approach to selling consultancy will eventually backfire. In the end, clients reward those suppliers who give them choices, instead of locking them in.

To distinguish themselves, consultancies and agencies of all stripes must collaborate with their clients at every level. We must leave our clients empowered by, not dependent upon our services.

If you are a consultant, build client learning and development into the engagement from the outset. Clients? Demand that your consultants do so, and fire them quickly if they fail to deliver.

3 comments May 18th, 2005

Good luck, Todd Storch!

Todd Storch , of the Business Thoughts blog, is riding this weekend in the FedEx Kinko MS 150 , a two day cycle tour through North Texas and Southern Oklahoma, in aid of those living with multiple sclerosis. He stands to raise over $3,000 for a very worthy cause, so why don’t you nip over to this post and say good luck? And you can even sponsor him .

Of course, you may be thinking: what’s in it for me? If you are, Todd would approve - WIFM features in Todd’s regular Word of the Week slot on his blog. In fact, Word of the Week is just one of the many good things that’s “in it for you” if you visit Business Thoughts. For example, check out:

1. The future of podcasting: Todd’s a radio guy , but he embraces change. When Todd decided he wanted to know more about podcasting, he asked groundbreaking podcasters to share their knowledge with all of us, via his Future of podcasting series. Whether you want to understand the business impact of broadcasting on the long tail , or you need technical tips to record your own podcast, Todd and friends have created an invaluable resource.

2. People you need to meet: When Tom Peters said “you are your Rolodex,” he wasn’t kidding. Today, bloggers might say “you are your blogroll.” Todd reads widely and, in the People you need to meet category, he takes time to introduce us in depth to some fascinating friends and family - business people , music people and people

3. What if? From creative thinking - What if you still saw the world through children’s eyes? - to business continuity planning - What if your best employee quit today? - Todd’s What if? s will give your grey cells a thorough workout.

Todd is generous with his thoughts and with his deeds and he has his eye on the future - but not in some impractical, sci-fi kind of way. With Todd, you learn what’s coming up and what you can do today to get ahead of the game. My advice? Add Business Thoughts to your RSS reader now .

And wish Todd luck for Saturday .

3 comments May 11th, 2005