How Will You Apply This Experience in Your Next Job?

Today marks the end of my brief run as Chief Technology Officer at Granite State College. On my way out, a respected colleague asked me, "How will you apply the experience you gained in your next job?" The question is an excellent one to which I didn't have a good, immediate answer. And because it's an excellent question I continued to ponder it throughout my last day.

Logically deconstructing the question, I see the first component as, "What experience did you gain?"

• Cross-functional project management can be a full-time job. Unless the focus is on developing one's own staff, assigning one person to tackle this kind of project management in tandem with operations management is risky for the organization.
• People can make work harder than it has to be. Something that only involves a few hours of technical work can end up taking several days, due to barriers that other people erect for myriad reasons. And because those barriers are erected by people, removing those barriers becomes extremely time-consuming and exhausting.
• When working with Salesforce, iterate frequently and demonstrate progress continuously. Adding new functionality to Salesforce is easy, and as a result it's easier and more productive to release features rapidly in small batches. In short, an agile approach to feature delivery would be best in Salesforce. 

Data Loader bean for SQL Server 2012 Express

To connect Salesforce's Data Loader (28.0) to a named instance of SQL Server 2012 Express:

1. Set the SQL Server Browser service's startup type to "Automatic"
2. Start the SQL Server Browser service
3. Use SQL Server Configuration Manager to enable the TCP/IP protocol for the named instance
4. Download the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server
5. Extract the downloaded sqljdbc4.jar to %DATA_LOADER_HOME%\Java\lib\ext
6. Create an org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource bean in your \conf\database-conf.xml file by adapting the sample database-conf.xml bean for SQL Server 2012 Express
7. Create a simple extract process to create records in SQL Server to test the configuration. Refer to this working set of database-conf.xml, process-conf.xml and an SDL file as a guide.

Additional Info

Along the way you may encounter numerous errors. Below are some of the ones I encountered and how they were resolved.

FATAL [main] process.ProcessRunner topLevelError (ProcessRunner.java:238) - Unable to run process sqlServerApplicationExtractjava.lang.RuntimeException: com.salesforce.dataloader.exception.DataAccessObjectInitializationException: Database error encountered during connecting for database configuration: insertApplication.  Sql error: Cannot load JDBC driver class 'com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver'.

• Solution: Extract the downloaded sqljdbc4.jar to %DATA_LOADER_HOME%\Java\lib\ext

Caused by: java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.6 is not supported by this driver. Use the sqljdbc4.jar class library, which provides support for JDBC 4.0.

• Solution: Delete sqljdbc.jar from %DATA_LOADER_HOME%\Java\lib\ext
• In my case, I had extracted both sqljdbc.jar and sqljdbc4.jar to the \Java\lib\ext folder

Caused by: com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: The TCP/IP connection to the host localhost, port 1433 has failed. Error: "Connection refused: connect. Verify the connection properties. Make sure that an instance of SQL Server is running on the host and accepting TCP/IP connections at the port. Make sure that TCP connections to the port are not blocked by a firewall.".

• Solution: Edit the connection string to specify a named instance, "localhost\SQLEXPRESS" instead of just specifying the server "localhost"

Caused by: com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: The connection to the host IGNEOUS, named instance sqlexpress failed. Error: "java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Receive timed out". Verify the server and instance names and check that no firewall is blocking UDP traffic to port 1434.  For SQL Server 2005 or later, verify that the SQL Server Browser Service is running on the host.

• Solution: Start the SQL Server Browser service

Caused by: org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (The server sqlexpress is not configured to listen with TCP/IP.)

• Solution: Use SQL Server Configuration Manager to enable the TCP/IP protocol for the named instance

RedirectHelp Page to Integrate Google Sites with Salesforce for Context-Specific Help

If you want to use Google Sites for contextual documentation in Salesforce, the following steps will enable your users to trigger a contextual search in your Google site when they click "Help for this Page":

1. Deploy the RedirectHelp page to a public site in your Salesforce org
2. Open your Google site
3. Perform a search for any keyword (e.g., "help")
4. Copy the resulting URL. It should look something like, https://sites.google.com/a/granite.edu/technology-playbook/system/app/pages/search?scope=search-site&q=help
5. Edit the RedirectHelp page. Set the baseURL variable to the Google site query URL, with {#section} inserted as a placeholder for the query keyword
6. Copy the public URL of the RedirectHelp page
7. On the "Help Settings" page in Salesforce, set the Re-direct Help URL to the public URL you just copied

Note: When you are satisfied with the functionality of the RedirectHelp page, you should set the pause variable to "0" so that the redirect is instantaneous.

Additional Info

Google Sites is a great, cost-effective way to create documentation for customized, enterprise systems such as Salesforce. However, integrating the two is not seamless out of the box.

Salesforce's Help Settings allow one to specify a Re-direct Help URL, which can be set to the base URL for a Google site. For example: https://sites.google.com/a/example.com/help/

But the Google site would not know what to do with the default loc, target and section parameters that Salesforce automatically adds to the URL.

Since the section parameter really provides the contextual keyword for the Online Help request, it would make sense to perform a search through the Google site for the keyword whenever a user clicks "Help for this page". Deploying the simple RedirectHelp page achieves this goal without custom Apex or JavaScript.

Note: This solution was last tested in Summer '13 DE and EE orgs.

Data Loader process.bat Error: The system cannot find the path specified

When trying to run process.bat for Salesforce's Data Loader from the command line, I encountered an error, "The system cannot find the path specified."

The problem turned out to be that I was not running process.bat from the %DATA_LOADER_HOME%\bin folder.

Running process.bat from the folder where the BAT file was located (shown below) solved the problem.

The root cause of the error is that process.bat (in Data Loader 28) looks for the JRE executable in a relative path, assuming the user is running the script from %DATA_LOADER_HOME%\bin.

How to Install Java 7 Plugin for Firefox on Windows Server 2008 R2

If you have to set up Windows Server 2008 R2 environments and try to get the JRE 7 plug-in to work in Firefox on the server, you may not have found it to be an intuitive process.

The quickest solution seems to be:

1. Open Google, and search for "java plugin verify"
2. Click the result with a title similar to "How do I test whether Java is working on my computer?" See the screenshot below for reference.
3. Click the Free Java Download button
4. Click the Agree and Start Free Download button. This should prompt you to download an installer such as "jxpinstall.exe".
5. Once the download is complete, close Firefox
6. Run the installer, and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation
7. After the installation, return to the verification page to make sure the Java plugin for Firefox now works

For some reason, downloading and installing the JDK or the JRE from Oracle's website does not install the plugin correctly for Firefox. This is the only reliable way I've encountered so far of getting the plugin to work in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Be Courageous and Get On With It after Graduation

Blue skies and sunshine set the tone for Granite State College's commencement ceremony yesterday, celebrating the accomplishments of hundreds of newly minted alumni. Juggling full-time jobs, families, disabilities and more while tackling rigorous curricula, many of these graduates model values of persistence and discipline that all of us can emulate.

Yet... as the songs, speeches and thunderous applause all drew to a close, I couldn't help but to ponder silently: What's next for each of them? What will they do with their education and degrees? While completing the years of coursework is commendable, earning a degree is still a fairly structured process with a well-defined beginning and end. Life, however, is very open-ended, and life's unknowns are exactly what face the graduates as each one descends from the stage, leather diploma cover in hand.

I wonder whether they were moved by a common message from the speakers, that all of us can do something extraordinary for at least one other person, if we set our hearts and minds to it. Hal Jordan posed a challenge to the audience: "Be courageous. The opposite of courage is not cowardice. It's apathy." And apathy is what worries me. With so many resources invested by all parties in this education, apathy is a sure way to net little in the end.

Apathy is not usually intentional, either. I think it's just the comfortable default. When there is a clear goal in sight, we can motivate each other to reach it. But once the concrete objective of completing a collegiate program is attained, one doesn't always leave with a clear goal for what's next. Change the country? Change our state? Change our local community? These sentiments sound great, but it's unclear how to really make a difference. Instead, I fear that we will simply go back to the known goal of improving our own situations.

So, I have just one wish for all who were touched by #GSC2013: Each participant at commencement today picks a single dream or aspiration and defines a short-term goal to move in that direction. Then, as Lucile Jordan advised, we can "get on with it." Let's achieve the monumental eventually, starting with a realistic game plan that builds on the momentum of graduation.

Maintaining Inbox Zero: No Emails in Your Inbox

"Inbox Zero" was a dream that began to look realistic when I decided to separate my emails into tiers: Chatter notifications, Basecamp notifications and everything else. When Chatter notifications were all that I was seeing in my inbox, it was easy to empty my inbox on a daily basis. But the illusion of having responded to everything faded very quickly as the number of unread emails piled up in a separate folder lurking just beneath my inbox.

Finally, to dispel the illusion and to actually respond to all incoming email, I took control of my inbox by making one simple decision. That decision is simply to check my email just twice a day, once in the morning and again in the evening. And now I am able to consistently meet a 24-hour response time to emails during weekdays.

Implementing the decision required just a few major behavior changes:

• Schedule 90 mins per session to handle email. Time not used in a session can be reallocated to other activities.
• Spend no more than 6 mins responding to an email. If more time is required, flag the email for follow-up. As a courtesy, after flagging an email for follow-up, I generally reply to the sender to let him or her know that I have received the email and need more time to craft a full response.
• Once read or flagged, either move the email into another folder or delete it.

The point of this change was to increase productivity by reducing stress, anxiety and workplace distractions from two things: constantly switching into and out of Outlook, and worrying about unread emails.

If you try this or are already doing something similar, have you been able to maintain inbox zero? Or does your job demand a different way to handle email? While I am far from completing all of my tasks on a day-to-day basis, I take comfort in knowing that I can at least respond to all emails that come my way. After all, communication is a key component of everyone's work.

Tip: To follow through with eliminating email distractions, turn off email notifications in Outlook, on your tablet and on your smartphone.

Tip: The articles below may provide additional perspectives on handling email:

• Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload
• Empty your Inbox: Process and organize your email more efficiently
• Managing Email Effectively
• SXSW Killed My Inbox Zero: Email Lessons From The Front Lines Of Tech(sas)

I Share, Therefore I Work

One of my staff made an off-hand remark to me, "No one knows what you've been doing lately." After I got over the initial shock of the message, I immediately suppressed my inner voice that was saying, I don't know what you've been doing either. I've heard that part of leadership is putting a good filter on that inner voice.

But more importantly, I started to explore this troubling statement more deeply as a symptom of a more fundamental, pervasive problem.

From the situation, I deduced the following:

1. My staff member doesn't know what I'm doing. (This is a euphemism, because another way to say this is that my staff member doesn't think I'm working.)
2. This is likely because my staff member has not seen or heard of any productive activity that can be attributed to me.
3. Obviously (or perhaps not so obviously), I have been working.
4. So, why doesn't my staff member know that I've been working? Simple: I haven't updated him.

You may jump to the easy and reasonable question, "So, why haven't you updated him?" My excuses would be equally easy and reasonable:

• I manage 10 staff, including 4 direct reports, overseeing quality control of our products and support of personal and enterprise technology in the workplace
• I manage a CRM implementation project with 10 team members having a May 13 deadline
• I manage an online admissions application project with 7 team members having an April 30 deadline
• I manage a customer and partner single sign-on project with 2 team members, institutional partners and outside consultants having a June 30 deadline
• I manage countless unmet needs and high expectations coming from all departments, including my own
• I am trying to hire additional staff on a tight budget to take on vast responsibilities
• Blah, blah, blah...
• In short: I have no time.

Well, now... How very self-centered of me, to say that "I have no time." Do others have more time? Probably not. What's so special about me that makes my lack of time so significant? Nothing. And if I am already time strapped, what the hell am I doing writing a blog post complaining about not having any time? Because I'm supposed to be a leader who solves departmental and organizational problems, and right now I believe we have a big problem that I am partially addressing with this post.

And that problem is inefficiency. How much time do my staff waste complaining among themselves that I'm not doing anything? How much time do my staff waste by going down one path only to find out later that I am heading in a different direction? How much productivity is lost because my staff feel lost and suffer from low morale? I don't know the magnitude, but my gut says I'd probably pop a vein if I saw the numbers.

I believe that great work comes from happy staff, and if their happiness and productivity depend on knowing what I'm doing, where I'm going and why, then I must prioritize the communication about my work, even above completion of the work itself.

Communication leads to coordination. Coordination leads to responsiveness. Responsiveness leads to adaptability. Adaptability leads to a competitive advantage that will help us not only to operate but to grow, transform and even persevere in a challenging economy and an unsettled industry.

And in a modern Web 2.0 environment that demands efficiency in all processes, including communication, meeting synchronously with each staff member or even with all my direct reports at once is simply not sustainable. The channel is too narrow, time consuming and logistically difficult to setup due to its synchronicity. But thankfully, we have an alternative channel that has completely opposite characteristics: Salesforce Chatter.

Chatter is broad, allowing me to potentially reach everyone with every post and comment. Chatter is fast because I'm typing and my audience is reading, compared to me speaking and them listening. And Chatter is easy because I can share my thoughts immediately, asynchronously without having to pull people together to gather at a specific location at a specific time.

So, I need to communicate broadly and frequently to keep my staff happy, coordinated and productive, then I believe I need to share, post and comment more on Chatter. This activity is no longer optional; it's a matter of the organization's strength and long-term survival.

You've probably heard, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" How about: If a man operates in an office and no one knows about it, did he actually work? What was the real, net value of what the man did? And who gives a Mars bar about it?

Impertio Ergo Operor. I share, therefore I work.

How to Lose Weight and Change the World

"Happy New Year!" Between saying it and hearing it said, the phrase must've popped into my life over a hundred times in the past 24 hours. Yes, it's a new year. But while I sincerely wish my family, friends and colleagues the best possible start to the next 365 days, at the same time a question starts forming in the back of my mind: What will it take for me to have a "happy" 2013?

Perhaps the answer starts with identifying what left me less than happy in 2012. A pretty simple task, considering 2012 was by and large a very positive year. So, what left me wishing for different outcomes?

Off the top of my head, I think of two tangentially related challenges: Mastering all the responsibilities in a new job position, and weight management. Without going into all of the details, the gist of the matters are that I still have personal skill gaps to bridge in my new position, and I now have many more pounds of excess flesh to shed in order to return to a healthy weight.

Without anything obvious between them, I'd like to offer two connections shared by the two items above: First, both are roadblocks in my personal mission to build a more harmonious world. Second, and perhaps more significantly, both challenges are rooted in habits that could use revisions.

I look at the challenges I face at work and the weigh control challenge I face at home, and it seems to me that one thing is clear: If I want to tackle and overcome more complex problems at work and in the world where I don't have direct control, I should start by proving that I can completely own a process over which I should have full control: maintaining a healthy weight.

In contemplating the weight problem (and by extension the larger problems), I think back to one of the books I added to my favorites list in 2012 was The Philosopher's Diet by Richard Watson. Watson offers a simple idea: Losing weight and keeping it off is one of the most difficult projects a human being can undertake. And if one can achieve consistent weight control, one can achieve anything. So, if I want to succeed at work, one way I can seal that deal is to succeed at reaching my target weight and staying there.

Another book I'm reading, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, suggests that habits can be generalized into having three components: a cue, a routine and a reward. In this sense, I know there are at least a few habits that are hurting me continuously. Thankfully, Duhigg seems to be empowering me by asserting that everyone has the power to change components of those habits to produce completely different results, ones that are desirable and exceptional. Duhigg believes in the power of self, and that's a comforting reminder to people who feel that much of their lives are outside of their direct influence.

And finally, hearing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" on the radio gave me added conviction to tackle everything systematically in the new year, following this chain of thought: improve my physical self, then raise my work performance, then advance my larger mission. Each success lays the foundation for the next success. "I'm starting with the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways. ... If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change."

So, at the moment I find myself and everyone else in a new year filled with many new challenges to come. And with the new challenges I believe there are at least as many new opportunities to match. Then, to welcome the new year, I'd like to make a toast to stronger economies and communities in 2013, starting with a focus on improving what we ought to hold in complete control: ourselves, and specifically our weights. Cheers!

Five-star education and the end of college rankings

How many colleges out there wish they had the #1 spot on U.S. News' Best Colleges rankings? Or at least a higher spot within their respective tier or category? I don't have a scientific answer to this question, but I suspect that the answer is "a vast majority". Ultimately, for me, the more critical question is: Why do those in higher education look to these rankings as a validation for the work that they do? Or as support for their marketing narratives?

At a quick glance (I'm trusting you on this one, Wikipedia), U.S. News published its first rankings in a 1983 report titled, "America's Best Colleges". Back then, people were still living in the age of the printing press where information was disseminated through official bodies without a broad social medium for validation. The public Internet was still under development, and Web 2.0 wasn't even on anyone's roadmap, much less Facebook, Twitter or Yelp. So the best that consumers could manage was to put their faith into a reputable organization that could help them sift through the myriad choices for higher education in order to find the best fit given various constraints.

But does what seemed like a great tool nearly 30 years ago still hold significant meaning in the Social Age? Maybe. Maybe not. But if the Best Colleges rankings are used as a way to establish an institution's reputation, I believe there is a better way in today's world: the five-star rating system.

I'm sure you've seen this. For years, whether it's on Yelp, Redbox, Amazon.com, the five-star rating system has helped people with needs and means to make purchasing decisions. means "Excellent, I highly recommend this!" means "Terrible! Don't touch it with a 100-foot pole." Have those reviews and stars influenced your purchasing decisions, at work or at home? They certainly have for me.

But how can such a simple scale measure such a complex service like education? Well... why not? The idea itself is not novel. Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been around the block and back, employed now by many industries including higher education. NPS uses a scale from 0 to 10. The star rating system uses a range from 1 to 5. So, the net difference is effectively just the number of notches on the line, which is why I think of the star rating system as "NPS lite".

But the real reason why a star rating system like that embedded in many social media outlets is important to higher education is that the scale helps an institution measure the perceived value from all of its constituents. And those constituents are going to be the most effective promoters or detractors of the organization. Yes, there are numerous, intricately linked and complex factors that influence any given rating. And yes, NPS and the star rating system omit other metrics that can help pin-point specific problem areas. But all of the good and the bad, both in and out of the classroom must roll up into something in the minds of students, parents and everyone else. And I believe the what is captured neatly in the number of stars every individual has the power to give to an organization.

Simply translated for higher education:

• , "I had a great experience! If you're looking for a graduate program, I highly recommend this college!"
• , "What the hell? What do you mean I spent 4 years and $100k just to end up with no job and a ticking clock on my student loans? Don't come here if you're serious about your education needs."

The five-star rating system. Simple. Measurable. Scalable. Inevitable.

In the future, I imagine people will stop caring about a "top 100" list published by a major corporation. Instead, they will head over to their favorite social media site and look for 5-star colleges as rated by parents, students, alumni, staff, partners and beyond.

And when the time comes, that will be the end of today's college rankings.

idea, noun: a proposed solution to an identified problem

What is an idea in the context of selecting projects to execute within a business? The closest definition given by Merriam-Webster is "a plan for action". But perhaps a better applied definition for leaders in an organization is "a proposed solution to an identified problem" where the problem identification comes first.

At a Technology staff retreat I held this past Tuesday, subtly charged conversation in the room revolved around the sequencing and meanings of a few simple words: problem, solution and idea. The backdrop to the conversation was a topic from project portfolio management: how a proposed initiative becomes part of a portfolio. Ultimately, the goal of portfolio management is to ensure that the organization is "doing the right work."

I had originally started the dialogue by stating the first step in the process is that an idea is conceived. A colleague then added that a problem should also be identified. This sounded reasonable. So, I agreed and proceeded to add this step below the idea conceived step on the flip chart. I was feeling good about how this addition tightened the gap between the first step and the goal step of project selected for execution. Off to a good start, I thought.

"The order is wrong. You can't conceive an idea or solution before identifying a problem." This comment gave me pause, as I looked at the large sheet of paper on which I left too little room at the top to switch the order of the first two steps.

"Is the order of those steps really significant," I began in an impatient reply, "if the person performing each one is the same?" In my mind, I was thinking about how we don't want barely baked ideas to bounce around the office, eating up staff's valuable work time. What's the big deal about the order, I thought, if the same person considers both the problem and the solution before sharing the idea with someone else? Isn't the result the same?  After a few more stubborn (on my part) exchanges back and forth with no changes in opinion or on the chart, my colleague gave a final comment, "I feel extremely concerned about the order being wrong, and this is the last time I'm going to raise this concern."

Worried about the negative direction the conversation was taking, I abandoned the page on which I was drawing and redrew the chart, starting with problem identified at the top then leading to idea conceived (with a solution). I verbally acknowledged that the new sequence would be better than the previous one, and I got a brief nod from the concerned colleague as a result. But mostly, I was just relieved to be moving on to talking about the criteria for weighing and comparing different ideas.

Reflecting on this experience a few days later, it clicked for me why my colleague was so concerned about the order of first identifying a problem and then devising a solution. The way I first drew the chart showed a shallow focus on what was "cool", "novel" or "trendy" about a product or service, whereas the rearranged chart demonstrated a clear focus on understanding and considering real business needs which need to be addressed.

What should leaders be concerned about? Should we put our attention on what's shiny and new that everyone else is pursuing and trying to find a way to apply them to our business? Or should we focus on learning our business needs first and then look for a solution, shiny or not? The answer I think is obvious, and I personally learned a valuable lesson about what lens to wear when surveying the work environment.

It's funny how blind we are to our own hypocrisy sometimes. When I first heard about "manufactured demand" in industries like big pharma, where products are created without an identified need, I wagged my finger and condemned the practice. It seems that I have fallen into the same rut as those I've criticized, and it's time to start pulling myself out and into better company.

A Football Lesson for Higher Ed

Shiny uniforms. Full-body contact with the risk of serious concussions. A pigskin ball flying like a bullet into a tiny, moving target. Touchdown! Yes, we're talking football. And... wait, we're also talking higher ed?

I've been marveling at Greg Bedard's account of the New England Patriots' stellar no-huddle offense against the  Denver Broncos on October 7. Sure, the execution was awesome. But what struck me more about the no-huddle strategy was a lesson to be applied to higher education, the industry first and foremost on my mind. If you put aside the content (sports vs. education) and focus on the form (teamwork and competition), the Patriots have a lot more to teach than simply how to run 89 offensive plays in 60 minutes.

Bedard writes, "Just one word can be powerful." One shared word makes efficient communication. Communication is integral to coordination. Coordination maximizes organizational productivity. Productivity begets business results. Now, rinse and repeat.

Often times I catch myself using GMAT vocabulary to convey simple ideas that end up in a mental wastebasket. In football, the quarterback could replace "Flip right, double-X jet, 36 counter, naked waggle, X-7, X-quarter" with "Bama left" to signal the same play. At work, instead of "please gather the members of the steering committee for a brief meeting to efficiently discuss the latest responses from the second-choice vendor", I could say "please convene the steering committee to review __'s responses". Wow, I bet I can cut most of my emails in half!

Furthermore, businesses all talk about being nimble, agile, responsive, resilient. But how do we actually achieve that speed? Keeping things simple certainly helps. To explain how Chip Kelly sped up his Oregon Ducks, Bedard quotes Ed Dickson, "[Kelly] wants to make it easier to where you’re not thinking about anything, you’re just going fast. Make it as simple as guys can learn it so you can go really fast. That’s the key, making it simple for your players so they can play at top speed." Translated to business: Streamline processes, remove barriers and keep people focused on what's important.

So, instead of fancy quotes or clever memes, maybe one word can be used to guide my work and that of others. In my current environment, I'd say good candidates for that one word are "learn" and "teach".

Delegating for success, not setting up for failure

Harvey Mackay said it well, "For the sake of your company (and your sanity), at some point, you're going to need to let go."  As a rational manager, I agree with Harvey wholeheartedly.  As a leader, I worry about Harvey's instruction to "focus on teaching skills."  The reason is that ultimately I want to delegate for success, not to set everyone up for failure.

On the surface, "letting your employees stretch their skills and judgment" sounds great.  Just reading it twice gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside!  But the school of hard knocks isn't so kind.  I learned of some critical questions to ask, when faced with the choice to delegate a task to an employee who has never encountered the challenge.

Does the employee need training?

If you ask a systems analyst who is well versed in JavaScript to create a new, custom alert for a webpage, most likely the analyst will figure it out autonomously without needing additional guidance.  But if you ask the same systems analyst to launch a new marketing campaign for baby formula sold to first-time mothers in Oklahoma City, some training is probably warranted (along with a job re-classification in this case).

There are many factors that go into deciding whether to train the employee: how adaptive (s)he is, how receptive (s)he is to change, how difficult the new task is, amount of widely available documentation, support network, etc.  In the end, deciding whether or not to train an employee is a judgement call based on decidedly imperfect information.

A C# analyst asked to write simple code in Java may flounder, and on the flip side a marketing guru may turn out to be an excellent R&D engineer!  In the ideal world, I believe we can groom individual contributors who are capable of searching and learning for themselves with minimal supervision.

If training is needed, how should it be delivered?

Okay, so we end up deciding that training is necessary.  How do we actually deliver the training?  The options are endless: shadowing, reading, simulation, in-house training modules, external training modules...  Obviously, some are more expensive, while others are much more limited in its use and appeal.

How much on-the-job training is justified?

And most importantly, the question of "how much training" must be addressed.  I would love to literally be a lifelong learner and never leave the student role, but then I would never become a contributing member of society.  The same is true of workers int he workplace.  If one spends all of his or her time in training, when is the contributor actually contributing or producing something of value to the organization?

For a full-time employee working 40 hrs/wk with 13 holidays and 24 vacation days per year, 5% of that person's time only comes out to ~1.6 hours per week.  How much can you learn in that period of time?  And who in their time-strapped days has the time to create such training?

Closing thoughts

I've succeeded in applying the philosopher's strategy to question deflection: Answer a question with more questions that are even more complex than the original.  But seriously, the art of delegation is a skill that needs to be honed, and for me part that I really need to learn is when and how to train and develop my staff.

Do you think about all this and/or more when deciding to delegate work?

Align email rules with Chatter to maximize ROI

At work, I face many regular communication challenges: some daunting, others frustrating, and still more that are just annoying.  In broad categories, some general pain points are:

• "Who has knowledge about __?"
• "Who can answer this question, __?"
• "How do I communicate this news: __?"
• "How can I tap into the collective intelligence of the organization for __?"
• "How do I work remotely with __ to accomplish __?"
• "Why am I answering the same question a second (or third, or fourth, ...) time?"

If you look at Salesforce's pitch for "Why Chatter?" you will see answers and solutions to many of these questions and problems.  And Chatter's promise of higher productivity is clearly communicated, with fewer meetings and email reduction presented as the first two benefits.  These are the promised ROI's from using Chatter.

But after reading about topics such as, "Is Email Dead?" and the ambitious Zero Email plan from visionary CEO Thierry Breton, I am beginning to believe that I can do more to lead the way toward email reduction and, if I dare to dream like Thierry Breton, internal email elimination.  If Chatter can take the place of internal email, then I believe we will be close to maximizing ROI from institutional adoption of this new communication tool.

To that end, I suddenly realized a way to align my own technology with the adoption of Chatter and elimination of email:  Create an email rule that will "hide" all non-Chatter emails by moving them into somewhere, anywhere, that's not my inbox.  As a result, the "move non-Chatter to email folder" rule was created.

The idea is simple.  In the short term, I anticipate that internal emails will be reduced and that Chatter will become the preferred method of internal communications.  So, raising visibility of Chatter activity and lowering visibility of non-Chatter are natural ways of not only preparing for the future but also accelerating our transition toward it.  If I always see Chatter first when I open Outlook, then I would be subconsciously cued and trained to use Chatter as my primary communication tool, right?

Some of my colleagues have already formed an ambitious group to tackle the challenge of defining communication protocols for Chatter.  Should the "move non-Chatter" rule be included as part of the protocol for handling Chatter?  I think it's time to convene the jury.

What do you think?  Will this rule help an organization achieve the promised ROI from adopting a social communication platform?

Custom setting values in Salesforce email templates

Yesterday, as I was playing with a simple CRM idea in Salesforce, I came across an unexpected roadblock:  There didn't seem to be a way to merge custom setting values into an email template. A search on Google seemed to confirm this suspicion, as another admin asked the same question and arrived at the conclusion, "No, it's not possible." But, trusting Salesforce's immense power and flexibility, and hoping at all costs to avoid Apex code, I pursued my gut feeling that there must be a way.

And without disappointment, I discovered through some quick experiments that Salesforce does indeed make it possible to merge custom setting values into email templates.

The idea is simple: Put the custom setting value into a formula field on the desired object, and then merge the formula field value into the email template.

Below is an example of how it could work for you. Let's say that you want there to be a default level of optimism associated with every contact in your org. Imagine that you intend to merge this optimism into your automated emails. How would you do it?

1. Create a new custom setting labeled "Optimism Setting" with Setting Type set to "Hierarchy". The object name (a.k.a. API name) should be set to Optimism_Setting.
2. Within Optimism Setting, create a new text field labeled "Default Forecast". The field name (a.k.a. API name) should default to Default_Forecast.
3. Looking at the Optimism Setting page, click Manage and then set the default organizational level value for Default Forecast to "blue skies and sunshine".
4. On the Contact object, create a new formula field labeled "Optimism Forecast". The field name should default to Optimism_Forecast.
5. Insert the custom setting value for Default Forecast into this field. Your formula should look like this: $Setup.Optimism_Setting__c.Default_Forecast__c
6. Save the field, and now you're ready for email merge!

At this point, you should be able to inject the custom setting value for Default Forecast into any email template simply by including the {!Contact.Optimism_Forecast__c} merge field.

Note:  If you do complete this exercise, I highly recommend keeping the Default Forecast at "blue skies and sunshine" in your org.

It's never too late to change or to affect change

As my first 90 days in this new leadership position draws to a close, I find myself sitting blankly in front of my luxurious company laptop, dissatisfied and disappointed with myself.  90 days or __ hours later since I started, what do I have to show for myself?  Too little, by my own judgement.

Sure, I've kicked off a few projects with high visibility: launching a new portal for students and faculty, and migrating to Salesforce from Intelliworks.  And I'm working with fortuitous support from great colleagues to roll out a transformational communication tool, Chatter.  Also, I'm setting performance goals with my direct reports that I plan to reinforce in order to focus our efforts.

But I can't shake the feeling that I'm starting to run faster and faster on a shaky foundation that I have less and less time to solidify.  With one staff member gone just before I arrived, and with another one on his way out right now, have I really established the right rapport with the right people to continue advancing the organization's mission?  Am I really running the department?  Or am I just riding my staff's previous momentum?

At this critical milestone, 90 days since day 1, I find myself in an uncomfortable position of my own creation.  Fortunately, I believe that if I have the power to dig a hole for myself, I also have the power to elevate myself to better heights.

In short, it's never too late to stop, hit the reset button, and put yourself back on the right path.

In managerial accounting, there's a concept that's supposed to help us move forward without the baggage of the past.  If you guessed "sunk costs" for the concept, then you're on the same wavelength as me.  I look at my previous work, good and bad, as sunk costs.  The experience and knowledge should be treated as objective data for consideration in future decisions.  What was good can be sustained.  What was bad can be stopped.  And what I should have done but didn't do can be started.  As long as I remember that the past does not determine the future, I wield ultimate control of my performance and contribution to the organization.

So, I am mentally hitting the reset button, picking up a copy of Michael Watkins' The First 90 Days and  taking charge of the next 90 days.  In the words of a favorite song on my playlist:  "... we'll turn it all around 'cause it's not too late.  It's never too late."

Worktime expectations: giving and receiving feedback

It's hard for me to decide which is more difficult: giving or receiving feedback.  But since there are numerous benefits to doing both in the workplace, I believe we should reasonably expect an employee to participate on both sides of this activity.  The reason is simple.  An organization needs feedback at the organizational level, just as humans need feedback on an individual level.

Just think:  How well would you function if your stomach doesn't tell you when you're full?  Or if your ears don't relay the sound of a fast-approaching vehicle?  Or if your eyes don't show you where your hands are as you're threading a needle?

An organization is much the same.  We know in our minds that it's important to stay coordinated with our colleagues, and everyone seems to lament the fact that often the left hand knows not what the right hand is doing.  So, let's do something to connect our organizational senses.

Giving feedback is pretty straightforward:  After each significant engagement with another individual within the organization, provide some feedback to explain the good, the bad and the ugly.  The other individual can be anyone: a peer in your department, your manager, your direct report, a colleague in another part of the organization.

The challenges to meeting this straightforward expectation are mostly cultural.  Do you feel that your feedback is valued?  Are you afraid of giving feedback?  Do you know how to give feedback in a professional manner that gets the point across while avoiding personal attacks?  I believe it's a leader's job to remove these barriers to facilitate the critical flow of communications up, down and across an organization.

Receiving feedback is a bit more complicated, as two steps are involved.  First, you have to create a channel through which feedback is created.  Then, once feedback is received, you need to confirm receipt of the feedback and then act on it.

The appropriate action on feedback depends on whether the comment was positive or negative.  If feedback was positive, then continue doing whatever it was that merited the support.  If the feedback was negative, then adjust your behavior, explain your behavior or ask for further discussion of the comment.

The primary challenge to meeting this expectation is also cultural.  How much feedback are you able to take?  Positive feedback is always pleasant on the senses, but it's the negative feedback to which we need to pay the most attention.

After all, it's easier to adjust the oven temperature while baking than to salvage burnt cupcakes.

Worktime expectation: self-reflection

In trying to set performance goals with my staff, based on my worktime expectations of an ideal employee and our organization's mission and objectives, I received good feedback that the broad categories of my expectations are currently unclear at best.  So, I aim to explain each of them in a series of posts, starting with what I hope is the simplest category: self-reflection.

To me, self-reflection in the workplace is the solo act of reviewing and adjusting one's own behavior to better serve the organization's needs.  The process can be outlined in three simple steps:

1. Review your recent activities, assessing how productive and well-aligned they were.  Consider your own personal goals and the organization's goals in your assessment.
2. Make a short-term action plan, noting which activities to start doing, to stop doing and to still continue to do.
3. Execute your short-term action plan.

The length of the "short term" is up to the individual to decide, based on that person's individual capabilities and the time constraint set by leadership.  For example, take an employee with a short attention span who is expected to spend 2.5% of his time on self-reflection.  This employee may decide that "short term" equates to one week, which is just enough time for him to start losing focus on the action plan.

As implied, self-reflection is not a one-time process, but rather a habit that should be developed over time.  I searched on Google for "why is it important to self-reflect" and found a few useful resources that explain how the process helps in many situations:

• Real Talk blog: "Why Self Reflection Is Important"
• College of the Canyons: "Self-Awareness"
• DJUS Online: "Cognitive Effects of Self-Awareness on Thought"

And when would be good to start this process?  Well, how about today?

How to stop lying and start working on priorities

A quote from Mahatma Ghandi explains it well, "Action expresses priorities."  The "it" being how we regularly lie to everyone at work, including ourselves.

You may be thinking, what the __ are you talking about?  I always practice integrity in the workplace, and I would never lie to my colleagues.  Well, I happen to think the same!  But if you're like me, and you look back at a week's worth of work (facts) compared to everything you communicated (words), are you sure you haven't lied?  Do the facts really reflect your words?

Okay, okay.  Maybe saying "we" is too much.  Let's step back for a second, and let me explain how I lie.

Within the past week, I've frequently said to a colleague working on a project with me, "This project is a high priority."  Yet, when I sat down with the same colleague for our weekly check-in yesterday, I was forced to admit how little time I had actually devoted to the project.  And because I contributed very little to the "high priority", I questioned myself on whether it really was a high priority.  I would expect anyone else to ask me the same question.  And the sad truth is:  No, the project was apparently not a high priority to me.

When I looked back at my week, it turns out my real priorities were the following, in roughly this order: addressing real emergencies, addressing perceived emergencies, meeting to discuss non-priorities, reading and sending emails about non-priorities, talking to people about non-priorities.  Oh, and I almost forgot this one:  Telling people what my priorities and the organization's priorities are.

Does this sound familiar at all to you?  Regardless, the lying has to stop.  And for that, I'd like to share three ways to do this, which I will implement today for myself.

Write down your priorities and post them where you can see them.  If you care to listen, our director of IT will tell you about the list of personal goals on his refrigerator at home for him and his wife.  "Every day, we'd come home and ask each other, 'What did you do to advance one of your goals?'"  The question is asked with the best of intentions, to gently help each other remember what is truly important.  As the late Stephen R. Covey observed, "Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important."

Block time on your calendar to work on your priorities.  Blocking time off is easy:  Create an appointment on your calendar, and mark it as busy time.  Almost like magic, most non-priority meetings requests will be automatically deflected.

Work on your priorities in a place where distractions are minimized.  How can you be productive when you're being distracted every 5 minutes?  Shut the door to your office.  Or go setup a workspace in a remote corner of the office where only the cleaners visit.  Or work from a conference room (that you can reserve), from home or from a coffee shop.  And no matter what, always remember to turn off your office phone and close Outlook, Gmail or whatever email client you use.

What do you think?  What are your tips for getting the right work done?

All hands on deck: Maximizing productivity with a strengths-based approach

Today, three of us gathered in the ITS department to discuss vision and goals for the coming years.  My colleague Kristin Mullaney proposed the idea of taking a strengths-based approach to staff's professional development and, by extension, to organizational development.  What exactly is a "strengths-based approach", I wondered.  I had previously never heard of the term, and I was suspicious that it was just another managerial buzzword that only sounded good.

But as she explained the concept, I noticed myself nodding silently in effortless agreement.  Why not?  Without taking undue credit from her proposition, here are the main points I recall about the approach:

• Recognize that an individual's skills may (and likely do) extend beyond his or her assigned functional area.
• Throughout the business cycle of an organization, there will be peaks and lulls in the demand for any one skill.
• As an organization evolves in step with the global environment, the profile of appropriate skills (and functional areas) for the organization will change.
• By enabling an individual staff member to exercise skills that are not explicitly required for his or her "assigned duties", the organization actually facilitates professional development of its human capital.  And as a result, the organization better positions itself to meet future demands in the marketplace.

Her points seemed so sensical that I found it difficult to explain why we are not already operating that way, although I know realistically that there are significant challenges to the idea's implementation.  I can already think of some possible challenges: accepting complacency, seeking comfort in repetition, setting narrow performance goals, protecting traditional departmental "turf" or boundaries, witholding access on a "need to __" basis.  While there are still valid arguments for each of those actions, I question the balance of costs and benefits for each of them in the modern world.

As I watch the rise in demand for agile, responsive organizations, I believe we have to leave behind many of the stiff policies and cultural legacies from yesteryear.  Even if we don't do it for the advancement of humanity, we must change our behaviors and expectations for our own survival in an increasingly competitive global economy.  How many big-name companies can you name that fell into decline or disappeared altogether?  HP, Xerox, Kodak, Circuit City, Borders, ...

But if we in an organization can learn from history, embrace current best practices and keep an eye on the future, then together we can grow smartly and sustainably.  And I believe part of the change involves setting new organizational expectations that break down silos and erase arbitrary boundaries which prevent business teams from reaching their full potential.

I'd like to close with a quote from Rebecca Seibert in her contribution to Harvey Levine's Project Portfolio Management (which I am reading for Granite State College's excellent PM 806 course, "Managing Project Portfolios"):

“All hands on deck” means that very few handoffs occur in our team settings. The expression “that’s not my job” is not in the mind-set of the business team. If we need marketing information for a specific program and the marketing manager is occupied with other duties, it is not uncommon for the technology team member, for example, to gather that information and communicate it to the team. The lines of functionality are often blurred, allowing people with the appropriate skills to be empowered to get the work done.

We have a noble mission to advance that requires us to maximize the very limited resources we have.  For us, "all hands on deck" should be our call to action.