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Analysis Paralysis Strikes Again!

I thought I was done with this subject last week.  But then it struck again, Analysis Paralysis!  I am near completion of a deal that is over 4 years in the making, not for me, but for a fortune 100 company.  In other words, they’ve been work it this long.

This company has been looking for a solution and had contacted one of our reps back in 2003.  They were about to move forward with the implementation but someone convinced them to wait, and ultimately pushed to build the program in-house.  It’s the same story I hear time and again, “we can build it in-house for half the cost”.

Yeah, right.

So here I am in a conference call with a handful of representatives from this large company and they are sharing with me how after 4+ years they couldn’t build a good tool and wanted to use ours.  This happened for a number of reasons.  Reason #1…It’s not what they do!  Sure it looks easy, but when you actually set out to do it, reality hits.  Reason #2…not enough time.  Building a tool takes away from their core business, and that always takes a back seat.

Suppose I wanted a nice wooden baseball bat and I see that Louisville Sluggers cost $29.  If I’m not careful I could be talked into buying a piece of lumber, sticking it on a wooden lathe and saving myself ten bucks to make my own.  We all know that would be a disaster. Yet somehow in business we don’t always take that same common-sense approach.  Instead we waste too much time arguing, waiting and losing money.  Isn’t it better to pay a small premium for another’s well invested expertise?

Waiting usually costs more than doing nothing or delay.  As one CEO recently said, “After hearing all the facts, make a confident decision, even if you aren’t certain.  It’s indecision that is costly”. 

 

–Warren

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Six Sins of Consulting

Biblically, 7 is the number of perfection, and 6 is the number of “man.”  Remember 666, the “number” of the Antichrist?  In light of that, I’m going to enumerate the worst sins consulting companies can make.  These are the ones that doom them to hell on earth.  If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you have probably already nailed these and gotten past them.  But they may be worth reviewing.

#1: Ignoring your customer’s complaints
The customer is always right, right?  No, not true.  But, when they believe they are right, you had better be there to work things out.  Sometimes you can make them see your position in a disagreement, but more times than not, you’ll need to suck carpet and make things right.  That’s part of what they expect of the relationship.  The mere fact that you take money from them puts you in that position.  Cruel fact of life – get used to it.

#2: Failure to smooze
This one is akin to the first, but slightly more on the positive side.  Remember the old adage “out of sight, out of mind?”  That’s what happens when you haven’t had face-time with your customer in a while.  They literally think less of you.  The relationship grows cold and they are less likely to call on you when a need arises.

#3: Letting sales slip
Consultants and consultancies have two big jobs: consult and sell consulting services.  Both are equally important.  Once a gig has been landed, the tendency is to settle in and forget about what comes next.  Looking for the next gig is hard.  It’s much easier to do what you’re competent at, and let the sales work take care of itself.  Problem is…  it often doesn’t.  When the gig ends, you’re on the street again without work.

#4: Shoddy work
This one’s so obvious, it’s hardly worth mentioning.  But it really goes deep down to the type of person you are.  Keep your standards high.  Remember that you are competing with other consultants, and for future work.

#5: Low utilization
Got a nice high billing rate?  Higher than working at Wal-mart?  Consider this: your “effective” billing rate (or utilization rate) is your revenue divided by the total calendar hours.  For example, $50,000 divided by 2,000 possible billable hours in a year is an “effective” rate of only $25 per hour.  You may charge $100 and hour for your time, but only book 25% of the total possible hours.

#6: Not picking up the scraps
Nobody likes to think of themselves as a handyman who takes odd jobs.  We’re skilled professionals with higher education.  But there’s no shame in stooping down to pick up small jobs.  Sometimes you can even charge more for them.  They can fill gaps between the big gigs and give you interesting new experiences.

 

–ray

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Analysis Paralysis

We’ve all heard the term analysis paralysis, and frankly it is a millstone around the necks of many corporations, especially ones that are heavily layered in management.  In today’s world economy only the quick and flexible survive. 

Imagine you have a great idea you spend days, if not weeks, researching.  You run the initial numbers and cost analysis that shows a marked improvement with a bottom line benefit.  You can hardly contain your excitement!!  So, let’s get started, right? Wrong!

Bob, over in development, isn’t sure this will actually save the company money and he thinks they “might” be able to build their own tool.  So he talks to Chris in accounting and before you know it there are too many cooks in the kitchen and everything is on hold!

It took 6 months before a decision was made to build this tool in-house.  It took Bob’s team over a year to figure out they couldn’t build the tool properly, and they spent 12 times the amount the original “off the shelf” implementation would have cost!  And the final result?  Still waiting…

If they had simply gone with the original idea of an off the shelf tool they would have saved the company enough money to buy the thing 20 times over!  Instead they’re back at square one.

I am all about due process and thinking things through.  However, at some point a decision must be made and all too often one isn’t made out of fear, job security, or simply because someone is being territorial.

This is a common story and that’s why strong leadership is important.  If you’ve done the homework and you know it’s a worthy endeavor… push, push and push some more.  In the end you will be rewarded for a job well done or sleep well knowing you gave everything you had.  To use a sports term, “Leave it all out on the field.”

 

–warren

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Sharing is Good

A few years ago I learned a valuable lesson.  I was working for a fairly large company in the order/shipping department to improve performance.  We were losing money on mis-picked items.  A customer order would be placed in a box with 1 to 15 items to ship.  That box would travel through our pick line, stopping at various stations, where human operators would pick the items ordered out of a bin, and place it in the box for shipment.  Too often, customers received the wrong items.  Then an employee would go out of sequence, make a special order and ship the correct item, a second time! 

My job was to reduce the number of incorrectly shipped (mis-picked) items.  To do that, I had auditors randomly inspect the pick line orders.  The ship line auditors despised our presence and we saw no marked improvement over the first few months. 

One day we had a meeting with the shift leads on the pick-line to explain why we were doing the audits.  We explained how a small decrease in the percentage of mis-picks would save our company hundreds of thousands of dollars and add to the bottom line.  In turn, this would increase their profit sharing bonus checks.

Over the next year we had a significant reduction in mis-picks and we received record profit sharing.  This happened in large part because we decided to share a little piece of information as to why we are doing what we do.  All too often we are quick to tell people to do something assuming they already know the reasons or don’t care, instead of explaining why!  I was guilty, and from time to time I imagine I still get in that “just do it!” mode.  However, I’ve learned that it is worth a few extra minutes to share the reasons behind our decisions.

–Warren

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Accuracy is a Necessity

I had the misfortune of incorrectly accusing a vendor, one of my company’s main suppliers, of neglect. It turns out…they weren’t neglectful at all!  I was wrong and had received bad information!!

I worked in the new product engineering group with a company that sold a lot of knick-knacks, similar to what you find in card shops like Hallmark.  We did catalog sales without a storefront.  My company had tens of millions in annual sales.  Part of my job was creating a new quality control program to improve the products we purchased from our manufactures.

One bright day I sat across from our main supplier and delicately challenged them on a few quality issues we had found in one of our recent audits.  You can only imagine my embarrassment to find that the product I trashed, was not theirs!  An auditor on the QA Team had incorrectly identified this problem product with the wrong vendor!  I had discussed three products in total, two of which belonged to them, the third did not.  Rather than making progress and improving the two products correctly identified as theirs, I spent the better part of two hours mending fences and eating crow.

Needless to say I had a long discussion with the auditor that filed the flawed report.  We put in place procedures to double check and verify products and correctly assign them to the right vendor.  I learned a valuable lesson that day.  Accuracy is important and usually doesn’t take much effort.  This was a lazy mistake that nearly brought down a 10 year relationship and wreaked havoc for thousands of other people.

Whether it is simple or complicated…having solid accurate information is a must.

 

–Warren

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Technology…Communication Made Easy?

I once worked for a large company as a QA manager.  One day word got out that our VP of Customer Service was on the war path because damage complaints were up over 33% year to date!  It was costing us a lot of money to resend orders that were damaged upon arrival at our customer’s locations.

 I was a mid-level manager at the time and only heard rumblings from my superiors from high level meetings they attended.  I was instructed to change product packaging to hundreds of items, perform drop testing and all sorts of comparisons to reduce damage complaints.  Nothing worked.  After about six weeks of panic and fact finding no one had arrived at a reason for the problem .

Then one day I sat in on a high-level meeting.  I recalled a friend of mine that worked in our  call center telling me how we started resending new items, instead of coupons for damaged products.  It just so happened that our system calculated damage complaints based on resent items, not coupons.  I mentioned this during our meeting; we crunched the numbers and determined that damage complaints were NORMAL!  No increase had ever occurred, only the way we calculated them!!

I would have given anything to avoid those six weeks.  We invented new procedures, hired consultants and changed all of our packaging!  If only we would have talked about this before we initiated the changes!  Communication, although not always easy, is always essential.

 

–Warren

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Life Isn’t All Work

This is a little reminder that we all need from time to time.  I’m not going to get too depressing here, but I attended a close family members funeral last week.  As I talked with family and friends at the service I was reminded of what’s truly important in life.

We all know this, but rarely stop and do anything about it.  We get caught up in the daily grind and focus on the latest hurdle at work.  Well I’m here to say that last year I said forget it, and took my family on a 10 day vacation!  We spent time at the beach and doing a whole lot of nothing.  During this vacation I got to spend time with my aunt whose funeral I attended last week.  I remember chasing and catching fireflies with my children in her backyard, priceless.  Jeez, I’m a city boy raised in So-Cal.  And during that time I got to ride on my grandpa’s tractor around the old family farm.  I am so glad we took that vacation!  These are just a few memories that no one can pull from my mind.  It was relaxing and it was more fun than I ever thought it could be. 

Life will always bring excuses as to why we can’t slow down to enjoy time with family and friends.  We Americans work harder than any people on earth.  Yet we ought to recharge and relax once in a while.  What are one or two weeks out of the year?  For me its a lifetime of memories and more fun than I ever dreamed.

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Build a Deck and They Will Come

OK, here it is springtime and my wife is pleading for a deck in the backyard.  So I’m thinking, why not?  We’ll have lots of barbecues, birthday party’s and plenty of friends and family to enjoy the summer with.  That got me a little interested, if not a bit eager!

Ah, the manly endeavor of building a deck!  Then reality hit.  This is a project, it takes planning and it takes work.  This is almost like being in the office!!  I mean, where do I start?

I know, I’ll check out the different types of material, bad idea.  Now I have to decide between a litany of composite materials which are more expensive, and regular lumber that is less costly but harder to maintain!  Oh, it gets better.

I have a deck designer program.  I spent a few hours one evening creating the perfect deck.  Only to find out it was exactly what my wife had in mind.  Back to the drawing board with her vision and ideas, a few hours later…bam!  The deck of her dreams right there in full color.  But now I’m back to the office part of the whole deal.  I need to look into permits, draw up the plans, get a cut list, choose the material and most important of all….STAY UNDER BUDGET.

If over 50% of project plans get blown over budget in the world of project experts…what chance does a novice deck builder have?  This is only the beginning, but at least there are only two people having to buy into the final design.  At the very least we should be able to overcome indecision.  I think I have a fighting chance.  How about you?

–Warren

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Get Rid of T.O!

Yeah, I said it. Cut T.O. (Terrell Owens) from the Cowboys; give a pink slip to one of the best receivers ever. This guy argues with coaches, yells at his quarterback, and then complains to anyone who will listen. He acts like a punk. Imagine dealing with that on your project team! We’ve all been there, because project team dynamics are not much different. All it takes is one bad apple to bring the whole process down.

 

We look for individuals at the top of their game to help us win. The dichotomy is that sometimes these “all stars” bring a lot of baggage and pull teams down instead of taking them to the next level. Much of the time, people are misunderstood and their frustration builds, causing true problems. Remember the old adage, “perception becomes reality when left unchecked”?

 

What to do…the first thing I recommend is patience and a little communication. We aren’t babysitters, but we are dealing with people, not robots. A little attention goes a long way. The new coach of the Cowboys, Wade Phillips, is known as a “players” coach.  He takes time to learn about them individually and does not ride them too hard.  I thought Wade was soft and T.O. would run him over. Guess I was wrong. With Wade Phillips as coach, T.O. had one of his best years ever. The Cowboys started winning and have a team capable of going all the way. T.O. toned down his complaining and even won some praise from his teammates. Is it because Wade Phillips handled him like a China doll?  Who knows? I bet if they win a Super bowl no one will care!

 

As you can tell, I don’t like T.O. But right now my team, the Denver Broncos, could sure use his help!

 

 

–Warren

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The Half-Pipe Stays

Have you seen the FedEx commercial with the half-pipe?  It’s halarious! As employees crash all over the place, the big boss discusses how much time FedEx is saving them, but then asks, “So why aren’t we getting more done”. One of the managers says, “Maybe we should get rid of the half pipe?” The boss ponders for a moment and says, “No, the half pipe stays.”

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5qwxqm683c

 

This kind of environment exploded during the tech boom. The feeling was that all of the dot com’s were going to make millions and competition was not a problem.  In order to recruit young talent, companies offered more than the standard benefits, i.e. health insurance, company car, etc. They offered a work environment that became a place where individualism rules. This is where today’s job market and yesterday’s collide.

 

When my father entered the work place I can picture an old-timer standing at the front of the office cracking a whip. Nobody likes that. Today we have moved to the opposite extreme. We get free massages and our choice of gourmet coffee. There are ping pong and foosball tables and the most distracting item of all…the internet! It’s easy to spend hours on the web planning vacations, reading articles and checking out American Idol results.

 

In my opinion Ramiele can sing. I think she was robbed. They should’ve sent Kristy Lee Cook home!  But that just makes my point. I am guilty like the rest. I could be more focused, after all what’s more important: the survival of my job, or playing on a half-pipe? But secretly… I hope Carly Smithson wins. What do you think?

 

–Warren