Rodent Regatta

Of all the newsletters I receive via email, I probably get more in less time from Dan Miller’s newsletter than any other. While Dan is a career coach and focuses in that area with his newsletter, he also provides a wealth of wisdom, insight and ideas for starting or improving your own business. His newsletter is free. It arrives on Tuesday each week, and it is excellent.

Curt Rosengren writes the Occupational Adventure Blog. This morning I noticed an entry about writing down three lists of goals and reading the lists each day. The past ten years has made me skeptical to the point of cynicism about such methods. It could well be that it’s the cynicism that prevents the results from coming as they would were I a more open participant. There is, however, another side to whole goal-setting phenomenon – that is the ability to be resilient through the disappointments. I’ve seen missed accomplishments drive people to a level of performance far below that which they had before they wrote some goals on a piece of paper. It’s sad, but it’s apparently a very real condition.

This old joke has been told a million ways and is relevant to almost that many technical support operations. It’s the reason I’m not willing to deal with trying to make a profit in technology advice any more. Once I’m on the front lines trying to help one of my clients with their hardware or software or other technology implementations, these are the kinds of answers I get. That’s for someone else, but not for me.

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to steer to the airport.

The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter’s window. The pilot’s sign said ”Where am I?” in large letters.

People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said ”You are in a helicopter.”

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to Sea-Tac airport, and landed safely.

After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the ”You are in a helicopter” sign helped determine their position.

The pilot responded ”I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because, similar to their help-lines, they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer.”

If you want to read a (serious) alternative to such an approach, read this about Dr. Deming’s views on operational definitions. Consistent, uniformly-understood terms and vocabularies are essential to effective communication.

In the case of software support, it must begin with some understanding of what it means to the ultimate customer of the software when they are down. What does business interruption feel like? How do we get support people to develop some sense of urgency – not panic – about the state that they put their customers in when software doesn’t work.

I can hear it now, ”how do you define doesn’t work?” Well, let’s start with this: it doesn’t do what you, your manual and your volley of emails said it would do!

Have you ever had an opportunity dropped in your lap? Here’s the story of how one person found a fit with no effort.

I have to admit these seem rare to me. Seldom does lightning strike quite like this. However, it does happen. Be thankful for those times. They certainly beat having to ”sell” your way to opportunity and subsistence.

Yes, I’m still on site at one of my client’s businesses. It is now 6:45p.m. on Sunday night. All of this began at 8:35a.m. yesterday. A process just began which I estimate will take anywhere from 5 to 7 hours. At that point, I’ll be in a position to determine whether or not this client can use this software at 7a.m. tomorrow.

My bet is that all of this has been for naught and one night or weekend real soon, I’ll be doing all of this all over again.

But, thanks for asking.