Book Review: Intertwingled by Peter Morville

Intertwingled presents a fast, easy to read, and personal overview of systems thinking.

Personal, because the author intertwines his own personal stories to provide many of the illustrative examples of interconnection and systems thinking.

It fits very much in the 'management' overview category so will probably sell well.

If you don't know much about systems thinking then over the course of the 5 chapters you will be introduced to different modes of thought, different approaches to modelling, different approaches to observation and analysis.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Procrastination and Over Preparation

When I get ready for conferences I prepare.

One might argue, that I over prepare.

I don't yet know the correct level of preparation that I need.

But... I do know some signs that suggest I have over prepared.

• Procrastination
• Boredom
• Tinkering

Procrastination

When I'm procrastinating about 'finishing', it often means that I'm actually finished.

When I can't build up the energy to work on the talk or tutorial, or read the slides, or work on the paper, etc. I may already have finished.

To Check, I practice. A dry run of the material will very quickly let me know if I'm done or not. If I can 'do' the talk or tutorial from the existing material then I'm done - no need to procrastinate. I'm done. If I can read the paper through without question or concerns. I'm done. No need to procrastinate I'm done.

And if I'm not done, I'll know, because I'll stumble, or hesitate, or not know then next step - and then fixing it, is my next step.

Boredom

When I approach the material and I'm bored with it - because I've over practised it, or revisited it too often. That is a danger sign that I have over prepared.

The best thing to do is to stop.

Leave it for a while.

But before I do. I make sure that I have written down the bullets:

• The core aims of the material
• The inspiration that triggered the talk
• The main points I want to get across
• The main takeaways I have identified

Because if the above are good enough. When I come back to the material, I'll be inspired enough to pick it up again and there will be no boredom in the presentation.

Tinkering

We all know the 80/20 rule, and 'tinkering' usually means that I've reached the circle of 20% work. 

The stuff I don't actually need to do.

At this point I stop. 

And if inspiration strikes, because my subconscious has been milling over the material and identified tweaks. Great, then I'll set a time limit and blast through the tweaks, reinvigorating the material and myself.

But I don't want to tinker with it. There is too much other stuff to do, on other projects to waste time tinkering on one project.

End Notes

I'd rather be over prepared than under prepared. But recognising when my preparation has gone too far is really important to prevent me wasting time and not gaining any value from the 'preparation'.

Free Cloud Based Project Management Gantt Tool Gantter.com

I had to create a Gantt chart, and once again I didn't have Microsoft Project.

I so rarely create Gantt charts that I haven't had MS Project installed for a few years.

After a quick look around at the open source project management tool space, there didn't appear to be many new tools. And those that did exist didn't appear to have been updated recently.

But Gantter.com caught my eye.

I chose to use the "For Google Drive" edition, since I could log in with my google account and save the files to my Google Drive.

Initial Steps:

1. visit gantter.com
2. click on the "gantter editions" link
3. click [Start Now] for the "For Google Drive"
4. allow Google to authenticate and use Gantter.com
5. start creating your project plan

 Either click on "Untitled" or use "Project \ Properties" to set the Name of the project. Save that.

Then immediately click on "Autosave : OFF" to turn on Autosave, and then you are free to experiment.

A few Lessons Learned:

The tool is pretty simple to use so if you know Gantt charts, you'll be fine. Just a few lessons learned.

• Set the View to show "Work" and use the "Work" field to define the duration of the tasks, this way when you add resources it will calculate the duration correctly
• Use the description field so you know why you added certain work values
• "Make a copy" before you do any major edits - just in case
• I had best results with resource/work calculation by setting the "Advanced" type to "Fixed Work" "Effort Driven"

For a free tool this is great, it met my needs. Some great features:

• Import from MS Project
• Free
• Google Drive Integration
• Export To MS Project
• Simple to use

The printing is based on the view that you can see, so make sure you configure the view and size all the columns the way you want them to print.


I found that printing to png worked better than pdf because then I could control the paging when printing more easily.

The Gantter site has some videos showing how to use an older version of the software, but these are still useful for getting you up to speed.

http://gantter.com/help/videos/

 

The Blog has an RSS feed. I susbscribed to that, to keep up to date with the tool

 

http://gantter.com/blog/

 

Get It Done Now and Close Open Loops

The simplest productivity technique to understand, and implement, is "Get it done now"

It doesn't take any theory to understand. Just do it now. Whatever it is, just do it.

Aside from actually achieving something, this process closes our open loops.

Our brains are great at maintaining half finished thoughts for us. So as we work on an important task our brain kicks in and reminds us of that unimportant thing we haven't finished yet: those expenses we haven't claimed for yet, that email we haven't answered, that phone call we didn't return yet.

Here's a simple model of how our memory works. If we haven't locked in an action to a specific time, in a way that we know we won't lose it then our brain will iterate over the open loops and refresh the neuronal pathways keeping that thought alive.

We can clear the clutter. Keep our brain focused. Boost our productivity. When we close the open loops and just get it done now.

The fewer open loops we maintain, the more focused we will become.

Book Review: Leadership and Self-deception

I normally hate business books written in a fictional fable storytelling style. But for some reason I managed to read and enjoy this one - with one or two minor annoyances which we can cover later.

The book suggests that sometimes we cause our own problems, or at least make problem situations worse through our own attitudes and behaviours. We do this when we fail to view other people as people - instead viewing them as object, and view their needs and desires as less important than our own.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Book Review: Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment by William C. Byham & Jeff Cox

Joe has a problem: everyone wants more, and no-one wants to do more than the bare minimum. Joe can't figure out what to do. He says "do a better job!" and they don't, he says "if you don't do a better job you'll get sacked", they don't do a better job, they get demoralised, and worse - they don't get sacked. Oh woe, poor joe, oh no, he doesn't know what to do, whatever can joe do? Of course... Zapp!
[amazon.com][amazon.co.uk]

Book Review : Driving Down Cost by Andrew Wileman

A highly relevant book to read in these cost cutting times. Andrew Wileman evidently having seen it and done it - and now presenting useful advice on the art of cost cutting.

Before started reading I noted down what I expected to see advice about:

• becoming more effective,


• getting rid of underperforming staff now and quickly,


• driving out a bonus on sales culture,


• etc.

I did have the concern that I would see too much advice on short term unitary costs and ignoring end to end transaction costs - and after reading I think I still have the concern that Wileman didn't deal with that topic effectively.

All other topics get excellent coverage and worth a read. Andrew provides a lot of other useful advice that I did not initially think of.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )