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 )

Book Review: The New Economics by W. Edwards Deming

This great little book acts as an introduction and summary to Deming's ideas:

• his 'system of profound knowledge'


• the purpose of management


• removal of numeric targets and incentives


• the Shewhart Cycle for learning and improvement


• Variation


• the Red Bead Game


• control charts

A highly recommended read because ....

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

The best book on writing a CV: Pitch Yourself by Bill and Michael Faust(Book Review)

I promise, I shall make this my last post on CVs and recruitment for a while. (see notes, and more notes)

But I just wanted to mention the only useful book I read about CVs when researching the CV book market. When I read this book I gave up on writing a CV book because it pretty much covered the notes I had made (previous 2 blog posts) and gave useful information for building up an effective CV.

Pitch Yourself, by Bill Faust and Michael Faust.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

The basic summary: You have less than 30 seconds to impress. You're CV needs to answer the question "What can you offer me?". CV needs to provide evidence, create interest. Make your next employer buy you.

More notes on writing a CV that a hiring manager wants to read

So the last post described what I wanted.

Now some tips about how I read a CV. So make sure you write your CV to support my reading of it.

Contrary to some advice - I don't really mind how many pages the CV has. I care about the relevancy of the information and that it demonstrates to me what you will bring to the role.

I have a multi-pass approach to CVs:

• pass one: Is this CV even worth reading?


• pass two: Who is this person?


• pass three: Could they meet my needs?


• pass four: Are they lying?


• pass five: Do I want to speak to them?

How to write a CV that a hiring manager wants to read

This post started as notes for a book. "What would be better?" I thought "In this time of recession, than to prey on peoples fears of losing their job and write a book on how to write a CV." And then I did the research and read through about 15 books on how to write a CV and I could barely keep them apart. They all follow the same formula and cover the same stuff. So instead of adding to the dung heap category of 'how to write a CV' I thought I'd pull together my thoughts and explain what I look for in a CV. Hopefully other managers looking for this stuff as well.

First some don'ts - so if your CV does any of these... stop it, now, edit it, fix it:

How to Track Your Time To Manage Better

I have grown more aware of the passage of time over the years. Not just in the sense of growing older, but as a manager my time gets split between multiple foci.

As a team member I typically had one or two tasks or priorities. At the end of the day I generally knew what I had done.

As a manager I have more priorities, more 'things' on the go, a broader view of the work going on. If I don't have a good handle on that then I start to question if I really know the activities and work done on a project.

A result of this:

• I plan my day,


• I track my day,


• I evaluate my day.

I have changed the way I do this over the years, and I will continue changing this as each project has different needs, each company I work for has different tools and I learn to track what I do better.

I shall describe my experiences with, and with not, tracking time.

Book Review: Life's a Pitch by Stephen Bayley & Roger Mavity

Subtitled "How to Sell yourself and your brilliant ideas" this dual-authored book has two parts. One for each author. And yes this has made it schizophrenic.

The first half by Roger Mavity tells the hard won lessons from a marketeer. The second half by Stephen Bayley reads like a standard book researched management text.

I only found value in part one so this review has its basis in that text.

The first half of the book roars along, peppered with anecdotes and words of wisdom.

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

Book Review: Everything I need to know about being a manager I learnedfrom my kids by Ian Durston

So, from the title, do you expect a kind of folksy tale of happy families and happy teams? Good, because that describes the book well. The books starts very un-managerially with the birth details of the children and then ties 'becoming a parent' in to 'becoming a manager'. I actually think I would enjoy working with more people who read this book since, I cannot imagine that some of the managers I work with treat their children like they treat their staff - at least I hope for the child's sake that they don't.

So... what do we learn?

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

Book Review: Detox Your Desk by Theo Theobald and Gary Cooper

Yet another time management book. This one starts well and by page xi in the introduction I have warmed to the notion of a "zero tolerance workspace". But then we hit an "analysis" phase and we learn...nothing for a while. I suppose this section tries to build up the belief set that we need to change our habits and why, and point out your bad habits.

But really we already bought the book to change our habits - so give me the details. Tell me the system...

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

Book Review: The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins

Most management books offer some platitudes, have 2 or 3 useful sentences and then lots of padding. "The First 90 Days" offers a real exception

I will not pretend to summarise all the useful information in this book for this book review. But I hope to whet your appetite so that you go out, buy this book and feast ravenously upon it.

I guess I relate to it so much because I have moved from site to site and job to job so often - mainly as a consultant, or contractor, but latterly as a full time employee. I have experienced a lot of transitions, and I know how hard those first 90 days can seem. Lessons I learned on my own:

• track your successes - otherwise you'll look back and wonder what happened (it all moves so fast)


• set expectations early with your boss (particularly on how you can evaluate success together)


• evaluate your team quickly and don't shirk the hard early decisions

Michael Watkins covers all this and more. And I wish I had read this before.

[amazon.co.uk] [amazon.com]

Book Summaries - how to gain more knowledge, faster, and easier

I have a problem with many business and management books. so many of them seem to have one idea, or 10 ideas strung out for 250 pages with lots of boring stories and examples, or worse - written in parable form. I really just want to get to the meat and substance of the book.

I spent a long time improving my reading speed, and yet I still want to find ways of cramming more valuable information into my skull more quickly and more easily. So I started to look for ways to outsource my reading - at least partially. I found various book summary sites. My initial thoughts were this would be a way of whittling out the dross of business books more easily and identifying the books that I really want to read.

I wasn't sure if I was going to find them useful or if I was going to end up signing away some money for a pile of badly written essays.

But I decided to sign up as an experiment anyway.

Why should a manager treat their staff optimistically?

People tend to meet expectations, their own, and those of the people who they have a relationship with.

I assume most people have encountered, even if 2nd hand, "Pygmalion In The Classroom" - the 1968 study of kids and teachers expectations.

I see no reason why the same dynamic does not work in business.

Book Review: Dragon's Den by BBC

So a cash-in on the ever popular "Dragon's Den" BBC programme - at least popular in my house.

Is it too much to hope for some good well spun and hard earned business lessons from reading the book? well....

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

Book Review : The Rules of Victory by James Gimian and Barry Boyce

Subtitled "How to Transform Chaos and Conflict", and further subtitled "Strategies from The Art of War". Which one of these attracts you to the book most? We could derive some sort of psychoanalytical analysis from that choice, or we could just class it as clever marketing - targeting the management book crowd, the self-help crowd and the Sun Tzu crowd.

[amazon.com]   [amazon.co.uk]