Author Archives: admin

How to Start a New Job

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Some of us have a harder time than others getting things going during the honeymoon stage of our new jobs. There is a bit of a push-pull we feel as we are attempting to get settled in and we don’t quite know how much will be provided to us and how much we should ask. My suggestion is to give a hard sustained push during your first week and really carve out the pumpkin so you can get to working in an effective manner as soon as you can.

Being a project manage-y kind of person, I tend to roll into new business environments with a hunger for a contextually complete view of my role and job functions therein. Below is a quick addendum on some pointers to get yourself rolling into high gear with a quickness.

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Write down your job functions

Im sure you know what you do, but you don’t want to miss any details and doing this with your direct manager will crystalize the articulation of this narrative. This will be the most important piece of documentation that you will have for the next few weeks and you both must consider this a living document. Even the largest of corporations are not going to have every detail of what you will do mapped out to the letter so managing your on-boarding will be a process for both of you. These details are also subject to change as you learn more about the role and your boss learns more about you. Perhaps you need more training in a certain area, or maybe you need more on your plate to give you 40 hours…

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Find the Organization Hierarchy Chart. If there isn’t one, build one.

This is especially critical if you are a people manager. Knowing who is above you, below you, and where the horizontal lines are drawn is fundamentally crucial for keeping your processes in order and is great for learning peoples’ names. Gripes go up, managerial direction goes down and collaboration generally goes sideways.

Populate your Calendar with a Daily Schedule Template

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This is the essence of time management. It allows everyone on your team to know when you are available for meetings, when you are on the road and gives your boss a quick view of how much time you are spending on what. You will also find it is a useful tool for calculating your productivity quotient based on the time you allow yourself versus how much you get done of a specific activity. IMHO, Outlook is still the best tool for this, having used both Apple Calendar and Google Calendar. Google Calendar is sloppy with timezone management and Apple’s dialog box for appointment instances and managing meeting attendees just doesn’t have it.

Assess the Application / Documentation Repository

Jobs should be a little like technology playrooms and they should all have a huge toy box in the center of the room for you to go digging through. Inside should be an articulated mixed bag of in-house and cloud apps, keys for getting into them and all the docs that you could ever want. You will find things like: Artifacts, On-boarding processes, SLAs, Org Charts, Charters, Project Plans, Custom Built Software manuals, workflow models, PluralSight Free-Trial access cards, jailbroken iPads, etc. Start-upy environments probably won’t have as many toys inside as you might want, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be in there, its just that no one has built up the repository yet. If the toy box is empty, you are probably the founder of the company and you better get started.

Some of my favorites:

asana

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evernote

Prepare a Growth Strategy for your Process Model

Now we’re really having fun!

Two words for you: scalability.

After you get settled into the swing of things, you should start developing a plan for best handling a strong upswing in delivery volume. This will usually be followed by a rapid influx of new personnel. Having a well formulated strategy in place is crucial for not being crushed under the pressure of this rising tide. Training of new resources should have a calculated process and be well managed. Complex deliveries should have a documented workflow and toolset that can be deployed with little or no supervision. Trainings on your in-house software should be done once and recorded with questions held to the end so that the next batch of new hires can watch it later and get the meat in short order. Politics concerning interactions with specific customers should be discussed in face to face meetings. All of the information needed by someone new to your high-tech assembly line should be bottled, put on the shelf and made available to everyone in the org.

Should you have any questions about ramping up resources or need a deep dive into getting into your groove, be sure to drop me a line.

 

Exercise for Engineers — Part 1

Integrating Exercise into your Life

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I’m sure all of us wish that we exercise more than we do. From what we have gathered in our lives, most of us know that exercise is an important part of maintaining good health. However, the daunting task of going to the gym, going for that walk, waking up earlier to finally start playing racket ball with whoever has never fully manifested itself with the ease required to maintain it. We all have busy lives, engaging jobs, kids, etc., that are all very demanding of our time and energy.

In order to gain the full benefit of exercise, it has to be established as a priority and incorporated into a daily routine. It has to be within the limits of your level of fitness and enjoyable in order to sustain it. There are a few different types of exercise that we will talk about, but the one that we will focus on first for the purposes of this lesson will be cardio…

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Each day, a person should be engaged in a minimum of 30 minutes of cardio-based exercise. Personally I am runner, and get up every morning at 6am and hit the track for my daily 5k. This is a very high-intensity level of cardio training to do on a daily basis, but it was easy for me to build up to it because I kept a daily habit of integrating this routine exercise into my mornings that led me to the level I’m at right now. I didn’t start out this way… not by a long shot. But what I do now is exactly the same as what I did when I started, and hasn’t changed.

I go everyday.

At first it was walking. Walking became jogging. Further and faster everyday. What’s even better is that I began to really enjoy the running as the painstaking and agonizing fatigue gave way to increased energy and confidence in my ability to run the longer distances. We all have to start small, within realistic limits of our fitness and what will be enjoyable for us. The running is fun for me because of the track I run is very close and it runs around a picturesque lake with lots of exotic waterfowl. The convenience is also a big factor in being able to go everyday; be sure to keep that in mind when deciding where you can go for your 30 minutes. Your cardio can be anything you want from walking, running, bicycling, aerobics, elliptical machine, etc., as long as you are sustaining a heart rate of at least 130 bpm for 30 minutes.

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I suggest everyone start walking for 30 mins in the morning or on a lunch break. The earlier in the day, the better. Do this on weekdays only. Take Saturday and Sunday off.  Here’s what you should have:

  • Workout clothes: Keep an outfit dedicated for your exercise.
  • iPod/mp3 player: Groovin’ to your tunes takes your mind off the fact that you really want to go back to bed instead of doing all this walking and running…..
  • Sunscreen:  Get in the habit of putting this on before exercise. Sweat droplets and smears on your forehead can prismatic-ally magnify sunlight and burn your skin faster than usual.

Without a daily integration of exercise into your life, the benefits of becoming physically fit will always elude you.

Be sure to consult a doctor and fitness professional before starting any kind of exercise
routine.

A cool app to help you get started

runkeeper

Introduction to Apex Triggers — Arming the Dangerous

This video will give you a very hands-on, mechanical operations detail of the most basic element of Force.com Apex code: Triggers. If you have no experience with Apex, this is a great place to start as it will warm you up to the way the platform functions, walks you through coding examples and is driven with the vocal excitement of Iman Maghroori and Doug Merritt.

The W5h Method for Project Management

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There are so many factors that slow down a resource ramp up,  especially in the situation of middle management. Businesses are cropping up overnight that staff for positions that have no one who came before you and no strategy in place for after you leave. How long did it take you to really get into the groove of things? 3 months? 6 months? Longer? Yeah.. I’ve been there. The problem really does become prevalent in most situations that don’t have a concept of maturing management techniques nor do most young execs have the time to hash out what your process should be because they are busy building the stuff above you.

There are several challenges that prevent smooth transitions:

1    Lack of a traditional business skill-set
2    Lack of the technical knowledge assumed by the position
3    Some form of personal strife external to work which inhibits the growth of the first two.

The first two are easily identifiable given that you have a resource which is open and unafraid in the face of such scrutiny of their core working ability. The third is perhaps a bit harder still to bring to bear in the light of concern for the employee. This must mainly be dealt with passively in the form of proactive management expressing the safety and trust surrounding any need an employee might have to confide and seek help with personal issues. Flyers and handouts on the wall are a great way to foster the surmounting of this communication barrier.

The W5h ( who, what, where, why, when, how ) method is a project management technique which circumvents all of the guesswork that is immediately undertaken by the resource who finds her/himself in a situation where there isn’t adequate direction to expand appropriately into a given role. In situations where you have resources that are wrought with any of the three perils listed above, this will create an immediate sense of connection and clarity about their role and the direction they will need to take their work.

W5h can be described in answering 6 questions in complete detail, no more than a paragraph.

Who are we?

This question is answered by starting out with the name of the role then continued.  The answering of this question will elaborate the reason for having the role in the company and give the employee a sense of purpose that will connect them to the whole of the organization. This will also let the employee know their inherent value they provide in doing their job.

What do we do?

Answered correctly, this question will be a very high level of the focus the employee has on their subset of the company’s product or service as it interacts with the real world of business.  A well written answer also breaks liberally into how a person in this role regularly goes above and beyond the call of duty in the performance of their job.

When do we do it?

This one is a killer. Here is how you define what the queuing system will be for an employee to begin a certain type of execution on a particular task. This question will also shine a light through all the holes in your own inadequately functioning processes as you have to spell out in detail that your still relying on someone remembering to email someone else about that place you put that thing that time.

This definition provides a comfortable and stable position of reliance that an employee knows when to do the work they have been assigned.

Where do we do it?

Now were getting somewhere, aren’t we? W00t! This section will underscore a few things that cover your company’s WFH policy and can deliver a clear expectation that a company with a lot of consultants on the road are expected to perform in the myriad of hotels, coffee shops and airports. Careful attention must be paid to this that you don’t enslave the people who work from home or the road as there is no clear geographic separation of work and home.

Why do we do it?

This is where most employers simply fall down on the job and forget to offer meaning to the people they ask to trade half of their waking lives to them in exchange for money. This could be the last chance an employer has to make a good impression on a person. This can mean the difference in having a resource who will eventually leave or a team partner for the life of the company. You need to tell them why the company was started, what the founder had in his/her head the very moment they said, “That’s it! I’m going to build my own company!!”.  That moment of truth the founder had needs to transcend the conscious plane of the workforce and permeate the identity of the corporate personality. You are providing a dream, a direction, a culture. Live up to the task and give them more than money. Give them something that validates why they share your company, at your company.

How do we do it?

This question can answer a broad range of business etiquette specifications and cover a lead-in to a highly scoped and exacting methodology prescribed by the model of your business or the mandate of your department. Everything that you didn’t cover in the 5 above can be highlighted here as its kind of a universally encompassing form of interrogatory verbiage in one word.

The W5h method can be applied to any team of any scope on any scale in an organization. It will give your compatriots confidence, connection and identity on such a wide range of levels which they can always fall back on should there be any confusion as the business trail blazes on.