Being Meaningful
August 17, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
Shortly after his return to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs defined the company’s purpose to employees. The brief video below captures the essence of this message.
Belief in the mission matters. Do you believe in yours?
Loyalty Isn’t a Program
August 9, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
I went into the bookstore of a major chain the other day. As I was checking out, the clerk asked, “Are you a member of our loyalty rewards program?”
“No…” I smiled, wondering if she would persist.
“Would you like to become one?”
“Not really.” Then, of course, I got curious. “How many people say yes?”
“Almost no one,” she said. “But I’m supposed to ask.”
No surprise there. Loyalty programs, once something of a novelty, don’t actually work. Consumers are smart enough to know that they’ll wind up with too much SPAM and a weekly newsletter they don’t want to read. Yet companies love to push them.
Here’s the tip: real customer loyalty has nothing to do with a program. If the experience or product is great (think The Apple Store), then we’re in. That’s it – no discounts, freebies or plastic cards necessary.
Legacy
July 28, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
Fingerprints don’t fade.
Especially those placed on the lives you’ve touched.
If you can explain why we do what we do in fewer words, you win.
Shake It Up
June 8, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
My friend Shawn Murphy doesn’t follow. He leads.
Shawn (@shawmu on Twitter) just launched the Wake Up and Shake It Up blog series. Need a push to think bigger than you have before? Here it is.
The first post, Big versus Small, went live this morning. I think you know the author – check it out.
Yes, But
May 29, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
How many times have you heard someone say “yes, but”?
“Yes, I’d like to ship that for you, but you can’t use that box.”
“That’s a good idea. I’d like to say yes, but this isn’t the time to try something different.”
Somewhere along the line, people were conditioned to say no. What would happen if everyone in the company had to look for a reason to say yes?
Don’t Change Your Story
May 23, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
It’s frustrating to listen to people, companies, and politicians say they stand for something while at the same time they try to please everyone. It doesn’t work that way, no matter how hard they try to convince us otherwise.
A company’s story can’t be about convenience, low-cost, premium-value, and great selection.
A politician can’t talk about lowering taxes, increasing services, attacking bureaucracy, and reducing the deficit.
A Little League coach can’t preach health and fitness to his team and then sneak a cigarette while the kids are running laps.
I realize that it’s hard to take a stand, to tell people what they don’t want to hear. But it does no good to change your story to suit your audience. Sooner or later people will figure out that you don’t stand for anything at all, which means you’ll be gone tomorrow.
The 5 Goals of a Project Manager
May 22, 2010 by Jason Westland
I’m thrilled to introduce a new contributor to The Baby Gorillas – project management expert Jason Westland. Jason is the founder and CEO of Method123 and Project Manager Online. He has written articles for Computer World and was the author of the best-selling book “The Project Management Life Cycle.” And he truly understands the concept of thinking big and acting small, which makes him a great addition to this blog.
For more information about Jason’s online project management software, visit Project Manager.com.
Please join me in welcoming Jason – we’re lucky to have him. His first article is the perfect primer for project management. I hope that you find it useful.
- Ed McLaughlin
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As a Project Manager, you need to manage people, money, suppliers, equipment—the list is never ending. The trick is to be focused. Set yourself 5 personal goals to achieve. If you can meet these simple goals for each project, then you will achieve total success. So read on, to learn…
The 5 Goals of a Project Manager
These goals are generic to all industries and all types of projects. Regardless of your level of experience in project management, set these 5 goals for every project you manage.
Goal 1: To finish on time
This is the oldest but trickiest goal in the book. It’s the most difficult because the requirements often change during the project and the schedule was probably optimistic in the first place.
To succeed, you need to manage your scope very carefully. Implement a change control process so that any changes to the scope are properly managed.
Always keep your plan up to date, recording actual vs. planned progress. Identify any deviations from plan and fix them quickly.
Goal 2: To finish under budget
To make sure that your project costs don’t spiral, you need to set a project budget at the start to compare against. Include in this budget, all of the types of project costs that will accrue, whether they are to do with people, equipment, suppliers or materials. Then work out how much each task in your plan is going to cost to complete and track any deviations from this plan.
Make sure that if you over-spend on some tasks, that you under-spend on others. In this way, you can control your spend and deliver under budget.
Goal 3: To meet the requirements
The goal here is to meet the requirements that were set for the project at the start. Whether the requirements were to install a new IT system, build a bridge or implement new processes, your project needs to produce solutions which meet these requirements 100%.
The trick here is to make sure that you have a detailed enough set of requirements at the beginning. If they are ambiguous in any way, then what was initially seen as a small piece of work could become huge, taking up valuable time and resources to complete.
Goal 4: To keep customers happy
You could finish your project on time, under budget and have met 100% of the requirements—but still have unhappy customers. This is usually because their expectations have changed since the project started and have not been properly managed.
To ensure that your project sponsor, customer and other stakeholders are happy at the end of your project, you need to manage their expectations carefully. Make sure you always keep them properly informed of progress. “Keep it real” by giving them a crystal clear view of progress to date. Let them voice their concerns or ideas regularly. Tell them upfront when you can’t deliver on time, or when a change needs to be made. Openness and honesty are always the best tools for setting customer expectations.
Goal 5: To ensure a happy team
If you can do all of this with a happy team, then you’ll be more than willing to do it all again for the next project. And that’s how your staff will feel also. Staff satisfaction is critical to your project’s success.
So keep your team happy by rewarding and recognizing them for their successes. Assign them work that complements their strengths and conduct team building exercises to boost morale. With a happy motivated team, you can achieve anything!
And there you have it. The 5 goals you need to set yourself for every project.
Of course, you should always work smart to achieve these goals more easily.
Yesterday, Tomorrow, & Today
May 21, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
The secret of business success comes down to one thing:
Time.
Sound too simple? I’d probably agree – if not for the fact that using time well is incredibly difficult.
Perhaps this story will help you to change your perspective on time. Imagine that your bank credits you with $86,400 every morning. You don’t have to pay this money back, but there’s a catch – every night, the bank deletes any balance remaining in the account. So if you fail to use any portion of the money during the day, you lose it forever. In this scenario, would you be certain to withdraw every cent? Sure you would.
Every day, we receive a similar credit – 86,400 seconds of time. As with the imaginary bank, failure to use any portion of the daily deposit is your loss. So the question is this: how much value do you place on the time you have remaining today?
Every second of time is valuable. If that seems like an overstatement, you should talk with a person who just avoided a car accident. It’s quite possible that the difference between life and death came down to a single second (or less).
Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is unknown.
Today is a gift.
Don’t waste it.
Stop Reinforcing the Status Quo
March 4, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
Every day, people do the same thing over and over without questioning the policy or the system. Which is why new ideas are usually met with resistance.
“That will never work.”
“It’s never been done before.”
“Don’t bother – we already tried that once.”
“Nice idea, but can you prove that it will work?”
“We can’t sell that to senior management.”
We aren’t taught to question things that are familiar to us. Which reminds me of an experiment that can be done with five monkeys.
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray the other four monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result – the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.
Soon enough, any monkey that tries to climb the stairs will be stopped by the others.
Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The newcomer will see the banana and try to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. And the previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.
Continue the process – replace the third monkey with a new one, then the fourth, then fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. But most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs – or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Regardless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know, that’s the way it’s always been done around here.
Companies all over the world repeat this experiment every day with their own people. What about yours? Or do you promote a culture that is eternally curious about why they do what they do?
Less is More
February 18, 2010 by Ed McLaughlin
Thanks to the Internet, the world has gotten smaller. It’s now possible to connect with people all over the world in a meaningful way.
While I agree that it matters who you know, that doesn’t mean the goal should be to have thousands of online friends. Quantity alone doesn’t mean that you’re truly connected.
Here’s a thought: make your network smaller. Then take that network and focus on making it tighter. Do this by reaching out to people more frequently (about them, not you) and connecting them to others.
This approach takes time, but it’s the best way I know to build a real network.
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