May 2010 Archives

Part of good leadership is coaching. I've previously shared documentation and other information about how to do coaching - but if you haven't coached before, you may struggle because you don't know what coaching "looks like." I'd like to show good coaching in action.

You may be familiar with the reality show "Project Runway." In the program, budding fashion designers compete to create the best outfit each week, usually over an incredibly tight deadline.

I'm not very interested in fashion, but what draws me to this show is one of the anchors: Tim Gunn. Tim acts as a kind of style mentor, and meets with each designer for a brief coaching session midway through each design challenge. I think Tim makes for an excellent example in coaching.

If you would like to see Tim's coaching in action, I've selected 3 good examples from this blog post dating back to November: (Read more..)

Brian McDonald and colleagues from MOR Associates were on campus last week to assist with a local IT Leaders Program. (Congratulations to Jac Campbell, who is in this ITLP group.)

Brian also spoke at an All OIT session. Thanks to everyone who attended Tuesday's presentation in person, and also those who joined via UMConnect. Brian's vision of how we can all engage with change helps one both personally and professionally. For those who were unable to attend, I encourage you to watch the program at
UMConnect.

You may have noticed the white-and-yellow signs around the office, advertising the coming ITG initiative, happening in July. The first set addressed a common misconception about ITG: "I don't have time for this". But in fact, the ITG initiative will help you to plan projects and manage time more effectively than was possible using TDOCs.

A second set of signs went up recently, reinforcing the first set: "But what's in it for me?" It's important to realize that ITG will help make your workload visible to others. How many times have you been asked to work on a project - but your manager didn't realize how much time you were already working, so that extra bit of work put you over the edge? With ITG, it will be much easier for others to see when you are available vs when you are overbooked.

The managers have already been to several ITG training classes, learning to plan projects and create workplans using ITG. The other big aspect of using ITG across all of OIT in July will be the entry of time against work plans and projects by you and your team members. Most of you should already be aware that training for time entry is being planned for June. Below is some information about the training sessions, pulled from the UTTC web-site:

ITG Center: Time Tracking Basics

This 1.5-hour hands-on course provides an overview of creating and submitting time sheets in ITG Center. Topics include: creating a time sheet, adding tasks to a time sheet, updating the estimated time to completion on a task, submitting time sheets, re-working a time sheet, and updating your ITG Center calendar. A brief overview of the time sheet approval process will also be presented.

This is the hands-on version of ITG Center: Time Tracking Basics. This training is also available as an online, self-paced learning opportunity (available June 4th).

As you can see, both hands-on sessions and on-line training are available. If you and the members of your team are planning for the hands-on training, please register for a session that fits into your June schedule.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation in this important OIT initiative, and let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Just a reminder to attend the presentation by Brian McDonald on "Leading the Changes Ahead" tomorrow - Tuesday, May 18th - in Mayo Auditorium at 2:30pm. If you are able to attend, I encourage you to make time on your calendar.

Many of you know that I attended the IT Leaders Program ("ITLP") several years ago. While in the program, I became friends with Brian. He's been a great friend, coach, and mentor ever since.

A few years ago, Brian hosted professional development sessions with OIT staff. If you had the opportunity to attend, you know this was a great working session. Brian spoke about leadership at all levels in an organization; you don't have to be a manager to be "leaderful."

Tomorrow's presentation is open to everyone in OIT. Additional program information will be available shortly, and will be published in an upcoming OIT newsletter. The event also will be available via UMConnect.

A friend pointed me to a blog article, The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash. In it, the author advances a theory: "Steve Jobs believes he's gambling Apple's future - the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn - on an all-or-nothing push into a new market."

This is an interesting article. But I've seen these thoughts before - it's not a new idea that cell phones and mobile computing will be the next generation of web computing. Basically, it speaks to the future of computing, and how we use the Web.

Let's take a brief look at the Web: In the early 1990's, the Mosaic graphical web browser helped turn Tim Berners-Lee's vision for a World Wide Web into a reality. It was a major milestone, where anyone with a web browser could easily access images and information via the Internet. (Prior to this point, "using the Internet" meant accessing FTP servers.)

Since about 2000, technologists have talked about "Web 2.0", where the Web becomes more of an application platform, rather than just static web pages. Broadband was certainly a player in "Web 2.0", but really it was the feasibility of AJAX that made "Web 2.0" possible. It's just hard to do much of AJAX over dial-up speeds.

I believe the next generation of the Web, or "Web 3.0", will be focused on the handheld device. We've seen a build up to this over the last year or so. Actually, I've been riding this wave for a few years now, with difficulty. I used to bring my PSP everywhere I went - not (so much) to play video games during idle time, but to browse the web using open wifi. The web browser on the PSP is serviceable for that, and many tech-oriented web sites have had a mobile-enabled version of their site (if not mobile browser detection) for a while now.

But today, if I want to browse the web (IMDB, email, etc.) and I'm not at my computer, I'll just use the browser on my smartphone. Welcome to the future!

So, let me bring that back to the article for a moment.

Steve Jobs is able to see that mobile/handheld computing is going to be the next Big Thing, so it's not a coincidence that the iPad is basically an iPhone with a larger screen.

And yes, other IT players are trying to break into the non-phone handheld device market. Microsoft has been touting their "Microsoft Courier" (I think that's what it's called) for a while now - and just recently killed it. But doubtless we'll see other large-format mobile devices hit the market soon. The Kindle was there first, but they targeted only the book market - I'll be interested to see what device comes next.

If iPad devices are successful, the Web will look a lot different in another 5 years. How do you think Web development will change?

There's an interesting blog post from a few weeks ago at Forbes: How Chat And Youth Are Killing the Meeting.

Can you run a company through e-mail and chat without meetings, without ever getting together in the same room or at the same time? At first, the answer seems to be yes. But there is a lot more going on here.

The article really is about how the meeting structure has begun to change in the workplace. What is a "meeting"? Some organizations are beginning to do away with most traditional meetings, opting instead to replace in-person meeting time with online chat and email. The trade-off is that everyone must be on chat, paying attention to it for most of the day.

While many 20-somethings entering the workforce today may find this exciting, it's definitely against the grain for those already established in the organization. This means the shift to more online meetings will be slow, although we already see some examples of chat-based meetings between some areas of OIT. Within the next 5 to 10 years, I predict online meetings will be more common within the University.

Technology changes the way we do business, and the ways we work together. In days past, it was common to draft a paper memo to distribute announcements and new information to a team. Corporate email changed that. When is the last time you saw an announcement from the University that was sent to you via a letter or paper memo? It's pretty much all email now.

Meetings are the next step for how technology changes things. The author suggests these guidelines to succeed in the long term with this new mode:

• Project managers must monitor the stream of activity and capture knowledge so that what is taking place can be reviewed and analyzed later.

• Checklists or defined processes must be in place so that the staff has guidance and a way to capture what they have learned about how to do their jobs better.

• A mechanism to provide clarity of plans and intentions must exist so that everyone can see what everyone else is doing and conflicts or contradictions can be identified early.

• Some form of conflict resolution must exist so that problems raised are certain to get attention.

• Resources consumed and progress toward defined goals must be monitored as closely as possible and reported frequently.

• There must be a forum for brainstorming and fellowship so that everyone can enjoy each other's company and learn from everyone else.

I'll add that in-person meetings are very useful, and online meetings only work well for a particular style of meetings. For example, plain "status update" meetings can easily shift to online. But if you want to generate feedback, especially collaborative feedback like a SWOT exercise or generating a set of ideas (i.e. "brainstorming") then an in-person meeting is the way to go.

I've previously given examples on how to use PowerPoint, and how not to use PowerPoint. Giving a good presentation shouldn't rely on your slides. The quality of your presentation content matters, not how pretty you made your slides.

It's also important not to overload your slides with too much information. The problem with information packed slides is that the audience is momentarily given lots of information but - having too little time to parse it - won't recall it later. And they won't be able to concentrate on your words either, because they'll be too busy reading.

This was demonstrated all too plainly in a presentation given last summer to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. One slide meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but instead was a beautiful impediment to understanding. The New York Times has more.

Some choice quotes from the article:

• "PowerPoint makes us stupid," Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander.
• "It's dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control," Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster (who banned PowerPoint presentations.)
• "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war," Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

For more about PowerPoint, 'information design' expert Edward Tufte posted a sample from his essay, PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques for Technical Reports. Tufte cites a PowerPoint presentation given at NASA about the 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster. In this case, unstructured information overload blurred key points, and made it difficult for senior management to realize the presentation addressed life-threatening situations.

In my own presentations, I rely on only a few simple PowerPoint slides that address a single theme that I can speak to. The key is simple, so that my audience's attention stays focused on me and what I'm saying. My "wordiest" slides have only 3 bullets, so the audience's attention is diverted for only a moment, then back to me.

I was a special guest at Penguicon last year, talking about FreeDOS and other open source software. One presentation I gave only used 9 slides for a 1-hour talk (but I could have done it with 7.) That's about 6-7 minutes for each slide, which helped me and the audience stay focused on each topic.

You may one day need to give a presentation for others. Remember the general rules to give a truly outstanding presentation:

1. Avoid distractions.
2. Use slides that are visual, not wordy.
3. Share your enthusiasm.
4. Leave room to talk around the bullet points.