For the four or five of you that read my blog, I thought I would take you on a magical tour of the websites that I frequent. For this tour I will use Kynetx technology. I am calling this tour Gumby Sites because Gumby is the nickname given to me by my Kynetx compatriots. Not all of these sites are work-related, but they are all safe for work. This tour will be guided and you will see my comments about each site as you visit it (look for a little black box in the upper right corner).

In order to see my tour you will need to download a browser plugin and an information card. Go to www.azigo.com and click on “get Azigo” in the top black bar. After downloading and installing Azigo, you will need the information card which can be downloaded here. After you are done with those steps come back to this page and refresh for the tour to begin. Enjoy!

Last week I completed my series on the principles from Steve Fulling’s We Are the Ten document. Today I am going to write about a subject near and dear to every programmer’s heart-exception handling. Exceptions in the world of programming refer to events that occur in a program that change the normal flow of execution. Some would call them errors. The common phrase is that a program will “throw an exception.” Good development practices demand that important exceptions are “caught” and “handled,” hence the term exception handling.

At times I and my associates like to apply technical terms to human relationships to give us a framework for discussion. It’s often very entertaining. Recently we were at lunch discussing how to handle exceptions thrown by our wives. Hilarity ensued. We all wondered what to do about silent failures (she throws an exception but does not indicate it externally). Also, how aggressive should your try/catch block be? These are questions that every new husband figures out through trial and error.

The workplace is another appropriate setting for handling exceptions in a human context. We all deal with general exceptions like maybe someone took your red stapler, or Fred is sleeping again in staff meeting. The horrible annual performance review is a formalized mechanism for exception handling (how awful would it be to work in a place where exceptions are handled only once a year?). If you are lucky enough to work in an environment where people largely subscribe to the principles of the Ten, then you can get a little bit more active with your exception handling. This is good because humans often need to be pushed hard in order to change. We don’t like to admit that we have room for improvement and we are good at ignoring error after error. Most people have complex mental constructs to defend their ego against perceived attacks that come in the form of constructive criticism. Psychotherapists are trained to break down those constructs and help people solve their problems.

If you have work associates that are honest and that understand and believe in the principles of the Ten you can create a culture of constructive exception throwing and handling. You have to get past ego and past the stupid politeness that prevents us from having real conversations. You also need a level of trust which is sometimes hard to establish in a workplace. If you find one or two other people and form a “We Are the Ten” group that provides honest feedback then you will come out ahead.

This concept reminds me of my experience with ToastMasters. ToastMasters is an organization aimed at helping people become better public speakers. I joined, not knowing what it was about. What I quickly discovered was that it was an environment where all public speaking exceptions are thrown and caught in a very constructive way. It’s like debug mode for verbal communication and it is a very powerful experience. Every “um” or “ah” is caught by a person specifically assigned to push a button on a buzzer whenever they hear them. After a speaker finishes the group provides public and private feedback to the speaker. That’s some serious exception handling. The result is polished public speaking. Look for this kind of environment if you want to improve yourself.

This is the final of ten principles that I am writing about as a part of my We Are the Ten series. This series is based on a document written by a friend of mine, Steve Fulling. He wrote the document as a kind of manifesto on the attributes of the top 10% of people in the workplace. The principles hold true beyond the workplace, too.

I wrote about simplicity back in January. The point of that article was that almost anything can be broken down into individual components which are simple. Once systems are broken down, regular people can discuss them and understand them and make meaningful decisions about them.

But how does a member of the Ten use simplicity in the workplace?

Businesses deal with complex issues every day. Most of the time this complexity is a result of incomplete information, which means that the complexity is merely perceived. Unfortunately this happens all the time because humans are not omniscient. Members of the Ten realize this, but the work hard to understand what is happening around them. They do this by acting like a four-year-old and asking a lot of questions. They are insatiably curious. Members of the Ten want to know why? what is that? why do we need to do that? what’s the point of this? how long will it take to do that? how does this relate to our main purpose for being? If they don’t get good answers to those questions they keep asking and digging until they are satisfied.

People who are not members of the Ten do not act this way because they are afraid of sounding stupid. Their caution prevents them from truly understanding what’s going on around them.

Members of the Ten also look at ideas or new systems and ask if they can be simplified. They keep asking why do we need this? until they get answers that satisfy them. The source of this drive for understanding is that members of the Ten have a healthy amount of skepticism about the efficiency or design of all the systems around them.

This is the ninth of ten principles that I am writing about as a part of my We Are the Ten series. This series is based on a document written by a friend of mine, Steve Fulling. He wrote the document as a kind of manifesto on the attributes of the top 10% of people in the workplace. The principles hold true beyond the workplace, too.

The purpose of a business is to produce value for its customers. The way to do this profitably is for the process of value creation to cost you less than the amount your customers are willing to pay for it. This is a tricky process, but the place to start is in identifying the value that your customers want.

Different businesses approach their customers in different ways. I think the relationships that businesses have with their customers can be grouped into the following categories:

1. Third-person. This is the kind of relationship where the customer set is a big blob of people measured in statistics and demographics. Customers are one big “Them.” Focus groups and surveys are used to capture customer feedback. In some cases there seems to be a disdain for customers, like they are stupid and don’t know what they want.
2. Second-person. This kind of relationship is much more human. Each customer is a “You.” The company talks with individual customers to find out what they need and get feedback on their experience with the company. The jump from third-person to second-person is huge, and customers can see and appreciate the difference. However, with second-person customer relationships, the company still views the customer as separate from the company. Customers are still a group of people “out there” while the company is “in here.”
3. First-person. With first-person customer relationships, the company seeks to experience the customer’s world, especially as it relates to the products or services that the company offers. The company strives to reduce the separation from the customer until they can be be thought of as “I” or “we.” This is the kind of relationship that members of the Ten strive to have with their customers. It is the ultimate in eat-your-own-dog-food, and it takes a lot of effort.

Members of the Ten are so passionate about bringing value to their customers that they want to understand what their customers value on a very intimate level. That’s why they strive for first-person customer relationships. A good example of this is backcountry.com. If you visit their offices you realize very quickly that the people that work there use the gear they are selling. They may have come to work at BackCountry because they were customers. Whatever your products are, you need to enthusiastically dive in to the world that uses your products and learn what matters to that world. You need to become assimilated into that world and get rid of the arm’s-length customer relationships of the past. Turn your customers from “them” to “us.” Then all you have to do is deliver the value your customers want in a profitable way (that’s the easy part, right?).

This is the eighth of ten principles that I am writing about as a part of my We Are the Ten series. This series is based on a document written by a friend of mine, Steve Fulling. He wrote the document as a kind of manifesto on the attributes of the top 10% of people in the workplace. The principles hold true beyond the workplace, too.

Anyone who is not evil would say that transparency and full disclosure are good things to have. However, many good people disagree on how much transparency or disclosure are appropriate in a company. Most companies do not do a good job with transparency. In many cases this is because of ineptitude of managers in communicating, not because of any machiavellian hoarding of information. Unfortunately, if this poor communication happens with top managers or C-level folks then the bad example they set is often followed by their underlings. What results is an unintentional dearth of information, even within a well-intentioned organization.

Leaders must set the example. Leaders must build a culture of transparency by being transparent. Leaders hopefully have more information than workers and should be digesting that information into clarity. In my post Strategies for the New Reality I wrote about the need for clarity, and that a prerequisite to having clarity is brutal honesty. These principles are very closely tied with transparency and full disclosure. If you as a leader have clarity then it is your obligation to disclose what you understand to be true. Of course, you need to be cognizant of the audience and tailor your message accordingly. If you do this you empower the people around you with clarity. From clarity comes conviction and powerful action.

Here is the advice that I would give any executive. The steps are simple to describe but difficult to implement:

1. Gather information (AKA data, truth).
2. Achieve clarity by honest, skilled analysis of available information.
3. Adjust strategy to reflect the clarity achieved.
4. Distribute the information (the data), the clarity (the conclusions), and the strategy as widely as possible within your organization. Err on the side of too much information. Share all three elements or your message is weakened. This can be done in the form of a story, making supporting documents available for those who want more info.
5. Task your managers with sharing the same story with their people.
6. Spot-check front-line employees to find out how much of the story they receive and make adjustments.

If any of the first three steps are done poorly then the positive impact of the last three steps will be limited, however even if your analysis is faulty at least your people will know where you stand and the reasons for your decisions. This is how members of the Ten behave.

This is the seventh of ten principles that I am writing about as a part of my We Are the Ten series. This series is based on a document written by a friend of mine, Steve Fulling. He wrote the document as a kind of manifesto on the attributes of the top 10% of people in the workplace. The principles hold true beyond the workplace, too.

In order to discuss courage and confrontation I must first lay some groundwork about the topics of ego. As humans, we all have egos. There are certain attributes or qualities that we identify with. Here’s an example. Maybe you are a great negotiator, and you take pride in that fact. You think of yourself as a great negotiator, and you subconsciously compare your negotiating ability with other people. If someone challenges your negotiating ability you take it as a personal affront and you defend your superiority because if it turns out that you aren’t so good at it after all, then your very identity is called into question.

Ego, therefore, is a huge impediment to self improvement. It prevents you from processing the environmental and human feedback that is around your all the time. It prevents you from accepting criticism as compliment and encourages you to view it as an assault. Somehow we all need to try to step back from our egos and look for feedback, and then take action on that feedback.

Now, what does this have to do with courage and confrontation? Well, everything. One of the main roadblocks standing in the way of open and honest discussions about ideas is ego. Members of the Ten believe that ideas should survive or die based on their merits. Ideas should be discussed on their merits. The best idea shoud win, no matter who came up with it. If it turns out that your idea wasn’t the best, that doesn’t mean that you are any less of a person. This also means that if you are typically the one who comes up with the idea that others adopt, you need to make a concious effort to encourage other people to challenge your ideas.

When Steve wrote about courage and confrontation in his original We are the Ten document, I don’t think he was encouraging confrontation just for confrontation’s sake. I think he was saying that each of us has a responsibility to take a stand for the things we think are correct, and we need to be willing to debate ideas on the merits. That takes courage, and it often leads to confrontation.

I enjoy participating in debates about the merits of ideas with intelligent people. I always learn something, and the idea itself emerges from the conversation strengthened by the process of running through the gauntlet. The people I associate with are capable of these kinds of discussions without resorting to personal attacks, and I appreciate that. Leaders and members of the Ten need to foster environments where these kinds of discussions can take place.

This is the sixth of ten principles that I am writing about as a part of my We Are the Ten series. This series is based on a document written by a friend of mine, Steve Fulling. He wrote the document as a kind of manifesto on the attributes of the top 10% of people in the workplace. The principles hold true beyond the workplace, too.

Members of the Ten are focused exclusively on the results they aim to achieve. In order to obtain this focus they first observe the world around them and identify the changes they want to affect, or the things they want to build. They give their best effort to align their objectives with truth and goodness, and they recognize the fact that breaking the law or being evil to others causes them to forfeit truth and goodness. They commit to these principles and then they move forward with a determination that comes out of a clear view of the world. They become a revolutionary, enlisted to a cause that they truly believe in.

As all revolutionaries learn, you sometimes have to break the rules to accomplish your objectives. The signers of the Declaration of Independence recognized that they committed an act of treason against the crown. They knew that if their side didn’t prevail that they would lose their lives. They signed anyway because they knew what they were doing was the right thing.

Your experience as a revolutionary may not be as dramatic. In fact, the only risk you may have to take to be a revolutionary in the business world is to risk your income. Members of the Ten are willing to take that kind of risk to affect change.

Members of the Ten don’t break the rules just to be contrarian, they just don’t let the rules stand in their way. This usually manifests itself initially as a break from established social norms. Maybe you speak up in a meeting and tell people what you really think is important. Maybe you take the initiative in a domain that is not seen as your realm. Regardless of what it is (within limits, of course), members of the Ten have the courage to do what they think is right, even when it goes against the grain.

This is the fifth of ten principles that I am writing about as a part of my We Are the Ten series. This series is based on a document written by a friend of mine, Steve Fulling. He wrote the document as a kind of manifesto on the attributes of the top 10% of people in the workplace. The principles hold true beyond the workplace, too.

There is a lot to be said for being data-driven. Focus on what you can measure. Look at the empirical evidence. Judge based on quantitative information. These all have their place. However, if you are going to be a member of the Ten you are going to need to be able to listen to and trust your gut.

That’s not an easy thing to do, mainly because we are afraid we are going to make a mistake. We are even more afraid of the scenario where we have just made a mistake and someone (like our boss) asks us why we did the thing we just did. Blaming “gut instinct” is generally not received well. Way to shoot from the hip, Texas Ranger. Don’t let the doors hit you on your way out.

So what role does our gut play in business and in life? For members of the Ten, it plays a big role. Members of the Ten know how to balance what their gut tells them with past experience and present empirical data in order to make the right decision. They trust their gut. They value that intitial impression they get when they first consider an idea, or they first look at a product. They know how they feel about something and use that to informt their decision-making process.

Because members of the Ten are also risk-takers they are sometimes faced with decisions where the only resource they have to consult is their gut. There may not be past experience or present empirical data to lean upon. This is where members of the Ten really shine. They make a decision and move forward, adjusting course as they find out more information. They accept the consequences of these decisions and take responsibility for the results. Sometimes they make mistakes, and that’s OK. If a decision that was made from the gut turned out to be a mistake, well then you have more data to use in making your future decisions. Get up/move on/learn.

This is the fourth of ten principles that I am writing about as a part of my We Are the Ten series. This series is based on a document written by a friend of mine, Steve Fulling. He wrote the document as a kind of manifesto on the attributes of the top 10% of people in the workplace. The principles hold true beyond the workplace, too.

Today I am talking about acting like owners. Few of us are in the position where we own the business in which we work. Most of us are one or more steps removed from the trials and tribulations of ownership. It is easy to blame “The Man” or to shrug your shoulders at the failures or successes of a business if you are “just an employee.” Employees are good at taking responsibility only for their little domain. If it’s not in the job description, it’s not an employee’s problem.

I argue that this kind of thinking is poison, even if you are “just an employee.” This kind of thinking looks to escape accountability. It withholds contributions that could be made to the business because they are not “my problem.” It looks only at tasks to be completed and doesn’t think about results. It watches the clock.

If you are stuck in this kind of thinking you are not likely to find success in private enterprise. You may actually be a good candidate for the growing bureaucracy of government. This kind of thinking thrives there.

I believe that thinking and acting like and owner is the way to make the best use of your human potential. Have you ever wondered what you were capable of? What kind of success you could have if only “The Man” weren’t holding you down? The barrier of “The Man” is just an illusion. You have the power to move past him. He’s only in your head. The way to move past him is to ask yourself, “If I owned this business how would I act? What results are important?” And then get to work, acting as if you actually are an owner. I submit that no matter where you are currently working that acting in this manner will bring you success. You may find that you need to look for other employement because maybe you work someplace that has institutionalized employee thinking, but that is progress because you will escape. Acting like an owner is always good for the human spirit and will make you a part of the Ten.

This is the third of ten principles that I am writing about as a part of my We Are the Ten series.

A note to my regular readers: This week’s We Are the Ten post comes on Wednesday because I was out of town Monday and Tuesday. Plan on seeing the next installment next Monday. Today we are going to talk about Agility.

Agile is a word that registers pretty highly on the buzzword meter. Software development shops everywhere are looking at the formal “Agile Methodology” for projects, wondering if it is right for them and if they should jump on the bandwagon. Similarly, executives tend to use terms like “agile,” “nimble,” or “adaptive” to describe their organizations. What does it all mean? Why is Agility a principle of the Ten?

Agility is the ability to move quickly and easily. Agility requires flexibility, both physical and mental. In order to develop agility you must develop flexibility. I served in the USMC Reserves for eight years. I was a mortar platoon Sergeant. We had the best mortar section in the whole Marines, in my opinion. I would put my guys up against the best active duty platoons out there and we would beat them soundly in accuracy and time to target. I attribute our success to a principle enshrined in our platoon motto which was a derivative of the USMC motto, “Semper Fidelis,” which means “Always Faithful.” Our motto was “Semper Gumby,” - “Always Flexible.” We were able to adapt to any situation that was thrown at us. We tried to take advantange of all opportunities that were presented to us. A good firing position, good Forward Observer position, and above all precision in determining the details of each fire mission. We did not deviate too far from our training, however we were good at improvising if the situation called for it. And we had fun.

These principles apply to business but are frequently forgotten. Most meetings are proof of this. Part of being agile is also the ability to get things done quickly. If you have an idea, build a prototype and vet it out before you go home, not next week. Get in the habit of expecting quick results from you and your team. Break down the mental roadblocks to agility. Push yourself outside of your comfort zone.

Speaking of confort zones, they are a killer. I have an on-again/off-again addiction to running. I have been on a streak since the Monday after Thanksgiving. Love it. I always want to run faster, but I get into a comfort zone at a certain speed. So how do you run faster? Well it’s really quite simple. You run faster by running faster. Leave your comfort zone and work on a new pace. Soon you will get comfortable at your new pace and you will have to leave that comfort zone as well. Do it! If you consistently leave your confort zone to work on something worthwhile you will end up with very impressive results.