“So did you talk to Jack?” I asked. Carolyn was smiling, “I sure did. He was really helpful. I thought he might reject me.” “And did he give you some useful suggestions?” “He kept asking me questions. It was kind of weird. He wasn’t insulting, or condescending, it was like he expected me to ask…
Avoiding the Meeting Takeover – Part 1
Carolyn was clearly frustrated. “He just completely took over the meeting… I felt like I had no ability to regain control.” “How did he do that?”, I asked.
Heroes of Change
Let’s face it. Middle managers are not that glamorous. They get stuck with some pretty odious responsibilities, like figuring out how to reduce costs, telling RIF victims bad news, and enforcing policies that they may not always agree with or understand. All the glory tends to go to the executives, along with the good compensation. …
Customer Satisfaction and The Hero
In this series I am exploring the notion of viewing interdepartmental relationships within a company as “customer-provider” relationships. In this post I want to tackle the question: What does customer satisfaction mean? Customer satisfaction is hard to define. Ultimately, we want customers from whom wealth flows to the owners to be content, so the wealth…
Goodness
Taking a short break from my customer series to ask a silly question… What are you good at? This Thanksgiving week, I want to think about things we can be thankful for. So lets start with those things that help us be valuable to those around us.
A Customer Who?
In this series I am exploring the notion of viewing interdepartmental relationships within a company as “customer-provider” relationships. In this post I want to tackle the question: Who is my customer? Internal departments may do work on behalf of real clients of the company, but never have contact with those clients. There may be customer…
A Customer
“The purpose of any business is to create and keep a customer” – Peter Drucker Five years ago, even two years ago, I would have said that the purpose of a business is to create value. Before that I would have said that the purpose of a business is to make a profit or to…
God Module Preventers
OK, only developers know what “god modules” are and according to the internet functional architects are just glorified business analysts. So why is it that I see Functional Architecture as an application of design, simply preventing god modules in a more abstract way? Here is my argument…
Trust is not Binary
I read this post in Dan Rockwell’s Leadership Freak blog and it aggravated me. I agree with Bob that trust is given, not earned, but distrust is often earned. Trust isn’t merely given, it is needed. I have to trust. I can’t function without it. It’s a matter of how much. Do I trust you…
The Elusive Inch Pebble
Of course this title has everyone asking “What in heck is an inch pebble?”, right? Well I was first introduced to this term by Johanna Rothman in an article she wrote about a hundred years ago. While I read it, and intuitively understood it, it didn’t at first occur to me that it was a…