Tag Archives: Business

Post-inspiration but pre-perspiration

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A few days ago on twitter I posted the following:

“I have the three i’s: inspiration induced insomnia” – @imsickofmaps on twitter

I sometimes get these spurts of inspiration late at night and then spend hours with a notepad/iPad/iPhone/book/etc. scribbling, reading, thinking and Googling. That night I finally managed to get to sleep five hours after I went to bed about 3am. Sometimes I wake and whatever consumed me was just a passing crazy train of thought that no sane person would care to discuss with me. Thankfully, sometimes its not and that night was of those and has sparked a number of useful conversations since which warrant another blog post another day.

The next day I tweeted again a follow-up quote that is one of my favourites:

“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration” – Thomas Edison

I’ve been thinking about that quote over the last few days and I think that there’s a missing portion to the formula in the quote which I’m stuck for a name for but is “post-inspiration but pre-perspiration”. To be cool it would need to be an “..piration” word but the concept is one of “thoughtful planning”. The formula is probably more like “1% inspiration + 5% thoughtful planning + 94% perspiration”. Too often I think people can jump straight from idea to execution and then flail around trying constantly pivot and re-aim in order to hit the mark they’re aiming for.

Anyone think of a “…piration” word for “thoughtful planning” so I can create a quote as cool as Thomas Edison?

Review: Is the tech entrepreneurial community in Cape Town alive and kicking?

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Monday evening this week saw a “Great Debate” hosted by Neal Gandhi at the iPlex co-working space in Cape Town. I attended out of personal interest because since I’ve been based here for 11 months now but still trying to work out what’s going on with the tech “scene” here.

It was meant to be a formal debate with a few people in favour and a few against the motion that “The tech entrepreneurial community in Cape Town is alive and kicking”. However, it started a little oddly as those against the motion proceeded to announce the were asked to be against rather than it being of their own choosing! It sounded like they were a little cautious or burnt be recent flames aimed at them from non-attendees who had seen the announcement prior.

The “for” motion was put forward by Daniel Guasco, one of the joint-CEO’s of Groupon in SA who put forward a number of success stories both of buyouts and inflowing development through things like Google Umbono as proof that it was. Unfortunately as he closed there was a heckle rough speaking that “you’ve named them all”!

This led nicely into the “against” position delivered by the supposedly “pressured into it” but surprising-lucid-and-passionate Eric Edelstein from Evly. His argument was nicely built upon the foundational statement that the community was alive but by no means kicking. He raised a number of excellent points that showed how you differentiate between the two states using Silicon Valley as a benchmark. A number of the audience challenged this as unfair afterwards in the open questions session but I personally think that firstly if you aim low, you deliver low. Secondly, calling the initiative to ignite the region “Silicon Cape” says that most people identify with that focus as being critical. I think his best point was that the ecosystem of related businesses and systems are just not here at the moment in Cape Town. Its not just the finance eco-system (though that could do with an injection of life) but the lawyers, accountants, education, etc. that need to be there to support the entrepreneur in their endeavors.

Eric was so brutal in his delivery and the follow-up debate ended up dragging in a few of the “for” panellists into making “against” statements!

However, there were a few things unsaid that stick out for me as the deciding factors in this debate right now. The first was that though this event took place at 4.30 in the afternoon, as I drove there I did so against the massive rush hour traffic out of the CBD! At 4 in the afternoon. Those people are generally not going home to carry on there like the crazy Americans. They’re going home to watch bad TV. I think the overriding culture amongst the educated middle-classes of Cape Town is one of quiet contentment, which is fine and nice, but not conducive to a hunger to leave comfortable corporate land and risk all on a start-up. The majority of those with a fire in their belly to create the companies of the future are not sitting on a body of knowledge and experience that will set them up for success.

The second thing that stuck out for me as unspoken is the requirement for South African businesses to wake up and adopt 10 to 15 year old technologies (such as a basic catalogue style website) to allow the next generation of South African based companies to build upon it and get quick, local, visual feedback on how their technologies are being used. Yes, the digital world allows us to throw something on a server and have people in China, India and Iceland try it out but in the world of user experience there’s somethings best done in-person.

The debate ended with a question time which was wasted mostly with people making statements (fine if that’s the deal, but that’s not a question time) but I got to ask one on the feeling of the experts around the concept of the “pivot” being acceptable here. Blank stares from around the room led me to think the concept is not even truly understood here but another one of the Evly guys, the verbose Eran, did and told a funny story about a South African investor who was outraged that a (successful) pivot had seemed to strongly indicate in favour of returning to the unsuccessful model!

The vote was overwhelmingly “against” the motion at the end, I think mainly to do with the excellent “alive but not kicking” point. I hope when the time comes for me to complete my “start-up sabbatical” in corporate land and reenter start-up land that its alive enough still and I can help make it a little more kicking.

Thanks to the iPlex for hosting, looking forward to returning and sorry for not eating the food but I was going out for dinner and it would have been rude to show up full!

The failure path of “over scoping”

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In my previous post I talked about Communication failures and now I want to look at “over scoping”, particularly as it pertains to setting your daily work agenda.

Over scoping was as term I used a lot previously when I was involved in my role as a “pivotal provider” (a term someone invented for the person or team who liaised between a customer onshore and a development team offshore). We used it a lot because at that time (around 2000) as project-based offshore development was becoming popular there was a temptation by customers, as a result of the lower day rate, to try and cram more and more features into applications. Our job was to try and push back the scope to the core requirements and ensure we didn’t start with a functional specification that was going to lead to a massive deliverable. This approach generally came out of a desire to ship a version one of the project or program with everything in it in order to demonstrate why this project should be funded and delivered.

However, it seems to me to be creeping into the wider world of work as a result of people trying to ensure they as an individual are seen as critical to the future health of the business and become indispensable to the organisation they work for. Rather than focus on incremental, bite-sized, valuable collections of activities people look for and try to define grand, strategic, immeasurable bloated roles. Then fail to deliver on them.

Seems like “strategy” is the one title everyone wants and actually what your co-workers and team mates want is strategic execution, not long-term airy-fairy futurism. This means you must understand and return to the epicentre of your role and build back from there. In their book REWORK (buy it) the team from 37Signals talk about the term “finding your epicentre” in regards to business startup. On their blog they talk about it like this:

Epicenter Design involves focusing in on the true essence of the page (the “epicenter”) and then building outwards. This means not starting with the navigation/tabs, or the footer, or the colors, or the sidebar, or the logo, etc. It means starting with the part of the page that, if changed or removed, would change the entire purpose of the page. That’s the epicenter.

That’s a real challenge when applied to a role in the workplace: What thing (or things) that if I stopped doing would the entire purpose of my role disappear and the ability to serve my organisation cease.

This is what I’m focused on today because I lost sight of it. Finding my role’s epicentre, pulling back on the rest and executing (not talking) against that core.

Failure? I’m OK with that… (Part 1)

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This past year has been an interesting one full of lessons for me. I’ve:
1. After 30 years in London moved to a new country (South Africa)
2. Moved to a new functional group (marketing)
3. Moved into a new role type (team leader)
4. Moved back to being an individual contributor again in the last few weeks
5. Stepped down from a leadership role at my church in the UK
6. After 30 years in the same church joined a new one (Jubilee, Cape Town)

I decided to reflect back on some of the failures I have had personally because you know what… I’m OK with that and I want to make sure I remember the lessons I learnt!

I think I’m going to make this the first of a few posts, it’s time to get back in the writing saddle…

Lesson 1: Communicate (with honesty) without failing
In a hierarchical organisation this has to be “up” and “down” the chart with equal vigour. I think the toughest thing I struggled with this year was the shifting sands of my team. I felt like there was never a time in the last 12 months when my tiny team wasn’t dealing with some kind of crisis. Whether that was personal, professional, internal, external, deserved or undeserved it doesn’t matter … It just gets very wearing after a while if people can’t (or won’t) communicate an honest view of their position. I’m lucky to have worked in some very flat and open teams in the past and though sometimes it felt like people didn’t have enough focus I think I’ve grown to appreciate some of it’s beneficial characteristics! I think there are a few frustrating things about communication challenges but two bug me especially. The first is legal complications and the second is my inability to remain true to my beliefs.

Legal Complications
One of the things I want to build up more understanding of this week is the legal communications frameworks of the major countries within the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region I work in. There are certainly cultural differences across this vast region but there also appears to be a complex maze of restraints on what can and can not be said or communicated to employees. I still intend to one day return to running my own business and have realised the importance of this complex area. I have a feeling though the process of hiring great people is more important that ever before due to the mess you can preempt by doing so. My favourite book of the year is Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh who’s company Zappos emphasises the need for “cultural fit” so highly.

Remaining True
This area is far more personal and I thank my wife Lydia for calling me out on this one. I have the joyful freedom to work from home a good portion of the time when I’m not travelling so she gets to listen to one side of my phone calls. She calls me out when I’m struggling by pointing out “you’re gossiping again” which is a personal pet hate of mine. I hate office politics with a passion but have gotten sucked in so easily this past year.

Setting Goals
So the first and most important goal for the next 12 months is to communicate clearer, more often, with honesty and respect. Time to get on with it!

Lets start with agreeing we’re doing the right thing…

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I’m sitting here on a Sunday thinking about work so I thought it best to get some thoughts down on “paper” as an outlet.

The thing that’s playing on my mind is a situation where we have to get a number of the different teams within our organisation all pulling together to make sure an upcoming launch works really smoothly and has maximum impact for our customers. I realised that on Monday when we have some calls on the subject I need to make sure we start from the position of agreeing that we are doing the right thing. Sounds obvious but I have the feeling that people are just doing their jobs and that their hearts are not really in it. Perhaps they don’t feel appropriately ”consulted” up until this point, or they actually have other more pressing things on their mind but we can’t go forward without support.

The tricky thing is going to be phrasing the question in a non-threatening manner that doesn’t make people defensive but instead drives an honest and productive conversation. I was pleasantly surprised the other day to be complemented by someone further up the “food chain” than me that I’d learnt to think a little longer before opening my mouth! Something I’ve been working hard on, speaking the truth without alienating those who I’ll need to work with for months and years to come (hopefully).

I’m currently in the process of applying for a job internally to become the Principle Regional Product Marketing Manager for Security and a lot of the challenges in this new role if I get it will be ensuring that situations like the one I’ve described don’t happen as often in future. Having a consistent flow of communication around current and future product and solution strategy with the various stakeholders internally and externally is critical to our success.

Listening to: Delphic – Acolyte

Asking and answering hard questions

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It struck me during a session at work the other day that sometimes “fear of saying the wrong thing” or procrastination seems to lead people to behave more like politicians than leaders. By behaving like politicians I’m not referring to the current inability to know the difference between a “work related expense” and “taking a sly one”, which was at first amusing and swifly became another nail in the “what are they good for?” coffin they were already lying in for me. I am more referring to their habit of answering a question with another question.

Let me answer that by asking you this…

I’ve seem to have a reputation at work for speaking my mind without holding back, whoever the recipient may be, peer or exec. This may get me into trouble one day (and probably already has) but I’d rather deal with occasionally clearing up a mess than sit there in a perfectly clean but static environment. I think especially at senior levels within larger organisation the feeling that the people on the ground who come and quiz you know more than you do about some areas of the business. As mentioned before the fear of saying the wrong thing and looking like an idiot leads to skirting round the question. I believe this stems from a mis-perception that great leaders have all the answers. When I ask someone in a role that has a great span of control than mine their opinion on something, I’d rather have their view based on that span of control they have as it will help me in a few ways. Firstly, it will give me an insight into areas that I don’t have (e.g. I think numbers are up and they may be 300% in my area but that is cancelled out by a 10% drop in a much larger area than mine). Secondly, they teach me about the information flow and any improvements that may need to be made to help people make more informed decisions. Thirdly, people just see things differently based on their background and career. I would rather have the benefit of hearing that and add it into my understanding and experience.

So next time I ask a tough question, don’t reflect it back to me as a question please. I’d rather …

You know what, I don’t know for sure but based on my understanding …

Pretty please.

Developing Information Risk Management Stories

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My what a dull sounding post title but one of the fun things about being a specialist is developing the stories we tell to help the technology make sense. Not stories in the fictional sense, we couldn’t get it past legal! I’m privileged to work on a bunch of products that are genuinely integrated and not just thrown together by somebody in marketing looking to meet some new buzzword requirement.

The usual corporate-PowerPoint-hell exists at Symantec with 50 slide monsters containing everything you ever wanted say written on the slide itself. I apologise if you’ve ever been subjected to one of ours! Personally I try and use whiteboard wherever possible and I’ve been re-thinking the one I usually give recently in the light of our Vontu acquisition.

Vontu as a standalone entity focused on data loss prevention (DLP .. Another fab TLA) which is fundamentally about discovering where your important data exists within your organisation and keeping in the hands of only the people that need it. I think as I’ve been reviewing their messages and slides that the thing that most jumped out at me was the fact that “policy” was the core of all they do. Describe data. Describe access. Describe retention. Discover. Protect and prevent leakage. All those kinds of words and phrases revolve around policies. If you don’t know what your policy is handed down from a legal body, or an internal body, then how on earth are you going to decide how long to keep that pile of emails from your customers?

I think the biggest relief for me though as I discover more about the Vontu technology is that it’s not some toothless auditing or reporting tool but can actually impact and change user behaviour. You can run it in “Monitor/Discover” mode or “Prevent” or both. It’s not hard to build stories when you can impact the behaviour of thousands or millions of interactions of individuals using “our” information within an organisation!

Yes, Symantec still make appliances…

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… and they’re very good.

If you searched on our good friend Google for “Symantec appliances” you’d get the following results as the top two:

Symantec turns off on security appliances | The Register

Symantec is scaling down its hardware offering by pulling the plug on a range of network security appliances. The vendor will stop designing and making the …
www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/27/symantec_appliances/

Avoid Symantec appliances, says Gartner – vnunet.com

Analyst firm predicts that Symantec will exit market sector.
www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2159677/gartner-advises-avoiding

Oh dear, that doesn’t bode well for me in my new role at Symantec where my two focus products at the moment are Enterprise Vault (formerly KVS, archiving software) and the Mail Security 8300 Series appliance! I’ve only been in the role two weeks and I’ve already overheard colleagues describe themselves loosing business because “.. we don’t do appliances”. I repeat, yes, Symantec still make appliances… and they’re very good! They don’t make the hardware, it’s well spec’d Dell kit, but they do everything else involved in getting an appliance developed and with customers.

The communication problem stems from an exit from making appliance hardware and forming a partnership with Juniper that occurred mid-last year. The releases weren’t particularly clear and the press certainly focused on the “stopping making appliances” part of them. I’m still not fully clear on what has happened/is happening with those “SNS” and “SGS” products but “SMS” (Symantec Mail Security) is going strong. Amusingly the road-map code names for the upcoming releases are mountain names which keep getting higher and higher… I hope they’re pacing themselves on the way to Everest! Though I hear sub-ocean mountains are higher…

It’s going to be a challenge reversing the perception that Symantec don’t make appliances and that they are a worthy and safe investment for customers to make but I’m sure our team is up to the task! The most frustrating thing for me so far is working out what is publicly promotable about the products and what is “secret”. Everything seems to be marked “Internal Only” by default and only gets made “External” if someone asks the right person the right question about the right material and they agree. I’m still trying to discover the best way for me to change that without stepping on too many toes or ruffling too many feathers!

Blue Monster and more

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I’ve been meaning to write the bulk of this post for weeks and weeks and finally got sick of it running round in my head and thought it best to put it down.

The “Blue Monster” is a little project that Steve Clayton (Microsoftie) and Hugh Macleod (of GapingVoid fame). The back story is here and it centres around this little cartoon: Blue Monster

I’ve followed Steve and Hugh separately for a long time and even had the pleasure of meeting Hugh years ago at a Joi Ito meet-up in London and it’s been funny to watch the two worlds collide. If you’ve not heard of the blue monster then go read the back story and come back before you read my thoughts. Otherwise, read on!

My interpretation of the blue monster runs along some thoughts that I’ve had for years about the concept of “Cow paths”. I can’t remember the source of this story but I think it was told by one of the Gillmor Gang on their weekly podcast. The story goes that one university in the USA decided after building its new campus to not lay any paths around the site, between buildings. Instead they let the students walk whichever way was quickest for them. They then returned a year later, looked around and saw the “cow paths” (worn tracks) and laid paths on those. Now the way I think this fits in with the blue monster is that for a long time now people have created pathways at Microsoft and its time for the next generation to make their own. Abandoning the paved stones for the rough grass. Now I’ve recently started walking a new way to the train station that takes me through a patch of grass which for some bizare reason has a wonky cow path on it that doesn’t take the straightest route and I’ve been pioneering a new one and I think its beginning to take shape. However, I have to be careful because people walk their dogs on the grass and though they wouldn’t let them poop on the path, they do let them in the rough. So my take in a nutshell: Make a new cow path, mind the poo.

Now this story takes on another twist today because you may recall my story of trying to get an evangelist job with Microsoft a short while ago. Well I never got round to writing that I didn’t get the job… rejected! Reasons were “not enough experience with the latest version of SharePoint” and “not enough experience taking to groups of 300 plus”. Which I personally thought were very poor reasons… a good evangelist can get their head round almost anything, it’s a personality type, not tied to a specific piece of software.

However, another large software company who I’ve also worked closely with for the last few years thought I was good enough and offered me an evangelist role. That company is Symantec and I start in a few weeks as a “Sales Development Specialist”. It’s going to be very interesting because if Steve et al think Microsoft have a way to go on their transparency then Symantec are miles behind them. I’m yet to discover the boundaries of my open-ness in the new role but as one of the groups I will be charged with enthusing is the channel (partners by another name), I can’t see that being successful behind closed doors. I’m sure I have many lessons to learn, mistakes to make, and frustrations to overcome but I’m really looking forward to it.

I wonder if Steve Clayton will be good enough to meet me sometime and swap tips… How far does the Blue Monster go? (and how often does he check Technorati to see who’s talking about him!)

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Symantec: What do you do?

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I’ve spent a lot of the last year working pretty closely with Symantec here in the UK. Most of the people I’ve run across have been excellent, hard working people. There’s a few “less useful” individuals but with 16,000 employees what do you expect?

Whenever I talk to people about working with Symantec they always say “Oh yeah, the ones who make the anti-virus … That ruined my computer” … or something similar. These people often include hardcore IT professionals. Take a look at the comments on this high profile ZDNet blog. How on earth are they going to get past this negativity? If you take a look at the products pages on their site you’ll see they do a huge amount in a number of areas.

You know what they should be doing? Getting out there and on these blogs and forums using the abundance of tools out there for tracking what people are saying and countering negative with positive. Engaging with the issues which are often repeated again and again. The excellent Jon Udell recently interviewed Paul English on his weekly podcast who stuck his entire staff on support so they would fully appreciate customers problems. I know 30 staff are different from 16,000 but there has to be some parrells!

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