Tag: barrier

Creating Business Impact

In Altnet conference, one of the discussions was around why we can’t tell business “this system is not working, we have pains with overtime and bad code”; “we should go agile” and “ship in small pieces”.
Proposing a new thing is hard for business to pick up and put into process. If they can’t see the benefit, they won’t believe us. Of course more importantly, we should believe in ourselves first.

If you are an idea person, it kills you more to have the same system/people not listening you…
If it is not working, you may listen to Fowler: “if you can’t change your organisation, change your organisation.”

However, this is my fifth company, and being confident about yourself gives the power to find a nice company in a few days/weeks; there are thousands of companies out there! Unfortunately, some of the companies did change after I have left. [Can’t they change when I was there? Should I be leaving to make a company change?]. I started to thinking that maybe I should be doing something more “effective, having more impact” for business so that they will listen, and take my offer into account. Eventually, I will feel happy and satisfied…

Just because of this reason, I was in training last week: Creating Business Impact.
It suggests a template:

1. Present Position:
[Don’t go straight into the problem. Do]
-Think about giving praise, thanks, and recognition, if appropriate
-Describe position now [e.g. sales, layout, staffing, system, equipment]

2. Problem
-Describe this so that the reader has a clear picture of what is happening, or could happen, if things don’t change.
-Stick to the facts, rather than your opinions which could differ from your reader’s.
-Don’t be too emotive -sound rational and reasonable.

3. Possibilities
– Set out different ways you could address the problem
-Number of ways. Give main advantages and disadvantages of each.
-Don’t confuse your reader with too many ideas, but you need to show you have thought beyond one solution, or one favourite brand.
-If you have a lot of facts and figures to present, put these in an appendix, and in a format that makes it easy for your reader to compare like with like.

4. Proposal
-State which possibility [or combination of possibilities] you recommend, and say why [without repeating all the advantages listed within the previous section]
-Anticipate likely objections, and address these.
-If possible, say how long it will take to get any return on expenditure.
-Say what happens next [i.e. Ask for finance, meeting].

That’s all…
Let’s see, if I can change my company this time [without leaving it]…

Delegation

What are barriers behind the delegation. Let’s look at with closer eyes:
a. Jealous:
      The delegated person can do a wonderful job.  We can realise/feel how bad we were doing the same task. A competency and comparison is unevitable
b. Guilty – Increasing to overloading
      By delegating a task, we are increasing the overload of that person.
c. Fear – Being overtaken
      We can be overtaken if the person is doing quite well. He can underestimate ourselves and can get promotion.
d. No Time
     Sometime, we don’t want to delegate because we don’t have time for delegation. “Telling what to do” takes more time than “doing it.”
e. Security
     The task we are doing can involve some secure information. We may not want it to be shared across other people.
f.  Enough skill/training
    Candidates for the task we are trying to delegate may not have enough skills/trainings. We see ourselves in power to be the only one to be able to do that task.
g. Love the task
    If we like the task, we are less likely to delegate it. Either it is easy or it gives excitement to us, we want to do that task on our own.
h. Hate the task
   If we think the task is useless and have repetition, too complex/ too easy, we may not want to share the task we hate.
i. Don’t like the person
   If we don’t like the person the less likely we want to give the task and watch him being successful.
j. The less motivation from the person
   If the candidates have less motivation than you have, and you don’t see them as willingful as you are, you may not assign the task, but do it on your own.

Knowing the causes helps to find out the solutions…