mikelally.net » tools

Best. Outlook. Plugin. EVAH!

mikelally — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:16:02 +0000

A guy I work with just changed my life.

I have a very severe problem with stating in the body of an email that I have attached a document and then hitting ”send” before attaching.

Jeremy B. – may your first child be a masculine child.

The solution is the Missing Attachment Powertoy.

Download it. Install it. Close Outlook (2007). Open Outlook. Try to send an email without an attachment and you will get a pop up message:

I am so excited!

And I know I haven’t posted in awhile. I’ve been all sorts of distracted.

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Using Social Media in Your Job Search

mikelally — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:41:00 +0000

I took my brother to Career Sherpa’s Employment Club meeting last night. She walked through her presentation on Using Social Media in Your Job Search. This made me feel guilty, because I was working on an update for this same subject. So – here it is. This goes into a lot more detail this time around. This isn’t just about searching for a job, this is about managing your career and your online identity. Enjoy! Drop a comment and/or share if you like it!

Using social media_in_your_job_search_v4_2_sep

View more presentations from mikelally.

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Getting a Job in 2011

mikelally — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:48:11 +0000

I know a couple of people that are re-entering the job market after years of not working or only working part-time. I thought I would share some thoughts and words of encouragement.

First. You need some kind of marketing vehicle. Traditionally, this is called a resume. Right now, I have three documents. I have your traditional resume – HOWEVER, it is a way cool resume updated for the 21st century. I have a Marketing Plan – which between you and me, I should update. I have something called a “pre-resume” which is something I recently read about and thought I would give it a try. It is a one-page combo of a resume (with limited info) and the meaty part of your marketing plan. If you need help with any of these things, you need to throw a little bit of money at Hannah. She will tighten you up.

Second. You need to get yourself on Linkedin. And you need to get yourself a complete profile. And you need a picture. Linkedin is a part of your marketing toolkit. But – more important – Linkedin is a giant relational database. It is not Facebook. You cannot play Farmville on it. But, if you work it, and use it to your advantage, it will help you find people inside of companies where you would like to go work. It is a tool to aid you in your most important job searching task…

NETWORKING.

Third. I don’t have a college degree. Yes – I went to college. I started as a Political Science major, got dis-illusioned in a hurry, switched to English Lit because it was fun and easy to read books and argue with people (two of my favorite things to do ). But ultimately got bored because I was working full time and going to school full time and making money and LEARNING a load of stuff that I still practice TODAY…20 (shut up) ish years later.

Not having a degree hasn’t hurt me. Yes, there have been a couple of companies that wouldn’t even look at me. Too rigid for me anyway. They did me a favor. It hasn’t hurt for two reasons. One – I hustle. I work hard. I achieve results. I win. Two – I focus on BUILDING and MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS. Some of you know this as “networking”. Every job I have had since I started delivering newspapers – with the exception of a very few of them – came from relationships and recommendations. In fact, the crappiest jobs, were jobs where I went in cold.

Starting in 2007/2008 when the world went ape-shit, HR departments decided they could add even LESS value by REQUIRING a degree from everyone. In fairness, they did this because there were just an overwhelming number of candidates for every gig. There are stats. You can look them up.

None of this matters to you though. You don’t answer ads on Monster or (sweet baby Jesus!) ads in a newspaper. No – you are new school. You build relationships and market yourself. While all the sheep are pounding on the front door, you have a close personal relationship walking you and your kick-ass marketing document (resume) to the hiring manager and and she tells that manager what a total rock star you are and how sick it would be to have you on the team.

Talk to Hannah. Or come with me on the 19th to her career club in Canandaigua.

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On Craftsmanship

mikelally — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:05:29 +0000

The concept of “craftsmanship” or being a craftsman (or an “artist”) has been a strong recurring theme for me this year. Godin talks about it in Linchpin. Pressfield talks about being a “professional” or “artist”. Graeme pointed me to an article from Robin Sharma (“60 Tips for a Stunningly Great Life”) where number 3 is “see your work as a craft. And today I just caught up on a posting from Josh Kaufman of Personal MBA fame that provides his take on being a craftsman (“The Craftsman Creed”)

Josh leads off with a great explanation – it’s not about money or a promotion. It is about:

“… the joy of developing yourself and mastering new skills that you can use to live a productive and satisfying life. Perfecting the art, and improving the quality of your life as you pursue it, in an end in itself. In short, we’re craftsmen.”

Craftsmanship for Godin, Sharma, Kaufman, Pressfield and yes, even Tom Peters is about continuous improvement. A craftsman knows what she is the best at doing. They hone their skills. They learn. There is always more to learn. They practice. They demand value for their skill-set.

It keeps slapping me in the face.

What is my craft?

I think we will save that for next time.

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Running A Successful Turnaround: Final Thoughts

mikelally — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:29:34 +0000

I have been working on a series of posts detailing my thoughts on how I would fix or turn around a business operation. We’ve talked about financials, how to get a handle on your customers and understanding youremployees in an effort to get them more engaged, and finally, we talked about processes.

When you walk into a situation that requires immediate improvements, you have to start the triage process almost immediately. Michael Watkins will tell you to wait 30 days of your first 90 days. I’m not sure I have ever been afforded that kind of time.

I like to get my hands around data quickly. If the data I want isn’t currently being collected, the first step is to begin the process of pulling it together. This is always coupled by what the military folks are calling HUMINT. Human Intelligence. Talk to everyone. Make sure you are getting the raw feed so to speak. Make sure it isn’t filtered by management.

You need both facts and data and the human take on things. You can make data support your assumptions. By the way, try not to have assumptions. Try to begin with an open mind. Let the stories unfold.

I like the term “Key Performance Indicators” or KPIs. I want to see

Financial KPIs:
Revenue
Operations Costs
Profit
Contribution Margin
DSO. Days Sales Outstanding.

I also would want to see the standard balance sheet/cash flow reports. But I am trying to take this from a purely operational point of view. You may not have access to the big picture. You can only control your own environment.

I want to see financials reported by customer. I want to see them reported by team. You will gain knowledge from those two views. We want to know our most profitable customers (not necessarily the customers bringing in the most revenue). I want to know who is COSTING us money. Because we may want to fire them. Gently, of course.

Customer KPIs

I know. I originally said 6 questions. Its 7. Those questions are:

1. Courtesy of the Whomever You Interact With Most Frequently (support person, billing, customer service, field service, delivery person, sales person, account manager, CEO)

2. Skills and Knowledge of Whomever You Interact With Most Frequently

3. Quality of the Resolution

4. Timeliness of the Resolution

5. Overall Experience

6. Additional Feedback – open ended feedback

7. Net Promoter Score. “Would you refer us to someone else?”

Day 1 – every customer gets these questions. Then quarterly. Sometimes monthly. Track results.

Employee KPIs
Two sets of feedback here. Sit down with everyone. One on one. Ask them 3 questions:

What are we doing well?
What are we doing poorly?
If you could fix one thing right now, what would it be?

When you have a good percentage of the people interviewed. Start listing action plans on things we are going to fix. FOLLOW THROUGH. Seriously, if you don’t follow through, just stop reading. Go play Farmville.

The second piece is more formal – quantitative. Employee Satisfaction Surveys. Everyone can groan now. Again…short and simple. 5 questions and a section for feedback. NOT ANONYMOUS. I hate anonymous.

1. In the past seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
2. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?
3. Do I have a best friend at work?
4. In the past 6 months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
5. This past year, have I had the opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Process KPIs/Production

You have to roll up your sleeves and understand what is happening in your operation. Your KPIs will vary here – each team will have a different set of productivity measurements. Sales will have contacts converting to leads and leads converting to sales. Support will have first call closure (number of times a customer has to re-contact you on the same issue). Every unit should be tracking their local version of the company focused numbers: Revenue, Profit, Contribution Margin, ESat, CSat, DSO.

I just watched a show that follows the New York Jets (football) around through Training Camp. The first episode starts out with the head coach, Rex Ryan, listing the teams goals for the season. WIN MORE GAMES THAN ANYONE ELSE. The defense’s goals for the year: WIN MORE GAMES THAN ANYONE ELSE. The special team’s goals for the season: you guessed it. I love the singular KPI. The One Number.

Another handy tool I forgot to mention in the process post is a SWOT analysis. You may even want to bring in someone from the outside to facilitate this activity. I’ve found that bias can certainly creep in. You can steer the analysis to support your theories. Facts and data people. Facts and data.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of posts. It has been very interesting for me to go through this exercise. I am sure I will have reason to edit and modify as time marches on. Please discuss in the comments. Ask questions! I will be happy to take a shot at answering.

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Running A Successful Turnaround: Process Improvements

mikelally — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:25:13 +0000

I have been working on a series of posts detailing my thoughts on how I would fix or turn around a business operation. I would take a stab at a scenario an MBA candidate/intern threw at me. So far we have talked about financials, how to get a handle on your customers and understanding your employees in an effort to get them more engaged.

Today we will talk about processes. Specifically understanding your processes and then applying continuous improvement to those processes. For those just joining, our hypothetical situation is a manufacturing operation that is in need of being turned around.My background is service operations. I have spent a lot of time in call centers in the financial services, telecom, and BPO industries. I’ve run customer service, technical support, inbound and out sales operations – you name it, I have the t-shirt.

Along the way, I picked up a very large helping of quality process management. I’ve gone through an ISO certification (and passed). I’ve been through a New York State Governor’s Award application process (it’s the state level Malcom Baldridge and we came in second). I’ve embraced and almost implemented COPC standards (call center six sigma).

I want to know how long it takes us to produce the widgets. I want to know how long it takes to ship the widgets. And I want to understand how long it takes us to support the customers buying our widgets. The current quality fad is Lean. Fine. Whatever. It goes back to Drucker. Total Quality Management. Six Sigma. ISO. All essentially the same stuff. All result in a quality framework. We can get what we need without spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on a “quality initiative.”

Coming from the land of technical support – any time someone was working on ANYTHING, they needed to be in a support ticket. Assigned to a customer. With the clock running. The same principles apply to production. Where do we have defects? Where do we require re-work? How long does it take?

I want to see rolled up reporting, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. How many tickets, top 10 issues, AGING of tickets. The same principles apply to production. Where do we have defects? Where do we require re-work? How long does it take?

The big tool here is doing root cause analysis. And, really, that is what this whole series is about. Figuring out why your business is struggling and setting it on a better path. RCA is actually very simple, but you have to be honest and authentic. You have to eliminate assumptions. Assume nothing! And the best thing about RCA is that you can do it without doing math.

A great tool for identifying root cause is the 5 Whys. Get yourself a fishbone diagram. (there are templates for word and excel off that link.) And start working through each situation. Do it in groups. And I don’t mean groups of managers. Again – USE YOUR TEAM(s). Don’t do this around a big conference table with your managers. Go to the floor. Talk to the people DOING the work. Better yet, get a cross-functional team going. You will be amazed at what 3 people from different business units come up with.

You may have to do some brainstorming. Don’t roll your eyes at me! It works. Sometimes you have to help people shake the cobwebs off. Sometimes you have to help them make the transition from step by step process thinking to stepping back to a broader view. Get yourself a whiteboard and start drawing the mindmap of the brainstorming session. You will quickly get to cause and effect relationships.

So there you go. Get your non-manager people together. Give them some tools. And let them have at it. Don’t be afraid to use your fancy watch and do some simple time studies. If it takes you 20 minutes to enter an order while the customer is on the phone – you have a problem. If your widget making machine is down for an hour out of every 8 hour shift you probably have a problem. (I can’t say for sure, maybe that is normal.)

Next time, I will wrap this series up with some final thoughts. I hope this is proving beneficial. Please leave a comment or tweet this out into the internets!

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Running a Successful Turnaround: The Employee View

mikelally — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:05:50 +0000

Its all about ENGAGEMENT. TP is a huge fan of employee engagement. Go figure – so am I. An engaged employee is a productive one. I read an article recently (can’t find it) that said U.S. working population is 26% engaged, 55% not engaged and 19% actively disengaged. in your 40 person shop, 20+ could care. 8 of your people are actively trying to screw you up. Are you listening now?

Oh…and those 8…they aren’t who you think.

I like a two phased approach coupled with a very strong helping of genchi genbutsu or MBWA (Management By Walking Around). Get yourself seen. Have breakfast with people. Have lunch. Fruit roll ups. Just do it. Then, the first step is to sit down with everyone and just talk. The second stage is to do a formal employee satisfaction survey. Depending on the size of the team, you may not get a chance to sit with everyone. But you can devote 30 minutes to each interview.

I love Capt. D. Mike Abrashoff (ret.), who wrote an EXCELLENT book on leadership -It’s Your Ship. (This is a great book for new leaders by the way.) Mike lays out a very simple plan in this book that has served me RIDICULOUSLY well over the years.

3 questions.

What are we doing well?
What are we doing poorly?
If you could fix one thing right now, what would it be?

Short and simple. The best part about this process is that once you have a decent sample size, you will know the top issues facing your team and you will have some pretty good ideas on how to fix them.

From a process perspective it is pretty easy. Gather everyone together and tell them you are going to meet with them individually. It is a great opportunity to introduce yourself to them and put them at ease. You don’t want to just start randomly calling people into your office. (Although – that tactic has its merits.)

From the long term approach – start conducting Employee Satisfaction Surveys. A long time ago I referred to a great set of questions that really get at Employee Engagement – the 12 Questions That Matter:

In hindsight, twelve questions seems like a bit much. Some of them are a bit redundant. Here are a solid 5 to get you started:

4. In the past seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
9. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the past 6 months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This past year, have I had the opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Number 10 stays because there is a lot of research on the benefits of having a best friend at work.

5 questions and then leave room for feedback. And I hate anonymous surveys. They are pointless. Guess what though…if people aren’t comfortable filling our your employee survey and attaching their name – YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

You are not going to get all your answers the first time you do one. But that is ok because you’re already doing the 3 Question meetings. Do the E-Sat quarterly. You could do them monthly if you like but quarterly has worked for me. You have to be consistent. The WORST thing you can do is drop this survey on your people and then not do another one. Actually, the worst thing you can do is conduct the survey and not follow up on the results.

You have to be very clear in communicating your intent. That is: you want to make things BETTER. Make YOURSELF accountable to action items created out of the survey. And do it publicly. You have to share the findings. You have to share the actions you plan to take to correct problem areas. You must be c-o-n-s-i-s-t-e-n-t. You must be patient. It takes a bit of time to build trust.

You could deploy this survey using the 5-scale or the 3-scale. In a 5-scale, you can look at Strongly Disagree-Disagree-Neutral-Agree-Disagree. Only the top two boxes matter. That is why I can say go with a 3-scale:
Disagree-Sometimes-Agree. And then only count the “agrees”. Just seems simplier and eliminates ambiguity.

Our next installment will talk about Processes and continuous improvement.

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5 Simple Career Management Lessons

mikelally — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:29:41 +0000

The Keys To Unlocking Your Most Successful Career by Joann S. Lublin from the July 6, 2010 WSJ online is possibly the best article I have read all year about managing your career. Great, great stuff.

Five simple lessons.

1. Network effectively. I already love Lublin. You’ve seen me rant about this before. She recommends “strategic relationships” and I am completely on board. She quotes a career coach, Paul Anderson, who says “relationships can’t be built in 60 seconds.” Amen, brother. This is the problem I have with “networking”. I am focusing on networking SMARTER. Quality versus quantity.

2. Sweat the small stuff. Details matter, people! This is another recurring theme from your old pal Mike. She reminds us to not have sweaty palms when you shake hands. Check the tags on handshakes over on the right —-> it has been a recurring theme for me.

3. Get your marketing materials in order. OK…I paraphrased my new favorite Lublin. She talks about creating something called a “pre-resume” which Career Sherpa will tell you is her Marketing Plan. It works. Do it.

4. Pay it forward. Help others.

5. Know thyself and be ready for re-invention. Seriously…I may have to stalk my new bff Joann Lublin. Know you goals. Know your core values. Know your TRANSFERRABLE skills. You can re-invent. Mrs. Mike Lally, after YEARS of worrying and ASSUMING that she would have to “start at the bottom” if she changed jobs – just got a PROMOTION at a NEW firm which takes her into a COMPLETELY NEW role.

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Running a Succesful Turnaround: The Financials

mikelally — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:45:56 +0000

Last week, I started as series of posts detailing my thoughts on how I would fix or turn around a business operation. Inspired by a promising MBA student that is doing an internship with us, I thought I would take a stab at a scenario she threw at me.

This week, let’s talk about financials. I am taking an operational view. Maybe a business unit, maybe a small company. In some scenarios, you may not get access to the financials. I like to focus on a few areas:

Revenue
Operating Costs
Profit
Contribution margin
Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)

Ultimately, I want to understand profitability by customer. I want to know who my most profitable customers are and I want to know who is killing me. Down the road, we will make decisions. Sometimes, customers need to get fired. Crazy. I know. But why would you do business with someone that is costing you money? Charge them more or get rid of them. Unless they are “strategic” – i.e. bringing you HORDES of profitable customers.

I don’t think anyone can be running pure COST CENTERS any more. Every unit should be finding a way to become a profit center. Either way, cost or profit center, you have to understand where the money is going. Detailed operating costs. I promise you there is waste. Find it. Create a bonus plan that rewards people for finding new ways of doing things. Make it so that it comes directly to you and not through a chain of command. Don’t let a middle manager feel threatened and stomp down a great idea.

Contribution Margin is a KPI I also like to examine. Simply put, it is total product price less its variable costs. This really gets at the profitability by customer KPI. You can break this number down many different ways. By customer. By product. By team. It helps drill down into potential trouble spots.

Then, there is DSO. This one has always amazed me. I have been in several operations where payments from customers have lapsed to 90+ days. 120+ days. How is that possible? It happens. One goal is to start closing the gap on DSO. If your standard terms are net 30. Your cash flow is being affected. Plus the conversation required with your customer is worth it for a couple of reasons. First, it is a good to talk to your customers. Second, if they are really late, maybe they have a business problem you might be able to fix.

What is costing us money? Where are we profitable? These are the two big questions that I seek answers to in a turnaround situation. Next steps are to figure out ways to align costs and customers better. Can you charge customers more for the products/services delivered? Can you cut costs? Are there process inefficiencies (more on that later)?

I avoided the obvious cash flow and balance sheet pieces. There are plenty of better places to get that information. I am taking an operational – line management – view. My goal is to show how I would pull apart an operation, dissect it, and then build it back up for greatness.

Next time, we will talk about the Employee Side KPIs. (I will try to do better on timing. This was a holiday week for me. Things got a little nutty.)

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Running A Successful Turnaround: An Overview

mikelally — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:01:53 +0000

This continues our series on how to run a successful turnaround – or – The Mike Lally Way. Maybe we’ll just call this RAST. Running A Successful Turnaround. The Mike Lally Way is just way too lame. Today, I will take a holistic, high-level view and in future posts, I will look at each element in more detail.

Walking into any turnaround situation, I immediately set out to acquire data supported by human information (or intel). You cannot just look at data on a page. A) the data will lie to you. It will beguile you. It will tell you that you are smarter than you think. B) You need to get out in front of your people anyway. Let’s start with data.

I want to see the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

Financial KPIs:
Revenue
Operations Costs
Profit
Contribution Margin
DSO. Days Sales Outstanding.

I want these numbers broken out by customer and/or by team. Definitely by customer. I want to know our most profitable customers (not necessarily the customers bringing in the most revenue). I want to know who is COSTING us money.

Customer KPIs
Customer Satisfaction – every main customer contact (assuming we have one) gets a very short 5+1 questions survey. The plus 1 question is the Net Promoter question. Then we start doing this quarterly, same questions. We track results.

Employee KPIs
Employee Satisfaction. Monthly. Simple questions. I will share them.

I will also interview everyone. Three simple questions. If the operation is very large where this isn’t feasible, I would push the interview down the chain of command and get summary reporting created.

Process KPIs/Production
Simple time studies will do. I want to know how long it takes us to produce the widgets. I want to know how long it takes to ship the widgets. And I want to understand how long it takes us to support the customers buying our widgets.

I come from the land of technical support. Any time someone was working on ANYTHING, they needed to be in a support ticket. Assigned to a customer. With the clock running. I want to see rolled up reporting, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. How many tickets, top 10 issues, AGING of tickets.

The same principles apply to production. Where do we have defects? Where do we require re-work? How long does it take?

Over the next days/weeks, I will dive into each of these elements/KPIs.