Tag Archive - stress management

Managing By Walking Around

June 22, 2010 in Business, History, Leadership with 10 Comments

George Patton 247x300 Managing By Walking AroundAs commander of the Third Army, General George S. Patton was known for getting the job done. General Patton succeeded because he was a realist who understood what was going on in the trenches. He always took into consideration the big picture and assessed what needed to get done…and then did it without any delay or excuses. More than anything, he hated orders that didn’t make sense or put his men in harm’s way. If the orders were outrageous, he would tweak them just enough so that the troops could still achieve success.

General Patton wanted no part of bad strategy. When he was told to stand by and not advance, he sharpen and polish his troops by sending out small battle groups to keep the enemy guessing and on their toes.

When it comes down to being successful in business, a leader should make sure his or her “troops” have what they need to execute the grand plan, or that plan can quickly become a disaster. Whether you are selling automobiles to customers in a retail setting or delivering parts to an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, how well you perform the task will indicate your level of success. On the flip side, great plans are ruined when the execution suffers. Bottom line…grandiose strategy plans won’t sell more cars, but solid customer service will. Listen to your customers, as for they are always telling you a story on how to keep them satisfied.

With that said, all of this reminds me of something Tom Peters wrote in A Passion for Excellence. In this book, he states that “Customers love being appreciated and hate supervisors who pull the disappearing act.” Heck, who doesn’t for that matter? Peters also stated, “Bad leaders are invisible, while good leaders demonstrate MBWA,” an acronym that he coined which means: “Managing By Walking Around.”

If you want to be informed about your company and provide useful direction to employees and managers, you need to get out of your office and change your focus from analyzing yesterday’s trends to witnessing the daily operation of your organization. By asking questions in the face of the day-to-day operations, you will get answers to problems you didn’t even know existed. By listening to other people within your team, you can give real input into the processes of your organization. By talking to customers, you’ll know if the business is hitting its target or just missing. Talking to a customer is much more valuable than looking at the results or marketing surveys.

So, the next time you want information…take a walk. Good things are sure to happen!

Ideas, Trends, and Fads – Both Good and Bad

May 29, 2010 in Business, Finance, Health and Wellness with 9 Comments

good ideas Ideas, Trends, and Fads Both Good and BadThere are some good ideas…and some bad ideas. Ken Hakuta should know, as for he is known as “Dr. Fad” and made quite the name for himself when he introduced the Wacky Wall Walker to the U.S. market. It became one of the best-selling fad toys of all time. Hakuta earned over $20 million while selling 250 million rubber spiders over a period of just six years!

Ken Hakuta can also attest that what may seem like a bad idea to somebody may be viewed as a great idea to somebody else. Everybody knows of an idea or concept that they’ve heard about and thought was not going to go anywhere (heck, look at Twitter!) and then, wham! – several years later the organization not only succeeded, but the idea spawned other related ideas and the business grew exponentially. Think of the Pet Rock, Chia Pet, and any other of stress management desk toy.

Always be on the lookout for new ideas that appeal to the masses. As you go about your daily life, look through a different worldview at the jobs people are doing around you. Are there ways we can be doing these jobs more easily? Are there certain aspects of an industry that you find fascinating? Do you find yourself attracted to businesses and markets that help people? Are you seeing something that will make people’s lives easier? By answering these questions, you might be able to brainstorm and think of something unique that the market will respond to in a very positive way.

Stop Worrying and Start Living

May 18, 2010 in Business, Health and Wellness, Leadership with 6 Comments

Stop Worrying and Start Living 300x300 Stop Worrying and Start LivingI have come to realize that people on a fast paced “career track” often burn the candle at both ends. I should know, I was once one of these people and I thank God that it didn’t take me very long (oh about 10 years or so) to figure out that I needed to change a few things in my life. These fast paced individuals are programmed to believe that if they work harder and longer, that they can eventually get ahead, solve the problem, or close the account. But let’s face it…none of these things will happen if you’re exhausted.

One of Dale Carnegie‘s bestselling books,How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, is about stress management. In fact, based on quite extensive research that I did, it was the first book written specifically on the subject. Mr. Carnegie wrote it because he was sick and tired of stressing out everyday over his position in life and wanted to put a stop to it. So he looked very closely at what it was he was worrying about, how it affected him, and came up with a method on how to stop it.

One of the first realizations was that stress and worry cause fatigue. So Carnegie’s strategies for combating include this very simple technique: lie down for an hour before dinner. He translated those hours into the course of a lifetime to get the technique called “5,467 times more effective” than a cocktail.

Today it seems that it’s even harder to find a free hour. But we are able to, and can adapt. Find the time to take a break, even if it’s for only 20 minutes. It will suffice. You’ll be amazed at the wonders it will do for your stamina and your overall peace of mind.

Emotional Intelligence in Technology

February 20, 2010 in Technology with 19 Comments

emotional intelligence in technology 300x202 Emotional Intelligence in Technology The other day I had a sudden realization about the importance of emotion and logic.  When I was managing a small computer support service provider, I would work closely with specialized technicians, programmers, integrators, accounting personnel, legal professionals, medical directors, and the obvious internal staffing of my company. Over the handful of years, I’d found it to be challenging to find people that had “the balance” of emotional and logical skill set in which I thought to be a “common sense standard”.  With the above established, I decided to put together the following blurb of research that I’ve recently developed:

A generalized overview with the expansion of the Internet and the resulting globalization of business activity, the capacity of the influence of information technology (now referenced as IT) has increased significantly. Many innovative business practices are being enabled specifically by IT. The capacity for integration of information in alpha/numeric, text, voice, and video form will give rise to an even greater abundance and impact of IT in the future. Also, the information systems (now referenced as IS) development profession has been maturing and IS has been recognized as a socio-technical endeavor for some time. For system developers, the need to communicate effectively with users and team members has been increased significantly.

A survey taken in 1993 of 192 human resource personnel responsible for hiring new IS graduates in the Denver, Colorado area discovered that, in addition to knowledge in applied computing and business, it was very important that a new IS hire be educated in: 1) the ability to learn, 2) the ability to work in teams, 3) oral and written communication, 4) problem solving and reasoning, and 5) a point of reference to health and wellness. In short, adaptability, communication, and stress management are seen as key skills for the IS professional. Yet, such skills are not developed through logic alone, but involve the “soft areas” of feelings, instinct, and senses.

A little over 25 years ago, there were two researchers, Couger and Zawacki, who  reported that, while IS professionals (systems analysts and programmers) had the lowest needs for social interaction on the job, they reported much higher “growth needs” than the other professionals surveyed. While at the time, growth needs were largely understood as greater development of professional proficiencies, there now appears to be some evidence that the IS development profession may be ready for a more holistic approach to growth.

For example, a management scientist, in his book on IS management, has called for extending Maslow’s hierarchy of needs beyond self-actualization to “self-donation” and has provided a concrete example of such a stage in the career of a systems analyst. An article in Computerworld has called for “emotional literacy among IS professionals” in the context of personality awareness. There was a convention of the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS), where a keynote speaker proposed that “love” and not confrontation be the model for organizational communication, and received a standing ovation. A job advertisement for IT professionals within an insurance company in a prominent U.S. software center points out that this employer is interested in contributing to the employee’s professional and personal life, and advises candidates to “listen to their inner voice.” A prominent U.S. textbook author has referred, in the dedication of his text on IS for the Internetworked Enterprise to “experiencing the Light within.” In a recent Canadian survey on stress among IS professionals, the most frequently mentioned desired coping resource was “personal development seminars,” closely followed by “conflict resolution seminars.”

Also, the concept of “emotional intelligence” is being increasingly emphasized in management literature. It is being recognized that, while the traditional IQ (intelligence quotient) can help a person to get a job, it is the EQ (emotional quotient) that will allow the person to keep the job and to progress satisfactorily in his/her career.

Thus, the stage appears to be set for a preliminary attempt to address specific psychological factors as applied to the work of various IT professionals such as system and data analysts, programmers, project managers, help desk personnel, and also software engineers, telecommunications designers, and others. In this context, the term IT is considered to include a broader range of positions, whereas IS is more restricted to the activities of planning, analysis, design, development, and deployment of computerized business application systems.