Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The vast majority of people need some type of motivation. There is, however, a limit to  motivation that leads to effectiveness. Adding more motivation after this limit only leads to lesser effectiveness.

Here are a few posts on the MOI model from author and consultant Jerry Weinberg. The MOI model comprises three parts:

1. Motivation
2. Organization
3. Information

This posts discusses Motivation.

Most people I know need some motivation to accomplish something. Some people are able to supply their own motivation. Things like fun, enjoyment, and accomplishment are enough motivation for themselves and these sources come from themselves.

There are other occasions when a manager or another person can supply the motivation.

Rah! Rah! Rah!

Well, maybe something a bit more subdued and sophisticated like,

There’s a big, fat bonus waiting if you finish on time

or

If you don’t finish on time, your fired

or even

I’ll love you if you do it right

Motivation works (the vast majority of the time in my experiences). The trouble is, there are limits to how much motivation works. This is part of Weinberg’s MOI model. Note the little graph below (you may have to click on it to see the whole thing).

At the left of the graph, you add motivation and everything works well – the effectiveness increases. This management stuff was child’s play. Well, it is until we reach the mid-point of the graph. We keep motivating – Rah Rah Rah – but the effectiveness stops climbing. Hmmm, let’s really cheer louder, but then we reach the right side of the graph and effectiveness starts to drop.

The Motivation Part of the MOI Model

It must be time to fire the employees and bring in new ones – the type of people who respond to our good management practices or at least who will act like they are on the left side of the graph.

There seems to be only so much motivation that people can take. More than that, and they stop performing well. Adults just don’t take to all that cheering and such. I suppose adults realize that they have a job and they do their best. They don’t do any more than their best, and more cheering becomes annoying.

I recently heard an interview with Steve Young. He played football professionally at a Hall-of-Fame level. Someone asked him what abilities leave a player as he becomes older. Young didn’t reply “speed” or “strength” or any physical abilities. He replied that he first lost the ability to listen to a coach give a motivational speech.

Even with people who are outstanding in their field of endeavor, motivation only goes so far.

The key question for a manager is, “when do we hit the center of the graph?” There is a different answer for every different person and every different situation. The manager should observe his own motivational behavior and the other person’s response to that motivation.

Notice yourself.

Notice the other person.

by Dwayne Phillips

The Federal government is spending billions of dollars on rural broadband. I haven’t seen any results in my rural area of interest. Something is about to happen, but we won’t know if it is practical or affordable until after it happens.

I am spending two weeks in Louisiana during the holidays. I was in rural Tangipahoa Parish at my mother’s house for about half that time. Each morning I drove “to town” to a coffee shop in Hammond for an hour or so of access. No broadband access out there in “the sticks.”

Whatever happened to the Federal money for rural broadband?

According to this story , 90% of the money went to the suburbs. People were creative in how they drew lines on a map and declared areas to be “rural.”

I did find several news stories about $36 million designated for rural broadband going in part to Tangipahoa Parish. This first story is one in which Louisiana’s Senators claim all credit for every ray of sunshine to hit the state since creation.

I could find no details on the technology that will be used in any of this.  All I learned was:

The technology will combine microwave and fiber connectivity

I am guessing that they will run a fiber optic trunk up a few major roadways and put RF towers every five miles. If you want service, you buy a special antenna, special modem, and pay a monthly few. No details on how much that will cost the consumers.

This story has a less than optimistic outlook. One of the parishes (counties in the rest of America) will receive broadband access in just a small area.

Sigh. This is a tough situation. It costs piles of money to run fiber into sparsely populated areas. A company would never recover the costs. That is the same situation that faced power companies in the days of the rural electrification programs. Taxpayer money made the difference. Today, we seem to have good intent, but the taxpayers’ money is going to the suburbs.

That is a shame.

by Dwayne Phillips

There are usually several ways to accomplish a given set of objectives. I find it good to consider a few of these ways before choosing one.

This is an exercise to help decide what to do. I’ll write this as a conversation.

Person: I am going to do X.

Consultant: That’s interesting. What are your objectives for doing X?

Person: I want to accomplish (A), (B), and (C).

Consultant: What else might you do that would also accomplish (A), (B), and (C)?

Person: I hadn’t thought of that. -pause- I guess if I did Y or Z, I would also accomplish (A), (B), and (C).

Consultant: How would doing Y or Z be better than doing X? How would doing Y or Z be not as good as doing X?

Person: I hadn’t thought of that either. -pause- I suppose…

Consultant: Now decide what you are going to do.

I had this conversation with consultant and author Jerry Weinberg about ten years ago. I have had this conversation with myself many times since. The conversation does not always cause me to do something that differs from my initial choice. It does, however, always cause me to learn a thing or two, and that is a pretty good result.

This goes back to the title of this post – there are other ways to reach the same objectives. Some of those ways will be superior to the first thing that pops in your head.

by Dwayne Phillips

DropBox is a service that allows storing files on the Internet. I learn that I can display and print these files from my iPad.

A friend recently introduced me to DropBox. This is a web site where I can put some of my files and access them from just about any computer that is connected to the Internet. That is kind of neat as I use three or four different computers every day that are connected to the Internet. If I want to work on a file from any of these, I have to email them to myself or put them on Google Docs or other things.

DropBox is neat in that it works from my iPad and iPhone. I write “it works” in that I can read PDF and docx and pptx and so on files from the iPad and iPhone. Previously, I had to find some type of software that would allow me to read these files from the iPad. I really like this feature provided by DropBox.

I have no doubt that someone could come to me and tell me, “sure, but you could do the same thing using…” Maybe I don’t pay attention to the latest developments in the mobile arena. Still, I am happy to have stumbled onto this one.

And, here is the part I really like, since I can now print from my iPad, I can pull up a PDF from DropBox via Safari on the iPad and print it. Hey, this iPad is becoming more and more like a real computer. I can read files and print them.

Next on the list of things to learn how to do: write real documents from the iPad.

I know, someone will tell me, “you could have been doing that for months by simply using …”

by Dwayne Phillips

In government, prestige is proportional to the number of people working for you and the size of your budget. Efficiency is doing the same or more work with fewer people and less budget. Hence, government managers stay away from efficiency.

Here is a little-known fact about being a manager in a government agency:

Your prestige is proportional to the number of people working for you and the size of your budget.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t so little known, especially if you have worked in government or in government circles.

Now let’s move to one of the really bad consequences of this prestige equals people and budget:

Government managers do not want efficiency

A move to efficiency means that you can do more work with fewer people. Efficiency means you can do more work with less budget. Please refer back to the first note above. Notice that “more work” is not in that note about prestige.

If you are more efficient, the number of people you manage and the size of your budget will decrease. Decreases in these numbers means less prestige. I never saw any government manager rise because of efficiency. People who rise in government management are not generally stupid. They are clever enough to recognize that people and budget help them rise. They are clever enough to see efficient peers fall by the wayside.

This leads taxpayers to frown and cringe and all sorts of other bad reactions. The answer is sweeping reform in government organizations. Again, please refer back to the note about prestige in government. I cannot find the words “sweeping reform” in that note. Hence, …

by Dwayne Phillips

Time marches on; Apple moves forward, and printing from the iPad becomes a bit easier. I use AirPrint from my iPad.

I’m a bit slow when it comes to keeping my iPad up to date. I finally moved my iPad to iOS 4.2. I guess I was supposed to do this weeks earlier, but I just didn’t get around to it.

I did learn how to print from my iPad a few weeks earlier. Well, my printer died and I bought a new HP printer that had this goofy label on the box about printing from email. Lo and behold, I was able to email files from my iPad to this new printer and print. See this post for the details.

I kept hearing about this AirPrint from Apple on the Internet. Why didn’t Apple send me an email telling me about upgrading my iPad so I could use this? It seems that Apple would have done something. I could have gone another year without updating my iOS. And as a side note, where did they get that name? “iOS.” It sounds silly to me.

So anyways, I plugged my iPad into my iMac and upgraded the iOS. Sure enough, there it was – the option to print. I could print web pages from Safari and emails from Gmail. Wow!

Like I predicted, the iPad is much better today than it was when it was new. I guess a lot of other people predicted the same thing. Anyways, this is getting good.

by Dwayne Phillips

Three questions I use as a basic framework for writing.

One of the questions that people ask me about writing is:

Where do you start?

When asking this, they are seeking a basic framework, a place to start when they have a blank piece of paper and need to write something on it with a pencil. I do have a place to start and I use it some 98.6% of the time. I use three questions:

1. What?
2. So what?
3. Now what?

These were given to me by a friend some 15 years ago. He probably doesn’t remember the occasion, but I did. The questions expand to:

What? What is it that you have to say? For example, for this post, what I have to say is that I use three questions as a basic framework for my writing.

So what? What does this have to do with me or my situation? You may be a writer or someone who is trying to pass important information to someone else and are struggling to put it together. These three questions may help you.

Now what? Okay, I understand your point and what it means to me, so now what am I supposed to do? Practice. Try these questions. If they work for you, use them. If not, forget them.

I pass these three questions along to people who are reporting project status to me.

Tell me what happened: There is a leak in the conference room this morning.

Tell me why I should care: We have a Vice President from another company who may partner with us on a key project visiting us this morning and we were to use the conference room for the meeting.

Tell me what you propose to do about it: I have a repairman on his way. We have replacement ceiling tiles on hand. We have also found another conference room and we have someone cleaning it and preparing the audiovisual equipment.

(The above items about a conference room are actually happening this morning as I write this post.)

There is a fourth item or question that I sometimes toss in. It is:

gut

The gut item asks,

How do you feel about this?

What emotions do I have while writing about this?

Per the conference room example, I feel all chewed up inside. Why did this have to happen today? Then I can address these feelings. Why am I upset about rain? Rain happens. Calm down. And by the way, let’s get someone in here soon to inspect the roof and other possible leaks. Winter is approaching.

by Dwayne Phillips

After writing about how to do something, apply a reality check.

I write a lot. I have written several books that explain how to do things like manage projects and other human endeavors. There are lots of nice, neat formulas and techniques that I describe in the books. Towards the end of each description, I apply a reality check. The short conversation goes something like this:

Reality Checker: Oh yeah? Oh yeah, Dwayne? If this is so simple, why didn’t all of your projects work out just right? Get real!

Me: Oh. You’ve got a point there. Let me reconsider.

After this not-much-fun conversation, I reconsider all the wonderful things I have written. I then go back and describe instances when I actually did in real life what I described so well only to have everything collapse.

I do much of my this-is-how-to-do-it writing in blogs these days. I apply the reality check to the blog posts as well. I consult a lot these days. Yes, I apply the reality check to conversations in which I describe to people how to untangle their real-world problems.

Life isn’t as simple as books, blog posts, and conversations. There are all those people in real life who don’t show up in the books.

Try to apply the reality check.

Reality Checker: Oh yeah?

Me: Yeah. This will increase the time it takes to write anything. It will increase the pain and agony of writing. It will introduce doubts in your mind that you must wrestle and at times make you sound and feel like you don’t know anything. But do it anyways.

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems to be a good idea to invest a portion of my money and time to personal training or learning experiences. Some reflection on 2010 shows that I spend much more time than money on such. Perhaps in 2011 I will pry more money from my wallet.

Last year I realized the concept of the personal training budget. When I was a government employee, I was able to work the system to have the government pay for training courses that I wanted to take. Now in private industry, such is not nearly as easy. Hence, I had to think for myself per learning experiences. I happened across an idea of using one-to-three percent of my income on learning experiences. That justified buying an iPad (see several posts with the tag iPad). I have learned a lot from having an iPad, so it was a good investment.

Aside from the iPad, I failed. I failed to spend even one percent of my income on learning experiences.

I did succeed, however, in spending large amounts of time on learning experiences. By my calculations, I am awake 16 hours a day 365 days or 5,840 hours.

Here is the time I spent on learning experiences in 2010:

• daybook or Internet viewing: 1 hour per day = 365 hours
• two blogs: 1 hour per week = 52 hours
• reading books: 3 hours per week = 156 hours
• working with writers: 40 hours
• teaching (includes prep time): 120 hours
• journal writing: 61 hours
• attending lectures: 52 hours
• attending free classes: 60 hours
• wrote a novel: 45 hours

These sum to 951 hours or 16.3% of my waking time. Whoa!!! That’s more than I thought. I’m glad I took the time to figure this. As an aside, I calculated this three times. Every time I calculated it, I thought of something else to add to the list.

Now, how can I pry some money out of my wallet to increase the dollar portion of my personal training budget?

by Dwayne Phillips

I was watching Wheel of Fortune recently. It has been years since I saw that program. The contestants had their ten seconds to describe their lives including what they did for a living. One contestant was an

Associate Director of Policy

That is all they said – no more information. I surmised that this contestant worked for a government organization at some level. Who else would have such a job title except for a government organization?

What would an Associate Director of Policy do? Well, there is a policy department that issues policies for everyone else in the government to follow. That department has a director who is the Director of Policy. The director has several people in the policy department that are one level down in the government hierarchy. These people one level below the director are the associate directors. Hence, their job titles are Associate Director of Policy.

See? It is all quite simple and quite logical.

The associate directors of policy probably supervise people who draft policies for the government body. The associate director will host a meeting to charge the employees with a must-needed policy. Somehow the world changed and the government is no longer able to cope with the world. A new policy will set the world aright again. One employee will draft the newly needed policy. The draft will be passed about through the other employees. Each will make a change to the draft (if they don’t make a mark on the piece of paper, they can’t justify their continued employment). A few weeks later, the draft will return to the originator with a bunch of meaningless marks. In a few more weeks, the draft, with a few changes per the meaningless marks, will be presented to the Associate Director of Policy. The Associate director will make a few marks on the paper to justify his or her job. The paper will go back to the originator, and the entire process (there must be a process in the government) will repeat a few more times.

See? It is all quite simple and quite logical.

Some may read this as a funny story. As a veteran of more than 25 years of government, let me assure you that this is not a piece of humorous fiction. It is a, sadly, non-fiction.

Now why in the world was I watching Wheel of Fortune?