Roman's miles

Endurance Is

If you seek to train and check your endurance full marathon is a good test. If you're hungry for lifting your endurance to the limits there is a program 50 marathons until 50. But Dean Karnazes put it to a new level: 50 marathons in 50 consequence days! I can imagine how exciting it is and can't realize how disciplined and trained your body and soul must be. Waiting to see what Dean plans after that:-)

Technorati tags: marathon, running

Do you cultivate a practice of debriefing in your team?

I'm reading now "Complications - A surgeon's notes on an imperfect science" by Atul Gawande. I took this book for two reasons. One, I was thinking of overcoming my panic, almost physical disgust for medical stories told (let alone shown) in details - really, just can't stand it. And second, I think that reading about parallel worlds (professions, industries, and experiences we don't cross in our business) can be a good means for widening the horizon. I'm in the middle of the book and if the first wish doesn't seem achievable (struggling forward scary medical terminology doesn't come effortless for me) the second idea brought some outcome.

In chapter "When doctors make mistakes" Dr. Gawande talks about mistakes that inevitably happen in a doctor practice. Medicine (both, science and practice) can't become one day error-less and he brings a number of examples when the human factor plays its dramatic role in every doctor's career. What nearly every hospital has, however, is a M&M process - Morbidity and Mortality conference. That's the place where doctors openly and candidly talk about their mistakes: "[doctors] gather behind closed doors to review the mistakes, untoward events, and deaths that occurred on their watch, determine responsibility and figure out what to do differently next time".

In my group we call it a debriefing process instead of M&M but although the process exists I found a few things we can borrow from its medical incarnation. I wrote before on how to love lost deals  and this time instead of concentrating on the sales aspect want to draw some suggestions on a generic level of process improvements.

• Discuss process not people. "Go after process, not people" - is the recipe from Dr. Gawande. M&M appears as a people-less processes. A good M&M discussion has lost of passive words implicitly accentuating on the process part of the problem, not the human part. I think a fear of a personal attack and reluctance to defend oneself in such a case makes debriefing projects unwanted practices in our world. In a recently performed debriefing  by my group one of the leads of the analyzed team complained that the report wasn't balanced. He wanted the areas needed additional development were accompanied by  accomplishments of the team. He missed the point (and I doubt I succeeded to come across with all my attempts) that the mission of the debriefing is in finding what to improve in the processes and not what to reward. For the latter it should be another discussion, probably internal. Also I think that we shouldn't forget the people part of the problems and its addressing should be, apparently, done internally as well.
• Make it a permanent practice. Almost every hospital holds M&M weekly. Although we don't have the highest criticality in our projects and engagements as the hospitals do, it may be a good idea to perform debriefing sessions periodically. Making the process a known place/time for critique and improvement suggestions is an important part of the team structure. Making this practice occur periodically with results focused on the areas required improvements will diminish the reluctance I referenced before.
• Build outcomes - find problems. M&M goes to discourage both attitudes - self-doubt and denial. But if surgeons can't afford being self-doubt for our industry, I believe, it's a healthy situation. When at M&M a chairman asks what the doctor, reporting the case, would do differently "nothing" is "seldom acceptable answer". Surgeons must have a "correct" view of mistakes - recognize them and come up with a solution. For our industry I think only the denial is the foe to relentlessly attack. Neither can we always come with suggestions on how to fix a problem or make things differently next time. But problem recognition is not a less crucial part of the solution. To discuss and identify problems openly is 50% of their solutions.

I'm in the middle of the book and really enjoying it. Maybe I'll find other things we can adopt from the surgeons. Dr. Gawande tells how his profession borrowed practices from aviation and engineering to minimize mistakes. Thrilling examples in the book of how new ideas helped to reduce fatal errors in medicine excite and encourage us to look at other industries in our turn and maybe to adopt something too. If not to safe somebody's life but simply to make our code better.

Technorati tags: improvement, debriefing

Half marathon is done. What's a great day!

Some of you know that I started preparing to a marathon almost a year ago. Then a knee injury made me stopped my preparation and I put the dream off. A few months ago I decided to give another try to the plans and started training again. Many great non professional runners (Brad, Susan, Barb, Jason, Adrien, Uve - last three work with me at SAP) and many other very professional have been inspiring me for a long time. The wish of running 26.2 miles is very poignant in my dreams' list.

This time, thought, I decided not to go for all the way and start with half the target. Today morning I completed the first half marathon in my life (13m). It was heavy raining and at the last couple of miles the knee let know about itself again so I even had to stop a few times. But anyway, I got it for about 2:07 2:06:23 (the exact time hasn't been published yet). I hoped to run out of 2 hours and though it didn't happen I'm still happy I did complete the distance! The day started from a very positive note:-)

At noon I took a mug of hot tea and a Guinness and went to relax the muscles in our sauna. While the sauna was heating I had another great time watching Falcons against Steelers. The day was getting better and better (we finally won  in overtime 41-38).

The evening I spent contemplating about next adventures. I've registered for a full marathon in Alpharetta in March but probably will find another one before. I'm also thinking about getting on a mountain bike - it's good for cross-training and a first step to my big dream of a triathlon.

Next two days are for deep rest. I'll be enjoying the no training time, rehabilitating the body, and the echo of today small victory:-)

The running category on my blogs is back (didn't want to post anything there before today finish)

Technorati tags: running, marathon, alpharetta

Corporate startup. How is it different from the typical ones?

By corporate startups (aka internal startups) they mean ventures, spun off a corporation as completely independent organizations, or else, ventures,  established from scratch but funded mostly by a corporation and being led by the corporation's former employees . Corporate startups are  sporadically mentioned in the startup literature and the blogosphere but there is a lack of materials focused on the corporate venturing, at least from a founder's perspective.

Not pretending to shed light on the topic in this blog and to shoot "10 do's and dont's for corporate startups" I'll instead try to create 10 questions one may be willing to answer when considering seeking funding from the company she's working for.

Before moving to the questions a short preamble. Maybe my understanding is not correct but I imply by corporate startup a company with two satisfied requirements:

1. It's a new and independent (to which extent is another question) company that isn't operated by the original enterprise. Otherwise, it's not a startup but just another internal project.
2. It's led by a group of former corporate employees.  Otherwise, it's just another venture that the corporation decided to invest to and the peculiarity of the topic vanishes when nothing links the founders to the VC.

I want not to mix the corporate startup with intrapreneurship because, again, the latter lives inside the company even if its management has an additional room for maneuver.

Now the questions. I hope that VC and entrepreneur gurus will come with their ideas and knowledge and help me find answers to the questions. Beneath each question I'll give a few hypothesis that sound logical for me to check but they're also the targets for your refutation.

1. What benefits does the corporation get from the venture or why the idea of its former employee should prevail over somebody else's who comes from outside?
   
   1. Trusted team. The "founders" are easily trackable and checkable.
   2. Providing some safety conditions for the founders it can get better conditions.
   3. Its VC division is very specialized and may not be attractive for "external" founders.
2. What benefits do the founders get from the company as their investing source?
   1. Easier to sell the idea (including the team and the track of records).
   2. Easier to roll out the product through the company's resources (customer base, brand, relationships, etc).
   3. "Dispersal field" in case of failure of the venture in a form of saved conditions in the company.
3. What disadvantages does the company get investing into an idea of its employees?
   
   1. Didn't come up with anything in case when it decides to invest.
4. What disadvantages do the founders get from the company as their investing source vs. independent investors?
   1. Potentially worse conditions.
   2. Lock out of the company's competitors as potential partners.
   3. Lock out of the company's competitor's customers.
5. What target does the company pursue from the venture (which defines the venture's degree of freedom for the product) and what is the exit strategy?
   
   1. Building disruptive model (product, service, etc) to later roll it out through the corporation (in this case the model is quite predefined and few variations in the plan are possible).
   2. Effective cash-out (probably not a first priority option for a corporate VC?) But in this case it allows to change and adjust the business model on the way.
6. How the venture is managed (operations and strategy)?
   1. Totally independent from the corporation but with its presence in the board.
   2. As a daughter enterprise (I excluded this case in the above but still want to hear how realistic it is).
7. When is good timing for the founders for asking money from the enterprise? Is there any difference in the approaches from the typical startups?
   1. The more model, prototype, product is ready the better - less dilution to expect.
   2. It's a "family" business and it doesn't really matter when to ask money - as soon as the idea can win the hearts and brains of the enterprise the founders should pitch it.
8. Should there be other VC and if yes on which phases?
   1. No. The corporate locks it out completely for others to join.
   2. Yes. The founders should be advocating for retaining such an option.
9. What other conditions should founders be aware of that are relevant only for internal ventures (both positive and negative)?
10. What other questions I forgot to ask?

What do you think?

Update: First Findings

Technorati tags: startup, corporate venture, internal startup

The best of my first 92 blogs

I'm reaching the first hundred of blogs (this one is the 93d) and I want to group and re-publish links to the ones I like most. I hope you've found them interesting too.

On entrepreneurship:

• Why to become a founder?
• Business intelligence, SOA, and your grocery shop
• Falling corporate startups
• How to make your startup a "cool to be working in" company?
• Mossad, French Legion, or Taliban - what does your company look like?

On career planning

• Three questions employee should periodically ask themselves
• Work with pros
• Your current job -"a time to kill, and a time to heal"
• Are you waiting for a week-end to end or to start?
• Evolving from a software engineer to...

On managing

• How to manage Squidward in your team?
• Who is the ideal boss?
• Whom to hire for startup?
• Getting good at giving feedback
• How many of your folks will be working for you in a year?

Random ideas

• Committed or tentative?
• IT/Business - how to talk the same language?
• Three pragmatic isolations
• Resetting the targets (05)
• Email culture

Blogging with different pace during this year and making a blog not focusing on a particular topic I've somehow got a small but firm readership and I want to thank you all for that. Hope you'll continue enjoying reading my second hundred of posts too.

Book review: "Co-opetion"

I took Co-opetition by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff with me to a coast-to-coast flight hoping to start practicing a fast reading method. Brad explained on his blog how he succeeds to read 8(!) books a week: "(a) no TV, (b) no kids, (c) four to six hours a night of reading, and (d) the willingness / ability to skim when things are dull". So I thought to try the method with Co-opetition and to complete it on my way from Atlanta to Palo Alto. From all the requirements only the willingness/ability to skim wasn't provided upfront. After the first dozen of pages I understood that that's not a skim-through book.

Adam and Barry made a book sharing principles of strategy, tactics, and planning carrying away your attention by clear reasoning, crystal logic, plain English, and bright examples. The book can takes it place on one's shelf next to "Good to great", "Marketing warfare", and the books of Jeoffrey Moore but unlike the latter doesn't goo too far in the academic direction. Quite the contrary, it oozes real, top brand examples, spending 90% of the text describing the stories of failure and success and only 10% devoting to formulating principles and recapping the arguments.

The book consists of two parts: the game of business and the PARTS of strategy.

The first part (about 1/3 of the book) introduces the concept of the value net reminding in a certain way Porter's five forces. The authors present a square graph with the business placed in the crossing of the diagonals and  customers/suppliers and competitors/complementers taking the opposite corners of the square. The book explains the theory of balanced forces and promotes principles and approaches symmetrically applicable to the corners of the net.

The war/piece preamble breaks the concept of known in advance friends and foes. Introducing multiple perspectives the authors claim that in the modern business world everything should be view through the prism of the net and simple definitions don't work anymore.

The PARTS (Players, Added value, Rules, Tactics, and Scope) are the components describing the game and depending on particular circumstances and targets the components have to be re-evaluated and re-mapped.

After introducing the concept the authors in the rest of the book religiously describe each of the components bringing tens of examples following and breaking the principles (and leading to success or failure correspondingly. Bright and bold marketing strategies of great companies leading to win-win situations with competitors, customers, suppliers, and complementers captivate you and don't let skim over. For every case of success the book brings a counter-example of failure as well cementing the principle and equally teaching and convincing the reader.

Among many other topics particular attention is devoted to such as how to manage negotiations, how to deal with perceptions, how to plan prices and avoid wars, how to establish and change rules, which tactics to apply, and how to analyze scopes.

Many new ideas flooded by almost detective business examples preclude me from skimming a paragraph in the book. A great pace with which the book expounding the matter, vivid examples, clear language, and strong (at times shocking) ideas make this book a solid must for everybody who deals with building, positioning, and rolling out products or services. Highly recommended!

Techorati tags: business, books, marketing

France and the French. Top Ten Quotes.

Guy Kawasaki recently published on his blog a very funny collection of quotations about French (mostly by French as well). 

Caroline, Gilles, and Michel, I'm re-publishing the quotations here for you to avoid unnecessary redirections and let your comments not to die in the tens of others at Guy's site (but they're worth of reading too).

1. France is the most civilized country in the world and doesn’t care who knows it. John Gunther

2. France is a nation devoted to the false hypothesis on which it then builds marvelously logical structures. Gore Vidal

3. France has neither winter nor summer nor morals—apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. Mark Twain

4. How can anyone govern a nation that has 240 different kinds of cheese? Charles de Gaulle

5. Dogs smoke in france. Ozzy Osbourne

6. We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France. Duke of Wellington

7. What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country. Samuel Johnson

8. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you, you have only to spend a little money. Ernest Hemingway

9. France is the only country where the money falls apart, and you can’t tear the toilet paper. Billy Wilder

10. They aren’t much at fighting wars anymore. Despite their reputation for fashion, their women have spindly legs. Their music is sappy. But they do know how to whip up a plate of grub. Mike Royko

11. The French probably invented the very notion of discretion. It’s not that they feel that what you don’t know won’t hurt you; they feel that what you don’t know won’t hurt them. To the French lying is simply talking. Fran Lebowitz

12. Every Frenchman wants to enjoy one or more privileges; that’s the way he shows his passion for equality. Charles de Gaulle

13. If the French were really intelligent, they’d speak English. Wilfrid Sheed

14. Germans with good food. Fran Lebowitz

I like the last the most, especially after our last meeting when we drove from Walldorf to Strasbourg:-)

Branding yourself

Career building becomes an important piece when we zoom into our thoughts about the job we're doing. We are encouraged by opportunities to get promoted, to enrich the resume by new achievements, to get new appealing challenges. But sometimes people pay too much attention to this (undoubtedly important) question and look at everything through the prism of career building and rewards. This behavior, of course, has a detrimental effect on their reputation and, eventually, on the desired promotion. How to not to get to extreme and find a right balance - is the topic of this blog.

• Don't push too much. My strong believe is your success depends 99% on luck. Also I'm a strong believer that everything is managed from the heavens so - don't push too much. Do what you can to build a stainless shiny brand of you and opportunities will find you in mysterious ways.
• Build the brand of a doer. Find what can be done in the given circumstances, criticize, suggest, but always complete a bemoan's speech by concrete suggestions and plans. Execute with excellence, complete what you start, and always make a project postmortem at the end (at least for yourself)
• Act like a SVP. Found this formulation in great advice from Dumb Little Man. Climbing career ladder is not only about getting promotion and higher salaries. It's about taking higher responsibility. Don't wait to be promoted to SVP. Start acting today as a hidden one. See what can be done and act properly.
• Work for the company. A mentor of mine went further and said work for the board of the company. But the idea is the same - think what should be done to make the company successful - not only what your group is after. Be creative with suggestions but don't go too far - suggest only pragmatic and practical things that you will start doing.
• Work for the boss of your boss. That's simple - make your boss happy by making his boss happy. He's the one who can remarkably promote you and he's the one who can reward your boss for delivered results - so you'll win anyway.

Don't be frustrated if your career doesn't advance with a desire pace. Much more important thing is to build your own brand as of one who addresses the problems, plans, and delivers. Your brand (read, your reputation) is the only long-time investment you have. Don't let it to catch a stain of a carper, or one who just plans, or one who starts but doesn't complete, or one who throws dust in eyes. I've seen so many colleagues that instead of making things happen on the current position worried about the next position, yet to come. Instead of promotions they got demoted, gained a reputation of unprofessional persons, and killed any opportunities to grow in the network of the people they've worked with.

Think about delivering and completing. Become a known doer and new opportunities will find you in a surprising way.

Technorati tags: career, promotion, gtd

What/Who SalesForce enforces by Apex?

The news that SalesForce.com announced its new language Apex has been echoed in the blogosphere for last week and the idea of yet another language has gained lots of criticism. People chew over the last step of the king of the SaaS world from all possible sides: how innovative it is, how significant it is, how known and repetitive (hinting to the ABAP success), and  even how SAP reacted to the news. I didn't read everything in the net on the topic but the ones, apparently, forget to answer the question why SF had no choice but to come with such an idea and what long-term targets SF sets for its business. I'll try to share with you my bet here what I suspect SF had in mind when it made this decision. Disclaimer: This blog, as all others published here, represents only my personal opinion and has nothing to do with SAP:-)

SF started its business and has been trumping its competitors with the SaaS philosophy. The impressive achievements of 0.5M users and 400 applications (regardless what we count as an application) makes the big guys (on-premise enterprise software vendors) nervous but, at the same time, leaves them and opponents of the on-demand application a few strong arguments why the SaaS model can't be accepted by some companies (at least for some applications and markets). I think the major obstacles on the way of a SaaS provider to grow are: 1) low customizability - I would call what they offer rather configurability, 2) high TCO for a big number of users, and 3) resistance of customers to deploy their data and/or processes outside of their data centers.

To address first problem a SaaS vendor has to equip its partners by some mighty tools. Nobody started a controversy on the reason for a language. But all platform providers have eventually to lock users by something: proprietary language, custom extensions, out-of-spec improvements - there must be a catch to not to let the users easy to go. SF decided to develop its own language (I doubt it will be as complex and powerful as Java or ABAP) but that's the ultimate level you can offer the lock mechanism to build on. It's always a trade-off between high bets with high risks and low bet with low risks (in case of SF to extend or directly use any of the widely adopted languages but not to gain a strong and short leash for the users). I don't want to discuss here merits and demerits of Apex and don't think it's really important. The step SF undertook to develop, promote a new language and empower the ecosystem (concurrently building it) deserves laudable comments from a business point of view. We'll see soon how successful its adoption will be.

To resolve the last two problems (high cost of ownership for a big user base and out-of-house deployment) SF eventually will need to offer on-premise solutions. Although they build the success on the anti-in-house applications thesis the pie of in-house developed applications is huge not to dream of it. I think it will be a hybrid model of both options where a dominant role of SF will maybe remain on the hosted side. But similarly to our move with CRM on-demand and Oracle's on-demand solutions SF and other hosting vendors will have no choice but to invade our patrimony of in-house deployment and start selling their platforms with a "buy-own-and-maintain" principle. Without a powerful [enough] language even to dream about that is a sing of a disease.

To reiterate, I think SF has a very ambitious targets on scaling up their partner ecosystem and building together with them new solutions for in-house deployment. The current success of 0.5M users may vanish as these users are not locked by SF's services at all. They got them fast and easy and they can lose them with the same epithets. To build a new level of success and become a player equal to the big guys they must accommodate the needs of customers equal to the big guys' ones. Without a powerful and locking mechanism it's impossible.

Is it parapraxia or just a typo?

The spell-checkers are stupid. At least they aren't smart enough to prevent us from composing stupid emails. Sometimes (and it happens more oftenwith foreign language speakers) we write a word that sounds similar to the one we had in mind but is spelled different - the new meaning can be ridiculous if not harmful. Once, pointing to my traveling colleagues, I wrote "hi, road worriers" instead of "road warriors" (I found it first:-) But another day I got an email with "a worm welcome" instead of a "warm welcome" (the author haven't corrected it yet).

Sometimes, we unintentionally replace a word by another, sounding in much the same and fitting the context the best, according to our unconscious mind. Freud called it parapraxia or faulty action and claimed that such slips of the tongue or a pencil are results of unconscious desire or wish.

Of course spell-checkers can't find a discrepancy between conscious and unconscious desires and the only way to avoid problems, at least in writing, is to re-read every email before running a spell-checker. I think it's another tip to the Email Culture list of tips of mine.  Let's not make our readers to resolve a dilemma whether it was a typo or our unconscious mind has some hidden but real associations:-)

Updates: New word slips:

• "we'll shoot down the server" instead of shut down

Technorati tags: typo, email, Freud