Roman's miles

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly News

I'll start with the ugly news. Last couple of weeks I've been so busy with my job and studying that I didn't have time to blog whatsoever. At SAP we have tons of planning work for 2007 with my group and next week I'm on a global kick-off meeting in Singapore with the team. I also had my first test on Financial Analysis class yesterday and its preparation stole a good chunk of time (hope I passed it:-); another work is due tomorrow (on Strategic Business Communication). I'm very happy with the quality and the level of discussions in the class, the homework materials, which are hefty but very inspiring; and the professors are just amazing! Still the MBA consumes all my free time and nothing was left for blogging last weeks.

The bad news is I broke my marathon schedule.  Last Sunday I scraped out only a slice of time for a 11 mile long run (instead of planned 18) and missed this week's Wednesday-Friday short ones. I'm taking off to Singapore Sunday afternoon and hope to have a workout early morning. Really bad news is that in two weeks I have another week long business trip to Israel so the preparation is seriously under the threat - the marathon run is on March, 4.

The good news is about my family. After almost 7 years of  the "rest" we're again expecting! Our fourth baby's go-live date has been forecast yesterday as September, 22 (so Lia is on her 8th week). It's seems too far today and I don't know who's waiting it more - me, the kids, or Lia; she's struggling with either constant sickness or faltering, twinkling, spontaneous, and vanishing requests to eat - so she doesn't know exactly what she wants.

I guess this year will be a bit "under pressure" for me since there have been so many things happening together. But anyhow I'm very excited and sure we will be good (maybe with an exception for the marathon:-(

Technorati tags: pressure

How to find a buyer's agent?

We're in a process of active preparation for buying a house. So after reading "subject literature", digging the forums, and browsing blogs on the topic I thought my findings can be useful for others too. Recently I published a detail Buy-vs-Rent calculator weighing the two options for your situation and today I want to share with you a questionnaire and some tips on finding a buyer's agent.

First off, a short foundation on the conclusion why you need an agent. Although I agree that for a buyer an agent doesn't come "free" even he doesn't pay for that (the agent's fees are already included in the house price) you hardly can request the buyer's share back if you come alone. The seller's agent  in a contract she signs with the seller usually takes already 5-6% for both agents. This money she either splits with a buyer's agent or leaves for herself. She doesn't have any incentives to give up 50% (or even less) of this money to you if you come alone. The only realistic scenario to get the agent's money is to offer the seller to wait until his contract expires and then to sell the house directly to you without both agents, getting the price automatically down 5-6%. It's a possible, logical, a win-win situation with only one unknown - how much time to wait until the contract ends and what the risks are that somebody else won't buy it before.

Secondly, since we see an agent is already included and pre-paid why not to use it? She has access to "private" information about a house that you can't get publically, knows the area, its statistics, trends, may give additional advice, and stear you through the process. I don't see a reason for solo house hunting taking into account the fact that the agent is practically speaking pre-paid already.

Now, after you decided to find an agent the tips.

• Never sign a locking contract! There are agents trying to oblige you to buy a house only through them for some period. Never agree. The only right thing to sign is to buy a house through the agent which he showed you. But even then the obligation should be limited by 3-6 months.
• You should be able to fire an agent any time without any penalties or advance notification.
• You pay no additional money. The agent gets commission he agrees upon with the seller or his agent. If you change your mind and don't want to buy a house anymore - the agent gets nothing from you.
• You don't pay anything for sell-by-owner houses where the seller is not "agent-friendly". You can compensate the agent as you want but then it's a tip and not a mandatory fee.
• You should work only with one agent at a time. It's fair for the agent and does make sense for you. If you have two agents simulteneously they'll be looking for a house in the same area, the same type of houses, the same price range - so why to expect different results? If you don't like your agent's quality simply change her but don't play a double game.
• Don't stop searching for houses on your own. If you find something let your agent know  about that and make him all necessary checks as he does for houses that he finds. Remember, you hired agent to use him.
• Find a realtor that works with sellers and buyers. I don't see an advantage in exclusive buyer's agents (those that never sell anything but only help buying). It's the same profession, the same market, the same patterns. Finding a good agent is not easy so why to do it twice? You need one pro that you can trust so when you sell your house you know who can help you (when you sell a house you can't fire an agent easy and must sign a locking contract for some period of time).
• Find a good agent. Your agent is your contractor that has to do the job well. Find a pro and don't go with a friend's sister that just got a license, a neighbor, a former classmate, etc. unless they can prove their experience. Spend time finding an agent, interview candidates carefully, ask questions, talk to reference customers, do it seriously.

Here is my questionnaire I use for interviewing agents.

1. Please explain me why I need an agent? What benefits am I supposed to get vs. a case when I represent myself? What agent do I need?
2. How do you get paid?  If you get paid by commission, then I know a higher priced house will result in more  payment to you---how can I be assured you will find the best deal for me regardless of the price?
3. Do you charge a retainer fee? Is it in addition to your commission or is it taken out of the commission at closing? Do I have any out of pocket payments besides the commission?
4. What's the length of an agreement? How do we terminate it if one of us is not satisfied?
5. What are my obligations to you during the agreement period?
6. Will I ever be put into a dual agency situation?
7. Will you try to sell me one of your listed properties before you show me listings from other real estate companies?
8. How do you relate to a buy-by-owner houses? How is it different for me? Should I prefer them or beware of them?
9. How do you provide your availability and what happens if you're not available? What communication means do you prefer? Do you have a backup or a partner?
10. Can you help me know whether I'd be pre-qualified for a loan, and then help me get the best loan? Do you advise on the mortgage-related questions on a general level?
11. How many homes have you bought in my price range in last 6 months?
12. How many customers do you have concurrently?
13. Can you provide me last 10 customers that you helped buying a house in that area?
14. What is your average sales price to listing price ratio for buy transaction?
15. Do you have any specific buyer's agent professional designations and what is your experience?
16. What kind of things/issues do you look out for when evaluating a home?
17. What clauses will you incorporate in our offer, to protect us as buyers?
18. Will there be a written contract between us?
19. How will you help me save money?
20. What are advantages of the buyer market and how we can utilize them for my benefits?
21. Specifically, how will you protect my interests and why should I hire you rather than another agent?

It takes about 30-45 minutes to go over the questionnaire in such a call. Some of the questions need to be asked to make the things clear others - to feel how the agent thinks, answers, clarifies her points, and expresses her vision. You need to feel if there is chemistry between you, if you may trust this person, if she seems to understand what you want. Make this job carefully and professionally.

In addition, I want to thank all the people and communities that helped me to shape my current opinion. Now you, my readers, are welcome to leave your comments here extending the bunch of tips or disagreeing with it and correcting me.

Technorati tags: real+estate, agent, buyer

What am I doing at SAP?

I found myself answering this question many times introducing my group and myself in real life; recently I've been getting many emails asking the same question - so I thought why not to blog about my team and my role at SAP?

I work in Solution Office of the New Product Introduction group. It's a global group presented in North America, Europe, Israel, and Asia Pacific. There are just a couple of dozens folks in the team but all came with a sound background in ABAP, Java, or .NET and brought many years of experience in a variety of technologies.

The mission of the group is told  in its name. When SAP introduces new products (not just new releases of the existing ones) it may take some time until all the major divisions inside the company get up to speed with the products: we need to iterate the products through a series of adjustments accommodating cusotmers' needs and consummating solutions, educate project and sales forces, enable the ecosystem, and gain mind and market share. I don't want to call this phase "crossing the chasm" but it's a very critical period for a new product and while it does its first steps outside of the labs the product needs a team fostering and supporting it. This is a team behaving like a task-force unit. Again bringing a military analogy such a mobile group reacting in an agile and sensitive mode isn't burdened by revenue, utilization, or any other rigid KPI and can do whatever is needed for a product's success (comparing to SAP's armies of consulting, education services, sales forces, etc. using an approach of scalability and targeting revenue generation).

I'm leading a team of architects and experts in the Solution Office driving MDM - Master Data Management. Our mission is to provide customer success on early project implementations, enable internal project forces and the ecosystem of partners with knowledge and experience gained in the projects, roll-in  the feedback to the R&D, assure solution awareness among our customers and partners, develop solutions on top of the product, and do everything is needed to warrant product success. We closely work with other groups of the NPI virtual team (more than 15 different divisions), engage in pre-sales activities, bootstrap projects, assist in evaluating solutions, present the product at different conferences, evangelize the solutions on customer and partner events - so the team knows the product inside-out which helps us to identify the gaps, propose, and carry out solutions.

With only a handful of people in the team we've reached this year lots of things. We've worn a hat of consultant (proposing solutions for customer ), a solution architect (evaluating architectures with project teams), a trainer (preparing and teaching classes), an analyst (brainstorming with customers ways to resolve problems), a bizdev guy (creating  solutions on top of the product and educating partners), a sales man (pitching the solution in front of customers), and many others internally. The only our criterion for a task to be taken by the team is a company-wise impact. Our group doesn't exist to replace any other team although often a task can be dispatched to another team. At the same time usually there is no time, or enough expertise acquired by the the other team, or a shortage of resources, or they have other priorities. So we take the task on our shoulders, build a solution, and later - to achieve scalability and a massive impact - roll it out to an appropriate owner in the company.

We cherish (or boost?) a new product for about 12-18 months and when it reaches its maturity and simultaneously other teams acquire necessary experience the product departures from our radar giving in its place to the next one.

It's a very interesting group to work in with tons of dynamics and wide exposure to other teams in SAP. It's also a very unique position for touching non technical areas of our industry (such as marketing, business development, sales, consulting, training, etc.) without loosing contact with  our technical background. The only disadvantage one (but not we) may find is intensive travels. Some of us have spent about 100 nights outside of the homes this year and flown more than 100K miles but with the majority of international destinations it's hardly perceived as punishment:-)

Technorati tags: SAP, NPI

Buy vs. Rent.

We've been living in the States for almost two years and periodically the question whether to stop"wasting money (renting) and buy our own nest arises. Since my current lease is approaching its scheduled finish day I had to answer this question seriously and weighed all the aspects for at least next year.

There are many great sites and forums discussing the matter and bearing various points for both options. Yet I was sinking in the ocean of arguments, long posts, inconsistent considerations, and location-specific data. After finding myself unlucky seeking a detail calculator for such a comparison in the net I created in Excel a calculator with all (I hope) parameters influencing the decision.  

I admit, that a buy or rent decision is not ensued from pure arithmetical conclusions and is shaped heavily by other psychological factors but if the latter outweighs then one, at least, should know the price she's ready to pay for the piece of mind.

So in the sheet there are only financial parameters and a few formulas summing up the picture. I'm not an real estate agent and haven't had a house in US so the data are probably incomplete. Not to a less degree I feel uncomfortable in pouting the "default" values you'll find in the calculator. Of course, "your mileage may vary", the cost can be different, so go ahead and change it appropriately. There is no "one case fits all" set of values.

At the same time, I hope my approach is quite fair in its algorithmic foundations. The calculator compares two options. In the first we buy a house paying some down payment and taking a mortgage for the rest (all the parameters are adjustable), then we sum up our monthly payment for utilities and maintenance (which are different from the option when we merely rent), subtract tax deductible money, and get the final number. The second option leaves us just renting, no tax deduction, no maintenance. Obviously enough, owning is more expensive in terms of the payments but as time goes the house becomes more and more yours. At the end of the day(s) you'll acquire it completely as opposite to the renting option when the money is thrown away.

So to compare the two options I take the difference in the monthly payments, take the down payment, and invest it all (regularly the former and one time the latter) to the market (CD, funds, whatever - the rate is an adjustable parameter too).

We compare finally two options along the time. When does it make sense to sell the house and to win comparing to renting and saving. As I said, all the numbers are adjustable; calculated ones are in italic so you don't need to change them. Inflation is not taken into account and tax deductible money is constant. I believe it's still accurate enough to get the idea.

In my case with the current projection for my area it doesn't make sense to buy a house if you're not planning to live there at least 4-5 years.

I hope it may be useful for you; if you find mistakes in the calculations, wrong assumptions,  forgotten parameters, or simply values too far from reality please let me know.

Useful sites on the topic:

bankrate.com (various calculators, tons of articles, mortgage quotes)
clarkhoward.com (Clark Howard's site with a very friendly and active forum)
gardenweb (many articles and forums on house issues)
patric.net (#1 site on housing crash)

Update: a very good analysis of the same question from Tim

Technorati tags: house, rent, buy, calculator

Show off what you're proud of

Human beings like to be proud of their possessions - whether there is a merit of their own in that or not. Russians are proud of being successors of Pushkin, Lomonosov, and Peter the Great, although the generation of today didn't contribute to the accomplishments of the ancestors. We simply inherit the culture, traditions, and the brand (both positive and negative sides) of fathers bearing the same mindset, behaviour, and social  "patterns". Regardless of a past we inherited naturally we incline to find something we can be proud of and show off our connection to that.

But reasons for pride are not confined only by our roots. In the States it's highly popular to take pride in your Alma Mater (on car title frames, car stickers, caps, and clothes), schools and sport clubs of the kids, or favorite sport teams. I enjoy the fact that in Georgia there are no front car titles so many drivers utilize this empty space for showing off what they're passion about. Motherland's flag is among the very popular options. I have only in my subdivision flags of England, Canada, Turkey, and UK. Today we've widened with Israel. I had a small dilemma: after growing, studying, and living 27 years in Russia and spending only 5.5 years in Israel what country to pick up? Nevertheless, the choice was easy. Israel is thought in our family as the spiritual motherland and Russia as natural (biological?) mother. I love both but when ought to decide what prevails it's an easy choice. I promise to find a magnet sticker of Russian flag and put it to the back door:-)

Just before publishing the blog another recollection flashed in my mind. In Israel having a sticker of your company on a car is very popular. Startups and solid companies give stickers to their employees and every leasing car (which is the majority there) has a small company sticker. A boss of one of the companies I worked for tried to save money on the stickers and rejected his employees' requests to buy stickers. He maybe saved 100$ all together but deprived his employees of the feeling of pride of the company. I'm sure each of us could have worked at least 15 minutes more productively and easily return the "invested" money.

We should create and find opportunities to make people we work and live with being proud of what they have, especially when they deserved it.

Technorati tags: proud, Israel, GA

How to find a mentor?

Finding a mentor is not an impossible mission but before sharing my thoughts on how to do it I'll tell why I think it's important.

We discover new things on our path and learning from own errors is the most expensive way to advance. Getting advice is free and getting advice from "old stagers" can save you lots of time and energy. Mentors are akin to our parents when we were young - they unselfishly teach us their secrets of life - be it family relationships, growing kids, or advancing on the career.

In this blog I want to talk about the latter. The role of luck in one's career hardly can be overestimated but learning others' patterns of success and listening to people that have reached high results can remarkably help. How to get exposed to their experience and make them wanting to share their secrets? A few ideas of mine:

• Don't be afraid of asking help. If you find a person whose experience and achievements are worth of studying try to reach the person and ask for a piece of advice. Very straightforward and very efficient. I did it a couple of times: asked for 15 minutes of conversation to share their secret of success and got 1.5 hours of a very frank talk. A caveat here is don't ask to help you. Ask to share their secrets and then they'll ask about your situation and will be willing to advise. But even if not don't be disappointed. What you need is to found  relationships so in the future you can come back and ask for advice.
• Use good timing. Big guys are busy, their inbox is full, and you should use the one-bullet principle here so good timing is vital. I did it on a conference where I knew we both would be. During a conference it's most likely the mentor will have some time. Again, ask for a chance to learn their experience not to resolve your problem.
• Learn about the mentor. Show that you're interested in learning the mentor's success seriously. Today lots of information is publicly available via a company site or network tools like Linkedin.
• Look everywhere. Find many. One mentor is great but two are better. You're seeking for sources of wisdom - hence the more the merrier! Look for candidates for mentors among executives you don't report directly - then you'll eliminate any potential for seeding a feeling of obligations to you and exclude any ethical problems. Look for mentors in other areas and industries too. A sales or a marketing executive can noticeably widen the horizon of a techie.
• Think about your current and former boss. You don't want to become a "student" of your boss if you just started reporting to her but if you have already continuous relationships you may feel it's harmless to ask your boss for advice, for being your mentor, and being your coach. Great bosses do it gladly. I was happy to work with such great guys and my experience is not exceptional.

As the time goes by we may acquire more and more advisers for different areas of our life. Professional teachers are rare thing and if we want to learn from other's success we should take care of getting mentors seriously. As Keith Ferrazzi writes in his book he even accepted an offer when the CEO of the company agreed to have lunch with him 3 times a year.

Earning mentors is not a simple mission but possible. What is your recipe for getting personal adviser?

Technorati tags: mentor, boss, career

What's important for choosing a job - Stability / Stimulation / Discovery?

Ben Casnocha rises a dilemma question - what is better for you and your career - stick with a stable but uninteresting job or move to an unstable but interesting one. He continues the with two options - work in a stable enterprise or become an independent self employed professional (either open your business or play as a contractor). The question echoes partly with another - where it's better to work - in a startup or in a big corporation. Then I looked at the question from an emotional side but today let's see what is better for your career - work independently, work in a startup (or any small company), or belong to a multi thousand work force organization.

The essence of the difference is in the level of responsibility and an amount of new things to learn which are both usually inversely proportional to the boredom of the job and stability.

In a startup (or any small organization) you deal with lots of things, unanswered questions emerge almost daily, and the company lives in a mode of permanent lack of resources.  Naturally you're responsible for many different things and learn a lot (on every position and each level in a startup). Necessity is the mother of invention characterizes the startup environment.

In a big, stable company your role is quite defined. There are processes, policies, and separation of work. Hardly a DB admin will be developing UI or Java programmer building a system of automated tests. For many people a passed year doesn't deposit any new values to the account of the learned things. Changing positions takes time, favorable conditions, and eventually luck.

A drawback of a startup is its stability but it's not the only weak side of it. If you don't work in a successful startup your career history is not very visible. If you work for a big brandy enterprise its success sticks to you too. In startups there is nothing to take (besides the knowledge).

An advantage of a big company is you can change your profession (not even a position) without changing your job. I've seen many former developers shifted their careers to sales folks, marketing guys, consulting managers, or bizdev people (discussed it partially here). Also experiences gotten in a corporation is more applicable to a startup than the opposite direction. Corporations have global presence, massive product roll out, service field forces, consulting, support resources and you can change your roles (although every time quite sticking to something concrete) inside the company.

Clearly there is no black and white and for some people just the environment dictates their decision. A few friends of mine can't work in a big company with policies and processes although others can't stand the startup world. My advice for newcomers is this. When you're fresh and unexperienced - experiences is all - go to a small company where you can learn a lot. After 2-3 years of professional experience start thinking about a big, highly recognized enterprise with global presence and copious forces. Try it and taste it for a couple of years and then you'll feel and know what world better works for you. You'll also will know what roles you'd like to play. I'm sure there is no better or worse. Each case has its own pros and cons but we should clearly realize them and be aware of the differences.

Technorati tags: career, job

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.

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

Becoming the ideal boss

Some time ago I posted a blog on the boss of a dream. Looking at a person from a subordinate side, what traits she should have. Now I want to drop a few tips on how to become a good boss. I won't mention here personal characteristics that every pro should possess but confine the list only by the ones describing an ideal boss, a boss others want to work with.

• Be a leader. It's been told thousands of times that one has to lead and not to manage but I don't agree do exclude the manage part though, anyway, leading is the predominant part of the leader-manager tandem. Personal example, initiatives, generation of ideas - the boss must work harder than her team members to become a model. Take some job on you even if you manage a very big group. Don't be just a task dispatcher and a reporter.
• Be a mouthpiece of the team. Promote the team, promote the people working for you. Make them known, build their publicity. Send the members to represent the team occasionally. Don't become the only face of the team. Don't accumulate members credits on your account but amplify merit and deserts of the group outside.
  
• Excite via interesting. Typically we read encourage instead. Agree, but the best encouragement is to let an employee to deal with things he loves. Not always it's possible to give all things they love. But at least know what they want to do and try to make it happen.
• Manage and care. Anew, the odious manage word. But that's a must of a good manager. While balancing between well-being of the company and well-being of an employee the latter has to prevail in the manager's choice. If it's impossible then it should be exceptional and caused by lack of any other choice. Try to protect your folks and reward their job. Promotions, bonuses, trainings, conferences, titles - just a few items in the arsenal. Don't be a cheapskate and don't care for the company too much at expenses of the people working for you.
• Make them want to work for you. People won't always work for you and you won't be their boss forever. Build great relationships with them and deserve their desire to work for you again in the future. Discuss with the employees their plans and dreams, help them to plan career paths and help develop them later. Don't hold the people if you know there is a better place for them and the company somewhere else. Put your employees above all and they'll work for you with desire, passion, and producing great results.

As usually, waiting for your feedback to replenish the list by your ideas.

Technorati tags: boss, employee, job

Fighting a micro-depression. Unfailing recipe

That was it, again; I haven't felt it for a long time but now the same dull wave rolled me over... A depression.

There was only 2pm and all the day and the evening of suddenly freed time until tomorrow morning flight but nothing excited me. Lots of emails were waiting for my attention, dozens of blogs waited to be read (and to write), downloaded books, podcasts - nothing could break the armour of boredom, locked, surely, the receptors of passion and creativity.

A light sense of panic that the day will be merely killed and tomorrow won't bring any change flashed in my mind. Briefly skimmed over the morning events - no apparent reason for the depression. So it's again a short circuit of the mood wires. Barely the tank of excitement gone:-) Ok, simple to analyze - harder to fix. What to do?

First off, calm down. If there is no logical reason it's all about feelings and senses. The tank analogy keeps working. The engine needs fuel - what to choose? For each the recipe is personal: lovely music, a book, a movie, good whiskey, a pipe - you've got the idea. Envision how you can rejoice yourself (where the "gas station" is). Do it alone or in a company, in  a pub or on a beach, immediately or later. Though not always we're flexible to play with time - our empty car has to be towed to the "gas station".

Here is the second tip. Once you recognize you're out of gas don't try to push the car by force. Try to roll down to the "gas station" slowly. Try to choose tasks that can be done mechanically. Don't do any creative job, anything requiring the very "gas" of inspiration.

Lastly the recipe cured me today. A nice Italian restaurant in the downtown of Palo Alto, a caprese, dug legs, and a glass of Rijoca did their job very well! A new book of Murakami made the evening almost perfect. I'm full of energy for the flight (SFO-PDX-FRA-TLV) and the depression is off and away.

So here is my recipe and to say the long short:

• Know to recognize micro-depressions;
• Have a set of recipes handy (and diverse);
• Don't push yourself before the treatment;

p.s. If it doesn't help maybe one glass of Rijoca wasn't enough? Are you already getting Prozac? (just kidding...)

Technorati tags: motivation, depression

The dream job, home proximity, and travels

A friend of mine is looking for a job and answered my question of "what is your dream job?" by mentioning (besides an challenging position, acceptable conditions, and stability) a close proximity to the home. The last one jolted me into writing this blog.

I think that for most of us  a job which we have to spend 2 hours/day traveling to it is not a half-full glass situation but a full-glass. Why? Because being isolated in a car we are doomed to spend the time listening to something or talking to somebody. Why not to use it efficiently and listen to something useful? Nowadays there are tons of audio books, podcasts, and interviews with interesting people.

But the ideal situation is when you can get to the office and use not only the ears but the eyes and both hands to study on the way. Lock yourself to a learning mode and your knowledge base will grow significantly. Just imagine if you can spend daily an hour (so the office is not really far) on learning additionally! It's about a book in a month at least. 12 new books a year - compare to how many you read today.

The same situation with jobs requiring travels. Don't perceive the time (on the way to the airport, in the airport, and in the plane) as wasted time. It's your added time to learn. With travels it's even more efficient. After a working day nobody waits for you at home (sorry, at a hotel) and you can spend the rest of the evening completely on yourself. I know a few consultants who worked 4 days out of city and in such a mode and completed an MBA (from a very respectful school).

No doubt, it doesn't come for free. If you travel the family struggles (so you do). I'm not appealing for a job that will give you a "gift" of 3 hours of learning daily. What I'm saying is if you get such an offer don't look at the travel time as a few wasted hours of your life. Don't kill it by Sudoku, a radio-show, or a useless talk with a traveler. Equip yourself with studying materials and be happy to grow.

Technorati tags: career, job, travel, study

Advocating emails (and Blackberry)

David Lorentzo fights his battle with an email disease and has taken the second step in building his new email lifestyle. This time (and please read the entire story - the links at the end of his blog) David tries to delete emails immediately that are not addressed directly to him. He admit, though, that it may sound drastic to us and that he's in the very beginning of the experiment so he may find it uncomfortable and change his mind in the future.

I think that the last recipe can't be accepted easily. It seems to me that David is struggling with the growing snowball of emails (like many of us) and the number of emails he ought to devote a dose of attention simply is unmanageable. But to delete emails not addressed directly to you sounds like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

We're CC-de on purpose and usually it's not spam. Sometimes you have to be in the loop, stay tuned, and keep track of the events. If you grow email culture in the organization (or at least in your team) then people start using the CC field, distribution lists, and emails in general cautiously. The same is true for Blackberry (which David got rid of some weeks ago). You don't have to answer every email from the BB and to answer any email immediately at all! The last point has been proved by David during his experiment.

I think that email is a very powerful tool and, as any powerful tool, it requires  safety measures. But when we try to get rid of emails (as a tool) instead of using it properly I feel we put the cart in front of the horse. A few short tips on how I tame the email monster.

• Use a few rules performing rough filtering. For instance, emails CC-ing me get to a special folder as opposite to directly addressed to me. Distribution lists is another clear candidate for auto-sorting to folders. Then different folders get different priority of my attention;
• Emails required future actions are marked "unopened" until they're answered or a corresponding task or event is created;
• BB is used only to trace the email flow and not to answer directly unless the answer is brief or criticality and urgency is high;
• BB is  used  only in a  out-of-desk mode - this is its purpose! I don't know why David likes so much no-blackberry-time while he's in a plane (taxiing, landing) - what so important in these few minutes if not to check "breaking news" from others?
• Emails are read in a the reverse chronological order. It saves time to you by not reacting to outdated emails and not dealing with the tail of the story;
• Use messengers for short-and-quick communications. GTalk is the best to my taste and is available on BB too:-)

Again, I admit the problem of uncontrolled emails exists. But don't believe that Stalin's principle - "no man, no problem" - may be applied to emails. We should develop and share better practices (and, apparently, better tools) to manage it more efficiently along with other communication means.

Technorati tags: email, blackberry, GTD, productivity, culture

Top Guy. Read it all!

If ever to make a link-to blog then that's the case. Guy has published top ten posts from his blog. I wish I read it all as far in the past as possible. The essence of pragmatism and the best example on how to get to the point. Guy, thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience. Please read now and re-read every now and then.

Technorati tags: kawasaki, tip, advice, experience

Our schedules are soccerized:-(

- when do we meet?
- any evening, just when not the games are.
(planning a meeting in Israel)
...
- when can we organize a webex tomorrow?
- let's do it afternoon, between the games.
(scheduling a presentation in US)

Thomas Otter writes about admiring sunset during time-breaks in Germany yet in US our working day is screwed up by the Mondial. The cup has reached its culmination (at least in the ratio of the number of games to the games' importance) and all here (at least those who would expect the word "footballized" in the title) are aligning the schedules where possible or record the games to later watch and go through the tension and excitement (a hint: don't tell anybody how great a game ended unless you checked (s)he knows the result:-)

Is your schedule affected by such rare and great events? Your family?

The good news for me is I'll see last four games when I'll be on vacation. Somebody can recommend a good pub for that in Singapore?:-)

Technorati tags: mondial, job, schedule, GTD

Email culture

How cautiously do you use emails with your team, company, customers? Do you think on how to help them make their life easier? Email today is the means of collaboration, even if you organization is happy to work with a wiki, an internal portal and uses (unfortunately a number of) instant messengers. Some of us get hundreds of emails daily and saving half a minute per email is a benchmark that very busy people are after. I know few that were so overwhelmed by emails that stopped answering/forwarding them  - they simply didn't know how to manage the growing snow-ball.

Here are a few simple tips of mine (the list is not exhaustive at all) that I found useful:

• Always fill the subject field. Make it as meaningful as possible. An internally accepted naming convention for what to put to the subject may seriously improve quality of rules and filters. It can be a branch name, a customer, or a product label.
  
• Put a recipient in the TO only if you expect him/her answering the email. Otherwise use the CC. It helps the reader to pre-estimate the email's importance before reading it and use filters/rules to sort it out.
• If there is more than one recipient and you question something or expect particular action from one of the recipients address  this part of the email to the recipient directly to help him/her not to miss it  (@John: or @DB team:).
• Answer emails in the reverse chronological order. When you get a chance to answer in an already quite going conversation don't take the participant back to the first email you got. They already have advanced in the discussion and you'd better off get yourself to the picture and read the latest answers (especially because the first emails are typically trailed at the bottom of every answered email anyway).
• Use the low priority for jokes and emails not related directly to the duties. Again, the same intention - help your recipients to draw attention to really important things.
• Use the high priority only if it's totally urgent. Otherwise it confuses the recipients and what's worse - you'll be known as a wolf-crier, so when the case will be really urgent nobody will pay attention to the small red exclamation mark on an email from you.
• Use OOO (out-of-office) auto-response if you can't return direct emails in a 24 hour interval of working days. If you don't use it and leave to vacation not only you'll find your boss unhappy with all the emails reminding you to answer, where (s)he, all of a sudden, became CC-ed. Your (and your team's) reputation and image will be damaged (let alone the fact that the senders may get stuck in the unknown).

The flip side of the problem is how to read and manage incoming emails. Dave Lorenzo writes about his experience in getting rid of the Blackberry and checking emails barely a few times a day. We're watching closely his experiment and impatiently waiting for the long-term results. It's the same problem - emails eat too much time of ours. I think we should address it from both sides - the recipient side and the sender one.

Waiting on your tips and experience on how to cultivate the email culture.

Update: David went farther and started deliting emails CC-ing him. Advocate emails (and Blackberry) is my comments to this approach.

Technorati tags: email, GTD, productivity, culture

The worst things you can do to fail your job interview

Usually I don't repost someone's blogs but this one is exeptional.  How Not to acti in a job interview is hilarious! Just a couple of quotations of what limits people stupidity can reach:

• Applicant challenged the interviewer to arm wrestle.
• Applicant removed a hairbrush from the interviewer's purse, brushed his hair, and left.
• Applicant pulled out a Polaroid camera and snapped a flash picture of the interviewer. He claimed to collect photos of everyone who interviewed him.
• Applicant arrived wearing only one shoe, and explained the other was stolen off her foot on the bus.
• Applicant asked who the lovely babe in the picture was. When the interviewer said it was his wife, applicant asked if she was home now and wanted the interviewer's phone number. The interviewer called security.
• Applicant hrew up on the interviewer's desk and immediately started asking questions about the job, like nothing had happened.

The list is long and I won't break your fun:-) Really nice!

Tehcnorati tags: career, interview, job

Building your network. The right tool.

Nothing has ever been as important as right connections. Today, in the Internet era it's impossible to overestimate the meaning of networking. Everything is changing rapidly and you barely hope (but don't know for sure) what you will be doing in a couple of years and whom will be working with.  Fortunately there is a number of tools helping us to manage our connections and I want to share my experience on the one I particularly love - LinkedIn - since a few friends of mine were asking me about it when I tried to join them.

The idea of the tool is simple - build your profile (a kind of an on-line resume), join other people you met, and be a connector of your network. Very simple and very efficient.

Why do you need it, what benefits do you get from it? One may say that Outlook is sufficient to store all contact information. But in LinkedIn by putting your contacts to your network you, actually, establish a connection with alive people; whatever they change in their data becomes immediately visible and accessible to you. You link them to you as opposite to storing a snapshot of their profile in your Outlook.

You get additional means to manage the connections like "shared connections" or "added connections". The former lets you see other colleagues that you and your connection share so if somebody changes her data you have other common contacts to reach the person. The later allows you to see what other contacts your connection has recently added and you may want to add them as well if you know them.

To sing-up you need to make just a few clicks and your virtual incarnation is given birth. It has a number of mandatory fields such as locations, industry, and company. You can control visibility and accessibility of your user (and its data) but the mandatory fields are always available for searches.

This is, probably, the best feature of the system since it helps you to establish connections with people you don't know in person but have an opportunity to reach them via your common network. Let me demonstrate it to you on an example.  Suppose, I want to meet Keith Ferrazzi. I don't know him (yet) in person but it happens that he already has registered at LinkedIn. When I execute a search there I see that he's only 3 degrees form me: meaning I have somebody in my direct network who has somebody in her direct network who knows Keith in person! Of course, I can try to contact Keith directly (if I know his email) but with LinkedIn I see a way (or a few) to be introduced to Keith via people we both know! Guess what my chances are to be accepted. By the way, Keith has a great article on LinkedIn and he also promotes the system in his amazing book.

Another advantage of the tool (or, rather, another aspect of the very same advantage) is you can find people from your big network (2nd and 3d tiers) based on the mandatory fields (location, company, industry). Looking for somebody in a certain company? Just put its name to the advanced search. Seeking an insider's view for an industry you have nobody in - the same receipt. You can use the network for anything - it gives you always the same resul - builds a chain of trusted (read: personal) connections to the target.

People often ask me whom should they invite or whose invitation to accept. There were two polar ideas: only people you can recommend personally or anybody you happened to know, even virtually. My opinion is you should add anybody for whom you'll be feeling comfortable to serve as a connector between her and your network. At the end of the day it's free but you don't want, probably, to have hundred people in the network whose names tell you nothing. So be selective but not greedy.

Membership is free at LinkedIn for a basic profile but there are options to upgrade to professional service from the network. I think you need it only if you're in an active job seeking position and am very happy with the level of free membership.

Last comment is building a network takes time and right contacts is something you want to have ready right when you need it. So don't shelve it - register today!

Update: Guy Kawasaki has a great post on how to use LinkedIn

Technorati tags:  social networking, linkedin, team

Under-bidding auctions for Amazon.

There is an option to sell your books (and some other stuff) that you don't need anymore at Amazon.  Each, having an account there, can offer his goods to be sold and the item will appear in the item's page under the "more buying options". There you can see the same items from other suppliers. They're new and used, in different conditions, and vary by price.

I found a few books that are out of my current interest but in good conditions and still may find potential buyers. I put them today on Amazon. A feature I didn't find and thought it might be useful is what I call an under-bidding auction. It's very similar to what we have at eBay just the opposite:-) If a right term exists for it please let me know.

When buyers are fighting for an item at eBay they bid and lift the price higher and higher and the seller benefits from that. Usually prices start at a very close to zero level and then go up. At Amazon sellers offer a price depending on the current situation. So if I want to ask for an item the lowest price I can make it lower the current minimal price.

In eBay auctions you set up a highest price you're willing to pay so the system automatically lifts your price in case somebody else overbids you. eBay auctions serve me, as a customer, and help me achieve my target in an easy and automated way - to buy what I want and pay how much I'm ready.

What I offer as an under-bidding auction is an option for buyers to lower the price if a lower asking price appears. The under-bidding auction should help me, as a seller, to reach my target - to sell an item as cheap as I'm ready. I expect to have an option to set a lowest price I'm ready to sell the item for and lower the current price automatically in case somebody asks for a lower price.

A service which is easy to implement I think could be a win-win for both - the buyers and the sellers.

Technorati tags: amazon, ebay, auction, overbid, underbid

Career planning - "Don't sell: Buy!"

I'm reading a very nice book of David Meister "True professionalism" - a set of essays on a variety of topics every professional (non necessary a consultant, as David targets its primary book's audience) meets on his way. Full of the practical wisdom this book is an amazing night-table reading, which ideas inspire you and cement a foundation of your belief.

Yesterday I read the essay "No regrets" where David advises us on building a career path. The gist of the idea is: don't be amorphous, know what you love, deal with what you want, and act with passion. He warns us of choosing our job based on the things that may be in demand but against your inclinations. "Do whatever you enjoy. Don't choose something you don't enjoy just because you think it's what we [partners] want"  - the advice he got from one of his elder statement at the dawn of his career. I wrote about a very similar approach in one of my previous blogs and it seems the idea is the pledge of successful and surefooted career building. We should fuel our engines of passion and excitement by gasoline they like so in a case we straggle from a course to the big target the "mechanisms" are not depreciated and ready to be re-fueled to go for a new voyage. David points out that passion is only the relevant "skill" that makes one  a pro and exhibits drive and determination. "Don't worry about what you're good at… What you like is critical".

I found the next chapter is particularly echoing with some of my previous ideas:

• What do you want to do next?
• Where would you like to be in three years from now?
• What kind of clients would you like to have in three years?
• What kind of work would you like to be doing in three years?
• What next career challenge would you find most exciting?

These questions are addressed to you and your professional satisfaction. They're not about your company. "Many professionals are too busy worrying about their firm's performance criteria to figure out what success really means to them" - another great reveal of the truth from David cautioning us about focusing on our own agenda, target, and path.

David gives a piece of advice on how to find the things we like:

• List all your previous assignments of the last three years and then question yourself on what of them did you most enjoy working?
• Find people you'd love to work with. We'll be happier if we like and respect the people we're doing business with. "For what do I want to be admired and by whom?"
• Clearly identify your evil secrets. Complete the sentence "I don't like to admit, but I…" (am an intellectual snob; don't like dealing with other people; really want to be reach). "Play to your evil secrets. Don't suppress them. You're a lot less flexible than you think" - sums up David.
• Recognize that your planned horizons are moving. "Few career choices are forever. Careers are built by moving from one challenge to the next." We outgrow ourselves and hence have to re-tune and re-focus our dreams every now and then. I call it "dream strategically and plan tactically". Here I'm in unison with David: "Don’t try to plan too far ahead. In 5 to 10 years you'll be a different person who wants different things form life".
• Don't blindly follow the advice of others. Nobody can tell you what you want in your career. "It's always a good idea to solicit outside opinions, in order to expand the range of alternatives to be considered. But you don't have to accept other people's ideas and conclusions, even if what you hear has a common theme".

David attracts our attention to an order of things people typically build their plans. They choose a profession, then a firm, and then a role they want to play. He thinks it's a wrong order. The role must prevail in the subsequence. The role you play is a trump of success and happiness of your career. "Figure our which role you want to play, and then (if necessary) tell your firm about your decision. If they don't t accept it, change firms. Don't sell: buy!"

Again and again David emphasizes the fact that ownership of our career, success, and happiness is solely ours. "You should be a lot picker than they [bosses] in deciding what you're going to do" - repeats David, "Don't sell: Buy!… Nothing is more impressive than someone who clearly knows what he or she loves, and why."

And here is the paragraph I'd like every pro has to make his motto and hang in a frame on a wall in his room: "You can either buy yourself a career, or be bought by one. Don't sell: Buy!"

It's an amazing book, written on very concise and clear English, and bringing tons of wise thoughts letting us to re-think our situation, our vision, and ourselves. I also highly recommend to browse David's site, read his articles and blogs, and listen to his podcasts.

Technorati tags: career, plan, job

 

 

How to make your blog attactive?

How to start a blog? The answer is simple - start blogging.  How to make the blog attractive? Quite simple too - start blogging about what you're good at. How to make the blog profitable? Make it really attractive.  Steve Pavlina repeatedly pints out how to make a site attractive (and hence profitable through ad) and he succeeded in this a lot. Another great follower of this idea is Jonathan whose blog talks solely (or mostly) about money and his personal experience. It's a very popular blog and the reason, besides the very popular topic and very professional content, is the fact the Jonathan writes about his personal experience.

I invite my friends to begin to think on starting blogging about their hobbies. Guys, you do invest, some of you are numismatists and philatelist, others are pros in fixing homes. Each of you has something to give a piece of advice and write about. Follow Jonathan and Steve and if you're really a pro additional earning will come.

Have a nice blogging:-)

We're back from Washington DC

I'm sorry I was silent so long and didn't update my readers on the reasons. I was on a trip to Germany and Israel and then was enforced to take a vacation to prevent complete wasting those vacation days the company owed me:-)

It was a kind of a challenging task to organize a vacation in such emergency conditions. The first step I did on planning the vacation was I swore to my wife and the kids I'd provide full isolation from my work duties, the Internet, and the notebook as a working implement. I set up an out-of-office auto-response and continued planning our vacation.

Originally I thought of taking a ski trip to North Carolina. The last time I stood on ski was my last winter vacation of the pre-married era (sounds like B.C. - it was 14 years ago!) and none of the kids and Lia ever tried it. That meant we needed besides to renting equipment and clothes to take a group lesson or a few. Thinking about going to a NC resort in such a no-advance time is a big mistake - everything is booked and what is left is very expensive. For our band a 4 day vacation would come near to 2K of dollars. Taking into account that Lia is not a big fan of extreme outdoor activities I decided not to take all the vacation to a risk (let the financial aspect alone).

A bright idea appeared from nowhere - have a car trip Washington DC. First, we haven't been there and it's a must item on an educational road-map for kids (especially foreigners in the States). Second, we like this type of traveling and have an idea to drive to Toronto one day - so it's better to put a short distance trip to a test before. Washington DC is a great opportunity - only 600 miles from Atlanta. Third, I had to use my award points in Hilton and this fact helped us to address the financial aspect (we payed in the hotel only for parking). So it was decided - we had a trip to Washington DC last Sunday.

The major part of preparation to the trip was installing a DVD instead of a VCR our Chrysler T&C had. Surprisingly e