Strategy in Principle - The Leadership / Management Blog of Kevin Crenshaw

May 6, 2010

Twain on Time Management ...

Without a foundation of relaxed productivity, you can't lead or execute your strategy well. And here's some futuristic advice on productivity from Mark Twain:

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." - Mark Twain

Great advice. David Allen (GTD) popularized this idea as the "single next action." However, he never claimed to be its inventor. Dean Acheson introduced the concept to Allen (GTD, p. 237), and Mark Twain beat Dean to it by a century....

Kevin Crenshaw is a business consultant and executive coach. As author of the blog "Strategy in Principle," he shares insights on hot topics in management and productivity tips for business owners. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life. Follow him on Twitter for more tips in all these areas.

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March 29, 2010

On Going First (The Real Cost of Pioneering)

Prepare to be surprised. This poem isn't about what it seems...

"1st"

Intrepid leader, pioneer,

the first to start the race.

Who charts a course to lead the way,

a route to second place.

Though guides are callow, maps unknown,

who treks the virgin land,

by each new failure, marks the path,

to reach the final strand.

The first will vanquish demons that

no other man will face,

and then to hold the place in line,

march on at double pace.

Who oft as not will never see

themself the end reward.

The trail built but someone else

will bridge the final ford.

Regret and failure, dreams destroyed

the conquered hero stands,

to see the next, in half the time,

will navigate these lands.

What will they see, the third and fourth,

while passing by the first?

A counterfeit? A vagabond?

A swine? A fool, accursed?

Or will they see the harbinger

of all they soon will reach?

Who cut the trail, but time expired

short of the final beach.

And will the vanguard be content

to never see the end?

Instead, to be the stepping stone,

instead, to help a friend.

~ John Crenshaw

"Dedicated to every oldest sibling."

My son John wrote this the day his fourth brother received his Eagle Scout award. All his brothers beneath him got theirs or are in line for it.

He never received his.

As new parents, we were still learning the ropes, and he was cutting a trail for this brothers and sisters. I'm the oldest in my family, and I never earned my Eagle either.

However, I'm totally "content," as his poem uses that word, and I think he is too. Blazing the path for others and seeing them succeed is where I get much of my satisfaction in life. Perhaps that's why I love being a coach so much ...

Kevin Crenshaw is a business consultant and executive coach. As author of the blog "Strategy in Principle," he shares insights on hot topics in management and productivity tips for business owners. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life. Follow him on Twitter for more tips in all these areas.

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March 8, 2010

Consensus in Crisis

What happens when a true leader, facing a crisis, honestly collaborates with all parties to find a group solution?

Read the following article. I don't think this is "spin" or positioning. It's the real deal. There were no dissenting comments posted on the Richmond Time-Dispatch news article as of this writing.

I recommend this pattern for any leader in any organization:

Use your influence as a leader to be a catalyst for responsible consensus.
What common ground can you find?
What ideas does the "other side" have?
Avoid finger pointing. Focus on issues, not people. (I think this article only scores a C+ for that.)

Bring all parties to the table, agree on the need, then figure it out together. Not only do you get a solution, but you get a solution people can believe in and implement with enthusiasm. And that makes all the difference.

"Tough, Responsible Choices Set Stage for Recovery"

Richmond Times Dispatch, March 7, 2010

By Guest Columnist Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell

Virginians need more good jobs. In this uniquely difficult economy, a top priority of government must be strengthening the free enterprise system and helping the private sector create jobs to get our economy back on track. This has been the focus of much of our efforts since taking office.

We have seen in Congress what happens when our leaders do not focus on economic growth, competitiveness, and job creation. They get pulled into partisan fights over other issues. Some of their actions have a negative impact on the capital markets, captains of industry, small business entrepreneurs, and consumers upon whom job creation depends.

I'm grateful to our state legislature that most of my economic development and reform proposals have passed one or both houses, most with large bipartisan majorities. The new tools we will have to promote small business, tourism, film production, wineries, and the energy industry will help to create the jobs and prosperity of tomorrow.

For the past seven weeks I have been working in a collaborative fashion with leading budget-writers in both parties and have made our budget priorities clear: First, new tools for job creation and economic development to foster future growth. Second, no job-killing tax increases. Third, generating a balanced budget on time that preserves our Triple-A bond rating and attractiveness to new private investment. Finally, protecting public safety and focusing reductions on those areas that had not received large cuts before.

Our work on the budget began in January -- facing a budget shortfall of $4.2 billion. Gov. Tim Kaine's introduced budget proposed to cover half of the shortfall with the largest tax increase in Virginia history -- a minimum 17 percent income tax increase for Virginians. Both houses of the General Assembly dismissed this plan on a bipartisan basis.

The inclusion of a tax hike proposal with no realistic prospect for passage left us with an unbalanced budget. It meant closing the remaining $2.2 billion shortfall in just a few weeks. It presented an unprecedented situation. Prior to this year, the most revisions an incoming governor ever made to his predecessor's introduced budget were $400 million (by Gov. Mark Warner in 2002). Our task has been more than five times greater.

Choosing a process of collaboration with my former legislative colleagues, I have been meeting regularly with leaders from both houses to help forge a balanced budget. On Feb. 17, I sent the General Assembly $2.3 billion in budget recommendations. Developing this package of recommendations was one of the most difficult undertakings in my 19 years in public office. Many cuts carry with them a human face, a personal story, and a real impact on fellow Virginians. But Virginians rightly expect their elected leaders to make the hard choices necessary to run government efficiently during tough times, just as they do in their family and business budgets. That means reducing spending to meet available revenues, conservatively projecting future revenues, and not balancing the state's budget with higher taxes.

According to Virginia's watchdog agency JLARC, the total state operating budget has grown by 73.4 percent from 2000 to 2009. After adjusting for population and inflation, it still grew by 28 percent. When times were good we adopted a high level of spending, not sustainable in today's economy.

Before I took office, Gov. Kaine and the General Assembly had already cut $7 billion from the budget over the past two years. Higher education, public safety, and transportation were all hit with deep cuts, while K-12 education and health care generally were not. Thus, our new spending reductions focused on those areas.

Reducing education funding is a tough choice. My sister is a teacher and all of my children graduated, or will graduate this year, from public high schools in the state. Over the past decade, direct aid to K-12 education has grown by 55 percent, faster than other areas of the general fund. In fact, education spending accounts for 39 percent of all general fund budget growth over the past decade. This has occurred while student enrollment has gone up only 7.6 percent.

Our budget proposal will still leave total K-12 spending in 2012 50 percent higher than it was in the year 2000. Our reductions are targeted primarily at expenditures outside the classroom. And the proposed reductions to K-12 can be offset in large part by the use of more than $500 million in additional revenue generated for localities through budget savings from the Virginia Retirement System payments, and through the utilization of nearly $280 million in additional revenues recently identified by our office.

The budgets of both houses have significant savings in the area of social services and health care. However, even if all of these cuts are made, Virginia will still be spending more on health care than ever before.

I have been heartened by the common ground we have found in crafting the final budget. Both the Republican House and the Democratic Senate rejected tax increases, preserved car tax relief, included funding for job creation and economic development efforts, and closed the shortfall through reductions in spending in areas not cut significantly before.

The collaboration with the General Assembly has fostered an atmosphere of candid dialogue. I have much faith in the senior leaders in the legislature to resolve their differences promptly and civilly. We stand ready to pass a balanced budget, in a bipartisan fashion, on time, and without a tax increase. These extraordinary fiscal times will bring about innovation and entrepreneurial management by both public and private sector leaders. The spirit of the people of Virginia to endure and recover from difficult times is outstanding, and I look forward to helping lead our state to brighter days ahead.

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February 25, 2010

A ZDNet Post on Priacta

I was happy to see Dan Kusnetzky at ZDNet wrote a piece mentioning our Total, Relaxed Organization training program, as he's just starting out on our TRO training. Check out this excerpt:

Recently, I came across a system offered by Priacta that claimed to offer the benefits of GTD using a more relaxed approach, an approach they call Total Relaxed Organization (TRO.) I became intrigued, signed up for an inexpensive online course and have been working with Kevin Crenshaw, Executive Coach and one of the company’s founders.

You can read the rest of his post here.

Kevin Crenshaw is a business consultant and executive coach. As author of the blog "Strategy in Principle," he shares insights on hot topics in management and productivity tips for business owners. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life. Follow him on Twitter for more tips in all these areas.

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January 18, 2010

Some TRO/GTD Humor: Dilbert & Time Management

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January 15, 2010

The Secret to (Actually) Getting Fanatical Support from Rackspace

I'd like to start off by asking you: Are you one of the people who are sick of seeing this message?

After my case study analysis of Rackspace Fanatical Support, we received a number of disillusioned, irate, and even hopeless reader comments (read them below the article here). Now it's time to report back, share our experience since then, and give you a likely solution. This article outlines our roadmap for getting true, Fanatical Support, as advertised by Rackspace.

Yes, I'm pretty confident you can get it, and it's not too hard. You just have to know the "secret," which really isn't supposed to be a secret at all.

Priacta's Recent Experience

Many of our site's reliability problems continue. They have improved somewhat, but from time to time they revert back to their old ways, like the Mr. Hyde side of Dr. Jekyll.

However ... something huge changed along the way.

Here's the big difference: Priacta was assigned a Rackspace Cloud account manager who 1) owns our issue and our account, and who 2) definitely acts accountable to us. (If you want this level of support yourself, read on ...)

RESULT: We feel like we are getting true fanatical support, in spite of the continuing issues.

SPECIFIC IMPROVEMENTS IN SUPPORT: Now someone is validating and responding to our concerns. We are getting regular updates from Rackspace on the status of the issues, setbacks, and progress made. We have some contact with front-line techs and engineers in the email chains. We are able to provide data and work with them to help resolve the issue. And there is progress... definite patterns are being discovered in when and why the issues surface, and likely causes identified and pursued.

ANALYSIS: It's interesting that even though the problems are not yet solved, we are much more willing to live with the pain when we see that Rackspace is definitely listening, letting us help resolve it, and trying as hard or harder than we would. It creates hope. There is no pain like the pain of uncertainty and hopelessness. Remember this principle for your own business: if your people are distressed at the size of the waves, give them an oar and ask them to paddle. When we feel like we are at least doing something about our problems, we don't feel as afraid of them.

CONCLUSIONS: 1) Adding accountability (to the customer) and 2) Rackspace taking ownership of the issue does, indeed, restore a "fanatical" level of support in the client's mind.

What About the Rest of You?

I believe that this is not just special treatment for us. Instead, there seems to be a gaping chasm between Level 1 and Level 2 Rackspace on a few critical, high-profile issues that you have to cross on your own. Why? There is no automatic escalation path. (Level 1 support was decent for a very long time. It only became bad for a couple of specific, company-threatening issues that they did not know how to handle.)

RECOMMENDATION TO RACKSPACE: Create a tech who owns this particular problem and is accountable to anyone reporting it. This tech's mantra should be: "I'm the 'No Suitable Nodes' Engineer. My mission is to find enough nodes, all the time, for everyone, no matter what. I want to hear your experience and give you Fanatical Support on this issue." Then tell your Level 1 techs to refer people to the "No Suitable Nodes" Engineer. Give her/him a face and name, a blog or web page, then let people post comments there and let him/her respond to them all at once with a running discussion. Channel all the complaints to one place where you can do excellent damage control and give people the same relief we're feeling now!

Escalating It Yourself

Rackspace reps have said that this kind of support is their plan, they have a policy of complete transparency, and they have an open door. But the real problem, in my opinion, is that this just isn't true right now for Level 1 support. Instead, you have to escalate it to the next level yourself by contacting management. Fortunately, their management contact information is public. Here is what Angela Bartels said:

We do keep our contact information public, including our leadership. Our GM, Emil Sayegh, publicly responds to customers and posts his contact information freely, and frequently. You can reach him at emil.sayegh@rackspace.com or via Twitter @esayegh. All of our contact information is here as well: http://bit.ly/8utwKW.

Her complete post and contact information is posted in the Comments here.

Try The Experiment and Report Your Results Here

If you're having troubles, let us know here. Then contact Rackspace using the contact info above to escalate your issue. Report back here in the comment section on how well they responded. After trying this approach, I'm betting you will get the Fanatical Support they promise.

Kevin Crenshaw is a business consultant and executive coach. As author of the blog "Strategy in Principle," he shares insights on hot topics in management and productivity tips for business owners. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life. Follow him on Twitter for more tips in all these areas.

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January 6, 2010

Family Businesses, Entrepreneurship, and "It's Not a Real Job" Syndrome

USA Today recently featured an article about the entrepreneurial spirit that family businesses inspire in the children of the parents who run it. Consider this:

Nearly half of business founders had a parent who started a small business first, according to a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation report released last summer. Slightly more than 15% had siblings who launched a business before they did.

"If you had a family member who started a business, you are more likely to become an entrepreneur than someone who didn't," says Vivek Wadhwa, founder of two technology companies, as well as a senior research associate at the Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and a co-author of the Kauffman study. "They provide inspiration, financing and they teach you the ropes."

This hit close to home for me. As a serial entrepreneur and father of 10 children, I'm seeing strong entrepreneurial tendencies in nearly all of my kids. Even my youngest son, at 5, routinely set up a "store" in our living room selling things he found around the house. When he turned 6, we explained that he needed to buy the stuff from us and resell it. Words like "profit," "inventory," and "margin" became a natural part of his vocabulary.

Owning a business absolutely helps you teach and train entrepreneurship in a more thorough, profound way. In fact, that's been one of our business objectives all along: involve the children, and teach them marketable skills in the process. We received some surprising benefits, as well. For example, some unexpected sibling communication issues did not get resolved until we hired certain children and put them into the same office. The emphasis on teaching and training also helped create a company culture of continuous learning.

The Rub: "It's Not a Real Job" Syndrome

However, even with all the benefits, you need to be careful. One issue we've run into is what I call "It's not a Real Job" Syndrome. Children tend to take a family-managed business more lightly than a "normal" job, so you have to take measures to prevent that attitude. Here's a few quick tips from our play book:

Where possible, let non-parents supervise children. Make it clear to the supervisor and the child that this is not a guaranteed job, and that they should be treated like all other employees at work.
At work, wear a different hat. I'm "Kevin" at work to my children, and "Dad" at home. When they speak using one title or the other, it makes the context clear. "Business is business, family is family." They don't overlap.
Don't rescue them. Let managers and the children work things out. Letting a child fail at something is often the best way for them to learn. Be ready afterwards with some encouragement and mentoring. Let them know that you still have great confidence in them, and everybody falls short once in awhile.
Establish clear, fair performance standards and review progress. "What we measure, improves." This helps ensure that the same standards apply to everyone.
Rely on principle-based management. Principle-based leadership and management bases its decisions on proven, externally-verifiable principles. Circumstances change, but principles always apply. This management mindset is strong insurance against favoritism, and it encourages and reinforces the clear standards, metrics, and processes you need in an organization (above).
Assure others of non-favoritism. It may not seem like it, but this is different from not actually playing favorites. Managers and others will be afraid that you will treat children differently, so you must reassure them, over and over, that you will not. Ask them to hold you accountable to that standard.

With a few safeguards like this in place, family entrepreneurship can be a blessing to you, your children, your business—and it can be a lot of fun!

See the WSJ article on entrepreneurial families here.

Kevin Crenshaw is a business consultant and executive coach. As author of the blog "Strategy in Principle," he shares insights on hot topics in management and productivity tips for business owners. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life. Follow him on Twitter for more tips in all these areas.

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January 5, 2010

Why Is Twitter Declining? Two Answers, Plus Three New Social Media Networks with Ideas

Twitter's numbers are flatlining or declining lately. Not as many people are joining up as they used to, and fewer people seem to be visiting. That spells trouble for Twitter. It also makes the business consultant in me wonder "Why?" and "What's next?"

What's the Problem?

I believe Twitter is waning for two simple, subtle reasons: 1) It's not creating persistent value, and 2) it's an unreliable communication channel.

1) No Persistent Value

What do I mean by "no persistent value?" Old tweets do not show up in searches anywhere. (See "Older tweets are temporarily unavailable.") The information in these tweets effectively drops off the end of the earth, lost to anyone unless they want to sequentially sift through someone's history. Imagine writing for a blog, knowing that in two weeks your article won't show up in any Google searches? How useful would Google be if it only indexed things posted to the Web in the last week?

This limitation threatens to relegate Twitter to the realm of mindless chatter instead of the world of real, personal resources. Example: My twitter stream is designed to be a persistent resource of micro-ideas, thoughts, and tips that would actually help people. But its value drops if you have to read the entire thing start to finish to find what you want.

A temporary workaround is to use archiving services such as TweetBackup or grabbing the RSS feed for a twitstream and adding it to our preferred RSS reader, but these won't help you or other users retro-actively search Twitter for old tweets.

2) Unreliable Communication Channel

Without third-party tools, Twitter is a leaky, inconsistent means of communication. Yes, I know that's part of its beauty, since you can turn off the background noise and see only some of it some of the time. I like that. Yet I've also had colleagues tweet me @replies that didn't get seen for a week or more, and they were miffed. They were expecting something that Twitter isn't really designed for, but that's the point! They expected it. Twitter didn't deliver it. Currently, Twitter can only send you email notices of Direct Messages, not your @replies. In contrast, Facebook lets you get notices of any messages people leave for you. That's important if you want to reply promptly and really contribute to a community.

Twitter should add an option, pronto, to send you immediate or daily digests of @messages (any tweet that mentions you). Without it, it's an unreliable communication channel, and it's value diminishes. It becomes "optional" communication, most useful once again for mindless chatter.

The workarounds for this are far from obvious to the average Twitterer. Take a look at notify.me and this article for solutions.

What's Next?

1) Hopefully, Twitter will fix their search and notification limits ASAP, and hopefully they will remain relevant.

2) If not, look for some other micro-blogging platform to emerge. It may include features from a three other new ideas coming our now.

The first network is Foursquare, a location-based social network that allows you to "announce" and keep track of places you've been. The second social service is Plancast, which allows you to "broadcast" your plans to friends and colleagues. And the last network is Tungle, which allows you to schedule meetings by proposing multiple possible meeting times, publishing your schedule's free and busy times, and inviting others to book meetings.

Check out this great video explaining how these three programs can keep you productive and connected. They may be the services to dethrone Twitter, if these problems persist.

Kevin Crenshaw is a business consultant and executive coach. As author of the blog "Strategy in Principle," he shares insights on hot topics in management and productivity tips for business owners. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life. Follow him on Twitter for more tips in all these areas.

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January 4, 2010

Tenacity: The Most Important Tool in Your Blueprint For Business Success

Tenacity is everything. It means if the front door closes in your face, you find a side door. Then if the side door closes, you look for a window. Get the picture?

In other words, if you don't know something, you'll learn it. If you lack experience, you'll seek out a mentor who has it and learn from them. If you can't "do" it yet, you actively listen and learn and watch for an opening when you can. It means asking gently, over and over—latching on like a bulldog and not letting go (with a smile)—until things finally start to happen.

Tenacity creates self-confidence and self-esteem: when you exercise tenacity, you know—100%, absolutely, positively, sooner or later, no matter what it takes—you're going to make it happen. And it feels great!

The Will to Win

By Berton Braley

If you want a thing bad enough

To go out and fight for it,

Work day and night for it,

Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it

If only desire of it

Makes you quite mad enough

Never to tire of it,

Makes you hold all other things tawdry

and cheap for it

If life seems all empty and useless without it

And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,

If gladly you'll sweat for it,

Fret for it, Plan for it,

Lose all your terror of God or man for it,

If you'll simply go after that thing that you want.

With all your capacity,

Strength and sagacity,

Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,

If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,

Nor sickness nor pain

Of body or brain

Can turn you away from the thing that you want,

If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,

You'll get it!

Kevin Crenshaw is a business consultant and executive coach. As author of the blog "Strategy in Principle," he shares insights on hot topics in management and productivity tips for business owners. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life. Follow him on Twitter for more tips in all these areas.

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January 1, 2010

How Many Emails Are in Your Inbox? 2010 New Year's Poll, Plus Solutions (#howmanyemails #tro #gtd)

Quick Poll: How Many Emails in Your Inbox? Post your number on Twitter using the Retweet badge below. Include both your READ and UNREAD emails, since they're all in there, gumming up the works ... Results will be posted on this blog.

So What's the Big Problem?

I keep seeing 2010 New Year's resolutions about organization, especially regarding email. For example, one blogger on new year's email resolutions for leaders said:

#7. Responsiveness. Is your inbox volume out of control? Haven’t cleared that voicemail in a long time? Try setting aside an hour a week or a daily block to review and respond to your messages regularly.

This idea isn't bad—it's called "time boxing"—but it's not enough. What the author calls "reviewing" we would call "processing" or "doing" as taught by David Allen's GTD and our GTD-inspired TRO approach. However, I've found that to keep your inbox from exploding into chaos, you absolutely, positively need to "triage" it. So, what is "triaging?"

5 Easy Steps to Triaging Email

To help you with your 2010 email resolutions, here are the 5 easy, GTD-friendly, TRO email "triaging" steps that will not only get your inbox volume "under control," but will allow you to use your inbox to get your entire life "under control," too.

Step 1) Identify junk email and remove it. Be honest with yourself. Delete it if you know you're never going to deal with it again.

TIP #1: Unless it's sleazy junk mail you never subscribed to, click "Unsubscribe" at the bottom to stop getting more emails. The US CAN-SPAM act has made this safe and effective with one or two clicks for most mailers.

TIP #2: After unsubscribing, group emails by sender to remove large chunks of email all at once.

Step 2) Operate under "Quick Communication" mantra. Keep it under 2 minutes. Disengage from emails by deleting or forwarding to someone who might care, then forget about it. Do not create a follow-up task. And if you can’t disengage, email makes quick replies easy, like: “Thanks. I got it. I’ll get back with you next week.”

Step 3) Is it a "hot" item for your to-do list? Create tasks from all actionable emails and process immediately.

Step 4) Not a hot issue? Put it in an "Unprocessed Tasks" list for later processing. Move the the email to “[Action]” for later processing, or, quickly add a task to your task list to collect the task. Include any relevant notes or information.

Step 5) File the email as a resource item, if applicable. Label reference items if needed, then archive them. Archive all of your email this way. Gmail has excellent search capabilities and plenty of space (7+ GB). Retrieving information is easy: simply search for it. The video below gives you a quick step-by-step on organizing your email with labels in Gmail:

Apply these 5 time management methods to your inbox, and you will have one more resolution you can check off your 2010 list.

Click here to see the full article on New Year's Resolutions for leaders.

Kevin Crenshaw is a business consultant and executive coach. As author of the blog "Strategy in Principle," he shares insights on hot topics in management and productivity tips for business owners. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life. Follow him on Twitter for more tips in all these areas.

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