Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - The Basics

I saw Randy Pausch's Last Lecture on YouTube and highly recommend it to everyone, for a number of reasons.

Of the many, many points he conveyed very poignantly, one stuck out for me today.

I was in a meeting that had gotten heated. Someone had "dropped the ball." Apparently some people in the meeting thought that that someone was probably me. I argued that it had never been my ball to start with. Of course I said so, rather eloquently, I thought.

The only way to resolve the dispute was to go back to the basics. My role in that organization is to be the product manager. The question was, did this particular issue fall into my purview?

It came back to the question I've pondered many times (as a product manager.) What, precisely, in this context and in this organization, is a product? A simple question, but shades of nuance change the way that I approach everything. If this thing we were arguing about was, in fact, a product; then I was responsible for ensuring that it adequately went through our company's processes. If it was not a product, but a service we had contracted to perform as a one-off item, then I our product life cycle wasn't relevant.

So, was it a product?

I still think the logical answer is no, but the correct organizational answer was yes. So I'm fixing the problem. :-)

Have a great weekend!

To "Go Native" Or Not

The article "Why You Need a Good Tailor in Karachi - How to Pack Light, Dress Well, and Make Friends When You Travel Internationally" has brought up a very good question.

Is more patriotic to dress like an American when you're abroad?

My thoughts-

If your objective is to be observed (if you're giving a lecture, attending an "official" function, representing your company or your country or whatever,) then, by all means, you should "dress like an American." John often a business suit with cowboy boots. He doesn't quite go so far as to break out the Stetson hat, mostly because it's a it large to travel with. :-)

If your objective is to observe, (as a tourist, a family friend, a businessperson there to meet with peers or negotiate a deal as an equal, etc.) then you should "do what the Romans do" and wear clothes that fit with local styles and customs as much as possible.

Two tales of misplaced fear

I'm interviewing women for my upcoming book on international business travel for women, and learning a lot about fear. Many women don't travel because they're worried about things that could happen. Well, things will happen, whether at home or abroad, both good and bad.

Rinku Sood, a retail specialist, related a story about how she set off alarm bells in an airport in China with a bag she was carrying for her boss, Mr. Sharma. Raising the level of anxiety, Rinku was traveling with a pregnant colleague who was suffering from stomach distress.

Apparently Mr. Sharma is a vegetarian and he carries food and utensils with him when he travels, and the bag he had asked Rinku to carry happened to have a knife in it.

Between recent terrorist activities and difficulties with the language barrier, our friend Rinku could have ended up in a Chinese prison - she said she was having unpleasant scenes from old movies running through her head while the police were called.

Eventually, cooler heads prevailed, the situation was explained and Rinku was able to catch her flight with her sick friend.

The other story also involves a knife - in this case, a teenager at a high school had helped a friend move over the weekend, and in the untidy mess of kitchen stuff a knife had fallen to the floor of the car, and remained there unnoticed, until . . .

The boy drove his car to school as usual on Monday and parked it in the school parking lot. Later that day, a security guard at the school was walking around the parking lot and happened to see the shiny knife sitting on the floor of the car. (Recently publicized events of violence in schools apparently came to his mind.) Since the school had a no-tolerance policy for weapons, the boy was EXPELLED from SCHOOL while an investigation ensued.

School officials interviewed the kid's friends, parents and teachers to ensure that he wasn't depressed, suicidal or crazy, and eventually he was allowed to return to school.

The point (bad pun) of both of these stories? We live in a society where most fear is misplaced and causes much ado about nothing. If we live among other people, we have to live with the fact that they have the potential to do us harm, with or without a knife. We just need to recognize that the probability of that that potential usually amounts to nothing.

We can't eliminate all risk, just be rational about it. The probability of staying home and dying from heart disease (due to stress, overwork and inactivity) is much greater than the probability of death or injury from anything that could happen while traveling internationally.

But for some reason, our fears are all in the wrong place.

How I Made My First $100 Online

I’ve never really separated “online” from “real life.” The internet is just another vehicle. Would you say that you made $100 from the postal service if that was your means of advertising, taking orders and shipping products? A business is a business. That said, here’s how we made our first $100 “online.”

Years ago, as my husband and I studied for our advanced degrees (his in International Business, mine in Adult Education and Distance Learning) we wrote a lot.

We wrote papers, dissertations, theses and essays. We did a lot of research and interviews. Just by virtue of the amount of writing we were doing, and the quality of people we were interviewing and researching, some of the materials we wrote turned out to be pretty darned good. They were too good to just file away and never be seen again. In a lot of cases, we could see that people might be able to save themselves a lot of time and hassle if they had this information handed to them in a neat format, rather than learning things the hard way, as we did.

We were also experimenting with web technology at the time, so we built a very simple website that organized our articles into topic

• Global business
• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Marketing
• Etiquette and Communications
• Customer Service
• Technology
• Finance
• Small Business and
• Aviation & Travel
  
  

It may sound like a strange collection of topics, but we’ve found that many people who are interested in one of these topics is often interested in another.

Thus, Ravenwerks was born.

We had no idea how to “monetize” the site, and our first objective was simply to monitor traffic for fun. We had little informal competitions about whose articles were more popular. (My article on etiquette usually edge out John’s on International Business and Finance, which is a constant source of glee for me.) We did some search engine optimization and experimentation with meta tags to see what would happen. We were doing great, and getting lots of traffic, and said to each other many times in the ensuing months that we should DO SOMETHING with all this traffic. We’d heard about many people making money on the Internet. While I was between jobs, we experimented with affiliate programs and with EBay. We made almost nothing with the affiliate programs. We made some money selling the stuff out of our basement, but we quickly qualified our demands of our “dream retirement job” as something that would not involve inventory, shipping or returns.

The breakthrough came when I was using Google’s search engine optimization tools, and happened upon the Adsense program. I was skeptical because of our experiences with the affiliate programs, but I put the code on one of our page, anyway.

The Adsense program involves a set of tools that allows you to customize an advertising space on your website. Using simple tools, you designate the size, colors, whether you want display or text ads. The weird par t is that you have no idea what ads will actually show up on your web pages. You are handing control of that small space, within the parameters you specify, to Google.

By some bizarre magic, Adsense evaluates your web site and places ads that are relevant based on your web site content. I have no idea how it works, and frankly, sometimes a rather weird match shows up. Occasionally you’ll get something regarding power tools on an etiquette article. But for the most part, the ads that show up are relevant.

Another nice feature of Adsense is that they have a monitoring page where you can log in and see, real time, how much money you’ve made that day, week, or month. You can run custom reports, export to Excel, and so forth. We became addicted to watching the reports.

We immediately made over $10 in one day! I was thrilled.

Our site was built with Dreamweaver templates, so it was fairly simple to add the Adsense code on all of the pages in our site. In our first month, we’d easily made $100. We’ve made as little as 9 cents per day, and as much as $18.37; but we can pretty much count on it for $100 -$200 per month. This is not much, certainly not enough to quit one’s day job, but it’s almost entirely passive income from articles and papers that would otherwise be lying around useless. We occasionally contribute a new article or blog to keep the site fresh, and we’ve met a lot of very nice people who write to us for advice on various matters.

In watching the traffic, I’ve discovered niches that lead to other business ideas. As an example, I’ve found that etiquette and international business travel for women makes a nice intersection that is absolutely fascinating. People have questions – should a woman pack a business suit with a skirt or with pants (or a burqua, for that matter!) for a business trip to Oman? More and more women are traveling to the Middle and Far East on business. I’ve started interviewing women (and men) who are frequent business travelers to these areas and am writing a book, organized by city. I’ve started a new web site (connected to the old one) to monitor and generate interest.

Making money online, at least for us, has not been quick or easy. Like any other business, you get rewarded for providing real value to real people. The internet just makes that simpler and easier.

Feedback on Small Business Article

Thanks for the article on small businesses! It was concise, easy to read and simple to follow.

It was also relevant in the sense that it reiterated the need for small business to be professional in their outlook, and not use their being small as some sort of excuse to 'get away' with minor mishaps. (If that doesn't sound too harsh!)

Thanks again,

Will
___________________

Will -

Thanks for the day-brightener! The article was a bit of a rant, but I enjoyed writing it.



Paula Williams
www.ravenwerks.com
Committed to Your Success

Headhunter Etiquette

Hello,

There is one scenario that I’ve been wondering about which wasn’t covered in the article. (Etiquette for Job Hunters) A work colleague was asked if she knew anyone who was interested in an open position (by a headhunter). She thought of me and emailed me the headhunters name & contact information.

Is it inappropriate to call and ask for more information so that I may edit my resume? Or should I just send my resume and cover letter? I think this would be particularly useful. Since my gut tells me it’s 50/50. There are pro’s and cons to both sides.

Kindest Regards,

C

______________

Dear C,

I would agree with the 50% of your guts telling you to call the headhunter.

You will have the opportunity to introduce yourself, ask questions, and fine-tune your resume and cover letter, if you use one. You can simply say “Alice told me that you were looking for a person to fill a _____ position and I wanted to let you know of my interest in that field.”

Your resume will be much more targeted and relevant if you are able to ask questions about the opportunity beforehand, and it allows the headhunter to give you more information and ensure you’re a good fit for the potential position.

As an FYI, it’s not a bad idea to cultivate a networking relationship with headhunters, even when you’re not looking for a job. If you’re in a position to know a lot of people in your industry, you will always know of someone who needs a position filled or someone who needs a job, and headhunters are always glad to have sources of information. Help them out when you can, and don't be bashful about asking for help when you (or a colleague) needs assistance they might be able to provide.

Best wishes, let me know how it turns out!

-Paula Williams
www.ravenwerks.com
Committed to Your Success

Has the War In Iraq Been a Success? It’s a Matter of Point of View.

We’ve heard that there are two sides to every story. To every really complicated story, there are hundreds, or even thousands, of “sides.”   A couple of the more credible but apparently polar opposite points of view:

           New York Post, June 9, 2008 – Arthur Herman

America has won, or is about to win, the Iraq war.

The latest proof came last month, as the Iraqi army - just a few months ago the target of scorn and abuse from Democratic politicians and journalists - forcefully reoccupied three cities that had served as key insurgency bases (Basra, Sadr City and Mosul).

Sunnis and Shias alike applauded as their nation's army compelled insurgent militias to lay down their arms. The country's leading opposition newspaper, Azzaman, led the applause for the move into Mosul - a sign that national reconciliation in Iraq is under way and probably irreversible.

USA Today, June 10, 2008 - Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press

Uncertainty over Iraq security pact could outlast Bush's term

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is conceding for the first time that the United States may not finish a complex security agreement with Iraq before President Bush leaves office.

Faced with stiff Iraqi opposition, it is "very possible" the U.S. may have to extend an existing U.N. mandate, said a senior administration official close to the talks. That would mean major decisions about how U.S. forces operate in Iraq could be left to the next president, including how much authority the U.S. must give Iraqis over military operations and how quickly the handover takes place.

 

So which is true?   Probably both.   So how do you measure success of a complicated project?  We can learn a lot from the Iraq war that we can apply in project status meetings!

•  Define (and communicate) the mission, goals and objectives as simply as possible.  If we all agreed on what the mission, goals and objectives were for the Iraq war, we’d have some common ground.  Unfortunately, there are many different thoughts about what those objectives are and which of them are most important among international entities and even within the U.S. government.  You may never get consensus, but if you don’t lay out what success is supposed to look like before you get started, you’ll never be able to know or communicate when you’ve achieved it. 
• Use the same metrics.  If you measure things a different way each time, you have no basis for comparison.  Different groups use different metrics to prove their own point.  In your projects, you have the advantage of agreeing beforehand with the stakeholders about what metrics will be used and how they will be measured.
• Use relevant metrics.  From listening to many demonstrations, the number of U.S. casualties is the only important metric for how we’re doing in the Iraq war.   But some of the bloodiest conflicts in human history were also seen by history as great victories when measured by other metrics.  (Defending against the Nazis in World War II, for example.)
• If you need help with metrics, see Measuring Results - Are We There Yet?
• Know when you’re done.   Set clear criteria for ending the project – whether it’s a success or failure, it will have to end sometime, and this is best done at logical decision points, rather than by inertia.   This is easier for most of us than it is for the strategists of the Iraq war.  Since “terrorism” has existed since the beginning of human history, it is not likely to end. So the “War on Terror” is, by definition, unwinnable.
• For more help on  killing projects that go south on you, see Making Good Kills  - Stopping Projects, Quitting Jobs, Terminating Employees, and Other Necessary Failures 

It’s easy to second-guess and armchair-quarterback.  John and I have mixed feelings (as most couples probably do) about the Iraq War, and I often have mixed feelings myself, depending on the news, which inevitably comes from different points of view. 

It certainly gives us a good example, though, of how success of a “project” can become a very subjective thing.

One thing we agree on is that we are very grateful for the men and women serving in our armed forces.  If you have served in the military, thank you for your service.  If you’re a family member or loved one of a service member, thank you for  your service as well.