Still Standing
April 30, 2008
Before I became a LUCRUM employee I heard a lot of rumblings about LUCRUM . My friends in the business were concerned about the mistakes LUCRUM had made in the past and the challenges that we faced moving forward.
When confronted with that, I asked my peers and I will ask you – what technology firm isn’t facing these challenges? Who do you know that hasn’t lost money in one of the last 10 years? Is there a group out there that hasn’t had layoffs, turnover or tremendous organizational shifts and changes?
I sure can’t think of one right now, I am betting not many of you can either.
But all this change is ok. Change isn’t comfortable for a lot of people but it is OK. One thing LUCRUM can proudly say after 15 years in this crazy industry is that WE are still STANDING.
Go back through your old contacts. I bet you would be shocked to see how many places that were well known in the industry 10 even 5 years ago that don’t even exist any longer!
I know of several firms that bit the dust. I was actually employed by one of them. THAT firm was one of the great ones in Cincinnati during the mid to late 90’s.
THAT firm had a growth rate of 50% per month for a very long time. Anyone that worked there made a lot of money and we were very proud to tell others where we were employed.
Where is THAT firm now? Well the first iteration has LONG been gone. After a multitude of acquisitions and name changes and leadership turnover THAT firm declared bankruptcy.
Within a blink of an eye our stock plummeted from 80 dollars a share to just around 4 cents a share. Just last week the second coming of THAT firm failed again and abysmally at that.
So as an employee or a client or a potential client please remember that LUCRUM survived. We survived the .com implosion, the 9/11 catastrophe, the Iraqi war (God Bless our Troops), the downturn in the economy and the exponential increase in foreclosures. We survived.
As a LUCRUM employee, I have a great place to come to work every day. LUCRUM hasn’t been through a dozen name changes or had a multitude of mergers. LUCRUM still has clients that have been with the firm for 15 years. THESE ARE GOOD THINGS!
So, whenever you wonder how is LUCRUM? Remember this – LUCRUM is still standing strong – 15 years and counting!
What is Consulting?
April 29, 2008
“Good Morning”
“Do you have a need for Contract Programmers?”
Here at LUCRUM, Chuck has done a great job at filtering our email solicitations. However, I still get the one above from some guy named Patrick Harris….it reminds me of how LUCRUM is positioned in the market as a consulting firm providing business and technology solutions.
There’s a real difference between “contract programmer” and “consultant.” The industry often mingles the definitions together and customers tend to negotiate for consulting services using “contract programmer” pricing.
LUCRUM has had a rich history of hiring IT professionals that thrive on “consulting” using their technology skills. With that statement, let’s ask ourselves “what is a consultant?” Consulting is bringing expertise of one’s experiences into a firm on a project or fee basis. One of the ironies of consulting is that the goal of the consultant must be to make him or herself obsolete.” All of us have been in the position of being frustrated (either as an internal or external consultant or even as a perm-placement worker) by management’s careful efforts to defeat any and all attempts on our part to transfer the knowledge we had to at least one (other) person in the organization. This puzzles me because I learned early on in my career that it is far more probable that a company will retain “intuitive knowledge” about their system/applications/data/whatever if more than one person has that knowledge.
To provide our technology expertise is simply not enough in today’s global economy. The disparity between India (and other Asian-based services) and the US will continue to have companies use “contract programmers” that are truly just “coders” and not consultants.
Why do I bring this up? It’s our livelihood! I also know that our mantra has been “85% social and 15% technical.” My ratio is skewed purposely to emphasize the requirement to “over-communicate” on every part of our daily assignment. The technology works; it doesn’t work if people are not communicating. As consultants, it’s up to us to take the lead responsibility with the customer on communications. That’s our largest challenge. You’ll see LUCRUM’s focus to grow our capabilities in this area with Customer Alignment Sessions, leveraging Whole Brain Organizational Development processes internally and with our customers, and a new larger emphasis on the consultant, and in developing unique professional skills. Jodie Heflin, as our Delivery Leader, has the proven track record of Customer-oriented 85/15 skills. It’s her goal to get all of our firm up to a higher level of capability; to “think” as a part of our customer’s business in addition to our technology capabilities.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Tuesday Model
April 29, 2008
Tuesday, not as bad as Monday, and not as good as Wednesday. Its a forgotten day to most people. If you have an average and dull life, then you could say that your life is a bunch of Tuesdays I guess. Is there any way that Tuesday could mean…a little more…here’s something that I use to get me through the Tuesdays of my life.
I have been at LÛCRUM now for about three weeks, and one of the first projects I have been asked to participate in is concerning customer loyalty. So I thought to myself, customer loyalty, how to get it, and obviously how to retain it, when it hit me….Tuesday!
What does Tuesday have to do with customer loyalty, and what is the Tuesday model, you ask? The Tuesday model is a little bit of advice that was given to me by my mentor in College. A successful venture capitalist, and entrepreneur, a man that I respect. Anyways, one day we were out at dinner and I was picking his brain about business, life, etc. when he told me this. “Andrew, all relationships, business or personal, are based on three criteria. Expectations, understanding and trust.” E.U.T or T.U.E the prefix of Tuesday as a way to remember it. “These are the building blocks of relationships” he explained. His logic was that, once expectations are not met, then understanding becomes clouded and thus, trust falls apart. Naturally he concluded “that trust is the backbone or all relationships.” I listened to my mentor and it made sense, moreover, this was a man that I respected and I could see he was great a forging strong ties in every aspect of his life and this was the secret ingredient behind his success.
Since that day I have implemented the Tuesday Model into everything relationship I in my life; family, friends, work and girlfriends. It helps you empathize, which fosters understanding and clarity. I have also amended the model itself. Trust, Understanding and Expectations is how it was originally conceived, but a sub note to expectations is communication. Only if communication is clear can expectations be derived and met. Of course this screws up the acronym but it’s worth it.
So now that I have acquainted you with my philosophy (something that I will do a lot if you let me), it is time to implement the Tuesday Model with my tasks here at LÛCRUM. Going along with the theme of Tuesday, you can find further “rants” if you so desire every Tuesday from here on out. If you agree with me great, if you have anything to add, I’m all ears, or perhaps you think I’m insane, either way, discourse is always welcome.
Sphere: Related ContentOf Web 2.0 and SharePoint 2007
April 28, 2008
Web 2.0 made a big bang in 2007 advocating and offering new avenues for information worker collaboration to increase their productivity. Forrester Research expects that “adoption of social networking solutions for business” will “accelerate dramatically in 2008 with many firms looking for internal social networking solutions”.
Web 2.0 in the enterprise is now here and companies, big and small, are having to figure out how best to deal with it. Technologies such as blogs, wikis, RSS, instant messaging, surveys, team workspaces, web conferencing, mashups and the like have grown immensely in popularity. In many cases, employees have figured out for themselves how to accomplish their work more efficiently using such technologies without formal offerings or support from their companies, and so it has now become imperative that businesses and especially their IT departments seriously consider how they are going to support this growing need for social computing in their organizations.
One of the primary contenders in the enterprise web 2.0 space is SharePoint 2007 from Microsoft. In the short period of a year since it was first released, SharePoint 2007 has generated over $1 billion in sales for Microsoft and has become their fastest selling server product ever. Industry analysts such as G. Oliver Young of Forrester Research say that “Microsoft’s SharePoint will continue to steamroll the market” in the enterprise Web 2.0 space (see Forrester Research’s “Top Enterprise Web 2.0 Predictions For 2008” by G. Oliver Young, January 25, 2008). He also says that “for SharePoint, 2008 will be another banner year.” Forrester also expects that the IT departments taking a leadership role in enterprise 2.0 deployments will look at SharePoint first.
For Lucrum, SharePoint 2007 is currently a cornerstone of our collaboration strategy. In subsequent blogs, I plan to spell out in greater detail those aspects of SharePoint 2007 that make it such a strong contender in the enterprise web 2.0 space. Of course, one cannot assume that SharePoint is the holy grail of social computing and it is what everyone needs - depending on the customer’s needs and environment, it’s possible that other tools might be better suited for them.
Sphere: Related ContentBusiness Intelligence, Country Music, Peter Drucker and You!
April 27, 2008
I get a lot of emails every day! I got this one that I didn’t delete and then felt strong enough to comment on it.
“In a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), nearly 80% of executives said that a Business Intelligence strategy would improve their company’s ability to enhance customer service and react quickly to market changes. However, fewer than 15% felt their organization has applied best practices to its use of business data.”
I love music. I love all types of music. I am not a Country Music fan though. I am a fan of Country Music Song Titles. There’s a title to a country music song (no music yet!) that I made up about the business problem that is one of the biggest problems in the entire economy. Here’s what it is: Companies go to great lengths to hire top notch people. Then they give them business responsibilities and the authority to act on the business responsibilities. Then, they don’t give them the complete tools to get the right analysis to get to the “right decision.” So, here’s my song title:
“You don’t know what you have done by the time you’ve already done it”
Is that right out of Nashville or what? Decision-makers and categorically speaking, Knowledge Workers” are nowadays tasked with making a lot of very timely and important decisions. After we have them on-board with what famous business professor, Dr. Peter Drucker, says is the 20% unique aspects of the business (he professed that 80% of all businesses are the same)…once they really gain expertise and experience in the business, we don’t necessarily give them the right tools to analyze their data and the general performance of the business. Perhaps another song title goes like this:
“I know she knows, but I can’t get it out of her”
Certainly, what we mean here is that the data is in the system. The person just doesn’t know how to get it out!” Conceptual thinking skills are not the norm in the Information technology world. Operating software systems, running networks, ensuring security, closing double-entry book keeping systems, and the normal “run the business” part of IT constitutes a majority of the activity. How’s this for another song:
“His left brain won’t talk to his right brain, so he won’t answer the door.”
OK, perhaps that one didn’t work….
The lack of relevant facts or real understanding in the decision making process is so apparent to person trying to sort through all of the data that surrounds them. Recently, I read 2 more statistics:
• More information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000
• Corporate data is doubling every 3 years
I am myself, “what happens to all of this data?” Another song title?
“I spent too much time looking for my data when the decision timeframe has come and gone”
Gartner calls it the “Fact Gap.” It’s kind of a “decision gridlock” which even with gas at $ 4.00 per gallon or higher is what we are going to see this summer on the construction-laden highways!
So, how do you figure out whether there is a Fact Gap in your organization or business? Perhaps there’s truly is a Fact Gap in your business? Here are some potential symptoms for this:
Excessive discounting
• Expensive marketing programs that do not result in revenue enhancement
• New product introductions are less successful than expected
• Low inventory turns per year
From a knowledge worker viewpoint, you can start to see symptoms where decision making that is unscientific resulting in …
• Inefficiency in production
• Missed opportunities
• Inability to react proactively
• Lost market share
• Excessive expense
• Lost revenue and profits
• Customer dissatisfaction
Perhaps one last song title will provide a summary of my topic:
“She turned data into information and he didn’t even know he had the answers!”
If we can turn data into information and empower business decision makers with the information they need to run the enterprise, there’s certainly a true opportunity to gain competitive advantage.
Sphere: Related ContentEat our own dog food!
April 25, 2008
It’s great to see LÛCRUM eat our own dog food! That may sound negative but it’s really a very positive statement. I heard this phase regularly from a former manager. What this means is if a product or procedure is good enough to recommend to our customer’s, it’s good enough for us to use as well.
Yesterday I had my first opportunity to participate in an Alignment Session at LÛCRUM. In simple terms, an Alignment Sessions is one of LÛCRUM’s differentiating tools we offer to our clients to help organizations align on key business decisions.
Our LÛCRUM meeting was to look at a new internal system. Our senior management team and key system users followed the Alignment Session process to help drive to consensus and define next steps. The process helped us document the current system’s Strengths (ie, it’s free!), Problems (ie, too many manual processes), Threats (ie, might cost too much), and Opportunities (ie, interface with other business systems). From that point we were able to define our required Objectives and differentiate those from the ‘Nice to Haves’. Then we documented the Challenges (ie data conversion), Resources (ie PM, Sponsor), and finally our Game Plan (a high level project plan).
As the project manager of this internal project, I am thrilled to have at the end of the session all the information I need to complete a Project Charter and move forward on the project. In addition, I’m comfortable that the right people are aligned on the decision. I went home that day feeling like the day had been a big success.
How to build a better team
April 24, 2008
We’ve all been involved on a team at one point in time. This team could have been family, sport, education, business, etc. focused. Each team member brought unique skills that may or may not have been relevant to every task at hand. Some members were more experienced, some less, but all had a common goal they were driving to. Hopefully someone had the map and directions though. A team is unable to perform optimally if they are going fast or working hard, but for the wrong reasons. In addition, to help team members understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, a certain amount of team bonding or better phrased team building is often warranted.
Team building comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. It can be as simple as coordinating team meetings where each member has the turn to “take the wheel” and share his or her ideas and concerns on the current direction. Perhaps building comes in the form of regular gatherings ranging from daily lunches to off-hour social events. Teams really interested in strengthening their interaction may benefit from a formal team building event run by professionally trained organizations/individuals. In any case, some form of team building should occur.
I recently attended a team building event conducted by an organization specializing in team development. We had the opportunity to bring together two teams in order to help improve our daily interactions as well as quash any of the “us vs. them” mentality. This event involved a day and a half of activities at a facility away from the distractions of the daily grind. Placing these teams in an unfamiliar setting (with BlackBerries off!) allowed us to better concentrate at the task at hand and more importantly, each other.
The event started with your typical icebreaker to get people warmed up and engaged, followed by some relevant discussions pertaining to our business. Because this was an overnight retreat, we were able to get to know each other on a more personal level and discuss a variety of topics while enjoying a campfire through the evening. The following day consisted of continued business discussions broken up by various team challenges. In my opinion, it is in these challenges where you get to see the real team building occur. Challenges ranged from mental puzzles to physically demanding events. Depending on the challenge, we either worked as a collective team or were paired into smaller groups. It was interesting to see how these teams worked towards a solution to the problem or challenge at hand. Did the solution require brute force strength, mental stimulation, prior experience, or delicate handling? One wasn’t sure at the start, but when you get a team of individuals throwing ideas around (or in some cases not throwing ideas around), the team begins to understand how they work best together and where they have room for improvement….thus strengthening their team resolve. In the end, one gets a great sense of accomplishment working with others to solve a common problem.
After the team building event concluded, did we have an answer for all of our current business challenges…no. Did we have a better understanding of how each person approaches a given situation…you betcha. We also learned that when you’re in a pinch, “The Hand of John” may just reach down and help you out!
Your team member,
Dave
Sphere: Related ContentA tool that will help you ideate!
April 23, 2008
According to a recent Accenture Survey (April 3, 2008) - “Nearly two-thirds of 601 executives in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada claimed that their organizations business strategy is either totally or largely dependent on innovation.”
Ideation, it’s puts the Ying in your Yang - because it leads to innovation… But how do we go about thinking about thinking? One way it to take advantage of what been done. But first lets talk about Homer.
I love that episode when Homer Simpson runs for the office of the sanitation department. His campaign slogan was “Can’t someone else do it”? Well, if its been done before - whether right or wrong, lets learn from it. Recently I have been making use of a tool that helps me think of terms…a tool that was created by a company that has a high dollar per share value and we all have come to know and love (and love to hate) - Google.
There are times when it’s hard to be exhaustive. I remember the times when my kids were young - at the end of a story they would ask…what else daddy? It’s not unlike situations that we are faced with today. When we are talking to the business or to peers alike, its always the case - what else? Today, I am going to recommend a tool that I sometimes use to help me build out a framework for analysis. Well, that might be an overstatement. It is like using a hammer to build a house - it’s just one tool of many.
The situation: you are meeting with your customer to frame a strategic discussion or to set a structure for analysis. For example, you are meeting with the business leadership to discuss a database consolidation effort - there is no precedent set and your beginning point is a real white board. It’s helpful to begin with an analysis framework - or a conceptual model that represents the enterprise and its nuances.
Often times, its good to look at a matrix - where there is relevance on where the rows and columns meet. On the left side of the matrix, you represent driving factors that feed in to a decision. But what is the list? Where do you start? Now, we need something across the top… Maybe the approach to scaling may make sense.
Yes, we can do most of it from our experience. But it’s always helpful to query some good data. Google has been doing data analysis around terms (and their relationship to terms) for years and are quite good at it. And they have opened up some of their findings. Of course, anything Google is very large. To manage this they exposed a database with a simple front end.
The concept is simple; type in some items in a list (or set as they call it) and click either ‘Large Set’ or ‘Small Set’. The application sends your input to their Google brain - runs some analytics on relationships and relevance of your terms to what others have ‘put together’ at some point during the not so distant past - in other words, Google is learning what terms kind of relate to other terms. What returns will absolutely astonish you, make you happy or leave you sad. Sometimes it returns nuggets of thought that you may have missed. Sometimes it returns things that don’t make sense - but you have to get good at using this tool!
TRY IT HERE: http://labs.google.com/sets
The magic here (or the power to harness) is using the results to think about things in a different way. Make use of the terms to abstract to higher levels or reach exhaustion of set terms. Once you figure out how to make use of Google’s term analysis, it will help you reach exhaustion - ok, that’s a punny stretched a bit…. what I mean to say is that it will help you think of those things on the tip of your tongue or terms hiding deeply within your brains - even presenting new things that you should consider.
Of course, everything is clickable and it initates a Google page - ready for you to continue your exploring!
For example, when I type in; love, peace and joy and click the Small Set. It returns the following:
- peace
- love
- joy
- kindness
- gentleness
- goodness
- faithfulness
- patience
- faith
- hope
- longsuffering
- happiness
- meekness
- jesus
Clicking the ‘Grow Set’ returns:
- peace
- love
- joy
- faith
- hope
- happiness
- kindness
- patience
- gentleness
- goodness
- life
- faithfulness
- god
- family
- humility
- prayer
- compassion
- friendship
- beauty
- jesus
- forgiveness
- truth
- generosity
- spirituality
- christianity
- trust
- justice
- courage
- friends
- charity
- wisdom
- gratitude
- honesty
- strength
- qotd
- bible
- grace
- blessings
- respect
- christian
- healing
- success
- freedom
- religion
- light
- mercy
- loyalty
- heaven
- longsuffering
Going the other way (technology), when I type in (Oracle, Microsoft, IBM) the small set returns:
- oracle
- microsoft
- ibm
- sap
- sun
- cisco
- hp
- novell
- intel
- bea
- sybase
- adobe
- citrix
Growing this returns:
- oracle
- microsoft
- ibm
- hp
- cisco
- intel
- sun
- novell
- 3com
- dell
- sap
- apple
- accenture
- symantec
- cognos
- adobe
- compaq
- sony
- toshiba
- amd
- acer
- fujitsu
- manugistics
- citrix
- agile
- lexmark
- marque
- sybase
- linksys
- webmethods
- epson
- apc
- bea
- deloitte
- netgear
- seagate
- ariba
- tibco
- linux
- ugs
- ptc
- canon
Going fruity and typing in; apple, banana, cantaloupe returns:
- apple
- banana
- cantaloupe
- pineapple
- apricot
- watermelon
- grapefruit
- orange
- grapes
- lemon
- cherry
- avocado
- lime
- mango
- blueberry
Growing the set returns:
- cantaloupe
- banana
- apple
- orange
- cherry
- lemon
- strawberry
- mango
- pineapple
- apricot
- pear
- grape
- watermelon
- blueberry
- papaya
- coconut
- kiwi
- chocolate
- lime
- blackberry
- grapefruit
- peach
- assorted
- pomegranate
- raspberry
- lychee
- tamarind
- vanilla
- cinnamon
- grapes
- sweet
- mint
- avocado
- plum
- blended
- cranberry
- tomato
- citrus
Want to know grocery stores - type in Kroger, Tesco, Bigg’s and Google Sets will return:
- tesco
- kroger
- wal mart
- safeway
- albertsons
- carrefour
- publix
- winn dixie
- sainsbury
- target
- asda
- walgreens
- meijer
- costco
- rite aid
- cvs
- food lion
- waitrose
- auchan
- kmart
- somerfield
- fred meyer
- harris teeter
- k mart
- home depot
- morrisons
- heb
- sainsbury’s
- hypernova
- ahold
- albertson’s
- sam’s club
- makro
- piggly wiggly
- ingles
- co op
- office depot
- globus
- kaufland
- metro
- giant
- eckerd
- sears
- walmart
- supervalu
- giant eagle
- king soopers
One word of caution - it is in Google’s Labs - their playground. Its fun to play there, but you may get sand in your pants!
Have Fun!
~ Scott Felten
Sphere: Related Content
April 22nd 2008 Job Postings
April 22, 2008
LUCRUM is growing - fast. As a result, we are constantly on the lookout for exceptional people to join the LUCRUM team. Below is a current listing of jobs I am looking to fill here at LUCRUM. Because we are growing so rapidly, the list changes frequently, so it pays to check it out regularly. Here is a listing of openings that I have an immediate need to fill for the week of April 22nd, 2008
1. 2 recruiters
2. SharePoint mid-level developers and one SharePoint senior level dev
3. A mid-level Rails developer that is competent on the platform and can work directly with clients
4. Junior to Mid DB2 DBA
5. A PHP developer that also has competency in one of the following: SQL Server, .NET (C#), SharePoint, MS Reporting Services
6. A mid-level designer that can interface with business people. This designer would be responsible for mostly web and some print design. Knowing Flash is a major plus here.
Before you apply, you might want to snoop around our blog and check us out. In fact we encourage you to do so. No corporate speak here, just real people posting real thoughts about work and life at LUCRUM. You should be able to get a pretty good feel for who we are and what we are all about. Then, if you decide you are still interested in joining our team, which we hope you will be, contact me. - Andy Erickson.
Sphere: Related ContentSee What is Possible
April 21, 2008
Friday morning I had the opportunity to talk to Raveen Rajavarma, our new Collaboration Community Leader. Raveen was sharing with me the latest info on SharePoint 2007. I’m really excited by the untapped potential inside of SharePoint. Raveen has committed to get some demo sites out under our own internal SharePoint site so that everyone can see what’s possible. Additionally, he’ll be working with our team members to determine how many resources we need on staff to support our clients and how best to position all Collaboration tools.
I look forward to seeing great posts, great information, and a great community under Raveen’s leadership.
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