Chapter 17: The Single Most Effective Management Tool

OK, even I admit that that headline smacks of hyperbole. After all, with all the management books out there, how could we possibly agree on a single tool that is critical to effective management?

Some folks might think it’s clear roles and responsibilities, and those are really important. Others might think it’s well-documented processes and procedures. Those are valuable too. Still others might think it’s SMART goals or a compelling mission statement.

I’ll be honest. All of those things are pretty darned important. But in my opinion and experience, nothing gets results like effective working relationships. And nothing creates effective relationships – working or otherwise – like frequent, meaningful communication between two humans.

That’s why I’m an absolute evangelist for one-on-ones. There’s nothing more powerful than a manager and her direct report sitting down for 30 minutes every week to chat about whatever’s on the direct’s mind.

With well-run one-on-ones, insights surface, obstacles are removed and fires are prevented. More importantly, however, effective working relationships are formed – relationships that allow organizations to sell more, add more value and just plain get things done.

The first objection I usually encounter to this is, “But I already have one-on-ones.” If that’s true, I’m sorry to have wasted your time. However, in most cases, I find what people think are one-on-ones are really status updates, two-person staff meetings or interrogations. One of the keys to effective one-on-ones is that your direct report should determine the agenda. You might kick off the meeting with an open-ended question, but let the direct take it from there. That doesn’t mean you can’t use the time to give your direct feedback or coach her in a development area, but the primary driver of the conversation is your direct report, not you.

The second objection is usually, “But I don’t have that kind of time.” I’m not entirely unsympathetic on that one. We’re all busy – too busy – and fitting in a bunch of 30-minute one-on-ones every week seems nearly impossible. Trust me, it can be done. Even if you have 10 direct reports, that’s only five hours every week – 13% of a standard work week (and probably even less of yours).

Not only is 13% of your time very little to spend on direct management, it will also pay dividends before you know it and actually save you time.

How much productivity do you lose when you and your directs aren’t on the same page?

How much time do you lose every week to urgent interruptions from your direct reports, asking for help navigating a political minefield, removing a roadblock or putting out a fire?

I can guarantee that – after just a few weekly, 30-minute one-on-ones – those interruptions and that lost productivity will decrease dramatically. Once you’ve opened the door to frequent, meaningful communication, your directs will be much more likely to be on the same page with you and much less likely to feel that every obstacle requires your immediate intervention.

I could go on and on about one-on-ones – why to do them, how to do them, when to do them, where to do them – but I won’t. I’ll simply ask you to give some thought to whether you’re having effective one-on-ones and, if not, if you’re willing to gamble 30 minutes a week to dramatically improve productivity.

Also, if you’re interested in more details on one-on-ones, I strongly encourage you to check outhttp://www.manager-tools.com. Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne host a podcast there that aligns very closely to my own advice on effective management, and they have some particularly powerful guidance on one-one-ones that just might change your life.

How’s that for hyperbole?

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 16: Don't Forget the People

The Human Side of Selling and Keeping More

Phew! If you got through that tome-like article on Pareto charts, you’re to be commended. I thank you for sticking with it and hope you were able to extract some value from my musings on Italian economists and the perils of Hollandaise sauce. And I’d like to ask your indulgence once more as we completely shift gears. I promise to keep this one brief.

Throughout this series of articles, we have focused on simple things that will make you stand out from the competition, adding more value for your partners and for your customers. Up to now, the strategies and tactics we’ve discussed have focused on operational excellence, continuous improvement and data-driven decision making.

Approaching technology sales and distribution with these handy tools and techniques will certainly distinguish you from Joe Boxmover who adds no value, but that’s only half the story. Managing a business is, fundamentally, about managing people. After all, barring super robots and artificial intelligence, no work gets done without people.

Whether you’re the CEO of a large corporation, a middle manager, an entrepreneur or even a sole proprietor with a teenaged niece you’re grooming for the business, how you manage people will impact your results. I, for one, would like to see you be the most effective manager possible – for your business’s sake, for your employees’ sake and for your sake. The next several articles will focus on just that.

I know there’s no shortage of management philosophy and advice out there. You could easily spend your commission check every month on the latest management books and have nothing to show for it. That’s why these articles will focus on specific actions and behaviors that you can implement – with little or no investment – to increase your effectiveness as a manager of people.

I promised to be brief this time around, so I’ll simply give you a sneak preview of the next installment. We’ll talk about the single most important thing you can do as a manager to get better results from your employees. You won’t want to miss it. Until then, hang on to your commission check.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 15: The Old 80-20 Rule or Making Pareto Practical

Add Value and Sell More with a Simple Data Analysis Tool

Last time we talked – instead of my usual practical advice – I gave you a history lesson, some theory and not one bit of homework. By the end of this week’s column, I hope you’ll see that the groundwork of history and theory was necessary to get us here. Strap yourself in – this is going to get hairy and fun.

If you haven’t read my last column about Vilfredo Pareto and his powerful contribution to solving business problems, I strongly encourage you to do so before reading on to find out how to actually apply Pareto’s concepts by making a Pareto chart. For now, I’ll completely oversimplify Pareto’s vast accomplishments in economics with the Pareto principle: 80 percent of problems are caused by only 20 percent of causes.

If you remember our previous conversations about selling stuff, we agreed that it all comes down to asking questions and listening actively to figure out what your customer’s biggest problem is and then solving it.

Let’s say, for example, that your customer is Wikimedia, the company responsible for the hugely popular Wikipedia. The company got a lot of unwelcome attention earlier this year when its data center in Amsterdam overheated, effectively shutting the website down for European users. Your job, then, would be to figure out why the data center overheats, and a Pareto chart could help you.

But since not everyone can relate to overheated data centers, let’s focus on something we can all understand.

Over the past two years, let’s say I’ve been late to work 143 times [Note to my boss: This hypothetical scenario is for learning purposes only and should not be included in my annual review]. Fortunately, I’ve had the immense foresight and perspicacity to keep track of my lateness and the reasons for it. My tally sheet looks something like this:



As you can see, I’ve sorted my tally of reasons for lateness in descending order by frequency. This is a crucial step in creating a Pareto chart in a simple office tool like Microsoft Excel. I’ve also added a column that figures out each reason’s contribution to the total, e.g. not hearing my alarm accounts for 22% of the 143 times I was late to work.

I’ve also added another column to track the cumulative contribution. This will be very important as we apply the Pareto principle to solving this problem.

As you can see, there are 10 separate reasons why I was late to work those 143 times. However, only three to four of them account for 80% of the times I was late. This might be made clearer with another picture. Here’s that same data, represented in graphic form:



Like Facebook junkies, server logs freely spit out endless amounts of data about themselves that will help you get to the bottom of this, so you won’t be fumbling around in the dark on this one. If the data center overheated 40 times in the past five years, you’ll probably find 10 different causes for the overheating, but only two of those causes were behind 80 percent of those situations. This is the Pareto principle in action.

Once you’ve figured out, hypothetically, that unnecessary read cycles on a tape drive and faulty power management on a web server have caused 32 of the 40 overheating incidents – allowing you to ignore things like that one really hot day in Amsterdam or the time a trash can caught on fire [Please note: I am totally making these things up. I have no reason to believe there’s anything wrong with Wikimedia’s tape drives or trash cans.] – you can start focusing the conversation on solutions that will truly make a difference for the customer.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to go out and start gathering some data about a problem that you or your customer is currently facing, and plug that data into a Pareto chart. Maybe it’s the number of RMAs you’re getting or the number of deals you’re losing to the competition. No matter what it is, you can easily start zeroing in on the key drivers by tallying up the causes and listening to Vilfredo Pareto.

By the way, if you’d like assistance creating a simple Pareto chart in Excel like the one shown above, don’t hesitate to contact me. I’m always happy to help. You can find me at SuddenSixSigma@gmail.com.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 14: This Won't Hurt a Bit

Getting Comfortable with Data Adds Value and Revenue

It’s funny. As long as we’re talking about storage arrays, we have no trouble talking data. People in our line of work deal with data all the time – gigabytes and petabytes and whatnot – and it doesn’t scare us a bit (warning: that won’t be the last pun in this column – spot them all and win – well – a satisfying chuckle, at best).

But ask us to provide a statistical basis for our sales forecasts, and we just might regress to the tantrums of childhood. The data that we sell is just fine, but the data about that data scares the hell out of most of us.

But the really funny thing is: that kind of data could actually help us sell a whole lot more of the other kind. It’s one thing to guess – or hypothesize, as the statisticians say – about our customers’ business problems, but in the real world, sometimes we only have part of the picture without data. And sometimes, we have to have hard, cold numbers to convince our customers and ourselves that we’re on the right track.

Imagine the power you could have – and the value you could add – if you could show your customers a pretty picture, based on data, that proved that buying just one piece of equipment from you could solve 80% of their biggest problems. Yeah, that’s pretty cool, isn’t it? And by “cool,” we mean nerdy, but profitable as all get out!

We don’t have to become statisticians, but if we can get comfortable with a couple of simple data analysis techniques, we can wow customers, add value to our partners and leave the competition in our eraser dust.

One of the simplest and most powerful data analysis tools you can learn to use is the Pareto chart. This clever variation on a basic column chart was named for Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian economist and philosopher who is probably best known for the Pareto principle. Before we get to the chart, it helps to understand the principle.

While studying land ownership and the distribution of wealth in his native country during the early 20th century, Signore Pareto discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by only 20% of the people. Since then, economists, statisticians and quality control experts have found this phenomenon to be true in all kinds of contexts.

In sales, you might see the Pareto principle at work when you see that 20% of your customers account for 80% of your revenue. In quality control and business process improvement – which is the business you’re in, if you really want to sell more by helping your customers solve problems – you might see it when 80% of the things that go wrong are the result of about 20% of the possible causes. 80% of the time that the data center overheats, it’s caused by only a couple of the dozen or so possible issues.

As always, talking about data like this makes it sound way more complicated than it is. It’s like dancing about architecture. So next time, we’ll get into specifics, with real data, real numbers and real pretty pictures. We’ll use a Pareto chart to help figure out why I just can’t seem to get to work on time. Until then, I’m not going to give you any homework. I just want you to promise that you’ll be brave. The data won’t hurt you. Its bark is worse than its byte.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 13: Better, Faster and Cheaper: the Business Problem Trinity

If you’ve been following this series of articles, I hope you’ve noticed a theme by now. One way or another, each article has centered on the idea that what you’re selling – even the hottest technology and the sharpest services – matters much less than your customers’ and prospects’ business problems. Those business problems should drive every single discussion you have.

We’ve also talked about a number of tools, techniques, philosophies and mindsets that will help you figure out what your customers’ most pressing business problems are so that you can design the best solution.

But the truth is, it really isn’t all that hard. While a fishbone diagram and a prioritization method and thinking like a consultant are all critical to truly adding value in the continually evolving world of information technology, there are really only three business problems.

That’s right. Three.

No matter what your customers and prospects tell you, odds are that they’re trying to do one or more of three things: improve quality, increase speed and decrease cost.

In other words, they all want to do business better, faster and cheaper. Don’t we all?

And yet, we all want to complicate the conversation. We want to talk about data transfer rates and protocols, megabits and gigabytes. We want to pepper the conversation with six-digit numbers and three-letter acronyms.

Don’t misunderstand me. If you’re not on your game to explain the latest cutting-edge technology, you’ll be the first one eliminated from the dance-a-thon. But if you can’t tell a prospect how that technology is going to help them do things better, faster and/or cheaper, you won’t even get into the dance.

The in-depth, jargon-laden speeds-and-feeds conversations that so many of us techies relish rarely close a sale. In fact, we’re more likely to lose a sale by overwhelming the customer with information that is not only esoteric, but also frequently irrelevant. Our job – your job – is to translate those tech specs into a compelling story about reducing defects, speeding things up and fattening the bottom line. It’s to turn a jumble of product features into tools that run better, faster and cheaper businesses.

Fortunately, you’re not alone in this challenging mission. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that Avnet has a wealth of information, resources and collateral to support that translation process. If you’re blinded by the flashing lights and deafened by the bells and whistles of the latest gear, and can’t boil it down to a simple better/faster/cheaper conversation, pick up the phone and get help. If you don’t, you could be dancing alone.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant