010 Molestia de Valor

#ideas2improve

He tenido la suerte de ver y oír hoy a @ristomejide en su participación en “Cómo buscarse la vida con el marketing y la comunicación”, ofrecido en streaming directo a través de http://www.prnoticias.com/. La conversación giraba en torno a qué se puede hacer cuando se parte de cero (la audiencia era mayoritariamente estudiantil) para encontrar trabajo, para abrir puertas en la carrera profesional. Uno de los mensajes que ha dado –en línea con su bio en twitter (“Si cuando hablas nadie se molesta, es que no has dicho absolutamente nada”)- es la recomendación de insistir, ser pesado y molestar para conseguir las cosas. Pero no se refiere a meter el dedo en el ojo de nadie o rayarle el coche. Eso es joder, no molestar.

A él le molesta, por ejemplo, que alguien sepa lo que él no sabe. O que no tenga lo que necesite.

Y claro, yo digo que generar esa molestia no es fácil. Porque es una molestia de valor. De valor porque hay que tener valentía para insistir (por ejemplo a un empresario o emprendedor, que no siempre es lo mismo) en la molestia desde la modestia y anonimato de un humilde (proyecto de) profesional de la comunicación (o cualquier otra área). Risto ha puesto el ejemplo de Alec Brownstein, que invirtió la temible suma de 6 dólares para comprar ciertos anuncios de Google AdWords  para llamar la atención de los creativos para los que quería trabajar (Scott Vitrone, Ian Reichental, Gerry Graf, Tony Granger y David Droga) de forma que cuando ellos se buscaban en Google a sí mismos lo primero que salía era “Hey, Ian Reichenthal, Goooglearse uno mismo es muy divertido. Contratarme también lo es”. Obviamente, recibió varias ofertas. Es también reseñable el caso de Bas van de Poel y Daan van Dam, que se hicieron seguidores de Iain Tait en twitter con varias cuentas, cuyas fotos formaban la palabra “HIRE US”. Y vaya si lo hizo.

Y claro, yo digo que generar esa molestia no es fácil. Porque es una molestia de valor. De valor porque vale, porque aporta algo interesante, diferencial, útil. Y al ser bueno de verdad, ellos tendrán que pegarse por conseguir lo que tú das.

Sólo hay que ponerse a ello. ¿A qué esperas?

009 Prepare for the Best

#ideas2improve: be prepared for the worst, but also be prepared for the best


It is always said that you have to be prepared for the worst. This is absolutely right. However, it is not always remembered to be prepared for the best.


Today there was a football match in the Spanish King Cup where Real and Mallorca faced the second match, with 2-0 in favour of Real. They probably prepared the match very well, thinking that they had to defend two goals, that receiving one goal would put them into risk, be very concious about the danger, etc.


However, they scored one goal in the first 20 minutes, which required Mallorca to score FOUR goals in less than 70 minutes. Mallorca had not score 4 goals for months and months... It was done. It was won. It was sure.


They put their mind somewhere else, the luck was in the boots of the Mallorca players and they score 4 goals in 7 minutes. It was lost. At the end, it was even worse, with a final result of 6-1.


Never underestimate a situation, never be too confident, always be ready to react. They need to think about this, they need to prepare for the worst, but also for the best.

008 Rock And Business

#ideas2improve: see what music (rock) can teach you to innovate in your business

Thanks to the 3 Wizard Kings, Today I have started reading the book "Rockvolución empresarial (Rockvolution at Business), by Salva López @viajerosonico, which shows "lessons from the world of music for executives and entrepreneurs".

The idea is original and I am sure there will be plenty of interesting ideas. Creativity is the golden secret in this century!

This is the link: http://rockvolucionempresarial.wordpress.com/

007 Customer Care

#ideas2improve customer care or "it is not my guilt":

So once you find a good way to spend your fidelity points before they are lost (going to the cinema), you travel 75km with your two 2 and 5 years old children and when you are trying to get your tickets, they tell you "sorry, we cannot give you the tickets, either you don't have enough points or there is an issue with the connection line".
You are sure that you have points, they re-check and yes! the connection is not working.

Now what?

Now NOTHING! No options, no alternatives, no possibilities. They cannot do anything, it is not their guilt, they don't offer any workaround. Is it your guilt? What happens with your children's illusion? With the time lost? With the money spent in the travel (and food)? It is YOUR problem.

Maybe it is that they are B2C, and C(ustomer) never has the right unless it is a B(usiness->big company that has power to push the selling Business.
Maybe the economic crisis is not affecting the entertainment sector or the cinemas.
Maybe they don't care if they loose clients.
Maybe I have a wrong concept of a business, a client and customer care.

What do you think?
Would you offer some kind of workaround? Maybe giving the tickets just writing down the card number is a bit risky... Maybe asking for half the money and writing down the card number, with the commitment of giving back the money as soon as they get the full points?

I don't know, but I still think there is something wrong in what happens in these situations and what my business mind says to me.

006 Meetings

Several #ideas2improve meetings efficiency:

• 30MM: Reduce meeting duration to 30 minutes
• 10 minutes late is a big deal in a 30m meeting
• HH:15-HH:45 helps everyone be on time if they finish a meeting at HH:00
• Start ON time, regardless of who is there
• PLANbeforeMEET
• Prepare meeting contents in advance, and ask attendees to come prepared
• Minimize attendants
• Meet-aims
• Reward ontimers, put tasks for last to arrive
• Start the meeting setting the goal
• End with conclusions and next steps

005 Steve Jobs

This post will be slight different, because the news of Steve Jobs' death has just hit us. Maybe lots of us thought it was going to happen soon, but you always think there is still hope.

It came the following day after iPhone 4s was presented. I will not say too much about his work, his ideas, his innovation. You all probably know better than me.

However, I wanted to hightligh the positive attitude, the illusion, the iEnergy he projected.

Thanks Steve. Welcome to the iHeaven, you left the iCloud here.

004 Paneríficos I

#ideas2improve: As I said in my first post, the end of our journey to CMMI-DEV5 v1.3 was the seed of this blog. At those hard times, I tweeted a collection of tweets (is there any other verb to show the action for a tweet?) that were born in an atmosphere of extreme efficiency and fantastic ideas of our #war-room. Some of those ideas were synthesized in golden sentences that we called #panerificos as an evolution of the Spanish term "panegírico" (panegyric in English) and the last name of the father of the idea (Panero). Although we ideated multiple paneríficos, I wanted to share here now only the 10 ones I created and tweeted during the 10 days the onsite SCAMPI-A lasted:

1. Use your money to improve your performance to achieve your objectives

2. Look for correlation between key factors to better understand your process and then improve it

3. Once you achieve a process improvement and close the cycle, translate it to euros and share the savings with your client and your team

4. Quantitatively control and measure your suppliers to ensure optimum service

5. Record defects found when you review and test to analyze them for issue patterns and best practices to improve

6. Establish your goals, measure to know where you are, measure to understand how to improve, enhance your objectives

7. Learn from what you do wrong (#PPQA) and right (#bestpractices) to keep improving and share it with your organization

8. When you plan to spend money in an initiative, ensure it will help you to go in a direction you want to go

9.  If one finding surprises you, improve. If two, analyze. If three, review your #ppqa process

10. This is fine as long as it ends well

The successful appraisal of CMMI-DEV v1.3 ML5 is a good end. Better said, it is a good re-start, just a "period (.)" to move one step beyond in the continuous improvement spirit.

Submit your @ideas2improve

003 chEckLists

#ideas2improve: A checklist is a collection of points to be reviewed after one activity has been accomplished.

A good checklist is very useful to catch defects soon, and the sooner a defect is fixed, the cheaper. The same checklist can also be used by the person that needs to perform the activity to ensure (s)he has everything in mind when doing so, and then to achieve better quality at first time. Doing things right at first time is even more efficient than having a good review process to catch them later.

Now, the question is:
Should a checklist contain ALL the points to be taken into account to produce with the required functionality and quality or ONLY those points that are most critical and typically may be forgotten?

The first alternative involves a long checklist with dozens of points that address every single detail to be considered. This also helps to transfer knowledge between people with more expertise to other colleagues less experienced, so these juniors will be able to perform the task, hereby reducing costs. On the other hand, there is a risk that long checklists are seen as bureaucracy and are passed faster than desired, skipping some important things, therefore converting the process in just (bad) "documentation".

The second alternative tries to synthesize the most critical steps even not including all the details. This helps to focus on what is important, reducing the cost of the review, agilizing the process and ensuring the imperative requirements are considered. However, the final result may not include all the requirements, and these will not be catched (contained), passing defects to the following stage. Moreover, some knowledge is not incorporated in the checklist (and therefore transferred to the other team members).

So, what's your choice?

Are your project people very skilled and you only need to ensure they don't miss essential things?

Do you have a team with senior and junior people where you need to transfer knowledge and rely on their discipline to follow a complex process to obtain great results?

Submit your #ideas2improve

002 Funny Flight

ideas2improve: Niki is the Austrian airline founded by 3 times F1 world championship and never too admired pilot and fighter Niki Lauda. Niki offers interesting flights between Austria and Mediterranean destinations such as beautiful and outstanding Malaga in Southern Spain.

In my last flight Wien-Malaga (30SEP at 6:40, HG2714) I lived  a curious situation that may make us think several #ideas2improve.

First, the situation: there are two toilets at the front of the plane (Airbus A321): one before and one after the curtain that preserves discretion for the stewardess when preparing meals (yes, Niki is one of few "green dogs" that still offer free onboard services such as sandwiches, drinks or newspapers). When the first toilet is busy but the second is free, the only light to show availabily is green.

Well, two guys went to the toilet, stopping in the first toilet (the curtain was closed). So they thought "it is the only toilet, the light is green, so even the door is closed showing a red Occupied label, it is free"

So, they used their creative mind to open the door. You know how toilet doors open and close in airplanes: just pushing slightly. Well, that is only true when it is not closed from inside. But they skipped that tiny point. So they pushed, pulled and looked for hidden mechanisms at the top or bottom (as Indiana Jones in his adventures), until they found a couple of small levers at the very top that they moved down and up until they took the door out of its rail. They were nearly removing the entire door (which would have put the person inside in an embarrasing situation) when fortunately the stewardess arrived, showing the second (empty) toilet to the guys to use it and staring at the newly discovered state-of-the-art "solution" with a face between surprise and laugh. She reacted profesionally, did not complain or scold them but called for help. The copilot came, looked at the door and could not believe what he was seeing. His deep studies included mechanics, geography, navigation, physics, and even cabotage, but not door fixing. However he did not stop because of the challenge, tested, investigated, tried and finally fixed it! Some passengers clapped and even shouted "Bravo"!

Now, the lessons learned that could be #ideas2improve:

-For everyone, think that things tend to be simpler than what a complicated mind could imagine because of a wrong signal (metric or kpi in your project): if the door says "Occupied" and with a couple of tries it does not open, probably it IS occupied. So, review your assumptions: either the metric is wrong or it meant something else that you skipped (the second -free- toilet).

-For everyone, when there is an issue, the best is: nice face, good spirit, better thinking only-looking-for-solutions and use your best combination of positive attitude, experience and innovation to solve it.

-For everyone, congratulate more than punish.

-For the company, value the work and professional attitude of the copilot and cabin crew, and maybe ask the plane manufacturer to put one light for each toilet, although I am afraid that will not avoid an improved version of the two guys ideating better adventures. So keep things as simple as possible.

001 ideas2improve

ideas2improve: This blog will try to be my humble contribution to innovation and improvement world.


The origin was several tweets I sent in May-July with ideas or thoughts that came to me when we were in the most stressful phase of the CMMI-DEV v1.3 ML5 appraisal.


Hope to be helpful at least for one person.


aaaeeeiii