Values that allow you to THRIVE

While at a start-up company we decided that the core of the organization would have an internal thought process to everything that we did. This guiding light feed throughout all areas of the organization and help drive the business choices of the organization. It was a very enlightening process of developing a set of core values for the organization. Having invested so much of myself in the organization, these company values very quickly became a way of expressing the personal values that I carry. I would like to share these with you.

When you are led by values, it doesn't cost your business,
it helps your business.
Jerry Greenfield (Co-Founder of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings, Inc.)

T H R I V E

thrive 1: to grow vigorously. : FLOURISH 2: to gain in wealth or possessions. : PROSPER : to progress toward or realize a goal. syn. see SUCCEED


TEAMWORK - I am committed to the spirit of open communications. I encourage cooperation and teamwork among all of us and believe that that can only be achieved by sharing all that we know, listening, and respecting each other's beliefs and individuality. I will admit mistakes, problems, and issues, freely , at the earliest opportunity, while they are still small.



HUMANITY - I believe in the importance of self and of family. Our success in our professional lives is balanced by success in our personal lives. Recognizing this allows us to be polite, helpful, accommodating, and considerate of the personal needs of others.



RESPONSIBILITY - I believe that we can only be successful by taking ownership of our goals. I encourage a commitment to our responsibilities and demonstrate initiative to accomplish the very best.



IMPROVEMENT - I believe in the development of ourselves as individuals. I look to be the best that I can be by learning from my experiences, searching for innovative and proven approaches to problems, investing in myselves and taking the long term view. I wish to leverage all that I've accomplished in the past as an individual, and as a professsional, and to regularly surpass it.



VIRTUE - I have been grounded on a code of conduct that is above reproach. I insist on being honest, ethical, and straightforward in all my dealings with others. I am proud of myself, my career, my coworkers and conduct myself accordingly.



ENJOYMENT - I believe that we do what we do because we enjoy it. I will only perform at my best if I feel great about what I am doing. I strive to seek the fun, the humor, and the enjoyment in everything I do.


There are many companies that have developed core values and many others that have tried. Please share your experience with the journey of development.

Notice: posts will have the highlights of projects that I have been apart of or have managed. Some of these examples have been fictionalized to make certain points. The examples are not a complete rendering of all the events of any project, example or actual event. Nor are they intended to be a factual accounting of events in a project, example or actual event. The examples of projects are to inspire and provoke thought on how anyone of us would have handled the situation. My intention is to highlight those "moments" where doing things one way or another might have changed the end of the story. This is done in an open and learning format where I hope we can all continue to learn together.

The Numbers Against the Business

Project management is full of statistical numbers. Enough to make an economist’s head spine. We use task tracking, risk analysis, P-Value, Binomial Distribution, Sigma, and Poisson Distribution, just to provide some simple explanation of how a project can affect a business. But to the average business individual, these numbers are almost meaningless.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw

While working at an organization I had to implement a large database application. This application was a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. The project started off normally with the Request for Information process and then the Request for Proposal process. Staff even had their input into the application selection. The project was well defined and had executive support.

Using standard project management methodology, a project summary was drawn up. It included the usual things; objectives, goals, risks and critical success factors. Then the other usual documentation of the high level project schedule, resource needs, communication structure and risk analysis. The project sponsor thought that the risk analysis was over kill documentation. This was due to the “expected level of commitment by all of the executive team” and that the project was to be successful. Strategic plans were being developed that would need the application as the main tool to accomplishing future goals.

The risk analysis was a mathematical calculation of the “what-ifs” of the organization. Due to the history of the organization having large scale projects failing in the past, I decided to include this brightly colored picture. Yes, I put red, yellow, green columns on each measured risk point. This allowed me to have the visual representation of; “Things are fine”, “Things are a little off”, (to the most important) “Hey we have a problem”.

As the project started to get going I needed to fully understand the extent of operational changes that the new system would create. I chose to perform a mapping of the existing business processes. I think this was the first sign that things were going to be difficult. When I started working with staff on how they did their jobs it was like I was demonstrating something totally new. Using a Visio and a note taker we mapped out down to the smallest detail what everyone in the organization did. It was eye opening for everyone and a great team building exercise. The down side was that this was the first time staff recognized that they actually did something repeatable.

Before, the general thought was that for most everything they did each day was always something new. They never thought of themselves as needed to repeat how they accomplished something last month and do it again. This created a sense of information overload for the staff. Then resistance to the idea of the new system, as their newly discovered information showed them they had a working set of processes. So a basic project management tool for creating a successful project turned into an addition to the risk assessment in a negative way.

Then a wave of attrition came through the organization. Now every organization goes through periods of roll-over staff and this is most of the time far outside the control of any single project. Now the new system project was not the only factor; political change in one office and a naturally high attrition rate in the industry also were in play. However, I found that several key individuals left as they could envision how the project of the new system would alter their jobs so much that they rejected being apart of the whole thing. The attrition reached over 20% of the organization and I went back to the risk analysis far more seriously.

The fist measurement of project failure was around 3%, and then moved to 7% to 10% when the business process mapping was completed. Once the attrition started, the risk of failure jumped and kept pace with the organizations attrition rate. I brought my analysis to the project sponsor and made it very clear that the rest of the executive team needed to know that things are looking very bad. The sponsor offered to reduce the scope dramatically in order to not just complete the project but have the scheduled roll-out done on time. The only way I thought that this could be accomplished is if we reduced the scope to 1/3 of the project.

So with a much reduced scope the project continued. We still had the same rollout in 4 months, but this time with a team that only comprised of areas of the organization not being affected by attrition. Problem averted, right? Well we found a kind on flaw in the application. Not really a flaw, more like, well, Vapor Ware.

“Vapor Ware” is that technical term for an application that is sold as existing and functioning, when in reality the vendor has to build it. Many portions of the application needed “custom configurations” in lieu of the typical “setup configurations” in most applications. This was the gold-calf for the vendor where each implementation requires billable “custom configuration” just to setup the application to function. No mention of this by the vendor, referred customers or the newly created users group.

Although the scope has now been reduced, the amount of work and tasks to be completed tripled. This basically washed out any chance of reducing the risk to the project. So we marched forward. As you have guessed; support for the project wavered; demand for change in project management and project sponsorship occurred; demand for financial compensation from the vendor ensued; the whole host of things that you don’t want to see happen to a project, including staff not involved in the project joining in with the poking fun jokes about the application.

So was the project successful? By the numbers, the reduced scope was implemented and the application is functional. By the numbers, the number of staff intended to use the application in the reduced scope is using the application. By the numbers, the budget ran over by twice the amount of the original scoped project. By the business, those using the application are slowly becoming satisfied with the application. By the business, no area of the organization is able to identify where their repeatable business processes are used in the system because they still do not believe they have “business processes”.

Is this a draw?

Notice: posts will have the highlights of projects that I have been apart of or have managed. Some of these examples have been fictionalized to make certain points. The examples are not a complete rendering of all the events of any project, example or actual event. Nor are they intended to be a factual accounting of events in a project, example or actual event. The examples of projects are to inspire and provoke thought on how anyone of us would have handled the situation. My intention is to highlight those "moments" where doing things one way or another might have changed the end of the story. This is done in an open and learning format where I hope we can all continue to learn together.

Influence – Ready or Not

It seems that from time to time every position has some level of influence that you need to exert. As a project manager, department head or even a staff member, there are times when you need to influence others decisions because of your expertise, skills or experience. Then there are the true positions of influence where the only activity that you can do is change based on how you get others to change.

“It's never too late to learn, but sometimes too early”

• Charlie Brown in PEANUTS by Charles M. Schulz.

The first position I ever had of true influence was with a fortune 500 company that had only just started getting into leveraging the Internet. This was indeed years ago, so please don’t think they were late in leveraging the Internet. Actually, they were about right on time with their “dabbling” and have continued to expand into B2B and B2C ever since.

I had been in technology for over 10 years, mostly as a developer and system administrator. I had also a number of projects that I had managed successfully that I was proud about. I thought what followed was going to be the natural progression of my career. I was surprised later to learn that I had a lot more to learn about projects and management.

I was hired to introduce new technologies into one of 23 of the divisions of the organization. Things like electronic scanning and OCR for Accounts Payable. Great project and things worked out well, but that’s for another time. The project and my background enticed the CIO to move me to the corporate level fairly quickly. I was the only other technology person at the corporate level as all other Directors and Managers actually reported to their local Operations Managers or Vice Presidents.

The first couple of months I spent my time going from location to location and learning the technology level of each. Sending back my two pager reports to the CIO on what I found. After a while I determined that there was a simple project we could accomplish that would make “Internet Technology” as real thing to those that I was listening and learning from. All that was needed was an web-based employee directory.

So with a little approved expense at the corporate level (very little), I set out to build the companies first in-house website. The Intranet was born within the company and this allowed me to have a live dog-and-pony” show for the road. It caught on very well and one day while visiting the corporate office I had a conversation with the Vice President of Marketing. The conversation was about the customers of the company and how the information about those customers could be tapped to generate new interest in the company. Having been to almost all of the individual divisions by then, I had learned that many had the basic information that the Vice President was looking for, but each division was its own island of knowledge. Not only were they technologically separated, but also very territorial about their information. I left things very negative with the VP as we could not get past some of these overreaching issues.

I really wish I had paid more attention to that conversation now that I look in hindsight. If I had it would have prepared me for what came next. Several months later on a late Friday as I arrived at my office from Logan airport (on the way home), the CIO called asking me to arrive in Chicago the following Monday. I said I would be there and asked was there anything that I need to prepare. ‘No, everything will be there when you arrive.”

I arrived bright and early on the red-eye in the Chicago office and was directed to a large conference room. As I walked in, there sitting was the 23 IT managers, their respective Plant Operations Managers/VPs, a few engineers that I knew in the organization, sales/engineers representatives from CISCO and Microsoft. I thought I was going to be treated to a relaxing day of product demonstrations and discussions on future ideas. Now I wish I had the extra 10 years of experience under my belt before I sat down in that room.

As the CIO welcomed everyone I thought that my day was indeed going to be just as I thought. Right after he said; “good morning” he jumped past the typical round-robin of introductions.

“Today we are going to determine how to migrate all our North America technology support centers into 3 main data centers.”

Dead silence in the room.

“Here you go Bill”….and he walked out of the room.

After the initial shock dimmed a little, I stood up and too a deep breath. Walked to the center of the room and looked directly at my old boss, the IT Manager of the plant I was based out of. I could see the visible signs of shock on his face and really knew this might not go well. The room started to fill with, as you would expect, with conversations about how ridicules this idea was and how much just thinking about it was going to upset plants ability to produce product. There were even the starts of shouting matches over which locations were going to be the new data centers.

Now I had at that time never had a position of politics. I never even entertained the idea that I would need such skills. I came from simple project management where most of the politics were monitored and managed by project sponsors. I was in over my head and there was no life ring in sight. So I did the only thing that I could think of, I ask a simple question.

Now over time I have attended many leadership training course, project management courses and management courses. The simple question that I asked I have found out was the only question that I could have asked and was actually the right questions. When the movie Apollo 13 came out, I learned that the question was the one that helped save not only the lives of the astronauts but also the whole space program.

“Does anyone have any ideas?”

That was it. Nothing like; “So who wants to go first?” Or “Who thinks this is not possible?” Not even the one question I found out was on everyone’s mind; “Who thinks that man is crazy?” That’s all I kept asking. When ever we came to an impasse or things started to get a little heated, I just interject with; “Let’s hear more ideas.”

It was long and hard, but a plan was created. I spent the next couple of weeks working with finance people and we figured out that the plan would save over a million dollars. We got the CIO’s approval and went to work. Indeed thanks to the cooperation and skilled people within the company the project was a success. It was those people that made the project successful. It felt like I was just along for the ride. Others became project managers of specific aspects and reported back only to their local IT Managers. There was no central reporting setup, so no high-level costs were developed and no projected savings documented.

I thought that was going to be the end of my career at the company. During the whole project I felt that I really did not do anything. Just sat around in meetings, listening to conversations and ideas; then every once in a while kick in my simple question. I went through six months of just asking people for their ideas and sharing them with others. I had no idea that was what the job was. I thought I was just wasting everyone’s time and sooner or later the CIO would get rid of me for wasting company’s time.

Shortly after that meeting I had several other run-ins like it with the CIO. I was sent to a location to redo all the telecommunications on the drop of a hat. I was sent to Microsoft to work out software and support agreements without first working with the 20+ IT managers on what was needed. As time wore on, I wore out. At the time I felt I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now I know that was wrong and I was in the right place at the right time.

Today, I could really enjoy that kind of position. Having much more understanding of how to communicate with others and stem new ideas from people would make me even more affective. Having asked just the right question might have been luck or my simple “Yankee” background did have positive results. I still will and have continued to ask the simple question over and over, but now I can carry things even further and to new heights because I am not so afraid to ask the question:

“Does anyone have any ideas?”

Notice: posts will have the highlights of projects that I have been apart of or have managed. Some of these examples have been fictionalized to make certain points. The examples are not a complete rendering of all the events of any project, example or actual event. Nor are they intended to be a factual accounting of events in a project, example or actual event. The examples of projects are to inspire and provoke thought on how anyone of us would have handled the situation. My intention is to highlight those "moments" where doing things one way or another might have changed the end of the story. This is done in an open and learning format where I hope we can all continue to learn together.

Welcome to My Blog

First I thought I should introduce myself. I have been growing in the technology industry and creating business successes for each employer for over 15 years. I have a generalist approach to technology with a firmly established hands-on ability with Microsoft technology. I use cutting edge technology to solve business issues economically and create thriving business environments. My background is founded in financial business processes and software development.

I will be using this blog to express some of my experiences in helpful terms that others might be able to learn the lessons that I have. Some posts will have the highlights of projects that I have been apart of or have managed. Some of these examples have been fictionalized to make certain points. The examples are not a complete rendering of all the events of any project, example or actual event. Nor are they intended to be a factual accounting of events in a project, example or actual event.

The examples of projects are to inspire and provoke thought on how anyone of us would have handled the situation. My intention is to highlight those "moments" where doing things one way or another might have changed the end of the story. This is done in an open and learning format where I hope we can all continue to learn together.

Continuous learning is the corner stone for any technologist. So please allow me to not only learn from what I have experienced, but also from your experiences.