THE EXPONENT: Volume 00, Number 4

"Start writing a new chapter, for if you live solely by the book you'll never make history."--Ben Sobel

"Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action."--James Russell Lowell

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."--Emerson

That's the general equation of life, I suppose. Certainly you'll run into new and different problems during the implementation of different ideas, but nearly any obstacle can be overcome with the appropriate application of enthusiasm. Even a brick can fly with the right amount of thrust applied.

Contents

• Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's Off to Organized Recruitment We Go
• Being a Guerilla Leader
• Make Wherever You Are the Big Time
• Free The High-Technology Slaves

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's Off to Organized Recruitment We Go

Tim Eiler minn87

Ahh, springtime, when a young Fraternity man's fancy turns toward thoughts of recruitment...well, okay, so your thoughts are really probably turning toward girls wearing fewer coats if you're an active and maybe golf or the project due for the boss tomorrow if you're an alumnus. All your thoughts aside, though, it really is time to begin planning your chapter's - and your own personal - actions for that extra recruitment push coming up in summer and fall. To help you, I hope you'll listen as we walk through three topics.

Message

You've undoubtedly heard of that salesman who could "sell ice to Eskimos." Well, you probably aren't him, so why try to sell a potential new member on a product he doesn't need or that doesn't meet his standards - essentially telling him a lie (not a Triangle kinda thing to do)?

Instead of selling a potential member on a wonderful utopian chapter that doesn't exist, why not begin to correct the things that keep the chapter from being as close to that ideal as possible? That way, you'll have a solid product to tell recruits about. It's a whole lot easier on you, a whole lot less disappointing for your "customers", and just a whole lot more moral in general to have and then to sell a GOOD product than one that is really bad with a bit of shiny paint of it. And the best part is, even if you haven't gotten to that "good enough" level yet, as long as you're heading to the right end of the road to improvement, you're likely to be able to convince men to join without that shiny paint. Remember that flying brick?

Method

"Failing to plan is the same as planning to fail." I can't remember where I heard that first or who said it, but truer words have not been spoken. Hopefully your chapter already has a plan outlining organized, non-spontaneous recruitment efforts for the whole year, but if it doesn't now's the time to go put one together for the Summer and Fall efforts, which are typically a bit more "organized" than the remainder of the year. Recruiting in this organized way means knowing what you want to accomplish and then getting all the resources to do it assembled and moving toward the goals. That's damn tough when you haven't thought about how to do it ahead of time. That difficulty will nine times out of ten mean that you and everyone else gets frustrated and stops performing. Thus the ever-decreasing spiral is born - the spiral in which success doesn't happen, people get frustrated and some drop out leaving only a few to do the actual work, and then no one wants to participate on the next cycle....not the situation you'd like to have.

All the planned organization does, though, is help marshal the troops. It helps put the right people in the right places at the right times. If it's a good one, it also helps ensure that everyone has in their hands the right messages and tools to help them be successful.

Some of the more important "tools":

• Meet him, make him your friend, introduce him to your other friends, introduce him to Triangle, ask him to join - in that order. Just because this season may have a little bit more organization to the recruitment effort, you don't throw out the fundamentals. All the organization is for - oh, I've already said that.

   

• Actively listen to what the prospective member is telling you he wants. Seek out his opinions about why he's interested AND seek out his thoughts on what things worry him about joining. You'll not only have your "destination" in mind for your presentation to him, you'll have the minefields mapped out, too. Listening shows the potential member that you're interested in him rather than simply expecting him to be interested solely in you.

   

• Tell stories rather than quoting a list of attributes. People like to hear stories and can relate to them better than just a list of "features" of your chapter. A story about a time that 5 Brothers went together and had a really great time doing because of is just about an order of magnitude more believable and "understandable" than saying "we have great ."

   

• Involve him. The more the prospective member feels like he's a part of the group, the more likely he is to join. Conversely, the more he feels like he's an outsider looking in, the more likely he is to never see you again no matter how much you pursue him.

   

• Repeat, repeat, repeat. No, don't line up the prospective members in a row and chant a list of the attributes of your chapter for hours on end. Once you've got all the members on the same page regarding the message, though, it shouldn't be terribly hard to ensure that each prospective member gets to hear the same message material framed in different ways. He'll be more likely to believe what your chapter has to say about itself if he hears the same basic thoughts from many of the members. So, you might ask, "should every member say exactly the same words?" To that I say, "duh" and encourage the reader to look at the sentence regarding lining everyone up in a row and, more importantly, the paragraph about telling stories. Get a clue.

Mania

Okay, so I really meant Attitude, but that word didn't start with "M." Tough. Get over it.

As the saying goes, "Your attitude often determines your altitude." You can choose to look at recruitment as just another chore - a necessary evil - or you can choose to look at it as fun. It's up to you, but your choice will probably determine how well the effort goes over. Even if you have a good message and have put together using the best process, a poor attitude shows. No one wants to be part of a group of people with poor attitudes, so hey, there's the birth of that spiral again. But, everyone likes to be part of a success...you do the math.

Being a Guerilla Leader

From

Technical projects can be run in many different ways, ranging from "laissez faire" approaches where no strict deadlines are set nor individual roles specified, to military style approaches where every step is precisely planned and the chain of command is very well defined and adhered to. The former approach is often found in operational environments where a project is initiated for the purpose of solving one specific problem (e.g. deciding on the need and requirements for a new inventory management system). The latter approach is found in organizations where project work is the main source of income.

The Guerrilla approach preached in this document sits somewhere in between, it is based on several aspects typical to the environments often found in today's high tech industry:

• Time is money: having no plan, deadline or procedures doesn't work for commercial organizations.

   

• Individuals are bright: Most engineers, technical people, and others have a decent education and are able to manage their own work to some extent, are very resourceful in coming up with alternative solutions, etc.

   

• The Design-Review-Build model previously used in industry is obsolete: the newer technology and tools of industry changed the logical order in which projects "must" be run. For example, the tools now allow for creating a screen "on the fly", wiping out the need for a long (and inflexible) design-review-build process, requiring a much less plannable prototype-review-build-review-rebuild approach.

   

• Roles are overlapping: The technologies and tools have become much easier to learn which made the formerly very rigid distinction between specialized "designers", "analysts" and "programmers" very fuzzy.

The approach therefore is based on:

• Clear definition of overall goals (what) and directions for solutions (how)

   

• Leaving responsibility for resolving the detail problems (how) to the individuals

   

• Leaders who coach in stead of micromanage, leaving large responsibilities with the individuals right from the start (and only revoked when experience shows the individual(s) unable to deliver).

   

• Roles within the group are defined beforehand so that each deliverable is the responsibility of at least one individual, roles however can be changed mid-way the project to account for under/over estimates of tasks

   

• Leaders who are capable of and not unwilling to do the "dirty work" themselves

Key concepts

Buy In: First you need to acquire buy-in from the customer group; do they support the results of the scope, the design, etc.? Before this can happen, however, you need to determine who "the customer" is: who influences and who makes the decisions? Acquiring a buy-in with the team is just as important; do the team members commit to the specifications and time lines?

Scope Control: Scope control is a fundamental concept in each phase which ensures that the estimations for the current and following phases are not to be overrun by a large margin. The entire team needs to be aware of the need for scope control. Besides that, having a customer who "buys in" to the time schedule and therefore actively helps in preventing scope creep makes the job a lot easier.

Expectation Setting: Or: when bringing bad news up front is better than bringing it later.

Project Phases

This document assumes the following distinct phases of a project:

• Pre-Design: A short, intense first-cut design of the system, typically performed in the sales stage (as part of a Request for Proposal/Request for Tender) or at the very beginning of the project, sometimes called a "Scope". The pre-design's focus is to define the boundaries of the project, in technical and in cost terms.

   

• Design: The actual design phase: in "RAD" projects typically relatively short (say one third of the length of development).

   

• Development: The actual development activities, potentially using prototype iterations.

   

• Roll-Out: Taking the software into production, sometimes referred to as "implementation".

Editor's note: If the above introduction interested you (and it should because it is not only something you need to know in your professional lives, but is also something that contains a lot of value for an active chapter leader), please go to the Web site mentioned above for much more information.

Make Wherever You Are the Big Time

Harvey McKay, Minneapolis Star/Tribune, February 24, 2000

Everybody is inspired by the story of National Football League and Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner. It's hard to think of a better rags-to-riches story -- in sports, in entertainment, in business, anywhere.

Warner started at quarterback only in his senior season at Northern Iowa, a Division I-A program, a step down from big-time Division I. He was drafted by the Green Bay Packers, but was cut from the squad in training camp. He then went back and worked for the minimum wage, $5.50 an hour, in the Hy-Vee supermarket in Cedar Falls, Iowa. When he wasn't stocking shelves, he threw passes every spare moment he could get someone to run out and catch them. He next hooked on as the quarterback for the Iowa Barnstormers in the Arena Football League, where they play a souped-up, roller-derby brand of indoor football. This got him, after a tryout, to the Amsterdam Admirals in the NFL European summer league. From there he played his way onto the St. Louis Rams and, after a year as a backup when he played during only 11 snaps, stepped in last year when the starter went down with an injury in a preseason game. Warner went on to throw 41 touchdown passes while leading the Rams to the Super Bowl, where he passed for a record 414 yards, including the winning 73-yard TD strike with only minutes left.

Many in the media picked up on Kurt Warner's "Cinderella" story, correctly lauding him as a symbol of hope to others because he never gave up his dream. He never quit on himself. He rode out his lows until he could achieve his highs. But what you can really learn from Kurt Warner is something I heard on the telecast of the NCAA Division III championship football game. That game was won this past December by a tiny college called Pacific Lutheran, located in Tacoma, Wash. Pacific Lutheran was the first college from the Far West ever to win this title. Frosty Westering, the winning coach of Pacific Lutheran, a big underdog in the championship game, said the key to success in life was "making wherever you are the big time."

Always remember that. How many of us think that way when we're down in the dumps because we're stuck in a job we've outgrown? Or a job that doesn't use all of our talents? Or when we have to settle for our second or third choice in colleges or graduate schools? Or when we're turned down for a job we really wanted? How many of us suck it up, shake it off, and prove the boss wrong when we get a performance review that's less than what we think we deserve? When you're edged out on the big sale or the big account, you have to say to yourself, "OK, so I'll find a bigger customer or a bigger client. I'll bounce back and show I can perform in the big time."

Warner always made wherever he was the big time. I'm sure he often visualized himself throwing the winning TD in the Super Bowl, right there on a lonely practice field in the middle of Iowa with nobody watching, piping in his own imaginary crowd noise to keep himself psyched. Then, a few short years later, in the actual Super Bowl, in front of a gigantic worldwide TV audience and more than 70,000 delirious fans in the Georgia Superdome, he did just that. Kurt Warner paid his dues. He is not Cinderella. He made this clear when asked in an interview before the Pro Bowl how he ever achieved such a fantasy season. He said, "It's not like I fell off a grocery truck." He referred to his tough apprenticeship.

The next time you're tempted to look at your present situation through the wrong end of the telescope, stop yourself and remember this: Make wherever you are the big time. Keep in mind what a NASA custodian once said while sweeping up. Someone asked him what he was doing. He looked up, smiled, and replied, "I'm helping to put a man on the moon."

Mackay's Moral: Making wherever you are the big time is always the winning attitude.

Free The High-Technology Slaves

Gary Heil, from The Center for Innovative Leadership

Jan. 22, 1997, may be the date we will remember as the day when our rhetoric of employability came home to roost. Even the staunchest supporters of employability may need to rethink the notion. The occasion?

Eleven Informix employees left their positions as programmers to join Oracle Corp. What was unusual about this departure was the reaction of Phil White, CEO of Informix. According to Oracle, White drove to the home of Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, and asked him to return the 11 "runaway" employees. "I cannot return your employees," responded Ellison, "They have their own free will. They are different from dishes that you buy at Macys." The following day, Informix sued each of the employees. One of the former employees said "they are treating us like runaway slaves."

Welcome to the strange, wacky, upside-down world of employability. If you've survived the thrash of downsizing, corporate takeovers, mergers and re-engineering that swept through the halls of corporate America during the past few years, you know that the new work front calls for loyalty only to yourself.

You've naturally bought into the concept that you are now responsible for your own learning and training and that the elusive quality of employee- and company-loyalty went out the window several years ago.

In its place is a new mentality, which John Sculley made famous while at Apple Computer Inc. "We can no longer promise lifetime employment, but we can promise that after your stint with Apple you will be more employable than when you began," he said. Thus, corporate America entered the "new employment contract phase" where every employee expects to move from company to company, job to job, gaining skills and experience to be used at the next juncture. Perhaps Sculley should have added this caveat: "unless, of course, you exercise your option to leave before we want you to leave, in which case we will slap you with a lawsuit."

In this age of insecurity and uncertainty, where lifelong employment has all but disappeared, where teams of people are routinely laid off at the conclusion of a project, how can we begin to justify lawsuits against employees who choose to leave? What exactly are the options left to employees? If, in the digital age, knowledge is the currency of the future, how can we stake out claims against knowledge and sue employees for exercising their option to leave when we clearly have told them through our actions and our rhetoric that we no longer can afford a commitment to long-term employment or security needs?

Although there are no easy answers, no cookie-cutter recipe for success, we can take a few learning points from the ensuing Informix-Oracle battleground.

While lawyers for both sides debate the issues perhaps we should begin to address some key issues around workplace and employees and loyalty in the digital age.

As technology levels the playing field in almost every industry, truly our most competitive advantage are the people within our organizations. Instead of resorting to lawsuits why don't we make genuine inroads into the policies, people practices and procedures that rule our organizations and institutions? Do they truly reflect the import of people or are they left over relics from the mass-production era where people were viewed as mere cogs in the wheel to be replaced, removed, reinvented and reshuffled at the convenience and whim of the company?

Are we prepared to analyze and agonize over the lingering effects downsizing has created within our organizations and within our people? Do we know the toll that cynicism and distrust on the part of employees is creating in our workplaces and institutions? Do we realize the effect upon our customers? Are we prepared to begin to reestablish and build trust with a work force that (for good reason) finds us untrustworthy?

If we can no longer promise long-term employment and if we expect employees to prepare themselves for 5 to 10 different jobs with many different companies in a working lifetime, are lawsuits against employees and the companies who employee them fair and equitable treatment? Can we really continue to hold out our absolute right to lay off and downsize in good times and bad and expect employees to be loyal to our goals and vision as in the past?

Are we as leaders and are our organizations prepared to cultivate, to lead, and to manage the new knowledge worker?

It is time to face the facts. The last decade has been a celebration of quality improvements, fast companies, sleek empires and a competitiveness that makes us continue to be a world player. Yet our ability to rebuild the human side of our companies has been severely handicapped. Lawsuits such as Informix's contributes further to eroding trust with employees in our organizations.

In the end, if we're ever going to realize huge improvements in our organizations, we will need to learn to leverage the talents and commitment of individuals in an insecure and turbulent corporate environment. Doing so will require us little choice but to immerse ourselves in the essential humanness of our organizations. Doing so will require enormous changes in the way we do business and in the way we lead.

The essence of the digital age calls for truly great organizations filled with talented, capable, enthusiastic and, yes, loyal people. Lawsuits, intimidation, lack of caring and distrust can never help us attain the very qualities we will need to compete in a global economy.

Hope you enjoyed this issue!!! If you have questions, feel free to email the editor ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

Tim Eiler
Exponent Editor
"Relentlessy Pursuing Excellence"

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