Archive | May, 2012

Where PLM and eProcurement Meet…

29 May

My previous world (PLM) and new world (eProcurement) collided in a blog by my friend Oleg Shilovitsky; “New Definition of PLM from UK Datamation Info Assets”.

There has been a significant amount of ‘virtual ink’ spent discussing “exactly what is PLM?”  It’s provided me with a lot of blogging material over the months….

This new ‘definition’ in Oleg’s blog I found to be intriguing:

PLM is different from say CAD, ERP, CRM, etc. and therefore investment decisions in it should be based on different criteria. PLM’s key role, as defined in the Datamation PLM Model report, is the effective management of information assets through-life. In other words, it is a “live entity”

There you have it.  PLM is typically sold based on what it does for you now (vaulting… security… design process management).  Not all that different from an eProcurement system (catalog management, purchasing, contracting).  The key value through life is not that it can handle these day to day tasks.  The key value is based on the fact that it builds an endless repository of all of those transactions.

In the PLM world, this data could be used to create design best practices, or it could be used for intelligent trouble shooting of design flaws.

In the eProcurement world, this data powers Purchase Decision Optimization (PDO).  PDO means that each and every purchase can be optimized, based on previous buyer experience, supplier performance, trends, etc.; the kind of social marketplace that has become 2nd nature in the consumer world, but is still rare in business to business transactions.

So, whether it’s design data in a PLM system, or purchasing data in an eProc system, it’s not how you get the data, it’s what you do with it once you have it that counts.  Learn more about PDO here.

– RTR

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Consensus & The Marine Corps

8 May

Commenting on a great Forbes Blog from a couple of weeks ago “Consensus – Team Building’s Silent Killer”; then another from Vistage that I dredged up from January comparing business to the Marine Corps.  Connecting the dots….

I remember being surprised by a quote from William H. Cosby, EdD, not because it didn’t resonate with me (it did), but because it didn’t sound like something ‘comedian Bill Cosby’ would say:

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

This rings true (like a bell clapper upside the head) for this ‘middle child’.  I was the third child of six in a loud and boisterous Italian-American family.  I learned early on that getting along sometimes meant keeping my thoughts to myself (you’ll notice I didn’t say “keeping my mouth shut”, not much danger of that).   However, with everyone talking at once, even if I HADN’T kept my thoughts to myself, no one might have noticed.

As I joined the work force and moved into management, I had two choices.  Be the loud, table-pounding type of leader (and risk alienation) or be a ‘consensus’ guy (and risk looking weak and indecisive).  Well I chose the later, and wound up with a reputation of ‘going with the flow’.  But that’s a good thing, right?  Nobody gets hurt, right?  So, it was interesting to read:

Teambuilding is not about equality at all – it has nothing to do with consensus. Rather team building is about alignment of vision with expectations, ensuring team members clearly understand their roles, and making sure they have the right resources to perform said duties with exacting precision.

Wow, us consensus guys missed the boat!   It’s not all about getting along, singing Kumbaya around the campfire and all that.  It’s about Shared Purpose, Roles, Responsibilities and Accountability.  Leadership is not a popularity contest, it’s much more difficult than that.  It’s a fine line tight rope walk between authority and popularity, where the answer can’t be the parental fallback “Because I SAID so”, but neither can it be “Whatever YOU think”….

The second connection was a Vistage blog entitled, “This is NOT the Marine Corps! In Business, It IS Okay to Leave Someone Behind”. It got me to thinking about a tumultuous time I lived through, the CAD/CAM contraction of the 1990s.

In about 1988, Prime Computer acquired the company I was working for, Computervision Corporation.  Regardless of how anyone on either side of the Prime/CV divide felt, looking back, I believe one of the reasons that the combination ultimately failed was that management was loath to lay people off.  The savings from the elimination of redundant functions never really materialized.  I know this sounds cold hearted, but there is NO ONE of the group laid off from Prime/CV that did not move on to other gainful employment.

Are there people in your organization that are ‘OK’, that you have decided to ‘accept as is’?  Of course there are!  I’ve never seen an organization of solid superstars, top to bottom.  The Vistage blog talks of three distinct groups:

In most companies, employees fall into three groups.  Core Employees, comprising about 20 percent of the workforce, are dedicated to giving everything to do their jobs well.  … . Temporary Employees—people who haven’t figured out yet whether they want to be a Core Employee or not—account for about 60 percent of the workforce. … The Others—the remaining 20 percent of the workforce—who have made a career out of mediocrity by doing just enough to not get fired but not nearly enough to help move your business forward.

A leaders job is to help transition as many ‘Temporary’ into ‘Core’ as possible, and ease out the ‘Others’.  So, how do you differentiate between a ‘Temporary’ and an ‘Other?  This brings me to my other favorite quote; author unknown:

If this was easy, ANYONE could do it…

– RTR

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Speaking of Sports

4 May

A few words about Junior Seau and Mariano Rivera…

Junior Seau

I heard the news about the suicide of Junior Seau with great sadness.  It also got me thinking about the sport of football that we love.

All of the talk about concussions, brain injuries quickly brought me back to when my youngest son was playing football in junior high school.  We had a couple of kids on the team that had played soccer for years, switching to football in the 8th grade.  What they had in common was an entirely fearless approach to the game.  Everything was at full speed.

I remember one game, one of these guys was involved in a helmet-to-helmet collision with the ‘star’ of the opposing team.   Both players were fast, athletic and they were flying.   I was announcing the game from the press box.  The CRACK of the collision was so loud it quieted the crowd.  The opposing player went down.  Our guy got up, took off his helmet, and started walking to the sidelines.  We applauded….  but there was something wrong.  His walk was more of a shuffle.  There was a bright red blush on his cheeks, the rest of his skin was pale white.  Even from the press box, I could see his eyes were unfocused.

He got about halfway to the sidelines when his knees buckled and he dropped to the ground.  You could have heard a pin drop.

Joe did not play again that season, it took him some time to recover from that concussion.  If I remember correctly, he also missed a week of school.  Now multiply that hit times the years of a football career.  Is it any wonder that we have a problem here?  I pray for Junior and his family, this is a tragic loss.

Mariano Rivera

Now, those that know me know that I am a DIE HARD Red Sox fan.  In my younger days, anyone that wore the pinstripes of the Yankees was the enemy.  Over the years, that has softened to the ‘good’ Yankees and the ‘bad’ Yankees.  There are a few on that team the I still love to hate.  Most, I’m ambivalent about, some I admire because of their obvious class, character and dedication.

Mariano Rivera falls into that category.  When I heard about his knee injury (possibly career ending at age 42), I was truly sad.  A classy pro like Mo deserves better.  I wish him a speedy recovery.

– RTR

 

I Can’t Improve On This …

1 May

I have commented and opined on Tony Schwartz blog at Harvard Business Review in the past.  I noticed that Tony and I are contemporarys, both turning 60 this year. so this one REALLY hit home.  I won’t try to comment, it speaks for itself:

“Turning 60: The Twelve Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned So Far”

1. The more we know about ourselves, the more power we have to behave better. Humility is underrated. We each have an infinite capacity for self-deception — countless unconscious ways we protect ourselves from pain, uncertainty, and responsibility — often at the expense of others and of ourselves. Endless introspection can turn into self-indulgence, but deepening self-awareness is essential to freeing ourselves from our reactive, habitual behaviors.

2. Notice the good. We each carry an evolutionary predisposition to dwell on what’s wrong in our lives. The antidote is to deliberately take time out each day to notice what’s going right, and to feel grateful for what you’ve got. It’s probably a lot.

3. Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.

4. Never seek your value at the expense of someone else’s. When we’re feeling devalued, our reactive instinct is to do anything to restore what we’ve lost. Devaluing the person who made you feel bad will only prompt more of the same in return.

5. Do the most important thing first in the morning and you’ll never have an unproductive day. Most of us have the highest energy early in the day, and the fewest distractions. By focusing for a designated period of time, without interruption, on the highest value task for no more than 90 minutes, it’s possible to get an extraordinary amount of work accomplished in a short time.

6. It’s possible to be excellent at anything, but nothing valuable comes easy and discomfort is part of growth. Getting better at something depends far less on inborn talent than it does the willingness to practice the activity over and over, and to seek out regular feedback, the more precise the better.

7. The more behaviors you intentionally make automatic in your life, the more you’ll get done. If you have to think about doing something each time you do it, you probably won’t do it for very long. The trick is to get more things done using less energy and conscious self-control. How often do you forget to brush your teeth?

8. Slow down. Speed is the enemy of nearly everything in life that really matters. It’s addictive and it undermines quality, compassion, depth, creativity, appreciation and real relationship.

9. The feeling of having enough is magical. It rarely depends on how much you’ve got. More is rarely better. Too much of anything eventually becomes toxic.

10. Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, and don’t expect anything in return.Your values are one of the only possessions you have that no one can take away from you. Doing the right thing may not always get you what you think you want in the moment, but it will almost always leave you feeling better about yourself in the long run. When in doubt, default to calm and kind.

11. Add more value in the world than you’re using up. We spend down the earth’s resources every day. Life’s primary challenge is to put more back into the world than we take out.

12. Savor every moment — even the difficult ones. It all goes so fast.

Couldn’t have said it better,  thanks Tony!

-RTR

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