Rod Bell explains systems analysis
To the best of my knowledge, systems analysis is what was practiced by Richard Riehle in
Office Space.
I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
But we have to make sure we don't get the wrong idea about systems analysis from this movie. LOL
Enter
Rod Bell, who explains the science of systems analysis in a simple (though LONG) list:
- Analyst confers with and studies users.
- Analyst documents current practices/procedures.
- Users review analyst's documentation; questions/clarifications to ensure that users understand analyst's description of as-is.
- Users ask for changes/additions/etc. as necessary to produce as-is document that they can sign off on.
- Repeat analyst/user loop until users sign off on as-is description.
- Analyst produces draft will-be using same documentation style as the as-is.
- Analyst meets with IT *not* for detailed response, but for first-cut deal-killer objections on IT's part.
- Analyst revises proposed will-be if and only if s/he cannot gain conditional ok from IT.
- Analyst takes proposed will-be to users, with explanation that this is a "wish-list" will-be; there is no way to know if it will be technically feasible (though it appears to be) or too expensive or whatever, i.e., other stakeholders have not been consulted yet.
- Users give analyst feed-back, loop through revisions if necessary, until a users sign off on proposed will-be.
- Analyst modifies documentation, as necessary, to clarify for IT.
- Analyst presents to IT, clarifies as necessary to ensure IT's understanding of will-be.
- IT either accepts assignment or suggests/demands changes because it's too hard/expensive/time-consuming thus beyond anticipated scope.
- If IT considers will-be is beyond anticipated scope, other stakeholders are consulted to see if scope can be expanded *or*, if it cannot, what reductions from user wish-will-be should be made?
- May or may not be lots of negotiation/discussion here, if gap bewteen user-approved will-be and resource availability (or timetable) is too great. But here and only here is the place to get that straight, otherwise the PM or somebody gets blamed when it doesn't work out as expected.
- Assuming no insuperable barriers, analyst does shuttle diplomacy between users and IT until a mutually signed-off will-be document exists. Note that this document may include specific screens, reports, user interfaces, etc., as deemed necessary by analyst to ensure the user will-be is fully understood by IT, and if IT wants to change those items, that's part of the negotiations prior to sign-off.
- This document then drives the remainder of the project plan and schedule.
Labels: engineering, rhetoric
On writing paragraphs
I was looking over several sites that talk about types of paragraphs and how to write them. It won't surprise you to hear that nearly all of these sites exist mainly to serve young American kids -- that there's almost nothing about the subject for working professionals. The surprise is that there isn't much there for internationals who are learning English. So I put my TESL cap on.
I have six major types of paragraphs, and I have a mnemonic device to help me remember them. My NASA experience tells me that actual words make the best acronyms and acrostics. :-) :-) :-)
So new acronym is FENCES, and the contents look like this:
- FEATURES and details
- supporing EVIDENCE and reasons
- NARRATIVES, anecdotes and examples
- COMPARISON or contrast
- cause and EFFECT
- SEQUENCES
You may have ample experience in writing paragraphs of each type, so it may not be necessary to go into the fine differences among these. I might have to in the classroom, though. Consider what young people learn about paragraphs in school, even as they prepare for standardized tests:
- sentence to introduce a subtopic
- three sentences to develop it
- sentence to summarize the rest of the paragraph
I don't think this structure works very well in a professional setting, or even in college. There are too many different things to write, as you see in FENCES above. And there are some documents that may require every type of paragraph on the list, such as
business plans and
failure investigation reports... and those are just two I actually know something about.
So I'm just going to toss out a couple of other paragraph features I like to use beyond what's taught to high-schoolers, and you decide if I left anything out.
I believe lists should be treated in list formats, not embedded in a simple narrative or descriptive text. My cutoff is three items on a list. If I have three or fewer, and they're short, I'll just bury them in the prose. but otherwise it's bullets or numbers.
And I think it's kind of a waste to use the last sentence of a paragraph just to summarize. I think a more profitable use is as a segueway to the next thing. I mean, if you CAN. We can't always. But that's the way novelists and short-story writers use that sentence -- as a bridge to the first sentence of the next paragraph.
Labels: rhetoric
Young Entrepreneurs e-book available FREE!
Four years of blogging on the subject of young entrepreneurs and their interests (or what they should be interested in) have been condensed into start me up! Young Entrepreneurs, the e-book.
It's available FREE. But it's a 10 MB Microsoft Word file. You have to want it. And if you use any of it, you have to attribute what you use to me. It's for educational purposes, but I still want my credit.
And I'm starting to take down the old posts too, since most of them are in the book. I will leave up just a few of the best. But it's time for me to clean up my Web site. In a few years, GTFW willing, there'll be a follow-up book. :-)
FOLLOW-UP: A wiki, eh...? That's not a bad idea... I will look into that. But it won't be posted on my Web site. I put the book together in the first place to clear some old pages out of the Web site. And I have no problem with users editing it to suit their needs, as long as I get original credit.
Labels: education, rhetoric, young entrepreneurs
Paralysis by Paralysis
I used to hear the old saw "paralysis by analysis," referring to engineers keeping product from shipping because of needing more analysis. Well, OK. But it turns out that we all have a similar phenomenon we have to deal with sometimes. This "paralysis by paralysis" is marked by an inability to decide what to do next. We're frozen in place while we figure it out. We're afraid of doing the wrong thing. We may have forgotten something important, and so we go on a desperate search for a lost memory. And in between, we hit this really annoying period of total confusion. Sound familiar?
You might ask yourself:
- Which is worse: to do the wrong thing, or to do nothing at all?
- If I were prepared for my next action, what difference would it make?
- Is it better to ask forgiveness than permission?
This paralysis will leave you with the shivers, because the boss might come along.
- What happens then, if you do a good thing, but it's the wrong good thing, and the boss asks what's going on with the right good thing?
- What happens if you're paralyzed, doing nothing, and the boss comes along?
Action leads to more action -- as long as good deeds go unpunished. LOL The same way, inaction leads to more inaction, though with short bursts of misplaced, unappreciated fanaticism.
You've got to overcome this!There is no substitute for planning and prioritizing.
- Take maybe 15 minutes at the start of the day to figure out what tasks will give you the biggest payoff. Those are the tasks you concentrate on.
- And you've got to commit to following the payoff, and concentrating on those high-payoff tasks.
- Take maybe 15 minutes at the end of the day -- you're winding down by then anyway -- to examine yourself and the payoff on your tasks, and ask yourself whether you did the right thing. If the answer is no, then you can think about how you might have misjudged what makes a big payoff.
- Be willing to hold on to some discipline and see what happens. If nothing else, your patience will make you stronger.
- If you feel paralysis coming on, and you fear the coming of the boss, then take pre-emptive action: go see the boss, and get clarification on a couple of tasks. Let the boss prioritize for you. It'll not only get you off dead center, but it'll delay the boss's next visit.
- Don't forget: some actions have to be taken, and some jobs finished, before we can really see what's next. What you think may be an order of events may be masked by something that has to be done up front.
Labels: recommendations, rhetoric
More lessons from editing resumes
A good friend of mine asked me to look over her resume. I don't have permission to repost it here, but I had some comments and thought I'd better summarize them.
- She's after a job as an assistant office manager. The job description gives some characteristics of the person the company wants. She did a good job of pointing out in her resume, and emphasizing in a cover letter, the ways she exceeds the minimums in the position description. Give 'em more than they want.
- She says she's got experience with "the Internet and Windows XP." Both of those are broad, and she needs to tighten that up by giving specific examples of experience. I suggested that evidence of Internet experience could be provided in the resume if she shows either that she knows Web-creation codes (e.g. HTML, JavaScript, Java, etc.), or Web-creation programs (e.g. FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc.), or applications other than Web searching (e.g. FTP, e-mail list management, etc.), and she took advantage of that. As for Windows XP, she should demonstrate the basics, like disk cleanup and defrag, changing default printers, etc.
- She hasn't graduated yet, and lists "some college coursework," and gives the major. She needs to say how much she has left. She's got a good major -- it matches the company's interests -- and they may want her to finish up. Use even a partial education for leverage.
- She has impressive work experience for a young person, but needs to show examples of accomplishments, not just assignments. Something like "trusted with the responsibility of a customer service supervisor." And "managed insurance card and policy package distribution, as well as training meetings for sales agents."
- Finally, if the editing she does makes her resume longer, she must try to cut it back to a single page by making the font a size smaller or fiddling with the margins.
All this stuff is simple but will enhance her attractiveness to the company. And it didn't hurt me to go through it. :-)
Labels: education, recommendations, rhetoric
More good stuff on presentation graphics
Even if PowerPoint is
responsible for the dumbing-down of America, it's still a de facto industry standard. If we can't embrace it, we can at least try to tame it to serve our purposes.
Lisa Henn wrote the
Rhetoric for Engineers list with a couple highly useful sites that supply presentation graphics tips.
This one is especially loaded with good ideas for ridding PowerPoint slides of
chartjunk.
And
here's another one -- it talks about making a simple plot of dependent v. independent variable more readable. If you are waiting for Microsoft Excel to take care of plot readability for you, don't hold your breath.
Labels: education, rhetoric
On conflict
Here are some typical sources of workplace conflict:
- "simultaneous" access to resources ("but I need to use the copy machine!")
- unclear or inconsistent decision-making authority
- unclear or inconsistent reasoning behind decisions or policy
- trying to know without needing to know
- failure to see or understand events and conversations in their context
- perceived deviation from some standard of behavior ("why do I do this while they get to do that?")
I find it's worth remembering this stuff -- the warning signs that help us prevent worse things from occurring.
Labels: education, rhetoric
The black hole of recommendation forms
I think the thing I hate most about filling out recommendation forms and writing recommendation letters is that I seldom hear what happens. For the last several years, a few students each year have asked me for recommendations for various honors: scholarships or student jobs, usually. And almost none of them has ever written me back to tell me what happened. The funny thing is that even
sites that describe the etiquette involved in requesting one of these things don't suggest that the requester report on the results.
But I can't help it. I want to know. I'd at least like the students who request a favor like that not to forget me. LOL And I'm learning a lesson here myself: I have to tell the people who've recommended me in the past that
my own job is going just fine. And thank them again.
A bit of history: five years ago, I worked with a group called the Weather Boys in one of my
Rhetoric classes. (They got the idea for their team name from watching the film
October Sky.) These kids, over the course of two semesters, performed the heroic feat of supplying
Ewing's Antheil Elementary School with a weather station. They convinced the Antheil Parent-Teacher Organization to donate $1000 for the purchase of the station, the rain gauge of which is pictured here. They installed the station. They prepared the software so Antheil's computers could receive data. And they did the groundwork for Antheil's weather feed to be supplied to
TCNJ's Web site.
All this work is now pretty much unknown except to the Weather Boys, myself, and a couple of Antheil staff members. This is because in the summer of 2003, Ewing schools put up a new firewall which prevented the weather station from sending data inside the building 20 feet away. And nobody would do anything about it. That situation still rankles me, years later.
But I digress. I brought this up because Matt Ledyard of the Weather Boys came along this week seeking a recommendation letter, as...
I am on the homestretch here at TCNJ, and upon graduation I hope to continue my service with the Air Force by becoming a pilot. Within the next few weeks I will be sending off application packets to various Air National Guard units across the United States. My top choice would be to fly fighter jets, specifically the F-15, F-16 or A-10 airframe.
This note came along just as I was beginning to get the annual spring rush of recommendation requests, and was most discouraged about them. Now I have to rethink my discouragement, because Matt is such a super guy. I see him as one of my greatest success stories.
Matt's the reason I'm posting this. I think my recommendation for a good young person is one of the best gifts I can give, and it really is flattering to be asked. It suggests that at least one person gives a shit about what I think. LOL
Labels: education, history, rhetoric, young entrepreneurs
The zigzag
Someone I work with wanted to know about broken axis graphs (like the one pictured) -- where you put what I call "the zigzag" on the axis. Is there a name for that zigzag? Are there special cases where you use it? How in the name of GTFW do you create one of these things?
You've got data that doesn't fill the entire data range. If you show the entire data range, there is a chance that you won't be able to see interesting features the data contains. So I posed the question to the Rhetoric for Engineers mailing list and got the following responses:
Lisa Henn broke out her old drafting book (Giesecke is the author) and found that
[C]ertain circumstances require special consideration to avoid wasted space. For example, if the values to be plotted along one of the axes do not range near zero, a 'break' in the grid may be shown... [W]hen relative amount of change is required... the axes or grid should not be broken, and the zero line should not be omitted. If the absolute amount is the important consideration, the zero line may be omitted.
And Lisa herself adds,
On graphs, you'd want to put breaks such that there is still a gap shown in the data. In other words, you wouldn't want the data points crowding the break too much.
She finally points out that
Edward Tufte probably addresses the issue.
Glen Hadley argues that it's not just that we want to ignore empty parts of the data range, but that we may want the data range to appear fully populated as well. This is an appearance issue, meaning that we might not be interested in an axis break for analysis. It's for presentations. So there are several sites where educators and consultants have found ways to fool Excel into creating axis breaks (why wouldn't Microsoft make that a standard option?) -- this is a long and tedious process, and you can be sure most engineers will never bother with it. I did it myself with the graph above, to make sure I could follow directions, and it took me 20 minutes. I also added a trendline to the original data, something the people writing on this subject didn't add to theirs. Here are the sites where they work this issue:
Everett Greene throws in a complaint:
It's too bad the financial world doesn't read this. The economic, stock, and such graphs (almost) always show the top 0.1% of a curve which magnifies the miniscule noise into major ups and downs making it appear that the noise is significant when it isn't.
Preach it, brother!
Labels: education, engineering, internet, rhetoric
Choosing working groups smartly
In the past, I've allowed students to choose groups to work in by affinity. (They go with their friends -- if they have any.) That doesn't teach 'em enough. Especially since what they're after is the chance to conceive of a business that might have a chance to survive. So this year I'm going to choose the groups myself, and gamble that, in a class of 15 people I can find small groups with skills that go across the board. (In business and industry, you'd really like your
working teams to have an assortment of skills, right?) An assortment of skills comes from an assortment of, well, multiple intelligences. Gifts that students may have that are relevant both to multiple intelligences (per
Howard Gardner,
Intelligences Reframed, 1999) and to in-class group work:
- good with numbers (e.g. financial estimates) (logic – math)
- artistic (e.g. marketing, Web design) (visual)
- one-on-one people skills (e.g. negotiation, interviewing) (interpersonal)
- group people skills (e.g. presentations, demonstrations) (intrapersonal, cultural, kinesthetic)
- good with words (e.g. research, writing) (linguistic)
- organized (e.g. team leader, meeting planner, document setup, support others) (interpersonal, intrapersonal)
Notice that the important skills for this work are interpersonal and intrapersonal. What we have to do is
- Find out what their skills are (via a survey?)
- Measure the skills (or have them demonstrate those skills in some way)
- Group them in a way that matches the skills.
Notice also that I refer above to "cultural intelligence." I use that term to mean the knowledge of the behavior of large groups, or even societies. This is a useful characteristic of (among others) marketers, urban planners, politicians, etc. And it's not on Gardner's list. He's not likely to want to talk to me about it, as he is a world-renowned scholar, but I'm gonna toss the idea his way anyway. Why stop at eight types of intelligence if it takes more to describe us? But that's a digression.
The point is that I'm hoping to get groups to dig a bit deeper for ideas, and back those ideas up more robustly, than I've seen students doing in the past.
Labels: rhetoric
No thanks, I have all the discounts I can afford
...'nuff said. :-) :-) :-)
Labels: rhetoric
The onset of stupidity
How do you know we are stupid? It's when we hear lines like these in a movie, especially a movie that's supposed to be a summer blockbuster:
I don't like sand, it's coarse and rough and irritating, and gets all over the place... not like you; you're soft and smooth.
-- Hayden Christiansen, as Anakin Skywalker, in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Anakin: You are so... beautiful.
Padme: It's only because I'm so in love.
Anakin: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.
Padme: So love has blinded you?
Anakin: [laughs] Well, that's not exactly what I meant.
Padme: But it's probably true.
-- Hayden Christiansen, this time with Natalie Portman as Padme Amidala, in Star Wars Episode II: Revenge of the Sith
...and we come back to the movies.
Labels: rhetoric
The genius of fireworks distributors
An article written in the Trenton Times by Darryl Isherwood on 06.07 talks about fireworks laws in Pennsylvania. Get this: it is legal for fireworks distributors in Pennsylvania to sell their stuff to anyone who can prove they live in another state. It's illegal to USE fireworks in Pennsylvania. So it's no accident that major distributors line up their outlets along the borders. Sky King Fireworks (pictured) is in Portland, Easton, and Morrisville to "service" New Jersey; they're in Erie and Hillsville to do Ohio to the west. Spartan Fireworks (also pictured) similarly has a location near the New Jersey border and a couple near Maryland.
But the fireworks are illegal in New Jersey too! So my well-meaning but shady neighbors, who want sparklers to entertain the grandkids on the Fourth, can't buy 'em here in NJ, and must go across the border to Morrisville and smuggle the booty back in. I read the article on the Times on Wednesday, went to work, then came home to find big old ads from Sky King and Spartan (both mentioned in the article and contributors of the images used here :-)).
I gotta tell ya, this is no way to run a business. The guys who run these distributorships must know their markets are living on borrowed time under this setup. Even if NJ and PA don't work together to lower the boom on fireworks through law, you can't market to an only out-of-state audience indefinitely unless the bulk of your sales are online and through the mail. Sky King and Spartan, at least, don't sell that way. And no wonder: in most states, you can't BUY 'em that way.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's not the kind of business you'd want to start just now. (I do like the way Spartan nicks up Sky King with the line in their ad about "buy one get one free pricing," though. Nice touch.)
Labels: rhetoric
"Absense" of an Editor
If you did this in your
press release, no media outlet would pick it up. So why does the local paper print this with such a bold typo?
Labels: rhetoric
On McKaig's "E-mail for Entrepreneurs"
Angie McKaig writes a very nice (and brief!)
article on the above subject, in which she hits on these major points:
- how the e-mail looks
- how often you respond
- why you should avoid emotions
- when to explain
- why e-mail is "real work"
There's only one place where she leaves me confused. She has this to say about emoticons:
Even if you never use emoticons, never forget the reason they were created: because it's tough to tell tone via email. Something straightforward and businesslike to you may seem curt or sarcastic to another. Be as clear as possible.
This could suggest to readers that there's room for smileys in business e-mail, yet she says just before this quote that there's no room for emotions at all. Rule of thumb to lift the confusion: if you feel the need for an emoticon, you need to rewrite the context instead. That's the only surefire way to avoid the risk of a misinterpreted tone.
McKaig's tagline is "still a great pair of legs." I dunno about that for sure, but I can say with some authority that she has a very nice bunny rabbit. :-) :-) :-)
Labels: rhetoric
Take the bad memories with the good
As I am converting my journal of experience with GreyPilgrim, Inc. to HTML for posting on the Web, I am more-or-less reliving both the good (feeling more like an engineer than at any other time of my life) and the bad, such as this experience from
September 1996:
I went with my boss to Windsor, CT this week, to visit the US headquarters of Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), whose nuclear division showed some promise as a service provider partner. We had a scheduled meeting with a division head that actually had the power to make a decision. (You're always told when job-hunting to try to get yourself into the office of the person with the power to hire you. This is the analogous scenario for our case.) Meeting scheduled at noon, we get there promptly (for me, after a five-hour drive) -- and the guy's not there.
Instead, we get a 90-minute meeting with two lesser supervisors (one of whom was reading our material as we talked). We get no offer of refreshment, we get no promise of so much as a return call, and I give away valuable copies of reports. After talking this over with Jean, I became steamed at such unprofessional behaviour (and "unprofessional" is a word I hate to use and seldom do) on the part of an industry giant like ABB. I told the boss that I'd not visit ABB again for any reason unless they paid me for the visit, in advance.
Funny thing: I have interviewed for several consulting gigs since, and it's common these days to have interviewers not offer to pick up travel costs, or to offer you lunch or even a cup of coffee. More often than not, the interviewer can't even offer you the gig: this is a maneuver designed to get you out the door so the hiring company has time to bring in others they like better. I used to think that the first thing that went out the window in times of budget cuts was R & D; now I see what really gets thrown out is hospitality. There is little kindness in the engineering world today. And I can't even blame Bush for that; it predates him by years.
But I digress. The experience journal is up for several months so far:
Labels: rhetoric
Simple secret of viral marketing: no in-jokes
The above image is plastered on t-shirts for the
Ewing High girls' tennis team. Now, if you don't know what the heck the t-shirt is on about, join the club. It happens that only a select few of the players were in on the joke that led to the logo, and these players were the ones to select the shirt design -- with the endorsement of the coaching staff. So now, everywhere the Lady Devils tennis team goes next season, nobody will know what their shirts mean.
T-shirts are among the most ancient, time-honored forms of viral marketing. Check the concept of t-shirts against
this definition and see if it's not so. If you put your message on shirts, ideally they will be shirts others will be happy to wear. If you are going to use t-shirts to advertise yourself, don't do what the tennis team did. Make sure the world understands you.
Labels: rhetoric
Unanswered questions from The Apprentice
Donald Trump said, the day
Sam Solovey (pictured) was fired on
The Apprentice, that "negotiation is innate... negotiators are born." But the Harvard Business School (at least)
says that's not true. Whom should we believe here? (I might add that that episode, from season 1, is the one my students study. Every class really enjoys it. And they seem to readily learn lessons about
negotiation.)
I voted in a Yahoo poll for
Bill Rancic as my favorite Apprentice. But I think that
Randal Pinkett is growing on me. It may not be long before
Pinkett is everyone's favorite. :-)
Labels: rhetoric
How to get quiet people to talk?
This semester's class is a bit different from previous years. In a class of 14, only one will talk. I haven't put up much of a fight -- yet -- because when they are organized in small groups, talking about businesses they would like to, and maybe will, start, THEN they'll talk. To one another. But I need them to throw their thoughts out there for the benefit of everyone in the room. Including themselves. After all, nothing crystallizes an idea quite like speaking it aloud.
Now, how to get them to open up? Well, I CAN remind them that "class participation" is worth 20% of their final grade, and that many of them are currently failing that aspect of the class. Which means the best grade they can hope for is probably a "B-minus." That's the "stick" option. But I need some "carrot" options as well. After all, like George Carlin said,
Most people work just hard enough to not get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.
Likewise, students will at times work just hard enough to pass and be rewarded just enough to fulfill a requirement.
Anyway, here is my informal list of techniques for drawing them out:
- Remind them of their (individual) importance. We cannot all learn effectively from just one or two sources. The learning process is a community process.
- Ask leading questions. Make them feel like they know the answer, not like the answer is being fed to them. (Yeah, right. Like I KNOW the answers.)
- Play Bloom's Taxonomy: make them activate their prior knowledge. Every day something we learned long ago is called upon to enhance something we're doing now. It's up to us to recognize how to apply it.
- Don't use up all the icebreakers in the first week.
- Take advantage of brainstorming exercises.
- Take advantage of role-playing exercises.
...and of course, I have to remind myself to keep toys and candy handy. :-)
Labels: rhetoric
The Books the NY Times Likes
Student assistant Linh retrieved
a list of books the NY Times likes. (I notice this list changes frequently, and Linh also tried to extract from the list titles most of interest to entrepreneurs, since the Times list is of business books in general.)
...I haven't yet read any of these. Maybe I oughta get on the stick.
Labels: rhetoric
The Books They Like
Here is a small sampling of the books my students read as part of learning about entrepreneurship through more-or-less guided self-discovery. I've noted books that I've read, and noted it IN CAPS when I especially liked the book.
- Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine -- READ IT
- Bunnell, Making the Cisco Connection -- READ IT
- Bunnell, The eBay Phenomenon -- read it
- Shirk & Wadia, Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs -- READ IT
- Spector, amazon.com: Get Big Fast -- READ IT
- Trump & Schwartz, The Art of the Deal
- Marriott & Brown, The Spirit to Serve Marriott's Way
- Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive
- Manes & Andrews, Gates
- Shook, The Entrepreneurs
- Henry, What it Takes
- Rancic, You're Hired -- READ IT
- Kepcher, Carolyn 101 -- read it
I'll supply more before long.
Labels: rhetoric
Four arguments in a business plan
Lunsford and Ruskiewicz, in
Everything's an Argument, list four major types of argument we run into every day:
- Of Fact: what happened?
- Of Definition: what does it mean?
- Of Evaluation: to what extent does it effect us?
- For Proposals: what must we then do?
Normally, writers treat each of these types of arguments separately. In writing
business plans, we can't. All four appear:
- Of Fact: I have a business idea.
- Of Definition: I have a market niche for my business.
- Of Evaluation: I have the team in place to make my business profitable.
- For Proposal: You should consider investing in my business.
They're all in there. You can argue that the proposal argument is central to the business plan, but you can't ignore the other types.
Labels: rhetoric
Bartering Networks, part one
There are such things as "
barter networks." Sometimes, these networks are organized, but most of the time (for your purposes), it's little more than small businesses trading space inside their facilities to advertise one another.
BUT... bartering networks may do more – MUCH more – than trading advertisements. They may also trade professional services, and even share access to such delicacies as health benefits, giving small companies the potential power to take care of employees and customers that large companies have. (For such privileges, you are likely to pay for membership.)
There are also large businesses that allow smaller businesses to set up
small spaces (or, kiosks) inside their buildings, e.g. the
Bucks County
Coffee inside the
Pennington Market or the
US Post Office inside the
Robbins Pharmacy or the
Zen Zone inside the Beverly Hills Hair Studio. I am guessing that this expression of reciprocal agreement, while not the most common, is much more common than a bartering network. Most small businesses (and large ones) can put one of these together pretty quickly, forming a symbiotic relationship not totally unlike
the one the crocodile has with the crocodile bird.
Forgive me if this is just a bit "stream of consciousness." I am just learning about bartering as a business option. I plan to explore this a LOT more.
Labels: rhetoric
SOMEBODY has to think of these things...
The
Wondervase, a thermally-activated vase that you shape (and flatten) with warm water, and the
Wovel, a "snow shovel on a wheel," are two interesting inventions I encountered while shopping for Christmas gifts this past month. They're two more of those things you look at and say "I thought of this years ago!" And yeah, I do the same thing. So why didn't we patent these things when we thought of 'em? Why isn't it US making the money from TV sales? SOMEBODY has to think of these things, right? Might just as well be me...
Labels: rhetoric
Maybe I can't hear, but I can read!
A local outfit called Beltone Hearing Care Center, a purveyor of hearing aids (!), sent me a brochure labeled as follows:
...doesn't this just say it all? :-) :-) :-)
Labels: rhetoric
The Meeting that Went Very Well
I was once the polar opposite of one
Joe Rasmussen (pictured), then a partner in
GreyPilgrim Inc. He was, as his current Web bio suggests, "CFO and primary business leader" for the company. His bio paints a picture, however, that's a bit of a stretch. The site says
He was instrumental in building this new company from concept to products and markets, creating and implementing financing and strategic plans to obtain $100M revenue potential.
...but since GreyPilgrim never got really close to that revenue potential, what Joe did turns out to have been more theoretical than actual. (Of course, all my engineering work on the EMMA robotic arm -- and I did a bunch -- falls into the same category, since EMMAs were never shipped out the door until
GreyPilgrim resurfaced as a new business. By then I was long gone.)
All this is just water under the bridge for the same reason. But what I really remember Joe for is for conducting
meetings with potential customers and clients and funding sources. Seems like he had a meeting with someone every few days. And when I would ask him how a meeting went, he'd smile and say "it went very well." And that's all I ever got out of him. Joe, what does "very well" mean exactly?
In retrospect, the dynamic works like this: I'm an engineer, he's a financial guy. He made the assumption that we didn't speak the same language. Since he didn't speak his language to me much, I'll never know whether or not his assumption was on target. And now that I have a teaching certificate in ESL, I think my ability to understand the speech of others whose English isn't the same as mine is really pretty good. :-)
If you work for an entrepreneur, you have to ask the right questions. The more specific, the better. If the partners don't want to give you a straight answer, you can at least force them to tell you so with specific questions. Try these, if you work with a guy like Joe:
- How soon will we be receiving a check?
- How much did you get them to commit to?
- When will they expect their first order to ship?
- Did they have any questions for me?
You have to wring answers out of these people. Don't settle for a meeting that Went Very Well.
Labels: rhetoric
Where the buck stops
Persuaded as Miss Bingley was that Darcy admired Elizabeth, this was not the best method of recommending herself; but angry people are not always wise; and in seeing him at last look somewhat nettled, she had all the success she expected.
This is from
Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, a book I have read maybe ten times. I'm not pointing out this passage because I need to read the book again, though I suppose that's possible. I have on occasion been very angry the last several months. The reasons are not relevant, because if I am angry it's not your problem, dear reader.
Being angry wouldn't even be MY problem if I could somehow manage to be wise at the same time just a bit more often. No such luck. This summer I've managed to hurt several people with my anger. Most of the time it's been personal, which is probably a deeper hurt; but once it was professional, which is plenty deep enough and more appropriate to this Web log.
I was working on a project with someone. I got irritated with her. My anger caused me to see little problems on the project as big ones; I also saw her gifts and talents as irrelevant. I went to the boss and blew the whistle. Much later I learned that she was reprimanded, and that this will stay on her permanent record. Yet my anger had melted away within a day or two. She never even knew I was angry at her. All she saw was the results. Crap, she lived with that all summer, and I didn't even know the pain I'd caused. Professional pain: you can't receive candy or flowers or get taken to a movie or a ball game or have anyone say anything nice to you and get over it. It has lasting effects. "Someone with power over me looks at me differently now, because of what you said," I finally got her to tell me. Even then it didn't sink in, not for several hours. But it's sunk in now.
I told her I wanted to fix it. She told me she wanted to vent. I told her her venting might not make her feel better. She told me I might not be capable of "fixing it," and might even make matters worse if I try. But that's the kind of person I am, I guess. Having seen that I have done something wrong, my first instinct is to correct it. And NOW, having seen the depth of my wrongdoing, I see that, like Elizabeth Bennet (pictured, played by
Keira Knightley in
the 2005 movie version), "till this moment, I never knew myself." I could say I feel like crap, and I'd be right, but it's nothing compared to the pain I have caused. (And imagine, if it's this bad when you hurt a colleague, how bad it must be when you hurt someone close to you! I know this betrayal as well!)
Don't you feel sorry for me. I'm writing this primarily to remind myself that all this has occurred. I'm going to try to fix things, without any real hope of winning my colleague's respect back, because it's the right thing to do. Doing the right thing, even when it's nearly hopeless, is still mostly better than three dead lemmings and a sharp stick in the eye. And I'm going to let her vent. But mostly I'm going to learn, finally, to count to ten. You'd think an engineer would know how to do that, wouldn't you?
I hate seeing the truth about myself. I hate knowing what I'm capable of. But I gotta know or I can't be healed. We all gotta know this about ourselves. So entrepreneurs, I tell you that
Pride & Prejudice oughta be required reading for you too.
Labels: rhetoric
The Revenge of Ockham's Razor!
Entities must not be multiplied needlessly.
That's
the Razor of William of Ockham (or Occam, as you please), and I've always given it the following interpretation: "the simplest solution that meets requirements is the best solution."
The Archimedes water screw (pictured) is an example of Ockham's Razor in action. It's essentially unchanged in design since it was developed sometime before 200 BC. And it's in use in many parts of the world:
- in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East it's still lifting water, as was its original intention
- The US Department of the Interior is using it as a "fish-friendly pump," or at least testing it that way
- it's used at very small size in heart surgery
- and it moves lighter particulate substances like grains.
A simple solution that's not really been improved upon in a couple thousand years.
Labels: rhetoric
On facing the money people
I wish I could tell you that one of the companies I'm involved with now is about to face a battery of angels and VCs, but I can't. None of them are that far along. But I want to tell you a story of one such visit -- before the Pennsylvania Private Investors Group (which appears to have had its Web site taken down) -- that took place when I was involved with
GreyPilgrim, Inc. Maybe this story will help you.
If you want to address a group of money people, and tell them about your business, you have to pay for the privilege of the group deciding whether you're worthy. This is not unlike paying to take an exam which, if you pass, will allow you not to take an otherwise required undergraduate course. Circa 1997, the PPIG was charging $150 to review business plans. Since they agreed to have us address them, the partners felt the $150 was well-spent. But the other partners agonized over this pitch for several weeks, and I decided that since so much effort went into it, I'd better tag along and see what was up with that. Even though the partners weren't going to let me actually TALK during the pitch. They said that since I was an engineer, and that I was likely to (a) tell the truth as I saw it and (b) put everyone to sleep with technobabble, I'd better sit in the background.
The meeting was held in a nice hotel, and coffee and muffins were amply available. I couldn't have a muffin, even though I'd missed breakfast -- we couldn't take the chance that one of the high-rollers would think I had bad table manners and decide not to invest in us for it. We were pretty sensitive to those kinds of things.
Another small company, which had developed an "expert system" to activate alarms in chemical and power plants in the event of an accident, presented ahead of us, and we had a chance to learn from them. (This group was inspired by
the famous Union Carbide Bhopal accident, as I was when I wrote
the sci.engr.* FAQ on Failures. They took a response manual used by
Dow Chemical to determine triggers and responses for alarms, and automated the manual. Then they added customer suggestions to the knowledge base, and made an intuitive graphical user interface. It really was sweet. And they'd set up copies of this software at HUGE companies like Dow,
Dupont, etc. -- but they hadn't SOLD any yet. That was baffling to me, and baffling to the money people listening in, too.
And it didn't bode well for us, either, because software generally requires less of a buyer commitment than robot arms.
Well, as it happened, our presentation went "very well." I used to scream when the partners would use that phrase, "very well," about how something was going. It drove me crazy, because it was undefined. And it never meant we'd made some money. So I tended not to believe them. My job, as the engineer, was to be the Voice of Reason, making impartial observations. And the Voice of Reason also got to flip the viewgraphs. Afterwards, we found ourselves surrounded by half a dozen old tycoons, asking questions and watching our videotape for nearly half an hour. They'd told us they'd never seen such enthusiasm. I never saw it either: we didn't get a dime of investment money.
Anyway, the Voice of Reason will now tell you what it means to feel "very well" in this context:
- you really do feel good when it's over
- you take a significant amount of time to answer questions, and you CAN answer them (in this case, they even let ME answer a couple of them)
- you collect numerous business cards (and with any luck, a commitment from a couple of guys to call you at a later date)
I heartily recommend visiting an investment group like this to any entrepreneur. Even if you're not on the agenda, if they can let you sit in, you may feel something fulfilling: palpable interest, and even excitement, about what entrepreneurs are doing.
Labels: rhetoric
Anatomy of a Strap-Mate failed negotiation
Steve Gable of
Strap-Mate (I know, they're actually called "LG Accessories," but I like the name of their flagship product better) sent me the play-by-play for a failed negotiation he had with
Spanx, one of the companies I recommended he contact as part of the
"sample ploy". Steve originally tried to contact CEO
Sara Blakely, but the contact was expanded to a specific office when Blakely, now a star thanks to
Rebel Billionaire, did not respond. It's really disappointing that the Spanx representative was not a bit more open-minded about Strap-Mate products, but you'll probably guess that she has a company strategy to follow and she followed it closely. She does deserve snaps for being prompt with her rejections. :-) :-) :-)
UPDATE: Steve also tells me he went after Spanx with LG's laundry bag product instead of the flagship Strap-Mate. His feeling was that the laundry bag was a better match.
Hi Stef! Just got your samples. Thank you for thinking of SPANX with your patented laundry bag, but at this time I don't see that we are interested. Good luck with everything and thank you again for showing me!
Jadideah Duckham
Product Development Manager
SPANX, Inc.
Thanks for your quick response.
I really wish you would consider running a web-site test. I currently have about 500 of the 15x17inch divided bags in bulk, not individually packaged, which would enable you to have a supply on hand. You could run it as a limited introductory product. Suggested Retail about $7.95 or $8.95.
We would be willing to sell you bags in bulk, not individually package. This supply for your resell of 500 is $1.95 per bag plus shipping from our warehouse in Dayton, New Jersey. Of course, we are willing to sell you less or more. The beauty of your web-site is that you do have the ability to test to your audience.
Jadideah, one of the reasons, I thought the Easy Care Laundry Bag would do exceptionally well is because you also sell specialty products for people who care about their products. There are those who do not do well selling soap type products but do selling mesh bags.
The Easy Care Laundry Bag with all of its features really is ideal for your audience. They will buy and say thank you.
Hi Steve. I really appreciate your email. But honestly as the designer of the products and packaging, this bag isn't really up to my standards of what I would make or sell under the SPANX brand. We just have really high quality and design standards that are more unique then many of the items out there. With retailers such as Saks and Neimans, we constantly have to keep the values high. Plus when we decide to introduce laundry bags, I would have one of our manufacturers make it for us instead of going through a middle man and paying an upcharge. I know you understand that [...]
So thank you again for thinking of us and I do really appreciate your efforts. I wish you the very best!!
I would only want you to have the highest standards!
What is unique is the divided bag. I hope that you will consider at some point utilizing the patent which could generate some royalities for Lisa.
Please know that the door is open if you want to test with our existing product, which really reduces your time line. You really don't know if it will go - was giving you a way to sample the market, reducing your R&D costs.
Thanks for your candor. I am so very happy that you provided the opportunity to have a frank discussion. Please keep in touch.
Thanks Stef. To this date we have never paid any royalties for someone's idea. I know that it's hard to get patented ideas into a large company because usually no one is willing to pay royalties unless it's a really huge idea. And although I understand the concept of the divided bags, it's not unique enough for us to use it and/or pay to use it. Again I appreciate your time.
Finally, Steve writes to me...
Just wanted you to see that I followed this to extract the core of how the organization operated. If I wished to pursue it further my role would be to convert it into a hugh idea for Ms. Duckham - for now, I will work on the other suspects.
What's disappointing about Duckham's responses is
- While showing the utmost politeness, it's clear she's cutting Steve off as though he were a Jehovah's Witness at the door. Maybe she gets a bucketload of such proposals every day.
- She doesn't say how Strap-Mate products fail to meet Spanx standards, and I frankly question that statement altogether.
Labels: rhetoric
The burden of proof is a moving target
Normally, the burden of proof falls on those making the
claim, whatever the claim may be. Of course, I have seen even this simple principle of rhetoric wrongly used against those with unpopular beliefs. Christians, for instance, are widely assumed (at least on the Net) to be about converting everyone else, even when they apply their beliefs and requirements only to themselves. These folks are often shouted down by people who think themselves enlightened for shouting. People who are otherwise thoughtful and analytical fall all over themselves to throw the "burden of proof" at bystanders who are willing to admit to having unpopular beliefs.
But that's a digression.
The entrepreneur recognizes the burden of proof in trying to sell a new product or service. We must convince an audience of potential customers that (a) they need what we're selling and (b) they want us to sell it to them. But the burden of proof is (sometimes wrongly) thrown back at us by dissatisfied customers. They say our product or service is bad, or even just that we suck, and they aren't required to prove it. WE are required to prove we don't suck instead. Doing business with the public is about perception. If we're perceived as nonresponsive to customers, we are until be prove we're not. Again, the simplest principles of rhetoric fail sometimes in the face of human behavior.
This is why some companies ignore customers who squawk. We figure maybe they'll go away after their spleens are vented. Of course, once again the Internet has made even this a risky proposition. That's why the best advice I can give the young entrepreneur about the "burden of proof" is to have everyone in the company be responsible for
customer service, and that our responsibilities in that role include listening -- even when the burden of proof is wrongly thrown at us -- and doing the best we can to act on what we hear.
Labels: rhetoric
Revenge of the greengrocers' apostrophe!
Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves defines for us the greengrocers' apostrophe: a possessive apostrophe used to indicate a plural noun, such as the sign in my local Shop Rite produce section that says "cucumber's 2/99."
So what happens when I get a professionally printed postcard in the mail, like the one I got from a small shop called Crystals, that announces a sale on "ladie's wear?" Is that a sign that the greengrocers are getting even?
Labels: rhetoric
Motivation: applying motivational theory to grading
A seminal work in classroom motivation is Keller (1987), "Development and Use of the ARCS Model of Instructional Design."
Journal of Inst. Dev., 10 (3), 2-10. Since it's about classroom motivation, it's not always relevant to workplace motivation. BUT... given that entrepreneurs are often in companies no bigger than classrooms, and in situations where they learn something every day, I think the ARCS model is worth at least not being ignored. ARCS == "attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction," by the way.
So here's how I can use the ARCS model to improve my own classes:
- Attention
- Relevance
- explain how each task contributes to final grade
- explain how each task contributes to potential start-up
- Confidence
- estimate time and type of effort to be expended on tasks
- Satisfaction
- give immediate feedback
- give rewards for individuals and teams
Some of this stuff I am already doing. But I am applying more information to my grading structure, because I sense that my students feel there's a disconnect between the work they do and the grade they get.
- 30% blog
- rubric for blog established
- blog must average minimum of one post per week, with average minimum of 250 words per week, and every month or other four-week period in which nothing is posted will cost 5% of blog grade.
- 30% business plan
- rubric for business plan from writing perspective established
- rubric for business plan from content perspective is as follows:
- executive summary: one page, summarizes the entire work
- financials: at a minimum, includes break-even point, start-up financing needed (which must be reasonable), purpose(s) of financing
- market: at a minimum, includes market entry strategy, barriers to market entry, major competitors, and assumptions
- management: at a minimum, includes your team and one experienced adult with complementary skill, full biographical info, no pointers to youth and lack of experience, roles in company clearly defined
- product or service: at a minimum, includes what's to be offered right away, and conditions under which that is to change and/or grow
- 20% book review
- In your OWN words, you describe -- within four pages --
- the central message(s) of the book
- what you learned from reading it
- whether or not you would have done things the same way
- whether or not you recommend that others read it
- To familiarize yourself with writing style, read at least two book reviews in trade magazines with an audience similar to yours.
- 20% other participation, with the following choices of graded assignments:
- Participation in Writing Program assessment at start and end of the semester. You get 5% of your final grade if you participate in both; you LOSE 5% of your final grade if you participate in neither.
- Creation of a brochure for your business, including graphics: 5%
- Creation of a one-page lecture handout for a relevant subject of interest, including sources: 5%
- Peer evaluation of three classmates' works: one blog, one business plan, and one book review: 5%
- A one-page handout offering suggestions for a small business problem defined by your instructor: 5%
- A five-minute presentation on a relevant subject of interest, plus Q&A: 5%
Labels: rhetoric
Motivation: teamwork
This site has some neat background on motivation theorists' work applied to the workplace. The work at that site is focused on management. But groups that work well together
- share the work (close to) equally
- treat each other fairly in other ways
- don't keep each other waiting
- tend to be more positive than negative; more encouraging than discouraging
- don't air each others' dirty laundry
- have leadership that exemplifies these qualities; CEOs, managers, etc. must do these things FIRST
So you can see that, while management has the most important responsibilities in motivating teams, none of us who are on
teams get away without responsibility.
This is why start-ups pay so much attention to their hires. They must find people who can work with each other, knowing that workplace squabbles will force them to make tough choices.
In large organizations, we see that sometimes teams are chosen by who's available. That's a different dynamic than what you find in a typical start-up. But in both cases, effective teamwork -- and motivation for the team's members -- is tied into trust. If individual team members are busy covering their asses, trust cannot be developed; motivation goes right down the Bemis.
I love writing about motivation. Plan on seeing a lot more on this topic down the road. :-)
Labels: rhetoric
The good answer now...
I was always taught as an engineer, along with other (sometimes clichèd)
proverbs that
a good answer now beats a better answer later. Well, now is the time for the good answer: school is out and I have to keep busy through the summer. Here's what I'm up to as far as I know today:
- Developing a (brief) plan for ESL services. The current population of adult English-language learners has grown to the point where there are enough potential customers for academic and professional English-language training to keep just about everyone who offers that service busy. I just got through making a formal proposal for TCNJ to offer such services to its own students -- something the College has never done. I believe they are 50-50 to adopt my recommendations, and even at that will not reach out to the community with what to me is a proven money-maker. So why should I not take my own advice?
As an advertising option, I'd like to make bookmarks with something like the editing symbols seen on the chart that's pictured here. I'm not totally sold on this particular chart, but I think if I want to hand something out that advertises my services, that something should have some useful information embedded in it.
- Assisting Juterphusion with the next generation of its business plan. They have not written a new one since going into business, and I attribute this to being too busy with... well, going into business. So I will write it.
- Assisting Holcombe Chassis Works with the next generation of its business plan and performing a series of load and stress calculations on the new chassis design. A small business can't afford finite element analysis code, so it has to make assumptions: namely, treating the chassis as a loaded beam. That assumption can lead to stress calculations happening in a spreadsheet -- one that can be updated later without my help.
Unfortunately, none of those options will generate money FOR ME in the near term, so I have to make some other things happen too. Stay tuned...
Labels: rhetoric
