Learning Plans = Intentions

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If you don’t create the budget for learning and development, your staff will not get the training they need to stay competitive and efficient. Your organization has to set the intention, not just react to a changing IT scene or a challenging economy.

Intention is everything, from closing a deal to deciding what you want to learn this year. One way that we work with intention with our clients is to help them create Learning Plans. It’s not a new concept, but one that served me well in my higher education days and fits nicely with business and resource planning. Knowledge must be at the top of your 2013 list, along with internal and external learning.

Jim Collins www.jimcollins.com, author of Good to Great, said, “It is my belief that continuing education in a company…will be one of the distinguishing forces that sorts the great from the good brands.” Learning Plans are like timelines that help individuals, teams and organizations achieve their educational goals.

Here are a few reasons why we use them.

  • To drive adoption of new technology and business solutions
  • Provides a timeline and roadmap for organizational and individual development
  • Learning Assessments empower organizations to use the correct environment, communication styles and incentives to facilitate behavioral change
  • Enable better use and efficiency of implementations
  • Learning materials reflect the level and/or role of the learner

Here are the results of using Learning Plans.

  • Alignment between business and technology strategies
  • Culture of learning is established within the organization
  • Users engage with the new technology and become proficient
  • Metrics to measure before, during and after the project
  • Proven methods of motivation

At the organizational level, the C-suite minds decide that a new customer relationship system is going to enhance the client experience.

The questions that pop up for the IT/HR director should sound like this.

  • Will users perceive this as better than our old process?
  • How much change will be required?
  • Will this adoption be easy or hard for users?
  • How quickly will the benefits be visible?

Above all else, remember learning should be fun. Arnold Toynbee said, “The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.” Set your intentions for 2013. Develop and expand your employees’ knowledge and enhance their ability to make your organization competitive and successful!

Craig Sroda

Making Businesses Better – Together

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If you’ve met me in person, you probably know I am a person who can be pretty darned enthusiastic. I am passionate about things like my family and cars. And, I get flippin’ pumped about technology. I love business and thinking about the future with customers and drawing out their dreams in whiteboard sessions. (I’ve always said, “My whiteboards are my art.”). I love making businesses better.

Back when Maurice and I founded Pinnacle in 1996, I was super excited because we could build a team and bring technology solutions to businesses and make them better. It was cool as crap back then and it’s still cool as crap today! (I know, but it’s just how I talk.)

Ten months ago, I had been looking for ways that Pinnacle could serve our clients better and for ways to reach new customers. It was about that time I met Steve Klatt, CEO of Advanced Imaging Solutions.

If you’ve ever met Steve, you know he’s a great guy. You know he has vision, integrity, and an incredible business sense. We hit it off right away. We discovered how much our two businesses complimented each other and how similar our corporate cultures and values were. Over time the question, “How can we help each other find more clients?” became, “How can we serve our clients, together?”

After a lot of thought and consideration, Steve and I decided the best path would be for Advanced Imaging Solutions to purchase Pinnacle. So today, Advanced Imaging Solutions is the parent company of Pinnacle. You can read our press release here.

This is great news! And while this is “officially” an acquisition, in reality, it’s much more like a merger. Pinnacle’s core offerings complement those of Advanced Imaging Solutions and Pinnacle will continue to offer the same core of solutions, from the same office, and with the same Pinnacle staff. Yes, including me. I’ll be on our newly formed Executive Team and quarterbacking ERP.

It’s been 16 years and I m more excited than ever about the future, about technology and especially about helping customers with their businesses. I hope you are too! Thank you for your business and your trust over these years. I hope you will continue to trust us as we serve you as part of Advanced Imaging Solutions. I’m pumped!

Sincerely,

Craig

The Laws of Technology Adoption: The Burning Ship

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“Quemo Los Barcos” is Spanish for “Burn the Boats.”

So, the story goes that in order to avoid mutiny before going into battle against the Aztecs, Hernan Cortes ordered his men to burn their ships so that they would have no other options available to them – they needed to stay and fight. There would be no going back to Spain.

It was fight and win … or die trying.

And while burning his boats may have been a really good way for Cortes to ensure his people did what he wanted them to do, we’ve learned that management by threat of death doesn’t sit well with most employees (nor with HR directors.)

Today, when it comes to technology adoption, many companies think a little like Cortes did. That is, they simply “burn down” their old systems by disabling them and leaving their people with no other options. And while this can be an effective way to get 100% adoption, we know that forcing people into behavior change is usually not a good way to get the best out of your people. Just like that old Cheap Trick song, I Want You to Want Me, we always want users to WANT to use our systems.

So, The Law of the Burning Ship isn’t about burning things up, it’s about starting emotional fires. It’s about creating a burning platform for change and helping users see the benefits that the technology will bring to them. It means fueling a burning desire within our people to embrace the technology and use it to its fullest.

So, how do we begin to create our burning platform?

First, we have to make sure we have a rock-solid business case behind the project – this is the WHY behind the initiative. To drive desire, the WHY must be compelling. If the case for the initiative is not or cannot be compelling, then there are probably larger questions that need to be asked.

Second, the WHY must be acticulated simply – so simple a 6-year-old can understand it. If a simple explanation cannot be found, scope must be reexamined, communications re-crafted, or perhaps a new champion assigned.

Finally, communication on the WHY must be clear, consistent  and relentless. Over-communication is seldom listed as a reason for technology adoption failure.  There should be no ambiguity from anywhere in the organization about the who, what, where, when and the Why.

Technology adoption is critical to your organization’s success.  Remember, no matter how perfect the solution, or how smooth its implementation, or how under-budget the project is at completion, it doesn’t matter one iota if the technology doesn’t get used as it was intended. The Laws of Adoption are real and should be considered as you undertake any technology initiative. Be sure to subscribe to Pinnacle’s free  24 Irrefutable Laws of Technology Adoption video series to help ensure your technology adoption success.

Whiteboard Session: Endless Possibilities

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A blank piece of paper is filled with opportunity. The opportunity to express feelings, thoughts, or pictures is possible with a blank piece of paper. Blank pieces of paper can also be shopping lists, invitations, maps or contracts. The possibilities are endless.

If you consider a Whiteboard as a piece of paper, and begin to think about your company goals and objectives, the current state of the infrastructure, the number of applications, data sources, workflow and processes you have, the possibilities of enhancing productivity while improving the infrastructure may also seem endless.

And though the goal of the Whiteboard Session is not to overwhelm with possibilities, we do wish to identify valuable options. We begin by engaging the customer’s team in formal discussions to identify the strategic layers of each organization: Business Strategy, Application, and Infrastructure/IT. Next, we provide a snap-shot of the current state of the systems and processes. Finally, we look for areas of improvement to reduce risk, enhance productivity, and align strategy and systems with the organization’s goals and objectives.

Each Whiteboard Session serves as the preface to the Technology Roadmap (TR). The TR is a 90-day, 1- and/or 3-year timeline for project implementation. [Link Reference to Previous Blog about TR.] The identified projects are the result of collaboration by the customer representatives at the Whiteboard Session. After agreeing on a timeframe for the projects, we document the project in a TR for project tracking and management.

Typically, we also discover a plethora of Excel spreadsheets in use. Because Excel spreadsheets are most often created by manually inputting data, or importing information from multiple datasets, silos of data become common place. Reconciling this information to reports created by others is nearly impossible as the datasets for the two reports may be different, and/or the search criteria may be different.

We also discover infrastructure opportunities for improvement. For instance, when considering hosted or cloud applications, the infrastructure must be configured to support the user base and the hosted application. Many of the customers we meet with today are not cloud-ready. We help them budget for changes to allow for cloud adoption.

In reviewing the data sources, we identify the data sources for ERP, Sales/CRM, Data Management, Data Imaging and Line-of-Business. We look for current and missing integration points between data sources, overlaps of data, and duplicate data entry processes. It is during this review where process improvement occurs. When automation of processes and reduction of manual data entry can be accomplished, costs are reduced. Creating a system that incorporates automated processes with sharing of information throughout the organization provides a streamlined approach to managing data sources.

Once the data sources are aligned, Business Intelligence (BI) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be mined. BI and KPIs are presented in real-time to decision makers as dashboards. Where previous information was individually and manually gathered and stored in Excel and/or Access, it is now stored in SQL databases. The SQL databases are accessible by all the users (with appropriate security) and data can be mined to provide real-time statistics.

Think of three key pieces of information that you wish you had each morning that would streamline your decision making process. As an example, for each of the roles below, the following information may allow for more informed decisions:

  • Sales Manager: Total Pipeline per Rep / MTD & YTD Deals Closed / Activity Tracking
  • Warehouse Manager: Inventory on Hand / Number of Back Orders / Efficiency of Order Picking
  • Production Supervisor: % of Scrap / Number of Lines Operational & Issues / Efficiency of Lines
  • CFO/CEO: % Sales to YTD Goals / Safety Statistics / % Scrap to Revenue

In order to gain this valuable business information, the systems, applications, processes, data sources and infrastructure must be in sync. Through the Whiteboard Session, Pinnacle identifies, advises and assists in aligning customer’s business strategy with IT strategy to attain achievement of company goals and objectives.

MSBUILD PATH Quirk Fix

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I just made a quick fix to a perplexing MSBUILD problem easily and quickly and thought I would share it.

Every project we undertake has a series of Continuous Integration builds defined:

Automated Build (builds on check-in to Source Control)

Nightly Build (builds each night)

Deployment Builds: Integration, UAT, Staging, and Release as appropriate.

We use Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS2010) for Source Control, and Team City for Continuous Integration management.

For the second time in probably a year, I had a set of builds suddenly start failing after the developers changed path structures, with the symptom that MSBUILD complains that a .CSPROJ file does not exist on the specified relative path. On investigation, the path is found to be exactly where it should be. I have had problems with path lengths in the past, so I checked both path lengths and found them to be less than 200, which should be fine. I ran across a Microsoft Reference during my research which pointed to a known issue with MSBUILD where the combined length of the calling project and the relative path of the referenced project equal a specific number (259).

Even though my quick NotePad++ line length count indicated I had not hit the magic number, I made a quick change in the VCS root by adding one character to the root(s) of the impacted builds. Sure enough – problem fixed.

TeamCity makes this easy.

Each project in the build has an associated Version Control Setting Root (VCS Root)

Each VCS Root can have one or more checkout rules defined to change path structures or filter out portions of shared projects not needed for the particular build. One convention I adopted early on was to add a short root name to each VCS root in order to keep relative paths equivalent during the CI Build process. (Short names are key here due to inherent path length issues when dropping down several levels in the project).

Example:

Project1
SharedProject1
SharedProject2
SharedProject3

Becomes:

PCProject1
PCSharedProject1
PCSharedProject2
PCSharedProject3

Final paths look like:

C:BuildAgentwork87b81e895d8dab89PCProjectNameSharedProject1Pinnacle.Customer.SharedProject1.FunctionFunctionFunction.csproj

C:BuildAgentwork87b81e895d8dab89PCProjectNameSharedProject2Pinnacle.Customer.SharedProject2.FunctionFunctionFunction.csproj

C:BuildAgentwork87b81e895d8dab89PCProjectNameSharedProject3Pinnacle.Customer.SharedProject3.FunctionFunctionFunction.csproj

TeamCity automatically adds the random subdirectory name (in this case – 87b81e895d8dab89) to the work folder for each build.

I use a two letter combination to define the TFS Collection in which the VCS Root lives, in this case PC for Pinnacle Collection – our general collection for most projects. We have other collections for DataBase SourceCode (we use RedGate Source Control), collections shared with vendors or customers, etc.

The two letter convention preserves the tree structure found in the development environments, and allows relative paths to walk up and down the structure as needed.

TeamCity allows you to add the pseudo root by transforming the path as code is pulled from SourceControl through the use of VCS Root Checkout Rules.

My original checkout rule looked like:

+:.=>.PCProjectName

Which simple says, Add “PCProjectName” to the beginning of the directory structure for everything pulled from SourceControl.

I simply changed the VCS root checkout rule in each referenced root to be:

+:.=>.PC1ProjectName

Making this simple change to the checkout rule changed the total path length of the problem references enough to bypass the MSBUILD path quirk.

Total time to research: 2 hours.

Total time for fix: 5 minutes

Enrique Lima

The path to MCSE:SharePoint. The Overview.

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There have been changes to certifications recently and with that new challenges and requirements. In the past, we had MCTS and MCITP or MCPD on a specific product and that was it, now the story is somewhat different. You will need to not only know the product (yes, I am one that still focuses on knowing a product not the test), but also the environment on which it sits or lives (therefore Windows Server and supporting services).

The requirements for MCSE: SharePoint now takes you through the MCSA: Windows Server 2012. Many have questioned this, I don’t. Why? I have seen plenty of “accidental SharePoint Farm Administrators” that have no background with the Server OS, much less with the services (like DNS and IIS). Again, I am not saying this will guarantee knowledge, but it does in some way require exposure to it.

So, again, the next number of posts will be to provide guidance for the needed knowledge for the test requirements. If you have seen the way I go about this, you know I don’t focus on exam questions, but rather providing guidance to the TechNet and MSDN documentation to get to know the product. I will also, in this case, go through the process to setup your virtual environment to play with the products and get to know them.

Now, the requirements themselves are:

MCSA: Windows Server 2012.

Exam 70-410: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012

Exam 70-411: Administering Windows Server 2012

Exam 70-412: Configuring Advanced Windows Server 2012 Services

There is also an Upgrade Path which means only one exam. This requires you be Certified as an MCITP: SharePoint Administrator, and then pass the following exam:

Exam 70-417: Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server 2012

SharePoint specific exams.

Exam 70-331: Core Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013

Exam 70-332: Advanced Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013

Passing the 5 exams will grant you the MCSE: SharePoint credential.

Jim Collins at IT Nation 2012

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Jim Collins spoke at the IT Nation in Orlando, FL.  Here are the notes for any company wanting to become great:

Why do some enterprises thrive in difficult times and others don’t? Why do leaders thrive and fall in tough times?

  • The difference in leaders who built 10x companies vs. those who were average: The X factor is humility combined with will of the leader
  • #1 Fanatic Discipline: No matter what the conditions, great leaders do the daily work, no matter what… a standard of discipline…
  • Comparison of two explorers (Omlinson and Scott in 1911) going to the South Pole, some traveled when the conditions were good, the successful one’s traveled the same distance every day in a disciplined way.
  • #1 best performing stock since 1972: Southwest Airlines- No matter what, we’ll manage ourselves in good times and bad. They are coming up on nearly 40 straight years of profitability. They had the discipline to only open 4 new locations when hundreds were clamoring for them to add their site.
  • “What is your 20 mile march in your organization? What is that daily discipline for you?”
  • Mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.
  • # 2 Empirical Creativity
  • If we’re going to “bet”- we better know it’s going to work- in going to the South Pole, use dogs not ponies. Get knowledge from those with the real experience.
  • Leaders don’t fire enough little bullets to see what will work for big bets, or big shots.
  • Creativity AND discipline is the genius of AND… Creativity is natural, discipline is not. Think about a 5 year old, they can be amazingly creative but not so much on discipline.
  • #3 Productive Paranoia
  • The only mistakes you can learn from are the one’s you survive
  • 3x Cash to Assets than their peers- much more than normal. Cash is king.
  • Take the paranoia and use that to make good decisions BEFORE you get in trouble so you can be strong in tough times
  • Specific, Methodically, and Consistent. SMaC
  • The greatest danger is to be successful without knowing why you were successful in the first place.
  • Southwest Airlines: Same airplanes used, same processes, they have great “SMaC” recipes- they copied a great business model in Pacific Southwest Airlines
  • What is your SMaC recipe?
  • Have the discipline to do it while always watching how to evolve it…. preserve the core and stimulate progress.
  • Test: Challenge: You didn’t cause it, potential major consequence, and has some unpredictability? (Can you think of an event like this in your life?) As a leader, how did you perform in that test, what grade would you give yourself?
  • In a changing world, the myth is that you need to continually change in a changing world, the reality is great companies have a deep understanding on how they were successful and are very careful about ever changing their recipe. Great companies only changed 20% over time and changed the “right” things.
  • Definition of Luck: “You didn’t cause it, it created a good consequence, and came as a bit of a surprise”
  • Are successful companies benefiting from luck? The winners were not “luckier”…
  • It’s not a question of whether you’ll have opportunities or luck- average companies squander them…
  • “Thousands could have, but only one did….”- is that luck or someone that can take advantage of the opportunities?
  • Life is about people and time with the people you love.
  • Luck is similarly aligned with miracles.
  • What is your Return on Luck? What is your Return on Bad Events or Unexpected Events? How do you grab the most of a Good Event?
  • Is our leadership a matter of what we do or what happens to us? It’s the things we do. Greatest is a function of conscious choice and discipline.
  • Great companies three things: Superior performance, distinctive impact of what would be lost if we disappeared, it achieves lasting endurance beyond any one leader
  • Would there be a distinctive hole left if your company disappeared?
  • A great organization is not truly great if it cannot be great without you. (to the leader)
  • Great leaders are not about having some huge personality, some of the best leaders seem to lack all aspects of charisma- it seem to have been removed at birth.
  • Make your short time on this earth matter…. are you spending your time well?

Kung Fu with Kolb

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Round three, I’m back again with another school of thought on Learning Styles with a Kung Fu kick. How do you approach a new task, action or observation? Do you jump into something or need to see a demonstration first, action or observation? How do you perceive something new, do you think about it first or do you feel it out, head or heart?

David Kolb formulated his Learning Styles theory back in the 80’s (hair bands, Mr. T and spandex). In 1984, Kolb defined learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.” Kolb’s learning model has two layers, but here are the basics to help you be a lifelong learner. The focus is on experiential learning and how it affects the internal cognitive process. It’s broke down into two levels; a four stage learning cycle and four separate learning styles.

The four parts are concrete experience (feeling), reflective observation (watching), abstract conceptualization (thinking) and active experimentation (doing).  One axis defines how you process information and the other axis describes how you perceive things.

Now for the Kung Fu, it literally means to spend time and effort on learning new skills and craftsmanship to accumulate knowledge and abilities through practice. What in the world does this have to do with Learning Styles? Well, that definition sounds a lot like a lifelong learner to me! The goal is to understand what kind of Kung Fu master you are, how to strengthen your skills and wisdom and then how to apply it. Keep in mind when you learn, you go through the entire cycle of feeling, watching, thinking and doing. This theory helps explain what your preferences are and where you start on the cycle when you experience something new.

There aren’t any free, static links for the Kolb assessment but you can access the PDF I use in class HERE.

Print it out and follow the directions for the first yellow sheet, then take those numbers and plot them on the second yellow sheet. If you need some help, hit me up on twitter or email me at ddutka@pinnacleofindiana.com .  Chances are, you will recognize your learning style just by reading about it.  I’ll be presenting a Learning Styles workshop soon, let me know if you are interested!

Accommodating Kung Fu master- Implementer, feel and do, hands-on experience, acts on intuition instead of logic, rely on others for information, action oriented and wants results, quick adapter, prefers group collaboration, focus on the “if”.

Converging Kung Fu master- Optimizer, think and do, experiment with new ideas, practical ideas/theories, prefer technical tasks to social issues, likes to solve problems and evaluate processes, lots of concentration, focus the “how”.

Assimilating Kung Fu master- Conceptualizer, think and watch, learns by lectures, reading and exploring analytical models, logic over practicality, prefers abstract concepts and ideas instead of people, can summarize lots of information into concise, logical form, focus on the “what”.

Diverging Kung Fu master- Generator, feel and watch, learns well in groups and brainstorming sessions, wants personalized feedback, imaginative and concerned with feelings, open to experience, likes to observe and watch before taking action, can sense opportunities, focus on the “why”.

A Kung Fu master once said, “A martial artist practices the fundamentals since the first day of his/her training to the last day of life.” Remember learning is a lifelong process Kung Fu master.

8 Is Great!

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I’m not talking about Microsoft 8; we’ll have that conversation later!  Multiple Intelligences (MI) is another Learning Styles theory and also happens to be my favorite. Howard Gardner published his MI theories in 1983 with updates as his research continues. Gardner’s theory explains how everyone has specific intelligences. Scholars have discovered that not everyone learns the same which can affect one’s professional and personal life. Learning needs to be accessible in multiple ways to ensure understanding, retention and adoption. Use this learning tool to better your life and the lives around you.

Literacy Works has a free MI quiz to find out what your intelligences are. Once you have the results, read on to learn about your MI.

http://www.literacyworks.org/mi/assessment/findyourstrengths.html

Visual-Spatial: (picture smart) think in terms of physical space, aware of one’s environment, like to draw, read maps and day dream

  • Learn best through verbal and physical imagery, drawings, video and multimedia

Bodily-Kinesthetic: (body smart) use the body well, very aware of the body and movement, like to build things by hand, communicate through body language and is touchy-feely

  • Learn best through physical activity, role playing, hands-on-learning and building curiosity

Musical: (music smart) sensitive to rhythm and sound, love music and aware of all environmental sounds, prefer to study or work with music in the background

  • Learn best making lessons into lyrics or songs and prefer multimedia, music and instruments

Interpersonal: (people smart) understand others, many friends, empathize easily, street smarts

  • Learn best in group activities, collaboration, seminars and active discussions

Intrapersonal: (self-smart) understands the self and one’s goals, interests and needs while shying away from others, very in touch with personal feelings, intuitive and may focus on health and exercise

  • Learn best through introspection and independent study with books, journaling and privacy

Linguistic: (word smart) speak very effectively with very developed auditory skills, enjoy reading, word games and creating narratives

  • Learn best by reading, dialoguing and using computers, books, lectures and multimedia

Logical-Mathematical: (logic smart) tidy, always calculating and reasoning things, conceptual and abstract thinker, sees things in patterns and likes to experiment and solve puzzles

  • Learn best using logic games, solving mysteries and investigating topics, must form concepts before handling details

Naturalist: (nature smart) in tune with nature, recognizes and categorizes features of one’s environment, likes to be outside doing activities like gardening, hiking and exploring

  • Learn best when relating things to nature, prefers hands-on experiences and being outside

People vary in their intelligences; many have two or three that are dominant. Most educational tactics focus on verbal and logical/mathematical intelligences; imagine how many learners miss out on valuable learning experiences because of this. In order to be effective in your career broaden the methods you use to educate, inform and communicate with others. Next time try interactive media in your presentation or facilitate experiential learning for your clients with a hands-on demonstration.

Keep in mind that MI influences how one understands others, the self, remembers information, carries out tasks, solves problems and gauges success. There is even an Associated Thinking Language that goes along with each MI. Your inner voice and thinking process reflects your MI. If my boss is an Interpersonal MI, she would use words like interact, collaborate, connect, relate and perceive. If she was Logical-Mathematical, she would use words like generalize, abstract, sequence, analyze and classify.

The goal is to learn how to employ each of the intelligences, 8 is great! Empower yourself, use this knowledge to build better relationships and continue lifelong learning…and encourage others to do the same!