Is there anything better than a good steak?

I really like eating a good steak, but honestly good steak is very hard to find. And even though I live in Boston – a major city in the U.S. - I can count the number of terrific steak restaurants on two hands. That said, there are a few really good ones and I was especially excited last Saturday, knowing I was going to one of them; Grill 23. I was so excited, I tweeted: “Dinner tonight – going to one of Boston’s premier steak and seafood restaurants - @grill23andbar. (Top 5 in my opinion).” 

Well, to my surprise, I received a tweet back from Grill 23 and they said: “@ValaAfshar we will do our very best to make sure you have a great time, so that we can stay high on your top 5!!”  Being in the customer service business, and adopting a social enterprise mindset, I was delighted to receive a prompt and welcoming reply from one of my favorite restaurants.  In fact, at this point, they had achieved a milestone – a satisfied customer. But the story does not end here.

I arrived 30 minutes before my reservation and normally when you represent a larger party – 6 in my case – you would wait by the bar before your entire party arrives, before you can be seated. Not tonight. I was promptly greeted, given the option to sit at the table, and had arguably the best services that I had ever received throughout the course of the evening. Friendly staff, engaged management, attentive service… absolutely brilliant. To be fair, the service is always very good, but for this particular evening, the service was exceptional. 

Now I have no insight in terms of how Grill 23 prepared for my arrival, given the social media correspondence, and whether that influenced the quality of service, but I like to think that it did. At this point, Grill 23 achieved a second milestone – a delighted, perhaps committed customer. I might even consider moving them to a top-3 position on my ‘restaurants in Boston’ list.

I really like a good steak. But what I love even more, is a superb customer experience. Thanks to social media, and Grill 23’s customer engagement strategy, I was able benefit from both.

Well done Grill 23 (for the record, I like medium rare; I bet you already know that).

Practicing What You Preach (even if you are not quite ready)

Recently, one of our (Enterasys) Solution Architects published this white paper on "Managing BYO Device Programs". Of course a bunch of my enterprising users immediately contacted the service desk asking if this was now policy, and when they could bring in their devices from home. Of course, while we have been working on this, we are not really ready to fully support this. We have been trying several things, looking for the balance that meets user needs, is not prohibitively expensive, and that will still provide us with reasonable security.

Here is where we are at:

• We evaluated full remote desktop type VDI, both from VMware and Citrix, and dismissed it, as at our user counts, it cost about as much per user as a good laptop, and left us with more infrastructure to manage
• We are allowing a limited set of folks to direct connect, and using our own NAC capabilities, limiting access to web resources. By using our SSL VPN portal, they can then get to internal web resources. Several folks have been doing this for quite some time, and it seems to work for them
• We are actually moving as many of our applications as possible to the cloud, which offers access from anywhere. As a side note, shame on you cloud providers that sell access from anywhere yet force your own employees to VPN in to access your applications. You know who you are
• We are in the early stages of deploying a cloud identity management solution (Okta) that will soon offer two-factor authentication, which will meet our security requirements going forward
• We have started evaluating the new HTML 5 Citrix client in an application virtualization deployment, and this one shows great promise
• We already allow employee owned Active Sync devices to connect to our Exchange environment as long as the user sets a simple unlock pin, and grants us the ability to do a remote wipe if necessary to protect our data

I have come to the conclusion that a single strategy is probably not enough. For some users, the guest wireless solution will be sufficient. For others, they will need a bit more access until we have more stuff in the cloud. At some point, I believe the only folks that will still need access to non-web internal resources will be the engineers that need to access our labs. Everything else will be on the web, and most of that in the cloud and accessible from anywhere and any device with internet access and an HTML 5 compliant browser. I attended a Google Enterprise event a few weeks ago where they presented there 100% web vision. I'm not sure I'll ever get us to 100% web, but I think 80% within the next two years is doable.

If our solutions team keeps writing white papers, I may have to do it sooner :). As we get closer, BYOD becomes much easier, thanks in large part to our NAC deployment's ability to classify the end devices and then allow only appropriate access.

Unlocking Your Full Potential

To unlock the full potential of your organization, business leaders can focus on 5 critical success factors (CSF):

1. People – Hire, empower, train and retain the best. Recruit smart, creative and passionate professionals with an unquenchable thirst for growth. A balance of both IQ and EQ (emotional) is important – a deficiency in either will certainly hinder your full potential.

2. Process – Stand still and you will fall behind. Measure or you will not improve but measure for the sake of improving behavior. As S. Covey noted, begin with the end in mind. And most importantly think big but act small and often – adopt a Kaizen approach of incremental change for the better.

3. Innovation – Outsmart the completion with the best and affordable tools but remember a lean process is the first step before you focus on the right tool.

4. Structure – Remove boundaries, flatten the hierarchy, and be adaptable. Structural elasticity can strengthen functional alignments (i.e. services and engineering) and propel you closer to reaching your full potential.

5. Culture – I was very fortunate to attend a luncheon with General Colin Powell as he shared his views of the importance of a purpose driven mindset. It’s good for organizations to have performance goals but it’s even better to adopt a purpose driven culture with emphasis on execution velocity, rejection of mediocrity, transparency, respect and enthusiasm for hard work and creativity. Our company’s mantra is ‘there is nothing more important than our customers’. Our purpose is to become our customers trusted advisor and favorite vendor to do business with.

To begin the journey of unlocking our full potential, I would like to focus on the first CSF – people. Hypothetically speaking, if you were given a choice to hire between two candidates, would you hire the ‘fast and sloppy’ or the ‘slow and good’ candidate? I know what you are thinking but assume you had no choice but to hire one of the two candidates. If you have ever competed athletically or coached then you might gravitate to ‘fast and sloppy’ because experience tells you that you cannot teach fast. On the other hand, if you subscribe to the ‘do it once, do it right’ school of thought then ‘slow and good’ is your choice. The challenge is to find the optimal balance that produces fast and good results.

Flat organizations are likely to place their employees into 3 categories: the thinkers, the doers, and the watchers. Your A-players are a combination of thinkers and doers so in order to unlock your team’s full potential you need to stop watching and do. The strength of your leadership, at all levels of the organization, will enable you to seek the optimal balance. Your hiring process is very important but the key to unlocking your team’s full potential is to retain and fully engage top talent. Once you have achieved a balance of fast and good, then you must work hard to develop an environment that fosters continuous improvements and growth. A flexible (telecommuting friendly) but challenging (performance score-carding) environment with market competitive compensation, accessibility to training, and most importantly a culture of inclusion will bolster your employee retention. Remember, no one of us is as smart as all of us so seek to understand before you are understood.

Recent industry data highlighted contact center average annual attrition levels at 27% (and north of 40% for offshore outsourced services). Since 2005, Enterasys has recognized less than 2% annual voluntary attrition levels in our customer support organization. It is worthwhile noting that the benefit of hiring and retaining top talent is real. In 2010, CRM Magazine recognized Enterasys as 1 of only 5 companies to earn a Service Elite distinction. Enterasys was the only technology company to earn this distinction and the only company to be recognized for multiple award categories including workforce optimization and enterprise feedback management. Check out the article here.

And finally, for what it’s worth, if forced to choose only one candidate, my choice would be ‘fast and sloppy’. I can expand more if you are interested but before we start to debate it’s important to note that even the best coaches and teams sometimes have to trade players to further improve. The management philosophy of ‘top-grading’ is one of guiding principles that has proven to optimize our recruitment, hiring, and retention success – http://www.smarttopgrading.com. As long as you maintain a flexible, decisive and fair mindset then you can take comfort in knowing that an iterative process will ultimately provide your organization with the balance you seek.

There will be future editorials regarding the other 4 critical success factors in a series of discussions that speak to improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Is there another critical success factor(s) to consider? I plan to add a 6th CSF in our playbook but I am curious to learn about your success stories and pursuit of achieving full potential.

My Twitter contact: @valaafshar

Geek of the Week (it's a good thing)

One of the things we have started in our quest for cool IT is what we call Geek of the Week. It is given out to folks that demonstrate some special "geekiness" that week. I actually kicked this off before I opened the "Are we cool enough?" can of worms, and folks seem to like it. Even other departments have heard of it and asked if they could join in.

I've kept it simple; people submit nominations to me, and I am the sole judge. Folks can nominate anyone, including  themselves. Nominations can be for any cool new bit of tech, or a new application of some existing tech that they have discovered and want to share. It is especially good if it solves a problem the business faces. A good example from a few weeks ago was the discovery of Tungle to share free/busy information externally. Many of us use it now, and it solves a real problem.

Of course you don't win much. I announce the winner via Chatter, and you get to keep the Geek of the Week certificate in your office until the next one is awarded.

I am interested in other ways folks have found to bring thought leadership to the surface.

Come on you Geeks!

Are We Cool Enough?

This question was prompted by this article on "What Motivates Your Top IT Employees". I posted the question to my management team, and ended up with a somewhat livelier discussion than I expected. I do push the team to do cool new stuff, and it often frustrates a good part of the team. While we are not done with this discussion, I have come to some conclusions:

• Cool for the sake of cool is silly. it still needs to enable the business
• What is cool today is status quo tomorrow (or maybe the next day). That doesn't mean it is not good, cutting edge stuff, and something to be proud of, but it does not give you a pass on cool new stuff
• I truly believe that thought leadership can be found anywhere; all levels of the business, customers, partners, etc. In order for us to capitalize on it, people need to bring their ideas forward. Encouraging this has proven to be a challenge
• We are in a major technology shift, specifically the shift of many business functions from traditional on-prem applications to the cloud
• This shift is causing considerable stress on the team, and managing through this change is another big challenge
• Many folks feel they are too busy to spend time finding cool new stuff. I am not completely buying it I find cool new stuff, and I am a pretty busy guy
• In order to give folks some more time to find the clever new solutions, I am trying to pick things we can stop doing. I am shocked at how hard it is to get people to tell me where they spend their time so I can pick stuff we will stop doing, or figure out how to do them more efficiently. If folks really do want to work on the cool stuff, they need to tell me what uncool stuff they spend time on so I can fix it

Of course we are pretty cool. We use our IT technology to enable the business considerably better than most companies I have contact with. Being an IT vendor ourselves, we also spend considerable time showing customers how we leverage our technology, and also upgrade to the latest beta (and sometimes alpha) versions to better support product development.

Another Long-time Vendor Causing Great Pain

This time it is RIM. We have been having sync issues with our blackberries for some time now. We believe it to be somehow related to our Exchange 2010 upgrade, as they started around the same time. RIM support has been no help. They now believe they understand the problem, but don't know how to fix it. They throw a lot of "try this" at us, but it is pretty apparent they don't have a clue as to how to get us relief.

My iOS and Android devices are nearly perfect when it comes to staying in sync, and they are much nicer devices to live with. The only reason we still have blackberries at all is are the slightly better corporate features that some of the users want. However, the most important thing sync, and if you can't get that right, you need to go.

So, I am going to pull the plug. I made and announced the decision to start a slow purge of the blackberries last week, and I am going to use my RIM support dollars on something that actually adds value to the business. I know the loss of my 450 user BES support contract is too small to make much of a difference to RIM, but I'll sure feel better when I am no longer sending them our check.

I really do hate my Microsoft EA

Our Microsoft EA is up this summer. We have started doing a review of our EA agreement, and I am looking to cut it back or eliminate it. Here are my motivations:

• It is the largest single line item in my IT budget, making it a prime target
• We tend to upgrade to the latest and greatest stuff because we own the rights to it. I want to do fewer upgrades moving forward, as we spend a huge amount of time upgrading stuff that could be better spent adding new value to the business
• Speaking of adding value, compared to my cloud apps, the pace of innovation is snail like. For example, we recently finished an Exchange upgrade to 2010. Combined with Office 2010, this gave us maybe half a dozen new features that are visible to our user community. Six features every three years, and you have to spend a few man-months of effort to take advantage of them. Shame on me. By contrast, SalesForce gives my users about 20 cool new features every four months! And I don’t have to do anything, they are just there.  GoodData gives me new stuff at least monthly, if not sooner. Bottom line; the pace of innovation in the cloud is just orders of magnitude faster than what we get from MS (and our other tradition software)
• Microsoft makes the whole thing just too damned hard. The “Product Use Rights” document (PUR) is 138 pages. Really. Only the Government could make it harder

I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff, but you get the idea. I am even likely to take us to Gmail (from Exchange) later this year. After all, Google has given their users nearly 200 enhancements to messaging in the last year or so. I think I would rather be on that train than run over by it.

And for anyone is having trouble sleeping, here is a link to the MS PUR http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/product-licensing.aspx, and the 26 page document that explains it J