A Conversation With: Dean Campbell

ITPro sits down with Dean Campbell of Aspirant to discuss building technical teams in an organization. Dean has a storied history in building technology teams in consulting firms balancing the lines between soft skills, business skills, and tech skills!

The conversation takes many good turns where we highlight some of Dean’s career and how his experiences brought him to a VP level.

Dean Campbell is the VP of Technology at Aspirant, a management and technology consulting firm. For more information on Dean or Aspirant see the show links on the episode available where ever you get your podcast and online media!

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A Conversation With: Erika Jefferson

ITPro would like to thank Erika Jefferson for taking the time to record insights on Program and Project Management!

Leading While Uninspired - The Ultimate Test of Leadership

There are times in one’s career when they are either in a company or position that may not be ideal or no longer a match for you. This happens to all of us at some point in our adult work life, though not all of us are in a position of power or leadership when this occurs. If you are in this spot or if you are younger and aspiring to hold a leadership position here are a few tips to help you along the way.

Do not let your dissatisfaction out of the bag

Resist wearing your emotions on your sleeve in front of your direct reports, or at least in this circumstance. You do not want to create instability with your team by putting on a continuous negative display. You will want to hold your dissatisfaction close to your vest and only disclose to a trusted mentor, partner, or friend your frustrations. Leaders will want their team to focus on their jobs and careers and not their challenges.

Most of my job changes have been a surprise to most of the organizations that I left. I try to keep an outward steady appearance that is supportive of my team and their goals, which means not creating undue drama.

Find your vent to release the pressure!

Keeping your frustrations and dissatisfaction at bay and stifled publicly may be required you to blow off your built-up pressure. Have a trusted person(s) who can relate to your situation that is willing to let you unload. this is important as it will stop you from making decisions that could negatively impact your personal brand, lose the respect of your team or coworkers, and wind up leaving the company before you are ready with a secured next job.

The ‘STUFF’ rolls uphill, not downhill!

Make sure your gripes, complaints, grievances, or otherwise negative effect is rolled to the position above you and not below you. Your team will feel the weight of your issues and act in ways you may not want. You want stability in your team, not a negative echo chamber.

There are times when your team needs to hear your issues with a situation. That time is when they need to know that you are their advocate working on their behalf to make a situation more reasonable or position them to succeed. The issue of your comp or the layering of additional duties need not be a focus of their day-to-day.

Have an exit plan!

You do not want to go scorched earth or nuclear at the first moment you meet resistance, or something is happening you do not like or agree with. Yes, squeaky wheels get oil, though, they also get a reputation. Organizations will not tolerate over neediness, crying wolf, or overly negative staff. You are replaceable. So, when you start to roll your ‘stuff’ uphill make sure you are prepared for your boss or organization to cut ties with you. This means you will need to replace your income and benefits and depending on the market and your industry may not be that easy.

If you are uninspired and wish to move on, then look at your options. but consider this exit plan likely will be permanent and the grass may not be greener, or you may find the same frustrations (then it just may be your issues and not who you are working for). you may contractually be bound to time limits or other restrictions on who you can and cannot talk to. You may be giving up a bonus or paid time off that will reset once you leave. There is a lot to consider but you must also think of your team in your exit plan.

How will your team respond? Will they be left better than when you got them? Did you make sure a career path you charted with them, or future promotion is logged with HR and will not be abandoned? Do you know who will be your replacement and are they prepared to take the helm? Your team will personally respect you for doing your job until the very end. Sets an example they can learn from.

Final Thoughts

This is just a few things to consider when your facing adversity or uninspired and have people in your charge. A leader will lead no matter the circumstances an effective leader will try to inspire in otherwise uninspiring times. Buckle down and fix your challenges at your organization or formulate an exit plan, but by no means should you be a negative influence on your team.

A Conversation With: Jeff Hancher

Jeff and I jump in the studio to talk about: Leadership, Empathetic Leaders, Business Trends, and more!

For more information about Jeff visit:
www.jeffhancher.com

Jeff hosts the podcast The Champion Forum
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The Case for 20min and 45min Meetings

The Case for 20min and 45min Meetings

We live in a remote world now. I am not sure that if we were not a majority remote workforce this article would be written, or if it would, I surely would not feature it. The content here would be added to a much larger idea like Time Management - respecting others. Hey, I think that maybe an upcoming article. Back to reality, this remote world has opened our eyes to things like how to be more effective, respecting boundaries, and Time Management.

The days of old would have been constantly running at a breakneck pace to finish up a meeting only to run or digitally join another only to say “Sorry my last [insert activity here] ran over”. The brain would be shifted from a very high gear to a completely different set of gears equally high. Executing thought and technical architecture at the highest of levels that command the rate in which I would be paid for just being present.

We all have been in these situations and let’s be honest here, we all know after we felt clear and absolved of our tardiness or just joining in time our eyes wondered to the notifications of follow up emails from the previous meeting with take-aways and thank-you’s, The real offense comes at the end of the meeting. Undoubtedly you may be distracted by queueing up that next call. You may even shout out the obligatory “I have a hard stop”. The voice on the other end will chime out with 2min left in the meeting that they acknowledge said hard stop, “out of respect for time”… Yet the meeting just rolls on past the end and you are late yet again. You feel overtaxed. Your bladder is hating your and your tea or coffee stares up at you near empty and cold.

I submit that if you were to run a tight ship on your calendar this wouldn’t happen. That would be like saying the sky is blue though, wouldn’t it? Unpacking these scenarios there will be a few common threads. The first one surrounds either a point of pride for some or the downfall for others and that is the multitasking myth.

There are no such processes or subroutines in the human mind that allows for productive multitasking. Yes, you can do more than one thing at a time but your attention, real mindful attention is a single thread constraint of the brain. Starting a task like deploying a DevOps script to run and at interval check on it while having a conversation about the merits of Peer to Site VPN networking in Azure can be done because your focus and attention start the DevOps task which is largely a self-sustaining autonomous set of tasks. A blip or two of your brain’s processing is dedicated to the quick glance at the screen looking for a red or green indicator next to the job. It is not a very complex action. By modern approach, I suppose you can call it multitasking, it is not really.

I don’t call jumping from one VM to the next and back again doing configuration or app deployment multitasking. Again your attention, eyes, and hands are only dedicated to one process at a time. I am sure that this is resonating in some capacity with you either being an offender or offended by this. You ask “Ok I get it but attention can’t be the only casualty of tight meetings” You are correct there are a couple more things that lay in the grave next to your ability to accomplish things effectively. Your reputation.

Not being 100% present will impact your job. You will either look scattered or risk missing a critical point of information that is a detail you may misspeak or have an action item/follow-on you’re going to miss. Your personal brand will be crafted in ways that you will not like and potentially cannot recover from. Snuggling up against your effectiveness and reputation will be opportunity.

If you are constantly taxed, not available, and exhibit a lack the ability to get things done properly you will be either passed over for career advancement or not given access to opportunities with new technologies and showcase your abilities. Seems trivial, though as someone who manages people, I want to enable people who focus on positive and repeatable results but understand their own limits. Those who know their limits manage to this, others will have to find this out or be coached. An unwanted side effect if these behaviors is termination.

So now that I have gone entirely too far from your meeting running long to losing your job, let’s get down to business on how to best avoid these scenarios. First off, you will have meetings run long and over regardless of what you do. It is unavoidable. Putting a few things in place can help you be more together like building time in your calendar to get yourself in order. If your scheduling how about scheduling a 20minute meeting over a 30minute meeting or a 45minute meeting over an hour meeting.

If you're at the mercy of others for scheduling or if you have some policy that requires defined blocks try to put focus time on your calendar in the late morning or midday and later in the afternoon. This will allow you to review your notes and do same-day follow-ups.

Ideally, I would like to shorten the meetings to 20 and 45 respectively (or some interval that provides a buffer of time before your next activity). By doing this, it will allow you to split the time between wrapping up offline activities from the ending call and teeing up what you need to do for the upcoming call.

A few simple techniques like these will have you not look put together, rather you will be together and mindfully present for the topic(s) at hand. There are some organizations that have already encouraged this behavior and others that leave it up to the employee to manage their time only to look at their results.

I want you to be your best so pick what fits your work style best and try it for three weeks. Not a couple of days, not a week, yes three weeks. Behaviors take time to be altered just as time and cycles are required to determine effectiveness. Again it will not be the case where everything will fit nicely in these approaches. Manage to the exception and not the rule.

-Michael Askins

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#TimeManagement #ITPro #BusinessSkills

National Coffee Day - Show Some Appreciation

It seems like every day is National Day of something, the reality it is a National - Something day every day. There are several websites dedicated to what topic your first social post of the day should be. Recently I found out that Daughter’s Day was followed a couple of days later by Son’s Day. Tomorrow (as of the posting) will be National Chewing Gum Day. Let us not forget that October has more than Halloween. We pick up National Taco Day and National Sausage Pizza Day which is just a mere month from September’s National Cheese Pizza Day.

It all seems a bit much, doesn’t it? I could carry on highlighting the various and sometimes humorous National Days and their World Day counterparts but that would be a mere diversion to the original intent of this post. It is National Coffee Day! I do like a good espresso (which has its own day in November). Making a run to the locally-owned coffee shop I had heard of this national day of appreciation and thought should we be biting on the marketing ploy that is a national day, or should we maybe use these days as a means to show someone appreciation?

It is far too often that we can overlook someone who has gone the extra mile or is constantly working predictably well. We sometimes take their work ethic or just the fact that they are there for us for granted. Find someone who makes a difference in your day and show them you are grateful for them by giving a simple token of appreciation. A random gift card on the national coffee day (or whichever day you choose) will be an unforgettable gesture.

This is a perfect opportunity to scare up some loose bills and send over an e-gift card to your coffee shop of choice. Yes, the big chains like Starbucks work in a dispersed environment but consider a local business if you can physically drop off a card (socially responsible ways please). I am sure the local workers and owners would appreciate every bit of business.

As I anxiously await National Tea Day, I give you this parting thought. When was the last time you did something for someone where you had no direct benefit? Try that sometime this week and let me know in the comments on Twitter.

-Michael Askins

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Managing Time - A Virtual Conference Story

I am sure that you have seen my user accounts blowing up the internet this past week with blogs updates podcasts and other digital mediums. This is as I like to call it, the most wonderful time of the year. The conference season is soon coming to a close. There are a couple of larger ones left, but in this pandemic mode we have been in it seems that events at scale are happening more often. With these events comes the challenge of fitting all of your existing activities around the virtual conference.

What, if any impact did this virtual conference have on my schedule. I had declared that my schedule was to be mostly Ignite related and put the block in Outlook accordingly. If there is a client need or immediate crisis I would pivot accordingly. All seems fine, go for launch!

We promised regular tweets, blog posts, and a daily podcast called the daily download. This was to be capped with a closing live recording with several guests discussing the news from the event among other topics. There was a lot of content and activity around this event which in turn had several weeks of coordination and planning. All of this planning made it easy for the team, right? We all seemed to have this under control.

I had built my sessions, had my schedule for my presentations that were related to the event, and all of the above prep was in full swing. Session notes were taken and my scheduled client interactions have gone as expected, and success was near at hand. Until…

A major client issue came up. My scheduled posts were not getting out. Two of the sessions I had signed up had technical issues. I needed these sessions for a few recordings and writings due out that night. It had become apparent that the rails we were on could not be found.

I build in a buffer in my schedule for moments like these individually but all three firing at the same time?

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“When you attend a virtual conference there are many things that can throw your time management approach to the wind.”

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When you attend a virtual conference there are many things that can throw your time management approach to the wind. Home distractions, existing obligations, and other’s expectations that your remote and can just ditch the conference to tend to other things. Attending a conference be it in person or remote, there are goals of skilling up, making connections, and potential new partnerships. When the conference is a paid conference you want to get your money worth of content. Sure you can grab the sessions later, but will you really? We are off script and I can see an enjoyable week evaporative in front of me.

Using my tried and true techniques I applied and adapted some time management techniques to allow me to put our three simultaneous urgent items in a good place. I adapted my contingency plan’s contingencies.

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Managing Time for Virtual Conferences

• Notify anyone who needs to know you are not available except for urgent items

• Block your calendar and apply an Out Of Office autoresponder

• Setup your attendee area with everything you need to keep from wasting time hunting down charges, snacks, and drinks

• Turn off notifications on devices during key presentations

• Come up for air and check-in with work and family during lunch or break

• Save key presentations or find alternative replay times to ensure you get the messaging

• Build-in time for physical and mental health - you can always take this back for emergencies

• Have a second session scheduled in case the one you wanted to attend did not meet expectations -DO NOT waste time on something that does not apply to you

• Enable others to make decisions and bridge the gap of your missing daily activities

• Trust your team

• Plan as much as you can in advance

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The Client issue required me to be on a call to regroup, so I suggested a time that was between a break and not as critical session. I ensured the session was added to watch later backpack AND added the replay to my event schedule. The remediation or decision point was required interaction so I didn’t worry, one of my able team members was able to pivot to making sure it was completed.

Just after the call, I did a couple of quick replies to have meetings related to some of my IoT projects for the next week and not during the conference week. It is ok to say you are not available if the situation is not a ‘down’ or critical one. Every project is important, however, if you can make things more comfortable without sacrificing the project timeline, make it easier.

You will find making the time for the project will result in better interactions with those on the project. Your time, mind, and attention will be clear and you will be present for the meeting or activity resulting in quality time spent. If you wrench those interactions where they just fit, you will find yourself jumping around which appears disconnected and inefficient.

Doctor Who Dalek

I was able to take a moment to walk away from the conference and computer for a moment to settle my brain. This allowed me to regroup and look at why the posts and other website technical bits were not functioning. I could have just jumped in throwing switches and levers to ‘make it work’ ala David Tenant piloting the TARDIS in Doctor Who, but pausing if for a minute or three with a change of scenery allowed me to approach the issue with a clear and settled mind. This approach is a common theme with me. I like to stop, settle, observe, then remediate issues with this approach.

So what did I do to accommodate a virtual conference, work obligations, and issues? We had planned in advance as much as we could so I would not be spinning as much time making content for online posts. We had agendas made for all activities both pre-produced and live. Thought was put into building our session schedules and my calendar of events for the week. Small blocks of time were preallocated for check-ins, physical and mental health, and time buffer. I had contingency plans for key/core sessions that were must attend.

I am certain as the day is long the week would have been a near loss or poorly executed if I failed to take some of the measures discussed. It is easy for things to go sideways and have the just roll with it approach. You will find you will look and feel more put together if you manage your time around events. Others will notice too!

-Michael Askins

Technology Architect - CTO

@primed3

IN/maskins

#Conference #technology #professionaldevelopment