#smallbiz

More Focus More Profits

January 20, 2019 By Tim Phelan

Entrepreneurs have three things that loom largely in the back of their heads when thinking about their business. First, what is the next innovation or service that will add value to customers, attract new customers, and create competitive edge. Secondly, entrepreneurs know “cash is king.” It is critical that they ensure that there is adequate capital to pay people and bills while still investing as much as possible into growth. Thirdly, to reduce risk by containing and cutting costs.

The salesman in me wants to believe that we can always sell our way to the next goal. That sales mentality is risky because most salespeople have rose-colored glasses, and costs have a sneaky way of rising proportionally with sales. As a recovering accountant, I view cost containment essential to organizational health. Strong sales while containing costs enhances the ability to grow by investing profits, leveraging core competencies, and increasing velocity to GTM plans. Before you go sharpening your pencils and pouring over cell phone plans, I submit that one of the biggest, yet seemingly undetectable, business costs today are transition costs.

Transition costs are the time it takes to switch our focus and mindset from one task/topic to another. These add up. The more desperate the task/topics, particularly on the creative to pragmatic spectrum, the more time this takes. The American Psychological Association asserts that “even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time” (“Multitasking: Switching costs”). In a business-world where being ADD is a badge of honor, there is conversely a simultaneous and tremendous impact in productivity and efficiency. Transition costs—wait, I just got a call from my son to discuss how badly Clemson beat Alabama in the National Championship game—so, what was I saying? Oh right, transition costs. Factors that increase transition costs on an individual level are the complexity/variety of activities required, span of control (the number of direct reports vying for attention), and also how well one takes care of themselves (proper rest, diet, etc.). The most insidious part of these transition costs is the difficulty quantifying the actual costs. Therefore, these costs are easy to overlook, shrug off, or ignore completely.

There are a number of fantastic resources and professionals that focus on assisting professionals in minimizing transition costs. and I have listed a few below. A few things that I have begrudgingly found effective are:

Batching Like Activities – Pretty simple, just arranging my schedule to do similar types of tasks in the same time slot.

The 1,440 “rule” – I read this somewhere. The notion is you only have 1,440 minutes in a day (24 hours), and only 480 minutes in an eight hour work day. With that perspective, I become more protective of my time, particularly when someone drops by saying “hey, can I run something by you for a few.” An excellent article on this topic is “What are You Doing with Your 1,440 Minutes? And Only 480 Minutes are in Your Eight Hour Day” by Jack Heimbigner

Do Not Disturb – I thought this was the most horrendous thing ever, and it took every ounce of willpower I had to start and stick to it. Cell phones have “do not disturb” functions where the user is not notified if a call or text comes in. Thankfully mine also has an exceptions list such as if a caller calls multiple times, or If a call/text comes from a specific person or group of people (instructions for the iPhone I use). Over time, do not disturb has become “my time” that I value and enjoy.

E-mail “times” – I have specific times in the day slotted to review and respond to e-mail. It takes discipline to do this and know that you will have to educate your less-patient folks on why they are not getting instantaneous responses. Yet, it has assisted me greatly in remaining focused and present. Of note: there is also a function in Outlook that I use that sends me a text if I receive an e-mail from certain people to whom I must be particularly responsive.

Curbing transition costs takes constant diligence. Think of it as life-hacking and make it fun. Like any other cost, if you spend the effort to minimize its impact, you will be amazed by the bottom-line results over time.

Resources:

Melissa Gratias PhD – Productivity Psychologist

LeadCrunch

IFTTT

StayFocusd

The Freelancer’s 6-Question Guide to Knowing When to Outsource

Big Data – The Final Frontier

October 1, 2016 By Tim Phelan

It sounds like a drive through meal, why should I care?

If you join the ranks of those entering the world of the technology religion…er, I mean industry, or technological exploration and invention, or are just a hobbyist there seem to be two prerequisites:

You must love, love, love, love, and dream in acronyms
If you name something, make it so generic as to leave it completely open to any conversation, application or ability.

“Big Data” falls into that latter to the proportion of the “smart phone” (what the heck does that mean???). This inability of the technology industry to intuitively name anything that self-describes in this case is tragic because of the wide-ranging implications and potentialities of Big Data. In fairness, none of us were English majors! What is Big Data in simple terms? Here is a non-PhD explanation of Big Data and why it is truly one of the last exciting frontiers, albeit not in a completely physical sense.

In our infancy of exploration of the scientific method, business, fitness, marketing, and almost any arena big or small, we started with siloed data. In other words, a business had accounting numbers; marketing had demographic data; and science had measurements beyond my comprehension. The goal was simple, to bring this information specific to a process or entity and make sense of it to make decisions, assumptions, valuations, or whatever was the pertinent decision point. We humans, in our inherent need to organize things, created data organized in columns and rows which brought the data together into “information” which we in a moment of utter lack of a comprehensive vocabulary, called reports. By sorting the data in in linear and even multi-dimensional formats, these reports enabled measurement of profitability, scalability, probability, etc.… Today this is still the widest used decision-making technique from household budgets to probabilities of orbital change affecting global temperature.

After years, actually decades, of analyzing reports to assist in decision-making someone asserted that this process of looking at formatted data that gave insightful information and then making decision missed a quintessential question: “what if?” After all, that leaves a great deal to interpretation and “gut feel.” By tracing both good and bad causal effects across information, modern computing could provide models by which we could look for predictive trends. In essence, by breaking down the silos of data, and joining them with other silos, technology could produce more accurate, and more actionable, information. In addition, models could then be manipulated to see where and how it impacted business, health, molecular generation, oil prices…you get the idea. The advent of relational databases made this sort of data storage, configuration, indexing and results available. Hence, the oxymoron term “business intelligence” (BI) was born because technology could now relate data to other data, with very minute variables in common.

The scientific industries and big business fueled the growth of what is now a several billion dollar a year business of BI. Technological advances with computing power and data storage and retrieval continued to make this type of analysis more accessible. Once the professional industries (consultants) joined in with their specific theories and understandings, beautiful modeling techniques such as Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), benchmarks, acceptable tolerances, sprouted up across every industry. In the simplest forms, many organizations use Excel with pivot tables to accomplish this task at a high level. Yet even in 2016, only a small portion of private organizations take full advantage of these capabilities. The major hurdles, which are slowly coming down, are the cost to deploy technologically, the expertise to ensure the models are actually sound (and not biased to the desired results), and the cost to adapt to each individual data set and configuration of decision trees which is a costly venture in consulting fees alone. Frankly, it has become a battle between the cost savings of proven models versus the innovation of out of the box thinking that brings an entire new set of variables into the mix. Undoubtedly, BI is today one of the most powerful analysis tools available, and it is just now starting to be deployed outside fo the fortune 5,000 and academia.

So, what is left? And, why Big Data? We broke down the data silos very intentionally, joining data with commonalities so technology could give us some predictive results on the question of “what if.” What is next, and more appropriately, why is it big? Simply, Big Data can look at tremendously vast data sets across seemingly unrelated data sets—more than the Library of Congress to the third power of ten hypothetically. This is only possible because computing power has exponentially risen and the cost of storage diminished. There are challenges as well, mind you: cooperation, collaboration, anonymity to name a few. A final frontier for technologists—programmers, analysts, subject-matter experts, and the experiences of past data joining—is coming together to create programs that systematically look for the “joins” instead of the answer in a universe of unlimited data. In short, we are tasking the massive computing power to actually find the relevant causal effects, no matter how distant they may be. Tell me: 42 year old humans living between the 40-43^rd parallel of the earth with chromosome 19 at 1,450 genes…what are material circumstances, outcomes, effects, trends, etc.… Except in this case, subject matter experts are only giving potential variables and the computing power takes over the rest, looking for trends, and other material variables. Imagine finding the correlation between potable water elements of a region and the effects on scientific exploration from those hailing from that region. The trends and how things may relate are limitless.

This is important because it does not give us all the answers. Rather, we are now finding and identifying connections between things we would have never imagined. None of this answers “why am I here.” Nor, will it create immediate change or cures. What it will do is expand our thinking—computers are just machines keep in mind…Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another giant technological leap. Big Data can deliver significant insights into the relevance and relation of organisms, people, ideas, environments, outcomes, tendencies to each other. Those results will lead to more “ologies” than we already know, and certainly to a new era of thought, philosophy, understanding, and connection.

In short to me, the only way to truly describe Big Data’s potential is taking a giant step towards technological wisdom. Out of that will sprout the next generation of entrepreneurial ventures and innovations that touch every aspect of our lives.

Here are a few interesting resources:

Engaging Technologies for Your Organization

January 19, 2016 By Tim Phelan

I have to admit my wildest dreams as a child have been passed like Jeff Gordon passing the Sunday driver. The thought of Captain Jim Kirk demanding Scottie to beam him up immediately by speaking into a hand-held gizmo expanded our imaginations. It’s 2016 and technology continues to make quantum leaps as we saw at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) recently. How does all of this technology empower us as workers, managers, business owners?

More importantly, how do we harness what can seem as impersonal technology to create greater engagement in our work? Sean Pomeroy (@VisSoft), Visibility Software’s “Top Dog” & CEO, develops and sells software designed to recruit and retain organizational talent states, “The biggest factor in keeping the best talent, even bigger than career path, is keeping the team engaged and we at Visibility make this an emphasis in everything we create and deploy.” Here are some employee-engaging technologies if deployed properly can keep your people engaged and your organization ahead of the competition.

Self-Service

Anyone that has renewed their driver’s license online, as opposed to going to the DMV, will agree with this wholeheartedly. With the adoption of online ordering and having information available at out fingertips with the assistance of Google, bing, or whatever your flavor is, we value speed more than ever. This phenomenon is going to increase exponentially as millennials continue to climb the corporate ladders. Give your team the ability to DYI their tasks at work: look up or change HR information (dependents, address, life-changes, benefits, time off, etc.…), retrieve the information they need to make decisions without having to put in an IT ticket, make purchases (within scope and restrictions) necessary to accomplish their jobs, and even “wikifying” (enabling team mates to contribute, alter and form) certain projects and initiatives. Employees that feel empowered feel good about their organization.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)

Giving our teams the ability to work the way they work best with the technology that is already deeply ingrained in their lives increases their engagement because it is just easier. I have talked to many CIO’s who staunchly oppose this, citing potential security concerns. While valid, there are ways to make applications and functions that do not require the same level of security as Patient Identifiable Data (PID) in healthcare. Further, enterprise information security companies such as Trust Digital, MobileIron and Good can deliver solutions to address these concerns. At one company that I worked, one of the things the team looked forward to the most was the “Look What I Can Do with My Technology” after-hours pizza party.

Instant Messaging

The power of being able to ask a remote teammate a question while on the same conference call is invaluable. It also gives your team the ability to ask quick questions with less disruption. I caveat this technology with the assertion that you MUST publish and enforce corporate IM responsibilities and ensure that your team understands how to use the technology’s “Do Not Disturb” function.

Video Calls and Conferencing

This is not a new concept by any means. Yet, very few companies utilize this technology on a regular basis. As workforces continue to become more remote, video is an inexpensive and effective way to not lose that “personal touch.” Whether it is an enterprise-wide unified communications platform (Cisco Jabber, Microsoft Skype for Business—previously Lync, etc.…) or using FaceTime by apple or Skype for Android on individual cell phones, this technology can bring your team, partners and customers together in ways that will set you apart and create a feeling of belonging…engagement even.

Organizations today are battling for the best talent. Culture and morale are important parts of creating work environments that attract the best. I have seen at many companies the Xbox that the executive team put in the break room to boost morale, only for it to sit there unused – because if employees are going to play, they want to play somewhere else (not to mention being perceived as someone with not enough to do). Leverage technology to empower your employees by getting the more engaged and you will find your organization moving quicker, with creativity and, and with better attitude.