We have a lot of celebrations at DAXKO – big and small – and we have unique ways of recognizing our team’s achievements. Case in point… when we add a new customer to the DAXKO family, we ring a large ship bell hanging in the center of our office. (Company founder loves sailing!) We recognize our outstanding engineers by requiring they don a Roman Centurion helmet and pose for a wacky picture. The list goes on…
But most recently, we celebrated a major milestone for one of our Support Services Team members, Daniel. Daniel’s a rockstar at responding to and resolving our customers’ questions and problems. He just closed his 10,000th customer support case. Way to go, Daniel! How did we help his celebrate? With Mardi Gras beads, a wooden Santa, and cookie cake, of course! Isn’t that how you’d do it?
Daniel Closes 10,000 Cases from DAXKO on Vimeo.
When a potential buyer is exposed to at least hundreds to thousands of advertisements a day, it’s hard to make the impression that you want to while using the generic marketing dollar. Countless advertisers try to make the most out of old-school marketing, going directly to TV, radio, and flyers, just hoping to get their message across. Sometimes this works. Many times it does not.
I work currently with hundreds of YMCAs - from multi-million dollar mega Ys to the smaller one-stop fitness shops. These customers are highly diverse and individualized, with different strategies for reaching their core target market. Generally speaking, the larger the Y, the more advanced their marketing tools are, and the more creative they must be to reach the community. Countless reasons exist for reaching the market effectively, which include higher spend per visit (more programs, water bottles, personal trainer sessions purchased) or greater reach when it comes to seeking new members or committing donors to making that big give for the capital campaign. So what is one of the easiest ways to impression manage without committing tremendous resources to becoming more creative at marketing?
The answer is dynamic content. This may be a riddle to certain readers, so let’s explain what this means. Dynamic content is the use of consistently changing content on the website that empowers members with options and functionality when they stop by your page. This content can enable the community to talk about a certain event with other members, register for that program online, see what is happening through a YMCA blog, interface with social media sites, donate online, or view the changing, dynamic pages that accurately portray the YMCA and local events that may be of interest to your core target audience.
Making use of dynamic content means a few easy changes to job responsibilities, as someone must be around to manage this, but the ever growing presence of the digitally savvy user can be reached with this method far better than through traditional advertising. According to the Manual for Major Gifts Fundraising, also known as the Green Book, YMCAs are seeing a decrease in program participation by teenagers and young adults. This disconnect could prevent Ys from committing members from the start from becoming a member for life. The life of these members is crucial to long term goals at your Y, including membership numbers and donations.
So how can you make a website using dynamic content? Update content frequently, compare your site to websites you admire outside of the YMCA market, ensure that content is linked to specific key words for search engine functionality, and keep your members updated with what’s going on in the community.
For some other useful information, check out the links below:
A little on the technical end, but good detail on ways to create a more dynamic website:
http://www.smooth-step.com/web-design/dynamic-websites
A list of five common goals of social media use which can occur from using dynamic content:
http://www.doshdosh.com/social-media-marketing-campaigns-setting-goals-defining-prospects/
Give your members a reason to come back to your website for more; creating a dynamic website can not only mean capturing members earlier in their life at the Y, it can also be a way to share with your members how the Y is benefitting the community and remind the member why he or she participates in the programs, camps, or training at the YMCA. Make it meaningful and worthwhile and you have sent the message to your core constituents and guaranteed higher satisfaction when they part with their hard-earned money because they know it is for a good cause. They’ve seen that little blurb on Betty that shows how their money enabled Betty’s children to have a place to go after school when she couldn’t afford it, and how John lost 75 pounds using the fitness kiosk you purchased back in December. They know why they should donate, and have the opportunity to do it on your site.
Through dynamic content, you can empower your members to be more connected to the YMCA and the community.
DAXKO, get your guns ready…we have a new Competitor Arsenal!
Many companies gather competitive intelligence and conduct analysis, but who has their very own arsenal of competitive information that every team member contributes to? We do! DAXKO recently established a centralized repository of competitive information that allows for quick entry from any team member at DAXKO. In fact, this process relies heavily on each team to learn, gather and share all that they can.
If the Implementation Team, for example, is converting a legacy system and hears a juicy tidbit about a certain competitor product’s feature set, we can quickly translate that into messaging to aide in the next sales discussion. Or, a customer tells our Support Services Team that their old system could do “X”. This information is valuable for DAXKO’s product roadmap discussions.
Why are these interactions so important? Consider Jacques Murphy article on Competitive Analysis for Sales. He states:
“Gathering information on competitors so that you can sell against them is a lot like gossiping, but with a very focused purpose. It’s taking a lot of information that is floating around in conversations between teammates, much of which you don’t necessarily hear, and putting it together in an orderly and systematic way.
Often, when all the information that your coworkers have is collected and compared side by side, certain competitive sales strategies and tactics suggest themselves.”
So once Product Management gathers the “gossip” from each team member, we can couple that information with existing market research, such as win/loss analysis data, partnerships and alliances, financial information, etc. The combination of all the “gossip” and market research translates into a strong Competitor Arsenal that is an invaluable tool for the Marketing and Sales Teams.
And when the time comes, we’ll be prepared to pull out our weapons and fight…
There’s a LOT of buzz around the word “Agile” in the software business. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 5 years, you’ve been exposed to Agile ideas through industry conferences, magazine articles, blogs, colleagues, vendors, etc. Companies of all shapes and sizes have taken the plunge and successfully transitioned their teams to some flavor of Agile. VersionOne just release their 4th annual survey on the “State of Agile”. Looking at the survey, it is easy to see that many of these companies are seeing significant results from their move to Agile. My experience is also that many troubled software development organizations see Agile as a “way out” – an “answer to all of their problems”!
Ha!!!
As someone who truly believes in the value and benefits of moving teams to Agile, I can tell you that simply adopting Scrum, XP, Kanban, TDD, Crystal, etc. is NOT the answer to all of your software development problems. Being an “Agile” organization is more than simply holding daily standups, developing iteratively, creating user stories, and calling each other pigs and chickens. Implementing these Agile artifacts and ceremonies will not guarantee success. The secret to success with Agile is found within the core team. I’ve worked with plenty of teams who delivered great software, on schedule, using a non-Agile development process.
The true strength of Agile is in the power it gives to the team itself. Agile teams are forced encouraged to work closely, vocalize obstacles, quickly deliver customer value, and continuously improve. This is not easy to achieve! It requires commitment and hard work from the entire team, constant coaching, and top-down support. I spoke of successful non-Agile teams earlier. You know what made those teams successful? They all worked extremely well together as a team. They communicated well. They focused on delivering value to their customers. They constantly worked to improve as a team. Agile doesn’t give you this for free. Agile only makes it painfully obvious when those things are missing.
While the northeast region of the country is experiencing blizzard-like conditions, we here in the Southeast are enjoying a winter wonderland of our own. Granted… we’re not plowing through 80 inches of snow… it’s more like 3 inches. But when it comes to Southerners dealing with snowy conditions, let’s face it, it might as well be 80 inches. Schools close, grocery stores sell out of milk and bread in a matter of minutes, and talk of being “trapped at home for days” runs rampant. For Northerners who’ve migrated south, it’s an amusing event to witness.
Despite so many businesses closing early in Birmingham today… DAXKO braved the “blizzard” and kept its doors open. Such troopers, we are! We even took time out for a snow pic… which, of course, led to a snowball fight. How is it that no matter how old we get, throwing snowballs at a buddy is just as fun as when we were eight? Happy Snow Day!
Back in high school, my entire day was planned. For each month. From August – May. As a classic Gen X attention deficit teen, I thrived on constant structure. I always knew where I would be next: English class, History Class, Track practice, Ballet lesson, Theatre….
My transition to the business world brought my regimented life to a screeching halt. Now, instead of 57 minutes of this, 48 minutes of that, I had 8 hours of “what?” I had 480 minutes a day for projects and deadlines. To make matters more confusing, I had nothing to do after work, except think about what I would do tomorrow at work. For 480 more minutes.
Two years later, I rediscovered extra-curricular activities: I remembered how much I loved art class and recruited comrades for Sips and Strokes; I started taking Yoga classes; I compiled a list of classic lit pieces I never read in graduate school.
It was disorienting to live life without the small, structural pleasures that kept it relevant. Staying committed to a schedule outside of work keeps me interested in each day. If you feel “suspended” this time of year, it may be time for you to reconnect with your own lost passions. At least, it will give you something to do between Super Bowl Sunday and St. Patrick’s Day.
And hey, if you need something to get you started, I have a Mahjong club that meets every Sunday.
As Dave mentioned in yesterday’s post, our Top Team of 2009 was our Accounting Product Development team (a.k.a. the Beans team). Two years ago when we started making some fundamental changes to how we developed software, the Beans team was the guinea pig. 2009 for that team was really the year where they hit their stride. Here are just a few accomplishments of the team in this past year.
Great stuff. The team was made up of Valeria, Jere, Matt D, Patrick, Bryan H, Samuel, and Shane. I’ve heard they are already talking two-peat in 2010…but it is going to be tough, the competition will be stiff this year, with some other teams already strong out of the gate. At least they have a leg up with their new 25.5” monitors and Bose headphones…
Pimp My Office from DAXKO on Vimeo.
Each year we conduct our annual, company-wide Kickoff event. Over the last six years, it has become the way we cap off the previous year and launch into the new year.
One of my favorite happenings of the year is what takes place at the conclusion of every Kickoff. It’s our annual awards ceremony that culminates in the announcement of our Achievers Club. These are Team Members who deliver the best results while at the same time demonstrating our core values on a consistent basis.
This year, we had seven recipients. Beyond the recognition in front of the rest of the company, each member of the Achievers Club, along with a guest, will go on an all-expense paid group trip to Las Vegas.
Beyond the Achievers Club, we recognized 11 others for additional awards, including:
These recipients all had a choice of prizes:
Friday afternoon, we distributed the prizes at a quick ceremony. It was great to see all the worthy award winners collect their spoils. Congratulations to those that were recognized, and thanks for what you do for DAXKO and for our customers!
If there’s ever a time to get kooky at DAXKO, it’s during our annual company-wide event known as Kick-Off. There’s just something about it that brings out two things in our Team Members: silliness and a seriously competitive drive. When you combine the two, you end up with ridiculous team names like, “Holy Sheep! We’re Better Than Ewe!” “Turn Your Head and Kick-Off,” and my favorite, “Laser Cats!” (Yes it’s an SNL reference. See clip. And, yes, they wore costumes.)
At every Kick-Off, we have a unique team building activity. This year, CEO Dave invented an urban scavenger hunt appropriately called “Operation Scooter Mountain.” The gist was that our beloved office scooters had been kidnapped and hidden around the Birmingham area. All 95 of our team members were divided into 10 teams that raced around the city aboard passenger vans, a limo and one stretch Ford Excursion to look for clues and scooters.
Since we’re a tech company who loves gadgets and gizmos, Dave sent clues to teams via their smart phones, and in return, teams sent back pictures proving they had made it to their destinations. Naturally, we wound up with a hilarious collection of photos afterward – some I wish I’d never seen, now that I recall…
Teams had to complete tasks like indoor rock climbing, getting cuffed by a police officer and getting behind the counter at Starbucks (sorry, Starbucks!). Small tasks, really. In the end, we had a triumphant winner: “Holy Sheep! We’re Better Than Ewe!” As it turns out, they really are better than ewe. Here they are below posing with their trophies and gift cards. For more pictures from Kick-Off, see www.flickr.com/photos/daxko.
My high school basketball coach used to talk about former players coming back and telling him, “If I had one more game, Coach, I’d hit every free throw…I’d get every rebound and loose ball… I’d leave it all out on the court.” Coach would start every practice with a speech about practicing for your last game … as you never know when it’s going to be your last. Coach Brown lost his fight to cancer almost three years ago. However, the work ethic he taught me will never be lost. In fact, it has newfound meaning for me – one that applies to my work.
Several days ago I had a small run-in with a mountain and a set a skis. I wish I could say “You should see the other guy”…. but that isn’t the case. Since my little accident, I’ve been forced to think about and plan an alternative method of delivery for the things I used to do on a daily basis. One of those things – which is critical in my role – is to stand and present information to groups of people. Now, because of my aforementioned run-in, I can’t do that for the next 3 to 4 months.
It’s funny how you take the small things for granted - the ability to quickly grab a document off the printer, type with your right hand, or stand up and deliver a simple presentation. The latter is the task that really impacts me. While I still have my voice… I’ve lost my mobility. We all know that presenters who stand are more effective. A greater presence helps your message resonate better with the audience. And, believe me, I can work a room. Just two weeks ago, I worked the room and delivered a dynamite presentation. And well, Coach, if I’d known it would be my last for a while, I would’ve worked just a little harder.
People often feel like knowing more empowers them. However the more you empower your team to know and do without you, the better you prepare your team for situations like the one I’m currently facing. Have you ever thought about what you would do if you couldn’t do what you do for 3 months? Could someone else step in and pick up where you left off? I challenge you to treat every assignment as though it’s your last and empower those around you to confidentally step in and help with you’re unable… because you never know when all that might change.
The title is a play off the Java Script Guru, Samuel K’s recent post on Software Engineering vs. Fun Factory. Great post, Samuel!
We all experience moments when someone in our family really doesn’t understand what we do. When we try to explain, they still get it wrong. Samuel’s explanation was right on point for how to break it down. But the million dollar question for the NuProfessional is, “Do you know what your company does?”
Do you know the different lines of revenue? Do you know the costs associated with your product? Do you even know what products the company offers?
Some may think this is a no-brainer, but many young and talented professionals get tunnel vision and only focus on their role and their department. Of course you want to be the best (fill in the blank) you can be. And if you work hard at your job then that promotion will come, right? WRONG! In order to be a NuProfessional rising star, you should know your company and how what you do affects the bottom line.
Dave Ulrich, author of The Leadership Code and a highly recognized consultant, spoke at a BSHRM (Birmingham Society for Human Resource Management) event this past December. He spoke to HR professionals about Transforming HR in the 21st Century. During his presentation, he stressed the importance of understanding the company and financials. Although his presentation was targeted for Human Resource professionals, I think it can be applied to any professional. Here are a few of my take-aways:
Overall, there is more to getting ahead than just working hard at what you do. Learn the business. Get to know your CEO and VP of Finance; I am sure they would enjoy sharing some knowledge with you.
I spent Christmas with my in-laws, a tradition my family enjoys every year. As is inevitable when our families get together, conversations arose about work.
I often struggle to explain to my in-laws what it is that I do for a living. This is no slight to them. They are all intelligent, honest, and hard-working people. Predominately, they work in industrial or agricultural fields. They produce tangible goods for a living whereas – as a software engineer – I do not.
Despite my efforts to explain my day-to-day routine, the part of my job description that usually sticks in their minds is “something with computers.”
By no means are my family members incapable of comprehending my job. A lot of the concepts are foreign, and I blame my inadequate explanations. This puts me into the mindset of searching for analogies.
Along with a mountain of other gifts, my older two boys received a Play Doh Fun Factory. We were all occupied for hours with extruding platefuls of blue Play Doh spaghetti. As we played, I began to draw a parallel between what it means to be a software engineer versus engineering a tangible item like the Play Doh Fun Factory.
Protect the users from themselves
Hasbro, the makers of the Fun Factory, load the colorful Play Doh with a copious amount of salt. They do this because the Doh has an appealing smell but shouldn’t be eaten (despite being labeled as non-toxic). The salt provides curious sculptors with an adequate deterrent from eating Doh.
When developing quality software like DAXKO Accounting, it’s my team’s job to make software that does what users want but keeps the users from making mistakes. We don’t enforce how our users budget their money, but we program validation into the software to make sure that they’re following generally accepted accounting procedures.
Protect yourself from the users
I watched my oldest son put his full weight on the Fun Factory in order to make a trio of wormy shapes emerge faster. He’s not a big kid, but considering the leverage involved and the tiny holes from which the Doh-worms materialized, I derived that the Fun Factory was withstanding internal pressures of around 200 lbs. PSI. In my opinion, that’s not bad for a couple of pieces of plastic. It also belies the engineering that went into the design.
Software users also push applications to do more things faster. Good software engineering practices include designing applications built to handle immense internal pressures, often beyond the seeming limits of possibility. We have to assume that users will find ways to put their whole weight on it, so to speak.
Don’t waste time on the wrong features
On the current model of the Fun Factory, there is a series of molds beneath the lever. A sculptor can pack these with Play Doh, then pull it free and have a small bas relief smiley face or butterfly with which to play.
These molds were not on the Fun Factory I had as a kid. This is all conjecture, but I imagine that the inclusion of this feature probably began with a casual conversation at Hasbro; something perhaps that began with “Wouldn’t it be great if…” That conversation likely evolved into meetings, and then persisted into designs, architecture, development, testing and ultimately production. One could even presume that this change to the Fun Factory came with a measurable cost.
There’s just one problem with these molds: almost nobody plays with them. Why would anyone want to do make a Play Doh smiley face when the Fun Factory pumps out blue spaghetti?
There is a lot of temptation in software engineering to create cool stuff, implement sleek new tools, or use awe-inspiring programming methods that would make even the most interested of users yawn. Software engineering conversations often begin with “Wouldn’t it be great if…” but great software engineers learn to follow these statements with, “Yeah, but should we?”
Let the users determine the best features
Our Fun Factory came with two colors of Play Doh; yellow and blue. At some point in my life I began to work diligently to keep my Play Doh colors separate. This change probably occurred about the same time that I also decided I wanted to do “something with computers” for a living.
When I watched my boys play, at first it was all I could do to keep them from mixing the colors. Then I remembered that the Fun Factory was their toy and not mine, and that I should let them mix away if they so desired. When they crammed the factory full of blue and yellow then pushed the lever, what to their wondering eyes should appear but green Play Doh! As my oldest pointed out, three colors are way more fun than two.
I was reminded that in software engineering, a quality end product is ultimately all about the user and how they want to use the application. It is not just about how we want them to use it. Sometimes then, it is then our job to lighten up and to be flexible.
The parallels between the Fun Factory and software engineering stretched on in my mind for as long as my boys and I continued playing. Lines were connected for cleaning out the gunk from time to time, putting things away when we were done and keeping the Play Doh off the rug. Ultimately, enough of a lesson was learned that I could make another attempt to explain to my in-laws what exactly it is that I do.
At least I hope that’s the case. If I didn’t explain it well enough this time, then when you ask them what I do for a living, be prepared for an answer like, “Something with Play Doh.”
Working in the world of talent, I’ve found myself on the giving and receiving end of some bad news lately. In my business, that could come in the form of a declined job offer or employee resignation. It could mean that I have to disengage a job candidate or even terminate employment. Ouch!
And while I don’t relish giving or being given bad news, it’s a reality in my role. I’m betting it’s a reality for you, too. At some point, we all have to be the bearer of bad news. Question is… are you going about it the right way or the wrong way?
A couple of months ago, one of the Harvard Business Review blogs gave four tips for handling those difficult conversations. Though the article focused on delivering bad news to a group, I think it’s applicable in every situation.
Sound advice. Simple enough. In fact, I’ve developed my own simple list of tips to remember when delivering bad news. Not necessarily built on the years of experience associated with the Harvard Business Review. Instead, my inspiration… The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Remember Dorothy’s friends – Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion? Surely you recall what each asked of the Wizard – a brain, a heart, and courage, respectively. Well those three desires are just the needed ingredients when delivering bad news. Think about it…
Again, simple advice for what can be complex and uncomfortable conversations. Next time you’re there, channel The Wizard.
If you’re going to grow the company, you’ve got to grow your people. Words to live by at DAXKO. To that end, we’ve put a lot of good development stuff in place for team members. One of those is the annual Professional Development Allowance. That’s right – money. In fact, it’s money to spend on any professional opportunity you fancy – books, conferences, memberships, subscriptions, seminars… you get the idea. The cool thing is that the training doesn’t have to relate to your current role at DAXKO – the world is your oyster. So here’s another installment of our ”Dough to Grow” series. Love it when we can weave in some shameless plugs for the team…
Handle: Anne
DAXKO Team: Training
What I want to get better at over time: Designing interactive training sessions for the “Digital Generation” of users
What I dropped the PD cash on this time: SALT (Society for Applied Learning Technology) Conference in D.C.
How I found out about the learning opportunity: My team lead
I give this event a BIG thumbs UP because… I was able to get a picture of DAXKO Training 2.0, which we will design and implement as soon as we have a trainer in the office for more than two weeks a month (wink, wink).
My top takeaways: 1) “Death by PowerPoint” is real. 2) Interactive LMS platforms can keep tech-savvy customers interested. 3) Our team members are so “colorful” compared to other tech companies.
“Aha” moment for me: Hey… we should make videos… like, really cool ones!
Something fun I did while there: Eating at overpriced seafood restaurants and talking “shop” with D.C. locals
Why investing in myself rocks: Because I talk an average of 40 hours per branch to people every other week, and I was glad to have someone else do the work.
One of the things that differentiates DAXKO in the markets we serve is our knowledge of those markets, our business, and how the two fit together. We (that’s everyone in the organization) pride ourselves on speaking the language of our customers and knowing their business just as intimately as they do.
Some team members come to DAXKO with experience serving in those markets… they’ve walked the walk. For the rest of us, we have to work at it. We ask, we listen. We study, we learn. Then… we TEST!
That’s right… recently everyone in a customer-facing role (including our Leadership Team) put their market knowledge to the test with a 100-question assessment. Questions cover a wide range of topics from customers to competitors, from partners to prospects. And it’s NOT an easy test. Granted… if you fail, we probably won’t fire you. But you do have to study up and retest. (I recommend dusting off the study skills you filed away after college. You’re going to have to put in the reps to pass this one on the first try.)
Check out the video below for a couple of different perspectives from my fellow test takers. (Jeremy, didn’t your momma tell you no one likes a bragger?)
Thoughts on DAXKO’s Market Quiz from DAXKO on Vimeo.
The DAXKO Connect elves have been hard at work and we’re excited to bring some early holiday joy with our December release. The main focus of this release is educational credits, specifically making it easier to get them in – and out – of DAXKO Connect.
Bulk Assign Education CreditsWe’ve made it super easy to assign credits in bulk after an event is over. We know that many educational events have hundreds of attendees and going into each record to redeem credits can be a pain. Now you manage all the assigned credits at the event level or the session level, too.
Query Education Credits for an EventNeed to export all the credits assigned for an event? You can now query education credits for a particular event with ease using the Query Tool. Just build a query and export the results. Simple!
Happy HolidaysWe wish all our association customers and readers happy holidays as we wind down 2009. It’s been a wonderful and exciting year for DAXKO Connect, and we’re already looking forward to 2010. Look for some big things coming out early in the new year.
It’s been about a month now since I started my new job after almost seven years at DAXKO. I thought it would be a good idea to say a few words about change. I think change is a healthy thing. Change works. It pushes you out of your comfort zone, forces you to learn new things and makes you establish new relationships and habits – all good things.
That’s not to say you have to leave your current workplace like I did since growing companies like DAXKO and CTS (where I now work) offer plenty of opportunities for you to force change on yourself. For me it works best when I make fairly radical moves – you could think of me a person on an airplane that hears the announcement to “sit back, relax and enjoy the flight” and then promptly jumps out of the plane at 30,000 feet. That has always worked for me, but the changes you make don’t have to be that dramatic.
However you do it, always be looking for ways to shake things up in your work life. Volunteer to take on a project outside your area of expertise or make a point to go to lunch with someone that you don’t work closely with every day – there are many ways to break out of your current pattern and grow in the process.
For a lot of people, change can be scary – that’s human nature. So if you decide to take me up on this idea of change, here are a couple of quotes that will be worth remembering as you go along. The first, largely attributed to Thomas Watson Sr. who built IBM into a great company, is “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” The second, which I saw posted on the wall at the downtown Y in Phoenix, is “Pray not for tasks equal to your strength, pray for strength equal to your tasks”.
Whether you take a step or a leap, make a move out of your comfort zone. You’ll be glad you did.
My friend (let’s call him Joe) popped onto IM first thing the other morning. He started bragging that he’d gotten permission to work from home.
Joe works in a corporate-schmorporate environment where gaining this permission is a major accomplishment. I personally dislike working from home. Nevertheless, I prodded Joe for his opinion as to why this was so great.
Joe’s primary praise was, “much fewer distractions,” but I couldn’t help but thinking: distractions like people wanting to chat with you at 8:00 in the morning before you’ve checked your e-mail or even grabbed a cup of coffee?
Don’t get me wrong, there are times when rocking the workday from home can’t be beat. Have to take the kids to the doctor at lunchtime? Have more snot coming out of you than is typically socially acceptable? Have the plumber, landscaper, cable guy and roofer all coming to visit you between 9:00 and 4:00? At times like that, a work-from-home day is the best thing ever.
Here’s what else I know about Joe: he hates work. He doesn’t like what he does, and when he is working he complains about it all day. I know this because most of the chats Joe starts begin with “Blah” or “Bored” or “Long day here.”
I also believe that “much fewer distractions” for Joe typically means “much fewer distractions from the non-work stuff I’d rather be doing.”
I love my job. It’s what I went to school for and I can’t imagine doing anything else for a living. Typically I wake up excited about getting to do it again all day. I like the team I work with and the place where I work. I also like to work really hard during work hours. I like to be in control of my distractions too, so I couldn’t be in greater disagreement with Joe about distractions being lesser when I work from home.
Don’t get me wrong, I have distractions in the office or at home. Am I guilty of occasionally doing other things when I’m supposed to be working? I’d be a big liar if I said otherwise. I like to stay socially connected and I use myriad chat utilities and social media outlets. Similarly, within arm’s reach of my keyboard there are two remote controlled cars and a helicopter, a Rubik’s puzzle, Star Wars figurines, and a drawing pad. There are a Wii and an XBox down the hall in DAXKO’s WorkPlay space. I also have more than six thousand songs in my iTunes library and a slamming pair of headphones. Should I want a distraction, I have a wide selection. When I’m in the office though, I can also choose to ignore all of them when I need heads-down time (and that’s typically what I do). At home, it’s just not that easy.
Before I sound like too much of a cynic, allow me to say that I love my three sons. They are the primary reasons that I work. That being said, they are also the primary reasons I prefer to work from my office. When I’m programming I’d rather be focusing on where the bugs are in the code and not on what my two-year-old just smeared on my neck.
Is there too much chatter from Joe? One click and he’s minimized to my system tray for the day. As far as I can tell, there’s nowhere that I can click on my kids to minimize them to my system tray. They totally ignore my “Busy” GTalk status (but to be fair, so does Joe). I’m also fairly certain that allowing one’s children to gather as much dust as there is on my Rubik’s puzzle or R. C. helicopter is a criminal offense.
I’m happy for Joe. For me, I’ll take the office space, at least until my kids get older. I hope he can be productive from home, but I hope he doesn’t forget why they’re paying him.
Meanwhile, I sure hope that this is pancake syrup on my neck.
You thought I was going to write about DAXKO’s Kick-Off T-shirt design, but…that’s not it.
The Team T’s I’m talking about here came from an excerpt from “The Game Changer” that Dave G. left on my desk. The article is about building an innovation team. I like it.
One of the things that hit home is the importance of intellectual diversity on the team. In short, to innovate a great product that will succeed in the marketplace takes a few key people with diverse “thinking styles.” Intellectual diversity means people approach problems and opportunities in very different ways. There are idea people, project managers, executioners (not as bad as it sounds!), and leaders. A successful innovation team needs them all, and sometimes more than one from each person.
Different people are going to get to the goal in different ways. Example: Market people will look at a market problem and attempt to solve it for a profit (looking out for the business). Product people, like artists and engineers, fall in love with design, novelty, or functionality (enamored with the killer product/service). Successful innovation takes both, and will only work when both types recognize the value of the other in reaching the end goal.
Tim Brown of IDEO uses the term “T-shaped” disposition to describe the intellectual profile of innovative teams. IDEO looks for people with depth in one subject (the down-stroke of the T). They must also have a breadth of curiosity and willingness to consider other people’s skills (the top part of the T). These “Type T” people are not easy to find. With drive and passion often comes ego and self-righteousness. Building a trusting team of T-Players is critical to getting our Association business on a success track. I am Thankful—with a capital T—that the players on the team already show great signs of being T-Players.
We’re fast approaching the DAXKO event of the year… a little adventure we call Kick-Off! The much-anticipated event rolls around every January, and details remain under wraps until day of. Seriously… it’s a “if I tell you, I have to kill you” kind of secret. This annual retreat isn’t limited to the bigwigs at DAXKO though. Instead, the entire team heads offsite for a major planning session.
The agenda includes a candid review of the past year – opportunities we capitalized on and those we missed, proud achievements and where we fell short. We lay out our goals for the coming year, and teams develop their attack plans to make it all happen. We usually wrap up the occasion with a crazy fun teambuilding activity – think urban scavenger hunt, inflatable obstacle course, high speed go-kart races, and Amazing Race… DAXKO style. (See pics of past events)
Check out the quick clip below to hear from this year’s event organizer extraordinaire, Barb.
Barb Talks Kick-Off from DAXKO on Vimeo.
Get in on the fun and help us choose our 2010 Kick-Off t-shirt. Team members submit design ideas, and the one with the most votes wins. Some of the top designs are shown here. Hit us with your fave in the comments!
