Wh-wh-wh-Windows 8?

It's not controversial to say that Windows 8 has not won the hearts and minds in the technology community. In fact, recently, Windows 8 and Microsoft were blamed for the slide in PC sales. While I personally think there are plenty of other reasons for said slide, IDC isn't exactly nobody in the tech business so people will take note.

I am a pretty technically savvy person so my concerns and needs do not exactly mirror that of a more every day consumer. Nonetheless, people like me buy a lot of computers, advise others what to buy and often support those systems at home and in our business. What we think does matter beyond what our ownership or market presence bespeaks.

Let's start with a few key issues. These arise from my use of Windows 8 over the course of the last month on my HP ENVY dv6 laptop. It is not touch enabled so this represents the vast majority of desktop and laptop computers in existence today was well as most new units shipped for the foreseeable future.

The Coffee Shop as the New Office?

Once upon a time, I used to begin my day with a can of Coke or a stop at McDonalds to get the even better fountain version. I didn't like coffee ass it tasted too thin, insubstantial for my tastes. Certainly, that was true versus the syrupy sweetness of coke. 

Eventually, my tastebuds matured a bit and that degree of sweetness became sickeningly sweet - especially so early in the morning. I moved onto coffee but then found the sweet spot in the latte. The blend of milk and espresso really gets it done for me. Unfortunately, they aren't cheap and you can really only get them at the local coffee shop. Perhaps I should say "shops" as the coffee wars continue to rage with Starbucks versus everyone else in a bid to seemingly achieve a coffee shop on every corner.

This growing ubiquity has led a trend of folks hanging out at the coffee shop as a social and work destination. Nowadays, the coffee shop is being hailed as a melting pot of creativity and caffeine by a variety of folks with recommendations to make it a normal working location. 

Job Hunting and the Efficacy of the Modern Resume

Since I'm back on the job hunt again after a 10 year stint at my last company, it's been interesting to be on the applicant side of the equation. Over the past decade, I was involved in hiring dozens of people which equates to well over a thousand resumes that crossed my desk. I was the hiring manager for some of the positions, part of a hiring team for others or perhaps the one-over manager.
In other cases, I wasn't involved at all but was pulled into a quick interview to help get a good feel for the candidates if there was question as to fit or multiple similar candidates.

Thinking back to the process, I remember a massive time commitment required to get together a good job description, work with human resources or recruiting to begin the process, review the resumes, perform a phone screen and then schedule and conduct one or more in person interviews.

Minty Fresh

I had never heard about the Mint family of devices before. If you haven't either the short version is that they are floor cleaning robots similar to the concept of a Roomba but for hard floors rather than carpet. I actually found out about it from woot.com which, in its typical style, had a one day sale on an older Mint model. I read the reviews and saw some issues with that model. However, when I looked into the newer model it seemed that most of those problems had been solved albeit at a higher price.

Robot Round-up

It's been awhile since I've posted a technology item here, so let's get to it.

Robots in our homes aren't exactly new. We have machines that clean and dry our clothes and dishes, machines that condition the air and water the lawn and so on. I've had a lot of schedule challenges lately and wanted to find a way to get back some free time. I've made two recent key investments in home automation.

A Few Good People

What is the difference between a good company and a great one or a good company and a crappy one? A few good people. No surprise really, since it was in the title... :-)

In all seriousness, every company's production/productivity is driven by the people you employ. The extent to which those people are intelligent, engaged and hard-working is generally going to determine just how successful a company can and will be. Naturally, there are external factors that can influence performance such as a violent economic meltdown, but let's exclude those for now.

There is nothing wrong with going to work for the paycheck, but let's be honest... If that's the only reason you are going there and you are in career mode, you're probably in the wrong place. Each and every one of us spends the majority of our days at work. There is absolutely no reason that we cannot be going to a place that provides challenge, excitement and a chance for advancement. People who look at their jobs like this are capable of improving their lives, their jobs and everyone around them.

This would be the point where folks reading this entry will scoff, point at me and make fun of the "pie in the sky idealist." I'll point back and tell you that I have seen individuals make a difference in a company. Smart, engaged people who can innovate and change the nature of their jobs are capable of raising the bar in a work group, a department, a division. Those people should be celebrated and rewarded, because they can lead a company to success one person at a time.

And to the managers and leaders reading this, you are not that person most of the time. You are not on the front lines, you are not doing the work. You can provide the vision and educate the staff about what they need to do and why, but the only impact you can truly have on staff is to find those good people, reward them, publicize them and above all else keep them. Otherwise, someone else will. Cheerfully.

Just a Little Bit Better

There's that old saying, "Don't confuse activity with results." And while that's important, all to often we confuse results with no results. Yes, I purposely wrote that sentence just that way to make a point.

There are plenty of times in live in which you can measure quite distinctly how you've done on something. That's the way life works. And even when you can measure objective success, that might not be that important in the grand scheme of things. The point here, is that sometimes it's too easy to focus so hard on the challenges ahead that we forget to celebrate the challenges conquered.

If you walked into a situation, whether personal or professional tomorrow and made it 1% better, would you be pleased with that? Most people would probably scoff at an improvement of one percent. They'd consider it a waste of time, a demoralizing failure. But what if you did that every day? If you worked just 200 days a year that would be 200% improvement. (And, no finance folks, I'm obviously not compounding here!) Now that's nothing to sneeze at.

But how do you measure these things? How can you say you've improved subjective things like staff morale, effectiveness, etc? Guess. Make an educated guess. No, it's not a fancy system. 

At the end of the day, give your self a point if you made things better, subtract one if you made things worse. Keep track for a month. The results will undoubtedly surprise you and it might just focus your goals and activity for the next day.

And that my friends, is both activity and results.

Re-organization in Your Organization

The world is changing quickly these days. Probably faster than most of us can even appreciate in real time. Our recent global economic meltdown is proof enough of that.

Individually, we can react to a shift in circumstances in the way in which we prioritize our tasks, the rigidity in which we might enforce policies and procedures and so on. But for an organization to properly address a significant shift in the marketplace, it must take a more drastic step of re-organizing. This process, sadly, often includes staff reductions, but is necessary to allow the company to place the right people and resources in front of the most important challenges.

These changes are not without costs, though. Change causes discomfort and can reduce morale as people often feel uprooted and unsure of the conditions. Productivity takes a short term hit as folks come up to speed with their new roles, challenges and staffs.

Regardless of the negatives, companies will need to continue to be agile in its approach to structure. And we as leaders, manager and staff will need to get better at foreseeing and shepherding change through our organization. We'll need to all work together to fill in the gray areas with detail and help people feel comfortable and empowered with change rather than merely being a victim to it.

I know, I know. Easier said, than done, right? Well, what isn't? Just because it's hard doesn't mean we still don't need to get better at it.

Dual Monitors

For years at work we have had every employee running with dual monitors. First it was 15" CRT monitors, then it went to 17" monitors. After awhile, we graduated to 19" LCD monitors and this year, we upgraded most of our staff to dual 20" or 22" LCD monitors. We've found that it improves productivity a great deal as so many of the tasks folks need to do nowadays require the use of multiple systems. For example, our customer support folks might be logged into our CRM on one screen and a customer's computer via WebEx on the other. Accounting might have the accounting system open on one screen plus an Excel spreadsheet on the other. And for developers, well, they love screen real estate.

In any case, I also have been running a similar setup at home for a while now. More recently, I caught a great deal on woot for some de-labled HP 24" LCDs. They run at a very impressive 1900 x 1200 resolution and I can fit all kinds of stuff on there at once. But of course, there's a problem in a paradise. (Isn't that always the case?) Two 24" monitors dominate your desk. I mean it eats up all the space.

Nonetheless, I like having my cake and eating it too, so I went ahead and rotated them vertically. So, technically they are running at 1200 x 1900. And I have some very tall monitors on my desk. However, I still get to keep my screen real-estate and now I get some desk back, plus access to all the cubbyholes behind the monitors as I have a roll-top desk. We'll just have to see how this configuration holds up, but so far, so good.