Category Å

The danger of inspiring others

Geir Isene 20 Comments

There is a liability in inspiring other people, to sell them an idea or work them up to do something. The liability is that the will of the person suddenly has an external motivator supplanting the intrinsic motivation of the person. Such an extrinsic motivator inherits the responsibility for the outcome of the person’s actions. If the person fails to, let’s say stop smoking, the person could blame the external motivator for the failure.

Brendan has accused me of being a fantastic motivator for people who later deflates when I am not around. This is a valid and good point.

It is better to help the person find his own inspiration, his own intrinsic motivation. Work with the person rather than perhaps unconsciously supplanting that motivation with your extrinsic motivating.


(Hugh at Gapingvoid.com)

Scrap the SLA (Service Level Agreement)

Geir Isene 14 Comments

According to Wikipedia, an SLA is:

“A service-level agreement is a negotiated agreement between two parties, where one is the customer and the other is the service provider. This can be a legally binding formal or an informal “contract” (for example, internal department relationships).“.

SLAs is a hot item in IT, and is given much weight in the organizational framework called ITIL.

Almost all IT directors I talk to rely heavily on SLAs or blame the lack of proper SLAs for lack of success.

But seriously, do you have an SLA with Google? With Facebook, Twitter or the scores of Internet services that you use personally? No – and if you are unhappy, you simply find another solution or service provider.

An IT service provider would be wise to simply scrap the SLA or any contract that seeks to bind the customer. Instead, let the customer be free to choose and move to another vendor if they feel like it. In that way, the service provider will have to be constantly performing better than the competition. And that is the best solution to keep the customers.

Instead of locking the customer with contracts, service the customer like no one else.

No contracts, no lock-in and you have no choice but to become and be the best.

Without even intellectual property protection, you would have to rely on pure and excellent service to retain your customers.

Customer lock-in mechanisms makes for laziness, dwindling creativity and thus ironically opens the door to better service providers.

SLAs are only warranted where the customer are not free to choose another provider, such as when the business strategy dictates the business units to only use the internal IT department.

Key success factors in business

Geir Isene 2 Comments

From an article I stumbled across over at Harvard Business Review:

The secret to being a great manager at Bell Labs is hiring the right people, giving them the tools they need, pointing them in the right direction, and staying out of their way.

It aligns perfectly with my article, “Processes, Automation and Human Potential“. It sums up succinctly how you do not rely on policy and micro-management to get things done. Whenever I see an organization relying on dictations, I know they fail on a) recruitment, b) training or supplying the right tools for the employees to freely use, or c) setting clear goals for delivery.


(Hugh at Gapingvoid.com)

Mastery

Geir Isene 4 Comments

Put simply:

Transcript:

We don’t care about money.
All I want to do is make bet­ter sushi.
I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit.
There is always a year­ning to achieve more.
I’ll con­ti­nue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is.
Even at my age, after deca­des of work, I don’t think I’ve achie­ved perfection.
But I feel ecs­ta­tic all day… I love making sushi.
That’s the spi­rit of the sho­ku­nin.
When to quit? The job you’ve wor­ked so hard for?
I’ve never once hated this job.
I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it.
Even though I’m 85 years old, I don’t feel like retiring.
That’s how I feel.

Thanks to Hugh for the tip.

Feel free to ask

Geir Isene 545 Comments

q

When the traffic gets high, when posts get more than 500 or even a 1000 comments, I am bound to miss questions from my readers.

I want to answer your questions, and to ensure you are not left without an answer, I propose you ask any questions you may have to me as comments to this blog post.

Just add your question as a comment here and I will get back to you with an answer. Ask anything – from my views on life, IT, Scientology, my favorite HP calculator, music, art, preferences in any part of life or whatever else you may have on your mind. Do not hold back. I am not shy.

This post is not an arena for long discussions – or I may again miss some questions buried in long threads. Interesting topics may instead earn separate blog posts.

The secret keys in coaching

Geir Isene 31 Comments

I have coached several hundred people in all walks of life. From executives of international companies and housewives to artists, top athletes and business people of widely different trades.

I have used many different tools and methods to help others. And the coaching has almost uniformly resulted in great success. But it is only recently that I managed to distill the reasons for success into two simple keys:

  1. Remain mentally fully present and uncover what the person really needs and wants. Find the goal of the coaching from the person, and not from your own assumptions or preconceived ideas.
  2. Help the person to not give a fuck.

That’s it.

Sure, there are perhaps many different aspects of life the person needs to tackle. But from my experience, a person’s inability to handle a situation is always linked to the person’s own tension, stress or drama. He simply cannot let go of being uptight about the problem. The problem is never that serious, and the less serious the person thinks the problem is, the better equipped he is in handling it. Usually, the person knows how to handle the situation, he only needs to let go of the up-tightness, simmer down and do what he knows is right. Sometimes the person needs some new knowledge – then I help him get that. But as long as the person remains uptight and serious, he won’t be of much use to himself.

And the best way to help the person not give a fuck is to get him to start doing something about the problem he is facing. Not to indulge in mental exercises, visualizings, meditations or other indirect attempts. A gradual tackling of the actual situation will help him see that the mountain is not unsurmountable. Get him to clean out the garage, talk to his wife, quit the job he hates, whatever. Tackle the main problem, not anything else. No beating around the bush. This will ease the tension. And he will relax. Finally, he will be on top of the situation, any situation. Be there for him. All the way.

Try it.

Update: Anette pointed me in the direction of this great article on this subject.

Beitostølen 2012

Geir Isene 26 Comments

Brendan, Niklas and I are at Beitostølen at the opening of the 2012/13 ski season cheering on our superstar Kristin Størmer Steira.

Our company, A-circle is a main sponsor (you can see our logo down where you usually wouldn’t stare at a girl’s body). Driving around in our new go-carts, we’re pretty visible here.

We’re having lots of fun 🙂

In a couple of days I will write a post that may generate some interesting action. Stay tuned.

Amazing person: Anne Isene

Geir Isene 3 Comments

Yes, my sister. And I am a very proud brother.

With a creativity and capacity like hers, it’s bound to be a continual explosion of great ideas and neat stuff.

When Anne was a kid, she wanted to work as a clown when she got older. Although I bet she would have done an excellent job in a circus, she made her career as a professional photographer. She did ad work for large corporations, portraits of famous people and made a name for herself. But that didn’t really hit the bullseye. She went on to become a clothes designer with her own label making clothes even for the Princess of Norway.

Then she started working with theater and film as a costumes designer. She’s done a wide range of productions – she is amazing when she does historical costumes. She is able to make stuff look worn and really old in no time.

Anything she does spouts of creativity and professionalism. She is such a dedicated professional.

Being her older brother, I used to protect her when she was in her teens. In later years she has returned the flow, and I am inspired by her dedication and strong will. Our mother’s passing this summer brought us closer. Brendan and I becoming her job neighbors is also rather cool.

Anne is a straight shooter, not afraid of speaking her mind. I can always count on her to give me her real opinion. She is rational and highly intelligent and challenges my views. Me like. A really cool sis (orwegian pun intended).

Amazing person: Janne Tørnes

Geir Isene 4 Comments

When Brendan and I take on a project to increase the production, cooperation and team spirit of an organization, we do not compromise. We go the whole nine yards. There are team issues and individual issues to tackle. When a key team player is having a rough time, we make sure to help until the person is again a productive, key player – or realizes his or her potential in another place. It doesn’t matter if the issues at hand are of work or personal nature. Be it health, inter-personal issues, mental stress, lack of motivation, wanting to do other things in life – the viewpoint is always “We motivating people and organizations to excel at what they are good at. We must help this person excel.” Always with the person’s own best in mind – because that will ultimately help the team.

Earlier this year we took on the task to help a department in a government organization. Janne is a key player in the team. She wasn’t working at her full potential, not even half. We quickly realized that she and the team would do much better if we were to debug whatever issues she was facing.

The normal scenario is along these lines: We get the person to describe the current life situation and a more ideal situation, and then fill the gap with realistic tracks that will move the person from Now to a better Future. We agree on tasks to be done. Usually a person is having problems with facing the issues in life and to get going on tackling those issues. We must nudge, comfort, hold hand, hug, discuss, nudge, be straight, be tough, hug some more, etc, before the person actually does the plan that he himself came up with.

Not so with Janne. This girl was blazingly fast to Get It. She got into gear, and off she went. She’s simply amazing at keeping the promises she makes to herself. Nu fuss – with her there is no try – only DO. And she went from this half-capacity team player to the key player she really is. Not only is she delivering like never before, she has taken on a new very important responsibility in the team.

Like Silje, she was way to humble about her own abilities and potential. She is now gradually waking up to the fact that she is an amazing person.