Inside ASI-AP

Further to my post a few weeks ago on how blogs can improve the shared communication process in place of email, I read some other posts today which share other useful ideas. The original post was from Tantek Celik on how email is not working for him, and this was picked up by Merlin Mann of 43 Folders on email insanity. 43 Folders is a great website full of useful ideas for improving personal productivity and provides coverage on the book Getting Things Done (or GTD).

I haven't touched on trying to reduce our email and IM clutter recently but just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I am going to be putting more effort into this year than ever before!

Why?

We have so much knowledge in our email – questions, answers, tips, tricks, who’s doing what, etc etc – but it is all private! For example - I can send an email to Colin on clarifying some pricing policies that may be of use to everyone in the sales and consulting teams, yet no-one but Colin gets to see it. That is a big problem because it is a missed opportunity to not just share useful information, but also to get feedback or clarification.

Julie distributed via email last week the nine month (3rd quarter) results of our SMART STEP internal training for 2007. We made some changes to the training program for this year that can be summarised by this saying: "planning to execute, and then executing to plan". I wrote more detail about the changes in the half year results.

The spreadsheet distributed by Julie shows your quarterly actuals against your quarterly plan. I want to recognise in particular the following people who are either ahead of their plan, or within 10% of making their plan, as of the three-quarter way mark (September 30):

One of the take aways from Jeff De Cagna's sessions at the Association Forum conference last week (my conference summary blogs day 1 and day 2) was the concept of "small safe tests" or "disciplined experimentation". Jeff posted this article late last year on innovation in associations:

"Creating what’s next is about putting ideas that emerge from insight and foresight into practice through disciplined experimentation. The careful development of prototypes, service tests, proofs of concept and other well-designed experiments makes it possible for associations to safely attempt a wider portfolio of new activities to advance both strategy and innovation efforts. Naturally, association leaders must play close attention to the learning derived from its experimental portfolio and act quickly to integrate that new knowledge into on-going strategic thinking and dialogue."

Beau posted a link to a nice article in the latest consulting newsletter. It is to a blog called "Change This" changethis.com and compiled by a deputy editor of the New York Times.

This particular article is called "When You Absolutely, Positively Should Not Use Email" - you can get the full PDF here.

It follows on some previous posts of mine about getting off email.

I listened to a great podcast yesterday from Merlin Mann of 43folders.com

If you don't podcast then there is a video you can watch: http://www.43folders.com/izero/

This has really helped me in setting a plan for managing my inbox. If you are struggling to get through the noise then he has 5 simple ways you can manage emails. Worth listening to/watching.

On the side, his website http://43folders.com, has all sorts of information for doing things a little more productively and is worth a look.

With the voice over IP system now rolled out in all regions, including the UK, we are really starting to see the call charges drop from our traditional office lines. All calls to the US are now essentially free, and between all staff with an IP phone. Our total phone bills for the 30 plus lines we have out of Sydney and Melbourne offices is now less than $1,500 per month. Before the IP phones it was over $3,000 per month.

Next, we need to get to work on mobiles. The monthly cost for mobiles is around $1,800 per month, now more than our fixed lines. Changing our mobile plans to give free calls from mobile to mobile did not have quite the cost-saving impact we had expected, so we need to take another look at our calling behaviours and look for cost reductions on mobiles. We are also going to be reviewing our policy on who actually needs mobiles once we get the teleworker IP phones installed for those working from home. In the meantime, please be conscious of time you spend on mobiles.

The schedule for Product Training for the entire sales and marketing teams has been set for the remainder of 2007.

We have changed the format of this training from being quarterly, on-site training in Melbourne (which we did last year every quarter when David Riffle was visiting), to a more regular, shorter session delivered via Sonnexis. Some of these have been recorded and you are required to watch in your own time, others - including those set for the remainder of the year - are scheduled 1-2 hour interactive sessions delivered via Sonnexis. We decided to change the format this year for a number of reasons: to have more frequent sessions to more quickly address questions and other matters relating to the iMIS 15 release this year; to make better use of David's time when he is here doing sales calls instead of being a trainer; and to save travel/accomm costs.

Julie just distributed via email the six month results of our SMART STEP internal training for 2007. We made some changes to the training program for this year that can be summarised by this saying: "planning to execute, and then executing to plan".

In 2006, the SMART STEP program was about each team member achieving 60 points of internal training. Since 1 point = 1 hour of approved training, this meant 60 hours of training a year per ASI'er. New team members needed slightly more at 75 hours to ensure extra training time was allocated for induction training.

In 2007, we became more focused. Just doing 60 hours of any old training was not going to be good enough. Instead, you have to do at least 60 hours of training, and the actual training you do has to be as agreed with your manager and documented on your SMART STEP Training Plan. This plan outlines the classes and training you will do, quarter by quarter. The training should reflect closing gaps in your skills matrices and other training relevant to your job responsibility.

The AP management team is currently enrolled in a Graduate Certificate of Management course at the Australian Institute of Management (AIM) in Melbourne. This consists of four modules being conducted over the period of 18 months. We started in February of 2007 and will be completed by mid-2008. This set of wiki pages is for collective sharing for each module of tools available, learnings and book references.

I posted last month on my work plans through to the end of June, and thought an update was in order.

I have completed these tasks:

6. Executive Briefing
7. Bob’s visit
8. Partnership Program customer visits with Mick
9. Q1 management meeting and BSC review

And still have these outstanding:

1. Complete written part of reviews for my direct reports
2. Finalise goals and BSC initiatives for 2007
3. Record and distribute our 2007 strategy presentation
4. Update all job descriptions for my direct reports using the competency based assessments we were taught in the AIM training

I have been working with a couple of you on setting work plan goals for the next couple of months so I thought I would also share my own (not in priority order):

I attended my Sonexis training session this week that was given by Steven in our US IT team. Sonexis is our telephone and web conferencing system that we own inhouse, and that is integrated into our IP phone system. It means that when we use it, we do not have to pay per minute charges like we do when we use Webex.

Note that we will still be using Webex for all public webcasts. Sonexis should be used for all other conferencing requirements.

Further to a posting I made recently on improving communication ('Email, messenger, phone first Fridays ...'), I wanted to share a statement I heard the other day:

The responsibility of communication rests with the transmitter, not the receiver

Consider that statement next time you use the "I sent George an email ..." excuse for having poor communication.

We all have our own lists of favourites/bookmarks in our web browsers, and occassionally a new website gets discovered and we email it around to each other. There is a better way - social bookmarking. Read the full story on the wiki page here www.insideasiap.com/delicious. Or click 'del.icio.us' in the top nav. I have only just started our collection, and this will build up over the next few weeks as I get around to adding more sites.