Liz Strauss

PERFECT VIRTUAL MANAGER

Quality.
Quality is an elusive term.
Who gets to define it?
Quality can’t be written into a contract or fully delineated on a spec sheet.

Yet, an expectation of anything less wears down the folks who are doing the work.

Right 5: The Right to Choose for Customers

Quality is what meets the unexpressed needs and desires of customers in ways that please and delight them. Any thing, any detail, any enhancement that a customer cannot see or would not miss is not quality. It is cost.

In essence, quality is the right to choose for customers always and every time.

Choosing for customers is a complicated thing.

Customers rely on us to know what will serve them best, to watch for their point of pain and for their dreams. Choosing for customers is so much more than merely asking what they want.

• It’s having the vision to see what they will need and want even before they have imagined it.
• It’s looking at simple, daily decisions and asking “What would our customers want us to do? Who does this solution serve? If we do this, will we be serving our customers even more fully?”
• It’s knowing that our customers get to decide what is meaningful and what isn’t.
• It’s understanding that knowing customers comes from more than spreadsheets and focus groups. It comes from listening to their experiences and understanding how they think. It is the ultimate empathetic endeavor.
• It’s taking care of our business so that we can continue to meet their needs effectively and efficiently. In other words, it is not offering customers what we cannot afford to offer.

Quality is choosing for customers by having a relationship with them that is authentic and transparent.

Who are our customers? Every person that touches our work inside and outside of our businesses.

Liz Strauss

Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding Manager. — PVM

See also Work with Liz! at Successful Blog

PERFECT VIRTUAL MANAGER

Budget and Schedule.
Some folks see budgets and schedules as limiting, but in reality they are freeing. Without them, the people doing the work cannot move. Every action outside a budget requires permission in order to begin. Every task outside a schedule will lose priority.

Budget and schedule, when understood and handled well can be powerful tools.

Right 4: A Budget and Schedule by Those Doing the Work

In context of any project, it’s rare that those who are not doing the work think through the time and costs of accomplishing the tasks involved. For this reason and for outright accountability, those who do the work have the right and responsibility to generate and manage the budget and the schedule for the project.

As with any quantitative measures that describe the future, budgets and schedules are built upon assumptions that certain information will be fact, that certain human and non-human resources will be available, and that the plan and process for a project won’t change significantly. The budget and schedule, in fact, are business controls that formalize the project plan in order to keep the project within agreed parameters.

Entry level professionals have the right to participate in the basics of building, reading, reporting on budgets and schedules, and the responsibility to understand how they work. They need to know that going over budget or missing a schedule deadline can be a positive, when the resulting outcome is a far greater return on investment. The same folks need to realize that completing a project well under budget and well ahead of schedule can be a negative, when the resulting outcome is an opportunity missed — one in which there might have been a greater return on investment.

Budgets and schedules need to be realistic within the context of the overarching company goals. That means that whatever is driving the company will also drive these two documents.

The fact that they are generated to predict the future immediately reveals the impossibility of a budget or a schedule that will be or should be perfectly met.

Differences in interdepartmental time/goal orientation make these working documents difficult to generate and are often the source of conflict in a political sense. That is the greatest argument to explain why the folks who do the work need to be the folks who generate these documents.

Building the budget and the schedule gets the interdepartmental team to think through and communicate the process before the project begins. Ongoing status meetings to update and manage the documents keep that line of communication open.

Three key points:

• Budgets and schedules give project teams room to work.
• Budgets and schedules get project teams to define and communicate the process before the work begins.
• Ongoing review of budgets and schedules keep lines of communication open.

Why then, do budgets and schedules too often get handed down from management, when the tasks of budget and schedule belong in the hands of those doing the work?

How many reasons can you think of?

Liz Strauss

Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding Manager. — PVM

See also Work with Liz! at Successful Blog

PERFECT VIRTUAL MANAGER

Information.
We gather information through a variety of means. We use our senses. We use machines. We research; ask questions; identify patterns. We read. We talk to each other.

Individually we are limited in the amount of information we can pull together, but collectively, we have the power to amass a significant resource.

Right 3: The Right to Accurate, Relevant Information

In project work, up-to-date information is crucial. Accurate, relevant information can mean the difference between work that is useful and work that is not.

In a healthy working relationship, I have to understand the goals and outcomes that are part of your job. I also need to realize how what I know and what I do might impact your process and your workload. However, understanding and knowing are not nearly enough.

Full-disclosure of relevant information about what I’m doing is what you need to make decisions about how to order and adjust your work. Any less than an accurate update, however well meant, can cause extra work.

Problems are avoided when information flows freely. Problems are caused when it does not.

Regular meetings, updates, and status reports built into a process can set the atmosphere for an appropriate information flow. However, key to maintaining this Right is suffering no tolerance for any less than full-disclosure and treating appropriate information sharing as a leadership skill.

To promote full-disclosure folks need to feel appreciated when they share information widely. They need to know they are in a high-trust environment, one in which bad news is welcomed as a safety net. Leaders can bring teams to this cultural value by the way they deliver and respond to bad news, and by the way they encourage experimentation, allowing small failures for the sake of growth.

How do you coax the information you need from a person who feels that information is the only power he or she might have?

Liz Strauss

Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding Manager. — PVM

See also Work with Liz! at Successful Blog