Monday January 31, 2005

Change Acceptance Questions

The past couple of weeks have been especially full of meetings. Today I was in an all day meeting talking about change acceptance. Obviously we already do a lot of change acceptance but we always want to get better. I wonder about several things.

What do companies want as far as help with change acceptance?
What companies do change management well?
Would anyone care to share their experiences good and/or bad with a change acceptance consulting vendor?
What do others do to be successful in maximizing change acceptance?
If you decided to replace your current office package with StarOffice what help, if any, would you need with change acceptance? Is that kind of help valuable to you?

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to respond!

Friday January 28, 2005

Studying Distributed Work

Our group, the iWork Solutions Group had a two day off site this week. We are using ourselves as a laboratory to figure out how to make distributed groups more effective. We are also working with Julie Rennecker a Professor from the Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management who is studying virtual and distributed teams and how to make them more effective. (That is my interpretation of what I am sure is a much more complex study.)

In our meetings this week we focused on the concepts of connectedness and awareness as defined in the book Distributed Work edited by Pamela J. Hinds and Sara Kiesler. We were particularly focusing on chapter 13. The premise that we looked at is that awareness of others and the work they are doing improves team performance. If we assume that this premise is true then developing processes, methods, and tools to increase connectedness and team awareness will be a good thing for Sun and our distributed work programs.

We spent time briefly educating each other about several of our projects. We then looked at how different people are connected to different projects. For three of the projects we then consciously shared different categories of information that we thought might increase our overall awareness. The kinds of information we shared included everything from team members personal work style and work hours to project work assignments and priorities. From a qualitative point of view I think we all felt that we came away from the two days with some great information that will make us more effective. I think we also will be able to convert our process for more general applicability.

On a higher level I know Julie will continue to study how we are connected and how it impacts our work. To me it is all very interesting.

Wednesday January 26, 2005

Remote Management web course

Our group, the iWork Solutions Group is having all day meetings this week. It is always fun to see everyone and to catch up on all the great work that everyone is doing. One of the things that I knew about but just got to look at for the first time today is a new remote management Web course. It is free to anyone within Sun who wants to use it. It has multiple modules addressing things like working across cultures, managing group collaboration, managing performance and when remote employees join. You can dip into parts of it whenever it is relevant to you. For Sun employees it is available from the iWork web site under Best Practices - Training.

I think I have mentioned before that our internal work infrastructure program has three components. The components are the technology necesasry to support distributed and mobile work, the real estate and physical infrastructure and the human resources processes and enablers. This remote management Web course is one of several human resources enablers.

Our meeting starts in a couple of minutes. I'm in the iWork cafe now so i better get going!

Tuesday January 25, 2005

SunRays

I love the iWork with kids story that ThinGuy told on his blog . I am adding his blog to my blogroll. All the machines on ThinGuys blog are SunRays. SunRay is such a great technology. Our CIO, Bill Vass, talked to our whole group this evening. Bill talked about what the SunRay can do for the world in the future. For a lot of people it is already great now. I have one at home and wherever I go at work. I love it. As Bill says you don't carry a TV wherever you go or get viruses on your TV so why should you have to worry about any of that on your computing device. The toughest part is the road from where we are today to ubiquitous SunRays. I want it all now!!

Monday January 24, 2005

What is having your own office worth to you?

The same co-worker who I described yesterday also told me that although he is a flexible status worker he would much prefer to have an assigned office. At Sun being flexible means you don't have an assigned office. Instead you reserve an office in advance in the building where you need to work on a given day. My co-worker is skeptical about the impact of Sun's internal work infrastructure program on ability to collaborate. He worries as I have heard others worry about how having to clean up every night might make him lose his train of thought and thus be less productive.

What most people don't realize is that the flexible office program is what has enabled Sun to develop all the other very popular aspects of the internal work infrastructure program we call iWork. If you read very many Sun blogs you realize that a lot of Sun people work from home. It is a big reason that people like working at Sun. We also have drop in locations close to where people live and iWork cafes on many campuses. These programs are all funded by flexible office savings which we have calculated are in the neighborhood of $70M per year.

I guarantee you that the Work from Home program, the mobility technology support, and the other aspects of Sun's internal work infrastructure program would never have happened if they were not seen as enabling Sun to save money, support the way we work and make employees happy at the same time.

One of the best things about being a member of the iWork group at Sun is that we have a very clear vision that we support the way people work. We understand that to some degree 70% of all employees at Sun are mobile (travel frequently from place to place to do their jobs) or distributed (choose to work in locations sometimes that area apart from their main work groups). These figures continue to grow, reflecting a phenomenon that is common for knowledge workers.

This is not to say that we don't continue to study how to support the mobile workforce while nurturing creativity, enabling collaboration and allowing people to work in an environment that is most productive to them. We continue to look at how to address the kinds of concerns my co-worker mentioned. But there is no way I would want an assigned corner office with a view of San Francisco if I had to give up all that Sun provides to allow me to work where I am most effective. I'd be interested to hear what others have learned about how to enable distributed work and support the mobile workforce.

Sunday January 23, 2005

JDS Change Acceptance Ideas

I had an interesting conversation with a coworker in another division on Friday. He is not running JDS (he is still running CDE). He is aware of the need to eventually switch but he is in no hurry. He says he wants a few free hours to make the switch and become familiar with the new user interface. I suspect he is typical of a significant portion of our user base.

I like trying new things but a lot of people don't like change and would prefer to stay with what is comfortable. Our conversation made me realize again how much continuous effort you have to put into making what in this case is a fairly simple change happen.

In our change acceptance meeting on Friday we brainstormed what we could do to get more people to make the switch. Here are some of the ideas we came up with.

We need to convert more of our system administrators into advocates for JDS. They are highly influential and if we talk to them individually and address any concerns they might have it might help. We can also enlist their managers to urge them to become active supporters.

Making JDS the default will help considerably. We will be doing this in a couple of weeks

We could create barometers that we hang in visible places or on the internal home page. Or we could widely distribute a weekly status report which shows how much each group or site has converted. Competition could help.

We could make CDE less stable or slower or make it inconvenient to use CDE. This might work but I think there is a good chance it would back fire.

We could promote cool features of JDS that would make people want to switch.

We could target managers / key influencers and ask them to urge their people to make the change.

We could do a once a week email to all CDE users asking them to switch.

A lot of these seem like good ideas that I can start to make happen.

Tuesday January 18, 2005

JDS file search

One of the most common questions we get from JDS (Gnome) users is how to search for a file. One might think that you open the Nautilus file manager and do a search. But one would be wrong. None of the menus in Nautilus have a search option. It is actually quite easy once you know the answer. All you have to do is select Search for Files from the Launch menu.

I mentioned Friday that I was going to be fixing my parents computer over the weekend. I reinstalled Windows and the virus protection software, ran some upgrades, switched them to Thunderbird for email and Firefox for browsing and they are back in business.

Friday January 14, 2005

SunRay and JDS

My parents computer has some kind of a virus or spyware that won't allow them to access the internet. I'm planning to go down to visit them in San Diego this weekend to fix the problem and of course to visit with them. While I am there I think I'll move them to Firefox and Thunderbird for browsing and email.

I really wish some company would offer a service that would allow people to use SunRay with JDS so that that they didn't have to worry about these kinds of problems.

Thursday January 13, 2005

The iWork Name

In a comment to my last post Geoff asked a very good question about the iWork name and the fact that Apple just announced their iWork product. Here is an email my boss just sent out that explains.

“By now, you may have heard about the pending launch of Apple's new “iWork Productivity Suite”. In order to avoid confusion around the use of the term “iWork”, I'd like to provide you with some background, and let you know where we at Sun stand today.

1) We understand that this month Apple may, in fact, have trademarked the term “iWork” as the name of a new office productivity suite.

2) We explored trademarking “iWork” several times within the last 5 years, but found that the term had already been trademarked. We also learned that the cost to purchase the trademark would likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, in addition to significant annual cost to maintain it. Therefore, we decided not to pursue that option.

3) Upon advice from Sun's attorneys, however, we determined that we could continue to use “iWork” for our internal program.

4) 18 months ago we began to develop a new name to describe our planned external sales solution, which is based on our internal iWork program offering. We are in the final stage, working with Corp. Marketing, of finalizing the name of our external offering.

5) We intend to continue to use the term “iWork” in reference to our internal program. When talking to customers and the press, we must continue to emphasize that “iWork is Sun's internal work infrastructure program ”.”

Wednesday January 12, 2005

iWork Trouble Reports

As you know iWork is what Sun calls its work from anywhere program. I was talking to my boss today about the perception within Sun that iWork technology is difficult. This is especially the perception among non technical people like Human Resources. A few years ago iWork technology was difficult. Today we have a good technology solution with very few holes. There are still a few things being worked out like how non technical people can get set up running Linux JDS on their lap tops but we are almost there.

What we need now is a system to capture iWork trouble reports. So if someone finds something like what Rich found about token card renewals they could just file an iWork trouble report. We might not be able to fix every process problem right away but it would point us in the right direction. I'd want to somehow differentiate between issues that the normal process should fix and bugs in the process. For example users would go to our resolution center for technical support but if the technical support process didn't work correctly they would file an iWork trouble report. We could then work to address process problems both real and perceived. We would consider each report a defect and work to reduce the number of defects. It would also allow us to show that we are improving our processes. We are getting better and we would have data to prove it. I'm not quite sure how we will do this but I think it is something we need to make happen.

Monday January 10, 2005

Java Desktop System – Change Acceptance

In a posting before Christmas I mentioned that one of the lessons I have learned leading the JDS change acceptance (CAP) team is that change is a long term process, and we have only just begun. Back in November we updated all the Gnome desktops at Sun to a new look and feel that we called JDS preview because it looks like JDS. This was first step toward deploying JDS as a part of Solaris 10 later this year. There was a ton of work done to build acceptance for JDS preview. Our Change acceptance work included a flood of communications, personal contact with more than 1500 individual users, identifying issues and addressing them, and developing and sharing the vision and business case for JDS. At least partly because of the change acceptance work done by the JDS CAP team the new desktop was well received.

It would be very easy to declare victory but the fact of the matter is that even though we increased the number of people at Sun who are running Gnome on their SunRays by 25% we still have less than 60% of SunRay users running Gnome (JDS Preview). Later this month we will be making JDS Preview the default desktop which will certainly up the percentage but I'd really like to see more users convert voluntarily before we make the default switch. Even after the default switch users will still be able to choose to run CDE when they log in. Therefore we can't stop working on getting JDS accepted in our user base.

One approach that we have decided to take is to pick 3 major sites that have a low percentage of users running JDS and do a deep dive into what the root causes for low take up percentages are at those locations. Then we will be able to address the issues we identify and hopefully continue to raise the acceptance percentage. We are also continuing to work on increasing the number of laptop users running JDS. There is still a lot to do and it really does prove that real change takes time and we've only been working on this for 4 months.

Sunday January 09, 2005

The floor

We are replacing the old linoleum on the kitchen floor with ceramic tile. This weekend we added the grout to the new tile. All we have left to do now is seal it and replace the baseboard. It looks really great if I do say so myself. Projects like this are fun and very gratifying.

Friday January 07, 2005

The power of Distributed - journalism, work, power, organizations

Reading Dan Gillmor's very interesting blog about what he means by Distributed Journalism got me thinking. The idea that the whole is more than the sun of the parts is one of my core beliefs. It is a secret weapon that most people would agree with but few take advantage of. Distributed work is about trusting ht individual to make a difference. Distributed work is powerful for organizations, for computer systems and for nations.

The power of distributed work is in many ways similar to the power of teams. When I lead a team I see again and again that if you have a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve and if you give team members the ability to use their minds and their experience, i.e. Don't micro manage them. you will always achieve more than you originally thought was possible. It is one of the most exciting things about leading a team. One of the biggest mistakes a manger can make is thinking that she is in control, that she has all the answers and has to tell everyone what to do. One of the keys to success is autonomy. It is allowing the individual to make a difference and contribute to the whole. It's all about the distribution of power.

Several years ago I read an article in the Harvard Business Review called Democracy is Inevitable by Philip Slater and Warren G. Bennis. The article really resonated with me and has stayed with me. It was published in September-October 1990 but it was a reprint of an article originally published in the HBR in March-April 1964. It is an amazingly prescient article and very worth reading even today. It was republished because back in 1964 it predicted the failure of communism as a form of government. I found it even more interesting because it predicted the rise of what I would call more distributed organizations. I would even go so far as to say the article is a precursor to the Cluetrain Manifesto. Some of the ideas in the article are certainly dated but its basic precepts are that “Democracy ...... is the only system that can successfully cope with the changing demands of contemporary civilization” and that “Adaptability to change [is] the most important determinant of survival” Slater and Bennis say that what they mean by democracy is a System of Values which include:
1.Full and free communication
2.A reliance on consensus
3.The idea that influence is based on technical competence and knowledge
4.An atmosphere that permits and even encourages emotional expression
5.A basically human bias

Personally I think these ideas are exactly what blogging enables and what distributed organizations allow.

Distributed computing is one of the big reasons Sun became a successful company. Examples include products like NFS which distributes the file system onto the network or even SunRays which could be said to distribute the CPU across the network.>/p>

But even more powerful is that I believe distributed work is one of the reason Sun will continue to innovate and succeed. Sun's iWork programs allows Sun to attract and retain talent regardless of where they work. But most important is our culture and the power of the individual at Sun to make a difference. Blogging at Sun is just one manifestation of this belief in the power of the individual. Of course a key to success as an organization is a common direction and set of beliefs but this doesn't mean that centralized control and power works.

Its about democracy and trusting individuals. We will achieve much more together without centralized control than we can individually or in one big centrally controlled organization

Wednesday January 05, 2005

New Kitchen Floor

At home we are in the process of installing a new ceramic tile floor in our kitchen. To be perfectly correct it is a porcelain tile floor. I should also say that I use the term “we” very loosely. My husband, Duke, is doing all the work and I am admiring the finished product. The old linoleum was in terrible shape. We thought it would come up easily but discovered that removing it was a big job. I did do quite a bit of the work pulling it up. After one whole Saturday working on it both Duke and I had blisters and we were only half done. So we hired a friend of one of the girls to do the rest.

Last weekend Duke laid almost all the tile. He has a little more to do and then we will be ready to start grouting. I think I will be able to help with that. So far it looks fantastic!.

Beta testing JDS release 3

Before Christmas I signed up to be an internal beta tester for JDS Release 3. Yesterday I loaded the new JDS iWork client on to my laptop because I didn't have (and couldn't get) the root password for the JDS currently installed on my laptop. The install of the new iWork toolkit went very smoothly. I love it when things work! Then I proceeded to download the JDS release 3 ISO images and I burned a set of JDS release 3 install CDs. Now I'm doing the install. Stay tuned.