Michael Jordan's Weblog

Just a quick note to readers that my postings have slowed down due to my campaign for City Council in Lafayette, Colorado (among other reasons). If you are interested in knowing more about my candidacy, see http://MJforCityCouncil.org/

...I never really want to go to the office.

I finally went home assigned, got my home office set up the way I want it (except for one last thing -- a suitable compute device), and took all my files and books home. I like to have my "stuff" around me, my reference material, etc. I do still go into the office regularly, which works fine as long as I keep my top few working files handy for back/forth transfer.

I had to buy a decent phone and this one (AT&T E2520) is almost perfect. It has full duplex speaker phone with mute, with on-base dial pad, with hands-free speaker on the handset (good for portability). My only complaint about this phone is that the buttons are just a little harder to push than need be. Otherwise, works fine.

I'm VOIP (Vonage) to the home office, too. Sometimes I get noise on the line but, mostly, works fine. The service was easy to set up but I do not use the web-based call manager. This is because the app from Accessline works better, is simpler. My VOIP service uses a Linksys router with two phone jacks and one input ethernet plug. It occurred to me after I bought it that I should have purchased the version with IP-routing capability/plugs. That way I think I could take the box with me when I travel and have my laptop plugged into it. One IP connection that routes both phone and computer. I am not aware of a conveniently portable unit like this -- seems like the manufacturers make these products a lot bigger than they need to.

Went with a 156GB network attached storage device from SimpleShare, primarily as a convenience for segregating my work files. But the always-on nature of this device means that if I work on a file from a different computer on my LAN, I don't have to go upstairs to wake up the device like I used to when just sharing files from a LAN-connected PC.

My Lexmark printer is an extra one from a printer consolidation project done at Sun. It's got an ethernet card and at first I was concerned about whether my LAN router (DLink DI614+) would have enough ports. It does but now it's full. Rest of my LAN is wireless to the DLink. I must say it was easier to connect my Powerbook to the networked printer than it was my XP machine. But XP picked up the NAS box easier.

Now I just need that SunRay at home.

It's no secret that Colorado has "expansive soils" (clay and such that expand and contract with moisture). A few weeks ago our Broomfield campus got a reminder when the power went out.

It was just like someone cut the cable going to the building -- bummer! But, somehow, this happened during the Sun July 4 shutdown so no one was around. But you can imagine havok this wreaks on systems in the buildings. Major systems have backup power but there are things like minor labs and such that don't need this kind of aggravation.

My wife is due with our second child here pretty soon and so is a friend. So I dug out a summary of man-to-man advice a buddy had given me for our first trip to the hospital maternity ward:

Bring:

• Radio/CD player with your wife's favorite tunes (variety of genres is best)
• Sleeping bag for you (hospital might provide a couch or even a pull out bed but a sleeping bag is more flexible than the sheets/blankets)
• Favorite Snacks -- for your wife; you never know what will be available in the hospital. I found myself wishing I had a couple big sandwiches.
• Digital camera / laptop -- it was really cool to be able to email pictures of our son right after he was born. (Make sure to have a dial-up account and a phone cord. Make sure you have all your friends' email addresses.)
• An outfit and blanket for the baby; your wife will want to put your baby in something cute for the ride home.

• You are the boss of the hospital. Try to familiarize yourself with the typical medical decisions that will need to be made during delivery, based on discussing with your wife -- epidural and other meds, for example. Discuss contingencies because you will have to make decisions for her while she's overcome with labor.
• Be aware that nurses will come in and out of the room fairly regularly. After your baby is born, your wife is going to be exhausted. If you think sleep is more important, tell the nurse to wait and come back later instead of waking your wife up to take her temperature.
• Figure out the car seat long before you go to the hospital. You don't want to be screwing with it when it's time to come home.
• Up to your particulars, of course but...I was glad my parents and in-laws didn't show up the day after we brought our son home. We needed a couple days to figure out what the hell we were doing.
• If you have a dog, they'll tell you to bring home something with the baby's smell and get the dogs used to it before bringing home the baby. I did this with a burp rag but I don't know that it really made a difference.
• When you give your baby a bath, wash his/her face before his/her butt. ;-)

I think that someone should start putting ringtones in home appliances. Why should my washer 'buzz' or my toaster oven 'ding'? That's so old and boring (like a phone that rings!). And don't get me started on doorbells!

Execs (or any other manager of managers) can create a lot of equity in their organizations by holding skip levels: meetings with the staff that reports to their direct staff, either one on one or in groups.

I was in a meeting today where Jonathan Schwartz came in for a pep talk Q&A session. Good to hear from the guys at the top. Jonathan is a pretty direct -- had specific ideas and direction for one of the program managers in the meeting (I bet that guy didn't expect the advice he got!) Jonathan does a good job of delivering timely and relevant information. He's very connected to what our customers are doing and saying and needing.

The thing about all hands, town halls, and other group meetings with senior execs -- execs judge their employee audiences by the quality of their questions. I've been in many of these meetings with the attendees show up without preparing to ask any questions at all. Senior execs hate this! So a word of advice to the managers of groups about to schedule a skip level: Get your group prepared. With a half hour or so of thought, they can be more intelligent participants in the meeting.

Our department has an RFP on the street for commercial real estate brokerage services and I recently participated in the interview process for the short list of bidders. It was pretty interesting (I'll write more about that after the contract gets signed next month).

As a student of management practices, I couldn't help but notice the difference between how the regional director in Asia and the one in Europe approached preparation for the interviews.

In Asia, the director (who is soon to be replaced by his second-in-command) was a bit more...organized (?) in getting his team prepared. The team met in advance of the interview sessions and created a pretty comprehensive list of what issues they wanted to explore with the bidders: coverage model, communications, company culture, &c. This list was presented to the bidders at the beginning of the interviews and, rather than presentation followed by Q&A, the three hours was spent in dialog between what the bidders wanted to say and what was on the list.

In Europe, the director also got his team together before the interviews and led a roundtable discussion of questions and issues to probe with the bidders. But my impression was that his goal was to prime the pump -- their pump -- so that they would come into the interviews with their own ideas and questions. He made a point that they should be familiar with the written RFP and bids (something that didn't really come up in Asia). And, during the interviews, the dialog was more organic than it had been in Asia. This director also made a point of going to each of his staff around the table (twice!) to make sure they got all their questions answered. (Stylistically, I just wouldn't have the patience for this -- I expect my team to speak up on their own accord. Maybe things are just different in Europe.)

I found both styles to be effective in eliciting information from the bidders, although the Europe interviews took much longer because the round-table came at the end of the schedule and the staff members' questions extended the interview period.

I'm assuming both styles were good indicators of how each director runs his group.