Oladipo Ademola Esq

Cover via Amazon

(Culled from http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hmu/2009/10/when-a-colleagues-mistakes-aff.html)

In an attempt to function in this increasingly complex world, organizations are becoming increasingly complex themselves. They are built on collaborative partnerships, dotted lines and matrixes, all of which mean more and more of your work depends on the work of someone else. When a colleague is making mistakes, this interconnectedness can feel like a major pitfall.

Yet a job where you don’t interact with others is nearly impossible to find, not to mention somewhat boring. So, you need to figure out how to make relationships work. Every management expert would agree that positive working relationships are essential to getting things done. So what do you do when a colleague is not doing her part and it’s affecting your work? Fortunately, handling your colleague’s mistakes in a productive way cannot only help remove barriers but may also help your colleague, and you, gain new skills.

What the Experts Say
The type of mistakes you might be affected by vary greatly. A colleague may miss deadlines, not produce the work required, make errors in calculations or even provide you with misinformation. These may all be innocent mistakes fuelled by lack of knowledge, experience, or awareness, but without more information you can’t be sure and won’t be able to act.

Diagnose the Issue
The first step in addressing your colleague’s behavior is to understand what’s really going on. Try to determine if the problem is short-term, such as a personal issue at home, a particularly heavy workload, or a health problem — or long-term, such as a lack of skill or a poor cultural fit with the organization. As Allan Cohen, the Edward A. Madden Distinguished Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College and author of Influence without Authority points out, "What you don’t know is if the person is getting the right support from others, if a non-work issue has cropped up, or if perhaps the person doesn’t understand the issue like you do." This diagnosis can be done by looking for corroborating evidence from other colleagues and checking that your understanding of the issue aligns with theirs. Deborah Ancona, Seley Distinguished Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of X-Teams: How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate, and Succeed, warns that it’s important to "be careful because you don’t want to make anyone else see the problem if they haven’t already."

Approach Your Colleague Directly
The best approach is to go to the source — speak with your colleague directly. This conversation should take place in an informal, private setting and you should always follow good feedback rules. Don’t accuse or blame your colleague. Use concrete examples to explain what you are seeing and its impact on you.

Richard Hackman, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard Business School and author of Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances says, "We tend to attribute what’s going wrong to an individual and specifically to something dispositional about them." This is dangerous because you are then attacking a person — not their behavior. Most importantly, to establish a common ground with your colleague, discuss the issue in context of mutual goals. "You want to ask ‘What can we do to achieve our goals?’ not ‘You screwed up again,’" Hackman says.

Don’t assume you know exactly why the colleague is making mistakes. As Hackman points out, "You need to be open to learning that you’re wrong about the situation." Use an inquiry mode and ask questions like "What’s going on?" and "Am I misreading or misunderstanding the situation?" In fact, you may discover that your colleague wasn’t aware of the mistakes or how her actions appeared to others.

Offer Help and Support
If a short-term issue is causing the mistakes, such as a difficult time at home or an illness in the family, you should offer to help. You may even consider covering for the person as a way to build a positive relationship. As Ancona says, "This world is all about connections and not only do you not want to jeopardize the relationship, but you want to build it." Covering may mean picking up extra work, spending time double checking her work or offering to explain to other colleagues what is going on. Covering doesn’t mean that you should lie on behalf of your colleague, nor does it mean a permanent shift in job responsibilities. You should only cover when you have an explicit agreement that the situation is temporary until circumstances change.

If you find that the source of the mistakes is a longer term issue, such as a lack of skill, you can offer to help brainstorm solutions. Perhaps your colleague can find a course that will help her build up her skills, or go to her manager to ask for assistance.

It is rarely a good idea to let your colleague continue to make mistakes. Cohen says, "In very competitive organizations, the temptation is to let people die on their own swords. But in those environments, it’s even more appreciated when you don’t let them die." By being generous now, you are incurring the obligation of your colleague to help you in the future. This reciprocity is often what strong professional relationships are built on.

Protect Yourself
It’s possible that you’ll discover your colleague is intentionally making mistakes to undermine you or take credit for your work. "These political situations are far messier to deal with," Ancona says. Fortunately they are far rarer as well. Cohen says that he has only met a handful of people throughout his career that are "true snakes." He advises, "It should be your last assumption that the colleague is making mistakes deliberately."

Ancona offers, "You can try to confront the person directly, hoping that may make him or her back down." If that doesn’t work you can use the following tactics:

• Make your work visible. Avoid bragging. Use the active voice instead of the passive voice. For example, try saying "I prepared these analyses that show where we should be investing resources" rather than "These analyses show where we should be investing resources."
• Offer to lead a presentation when joint work is being shared. People often think of the person in the front of the room as the leader, or at least one of the more active participants in a project.
• Take credit where credit is due. This doesn’t mean you brag. Instead, showcase your involvement or let your manager know exactly what part of the project is the result of your efforts.

In these political situations, don’t resort to badmouthing your colleague. Negative comments often reflect as badly on you as they do on the person you are speaking about.

When the Issue Continues…
Despite all your efforts and care in handling the situation, it is possible that the mistakes will continue. This isn’t only an inconvenience, it could hinder your career. The experts suggest you take a few approaches to preserving your reputation. If possible, avoid working with that person in the future. If that’s not possible you can employ some of the same tactics listed above if the person were undermining you. Also, you should consider approaching your manager. Explain what you’ve done to date and ask for her advice. Be clear you are not asking her to intervene.

The experts agree that things would need to be very serious, e.g. the project you’re working on is headed for failure, before you approach your colleague’s manager. There is a major risk that you could alienate your colleague and permanently damage the relationship (see Allan Cohen’s experience in Case Study #2 below). In many organizational cultures, talking to a person’s manager can be coded as not being "a team player."

Principles to Remember
Do:

• Keep in mind that relationships matter
• Be direct and honest with your colleague about how the mistakes are affecting you
• Offer help if the colleague is struggling with a short-term issue such as a heavy workload or a personal issue

Don’t:

• Badmouth your colleague to anyone in the organization
• Assume your colleague is aware of the mistakes
• Go to your colleague’s manager without first talking to your colleague and your manager

Case Study #1: Stopping Mistakes Before They Happen
For Drew Chatto, a software engineer who worked at VeriSign, close collaboration wasn’t just part of his job, it was his job. While he wrote code on his own, it was always reviewed by others and then put together with his colleagues’ work to form a complete product. Eddie, one of Drew’s colleagues, was a less experienced — although not less talented — engineer. Because Eddie was relatively new to VeriSign he wasn’t familiar with the specifics of how the company wrote code. Instead of asking questions, he made assumptions and often finished code quickly. During code review, Drew regularly found mistakes with Eddie’s work and had to ask him to rewrite it. Eddie never argued but he continued to make similar mistakes. Tired of having the same conversation over and over, Drew offered to help Eddie think through his code assignments before he began writing. These conversations gave Eddie the opportunity to ask how specific things were done at VeriSign, instead of making the decisions on his own. As Drew said, "I couldn’t expect him to know the right questions." Eddie was open to the suggestion; he knew Drew had more experience, and he was likely tired of having to redo his work. Drew’s approach helped Eddie avoid mistakes before they happened. While those preliminary conversations took more of Drew’s time, they saved him time in the code review process and built a stronger, less contentious relationship, with Eddie.
Case Study #2: The Risk of Escalation
Allan Cohen is a professor and dean at Babson College, and one of our experts from above. In a former role at a major university, his good friend and colleague Carl served as the Associate Dean of Allan’s department. Allan was proposing a new program that required Carl’s approval. Despite Carl’s background in accounting, he kept making accounting errors when attributing costs to the new program. Worried about him, Allan stopped by his boss’s office one afternoon to explain what was going on. His boss was the Dean of the School and as such, was also Carl’s boss. In the middle of the conversation, there was a knock at the door and Carl walked in. Carl’s office was directly next door and he explained that he had heard the entire conversation because of a chip in the concrete wall between the two offices. Allan explained, "We never mentioned the incident again but it took me well over a year to repair the relationship." Allan regrets not going to Carl directly first. "If I had, I could’ve saved the relationship and maybe even helped him."

Further Reading
When Your Colleague Is a Saboteur
The Danger of Silencing Conflict at Work
The Promise: The Basic Building Block of Accountability

The first time I learnt Qbasic, I was so excited that when I got home, I wrote “INPUT ‘PRESS THE BELL’” at our doorbell. And at the buzzer, I wrote “OUTPUT: RIING! RING!!”.

My dad got home and changed my input to “PLEASE PRESS THE BELL”. That was my first lesson in User Interaction Engineering

Culled from http://designm.ag/freelance/business-lessons/

The vast majority of freelance designers and developers have chosen to embark upon a career as a freelancer because of their interests and abilities that are related to the work that they’re doing. Running a business is just a necessary evil for most of us, rather than being the ultimate focus of an occupational decision. In many cases, the most dreaded duties for a freelancer are those that only deal with the business aspects, such as invoicing, tracking finances and working on taxes.

Regardless of how much we like or dislike the requirements of the business side of our work, running an efficient and legitimate business is essential. While some freelancers have more of an entrepreneurial nature than others, there are plenty of lessons to be learned by all. Whether you freelance part-time or full-time, paying attention to the lessons that you’re learning will drastically improve your chances of success.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all seen this guy’s ads featured in income opportunity publications. He’s the guy making anywhere from $5,000 to $500,000 in a few days or weeks. He claims he got rich quick with very little effort and only a few brain cells functioning. He attributes this success to a secret plan or product he is willing to sell you for $20 to $30 bucks.

Now let’s step back for a moment and look at this guy’s ad. First of all, his ad is usually a page long. The print is micro- small so he may put as many details of his wonderful life on one page for your enjoyment and envy.
After we hunt down our glasses and settle down to read this fascinating "rags to riches" account we become boggled and googly-eyed with the details. These details usually include how broke he was and how now he and his family are buying Mercedes and BMWs every year and taking exotic vacations they only dreamed about. He usually refers himself as "a little guy" just like you. Therefore his ad is strategically written to strike a cord that adheres to those of us looking for a way out of pending financial doom or the nine-to-five grind.

The guy who got rich quick offers you the "sizzle" without even a glimpse of the steak. This type of advertising is usually called ‘a blind ad’ because we never know what the product is. All we know is that it’s a BIG SECRET plan to riches.

The intention is to ask you to buy something without knowing a thing about it. Well you know it made him rich, don’t you? No you don’t. There is no law against telling stories. There are only laws against misrepresenting products being sold. He doesn’t say anything about the product except that it’s a money- making plan. As long as it is possible that such a plan could make money for someone under some circumstances, the authorities don’t object to it. It makes no difference if the story of the Guy Who Got Rich Quick is total fiction. He’s not asking you to pay anything for the story only the secret plan.
Very often the plan is a book or manual consisting of ways to sell by mail. It probably did make him rich. After all, selling things by mail is what he’s trying to do with his ad.

Most books sold this way do not tell you anything specific about the experiences of the advertiser. He tells you to pick some product, write an ad and take your money to the bank. It’s about as useful as an 8-page manual on how to be a heart surgeon. Never buy anything from a blind ad that doesn’t have a solid money-back guarantee.

The fact is, there are no real "get rich quick" plans. The mail order business takes time and money to launch. The Guy Who Got Rich Quick never tells you what he paid for his full page ad. A full page ad in a national publication can cost anywhere from $600 to $2,500 for a one time buy. He didn’t say that you must advertise consistently to be successful in mail order. He also forgot to mention the cost of paper, postage stamps, office equipment and time required to get your offer delivered.

Those of us who are in business for ourselves know that the only secret to making a profit (or riches) is perseverance, a lot of hard work, good management, good customer service, time and commitment.
———-
Chris A. Friar is a business reporter and former media relations executive for the largest advertising firm in San Antonio, Texas. Her articles and advertising critiques have appeared in various local, state and national publications including USA Today. Friar is writer/publisher for Home Grown Business News a publication exploring good and bad business opportunties for those who wish to work at home.
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Most LifeHacker desktop showcases feature the desktop with the windows minimized. Seriously, how many people actually work with the windows minimized. My desktop allow me to work in almost any condition.

Because I have a widescreen, I used the advantage of width over height in the placement of my taskbar. I dragged it off to the right. Some of my fellows in the office, use the left side, but I found out that using one side for the “always on” windows was preferable (They do not use the vista sidebar – so…)

In my set up, I tried as much as possible, to use the base applications that come with the operating system, because in my opinion, windows becomes slow when you install applications on it. The base operating system is quite fast. Compare a 2 month system with a fresh installation, the old system has applications installed.

Theme
Vista Aero (Basic and Not) provide way too much eye candy that really helps work. So I patched my OS to allow other themes, and I installed Slan XP for Vista. Lovely theme (needs a few tweaks, but it works). I am using it as is. Microsoft, do I really need that 4 pixel border?

Taskbar
Like I said earlier, taskbar -> to the right, to the right. But you are not irreplacable (in my view). You just need to be upgraded. The right side placement allows me to use the start button on top, my running tasks, my quicklaunch (always visible) and other icons. It evens shows the full date and time (don need an extra clock on my desktop).

Start Button and Menu
A lot of people like to kill the start button, not me. It works just fine. Though, I must confess, I hardly use it. By now, many people would have guessed it. Yes, I do use the mouse a lot. Good mouse use, faster than the keyboard, but then again, there are pros out there.

Vista Sidebar
Placed by the taskbar (so that all by bars to right, windows to the left). I have the Lava Lamp gadget (probably the only non functional item on my desktop – purely for show).

The Outlook gadgets. I am a heavy outlook user – tried Thunderbird for 3 weeks and ran back to outlook like an addict. Yes, I am addicted to outlook. Thunderbird tries, but Outlook rocks.

I once tried downloading a notes gadget for the sidebar and cancelled the download before it started. The default notes gadget works well for me.

Multiple Desktops
I tried it a number of times – Deskscapes, Virtual Desktop Manager, Desktops. They all went the same route. Uninstallation. Just could not get used to it. Rather than have a radical new view of my desktop, I prefer easing myself into a new work layout. Close a program, open another. Minimize an application, restore another. And yes (yet again), a number of applications freeze when run on multiple desktop instances – think Firefox Portable.

Desktop Icons
My desktop is most times a temporary placeholder for some files before being moved to their respective locations. Usually, my desktop has only 1 icon. The default as Microsoft commanded it. The almighty recycle bin .

A lot of times, desktop showcases only showcase the visible portions. But we all know that some invisible applications make us very productive. My list includes:

• Nokia PC Suite. Continuous synchronization of my Nokia E61i. A must for me or any Nokia mobile phone user.
• Proxy Master: between home, office and a number of places, changing proxy settings used to be an issue, until this guy came along. Looking for an open source alternative.
• Media Monkey and Foobar2000. Great music players. I hardly play video. No point, my home theater does that very well.
• Picasa with the Facebook plugin. Lovely picture application. Nuff said.
• Windows Live Writer: an awesome desktop blogging application. Since most of my clients websites use WordPress as a CMS, I can easily update the sites from my system even if my Internet connection is misbehaving.
• MS Paint: quick application to paste my screenshot and remove un-needed portions.
• Jon’s Background Switcher: lovely program for finding backgrounds. Though it is on suspension, after it found the current wallpaper.I am so in love with it.

  

I love using Nokia phones. Even better than the iPhone, but one drawback exists. Nokia refused to implement a USB charging system. Now, Nokia, that is just plain stupid. In this age, with the USB power source becoming ubiquitous.

“In information technology, Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a serial bus standard to interface devices to a host computer. USB was designed to allow many peripherals to be connected using a single standardized interface socket and to improve the plug-and-play capabilities by allowing hot swapping, that is, by allowing devices to be connected and disconnected without rebooting the computer or turning off the device. Other convenient features include providing power to low-consumption devices without the need for an external power supply and allowing many devices to be used without requiring manufacturer specific, individual device drivers to be installed.

USB is intended to help retire all legacy varieties of serial and parallel ports. USB can connect computer peripherals such as mice, keyboards, PDAs, gamepads and joysticks, scanners, digital cameras, printers, personal media players, and flash drives. For many of those devices USB has become the standard connection method. USB was originally designed for personal computers, but it has become commonplace on other devices such as PDAs and video game consoles, and as a bridging power cord between a device and an AC adapter plugged into a wall plug for charging purposes. As of 2008, there are about 2 billion USB devices in the world.^[1]

The design of USB is standardized by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), an industry standards body incorporating leading companies from the computer and electronics industries. Notable members have included Agere (now merged with LSI Corporation), Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Intel, NEC, and Microsoft.”

Thanks Wikipedia

I currently use a Nokia E61i and intend moving to the next grail, E71

Numerous competing devices already support USB charging. Blackberry phones support USB charging. The iPhone supports USB charging. Chinese phones support USB charging.

The benefits of USB are immense. Charge and sync is one. Easy access to power is another, I can easily plug into almost any USB and quickly receive a charge. Lighter, I wont need to carry around the bulky power adaptor, just a simple USB cable.

Nokia, wake up. You are a market leader, and that lead is rapidly diminishing.

Nokia developers, here read this note (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/usb_stuff.html)

There will be no activity on this blog for a while, moving my efforts over to Music Naija (http://musicnaija.net). Please come visit us.