“Instead of asking…Which choice will maximize my ROI? We ask instead, Given the core competencies of my organization and the assets under it’s control, how can I best direct the organization to serve? Which products or services could we produce that would best enable my community to flourish?”

At first take, I asked how you can ignore profit? Well, you cant. The argument here is that profit is what helps the business attract sufficient capital to continue growing and enabling greater and greater levels of community flourishing and service.

These two compelling questions are inspiring my actions on a daily basis. How would your world change if you focused on these two questions in lieu of maximizing ROI?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Profit and Maximizing Shareholder Return Fail to Inspire

“…Life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers…We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?”

Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

I ventured out today. Booked a ticket to the Storyline conference. We were able to grab a group of 5 awesome guys to head out to Portland together.

Have you ventured out recently?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Let’s Venture Out: Storyline Conference

You can’t look a big problem too directly in the eye. You have to approach it somewhat obliquely. But you have to adjust the angle just right: you have to be facing the big problem directly enough that you catch some of the excitement radiating from it, but not so much that it paralyzes you. You can tighten the angle once you get going, just as a sailboat can sail closer to the wind once it gets underway. [Emphasis mine]

Just a bit of a Thursday attitude change toward projects.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Catch it, but dont be Paralyzed

Picture via cliff1066 cc and flickr

“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

The more I experience in business and leadership, the more I realize that planning is both worthless and invaluable.  Dwight D. Eisenhower said it best:  ”In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”  While I don’t believe president Eisenhower is saying we shouldn’t bother planning, I do believe the statement does lend itself to viewing planning as a means of helping a team to learn the information necessary to execute and frequently adjust a project’s course.

President Eisenhower has created intentional gray space to allow his team to plan and adjust accordingly as seen fit as new information is gathered.  This shouldn’t mean that project managers outline every second and the minutia of a product.  I don’t think I am the only one that thinks my bathroom breaks should not be scheduled on a gantt chart!

As leaders we should build opportunities into projects that allow us to adjust course and allow our teams to innovate.  But that also does not mean we should allow operations to continue as if there is no plan.  Highlighting the large tasks and general outlines of tasks will help to reduce the ambiguity of a project and enable higher levels of innovation.  These opposing forces of rigidity and open space certainly creates a gray space  between planning activity that is seemingly useless and activity that matters.

Because of reasonable planning exercises, I have found myself more prepared to do battle and able to accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.

I’ve found three areas where I can embrace planning gray areas:
1. Vetting Financial plans:  Back of the napkin analysis is just as good as weeks worth of spreadsheet work, especially when we arrive at about the same result.
2. Long and medium term project plan development:  Embracing the gray areas while developing project plans allows for the insertion of relationship building and intention determination.
3. Assessing:  Allowing gray space in assessment of a new project, plan or measurable action allows for the creation of measures that creatively help to determine the next steps of the project.

The real trick is not to run to or from planning, but to utilize it in a way that advances the cause to a place where people agree on the vision, understand the large steps along the way and understand they have space to be creative.  Of course none of this can happen without mutual trust, both in the leader and from the leader. If the trust doesn’t exist, see Ben’s awesome post on how to handle office politics.

When leaders embrace the planning gray spaces, they can only continue to advance and innovate.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Planning: Value in the Gray Space

What!? Joe? You? Mr. ilovebeingonlineandallthesecrazythingsyoudoetal? 

Yes.  Its over.  Its time to move along. 

Ok, well, I’ll still write about some cool stuff I find, because I like cool stuff.  But from here on out I am done trying to be Shannon Paul and Chris Brogan or even the esteemed Guy.  I am clearing out my feeds and I am starting to clean out who I follow on twitter.

I am offically declaring my blog and me, to be in an idenity crisis.   Ok, I do know who I am, but I dont know what I write.

So, I am on the hunt.  What is it that I do?? 

You are what you eat, so I think that means I am I what I write.  Big changes to come…

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

I am Finished Writing about Social Media

Dear www.JoeBuddeJr.com,

Happy Birthday Blog!  It has been a great year getting to know you and your readers.  You have helped me learn how to start conversations, join them, make new friends and rekindle old ones.

Your readers have helped me by suggesting things for me to write.  Your readers are good people. 

So on this, your first birthday, I wanted to wish you luck with the following things:

1. That your readers might comment more. Since I am a blog author, I know it can get lonely out there on the interwebs and your only outlet is to converse with your readers, so I hope you can count on them to comment more in your second year.
2. That your content will get syndicated more.  I know you put out great content, but some people are unable to access it because of the competition out there, but through your syndication on Brazen Careerist, I hope you can meet new readers!  
3. That you continue to enable your author to learn.

So blog, thanks for the memories, I look forward to continuing our relationship and our relationship with our readers.  With out our awesome readers all of your hard work would not be recognized!

Thanks,

Joe Budde

 
PS. Dont smash the cake in your face… its so messy.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Happy Birthday! JoeBuddeJr.com Turns 1 Today!

I trust everyone enjoyed this holiday season.  While away from the computer, I saw Will Smith’s new movie 7 Pounds which was good but I recommend waiting for it to come out on hulu.  I also played a ton of RockBand and Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii.  My sister was a literal rockstar with a gift as awesome as Rockband and my wife sacrificed time together with time for me to play Zelda(and time for her to read!)  I also found out that my wife’s cousin can alphabetize any 6 letter word instantly. Quite an amazing skill if you ask me.

I am looking forward to 2009 because  I have several draft posts going right now that should be hitting the shelves, aka my blog/your reader, in the next few weeks as I iron them out:

• An interview with a brand new Cincinnati start-up company’s founders!
• Learn to Invest Socially: Investing Communities
• Blogging Lessons Learned After a Year
• My blog’s first anniversary!

I also hope to engage more with my readers by posting about things they want to know.  What post would you want me to write?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Happy New Year! On the Slate for 2009

Also there have been tons of great stuff about Thanksgiving out there, I thought you all might enjoy.  So check out some blogs I am thankful for by visiting their amazing posts about Thanksgiving.

• ReadWriteWeb’s 7 Fun Facts for Thanksgiving
• Flowing Data’s Number of Turkeys Consumed
• Ryan Graves’ Startup Lessons from Thanksgiving
• Brent’s The Gift that Creates Thankfulness and Gratitude

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Happy Thanksgiving!

As you all know, I love Yelp!  But I just got back from Budapest, Hungary, and I have no where to tell everyone I know about all the cool things I saw/did there, especially the Hungarian Baths.

If there was a yelp geared toward purely european backpacker-types, I would really apprecaite it.  And frankly, so would a slew of hostel lovers across europe.  I would call it Eurelp.  But hey, you don’t have to use it.  Its just a suggestion.

So when Yelp has a targeted european section, I could tell everyone about the amazing time I had at the Széchenyi Bath.  I could share about how the hot water jets shoot the natural spring water on your shoulders so hard that it is better than a swedish massage.  I could tell them to check out my pictures, or watch a movie about the hungarian bath on YouTube.

Oh and Yelp, it would be really great if you could take the train schedules on www.DB.de and the hostels on www.hostelworld.com and tie them into a schedule that helps me make the most of my two weeks in europe.  That would be a great addition to the reviews of european attractions.  Thanks.

Regards,

Joe Budde Jr. 

PS. I love how Yelp helped me in San Francisco. I just want the same for my european adventures!

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

An Open Letter to Yelp: Eurelp

The “Journal-for-a-day” assignment asked me to describe how my work day flows, what activities I find interesting, and what work makes me think of my time and experiences at Miami University.  So I want to share how I organize my work day and how my experience at college impacts how and what I do on a daily basis, it just so happens that the day I journaled about was a rather exciting one in Budapest, Hungary!  (which explains my much too lengthy absence from blogging)

So without further adieu, some notes about how I spent my day and some nuggets I learned in school that I used during the day (yes, college can actually teach you something).

My Day: October 14th, 2008 | Budapest, Hungary

Getting started
Triage email. Filter out the stuff that can be done later/read later or deleted.  Push the todo’s into a special folder and hammer out the urgent tasks right then.  After triage is over, get started working on the frog for the day that I prepared before I left the office the day before.  What is a frog?  It’s that big task that is the project that will get you to the next step/next milestone/add huge value.  Its the hard task that takes time, focus and energy.  I must make myself get out of email and admin tasks to actually work at something that will drive the company and my job forward. 
Mid-morning
Work on the frog.  I spend most of my morning making sure I am making progress. Analyzing, problem solving and communicating with key stakeholders to advance the project.  In Budapest, I was reviewing some account reconciliations (aka. spreadsheets for you non-accounting folks).  My main task was to analyze what was provided and ensure it was complete and correct.  This isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, but I did learn an awful lot about inventory and how it hits the balance sheet. 
Lunch break
Ah, the Canteen.  Canteen and ordering in Hungarian. Ah yes, one of life’s most wonderful “opportunities”.  You point at an English/Hungarian menu, hoping that whatever comes out is something resembling the English words on the paper.  60% of the choices are fried, so you cant go wrong there, but the stomach ache in the afternoon isn’t worth the assurance of knowing that french fries are french fries everywhere.  It only took one order of “Thai Noodles” to make me stick to the fried foods.  I know, Thai in Hungary. Hey, I was giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Mid-afternoon
Mid-afternoon is a misnomer since I break the afternoon into several chunks.  Following lunch, I catch-up with industry news on google reader and check my emails for urgent and “frog” related items.  Following that Triage session I move to finish up some work on my “frog” and summarize the questions and issues I have found throughout my work day. I find that creating a summary of these issues helps me define the problems and questions much better and thus provide and create better solutions.  Its really quite DMAIC. Since I was working on the Audit, I then had a end of day status meeting with the Audit Manager to review any questions or issues. 
Leaving work
Typically we took a bus back to the city center as there were plenty of folks at the Plant from out of town, but on this day, we took a cab back a bit earlier than normal, so I ensured that I had prepared a “frog” for the next workday, so that I would not spend 15 minutes groping around for the information I needed to make something happen in the morning.  I also spent the last minutes of the day completing the todo tasks that arrived in my inbox throughout the day.

Nuggets from college that had an impact

• In FIN 301, Bill Scanlon had us write Business Memos. We wrote about whatever we wanted, but we had to make it informative and concise.  Scanlon helped me realize, after a few terrible memo grades, that the fluff and flourish writing style I mastered in my political science papers was not my ticket to the top of the business world.  My emails at work now have the brevity of a stock quote.
• In IMS 440, I learned how to accomplish work by removing ambiguity.  At work, its like school in that you have certain tasks you must complete within a time frame.  The what and how you get there is not defined. At school you get a syllabus and execute. At work, you get a final, create your own syllabus and then execute.  Life is a blank syllabus that my coursework and time at Miami prepared me to create and execute.
• I find myself creating milestones or goals and objectives to measure progress at work.  When I create these milestones I enable myself to ensure that I am achieving personal, professional or job growth.  At Miami, there were only two courses that encouraged me to do that, and 2 of who knows how many courses isn’t the best ratio, but hey, 2 prepared me much better than 0.
• At the plant, we interacted withmany people from accountants to assembly line workers.  At Miami in both of my capstones, I worked with students from over 12 other majors.  This experience helped me to understand how to slow down and take on different perspectives while working with people from different backgrounds.

So that is how I typically organize my day, and some ways that my college experience impacted my work day.  “Journal-for-a-day” was an awesome break from my traditional blogging routine. 

Now I want to learn from YOU!  What sorts of things do you all do to make your day efficient? Should I check my mail more often? Less often? At a different time of day?  Teach me oh you the wise!

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

How My College Experience Impacts My Workday