Posted: June 4th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, Personal Develoment, life | 5 Comments »
Whenever I write anything on this blog I try to write as both the teacher and the pupil, why? The fact is that we are all both teachers and pupils deep down and this is a fundamental feature of humans. We have a deep need to learn things and a natural sense of curiosity. While I like to think that I know a bit about things and I am willing to share it with anyone who is interested that fact remains the I also have a lot to learn still.
There are two things that I really have struggled with over the last year or so and that is Time Management and Procrastination. I have tried all kinds of prescribed methods to help get past this hurdles but sadly to no avail. I have tried reading Getting Things Done by David Allen but I found that to seem very elaborate for me to start in with. That is not to say that it is a fantastic system, which I know it is as good friends have implemented it and it works great for them, but I am just not ready for it. I have also downloaded the AudioBook The Now Habit, which is a great system for overcoming Procrastination and gave me a great insight into the roots of it. Again though it wasn't working for me. To say I was despairing of all of it would be an understatement.
Then I was talking with a friend the other week and he was telling me that he had set himself a target to get any work that he gets in turned around within 24hrs. I thought it was a little brave but then whatever works. As I thought about it more over the next week it just kept ringing in my head and in the end I figured I may as well give it a go. The thing that I liked was that it met what I was trying to achieve with such simplicity that I feel it could get me back on track again.
Does it work? So far yes. Thats not to say that it will continue to work but right now it is and I hear myself saying things like "I'll sort that later" and then think again "why put off what I can do now" and I just get it done.
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best one's, I love the way that GTD works but at this point in time I just need something simple to get the ball rolling. I'll keep you posted on how it works out.
- Rob
Posted: March 18th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Personal, Personal Develoment, life | 4 Comments »
This is just a quick post that came to me this morning as I was getting up, "What gets you going?".
I envy people who find it easy to get up early in the morning as this is always something I struggle with, don't get me wrong I always wake by 7.30am which some would consider early but I want to be getting up at 6am as there are things I like to do. Lots of people I know get up at 6am seemingly without any major hassles or struggles but do they? I do manage, for the most part, to get up at 6am as I love to cycle early in the morning before work and some would look and think that this comes natural and easy for me. Let me tell you now I REALLY struggle.
Human nature is to see the negatives, for example;
- But the bed is nice and warm and it's cold out there
- Just 5 more minutes..
- It's raining so I'll cycle tomorrow
- I didn't go to bed until late so I'll get up late
The fact is that getting up early sucks for me but if I want to do the things I want to do I have to find the things that get me going...maybe thats all you need too?
- Rob
Posted: December 28th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, Personal, Personal Develoment, Uncategorized, life | 2 Comments »
I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas break and Santa brought you lots of lovely things, this post was originally due to be put up last week but unfortunately the time just didn't appear !
I was speaking with a friend the other day and he was having a bad day. First off in the morning his car wouldn't start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started he then couldn't get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work. Once at work things didn't get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking. He explain how his day had gone and I said to him, "sounds like you've had some fun today". At this he replied "ain't that the truth, still, s**t happens!". This got me thinking.
How many times have we all heard that said? I know I have said it a fair share myself over the years but when you say this what are you really saying to yourself and more importantly what are others hearing? Ok we'll start with what others are hearing as that is sometimes more important in life. At best they find this funny and laugh it off as just something funny, however more often you will be seen as a very negative person, a 'glass half empty kinda guy'. People inherently do not like to be around negative people, they want to surround themselves with positive, happy people that are going to help them to feel positive and happy themselves. After all when you meet with someone and they ask if you are well, they don't want to hear that your back aches from driving 4 hours to see them, or that your tired because you had to get up at 3am to get to the appointment with them on time. They want to hear how great you are and how wonderful life is (though not literally).
So what does it say to yourself? If you are not able to find the positives in any situation then you will always see the negative, obviously. However, the impact on your life can be massive as over a period of time (which could be months or years) it can eventually start to make you feel unhappy with your life and every thing will just seem dour and pointless. It may seem a little extreme but I have been there and after a number of tough years in both work and family I found it hard, real hard with daily life but I still carried on. What changed me was two things. First of is someone who I consider to be a very good friend who over a period of time helped me to see there was two ways to look at everything and what you take from it is a choice and you must choose to take the positive or the negative. The second was when I joined a business networking group, the people there were *very* positive people despite being early morning. What I learned there was while you will make some close friends you can really talk to your must put your best business face on and show everyone there that you are having the best day ever because when you do people naturally gravitate to you.
With that in mind lets take another look at my friends day and see what he could have took from this had he looked at things differently:
"
First off in the morning his car wouldn't start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started" - What can be taken from this? Ok first off the car would not start which is a real pain for
anyone who has had it happen. That said a good neighbour came over and helped him get it 'jump started' which took a LOT less time than waiting for a break down truck to come. So he has good neighbours to be thankful for.
"....he then couldn't get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work." - So he couldn't get out of the street straight away because of the snow, after all we did have some last week. However, the positive here is that it turns out that once again one of his neighbours had some grit and went out and spread it the length of the road so all the neighbours could get out.
"Once at work things didn't get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking." - Here again is another positive. Ok on of the servers is down and clearly he was out of his depth, but what he did was called me and we located the problem, resolve it and had the server up and running in less than an hour.
So next time you're having a tough day, always, always find the positives in whatever happens because it is always there. It's all too easy to focus on what it negative in the world but it takes true spirit to find the positives.
I wish you all the greatest success for the New Year, hope you all have a great one!!
- Rob
Posted: November 13th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, Personal Develoment, small business | No Comments »
When I first started in I.T I was young and able to absorb everything I read and memorised it all. Then as the years passed by I learned more about processes for performing regular tasks in my work and they became my own. So much so that they were engrained within who I was and I never needed to look this type of information up.
However, as I have gotten more involved in the business of running a business and not just owning a job it has become much more difficult to remember this so fluently as I used to. This gave rise to processes. Many people have come across Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) which are common practice in large organisations but not so in small businesses, why? The reason is quite simple; In order for a large business to run fluently and in the way the creator designed it there must be an SOP as he/she will not be there to train every role in the business.
I am currently in the process of creating a whole raft of checklists for tasks which are undertaken at a clients site along with business processes for things that must be completed within our own business. So what needs to be documented? Anything and everything.....this sounds like a mammoth task but it isn't. The reality is that you need to document anything which needs to be done but should not require you to perform it yourself. For example my topic this weekend is 'SBS2oo3 to SBS 2008 migration checklist'. This is simply a checklist to tech's to following when they are performing this type of migration. It is not a full migration manual for SBS but it is a 'crib sheet' to help job the memory of a training technician so that something important is not forgotten.
Does your business need checklists and procedures? Maybe. Would it benefit? Definitely.
- Rob
Posted: November 7th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Personal, Personal Develoment, small business | 1 Comment »
My experience of the IT community up until running my own business was..well inbred to say the least. The company that I worked for previously bordered on almost grooming you to distrust other IT companies as if they were the 'enemy'. To my shame this was a feeling that was exaggerated in some of my future engagements after leaving there and setting up on my own. However, about 2 years ago I joined the BNI which is an international business referral network which brings different businesses together to allow them to pass business once a certain rapport has been made. I will always remember the first meeting I went to was at Woodborough Hall in Nottingham on a dark November morning. I arrived there at 06:45, that's right 6.45am, to a room full of people that I had never met. I mean talk about a fish out of water, I don't think I could have been more uncomfortable if I had been stood there naked!
None the less the first person to that came to speak with me was Adam Harris from Bear-IT who came over to speak with me and discuss what I did. This totally opened my eyes to the fact that maybe, just maybe, those other IT companies were not so evil after all and that maybe, just maybe, there could be synergies between seemingly rival businesses. After this Adam invited me up to meet with him to discuss things further. I was told by another IT company that I was working with at the time not to discuss software and tools etc as they should be a closely guarded 'secret'. However, once I started talking with Adam I found that we all do the same things, same tools, same software just a different business with different faces. So I reciprocated the openness that was shown to me.
Fast forward on to the beginning of this year when I was approached by another IT consultant and fellow business owner from Birmingham. Richard Tubb from Netlink IT contacted me following some posts which I had made on Twitter. After reading Richard's blog it seemed clear that he had travelled the business path which I wanted to embark upon, making the move from being 'self-employed' to being a 'business owner', so we began to talk. Once again I was astounded at the openness of information that was being afforded to me by someone I had only known a short time. Things such as the type of tools to use, how to deliver the best customer experience, service management and delivery, all of which is normally hidden information within the IT trade. So why was all of this being given free of charge, without a catch or clause? Because Richard believed in the community and the power of working together instead of against each other. Now all of this collaboration what highlighted when in May 2009 I was drafted in by Richard and some of his peers to assist in a massive nationwide upgrade project for one of their clients, you can read all about it here. All in all there was 8 different IT businesses working together under on collaborative umbrella which meant that what was a massive project which included over a dozen servers, 200+ desktops across 13 sites was all made possible by the IT community working together instead of against each other.
It was once said by John Donne "No man is an island", and no truer word has been said. For those that run businesses it can be quite isolating but there are people out there who are willing to work with you and help you so don't be afraid to ask.
If you are interested in developing a strategic alliance with myself then please feel free to contact me at rob@potter-tate.co.uk. Alternatively if you have a storey you would like to share about how the community has helped you then send it over as it would be great to share.
- Rob
Posted: March 7th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, IT Support, Personal Develoment, life, small business | No Comments »
When I was a kid growing up I used to get all sorts of aches and pains, when I asked what they were more often I was told these were 'growing pains'. With the sharp departure of my teenage years meant I saw the last of these 'growing pains' but I didn't realise that they would again come back to haunt me.
Recently business has been good, I mean very good. The last couple of weeks has seen my week more than full of work which has been absolutely great as more work means more money of course. The difficult thing with this type of influx of work is trying to manage this influx of work with the existing work as well as fulfilling the expectations of new clients. This in itself is not an easy task as predominantly most new clients have a major or a significantly challenging issue which requires urgent attention. For example, I had a customer call through to the "on-call" support phone at 8pm last Friday night asking for someone to go out straight away as he'd had no email for 2 days because the broadband had been changed over. This meant that despite being on a Exchange installation over the weekend it needed sorting out, 3 hrs later I was back home again. Going out at that time was not an issue, after all I love what I do, the trick is managing all of the expectations that come with this. This type of work also throws the entire work schedule into disarray and some tough decisions need to be made as to how to organise the week.
Our clients have always understood that if ever there is a high priority job because of an emergency that we pull out all the stops to sort it out. Which essentially means that if the scheduled work is non-critical, ie. routine visit, then we would ask to rearrange the work if an emergency comes up. They agree with this policy as this is the type of service that they would expect so when it is their stuff that needs rearranging, once we explain the situation they will work with us to rearrange. This policy has been a tremendous help both in the past as well as in the present but sadly there is not always enough hours in the day to get things done. As it stands we are getting close to the point where we will have to consider bringing another body on board to cover the new work but we need to ensure that the work coming in is of a consistent level before making the leap. So how do I decide what's not so important? Here's some simple guidelines:
- Is this job a fault/failure?
Some site visits may not be as a result of a fault or failure they may be in-fact a scheduled site visit. - How many people does this situation affect?
If the issue that you are responding is affecting more than one person then it will be difficult to "bump" it but if it is only affecting one user then it may be possible. - Can the client wait until tomorrow/the next day etc?
If it looks to you like the job can wait, them ask your client. We always explain to the client why we need to change the appointment and explain to them that in case of emergency we always endeavour to pull out the stops and would do the same for them. This usually sways things. - How important is it really?
This is a tough one as you may not see a signature in Outlook as being critical but to the user you can be sure that it is. - Can it really be done remotely?
This should be a no-brainer as it should have already been tried but sometimes the client will ask for a site visit and you just agree.
The most important thing is to engage your client and explain why, at then end of the day no matter how much preventative maintenance we perform, no matter how much proactive management we do there will always be something that breaks/goes wrong. We always make a point of explaining to clients that we have the "bump" policy that says that if an emergency arises then we will attempt to reschedule any non-critical site visits so that we can get the maximum man-power on to an emergency situation.
Hope you all have a great weekend and better week.
- Rob
Posted: January 23rd, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Personal, Personal Develoment, life | No Comments »
Drive and motivation typically go hand in hand but it's something that typically does not come naturally. I love running, in fact the only thing that I love more than running is cycling, but with the hectic lifestyles that we lead today it is difficult to find the time to do these kind of activities especially when you have a young family. One of the reasons that I love these sports is just the sheer love of the outdoors and the fact it is just a little time where I don't have to think, just simple primal instinct. The other reason is that it keeps me fit & healthy which ultimately is better for me. In order to fit this in though 3 mornings a week I get up at 6.15am and I'm out on the road by 6.30am. On Thursday I got up as usual and on this night we had carers staying over to look after our little boy (see www.potter-tate.co.uk for more on Danny), when one of them said "I wish I had the dedication to get up at this time and exercise, perhaps you can give me a little of your dedication". This got me thinking why do I got up at this un-godly hour and run in the cold, rain snow or whatever the weather brings. If fact most of my friends think I am insane for doing it but I still get up and I still run. Don't get me wrong it's hard, it's tiring and sometimes I just feel like stopping and walking back home but I never do. So why do I do it?
There's no simple answer I'm afraid, but what I can tell you is that the need to run/cycle is NOT enough. I want to stay healthy and more important I started about a year ago to struggle, and I mean really struggle to get into my clothes. This bothered me a lot, I mean I am about 5' 8" and was weighing in at just a touch under 14 stone (196 pounds) which was just TOO much. I thought of dieting but to be honest I love food, all sorts of food and the I couldn't handle the concept of limiting it through traditional diets. What I did know was I need to loose it. So I decided that the way to do it was to exercise so I started the Couch to 5K runner plan which too you from nothing to 3 miles in just 9 weeks and it was great. By summer I was running 3 miles regular in about 30 mins but then I got pains in my legs which too me out so I started back on the bike. I was cycling 14 miles a session 5 days a week which took about 45 minutes to do and I loved it. Sadly the bike broke in late November last year so I am back running again which is great. Throughout all of this, the thing that got me out of bed each morning was the fact that I wanted to be fit & healthy for myself and for my kids.
Now, your probably wondering why the life story? Well the thing is most articles that guide you in goal setting they don't usually help with real world examples so hopefully my experience will you. The thing with goal setting is that you can meet the stages short-term but if you want to continue on day-by-day then you have to have a long-term goal that these little steps go toward.
I don't have the answers to real goal setting, but I know what worked for me and maybe this can help you. Any question then please feel free to drop me a line.
Posted: January 18th, 2009 | Author: robfranklin | Filed under: Business, Personal Develoment, life, small business | Tags: Business, life, personal development, small business | No Comments »
The old saying goes that "if a jobs worth doing, it's worth doing well" and never a true word was spoken. The world we live in today is fast moving and sometimes you feel as through you are in the wake of an avalanche with no way of stopping. People today do not spend enough time on things and it is all too often the case that they will procrastinate until it is too late to do a good job. Sometimes it is frugal to procrastinate as it gives us time to plan the work that we are undertaking, allow the creative thought process to run so we can create the work at hand. However, more often than not this time is not required and more importantly it is wasted with resulting work being typically of poor standard. A classic example of this was this evening my son said that he had homework to do. This had been given to him on Friday but he had not done it, he also didn't have the assignment as another child had taken it from him. Creatively enough he decided to create a document which discussed various plants as he knew this was the topic. The resultant document was not so impressive as he had copied parts from the Internet without formatting he text correctly and more importantly he had copied one section three times. The resultant document was just rushed and had no real effort put in to ensure that what was being presented was correct or of reasonable quality. This may seem a harsh analysis of his work but I was raised with the understand of "If a jobs worth doing, it's worth doing well". So with that I assisted him in making the necessary corrections and explained that what he had done was great but he needed to be more conscious when doing this sort of work.
The fact is that we are all judged by the work that we do for others. This could be something as simple has helping over the phone, guiding a customer to the right place in a store or it could be a new network installation. Whatever the task we, as individuals, should always try to strive to better ourselves and stand out above the crowd by going that extra mile to make our client happy. Always remember that it takes a lot to impress people today but it doesn't take a lot to disappoint them, which do you want to do?
Posted: January 12th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Personal, Personal Develoment, life | No Comments »
Intriguing title maybe but what am I talking about. As we go through life we become who we are by the people we meet, the surroundings we live in, our role models that we adopt as well as many other things but does this make a better you? In short maybe but then maybe not. Personal development is all about looking at those that surround us and looking what, if any, traits can I adopt which will make me a better person. It is also about looking at who we are now and seeing if what we have become is all that we want to be or if there are some things which you don't like that you can change.
In my current journey I am looking at who I am now and seeing what things need to be changed to get me to the person that I want to be and in some respects the person that I was. The last few years have taken their toll on me which, some of you may have read before, has been a very trying time with building what was basically a new business as well as our newly born son being very sick in hospital. This time allowed certain aspects of me to develop for the worse, something which I am not proud of but I do seek to change. These characteristics are something that I know I'm doing but are consciously allowing to continue so these are things that I am trying to tackle. Why be so honest and open about this? Well in short because I am not perfect nor would I ever claim to be. What I do claim is to try and do better each day, one small step at a time. So what can you do to be better each day:
- Look at the things that you do each day and think to yourself, "Would you be happy to be on the receiving end?"
- Do you think that you are achieving the best out of your day.
- Could you be a better person
Once you have answered these questions then it's a good place to start and from here you can build an idea of what you need to change and how you'll change it. Do I have the answers? No just some questions that you can ask yourself and just maybe what I am figuring out can help you too.
Posted: January 3rd, 2009 | Author: robfranklin | Filed under: Light relief, Personal, Personal Develoment | Tags: Light relief, Personal, work life balance | No Comments »
Like most people I spend almost every working day racing around seeing people, speaking with them on the phone, rushing home at night to see the wife and kids. This I have done for many years so much so that it has become the normal speed of things and I am always in a rush. More recently though I have started to look at things a little more deeply and found that I don't like all the rushing but what can you do to stop this? The single thing that made me realise that I needed to stop rushing was when I was taking my little boy to bed, as I do most nights, and he was doing what most 5 year olds do and that was mess about. Now Tom has not had a really normal bedtime routine since he was two before his little brother was born. This is because little Danny was born with problems which meant we have spent the last 2 1/2 years in hospital see
www.potter-tate.co.uk for more info. Anyway, it was around 8pm and he was messing and rushing as usual I said to him "come on Tom, I've got work to do if you don't stop messing then no story". It wasn't till I got downstairs and sat down at my computer that in dawned on me that in actual fact what I was rushing down to do was neither that important or in fact a "real" job that needed doing.
So I am resolved that while I cannot slow down the work pace while doing on-demand work what I can do is slow down outside of work. I am also resolved to doing things different to the way I have before. So earlier today I decided to walk to our local shop, something which I have NEVER done in the whole time that we have lived at this house which is almost 7 years. The local shop is only about 3/4 mile away and while I going running three times a week and pass it then I have never walked to the shop. You should try it sometime, it's a surefire way to completely spin out your partner/wife. I said to Julie "I think I'll walk to the shop", you should have seen the look on her face. It couldn't have been more stunned if I had said that I was catching a flight to the other side of the world! So leaving behind a rather confused Julie I walked to the shops, the thing was I ended up looking round with almost schoolboy fascination at houses that I had seen before but never really looked at.
So if you are looking for a New Years Resolution try this, "Do something once a week different to the way you have always done it".