Mongkhon BoPhit,
originally uploaded by binnur gul.

Well… I know I have been quiet, but I had a good excuse. Between visiting Thailand, recovering from jet lag, and the usual craziness of the holiday season, I haven’t been able to do anything more than just think about blogging. Honestly, I have been thinking about really cool topics to blog about, too!

Though it was work related, I was able to see some wonderful places around Bangkok. Turns out my visit coincided with the King’s 80th birthday celebration. As such, I got to experience and witness first hand the love the Thai people have for their King.

Thai people are kind and thoughtful. I was stuck in traffic for over 2 hours (mostly snoozing at the back of the car), and barely heard any loud horns. That level of patience is quite rare in the world.

I also noticed the newspapers frequently cover stories relating to global warming and impacts to the country and the economy. Perhaps this is due to the accelerated rate of globalization that is experienced in the region. Thailand seems to be divided on the topic as well. While the manufacturers in Thailand see globalization as a threat, public view reflects otherwise. However, they are concerned with the impact of globalization to the environment.

You can see the photos from my trip on Flickr.

Happy Holidays!

Technorati Tags: Thailand, globalization

Today is the Blog Action Day and this year’s topic is the environment. As technology managers, we are in a position of influence to reduce our impact on the environment. How we develop our innovations and technologies have just as much impact on the environment as the type of innovation and technologies we are working on. Here are few ideas on how we can incorporate more environmentally friendly decisions into our day-to-day technology management activities.

• Design decisions: environmentally friendly material selections, architectures that specifically focus on less power usage, equipment selection that is energy efficient;
• Project management methodologies: reduce paper usage for reports, etc., invest in collaborative technologies to reduce travel as well as enable individuals to work from home;
• Development and testing tools: virtualization tools to help reduce the number of needed servers for development and testing;
• Programs and promotions: recycle older products and parts, reduce packaging waste, use greener materials for sales brochures;

Yes, going green and the environment requires a shift in our thinking. However, it is not an either/or type of question. Going green will improve your customer relationships, and ultimately save money for your firm and your customers.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is the familiar 3Rs focused on producing less waste by the environmentally aware consumers. As a family, we include a 4th R: Refuse: refuse to clutter the environment with unnecessary waste.

Apply the 4R philosophy (Reduce, Reuse, Refuse, Recycle) into your projects. Remember, every little step counts.

Technorati Tags: blog action day, blogactionday

It has been a year since I started blogging. It has certainly been a fun and at times frustrating creative experience. Some weeks, it is quite a challenge to come up with a captivating topic that I am motivated to write about. Overall, it has been a great experience. And I hope some of my thoughts have sparked new ideas and possibilities for you as well.

So, here is the top 5 content of the year:

• Strategy 101: Revisiting low-cost leadership with Dell — Interestingly enough, this article has been at the top of the reading list from day one. Not sure if it is due to Dell or there is more interest in achieving differentiation via low cost leadership. Either way, average time spent is little over 4mins on this article. Wow!
• How to identify forces impacting your innovation
• Metrics gone bad? and steps to recovery
• Best practices: SWOT analysis revisited
• Effective strategies for surviving culture tax

Thank you for your support! As always, drop me your thoughts and ideas for what you like to see on this blog for the upcoming year. Here is to a brand new year of blogging!

I finally created a Flickr account and even uploaded some of my photos…. Here is the fun part, FeedBurner will embed random photos to my feed. Hope you enjoy it!

I am a WSJ (Wall Street Journal) reader. I find the articles insightful and interesting, which makes it an enjoyable experience, especially with my morning coffee. However, I can’t say the same thing for their customer service experience. So, Mr. Murdoch, I hope you are reading this post and will take this customer’s recommendations to heart as you are developing your strategic plans.

I almost posted about my WSJ customer experience couple of months ago. You see, their Online Journal and Print Edition are two very different organizations, and they don’t share any subscription information at all. So, early this year, when I re-subscribed through WSJ Online which also gave me a print subscription, their Print Edition group had no idea. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, except I kept getting letters for subscription offers, which didn’t make any sense to me. Unfortunately, they also sent a letter accusing me of taking advantage of their good will for continuing my print subscription and urging me to re-subscribe for something that I already paid for! This issue was finally resolved when I got in touch with their print subscription service representative that admitted she doesn’t receive any notice from the Online WSJ group regarding the print subscriptions offered through their promotions.

Today, I ran into a different issue with WSJ services group. Guess what, for every new WSJ account, you need to create yet another user account to manage it. I actually called up their 800 number as I thought they could update my user information with the new account number, but no go… It is bad enough that I have a spreadsheet to manage my accounts/passwords, but now I have 3 different user accounts for one site and one is no longer valid???

When I asked how I can provide customer feedback and suggestions for their Website Services group, I was told that they would be happy to pass my feedback along. However, they don’t have any mechanism to submit it directly to them. Lack of customer connection is in my top 10 list of how NOT to innovate!

This is quite different than my UPS delivery experiences. I always enjoyed using UPS and their online tracking services. Yesterday, however, I was introduced to a new service from them, which has apparently been around for the past 6 months. It is an automated voice message that they send out when the package they are delivering requires a signature. The service today cannot give a specific delivery time (sometime between 8am-7pm). However, with the latest technology advances, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an updated service integrated with their SMS messaging to give a 1-3 hour delivery window within the next 6 months.

Thank you for listening. For more on the importance of quality of your customer service and dangers of siloed organizations, please read my previous posts. If you happen to have one of these siloed customer service organizations, please take action today and put a strategic plan in place with specific milestones to fix it. How well you service your customers can be your strategic differentiation or a sign of your deteriorating brand.

• Innovate with quality
• Strategy 101: Revisiting Low-Cost Leadership with Dell
• Good, Bad and Ugly: Organizational Silos

Technorati Tags: WSJ, Wall Street Journal, customer service, Murdoch, UPS

A friend of mine brought up the question of dealing with organizational cultures where the process of getting things done is draining and demotivating. He refers to this as culture tax. I have seen many cases where misalignment of priorities, inadequate resources, complex organizational structures, lack of clear accountabilities, misguided values of the leaders and overwhelmed groups help create this culture tax.

If your work environment reminds you of one of the regions of Hades, read on and remember what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Otherwise, consider yourself one of the lucky ones, but file this blog away for later reference as your time might come.

Before I share my survival techniques for effectively sailing through rough waters while keeping sanity, it is quite important for you to do a personal assessment. Be honest and ask if the culture of your organization is right for you. If you do decide to stay, be clear on your motivation, purpose and goals.

If your challenge is dealing with jerks in the workplace then check out Bob Sutton’s blog as he has extensive information on the subject. Though I haven’t read his latest book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, I have enjoyed listening to his interview on Standford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture series. Once you recognize and accept the negative styles of the people you are working with, you are no longer the victim. With that, you can focus and direct your energy on how to effectively achieve your goal.

Next, take your time and revisit your organization’s decision making process, key influencers and decisions makers. I previously touched on the decision making process and decision quality chain. Reflect on your objectives and how your circle of influence (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey) helps/hinders the accomplishment of those objectives. As a side note, if you are a people manager, please find ways to isolate your team from all the politics and demotivational activities of your organization. You will be surprised how this will not only improve your team’s motivation, but also increase your productivity and effectiveness.

This exercise of understanding organizationally where you stand in regards to your objectives, recognizing how decisions are made and who the decision makers are will enable you to raise issues well. Here the goal is to translate your concerns and issues to purpose and objectives that others will not only relate to but also care about. Basically, look for ways to extend your circle of influence.

In addition, I recommend practicing the Zen discipline of emotional detachment. Unfortunately, this is often misinterpreted as not caring and being disengaged. However, emotional detachment merely directs you not to be attached to an outcome or to an expectation. This practice will help you objectively evaluate the situation and recognize new opportunities as they arrive. After all, when one door closes another will open, but only if you are listening.

Here are a few other tips that worked well for me in the past:

• Be a good observer, and focus on learning people’s styles: what motivates them, how they are influenced, how they listen and communicate, … And, adjust your style as needed.
• Be open to getting help, coaching and mentoring from others.
• Recognize and celebrate little accomplishments. This can be especially hard for high achievers, but especially important in situations where progress is slow to achieve.
• I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a healthy lifestyle, exercise and meditation for maintaining a positive attitude and outlook in life.

Keep on smiling. Remember, your smile is one thing that is under your control. And, please do share your experiences and survival techniques with us.

Technorati Tags: organizational cultures, culture tax

Hello Kitty has introduced a new laptop targeted for working Japanese women. The laptop design certainly highlights the differences in cultures, as this would certainly not appeal to professional women in the States. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the color pink, but this is little too much…. Don’t you think?

On a different note, if you ever wondered which superhero you might be, check out the Superhero Quiz site. I’m the Supergirl.

Your results:You are Supergirl
Lean, muscular and feminine.
Honest and a defender of the innocent.



Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…

I finally had the chance to update my site themes: kitetail.com and blog.kitetail.com. It has been a fun experience, at times also frustrating. IE6… Enough said! Along the same lines, trying to test web sites using virtual PC on Mac is not the most efficient process

Thoughts, problems? Please let me know. Thanks!

Unfortunately I got one of those nasty bugs… And it has been miserable… I was thinking that I can’t remember if characters in Star Trek ever got a common cold. In the mean time, I have to deal with mine. I plan to be back as soon as possible.

Last week was Spring break, and we decided to leave sunny Seattle for cloudy San Diego for a little family vacation. Yup, while we were in San Diego wishing for some sun, Seattle was warm and sunny… It figures All in all, we had a great time, especially our 9-year-old in LegoLand, at least up until our return flight.

Given the aging airline fleet, and the higher demands on air travel, it is becoming more common to witness late departures or cancelled flights. However, this experience clearly shows the innovation gap in the airline industry, and numerous opportunities to improve the overall customer experience. Plus, this made it to my top three worst-ever non-weather-related airline experiences, so it is worth sharing.

Here is the timeline of events that led to the cancelation of our Alaska flight from San Diego to Seattle. We were originally scheduled to depart Sunday at 6:24pm, but ended up leaving 12:24pm on Monday. Note, these are all approximate times.

• 6:15pm: The prior Seattle flight boarded our plane due to mechanical problems they experienced with theirs.
• 7:15pm: We are informed that the part needed to fix the broken plane is in transit, and we should be well on our way by 10pm.
• 9:40pm: We are told they are not able to fix the problem. However, they are diverting another plane, and our expected departure time is now 10:45pm.
• 10:20pm: The pre-boarding process starts. After 10 mins of waiting for the doors to open, we are notified that there is a mechanical problem with a circuit breaker on the replacement plane, and they need to do further testing.
• 10:50pm: Our only gate agent disappears, leaving us wondering…
• 11:00pm: Everyone notices the blue screen of death, and smiles as the terminal screens reboots at precisely 11pm (but we also note that their clocks are set to midnight).
• 11:05pm: The gate agents walk out of the jet-way, reminding me of the slow motion heros walk in the movies. As they say, there is safety in numbers. They inform us that the flight is canceled and they start the rebooking process.
• 11:15pm: An unhappy customer throws crumbled paper towards the agents. One of the Alaskan gate agent walks away due to the hostile situation. Neither behavior was appropriate, needless to say. Btw, the crumbled paper was Alaska’s customer relationship number.
• 12:00am: Our luggage arrives at the baggage carousel, almost a full hour after the flight was cancelled. There was much confusion about which baggage delivery device the bags would appear on, probably confused by the fact that this luggage was not being delivered to its destination, but rather its source.
• 12:05am: We finally walk out of the airport and arrive at the hotel shuttle service waiting area. It turns out that the hotel shuttle service does not operate after midnight, and the hotel is sending a town car for 80+ people.
• 12:10am: We beg & pleat a taxi driver to take us less than 2 miles to the airport hotel (he is sure that there is a hotel shuttle). As we approach the hotel, he cracks up with laughter watching all the taxis pull over to the hotel entrance.
• 12:20am: As we are checking into the hotel, the person tells how surprised they are to see all the people showing up. The hotel was not notified of the canceled flight and the flood of new customers.
• 12:25am: We are the first of the flight to actually make it to our hotel room. We left a long line of checkins at the counter, and more at the airport. It is now that we notice that the dinner certificate handed out by the airlines cannot be used, as the restaurants stop serving food after 12:30am.
• 11:45am: After a nice rest and a great breakfast (where the dinner certificate had to be combined with the breakfast certificated, and still barely covered the cost), we started boarding our new, new flight on time. As we were boarding the flight, we heard the announcement “The 9am flight that was delayed due to mechanical problems should be fixed and ready to depart by 1pm.” Yikes! It seems that the broken plane from the night before still hadn’t been fixed by morning. Good thing we decided to sleep in and go on the second flight out.
• 3:10pm: As we are waiting for our checked luggage in the Seattle airport, we note that the 9am flight that was scheduled to depart by 1pm was now scheduled for 4:30pm arrival, over an hour after our flight landed. As a note, most of the passengers from the previous night were booked on that 9am flight, to get them to Seattle as soon as possible……..

Delays and cancelations are inevitable. However, better operations and risk management will certainly ease the pain that the airline and the customers feel. There are plenty of thresholds that an airline could watch for that could trigger a set of actions.

• Detection of mechanical failure: Automatic initiation of wait-listing customers to the next available flights. Today, this is manually initiated by the customer.
• Service triggered events: Usage of a given part, its previous history or trends on the given airplane could trigger automatic recall for service.
• Grounded airplane or customers: After certain hour of waiting, say about 3hrs, it should be obvious whether the given flight is a go/no-go. Based on available planes, the airline should be able to decide to cancel the flight.
• Notification of partners in the ecosystem: Cancelation in the system should automatically notify the required partners from airport baggage handling, to shuttle services and hotel personnel.
• Cancelation triggered activities: I always wondered why airline agents type so much on the computer, even for small queries. The rebooking process literally took 10-15mins per person. This should be as automated as possible, and even before the cancellation is announced the needed information (hotel, reservations, …) should be printed and handed to the customers.

As a note, it is obvious that the airlines are not equipped to handle crisis, as displayed in the behavior of the Alaska gate agents. Maybe this is an opportunity for a firm focused on handling small-scale crisis to get into the picture to improve customer experience.

Thank you for letting me whine/vent/fume. Your regularly scheduled blog will return later this week. Stay tuned.