A need to feel productive

I spent only three hours in the office this morning before returning home sick. I've been sick with a head cold for a little over two weeks. My wife and daughter have both caught it, fought it, and moved on while I'm still fighting it. Struggling to speak finally did it for me. After three solid hours of meetings: 6 AM - 9 AM, I called it a day. When I arrived home I took a single Benadryl, and then slept for 5 hours straight. I'm updating my blog so I feel productive.

JOB

I'm two months into the job and I already feel like I've accomplished 80% of what I need to in my two year assignment. The remaining 20% requires repetition and time. Recognizing that I may be overly optimistic on the progress, I'm still pleased with what the team has accomplished in the last three months (I officially took over one month before my arrival). I knew this team was better than they were performing.

The big question that usually follows such a statement is: "what did you change?" The honest answer is: "Not much". To borrow terminology from the book "From Good To Great", we already had the right people on the bus, we just needed to point the bus in the right direction. I made three changes:

1) I modified the roles and responsibilities of the three section leaders. We were too matrixed in how we managed resource assignments and we were underutilizing one of the best analytical minds on the team. I made each section lead responsible and accountable for the resourced in their area of focus, and I put the person who was managing that effort in charge of solving our production support issues. The net result - less resource churn, higher productivity, and a 20% reduction in production support backlog.

2) I changed the focus. Demand management is one of the most difficult jobs a technology manager faces. We support every department in the business, who all report to a different VP, so negotiating which projects take priority often falls to the IT department - and at least one VP is always upset that they are not considered a priority. When I arrived, we had 35 people working on 30 projects. We were trying to do everything and really accomplishing nothing. Something needed to change. As we began finishing projects and starting new ones, we allocating two to five resources per project, instead of one. Over a 6 month period, we'll complete the same number of projects, but we will complete each individual project faster, so the illusion is higher productivity, and the team feels like they are accomplishing more. Delaying the lower value projects will provide the additional benefit of them dropping off the list as people find other ways to accomplish their objectives without technology.

3) I changed the measurements. We were very focused on delivery and schedules. The end result was releasing non-functioning product on time and creating a mess for the production support team to clean up. There was talk of implementing a "project warranty" - a period of time that the project team would support any issues. Instead, I borrowed from Deming and built quality into the process - better estimates, better design, better testing - and started holding people accountable for the quality of the product, not how fast they completed it. At this point, we are delivering a few weeks late (our estimates haven't included the learning curve associated with better quality), but our applications do not generate production support issues after they release. I'm willing to face my management, and my customers, with delays if I can guarantee a quality product at the end.

FAMILY

This is my daughter's final week of school. End of school in Jakarta, for expats, means return to the home country. For us, it means everyone we met has already or is planning to disappear for the next two months. Per my contract, I don't get a vacation for my first six months, so we won't be going anywhere. It will almost be like our first day here all over again where we didn't know a soul.

Next week is my daughter's birthday, and we've been concerned that there would not be anyone around to attend her party. My daughter even expressed this concern quite poignantly the other night when she lamented "I'll be in my princess dress and there will be no one here to see it." Hoping to avoid that emotionally scarring trauma, we decided to celebrate her birthday this Saturday, betting that her classmates would not be leaving the day immediately following the last day in school.

Our bet paid off - larger than we had anticipated. We went from thinking we'd have no one, to an event that looks like we'll have over 40 people including about 25 kids. We still have not received the majority of our belongings (though I did receive word they are in Indonesia's customs), so we're a little concerned we won't have enough in our house to keep everyone entertained. We have hired Gymboree to host the party, so hopefully that will be enough.

JAKARTA LIFE

In 2000, I had my first job that allowed me to connect to the company network from home. In order to do so, I had to contact the host computer and provide my credentials and a security token. The token was a randomly generated number that changed every 30 seconds. I had to carry a small, pager-like device that would provide me the appropriate number to use based on the time I was attempting to gain access. Today, technology has advanced to a degree that instead of randomly generated tokens, we use SSL or VPN or a reverse-proxy server. Well, except for here in Jakarta.

I have utilities to pay in Jakarta - cable, electricity, water, cell phone. I don't have checks, the utilities don't do auto-deduct, and none have the ability to pay online. Thankfully, much like my bank back home, I can do online bill pay through my bank. I registered with my bank - BCA - to have this feature (which cost me 10,000 Rupiah - $1) and they gave me....a token generator. Yep, in order to pay bills online I now have to use a randomly generated token like I did over 9 years ago to access a network. I guess SSL was too difficult to implement on their website.

Online banking isn't the only financial service that required me to take a few steps back in time. I'm finding that for many of my transactions, cash is the only acceptable form of payment. This is especially true of services - the Gymboree party, tennis lessons, many restaurants. Often, business that do accept credit cards pass on the 3% transaction fee to the consumer - so, cash is the cheaper way to buy goods. I prefer the US approach of including the 3% fee in the list price and charging the dinosaurs that use cash more so that I can have the convenience of my fraud protected credit card.

Finally, while service levels in general are superior to those in the US (or any western country, for that matter), repeat service is not. I like to be a regular. When I find a restaurant, a barber, a mechanic, a brand, even a car dealership, that I like, I give them all my business and am very reluctant to change - my econ professor would say I'm a 'sticky' consumer. In exchange for my loyalty, I expect them to recognize me, throw me a freebie now and then - basically, reward my loyalty. In the US, businesses do that. One place I frequented for lunch ended up buying every 3rd meal for me - so I went there a lot (until my wife said I was not allowed to be a regular at Hooters).

We've been to the Hacienda restaurant every Saturday for dinner since we found it - the last 5 Saturdays in a row. We arrive before most people have dinner (around 5 PM), so we're often the only people in the restaurant. I would think by this point they would be saying "welcome back", or at least know that we always like extra chips (that they charge us for). Nope - we're like any other bule to them. It's the only place in the city to get our Mexican fix, so I don't see our habits changing anytime soon. For now, I'll just have to live with my disappointment.