Are You Going For A Gold Medal At Work?

As the media is aglow with the London 2012 Olympics, it made me wonder, what if there were an Olympic event on my day job? I imagined myself going up against the Russian Federation or the all powerful US team. I’d be proudly wearing my Canadian made suit, lining up for my turn in the corporate boardroom to go up against my competitors.

But in reality, aren’t we doing it already?

The Olympic motto, in use since 1924, is “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. For 17 days, you will hear, and due to the TV time delay, see repeatedly, athletes trying to go faster, stronger or higher. Today, I watched Om Yul Chol from North Korea lift 3 times his body weight. He set a new personal best. This new personal best also was better than everyone else for this event and he won the Gold Medal.

I also watched Tera Van Beilen from Oakville, Ontario. She made it into the Women’s 100 metre semi-finals to compete against 15 other competitors where only the top 8 go to the finals. In something you don’t see very often, she had to swim an extra race as she was tied for the eighth and final spot in the finals. In watching her being interviewed after she found out she had to race again, the joy and excitement was incredibly infectious. She couldn’t wait to race again. In the swim-off, she did not advance, but we should not look at it that she lost and failed to advance to the finals.

I prefer to look at it that she won the right to represent Canada at the Olympics and that she ended up with a personal best of ninth in the world! We seem to focus on gold, silver and bronze, but forget to celebrate every single person is a winner as they are representing their country on an international stage.

Today, Van Beilen, didn’t take a long lunch, she didn’t take a day off, she didn’t call in sick. Today was the result of many hours in the pool training and the result was a personal best.

Are you competing at your day job as if it was the Olympics?

In most cases, there are not any competitions that we can compete against one another to see who will place first. Every day we should be focusing on a personal best; a personal best in the report that you are delivering, a personal best in the presentation you are giving, a personal best in the interview you are about to perform.

While at work today, did you achieve a personal best?

Call Me Maybe - The Importance of Involving Your Help Desk in Project Planning

CarlyRae Jepson might sing a new hot song now “Call Me Maybe”, but in the project world, you need to ensure that your help desk is ready to tell their customers, call me really!

In the heat of readying your widget for implementation; whether your widget is a service, a piece of hardware, a marketing campaign or a new product, the importance of your own Help Desk is sometimes forgotten. It’s easy to get caught up in the planning and getting ready to for Go Live that the operationalization of what you are implementing is overlooked.

During original project planning, we plan for both the capital and operational costs of the project. Capital costs are the easy part; what do we need on a one time basis to implement your widget.  Once these funds are in place, you begin working through the stages of implementation using the standard approach your organization approves; requirements, design, build, etc. The operational costs (the costs to keep your widget in service) are more difficult.

A Help Desk may have many names such as a Service Desk, Contact Centre or Call Centre but is just as important as all other players in your project and need to be included right beside, or better yet embedded within your project team. The users of your product are definitely being involved to help determine the end product. Why not involve the group that will be the primary point of contact when you do launch your widget?

Gathering the Help Desk requirements are crucial in the development of any successful widget. During development, it is easier to embed the needs of your Help Desk instead of near your widget launch. Your Help Desk will usually have a long history of similar widgets that can be referenced to improve your project. How many times have we seen one project make the same mistake as another? Being able to leverage existing support processes may enable you to provide enhanced post launch support than originally planned. My experiences to date have demonstrated that Help Desk staff are very willing to participate where possible. They are an inquisitive bunch wanting to know more about your widget than you might expect. They will be able to be able to set up their call tracking solution to be able to categorize all post Go Live calls for further analysis and correction. It is much easier to build in a requirement during the design than after the build where it is much costlier.

Alternatively, you can leave the contact with the Help Desk until the end when you are ready to launch.

You will receive another line from Carly Rae something like, “hey, I just met you and this is crazy”. Your Help Desk require information that enable them to support the types of questions that will be received; process flow, call scripts, common answers, general widget knowledge, etc. Answering a query at the first line of support within 5 minutes is by far less costly than having to escalate the call to someone else.

Waiting until near launch may elicit another lyrical line, “you took your time with the call” and now go away! The Help Desk may in fact hold enough organizational power or influence to delay your launch until their requirements are met.

Doing anything right, the first time is much easier. Involve your Help Desk! By asking for their input, you will find their involvement and level of commitment will grow exponentially. It’s not only the project team that want success, but it is your Help Desk as well.

They will be glad to be waiting on the other end of the phone saying, “call me maybe”.

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