Jack Welch, in his book, Winning, talks about how to create great mission statements.

He says most mission statements are dull, uninspired, and even unhelpful.  Most groups write their mission statement to describe only what they are in business to do.  While this is not wrong, it creates a whole bunch of mission statements that all look the same among competitors, and are not really valuable.

Welch suggests that a good mission statement not only describes what the company is in business to do, but how they are going to succeed at it.

For example, "We are going to sell lots of chickens," is not as effective as "we are going to sell lots of chickens by growing the largest free-range chickens and advertising their value to the industry."

Following his logic, I did some research and found some interesting comparisons:

Ford Motor Company in Europe's mission statement (couldn't find the U.S. mission statement anywhere online) is:

"Our Mission: we are a global, diverse family with a proud heritage, passionately committed to providing outstanding products and services."

OK, so Ford's mission is noble, but there is no explanation as to how they will succeed at their mission.  Compare this to Toyota's mission statement:

"To sustain profitable growth by providing the best customer experience and dealer support."

Toyota's mission statement expresses their intention to make money by providing the best customer experience and dealer support.

Indeed, their mission statement tells what they are doing and how they will succeed.  This is an example of an effective mission statement.

There is a business principle at hand here:  Ambiguity is the enemy to progress.  It's nice Ford wants to provide outstanding products and services, but there is no formula or direction given in their mission statement as to how they plan to do this.

Toyota states it will succeed by providing the best customer experience and dealer support.   Are they succeeding at this?

In 2007, Toyota became the largest seller of cars in America.  As customers, we vote with our money.  It seems then,  that they are providing the best customer experience, and are fulfilling their mission statement.

On a lighter note, Enron's mission statement is/was:

"Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence."

Mike J y
www.RedRockResearch.com

I just finished reading The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, by Timothy Ferriss.  Timothy Ferriss is a 29-year old self-made millionaire, TV actor in China, athletic advisor to more than 30 world record holders, Chinese Kickboxing Champion, first American to hold Guinness world record in Tango, speaker of four languages, and a four-world champion cage fighter.   This book now makes him an author.

Ferriss's book is about beating Corporate America, and becoming content and happy using the newer technologies available to us today.

He provides a formula for successful entrepreneurship.  One important point he makes is the need to find a market, before investing in building the product.  He suggests this successful pattern:

1. Pick an industry you understand.


2. Target a product you can Create, License, or Resell.


3. Look at competition to see how you need to differentiate your product.  Examples:
   
   
   
   1. More credibility indicators
   
   
   2. Offer a better guarantee
   
   
   3. Offer a better selection
   
   
   4. Offer free, or faster shipping
   
   


4. Micro-test your product (before you put any money into it), by using eBay, or Google Ad's.  Microtesting is "probing" customers to see if they would buy the product.  Some examples:
   
   
   
   1. Put an add on eBay, then cancel the add minutes before the auction ends, to see how much people are willing to pay.
   
   
   2. Build a dummy website, with item, description, pictures, and pricing.  After the user pressed 'purchase now,' display a "Thank you but this item is temporarily unavailable."  This enables you to test your conversion rate up front, without needing to invest in manufacturing, etc.
   
   

This way, you can determine up front if there is a market for your product.  He suggests putting the price on a separate webpage altogether so you can measure the effects that changing the price alone will have on your conversion rate.

Ferris goes on to explain how to transform managing a business into automating the business.  He suggests time management is a thing of the past.  The key to living better today is to remove distracting inputs from our lives.

He talks about outsourcing every part of you business and empowering the outsourcers.  He talks about only answering email one day a week, and having your cell phone message redirect people to you email.

The final part of Ferriss's book talks about what to do after you have successfully started and automated you business.  He talks about getting out of your comfort zone, travelling, learning new skills, and new languages.

I think this book is an excellent read, and surprisingly cutting-edge.  It's nice to read a business book about PPC, Google AdWords, and eBay microtesting.   Makes me feel understood.

Mi Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

I finally finished Halo 3---in Heroic mode!  Heroic mode is one notch above Normal, and one below Legendary.   For those of you that have not completed the game, relax--there are no spoilers here.  I will offer some strategy advice, though.

Halo 3 is the third installment in Bungie's highly-popular XBox video-game series.  The storyline takes place in a futuristic world that has been infested with an alien army.  Led by a creepy villain who calls himself the 'Prophet of Truth,' the alien onslaught will annihaliate the entire human race unless, of course, you and the space marines expel them.

Halo 3 is a little twist from 1 and 2 because you have an alien-defector who helps you during most of the levels, and well, it's the Xbox 360 this time!

The graphics are outstanding and the playability is great.   I remember playing Halo 1 with my friend, Greg Wright.   He came to my house the day I brought the game home.   It was around 5pm when we started playing the game.  After what seemed to us to be about three hours, his wife called us to ask if her husband was ever coming home again because it was 2:30 am and she hadn't heard from him.

With Halo 2, my neighbor Rob and I finished the campaign game in about two weeks.   We'd play every night until about 1 am.  By then, our brains were so fried we couldn't speak properly.  We had to use hand signals to communicate 'good-night' and 'same time tomorrow.'

My all-time favorite games were Bolo and Bilestoad on the Apple II, Doom and Klingon Academy on the PC, and 007 on the N64.  Ghost Recon is my most-played XBox game, and so far, Halo 3 is the best 360 game.

Heroic is a difficult level.  It took me about three months to complete, playing solo and moderately during that time.  The first few levels are pretty easy.  You basically shoot anything moving at you.  As the game progresses however, you start facing more difficult aliens and tougher challenges.

Here are some strategies that helped me:

1. Learn to be patient and lure the bigger aliens out one-by-one.  You have a much better chance of being successful facing them one-by-one.

2. Don't feel compelled to annihilate every alien you come across.  Sometimes, the melee was so chaotic it was simply easier to run past everything and through the next door.

3. Discover your melee-punch attack.  This is where you run up on an alien, and punch them with your weapon.  I found this to be the best way to clobber a tough alien.  One or two hits and you can take down a Brute.  This works especially well inside a shield-dome.

4. Chieftains are the toughest opponents.  Wielding gravity hammers, and invincibility armor, they strike pure terror when they run at you.  There are three excellent techniques to use to defeat them:

A. Blast them with plasma cannons.  The continuous impact will stun and drain them of health.

B. If you have an invisibility shield, go invisible, quickly walk up behind the chieftain, and melee punch him in the back several times.

C. Learn to jump up over them when they run at you.  You can stay alive and shoot at them for a while doing this.

5. Attack the exhaust vent of the Wraith.

6. Attack the legs of the Scarab SuperTank, then jump on, run up to the top, and blast it's power source.

7. This should be obvious to you-- running over the aliens is easier than shooting them.

Halo 3 is a guys game.   It's full of marines, monsters, lasers, rockets, jeeps, four-wheelers, space-ships and shooting.  There are only three women in the game.  A dispatcher who you never see,  the operations commander, and an attractive computer persona.

There are nine levels.  The environments range from jungle, to desert, to internal facilities, to inside creepy, fleshy-spaceships.  The final level is a unique racetrack-like experience.

I really liked the humor in the game.  The little grunt aliens see you coming and say "Oh, no!  A monster!"  Sometimes the little grunts poke fun at their bigger alien buddies by saying "Brute's are jerks."

The brutes have their own humor.  They are big, scary aliens that speak with deep voices.  Sometimes, when you die, one of them will say "All to easy..." which is a direct quote from Darth Vader.

The brute comment that makes me laugh the most is sometimes heard when you are unfortunate enough to come across a mass of Brute aliens marching towards you.  One of them will say, in their deep, Vader-like voice, "No inappropriate touching!"

I noticed a recent news snippet that Microsoft has released it's seven-year hold on Bungie.  They're now free again to wow us with more great games.

I really enjoyed playing this game.  I guess I'm ready for some Halo parties, now.  If you are having one, let me know.  Find me as MBER on Xbox Live.  I'd welcome some comments from others who have finished the game.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

Ed Sullivan's book, Under Pressure And On Time, is a no-nonsense guide for delivering software products to market in a timely manner.

In this industry where the average software project is late, over budget, or a complete failure, there are so many books written about what not to do.  It's refreshing to read a software development book that tells you "what to do" for a change.

Sullivan skips past conventional theory and provides real-world experiences and wisdom for how project managers and software development teams can succeed in this challenging industry.

Novel to Sullivan's recommended approaches is the concept of one-team-per-project, reporting to a single manager.  Conventionally, most companies split out development, quality-assurance, and product management into different departments.  Sullivan describres this configuration as a model set-up-for-failure.  Too many factors, he says, complicate team performance when each team-member is reporting to a separate manager.

I consult with software development companies to improve their product delivery speed and product quality.  I call Sullivan's single-team suggestion the "lean model," and I agree with his conclusions.

In the manufacturing sciences, there is a belief that the production manager and the quality assurance manager have an inherent conflict of interest, therefore, they should be separate departments within a manufacturing organization.  Many business books are written about this.

In software, however, this model is a less-effective approach.  It can work, but it creates barriers between project teams for several reasons:

1. Contention can arise as an "us vs them" mentality builds when team-members go back to their respective departments dougouts, to commesurate with their non-project department staff.


2. As team-members need each other to succeed, it becomes easy for a team-member in one department to delay requests, or grandstand, because their department manager "has asked them to work on other things this week."


3. A department manager will tend to be uninformed about upcoming urgent project team needs and may unintentionally delay the project by asking their employee to do other things at the most inconvenient time for the project.


4. A lack of focus will accompany any project team-member who has continuous department responsibilities outside of the project team.


5. If contention arises, the project team-members from different departments may value disparaging another department, rather than working together to solve the problem at hand.

Sullivan goes on to discuss effective hiring techniques, retention techniques, and general healthy corporate culture factors.  He talks about ranking employees in terms of inner-circle, middle-circle, and outer-circle.  This reminds me of Jack Welch's theory on differentation.

Another novel concept Sullivan describes is his simple but effective project scheduling process.  He breaks each month into daily rows, listing team members names as column headers.  Inside of each cell is a letter/number combination representing who needs to be finished with what task on that day.  In my opinion this is much better than a gantt chart.

Sullivan goes on to describe meetings, schedule management, release management, and project closure.

I found this to be a beneficial book to read.  I would recommend reading it topically, as a reference, rather than cover-to-cover.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

About Me:


I've been involved in commercial software development since 1991.  I've worked in various positions including:

• Retail Software Sales


• Support Technician


• Mainframe Programmer/Analyst


• Windows Programmer/Analyst


• Development Team Lead


• DBA


• Systems Architect


• Corporate Founder


• Development Manager


• Vice President of Development


• Consultant

Holding a Bacholors Degree in Information Systems and Technologies from Weber State University, I have worked or consulted successfully for the following companies:

• Zions Bankcorporation


• America First Credit Union


• Regents Blue Cross Blue Shield of Utah


• ChartLogic, Inc.


• Weber State University


• TeleperformanceUSA


• LDS Church


• Mortgage Computer Applications


• DAKCS Software


• Streamlined Information Systems


• Golden Getaways


• Beehive Clothing


• Software Plus

States I've visited (in red):



Create your own personalized map of the USA

Countries I've Visited (in red):



Create your own visited country map

I love mountains, deserts, and jeeps. Here's a few fun jeep videos:

• 
  

  Crash testing a jeep cherokee



• 
  

  Jeep driving across water

In Steve McConnell's book, Software Project Survival Guide, he describes the foundation and procedures for managing a successful software development project.

Researching from NASA, IEEE, and some other industry giants like Grady Booch  and Tom Demarco, McConnell summarizes software development into six stages:

1. Planning


2. Design


3. Construction


4. Testing


5. Release


6. Wrap-up

McConnell also offers some great ideas like keeping a project history to record lessons learned and actual project data (time to completion, lines of code, etc.)

He talks about Quality Assurance practices and team development.  Interestingly enough, his book starts with a diagram and commentary on Maslow's human needs heirachy, and how the needs of a software development group are similar.  He proposes a Bill of Rights for the project team, and a Bill or Rights for the customers.

He offers a project health quiz--allowing you to measure your project to see how probable it is at succeeding.

McConnell ends his book with a chapter on project do's and don't, borrowed from NASA.  These are:

Software Development Project Do's:

1. Create and follow a software development plan.


2. Empower project personnel.


3. Minimize the bureaucracy.


4. Define the requirements baseline, and manage changes to it.


5. Take periodic snapshots of project health and progress, and replan when necessary.


6. Re-estimate system size, effort, and schedules periodically.


7. Define and manage phase transitions.


8. Foster a team spirit.

Software Development Project Don'ts:

1. Don't let team members work in an unsystematic way.


2. Don't set unreasonable goals.


3. Don't implement changes without assessing their impact and obtaining approval of the change board.


4. Don't gold-plate (don't add features no customer asked for).


5. Don't over-staff, especially early in the project.


6. Don't assume that a schedule slip in the middle of a phase will be made up later.


7. Don't relax standards in order to cut costs or shorten a schedule.


8. Don't assume that a  large amount of documentation ensures success.

Overall, this is a great book for new software development managers, and software development mangers who have chosen SDLC, or other non-Agile development methods. Published in 1998, this book came out before the Agile software development movement.  Regardless, it's a good book to refer to occasionally.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

I just finished reading Willie Pietersen's book, Reinventing Strategy: Using Strategic Learning to Create and Sustain Breakthrough Performance.

Pietersen first sets the stage for the rest of the book by underscoring the need for organizations to be adaptable.  He paraphrases Charles Darwin, concluding that is it not the largest, the strongest, or even the most intelligent of species that survive, but the most adaptable to change.  He explains that corporations need to start thinking beyond doing things right, to thinking about doing the right things.

He explains that vision is different from insight.  Vision is what the leader has in mind for the group.  Insight is what the group learns about their customers needs, through studying their customers.

Pietersen describes a four-step process he calls the "Strategic Learning Process:"

1. Situation Analysis (Learn)

1. Strategic Choices (Focus)

1. Align the Organization (Align)

1. Implement and Experiment (Execute)

This process provides the basic toolset for gaining insight, and turning that into vision.  Continuous learning is essential, Pietersen says, and he quotes Arie de Geus's observation that a company's "ability to learn faster than competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage" they have.

He continues, "Nature, in effect, suffers from two massive learning disabilities.  When nature fails, it doesn't know why; and when it succeeds, it doesn't know why...therefore strategic learning is at the heart of successful adaptation"

Pieterson's goes on to offer a formula for initiating change.  His formula is:

D x V x P > C

D = Dissatisfaction with Current State
V = Clear Vision for Change
P = Process for Getting it Done
C = Cost of Change

His formula suggests that if D,V, or P are not strong enough to collectively overcome C, change will not occur.

Pieterson concludes his book by suggesting Strategic Learning can be applied to our personal lives to enable personal growth.  Appling it to such topics as Emotional Intelligence, and Personal Renewal, the Strategic Learning process can help us throughtout our life.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

What is a value system?

As of late, corporations have discovered that mission-statements are only somewhat helpful in providing direction to a company.  Being strategic in nature, they don't provide enough detail to govern tactical decisions made by the corporate employees on a daily basis.

To answer this need, value-statements, and value-systems have come into vogue.  Many companies have value-statements to underscore their mission statements.

Just as some mission statements are more effective than others, some value-systems are more effective than others.

The simple approach to establishing corporate, department, or team values is to get everyone together in a room and have them suggest values the team should adopt.  Voting happens, and the group committs to their agree-upon values.

After one of these sessions, the group might come up with a list like:

• respect


• trust


• excellance


• high performance

This list is a start, but only representative of a one-dimentional value system.  These values, by themselves, realy don't project any context or weight.

A more effective approach would be a two-dimensional value system.  A two dimensional value-system provides a greater context fabric.  For example, you could say your group values:

• respect over cynicism


• trust over hope


• excellence over heroics


• high-performance over sub-optimization

These comparison value statements proved direction and context.  This represents a two-dimensional value system, and is more effective that a simple list of values.

A three-dimensional value system is a prioritized list of these comparison statements.  For example, you could say your group values these statements in this order:

1. trust over hope


2. excellence over heroics


3. high-performance over sub-optimization


4. respect over cynicism

This list shows that trust is the highest factor in inter-departmental dynamics.  It shows that excellence is more important than high-performance (so no cutting corners!), and that the group values trust, excellence, and high-performance more than respect.

Every group will have their own values and differences in priorioties, but putting a three-dimensional value-system in place with your team is a great step forward in building functional team cohesion.

Once in place, a reward-systems can be built around your value system to promote it' ectivness.

Mike J Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

I just finished reading Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, by Jim Collins.  This #1 bestseller is the best business development book I have ever read.  In fact--I would even say--I can recommend it with every fiber of my being.

Collins takes a team of 20 graduate students from the University of Colorado and dedicates roughly 15,000 hours of research to this book.

Collins's team explores why some good companies become great companies, and why the rest never do.   Their research subjects were companies that outperformed the stock market index by an average of seven times during a fifteen year span.  Their findings are novel and counter-intuitive.

The first major takeaway I got from reading this book is that great companies have learned to say "no."  They don't pursue opportunities that don't meet certain internal criteria.

The second takeaway is that achievements, although seemingly "sudden" when viewed by outside groups, are really a long set of disciplined decisions made over time by these companies.

The third takeaway is that leaders of these great companies were not magnanimous superstars, instead they consistently seemed to have a compelling modesty about them.

A forth takeaway is that these companies seemed to consistently put their best people on new opportunities, not on their biggest problems.

Another concept Collins introduces is the Hedgehog Concept.  This concept is that companies are most successful following opportunities that have three criteria:

1. The team or corporation has a deep passion for the subject matter of the opportunity.


2. The team feels they can become the best in the world at it.


3. The opportunity is in-line with what drives the corporation's economic engine.

I think I could write a twenty-page review about this book.  Let me just say you need to go and read it.  If you read any business-development book this year, read this one.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.comWith a forward by Zig Ziglar, John C. Maxwell's book titled The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is an assured home run.

Maxwell breaks down leadership into 21 categories.  He then goes to great lengths to explain each category and give real world examples.

He describes the progression of leadership by highlighting great leaders who have created momentum in others around them.  For example, he explains that early in Michael Jordan's basketball career, he relied heavily on his personal talent to win games.  But as he matured, he turned his attention more to being a leader and making the whole team play better.

Jordan is quoted in the book as saying, "That's what everybody looks at when I miss a game.  Can they win without me? ...Why doesn't anybody ask why or what it is I contribute that makes a difference?  I bet nobody would ever say they miss my leadership or my ability to make my teammates better."  Yet, that's what made him such a great teammate.

Some of Maxwell's principles are predictable and conventional, but some of them are quite novel.  I enjoyed reading about the Law of Magnetism and the Law of Connection.

The Law of Magnetism states that you are who you attract, and the Law of Connection states that you must touch people's hearts before they will trust you.

This book is a great reference for leaders in all stages of their career.  A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week bestseller, I highly recommend you buy it, read it, and consult it often.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

With a forward by Zig Ziglar, John C. Maxwell's book titled The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is an assured home run.

Maxwell breaks down leadership into 21 categories.  He then goes to great lengths to explain each category and give real world examples.

He describes the progression of leadership by highlighting great leaders who have created momentum in others around them.  For example, he explains that early in Michael Jordan's basketball career, he relied heavily on his personal talent to win games.  But as he matured, he turned his attention more to being a leader and making the whole team play better.

Jordan is quoted in the book as saying, "That's what everybody looks at when I miss a game.  Can they win without me? ...Why doesn't anybody ask why or what it is I contribute that makes a difference?  I bet nobody would ever say they miss my leadership or my ability to make my teammates better."  Yet, that's what made him such a great teammate.

Some of Maxwell's principles are predictable and conventional, but some of them are quite novel.  I enjoyed reading about the Law of Magnetism and the Law of Connection.

The Law of Magnetism states that you are who you attract, and the Law of Connection states that you must touch people's hearts before they will trust you.

This book is a great reference for leaders in all stages of their career.  A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week bestseller, I highly recommend you buy it, read it, and consult it often.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com