Author Archives: Tom Foster

About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.

Maximum Time Horizon

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question: Related to our discussion of Time Horizon. Submitted by David.

But, doesn’t the individual’s ability or skill level play a role in measuring the complexity of a task? If I give the same task to two different people, inevitably they will complete it at different rates based on their skill level and/or familiarity of the task. Doesn’t that skew the measurement?

Response:
There are indeed the additional elements of skill level and experience, but the complexity of the task itself does not change. A person’s experience and skill level does have a bearing on their ability to be successful, but the complexity of the task does not change whether the person is successful or not.

A person’s skill level and experience will have a bearing on a person’s current time horizon, but the important observation is of a person’s maximum time horizon. As a person’s skill level and experience increases, their current time horizon will increase, but never beyond the person’s maximum time horizon.

Tomorrow, we will look at typical time horizons to get a clear understanding of how this works and why it is an important concept for managers. -TF

Special thanks to David for the question.

Complexity and Uncertainty

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“My gut tells me that you are right, but I am not sure if I could explain it to someone else,” Marge said. “The longer the time span of a task, the more complex it is?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Remember we were talking about your freight supervisor working out two weeks into the future using the shipping calendar?” Marge nodded. “You said that the first week was pretty solid, but the second week was not as certain.”

“Yes, this week, we know exactly what orders are due, but there are always some unanticipated problems for next week. We just don’t know. It’s okay, we just don’t know.”

“Exactly, the further into the future, the more things are uncertain. That uncertainty into the future is what creates the complexity. The further into the future that you expect someone to work, the longer the time span that person needs to have.” You could see the wheels churning in Marge’s head.

“So, that’s why Martin has difficulty for anything beyond today. He doesn’t have the time span for it?” Marge finally surmised.

I nodded my head. “Time Span becomes an accurate measurement of complexity.” -TF

Time Span and Complexity

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“I never thought of it that way,” said Marge. “But I am not sure exactly what you mean.” We had been talking about how measuring time span was a valuable indicator of the complexity of a job.

“Time span is the length of time that a person can work into the future, without direction, using their own independent discretionary judgment,” I explained. Marge turned her head with a quizzical look.

“Let’s take a task. Let’s say I want to delegate a task to you. So we have a delegation meeting and I explain all about it. You get some questions answered and we adjourn the meeting. From that moment, you begin to work without further direction from me, using your own discretionary judgment.

“When you complete the task, you come back to me and say, -that’s it, I am finished, what’s next?

“The time that you were working independently, measures the time span for that task. On the shipping dock, you have people doing things with different time spans. Packing a box may only have a time span of 15 minutes. Working a rolling freight schedule, checking inventories, supplies and personnel on the loading dock may have a time span of two weeks. Two totally different roles, each with its own time span.

“Time span becomes an accurate measurement for the complexity of any given task.” -TF

Time Span of a Task

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Marge had a frustrated look on her face. “I am just about fed up to here. I spend more time counseling and correcting than I do controlling the work.” She had just emerged from a round with the shipping dock. Four orders had been mis-packed and two orders had the wrong ship address. Luckily, the errors were found before the freight company picked up, but the orders would now be delayed another day.

“What do you think the problem is?” I asked.

“Well, Martin just doesn’t seem to be catching on. He has been here for five weeks, now and I swear it’s like he is still in his first week. He is supposed to be matching and proofing orders and picking tickets, catching mistakes before they cause disruption.”

“When you look at his job, how would you describe the longest task he has to perform, longest in terms of time frame?”

Marge thought for a minute. You could see some insight wave across her face. “He gets an advance report every Monday that looks two weeks out for orders and their target ship date. It’s like a rolling two week calendar. Of course, the orders during that week are much more definite, but we want him to be thinking out two weeks.”

“And how far in the future do you think he is working?”

“Oh, no more than one day. If you ask him about tomorrow, you get that deer in the headlights look.”

“Did you ever think about that when you hired him?” I asked.

“No, he had experience as a packer, but not as a supervisor. I never thought it would be that big of a deal to really control what was happening.”

“Marge, don’t feel bad. Most companies underestimate the time span required for success in the job. And if you key in on time span, you can get much more specific about the level of the person you need. Here is the key question. When you look at the job, how would you describe the longest task the person has to perform, longest task in terms of time frame?” -TF

Competitors Have to Retool

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“You said this subject has implications outside of the marketing war room?” I continued the conversation with Jaynie Smith about her new book Creating Competitive Advantage.

“Often, when a company thinks about its competitive advantage, it gets stuck as an exercise for the marketing department. The most powerful part of this process occurs when competitive advantage gets driven into operations.

“Competitive advantage is not some double-speak marketing gimmick. For it to be effective, it has to be real, when its elements are designed into the product or service and become visible to the customer.

“I tell the story of Volvo. Its marketing talks about safety and its design includes whiplash protection, brake circuit redundancy, traction and spin control. Competitors cannot copy a slogan. They have to retool their product if they expect to win on the promise of safety.”

So, what is your competitive advantage? Not what your marketing says, but what is truly distinctive about your product or service? I would be interested to hear your thoughts. -TF

Jaynie Smith’s Creating Competitive Advantage is now available on Amazon.

Competitive Advantage Over Worthy Opponents

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I was talking with Jaynie Smith, a friend of mine about her new book. “There are all kinds of management books written by all kinds of people. Why is the subject of Competitive Advantage so important?”

“Just because you make a product, doesn’t mean you have a successful business. Just because you take out an ad or create a fancy brochure doesn’t mean you will win. Every company spends marketing dollars, but most of it underperforms. Most marketing doesn’t communicate what is truly important and gets caught up in the blather that sounds like every other company’s marketing stuff.

“And customers are smart. There is the saying that you can’t fool dogs or children. Well, you can’t fool customers either. Most marketing doesn’t connect or communicate anything real.”

“Give me an example?” I asked.

“At our company, quality is number one. We are in business to exceed our customer’s expectations. Please. It doesn’t mean anything.” Jaynie stopped. “But it is more important than that. This is not about fixing bad marketing. This is about competing head to head with worthy opponents who have the skills and resources to beat you, if you let them.

“I tell the story of JTECH, an on-site pager company in Boca Raton, Florida, who successfully brought to market local pagers, used by hundreds of restaurant and retail store chains across the country. It was such a great success that Motorola decided to get into the business. JTECH had to seriously answer two simple questions. Why should our customers do business with us? What do we offer that the other guy doesn’t?

“By making the right choices, JTECH fought off a devastating attack.”

If you are interested, you can read the rest of the story (pdf) and find out how they did it.

Jaynie Smith’s book Creating Competitive Advantage is available now from Barnes and Noble ($16), CEO Read ($16) and Amazon ($13). -TF

Creating Competitive Advantage

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Struggle as they might, not a single person in the room was able to do it. The assignment sounded simple. Name your unique competitive advantage. Name one quality that truly distinguishes your company from your competitors. Name that one quality that gives your customer a reason to make you the clear choice above your rivals.

I met Jaynie Smith more than ten years ago. Over the years, I have watched her ask that question many times, so the response from this group was no surprise.

“It’s rare that a company doesn’t have a competitive advantage,” Jaynie explains, “but most often, the company simply doesn’t know what it is. Or they know what it is, but have never talked about it, held it up for display, pulled it apart to understand its power. Or they know what it is and even understand it, but never tell anyone, never tell their employees, never tell their customers.”

And so, I was happy to learn, a couple of years ago, that Jaynie was compiling her research into a book. And it’s published. Because she is a close friend, I get to spend time with her to pick her brain. Over the next couple of days, I will share some insights from those conversations.

Meanwhile, the book is out. Creating Competitive Advantage by Jaynie Smith. It lists for $20, but Amazon has it for $13. And if you can’t wait for the book, you can read chapter one on Jaynie’s website (for free).

Tribal History

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“Culture should be practiced and not need to be communicated,” says Naill in a comment to the post last Thursday about culture and how it is communicated through the company.

Hmmm. I agree culture should be practiced, but actively talking about the positive aspects of the desired culture is critical.

All kinds of conversations will occur about people and behavior in every company. These conversations will take place at the water cooler, the coffee break room, the smoking lounge, in meetings and in emails. They will occur in official communications and unofficial whispers. All of the conversations drive and document the culture inside the organization.

For the company that has determined its values mindset, actively talking about the positive aspects of people and their contribution (behaviors) is critical. The purpose is to identify those conversations and amplify them so they become the driving force, the tribal history.

These are the conversations that keep us alive. These are the conversations that distinguish one company from the next, one that is struggling and the other that sees success. -TF

Things That Matter

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Last Thursday, we received comments about the practice of communicating culture through official communication channels like newsletters. Eric observed that “the problem with company newsletters is, they come from headquarters, no wait, they reek of headquarters/HR etc.”

So, Eric points out a fundamental principle of management. Cluetrain calls it the “voice.” Dale Carnegie calls it “being genuinely interested in other people.”

This culture stuff is powerful. Most companies that merge together often fail, not because of financial difficulties or unsound business practices. They fail because the acquiring company failed to understand the culture.

And, yes, even an official company newsletter can find its voice, communicating like we are all sitting down over a cup of coffee, telling the truth and talking about things that matter. -TF

Green Shirt Day

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I was walking the floor. The drone of the saws was dampened by my ear protection. The conversation with Lloyd could barely be heard above the din.

“What’s with all the green shirts?” I yelled.

Lloyd looked around. “It’s green shirt day.”

I nodded as we ducked around a corner where the noise wasn’t so bad. I popped out my earplugs. “What’s green shirt day?”

Lloyd smiled. “It’s like the difference between a light bulb and a laser light. 100 watts from a light bulb will light up a room, but with all the light beams focused together, a 100 watts of laser light will drill a hole in the wall. Same thing works with my team.”