WDDinc

We, at WDDinc, have a service offering that many of our clients enjoy deeply. The interesting part is that most of our clients didn’t know it was possible. We offer Retained Services to all of our clients. Essentially, retained services allow any client to use our services however they choose. They will have a minimum monthly allotment of hours they can use, and typically get a discounted rate. We also guarantee 24-48 hour response.

Many of our clients (and some others) have asked what is so different from this and staff augmentation. The answer: A LOT!

Staff augmentation services work as follows. The client will call their staffing vendor and say they need a contractor for a project. For this example, lets say a .NET developer. They staffing firm will scour the job boards searching for a person/candidate that fits the job description. They will send many resumes to the client for review (the scary part is most staffing companies never even interview the candidate), until the client feels comfortable with one and decides to move forward. The staffing company hires the candidate and works out a contract with the client at an hourly rate and a duration of time. The staffing company then contracts the candidate to the client at,  lets say $100 per hour for 12 months.

The problem that I see with this model is the risk associated with it on three fronts:

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I am not usually a widget or tool guy – they always seem to take more effort than they are worth. I have, however, found one recently that is great.

I like to describe Dropbox as a 2 Gig flashdrive in the Cloud. It shows up on all of my PC’s (home and office) and mobile devices (iPhone and iPad) as part of my file system. Whatever files I copy, change or remove from this drive are instantly reflected on all of my devices. I can share specific folders with friends if I choose, or keep folders private.

The best part – the first 2 Gig’s are free. More than enough for me.

Take a look: www.dropbox.com

Failure is not a prerequisite for success. A Harvard Business School study found
already-successful entrepreneurs are far more likely to succeed again (the success
rate for their future companies is 34 percent). But entrepreneurs whose companies
failed the first time had almost the same follow-on success rate as people starting a
company for the first time: just 23 percent. People who failed before have the same
amount of success as people who have never tried at all.  Success is the experience
that actually counts.

The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.

- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

June, 2010 Harvard Business Review

by Robert I. Sutton

What makes a boss great? It’s a question I’ve been researching for a while now. In June 2009, I offered some analysis in HBR on the subject, and more recently I’ve been hard at work on a book called Good Boss, Bad Boss (forthcoming in September from Business Plus).

In both cases, my approach has been to be as evidence-based as possible. That is, I avoid giving any advice that isn’t rooted in real proof of efficacy; I want to pass along the techniques and behaviors that are grounded in sound research. It seems to me that, by adopting the habits of good bosses and shunning the sins of bad bosses, anyone can do a better job overseeing the work of others.

At the same time, I’ve come to conclude that all the technique and behavior coaching in the world won’t make a boss great if that boss doesn’t also have a certain mindset.
My readings of peer-reviewed studies, plus my more idiosyncratic experience studying and consulting to managers in many settings, have led me identify some key beliefs that are held by the best bosses — and rejected, or more often simply never even thought about, by the worst bosses. Here they are, presented as a neat dozen:

1. I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me.
2. My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.
3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day.
4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.
5. My job is to serve as a human shield, to protect my people from external intrusions, distractions, and idiocy of every stripe — and to avoid imposing my own idiocy on them as well.
6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.
7. I aim to fight as if I am right, and listen as if I am wrong — and to teach my people to do the same thing.
8. One of the best tests of my leadership — and my organization — is “what happens after people make a mistake?”
9. Innovation is crucial to every team and organization. So my job is to encourage my people to generate and test all kinds of new ideas. But it is also my job to help them kill off all the bad ideas we generate, and most of the good ideas, too.
10. Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.
11. How I do things is as important as what I do.
12. Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.

WDDinc perspective: A list to make us all think. Whether a boss, spouse, parent or anyone responsible for others. Hopefully the simple act of thinking will improve our relationships.

Former WDDinc intern Jay Buente achieved his lifelong dream last Thursday night.  Jay has spent the past 5 years in the minor league baseball system, and was finally called up to the big club.  The Florida Marlins promoted him to the major league team earlier in the week, and Jay made his debut on Thursday night against the Atlanta Braves.  Jay threw 1.1 solid innings, including getting future hall-of-famer Chipper Jones to ground out to the right side.

Jay spent his time at WDDinc in the testing side of our business, working for two consecutive off-seasons as an intern.  He spent time on the CommScope, One Degree and ITT projects.  Last winter, Jay decided to focus full time on his baseball career – a decision that has paid off this week.

Congrats Jay!

Check out the news article on Jay being called up here!

Anyone who has worked in an office for more than a day has made a mistake. While most people accept that slip-ups are unavoidable, no one likes to be responsible for them. The good news is that mistakes, even big ones, don’t have to leave a permanent mark on your career. In fact, most contribute to organizational and personal learning; they are an essential part of experimentation and a prerequisite for innovation. So don’t worry: if you’ve made a mistake at work, — and, again, who hasn’t? — you can recover gracefully and use the experience to learn and grow.

It is much better to accept mistakes, learn from them, and move on. “Look forward and base decisions on the future not the past,” Schoemaker says. Christopher Gergen, the director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative at Duke University and co-author of Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives, agrees. The most useful thing you can do is “translate a mistake into a valuable moment of leadership,” he says.

Fess up and acknowledge your mistake
First and foremost, it’s critical to be transparent, candid, and own up to the error. Don’t try to blame others. Even if it was a group mistake, acknowledge your role in it. In cases where someone was hurt, issue an apology. However, don’t apologize too much or be defensive. The key is to be action-oriented and focus on the future. How will your misstep be remedied? What will you do differently going forward?

Once you’ve admitted your blunder, it may be appropriate to reframe it. Reframing is not making an excuse, but a genuine effort to help people see the mistake in a different light. Poor decisions or flawed processes can sometimes lead to mistakes, but that doesn’t mean that every bad outcome is a mistake. Gergen says it’s important to understand what was external and internal, what was in your control and what wasn’t. Explaining in a non-defensive way what led to the mistake can help people better understand why it happened and how to avoid it in the future.

The WDDinc perspective: A good friend likes to say: Be hard on the processes, not the people. Making mistakes helps us all get better.