As Maximizers, leaders are responsible for getting the most and best out of the human, physical and economic resources under their stewardship.  This is another critical aspect of leadership.  Nothing can kill a business like underutilized assets.  Leaders are responsible to monitor and manage this closely.  They need to place close attention to the maximization of all resources.

Leaders are responsible for three fundamental types of assets:

• Human: People
• Physical: Plant, equipment, and capabilities
• Financial: Balance sheet and income statement items

To be the most effective and efficient in this role, leaders need to set up goals and strategies to get the most and best out of their resources.

Getting the most and best out of human resources

In a book I read a while ago, The Breakthrough Company, Keith McFarland identifies strategies and skills that enable everyday companies to become extraordinary performers. According to his research, key managers in “breakthrough” companies have the ability to move away from spending time doing tasks and focus on spending time in three critical areas: Strategy, people and execution.

In the People area, the idea is to spend more time on activities that ensure you are getting the most out of your people. This does not mean “slave driving” or “watching over shoulders.” It means spending time finding out what makes people tick, challenging them, catching them doing good things and bad, and providing productive feedback to make sure they are engaged and aligned with your company’s mission.

Getting the most and best out of physical resources

Companies make significant investments in plants, equipment and capabilities critical to business operations.  Leaders must not only ensure these investments are made wisely during the pre-acquisition phase, but they must also ensure they are implemented, maintained, and fully utilized afterwards.

Underutilized space, capacity, features and functions must be identified and managed constantly.

Getting the most and best out of financial resources

Finally, leaders must keep an eye on the financial resources under their stewardship.  They need to make sure that they are making the best use of the cash they have on hand. They also need to ensure that collections remain in check, they have the best ratios (debt/equity, etc.) given their industry, budgets are under control, and loans are structured properly given the market conditions.

Maximizing is the final role in this series.  Leaders must be constantly vigilant of these four roles and the tasks thereof in order to be most effective in their position.  Depending on their level and the size of their organization, these roles change accordingly. Nevertheless, they are all critical to your success.  Structuring your agendas accordingly will enable you to fulfill them and accomplish your responsibilities as a leader much better.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

As Actualizers, leaders are responsible for ensuring the execution of the developed strategies and ensuing plans and tasks.  No ideas or strategies will come to fruition without making sure things happen.  Leaders must be vigilant of execution.  They need to make sure they and others follow-through as planned.  Many great ideas fall through the cracks and many strategies remain on paper because leaders fail to ensure execution.

What does Actualizing mean?

Actualizing means both getting things done and making sure things happen.  It is both a personal and a leadership activity. Actualizing is making sure that the key responsibilities of your role as a leader get executed.  When you do, you can lead by example.  If you do not do what you are supposed to do, you will have less integrity to ask others to do their part.

What is the Actualizing challenge?

Chuck Martin and his colleagues, Dr. Guare and Dr. Dawson, recently published their latest book, Work Your Strengths.  This book is based on the results of a two-year study of 2500 individuals in hundreds of American corporations both large and small.  The study was designed to help identify the strongest and weakest of 12 executive skills that Martin and his team identified in their previous book, Smarts.  This book is fantastic — A must read!  One of most interesting findings relevant to this post is the fact that “Task Initiation” came out as a common weakness across all categories of the studied subjects.  Employees, Managers, Directors, EVP/SVP, and C-level folks all have this as a weakness.  In a nut shell, it seems that we are all procrastinators.  Thus, actualization is a big challenge.

I also read recently that a VERY small percentage of strategic initiatives are actually seen to fruition in corporate America.

If all this is true, leaders who find ways to get things done and to make them happen across their organization may have a competitive advantage!

What does Actualizing entail?

Actualizing entails identification, prioritization and organization of critical role responsibilities, tasks, and action items for self and others.  In the context of this post, I will focus on actualizing the things that will make the biggest impact on accomplishing your aims.  Aim Accomplishment Strategies produce action plans that contain the action items necessary to get your aim accomplished.  To actualize your aim, you must make sure the plan is executed.  Everyone who has to take action needs to be held accountable for their part of the plan.  Very often, aim strategies and related plans are developed and launched, but mechanisms to ensure execution are not put in place to track progress. People then get distracted or busy and fail to follow-through, or they do so off schedule.   Leaders must set a process to ensure execution.  There are several mechanisms to help do this.  Regular meetings and reports are most commonly used. There are a number of software packages that can also be used to track project and schedule progress.

Lack of good follow-up and accountability can kill accomplishment.  When people do not do what they committed to do per plan, there probably was a failure in one of the early-on activity stages.  People who did not get the importance of the aim, strategy or action items will have less impetus to do what they are supposed to do.  People who were not energized or lost their “energy” somehow, will also lose their impetus.  Lastly, if people were not properly enabled with resources or capabilities, they will also have a harder time following-through.  One of my tendencies is to set out too many things to accomplish at the same time.  This tends to confuse people and causes poor follow-through as well. Lack of clarity can be a constraint to accomplishment.  I try hard to use the vital few (80/20) principle to keep me and my team from trying too much at once.  It helps!

When things are not getting done, look first at the early-on stages and make sure people are aligned, engaged and enabled.  If they are, look at the mechanisms in place (or missing) to track progress and hold them accountable.  My experience has been that fully aligned, energized, and enabled people need little prodding to do what they are supposed to do.  That is the power of clarity, motivational force, and enablers!  Keep an eye on them and you won’t need a big hammer to get things to happen.

To be more effective in this critical role, leaders must develop an action bias and effective approaches to ensure execution from self and others.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

As Strategizers, leaders are responsible for developing strategies to accomplish what they conceptualized.  Once leaders conceptualize, they need to develop ways to get from ideas to results.  Strategies provide approaches to ensure that a vision becomes a reality or that a product or service idea becomes a reality in order to produce revenue and profits.  Strategizing is critical to leaders!

What is Strategy?

Strategy is the approach you take to accomplish an aim. It is a series of actions and decisions designed to achieve a particular objective, expectation or goal. The purpose of a strategy is to guide you to accomplishment. Strategizing is the process of planning or choosing a strategy. Strategies are dynamic, rarely static. According to the results of his five-year study of over 7,000 companies, Keith McFarland, author of The Breakthrough Company, discovered that leaders of such companies spend a significant amount of time engaged in strategizing. He uncovered that it was the top activity these leaders engaged in day in and day out.

What Does Strategizing Entail?

As a process, strategizing involves multiple aspects:

• Crafting, or creating strategy
• Adopting, or implementing strategy
• Adjusting, or modifying strategy

On a daily basis, leaders are involved with multiple strategies devised to accomplish multiple aims. Because strategizing is such a dynamic process, leaders find themselves involved in a multitude of strategic efforts on a regular basis. They are constantly crafting, adopting, or adjusting strategies for their multiple aims. Furthermore, depending on the strategy’s level (organizational, departmental, or personal/individual) being worked on, others must be involved. This makes strategizing a very interesting, and sometimes complex, process that needs to be carefully orchestrated. The “classic” strategic framework, regardless of level, is fairly straight forward and involves seeking the answer to a few basic questions:

• What needs to be done?
• Why does it need to get done?
• Who needs to do what?
• When does it need to be done by?
• How does it (best) get done?

Many variables need to be considered based on the level of strategy, and on the impact and consequences it will have. The most important aspect to keep in mind is that the process is usually more important than the outcome itself. Strategies are rarely carved in concrete. It is rare to accomplish an aim with the exact strategy that was devised at the onset. Much can, and does change. Strategies need to be flexible. That is where the adapting aspect comes in and leaders need to spend time adjusting strategies to adapt to changing conditions and circumstances.

Strategy forces us to think critically. It requires that we stop, look, and listen. It requires asking and responding to questions. It requires the involvement of as many as possible and as practical. At the business strategic plan level, there are markets, competitors, employees, products, services, prices, economics, etc. Strategizing time is powerful time. That is why “Breakthrough” leaders spend so much time on strategies; both big and small, simple and complex. They are always crafting, adopting, or adapting some strategy at some level.

I hope this post gave you a better sense for this critical leadership role.  The strategizer role is critical if you want to make what you create as a conceptualizer a reality.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

As I mentioned in my last post, there are four critical leadership roles:

• Conceptualizer
• Strategizer
• Actualizer
• Maximizer

In this post, I will delve into the first role: Conceptualizer.

As Conceptualizers, leaders are responsible for crafting ideas, visions, goals and objectives for their organizations.   They must be creating constantly.  Business is very dynamic and requires constant flows of ideas in order to survive our challenging environment.  Things are always changing and business must adapt quickly. It is the leader’s primary responsibility to ensure the conceptualization of the aforementioned items.

Leadership is all about making things happen!  To make something happen, you must first conceptualize it by forming a clear image of it in your mind or on paper. Conceptualizing is about developing, conceiving, creating, crafting, or devising things such as:

• Ideas
• Solutions
• Decisions

Let’s delve into idea conceptualization.  Ideas are the life of business.    Without ideas, business would not exist!  Ideas give birth to businesses and keep them alive and thriving.  Creative business ideas are hard to come by.  There are several categories for business ideas:

• Growth ideas
• Profit ideas
• Other ideas

I have devised a four phase approach to idea conceptualization that leaders can use to help them ideate.  These phases apply to any of the categories above.

Phase 1: Framing

Framing provides context for the idea. The purpose of this process is to ensure the effort to generate ideas is efficient and effective.  The goal is to ensure ideas are generated in the context of the business goals and objectives as well as its environment.  The framing process requires certain inputs, takes a number of prescribed steps, and produces an output that feeds the next phase: Idea generation.

Phase 2: Idea Generation

Idea generation is the phase where you come up with a number of ideas regardless of anything.  Whatever comes to mind goes within the frame set in Phase 1.  Think and list whatever comes up.  Let the storm brew in your brain and gather any and all thoughts.  Quantity not quality is the goal at this stage.

Phase 3: Idea Evaluation

In this phase you take the list of ideas previously generated and you take a careful look at it.  There are many ways to sort through them.  You can use affinity diagrams to find common themes or you can look for similar ideas and combine them.  Once you have the list down to a manageable level, you need some criteria to evaluate them.

Phase 4: Idea Selection

Using the criterion you developed, go about choosing the most applicable ideas given your goal.  Ultimately, some gut feelings will come into play as you go about making the final selection.  Obviously, involving others in these processes can always add to the probability of success.

In the case of a growth idea, there are many approaches to grow your business:

• New, improved, or expanded products and/or services
• New, improved, or expanded processes
• New, improved, or expanded methods
• New, improved, or expanded markets
• New, improved, or expanded channels
• Etc.

As you can see, it can get complicated.  Having a well-planned process available to help you can make this a very effective and efficient endeavor.  Give it a try!

In my next post, I will delve into the next leadership role: Strategizer.  It is not enough to have great ideas.  Leaders must make them happen.  The next step to get ideas from paper to reality is to develop a strategy.  That’s what I will focus on in my upcoming post.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

In my next blog series, I will explore four key roles that leaders play in business:

• Conceptualizer
• Strategizer
• Actualizer
• Maximizer

When you boil it down, these four roles capture the essence of leadership.  Leaders in all realms of leadership spend a great deal of time doing things that fit one of these four areas:

Conceptualizing

As Conceptualizers, they are responsible for crafting ideas, visions, goals and objectives for their organizations.   Leaders must be creating constantly.  Business is very dynamic and requires constant flows of ideas in order to survive our challenging environment.  Things are always changing and business must adapt quickly. It is the leader’s primary responsibility to ensure the conceptualization of the aforementioned items.

Strategizing

As Strategizers, they are responsible for developing strategies to accomplish what they conceptualized.  Once leaders conceptualize, they need to develop ways to get from ideas to results.  Strategies provide approaches to ensure that a vision becomes a reality or  that a product or service idea becomes a reality in order to produce revenue and profits.  Strategizing is critical to leaders!

Actualizing

As Actualizers, they are responsible for ensuring the execution of the developed strategies and ensuing plans and tasks.  No ideas or strategies will come to fruition without making sure things happen.  Leaders must be vigilant of execution.  They need to make sure they and others follow-through as planned.  Many great ideas fall through the cracks and many strategies remain on paper because leaders fail to ensure execution.

Maximizing

As Maximizers, they are responsible for getting the most and best out of the human, physical and economic resources under their stewardship.  This is another critical aspect of leadership.  Nothing can kill a business like underutilized assets.  Leaders are responsible to monitor and manage this closely.  They need to place close attention to the maximization of all resources.

In my next post, I will explore each of the four roles in more depth.  I hope you will read them and find them useful.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

As a DBA who services numerous customers and clients, an issue that crops up relatively often is the need for more disk space. As an organization you do have options:

1. Trim your data
2. Buy new disks
3. Truncate your data (Yeah right!!)

For most organizations these are truly not options at all. With the release of SQL Server 2008, one feature that can immediately address this concern with minimal side effects is backup compression. Here are some stats collected against the adventureworks database:

Uncompressed

Processed 23016 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘AdventureWorks2008_Data’ on file 1.

Processed 36 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘FileStreamDocuments’ on file 1.

Processed 1 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘AdventureWorks2008_Log’ on file 1.

100 percent processed.

BACKUP DATABASE successfully processed 23053 pages in 10.842 seconds (16.610 MB/sec).

Compressed

Processed 23016 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘AdventureWorks2008_Data’ on file 1.

Processed 36 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘FileStreamDocuments’ on file 1.

Processed 2 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘AdventureWorks2008_Log’ on file 1.

100 percent processed.

BACKUP DATABASE successfully processed 23054 pages in 5.975 seconds (30.142 MB/sec).

The compressed backup took 4 seconds less and was 75% smaller.

Think about the potential gain once this technology is applied to vldb (very large databases). There is an extreme amount of potential savings in disk space just by utilizing backup compression. With the release of SQL Server 2008 R2, not only are these features available in the Enterprise Edition but these features are also available in Standard Edition.

Thanks,

James Shropshire MCDBA, MCITP SQL Server

Motivation influences how we make decisions.    According to the expectancy theory proposed by Victor Vroom, employees in an organization are the most motivated when they think an effort will result in better performance, and that better performance can lead to rewards they value.  Based on the same theory, Professor Richard W. Scholl of the University of Rhode Island poses that motivational force accomplishes three things:

• Energizes behavior
• Directs behavior
• Sustains behavior

Let’s explore each of them.

Energizing behavior

Motivational force gets us going.  It gives us impetus to take on an effort. It provides energy to sustain the effort and overcome the challenges and obstacles that always come with worthwhile endeavors.

Directing behavior

It directs our attention towards the things we believe are necessary to accomplish what we set out to do.  It informs our judgment to help make decisions that will be consistent with the aim.

Sustaining behavior

It helps us keep up with whatever we have to do to accomplish our aim or commitment.  It provides oxygen to our persistence and perseverance muscles.

The following diagram, developed by Professor Scholl, depicts motivational force in an equations format.  It further defines and explains the concept:  Motivation = Valence x Expectancy(Instrumentality). This means that motivational force is the product of our perception of the chances or probability that an effort will produce valuable results times the probability that the outcome of our efforts will lead to expected reward times the value we place on the expected reward.

Here are three questions I developed to inform my own decisions and to assess others’ motivation towards assignments and responsibilities assigned to them.

• Can I/you get it done?
• What will I/you get from doing it?
• How important is what I/you will get for me/you?

If you find yourself or others not fully engaged in something, use these questions to explore motivational forces and decision-making approaches affecting job performances.

There are many more motivation theories.  I have found this one to be the most useful at work.  I hope it works for you too.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

The current unfortunate situation in the Gulf of Mexico has made me very aware of the importance of risk awareness.  Risks are everywhere.  We take them all the time. Sometimes we are not even aware of the risks involved or the consequences those risks entail.

Databases are at the heart of today’s corporations.  They make a business tick.   It never ceases to amaze me what we find when we first take over the administration of new customers’ database environments.    It surprises me how some of these businesses have been able to operate without major disasters for some time.  The risk level of many of these environments would make some CEOs and other stakeholders sick.  Not only do we find problems with the environment, but we also find environments without proper backup and recovery setups.  So we have unstable environments, some with high rates of on-going change and several with poor backup/recovery capabilities.  OOPS!!!  By the way, not every environment we inherit is that bad.  We have also seen some very well setup and stable environments.

This situation begs several questions:

• What decisions lead to environments rid with risk?
• Are folks at these companies cognizant of such risk?
• Are IT managers and professionals as risk-sensitive as they should be?

Risk assessments involve two primary dimensions.  The first dimension is severity and the second is probability.  The figure below illustrates the relationship between the two dimensions and the resulting risk level given each of the magnitudes.

Risk mitigation and management starts by identifying the probability or likelihood of database availability and or performance issues and the impact such issue would have on your business.  With those data points in hand, you can determine the level of risk and thus the urgency of attention and action required to reduce your risk.  Risk management is a highly proactive decision-making process.  The first step is to become highly aware of the fact that risks exist and are always lurking out there.   Once you acknowledge this fact, then you need to take the steps to develop a risk mitigation strategy and plan.

Risk should be a key part of most decisions we make regardless.  Risks exist 24x7x365. They are unavoidable but they are manageable.

Here are a few questions to ponder:

• Do you know what your risks are?
• Are you managing them?
• Do you keep them in mind when you make decisions?

Just make sure your IT shop has no unstoppable database leaks in the making.

To learn more about the impact of database risk and our mitigation approach visit our risk mitigation section of the website.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

There is a field of forces that plays into our decisions.  Identifying, visualizing, and analyzing these forces can be a useful exercise for important decisions.  I have devised a form to help you do this easily.  Your intention or the decision you want to make goes in the center box.  The driving forces go in the left hand boxes and the restraining forces go in the right hand boxes.

Notice that there are three levels of boxes on each side.   This is intended to help you explore the driving and restraining forces further.  Sometimes, these forces need further exploring in order to get to the root or true meaning of them.  By providing two additional levels of space on each side of the forces, you can think and identify critical aspects of the meaning a force may have to you.  Simply ask why the force is the force a couple of times until the true or root force emerges.  When we can visualize what drives or constrains us, our decision-making process  becomes easier.  Give it a try!

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

The human brain is lazy.  It does not like to work very hard.  This is a scientific fact!  Our brain is “programmed” to conserve energy.  This is because it needs to be ready to operate under danger (mostly from the olden days).  Thinking too hard takes energy and uses brain resources that can peg our “CPUs.”  Thus, our brain has devised mechanisms to avoid resource overload.  Hence, we make assumptions all the time.  Assumptions are perceived truths.  They are things we believe to be true, but may not be so.  We presuppose with little or no facts.  We make connections where none may exist.  Stereotyping is a classic form of assumption.  Unchecked assumptions can get us in trouble and make our decisions weak and costly.

When dealing with important matters, it is critical that we keep this important human frailty in mind.  We must examine our own and others’ assumptions before critical choices are made.   Assumptions that have supporting evidence are considered to be warranted assumptions.  Those that do not have supporting evidence are unwarranted assumptions.   When we read there are implicit and explicit assumptions.  We must be vigilant for all assumptions and must surface as many as possible if we are to make the best decision.

While assuming is driven by the brain’s attempt to save energy, it can also become a habitual thing.  The more we assume the more energy the brain saves and the more it wants to save.  That is what habits are—ways for the brain to conserve energy.  To break out of it we need to keep assumptions in the forefront by reminding ourselves and questioning others about it.   Remember, we are looking for false or incorrect assumptions, those without merit or factual basis.

One way to surface assumptions is to use perspectives.  Two popular metaphors for such process are: “Walking in someone else’s shoes” and “wearing someone else’s hat.”

When we look at things from different perspectives we can surface assumptions in ourselves and others.  Another way is to ask questions to clarify needs, wants, beliefs, conclusions, etc.  As a leader, this is one of the most critical roles you can play.  Asking people what they mean by their statements, where they got the facts that led them to a conclusion, etc. can help change habits and force everyone to drop unwarranted assumptions and work to dig facts.  Don’t let the brain be lazy—make it work for the money.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO