:: MIS Insights ::

I got this from the Jay’s talk in the last HP WSNT-BIDS coffee talk. When giving feedback to other people, here’s a useful formula to get you started:

When you [insert action that person did], it [insert impact to you or others here]. Can we [suggest what can be done about the feedback] next time?

For example:

When you answered a phone call in the last meeting, it distracted the audience. Can we silent our phones and avoid answering them in the succeeding meetings?

The objective of a feedback is to stop an undesirable event from happening. In this case, we want the person to stop answering phones during meetings because it is distracting. The following, however, is not a feedback:

You work slow like a turtle on a leisure stroll. Can’t you work any faster?

Where the former statement had a specific and repeatable action, the last one was very subjective. Instead of using a verb (an action word), it used the adjective lazy. The problem when using adjectives is that they are descriptive words based on personal interpretations. What might be slow for one person might be too fast for another. The following would be a better form of feedback, I suppose:

If you keep submitting your reports past the deadline, other deliverables dependent on your task gets delayed also. Can we agree on a timetable which we can use to satisfy the customer’s expectation on a timely manner?

Feedbacks aren’t only meant to prevent bad stuff from happening again though. They’re also there to keep good things happening over and over. Here’s what I told Bacchus during the event:

When you invited me for coffee during my first week at HP, I felt very welcome and good about the company. I appreciate the gesture in the same way that I know new hires will too.

The following though, is not a feedback:

You’re a good Project Manager. Keep it up!

In contrast to:

Your persistent and encouraging mobilization of resources has helped the team deliver quality work on time. Others can learn a thing or two from what you do best.

Giving feedback takes practice though. It’s a form of communication that’s devoid of emotion. It’s not something you do once in a while and expect to do correctly every time. As Filipinos who put a lot of value in what they hear and say, objective and constructive feedbacks might take some practice. I’d recommend doing it every day. Try it out with your seatmate. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.

How do people cost their projects or services?

Experience
Experience and expertise in a given field can jack up or drive down prices. If you’re alone in an industry where there are a few experts - like a COBOL mainframe programmer, you can expect high rates for your skills to maintain legacy applications. Now contrast this to the army of Java programmers that colleges churn out. With the latter, you’d have to be very good or very experienced at the field to justify a premium.

Supply and Demand
However, the economic law of Supply and Demand can easily overrule such principle. For instance, you might be the only QBasic programmer in town where the demand for such services is nil. In this case, don’t expect the local market to pay you well. There is simply no demand for the QBasic service that you are supplying.

Values
Would you pay Steve, your shoe-shine guy, $1000 per year for polishing your shoe? Would you pay a gold miner $100 per trip to bring up rock from the ground? How about CEOs? How many CEOs can live well with a four-digit annual salary? Simply put, some jobs like Steve are valued differently in the economic food web. Some jobs can easily command a higher salary than the others - regardless of one’s investment in time, skills and effort - just because society thinks and values that it should.

Customer-Centric Costing
This afternoon, I got invited for a second interview for a project that my colleagues and I were vying for. During the first round, there were several bidders. Though our skills netted thrice the quality of our competition, our bid was twice as expensive as the competition - which didn’t really spell good for us. Unfortunately, price was one of the constraints for the project and we were advised of such project limitations.

So, my partners and I took away all of Rambo’s extra guns and ammo, leaving only the essentials: an Armalite, a jungle knife and a clip for a reload. This resulted in a costing that was as affordable as the competition while still meeting the minimum requirements. The client seems to be pleased and we’re off for a second round of negotiations.

Sometimes, landing projects is all about wanting to do what you do. If excess money will be the only obstacle between me and a project, by all means, let’s take it away. After all, I love what I do. That’s what I meant with this post I made a few months ago. From the movie Jerry Maguire:

Here’s why you don’t have your ten million dollars yet.

You are a paycheck player.
You play with your head. Not your heart.
In your personal life? … Heart.
But when you get on the field — you’re a businessman.

Do you love what you do? Because until you love what you do, customers won’t love what you do.

Businessweek relasead an article about Asia’s Best Entrepreneurs under 25.

From the article, a good number of the young guns are building empires using Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Notable services provided by these entrepreneurs range from web and mobile application development to IT consultancy.

There are 21 professionals listed in the article and none of them are from the Philippines. Eh? I’m not surprised that there were no Filipinos on the list.

• Copycats. An unprotected product or service is easy prey for dopplegangers. Unless you can protect your business idea with proper brand management and a huge barriers to entry (cost or legal), most ingenious ideas are bound to get oversaturated in the Philippine market Quickly.
• The Philippine economy is not very friendly for start-up businesses. Rents, Utilities and Operating Costs keep going up every year. The laws which protect SMEs have yet to be made easily accessible to everyone.
• Our Educational System is geared toward producing employees, not employers. There aren’t enough classes that talk about Practical Risk Management or Innovative Product Design within the standard course curricula - or courses that can bring out the entrepreneur in everyone.
• Nepotism keeps wealth within reach of the founding families, but stifles far-reaching benefits for everyone.
• Politics. Trapo. Enough Said.

However, I believe that the opportunities are out there just waiting to be taken advantage of. As much as limiting as the local setting is for doing business, remember that we are now part of the Global economy. We shouldn’t just look for opportunities to do business in the Philippines, but abroad also as well. Unless the product you’re marketing in the Philippines is dirt-cheaper than the ones being imported from China, one is better off looking for international customers.

Change dictates that the Competition for Customers is now global.

Now, let us do something good today that can be talked about for years and decades to come.

Here’s why you don’t have your ten million dollars yet.

You are a paycheck player.
You play with your head. Not your heart.
In your personal life? … Heart.
But when you get on the field — you’re a businessman.