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Let's Flourish and Prosper!

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Some say that in business as in sex: if it is good, it’s great and if it is bad it’s still pretty good. This does not happen to be true. If business is bad, it can get very bad. There are personnel problems, production expenses, overhead, laws, taxes, fines. Faulty financial decisions, inability to accurately evaluate the situation and quickly resolve problems all lead to an extremely high mortality rate among new business: up to 95% do not survive past their first 12 months.

Modern business management is an art, based on a certain technology requiring certain skills. There is a technology of how to estimate and evaluate any situation and accurately predict future events and trends. There is a technology of finding exact problems, the underlying reasons behind them and handling those exact reasons to eliminate specific problems. Some of the basics of this technology are presented here to help anyone flourish and prosper.

1. OPERATE BY STATISTICS. Statistics reflect production of something in a unit of time. It is a tool that should be used to locate and handle any routine problem or any severe crisis. Awareness of the key statistics provides you with an insight into what is really going on in your business. They help establish causes of events. Best businesses collect up all their key statistics daily, sometimes hourly. Examples of key statistics could be Gross Income, Value of services Delivered, Number of Contacts Made, Number of Appointments Made, Number of Closes, Cash/Bills Ratio, Minutes of Operation With No Downtime, Qualified Staff Hired, Dollar Return Value per Promo Ad, etc. Anything can be represented as a statistic.

2. CONDITIONS. Everything that exists, any activity, is always in some condition. These conditions are very well defined, there are only 6 of them. Depending on statistics, every activity is in one of these 6 possible conditions. Any activity starts in the condition of Non-Existence. As it becomes better established and more known, it raises up to Danger. Then, as it expands, it passes through the condition of Emergency into Normal Operation and then may reach Affluence or even Power. So the conditions from the bottom up are: Non-Existence, Danger, Emergency, Normal, Affluence and Power. Each of these conditions has a “formula”, a series of steps which would lead the activity out of any condition it is in and move it into a higher condition. + For example, formula for the condition of Non-Existence is:

· Find a communication line – a channel on which communication can be sent out and received.

· Make yourself known.

· Discover what is needed and wanted.

· Do, produce and/or present it.

This is the starting condition for any activity. It is easy to see that any gross non-compliance with any of these 4 steps would make it impossible for any activity to eventually reach Affluence. People either know these conditions and use the formulas or follow conditions intuitively, or completely neglect them, commit gross errors and fail.

Statistically, these 6 conditions look as follows:

- Non-Existence: statistics are crushed to the bottom or stay extremely low for a long time or it is a brand new activity.

- Danger: statistics drop sharply or there is a gradual drop over a long period of time.

- Emergency: statistics are slightly down or remain unchanged (no rise, no fall).

- Normal Operation: gradual increase in statistics.

- Affluence: significant increase in statistics, very steep uptrend.

- Power: after a period of Affluence statistics go into Normal Operation trend (gradual rise) on a brand new very high level.

3. DATA ANALYSIS/SITUATION ANALYSIS. Accurate analysis of a situation is a science in itself. It is based on the subject called Logic. It is not feasible to get into it at any length here but there are 2 points that must be understood:

1. There is a cause for every non-optimal situation in business. That cause is defined as something under your control which if handled will resolve the exact problem and revert the statistics.

2. To handle any situation you have to handle the exact reason that created it, not something else.

This seems obvious but people often do the opposite. For example, an employee keeps breaking tools, the owner keeps buying better and sturdier tools. What problem is he trying to solve and what was the cause of that problem in his opinion? The actual reason was that the employee was untrained and needed drilling and apprenticeship. It just required a little bit of an investigation and observation to figure out.

Operating by statistics, knowing and applying condition formulas and investigating the causes of problems allows any activity to flourish and prosper. I will be happy to answer any questions. Let’s flourish and prosper!

I recently had the distinct pleasure of meeting up with Mary Jo Foley in Vancouver during TechDays as she was our guest on a special edition of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk series. She’s put together this guest post for the blog on what you need to know as an IT manager and shared her tips on how best to keep up to date. Enjoy!

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After having the opportunity to talk with a number of IT managers in Vancouver during Tech Days in November, I came to a few realizations.

What Canadian techies want to know is not so very different from what U.S. techies do. And like their U.S. counterparts, Canadian IT professionals want to know how they can find reliable, timely information that will help them do their jobs better.

Ruth Morton, a Microsoft Tech Evangelist and host of the AlignIT IT Manager Podcast Series, is the one who got me thinking about the "how" question last week, when she asked me to give IT managers some ideas for staying abreast about what's going on at Microsoft.

The way I -- a full-time Microsoft watcher -- stay up-to-date about IT matters is a multi-pronged process:

• Make sure to watch and listen closely for information about new products and directional shifts. Remember when former Server and Tools Chief Bob Muglia said over a year ago that Microsoft's strategy with Silverlight had "shifted"? That was key for IT managers who were thinking about the extent to which to bet on Silverlight, Microsoft's rich-media plug-in and development tool. Some may have opted to consider other options, including HTML5, JavaScript and CSS, for certain new dev projects.
• Be on the look out for roadmaps. This is where Microsoft conferences and blog posts can be handy. At certain shows, Microsoft execs may be more willing to flash a roadmap slide during an in-depth talk. And every once in a while, teams decide they can share more information via blog posts. (Subscribing to favorite blogs via RSS, while no longer, "trendy," can help you make sure not to miss the occasional roadmap post.)
• Filter, filter, filter. There are more technology blogs cropping up every day. But not all blogs (or bloggers) are created equal. Look for blogs and authors who seem to be clued in and who have a good accuracy track record. While it's easy to be caught up in the latest hot rumor on TechMeme, remember that there's pressure like never before on journalists and bloggers to get clicks. Volume doesn't equal quality; rumors aren't the same as well-sourced reports.
• Don't be afraid to use social media to ask questions. It's next-to-impossible to be an expert on every new technology. But the Web is full of experts in particular domains. Ask questions using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social-media channels and you'll quickly find a number of subject-matter experts willing to share what they know. I've had good success gathering timely information via Twitter on everything from System Center, to Windows 8. A quick Twitter exchange often leads to email address sharing, allowing more in-depth, private conversations.

Next year, 2012, is going to be one of Microsoft's biggest launch years in the company's history. If the tipsters and roadmaps are right, Microsoft will be delivering SQL Server 2012, System Center 2012, Windows 8, Office "15," Visual Studio 2012, new versions of Dynamics CRM and ERP -- and cloud complements to all of these products -- before the year is over. Keeping up with all the coming changes can be a full-time job (and is, for me). Being smart about staying current with the latest tech trends is more important than ever.

Bonus Links

• Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted
• Microsoft server roadmaps: A free webcast and cheat sheet 
• New System Center, SQL Server releases on tap for early 2012
• Keeping track of the Microsoft codenames

About Mary Jo

Mary Jo Foley has been a tech journalist for more than 25 years. She has worked for a variety of tech publications and Web sites, including PCWeek/eWeek, CRN and ZDNet. She is the editor of the "All About Microsoft" blog on ZDNet, and the author of the book "Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era" (John Wiley & Sons). She also is the co-host of the Windows Weekly show on the TWiT network and a frequent commentator and speaker on all things Microsoft-related on TV, radio, podcasts and at industry events.

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