Working Smart Versus Working Smarter

We recently decided that we were going to rip out our 4 foot high picket fence and replace it with a 6 foot privacy fence. The biggest challenge through the whole process lay in removing the concrete encased fence posts for the existing fence. If you have ever tried to remove an irregularly poured chunk of cement from the ground, you’ll be able to attest to the backbreaking difficulty in doing this with only a shovel and muscle. I really wasn’t looking forward to hours of arduous work so I decided to work smart instead of hard.

I decided to build a contraption to help me out and remove much of the physical exertion from the process.  The basic design (not fully depicted below) was using pressure treated 4×4’s so that I could reuse them for the new fence. The uprights are 8 feet tall, each foot is 4 feet long, and the top cross beam is 2 feet wide and the whole structure is held together with 1/2 inch lag bolts. I then placed a 1/2 inch eye bolt through the cross beam so that I could attach a come-along. Add a matching eye bolt in the fence post and I had a great way to wench the posts right out of the ground. I simply rocked the posts a bit to loosen them up then used the contraption to rip them out of the ground.

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My contraption. I forgot to take the picture…

Turns out I was working smart, but not as smart as I could have been. I neglected to take the weight of the contraption into account and how I was going to move it from post to post. So I had this great mechanism that would save my back from the exertion of ripping out posts, only to strain my back by having to move it. I estimate it at around 100 pounds, which isn’t too bad in itself, however the unwieldy nature of such a large structure posed balance problems in addition to weight problems. Had I thought the entire process through, instead of focusing on just the main problem, I would have come up with a better design. Perhaps casters, handles, or even a bottom cross support so that I could use a dolly were in order.

The same paradigm rings true for business in general but it resonates especially loud in the software industry. We often design features, applications, and bug fixes with the intention of solving the problem at hand. While our approach may be smart in that it solves a large problem, keeps the problem from coming back, or takes into account the possible future needs, it isn’t always the smartest solution.

A great example comes from a small contracting business I once ran. Many of my clients wanted much of the same functionality as each other. So instead of rewriting or even copy and pasting code from one client to the next I decided to write a modular based system. This system was ant based and simply took a properties file as a build argument. The properties file would list the images to be generated for the site, the style sheets to use, the modules to be built, and even the scripts to run against the database during deployment. This system allowed me to write modules that were self referencing with respect to their dependencies. So I could drop in the users module and the client site would now have full support for user management, complete with authentication code. This users module would understand that it was dependent upon the security module and the security module was dependent upon the core module. All would then be included in the final build simply by including the users module.

The solution was smart. It kept me from duplicating a lot of work, but it wasn’t smarter. I finally realized a problem in that the system allowed no room for conflicting options. If client A and client B wanted different and conflicting things from the same module, which eventually happened, I was back to square one. In order to accommodate such disparities I would either need to copy and paste modules or build in very complex configuration functionality. Had I worked smarter from the beginning I could have foreseen some of these problems and taken steps to circumvent them. I won’t go into details on how, as most of them would require a deep understanding of the module based system’s inner workings. Instead, it is sufficient to note that there were other design options that would have yielded the same scalability without the technical nightmare of conflicting demands.

Always work smart. Strive to work smarter.


Book review – In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions…When It Counts

In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions… When It Counts

This was a good book. It starts out by talking about the questions President Clinton had to answer during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and reviewed some rather tough questions he had to field during that time. The book then expanded to cover a formula for answering questions, tough or otherwise. Through reviewing a number of presidential debates and interviews the book gives plenty of examples of how and how not to handle various types of questions.

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If you have ever taken a course in effective/strong/great presentations then much of this information will likely be review, as the concepts are not new. However, if you have not taken such a course the information contained within these pages truly is helpful in any situation where you must answer questions from anyone. As such, I would recommend this book to anyone who will ever be in a situation where they must handle Q&A. While this book is geared towards the CEO actively pursuing an IPO, it is written in such a way that it is relevant to anyone who would be in a presentation situation.


Wal-Mart only kind of sucks (now)

Introduction
Crowded aisles, pushy and oblivious customers, and rude staff can all be used to describe my past experiences at Wal-Mart. While they do have lower prices than most competitors, I found myself gladly willing to pay an extra couple dollars per item in order to avoid the atmosphere of the low cost leader. But I now have a slightly improved view of the company.

We recently set out to find a play set for my daughter and found that a number of different places around town didn’t have it. We went to the Wal-Mart (Store G) near my house and they told us they didn’t have one but called around and found that another Wal-Mart (Store S) nearby had four. So I called Store S and asked if they could hold one for me. No. “We don’t do that.” I asked Store G about it and was told that they do regularly hold items and someone at Store S just didn’t want to deal with it. So I called back and tried again. No. So I went over a couple days later, verified that they still had them in stock, and asked to go ahead and pay then come back in a few hours with a truck. No. “We don’t do that.” Seriously?!?! The manager politely smiled and nodded while I complained but did nothing to help me. Screw it. I’m not giving them my money.


The original playset we were looking for.

Climax
So I called back over to Store G, the one near my house, and they promptly apologized for the actions of the other store, said that they should have held it, and told us they had one in stock now. I asked them to hold it and they said they would. One hour later we showed up and hung around for the next hour while they tried to locate our play set, which consisted of three 10′ boxes weighing ~300 lbs each. The manager finally came out and told us that, despite a note with our names on it and it being placed right outside his office, someone had sold our play set to another customer. So now I had wasted almost an entire day due to the incompetence of Wal-Mart and was pretty annoyed.

Surprise Ending
The manager came out with a slew of staff and they were all extremely polite and apologetic. They informed me they were already reviewing the security cameras to determine who took the play set and take actions (which I could have cared less about except that it showed me they were trying) and then offered to upgrade us to the next play set for a significant discount. The deal was too good to pass up and we agreed. The manager walked us up to a closed register and rang up our purchase to avoid any further waiting. He then apologized more for our poor experience and then monitored a team of employees as they loaded the set into my neighbor’s truck.

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The play set we ended up with.

I found out later that Wal-Mart Store G was ranked number five within the company for customer service. It shows. I will never shop at Store S again but no longer avoid Store G. Wal-Mark, on the whole, still has an image problem but if they could only get the rest of their stores like Store G their company would truly take over the world.