Incentives

Some years ago I first heard, from Accenture consultants, the so called “up or out” approach.

In a few words, your career must proceed with continuos promotions, otherwise if after a certain time you stuck to the same level, you are invited to choose different solutions out of the firm.
At a first sight, the system should grant to always have the strongest performers to leadership positions. In practice, the strength of the company is maintained by the internal competition: everyone struggle to perform the best in order to be evaluated high enough for the promotion. The firm itself grows either because of the great effort put by the few winners, but especially because of the unrewarded effort put by the many losers. That is where their “margin” is.

I do not want to enter into ethical disquisitions, but what I would like to discuss here is the mechanism of “incentives” and whether the up or out system may be considered one of them or not.
Incentive, what is this? It’s adding an expectation that encourages people to behave in a certain way. Which way?
By definition, incentives imply that you wouldn’t do the thing you are being asked to do for intrinsic reasons. What exactly you would not do naturally so that you must be attracted by an incentive?
Let’s discuss this.

Is it done for granting people to “put maximum effort at work”? I do not think so.

If you chose to dedicate your life to technical consulting this imply you are really motivated to what you do. You felt something pushing you to a certain type of job, that requires a huge effort, preparation, dedication and ability.

What kind of “incentive” should attract these people? The beauty of the project, the prestige of the result, the difficulty involved. Money? Yes, for a certain extend.
What else? What is the need of incentie enabler? What is that thing you would not do for “intrinsic” reasons?

My personal answer is “competition”, is “fight those working as you do to stay ahead”. There is no intrinsic reason to always struggle for being promoted and stay on top. Ask a painter, or musician. He would tell you tons of intrinsic reasons for putting all his heart and effort on what she does.
But he would not mention “to be the best of all the musicians”.
If he says so, it is because there is an incentive working behind the scene. For example a great salary for directing a famous orchestra, or whatever.
Some people do not react to incentives at all.
Incentiving starts with “in” like “influencing” rather than “inspiring”.

According to Ruth Grant, a Professor of Political Science at Duke University, “incentives in the workplace [...] undermined team spirit”, [...] made her feel manipulated [...] I began to notice that incentives have become the preferred tool of policy in all kinds of settings – governments, businesses, schools, prisons, hospitals – and it seemed important to think through which uses of incentives are innocuous and which are not.”

The Race to the Top obviously involves severe renouncing; people need to voluntary obey to a coercive force that attracts over a unique direction.

But passion and love for your work is intrinsically volunteer, and it’s all over the place. Sometimes is upwards, sometimes is down.
Always keep in mind what trade comes with the incentive.

Up is just one of the possible directions.

This post is dedicated to a great friend and an incredibly talented consultant who is about to commence a new adventure, taking him very far from home. I really wish the best for him, wherever he goes.

Further readings:
http://www.russellsage.org/blog/interview-ruth-grant-ethics-incentives

 

Back with a Book (review)

INCIPIT

I am happy to commence the new year with a brand new post. I have not been writing for over four months, since I relocated, changed my life and started a new job. I missed writing this blog, and now I am getting back.

This post is to light up your curiosity over an interesting book. The title is not really encouraging for someone trying to rework his life, but I am chasing a new perspective and I know that the journey will be long, difficult, and pass through rises and falls.

Archeologists seem to agree about the fact that around 4000B.C. a devastating change occurred on human being; peaceful neolithic cultures and populations had been conquered and somehow destroyed by so called “Saharan-asian civilizations”, migrating after a significant environmental change and from territories that suddenly became arid.
The latter were patriarchal, devoted to war, applied social stratification and had little or no consideration for women in general. But it seems they somehow “became” as mentioned above from a long initial peaceful and egalitarian phase. In short, human beings at the very beginning were devoted to nature, respectful to women and did not oppress each other.

As they turned to patriarchy, war and unequal, they maintained these “principles” and spread them; it seemed to permeate the ego of human being so deeply that for the following 6 thousand years, until nowadays, nothing seems to have changed.
It may sound naive, but this is not.
Forget about rhetoric of people caring about living life in peace, of women movement for independence and about the idea of chance equality.
I do not care about bullshit and like to look at things as they are.

We are first of all one against the other. Always. No matter if it is for a job role in your company or for selling your product to a customer. It’s common to use the term “fight”.
You are fighting again a competitor, you are fighting for being promoted, and so on. They call it competition and of course it has been covered by a handful rhetoric of positive connotation. Competition is good, they say. But they call it fight, or war.
Second thing is equality for men and women. No distinction they say. Women can be manager. Wow. What does it mean for them? Well it means they are allow to behave like men, so being on top of a pyramid, ruling others. What about the unique and sacred value of femininity? They don’t mention.
It’s still often just a matter of women who won (again) a fight, so now they have been allowed to rule and allowed to keep fighting in order to keep ruling.
Think about it: it’s again the good old social stratification at work. Layers, where a leader command, and today she can be a woman.
Women independence is often explained as “today a woman is just as much as a man is”

Well guys, I think she is much much more.
What a conquer, guys. This pity that looking more carefully this is just possible in rare cases, and men still rule the fight and the game.
I look around and I see that real life is no different from what I have been reading on history books at school. Life is a sequence of wars and fights, whose result is just a rebalance of a social stratification, mostly ruled by men with coercive methods.

I may sound ridiculous to you, I know. You may be thinking I am sitting on the grass, with long hairs and a “peace and love” t-shirt, dreaming of an ideal world that will never come. In John Lennon’s words, you may say, I am dreamer.
What can I answer? My mind, as yours, had been filled for years with sentences like “life is fight, you rule or you get ruled by others”. This is just the human nature. It has always been so, and will never change. You lied or played dirty to win a game? Well, it is justified, all in all what really counts is being on the top of the game.
Alternatives? No.
Voices in your “conscience”? Just lie yourself and each other from time to time with some “beau geste”, just to create a nice show that sooner or later must finish or just reman and exception. That’s human nature and there is nothing you can do about that. Just try to calm your “conscience”, then simply … forget.

Well, this book tells you a different story. Things has not always been this way, and definitely it is not true for everyone. It just seems so.

Find the bright spot.
Make it happen, and do not fall apart.

(What’s above are my personal considerations. The book itself has different views and tons of other concepts and stimuli. Not an easy reading, but worthy.)

Found in consulting

Carissimi

E’ arrivato il momento di salutarci.

Dopo la magnifica festa di ieri non so davvero che dire in vita mia non ho mai ricevuto un così grande e intenso abbraccio.

Sono trascorsi 2797 giorni da quel primo piovoso lunedì di dicembre 2003.

Mi rimane, di tutti questi il piacere e il privilegio di aver lavorato con persone eccezionali, e la gioia di aver fatto allora la “cosa giusta”, scegliendo di lasciare tutto il passato per vivere questa esperienza.

Oggi sono felice di essere la persona che sono e che mi avete aiutato a diventare.

Non fu LA scelta di venire qui, ma le conseguenze di quella scelta a mettermi su questa strada e a portarmi a questo.

Per questa ragione vi ringrazio ancora una volta: mi avete regalato quanto  necessario a intraprendere il cammino al quale mi accingo ora.

E’ piuttosto frequente sentirsi dire che bisogna provarci sempre, dove gli altri tentennano o evitano per paura di sbagliare.

Ma tutti sappiamo quanto noi stessi siam bravi ad accampare scuse e spiegazioni.

Frasi come “lo farei sei il mio capo me lo consentisse, se avessi più potere, se potessi decidere io etc…”.

Ma di quanto potere abbiamo bisogno in realtà per compiere delle scelte, per cambiare qualcosa veramente?

Ci sono momenti di “grazia” nei quali si percepisce come in realtà siamo tutti collegati, come i nostri sforzi non siano soltanto rivolti a noi stessi ma sostengano in realtà un insieme di vite interconnesse.

Per questa ragione, nel “cercare la propria strada”, ognuno di noi ha il dovere di percepire e rispettare tutti coloro che ci vivono non “attorno” ma vicino, accanto e “addosso” a noi.

Mi conforta molto aver acquisito questa consapevolezza, che mi consente di prescindere dalla prossimità geografica, di trascenderne per sentire questo legame persistente nell’animo e nelle ragioni di tutte le future scelte.

Il mio augurio per tutti è che possiate vivere questa grazia il più possibile anche voi, e tutti coloro che hanno la responsabilità più o meno diretta e più o meno esplicita della crescita degli altri.

Ho incontrato professionisti straordinari verso i quali è un delitto il perpetuarsi di una certa dimenticanza, o intenzionale disattenzione.

Così come ciascuno di noi non deve indugiare nella pigrizia del nascondersi e del non provarci accampando scuse rivolte ad altri, così chi ha l’occasione di avere in mano le chiavi di cancelli più o meno grandi ha il dovere di aprirli per far passare chi lo merita indipendentemente persino dal fatto di poterci entrare lui stesso.

 Alla fine, chi cerca e chi vuol farsi trovare non possono non incontrarsi.

Nominare tutti è chiaramente possibile, nell’animo i nomi sono scolpiti ma la memoria è limitata e difettosa.

Sono davvero tante le persone che devi ringraziare sia appartenenti al mondo Vodafone, che i colleghi consultant di ogni “bandiera”.

Un ringraziamento particolare lo vorrei esprimere a Cristiano Baro, che mi ha accolto come AMICO fin dall’inizio.

Poi, semplicemente, non ha mai smesso di esserlo.

* * *

Se avete voglia di contattarmi la mia mail personale è vinci74@gmail.com, che è anche il mio contatto Gtalk.

Sono presente nei vari social network, da LinkedIN a Facebook.

Il riferimento più importante che vi lascio è il mio numero personale :

348 8044495

E’ Vodafone, ovviamente

Arrivederci!

Andrea

What have I been doing for the last 8 years?

If you ask me directly, answer is I have been consulting in Telco since 2003.

I say consulting as consultant was the job title, and same was the title on clients badge I have been given.

Consulting was part of the name of the first firm I worked for, and consulting is in the mission statement.

According to wikipedia, “Consulting is providing advice in a particular area of expertise. This is not the same as customer service.”

I loved consulting. I think consulting is exactly what an engineering student aims to do.

Providing advices. Better, a young engineer dreams of providing solutions. Better, a young engineer aims to provide innovative solutions.

Stuff that works.

I learned innovative solutions comes in two ways: you are a genius, you base on others study, you mix stuff, you invent, you deliver.

Second way is you deeply feel the need, you realize companies are based on people, you use your knowledge and ability to generate a mind switch, you make a change. You give a gift.

Both cases are so rare and difficult to occur.

Most of the time, you fail to change anything. You just deliver what you have been asked to.

You respond to a need. But no changes.

Does consulting really help companies enhance their business?

Well, my answer is “only when they succeed in generating a SWITCH”.

Back to the initial question, what have I been doing then?

Consulting? Yes. But mine was more precisely “Internal consulting”.

Internal consultants spends a certain time (sometimes years) within a client company working exactly as a client employee.

Nevertheless, they accumulate in-depth knowledge of the client business and organization. This is a privilege as they have sufficient time to rely of this profound knowledge to implement a strategic change, or even to affect the “culture” of the client itself.

Unfortunately, there’s a dark side of the moon. The fact that you are seen as internal assigns you the same burden of limitations that common client employees have.

You are simply not seen as someone who is there for a REASON (as external temporary consultants are) but a member of the team supposed to help delivering the day by day business.

Another factor not helping internal consultants is the contract that regulates their service, the so called “time and materials”.

Time and materials is “a form of contractual compensation involving payment for materials used and at agreed rates for the those involved in performing the services”. How can I pay the precious chance of being given a gift of change if I pay the minutes spent in an office following a fee board scheme?

Anyway, keep in mind that T&M is not WHAT you do, it’s HOW you activity has been regulated and rewarded.

(Too many internal consultants confuse the two).

But if time and material is just how your consulting is paid, then this should not be the factor you focus on to find the significance of your role. You’ll risk to lose the right path, forgetting the reason why you are consulting.

I may agree time and material is not the most appropriate way to regulate a consulting contract.

I may agree that consulting firms fighting for those outsourcing contracts (the so called … as-a-service) are getting a bit far from their mission (even if this means making money).

But the important message here is: never ever forget that consulting is not just delivering a customer service (remember wikipedia’s advice not to confuse the two).

Consulting is providing a SWITCH to enhance a business, a working pattern, a method, a way of thinking. It’s giving a GIFT.

I have in my mind the few moments I did not simply delivered, and I generated a change.

It seldom occurred, but it did. And I am grateful for that. That was when I did what I liked to do.

That gave significance to my work. And made this experience so beautiful.

The rest of the time I did what I had to do: just delivering. Rapidly, properly, but just delivering.

I am about to quit for a new experience, leaving the consulting universe.

When I decided and chose the new company, I dedicated a few time understanding what the company would have expected from me in terms of delivering.

For the rest, I tried to “feel” whether the new role, people and environment had the ingredients for growing the seeds of change and innovations. Of cooperation. Of the uniqueness of individual  mixed in a “no man is an island” world.

That’s what I want to keep in me of consulting. I want to keep consulting the new company I will work work, and provide customer services with “innovative consulting style”.

I think the transformation has completed.

Now that I am about to quit the “consulting as a job”, I feel I finally have become a “consultant as a person”.

And the title, finally stitched to the person itself.

Good luck.

Starbytes: a freelance consulting platform

A few months ago I have seen a Reply initiative for releasing an on line service for freelance working over micro projects.

I say micro as fees are under 2Keuros per project.

Its name is Starbytes and it’s a way to work over ICT projects and ideas autonomously and online.

It b rings actually a new perspective for asking people and candidates to share their experience and resume.

In fact, it is not focused on the recruiter needs, but it’s presented as a real choice for the worker.

You just  directly link to a company need;  it’s not a mailbox to send the resume to, but it’s an effective autonomous decision of joining a social tribe of freelance young ICT workers, the Starbytes one.

Once you are in, it’s up to you to give the more as you can to be considered as a potential resource to assign job to.

I believe this is a fantastic idea.

You may join existing projects, or simply linking your profile to knowledge base areas.

But most important, you may offer your services, work and deliverables at a certain price. It’s then up to Reply to choose you or another.

You may also offer ideas and find support for making it real.

This part is actually quite complicated and worth investigating, as I do believe no one should give away ideas or deliverable for free. Anyway it doesn’t seems to be the most appreciated part.

You can see the concept of brewstorming, a kind of open forum for discussions over projects and jobs opportunities.

“Starbyters” may contribute to improve their own instrument, and that’s fantastic.

A few consideration from my side. I see this as a really good idea for those young engineers and developers willing to show up and link their name to effective deliverables.

Moreover, people is presented with a need, but they are allowed to propose their own approach and solution, and then giving a quotation to it.

You definitely somehow bid to make a joblist entry you short term next income source.

You results are rated then and you may move up to the list of best consultant and eventually being permanently hired.

Great advantages for the consulting firm is really having ready several solutions and possibilities, with standard documentation almost ready. And costs are strictly under control.

The difficulties is the amount of time necessary to atomize as much as possible development activities as well as screen proposals.

Freelancers have enthusiastically joined the initiative, complaining the amount of offers being not sufficient for the effective resonance the network has reached.

I believe this is an initiative worth of attention as shortcutting to young people willing to be active and demonstrating their abilities and not just faking a short resume with enthusiastic hobbies and interests lines.

 

About Changes and Choices

While preparing myself for the next big change I have chosen to give to my life, I have read the two books here below. I do strongly recommend them for a profound reasoning about life changes and the way we come to them.

The former, SWITCH,  is about how big changes may occur and what happen when a change is driven by someone.

I have been trying to use this book to induce those changes I was looking for when I decided to stick with consulting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The latter, “The ART of Choosing”, as self explicating title may suggest, is a book about the psychology of choices.

This is the book I considered to read after having decided to quit with consulting, and chose to try a new adventure.

The two of them are fundamental for understanding the power of reason either in terms of “how reason works” and “how culture affects our perception”.

So much, too much we give as granted, believe we could control, but only seldom we may discern about feeling and reasoning.

We are so naive users of such a powerful stuff inside our head.

I don’t know about you guys, but I think to be a profound analyzer. I observe, I screen, I think. I break reality into small pieces and put them back together. I believe I carefully listen to every single word others say about life.

I believe I am the captain and the ship in under control, the instruments tell me about the sea condition etc…

I also admit myself sometimes the process gets stuck, and bells start ringing.

It’s my body. It’s the lizard brain that is telling me to prepare for the fight, or to escape.

I took a decision consciously and in the full control of my mental capabilities. Is it really so?

And if it is my decision, why does my stomach hurts? Why does my mind prevent me from sleeping? If the lizard brain feels such a danger, how comes a part of my brain have been so strong to override the control? And why the same decision has not been taken in the past, or better, why so far have I chosen the opposite?

How comes that the rational part of my mind almost everyday told me I was wasting time doing what I do, and my lizard brain always found a reason for staying? And on top of all, why this continuos need to take a decision, to make a choice, to stop and watch me on a mirror shouting “Time to move dude, break the rules, find the unexpected and follow it”.

Why, if my brain decided it was safer to keep a low profile executing those easy tasks others gave me, a mechanism in my mind sooner or later fails and choses the risky alternative, refuses any authority and feels the need of taking back the control steering, even if it provokes pain in my stomach?

And last but not least, why I did not manage to produce the change I dreamed of in the job environment I have been working in for 10 years, despite all my effort and my tentatives? What went wrong? Which words I missed to say? What I failed at in front of all the colleagues still telling me I was their inspiration?

How comes that only now that it’s almost over I clearly see how many minor changes and actions I could have done (and I missed too), just pointing to the big targets and forgetting that a big achievement comes in a sequence of small steps?

These questions must be sorted out: when you are in your twenties, there are some good reasons your mind finds for you or simply skips it and moves on.

But if you are a 36ers, as I am today, other reasons jump up.

First of all, ideas and feelings, Mind and Stomach, if you like.

The two of them, accordingly. You must come to a good and common agreement with both parts of you if you are willing to move the entire “package”, or understanding why I thought something and did the opposite.

Each of the two have proper mechanisms, rules, need specific exercises.

Our brain is as much as a powerful as fool machine we may fake several times.

We are not as serious as we think to be.

We are much much more predictable and easy to open up. But you need the key.

Once you come to a clear consciousness of the keys that work with you, you need to practice how to use them and easy the process of making a choice.

Become a good friend of yourself and watch every breathe you take and every move you make. Life is an amazing adventure, and it’s worth knowing how to direct the rudder of your sailboat to better use winds blowing to you.

Have a nice journey and enjoy. In future posts I’ll give you useful examples taken from these books.

The day Operators became extinct for not accepting to get back to their original job

Yes, sounds quite provocative.

But think for a moment.

If you are interested in mobile business, you’d probably heard about RCS or RCS-e. In short, it’s an attempt to give users a set of cross operator apps services they have been already using (some for at least 3 or 4 years).

It’s yet another attempt by operators to stay in a business environment whose air they have not suitable lungs to breathe.

You’d certainly heard about mobile Clouds, iOS or “Googleandroid” ecosystems, Korean vendors ecosystems, etc….

In short, it’s an attempt to shape the business of smartphones.

The business of smartphones in less than three years will be the business of our lives.

It is not a matter of calling, chatting, using apps and updating facebook profiles.

It’s the future of payments, personal data storage and exchange, localization, identification and living into virtual reality, sensors, healthcare…

It’ll be a “wearable” body extension we won’t be even existing without.

Guess who’s seriously working on this?

Yes, mobile vendors. Yes service innovators, developers spread around the world, whoever wants to come on board.

They will always need the network, some of the Brontosaurus may say.

Well, what if the world turned spread of (hot) spots-to-the-internet?

What if a device may reach the spot by jumping through a long chain of “similars”?

What if I’d just need to sync? What if a cloud may exist in the form of a “swarm” of devices belonging to the same ecosystem?

What if my TV may route me to my printer helping me reaching my car from my mobile, being the car under a sufficiently strong spot coverage?

What if my friends devices, or my family devices may help me to build this ring?

Ok, ok, I am running too fast in the future.

Or maybe not.

I am about to change my job and I’ll see the Telco evolution from a less internal perspective.

But the question remains?

How will the world be cabled in ten years?

My two cents: operators, get back to building the network, but try to change your perspective.

It’s no more a matter of covering the world, as it was when first railways or highways have been made.

It’s a matter of making a country growing, humans and machines being connected.

Stop focusing on copying other styles, apps or stuff others invented ages ago and are giving away for free.

I may be given a smartphone by banks in the future, or by the government itself.

Still thinking making margins on this?

Enjoy the movie guys, wherever you are watching it from.

When “cheap” act cheaply

http://risky.biz/sosasta

If we volountarily give all our personal info for a few bucks to any new kid on the block proposing special discounts, why should security be treated as a major issue?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once in a while, don’t blame it to operators…

http://blog.davidsingleton.org/mobiletcp

Actually, management of timeouts and retry even from the most used apps sometimes left me baffled.

What is your experience?

 

Outsourced and…done?

http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/23/symbian-is-officially-no-longer-nokias-problem/

Will Accenture use this as an unique opportunity to lead a change and smash the world of mobile consulting?

Is it just an operation to rapidly turn Nokia into an empty shell (ops I meant a pure brand)?

Is Nokia light enough now to be acquired by Microsoft?