New Year Resolutions

I forgot to post this one, but the resolutions are going well for once!

It's that time again. Perhaps i've had too much time to think about what to do in 2012. But here goes...

Personal

1. Bring back the romance - some work to do and had a lovely 15 wedding anniversary
2. Learn Golf - ah, not done this one, maybe next year
3. Enjoy the gym . . . regularly - loving it!
4. Move house - well, we've found a house, just need a mortgage now, how hard can that be?
5. Lose Weight - I'm on it!

Business

1. Train our people
2. Build profit from our own Solutions
3. Take a leadership course

I would say 25% done at the moment, 75% to go, better than some years, 4 months to improve before the next champagne fueled annual promises!

Optimistic flush from a Jolly Fat Man

A quick note on diet and exercise. Having spent the summer with a fit of 'the lazies' and finding my sedentary digital lifestyle getting more and more sofa bound I have upgraded.

So in comes wifi connected scales, food diary, auto life tracker (steps, stair climbs), body fat % measuring and most importantly a great new personal trainer who is hooked up to all of it. 2 gym sessions a week with Dan plus a swim and a free session, let's see if all this measuring, monitoring and fitness causes a 'Jovial overweight fellow' (as a Dr recently described me in a life insurance medical!) to lose the 16 kilograms (35 lbs) of excess fat he is carrying.

According to the scales my body fat should be 15kgs maximum. Currently it's 31kgs, the makes goal setting pretty easy.

If so I shall become a good case study for Withings ( wifi scales) and Fitbit ( food diary and life monitor), not only that but perhaps I can look a little less like Billy Bunter on my profile picture!

Entrepreneurial Amnesia

Your Amnesia sets in when you have too much on your plate. The Strategic Coach teaches some simple strategies to combat this: Buffer Days - get rid of the admin, Focus Days - 80% of your time focussed on what you do best and Free days - giving your brain time to relax. Most time management systems aren't built for entrepreneurs, they're built for administrators so this simple system is built for you. And then...

Focus on your unique ability rather than diluting your time with everything you are weak at. Find the people whose strengths are your weaknesses and make it work with them involved!

Proof, should it ever be needed

Man went to the Moon... Such a great endeavour, so long a distance, so long ago. The Landing sites have now been photographed from orbit (LRO Sees Apollo Landing Sites). Move aside the doubters and lets humanity go there again, it's surely better than paying for war and banking crises.

Juggling Elephants

Life is like a 3 ring circus (say Jones Loflin and Todd Musig).

Work, Home, Self. Like the ringmaster it is important to manage the acts in each ring and know which ring you are in right now. Don't schedule 3 big acts all at the same time. Make sure all the acts are quality in each ring and that each performer is motivated to deliver their best. Most of all make sure the acts are right for your circus, they may be a great act, but if the timing is wrong, the cost too high or they just don't fit, then don't do it!

So work out what is in each ring, which things can be done now and which should be delayed because they can't start yet (those are in your lineup). The ringmaster's job is to introduce each act, make sure it starts well, and move on to the next ring, making sure that the performers are ready to go, and so on.

So that was my first read, it only took an hour, i recommend it, perhaps i'll read it again.

Breaking down the sales process

Credit Crunch, there, I said it. The markets are down, mortgages not yet cheap enough, businesses faltering, or so it would seem. What to do? Well i say fcek the credit crunch. Sell what saves or makes money, tune your business to take the budget scraps, deliver value greater than your project size, service, service, service your accounts, be loyal to your business and structured in your sales. Recessions happen to the overborrowed, anyone who mortgaged on the future. Take up a hobby, remember to breath, refocus your finances, if you have cash, invest near the bottom (the stockmarket will likely go up more in the next 12 months than at any time in the last 7 years) and ride out the year. Good luck.

Stock Boards

Fight on my men Sir Andrew said. I am wounded but yet not slain.
I'll just lay down and bleed awhile. Then rise to fight again.

I'm an investor, i always have been. The door is half open, i see the qualities, other help me to understand the downside risks! Business, shares, property but when it all goes wrong for an investor then it's the people and the relationships you've invested in that still lift you up...

And it will go wrong, every 7 years for property, every market cycle for stock, you'll be riding high and the market will take a tumble. In hindsight it's always obvious. In the UK property has doubled every 7 to 10 years since 1930, so if it triples, then it's likely to drop 33% in the next correction. Here in the UK, property tripled and now we have an 8.2% drop in property prices (to July 2008), so we could drop a further 25% off the peak. It should, on average, double off that low within 7 to 10 years.

A good early read on investing is Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He won't really give solutions, but it'll start the journey of being an investor and growing assets. There are always setbacks but never reasons not to invest.

Walk training commences

I'm off for a 102 Mile walk along the Macmillan Way West from Barnstaple to Castle Carey in September in 6 days. It takes a little working up to as the first day is a Yomp practically all the way across Exmoor so some practice is required. Yesterday was my first 8 mile training walk with a pub and a curry dinner in the middle. At least my pack is lighter this year as i have left all the cooking equipment behind, water and cold rations this year with hot pub food to look forward to. I'll continue to post my progress here, shifting 1 stone before the walk would reduce my load considerably. Any comments on how to toughen your feet would be most welcome!

Personality testing

Knowing your personality is crucial in business.

Knowing other people's and being able to correctly interpret their actions and tailor your responses to their communication needs is a skill i have yet to fully master. So take your Belbin, Myers-Briggs, DISC and any other test that comes along. More importantly do them with your team and your significant other. Compare and contrast your results and you will all get along better! Below you can see my Brain Lateralization test, goodness knows what happened to the missing 12%, perhaps Alzheimers is setting in already!

Brain Lateralization Test Results

Right Brain (70%) The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive side of the brain. Left Brain (18%) The left hemisphere is the logical, articulate, assertive, and practical side of the brain

Are You Right or Left Brained?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Blue Ray Development

Blue Ray is the future standard for HD. 95% of the players in the US are currently PS3. The players are network aware so that you can interact with online. They use BDJ (rather old Java similar to J2EE mobile Java) and the current versions is 1.1 which means that the studios have abandoned early adopters but at leas late hardware adopters will have a great user experience. All the £1000 player adopters will, i'm afraid, have to upgrade!

Blue Ray authoring is an art which our multimedia arm, with a long history in software development, video and CDROM/DVD authoring has committed to. It is the future. However Blue Ray development follows a rather different profile to these older technologies. For instance, it's hard to preview to your client as until you've written 95% of the code you won't have anything decent to show! So the client may be used to DVD taking a few days or CDROM taking a week with a preview after a few days. Blue Ray will take longer and it's only toward the end of the project that you'll see the result actually functioning.

The flexibility of the platform and the quality of the video playback make this the future of HD distribution on disc for western economies. It has so many uses beyond film and TV disc based distribution. Due to it's Java authoring environment Blue Ray Games development is possible mixing a hybrid of video, server based communication, content and game elements.

Other examples of potential solutions are HD video playback in car show rooms and exhibtions that automatically update their content, Web based presentations (i.e. like a web based video conferencing box with slides and live audio/video streams), chat and instance fanbase communication, buy the disc , join the group.

Setting up the studio is expensive, building the in-house expertise is not quick and you should start with a good base. And what of there are Test plans, QA and Qualification of your code and disc. We are building a center of excellence in Testing QA for Blue Ray as well as other other development team (.NET, Web, Java, CD, DVD, Content). Watch this space!

Business continuity

There is nothing like a burglary to focus the mind on Business Continuity. Last night two men broke into our business block, through our outer door, broke the glass on our interior door, caused a little mayhem, and scarpered empty handed. Although not before they'd appeared our our cctv in starring roles and left blood on the walls which police forensics are examining as we speak. It could have been so different.

No cctv (it was a neighbouring business who had it) and no alarm call (it took us an hour to get there and the police didn't even put in an appearance until the morning, low priority crime they say). Frankly these guys could have parked a van outside, taken their time (at least 30 minutes from alarm sounding to anyone being there) and emptied out everything.

What would we have done... were all our backups up to date... could we deliver our key jobs in time... what about software licenses... pieces of infrastructure... the books... receipts... paperwork!

Time for a spot of disaster planning, and luckily not too late, frankly these boys did us a favour but i'd still like them behind bars...

Family Alignment

If you haven't done this then please do...

sit your family/friends/colleagues down and ask them what they dream about... What would they like their lives to mean... If you can't dream it, you can't do it! Then work out how you need to behave and do in order to achieve these dreams. It's the healthiest thing you can do for yourself and for your team, family, friends...

Think... Be... Do... Have...

Go on, make a difference...

Quality Assurance

The office was lucky recently to be visited by a QA Guru. Shah Kahn gave us the low down on good QA processes and why these are crucial at all levels. QA issues are certainly something we have all noticed and to a person want to put right. Common sense is also a QA process so it's not just •can• it be done this way but •should• it be done this way...

Quality Assurance is a lifestyle, not just for Christmas. It has to be built into the DNA of a project from the initial brief and specification through, design, code production, module testing, system testing, user acceptance and client testing. You can't just add it at the end of a project and use it as a buffer to soak up project creep!

The opportunity for us in the UK business is to become a QA center of excellence and this is an ambition that we intend to grasp with both hands.

Brad Sugars

Bradley does a "DVD 6 steps to a better business" and a book called "The Business Coach", really these should be watched and read in tandem. Brad Sugars aims his book at all business people but the examples i have read are mostly targeted at people in the retail/service sector. This can mean that his books are dismissed as 'too lowbrow' however there are still great learnings to be made and a stepwise and systematic approach will surely be better than the scattergun methods that most of us Business Managers employ! Another enjoyable read. If you have a chance to go to one of his free seminars then i recommend it...