2007 – Page 19 – Chronicles from a Caribbean Cubicle

January 25, 2007

TextAloud

I have found something good!

As an increasingly frequent writer, my concern about putting out well written material has given me pause for thought. Some recently read, self-published books that I found to be horrific literary adventures, have only added to my concern. Given that I write a blog, I can’t very well blame my editor, publisher or proof-reader.

I imagine that I could blame my wife (my unpaid editor)… but doing so would only confirm suspicions that my jackass writings are indeed written by… a jackass.

Well, the good thing I have found will at least let people know that I can, more frequently than not, put together the basics of grammar, punctuation and spelling.

The tool is called TextAloud, and it simply converts written words into words spoken aloud by my computer.

How has this helped?

In the course of my recent writing, I found that the very best way to edit my own writing was to read it out aloud to “hear” how it sounds to the ear. An even better technique was ask my wife to read it.

Both methods, but especially the first, were kinda goofy. I seemed quite capable, with enough effort, to overlook crappy spelling and turn paragraphs of garbage into prose worthy of Rex Nettleford.

Plus, for some strange reason, she tired of it (calling her a monkey once didn’t help.)

Now, I have “Anne.” She has a mid-West U.S. accent that sounds bizarre when reading bad writing. My bad writing.

When I get tired of her, there is “David,” who sounds a bit Southern U.S.

I can purchase others, and may spring for an English voice that may help my writing sound even better!

Of, course, that is not the point. The point here is that Anne and David help me to write with more fluency, greater cohesion, and with a rhythm that is pleasing to the ear. The fact that I can achieve all this with such a simple tool is something good, that might help this jackass get his points across.

January 25, 2007

Feedblitz to your inbox

I recently added a new feature to this blog: the ability to receive an email with the latest entry from this blog. The feature is free, and is designed by Feedblitz.

I rarely post more than a few times per week, so emails would come at most 3-4 times per week.

It provides a level of convenience that I find quite useful, and the output is also very well designed.

To add your name to the list of subscribers, fill in your email address in the form at right.

January 18, 2007

Goof Off Time and other Time Management Techniques

One of the efforts that we at Framework are undertaking this year is that of defining a method of time management that fits the Caribbean tempo and lifestyle.

The reasons why none of the popular approaches used worldwide has become popular in our region are varied and many: too much rigidity, too much technology, not enough humanity et al.

While the best approach I have found is the one described in the book Getting Things Done by David Allen, eve this approach does not provide a complete time management solution for our way of living.

I know this from personal experience, having lived in both North America, with its daily predictability, and here in the Caribbean, where for example I am “borrowing” someone else’s wireless internet access, because it is taking now 7 weeks to get my phone and therefore DSL service installed. Incidentally, the borrowed service is now down (an occurrence that befalls us every three days or so.)

In my reading this morning, I realized that my own time management tricks have evolved a great deal over the years. In particular, my calendar has evolved to the point where I discovered that I actually have three calendars in one, viz:

A Same Action Calendar

This is my weekly calendar of regularly scheduled items. It contains items that I have scheduled do to each day, each week, and each year at regularly recurring intervals.

For example, I went cycling this morning at 4:00am with my cycling club, a regularly recurring Thursday morning activity that I undertake whenever I am in town. It is pre-scheduled into my calendar, and requires an intrusive alarm clock to set it into motion!

Each month at around this time, I balance my check book.I also pay my phone bill.

Each year at around this time, I set an appointment to look at issuing various tax documents that are due on January 31^st for the prior year, and also at scheduling my company’s annual meeting – -a legal requirement.

These recurring activities are all programmed into Microsoft Outlook, although I do use a variety of other tricks to help me to remember them, such as a programme called Rememberit.com that sends me an email reminder to complete one particular tax document that I seem to forget about each year!

This “Same Action Calendar” keeps my life humming in the background, and I never have to remember to do any of the actions in it. I love to find new things to put in this calendar, because each time I do it, I relieve myself of the burden of having to remember, or to rely on someone else’s memory, or to rely on a piece of mail that can get lost.

It is much easier to take that child to their swimming lesson when it is on the same night each week, and when the schedule is regularized, it can be safely put in the Same Action Calendar where I can forgot about it until it reminds me at the start of each day.
A Next Step Calendar

This is my calendar of projects, and all other activities that happen only once, broken down into the “Next Step” that I must take in the sequence of actions to complete the project.

This includes activities such as “contact my web designer” which is the next step of a larger project called “Update Website.”Another activity is “Install Monitor” which is part of a project called “Install New Office” (I just moved offices.)

The calendar of Next Steps is, admittedly, filled with more fun and exciting activities than the Same Action Calendar, which is filled with lots of mundane activity, some of which I normally detest. They are both critically important, however, to my functioning as a professional.

The next calendar is one that is truly Caribbean.
The Unscheduled Time Calendar

(Also called the Interruption/Emergency/Goof-Off Calendar)

This one is critical for mental health and sanity for those of us who work in the region. It is a calendar of time that must be devoted to fixing stuff that breaks, recovering from emergencies, cooling out from the heat, drying out from the rain, waiting for stuff to happen (like for the Fedex man to come between 8:00 and 2:00 when he comes at 2:30) and responding to interruptions of a human or inhuman nature.

Life here is all about going with the flow, and there is a lot of stuff flowing about, that one needs to learn to go with – enough to drive a North American or European professional absolutely crazy. This time needs to be put in the calendar (just in order to reflect reality.)

Each day differs, from what I can tell.

Staying at the office in a meeting all day? Schedule very little Unscheduled Time.

Going on errands to the Tax Office, Post Office and Bank, while picking up the children? Plan for a LOT of Unscheduled Time to account for the pothole that blows a tire, the long line at the post office, the bank that can’t find your account and the Tax Office that… nuff said.

Plus, you may need to spend an extra fifteen minutes with that one child who had a tough day and is looking a bit forlorn.

Each professional I different in terms of what their Unscheduled Time Calendar looks like, and it needs to be carefully tweaked to match the circumstances of the day, week, month or (God forbid) year.

Putting Them All Together

Of course, these three calendars are not actually three different pieces of paper, or three different electronic files. Think of them as transparent overlays that come from three very different ways of thinking.

In actual practice, they are being assembled at the same time as the Caribbean professional builds his/her calendar for the day. He/she ensures that all three mindsets are carefully balanced to produce a day that is not just productive in the traditional sense of the word, but also realistic and relatively peaceful.

After all, isn’t that the goal of trying to manage time in the first place?

P.S. Your comments are welcome, as this particular idea may be used in the programme we are currently developing. If you actually start using the idea, we would to know that also!

January 10, 2007

FirstCuts ezine Issue 7.0

FirstCuts

A Framework Consulting Online eZine

High-Stake Interventions — Issue 7 January 15, 2007
Developing a “Caribbean Manager”
by Francis Wade

Editorial

While I was in Johannesburg, South Africa over the holidays, I was able to take tours of 2 townships: Soweto and Alexandria. While visiting I was struck by the wickedness that was the Apartheid system, and how long it will take that country to integrate all of its citizens
into a seamless whole — something that has never existed.

Here in the Caribbean we have a similar challenge: to create an economic force that has never before existed. This issue is devoted to the idea that a truly “Caribbean Manager” is the basic building block, because if the mindset is not there at an individual level, then all the CSME activity will be wasted.

Francis

Developing a “Caribbean Manager”

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Developing a “Caribbean Manager”
====================================================

The upcoming Cricket World Cup arrives in the Caribbean in March
2007 and brings with it several interesting possibilities.

One possibility that it brings to mind is that we, as a region
can find a way to emulate the success of the West Indies cricket
team in the 1980’s and 1990’s — off the field. One lesson that we
might learn from our Test cricketers and their collective success,
is that they each had to undergo a personal transition from being
merely a representative of their country, to being a member of The
West Indies cricket team.

I am certain that the transition involved more than just a change
in team name, particularly when we were world beaters in the
1980’s and early 1990’s. The players of that time were able to
set aside their local preferences, biases and idiosyncrasies, in
order to build the kind of unified force that politicians and
business-people have, to date, failed to create.

While our politicians are making little headway with the
implementation of CSME, it is our business-people that are more
closely following the example of our Test cricket team. Assisted
by the liberalisation of the region’s economies, they have been
able to export capital, and use it to build regional conglomerates
in manufacturing, distribution and banking.

In our work, Framework has defined a term that we have been sharing
with our clients that we hope to make synonymous with the power
that “West Indian cricketer” has around the world: “Caribbean
Manager.”

Why should we care about becoming Caribbean Managers? Who or what
are they anyway?

A Caribbean Manager is a manager who has undergone a mental shift
or transition from being a local professional to one who sees
themselves as part of a wider regional fabric. It is a change that
one makes for oneself, and with it comes a broader context within
which to make decisions to invest time, energy and capital.

For example, a Caribbean Manager cares about the latest business
happenings in other countries in the region, and seeks out sources
of news and information that may give her a competitive edge.

How does a manager make the transition? In our work, my colleagues
and I have identified three characteristics that can be learned by
regional professionals: learning to collect different and varied
first-hand experiences, using heartfelt interests as a tool for
natural networking and being willing to identify and surrender
mind-sets that are obstacles to becoming Caribbean Managers.

==================================================
A Collector of Different Experiences
==================================================
Perhaps the first part of the transition that a manager must make
is to become committed to having a variety of different experiences
across the region. While there is a great deal that can be learned
from reading books and using the Internet, nothing does more for a
manager than direct experience of other countries in the region.

I can vividly recall my first trip to the Point Lisas Industrial
Estate in Trinidad. When I surveyed the number of heavy industrial
companies in the area, I immediately understood that Trinidad had
a very different economy than Jamaica’s, and that seeing the estate
was very different from reading about it.

The Caribbean Manager yearns for experiences such as this one,
because they help him to understand the deep underpinnings of
business in a particular country. He is never satisfied with an
understanding of his own society, and in fact finds that travelling
to other English-speaking countries in the region help him to
understand his own country.

These experiences cannot be scripted, as trips to different
territories become opportunities to combine markets, suppliers and
products in ways that cannot be determined from merely doing market
research. These unique combinations can only be created by
business-people who understand the region and its needs from
direct experience.

Some examples of unfilled opportunities include the lack of a real
jerk restaurant or patty shop in Port of Spain, and the fact that
authentic Trini roti is impossible to find in Kingston. These are
both waiting to be filled but can only been seen by those managers
who can see the need based on their experience.

Also, travelling across the region in search of these experiences
help to teach a budding Caribbean manager how to manage the people
in each country.

In a recent study conducted by Framework, Trinidadian executives
admitted to being surprised by the degree to which Jamaican
business culture differed from that of Trinidad. They may have
been better prepared if they had simply spent more time working in
Jamaica , managing Jamaicans, before accepting their assignments.

Travelling and working across the region gives the Caribbean
Manager valuable insights into another culture, but they can also
learn a great deal about their home culture. Furthermore, they
can also learn to adapt themselves to the strengths and weaknesses
of the Caribbean management style.

There are too many managers across the region who are, at best,
local managers with very narrow interests. They have not visited
another Caribbean country, do not read regional newspapers, and
are more acquainted with Miami than any of the region’s capitals.
They do both themselves and their companies a disservice.

================================================
A Networker Who Builds on Natural Interests
================================================
The idea of regional networking fills most professionals with a
feeling of dread. The idea of hob-nobbing with a power-elite
over golf or tennis at the country club seems foreign to everyone
other than the few who are already members.

We have found that the savvy Caribbean Manager builds networks
around areas of authentic interest. They start with what they
are already interested in, and broaden the scope of their interest
to include the entire region, way past the limits of their
country’s borders.

For example, a collector of exotic orchids who happens to work in
a bank, could decide to build their network around this particular
hobby. Using this pastime as a starting point, and the Internet as
a tool, they could engage in the following activities:
– find contact information for orchid growers across the Caribbean
region
– join paper and electronic newsletters and mail-lists
– join or start electronic discussion lists
– travel to attend orchid shows, and pass send around
trip reports
– become knowledgeable about the laws regarding the import and
export of orchids

Taking these simple steps (based on my absolute dearth of knowledge
in this area,)could enable someone to become a regional expert on
orchids, simply by pursuing their interest in a wider geographic
sphere.

How does this apply to the Caribbean Manager?

It turns out turns out that developing an expertise in a single
area can be just as effective a networking tool as any other. As
one’s expertise grows and deepens, the likelihood increases that
relationships will be created with other experts in the field
across the region. These other experts will themselves have
connections with professionals in each field, including banking.

All without learning how to serve, and without trying to perfect a
back-swing.

Caribbean Managers have found that the relatively small size of our
societies lends itself to authentic networking, and that business-
people are as likely to be found on the golf-course, as they are
to be found at a local pan-yard, race track or orchid show.

The savvy Caribbean Manager sticks to their areas of interest, and
trusts that their passion for the area will be attractive to
others. Their only duty is to stay true to their heartfelt
interests, honouring their passions while avoiding the dark
thoughts that they should buy a set of clubs in order to meet this
quarter’s sales goals.

The practical side benefit of following an interest are easy to
see. While the banker described in the example above is visiting
Georgetown at the annual Orchid Festival, it might be quite
easy to stay an extra day or two in order to meet the President of
the Guyana Association of Bankers (who just happens to be an old
school-mate of the Vice President of the Orchid Society.)

I benefited tremendously from an extra three days in Trinidad
after recovering from Carnival 1996. After meeting with a few
businessmen, I realized that not only could I do business in
Trinidad, but also that the talk in Jamaica about Tricky-dadians
was overblown — “old talk.”

===============================================
Willing to Surrender Mind-Sets
===============================================
A mindset is simply a way of being, or a lens, that
colours the way we see other people, countries or
situations. We, more often than not, don’t realize
they are there, and come to believe that the way we see
life is the way that life is. The problem comes when we
are wrong, and fail to see what is in front of us, or in
other words, what is in our blind-spots.

The talk among business-men in Jamaica about “Tricky-dadians”
and the inability to trust them is still widespread. Today, it
stops some Jamaicans from even attempting to do business in the
twin-island republic.

Caribbean Managers are able to transcend such limiting mind-sets.
They realize they exist, but they are willing to question them,
and to compare them to actual, first-hand experience.

This process of constant checking is more than just some parlour
trick — it is the key to seeing possibilities and opportunities
where others cannot see them. In business terms, it is the key to
finding new sources of profit.

How does a manager improve her ability to shed mindsets? There are
a variety of commercial approaches that are available for the
individual who is interested in being trained, and the one I most
recommend is based on the work of Byron Katie, which can be found
at www.thework.org.

===============================================
Summary
===============================================
Companies that are the first to develop a cadre of Caribbean
Managers will gain an undeniable competitive edge. Unfortunately,
I am unaware of any company that has put in place a systematic
programme of training, exposure and awareness to bridge the gap.

While it is clear that not having Caribbean Managers is costly to
regional firms, there is no easy prescription on how to put these
programmes in place. A Caribbean solution is needed.

Perhaps the Cricket World Cup might provide the impetus
we need to develop more than just regional cricketing
talent.

The FirstCuts Bottom Line: Start developing yourself as a
Caribbean Manager TODAY.

What are some of the things you are doing to develop yourself as
a Caribbean Manager? Let us know at the Framework blog by following
this link: http://tinyurl.com/y2z9qs

Useful Stuff

Tips, Ads and Links
Framework’s One-Page Digest has been launched and can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/y9b6ev. It includes a list of links to information that I think is invaluable to Caribbean executives. Subscription details can also be found at the link above.
Update: I plan to release a new issue every 2 weeks

Back Issues of FirstCuts can be found at http://tinyurl.com/pw7fa

We are on the lookout for possible contributors to FirstCuts. If interested, send email to francis@fwconsulting.com to be included in a future mailing.

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