Book Review: How To Have Confidence And Power In Dealing With People by Les Giblin

"How To Have Confidence And Power In Dealing With People” by Les Giblin had been sitting on my bookshelf for years and I was expecting it to be an over the top sales book so had put off reading it, but I was so wrong and now wish I had read it years ago. This is a superb book that has lots of great advice, good examples and is well written. I also really appreciate the short recap that each section has at the end summarising the key points.

Book Review–“Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” by Daniel Goleman

I found “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” by Daniel Goleman to be quite an academic (and at times scientific) view of emotion that includes some good story-telling.

It started very dry but I found it got more engaging about 60 pages in. I found the book to be more focussed on describing emotional intelligence as opposed to providing much guidance about how to improve your emotional intelligence. Despite this, I did however find that it contained a wealth of interesting information.

My key takeaways were:

• We have two minds (rational and emotional) that typically operate in tight harmony.
• Anger builds upon anger; the emotional brain heats up.
• Distraction is a highly powerful mood-altering device. This is due to the fact that it is hard to stay angry when you’re having a pleasant time.
• Thoughts are associated in the mind not just by content, but by mood. People have what amounts to a bad-mood thoughts that come to mind more readily when they are down.
• While crying can sometimes break a spell of sadness, it can also leave the person obsessing about the reasons for despair. Crying that reinforces rumination only prolongs the misery.
• Aerobic exercise is one of the more effective tactics for lifting mild depression. This however does not hold true for habitual exercisers, since the opposite is true whereby they start to feel bad on those days they skip a workout.
• Relaxation techniques which put the body into a low-arousal state work well for anxiety, a high-arousal state, but not so well for depression.
• A constructive approach to mood-lifting is engineering a small triumph or easy success.
• A potent antidote to depression is seeing things differently, or cognitive reframing. i.e. step back and look at the scenario from the perspective of somebody worse off.
• A helpful depression-lifter is helping others in need. e.g. volunteering, feeding the homeless.
• A strong cultural work ethic translates into a higher motivation, zeal, and persistence – an emotional edge.
• Good moods, while they last, enhance the ability to think flexibly and with more complexity, thus making it easier to find solutions to problems, whether intellectual or interpersonal. Laughing consequently can help people think more broadly.
• People with high levels of hope share certain traits such as being able to motivate themselves, reassuring themselves when in a tight spot that things will get better, being flexible enough to find different ways to get to their goals or to switch goals if one becomes impossible, and having the sense to break down a formidable task into smaller, manageable pieces.
• People perform at their peak while in flow; they exhibit a masterly control of what they are doing, there responses perfectly attuned to the changing demands of the task.
• People seem to concentrate best when the demands on them  are a bit greater than usual, and they are able to give more than usual. If there is too little demand on them, people are bored. If there is too much for them to handle they get anxious. Flow occurs in that delicate zone between boredom and anxiety.
• Being able to manage emotions in someone else is the core of the art of handling relationships.
• Emotions are contagious. We transmit and catch moods from each other.
• Coordination of moods is the essence of rapport.
• In terms of managing our own career, there may be nothing more essential than recognising our deepest feelings about what we do – and what changes might make us more truly satisfied with our work.
• Turning a blind eye to acts of bias allows discrimination to thrive. To do nothing, in this context, is an act of consequence in itself.
• While a group can be no “smarter” than the sum total of its strengths, it can be much dumber if its internal workings don’t allow people to share their talents.
• Harmony allows a group to take maximum advantage of its most creative and talented members’ abilities.
• Cultivating good relationships with people whose services might be needed later can increase your chance of success.
• The stars of an organisation are often those who have:
  • thick connections on all networks, whether communications (who talks to whom), expertise (which people are turned to for advice), or trust.
  • teamwork coordination.
  • leadership in building consensus.
  • ability to see things from the perspective of others, such as customers or others on a team.
  • persuasiveness.
  • ability to promote cooperation while avoiding conflicts.
  • initiative – being self-motivated enough to take on responsibilities beyond their stated job.
  • self-management in the sense of regulating their time and work commitments well.
• Helping people better manage their upsetting feelings – anger, anxiety, depression, pessimism, and loneliness – is a form of disease prevention.
• Many patients can benefit measurably when their psychological needs are attended to along with their purely medical ones.
• The emotional abilities children acquire in later life build on those of the earliest years.

Considerations when responding to an RFI or RFP (a view from the receiving end)

Having been on the receiving end of Request for Information (RFI) and Request for Proposal (RFP) responses, from an evaluation perspective there are ways respondents can make it easier for the evaluation panel to assess what it is being proposed and ultimately have greater success on getting through to the next round. These considerations are from my experiences with Software package selection and with Delivery partner selection, but should be applicable to many other selections.

1. First impressions count.

Even before the RFI/RFP response is opened, an evaluator can be swayed by the presentation of the response and the level of engagement getting there.
Key considerations:

• Ask questions during the response period to validate any areas lacking clarity, but don’t go overboard.
• Make sure you meet the response times.
• Use good quality paper and colour (if required to present a  paper copy).
• Binding can make a document look classier.
• If the response requests that all questions and communication go through a particular person or channel, then abide by this. 

2. Make it easy for an evaluator to find information they are looking for.

When performing an evaluation I will assess the RFI/RFP response against an evaluation template where I score the responses from each vendor. In order to ensure that I am being fair in terms of the evaluation, I assess each line item of the template across all RFI/RFP responses at the same time, as opposed to scoring each vendor separately and then moving on to the next.
Key considerations:

• If there is a RFI/RFP response template provided, use it.
• Have a table of contents on Page 2 (or thereabouts) of the document, and ensure there are page numbers throughout.
• Have your logo on the front page of your response. This makes it easier when the reviewer is looking through documents from multiple vendors.
• Be very clear about what is and isn’t included in any pricing. Even if you have the information in a scope section, it is worth highlighting the key inclusions, exclusions and assumptions in the pricing section too so that if an evaluator is looking at each solution in parallel you are not seen to be overly expensive or hiding something.
• Don’t have information split across multiple documents, unless explicitly requested to. 

 

3. Consider what an evaluator is likely to be assessing the solution against.

Whilst there are a number of questions asked in an RFI/RFP, there may be other things that an evaluator is wanting to see demonstrated in the response. If the response is silent about something, then the evaluator may rate this lower than it should be.
Key considerations:

• Show an understanding of the requirements.
• Explain how the proposed solution meets the requirements. Diagrams are good.
• Show an understanding of the business / industry sector.
• Use case studies that are in the same region / country where possible.
• Cover the methodology that is proposed to deliver the solution (if appropriate). This should however not read as if it is a shopping list of methodologies straight from a text book.
• Explain your level of flexibility to adapt the methodology and/or solution to better fit the organisation.
• Demonstrate thought leadership and best practice guidance. This may be by providing alternative solutions or explaining standards or processes that will be adopted.
• Explain different pricing model options you are open to; Fixed, Time and Materials, Monthly, Pay per use, ...
• With a software package selection, explain what is possible with configuration, what will entail customisation / development, and if so how this will impact any upgrades.
• Explain additional opportunities your solution provides.
• Cover whatever else you think is of interest to the evaluation panel.

Book Review: Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono is a very easy read and provides a good simple approach for exploring ideas and problems through thinking from different perspectives in a structured manner. There are six hats, each of which have different characteristics:

• White Hat: facts, figures, information
• Red Hat: emotions and feelings, hunch and intuition
• Black Hat: devil's advocate, negative judgement
• Yellow Hat: optimism, positivity
• Green Hat: creativity
• Blue Hat: controlling of the hats and thinking, orchestration 

The idea of the hat is that a person will put on or be asked to put on a hat and to express a view from that perspective. This gets people thinking in different ways and since it is play-acting people are more willing to express views from under the security of the hat that otherwise may be left unsaid.

Exporting from OpenOffice Base database to SQL

I was wanting to export the contents and design of an OpenOffice.org Base database to SQL with the intent of migrating to MySQL. I struggled to find out how to do this, but finally found out how.

To generate an SQL file that contains both the contents and the data of the database I used the following command from the “Tools –> SQL…” menu:

SCRIPT 'C:\temp\file.sql'

When I tried to write it to the C:\ root directory I got a security error, but using another directory worked fine.

Thanks to http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=32333 for pointing me in the right direction.

Incidentally, on my way to the final solution I also came across the following command to generate a CSV file of a table’s contents:

SELECT * INTO TEXT "output_csv_file_name" FROM "table_name"

The version of OpenOffice I was using was OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 – OOO330m20 (Build:9567) and I running this on a Windows 7 machine.

NZSki is making great use of RFID to enhance customer service

I went skiing yesterday and was impressed with how NZSki is using RFID to enhance customer service.

I started the day by going into the Queenstown Snowcentre to buy a ticket for the bus up to Coronet Peak. Instead I found I could buy my ticket for skiing as well, which was great. The queue was short and when I got to the counter I was asked if I had used NZSki before. I hadn’t, so the person serving me proceeded to ask my name, took my photo, and casually asked me where I was from.

Before I knew it, a plastic re-usable pass for the mountain had been printed for me with my name on it, a reference number and the fact I was an Adult and Male.

NB: Reference number blanked out in picture.

After a 25 minute bus ride, I was at Coronet Peak and then proceeded to the chair lift. What I then found was that at every chairlift and t-bar I went to during the day there was a gate to go through where you needed to hold your pass up to (typically there were 5 gates, one for each seat). This worked fine through my jacket, however for the first gate since I had my cell phone in the same pocket it didn’t work, but the liftie let me through anyway.

I also noticed that as each person went through, the liftie had an iPad that had pictures of who was coming through each gate so they were doing checks to see that people weren’t using other peoples passes.

There were also top-up machines located at both the snowcentre and near the ticket offices up the mountain, where you can use buy your ticket yourself without needing to go to the counter. Similarly, you can also buy your ticket from the comfort of your home through registering and logging in online (more about that later).

The whole process worked well and helped to keep the flow going (not that there was much of a queue today; it was in fact almost non-existent).

I had a superb day on the mountain. The conditions were excellent, beautiful blue sky in the morning (there was a little bit of cloud in the afternoon, although this was minimal and there was still unlimited visibility), no wind, great snow and almost non-existent queues. My legs and feet were a bit shocked by the exercise, but I still managed to do a decent number of runs.

Once I got off the mountain I went to the nzski.com mypass website, entered the reference number on my card and then proceeded to enter a username and password. Some details such as my name and city were already populated. What was also nice was the statistics displayed, showing how many metres I had descended and how many runs I had done (NB: this will be missing my first run, since they just let me through).

There are also leader boards of who has descended the most in the day, season etc. and who has done the most runs.

Today I went back to this site and purchased an afternoon pass for The Remarkables. It was all very simple to do.

I was impressed with how well RFID was used to enrich the customer experience.

<Cross-posted to http://sinnjoy.com>

HTML5 input type does not submit name for images

I had some very simple code that worked well in the Chrome web browser, but it did not however work with Internet Explorer or Firefox and didn’t generate any errors. The functionality was simply to pass a parameter (in this case ‘auth’) to a PHP page; once on the page I am simply checking that it is set. I was attempting to do this by attaching the parameter to the image input type but was having no joy. Rather than look at alternative options, this made me curious so I went searching.

After a bit of digging, I found that the HTML5 spec requires just the x and y coordinates clicked on for the image to be appended to the form data submitted. After realising this, I changed from using the name/value attributes on on the image input type to using a hidden field and all browsers were happy.

In terms of my very simple HTML code, to make it work.

Before:

      <form action="index.php" method="post">
          <input type="image" src="img/sign-in-with-twitter-l.png"
                 alt="Connect to Twitter" name="auth" value="1">
      </form>

After:

      <form action="index.php" method="post">
          <input type="image" src="img/sign-in-with-twitter-l.png"
                 alt="Connect to Twitter">
          <input type="hidden" name="auth">
      </form>

For completeness, in terms of how I check the field is being passed through:

if(isset($_POST['auth'])) {…}

Thanks to http://www.onenaught.com/posts/382/firefox-4-change-input-type-image-only-submits-x-and-y-not-name for pointing me in the right direction.