November 27th, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
9 Comments »
A key principle in one of my favorite books, Good to Great, is described metaphorically as “getting the right people on the bus.” When a manager is trying to move toward a vision, the most important thing he can do to be successful, I believe, is to have great people along for the ride. You can cover an awful lot of organizational weakness by having great people. Some managers feel threatened by surrounding themselves with great people. I try to always hire people who are smarter and more capable than myself. It makes my job much easier and increases my organization’s effectiveness.
Hiring great people isn’t a panacea, however. It’s easy to thwart even the most proficient employee by surrounding him with ineffectual or slow systems. By system, I mean interdependent process and tools–not just tools. Too many times I’ve hired someone who was very successful in one context, only to see her become frustrated and ineffectual with the context I hired her into.
When facing a situation where an employee seems not to be working out, first consider the system you’ve surrounded him with. Does she have the tools she needs to be successful? Is he clear on his role? Are you running interference for her? Does he have the time he needs to do his job or is he spending his time floundering in administrivia?
Good managers fix systems first and employees second. In the coming weeks, I’ll talk about some of the systems an I.T. shop can focus on improving.
November 19th, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
No Comments »
Dr. Charles Knutson, a computer science professor at BYU, has started a new podcast called Internet Safety Podcast where he talks about safe driving on the Internet. The first few episodes deal with what kinds of things kids are exposed to on the Internet and some techniques for coping.
Check it out.
November 13th, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
2 Comments »
Almost a year ago, I posted on a contest that a friend of mine at work started in order to help people lose weight. Mark Barsocchini reminded me in the comments to that post that I never closed the loop.
The contest lasted 3 months.
105 people started the contest but only 38 survived to the end.
The group lost 1123 pounds!!
The person who lost the most lost 61 pounds.
8 people beat Tadd, even though Tadd personally lost 39 pounds.
You can see some of details here. What a great contest!!
October 17th, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
No Comments »
I’ve been reading Primal Leadership and it is exceptional.
It’s written by the same gentleman who wrote Emotional Intelligence. He discusses why some people are better at dealing with emotional issues like empathy and self-awareness then others and also discusses how to improve our skills in these areas, both as individuals and as groups.
October 14th, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
2 Comments »
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about an unofficial LDS group in LinkedIn called LDS Connected. We’re now up to 749 connections! When you go into the group in LinkedIn, only 500 show up. That’s because they’ve hard-coded the list to 500.
If you go to advanced search and search within the group, it will search all 749 (and rising) contacts.
October 14th, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
9 Comments »
I enjoyed Joseph Walker’s memories of General Conference in the Deseret Morning News. What are some of your memories from this last conference? (video or otherwise 
).
October 8th, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
5 Comments »
Let’s try an experiment.
For those who have an inclination, I’d love to hear/see video blogs which chronicle your reactions to this last general conference.
Please post a link to your video in the comments. I assume 90% of you will use good judgement and avoid abusive language, criticism or clips from copyrighted material. For the other 10%, I will review each post before allowing it be live in the comments. If the clips are 30 minutes long, it will take me a lot longer to view them all. A couple of minutes each might be more like it.
Have fun! This will be an interesting test. Share your comments/feelings with the world!
[Joel: Thanks to Justin, our one and only attempt at the video experiment so far!]
October 1st, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
7 Comments »
LinkedIn is a “social networking” web site. That’s “fancy techie talk” for a web site which allows you to make and maintain connections with others who use the same web site.
You can put some information about yourself into LinkedIn and then invite others to “connect” with you. Once you’re linked to others, you can (with permission) get introduced to their contacts, and to their contacts’ contacts, and so on.
I have only 196 contacts listed in LinkedIn right now (I usually try to keep it to people I actually know or people who have been specifically recommended to me). My contacts have a collective 23,100 contacts. And my contacts’ contacts have a collective 1,494,100 contacts. Amazing.
One of our enterprising program managers, in partnership with LDS Employment Services, created a group in LinkedIn called LDS Connected. If you follow this web site, you can affiliate yourself with the group. This means that when people search the group “LDS Connected” they will find you. Currently about 411 people have joined the group. I suspect this number will go much higher once word gets around.
October 1st, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
5 Comments »
The Church has released a new web site dedicated to stake technology specialists.
Click here to peruse.
We will be improving it over time. The next big feature will be forums where specialists can ask and answer technical questions.
August 31st, 2007 |
By Joel Dehlin |
3 Comments »
Over at LDS Tech, Tom Welch has posted an article on some of the power features of the online scriptures. Check it out.
