davidwp, Author at David Pederson 800.664.1614

I am a SaaS copywriter specializing in applications and services used in business intelligence.

Telecommuting – Is it as easy as we think?

July 4, 2019 By davidwp

Greg Baker is the skeptical CFO of Logicalis International. Yet, when he embraces a concept, he embraces it deeply. Telecommuting is the one most recently on his radar.

Greg’s task was to set the growth strategy for Logicalis. To address the company’s rapid expansion, he let workers start telecommuting.

While he attracted the best talent possible, he also experienced other benefits. There was a reduction of fixed costs, especially long-term leases on space and purchases of office furniture and equipment. Employee retention increased, and geographic limitations disappeared.

By including the mobile world, Greg could hire the best, regardless of their location. This change increased the morale of all Logicalis employees by weaving together both corporate and employee demands.

So how does one prepare for the telecommuting world?

Telecommuters should start with three principal foci.

First, allocate as much time to strengths as the “needs improvement” areas.

Be the ‘go-to’ person for at least one area. Mary Nicholson, now Director at Universal Music Group, was part of Washington Mutual during the turbulent times of the mortgage meltdown. She survived several rocky times there while telecommuting to Seattle from her home in Los Angeles. Her “go-to” skill was the bank’s data dictionaries. She knew more about them than anyone else. She could work where she pleased because she was the best in her sphere of influence.

Second, think strategically about your career by using SMART goals. Managers measure a telecommuter’s tele-commitment, so be SMART. The ability to define goals that include Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Sensitive components is an industry-standard today. It provides a robust career framework, allowing the remote professional to continue towards career goals.

On this, every telecommuter must lead. Managers change during a career. Some do not use SMART goals, but savvy professionals who stay ahead of the game are reliable practitioners of SMART.

Third, know your technology options. The most significant problem professionals face as telecommuters is awareness about the tools they need to get their jobs done effectively. Successful remote professional masters four essential tools. They use them as quickly as a pencil, sharpening them as they dull and replace them when they have reached the end of the cycle.

Virtual Conferencing: Today, tools like Cisco’s WebEx and Citrix’s GoTo Meeting make it easier to be in the office while working away from the office. With WebEx, I have employed an expert from London, England, to mentor engineers through virtual classrooms. They remained in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York.
Still, we were able to do more than we could have by meeting together in the same space.

- We met for real-time joint sessions, then broke into smaller working groups, and came back to report to the larger groups.
- We worked through issues as teams in real-time talked to each other over web cameras.
- We had side conversations on trunked phone lines.
- We could reconfigure groups instantly according to our needs.
  As you can guess, once you master the hard parts, doing it remotely is a breeze.

Technological Redundancy
:
Overlooking the simplest things can set up a disaster.

A professional telecommuter will plan for redundancy. A second way to maintain a remote connection is essential.
- Knowing how to switch on a hotspot compensates for those moments when the primary internet connection is interrupted.
- Running large presentations from two computers safeguards the times when one fails.
- Storing email and key documents locally and remotely is essential in creating the professional remote executive.
  It takes lots of behind the scenes effort to make things look effortless. A professional uses the ability to compensate quickly for failures in technology. Telecommuting demands a mastery of the technology used to stay plugged into the working environment.

Security:
Amateurs overlook this area often because it is complex and takes effort to know how to work with security features.

Is it needed? Well, a mismatch in connectivity can cause hours of downtime – your absence due to technical ignorance comes across to others as incompetence. It is essential to understand the configuration of the office and its security protocols. Not knowing whether to choose between WEP40/128-bit hex or ASCII or WPA2 Enterprise over LEAP can effectively make the most brilliant telecommuter the dumbest team player.
Telephone and Contact Management.
In a day of speed dialing and direct calling from contact lists, a professional will always make sure their devices have the people called most often available. And that accessibility is easy.

Call forwarding, listing a current number in the corporate directory, and leaving it on voice mail signals that you are keen to help every caller get in touch. When nobody is sitting in the office next to you, you must run this show yourself. There will be times you will need to get a hold of a coworker to resolve a crisis.

Don’t be caught without that most basic of tools – the phone number.

Working away from the pack takes more training than the person in the office needs. Being a go-to person who is available at the same level as those in the office is the foundation of success.

To sum up

Be the go-to person for at least one skill.
Know your environment,
Plan for the “gotchas.”
Add that bit extra of talent so that people seek you out.
Follow the adage “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” You’ll find that distance is no longer the barrier to career achievement.

Telecommuting Team Trust

December 1, 2018 By davidwp

So you’ve been telecommuting for a while and things shifted; the department is reorganized, your manager moves on, you are moved to a new project, or one of several other things change your cozy telecommuting relationship.

How do you maintain your status and reputation as the world turns? Here are five core steps to helping others see you from a distance.

BUILD TRUST FROM THE GROUND FLOOR . . . AGAIN

This one appears easy, but takes a different set of skills; build a repeatable process of trust. Start by knowing that when things change you can’t expect anything to transfer forward. Your new boss may not know you, your last boss may have left without detailing your brilliance in your personnel file or you may be the new team lead, except you aren’t known by the new team. So, like it or not, you need to start at the ground floor and build again.

Telecommuting adds a layer of challenge. People like to see the new person, to look them in the eye, watch them react with others, determine whether they are a kindred spirit or not. In short, they want to say hi and shake your hand. It is an unchanging trait of human nature, so face it. When the ground changes you can fast-track this process but you can’t ignore. So, make the effort to meet the folks on your team, even if that means you pay the ticket.

PLAN TO PAY FOR YOURSELF

Some telecommuting policies lack an allowance for impromptu travel. Prepare for this and sock away some of the savings you are getting from not commuting to the office for this occasion. Then when it happens make plans to meet the team at your expense. The company has already saved you money by freeing you from the office so don’t cheap out now and make expense demands. Step up and it will pay off.

SHOW LEADERSHIP WITHOUT SEEKING RECOGNITION

Use this as an opportunity to test out the new landscape. A new manager worthy of your respect will offer to bring the team together, but some don’t and have a variety of reasons for not doing so.

That cannot stop you from footing the bill and being in town. As a matter of fact, the process of organizing your trip will more than likely catch on and the team will self-organize.

Other new players will want to meet you and if your team is geographically split you may be the catalyst for a meeting of the minds. Don’t be surprised if this event turns into wholesale reimbursement for the team and translates into a very good experience for you.

If you plan your time in the office well you will leave with your manager’s appreciation and a check covering your expenses. If there is no check, suck it up and think of it as an investment in your career.

GIVE CREDIT TO OTHERS

New teams and new projects start with one common thread, insecurity.

Even the “Rah!Rah!Rah!” projects are really just railing against the fear that they will fail or be mediocre at best. Knowing this gives you a leg up. If everyone is insecure, how can you help?

Remember you are only in front of them for a short time before you fade into the background of your home office. So, find ways to give them credit for stuff you do while you are there. If you make them shine in the office they will remember you out of the office. Remember, you have already achieved telecommuting status. They have to face the coffee breath of their cube mates.

So give them some kindness – you will build your new relationships and set up the pathway to trust if they know that you aren’t there to stab them in the back.

WHEN YOU GO HOME, STAY AVAILABLE

There is a tendency in all of us to think once we’ve done a job it’s done. But for the telecommuter that is not true. Office folks turn up together the day after so the bonding continues. The telecommuter is not there so the bonds become more tenuous.

What people like after meeting you is to meet you again, a replication of their normal office experience. As a telecommuter you need to make that happen for them and you do it with the telephone, IM, and video chat.

Don’t rely on email during this time. Email is a cold task driver which has only three decisions for us; reply, delete or diarize. All of these are work related.

You are building bonds so don’t make work, make rest. Let them see you, hear you, and interact with you. It doesn’t take long to make a bond and only a bit of work to maintain it, so make the effort. The bond with your colleague builds trust. With it, you will become part of the new landscape.

Work as hard at rebuilding trust with your new workmates as you would if it was your first day on the job. Despite your tenure and accolades, it is your first day. Make it a great one.

Can You Stop a Data Tsunami?

September 13, 2018 By davidwp

So, Your Customer’s Data is Lying?

Most clients can tell you stories about their data. Sometimes you can’t solve them without asking your client to throw tons of money at the problem. And that can strain your relationship. Costs can threaten your circle of trust. Not good. You want to solve problems in ways fair to you and fair to them.

Your customer knows the day their first report gave them bad answers. That was “The Day.” They call you, you have a look, and tell them the cost of fixing it – a leaky faucet. They think they can manage it on their own, so they don’t have to pay to repair the root cause.

Instead, they hire someone to “manage” reports. But that new manager asks the staff to stop what they’re doing and ‘validate THE REPORTS.’

After a few days, they deliver. And, it’s still wrong.

It’s stopping your client from moving forward on a new idea. Now, their staff is behind in their work. Their HR person is looking for a root cause … in the employees who work for them. Some quit, some try harder. But the data is now a full-time job, and everyone hates it.

They’re at the edge of a Tsunami.

The leaks expand, the system slows down, and failure is just on the horizon. Their competitor beats them to market. They lose market share. Guess who they call? Yep, now it’s your turn!

Are you ready to face their tsunami? Do you want me to stand with you? I will help you.

With a 20 year career with both large and small players like JP Morgan Chase, Best Buy, Washington Mutual, Ford Motor Credit, North American Insurance, Hannon Technology, and Data Educators I know data. I know it better than most.

At the core of each of these problems is analysis and communication. That is the job I do well. I communicate solutions after I do my research. My analysis finds answers. Then I write:

findings and summaries
visualizations that show the problems,
white papers showing options,
case studies explaining how others solved their problems, and
recommendations for new software or consulting services, so the data stop telling lies.

We’ll Tame the Tsunami.

I solve problems for companies handicapped by their data. — Companies ready to grow but held back by the cost of managing their data problems. They’ve seen the tsunami. I write to show them the path forward.

I help companies change their data into a well-controlled stream, rich in resources. As a technical copywriter with 20 years of broad data experience, I make their data talk without you breaking a sweat. You’ll show them what it’s saying, and they’ll be ready for your next suggestion.

I change data into actionable information in simple and understandable terms. And quietly help you keep your customers keep you in their circle.

Let me help.

Published Article Sample – Three Myths You Should Know About Risk Management

January 6, 2015 By davidwp

Risk management takes real skills, developed over time, with tools to formulate options for any series of events that may occur during the life of a project. Those options range from negative risk, where an event will harm the project, to positive risks, where an event reveals a new opportunity to pursue.

But the real challenge is when a black swan appears. Black swans are big, bad, unanticipated catastrophes that force change. Sometimes referred to a VUCA and demanded a new way of thinking and responding to risk.

Black swans aren’t restricted to weather. In finance, they present mathematical challenges that earn Nobel Prizes for those who find new ways of modeling for the risks they represent, folks like Robert Engle.

The 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis was a black swan. Recently, the graduate school at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby Canada took a deep-dive into how black swan events affected Value at Risk (VaR) strategy and published a case study on the top four methods used to set on a 10 million student services fund it has been building since 2003.

The study, while looking at the best of the best in risk management practices, pointed to three myths about which we should be aware.

One: Things Work When We Choose a Best Practices Strategy.

The low-risk model, HS, over-estimated Swan for one year. That means the fund didn’t take advantage of stocks that were actually in positions to increase returns.
73% of banks use HS – that activity holds back investments that could stimulate growth only because the model is deficient, not because the opportunity was bad.

Two: What’s Good For a Fortune 50 Company is Good For Us.

There is inconsistency even among the biggest players who are responsible for protecting the public from financial risk.
In a study of VAR among the “Big 5” Canadian banks, researchers Xiaoya Chen and Duo Zheng studied data from 4340 trading days, including the beginning of the black swan. During that time a total of 43 exceptions (days where losses exceed the VaR) were acceptable to regulators, but 47 exceptions were created. When they drilled down into each bank, they found larger variances with two of the banks (BNS and TD) very close to the norm and two others BMO and RBC) significantly exceeding it.
Even among the biggest players in the same industry risk is seen differently. To hold them up as a standard for project managers to use is foolhardy.

Three: Choosing a Well Engineered Best Practice Means We Can Short-cut Analysis

In the SIAS fund, the risk management strategy was weakened by the governance process focused on individual stock volatility rather than portfolio risk. They used seven teams to make strategic decisions which would go through a voting process resulting in a slow turnover and trading frequencies. The advisors, including three from top Canadian banks, tended to review the effectiveness of the team and how well past strategies held up. Rather than deep dive into the details of the chosen VaR, the methods used were accepted as industry standard.
It wasn’t until Hsieh and El-Hourani took on a more in-depth analysis of the portfolio for their thesis that it came to light that the ratios used for individual stock evaluation were flawed when looking at the collection. The short-cuts were taken, despite using best practices and industry standards were not good enough to optimize results and the black swan event pointed out the deficiency in the strategy.