Airline companies should reward on time passengers and good customers...

Just another upgrade story

I just flight with US Airways and I would like to relate some interesting story that happens to me and is, I think, shared by most of the airline industry.

I was late for various reasons :

• somehow, my Nexus card was flagged as "deactivated" and I spend half an hour at the custom instead of my usual 2 minutes as it is the case when Nexus is working as expected (+30 minutes).
• The airport parking was full (because of work done on the parking lot) and I had to use the the shuttle parking (+10 minutes)
• Security was finding again and again some "large metallic item" in my bag and it was emptied and scanned 8 times (IIRC). It look like it was my keys that causes this (I used the same backpack and the same keys on more than 50 flights without any problem !] (+30 minutes).

During my security adventure, I could see the departure gate emptying and every passenger getting on board. I was not able to hear the announcements but when I was finally able to present myself at the gate, the lady told me "too late, you were supposed to be on board 10 minutes ago, your seat has been re-assigned". Been there, done that anyway so I remain calm and ask the only meaningful question I can think off :"are you sure the plane is at complete capacity ?".

The lady recounted the boarding passes (by hand, not using any computer which I found funny and slightly disturbing) and then visited the plane.
At the end, she came back in a hurry and told me I was lucky : some place were available ... in first class.

Another happy first class passenger  ...  but wait : is this ethical ?

Of course, I was happy with the experience and I'm writing this post from
a very comfortable seat with first class service reflecting on this particular
fact from a marketing and ethical point of view.

I'm not a bad customer as I fly quite often and from a business point of view
it make sense to give me some reward. However, the decision to upgrade me was not at all based on this information but on the sole fact that I was a bad
customer : I was late for the flight.

How come I have been rewarded for a bad behaviour ? Does it encourage me to
come up early ?

My advice to airlines companies 

I'm sure that passengers that came early and are good customers are the one you want to reward. Not the one that are randomly late !

Please encourage ethical behaviour and reward

• your on-time passengers
• your good customers

In 2010, this should be an easy function to implement in your CRM : as long as
it will not delay the flight departure, moving a couple of passengers and then
assigning the remaining seats to the late passengers seems way more ethical and
that assigning the remaining (and sometime excellent) seats to the latest passenger...

How to help large organizations to contribute open source project ?

Context

During the 2010 thinktank in Napa, one of the participant asked the audience the following question "How could we help organizations to contribute to Open Source software".

The problem is the following : most of the large organizations rely on open source software one way or another. There is not necessarily an official policy about FLOSS usage but system engineers and IT administrators & developers tends to use and deploy Open Source software.

In this context, and because, more-often than not, this software is critical to one or several business unit, in theory, it should be easy to contribute.

Hypothesis : IP protection and no open source policy

The problem is more acute for large organization because there is, more often than not, a legal department and some policies are in place to guide workers. Those policies are in place to protect industrial secret and more generally IP of those organizations.

In those organization, more often than not, there is no open source policy : open source leaders do not necessarily have corporate support and, as a consequence, those projects tends to be hidden/not widely publicized.

How to improve the situation : patchs & minor contributions ?

A public Open Source policy (like the one from the government of California) should be published : the goal is not really to have non-open source users contribute but simply to help open source projects to become more publicized inside the organization. It is a clear sign that Open Source is welcome in town !

Lawyers should become involved at this point in order to define a "contribution policy" for the organization. The main question to answer is : Is the corporation OK to contribute with his own name and (c) on the code or not (for marketing, business or fear of liabilities reasons).

If the organization is OK to be involved and become a more or less official contributor of the projects then, proceed to next step.

If the organization is not OK to be involved, the idea is to use a partner : more often than not an Open Source integrator that will be able to somehow "white label" the contributions and, as a consequence, cut any potential liability between the organization and the contributions (as a matter of fact, we already did this for several customers : they did not want their name to appear in the patch for various reasons).

Once this legal issue is defined, then the CIO should then publish a "contribution guideline" that officially allows and encourage bugfix, patches, documentation update and contribution to be made by internal IT either directly or indirectly (via a partner). The goal of this guideline is not, once again, to _force_ contribution : it simply show the path and will make contributing easy and possible for everyone in the organization.

As contribution become more common, good practice should be encouraged : an internal blog or intranet can be set-up to list every contribution in order to reinforce the positive attitude and to create rock stars among their peers : top contributors could be awarded some really cool things like ... attending the developer meeting of their proffered technology, attend training session or technical training, etc.

Contributing to a community is a good thing and you could then suggest the marketing & communication department to publicize your contributions to the open source community. HT department will be interested as well by this as you will be able to attract highly skilled and motivated IT professionals.


How to improve the situation : major improvements, plugins, new projects ?

In this case, the situation is a bit more complex. We did several consulting sessions for customers that really wanted to open source either a complete project or certain area of the code. Most of those projects were initiated by the IT department and let's say that the relation with the legal department was very very conflictual.

One of the root cause of this conflict is the fact that the legal department was not part of the initial project team, they were seen as a necessary evil and ... they behave as such ;-)

Lesson learned : please, involve your legal department as soon as possible. Propose them to work with a lawyer firm specialized in open source IP and licensing. Have them have lawyers luncheons and let them decide of the funny things like license and IP management for the project. 


Initially, I would recommend to start with small scale project. Ideally, select an existing add-on, plugins, piece of code. Once you can have a small success and contribute one component, you can expect the process to become more and more routine like.

After some successful projects, we could even envision an official "open-source policy" for any project that is not part of the core business/specificity of your organization but I don't think that this should be a goal : this is a consequence of the normalization or major contribution. The same concepts apply : you should celebrate success, list contribution and eventually publicize them !

Before any open-source release, you should have a process in place. The process could be very simple (in our company, this is a very simple form that ask for the Open Sourcing of a project) in order to make sure that : you own the code that you want to open source (it seems evident but ... is it ? Do you have cut&paste some code snippet, have some of your code been developed by sub-contractors, etc.) and then you can make sure that the code is not something you want to offer to your competitors. Finally, you can select the appropriate license based on your own legal department advice but also based on the type of license in use by this specific open source community.


Conclusion


I think that those small steps could really help large organizations to contribute more to the open source software they are using. Those ideas are grounded, easy to implement and easy to put in application. 

• The "contribution barrier" will be lowered inside the organization
• It will reveal a clear path for open source contributors
• It will reveal a clear path for starting open source projects
• Legal department will feel respected and part of the solution
• Internal publicity (blog/intranet) will reinforce the process inside the organization

Ubuntu : I am because we are (book review)

When I noticed this book in Washingon Dulles airport, as a Ubuntuer myself, I did not resist the urge to buy it ;-)

My initial understanding of "Ubuntu" was the one stated on Ubuntu Site : "Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world."

As such, I was already genuinely interested by the subject and surprised that it was a much more complex and structured philosophy than I expected. For more on this subject, please consult Wikipedia Ubuntu_philosophy page.

The book is very easy to read and lightweight : this is a kind of initiatory novel where the hero evolves from a stressed, social hurt, on the edge of loosing his job because of work-induced problems (recent evolution to a managerial job, overtime, no family life/divorce, etc.) to a much more ethical and peaceful state of mind. The company will be transformed as well by this philosophy.

The change agent is a young man from South-Africa that happens to embodied the Ubuntu philosophy : he _is_ Ubuntu ! The large corporation where all the characters are working is in a difficult position : the financial crisis is partly in cause and the ethics and core values are not shared anymore by the employees. Business units operates independently and everyone wants to reach its objectives without consideration for the other humans and business units.

The Ubuntu philosophy is explained, on step at a time, and it is truly revealed when, a team is visiting South-Africa thanks to a HR department contest.

But what is Ubuntu ?

Instead of citing passages of the book, I will refer to the Wikipedia Ubuntu_philosophy  page :
Archbishop Desmond Tutu further explained Ubuntu in 2008:

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu - the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality - Ubuntu - you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

I have found numerous common point with Buddhism (that I practice) in particular the respect ("don't be evil") and interconnection of every human being (but not only!).

This book is very easy to read and very inspiring as it reunite the "evil" corporate world (especially since the financial crisis) with a more ethical world. While I compare Ubuntu to Buddhism, the book is not religious or even philosophical : the wisdom of Ubuntu flow slowly as the book plots and characters appears. They progress along the path as the reader discover the Ubuntu philosophy.

Out-standing Employer

I'm very proud to be the CEO of a young company that recently obtained a certification called "Out-standing Employer" (Newspaper link , in French only : Employeur Remarquable). This certification is original because the auditors are all the team members (this is very different from most certification, like ISO9001:2000 where official auditors are not members of the team : this is an external audit process).

The certification is done from two point of view :

• Every team member fills a 141 questions survey that is completely anonymous (i.e. : managed by a third party that will not reveal the individual results : only averages and only for groups > 5 people). This is a key advantage compared to internal survey : truth can be spoken out !
  
• Managers fill the same 141 questions and are conducting an auto-evaluation of the sames practices.

During the same process, the importance of every criteria is assessed by the team members and managers.

This gave a very interesting managerial practices :

• What the team members define as important vs what the manager define as important
• The performance evaluated by the team members vs the performance perceived by the managers

Those results are then mapped on an Importance (X axis) vs Performance (Y axis) graphic as well as other representation (comparison team/manager, ratio performance/importance, etc.). Those graphs are very interesting as they allow team members and managers as well to :

• Visualize the strengths and weaknesses of the company managerial practices
• Rate, by importance, the managerial practice

The company (site in French only at this time) that created the certification is also providing an analysis of the complete data-set. They also generate an action plan :

• Strong points : What is very important for the team, perform well, but could perform better
• Weak points : What is performing OK/badly but is important for the team (65% and more importance)
• Analysis by age-group, department, physical location, etc. with corresponding strong and weak points (minimal sample size is 5 to have access to the statistics)
• Values of the company as measured by the survey : what interest the team members. This is a very precious results that you can use to recruit like-minded people that share the same value as the team.

The certification is awarded only to the teams that have 65% of the most important managerial practice that have a performance of 65% or better.

This certification reinforce my personal motto : " I prefer to work with motivated people than working to motivate people !". This is true, as far as I know, for partners, shareholders, investors, employee, customers.

What to do when a good executive (VP Operation) is leaving ?

Context

We/I recently hired a VP Operation (three months ago). Let's call him B. As a young/startup type company, it was the first time a manager was not coming from internal promotion. As such, we (HR, executives) knew that this was a risky operation. However, we ended up taking a long time discussing this possibility with the (then) candidate. Because we already had both a business relationship (we did some project with the candidate, then our client) and a partnership relationship (we build together a very successful city-wide community network) everybody involved was confident that the association would be a success : human fit was excellent, technical people that worked with the candidate were extremely positive and respectful, etc.).

Integration : can do better

Integration was OK but not great. Once again, we are much more used to integrate technical people/engineer/developers type than the exec/manager type and our tools tend to be technical/power user oriented. So my retrospective view on the integration was that it was somehow painful and we should do better next time (ex: provide a Linux thin-client & laptop early on, FF with bookmarks for our systems, visit one or several customers ASAP, visit one or several prospect, meeting with our key suppliers/partners, etc.). So integration was good but could be improved.


Delegation : OK

This was, for me, the big unknown. As one of the founder of Revolution Linux and C.E.O., I ran most of the operations since the inception of the company and well, I was not very clear about what I should delegate and what I should not. My idea was to leave some space and then decide together what was my responsibility and what would become B.'s responsibility.

After one month, things were well set up : Portfolio management, product development and Finance/Administration for B., Sales/Marketing/Communication/Strategy for me. We were in the middle of a financing round so B. has to put lots of efforts and energy on those areas.

Moving full speed : not OK

Well, with all this define and everybody now ready to change things, I was pretty confident that we were going to full speed in the following months. I was feeling some "holding back" from B. on certain subject. I was then attributing this behavior to the fact that I'was/am very busy and spend most of my time out of the office (hey ! that was the goal after all!) so building our relationship was slower than planned. My reaction was to give more space and confidence proof to B. : this was supposed to demonstrate my confidence in his abilities, skils and define more precisely his area of responsability.

Announce day : feeling ... good !


One day, B. as a seasoned executive asked for a meeting and told me the news in a very professional way : he made his decision and was going to leave. His old job was still open and he was going back to his old position. Already was ready: list of hot projects, task list, plan, etc. We decided about the communication plan and who will be contacted when.

Well, first of all, of course I was surprised !

But I was not necessarily in a bad state of mind (i.e.: angry, etc.) when exiting his office and that's because one of my core value is the following : "I want to work with motivated people, not working to motivate people". So, in my heart, I knew that someone that is not motivated will be a liability for the success of Revolution Linux. The higher the position, the worst effect it can have on all of the teams.

So in a sense, I think that the world would be a better place if everybody was displaying the same courage : knowing when to leave and being able to do so without frustrating anyone is, for me, a proof of respect and courage. I would even add that the sooner you announce it (after you decided!), the better it is for all the parties. Don't wait a day : make your plan and announce it as soon as possible.


As a consequence, I have a lot of respect for B. and his course of actions and I really hope that we will keep a good relationship (even if is no more part of the Linux Revolution ;-).


Immediate reaction

Well, the first thing I did was to move my office back in B.'s office. In the following months, I'm in charge of all the company, not only the Sales/Marketing department and I did not want anyone to have a single doubt about this.

Communication : decide how to communicate and announce this the team (well, not me directly : planned holidays)


Professional todo update : decide what would be my next actions because I was suddenly taking ownership of every of B.'s projects.



Lessons Learned

Emptiness/void point of view : 

• This can be seen as a failure to integrate a highly skilled individual
• It can also be seen as a failure to motivate somebody.
• Time loss (recruitment process, integration, etc.)

Positive point of view :

I really think that focusing on the emptiness is an erroneous view of the world : each individual experienced the world in a unique way. It is not our job to "integrate" or "motivate" people. We can only offer our best and a good platform that will lower the entry barriers and allow individuals to express themselves.


If this environment and platform is not working for them, the sooner it is over the better.


In the process, I've learned a lot more : I asked myself some hard questions (I am still fit for the job, is it my passion, is it in sync with my core values, etc.) and the answer was yes for all of them ! 

During his time with us, B. was able to reform certain processes and bring his own experience to the table and this changing things in a very positive way

Scott Berkun "Confession" review

Book Review : "Confession of a Public Speaker", by Scott Berkun

I have found the Confessions to be very informative and to the point. In this book, Scott Berkun is somehow doing a complicated exercise : sharing his own experience of public speaking requires something that can be compared, somehow, to a kind of "mental strip tease". Most of the book is build around some episodes of Scott Berkun's life. Sharing very personal story about his life could have produced a boring and uninteresting book (aka me, myself and I) but this is not the case.

Because the book is very grounded, the experiences that are shared are always interesting and completely integrated into the story. Also, the book includes a lot of experiences from other famous (or not!) public speakers in order to illustrate certain points.

Several key points are covered in a nice chapter per chapter approach. Each of the point somehow resonate with my own (limited) experience as a public speaker and because of this connexion, It is very easy to understand and benefit from the book.


Occidental people in general and north american in particular tend to confuse theoretical knowledge and practical experience : after reading a book or two and after having watched a video or two, we tend to become very quickly a martial art master or a buddhist Yogi. Scott Berkun is very careful to destroy this myth in every bit of advice that he shares and I really think that this is a key point here.


Like Malcom Gladwell in Outliers (10 000 hours of practice of any activity will make you a world class performer) training and practice are at the center of the book. Exactly like a professional athlete, you have to practice and practice again, using camera or Webcam, until you are confident and the story you are going to tell, in public, flow naturally. Once you are comfortable with your talk/storyline (your performance but also your supporting material : slides, video, handouts, etc.) then you have a chance to perform well in front of a crowd. And back to practice again : the more you will talk to a crowd, the better you will be...


No silver bullet here : work work and work again.


I have found a lot of very interesting experience, hints and advice : how to repeat, practical advices on how to be yourself (somehow!) on stage, test the room where you will perform, what to do if ... the room is empty, you forgot your slides, the crowd is angry, etc. 


All in all a very honest and practical book that will benefit anyone that has to publicly speak. In my mind and in no particular order : scientists/students that have to present they research (especially M.Sc., Ph.D. : practice your show !), teachers of any level (how to engage your students), managers of any level (how to engage your employee), salesman that present during show/conventions/conferences (how to engage your prospects/future customers).