Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

My twelve year journey with this company – seeing it grow its customer base, and product range, from nothing to be quite substantial – has been one of great learning for me.

Of my greatest areas of learning has been with respect to others within in the company.  I have struggled, at times, due to my lack of prior experience and preparation.

For some time I’ve been pondering the apparent paradoxes across a variety of books and other materials I’ve read – with respect to the concept of Strengths and Weaknesses.

Where I have read this, it has been with respect to an individual’s own strengths and weaknesses – however I believe that the pointers that I’ve learnt are also applicable at an organisational level (where a strength is more commonly termed “competitive advantage”).

After quite a bit of reflection, it currently* seems that to be truly strong, an individual (or a company) needs to have the right combination of all three of the following factors:

* I say “currently”, as it seems that the learning journey I am on almost guarantees that my view will become even more nuanced in future.

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Had almost reached the end of this book and was thinking that (whilst it did contain some worthwhile information), it did not totally do it for me….

The Book	What we thought
“Know-How: the 8 skills that separate people who perform from those who don’t” by Ram Charan	Solid, not stellar – but the letter’s worth reading!

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…and then I reached his “Letter to a Future Leader”, included at the end of the book (p265) …

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I was pointed to this post on the Esther Derby blog by some discussion on one of the many groups I’ve joined on LinkedIn.

With Shirlaws reminding me that one of the enduring roles of the CEO being to coach (and not play), I am keen to learn as much as I can about this increasingly important part of my role in the company.

In my 20 years of professional experience, I’ve gained a fair exposure to a wide range of aspects of the competitive electricity market – and have some clear ideas about the needs of our broad range of clients, and how we can delight them with the software we develop.

The role of “coach”, however, is not something in which I have gained extensive experience.  Hence I’m keen to (and need to) learn as much as I can.

Nothing else to say now – just want to keep a record of this post for future reference.

After posting my review of Kent Beck’s webinar back in November, I contacted Kent to confirm it was ok with him to publish.

As part of doing this,  I asked Kent if there were good people in Australia who could provide us assistance in transitioning to Agile.

Hence, Kent pointed us at Steve Hayes of Cogent Consulting, who we have been recently using to provide us some greater understanding of different aspects of Agile (though I read recently that Steve is planning to leave)!

This post is the 2nd draft, and is still a work-in-progress.  Check back later for updates!

As part of the Autopsy 2 process, I have been working one-on-one with the firm Shirlaws.

One facet of their engagement has been to work with me on improving my leadership.

Their approach (which I accept) is that the disappointments that have come our way have been ultimately my responsibility (whether it’s been because of the “wrong people on the bus”, or the wrong culture, or insufficient direction, or whatever).

The corollary of this is that it’s also my responsibility to fix whatever’s broken.  This I am in the process of doing (following on from the Autopsy 2 process).

Part of what they are helping me to understand is that the CEO should have 3 core enduring roles, which should continue to be my focus well into the future.

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Back on 29th July, I had the good fortune of attending an event provided by the IIB entitled “Building the Resilient Company”.  I posted some comments about this at the time here.

During this event, I heard a presentation by Evan Fortune (one of the founders of Vision 6) and was impressed with his story.

In his presentation, Evan mentioned a couple of consultants/coaches they had utilised to work through some of the muddle in which they had found themselves as a result of the growth they had experienced over several years.

I met with Evan on a couple of occasions following from this, and learned more of his story.  I learned of the small firm, Sound Reasoning, that had been involved with Evan since the early days of the company and were no-nonsense coaches.

Based on what Evan told us of their successes with his firm, we opted to give Sound Reasoning a try – calling them in as one of several external resources during the Autopsy 2 process.

Stay tuned to this blog for more details about how much value we gain from Sound Reasoning!