I’m sorry, it’s very loud here. Can you say that again? You are or are not seeing the issue with the Secondary Lending calls? Are? Okay. Go ahead and start tracking them. Same drill, have them help the clients if possible otherwise ask them to call back. Hold on just a minute. I’ll be right back. . .
I placed my phone and the ubiquitous one-sided headphones down between the pizza and the pitcher of rootbeer. Picking up a marbled black ball, I took a deep breath and threw it down the alley at the waiting ten pins.
I barely noticed as the ball connected perfectly and knocked them all sprawling. Good. I didn’t have to throw the second ball to try to pick up a spare.
Yeah, this is Rodney. I’m back. Can you give me a status check on the agents in Lexington? Are they seeing any improvement at all?
Such was my Saturday. My company had a charity bowling event to benefit Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Utah. It was planned months in advance. We’d held bake sales and sold raffle tickets and put up posters around our buildings in Salt Lake City asking employees to donate, or form a team and join. I was invited by a former manager to join his team.
I didn’t want to go. It’s not that I’m against helping others, and Big Brothers and Big Sisters is certainly a worthy organization that does fantastic work. It’s just that I work a lot of hours and Saturdays are generally reserved for kids and family. But, I also know that it’s the extra things we choose to do that people remember. Much of my work is accomplished via influence and relationships. And if it took a Saturday bowling to help strengthen a relationship with that team, then, it was a worthwhile tradeoff.
What I didn’t expect was to get a call at 7:30 Saturday morning that one of my sites was down. It quickly became obvious that all of my sites were down. I reached out to the client and joined their outage bridge on my headset, and assembled my team on a conference call on my other headset. But, 7:30 is a long way away from the bowling start time of 11:30. I figured we’d be done in plenty of time.
But, I did have to shower and get dressed.
Hey, sounds like we’re in a bit of a waiting period. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be right back.
The clock kept ticking and we were no closer to solving the problem. Well, I should point out that the problem existed on the client end. We were waiting on their engineering team to fix the problem. And we waited. And waited. Soon, it was time for me to leave for the event.
I need to switch to a single phone. I’m going to be using my cell phone and bouncing back and forth between the two calls. Bear with me, if you need something, it might be a minute before I check back in.
Off to Fat Cats in Salt Lake City with my Apple headphones with the left bud cut off, firmly planted in my ear. I arrived shortly before the 11:30 start time. The parking lot was packed and there was a line of people out of the door. Fortunately, as a team member, I assumed I got to skip the line. (I was going to anyway, but it was nice to know it was allowed.)
Rodney! Where have you been? Hurry up and get your costume on. We’re about to start and they want to do pictures.
My friend had purchased “Rock Star” Halloween costumes for the members of the team. I wore the bright red jacket and zebra striped pants. Other team members had stars and lightening bolts painted on their faces with “big hair” fake wigs. As we gathered for multiple pictures, I discretely removed the earphones as each photographer took their turn.
I still had a job to do.
We worked out a strategy where I would stand on the far side of the arcade, away from the noise of the balls hitting the pins, the music and the really loud announcements. As it was my turn to bowl, my team waved me over and I put my call on hold.
I’m not a great bowler. Apparently being distracted helps. I bowled a 123 for the first game. I upped that to a 133 for the second game. But, more importantly, I managed to get my four sites to validate the client changes were effective. I also then reviewed the spreadsheets from each site that track our number of impacted agents. When the outage was over (about half way through the first game) I quickly tracked down the site director for our Salt Lake City office and updated him on the impact. (He was bowling three lanes over from us.)
The company provided pizza and drinks and multiple prizes, including trophies for the team with the “best costume.”
Yep, I’ve now joined the ranks of middle-aged American men everywhere. I own a bowling trophy.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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No, that is a completely misleading headline. This post is about cars and bottled water, but not together. Sorry, if you want the hydrogen powered car post, you should probably stop reading now.
Dad, where are the different cars made?
Well, most cars are made in the US, Japan or Germany. For example, Dodge is an American brand.
What about Chrysler?
That’s the same thing as Dodge.
Then why do don’t they call it the same?
I saw a movie a few years ago called, “Return To Me.” It was your classic romantic comedy that centered around a woman who dies and donates her organs. Her boyfriend ends up dating the woman who got her heart. (Yeah, not your typical funny premise.) Anyway, there was a scene where a woman at a restaurant demands a certain brand of bottled water. As it’s delivered, she remarks, “You really can tell the difference that quality makes.”
What she didn’ know, but we as the audience got to see was the waitress dumped out the bottled water and refilled the bottle with tap water before serving it to her. The woman was impressed with the bottle, not what was in it. I carry around a water bottle. It’s the evian(r) brand. That’s often considered an “expensive” water.
I said, I carry the bottle, I don’t necessarily like evian(r) water. In fact, I only have it so I can reuse the bottle. It’s the perfect size for those powered drink mixes. And the evian(r) bottle, unlike other water bottles is completely smooth inside. I spin the water into a mini tornado and quickly dump the drink mix in to get a more even mixture. I’ve tried removing the label, but the glue they use is really high quality.
The point is that people see the outside and instantly make judgements about the inside.
Actually, Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth are all owned by the same company and are often just different names of the same car.
What do you mean?
Well, we used to own a Dodge Caravan. That is pretty much exactly the same car as a Chysler Town and Country. It’s just cheaper. It’s also the same basic car as the Plymouth Voyager, just with some added features and more expensive. People will pay more for the name even if it’s the same car.
Make sure when you are evaluating something, be it a job candidate, a book, a car or a bottle of water, that you are paying at least as much attention to what is inside as what is outside.
(Oh, and don’t try to make your car run on bottled water. Not even if it’s evian(r).)
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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My world will get bigger this year, and a little smaller. Two of my daughters are expecting babies this year. One in April, one in August. The miracle of birth is one of the most common occurances in the world, and yet still a miracle everytime. My friend Steve Hofstetter who has no children, commented about babies. . and pizza.
It takes more effort to order a pizza than does to have a child. Has anyone ever ordered a pizza by accident? Just opened the door, “How’d this pizza get here?”
Steve’s a professional comedian. And it’s true that life is common, more common than pizza possibly. But, it’s also precious and wonderful. This isn’t really a post about babies. . .much.
Like babies, company’s are also born. Every company has a date on which it started. Sometimes, it’s with great fanfare. Sometimes, it’s a couple of guys in a garage who realize they need a business license to sell their software. Sometimes those businesses get really, really big. They grow up and take on a life of their own. Sometimes, they outlive their parents, or founders.
Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. And while Woz is still with us and hopefully will be for a long time, Jobs passed on. Sometimes companies grow up and move out of their parent’s house. Microsoft, was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. And while both of them are very much alive, neither one is involved with the company anymore.
Just as companies are born, they can also die. WordPerfect, was founded by Alan Ashton and Bruce Bastian. At one point it was the biggest software company in the world. (Before Google and bigger than Microsoft or Apple.) But, WordPerfect found itself out of step with a changing marketplace. Technically they were “acquired” by Novell back in 1992. In actuality, the company that started life as Satelite Software International (because one of the founders saw the initials SSI on the side of a train car and found it interesting) ceased to be a separate company. It died. Many of my friends and I mourned its passing.
This year marks the end of The Ringling Brothers And Barnum and Bailey Circus. Like WordPerfect, they found themselves out of step with a changeing world. Ticket sales fell and we all started questioning the morality of dancing elephants. The Circus was 146 years old. Older than any person could live, but still not immortal.
Twenty years ago, the big scandal was the failure of Barings Bank. Founded in 1762, a single employee managed to kill it by mismanaging the banks assets. Two hundred and thirty three years is a good run.
I’ve started businesses. Some of them, like RESMARK, a reservation software company for the rafting industry, are still around. Others like Purple Crayon Club Consulting, were never designed to have a long life and are gone.
A close family member, after 83 years and a full life will most likely leave us this week. My life will be a little smaller as a result. It was a good life.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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But I’ve always found my way somehow
By taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
– “The Long Way Around” by the Dixie Chicks
Which is better? The shortest route or the quickest? Suppose the question was “What’s the best way to get down off the roof of a building?” Not sure I want to go shortest or quickest. Sometimes, the long way is preferable. I drive about 45 minutes to work most days. It’s about 40 miles, but much of it is at 70-80 MPH freeway speeds. At the very end of my commute, I have to get off the freeway. The shortest route is to get off at Bangerter Highway. There’s a light at the exit, of course. Then, a half mile down Bangerter there’s another light to turn left. And then it’s city streets to my building.
I don’t go that way. Instead, I drive another mile down the 201 freeway to the 15600 West exit. The exit ramp turns into a no-stop right turn. A half mile down the road, there’s a right-turn-only lane that never has traffic. And the city streets coming from the “back” side of the building are deserted. It’s a longer drive.
Is it shorter time? I have no idea. I don’t care.
I get to work at about 7:00AM, Salt Lake City traffic isn’t as bad as many cities. At 7:00AM there are a couple of slow spots that I mostly avoid by buying a ticket to the car pool lane.
Going home is another matter. The roads start filling up about 3:00pm and are pretty slow until after 6:00pm. Most of the time I avoid the freeway and take a series of backroads that take me through wheat fields and skirt the mountains. It’s a longer drive.
Is it shorter time? Nope. Not even close. At the best of times it’s 30 minutes longer. When the freeways are jammed, it’s still a little longer. I take it anyway.
I’ve decided that driving, while being about getting me from point A to point B, is also about the journey. I’d rather spend the more time driving in the shadow of the mountains driving around grain trucks, than save a half hour poking along in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Business is about results. One of my favorite movies is Mannequin starring Andrew McCarthy. He goes through a series of failed jobs, one of which is being a mannequin maker.
What do you think? I think she turned out pretty good. I figure I can knock out three or four of these per week.
Per week? You’re supposed to be doing three or four per day! You’re fired!
So, it might seem strange to consider “take the long way” as having an application in business. But, I absolutely think it does. My job requires that I travel. Sometimes I travel a lot (eight of the first ten weeks in 2016.) It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of getting packed, getting to the airport, getting through security, getting to the gate, getting off the plane, getting your luggage, getting your rental car, getting to the hotel, getting to bed, getting up to go to your meeting, getting back to the hotel, getting ready to go home.
Honestly, it can be exhausting. I try to make sure that as much as possible, I enjoy the journey. I had a jam packed trip to the Middle East and Southern Europe a few years ago. I intentionally booked an extra day in Athens because. . .ATHENS! I made sure to hit a crawdad place when I was in Shreveport, LA.
One of my job responsibilities is to coordinate phone calls when there’s an outage at one of my call centers. These calls can be high stress, but mostly they feature long periods of dead space. They can be very boring and very stressful at the same time. I’m often on the calls with the same group of people. I “take the long road.” How? By realizing that while we all are working on this problem, we are also all people with lives and kids (or not) and pets (or not.) It’s amazing how much it relieves the tension during a lull in the troubleshooting to offer up a,
So Mary, whatever happened with your dog’s surgery?
Joe, how’d your son do in his tournament. Was that last week?
Do these type questions help us get to resolution on our technical issue faster? Are they part of the “shortest path?” Nope. They are the long way.
But, if you have to be on a long trip/call, at least try to make it more enjoyable.
Take the long way.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Jim, I just watched my planet be destroyed. I am emotionally compromised.
– Mr SpockThe first one who gets mad, loses.
– Lloyd V Bliss
It was a pivotal scene, remember? James Kirk had to convince Mr. Spock that he was too emotionally unstable to captain the Enterprise. He had to do this by forcing someone who was trained to not show emotion to actually show emotion. He was successful, but it almost killed him.
By losing his temper, Spock had to admit that he was emotionally compromised. He got mad and then he lost.
We have similar situations in our everyday lives. And our lives are WAY harder than piloting a starship. We have spouses that can get on our nerves, kids who won’t give up an issue until someone starts yelling, coworkers who have annoying habits, or disagree disagreeably.
It’s fun to “pop off.” To “let them have it.” A heated conversation gets our blood pumping and the fight or flight response kicks in and since we cannot run away from our jobs, or kids or spouse, we give into the release of getting angry.
And in every single case, as soon as we do that, we lose. It doesn’t matter the context. If you end up screaming at your kid because they’ve broken curfew one to many times and want to give you some attitude about it, you lose. If you get angry at your spouse because he went out and bought ANOTHER video game even though you aren’t sure if the rent money will be there, you lose. If you yell that your boss is being unreasonable, you lose.
The man who can keep his temper has an immense advantage over the man who can’t.
– Rodney Bliss
It does little good to know that you need to keep your temper and lose it anyway. But, knowing is the first step. If you can learn to channel that adrenaline into resolving the issue, or at least pursuing a solution, you both win.
And that is really the goal.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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The quickest way to kill motivation is to reward it.
Oh sure, that’s just a provacative statement to hook you and then I’m going to later tell you how it was actually false.
Nope.
I honestly believe it. And I think I can prove it. Let’s start with books. I love to read. At times I have to prevent myself from starting a book simply because I know that my love for reading will consume all of my time. I read plenty of non-fiction; business books mostly. But, I also love fiction. Louis L’Amore, the western writer is one of my favorites. Clive Cussler and his tales of adventures at sea is another. I loved Lord of The Rings as a kid, and I read most of the Harry Potter books.
My greatest joy was in seeing my kids develop a love of reading. The first time I caught them hiding a flashlight in their room to read late into the night, I had to act stern, but inside I was doing a happy dance. My granddaughter is almost 2 years old and in the few short months she’s been staying at our house, she’s developed a love of books. Goodnight Moon is a big hit at our house.
You know what would kill my kids love of reading?
If I started paying them for every book they read. And the bigger the incentive, the quicker they’d lose interest. It makes no sense. If they already love doing it and get satisfaction from it and I add an additional incentive, wouldn’t they love it twice as much?
No.
If I started paying them to read, they would start to depend on it. Soon, they would be calculating how much money they could earn over the summer by reading. And then, when I eventually withdrew the incentive? They would be resentful.
My father was a professional card player when I was growing up. He supported a family of six on what he was making playing poker. Yes, he was that good. But, he hated it. It wasn’t fun. It was a job and a stressful job, with terrible hours and a lousy work environment. But, it paid the bills.
It also killed his love of playing games.
My entire growing up life, my father never once played a card game, or any game with me or any of my siblings. He explained to me one time why.
Rodney, it’s just too frustrating to play for free and get a good hand and know how much that hand would be worth in a poker game.
Basically, he wasn’t going to play if he couldn’t get paid for it.
My friend Howard Tayler is a cartoonist. When he was working as a software manager, he drew for fun. After he became a cartoonist fulltime, he had to develop another hobby. Drawing, while still enjoyable, no longer provided the intrinsic pleasure that it had when he was doing it for fun.
I work with a boy scout troop. For a while I incented them to wear their uniform by providing treats. And if any scout wore a more complete uniform than I did at a meeting, they got a large chocolate bar. I “allowed” them each to eventually “catch” me without my scout hat or scarf. Each boy who wanted to, including my two sons, eventually won the candy bar and promptly quit wearing their uniform.
Lasting change comes about because of intrernal not external motivation. If I want to change someone’s behavior for a day or a week, I can provide an incentive. But, when the incentive is gone, so is the behavior. And if someone is personally motivated to behave a certain way, the quickest way to kill that motivation is to tie it to a reward.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I never wanted to be in management.
I know it sounds odd. And those who have worked for me might find it surprising, but I actively avoided management roles. I worked for the first 15 years of my career in an individual contributor role. When I started at Agile Studios, it was as a Customer Relationships specialist. My role was to work directly with the customers for our small developer shop. I didn’t have to sell, but I needed to meet with clients and provide them our finished results. I also met with them to gather requirements.
It was a great job. I was pretty good at it. And then the company president decided to shake up his management team. We had a really big project that would eventually spin off as RESMARK. In the mean time, Brent wanted to make other changes and he wanted me to take on a management role. . .he just wasn’t sure what to call it.
Well, Brent, you have two choices. You can call yourself CEO and make me the president. That’s actually the model that WordPerfect used early on. Or, you can remain the president and make me the Executive Vice President.
We both agreed that CEO was a bit too large a title for a little ten person development shop. So, I became the Executive Vice President. I was now responsible for meeting with customers, but also for hiring, firing, coaching, spending, accounts receivable, purchasing. . .you name it and if it wasn’t programming or selling, it was my responsibility.
I now found myself in the very position that I had actively avoided for years. And a strange thing happened; two strange things, actually. The first was that I liked it. Lots of people like being in charge. So, that wasn’t surprising. I could make decisions and then see them through. Sometimes I made the right decision. Sometimes I didn’t and had to correct. But, the second thing was that I found I was good at it. I made far fewer errors than good decisions. We continued to grow as a company and when it was time to spin-off RESMARK, Brent tapped me to become the president of the new company.
I’ve had management roles throughout the rest of my career. I continue to enjoy them, and I continue to have success. If it hadn’t been for a small start up in Orem, UT that needed a “designated grownup” I might have never pursued some of the most rewarding positions of my career.
Company: Agile Studies
Titles: Customer Replationship Manager, Executive Vice President
Years: 2004-2005
Best thing: Figuring out how to be an effective manager
Worst thing: That time our client didn’t pay and I had to tell 10 people they weren’t getting paid
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Which name do you think is more effective: Backroads Software or RESMARK?
Backroads Software. I like that one a lot!
We’re naming the company RESMARK.
That pretty much encapsalated my relationship with the company owner. RESMARK was a software company. Our owner owned a rafting company. He hired us and formed the company so that we could make reservation software for the rafting industry. You might think this is too narrow a niche and maybe even kind of pointless. But, most rafting companies in the US have about a 100 day season. It unofficially starts on Memorial Day and ends on Labor Day. During that time a large rafting company might handle 25,000 guests. That’s a lot of people to keep track of on a spreadsheet.
I was the company president at RESMARK. I was also the HR department. And Project Management. And pretty much anything else that didn’t involve writing code. I had a team of 10 developers working at RESMARK. We spent years in a previous company and in the newly spun off RESMARK company, building our software. We released on September 1, 2006. My relationship with the owner never really recovered. He knew more than I will ever know about marketing and the rafting industry. I knew more about making software than he will ever care to.
We attempted to educate each other, but ultimately parted ways. The company still exists today and the software is still in use.
Oh, and he was absolutely correct about the name. RESMARK, a blend of reservation and marketing described the product perfectly.
Company: RESMARK
Position: President
Years: 2006-2007
Best thing? Getting to hire and develop great programmers
Worst thing? . . .Well, you can guess from my description above
The end
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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If you live in the United States, you know that Monday February 20th was Presidents Day. (There’s actually debate over whether the apostrophe should be included: President’s, Presidents’ or Presidents. This post isn’t about that controversy.) We celebrate Presidents Day to remember Presidents Washington and Lincoln. There’s no question that Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809. He would have turned 208 last Sunday. It’s probably a good thing they did that statue of him in Washington based on when he was younger.
It’s less clear when George Washington’s birthday was. If you look at your calendar, it will clearly tell you that he was born on February 22, 1732. So, feel free to have a party today celebrating George’s 285 birthday. Just don’t expect George to show up for it. And not just because he’s been dead for 217 years.
See, George already celebrated the big 285 back on February 11. In fact, throughout his life George Washington consistently celebrated his birthday on February 11. . .even after the government switched it to February 22.
When Washington was born, the American colonies, as part of the British empire followed the Julian calendar. It was called Julian because it was conceived by Julius Ceasar. The process of days and months were put together by the famous general. He named a summer month after himself: July. August was named after another Roman emperor, Augustus Ceaser. October was named for Octavious. If you look at the calendar, you will notice that those three months, all named after famous Roman leaders, all have 31 days. It’s not a coincidence that they made sure that their month had at least as many days as anyone else’s. Alas, poor February took the brunt of abuse. (Probably because there was no Emperor February to protect it. February is based on the latin word februare which means “to purify.”)
But what does Julius Ceasar’s calendar devised in 45 BC have to do with George Washington? Very, very little, it turns out. But, very, very little is not nothing. See, Ceasar (actually his calendar guy) figured out that we needed a leap year. He switched the calendar from a lunar cycle to a cycle based on the sun. And he understood that the earth rotation around the sun wasn’t exactly 365 days. So, every four years we got a leap year. And that’s how it continued. . .for a long time. . .like really long. . .hundreds of years. But, we don’t just add an extra day every four years. Because even with the leap year we still are just slightly off of matching the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun. To compensate, we actually add “leap centuries.”
About 1500 years after Ceasar fixed the calendar, it was broken again.
Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400. For example, the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 are not leap years, but the years 1600 and 2000 were.
– Wikipedia
In 1582, Pope Gregory fixed the calendar. The world hadn’t been counting those leap centuries and the days were off by about 10. When the rest of Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar, the British stayed on the Julian calendar. Why didn’t they get on board with the latest technology? Henry VIII. The guy who had all those wives. He wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon after she failed to produce a male heir. But, being Catholic, you had to get the Pope’s permission to get your marriage annulled. (And the fact that they had a daughter makes the whole question of annulment an interesting one anyway.) Catherine was the sister of the King of Spain, at the time that Henry was trying to get his annullment, the Pope was a prisoner of Catherine’s nephew Emperor Charles V.
Catherine didn’t want a divorce, and made sure her nephew understood her wishes. He in turn let his prisoner, the Holy See, know that it would be a very bad idea to annoy his aunt. Pope Clement VII was clearly not a stupid man and refused to grant the annullment. Not getting the result he wanted from the Catholic church, Henry decided he’d form his own Church. Which he did in 1530 and promptly granted himself an annulment.
As you have no doubt noticed, 1530, the date of the split between the Anglican Church in England and the Catholic church, is before Gregory fixed the calendar in 1582. So, by the time the Catholic church got around to fixing the calendar by adding 10 days, England had decided it wanted nothing to do with the Church in Rome, including their new fangled calendar. So, England stuck to the Julian calendar and the rest of Europe updated their dates to reflect the new Gregorian Calendar. And that’s how it stayed for a lot more years, until 1752. It was in that year that the British Empire finally got on board with the new calendar. By now the two systems were 11 days out of sync.
To sync the calendars, it was decided that Wednesday September 2, 1752 would be followed by Thursday September 14. And that was officially the shortest two weeks in the history of the world. Now that the calendars were in sync, they still had to fix the dates. It was decided that things like birthdays would also be moved forward 11 days so that the celbrations were still happening about the same time of the year. Washington, as has been said, was born in 1731. He was obviously born before the big calendar switch. So, his birthday, like everyone elses jumped forward 11 days. They also shaved nearly a year off his age, by moving the year of his birth from 1731 to 1732. This was done by changing the start of the year (from March 25 to January 1) and pushing all dates ahead one year. It was designed to keep people’s physical age closer to their calendar age
The problem was that Washington decided he didn’t like February 22. He continued to celebrate his birthday on the same day that he had for the first twenty years of his life: February 11. (Well, the first 19 years of his life after the calendar change.)
So, as you raise a glass to Old George today, realize that he’s already had his party 11 days and a year ago.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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We don’t like to hire MBAs here. We will teach you everything you need to know about the software industry.
Three years later, it all came crashing down and might have been saved by a few more MBAs.
WordPerfect was the first “real” company I ever worked for. I had a salary. I had health insurance. And I had paid days off! How cool was that? And like most first loves, I overlooked a lot of flaws. Mostly, it was because I was young. We were all young once, and it is the perogative of the young to be niave. In hindsight, WordPerfect was a flawed company from nearly the very beginning.
WordPerfect got its start be radically redesigning the word processor. The introduced a nearly empty screen. As the user typed, they saw a rough approximation of what the printed page would look like. They quickly became the #1 word processor in the world.
It’s said that the worst thing that can happen to a first time gambler is for him to win. WordPerfect was that first time gambler and they won big. But, like the new gambler, they didn’t understand enough about the game to prepare for their eventually losses. They assumed that they were successful because they had it all figured out. They didn’t realize that the market they came of age in would change.
Now, you might say that no one, Microsoft, Google, MySpace, IBM, or WordPerfect knows what the market will be like in the future. And you would be right. But, one difference between successful companies and unsuccessful ones are that successful companies assume the market will change. They may not know how, but they plan on it being different at some point.
WordPerfect’s biggest draw was their biggest downfall. They offered unlimited tollfree support forever. The largest group, by far in the company was the support department. It worked well when WordPerfect was selling for $500 per copy. And this was in the 1990s. Eventually, other competitors entered the market. Most notably Microsort Word. MSCORP started offering more features and a lower price. And, of course, Word worked well with Windows.
The fall of WordPerfect was swift and dramatic. A company that had cashflowed its expansion suddenly found itself runing out of money. It was $100,000,000 in debt when Novell purchased them in 1994. By the end, they couldn’t change their business model enough to stay profitable in a changing marketplace.
Today, the buildings that they constructed in Orem, Ut are still there. A dozen small software companies use them. Each hoping to be the next WordPerfect. The houses that the executives built literally next door are still there, but many of them have changed hands.
The company itself no longer exists. Correl still sells a version of WordPerfect, mostly to law firms who have years of files they don’t want to convert to a new format.
In the end, WordPerfect fell because of a combination of hubris and organizational structure. At the end, or slightly before the end, I bet they wished they had a few MBAs who understood the industry.
Years employed: 1988-1994
Job Titles: Telephone technician, Support Operator, SWAT Team member
Best things: Great people and free soda
Worst thing: A lack of vision
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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