Recognized for Most Innovative Relationship Management in a Downturn Economy

SAN JOSE, CA - 12/02/2009

Official Press Release Here

CenterBeam, an IT outsourcing provider, was named the winner of the “For Better or For Worse” award on November 20, 2009, as part of the second annual Outsourcing Relationship Management Awards – the RMMYs – sponsored by the Outsourcing Institute and Vantage Partners. This award recognizes the service provider with the most innovative approach in helping its customers do more for less in a downturn economy.

Vantage Partners and the Outsourcing Institute established the RMMY Awards in 2008 to broaden the dialogue about the importance of relationship management in achieving value, and to raise the bar for the industry. “Effective governance and relationship management is what sets apart the outsourcing deals that deliver the greatest value from those that fail,” said Danny Ertel, a founding partner of Vantage Partners. “Many providers have learned that it takes more than a few good people to manage a complex relationship to its full potential. The RMMYs shine a much-needed spotlight on those providers that have gone beyond 'talking the talk' to actually investing in developing the skills, processes, tools, and metrics to manage relationships effectively.”

“CenterBeam has quickly become an integral and trusted part of the SEMI IT team and helped accelerate our cost reduction initiatives,” states Gil McInnes, CIO of SEMI. “What has impressed me most about our relationship with CenterBeam is their collaborative approach and willingness to bear the risk of our relationship with a short term contract where they are literally earning our business every day. We benefit from a consistent level of IT service and support that allows us to scale up or down on a monthly basis to match our employment levels.”

As the category’s inaugural recipient, CenterBeam was recognized for its ability to help its customers do more with less. “From its short-term contract, to its scalable services and fee structure to its collaborative relationship management approach, CenterBeam’s model impressed the RMMY judges with its ability to incorporate the flexibility needed to stay in step with its clients evolving business conditions, as well as the natural evolution of technology,” states Frank Casale, CEO of The Outsourcing Institute. “CenterBeam provides a noteworthy example of how a world-class managed service provider can partner with its clients for shared success, and certainly something we would hold up for other outsourcing firms to aspire to.”

Winners will be formally honored at an award ceremony as part of the Outsourcing Institute’s “Outsourcing 2.0 Roadshow” on December 3, 2009 at the New York offices of Morrison & Foerster. They will also be promoted at “Outsourcing 2.0 Roadshow” events throughout 2010, and be showcased on www.outsourcing.com. For more information and to register for the Roadshow series and event for winners, please visit: http://www.outsourcing.com/roadshow.

About CenterBeam
CenterBeam is an award-winning managed IT services provider with a rich service portfolio including PC management, hosted Microsoft® Exchange email, helpdesk support, and network and server management. CenterBeam’s focus is providing mid-sized businesses with Fortune 500-class IT management and services for a fixed monthly fee. CenterBeam’s partner designations include: Intel® Certified – Powered by SpikeSource®, Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, Cisco® Silver Partner, Citrix® Certified Partner, Juniper® Elite Partner, VMware® Authorized Consultant (VAC), and VMware VIP Enterprise Partner. For more information, visit www.centerbeam.com.

About Vantage Partners
Vantage Partners leads the field of relationship management, building on more than 20 years of research and consulting experience with the world’s leading companies. A spin-off of the Harvard Negotiation Project, Vantage Partners helps organizations negotiate and manage their most important business relationships, with key customers, suppliers, and business partners. Vantage works with clients on specific relationships as well as on enhancing their institutional capabilities, to make effective negotiation and relationship management a repeatable process. For more information, please visit: www.vantagepartners.com.

About The Outsourcing Institute
Founded in 1993, The Outsourcing Institute (OI), located at outsourcing.com, is a neutral professional association dedicated solely to outsourcing. As one of the most influential and credible in the outsourcing space, OI is recognized worldwide for its intellectual capital, outsourcing practice expertise and unbiased thought leadership. OI’s commitment to innovation, along with its mission to advance the skills and knowledge of its membership, has made it the most respected and relied upon brand for the outsourcing marketplace. OI’s executive network, which is comprised of more than 70,000 professionals worldwide, looks to OI as the go-to source for outsourcing thought leadership, information and advice. www.outsourcing.com.

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For the 2009 series, the USOpen has launched an on-line video stream for all of their broadcasts that is magnitudes better than any other I’ve seen to date.  I’m sure there are some good ones I may have missed, but this one has fantastic features that can’t be overlooked.

This is a game-changing way to watch tennis.  First, I’m not the type of person who will go out of my way to watch the game, but have found myself doing so.  If I could do this with football or hockey?  Trouble in the making!  I hope to see other stations and organizations following this fantastic business lead.  Read on for the features…

The stream is crisp, clear, and snappy to load up.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Once loaded, you’re presented with a number of options right on the screen:

• View other courts (top left):  This displays video from all 5 courts that have feeds as well as scores, clicking on one will take you to that broadcast.
• Game statistics (bottom left):  Aces, 1st Server %, Double Faults, Win % on 1st/2nd serves, Winners, Unforced Errors, Receiving Points Won, Break Pt. conversions, Total Points Won, Net Approaches.  Real time, ON SCREEN!
• Fanbook (top right):  Sign up for an account, and you can comment on the match along the way…or just sit their and read if you don’t want to interact.
• Picture in Picture (bottom right):  Yep, pick one of the other stadiums and you can watch a smaller stream of that!  Click the “swap” button, and voila…PIP is swapped.  Awesome.

Click on the image in this article to see a full-screen version of the stream with all four options expanded.  clicking them again nicely hides them out of they way.

Better yet, head over to USOpen.org and watch for yourself!

What additional features can I imagine?  The ability to view your own camera angles instead of leaving that up to the event producer, ability to tie into your Facebook or Twitter account so whatever you type in the “Fanbook” section shows up on other social media sites, an alert for an amazing play you may have missed on another court (with the ability to quickly catch a replay), the list goes on…  I’m looking forward to the 2010 version!

What additional features can YOU imagine?  Have you seen a better player out there?  Let me know in the comments…

The purpose of this post is two-fold:

First:  To stress the importance of preserving the security of your on-line identity

Second:  Exposing a company who’s doing an inexcusably poor job of protecting your on-line identity

Most of us don’t realize how insecure the on-line world can be.  You create an account on a website, give it a username and the password of your choosing.  That password is obfuscated with asterisks so someone over your shoulder can’t see it, and many sites even require certain complexity (numbers, upper/lower-case letters, special characters, length, etc) to help assure your password is not easily guessed by a human or a brute-force and/or dictionary attack.  As well, the registration form is usually protected with SSL (aka: Secure Sockets Layer, Transport Layer Security, or when you see https:// in the URL) encryption.  Beyond that, you’ll usually enter an email address where you’ll have to validate that you’re you before you can even proceed on the website. 

Sounds like a pretty secure process, right?  In most cases, it is.  The problem with this, is you’re only exposed to how they protect you from OUTSIDE exploits.  Everything mentioned above does nothing to protect you from an INSIDE exploit…and frankly, an inside exploit is FAR more likely than an external one for 99% of the population.  A rogue IT Administrator or Webmaster, or worse yet…an internal company process that ALLOWS employees access to your private information.

ZipRealty is a company that I’ve used for a number of years to help keep an eye on property values in my area.  I set up some criteria for alerts that send me emails, and I had a hankering to make a change to those emails just the other day.  I logged in and found out that the system said I didn’t have any “saved searches”, despite the fact that I was getting emails from them.  So, I asked for help in straightening this out.

When you register at ZipRealty, they assign you to a Real Estate agent.  I’ve had more of these agents assigned to my account than I can keep track of, as it appears they have a fairly high turn-over rate for their agents.  Since all my “alerts” come from this person’s email address, I replied to her.  I asked why it was that I was getting alerts but didn’t seem to have the ability to modify them.  After going back and forth a bit, it came into question whether or not I might have two accounts assigned to the same email address (turns out I didn’t…but that’s not the important part).

In order to verify whether or not this was the case, she emailed me information about my account and asked me, “Is this you?”

Here comes the sad part.  She emailed me, in plain text across the Internet, not only my user account…but my PASSWORD.  It’s bad enough she did that, but the far worse situation is that she actually had ACCESS to my password.  This is an agent that likely signed up to get leads from this service and was randomly assigned to various user accounts.  This person, who will likely not be assigned to me due to turn-over in the next 3 months has access to my username AND password.

The grand point of this post?  There are two of them:

1. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.  Just because their outward appearance seems secure, does NOT mean the internal workings are anywhere near as secure.
2. Do not use ZipRealty.  If you do?  Change your password to something you do not EVER use anywhere else.  If you have the same username and password on another site…someone from ZipRealty (and possibly other poorly managed companies) has access to that site.  Let’s hope it’s not the same as the account to your on-line banking site.

What’s the best means to protect yourself against inside exploits?

Do not use the same password on any two sites.  I know…I know…how can you remember them all?  Options:

• Build a spreadsheet with all of your passwords (and password protect that spreadsheet.)
• Use a password management application.  There are lots of them out there.  I would avoid the ones that store your passwords on-line, but that’s just me.
• Assuming you have a good password to begin with (secure from outside exploits), you can add characters to this password that pertain to the site you are registering with.  This makes your password unique, albeit only slightly different (and thus, still easy to remember).  For example, if your password is normally “password” (please, tell me that’s not your password)…your new password for ZipRealty.Com might be “ZpassRwordC”.  Be creative, but memorable for you…and not something so obvious that someone looking at ZpassRwordC knows that your WellsFargo.Com password is going to be WpassFwordC.  My example was just a simple example, not a gold standard!

Have you seen similarly poor security practices anywhere?  Have you experienced any security breaches from particular companies?  Please share them in the comments…

One of the many projects I’ve been focused on over the past 6 months is integration of the old Network Insight portal that I created into the existing CenterBeam portal framework.  Not only did we successfully do this, but we also launched a completely redesigned portal framework in the process. 

Within just a couple months of acquisition, we not only had both companies on the same internal business infrastructure (email, file systems, etc) but we integrated our on-line web presence into a single pane of glass for all of our customers (launched Feb 2009).

Took me a while to post this, as it all happened between November and February, but below is the official CenterBeam Press Release text:

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Midmarket Gains Window to its IT Services Through Single Pane of Glass

SAN JOSE, CA - 04/07/2009

CenterBeam today announced its next generation online customer interface, My CenterBeam. This enterprise mashup represents a significant evolution of its key information and support tools into one seamless window pane for organizations to manage their IT services. Combining information from messaging systems, business intelligence engines and data integration solutions, My CenterBeam delivers critical service information to a single pane of glass, clean and standardized.

With My CenterBeam, the company addresses a significant issue for midmarket businesses, the ability to inspect, verify and manage, in one pane of glass, its IT service performance, security and availability information. With this data typically coming from numerous vendors, systems and platforms, each with its own proprietary console or reporting portal, there has been no coherent way to easily or cost effectively aggregate and correlate the information.

Traditionally, IT teams have to draw information from disparate data sources, each tracking and reporting data in their own way. CenterBeam’s operational data store forms the nucleus of My CenterBeam, leveraging Web 2.0 techniques and CenterBeam-developed API’s to collect and transform that information into consumable or “mashable” assets. My CenterBeam presents the correlated assets in a standardized format, allowing users to gain valuable insight into service metrics. This includes patch and configuration management data, anti-virus and anti-malware statistics, case and satisfaction metrics, service requests, server and network availability and performance and mailbox usage – all in a single pane of glass.

“Until now, an IT executive had to keep track of statistics and information from possibly dozens of different vendors to figure out the health and performance of its IT systems. This makes inspection close to impossible and exposes the business to risk if, for example, they don’t notice that a significant patch has been missed, or if backups aren’t happening the way they are supposed to,” states Shahin Pirooz, Executive Vice President and CTO, CenterBeam. “My CenterBeam eliminates the confusion and delivers clarity by rolling up all service and information into one standard view, giving the business or IT executive, for the first time, one place to go for comprehensive and actionable information.”

“My CenterBeam provides invaluable insight into the performance of our IT operations,” states Curtis Helsel, Vice President, Information Services at University of Colorado Foundation. “To gain this level of information on my own, I would have to access several different reporting consoles and attempt to translate and reconstruct the data to provide a holistic view of our systems. This is something I don’t have the time or resources to manage or maintain.”

My CenterBeam aggregates information for all CenterBeam services including hosted email, PC security, network and server management and help desk statistics.

About CenterBeam
Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., CenterBeam is an award-winning managed IT services provider with a rich service portfolio including PC management, hosted Microsoft® Exchange email, helpdesk support, network and server management and consulting services. More than 140,000 daily services are delivered in an integrated software as a service (SaaS) architecture to clients with end users working in forty-five countries. For more information, visit www.centerbeam.com.

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I thought it would be fun to take a different perspective on how to go about merging or acquiring a company...by focusing our undevided attention on how to fail at it.  This article focuses mostly on the technology aspects and skips over Human Resources, Finance, and other non-technical areas.  I will spend a little time on Operations, though...as Technology and Operations should be heavily intertwined. 

This topic was spawned by the numerous articles out there discussing the varied emergency mergers and acquisitions that seem to be happening due to our economic situation.  It seems that there has been a subtle swing in reasons for a merger today compared to the pre-economic meltdown environment.  Previously, companies would merge not only for financial gain but for the ability to spread their wings, improve their position in the market, and stretch their product focus to new boundaries.  Today, many of the mergers happening are based in large part (if not completely) on financial survival.  Survival being the key word.

Having recently gone through a post-meltdown merger NOT focused entirely on survival (CenterBeam Acquires Network Insight), and being largely responsible for the initial merging of these companies from a technological perspective, it seemed appropriate to share my thoughts on this.  As CenterBeam, I'd like to think we've done a very good job at mitigating the below risks, or avoiding them entirely.  Of course none of us are perfect, but I'm proud to say that we've accomplished a lot in a short time frame and haven't destroyed anything along the way.  Yet, there's still plenty of work to do.

Don't get IT Involved Early

A common theme through many of the articles I've read over the past 6 months is that IT wasn't involved in either the decision making, the planning processes, or both.  In this day and age, you simply can't afford to do that.  If you don't have an IT department (or an "IT guy") in your company, you're likely outsourcing it.  If you're not doing either, we'll call you and your company "unique" and move on.  <smile>  The important point is that in many organizations, the accelerated proliferation of technology over the years has become the glue to keeping things moving smoothly through your organizational process flows. 

When was the last time your email server went down?  How much of a screeching halt did your company come to because of it?

Get IT involved as early as possible.

Don't Use Proper Project Management Resources

In a previous life, I was a Project Manager and even led a team of them at one point.  Despite the title no longer residing on my business card, I still wear my Project Management hat on a near-daily basis.  As someone who's worked in the IT-based Professional Services industry for 10 years, I can say...without question, hesitation, or doubt...that project management is a vital aspect to successful technology projects.  A small project can get by with a solid technological resource who knows how to manage his tasks, but that's not what we're discussing here.  A project of any scale requires multiple Subject Matter Expers (SMEs) working in harmony, with numerous dependancies on each other, over a lenthy period of time.  The only way you're going to keep that herd of cats moving in the same direction is by using a solid Project Manager, or Project Management team.

In the Professional Services world, customers will often balk at getting billed for Project Management hours in their projects because they don't understand the benefit.  Having lived and breathed it, having seen projects succeed and projects fail, and knowing wholeheartedly that much of that success and failure had to do with the level of project management involvement...it would be silly to avoid proper project management. 

Our VP of Operations provided me with an exceptional quote the other day:

"If you can't take the time to do it right today, when will you find the time to do it over?"

This applies to so many areas of business.  Don't skimp on Project Management, you'll only pay more later.

Don't get Appropriate Subject Matter Experts Involved

SMEs are your best friends when championing or managing an IT project.  If you plan without them, or without their input, you will miss things...you will forget something...and your struggling project will cause grief for many.  Better yet, don't limit yourself to just asking for their input.  They need to be active players and stakeholders in the project, so give them the responsibility to be successful with you.

You are not a super hero, regardless of the underoos you sport!  Don't work in a bubble.

Don't Spend Time Researching Both Networks and Systems

If you're an IT Manager, CIO, CTO, or other technology leader...and you're working in an organization who's core focus is not technology...odds are that you might not be very much involved in the "go" or "no-go" decision making regarding the merger or acquisition.  This is OK in most circumstances.  What's not ok is for you to sit back, accept the decision and deal with the consequences.  You still need to do your dilligence.  You have to consider how both organizations are functioning, on what types of systems they are functioning, what the short-term merger solution is and what are the long-term merger solutions going to be.  Beyond this, you need to know the risks, requirements, and effort necessary for you to be successful.

A subset item to this is having an understanding of how the two disparate systems will actually work together in the future.  There have to be distinct visions for what the merger will look like in 2 months, 6 months, and 12 months...and you need to be considering this well in advance of any acquisition. 

If you are working in a technology-based organization, and you're a high-level technology leader, you need to be a part of the decision-making process.  The executives will be looking to you for appropriate analysis and decisions on whether this is the right solution.  Everything mentioned in the above paragraph is still mandatory...and it's mandatory that your peer leadership team hears what you have to say.

The bottom line here is that the Executive teams need to understand the entire cost structure required to merge the two companies, whether they are based on technology or basket-weaving.  If they don't understand the cost basis, and it runs out of control because dilligence was not performed (or listened to), the acquisition is an immediate failure. 

No one loves homework, but you need to do yours.  Thankfully, you can do a lot of your homework at work.

Don't Sweat the Workload Requirements...You're Acquiring or Being Acquired!  There are Now More Resources to Do the Work.

This one scares me the most.  In this economy, companies are downsizing dramatically.  Last week alone 100,000 jobs were lost.  ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND.  In ONE WEEK.  Insanity.  This means that everyone in the company is going to be asked to do a little more, with a little less.  It's incredibly likely that the company acquiring you, or the company being acquired by you, has a heavy workload on their employees already.  Adding headcount due to acquisition does NOT mean you have more people to do new work.  It means you have more people that already have full-time jobs, and you now have to find a way to merge these organizations with your existing headcount (as it's pretty unlikely you'll be getting any more heads).

Even in a normal economy, this is still a frightening proposal.  Understand the workload of your employees and those being asked to perform merger duties.  Of the employees critical to the integration, work with their supervisiors and peers to understand their workload, existing projects, and abilities to balanace additional responsibility.  Otherwise, risk severe inaccuracies to your time estimations, commitments to Executives, and deadlines.

Know what can be done, who it can be done by, and in what timeframe.  Know it well.

Don't Bother Planning for Change

So, you've heeded the above advice...you've got your ducks in a row and everything is moving along as you've hoped.  The plan is set in stone, risks have been identified and mitigated, stakeholders and SMEs have been identified, everyone knows their responsibilities, and project management is on it. 

What's wrong with the above paragraph?  "The plan is set in stone..."  Come on.  You know as well as I do that nothing (nothing) is ever (ever) set in stone.  Your deadlines will get moved.  New customers will drive requirements that throw wrenches into your well-formed plan, cascading further issues throughout the project.  There are any number of items that can cause problems.  Your job is to forsee these and build flexibility into your plan.

Be nimble, be quick, be prepared to jump over that candle stick.

Do Not, Under any Circumstances, Focus Your Efforts on the Employees

The first thing to approach in just about any acquisition I can think of, is the employees.  If you ever expect to perform as a single organization, one company, one unified front...get your employees on the same collaborative systems as soon as humanly possible.  If you don't, all communication between the two companies will be haphazard and many, many, many things will fall through the cracks.  One of the first things we did at CenterBeam was get Network Insight employees dialed into all the CenterBeam systems (email, instant messanger, intranet, file systems, human resources, etc).  We did this in roughly one month.  Not bad, considering the network and systems effort required.

The point is, we're still working on the integration and merger.  I expect it to go on in various phases throughout the year.  But, since our employees are now "one", it makes our integration life so much easier.  Because we're already working as a single unit, getting the company to function as a single unit will be that much easier.

Employees first, without them you'd be job hunting instead of reading this.

Don't Rush it...Our Companies aren't Going Anywhere...We Have Time

Procrastination is NOT your friend, especially when it comes to acquisition.  We all know what happens to things that get "put off".  Something else always comes up with higher priority, and the items sitting on the shelf waiting for completion will never get attention again.  Stoke the fire while it's still hot.  If you're not well on your way after 2 months, 75% complete after 6 months, or finished in 12 months...something is seriously wrong and you need to re-evaluate the acquisition project and get Executive sponsorship back in the game to prioritize and finish things up. 

If you're not fully integrated, your employees are spending valuable time and money working around operational inconsistencies when they could be focusing more on productive endeavors.  Get on your integration horse and ride hard.

Conclusion

This is by no means an all-encompassing look into how to be successful at a merger and acquisition, even just focusing on the technology.  However, these are all very important aspects that in many circumstances get overlooked, undervalued, or shrugged off.  Treat these items with the respect and attention they deserve and you'll at least be on your way to a successful M&A.

Image Credit:  business-sale.com

We live in a very distractable world.  Email, Instant Messanger, Cell Phones, Home Phone (if you still have one), Text Messages, Desk Phone.  No matter where you are, you can be interrupted.  Sometimes in more ways than just one...  How many times has this happened to you:

• You're on a call at your desk, and another call beeps in.  You have to ignore it, as...you're on another call.
• Your cell phone then rings.  Again, you can't answer...and you scramble to find it and mute it so the person on the other line isn't annoyed.
• Meanwhile, your desk voicemail lights up...and if you're really cool, an email with that voicemail pops into your inbox.
• Your Instant Messanger starts lighting up (why are you looking at that while you're on a phone call anyway?)
• That cell phone voice mail finally alarms letting you know you have a voice mail.
• Soon after, a text message comes in from the same person saying, "Call me".  Really?  I had no idea.  <grin> 

Ok, that probably hasn't happened to all of us at that extreme of a scenario, but we can all certainly relate to bits and pieces of it.  These interruptions come at any time of day, and sometimes at very inopportune times (since when did the bathroom lose it's sacredness?!)  This interruption-mania doesn't even take into account the (literally) hundreds of Social Networks many use as distractions...Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn (and that is barely the tip of the iceberg).  How is it that we get anything done?

Are we handling this new found immediate gratification and communication at our fingertips well?  I suppose it depends on where you spend most of your time.  The majority of my day is spent at work, like many of you.  In most cases interruptions are quite counter productive to, well...productivity.  Don't get me wrong, interruptions also have benefits...and I'll get into those...the ones in immediate focus are those you have (apparently) no control over.  But...you do.

I was sparked into this post by an entry at the Manager-Tools blog that briefly discusses the concept of "toast".  These are the little pop-ups that slide their way into your vision located in the bottom-right of your screen.  IM's, emails, whatever...little pieces of toast coming out of the toaster that you can't help but look at.  Don't kid yourself, most of you will probably look at one while reading this post.  Frankly, if you haven't been distracted away from this post by one of them...I'd be surprised!  The irony that Manager-Tools brings forth is a nice play on words..."If you're paying attention to the toast, you're toast."

How many times have you been in a meeting, formal or not, where the person speaking simply stops mid-sentence to focus on their PC or phone?  How many people in meetings are typing away on their Smart Phones, clearly oblivious to the conversation around them?  Have you noticed while having a conversation with someone on the phone that they occasionally drift away...clearly focusing on something else at the same time?  How many times have you caught yourself pausing in the middle of something to look at a piece of toast on your screen?  Don't kid yourself, it likely happens more than you even realize.

These are distractions that pull us all away from directing our focus at the person who's kindly requested our focus. 

There's a cost associated with this type of activity.  In some ways it's directly financially tangible, but in others it's more indirect.

1. Lowered morale of those left waiting because something that can likely be dealt with later is given higher priority, leaving them with the feeling that you believe your time is more important than theirs.  As a manager, this would be an awful situation to put yourself into.
2. Opportunity cost of those waiting for the key stakeholder to return their focus.  How much of their collective time could have been spent on something productive, how much does idle time cost the company...or you if it's your company?
3. Despite how good you think you are at multitasking, you're going to miss something.  Sooner or later, it's going to be something important.  You're going to regret not paying full attention to those around you who need your full attention, and you'll be left dealing with a loss of #1 and #2 (morale and cost) all over again.
4. How long does it take you to get your train of thought back once you've finished your distraction?  Once you finally remember to get back to it, you have to get your brain back into that mode.  This rings especially true for software developers, project managers, or others who have to focus on the short-term as well as the future simultaneously.  To clearly do your job, you thrust yourself into a virtual world where you plan and make a long-term solution happen.  It's surprising how long it can take to get you back into that mindset.
5. Learning is usually compromised by distractions.  I apologize for not having direct citings, but I've read about a few studies that show that learning while multitasking is much less efficient.  The bottom line (to what could be an entire topic by itself) is that distracted learning may allow you to make similarly accurate decisions on occasion, but you may not fully understand why it's the right decision to make.  This is due to the way your brain ends up processing the information you're learning and ultimately storing (or not storing) it in long-term memory, as there are very different methods used during focused and distracted learning.

So, back to the most common types of communication many of us use...  Are they being used correctly in your environment?  Part of eliminating distractions has to do with the people around you.  If someone calls your cell phone every time they need something, regardless of how important it is, that can be a bit of a distraction.  In my estimation, a call to the cell phone is typically the sign of a very important item....but it may not be used that way by others.

Below I've listed, by order of my perceived priority, the most common types of communication available to us in the workplace.  It should be noted that there are always valid exceptions to any rule, especially this one.  I can't say enough about how important in-person communication can be to a productive working environment.  Just because it's listed as #1 on my list doesn't mean that you should never contact someone in person unless it's vitally urgent.  There are many other circumstances at play here, and there is no black-and-white definition on how communication should happen.  This is merely meant to be a framework or guideline for prioritization of communication.

Aside from prioritizing each communication type, I've also included a few bullet points on how this type of communication should likely be used.

1. In Person
   • Requires face-to-face collaboration
   • Quick or substantial discussion needing immediate attention
2. Cell Phone Call
   • Requires substantial discussion
   • Requires immediate attention
   • Is tied for #1 if the person calling does not have the ability to quickly find you in person
3. Desk Phone Call
   • Requires substantial discussion
   • Important but can wait until you're at your desk
4. Text Message
   • Requires quick question / answer
   • Relatively urgent answer required
   • Could arguably be placed at #3, but I put it here because it's usually a shorter communication
5. Instant Message
   • Requires quick question / answer
   • Important but can wait until you're at your desk
6. Email
   • Requires substantial information to be shared
   • Requires documents or other files to be shared
   • Can wait until you're in front of your computer
7. Everything Else
   • Low priority

This is all fine and good, but what do I do to enforce this?  How to I keep these distractions at bay so I am not constantly distracted?  For this list, I'm going to start from the bottom up.  The least urgent items get first attention here.

• Everything Else
  • Social Networks and other items do not require immediate attention in 99% of the workplaces.  I'm sure there are some organizations that thrive by using these systems, but for most of us they're nothing more than distractions.  Disable all alerts to your email, to your phone, or to any other place.  Turn them off.  Look at these sites on your lunch break or when you're at home.  Do not allow these sites to dictate when you should be doing something...you own your time.  If you need something specific, by all means, go for it...just don't get caught up in their notification loops.  These sites selfishly want you coming back, don't forget that.
• Email
  • Turn off your pop-up toast!  You'll be amazed how much more productive you'll be with this one simple modification.  Email is low priority, and if you get as many emails as I do in a day...that constant pop-up will keep you from ever getting anything done.  Here's a quick tutorial on how to disable Outlook 2007 pop-ups.  A little Google Searching will likely find you where to change options in whatever mail client you use.
  • There are many recommendations on how often you should check your email.  For me, this depends on what kind of project I'm working on.  If I need to sit down and grind on something uninterrupted for a while, it may be a couple hours before I get to it.  In most cases, once an hour is probably good unless you have nothing else going on (lucky you).  For some, once every 30 minutes would be OK.
  • If others are using email as high-priority in an organization that doesn't function that way, politely ask them to contact you using different methods if it's more urgent. 
  • Turn off email notifications on your phone.  There is rarely a need for this.  People grow to hate their Smart Phones because they say they can "never get away from work" because of them.  The reality is, most of these comments are based on constant harranging due to email notifications.  Turn them off and look at email when you want to, not when it wants you to.  Smart Phone life can be good!
  • If it helps you, politely ask people to start CC'ing you on things that you just need to be aware of.  This is another layer of productivity that'll help you find the important items in your inbox quickly...when you do decide it's right for you to get to your inbox.
• Instant Message
  • Again, turn off the pop-up toast!  Turn off the blinking task bar items.  Turn off any other creative "look at me" notifications the IM clients provide.
  • Don't allow people to write novels in IM, and don't allow this inflectionless quick communication to lead to misunderstanding.  It's meant for quick question / answer solutions.  If you're going back-and-forth with someone, pick up the phone and have a 2 minute conversation and get it over with instead of banging on your keyboard for 15 minutes (and being distracted all along the way).
• Text Message
  • Get comfortable with putting your phone on mute.  Do it regularly, in particular when you cannot be bothered due to an urgent in-person or phone conversation.  Granted, a text message should be used for relatively urgent communication, but some things are more urgent than others.
  • Much like IM, do not attempt to have long and productive conversations over Texting in a short period of time and without distraction.  Use the other fancy feature on that phone...the phone!
• Desk Phone
  • Turn the volume down and choose a more appealing ringer if you have that option.  I'm not saying to ignore this communication tool, that would be counter-productive.  However, turning it down and/or using an amicable ringer is less alarming and startling to your thought process.  You will be able to field the call and get back to your groove quicker if you didn't jump out of your seat or become irritated by that annoying ringer sound.
• Cell Phone
  • The same desk phone ringer suggestion applies here.
  • Additionally, much like the text messaging suggestion...get familiar with your mute button.  Turn that ringer off when appropriate.
  • See the phone email notification section under Email above...turn these off!
• In Person
  • If you're one of the lucky ones with an office, shut your door.  This signifies that you're busy and only urgent items will result in a knock on the door.
  • If that isn't enough, and you really need privacy, put a sign on the door that says something to the effect of, "Please do not interrupt unless you are on fire."  You may choose your words more wisely if you wish.  <chuckle>
  • If you have the option to work at home, that's always a solution.  I will warn, however, that in many cases the remaining communication tools will increase in their use due to you being out of the office.
  • Finally, one of the simplest and most effective forms of getting yourself some focus time is to politely tell your employees and/or coworkers that you have to focus and would appreciate if interruptions could be avoided.  This one really works wonders (as long as you're not asking that every day!)

Are distractions ever a good thing?  After reading this article (assuming you've even gotten this far), you may believe I think they are pure evil.  Not true.  Distractions are good, and can be good if used correctly.  Here are a few reasons how they can be beneficial:

1. If used on your terms, meaning, you initiated the distraction on your own because you needed to hit the mental reset button.  Get up, stretch, walk around a bit to get the blood flowing again.
2. If you've been struggling with a problem for some time and are fighting to get to a solution, step away for a while.  It's amazing how our minds can keep working on a problem subconsciously, and in many cases that subconscious thought will result in a successful solution...sometimes when you least expect it.  Sometimes sleeping on a problem is even better, as you'll wake up in the morning refreshed and occasionally with a new solution that your sleeping mind helped devise.

Some will ultimately argue with these views.  One argument that I've heard many times is, "I have to keep up on my inbox or I'll get too far behind."  So, they focus on it on-the-fly to keep it from queueing up.  I disagree with this mentality because I don't believe these people realize how much productivity they lose in distraction time (I was one of those people, by the way).  Jamming through all your emails on a 60-minute (or even a 30-minute) basis is a great way to focus on email and get it cleaned up.  Meanwhile, the other projects you've been working on don't suffer because you've neglected them due to email distractions.

If you don't agree...I'll only ask you to give it an honest shot.  I have been, and on occasion still am, a distraction junkie.  I live in the same world you do.  But, in making some subtle changes in how I manage distractions I've become more productive...and really, a lot happier.  Oh, and I still get more than my share of good, clean, positive distractions in!

Since the Acquisition (press release maybe this Friday?) of Network Insight (NI), I've been spending a fair amount of time trying to understand the technologies of our new company.  My responsibilities at NI have always included the technologies we used to run our business, and manage the networks of our many customers from within our 24x7 NOC (among my many other duties).  With the merger, my responsibilities have expanded to include the technologies we (including the new company) used to monitor 7-8 times as many customers, offering likely twice as many features.

I've spent the past couple weeks on-and-off with some of my new co-workers...in person, via email, on the phone, etc.  I've learned a lot...and have also learned I've got a LOT of work ahead of me.  In doing so, I realized I need a much more scalable system to keep track of:

1. All systems that currently exist today.
2. What these systems are tasked with doing...?
3. ...and what are they capable of doing?
4. How do these systems interact with each other...?
5. ...and how could they interact with each other?
6. Which systems from both companies overlap...?
7. ...and where do we need systems that neither company has?
8. What's wrong with the current infrastructure(s)...?
9. ...and what's right with it?
10. Who are the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for each system?
11. What are the business requirements of our new organization...?
12. ...and are these tools mapping to those requirements?  Better yet...CAN they?  If not, what will?
13. How can these systems be broken out into functional groups?
14. What is the best way to categorize and prioritize changes and releases to actually get things accomplished?
15. ...
16. ...
17. ... (the list really goes on and on, but I'm sure you get the point)

What point, you say?  How in the world do you organize all of this?!

Today I ventured into the world of Mind Mapping.  I've been here before, but it's been a few years.  There are a plethora of options when it comes to Mind Mapping software, and I briefly skimmed the features before deciding upon one to try out.  I spent an hour or so taking my varied lists of notes over the past couple weeks and dumped them into iMindMap.  I'm not necessarily following the strict rules set forth by the software, as I don't think that's an appropriate fit...or, I'm just too stubborn to see the perfect fit yet.  <chuckle>  Entirely possible.

So, what are my initial thoughts?  My head is still spinning a bit...but at least I've got a big inventory laid out.  If I continue down the path of Mind Mapping, I will likely end up with multiple maps.  The first one I've created lists the people and technologies involved, and is a nice looking overview of everything.  Could I have done this with a simple list?  Likely.  Was this a beneficial excercise and hour well spent?  Of course.  Trying new things is always a good idea, and this is no exception.  Even if it turns out not to be a great fit moving forward, I will very likely find a more fitting use in the future.

Right then, what might my next steps be?  Gather more information and keep plugging it in...  Then, determine if this will help me sketch out a big picture that can be modeled into a plan of attack, and result in successful changes.  At a minimum, I'm hoping it can be used as a brainstorming tool to help me devise a path to be modeled into a plan.  Regardless of the outcome, I'm excited to see where this ends up.  I'll share any future enlightenments...!

Image Credit:  iMindMap

UPDATE 10.24.2008:  The acquisition is 100% official, so I'm updating this post to be a little less anonymous regarding the buyer.  I'll post the press release when it comes out.

So, the big news is that my company, Network Insight, was recently acquired by CenterBeam.  The formal press release has been delayed (due out the week of 10/27/2008), so I won't announce the buyer just yet...although all of our clients and most of our colleagues are already fully aware of the details.

What does this mean for those of us at NI?  It means we're becoming a much larger organization, with much better funding, a much larger footprint, and are gaining a number of very (very) complementary offerings.  The Professional Services and Managed Services that Network Insight provides to it's customers is very similar to what our buyer CenterBeam does for theirs, but the overlap in services is incredibly minimal.  We'll finally be able to accomplish many of the things we've been hoping to over the past few years.  Additionally, it will allow the employees of NI to have a broader spectrum of peers surrounding them, and have more opportunities for career growth.

What does this mean for our acquirer CenterBeam?  Much of the same, ironically, despite our size being much smaller.  We will allow them to take on business they've had to turn away over the years, add to their experience, and help them spread their wings.  They will gain efficiencies, redundancies, and skillsets they do not have today.  I will say that everyone I've worked with over the past couple weeks has been incredible...this truly appears to be a great company that has "it" figured out, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how things pan out.

Network Insight has always been a company that does very well during economic booms, and very well during economic busts...but just does average when things are in the middle.  Right now, we're in an economic bust and we've been doing quite well over the past months and years of the downturn.  The most recent accelerated downturns, and this acquisition, will bode quite well for both companies.  Singularly, we were each able to substantially reduce costs (both OpEx and CapEx) for our customers...together we'll take that benefit to new heights, which is exactly what CFO's have their eyes open for today...more than ever.

As for me, my life just got a whole lot busier!  I'm going to be responsible for much of the integration with respect to all of our (and their) technologies, and have started the process of researching and learning what each company has to offer so we can make educated decisions on our future product catalog...not to mention the systems used to service that catalog and our customers.  This will certainly be a daunting task, but believe it or not...I'm really looking forward to it!