Windward Wrocks

What did you learn today?

Management is defined in many different ways. Old school (and dying off for very good reasons) is that the manager makes decisions from the mountain top and directs those under them on what to do and how to do it. This is the original definition of management.

It is also defined by many as a "coach" (I dislike that word because it is more than that). And in this case you are trying to get people to do the best they can in the job they have. This can ran the gamut from mere facilitator to hard-ass guidance.

There are numerous other definitions but they all have one thing in common, the manager is working to get the people under them to be as effective as possible. And that misses a gigantic part of the job.

What did you learn today? What did you learn that makes you more effective at your job? Because if you're not learning, then you aren't going to get much better at your job. And if you aren't learning, then you are not going to be able to continuously improve the performance of those that work for you and work with you.

You also need to be learning daily. Managing people is a very difficult job to do well. Very very difficult. If you learn only at a couple of conferences a year - how much can you improve things a year? If you learn something new every couple of weeks, that's what - 20 items/year?

It's an incredibly competitive rapidly evolving world out there now. The companies you compete against do have people working to improve things every day. And you won't be able to discover much totally on your own as opposed to what is out there to learn.

Easy to say. The trick is in how to pull it off. There are many ways, here are a couple I use:

1. When we have something go wrong, I pull the people involved together and we discuss what we should have done different so that we did not hit this problem. This is not what we could have done better to fix it. This is not assigning blame. This is figuring out how to avoid a repeat. What is interesting about this is that usually the trick is not the big problem that occurred, but a smaller issue that led to the big problem - and something much easier to fix.
2. Lunch. I try to meet someone new for lunch once a week to pick their brain. And some of the most interesting conversations are with people who have no expertise in the high-tech industry. It's that very different view that brings up some very different ideas.
3. Ask your manager and peers for feedback and suggestions. Most people are afraid to do this because they don't want to be criticized. But you will find if you do this regularly it becomes a support system.

Read books, talk to your kids, attend meetings with interesting discussions, discuss issues in blogs, ... the list goes on and on. And in all these cases, view all of these people as a resource where you learn something new. Where you learn many things new. And from that you never know what will turn out to be helpful in your job.

Plus it makes life a lot more interesting for you.

If I could ask one question

If I could ask a candidate for a position as a software developer one question, and only one question. It would be:

For the integers between 0 & 100, ie 0, 1, 2, 3, ... 100 - how many have the digit 7 in them?"

This is not a trick question. Someone I highly respect suggested it as a question and so I started using it. What was amazing is the incredibly high coorelation between getting this question right and a candidate being rated a "hire" after our 4 hour interview process.

I would estimate about 95% of the time their answer to this would predict their success in our interview process. Why? I have no idea. But it sure is an interesting interview question.

After you answer this - click here to see if you were right (after you answer it).

And the answer is

Most people say '10' - 7, 17, 27, ... 97.

A few people say '11' - 7, 17, ... 70, 77, ... 97

And very few get the correct total '19' - 7, 17, ... 70, 71, 72, ... 79, 87, 97

Occasionally someone will say '20' because they double count 77. That's no big deal because they are making a simple error - but they were successful solving the complex question.

It seems like such a simple question, yet so many programmers miss it. Did you get it right?

Road Map

It used to be that a company could give a road map for the next 5 years and be confident that it was very close to what the company would do. Even 10 years was possible for at least a general guideline. But to do that today and pretend it's locked in stone would be disengenuous at best, and lying at worst. I'm not going to do that.

Yet with no guidance we're all left wondering what will happen tomorrow and it is impossible to plan around that. It is also unfair to ask people to buy our software with no assurance about what we will be doing tomorrow. We owe you not just a guess, but reasonable assurances as to what we will be doing 5 years from now.

So let's start with the basics. We provide a great reporting solution and we will continue to do so. This is what the company is built around. Even if we ship a new product that is a very different part of that market, Windward Reports is a solid successful product that solves a real need for most companies. We will continue to not only support it, but increase it's functionality.

As to what those new features will be, there are three primary guidelines that we use. These guidelines are how we determine what will and what will not be added to future versions:

1. K.I.S.S. – we will keep it simple. The world has plenty of reporting systems where report design and the programming to call it is complex & difficult. The world does not need one more complex system. So retaining simplicity is key.
2. What our customers ask us for. The simple answer here is what customers vote up in IDEAS. But it is more than that. It is the conversations we have with our customers {link to Shirley's blog entry here} and what comes out of that. Many times the big ideas come not from a vote or a blog entry or a comment – they come out of a discussion.
3. What we come up with. To a large degree this is a repeat of item (2) because our employees present their ideas through the exact same mechanism as our customers (see Office Live and AutoTag).

So what will we see in the near and intermediate future? In the near future (this summer) we definitely will see:

• A better system to teach AutoTag when first using it.
• A full macro language for most tags. This macro language is very similar to that for Excel and will allow complex processing for a tag.
• A means to display tags in Excel using shorthand as we do in Word.
• Complete refactoring of the PDF builder which will allow using the latest version of iText, proper support of Arabic, and fixing a number of minor bugs.
• Supporting XLS & XLSX files as a datasource. (These will look like a single table in a SQL database.)
• Generate report output directly to a printer.
• Advanced support in the SQL Wizard (primarily auto-joins) for Oracle, DB2, & firebird. (We already have this for Sql Server, MySql, & PostgreSQL.)

Before the end of the year we will probably see the following. The items below we will present in detail on our website and ask any & all to comment about their usefulness and the design we have in mind. We will probably include webinars with open discussion (and we will record them and make that public too). With that said, I will be very surprised if any of these are shot down.

• An improved charting sub-system. This would include prettier charts, adding gauges, a better UI for selecting data, tying into Excel charts (both for design and aoutput), and the ability to call a 3^rd party system to design & render the charts.
• A switch statement eliminating the need for nested if/else/… constructs.
• Dashboards (which we mostly do except for the lack of gauges in our charts). Parts of this might be a new product – if we have a mechanism for live dashboards and/or a what if system like Xcelcius.
• A full docgen system built on sharepoint and/or Office Live. (If both, it would run on either, not require both.) This would probably be a new product.

And then there's long term. I think we will create some kind of ad-hoc query system that would then optionally tie to our reporting system. But the big driver of what we do after the above will be driven by what people see as both useful and possible as they start making use of the features we are adding over the next 6 months. So tell me, what do you want to see next?

Book review: What Would Google Do?

First off, this book is not really about what would Google do in any given situation (that much). It's a catchy title and he does speak to that point at times. But it's a secondary issue at best and not all that significant when used. But, with that said…

This is a phenomenal book.

If you are in executive management, in any industry, in any role, you should read this book. If you are in marketing, in any way, at any level, you should read this book. If you are in business development, product design … you get the idea, read it!

So what is this book about? Fundamentally, it is about the world we now live in defined by Google, Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, etc. Even if every specific item in the book is something you already know, the way Jarvis weaves it together into a whole and walks you through what it means is eye-opening. And, if much of what he presents to you is new, I think it will radically change your view of how we learn, communicate, sell, etc. in this new world.

For example, look at what is occurring in Iran today. Where do you go for information? Not CNN or The NY Times, but to Huffington Post, the Daily Dish, and Twitter. Our primary source now is not news packaged up where we get a summation from a reporter. It is videos, tweets, and web posts from people on the ground in Iran, reporting what they are seeing. This is not just a different person we get the news from, this is where we each get parts of the raw data out there and we each, on our own, weigh the credibility and importance of every piece of raw data.

We see the same changes in Amazon where the ratings on each product are put up by thousands of people, unfiltered and unmoderated. And out of that mass comes very reliable data. We see it in eBay where total strangers have a system where they can trust each other selling products. We see it in the blogosphere where we find commentary on politics, sports, entertainment, etc. that is, again, available in overwhelming quantities, leaving it for us to pick and choose on our own.

To drill down in the specific case most interesting to us at Windward, it means the old ways of marketing are dead and gone. An article or ad in a trade magazine – useless. An ad on a web site – marginal. Our web site – secondary. What matters is what others say about our product. In forums, in blogs, in emails, & person to person in meetings.

This change has one earth-shattering component. If people are talking about you, there is no way you can influence this discussion. It is too diffused, and there is too much information available, to change what people are seeing. So a company is now being measured by what people think of its product. It's not the TV ads, it's not the magazine ads, it's not the review by key magazines – it's the product itself. If it's a killer product like the iPhone, that's a wonderful change. If it's a lousy product, well you can no longer put lipstick on a pig – the world knows the product sucks and sales will plummet.

This has an interesting corollary in our case. If you're a small company you aren't talked about (much). And this concept is a very hard thing to reverse because getting the word out requires reaching many, many people all in many different places. Having 10 people shout that you are awesome in a crowd of 10 million does not have much impact (This is what we are 95% focused on for our marketing efforts – and things can be done).

But it's not just marketing, it's not just company reputation, and this change is continuing and accelerating. (In my blog I have started discussing the impact this will have on politics.) Any company that does not take this in to account will go out of business. People have changed how they live, learn, and communicate – radically changed – and this is revolutionizing our society and culture.

This book will change your view of the world. Read it.

Book Review: Lords of Finance

15 June 2009

As we work our way through the present economic mess, looking back at what led to the Great Depression is a valuable exercise. This book does a superb job describing what happened, and is so well written it is hard to put the book down.

The core problem we faced back in the Great Depression was the financial leaders we had (with the exception of Keynes who was not in a leadership position) did not understand the economic system after WWI and as such tried to return to the economic system of old, centered on the gold standard, rather than adapting to the new world economy. And when the crash hit, rather than reacting to it, they doubled down on the old system.

This book will make you feel more optimistic today. Granted everyone in charge is guessing – no one knows for sure what to do. But they are making educated guesses based on a lot of study about how our economy works. And they are actively trying to resolve the problem. This alone puts us today far ahead of what occurred back then.

By any measure this is a thrilling story and a great read. In the context of today, it's also very useful information. Amazon link.

As we work our way through the present economic mess, looking back at what led to the Great Depression is a valuable exercise. This book does a superb job describing what happened, and is so well written it is hard to put the book down.

The core problem we faced back in the Great Depression was the financial leaders we had (with the exception of Keynes who was not in a leadership position) did not understand the economic system after WWI and as such tried to return to the economic system of old, centered on the gold standard, rather than adapting to the new world economy. And when the crash hit, rather than reacting to it, they doubled down on the old system.

This book will make you feel more optimistic today. Granted everyone in charge is guessing – no one knows for sure what to do. But they are making educated guesses based on a lot of study about how our economy works. And they are actively trying to resolve the problem. This alone puts us today far ahead of what occurred back then.

By any measure this is a thrilling story and a great read. In the context of today, it's also very useful information. Amazon link.

Version 8

8 June 2009

Hello-
 
I hope everyone is doing well in this difficult economy--that you and your family are in good health and happy.
 
This post is to announce how we  plan to handle Windward versioning in the future. In the past, a company would work for a period of time, adding numerous features to a product, and then ship that new version when all features were completed. In the era of shrink-wrapped products, this was the most efficient way to deliver new versions because the huge overhead associated with a new version.
 
With the advent of the Internet, this has changed. While old habits die hard, we have all seen changes, for example,  in Software as a Service (SAAS). On any given day, in an SAAS product,  there can be additional features - and you, the user, might not  even know there has been a change. SAAS offerings tend to evolve, rather than drop groups of new features all at once. And the world now views this as normal, even advantageous.
 
As Windward has grown, we now have multiple teams working on various parts of Windward Reports.  We, also,  have found that different feature sets are completed months apart  from each other. To hold a new feature up for months just so we can release it with 2 other features does not help anyone. Because we release our software over the Internet, there is no additional expense to making features available as soon as  they have been completed & tested.
 
Going forward, we plan to release new features immediately as we complete them. And to be honest, we have been doing this since we released version 7.0. Have you noticed that  Version 7.1.25 has numerous additional features over 7.0.0?
 
In fairness to our customers who pay annual Maintenance (which pays for this development effort), we need to increase the version number regularly, so that these new features are made available only to those that pay the annual fee. So we will increase the version of the product every 9 months. On July 1, Windward Reports will release version 8.0.
 
Some of the  most exciting and  early Version 8 features in that release are "Output to printers" and a macro for Excel that will replace Windward tags in cells with their nickname (like in Word). Subsequent to that, additional features will be determined primarily by the suggestions at http://ideas.windwardreports.com , ( Isn't that What Google would do?)  I invite you to go there and both make your own suggestions or vote for the features you would most like to see implemented.
 
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, with this or any aspect of Windward Reports, please comment here, email or call me.
 
Thanks - Dave

The Performance Difference between the Public & Private Sector

17 May 2009

The conventional wisdom is that the private sector is much more efficient than the public sector. Everyone has horror stories of public sector employees that don't work, that do as little as possible, etc. (Of course, we all see this in the private sphere too.) And this is true that there is more of this than there should be.

The public sector also faces the very real problem that people are punished for mistakes but not rewarded for successes. So the incentive for people working in the public sphere is to be very careful and avoid mistakes. Because you cannot at the same time both push the envelope to find better approaches and at the same time avoid mistakes.

But…

Let's talk about something the federal government does much better than private industry. And I single out the federal government here because it's efforts here at not matched at all by state or local governments. (I'm sure some do, but I've yet to see one.)

I'm the CEO of a small software company and we recently started reaching out to the federal government (as they have all the money). We have sold to the feds before, but it was always them coming to us, not us reaching out to them. So this whole process is new to us. We have no skills on this, no knowledge, nothing.

The SBA

First off there is the Small Business Administration. They have people everywhere. And with the rare exception, they have been very helpful. I have had people spend 10, even 20 minutes answering my questions, thinking up suggestions, giving me people I should contact, and forwarding our information on. And this isn't just a canned response – what we sell is specified before it gets to the purchasing person so we need to reach past purchasing to the I.T. staff. And these people on the SBA staff have drilled me with questions and then work with me to figure out what to do.

Now compare that to a fortune 1,000 company where they won't even put you on their list of products (that they then ignore). Large private companies are structured to shut out any new products. The federal government is structured to help bring them in. Small businesses are responsible for virtually all the innovative new products in this country and it's the federal government with an infrastructure in place set to bring these ideas in to expose them to people.

Let me describe a couple of my favorites just because it is such a nice story. One person walked me through how often to email him to pass on to his POCs (Points Of Contact), what to put in it, how to mix them up, etc. And he finished it telling me that I will get replies saying once is enough – and to ignore that feedback because the repetition is key. This is based on his being on the purchasing side for 15 years before switching over to the SBA. He told me what to do to be effective rather than what he in his old position would prefer to receive. Very funny guy too, and had some great ideas on wording for our stuff.

Another person was talking to me about how to reach the OCIO (Office of the CIO) for his (Cabinet) Department. He gave me three different avenues to try. And then he told me that if they didn't respond and say they would take a look, to call the office of the Secretary and tell them to exert pressure. This is an individual who works as a small business advocate in the Department and boy is he an advocate. To him someone not looking at something new is unacceptable.

A third person walked me through all the major parts of the major agency she works for, and told me which ones were more open to new ideas, which were more likely to need our software, etc. This was a 10 minute picture that it would normally take a sales rep a year to work out – just handed over. And it was bluntly honest based on what she said about some of the sections. A tremendous help for us as we're a small number of people half way across the country from D.C.

An SBA director did a superb job of first getting a picture of where we are as a company with some good suggestion for us as a business as a whole. And then looked at us strategically and where he thought the government most needed us – giving me names of people to contact and where I should reach in. And one of his major suggestions was the SBA itself (which we're working on).

I could go on, there's probably 30 people that have been a major help in the last month. The point is, the difference between this and what you see in private industry (or state and local governments) is phenomenal. And it is receiving both guidance and assistance. For a small company this is invaluable. And for the government it is key to getting exposed to better solutions.

Office of the CIO

Ok, so lots of help on the purchasing side. For a lot of companies that works great. For us it's not as useful because software like ours is generally selected by an I.T. person and then the RFP lists it by vendor. Or it is purchased direct by credit card or from the GSA Schedule with no RFP (that's how we've sold to the government in the past). And so, that requires getting word of what we have to those IT people.

The suggestion I heard from person after person was to reach out to the OCIO. Each department and agency has an Office of the CIO and they provide (as I understand it) IT leadership for the department/agency. Therefore, in a case like ours where we have a software product with a significantly better way of solving a common need, the OCIO is the means to get the word out.

Ok, sounds simple, but what are the odds of getting in? Turns out, pretty good. The Department of the Treasury was the first one I tried and for 6 weeks it was pretty de-motivating. Lots of calls and no real progress. Calling numerous times to reach someone. Then talking to the administrative assistant who then promised to forward it on "to the right people." Well ok, that's better than we ever heard from a fortune 1,000 company but I was assuming that the odds were about zero.

And then we got an email back asking us to come present to three people at the OCIO (Treasury rocks!). Compare that to banks like CitiGroup, Bank of America, etc, where we get low-level managers from those companies contacting us weekly because they see a need for our software, but we can't get anyone in the CIO's office to even pretend to look at our software. But at the Treasury Department they are open to new approaches.

And it's not just Treasury. With their asking us to present that got us to kick it in to gear hitting the other Departments and major Agencies. At over half our info is being looked at to see if they are interested including at the Department of the Interior where it is being looked at by the CIO himself. And based on the reply from the administrative assistants when I call to check, I believe them (they tend to say hold on, no not there, wait… nope not there, found it, ok it's with…).

Of special note is the Veterans Administration where their system is the information is forwarded to all in the CIO's office and if anyone sees an immediate need the company is invited in immediately. If there is no immediate need the company is added to a queue and when it rises to the top (in 3 – 4 months), the company is invited in to present to a group in the CIO's office. In other words, they will look at you regardless.

If an organization is insistent on doing things the same old way, then it is not going to improve. And in fact it will fall behind as other organizations are improving and accelerate past the hide-bound dinosaurs. This effort and willingness to look at new products is a significant difference between the federal government and most large private companies (and most states and local governments). The federal CIOs operate as all CIOs should, and yet so few do.

And so we get

This combination of active help for small businesses and openness to new ideas by the OCIOs does a couple of things. First, it provides strong support to the small business community which is the source of innovation and new jobs in this country. Not a source, but almost exclusively the source. And it does it not with quotas or an unfair advantage but merely by giving small businesses a shot. It stops them from being shut out by the large companies they compete with.

While by comparison, for most large companies, they do shut out small businesses which not only hurts the economy, but it hurts that company.

Second, by bringing in new ideas, new approaches, new ways of accomplishing tasks, the government is able to improve on how it delivers to us. It doesn't mean it jumps immediately on every new approach that will improve things. But it does mean that it will tend to be looking at and using new approaches long before many large companies. And that lets the federal government do a better job.

Finally a thank you to all those I have talked to, traded emails with, etc. And thank you to those they passed our info on to who have looked at it and are considering it. Your efforts to give us a fair shot are so appreciated by all of us small business people out here.

And for those small business people who have avoided the federal government because you've heard it's very difficult to do business with, don't believe it. (Unless you're a competitor of ours – then yes, run away, run away.)

The conventional wisdom is that the private sector is much more efficient than the public sector. Everyone has horror stories of public sector employees that don't work, that do as little as possible, etc. (Of course, we all see this in the private sphere too.) And this is true that there is more of this than there should be.

The public sector also faces the very real problem that people are punished for mistakes but not rewarded for successes. So the incentive for people working in the public sphere is to be very careful and avoid mistakes. Because you cannot at the same time both push the envelope to find better approaches and at the same time avoid mistakes.

But…

Let's talk about something the federal government does much better than private industry. And I single out the federal government here because it's efforts here at not matched at all by state or local governments. (I'm sure some do, but I've yet to see one.)

I'm the CEO of a small software company and we recently started reaching out to the federal government (as they have all the money). We have sold to the feds before, but it was always them coming to us, not us reaching out to them. So this whole process is new to us. We have no skills on this, no knowledge, nothing.

The SBA

First off there is the Small Business Administration. They have people everywhere. And with the rare exception, they have been very helpful. I have had people spend 10, even 20 minutes answering my questions, thinking up suggestions, giving me people I should contact, and forwarding our information on. And this isn't just a canned response – what we sell is specified before it gets to the purchasing person so we need to reach past purchasing to the I.T. staff. And these people on the SBA staff have drilled me with questions and then work with me to figure out what to do.

Now compare that to a fortune 1,000 company where they won't even put you on their list of products (that they then ignore). Large private companies are structured to shut out any new products. The federal government is structured to help bring them in. Small businesses are responsible for virtually all the innovative new products in this country and it's the federal government with an infrastructure in place set to bring these ideas in to expose them to people.

Let me describe a couple of my favorites just because it is such a nice story. One person walked me through how often to email him to pass on to his POCs (Points Of Contact), what to put in it, how to mix them up, etc. And he finished it telling me that I will get replies saying once is enough – and to ignore that feedback because the repetition is key. This is based on his being on the purchasing side for 15 years before switching over to the SBA. He told me what to do to be effective rather than what he in his old position would prefer to receive. Very funny guy too, and had some great ideas on wording for our stuff.

Another person was talking to me about how to reach the OCIO (Office of the CIO) for his (Cabinet) Department. He gave me three different avenues to try. And then he told me that if they didn't respond and say they would take a look, to call the office of the Secretary and tell them to exert pressure. This is an individual who works as a small business advocate in the Department and boy is he an advocate. To him someone not looking at something new is unacceptable.

A third person walked me through all the major parts of the major agency she works for, and told me which ones were more open to new ideas, which were more likely to need our software, etc. This was a 10 minute picture that it would normally take a sales rep a year to work out – just handed over. And it was bluntly honest based on what she said about some of the sections. A tremendous help for us as we're a small number of people half way across the country from D.C.

An SBA director did a superb job of first getting a picture of where we are as a company with some good suggestion for us as a business as a whole. And then looked at us strategically and where he thought the government most needed us – giving me names of people to contact and where I should reach in. And one of his major suggestions was the SBA itself (which we're working on).

I could go on, there's probably 30 people that have been a major help in the last month. The point is, the difference between this and what you see in private industry (or state and local governments) is phenomenal. And it is receiving both guidance and assistance. For a small company this is invaluable. And for the government it is key to getting exposed to better solutions.

Office of the CIO

Ok, so lots of help on the purchasing side. For a lot of companies that works great. For us it's not as useful because software like ours is generally selected by an I.T. person and then the RFP lists it by vendor. Or it is purchased direct by credit card or from the GSA Schedule with no RFP (that's how we've sold to the government in the past). And so, that requires getting word of what we have to those IT people.

The suggestion I heard from person after person was to reach out to the OCIO. Each department and agency has an Office of the CIO and they provide (as I understand it) IT leadership for the department/agency. Therefore, in a case like ours where we have a software product with a significantly better way of solving a common need, the OCIO is the means to get the word out.

Ok, sounds simple, but what are the odds of getting in? Turns out, pretty good. The Department of the Treasury was the first one I tried and for 6 weeks it was pretty de-motivating. Lots of calls and no real progress. Calling numerous times to reach someone. Then talking to the administrative assistant who then promised to forward it on "to the right people." Well ok, that's better than we ever heard from a fortune 1,000 company but I was assuming that the odds were about zero.

And then we got an email back asking us to come present to three people at the OCIO (Treasury rocks!). Compare that to banks like CitiGroup, Bank of America, etc, where we get low-level managers from those companies contacting us weekly because they see a need for our software, but we can't get anyone in the CIO's office to even pretend to look at our software. But at the Treasury Department they are open to new approaches.

And it's not just Treasury. With their asking us to present that got us to kick it in to gear hitting the other Departments and major Agencies. At over half our info is being looked at to see if they are interested including at the Department of the Interior where it is being looked at by the CIO himself. And based on the reply from the administrative assistants when I call to check, I believe them (they tend to say hold on, no not there, wait… nope not there, found it, ok it's with…).

Of special note is the Veterans Administration where their system is the information is forwarded to all in the CIO's office and if anyone sees an immediate need the company is invited in immediately. If there is no immediate need the company is added to a queue and when it rises to the top (in 3 – 4 months), the company is invited in to present to a group in the CIO's office. In other words, they will look at you regardless.

If an organization is insistent on doing things the same old way, then it is not going to improve. And in fact it will fall behind as other organizations are improving and accelerate past the hide-bound dinosaurs. This effort and willingness to look at new products is a significant difference between the federal government and most large private companies (and most states and local governments). The federal CIOs operate as all CIOs should, and yet so few do.

And so we get

This combination of active help for small businesses and openness to new ideas by the OCIOs does a couple of things. First, it provides strong support to the small business community which is the source of innovation and new jobs in this country. Not a source, but almost exclusively the source. And it does it not with quotas or an unfair advantage but merely by giving small businesses a shot. It stops them from being shut out by the large companies they compete with.

While by comparison, for most large companies, they do shut out small businesses which not only hurts the economy, but it hurts that company.

Second, by bringing in new ideas, new approaches, new ways of accomplishing tasks, the government is able to improve on how it delivers to us. It doesn't mean it jumps immediately on every new approach that will improve things. But it does mean that it will tend to be looking at and using new approaches long before many large companies. And that lets the federal government do a better job.

Finally a thank you to all those I have talked to, traded emails with, etc. And thank you to those they passed our info on to who have looked at it and are considering it. Your efforts to give us a fair shot are so appreciated by all of us small business people out here.

And for those small business people who have avoided the federal government because you've heard it's very difficult to do business with, don't believe it. (Unless you're a competitor of ours – then yes, run away, run away.)

Last day on the job pictures

Note: If you like the below, you should like Fail with Dignity.

Update: Apparently these are photoshopped pictures. I received them in an email with no attribution so I was not aware of their origin. With that said, they're still hilarious.

Sometimes the only possible response is you're fired.

In other cases, after the decision while most people leave quietly. A few do so a bit more publically.

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Optional Advertainment: A very funny metaphor for reporting software.

The Department of the Treasury ROCKS!

12 May 2009

As I said previously I have been calling into the Office of the CIO at the federal government departments. And it's a lot of calls as you try to sell yourself enough that they will take a real look at you. A lot of the conversation is with administrative assistants who, with 1 exception, have been very nice.

But it's also a situation where you eventually email your info to the right person, they will pass it on, and you wait... In many cases you don't even know who the person is that is looking at what you sent. And you have no way to proactively answer any questions they have.

And so...

We got an email from the Department of the Treasury asking us to fly out and present Windward Reports to three members of their staff! The system worked, the OCIO at Treasury did take a real look and they are clearly open to new products that solve problems more effectively.

Michael Duffy (CIO Treasury) - your department rocks. And a giant thank you to the individuals there that reviewed Windward.

As I said previously I have been calling into the Office of the CIO at the federal government departments. And it's a lot of calls as you try to sell yourself enough that they will take a real look at you. A lot of the conversation is with administrative assistants who, with 1 exception, have been very nice.

But it's also a situation where you eventually email your info to the right person, they will pass it on, and you wait... In many cases you don't even know who the person is that is looking at what you sent. And you have no way to proactively answer any questions they have.

And so...

We got an email from the Department of the Treasury asking us to fly out and present Windward Reports to three members of their staff! The system worked, the OCIO at Treasury did take a real look and they are clearly open to new products that solve problems more effectively.

Michael Duffy (CIO Treasury) - your department rocks. And a giant thank you to the individuals there that reviewed Windward.