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Better + Faster = Excelerate = XLr8
- Details
- Category: XLr8
Twenty years ago I started a company to provide civil engineering training services.
I'm not a "salesman", but I could sell the idea that I could save you time and increase your quality.
Saving you time is about speed AND quality. Speed without quality does not save you time.
Faster must be coupled with Better:
Excel + Accelerate = Excelerate = XLr8
I called my company Civil XLr8.
Twenty years later, I can still sum up what drives me in those four letters: XLr8!
My company/"business services" website is CivilXLr8.com. Check it out!
Quick Links: YouTube Channel JeffMartinPE | My Resume | About this web
Why am I Here? (in front of class)
- Details
- Parent Category: Leadership
- Category: Training
One of the first things I do when I start an on-site class is ask:
"Why Am I Here?"
- What value do I add by being here?
- Why did your company pay me money to teach you something that is available for free?
- Videos of these lectures and exercise are availble online. In fact, in many of them, I'm the narrator (unlikely now, but common at the time).
- Why Am I Here?
- It forces staff to spend the time 24, 32 or 40 hours taking the training.
- I can answer "detail" questions and provide context.
- I diagnose, triage, and curate. There is a LOT of content available, some of it is critical to you, much is not. Some has a negative consequence. The first hour I spend focused on learning your needs, picking appropriate foundational material to work through for the first day. Over the course of the day (and the next), I refine my understanding of what you need and then find the best material available. Generally if there is a day 4, I've got some new custom exercise that fill the biggest gap in the material that fits your needs.
- I can translate the generic workflow to how you do things or how you should be doing things for your projects' unique or quirky needs.
The Fierce Urgency of Now
- Details
- Parent Category: Experience
- Category: self
My Career Drivers
Innate
Love of Learning
Knowledge is Power. There is Safety in Power.
There is also comfort in that the world is orderly and that the orderliness can be known.
And the whole thing is grandly wonderous.
Compulsion to Serve
There's always been a need to be of service, of value.
Career
Utility/Application
Career is about application. What can you do for somebody?
What knowledge can you convert to valuable action?
Learn while you do (recursive). Apply!
Impact
Scale your effort.
The Six-Ball Juggle
- Details
- Parent Category: Leadership
- Category: Insight
The Six-Ball Juggle
Designing Better workflows
Summary (the Takeaway)
How do you:
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- Simplify the Project
- Speed the Workflow
- Improve Quality
- Solve Resource Issues
- Improve Morale
- Prevent my biggest regret as a Parent
Juggle fewer balls.
Do this:
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- Skeptically re-evaluate your assumptions about the requirements.
- Be skeptical that your Six Ball Juggler's workflow is actually the best workflow.
- Bring in Circus Experts, talk to Entertainment Experts, Talk to Peers.
- Design your workflow for Quality
- Design your workflow for Clarity
- Design your workflow for multiple talent threshholds
- Design your workflow to be sustainable
Here's the Powerpoint Presentation: The Six-Ball Juggle (slideshow)
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