I was recently asked if going to all of these events was really worth the time. My answer to them is the answer I give to everyone. There is always one person you will have a conversation with, one speaker giving a presentation, or one bit of information that makes the time completely worth it. If nothing else, you usually get a free drink or some food out of it. But in all seriousness, I cannot express enough the importance of attending these events.

I am not saying that it is valuable for an individual to attend every event that is going on within a 20 mile radius. I do think it is key to pick groups and events that are not only crucial for the industry your company represents, but also the groups that will help you with your career.

This past weekend I attended Austin ProductCamp, a semiannual event for product managers and product marketers. A message they have consistently reminded all attendees of is “a meeting is only what you make of it”. They suggest instead of messing around with your phone during session breaks, take advantage of your peers that are there to learn more too. Instead of only exchanging business cards be sure to follow up with people. It doesn’t count to just go home and connect with them on LinkedIn. Instead of staying in a session that isn’t giving you what you need, use your two feet (the two foot rule at ProductCamp) and go to a different session.

Even though ProductCamp is making these recommendations, their lessons and practices can be used to make all events you attend worth your time. What are you looking to get out of the events you attend?

• My position’s most important role now is to get my employees promoted. My job is no longer just executing my daily tasks; my success depends on their success. I believe that mangers often mistakenly believe that the employee is there to help get them promoted. Having a person under you will not automatically give you a better title, double productivity, or be able to pass off all the unwanted tasks you don’t like as to not deal with them anymore.

• The sooner you start thinking about your employee’s future the better. Since it is now clear that my job as a manager is to get employees promoted, I need to be sure to send them down a path that they will be successful at and want. Talking with employees about where they see themselves going and being honest about what will be needed from them in the future is extremely important. This is the best way to be sure that both parties’ expectations are aligned.

• Create black and white criteria with your employee for reaching that promotion. If you talk a lot about wanting to get them to the next level but never let them know how to reach it, that can foster bitterness. Make the metrics measurable, reasonable, and obtainable. It is important to make the metrics about behaviors and not results. This will help keep employee from feeling the metrics are out of their control and the promotion is just a carrot at the end of a stick.

• Provide the tools and remove road blocks for your employee to complete the defined criteria. When an employee comes to me asking for help and I am in the middle of doing something, sometimes I have to remind myself of this. This is not a coming of age test where you send them out into the desert with a switch blade and a cantina of water. It should be more like backpacking with someone that has done it before. You are still going to have to walk yourself and carry your stuff, but I am there to tell you not to wear deodorant because it attracts bears.

This is where I am so far.  I have got a lot to learn and lots of mistakes to make, but if you have any words of advice I would greatly appreciate them. Just leave me a comment below.

Often I find myself thinking, “I just know that solution y will solve problem x,” but knowing that will not be enough to convince my fellow developer teammates. Now I am not saying that I’m not swayed by a good statistic, but I can usually be influenced by a trusted teammate’s feelings, intuition, or experience. Being a D personality (from the DiSC Personality Profile) a statistic to me is no more than a luxury when trying to make quick decisions.

As I prepare to bring my case to the team, feelings, intuition, and experience will not be enough for this group of predominately C’s. So, I start the necessary hunt to provide statistics that will prove ‘solution y’ is truly the answer. Wanting to give my audience of data-driven minds exactly what they want, I quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of data that I can collect and slice up so many ways. And that my friends, is why I am writing this blog!

This blog is a reminder to all my fellow feeling, intuition, and experience folks that find themselves spending days mining data and dividing cell B2 by every other occupied cell in your sheet. Don’t forget (as I recently did) that you just need to find the statistic that most clearly represents why ‘solution y’ is indeed the right solution. I find that I can sometimes avoid this issue by following these steps before collecting a shred of data:

1. Write down what it is that I am trying to prove.
2. Write down what data I have access to. And most importantly…
3. Ask an audience member what’s important to them, don’t just assume.

Have you found ways to not get sucked into the data black hole? Please, share your brilliance with me!

Let’s look at some examples:

• In 1944, young modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker was told by the director of Blue Book Modeling Agency she should get secretarial work or get married. Norma Jean Baker later became a world-known pop cultural icon, Marilyn Monroe.
• In 1954, an unknown performer was fired by the manager of the Grand Ole Opry who advised him to go back to driving a truck. This singer became the most popular singer in American history and left a legend as the “King of Rock and Roll,” but most know him as Elvis Presley.
• In 1962, Decca Recording Company turned down a record deal with a band of four British musicians citing they were left unimpressed and disliked their sound. This group later became the international phenomenon known as The Beatles.

So what changed for these people? What led them from failure to success? It wasn’t luck; it was acquired knowledge. They were, at the very least, able to eliminate one course of action in order to develop a new plan.

The greatest opportunity success through experiencing failure offers is knowledge. Most of us probably don’t remember learning to walk, but surely our parents do, and they can vouch that we didn’t get it right the first time we tried. Did we give up and continue to crawl? No. We tried again until we got it right. But not only did we try again, we practiced walking so much we were eventually able to run. We weren’t born knowing everything, but we were born with the ability to learn and grow. So, similarly when faced with challenges in our professional and personal life, if at first you don’t succeed, try again and continue to practice your skills so they become second nature to you.

So, success means gaining knowledge from a good, hard failure.  Open yourself to new situations by being vulnerable and exposed to criticism. Understand what it is that holds you back from success, embrace it as motivation and envision yourself in an ideal situation. Essentially, change what failure means to you and harness it as confidence to create further success.

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.  -Mark Twain

Similar to relationships, people and their jobs don’t always work out. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported more employees left their jobs voluntarily than were laid off in 2010. Here are some reasons reported why people quit their jobs or are seriously considering resigning.

• They couldn’t stand their boss
• Job Stress
• The company was struggling
• Better opportunities
• Being stretched to the limit
• Boredom

Below are a few tips that we follow that have led to a positive impact for our employee retention efforts:

Studies have shown people thrive in positions where they feel they are contributing and making a difference. Employees like to be part of the big picture plan to help the company succeed, so let them know what the big picture plan is and how their role will directly impact the company getting there.

Employees also like to know they have a career path laid out for them at your company. Make it clear about what it takes to progress in your company. Career progression also includes salary and benefits, which will help keep employees engaged and happy.

Get regular feedback from your employees. Ask how you’re performing or, if appropriate, send an anonymous survey to understand what your employees think about their jobs, the company, your performance, etc. Often people don’t leave the companies, they leave poor managers. Have regular formal or informal catch-ups with your employees to gauge where they are.

Are there things or tips you’ve seen or are doing in your company to help employee retention?

1. Improve your leadership

Review how you lead your team and find opportunities to improve it. The solution could be classes or getting involved in professional organizations to help you learn new best practices. Do you meet with each employee on a regular basis? You could also change your review process with your employees and find new ways to support them.

At Headspring, employees meet with their supervisor for a one-on-one once a month. This is a chance to discuss anything the employee or supervisor wants to. This is also a great way to encourage a collaborative and team environment.

2. Review your business goals

As your business evolves, your end goal may evolve also. It’s important to periodically review your business goals to keep your focus and actions aligned. Is your company still on the right track to success or do you need to shift the goals? Take in consideration your progress so far and where you want to be in the future.

Every quarter, our entire company meets to discuss the company’s goals, evaluate where we are, and discuss where we are headed. Then, we go spend time outside of the office doing something fun – i.e. rock climbing, laser tag, Segway tours, etc.

3. Diversify your offerings

Expand and diversify your offerings based on your clients’ needs. What other services or products can you offer? Think about how you can improve your clients’ experience or meet their needs. Complementary products, educational webinars and white papers or internal improvements of processes with clients can help improve and grow your business.

Our developers and team frequently develops open source projects, hosts numerous training and education seminars and focus on providing systems that will help our clients’ businesses grow.

4. Develop the skills of your employees

Are your employees improving their skills and continuing their education? When your employees improve and expand their skills, it allows them to improve their quality of work at your company, which will make your company more successful. Your company can offer company educational or seminar days for your employees or you can provide your employees with a list of options, such as classes offered in your city or educational events employees can attend.

We continuously encourage and support mastering a skill. We’ve built in CI time daily for employees and host peer learning lunches, which allow them to focus on anything they choose that they want to master and share what they’ve learned with the entire office.

What business growth strategies do you use?

As consultants we have helped many clients and prospective clients determine the value of updating their systems. There is not always a need to update. With our 10 years of experience, we have gotten a nice rhythm down for helping businesses decide if investing in a new business application is the best move for them. We compiled a list of questions in a quick reference guide to help you and your team determine if updating your systems is a good move.

If you have been trying to convince your decision maker to allocate resources in new business systems, this is the tool to help make your case. It covers the following topics:

• If your system is business critical
• Is the system at risk and should it change
• What benefits you will gain with newer technology
• How much updating a system might cost

Logan is a bright and ambitious student who wanted a more technical and career-oriented summer experience before he went off to college in the fall. After acing a technical interviewing process filled with several interviews and tests, Logan began a beneficial summer of learning how to improve his programming skills. As a productive member of the team, Logan assisted on multiple projects and was able to put what he knew into practice and learn what this career path looks like from our employees.

We’re looking forward to seeing Logan develop his skills in the next few years and starting a successful career!

Logan’s school, Grace Academy, also wrote a great article about his internship.

If you or someone you know is interested in an internship position at Headspring, start the process here.

“I started programming by creating a web page, and I was one of the early people who had an email address when if you ask someone ‘hey, what’s your email and they would ask, what’s that?!’”

As a six-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), find out more about how Palermo found his passion for programming, his career advice, his methods of handling a leadership role and his approach to business and management.

Listen to the full podcast, by visiting the Pluralcast website.

I knew I’d have to gather requirements for the site. Having no idea of what requirement gathering techniques were out there I just started a word document list: pages, forms, content.  When I sat down with the team to start developing the site, they needed more information about site flow.

I tried explaining with my 17 page word document, highlighted and notes scribbled on the side, but no one was getting it (including myself). When one brilliant person suggested that we draw it out, markers opened and the drawing began: home page, top-nav pages, children pages, forms and so on.

When we were done the picture finally became clear. All my requirements, even those that I had forgotten about, were there and easy to follow. No matter what you’re building, please learn from my mistake and start off drawing your requirements, because if it can’t be drawn, it can’t be built.