How to Recognize a Good Boss by Marty Zwilling

Below is an article about how to recognize a good boss. All of these are good traits and abilities that people can develop. The real exceptional leaders are the ones who know how to extract higher levels of performance. The true leader can be charming and the worlds nicest person but also must have the ability to be nice while instilling a sense of fear that failure is far more painful than the effort to required to be #1.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

How to Recognize a Great Boss, or Even Be One

Everyone can recognize a great manager a mile away, so why is it so hard to find one? We all remember a few that are “legends in their own mind”, but that doesn’t do it. In fact, the clue here is that the view in your mind is the only one that matters, rather than the other way around.
Almost every one of us in business can remember that one special manager in their career who exemplifies the norm, who commanded our respect, and treated us like a friend, even in the toughest of personal or business crises.
I’ve asked many peers for the traits or attributes they saw in that person, and most will list the following positive functional traits of a good manager:

1. Leadership. Shows outstanding skills in guiding team members towards attainment of the organization’s goals and the right decisions at the right point of time. As Drucker said, "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
2. Plan and delegate. Possesses foresight and skills to understand the relevant capabilities of team members, and then scheduling tasks and delegating to the right people to get tasks done within deadlines. You are a guide, not a commander.
3. Domain expert. Demonstrates complete knowledge of his field and confident about that knowledge, with the common sense to make quick productive decisions, and ability to think outside the box.
4. Set clear expectations. Employees should always know what is expected of them. One of the easiest ways to do this is to set deliverable milestones for each employee over a set period of time. Then review the performance vs. the roadmap or deliverable at least six months prior to a performance review and discuss ways to improve.
5. Positive recognition. Immediately recognize team members, publicly or privately, when they complete something successfully or show initiative. Congratulate them on a job well done. Most employees are not motivated by money alone. Good managers know that employees want regular recognition that their job is being done well.

In my view, these are all “necessary” attributes, but are not “sufficient” to put you in that ‘great’ category. Most people recognize that it takes more to be ‘great,’ but the attributes are a bit more esoteric, and harder to quantify. Here are a few:

6. Active listener. Shows traits such as listening with feedback, optimistic attitude, motivating ability, and a concern for people. Listening to what is said as well as what is not said is of the utmost importance. It is demoralizing to an employee to be speaking to a supervisor and be interrupted for a phone call. All interruptions should be avoided.
7. Shows empathy. This refers to the ability to "walk in another person's shoes", and to have insight into the thoughts, and the emotional reactions of individuals faced with change. Empathy requires that you suspend judgment of another's actions or reactions, while you try to understand them, and treat them with sensitivity, respect, and kindness.
8. Always honest. Simply put, today’s managers live in glass houses. Everything that a manager does is seen by his employees. If a manager says one thing and does another, employees see it. Managers must be straightforward in all words and actions. A manager must “walk the talk.” That also means recognizing weaknesses, and admitting mistakes.
9. Sense of humor. People of all ages and cultures respond to humor. The majority of people are able to be amused at something funny, and see an irony. One of the most frequently cited attractions in great personal relationships is a sense of humor.
10. Keep your cool. A great manager is an effective communicator and a composed individual, with a proven tolerance for ambiguity. He/she never loses their cool, and is able to correct the team members without emotional body language or statements.

Whole books are written on this subject, but hopefully you get the picture. Great managers must do the technical job well – and they also must do the people job very well. Now that you understand these things, I’m not sure why it is so hard to find a great manager. I guess an even harder question I should ask is why is it so hard to be one?

Marty Zwilling

Interesting Article from ComboApp (via techvibes)

Vancouver's ComboApp reveals results of extensive mobile app developers' survey

Thanks to techvibes for the article but quite interesting to see what is on the minds of the local developers. Obviously Apple has a big head start but Android could take over as the dominant play. The other interesting piece is that most developers are willing to develop on the HTML-5 platform that Blackberry is using for its tablet. (Tim)

Vancouver-based marketing firm ComboApp has revealed the detailed results of a thorough study aimed at delving into the minds of today's mobile app developers.
When asked which platforms developers are most vested in, 39 percent answered Android, followed closely by iOS at 36 percent. Symbian and Windows drew virtually no interest, while Mac OS eked out BlackBerry OS by two percent.

When asked, "Is it profitable for you to place ad banners within your applications?" more than 40 percent responded with "I have not attempted to utilize this business model." Yet most who have used it found success, with roughly two-thirds saying it is either their primary or secondary source of income.

For the rest of the article, please see http://www.techvibes.com/blog/vancouvers-comboapp-reveals-results-of-extensive-mobile-app-developers-survey-2011-05-09.

Demand For goodPeople is on the rise in Vancouver

I tweeted this through one of my many Twitter Services and I managed to get this posted on the Blog - by accident but what the heck. I might as well stretch out the rest of the tough.

"TS Demand for good finance professionals is on the rise in Vancouver. I am looking for a Manager with great MD&A writing skills"

Over the last several month in Vancouver, the labour market has been tightening up and the finance people are now starting to get the sale pull. The usual cycle in the Tech Sector is sales first, followed by engineers and them finance and operations staff. We have seen some solid activity on the front two and finance is catching up as of late Q1 2011. That's good news for the economy.

While many are predicting a different kind of market for the future, and I don't disagree entirely, what we are seeing is a new approach to technology acquisition that looks like it can perpetuate itself for some time to come.

In Vancouver, the gaming industry has shifted from a "work for a big studio" to build your own gaming application on Face Book. As a result, the bigger studios are shedding folks who are not missing a beat and launching more small and private ventures. Instead of contracting for a biggie, these people are contracting for themselves and financing their products through a variety of channels from the Apple Store to Face Book.

All good news.

How to Get IT Help

COO Magazine?

So where can I get my subscription to COO Magazine?

 

No matter what you do, there is a high probability that there is a web site or magazine dedicated to your profession unless you are a COO. A few issues ago, The Harvard Business Review noted the same thing. So why is it that a such an important role in growing organizations gets so little attention? And if there were a COO website or magazine, what would it look like?

Drawing on the quarter century of resources in our proprietary data base, Corporate Recruiters looked at over 150 position descriptions and resumes to find out.

One factor that came to the surface was the sheer uniqueness of the job description. Often the ‘heir apparent’ in a company, (but not always) the COO needs to have a skill set that balances that of the CEO. Often, in a manufacturing or electronics focused company, this person would have an engineering background. So should COO Magazine resemble a technical journal? Not so fast.

Services companies tend to have former project managers and development managers in the COO role. Software companies were most diverse of all, including individuals from both of the above categories as well as sales operations, channel management and finance.

There is one trend that seems to be moving across the board. With the increased focus on corporate governance and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, many companies are seeking COO’s with backgrounds and qualifications in finance. Many recently anointed COO’s have come from the camp of the CFO’s.

Will this bring an increase in financial oversight and a decrease in the traditional role of merging vision and strategy with structure and execution? It’s too early to draw conclusions, but we may see smaller companies with larger executive teams where the new role of COO takes on some of the large portfolio of responsibilities traditionally owned by the CFO.

One thing is likely never to change, however. It has been said that entrepreneurs look for best actions, while COO’s focus on best practices – a dichotomy that will lead to interesting boardroom discussions well into the future.

By Tim Swanson, Corporate Recruiters Ltd. He can be contacted at tim@corporate.bc.ca

Wind Enegy is Cost Effective!

It is no secret that I am a windy guy. Just ask anyone who stands behind me in an elevator but today's article is not about biogas - mine or otherwise.

I always love to hear a story where wind energy is winning the game. Last year we noted that Texas maxed out the transmission grid with wind power.  It doesn't get much better than that and you have to pitch one to Spain for their ante in the claim to the clean energy throne. Their claim comes with an outstanding day on January 6th, 2011 where ecogeek reports that renewable energy made up a record-breaking 75 percent of Spain's electricity on that day!

Also, I am pleased to say that wind is now competing with the dirty power industry on cost effectiveness. According to ecogeek, in regions of Brazil, Mexico, Sweden and the U.S., wind power now costs $68/MWh and coal power costs $67/MWh. Recent agreements has wind power being contracted as low as 5 to 6 cents per kwh which is competitive even to natural gas.

So now I am really looking forward to stepping out of the elevator and taking a nice deep breath of fresh air and you should too. Just remember to do it infront of me rather than behind!

Tim Swanson,
Cleantech Recruiter at Corporate Recruiters Ltd.

The Tech Job Market is Hot

Originally I typed "The Job Market is Heating Up." But that is just not the case. It is hot and that is great news for our economy (and as a recruiter, I like it too).

Plain and simple - no indexes or moving averages - just plain vanilla stats.

• In Sept 2009 there were 550 vacant tech jobs.
• During the Olympics there were 750 vacant tech jobs.
• One year after the the Olympics there are 1100 tech vacancies out there.

Simply put. We are 50% better since the Olympic and 100% better since the the fall of 2009.

If you want to see more evidence, check out these articles from the Vancouver Sun.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/aerospace+sector+needs+more+workers+industry+leader+says/4299710/story.html
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Labour+pains/4284461/story.html
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Local+employers+grapple+with+global+economy/4201059/story.html

If you are experience tech labour pains, please let me know because we have a solution for you - Call me @ 604-687-5993 x116.

Tim Swanson
Corporate Recruiters

Top Financing Deals in 2010 for BC's Tech Sector

This was a popular list from last year where the deal size wasn't exactly glowing and compared to 2009, 2010 looks to have been a pretty good year. Looking at the top 20 deals from each of 2009 & 2010 have some interesting comparisons but before we break out the champagne, a couple of deals are still pending but size of the deals are nice to see. For example, Westport's $100 million public offering announced in November is still pending but, hey, $100 million is a nice lead in to the list.

Top 10 for BC in 2010

1. Westport Innovations Inc.             $106,000,000

2. OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. $  51,000,000

3. I-Pulse Inc.                                   $  46,500,000
4. WEX Pharmaceuticals Inc.            $  35,500,000
5. CellFor Inc.                                  $  21,200,000
6. D-Wave Systems Inc.                   $  17,000,000

7. Delta-Q Technologies Corp.         $  17,000,000

8. Celator Pharmaceuticals Corp.      $  15,900,000

9. NGRAIN (Canada) Corporation   $  12,250,000

10. Allon Therapeutics Inc.                $  10,100,000

11. Vivonet Incorporated                   $   8,800,000

12. Response Biomedical Corp.         $   8,000,000

You may notice that there are 12 deals listed. This is because the one at the top may not count because it is still pending. Also, I-Pulse, which looks real exciting, was financed by a resources company in BC (Ivanhoe), so they may or may not add to our booming tech community in terms of jobs.


In comparison to 2009.....well there's not much of a comparison. The number speak for themselves:

1. Plutonic Power $70,000,000
2. Burcon Nutrascience $16,900,000
3. Tantalus $14,400,000
4. Oncogenex $10,500,000
5. General Fusion $10,000,000
6. Zeugma $9,000,000
7. Tranzeo Wireless $6,900,000
8. Redlan Technologies $5,180,000
10. Pakit $5,000,000

There is some real dough out there and the trickle down is noticeable. It is no longer a buyers’ market for employers. The demand for tech talent is up - demand has doubled over the last 18 months.


The TSX also agrees that the tough times are more behind us than in front of us.

Tim Swanson
Corporate Recruiters

A Vision for Education in the 21st Century

The Premier’s Technology Council (PTC) has released a special report outlining a vision for education in the 21st century. The report considers what skills and attributes will enable students to succeed in a knowledge-based society and how our education system could be transformed to address the rapidly changing globe.

http://www.gov.bc.ca/premier/attachments/PTC_vision%20for_education.pdf

Premier’s Technology Council



A Vision for Education in the 21st Century


Over the past fifteen years computers and other personal devices have combined with the Internet and wireless capabilities to create a situation where finding information is the matter of clicking a button, regardless of where you are. The net result is an increasingly complex, interconnected, global society. Ensuring that everyone remains fully functional in this complex world will be critical for British Columbia’s future. Education systems around the globe are transforming themselves to address the new of information and BC’s education system needs to transform also.






The Premier’s Technology Council (PTC) has developed a vision (attached) of what such a system should look like and how it should educate our students. It is critical that they are trained for the world that that they must live in tomorrow, not the world that existed twenty years ago. At one time information was a scarce resource. Information is now ubiquitous and there is almost too much of it. The most critical information related skills are no longer how to find it, but how to synthesize it, sift it, assess it and most importantly, use it. This then shifts the role of the educators; they are no longer required to be the student’s primary source of information. In this new world, educators must instead guide students as they learn to apply their skills to the information that is so readily available.






The skills of the 21st century will still be rooted in literacy and numeracy. Built on that will be the ability to think critically about the information available. Creativity and innovation will be needed to generate new ideas and concepts. Students will have to understand how to use the technology available and how to interpret and use the various forms of digital media available. They will also have to understand how to use what is available to communicate and collaborate with others. Intellectual collaboration is no longer bound by the walls of a room or the slow pace of words on a page. Our students must learn how to tackle problems with teams of people across the country and around the globe.






The PTC vision describes an education system driven by individualised learning. Parents will have an opportunity to be more involved and the role of the teacher will become more complex, shifting from lecturer to guide. It is a vision where the students are challenged to examine content in more depth. Some may lament this shift and argue that if students are not memorizing facts, then you aren’t teaching them anything. The reality is that the world has changed. Online information sources like Wikipedia combine with Google and other search engines to create repositories of information that were unheard of ten years ago. The children of today already use them. It is critical that we teach them to use what is there today and what will be there in the future.


The PTC is advocating this transformation because the world is changing and we need to respond. Other education leaders around the globe (jurisdictions like Finland and Singapore) are also making this shift. If we in BC want to remain competitive in a knowledge based world and transition to the knowledge-based society of the future, then we need a system that helps people to achieve their goals and be contributing members of a 21st century society.

Turning Plastic Back into Oil! Great for the Planet.

Plastic to back to fuel is a good thing.
Tim Swanson