Saturday, July 12, 2008

It's back.... Minto!

Went to a meeting yesterday where an IT consultant was telling us how to better integrate our systems. I was there because of my responsibilities for making sure e-commerce is awesome.

So we get in this meeting and the consultant goes: blah blah blah. For each "blah" he was supposed to say, it seems he said forty-extra "blah's." In mathematics, that's a blah-speach to the 40th power. So what should have been 5 minutes was quite a bit longer.

I spoke with an executive after the meeting and he said the guy should have displayed 1 chart slide and said the systems aren't integrated and too many manual processes are used to link them.

Then put up a second slide saying that phase one is just to get csv files to link them-- creating X manual processes per day instead of per order. 3rd slide: Phase 3 eliminates those manual processes etc...

Ok fellow BYU MBA'ers, do you know what this guy was describing nearly to a "t"? Minto. Start with a story: "Data Entry is going on and it sucks"

"Here's why it sucks"

"Here's the band-aid fix"

"Here's the long-term fix"

5 minutes and 4 million less "blah's" later, everyone is able to make their carpools and read over the full version of the report if they need to.

Glad I wasn't the guy presenting. When it comes time for me to, I will remember this lesson.
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I'm not trying to be rude to the guy here, but just make a point. He was actually well prepared, but most the people at the meeting wanted to donate precious few minutes and his strategy was to explain his findings in great detail. If they had more concerns they could get them addressed (hence be prepared), but I think the biggest concern was "let me know the problem is beiing taken care of and I won't get in your way."

Make sure you're prepared to answer questions but people in most businesses are busy; communicate necessities and then hand over your report.

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