Discussing Forum – Letter Issue

Victoria Rivkin wrote in her article, "Women Dissatisfied With Legal CareerAdvancement, Study Finds" that "Both female and male law graduates agree onstrategies for advancement, such as demonstrating strong communicationskills, developing a style with which their managers are comfortable andtaking initiative."

While I have heard young men and women articulate the same strategies shementions, in my experience I have consistently seen young men and womenapply two additional and distinctly different strategies. When men enter anew position they expect a promotion when they get the current positionabout half-right. The women on the other hand tend to spend more time in aposition getting it 90 to 100 percent right before they expect to bepromoted into the next position. The result is that, all things being equal,if it takes a year to get a job right, using the strategies I identified ittakes 18 months for the men and three years for the women to get threepromotions. This is not evidence of managerial or institutional bias but aconsistent distinction in strategy applied by men and women.

I think there is another issue in that I find women seem to desire moreformal training than their male peers. I think that the people who preferformal rather than on-the-job training will find that this choice slowstheir advance over peers who select OJT. Again I don't think this is agender bias issue on the part of the managers. I think managers see peopleof either gender who choose formal training as weaker than those who choseon-the-job training. But since more women than men choose formal trainingmore women than men are affected by their choice. It's simply applying thesame approach that make one successful in school to the real world fails torecognize real life is not school.

[This letter was written to Brian Gallagher regarding his December 2000 column entitled "Chain of Fools - Getting to the Root of Your Outage Problems."] Brian Gallagher's approach to getting results is very similar to my own and works best for email. However, I would like to suggest a snail-mail technique, which is also very effective.

I used to be an insurance broker and when a client brought a dispute with an insurance company to my attention I did the following. I would write two letters. One to the attorney general the other to the department of insurance. I would then CC copies of these letters to the company with a cover letter, but I did not send the originals, at least at first, to either the attorney general or insurance commissioner. The company had four options: (1) Trash the letters (never happened). (2) Call me with facts my clients had overlooked or gotten wrong that explained their position (which happened about one-third of the time). (3) Get on the stick and fix the problem before either department nailed them. (4) The final (and really dumb) thing for them to do was to call the agencies and open the can of worms on themselves (happened only once or twice). You can choose the appropriate people to contact in your CC mail. It might be the corporate headquarters or some government agency. It doesn't really matter so long as they are perceived as important to the real recipient of your mail. You only want to chose CC recipient names that will make your real target say, "Oh shit" and get moving.

Finally as Brian suggested these letters had to un-emotionally and accurately describe the chain of events. He is also correct in suggesting that you require a return-receipt or a signature for certified mail. Either of these two items wake people up to the fact a paper trail is starting. Finally you are not trying to write so they understand. You are writing so they will take a particular course of action.

Best wishes all,

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Dear Doug,

It's great to get some reinforcement from those in the trenches. As you succinctly point out in your letter [Letter to boardwatch.com], getting it in writing is often the only way to go. In addition to fixing many things broken, there's another great place for documentation in a business environment that I'd like to mention. I have watched hundreds of hours pass in meetings with multiple people and watched everyone come out of them with completely different perspectives on what was accomplished and agreed upon. A summation of events, from anyone in attendance, is beneficial to all so that points of contention or confusion can be identified and addressed before they become obstacles to implementation. Keep reading (and writing).

Best regards,

Dear Editor,

I am writing to communicate my concerns regarding the possibility ofdiminished patient care and increased cost to the state if the plan nowunder consideration by the Veterans Administration to close the RadiationTherapy Unit at Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Jamaica Plain,Massachusetts is implemented. At this time all Veterans in Maine, NewHampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut receivingradiation therapy for cancer go to the Radiation Therapy Unit at VeteransAffairs Medical Center, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. The next closestradiation treatment unit run by the VA is in Albany, New York.

The plan as announced would provide treatment from third party providersinstead of the VA Medical Center. The VA's plan, as I understand it, is toclose the unit and send patients from Massachusetts to the New EnglandMedical Center. There is a possibility that once a third party, such asthe New England Medical Center in Boston or the Dartmouth Medical centerin New Hampshire, is used to provide radiation treatment then free care toveterans whose cancer is not service connected will no longer be availablefrom the VA in New England. The people who need this assistance areveterans with low income and no health insurance.

I am also very concerned that patient care will diminish with this change.I was treated for cancer at the Radiation Therapy Unit in Jamaica Plainthis year. I became very ill from side effects of the treatment and had tobe hospitalized. The exact source of my problems couldn't be explainedcompletely as side effect from either radiation therapy or chemotherapy. Ithink one factor in the present system that improved the quality of mytreatment was that doctors treating me (and all the other cancer patients)from several specialties met every week and more often if necessary. Theywere able to get together and coordinate the treatment because they werein the same building. I fear that if radiation therapy moves from the VAMCin JP to another facility located some distance away this vital line ofcommunication will become strained if not completely broken. I believevery strongly disrupting this process of communication will reduce thequality of patient care. I also think that the daily travel across towneach day in midwinter for treatment would have been more than aninconvenience for a hospital patient. If it ain't broke don't try to fix it.

Thank you in advance for you kind consideration.

Sincerely,

Thoughts on how introduce a new product Thoughts on how introduce a new product. The creators of new technology generally do a poor job of describing it to their customers. Admittedly when they have come up with something really new the client base has no idea what's going on and they do nned to get educated. But what do you tell them?

Rule Number 1: Don't try to "educate" them. Only talk about the issues on which they need to take action. Only talk to them about "action items". What's an "action item"? An action item is something the prospective buyer needs to consider. If the color is important discuss it. If your widget is installed behind the wall color is probably not an issue, so don't discuss your product's color in literature or presentations. The same is true of all the other possible descriptors. For example the fact that you use a custom chip rather than use a couple of off-the-shelf chips in your product is not an "action item" for the customer. It was a big "action item" for your engineering department. The engineering department will probably tell any one who will listen about the chip, the effort to get it right, and so on. When a new product is introduced all to often there are always a lot of "facts" that provided by the empty suits in your ad agency. They got a lot of those facts from your engineers. Don't discuss facts in your literature and presentations that aren't customer "action items" and don't confuse your "action items" with your customer's. It was the solution your engineering department chose, and you can't change it now, not for any customer. Keep your message simple. Omit needles facts. Omit needles facts. Omit needles facts.

Rule Number 2: Who you chose to talk to under non-disclosure depends on where you are in the development cycle. You always want to be "first to market" and you have designed a timetable to do that. Who you talk to and when should be driven by your customer's implementation cycle. If your customer's project cycles are annual and start in the spring then start talking with the managers and planners in the fall (Rule 2a). Start talking with the technical people in the winter (Rule 2b).

Rule 2a: If you are more than a couple months from first shipment talk under non-disclosure only to Managers and Planners . Do not talk to your customer's technical people (see Rule 2b).

Rule 2b: Don't talk to technical people under non-disclosure more than 16 weeks before the product will be in their hands. Technical people are "doerbees" they need to deliver stuff to make the company run. Their project cycles are generally short. (Partly because their mangers have a planning horizon of about five minutes.) If you tell them about a wiz-bang solution that would solve a lot of problems for them, but wont be available for their current (or next) project you are probably going to hurt their morale. If they don't like your technology (and technoids, dweebs, and geeks have strong opinions about technology) you give them lots of time to shoot it down before you can deliver and you can't take money for it until you can deliver it.