10 change agent tricks

All across organizations, no matter if big or small, you find people with the weird interest of improving things, making things better, make of their companies, units or teams best in class. These rare animals assume as their "confort zone" exactly that that others run away from: change, change, change.

These people are continiously finding different ways to make things, even irrationally, it's in their DNA. Rules usually don't work too well for them and have an internal permanent frustration that moves them to evolve.

For all those, I'm going to share some tips, rules that I apply in my day to day. These are my learnings after several years of hard work, failures and hits against brick walls wherever I've been working in. These have been generated working in a big corporation and also small businesses. But the most relevant comes from my years in a big Corporation so you'll realize they are clearly applicable there but probably most are useful in other environments.

Trick 1. Choose the battles to fight in: Change is great but focus on what you CAN change.

There are lots of things to change so choose based on answering two different questions: can you change it? Have you been invited to the party?

If you see you cannot do it, find another battle. If it's too big, concentrate in small pieces of change. If you deliver differencially, at the end of the day, you'll find out that you've changed more things than expected.

And of course, if you haven't been invited to the party, don't go! I've done myself the failure of trying to force a change in something that wasn't my responsibility and it always ended up in high energy crash with fire.

Trick 2. Prepare the best sales pitch ever.

This is about preparing a great argumentary. Do it, be ready, you'll need to use it a thousand times. I learnt this from a business colleague. Thanks Michael for it! The steps are:

2.1. Challenge the Status Quo.

If you want to change something, first you need to answer the question: why do we need to change at all?

Most people dislike change so this question will come. Be sure about it. And some will be really rude so be ready.

2.2. Share your vision.

There's a second question coming from your colleagues the, let's call them, "change challengers". Ok, so what you want to do?

Prepare a great answer. Be as bold as possible. Figure out where you want to be once the project is finished. THINK BIG!!! But remember, be realistic, figure out which boundaries you can afford to jump over and which you don't. One thing is been visionary, another is being a dumb.

Once the answer is ready, use only a 10-20% of it. Yep, do you think that people that don't want to change and are probably far from beeing like you are going to say yes to your dreams? Sorry, no, so tune it down. That will set the expectation of your organization on your iniciative.

But keep your own personal and private target in your first estimation. Fight for it, maybe someday it'll become real.

2.3. Define clear small steps to get to your vision.

There's a third question you must answer: how do you want to do that?.

Probably they'll say something like, that's impossible, cannot be done because bla bla bla... First barriers mate! So define those baby steps. That's going to be your WORKING PLAN. That will define your sucess so be fair with your estimates. Not too positive, not too pessimistic. The right point is exactly what you are able to deliver

Probably, the most difficult to dimmession is the third point. Naturallly positive people tend to make timing short and targets high. I've learnt on the way that in order to be adjusted to reality I need somebody to pull me down to reality (I'm naturally optimistic). That works if you have those profiles near. It can be a colleague, a team member or your boss. Sorry, mate, you are not perfect, let others help you in your imperfection to make your delivery an optimum.

Trick 3. Win friends, you'll need them.

You cannot change the World alone so win as many friends as possible. Read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" of Carnegie. It may help.

Avoid to create enemies for free. There will be people that won't like you, it's natural, but don't generate negative sentiments around you, that will hinder something sooner or later.

Actually you'll be surprised if you invest enough time on some people that initially may look negative, they can become your best allieds.

Of course there will be people you will not convince. No matter if you have the best sales pitch, if you are lovely, fun and brilliant buddy or if you bring the cure of cancer to Menkind. It doesn't matter. There will always be one guy saying you: "NO WAY". To this, apply trick 4.

Trick 4. Find ways around. Be creative!

This is the moment of the bad news. Nothing is going to be ready to help you. Processes were created for another kind of business, the resources are always limited and probably you don't have all the skills required in your team.

So be prepared to create ways around, imperfect solutions for all poping up barriers. One good colleague told me once: perfection is the enemy of what's good. That trick can be used whenever it doesn't break trick 5.

Trick 5. Don't compromise the quality of your delivery.

When you find ways around (trick 5), sometimes you must compromise certain parts of your vision. That's OK whenever it will not affect your result.

If after all compromises required by your organization, environment, resources, whatever, you deliver a piece of crap, nobody will remeber that it's because of all the difficulties. Nope, you'll be a failure. Bad luck, no time for losers, go back home!

One small hint, prepare your Santa's list with bulletpoints but make sure you know which of those you cannot renounce to.

Note: This rule doesn't apply if you are Steve Jobs,  He never compromises his vision

Trick 6. Bring your passion in! Work harder, work longer.

No real trick. Talent is great. But hard working is needed. Simple. Waking up earlier and going to bed later helps. Be very efficient in your time usage too, it costs millions.

And when you leave the office, disconnect your brain from business... if you can.

Trick 7. Be prepared to frustration.

Nothing is going to be easy. Everything will be a pain. Lots of things will fail and lots of people will critize you so be ready for it. If you love what you do, that will make it easier.

Trick 8. Stop often, watch how things go and reshuffle plans.

Sometimes the picture changes while you are working, so be ready to realize and react.

And also iterate fast. If you can deliver pieces of what you are doing to others (in SW this fits well), do it and ask for feedback. That's really useful. Of course some trolls will show up and will try to put you down, don't pay attention to them and focus in constructive feedback.

But listen more to those that say you the failures than the good things. Those will help you grow, will help you to be better.

Trick 9. Find inspiration wherever you can.

No matter what you are trying to achieve, there's been people before you trying to do things that were more difficult than your challenge. Find them, read about them, listen to them and, if possible, meet them. They'll be glad to share, I've learnt that this kind of people are usually altruistic in sharing views, so be open to learn...

Trick 10. Have fun!

You are going to be the weird guy, the enemy, the green dog, so at least have fun.

If you are able to put distance in between things and you, that will make you happier and capable on laughing about all things happening around.

A friend of mine told me that when he was in a "war" of change, he used to meditate once per week and work out everyday. I'm sure that helps but I prefer laughing.

My own private MWC... hectic days!

Back to the core of MWC week, here are my notes on my own personal experiences

Monday 11th

Monday was hectic, it started with a meeting with Bala Balabaskaran, VP of products of Schakra Inc, a Redmond based company that has started using BlueVia APIs. It was great to speak with a guy with his experiece and also motivating when he praised BlueVia.com because of having a proper business proposition. Please, find the link to its Case Study

GoGoStat Connect Case Study

View more documents from BlueVia

Then I headed to a panel at Telecom TV with a very motivating title "Applications: is it already game over for telecom operators". I joined Emma Mohr McClune, Research Director at Current Analysys and Erik de Kroon, VP of Devices and Products at WAC. Funny to see how they put my name in the video... Spanish names are a pain for foreigners :-)... I'm Jose A. Valles Nunez, Jose Valles to make it simpler... don't play with my name, please! :-)

And, with no time, rushing to see WAC keynote including our COO Julio Linares. It was good to have the chance, finally, to meet Peters Shuh, WAC CEO and meet my former boss there, Yotam Ben Ami, currently CFO and CSO at WAC. WAC is hitting their milestones but still have a long and tough way to become a success. They count with our support at Telefonica!

And to finish the day what's better than a party. I headed to the Mobile Premier Awards organized at the building of Telefonica R&D, that by the way is impressive, and also had the chance to meet Andreas Constantinou, who thinks really big in the Telco evolution to 2.0.

Tuesday 12th

On top of lots of different meetings I have to highlight two things:

First the discussions on how to speed up GSMA activities in OneAPI. I hope something good will come from there

Second an Analysts round the table, that was a good termometer of what is about to happen with BlueVia. Let's see what they write but the first reactions were really possitive.

Wednesday 13th

This was probably the hardest day but also the most exciting. On top of lot's of meetings starting at 8am, I want to highlight the meeting we had with Alan Quayle. it's always enriching to talk to Alan, his broad view of the telecom industry and like for details makes every meeting a learning session. Also a meeting with the team running Forum Nokia represented a chance to see, first hand, one of the most influencial orgs in developer engagement... Some chit chat on WP7 announcement couldn't be avoided, of course!

And finally, almost exhausted, headed to WIP Jam Carnival of Nations to see James bum bum Parton playing drums (or that's what he wanted) and the chance to meet Jason Silva, founder of JBBMobile Inc who left this great quote for the future... And we hope he'll start working with BlueVia soon!

Thursday 14th

After some meetings, thanks God, back home. Funny and disgusting when I opened the the door and my 19 month old daughter run away.... Not good to be so long far from family.

I hope next year we can bring 20 developers with us showing cool stuff done using BlueVia APIs!

Special thanks to Arturo Garrido, CEO of Twitea.me and Bala Balabaskaran, VP of products at Schakra Inc. for their collaboration spreading BlueVia message at MWC. And also to Carlos Domingo for this nice piece at TechCrunch Europe



Next year more

Jose Valles
@josevalles49

My experience at MWC 2011... the warm up

This year has been a special one. Finally we got to launch BlueVia.com and that gave us the chance to talk about this fantastic story to tell. However, despite what everybody could be expecting, we decided not to make any big statement, event at the MWC zoo. We know that we have still a long way to walk and prefer to keep working grass-rooted, directly with developers and ISVs until we gain speed, demonstrating that our value proposition for developers makes sense and works. But the warm welcome and what has been said really deserves a few lines.

Thursday 10th

This year MWC started a few days before for us. On Wednesday James Parton (@jamesparton), Head of Marketing BlueVia briefed UK press on BlueVia public release and in Thursday I did it with the Spanish one. So Thursday was a special day as we had all the press covering the story (see Press Release). Some pieces are:

Light Reading: "Telefonica shows developers the money"

Cinco Días: "Telefonica tienta a los desarrolladores con un nuevo reparto de ingresos"

Telecom TV: "Telefonica consolidates its app developer grooming effort"

Following what was said a few weeks before when we released our closed beta:

Intomobile: "launched a developer platform called BlueVia that’s just about the most innovative thing I’ve seen come out of the backwards telecommunications market since ringback tones"

Telco 2.0: "We believe that the thinking behind BlueVia is a major step in the right direction for the telecoms industry. One that other operators should emulate, and fast"

This is just a sample but shows the interest generated. Said that, the reality is that we need to demonstrate all that with delivery, delivery, delivery...

Friday 11th

Friday was a cool day, we announced the first four services using our APIs and demostrates the multiplatform approach makes sense.

Otter app, an android app
GogoStat, a WP7 app
Test Deck, a Mac app
Twitea.me, a service to tweet using SMS

And also we had the chance to have Sam Ramji (@sramji) in Telefonica's premises to explain how APIs are changing the way brands get connected to their customers. Following I explained how BlueVia can change the way we enhance our customers lives and also Arturo Garrido (@arturogarrido), CEO & Founder of Twitea.me explained how BlueVia is leveraging its Business Proposition and helping him to spread his service to other countries.

It was fun to share stage with Arturo and Sam


BlueVia evangelises API’s to Telefonica’s leadership team from BlueVia on Vimeo.




Saturday 12th

I arrived to Barcelona on Saturday because I was invited to by Stefan Rust (@srust99) and the Exicon crew to participate at the Qtel Innovation Forum. It was a great chance to see first hand the things that Qtel is thinking on deploying in their footprint.

To congratulate for the panel on MCommerce and mobile payments. Very thoughtful

About the part I was in, of course, Apps business, I shared a panel with actually a sample of all the ecosystem, from developers, Android, WAC, aggregators and, of course, a telco. It was cool to see the warm reaction of everybody to the approach of Telefonica through BlueVia and their willingness to collaborate in our challenge. Lot's of follow ups to be done

Sunday 13th

A part from meetings the whole day, it was cool to get to the first event of the MWC: Mobile Sunday Barcelona. I had the chance to meet with great people and friends of BlueVia like Caroline Lewko (@carolineWIP), Carles Ferrero and Rudy de Waele (@mtrends), these are people you should follow as are very representative in this new economy of apps and APIs


There are lot's of things I saw and enjoyed and then headed early to sleep as MWC week was about to start and the rithm expected was frenetic... and I promise it was.

I´ll write some more notes here on MWC plus the full story of the BlueVia crew at MWC to be published at www.Bluevia.com/blog

I hope you enjoyed this warm up.

Jose Valles
@josevalles49

The APIconomy growth in the retailer space: what about Europe and LatAm?

Yesterday I came across this article of a florist company offering an API to allow developers to ingest in their apps its flowers offer. They have a simple incentive for the usage of the API: they pay a 22% commission on flowers sales. Simple, straight forward and bloody brilliant.

We are already familiar with big consumer brands in the US taking this step forward. Tesco, Best Buy or Sears offering APIs with a different grade of maturity or commercial thinking but having something out there that others can use to create, out of the blue, a totally new way for those brands to engage with their customers. This recalls me more and more to the Business Darwin evolution shown by Sam Ramji in his Darwin's finches talk

But what about Europe and Latin America? Are there commercial brands already exposing APIs to generate a new "evolved" sales channel?

I'd love to have companies like Zara, El Corte Ingles, Harrods and others exposing APIs and enriching this new business space. I hope the Old Europe and the Promising LatAm react soon on this new space for competition/growth and this won't be, once again, a train that passes by without having us in.

If there are some examples out there, happy to hear about them

J

APIconomy and 2011 expectations

Year 2011 is starting and, probably, it's going to represent a very interesting year for software developers. All Industries are realizing or have already realized that third party development represents a cornerstone for future growth and even existence. Telco, consumer, media and entertainment Industries give signals of a shift in this direction that will, for sure, enrich the business possibilities of start-ups and ISVs all around the World. The signals I see are:

1. The API business is boosting already
Salesforce.com does 400 million transactions a day. 50% of its transactions are API call.
What else can I say? Mentioning again that Twitter got to have 80% of its traffic generated by third party applications seems poor behind Salesforce.com numbers. It's awesome and I expect that from other businesses soon.

2. The "APIconomy" is not only for Internet companies
The story of GoldCorp that starts WIKINOMICS, shows how mass collaboration can change the results of a company. But now it's about the APIs.
Embracing that, lots of companies are heading in this direction exposing their assets through APIs. Companies like ING, TESCO, SEARS and NYT have understood this is not only an opportunity but probably a neccesity to keep on competing and they are speeding up. I hope lots of others to follow soon.

3. The paranoia of control is stepping aside in the companies Innovation
As this Harvard Business School article says: "Innovation takes courage and the willingness to be out in front rather than following the herd".
And that's something we are seeing in companies that are bold enough to dare on assuming new technologies, new processes and new business propositions to leverage their assets. P&G, with that great figure showing that 50% of its sales are not coming from own developments, demonstrates different ways to face innovation became an advantage in the past: But, in the near future, it'll probably be a must.
Open Innovation is a reality, our companies cannot exist as isolated islands and require the support of third party innovation to ensure the future. Now it's about execution and APIs will play an important part on it.

4. Customers are eager to live new and richer experiences
Quoting TechCrunch, "Gartner’s estimates that the total app market was around $4 billion in 2010 and should grow to a whopping $27 billion by 2013". This shows a WOW growth and demonstrates customers are expecting new experiences and also the number of customers with access to those new services is growing rapidly. Smartphone sales growth and mobile internet penetration will spur new niche services that we cannot even imagine now. 

5. It's not only about Smartphones
The "Internet of the things" is here. Smartphones are now the "Queen of the Party" but tablets are gaining importance quickly. In CES we'll see tens of new tablets, surely not all of them will get to the market, but the efforts and expectations in that arena are huge.
But consumer electronics will utilize these technologies in lots of our living experiences. Not only through Smartphones or tablets. Lots of other connected devices. Why not in a car, in your fridge or in whichever device you use? 

6. Yes, not only about Smartphones, but the Smartphone is the killer
There are only two things in History that from their invention, apart from clothing, have gone with men as a must have. The watch and the wallet... cannot live without them. Or should I say, couldn't live without them?
The watch is being killed by the Smartphone, despite the iPhone alarm bug. And the wallet is on the way. NFC is becoming a reality and mobile payments will probably speed up as it's a hot market and certain acquisitions can be expected in that space.
And what to say about mobile advertising? Some may say it's a hype created by analyst but, as far as I see it, the potenciality is huge as 80% of my personal digital life ocurs through my mobile handset. That market has to grow and if it's not in 2011, it'll be the next year.
As soon as those opportunities cristalyze, the companies behind will expose those capacitites to developers through APIs to grab traction faster and better... Let's see what's the business model behind.

Well, under my view, all this makes 2011 an interesting year to be in SW development. There's going to be new things showing up and that will probably be the catalyst for a new stream of creativity, services and business opportunities.

Enjoy 2011!