Rock Stars and Turn-Dials

April 14, 2011 by 2 Comments

Make sure to get Rocks Stars to control your Big Dials!

Troy Aikman, the Hall of Fame quarterback that led the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl victories in four years—the first team to do that—started his college career at Oklahoma. Heralded as a high school athlete, he certainly did not disappoint. In his first season as a collegiate starter, Aikman led the Sooners to a 3-0 record, beating Minnesota and Kansas State before knocking off the rival Longhorns of the University of Texas, ranked number 17 in the country at the time. Unfortunately, his season was cut short by Oklahoma’s next opponent, the University of Miami, when the Hurricanes’ Jerome Brown sacked Aikman, breaking his ankle. A long story shortened is that Jamelle Holieway, a freshman, replaced Aikman. And after finishing the season with a National Championship; the school’s sixth, but first in a decade; Holieway became part of Oklahoma lore, to this day considered one of the all-time greats. Oh, and he just happened to be a totally different style of quarterback than Aikman, forcing then head coach Barry Switzer (who ironically would later coach Aikman to a Super Bowl Championship with the Cowboys) to completely change the offense from a traditional one in which the quarterback dropped back and threw downfield to “The Wishbone”, where the quarterback was the focal point of the running game.

You’re probably saying about right now, “Again, Bobby? What are you talking about?” Well, here’s the punchline: Read more of this post

Filed under Business Stuff, Company Strategy and Culture, Self Improvement & Motivation Tagged with , , ,

Your own personal Problem SOLVER

April 11, 2011 by Leave a comment

The business world is full of “what-if”s.  What if one of your suppliers raises its prices significantly?  What if your boss demands that you spend at least 20% of your advertising dollars on sports programming?  What if the corporate office suddenly shrinks your overall budget by 25%?  With scarce resources, companies (and individual consumers, as well) are always looking for ways to get the most bang for their buck.  Making matters more complex and difficult to navigate, often times decisions involve careful manipulation of several equally (or almost equally) important levers.  For example, you want to minimize your costs, but the cheapest vendor is not as effective or dependent as the more expensive ones.  And even if you had one clear choice, you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket, depending too heavily on one supplier.  Or maybe you’re asked to minimize your costs on marketing and advertising, but must reach a minimum number of potential customers.

One way to solve these types of problems is to build a spreadsheet, linking all of the important variables and calculations.  You could then give the user (you or someone else) the option to change those variables, viewing the results of different scenarios as changes are made.

The problems with this method should be obvious.  Not only is it tedious, requiring the user to manually change the numbers in order to see what happens, but it is also incomplete.  Insofar as these problems involve more than a few moving parts, it’s nearly impossible to manually account for and analyze every conceivable combination or possibility.

Luckily, Microsoft Excel provides a nifty tool to do all of this work for you.  You can think of it as your own personal problem Solver available at your command.  What more could you ask for? Read more of this post

Filed under Application (Excel, Access) and Process Development, Business Stuff Tagged with , , , , ,

Gas for the trip

April 8, 2011 by 5 Comments

Stop getting just "Gas for the Trip"

My wife goes to the gas station and, instead of filling up, will put $20 in her tank.  It drives me crazy.  After fifteen years together, it’s one of a very short list of items that she does that bugs me.  Her list for me, by the way, is much longer.  In fact, I think she’s hired a consultant to build a database around it.

But this affliction is very, very prevalent.  We all suffer from it in one way or another.  It affects us personally, as well as professionally; emotionally and even physically.  It may very well be one of the main barriers toward sustainable success in our lives.  Taking shortcuts, it should come to no surprise, is as destructive to growth as any other actions or thoughts we have. Read more of this post

Filed under Application (Excel, Access) and Process Development, Deep Thoughts and Philosophy, Self Improvement & Motivation Tagged with , , , , , ,

What quarter is it?

April 2, 2011 by 1 Comment

When you’re working with financial data (forecasts, revenue or sales targets, financials), you are certainly used to working at the annual and monthly level.  And doing so, whether with a spreadsheet or accounting software, is straightforward.  Grouping by quarter, though, is not as simple, at least when working in Excel.  But, as we accounting and finance people learn, it can be the most useful.  Monthly information often represents too small a slice of data to offer any useful insight- at least in its own context.  On the other hand, while annual information gives you a much better feel for what’s going on with the business, it happens too infrequently to allow management or ownership to do anyting about it.

It makes sense, then, to organize and analyze important information by quarter.  After all, there’s a reason big companies report these results to all who are listening. Read more of this post

Filed under Application (Excel, Access) and Process Development, Business Stuff Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

A Bit of Workout Advice

March 30, 2011 by 3 Comments

Knowing why you're training is the first step!

Jared, a friend of mine at work is getting himself back into shape.  He comes to me now and again for tips and to answer any questions he might have.  I consider it a privilege and obligation to be as helpful as I can.  This morning, he walked into my office and told me that, after a few weeks of working out, he was no longer getting tired, or at least not as tired as when he first started.  Well, first I chuckled and told him that he was probably bullshittin’ (anybody who knows me, knows that’s one of my patented sayings; in fact, I’ve reserved the domain stopbullshittin.com for later use!), After that, I gave him my thoughts.

I first asked him to give me an idea of what his workouts were like.  He said he was trying to get toned (then ripped, but first things first) and that he typically did about 15 reps (repetitions) for each set he did.  After hearing him talk for a few minutes, I realized this was something that I’ve heard–in one shape or form–several, several times in the 20+ years I’ve been working out.  I feel blessed to be able to have kept in shape for this long, both for the physical ability to work out and also for the inner drive God has given me.  And as is the purpose of this site/blog, I am here to share those gifts with others. Read more of this post

Filed under Application (Excel, Access) and Process Development, Fitness Stuff Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →