Diaries of a working mom chapter 12: Back to work, again!

Our baby is here!  Little Leo was born April 11th and he is doing great.  I am recovering well and very happy not to be pregnant anymore.  We are all enjoying the innocence and cuddliness of a perfect little newborn.

The other day, my nanny-share neighbor came into the house and asked how my first day "back to work" had been for me.  Was it hard to go back?  Or great to have childcare and get my brain re-engaged in the adult world?  I thought about this for a moment in my very sleep deprived delirium and something popped in my head that really resonated.  "It was … uncomfortable," I responded.  She laughed and nodded, understanding exactly what I meant, having gone through the same thing a couple months ago.

Yes, change is uncomfortable.  

Leo, 2 weeks

Leo wasn't even quite three weeks old that day, the day we had a new nanny start while I attempted to get back to running a company and thinking about IT strategy.  Before you judge and/or pity me, please let me clarify.  Yes, I'm back to work, but I now have full-time childcare for little Leo, and I'm working part time, from home, and nursing him whenever he likes.  For the next month or so, I'm only doing meetings if the little guy can join.  I'm primarily working behind the scenes as time and energy allows.  I actually think my situation is pretty darn awesome.   Having been through this once with our first son, I knew I wanted to get my head back in the game sooner but have the flexibility to be with my little guy throughout the day.  I'm very lucky to have a job where I can define the best setup for me, and to work with and live with people who support my preferences.

Despite all that, getting back to work has been very … uncomfortable.   Our new nanny started the same day I got back into it.  She's competent, pleasant and so great with my little guy.  But I'm still leaving him to another caregiver, which is hard at any point: 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years, whenever.  When I hear crying, I wonder if it is him or his neighbor buddy who shares our nanny.  Then I wonder if I should know!  When she shares a concern with me about him, I wonder why I didn't notice it first.  When I'm thinking about work, I think I should be thinking about him and when I'm with him, I wonder if I should be working.

It occurred to me that we should all be a lot easier on moms coming back to work and realize that no matter when they choose to come back, there will be an adjustment period.  No matter how perfect the situation, no matter how much the mom is committed and in the game, it is still… uncomfortable.   It just takes a little time.

That all said, I am excited to be back and I wanted to say "hello" on my blog.

Minivans and Software Selections

As sure as we were that we wanted two kids and only two kids, my husband and I were sure that we'd buy a minivan sometime before the birth of the second child.  Yes, as my "reward" for carrying this pregnancy 9 long months, I get a new minivan to replace my aging Acura RL sedan.  And here we are, 48 hours from being induced, and our garage is still missing its second most important expected arrival of the week.

What happened?  Well, we procrastinated on the shopping and finally went out to "pick" our minivan a few weeks ago.  Armed with last year's Consumer Reports and a lot of opinions, we knew going in we had exactly two choices: a Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna.  As we walked into the Toyota dealership, I remembered my friend telling me about her husband purchasing their minivan.  The sales guy asked him excitedly about what model and options they were interested in and the husband said, "I don't know … it is a minivan.  Can't you just go get me one?"  That was about what I thought: Odyssey or Sienna, whatever, let's just pick one and be done with it.

We test drove the Sienna first. Compared to my RL, it was pretty slow and missing a lot of cool features, but it maneuvered fine and rode comfortably.  Eric was less impressed, so we headed to the Honda dealership next.  As the sales guy got Eric all excited about the various seat configurations and how much stuff he could haul around, I discovered that there was no option for keyless entry into the vehicle.  I realized at that moment that I wasn't sure I wanted a minivan at all.  Because I was so sure we needed this minivan with its sliding doors and extensive seating, I'd let go of my run-flat tires, collision mitigation system, voice activated everything and many other features that I had enjoyed for six years.  But once I found out there was no way to enter the car without finding my keys, I wanted out of that dealership as fast as possible.  I informed Eric emphatically that the Odyssey was no longer an option and so we might as well just go buy the Sienna based on my (9-month pregnant and impatient) process of elimination.

Well, Eric wasn't so sure.  He liked the Odyssey, so he researched this keyless entry thing online and found out I wasn't the only person griping about this feature, so he wondered if we should wait till the fall or next year when it might be added.  We even considered adding it after market.  We continued to find other things wrong with the Sienna.  And when we couldn't come to a good conclusion, we began to question the whole premise of buying a minivan entirely.  We started looking at SUVs and considered the cars in our garage with renewed interest.  We even looked at some other minivans we had ruled out before, only because they had keyless entry.  We've gathered passionate opinions from minivan and non-minivan owners ranging from "Get over it and find your keys - it is SO worth it for the sliding doors!" to "You really don't need a minivan (but if you get one can you haul us around?")

So, what in the world does this have to do with software selections?  Those of you who have been through disorganized or informal ones probably know already how similar our experience with minivans is to buying software in many companies.  How often do we see business stakeholders decide what they are going to buy before they really even start shopping?  How often do we think we are at the end of a buying process and find that one of the decision makers stops it because of some missing feature like my keyless entry?   How often do we get stopped because two decision makers find at the end that they have different priorities? Sometimes, we go all the way through the process before we realize we are looking at the wrong type of system entirely, hopefully before purchasing, but sometimes after it is too late.

The day before the keyless entry debacle, I helped my colleague Russ facilitate a workshop for one of our clients on their upcoming software selection.  Because of that, at the moment we were walking out of the Honda dealership, I realized a good consultant should have known better… or I should have hired Russ to organize our car evaluation project.  The parallels were spooky.  Just as we had interviewed the key users of the system at our client to determine their needs in replacing it, Eric and I should have discussed up front how we were planning to use this new car.  Just as we had facilitated a workshop to determine which system requirements were deal breakers, Eric and I should have determined before test driving cars that keyless entry was a necessity.  Just as our project had started with over one hundred vendors and narrowed them down based on requirements, Eric and I should have started with a broader list of automobiles and narrowed it down based on what really mattered to us, not what everyone else said.

Instead, we are confused and back to ground zero, and frustrated enough that we are probably not going to buy a car for a while.  I could apply my consulting expertise to help us get to a decision, but instead I'm going to have a baby and figure it out later… or, more likely, just let my husband handle it.  But, I won't forget this when suggesting or leading future software selection projects!  There are good reasons we go through the processes we do...

New Year's Resolutions: Less and More

It is January 31st, so I guess I'm finally ready to commit to my new year's resolutions.  This year, instead of specific goals, I'm going to try a less/more mentality.

Here goes:

1. Spend less time reading email and more time reading more interesting things like blogs, articles and books
2. Travel less by plane, instead do more virtual meetings, especially since the doctors aren't letting me travel for a bit
3. Write less on paper and more in Evernote and other virtual tools
4. Hopefully the easy one... Lose more weight than I gain.  Since I started the year up 25 pounds and am now up 33, shouldn't be too hard

I've already been working on the first three, but I can't really start on #4 until mid-April...

P.S. - Yes, if you didn't figure it out from the context clues or "run into" me lately, I'm expecting another baby again!   

Nordstrom intercepts my multitasking

I just had an impressively spooky experience.  I'm hanging out with my brother and sister-in-law on their couch, doing what people do these days when they communicate; we are having about three conversations at once, all while on our phones, iPads and computers.  We are flipping between three conversations of holiday shopping, work updates and house hunting; meanwhile, we are all flipping between email, Google searches, holiday shopping websites and home buying websites.

My sister-in-law took the challenge to help me find some pants for my husband.  We both focused intently for about 15 minutes, trying to find 36x36 pants of a certain color and style (I thought I had problems finding long enough pants!).  She finally hit the jackpot on the Nordstrom site. After some online chats with a wardrobe consultant, I found two pair I thought would work and added them to my shopping basket.  Then I got distracted.  In fact, for about 20 minutes, I'd rerouted to LL Bean, then house hunting, then Toys R Us and finally, my email.  Then I started back on the holiday shopping, looking for a gift for another difficult-to-purchase-for relative.  I was looking for something specific and found a personal blog of a mom to help me; I can't say any more or I might spoil the gift. 

The best part is that I was reading through this blog and after I paged down a bit, a Nordstrom advertisement showed up in the middle of the text!  Not any ad, an ad with the two pairs of pants I'd selected and forgotten about in my shopping cart.  I was so impressed with Nordstrom's insistence I switched tasks and purchased.

I guess in today's world of short attention spans and multitasking, companies must advertise to get their customers back when they forget about their purchasing.  I'm impressed!

Apple takes over the Jasper house, but not for the whole weekend

Can you believe I set up three new apple devices and reconfigured a couple others during my 18 month old's nap on Saturday?  Yes, Gus is a good napper, but Apple also has perfected the art of getting people up and running on new devices quickly.

My iPhone 5 finally arrived on Friday, as did Eric's new Mac Book Pro (replacing a four year old PC).  Additionally, I had a new iPad 2 that I won at a conference last month (which I'm planning to use in parallel with my older iPad, which has 3G, unlike the free one).  So, the Jasper household now has an iMac, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, iPad 1, iPad 2, iPhone 5 and iPhone 3 (now an iPod Touch for Gus).  I'm not sure if this is "normal" or not. Maybe it won't be till we get my husband off the Android and onto an iPhone.

I decided to go through the pain of setting up everything at once and I'd been delaying until I had everything on hand.  I had not updated software or applications in months, knowing this upgrade was coming.  As soon as Gus closed his eyes Saturday afternoon for his snooze, I downed a cup of coffee and started unwrapping new devices. 

Unwrapping an Apple device always impresses me, because it is so simple and fast.  Once again, Apple did not disappoint.  The devices were charged and ready to go, even the iPad that had been stored for months.

After a couple set up questions, the iPhone and iPad gave me an option to restore from backup.  After 10-15 minutes, that was complete and all I had to do was enter some passwords!

- I enabled iCloud, and voila, contacts, pictures, videos and reminders!

- I logged into Gmail, and voila, email and calendar!

- I logged into Evernote, and voila, all my notes!

- I logged into Dropbox, and voila, all my files!

- I enabled "Find my iPhone" and voila, all my devices on a map... from any of my other devices.

I didn't do much with Eric's new computer, but he got it up and running right away too.  I set up a couple things to link the rest of the family devices, like my calendar, so that he can stay synced.

Before naptime was over, I was fully operational and synced between all devices.  As I sat there testing my "cloud-enabled integration" I added calendar invites, contacts and pictures and watched them pop up almost immediately on all the other devices on the desk, I marveled at how far we've come in the last few years.  Setup is so easy, at least with Apple products and the applications I use, and integration is fast and flawless.

I still need to figure out what we are using for picture sharing, and I'm not sure how we are going to do Facetime or Skype between devices if they are on the same account, but I can figure that out over the holidays.

Life is good!  I'm thankful for the ease, speed and integration of technology today.

The 40-something controversy

Inge Geerdens, a small business owner in Belgium, has started quite a conversation on LinkedIn.  She wrote a post yesterday titled "Why I hesitate to hire forty-somethings" that has generated quite a controversy and inspired her follow-up "I hire on ability, and nothing else". 

I find these posts fascinating, as a very soon to be 40-something, as an employer, and as a friend and colleague to people in this age group (and older) searching for their next career move.

(Note: my opinions here and I would suggest Ms. Geerdens' opinions are relevant primarily for higher income knowledge workers: say $100K plus per year)


Ms. Geerdens asserts that 40-somethings are expensive, and hard to justify when there are younger, cheaper models who may do the job as well.   I don't think she's discriminating based on age, she's just offering her perspective on the trends she's seeing as a hiring manager.  The 40-somethings she's interviewed have great skills and experience, but they have very high base salary needs based on their lifestyle.

Geerdens offers a solution that I really like: these 40-somethings need to be willing to take on some more risk in their compensation.  If they'd be willing to take some of that salary as pay for performance, perhaps they'd look more attractive in an interview.  Additionally, their hiring companies need to be willing to be creative with compensation packages and really pay them when they do perform.

I don't have enough data points to generalize, but I have seen through hiring and helping others find jobs that people in this age group do tend to have higher base salary needs and less interest in taking on risk or pay for performance.


Yes, I realize this pay for performance "solution" contradicts some of the recent research on motivating employees (as best highlighted by Pink's book Drive), but I've already blogged on that.  

Is it harder to be a strategic CIO at a technology company?

Over the last couple months, I've run across a few CIOs who are frustrated with their ability to be strategic within the context of their companies.  They feel like the only strategy their executives want them to pursue is one around cost minimization.  The most strategic thing they can do is implement SAP or some other "commodity" ERP application to help streamline their business internally.

The only common denominator between these CIOs is that they all work for technology companies.  So it isn't that these companies aren't using technology strategically to compete, it is just that someone other than the CIO owns it, usually a CTO.  Any kind of revenue generating idea is by default assigned to someone other than the CIO.

I may be exaggerating a bit here to make a point, but I'm wondering if people think these CIOs have a valid point. 

Is it harder to be a strategic CIO in a tech company?

If so, what can these CIOs do to be more strategic, or should they just hunker down and manage their costs?