Erik Boles

When I got promoted to Lieutenant working for the Fire Department back in the 90’s, I worked under a Captain by the name of Larry Hembree.  When Larry first handed me my shiny new red badge, he asked me to look on the back and read the instructions to him.  I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, and asked him for clarification. He said “You mean there aren’t any instructions on HOW to be a Lieutenant?”

His point was very simple and very powerful, I had just been promoted to Lieutenant based on passing a test and showing promise, not on the assumption that I could walk in on day 1 and rock the job.

As companies, we put people in roles of managing people, projects and products because they show promise, and we send them through some basic HR training on “how to manage”, which is primarily focused on keeping the company out of legal hot water, but it isn’t truly aimed at making them better at managing people, projects and products.

I was talking with a good friend today about a video project they have coming up, and found out that they were looking to have different people take video from different sources (cameras) and had only given very limited thought to how they were going to edit it all together, never considering format of video, aspect ratio, etc.  In a sentence, they had never defined project scope.  They are now 10 days away from the project deadline and have a lot of backtracking to do to get the project scope defined.  More on this in the next post.

This is what inspired me to start writing the Management 101 series.  A very important note: this blog series is absolutely not a “how to” of management, I certainly do not claim I am the one you should be taking your queues from to become better at management of, well, anything.  This blog series is, quite simply, things I have learned over the last 20 years of owning 3 businesses, consulting for companies large and small and managing people, projects and products from the technology space, interactive space, sales space and emergency services space.

I greatly appreciate all feedback and discussion.

~Erik

Erik talks about people that work their asses off to gain recognition in the new media landscape and then proactively do stupid things to damage it, and how you can avoid it.

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In the world of Web 2.0, what does “beta” really mean? Erik’s gives his thoughts and how beta is no longer a word, but a mindset that allows you to be successful.