Great interactive classroom instruction coupled with real-world work opportunities provide the best educational experience for students. When you have the chance to help make that happen, it’s extremely rewarding. That happened for me recently as I was a guest lecturer at a university class.

I was honored to be asked once again by Dr. Sara Steffes Hansen, a professor at University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh and chair of the Journalism department. Her class, Application of New & Emerging Media, provides that educational experience working with entities in the community on their social media and beyond. As her students make on-site visits to their clients, I was asked to speak to the class on the topic of consulting.

Last year I spoke to students in the same class, but after their client visit, where this year it was ahead of it. As meeting face-to-face with clients involves many factors – factors many don’t execute on well – I incorporated a role play into the interactive lecture. With a “volunteer” student, I did an improvised sketch where the student was the client and I was the bumbling, unprepared consultant. This segued into my discussion on preparing for and executing on the on-site visit, as well as the follow-up and deliverables from the class assignment.

For me, this guest lecture served many purposes. As I have learned from others, both in the classroom and in the real world, I welcome the opportunity to share my experience and “war stories” with the students. As someone who still thinks and works like a consultant, poor consulting skills from others stick out like a sore thumb soaked in sriracha and lit on fire! If this lecture can help guide students down the path of honing their consulting skills, then the world will be that much better.

This class is part of the UW – Oshkosh’s Interactive Web Management major, which is a combination of curricula from Computer Science, Marketing, Journalism and Information Systems. It is a unique major, mashing up key aspects of each of these areas to offer a comprehensive educational background for how companies today are staffing roles in marketing and tech.

Where you needed to be enrolled in the class to get the full lecture, I am sharing my slides. You can link to the slides from my guest lecture here on SlideShare, or view them embedded below. I am planning on coming back to the class at the end of the semester to watch their client presentations. In the meantime I wish great success to the students of Journalism 61-440!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Business • Strategize • Technology • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

I am thrilled to announce a networking event for people who work in the tech and creative fields in Northeast Wisconsin. Introducing dMorning.

What is dMorning?

The idea behind dMorning is relatively simple – informal networking before the busy workday starts, with no set rules and no agenda. Since I moved to the Fox Valley last year, I have been looking for something like this, as I work in the Web and I am looking to meet people who work in similar fields in the area.

I hosted a variety of meetups when I lived in Chicago – some very specific and others more general – and have found the latter to be more interesting and worthwhile. A casual gathering of people to talk about what they are working on, sharing stories and bouncing ideas off each other… this is something I have wanted to restart for a while, and why not here? My plan is for this to be a monthly event.

The next dMorning will be on Friday, October 19 beginning at 7:30 am at All Seasons Coffeehouse in Appleton, conveniently located off I-41 at Wisconsin Avenue. I say it ends at 9:30 am, but anyone can stay longer. There is no cost for dMorning; you just pay for any beverages or food you purchase from this locally-owned business.

What’s in a name?

So why did I call this dMorning? As I sought out a name for this event, I didn’t want to pick something too limiting. On the Web site at dMorning.com there are some ideas of what the “d” can stand for.

Hope to see you there!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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When people think of the New England Patriots football team, their success over nearly the last 2 decades is what likely comes to mind. From 5 Super Bowl titles to longtime quarterback Tom Brady, it’s not surprising. However not everything with the team has always been sunshine and rainbows.

I know – as a longtime fan and season ticket holder, I lived through some of the embarrassing times of the Pats. However these stories stretch back even before I was born! The scrappy, low-budgeted team that didn’t have a set home stadium for its first decade that became one of the most valuable, treasured – and hated – team; it’s a Cinderella story.

Sean Glennon tells many of the positive and not-so positive stories in The Good The Bad The Ugly New England Patriots, chronicling nearly the first half-century of the team. I knew this would be a great book as I really enjoyed Glennon’s first book on the team, This Pats Year, which chronicled one season of following the team and their fans. I found the book in final boxes I unpacked after a recent move, and had forgotten I had it. Where it was a treat to find it, I don’t remember when or how I had acquired it. All things considered, I have a few takeaways for both fans and non-fans of the team.

I had forgotten many stories about the Patriots – There were a lot of nuances and details of some of the highs and lows of the team over the years I had simply forgotten. Call it what you like, but many times as I was reading the pages of this book, I said a lot of “oh, yea’s” and “wow’s” to some of the tales told by Glennon. That alone made reading them along with the stories I remembered an enjoyable experience.

Journals like this need to be updated – It wasn’t until I was about a quarter way thru the book that I looked and found it came out in 2008 – 10 years ago! Why it took me so long to read it I can’t say, but I am glad that I finally did. As a lot has transpired with the team since then, it would be great to read an update to it. I won’t hold my breath on that thought for when I tweeted Glennon about it, I didn’t get the sense he shared my sentiment!

Where The Good The Bad The Ugly New England Patriots is written for fans of the team, anyone who is a football fan, especially those who lived through the years covered in the book, would find it a good read. Which is what I hope my friend whom I gave the book to felt as well, as he also lives away from New England and these kinds of stories may also elicit the same responses in him they did for me.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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As the new year starts, for many it is also the start of the annual review process with their employer. Where this process varies from company to company, typically it entails creating goals for the coming year, taking into consideration the goals for the team, organization, group etc. and then at the end of the year measuring if you met those goals or not along with feedback that was accumulated throughout the year.

Ask any person who goes through this process and they will likely tell you they would rather spend time standing in line at the DMV! Many people feel it's a waste of time, not only in the fact that they have to spend time working on it but also at the end of the year a couple of things typically happen - one, they don't get a raise or a bonus, and two, for the first time they learn at the end of the year of something that happened months ago or even earlier in the year.

When you get written up on something in December that happened in March, how can you really do anything about it, nine months later, to affect any change? In other words, the performance appraisal process is broken, and I have an idea to fix it -penalize the manager that gives you a poor review or feedback at the end of the year as an afterthought when they had the opportunity to tell you earlier.

Say what?

If you think about it, at the end of the year when someone is giving you a review, their own personal review doesn't necessarily reflect yours. It should, for a manager should be measured on the overall performance of their team, as they should be ensuring their team is excelling at all times. Some manager do believe in this (including, fortunately, the manager I have now), however many managers don't want to be bothered by this throughout the year and as a result giving a poor performance review at the end of the year is really no skin off their teeth and comes naturally to them. Sometimes that poor performance review is based on asking others who have worked with you to provide their input, which is often referred to as a 360° review process. Even when organizations say they have a "immediate feedback mechanism" to let people know when they do well or when they do poorly, it rarely happens this way. Finding out about a problem at the end of the year when there's really nothing that can be done about it serves nobody well.

If the person giving the negative feedback is giving it too late, it is they themselves that should be marked down for it in the end of the year process. This gives the person giving the poor review skin in the game and makes them part of the solution. The whole idea is to inform people at the time something happens that something was unsatisfactory or could've been done better or could've been corrected. When it's given at that point, the person that has the opportunity to make the correction, discuss impacts on their workload that impacts their success, identify the need for education or training or greater organizational issues that need to be addressed that the manager may not even be aware of, et. al. The person and their manager or whomever is giving the negative feedback can then together put a plan in place to lead to success, along with a timeframe and measurement.

Been there, wish it was done

Many times throughout my career I have been on the receiving end of negative feedback too late to do anything about it. When I asked why nothing was brought up sooner, I was never given a definitive answer, namely as the review process did not require it. On the flipside, I have had many managers who gave me continuous feedback, comments, adjustments, etc. as I worked with them, and this was not only greatly appreciated but led to my success and the success of the project I was working on. I also hear this from friends and colleagues that hear of such late-in-the-game feedback they can do nothing about, which simply makes the workplace even less tolerable.

Deconstructing Giving Timely Feedback

Why not strike while the iron is hot, and give feedback while it is fresh, meaningful and can produce a positive outcome? This takes facing issues head-on, something many managers may not be comfortable with or other senior people don't want to be bothered with. By making these mid-game corrections, it allows everyone to succeed, and may also impact the bottom line of the team or organization. This investment in one's team is as important as any training or materials you spend money on them, and can reap even greater rewards.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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To anyone reading this, THANK YOU! I have been writing and posting to this blog now for 11 years. Where many of you have been reading for part of the time, there are a few who have been reading the whole time. No matter even if this is the first time you have read something here at The Hot Iron, kudos and karma now and throughout 2018!

When I think 11, the first thing that comes to mind is 11 Alive, what New York TV station WPIX used to use as their tag line back in the 70’s and 80’s. For some reason, it was part of the cable package in Massachusetts when I was a kid, and here I share with you their jingle – watch the embedded video below or follow this link to watch it.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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