Posts in Meandering Genius

Moving forward in change–maintaining the 51%

Change Management Meandering Genius

Change is our way of life these days and the speed of change is compressing the time changes need to occur and increasing our change saturation in organizations.

In basic terms, changes need to happen faster because we are in a state of constant change.

I think, for the more established organizations, this is even truer. The reason is that they have been so entrenched in the way they do things today that they are finding themselves with many legacy things that need to change as well as the things that need to change to keep them competitive.

How do you speed up change?

I will call this the 51% rule–we are using it in a change effort right now.

This change effort is happening much faster than other changes typically take in my organization. Especially one of this magnitude. Now, the initial phase of this change is being done through a pilot, so it’s not like everything is changing at once; we plan to make the proposed changes and then adjust for future roll out in 2015 and 2016.

That being said, the changes for the pilot are still moving very fast.

There are many that are involved that like things to not change…we all have them. They would slow this change down to a crawl by constantly discussing and not deciding. Last week I actually talked about these type of people and had a lot of great feedback.

However, we have a rule in this change–it’s called the 51% rule. The leaders of this change, and we have several, hold the 51% decision-making authority. What this means is that when it comes to make a decision, based on our schedule, they will make it based on all the input from the teams putting the change aspects together.

So, if people want to discuss something to death, simply stick to the milestone schedule and then provide all the discussion to the leader with the 51% for a final decision. Then, move on to the next milestone.

This, however frustrating the disrupters, is proving to help tremendously to move the change along at the pace expected.

What this is causing is that the teams as a whole don’t get to fully decide on something because a few selfish individuals hold everyone back on points that are important to them. However, if the organization is going to be decisive in business, then they need to be able to stick to a schedule and make changes based on that schedule. If the disrupters can’t figure it out, what I’m finding is that the others who want to help lead the change will work around them.

So, when you start your next change effort, or if you are in one now, consider discussing the 51% rule with your change sponsors and leaders. Get them to agree to the concept and the milestone schedule. When the milestone is up, bring your proposals to the decision authority and have them make a decision. Then you don’t discuss that item again…move on to the next milestone. If the disrupters continue to stick to the past decision and can’t move on, that is fine, work around them with those that will and get a decision at the next milestone. The holdouts will get frustrated, but the only other way is to acquiesce to their actions and stall the change.

These people will eventually see that the team is passing them by with discussion and decisions and they will eventually join where the effort is or they will simply leave. If they choose the latter, find someone else and continue to move forward–that person has decided not to be part of the change that will improve your company and perhaps they have no role in the company anymore?

I know this is tough talk, but reinforcing the negative behaviors of people who try to disrupt and derail change efforts to suit their personal needs and agendas is not focusing on your company’s mission, vision, or customers. They are only focused on themselves. This forces a Service Before Self core value and sends them a message that they are either working to move the company forward or they belong with the competition.

Give this a shot. Of course it depends on steadfast change leadership, but it is a good rule of thumb for change that a leader can set in the beginning and employ with every activity.

A way to better blogging

Blogging Meandering Genius

Do you blog often, or do you want to blog more often? Are you interested in blogging, but don’t know where to start?

There is a way to make blogging daily easier. It just takes a little work up front.

I have two running blogs that I write on Saturday and Sunday. I use this approach with them every weekend.

How do I do it?

What I have done is create a template in Word with key items that I want to happen every time I blog.

I have a title and subtitle for the blog. The title is something catchy and the subtitle is more descriptive. I actually have a blogging outline plan for each blog and all that is listed is the title and subtitle. That’s enough for me to generate my blog every week. An important point is to keep your title to under 75 characters. This ensures that when you tweet the title, the URL that is generated doesn’t cause the title to become shortened. Since all of my blogs automatically post to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, this is important.

The next section is a short synopsis of the article. I don’t write this until I am done writing the blog. After I publish the blog, I use the LinkedIn button at the bottom of the blog to share it with several key groups on LinkedIn. I copy the subtitle in the title blog and the synopsis in the detail block. This provides enough information to see if the reader is interested in the blog. Sharing my posts to these groups is what generates most of my readers to my blog.

Then I have the body of the message. Since I have a running blog, the opening and the closing are always the same and are prewritten. I link back to the first blog in the series so readers that come in later in the series can still follow the line of blogging.

The first thing, after the opening, is the subtitle. Then I write the body of the blog. This is where the magic happens.

At the bottom, I have a section for related links. If I don’t hyperlink items in the body of the text, then is find at least three related links for the audience.

Last, I have a section at the bottom for meta tags. I type in the regular tags and save the template, but then I add tags to the list after I write the article. This ensures I get the spelling right on the tags and I come up with as many as possible.

When it is time to write a blog, I open up the template and save it as the title of my blog for the week. Then I just start filling in the blank areas and updating information as required. After it is written and proofed, I copy it into WordPress, add graphics, and publish.

Makes the daily blogging activity pretty easy.

If you professionally blog, this will help you with daily idea generation, sticking to a line of thought and on topic, and ensure you keep a record of your blogs for potential use later.

For both of my weekend blogs, at some point, I plan to combine all the posts and put them into a book. Having all the posts helps to make this happen.

For me it’s computer games

Meandering Genius

TV can be a giant time waster. I talked about this about a month ago in a blog. Several years ago, I used to watch a great deal of TV and it’s amazing the difference that it makes in the time I have in my life not watching it.

Computer games have the same effect on me. Every once in a while I will get a ‘diversion’ computer game. It’s meant to entertain for a little bit, but let me tell you how a computer game can really wipe out my day.

Yesterday, after I wrote my leadership and management blog, I was surfing Steam and found an interesting and free online multiplayer role-playing game.

Needless, I played that stupid game all day.

LSS Conference Workshop

Meandering Genius

I’m in the Friday workshop for the LSS Workshop. Hoping it’s good. Looking forward to a full and fun day.

Had to send a long email this morning, so wasn’t able to post my blog this morning, so this will do.

Collecting Dots

Meandering Genius

This week I am in the Lean And Six Sigma Worldwide Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Two years ago this conference was here and I attended it. It was “ok” then. This year, it’s back in town and of course I had to attend again…I mean when you don’t have to worry about travel, why not, right?

Well, this year, I’m working with a Business Process Management deployment team that is evolving the current way we do process improvement for USAA. I recommended attendance at the conference to the team.

Let me tell you, it is so much better than it was two years ago. Hats off to the team that is putting this on and making it possible. There are a lot of professionals volunteering at this and they’re doing a great job.

David Silverstein, President of BMGI, gave a keynote presentation yesterday morning that was spot on. It was based on his book, One Dot, Two Dots, Collect Some More Dots.

Standing ovation David!

I wrote this statement down that sums up the speech, “In order to connect the dots, you have to collect the dots, which means we often create the dots.”

Dots, in David’s presentation and book relate to data or information. We as curious human beings want to connect the dots to understand something, but when the dots don’t exist, we often create our own dots to complete the picture. We fill in the gaps in information all the time. Instead, he talks about very simple ways to engage your curiosity and collect the dots versus creating what might be wrong dots.

Wow! I’m a creator of dots! Let me tell you, I will fill the gaps all the time. This presentation was perfect. David also gave away copies of his book to everyone…oh yes, he gave it away. There was no sales table outside and he wasn’t sitting at the end signing what you bought. You went by the BMGI booth and they gave you his $9 book!

Props to David. I skimmed his book yesterday and look forward to reading it…it’s short and looks easy to read. I’m looking forward to it and the message. Thanks again David for the presentation and helping me build my curiosity muscle!

Change Management Pet Peeves

Change Management Meandering Genius

Let’s face it, change management is hard enough as is. Some actions of professional adults can really make my head spin. I’m talking about the person that works so hard to derail the project, but in many ways often has so much to gain from it. If they would just put in the same level of effort to make it happen, it would get done twice as fast.

You know the type…

004-300x163They demand to be included in the change management effort, but refuse to come to any of the meetings or read any of the minutes and materials being created by those working hard to make the change a success. Then they come in several weeks later and they completely want to derail the effort by taking you back to the beginning and tell you that you what they think you haven’t done and what they think needs to be done.

Then there are those that simply want to revisit the very first points or relive how we got here at every meeting. They simply can’t move past that. They want everyone to endure hours of explanation of why it is the way it is today. Just when you think you have enough as-is, they want to add more the next meeting. They are stuck in the way it’s being done now.

There are those that use others as their excuse for slowing up progress. They say they are 100% behind the effort! but they need to protect their people. They use their bosses as scapegoats for their question, “Well, my boss has concerns and I’m just trying to get them out in the open.” All the while, you have socialized the change with leadership, who are 100% on board and their people are excited about the change. This is a typical middle management stance.

Then you have those that participate in the change effort, but take every opportunity to grandstand on topics that just prove how unsupportive they are of the entire organization. My recent example of this person was someone who passes themselves off as an expert, but isn’t even certified. Then he blames his lack of certification on the organization, not himself. Then states, he refuses to wear company logo items because the company doesn’t pay him to advertise for them. None of these things have anything to do with the project, but clearly demonstrate the need to remove someone from their current job.

Then you have the “I’ve already solved that,” group. These are the ones that get me the most. Everyone has spent hours defining what is wrong that needs to get changed. Suddenly, as you get down the road, someone who should have fixed the problem long ago, starts chiming in that they’ve already solved the problems that are being addressed. It’s almost always those that should have solved the problem in the first place. They have put some bandaid on the item or put a un-resourced plan in place to fix something and suddenly that isn’t a problem anymore. Basically, these people simply want you to move past these issues, because you’re highlighting their ineffectiveness up to this point.

Then you have the cheerleaders for the negative. These are the people that one-on-one are supportive and behind the effort. Then, you get in a meeting and one person speaks out against an idea and suddenly there they are cheering them on. What’s worse is when you have a room of cheerleaders, who individually tell you to your face they are behind you and then the first chance they get, they’re on you like a pack of starved dogs.

Nothing can be more frustrating than the inclusive disagreement. You bring certain people in on a change effort because you know they are going to be a problem and you really want their buy in. They come up with ideas and approaches that are pretty good. However, every time you adopt their idea or approach they turn around later and try to shoot it down. You make them inclusive to the solution, you accept their approach, and then they disagree. Here’s your cigarette and blindfold, let’s step out back.

Over the last six years I have been involved in many major change management efforts. These same people show up in every effort. I’m sure you’ve seen them. Dealing with the ones that simply flat out refuse to change, in my mind, are easy. These people above frustrate me to no end. These are the ones that pretend to your face that they are supportive and team players and then prove themselves wrong at every turn.

What’s worse is that I don’t think they even realize what they’re doing half the time. I recently had someone tell me how much they needed to be involved in the effort, but they hadn’t been to one meeting that we’ve had and never sent a delegate. I asked if the minutes and material were detailed enough to demonstrate what we we’re doing and if they’re keeping them informed and they simply said, “Oh, I haven’t read the minutes.” Then, after totally tearing down the meeting and the whole effort, they say that I need to add another person to the meeting in their place as a delegate and, half way through the meeting, they take a phone call and have to run off to another important meeting. Note: the meeting we were having was specifically set up for that person.

In all of these cases, this is where strong change leadership is key. When you have these type of people, you need your change leadership to step in and have a talk with these people. Like I said, in many ways, they are simply acting the way they have always acted. I’m sure that you can understand how the person in the above example could cause significant problems throughout an organization with that type of behavior. You know that is the way they operate every day and you’re project is just experiencing it for the first time.

Department of Miss-Defense

Department of Miss-Defense — What Needs Fixing

Leadership Meandering Genius

Department of Miss-DefenseI am absolutely sick of the news today.  Being a retired Air Force member, it kills me to see the constant erosion of benefits for retired and current service members.  If you haven’t been watching, you better start waking up.  The bigger news is the regular lack of a balanced budget from Congress, Sequestration, Government Shut Downs…it seems to go on and on.

I, being who I am, like to blame Congress and specifically the Administration.

However, the real blame, especially for the Military budget and financial woes rests squarely on the Department of Miss-Defense.

Yep, that’s right, you may not have ever heard about this super secret and extremely covert military organization, but many of the senior military leadership (military and civilian) work for this department and don’t even know it.

Day-in and day-out the same people complain about the same things I do– Congress and the Administration.

The problem is, they’re doing it to themselves.

Step back and take a look at our military machine–the Department of Defense.  What if I told you that, because of its design, its fraught with waste and redundancy.  I mean waste and redundancy that is so big you could pilot a Carrier Group through it.

If the Military–specifically the leadership–really cared about reducing their bottom line and not taking it out of the promised benefits to veterans or future benefits that will destroy the all volunteer force, they need only open their eyes.

Today every single military branch, Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard have redundant support services that help keep the military engine running.  Things like information technology, human resources, transportation, and logistics.  For the most part, these support services do the exact same thing.  The only real difference is HOW they do it.  This redundancy of effort across the branches has created bloated organizational fiefdoms within each branch that drain on the military might we desire to prosecute war with.

Want to fix Miss-Defense?

Eliminate the support services from the branches and create one support service department.  Throw out all the antiquated systems and approaches and create one that supports all the branches.  A large portion of it can be immediately outsourced and another large part civilianized, leaving the military part for deployment requirements.

This would significantly reduce the Tail in the Tooth-to-Tail ratio that the military is always concerned about.

Won’t work you tell me…Bull!

Take a look at Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) and tell me it won’t work.  They’ve already done it.  As a matter of fact, I would build this support department off of DFAS and eliminate DFAS–it’s just another support service.

This is only the start.  There are many other support type roles that I’m not even mentioning, like planning, military equipment (land, air, marine, and space) maintenance, public affairs, etc.  The list is long.

What I propose is a complete reengineering of the Department of Miss-Defense.  The branches focus on delivering the military might and all support services focus on supporting the delivery of that military might under one department.

Part of the reason Joint Forces Command even exists is to coordinate this support–let them focus on simply coordinating the offense and leave the support to the expert.

Think of the reductions in cost and the developments in effectiveness and innovation if you went this route?

Breaking Down Silos

How do you break down silos?

Books Meandering Genius

Saturday I came across this question on LinkedIn…how do you break down silos?

Breaking Down SilosSilos exist in nearly every organization.  Organizations’ that suffer from silos are affected by what I refer to as Organizational Myopia.  My book on this is due out in a couple months that addresses this topic.

Silos are created by human nature.  Entrepreneurs start their small business with a great idea.  They are really good at delivering a service or building a product.  If the customers like the product or service, business tends to grow fast.  Specialty departments form because the founder’s skill is in developing the product.  Needs like HR, Finance, and IT crop up and specific people are hired to do this.  They often need to stand up a team or department.  Then the delivery side of the house gets too busy for everything to happen with one person and it fractures into things like Operations, Sales, Marketing, and Logistics.  These departments tend to start to segment around customer bases and then fracture further into teams.  These teams promote competition across the product for sales and delivery.

When the company started, it was small and manageable.  Everyone was focused on the same things.  The company grows and it starts to form these “groups of humans” in what we call “silos.”  So, the silos ALWAYS exist in successful companies.  The bigger the company is, the more prevalent the silos.  Mergers and acquisitions tend to create more silos then remove them.

Then here comes human nature.  Everyone wants to “belong.”  It’s a Maslow basic need.  They identify with their group at work as part of that effort; belonging means that you are part of one team and not part of others.  Thus, you get a strong feeling of team affinity.  This builds walls and starts to create an “us and them” mentality.  People start to think “we’re better than they are,” “they get better stuff,” “we have more work,” and “we need more money or people than they do.”  The walls solidify with brick and mortar and now your silos are firm and resolute.

Problems with this are a lack of communication across silos, people tend to throw “stuff” over the wall to the next step in processes without regard, constant empire building and resource wars, and everyone develops their own view of what customer is important.  This is Organizational Myopia.

The thing is, just disrupting the silos (breaking them down) WILL NOT solve your problem.  Tear them down with leadership and personnel changes, mergers, and acquisitions–the normal management response to the problem–doesn’t work.  You spend months, if not years, dealing with the change management issues associated, or worse, the ramifications because you didn’t deal with the change management in the first place.  Needless, employees flail around being unproductive for a while and then guess what?  Human nature takes hold again and they form right back into their belonging groups and they rebuild their silo walls and make them even more solid to prevent the same breakdown again.

The trick is to learn to work in a silo environment, not break down the silos.  Knowing how to Overcome Organizational Myopia is the purpose of my book.  It’s about breakthrough, not break down.

My view of the major difference between Exempt and Non-Exempt

Meandering Genius

For some stupid reason, I always have trouble remembering which is which when it comes to hourly and salary employees. I often look it up–I don’t know why–but essentially Exempt means that they are exempt from the labor rules around being paid an hourly wage and overtime.

So, you might be thinking that I’m writing to say that this is the major difference between these two types of positions.

No.

I think the major difference between the two positions is totally something else and a lot of people don’t really see it. I think it’s kind of a forest through the trees thing. It’s so obvious that it’s pretty much invisible.

I’ve talked about it before, and I think the difference frustrates both employees and managers because they don’t understand the difference. My intention is to provide my simple view. My view doesn’t always work, but I believe that is because some jobs are classified incorrectly.

The difference has to do with the work itself and how they approach it.

A Non-Exempt, Hourly employee comes to work every day to perform the same set of tasks pretty much the same way every day. When you come into work, there is a queue of work normally waiting for you and your job is normally to get these items or a specific amount completed on your designated shift. Work for hourly employees can normally be broken down to widgets. When the amount of widgets increase beyond your normal work day capacity (8 hours), that’s when overtime is authorized to get the work done before you leave. Hourly employee tasks are normally very repetitive and completed rather quickly.

The general mentality around this work is that it is assigned to the employee to fill their day. The employee’s work is done when they have run out of work and they either clock out or they help others complete their work so everyone can get out of work on time or early. Work that has to be completed before that employee leaves, requires overtime to work it and work that doesn’t will go into the queue for the next morning or the next shift. This is a very simple model of work to operate under, but obviously it could get rather monotonous and boring. However, what you do and how you do it is pretty cut and dry.

Clearly, some people are getting paid a salary, but the work they’re doing really fits in this category and hourly paid people sometimes don’t work like this specifically. However, in my mind, this is the general rule around non-exempt employees.

Exempt employees are paid a salary and are not subject to hourly wage and overtime. They are exempt from the labor law essentially. But the work they get and how they approach it is very different. This can be very frustrating for employees and managers, especially if employees are new in the exempt role.

The tasks that are performed by exempt employees, for the most part, are repetitive, but the frequency of those tasks vary a great deal more. Normally, you don’t come in and have a queue of like things every day. The things that need to be worked on vary every day. You normally work on the same things for the most part all the time, but sometimes what they are is harder to define.

The major difference is that most exempt-type work spans more than a day to complete. Many times you can work on part of the task and then you have to wait for someone else or something else to happen to proceed to the next step. Thus, work spans days, weeks, and even months. Also, an exempt employee’s day is generally filled with many more meetings than non-exempt employees. Meetings are how much of the work is identified, scoped, discussed, worked, and accepted.

The beginning and end of work in exempt positions are normally not as clear as well. This can be very confusing.

The biggest thing is that exempt employees are expected to “find” things to do that need to get done, not wait for these things to drop in their lap. Also, they are expected to simply work later to get things done that need to get done, but should be allowed to leave and take care of personal things during work hours if they need to go.

You can imagine an employee’s transition from hourly to salary work. Your whole approach to your daily work has changed. However, many employees struggle with this. I often see one of two things happen.

1. The employee becomes bored with a feeling of not having enough to do during the day, or they feel overwhelmed and frustrated that they never can accomplish anything the day they come to work. Managers get frustrated with the employee who isn’t looking for things to get done or putting in the hours to get needed work done.

2. Employees aggressively attack the work and become overworked quickly. They are constantly finding things that need to get done and tend to work long hours trying to get them done during the day. They get frustrated that they can’t get things off their plate fast enough and the burn themselves out and/or ruin their work/life balance. Managers tend to like the drive and enthusiasm of this behavior, which can make it worse then better.

The two rules for exempt employees are:

1. If you don’t have any work to do, you aren’t looking for it.

2. The work will always be here tomorrow.

You are expected to have more work to do then you can get done in one day. If your work can be completed every day, you probably should be paid an hourly wage.

Why do you blog?

Blogging Meandering Genius

A couple a days ago I was having a conversation with a friend at work about a blog she’s putting together.

As I thought about that conversation, I think the fundamental question you should ask yourself before you even start blogging is why do you want to blog in the first place.

That base reason is what will drive a lot of things in how you actually go about blogging.

If you have been hired to be a blogger and are getting paid to do it as part of your job or specifically as your job, then this might be the conversation you should have with your employer.

Your decision why you want to blog should lead you to decisions regarding frequency of blogging, material you will blog about, and details about the blog itself.

I believe the best stories and messages (and thus blogs) provide a deep level of transparency into the writer. Being honest with your message is a key to a good blog. To that end, let me share why I blog as an example.

Currently I have a full time job and on the side I have my own consulting company with myself as the only employee. I started the company, Crosscutter Enterprises, in 2008 when I retired from the Air Force. I have done several pro bono and a few paid consulting assignments through this company over the past five plus years. Right now I’m ramping up a project with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, here in San Antonio.

I also am an aspiring author. I have my first book out, published in 2012, called One Dead Marine. It is a post-apocalyptic science fiction/fantasy about a US Marine who wakes up in the future where monsters, magic, and technology crash together in a post-apocalyptic US. I am also working on publishing my second book–a nonfiction, business book, called Overcoming Organizational Myopia. It is about breaking down stovepiped organizations.

At 48 years old, I still have several years to be eligible for retirement with my current company. However, my plan is to continue to work as a consultant, writer, and speaker after “formal” retirement (this will be my second retirement since I’m already retired Air Force).

Knowing more about these thing gets to why I blog…

I have three reasons why I blog.

1. Blogging regularly helps me think through writing concepts and hones my writing skills. The more I write, hopefully, the better I will get at it.

2. Encouraging and gaining followers creates an audience base for when I release future books, which I expect to publish. Obviously if people are interested in what I write about, they might also be interested in buying my books when they come out.

3. Blogging provides topics and material for future books that, with some adjustment, could end up as new books. For example, I have found several people are interested when I write about blogging itself. Perhaps writing a book on blogging might be a good idea.

Understanding why I wanted to blog led me to some blogging decisions.

1. If I really wanted people interested in what I’m writing and to follow me, I needed to blog often. The rule of thumb is to post one blog a day. More then one a day becomes overload and less than one a day loses interest. That doesn’t mean people read your blog every day, but every day they have something to read.

2. My blogs need to be informative and helpful. Going off on political rants every day might attract interested people, but really isn’t demonstrating my understanding of publishable topics like strategic planning, process improvement, employee engagement, blogging, etc. I’ll leave the political discussions to Facebook.

3. In order to blog daily and gain the interest of a broad audience, I needed a broad topic list. Not too broad to lose the interest of readers…in other words, today I’m talking about blogging, tomorrow it’s fashion, and Saturday it’s global warming. No, I needed to focus on specific things that I think my readers would be interested in.

4. This is important. I’m not selling anything. I am not monetizing my portal and posting a bunch of ads. At the bottom of every blog, I’m not posting links to my business page encouraging you to hire me. Basically, my blogs are not veiled marketing messages and sales pitches. There is a guy named Steve Harrison that promotes “free” speaking and speech advice and webinars. Every day, I get a “blog-like” post from him that is 5% content and 95% marketing. His webinars are essentially the same. You will not get that from me.

5. I’m giving away the secret sauce. I’m not going to share part of the way I recommend or actually do things, especially in my weekend strategic planning and leadership blogs. I am going to provide the full advice and you don’t have to hire me to get the rest of the story. If you think I know what I’m doing and want my assistance, the reader knows how to get a hold of me.

6. I will have some structured messages. On Saturday, I have a blog dedicated to strategic planning called Think Big, Take Small Steps. I started it a while back, but never followed through on the writing. This year I delved into it with earnest. On Sunday, I now have a regular article on leadership and management. Both of these messages, once created and posted, I share to specific groups on LinkedIn.

Can you see how knowing why I blog, led to how I blog. This is much like Simon Sinek’s book, Start With Why.

If you just want to write about things for the fun of it, then the frequency doesn’t matter and neither does the topics. If people follow you, so what, so encouraging any followers is pointless. You can definitely ramble on with your blogs and things like spelling, grammar, and sentence structure really aren’t important.

If you are looking to make money off your blogging activity, well, you need to monetize the platform. You need to sell in your blogs and your blog page needs to direct people to things you are selling. You better be really good at writing and have a solid message that people will want to read. If you blog for a company, chances are, you are blogging for this reason.

If you are like me and you blog to build credibility for future opportunity. Then your focus will be entirely different.

So, if you are blogging today or you are thinking about blogging, ask yourself why do you want to blog. This will lead you to determine how you want to blog and honestly, what you want to blog about.

Good luck blogging.