Doug Wagner, Author at Sunwapta Solutions

1 Dec 2010

Living Your Mission

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:46:44-06:00December 1st, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Mindset and Motivation, Sales|

In a prior post I defined the mission as being the Tweet sized statement of your service to humanity without reference to your current products or services. The mission is long-term and should be able to survive changes in your business offerings. In fact this is essential, as what exactly your business does, must change over time to address the changing world in which we live.

But your mission is not just for your customers.

You must live it internally in your company. Your shareholders, partners, vendors, and employees must see the consistency.

Before the Internet and social media you could […]

24 Nov 2010

Aligning People and Strategy

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:49:37-06:00November 24th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

Some people or companies think you can buy loyalty and productivity. As Daniel Pink says in "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" this is motivation 2.0 at work. The carrot and stick approach to management that derives from the factory mentally of the previous century. It works, to a degree, for repetitive work where the problem to be solved is linear and repeatable.

But much of today's work is knowledge and creative work. The outcome is not a linear, repeating process but rather requires a unique solution each time. Software development is generally like this. Sure each […]

23 Nov 2010

Setting Goals You Won’t “Want” to Miss

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:48:13-06:00November 23rd, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

Game Recap

Earlier I defined what I thought make a great mission and vision.

A mission is the Tweet of strategy and describes your overall purpose or service to humanity. Your mission should not reference your current product or service.

Your vision is the story (or blog) of where you intend on going. A good story has a beginning, a middle, and a strong ending. It also should touch on why; this will fuel your emotional commitment.

Introduction to Goals

Goals are where things get a little tricky. Not because goals are inherently difficult to understand, but because setting good goals is tricky. There is a big difference between what […]

16 Nov 2010

When The Student Becomes the Master

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:49:50-06:00November 16th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

The Manager

A funny thing often happens when you first become a manager (leader). You think that you became a manager because you had all of the answers or that being a manager requires knowing all.

After you settle into the role and if you have the right mindset, you realize that your job as a manager/leader is to find people who are smarter than you and help them produce at peak levels; essentially you are there to coach and remove roadblocks. You cannot truly be a great manager until you put your ego aside and realize that you become worth more […]

12 Nov 2010

Strategy – Don’t Forget Your Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:50:00-06:00November 12th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|

There is a lot of confusion over some rather simple concepts in business. They stem from the following:

Working on the business,
Working in the business,
Focusing on your business strategy, and
Keeping your customers happy and finding new ones.

This all stems from one major problem with how many entrepreneurs think about business.

Your goal as an entrepreneur is to build a business (first and foremost) that can then build and deliver great products and services to your customers, thereby making more money than you are spending (profit).

What many entrepreneurs do is build the product or service as the main focus and deal with the […]

10 Nov 2010

User Experience Design – Ahead of the Developers

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:50:07-06:00November 10th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

Lately we've been using an interactive wire framing tool to design and define the user experience across multiple pages of the application for our product development. It is working well for us as we can make changes faster than building HTML or code by an order of magnitude; it is even quicker than paper when you consider how much redrawing you do to explore ideas. We still use paper to get the rough idea sorted out first.

The lessons I have learned so far are:

This isn't a waterfall process, you don't need to design the entire product up front though it […]

10 Nov 2010

Corporate Disclaimers – Have Fun Instead

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:50:11-06:00November 10th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

Have you seen the amount of disclaimers that coming out of well known companies these days. You go to their website and it basically says:

"We are a great company, do business with us because we stand by what we do."
"If anything you learn from this website is not right or doesn't work for you, it is your problem, not ours".

This contradiction is insane. It is not how you build trust.

Here is the version I am working on for our outbound e-mails:

Disclaimer: In the event any of the information contained in this e-mail is wrong or doesn't work for […]

9 Nov 2010

Great Visions Tell A Compelling Story

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:25:09-06:00November 9th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

In my last post, I covered what I think a good mission statement is. Short, serves humanity and when you fulfill it, you are fulfilled.

If a great mission is a tweet, a great vision is a blog post. A short compelling story about what you are specifically going to do to over the next 3-10 years to deliver on the mission.

Unlike the mission, you get to include your product or service here. A mission is timeless but a vision is a picture of a point in the future. It is a moving window about where you are heading […]

8 Nov 2010

Mission – Not So Impossible

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:26:49-06:00November 8th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

Coincidentally this is my 300th blog post. Somehow I am subconsciously compelled to impart something remarkable. So I thought I would share some wisdom that I find compelling… I’ll leave it to you to determine what it is worth to you.

Mission Statements

This is a topic that generates a lot of confusion about the difference between mission, vision, values, goals, etc.

There are a lot of really bad ones out there too. Blah, blah, blah, value to shareholders, blah blah, customers are important, blah, blah, employees, blah, and ethics… blah.

Why This Is Important

I know a number of people who started businesses to […]

28 Oct 2010

Rapid Prototyping

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:50:29-06:00October 28th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

Building a product from scratch is a creative and exciting endeavour. This is not a custom software application designed for a single customer; but a product that hopefully millions will find useful and easy to use.

I've been around the development world long enough to see the Waterfall process in action. Spending months to years writing detailed specifications, then attempting to build software according to those specifications, even if they are dated or wrong. Then the stress of in scope of and out of scope change requests to make some attempt at getting the customer what they really want.

Then there is […]

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About Doug Wagner

Game Recap

Introduction to Goals

Mission Statements

Why This Is Important