Today’s quote of the day:”It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting.”- Michael Pascal(From the introductory session of a lean “rapid improvement event” that we’re doing in my company. “Lean,” by the way, is a version of the Toyota Production System.)
Tag - work
These are the options if you want an Education Week subscription:
As you’ll quickly see, you actually pay more to get the online version than the print+online versions. Probably has a lot to do with advertising revenue and subscription counts.
Major rip-off … and it isn’t doing trees any favors either.
I recently received a note from a colleague on preferred email communication with a new boss. Thought it was worth passing along – minor elements are changed to protect identities and make it flow …
[tags] email, etiquette, work, john koetsier [/tags]The purpose of this note is to give you a heads up on written communications by email. I have found that emails with opening lines that clearly explain the purpose of our communication work best. For example:
- the purpose of this email is to recommend … OR …
- to provide you with an update
- to get your approval for
- to share an idea
- etc, etc.
That opening line should then be followed up with either background information, tightly crafted explanation, and should conclude with a sense of next steps (if applicable).
For example:
- if you support the recommendation, I will organize a meeting/communicate this to appropriate parties … OR …
- once I have received your approval I will process the request/follow up with
Trusting this makes sense. Offered in the spirit of collegiality.
Getting 6 people together at the same time on the same date at the same place (even if it’s virtual) is like herding cats.
So when a meeting fits in this nicely, it’s like the parting of the Red Sea … especially when our corporate meeting software shows busy times in red:
You never have office politics at your work right? Riiighhht …
There’s a really good article about office politics at BNet. Here’s an excerpt from the intro:
Like it or not, every workplace is a political environment. But operating effectively within it doesn’t have to mean sucking up, lying, or slinging dirt. In its purest form, office politics is simply about getting from here to there: securing a promotion, seeing an idea come to fruition, or gaining support to make an organizational change. Playing the game well is about defending your position, earning respect, exchanging favors, and keeping your sanity amid the chaos. To get started, you need to know what you really want from work, then orient your political moves toward those goals. It all starts with strong relationships and helping others; those people in return make up the support system that helps you realize your goals.
Having endured years of chronic neck pain in my life, I know something about the need to intentionally relax your muscles.
I saw a good tip today intended to help prevent near-sightedness, but a major side-benefit (or perhaps the main benefit) is muscle relaxation. I find that I tend to get a little more stressed, hour by hour, at the office, and that results in tensing my muscles, locking up my joints, and making me more likely to have neck or other joint pain.
Here’s the tip:
Poor distance vision is rarely caused by genetics, says Anne Barber, O.D., an optometrist in Tacoma, Washington. “It’s usually caused by nearpoint stress.” In other words, staring at your computer screen for too long. So flex your way to 20/20 vision. Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing muscles such as the biceps and glutes can trick involuntary muscles like
the eyes into relaxing as well.
Just watched the excerpts of Scoble’s interview with Tim Ferris (the 4-hour-workweek guy), and one thing he said really resonated with me …
Control the environment, not the behavior
He said it in the context of finding a PDA for himself that had email but no wireless access, and not having a particular brand of dark chocolate in the house. Reasons: he knows himself, and he knows he’d be breaking his own rules about email access and healthy diet.
That’s a powerful insight: engineer your environment to make undesired behavior inconvenient. I’ll be finding some ways of implementing that in my own life and work.
Was at a B -B-Q recently, and I was the burger flipper. Not such a bad job … I could probably get used to it … maybe even saying “would you like fries with that” 500 times a day.
On the other hand … maybe not.
But it was interesting to see who went for the vegie burgers and who went for the beef. I’ve seen a lot of people who are on low-carb diets. A lot of people on low-protein diets. And a lot of people on all kinds of other types of diets.
There’s one constant: they’re all fat.
There’s gotta be a lesson about human nature in this. Or one about marketing.
Or if not, maybe one about food.
[tags] diets, marketing, john koetsier, human nature [/tags]
While not straying too far off the beaten track for this blog, I just had to post a great quote.
It’s from Smoke Blanchard, mountaineer, hiker, traveller, guide, climber, trekker, truck driver, and about a thousand other things in between … and appropriately enough, it’s about life and career choices.
Most choices at the crossroads of life are made under weak starlight with a feeble lantern that illuminates poorly the farther stretches of trail.
I’ve just finished his 1984 memoir, Walking Up and Down in the World: Memories of a Mountain Rambler, and had to mention it here because it rings so true.
[tags] career, books, quote, smoke blanchard, john koetsier [/tags]Remember that …
totally innovative never-been-done-before six-figure customer support, training, and marketing initiative for a multi-ten-figure product line with extremely high gross margin
… project that I was pitching a week or so ago? It’s a go. Just completed it via conference call a few minutes ago. I am pumped!
Now, of course, the real work starts.
[tags] project, management, woohoo, john koetsier [/tags]Yesterday I was pitching a totally innovative never-been-done-before six-figure customer support, training, and marketing initiative for a multi-ten-figure product line with extremely high gross margin to the board of an industry-leading company when someone piped up and said the same thing every scared decision-phobic exec always says when presented with a new idea:
Maybe we should do a focus group or something – ask our customers if this is something they would like.
So I was happy to see James Dyson’s quote at the Independent:
“You can’t go out and do market research to try to solve these problems about what to do next because usually, or very often, you’re doing the opposite of what market research would tell you. You can’t base a new project two years ahead on current market trends and what users are thinking at the moment. That sounds very arrogant. But it isn’t arrogance. You can’t go and ask your customers to be your inventors. That’s your job.”
Bloody right.
There’s a time and a place for listening to clients … but usually it’s not when you’re inventing some new product or service. People want what they know. They literally can’t want what they don’t know.
Innovation often comes from the edges – and sometimes that’s clients – but unless you’re incredibly smart at reading between the lines, focus groups usually tell you what you already know.
(In case you’re wondering, we’re reconvening next week to get to yes – or no.)
[tags] dyson, innovation, business, strategy, john koetsier [/tags]
I was looking for funky off-the-wall product ideas and a colleague directed my attention to Knock Knock.
Cool stuff!
I especially like the mojo loss and the I’m sorry but cards.
[tags] cool, products, printed, knock knock, john koetsier [/tags]I get Perry Marshall’s AdWords/marketing email newsletters. Today’s had a section on entrepreneurs versus wanna-bes that I thought was really, really good:
- Wanna-be’s obsess about ideas. Entrepreneurs obsess about implementation.
- Wanna-be’s want more web traffic. Enrepreneurs focus on sales conversion.
- Wanna-be’s focus on positive thinking. Entrepreneurs plan for multiple contingencies.
- Wanna-be’s want to get on TV and get “famous.” Entrepreneurs build their list.
- Wanna-be’s seek a perfect plan. Entrepreneurs execute and adjust the plan later.
- Wanna-be’s wait for their lucky break. Entrepreneurs engineer four, five, six plans and execute them in tandem, wagering that at least one plan will get traction.
- Wanna-be’s fear looking stupid in front of their friends. Entrepreneurs willingly risk making fools of themselves, knowing that long-term success is a good trade for short-term loss of dignity.
- Wanna-be’s shield their precious ideas from harsh reality, postponing the verdict of success or failure until ‘someday.’ Entrepreneurs expose their ideas to cold reality as soon as reasonably possible.
- Wanna-be’s put off practicing basketball until they’ve got Air Jordans. Entrepreneurs practice barefoot behind the garage.
- Wanna-be’s believe what they’re told, believe their own assumptions. Entrepreneurs do original research and determine what paths have been already trod.
- Wanna-be’s believe they can do anything. Entrepreneurs do what they’re gifted for and delegate the rest.
- Wanna-be’s think about the world in terms of COULD and SHOULD. Entrepreneurs think in terms of IS and CAN BE.
To be honest, it’s a great checklist to check up on my own behavior. Am I acting like an entrepreneur or a wanna-be?
[tags] perrry marshall, adwords, entrepreneur, john koetsier [/tags]Last week I finished up almost a month’s intensive investigation, analysis, synthesis, and creation, and planning.
We have a major product family that needed a huge refresh. The product manager for that line was transferred elsewhere in the company … and I got the file 3 weeks before a executive meeting in which I had to present the plan. Tens of millions of dollars are at stake.
So I had to plow through a ton of data, figure out what was happening with the line, understand it, decide where to take it, plan the new approach, formulate my presentation and style, and sell it to the top stakeholders.
That was an intensely interesting experience, and made me think about the relationship between data, complexity, and the quality of decisions. In honor of Kathy Sierra and her wonderful charts, I fumbled together this graph in 37 seconds or less:
So here’s my back-of-the-envelope theory:
- With little data, decisions are a crapshoot. Who knows: might be right, might be wrong.
- With lots of data but inadequate synthesis, decisions are even worse. Still might be right and might be wrong, but even more likely than the little data scenario to be fuzzy, unfocused, and confusing.
- With even more data but extremely rigorous synthesis (lots of interesting but not ultimately relevant datapoints dying on the cutting room floor) you have the chance – repeat, the chance – to make good decisions that can actually be implemented in a clear, direct, and powerful way.
I’m sure there’s lots of holes in this bathtub analysis: poke away!
[tags] decisions, matrix, data, complexity, kathy sierra, analysis, synthesis, john koetsier [/tags]Why doesn’t anybody sell flowers and chocolate?
I need a few gifts for co-workers who are really doing an amazing job. I was thinking flowers and a box of fine chocolates. Why do I have to go to two different stores to do that?
Someone should sell both. I think they’d make a killing.
[tags] flowers, chocolate, gift, marketing, business, idea, john koetsier [/tags]
One thing that has always irritated me about Adobe’s Acrobat applications is that they are real space hogs. Upon launch, they immediately expand to fill all available space:
Note, that’s all available space – as wide as your monitor will allow. Not, as one might expect, a reasonable size that is commensurate with the size of the document that you’re opening and viewing. To me, this makes Acrobat one on the long list of rude applications.
Annoying!
[tags] acrobat, space hog, PDF, john koetsier [/tags]
I am posting this to keep from throwing my laptop across the room.
A project management tool we use called Infowit is set up to force users to choose a new password every couple of months. OK, I can somewhat understand that – there’s a desire for security.
(Never mind the fact that when people have to change their passwords, they’re more likely to write them down so that they remember them, resulting in less security. On the other hand, if people change jobs, eventually they’re locked out of a corporation’s systems by default.)
The annoying thing is that the system will not allow me to choose any normal (i.e., human readable) password. It has to contain characters such as ~!#$%^&*()_+ etc. etc.
The triply annoying thing is that the auto-generated new password the system offers CONTAINS NONE OF THOSE CHARACTERS … and thus, tragi-comically, fails to work.
Sometimes, you can only shake your head wearily (and publish a nasty blog post about some stupid company’s stupidity.)
[tags] infowit, password, security, stupidity, funny, annoying, john koetsier [/tags]Saw something funny while using Mac OS X Mail the other day:
Notice how many attachments are in the email at the top. I guess I’ve never had enough before to see this particular uncounted count.
[tags] mac, os x, mail, attachments, funny, john koetsier [/tags]I came in from NC last night. Stepping out of Sea-Tac airport was great: wet but warm.
(North Carolina sort of feels like the North Pole right now … I was in Asheville and it was about -10 Celcius, with a killer wind.)
Good to be back … will be posting some pix here soon of the trip …
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I’m in Asheville NC for a conference and it’s bloody cold here … colder than Vancouver, Canada which is (roughly) where I’m from.
Whoda thunk you could come at least 1500 klicks south, closer to the sun, and still be colder?
Live and learn!
Backing up a couple years worth of mail today … 2.59 gigabytes of stuff.
incredible.
[tags] mail, backup, john koetsier [/tags]I’ve recently been helping a nonprofit in Abbotsford create a central resource for all the Christian help/counselling organizations in Abbotsford, BC.
Announcing AbbyChristian411:
There’s an old-skewl paper-based publication as well, which will be distributed around the community.
[tags] abby, christian, 411, directory, john koetsier [/tags]Read this today in Wired:
“Somewhere along the line, we seem to have confused comfort with happiness. Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well preserved body … but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow! What a ride!”
OK!
[tags] quote, motivation, life, john koetsier [/tags]If you ever, like me, need a way to get all your contacts’ information out of the OS X Address Book strongbox, look no further than Export Address Book.
Does exactly what it says, freely, with minimum fuss and maximum flexibility.
Thank you Dibomedia!
[tags] address book, mac, os x, mail, contacts, john koetsier, Export Address Book [/tags]
Got this from a buddy, who wrote it and sent it tongue-in-cheek to a manager who wanted him to do some unscheduled web development work.
Names and locations have been changed to protect the guilty (and me). Enjoy:
Hi Steve;
Jane mentioned there were a few issues with the McDonald site – we already knew about those, and we can fix them. Obviously the company who built it has no concept of quality control.
Could you clarify the issue with the picture? (We added a missing picture … are there other issues?)
However, before I can proceed with those changes, you should be aware that we have all agreed to follow a much more formal process for project development and change control for all issues affecting web sites, as discussed by the team.
To this, I need to bring a few quick things to your attention before I can proceed:
- You need to submit the request for change to the McDonald site. It should not take too long. You just need to specify an overview of the change, all required materials, expected result of changes, plan for quality control, contact persons, expected delivery date, and a grid of stakeholders that need signoff. You will need to use form PSA-TS-88-ChangeReqest.
- You will also need to fill out parts of form PSA-TS-88-SSI/43, which needs to get sent to our parent company for approval, to ensure the *changes* align with the parent company’s standards.
- Actually, before we proceed with changes, you need to fill out the ENTIRE form PSA-TS-88-SSI/42, since this project hasn’t been properly approved by our parent company regarding minimum style guides. As well, there’s sub-form PSA-TS-88-I/42, to ensure the project meets our internal sytle guides (But I can probobaly help you with that).
- We also should fill out a form PSA-HR-912/3, since we are posting personal information & photos of employees, we need their permission. This is formally required as per HR Director of our parent company, and our policy. We may have to wait until our new HR Directory is in place before we proceed.
- Since we are using a new combined web address, we will need to have signoff on a new registered address (this is to ensure we don’t lose track of all these). I don’t have a form for that yet, but you will need to wait until I do.
- It’s a bit awkward, but I don’t have any resources approved to allocate to maintanece of this site. I’ll need to have a detailed ROI on the change requests, so I can help allocate resources and priorities. I think it’s a form PSA-TS-431. I’ll check. Sorry about that.
- As well, I don’t really have any user requirements document for the site (vision, goals, usability review, etc), so it’s going to be a bit hard to determine the scope of the changes you really want. We’ll have to work on that as well. I’ll send you a template document for your team to fill out.
- We probably have some resources to do a full usability test on the site before it can go totally live. We’ve define a process that you can follow to submit to me, using form PSA-TS-33-GUI.
- Since the site was developed by a 3rd party vendor, we should really have a better understand of their liability for support & mainteance if things are delivered wrong, or not according to specifications. We should have lawyers draw up some formal expectations, using form PSA-TS-88/Vendor as a template.
- Since there are a lot of forms to fill out, to help facilitate management of these forms, we have created a generic ‘Form Request Form,’ from which you can request the other forms you need.
Thanks!
Hope to hear from you soon!
Joseph.
Now that’s how to stonewall requests!
[tags] funny, project management, web development, john koetsier [/tags]
Happy new year to all readers and incidental visitors of bizhack. This promised to be an exciting year both for the web as a whole and personally for me.
Interesting, amazing, wonderful (and sometimes ominous) things are happening online. Huge acquisitions and major announcements by the big players are inevitable … as are wonderfully exciting and rapidly growing little things, unnoticed until the doubling effect hits the 29th day and we all stand amazed at the latest startup that went from 0 to 100 in 5 months or less.
Personally, I’ve got 2 irons in the fire: fatboynews and an as-yet-unannounced joint venture with a biz-dev buddy. My hopes are high that those will be blessed and successful (even if not YouTubes!) and that the dawning of 2008 will be even more exciting.
To you and yours: may you have a wonderful, exciting, challenging, beautiful, growth-filled, and prosperous 2007!
[tags] new year, 2007, 2008, 2006, fatboynews, startup, john koetsier [/tags]
Working at home today … we’re getting all the windows in our house replaced.
The installers follow a sort of factory assembly-line model: first they take all the old windows out; then they put all the new windows in.
Which means, of course, that I am freezing my (insert random body part here) off.
I’ve been working through a lot of product identification and differentiation lately, and this Seth Godin post really hit home: the story always matters.
The most important point:
“A commodity is only a commodity if you treat it like one.”
So: are we going to treat our products as commodities, or will they be the pages we write on to deliver interesting, compelling, remarkable messages to the people who buy and use our products?
It’s only a commodity if we are so bored (and boring) to treat it as such.
People want to be excited. People want to be motivated. People want to be captivated. People want to be passionate.
Are we allowing, providing, creating, inventing, hiding, showing, and building those possibilities into the things we create? What’s the story?
Let’s make it a good one.
[tags] stories, marketing, products, seth godin, john koetsier [/tags]Ho hum, it’s snaining here in Langley, BC., Canada.
(Snow and rain mixed together, for the uninitiated.)
[tags] snow, rain, snain, snaining, langley, bc, john koetsier [/tags]