I never thought I’d spend $40 for admission on my family of 3 for a movie and feel like I got a good deal, but that’s exactly what happened this past weekend when we saw Disney/Pixar’s latest, Up, at my local theater in 3D.   It wasn’t because of the 3D effects, although were impressive and vividly clear in the digital theater my familiy went to, but because of the very moving story.

If you just look at the trailer, this looks like it’ll be a movie about a cranky old man who ties balloons to his house.  Once you understand his perspective and realize why he became so cranky, the story takes on a surprising depth and validates why you should take the time to understand why someone is behaving the way they are in any of your relationships whether they be business or personal.  Experiencing this movie also slammed home the point about how important it is to get your audience interested at the beginning of any presentation and made me ponder on the business model movies seem to be inching towards.

As a starting point, here’s the trailer for Up:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I789Pr5wLUc

Cranky old man ties balloons to his house and floats away with a stow-away he didn’t count on. If I didn’t live with a 7 year old, this was not enough to get me to go to the theater despite Pixar’s excellent track record with quality story telling.  You can predict the stow-away annoying the man in a variety of situations as they figure out how to get unstuck from one another.

At least, that’s what I thought.

The first 10 minutes of the film gives you the cranky old man’s backstory, giving a brief history of his life that explains how he got the the point seen in the trailer.  I won’t spoil it here and I admit to becoming more sentimental with age, I was brought to tears by this introduction to this character’s life (as was my wife).  Once I understood why he was the way he was, I understood his actions a lot better.  Challenging yourself to do the same with people you aren’t getting along with at work reaps similar benefits of understanding.

So, 10 minutes in and I was completely invested in this story I previously had no interest in.  Using good presentation techniques along the lines of “What is this and why is it important?”, the movie presented a path for me to change my context and care about what I was seeing.  It very much reminded me of Walt Disney’s EPCOT presentation in that way, although utilizing emotion instead of financial benefit as the “hook”.

Finally, I came away from watching this movie thinking about how that business model is changing.  I saw Up in digital 3D at a theater with stadium seating, which was quite a bit different from seeing Star Wars at the Imperial Valley Drive-In with a single speaker  hung on the car window during the summer of 1977.  Movie theaters have a much higher bar to get over than they used to given the competition of home theaters with their surround sound and online access to Netflix streaming.

Unlike Bolt 3D, Up seemed to be produced with a 3D presentation in mind (hence the movie poster logo) that was gracefully degraded for 2D viewing.   I also saw, for the first time for me, trailiers in 3D.  At first I thought this was cool, but then I realized that I’m probaly not going to be willing to pay that same premium for a 3D presentation of a guinea pig spy film, but that’s just me.

Will special effects films for the sake of special effects, but with unengaging story (hello, Star Wars prequels) keep people coming back for $13 seats and $5 popcorn?  That seems to be the multi-billion dollar question for the movie industry.

It’s June, which here in the US means “Dads and Grads” is the most repeated (and my least favorite) phrase in advertising for the next month. For those of you graduating from something in the face of a difficult job market I repeat for you the best movie answer ever to being questioned about your job future:

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”

—Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything

When I make a mistake, I own up to it. One time, I had the brilliant idea to wash my wife’s new car with a coarse scrub brush, which of course scratched the finish nicely. I messed up and got it fixed.

What I hate more than anything, though, is being blamed for a mistake that isn’t my fault. Often, this happens when someone else made a mistake and either remembers a series of agreements you made with them differently than you do or they are outright lying about a set of previously acknowledged facts. Either way, now they are saying it was all your idea to use the scrub brush and they had nothing to do with it.

When this happens, prevention is the key. How do you cover your ass (CYA) so you don’t own someone else’s mistakes?

I’ll completely nerd out on you by asking you to consider a scene early in The Empire Strikes Back as a working scenario. The Imperial Navy thinks the Rebel Alliance is hiding out on Hoth and sends a fleet there. The flagship of the fleet is The Executor commanded by Admiral Ozzel and his second in command is Captain Piett. Darth Vader oversees them both. A mistake is made. The fleet comes out of hyperspace too close to Hoth, alerting the Rebels that the Empire has discovered their hideout and they respond by putting up a powerful shield.

In one of the best movie lines ever, Vader remarks that Ozzel, “is as clumsy as he is stupid” for making such a mistake and immediately crushes Ozzels larynx as punishment. Good news, Piett, your immediate superior has been killed for being an idiot and you got promoted. Try not to tick off the big boss, though.

Ozzel takes responsibility for the mistake, but here’s how it could have played out:

Ozzel: “Honestly, Lord Vader, Piett did this all on his own. He’s been having trouble following orders lately.”

Piett: “Uh, what are you talking about, Ozzel? You told me to sneak up on them and now we can’t bombard the planet from orbit.”

So who gets the Force Choke? It’s Ozzel’s word against Piett’s and ignoring for a second that Vader could use his powers to compel them both to tell the truth, there’s no other way to know which one is right. Odds are, though, the person lying about the facts (Ozzel) is probably a bigger suck up to the big boss, so how likely is he to be the one to get punished?

Consider alternative to the scenario:

Ozzel: “Honestly, Lord Vader, Piett did this all on his own. He’s been having trouble following orders lately.”

Piett: “Uh, what are you talking about, Ozzel? I have an email right here dated 3 hours ago where you asked me to sneak up on them. Lord Vader, I’ve already forwarded it to you.”

Now Piett has CYA’d and can breathe easy (literally).

What’s the difference between the two made-up versions of the events? In the second one, the decision was recorded, it was stored, and it was easily retrievable so it could be used as evidence. Those are the 3 key steps to CYA.

1. Record It

Some people can be trusted more than others, so don’t pull this trick all the time or else you’ll just annoy everyone. But, if an important or controversial decision is being made in a non-recordable medium like a conversation, it’s a good idea to follow that up with confirmation of the decision in a recordable one, like email. For example:

From: Captian Piett
To: Admiral Ozzel
CC: Darth Vader;General Veers
Subject: Hyperspace plan for Hoth

Admiral,

I just wanted to confirm our recent hallway conversation that you would like me to have the fleet exit hyperspace as close to the Hoth system as possible. No doubt the ground troops led by General Veers will win a swift victory and put the Rebels in their rightful place. Please reply with confirmation at your earliest convenience.

—Piett

This email gets to the point, asks for confirmation, and throws in some team-building words of encouragement. It doesn’t read like it was sent exclusively for preemptive CYA even though it has that effect. Depending upon the circumstance, you may or may not want to CC a higher superior so that it is well communicated that some decision has been made. In this example, even if Ozzel never responds, it was at least recorded what Piett interpreted the decision to be., which might be enough to get Piett off the hook if there is trouble to be had. If Ozzel confirms as requested, it is pretty clear who made the decision and what it was, removing all doubt who’s neck is on the line.

2. Store It

Of course, a record is only good to CYA if you have it around later to use. In some companies, there are limits to how much you can store on an email server. For that reason, explore storing your email archive on your local system and manage your own back ups. That way, the storage of things like this is completely under your control, although it then completely becomes your responsibility too.

3. Be Able to Retrieve It

Recording a decision and saving it doesn’t do you any good if you can’t find it when the big boss comes looking for someone to cease breathing. Of the 3 key steps, this one is probably the most important. Good archival organization systems only go so far, though. Even better is a well used desktop search tool. I happen to like Google Desktop Search, but there are other products that do the same thing. That way, even if you can’t remember where you filed something you can still find it. Plus, you’ll find a lot of decisions get made via email so the first two steps happen automatically and all you need help with is the retrieval.

Final Thought

This doesn’t mean that every conversation you have needs to have an email follow up. Nobody will get mad at you for picking up the wrong burritos during a lunch time food run, but on big decisions or with people who have shown themselves untrustworthy in the past, learn to CYA so you only have to take the blame for mistakes you actually made.

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Peter Clayton runs an excellent career podcast over at Total Picture Radio and was kind enough to have me as a guest.  We talked about the premise for nerdguru.net and my recent adventure with “What’s your best career advice using EXACTLY 6 words?”

Take a listen to the 16 minute podcast over at Peter’s site when you get a chance.

Which exchange would you rather have:

Marketing person: “Can you set up a company blog for us?”

You, software person: “Sure.”

or

Marketing person: “Can you set up a company blog for us?”

You, software person “I’ll do whatever you guys want, but are you sure you really want that?  There’s a Forrester report out there that says blogs are the least trusted form of communication between a company and its customers unless it’s written a certain way.”

The second one, if delivered in a deferential way so as to not setp on the toes of the marketing person, will show that you’ve been keeping up on trends and get you extra respect when the time comes to have your performance evaluation.  With that in mind, I’m going to try a new category of posts geared towards marketing trends you should be aware of.

This first one examines a post over at Groundswell on brand social strategy.

The question asked of adults and youths was “How interested are you in each of the following from your favorite brand, store, or service provider?” The survey found that adults were more likely to be interested in forums while youths (teenagers, basically) were more likely to be interested in videos or Facebook experiences.

Although I really liked this post, one thing you have to keep in mind with things like this is that it is marketing geared towards getting you to buy the report.  Apply your own level of skepticism as a result.

Another aspect of these reports to keep an eye out for is what the baseline assumptions are and how they differ from your situation.  For example, the graph in this post is most relevant if you segment your customers as adults versus youths.  If you don’t, you can still extrapolate some useful things out of the adult portion of the analysis but it might not be telling you the whole picture of what is happening within key demographics that relate specifically to you.

That said, I really liked the analysis at the end of the article which discussed how “boring” brands can take leverage social media by “borrowing relevance”.   For example:

“Johnson & Johnson built a Facebook page for mothers of ADHD kids – because, as with all medications, its ADHD drug is boring but its sufferers generate interesting problems. Doritos invited its customers to make ads in the 2007 Superbowl, since an ad contest is more exciting – and more social – than a corn chip.”

Besides borrowing relevance, another example of using video to make a boring brand more exciting is the “Will it blend?” series by commercial blender manufacturer Blendtec.  Reminding old school Saturday Night Live fans of Bass-o-matic, placing an iPhone into an awesome blender produces hilarity.

Marketing is largely about getting people to talk about your brand and this post does a nice job of framing how that might differ based on the age of your target audience and some things you can do even if you have what most people would consider a boring product to spark conversation.

Malcolm Gladwell has called his latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success, an apology for his own success.  While that’s accurate, it also sells the ideas in Outliers short.  Really, it is about how big a role chance opportunity plays in being successful.  It’s actually a little scary when you think about it, but ultimately it makes some pretty compelling arguments that often minor changes in approach can have huge impacts on outcome.

My favorite stories from the book, which is just as good if not better than The Tipping Point:

• An overwhelming majority of elite Canadian hockey players, around 70%, were born in January, February, and March.  Why?  Because the cutoff birthday for kiddie leagues is January first and players identified as being better at early ages who then get the benefit of access to better training aren’t really better, they more physically developed than their competition because they are slightly older.  Gladwell argues that if Canada would create multiple kiddie leagues more finely separated by age, they would have more elite hockey players.  As an added bonus, the same trend proved true in other countries with other sports.
• In the late 1960’s, you were lucky if there was a computer terminal in your city, let alone at your high school.  Do you know who’s high school had one?  Bill Gates’, that’s who.  By logging hours and hours of computer time as a teen, he became an expert at writing computer software at just the right time to change the world.  Gladwell’s rough estimate is that you need 10,000 hours of training to be really good at something and Gates got that on software engineering before Paul Allen got on the plane to New Mexico to lead to Microsoft’s first sale.
• A study that followed the same Baltimore school children from 1st through 5th grades and tested their progress in both June (at the end of the year) and September (at the beginning of the year) found that students learned the same throughout the year but socioeconomically disadvantaged kids learned very little or lost knowledge over the summers where their financially better off peers continued to gain knowledge.  Gladwell presumes this is because rich parents can afford to put their kids in summer programs while poor parents can’t and that if we adjusted the school year, which was set up in an era where most American’s were farmers and needed summers off to tend to land, so that it had fewer breaks we’d ultimately have more kids from low socioeconomic families in college.

There are many more examples like these in this great read and all point to the importance of access and when someone gets that access, as contributors to things going well for someone.  It has made me think carefully about the things I expose my 7 year old to, but also how I involve others in my decision making process.

For reasons outlined below, Q2 ended for me April 30 and I just finished my habitual mid-year accomplisments list.  Even if you have a more traditional calendar and your mid-year doesn’t hit until June, it’s a good idea to start thinking about this.

The article below ran last year in July (several months late for me), but served as a good reminder for me this year of the different places to look when recalling the variety of things I’ve been up to.

—-

Many years ago, Dave Packard noticed that his accounting staff had to put in overtime at the end of December in order to process all the necessary paperwork to close out the financials for the year and he didn’t think that was fair for them to have to give up family time in that way. So, he moved the start of the fiscal year to November 1 (moving it back to December 1 complicated Thanksgiving plans) and thus HP’s unusual financial quarter boundaries were born.

That’s a really long-winded way of saying I’m late when it comes to completing my mid-year accomplishments list, which I should have done in May but am only getting to now.

Why make a mid-year accomplishments list? Well, what did I do last November? Uh, off the top of my head I can’t remember. If I can’t remember that now I have no hope of remembering it in October just before my performance evaluation. Hence the need for a mid-year accomplishments list.

First, I looked at my last end of year accomplishments list. Mainly, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t accidentally taking credit for something that happened in that October/November timeframe twice, as it would not only be unprofessional to do so but I would also feel pretty stupid for getting nailed stretching the truth later when I could have prevented it.

Next, I went through month by month to see if I could remember what it was I was spending my time with. I find it’s helpful to think of what was going on in my personal life as those things stay with me a bit more. Case in point, I know where I had Thanksgiving dinner (on the Disney Wonder cruise ship) but I have no idea who I met with right before that extended U.S. weekend. Using that technique, here’s what I came up with (as with the actual performance evaluation, each line item is written with a leading verb in the same way you would do for a resume):
November:

• Handed off program management responsibility for a major presales marketing site to a development manager teammate
• Worked with third party vendors for an external data center exit
• Created and presented an architectural overview of all projects to our new Vice President

December:

• Suggested and oversaw implementation of an extension of the external data center hosing provider when the negotiations that took place in November fell through
• Prepared version comparison spreadsheet for more than 40 web site programs so that, in anticipation of the FY09 planning processes coming in January, software stack version upgrades (OS, database, middleware, etc.) required to keep up with HP data center standards could be identified and enumerated properly
• Generated a potential project list for IT streamlining during FY09

January

• Provided coarse level estimates (small/medium/large across 3/6/9 month durations) for 30+ projects for the preliminary FY09 planning process.
• In conjunction with 3 Solution Architects, generated fine level estimates (specific man days per week) for 10+ projects
• Crafted a process with business teams for evaluating 3rd party vendors that could be engaged with HP IT oversight
• Conducted a technical evaluation of two 3rd party vendors as part of the emerging process

and so it goes for 3 another months worth of material.

Next, I looked through my email archive.  Specifically, I sorted through my “Sent Items” folder looking for items that had attachments to them (because that meant I was delivering some work product to somebody) or that went to recipients I don’t normally work with (meaning I was expanding my influence).  That was good for at least 2 more bullet items per month.

Finally, I looked through my file system (which, like a lot of people, I have organized by project) to see if there was something else I might have missed.  The results, after about 90 minutes spread across 3 days, was a list of about 3 dozen items spanning 6 months worth of work and should provide a good foundation for my performance evaluation in the Fall.

At the recommendation of one of my bosses, I’m reading a book called Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales, which examines the psychology behind accidents (aviation, space flight, hiking, rock climbing, etc.).  It takes a very interesting look at how we are capable of being very intelligent but have blind spots in our thought process.  In a weird way, it is very similar to the recent Wired article featuring Teller about the psychology of magic.

On page 113 of my paperback version, Gonzales quotes Lockeed engineer Dan Canin who was commenting on the trade-offs between safety and pushing boundaries with NASA:

“Shit happens, and if we want to restrict ourselves to things where shit can’t happen . . . we’re not going to do anything very interesting.”

We all take on projects with a certain amount of risk.  In Mr. Canin’s case, that risk equates to whether or not people will live or not, something I’m not experienced with seeing as I’m pretty sure no web site ever reached through someone’s screen and attacked them.

Still, the path to greatness usually comes with risk.  The Apollo astronauts knew there was a pretty good chance they would die but they took on that risk in the name of pushing boundaries.  Space Shuttle launches sometimes become common enough that we almost tend to think of them as commercial flights, but they aren’t.

In order to make new discoveries, to “do anything interesting” as Mr. Canin put it, comes with risk.  But when you mitigate those risks and avoid them, the results can be spectacular.  Don’t assume you can make those big leaps without the risk that comes along with it.

Microsoft blogger Scott Hanselman has an interesting post today on behavior and attitude in the technology world.  This quote best summarizes his framing of the subject:

However, it depends on what you feel strongly about and if what you feel strongly about outweighs what you believe others might feel. You need to be yourself, but you there ARE social norms, and others feelings, that should be considered.

@mstum on Twitter said: I’d rather have honest f-bombs than gentlemen hypocrites… Honest and direct people are so much easier to work with.

But can’t one be an honest gentleman? Why is online (or offline) use of the F-word and general crassness somehow exemplary of “honesty?” If someone swears and slams their hand on a table in a business meeting I don’t immediately think “Whew, finally an honest person!”

Being generally pleasant and helpful isn’t sugarcoating, it’s being pleasant and helpful.

I absolutely agree.  You can be honest without being crass.  In fact, when you go a step further by being pleasant and honest, you increase your chances of being taken seriously.  As I’ve written before, people have lots of different perspectives and to assume yours is any more valid than someone else’s is counterproductive.

I see this attitude come out a lot in what I call “The Angry Genius”, the techie person with incredibly deep knowledge on a particular subject.  The Angry Genius is impatient with his technical peers and downright nasty to the marketing and management people he has to work with that have very limited technical ability.

The thing is, deep technical knowledge doesn’t guarantee:

1. That you can implement the whole thing by yourself.  Instead, you will likely need help from others.
2. That technical knowledge necessarily translates into expertise on how this particular technology will be used to solve problems.  Those marketing guys and management gals spend the bulk of their time understanding core business issues and come to you for technology to solve them.  To dismiss their perspective is a missed opportunity to truly comprehend how The Angry Genius’ beloved technology might be utilized.

You can choose to insist you are always right but the opportunity cost of that is significant relationship erosion.  If you embrace the idea that you might be wrong and challenge yourself to discover and understand alternative points of view, you grow relationships that can benefit you later.

As Scott put it at the end if his post:

Don’t be a dick. If you are a dick, you don’t get to complain when things go bad for you. There are consequences to all actions and they live on.

I was IM’ing with a friend about this article and we were debating why this bad attitude seems to be more prevalent in the tech industry.  His thoughts were pretty telling:

There are dicks in every field I guess. It’s just in the tech world, they have a more visible platform from which to pronounce their dick’ishness.

I love newly invented words.  Avoid pronouncing your dick’ishness.

Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror ran an article back in March on pair programming that was in the same vein as the entry I wrote last month, Impressing your friends as a motivator for exellence.  For all you non-coders out there, pair programming is a software engineering practice where, as the name implies, you work in tandem with another person on a project so you can constantly check each other.   You have someone else to run things past before a broader audience sees it and, by extension, impressing that person becomes part of your mindset when creating output.

It’s always better with two, isn’t it?  Hewlett and Packard.  Gates and Allen.  Jobs and Wozniak.  Brin and Page.  Disney and Iwerks.  The list goes on and demonstrates that working in pairs can be extremely constructive.

As Jeff says in his article:

Remember those school trips, where everyone was admonished to pick a buddy and stick with them? This was as much to keep everyone out of trouble as safe. Well, the same rule applies when you’re building software. Before you check code in, give it a quick once-over with your buddy. Can you explain it? Does it make sense? Is there anything you forgot?

This same thing is try no matter what you might be doing, not just when developing software.  When you are putting together whatever your deliverable is, ask yourself whether or not it is going to impress whoever your buddy is.  Make your standard not just satisfying yourself but getting the seal of approval from others as well.  And don’t be afraid to ask for feedback from that buddy too (remembering what feedback is and what it isn’t) so you can catch mistakes and make your work product better.