“Strategy is dead. Who really knows that is going to happen anymore in this super VUCA world? The more time and money you spend devising strategies the more time you are giving you rivals to start eating your lunch.

“Management is dead. To win today you need a culture and an environment where the unreasonable power of creativity thrives. Ideas are today’s currency not strategy. Martin Luther King did not say ‘I have a vision statement’ did he? He had a dream. You have to make sure you have dreams and your brand also needs a dream.” [...]

“The big idea is dead. There are no more big ideas. Creative leaders should go for getting lots and lots of small ideas out there. Stop beating yourself up searching for the one big idea. Get lots of ideas out there and then let the people you interact with feed those ideas and they will make it big.”

I read the article, and on one hand, was nodding my head saying “Yes, Yes, YES!” all the way through. I was inspired by it. But on second pass, I think the situation is a little more nuanced, and the details of the article started to feel misguided.

Strategy is not dead. But huge well-thought-through strategy may be dead. I think a little strategy can go a long way – like directional guidance. Know who you are, where you are, and have an idea where you want to go. That sort of strategy makes a lot of sense to me.

But he’s right that we live in volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and complex world. This doesn’t mean that big ideas are dead, or that management is dead. In means that when you optimize your projects, perfect is no longer your first priority. Speed is your first priority. Big ideas happen not on their own, but as a collection of dozens and dozens of small successful ideas.

And please stop worshiping the Almighty Idea. Ideas are great. And you need good ideas. And a good idea can Make A Difference. But an idea, devoid of context, is a dangerous thing. I have 100 good ideas every day. But they aren’t really any good until something happens with them. And if it takes a million bucks to make it happen … is it still a good idea? Execution is everything, and as pundit Gruber notes about concept videos (i.e., “good” ideas): “The designs in these concept videos are free from real-world constraints — technical, logical, fiscal. Dealing with constraints is what real design is all about.”

So let’s take a second try at the inspiring misguided article. The way I’d characterize our world:

Using outdated management principals, it is now (more than ever) too easy to over-strategize. The world is changing fast, and it is volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and complex. Your best strategy to succeed in this environment is to hire creative leaders and creative team, and tune your culture for speed and responsiveness. Deliver a product every 2 weeks. See if the market thought it was any good. Take the feedback. Adjust. Repeat.

Remember: The rate of change is accelerating exponentially, not linearly. It’s hard to conceptualize that, but think of it this way: the tools you need to compete in next year’s environment have not even been invented yet.

You can’t. We tried.

There are a few different models available: like this one that a stiff breeze will blow over, or this one that smells of too much aesthetic design and not enough old fashioned quality, or this popular one that we owned at our old house which we found to be cheap and wobbles a whole lot.

So we had one made. Custom.

Enter Lee from Quality Stainless, Inc.

Lee helped us design one using a 2″ schedule 40 304SS pipe welded with a 90″ vertical and a 48″ horizontal centered on the vertical with 5 eyelets, and an 18″ sleeve for the concrete. I’m not sure what “schedule 40 304SS” means, but it is awesome.

Steve, the fabricator from Modern Systems, threw in end caps and a bead glass finish for free. A bead glass finish! It’s like sand-blasting, but with glass. How cool is that? If Apple made clothes lines, they’d have a bead glass finish.

Anyway, we’re pretty excited, and I think you’ll agree that it turned out pretty stellar.

Sometimes change is good, and I write about that a lot. Other times it makes sense to just iterate a little bit on the old ways and call it a day.

This pole is going to last us the rest of our lives, and we’re thrilled with it.

The stuff that others have covered which seems pretty credible:

High-res screen – AKA, a “retina” screen. That didn’t happen on the iPad 2, or any of the iPhones save the one-time update with the 4. It’s time, and it’ll be a great selling point to compare against the dpi of the Kindle.

Faster processor – A lame prediction to be sure. But let’s call it an A6 quad-core just for the fun of it.

Previous models for sale – This doesn’t always happen. You can’t but an iPad 1 from Apple today, but you can buy a iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4. Previous models of laptops are typically only sold until the inventory is exhausted. Let’s say the iPad 2 goes for $100 less than it does today.

Bigger battery – This will cause the case to be slightly thicker (1 mm). I haven’t heard anyone say what this means for battery life, but today the spec says “Up to 10 hours”. I think it’ll actually stay the same.

March 7 announce date - Apple hasn’t announce a date when all the press should show up, much less give any indication that this un-announced event will announce a successor to the iPad 2. Availability 10 days later.

One thing I think will be announced, but isn’t iPad related, nor have I seen mentioned elsewhere:

iWork for Lion update - with built-in iCloud synchronizing. In terms of moving from one computer (phone/tablet/laptop) to the next and staying productive, this was a huge iCloud miss. Today a Keynote file will sync only between an iPad and an iPhone/iPod Touch. While I might use those platforms to improving a presentation, Keynote in Lion is still the most productive place to be. And to “sync” you need to download your keynote from the iCloud.com site and upload it after the changes are done. Could be a lot better.

As for other rumors out there? I’d expect Apple will certainly do something to surprise and delight, but how much of these are wishful thinking, I have no idea. Here are a few worth mentioning, but wouldn’t count on:

iCloud expansion – Maybe link your me.com address to your own domain. Or maybe an iCloud for business program that brings in corporate management tools. Or maybe desktop backup via iCloud. There’s something here, but what their next step is in the evolution, I’m not sure.

Siri iPad enabled – Seems like it would be a no-brainer, but then why would Apple add a feature that fits so much better on a phone? Siri feels more like a mobile productivity tool than a sitting-on-the-couch productivity tool.

A smaller iPad – From an Apple-must-respond-to-the-$200-Kindle-Fire perspective, maybe. But that’s not really Apple’s style. If such a thing is announced let’s call it 8″ with the 1024×7678 resolution running the A5 and starting at $300. And aimed at the education market. A more affordable model means schools will be more likely to buy a whole classroom set.

Apple TV refresh – Tweaks & improvements to the interface. Perhaps Siri enabled? Perhaps more streaming providers like a hulu.com deal?

An actual television – The Apple TV is no longer just a set-top-box, but an all-in-one screen + Apple TV. Lots has been discussed since the Isaacson mention, but I’m guessing Apple isn’t quite ready on this one.

LTE – You know, this one sounds credible and it’ll probably work out that the iPad 3 is all LTE-enabled, and the only way to get a wi-fi only model is to get the iPad 2. But I could care less on this feature. I don’t have 3G on my iPad 1, and even if I did, I would rarely use it.

Oh, and on the name. It’ll be the iPad 3 or the iPad 2S. Either way, it’ll be whole new model.

My thinking around the topic has been evolving over time, and today I probably should tweak it to focus less on time and attention, and more on energy. That is to say, start your “time management” journey by paying attention to where are you putting your energy, enthusiasm, concentration, etc. It’ll help.

For now, I hope this little deck inspires you to do. Enjoy.

(OK, I admit it. There isn’t a lot of detail here. I figure you have the internets to help solve that issue. Right?)

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
pre-ordered the iBook, read mostly on my iPhone

Lots have been written about this book, but what I’ll tell you is that I’m conflicted. The book itself was great and I have no qualms with Isaacson and his style. The question is that of Steve himself. Having read the book, I now respect Steve less because of the way he treated others. Yet, I respect him more, because of the insight he brought and the rigor he demanded of Apple products.

The Myth of the Garage by Chip and Dan Heath
free pdf download, read mostly in the iBook app on my iPad

A quick read full of their articles written over the last year. Funny, entertaining, and insightful. From the chapter Loving the Slog: Why True Grit Matters in the Face of Adversity: “Grit is not synonymous with hard work. It involves a certain single-mindedness. An ungritty prison inmate will mound a daring new escape attempt every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time.”

You will also enjoy the chapter: The Inevitability of $300 Socks.

Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis by Al Gore
purchased app, split reading between iPad and iPhone

Can you “read” an app? I’d say yes. This book was a delight to read. The interactive parts were thoughtfully put together, and my 8-year-old flipped through the whole book just to try them all out. Gore doesn’t just clearly lay out the issues – and explain why they are important – but he puts together a multifaceted and thoughtful solution. The trick is that it will take nearly all of us pulling in the right direction to pull it off. I believe this is one of the biggest challenges facing our generation.

The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton
purchased used book, read the old fashion way

This is an older book, but I wanted to read something by Sutton since I’ve been following his blog for a few years. The examples were understandably older, but the message was clear. Action, even in the face of uncertainty, is the engine that helps improve a company:

“One of the most important insights from our research is that knowledge that is actually implemented is much more likely to be acquired from learning by doing than from learning by reading, listening, or even thinking. There is a limit to what we can do for you in this book, regardless of the insights we have acquired. One of our main recommendations is to engage more frequently in thoughtful action. Spend less time just contemplating and talking about organizational problems. Taking action will generate experience from which you can learn. “

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
purchased iBook, read mostly on my iPad

I had the opportunity to not just read the book, but to hear Jane speak at SxSW. She has such a positive and contagious outlook on games. Games are not distracting us, she says, they are preparing us to solve the biggest problems the world is facing. That is to say, when a problem can be approached as a game to solve, progress towards the solution happens faster and with more purpose. She noted that after playing games like Guitar Hero, 67% of the gamers were inspired to pick up a guitar for the first time and 73% spent more time playing the instrument they already had.

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
purchased new book, read the old fashion way

“Innovation” is such a dirty word. No one knows what it means, but everyone claims that they’ll know innovation when they see it. Steven takes a broad view of history and discusses where innovation occurred, what events lead up to it, and what the environment was that made it possible. It’s a great study, and has molded my thinking around fostering innovation. He summed it up on page 61: “the most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop.”

Things fail when they are not taken seriously, things work when they are respected and effort is applied to them.  - David Green, Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care, New South Wales, Australia

And then more recently:

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. – Steve Jobs

And again:

You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. – Steve Jobs

An idea is a start. But only a start. It seems silly to say it, but the hard work – the real work – of any project is not in the concept, but in the execution. I could come up with 100 perfectly fine ideas every week. Even every hour? But you don’t know if they are any good until you carry out the idea to fruition. That could take weeks, if not years, of very hard work.

My aim for 2012: Respect ideas a little less, and respect effort and doing more.

“Android has a very large installed base, but a disproportionally small number of people paying for apps.”

The longer answer: First, let’s assume you’ve read through the promotional site already. There is a lot of good information there, and I find that Apple talks pretty straight without a lot of hyperbole that you hear from other tech giants. Now on to my experiences…

Photo Stream – By far my favorite new iCloud feature. It isn’t so much a photo backup as an photo distribution mechanism. I take a photo on my iPhone, and it shows up on the iMac (which happens to be automatically backed up by the good folks at CrashPlan). My kids take a picture on their iPod Touch, and it automatically shows up on my iPad. No importing, and no iTunes synchronizing. It just works. If I were to criticize anything about the photo stream, I’d say it works too good and too fast. I might take three pictures of a bird in our backyard – with the intent to save only one. By the time I’ve reviewed the pictures and deleted two, all three will already have been added to the stream and sync’d out to all of the devices.

Documents in the Cloud – if you are doing work in Keynote, Pages, or Numbers, this works well between the iPhone and iPad, but unfortunately leaves the desktop out. Technically, you can go to iCloud.com and download/edit/upload a document on your desktop, but it’s klunky. This will really sing when the desktop iWork apps are iCloud-enabled. But till then, it’s not quite helpful for my workflow.

Other App data – I recently installed the Apple Store app. It figured out who I was, and linked me straight in to my account. I was able to check on my recent photo order from iPhoto with only a quick confirm of my Apple ID password. I can only assume that this was because if iCloud, and I liked it. It’s like single-sign-on, for all of your apps. And at this particular moment in history, I trust Apple more than Facebook, Twitter, or Google for single-sign-on. More apps need to use this!

Contacts – I’d been synchronizing all my contacts through Google for the last few years using their Exchange protocol. It worked well enough, except for a few small things. Home email addresses would occasionally switch to Other email addresses. Two-part names might double up: Mary Jo Johnson might change into Mary Jo Jo Johnson. … None of it horrendous, and I don’t think I ever lost data: it just got mangled from time to time. I’ve switched to iCloud for my address book storage to avoid these inconveniences. A couple weeks later: so far, so good!

Calendar – Like contacts, I recently switched my personal calendar from Google to iCloud. The Exchange sync protocol Google uses isn’t bad, it just isn’t perfect. Time will tell. It was sort of a pain to switch each appointment from one service to the other.

iOS Backup – Thus seems like a no-brainier to me. The more backups, the better! I restored from a cloud backup to my iPhone once, and it worked like a charm. The biggest surprise was that the restore process let me use the device while it was still restoring the apps.

Music Match – Haven’t tried it yet. I’m one of the early iTunes users that built some complex smart playlists and rated my entire music collection. Of my 30+GB music collection, I almost always have the 2-3GB of songs automatically on my phone that I want to listen to. It sounds like a neat service, but I’m not ready to part with $25 to try it.

Find my friends – This is both cool, and creepy. This would be better as “Find my family” because you probably won’t want too many people to know that you are not at your house at any particular time. This might work well in college or for high school students. But as a family man, few people will get added into Find my Friends.

All told, I’m hopeful for iCloud. There are a lot of good things in there, and I can’t wait for more apps to leverage it.

Let me help:

• So Far Rivals Can’t Beat iPad’s Price (NYTimes, 3/2011)
• “Would-be rivals to Apple’s iPad have more of a chance in Europe than they do in the United States, but they need to cut prices fast to grasp the opportunity, IT research firm Forrester said on Tuesday. [...] their prices cannot yet compete with Apple, which has far larger scale in the tablet market and an efficient supply chain.” (Reuters 8/2011)
• “PC makers are struggling to match Apple’s prices” (Daring Fireball, DigiTimes 8/2011)
• “Something unexpected has happened at Apple, once known as the tech industry’s high-price leader. Over the last several years it began beating rivals on price.” (NYTimes, 10/2011)
• “The first crop of Android tablets that hit the market failed to come close to the iPad’s entry-level price of $499″ (CNET, 10/2011)

“The design dilemma these sites are facing is that their is simply too much content. Instead of trying to narrow down what content needs to be shown on the homepage, they try to find ways to ensure that all content is shown on the homepage. [...] The only reason I scan a news page is because I have a hard time keeping my eyes focused on one spot. [...] The trick is to not allow your readers to scan the page, but to force their eyes to go into a state of perpetual motion until their finger saves them and clicks on a link. Brilliant.”

I’ve been a long-time follower of Bob Sutton’s blog, and it was about time I picked up one of his books to read. To my way of thinking, Bob has some fairly sensible advice for working with people, and I’d suggest you take a moment to hear what he has to say.

From the Preface:

“But once something was clearly not working [while writing the book], we abandoned the path quickly, stopping just long enough to figure out what we should learn before trying something new. We never stopped to worry about how much time we had wasted and never spent one minute talking about which one of us was to blame for the last dead end. Rather we were inspired by the successful firms we studied, in which setbacks and mistakes were viewed as an inevitable, even desirable, part of being action oriented. We heeded their advice that the only true failure was to stop trying new things and to stop learning from the last effort to turn knowledge into action.”

 Great advice for being action oriented — from the preface, no less!

1. Recognize that something isn’t working. (This is often easier said than done.)
2. Abandon that path quickly.
3. Figure out what to learn from the last effort, and try something new.
4. Don’t worry about wasted time, nor assigning blame.
5. View setbacks and mistakes as desirable.
6. The worst thing you can do is to stop trying new things.

My questions to you are: When did you last fail in front of your whole team (maybe even your whole company)? What did you learn? What are you trying now?

Can’t wait to read the rest of the book!

- Peter

Google’s answer to this problem is that the device doesn’t matter. Its all about the browser. Apples answer is iCloud — it’s all about apps.

[A short recap for those just joining the conversation, iCloud is a thing that enables sharing of data between your devices. You take a picture on your iPhone, and moments later that photo is on your iPad, in iPhoto on your Mac, and even the photos folder on your PC. Apple is initially building this into many apps: iTunes, Photos, App Store, iBooks, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Backup, Contacts, Calendar, and Mail]

Why is this important?
Today maintaining state between computers, smartphones and tablets relies on a hodge-podge of technologies:

• Mail is kept in sync using special imap server settings on each device.
• Music is sync’d only with a cable connected to iTunes running on just one computer. Same for bookmarks, photos, iBooks.
• Kindle books, probable the closest in style to iCloud, syncs through my Anazon login. Yet that one login on each device gets me precious little beyond the books.
• Calendars use a mashup of CalDAV, Googles services, and Microsoft Exchange. My address book is in a similar situation.
• OmniFocus todo’s are sync’d through a custom WebDAV folder on my edstrom.net server.
• Dropbox, one of my favorite utilities, also comes close. Their big claim to fame is their open API which many applications have adopted instead of building their own sync layer. And there is certainly demand for it: take a look at all the Dropbox apps.
• Games may or may not save state…

In a lot of ways, I think iCloud is the answer to the old buzz catch-phrase: Single Sign-On. Now I can sign into any device -once- and all my apps, my photos, my documents, my music … will all be there. Outside of the browser window.

This refers to the notion that often “something that seems normal or inevitable today began with a choice that made sense at a particular time in the past, but survived despite the eclipse of the justification for that choice.”

For instance, typewriters used to jam if people typed too fast, so the manufacturers designed a keyboard that would slow typists. We no longer have typewriters, but we are stuck with the letter arrangements of the qwerty keyboard.

When I suggest changing a technology that has been around for a while, I always argue that “it was the right decision at the time” but also that “it may no longer be the right decision”. I find this acknowledges the good work that had been done, while also giving those same people space to consider new approaches without being blamed for the old.

— Hunter S. Thompson

MAJOR THEMES FROM THE CONFERENCE

• Existing technologies (tablets, smartphones) will be adopted by a much broader audience this year.
• The iPad is getting far more attention than Android. Often Android devices are not even considered.
• Making your content/experience/application location aware (Location Based Services) is gaining momentum.
• There is a lot of interest in Gamification/Gameful approaches to products.
• QR codes were everywhere.

RANDOM NOTES OF POSSIBLE INTEREST

• The Like button is only 11 months old. (!)
• Ambient Location with automatic check-in’s is emerging. Ambient Location is location tracking such that automatic things can happen: your lights turn on when you get home, get an sms when you need to get off the bus, letting the boss know when you are running late, etc.
• The hyper-local approach seems to be morphing into hyper-personal
• QR Codes were used for contact info, liking on facebook, downloading apps, viewing promo web sites, on the backs of t-shirts, on business cards, etc. Once you know how it works, it is hard to *not* scan them.
• QR codes can be made here or you can read about them here.
• App development recommendation: go big or go home, and it is vital to have a solid well-organized back-end
• Users are much more aware of how much you support (or don’t support) new features. One app got a 3/5 rating in iTunes because they didn’t have retinal display graphics in their audio player … be ready to embrace upgrades without delay when new phones/software updates become available
• Check out Qwiki (be sure to turn your speakers on). I can’t help but think of StarTrek. Recommended use: search by name name to find out more info.
• WordPress powers 12% of the web
• Flipboard is moving towards an ad-based model. 31 employes, $0 revenue so far, VC ends at the end of the year. An iPhone app is in the works.
• People spend 3 billion hours a week playing video games; 10,000 hours by age 21 — essentially an entire 2nd education. Playing games produce: positive emotion, stronger relationships, meaning, accomplishment. Gamers spend 80% of their time failing, “work is more fun than fun.”
• Dropbox had a cost per acquisition (CPA) about $300 through google ads but the lifetime value (LTV) was only $99 so they switched to referrals with a 2-sided incentive program. They saw a sustained growth of 60% when they made this change.
• Engagement metrics from newest thinking to old-school: daily active users, time on site, frequency, customers, registered users, returning visitors, unique visitors, visits, page views, hits
• * Watch the smartphone and tablet penetration this year. Smartphones are in the early majority stage, tablets are still at the early adopters. 15 mill iPads sold in 2010, 28 mill predicted for 2011 (looks like 0.6mill iPad2′s sold in first 3 days)
• Google’s specific blue “was worth at least $80 million” – Paul Ray of Bing
• In tablet design: clarity trumps density, and buttons are a hack.
• There are two types of designers: Intuition based design and Data-driven design. The latter helps reduce arguments based on opinions but may lead you to a local-maxiumu … where the design is not optimal, but can’t get any better without whole-sale change or intuition.
• Video of 4 year-old on an iPad, “how did you learn how to do that?” “I’m just learning all these things from the screen”… for kids, all screens are touch screens.
• Favorite tools for designing: white board, paper prototypes, lots of gesturing, listening and translating jargon. created a gesture map.

TIPS FOR NEXT YEAR

• Pre-select sessions online (plancast, lanyrd, sxsw app), but paper may be easier when you are there
• Take pictures of things you want to remember but don’t want to write down or carry
• Wi-fi was really good except 10 minutes before major session times (keynotes), AT&T worked reasonably well for me
• Group text messages via GroupFlier worked great for coordinating meet-ups
• Have a team email list
• Make t-shirts with a QR code

“Last night, I was browsing through story after story on the interwebs that hoped to help people decide on a tablet purchase by comparing the Xoom specifications with the iPad. From multitasking to chip speed to RAM, analysists attempted to find consumers the best possible value for the money.

And they completely missed the point.

When it comes to tablets, it’s not about the specs. It’s about user experience. It’s about the way we use the device and how the device fits itself to the way we want to use it.”

Andy explains:

“But you kind of have to hold the iPad 2 to really get the redesign. It’s thinner by a third, plus its edges taper to a thin line of metal. It’s almost inconceivable that this thing you’re holding is a multicore tablet computer. The Xoom tablet is trim, light, and very pretty … but when you place it next to the iPad 2, it looks as though it was designed and built by angry Soviet prison labor instead of by Motorola.”

And who wants to surf the web, watch a movie, or try to be productive on something designed by Soviet prison labor? It’s suppose to be a joy to use, not a chore. Right?

Specs are a nice place to start when it comes to comparing one tablet to the next, but if you never go beyond the quantitive specs, you’ll never understand the qualitative aspects. And I’d argue that the qualitative aspects are far more important.

For example: You have an article about iPhone and topics Apple and Smartphones, respectively. Topic “APPLE” may contain tags: MacBook, iPod, iPhone, OSX, and topic “SMARTPHONES” tags: Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, Motorola, Palm. By tagging the article with Apple::iPhone and Smartphones::iPhone you will ensure that article appears on both topics in navigation and provide cross-category posting.

By my thinking, this makes tags hierarchal and thus completely misses the point.

When setting the tags for an article, you should be thinking about the content (“hey this is about iPhones!”) not the multiple destinations the article will -or should- land in.

You’ve just posted your 40th article about iPhones, and tag it “Apple::iPhone” but forget to tag it “Smartphones::iPhone” does that mean the article is about Apple iPhones that are no longer Smartphones?

By advising your users to create *two* iphone tags means you’ve implemented tagging wrong.

Fail.

But “focus” is the willful rejection of this theory. By saying no to alternatives you increase risk disproportionally to the reward. If you have the means to maintain a portfolio it certainly seems imprudent not to do so.

So why would someone want to focus?

The answer is that too much diversification is dangerous. It’s dilutive to everything the company uses to create value: its resources, its processes and its priorities. It dulls the mind and tarnishes the brand.

“Growth like this is hard to get one’s mind around. Not only are downloads increasing, but the rate of increase is increasing.”

His chart where he compares app downloads to music downloads in the iTunes store helps. The iTunes store became the biggest music retailer in less than 5 years after initially opening, displacing Best Buy and Wal-mart. Note the speed of getting to 10 billion downloads:

Personally, I have 223* apps in iTunes, and there are three iOS devices in our house. Doing the math, I get 74 app downloads per device.

* After a one-time attempt to vainly delete the unused ones.