If the cost difference is neglible, and it saves the company time or resources. Do the thing that is most benefitial to customers.

 Simply put: Tie goes to the customer.

Think of all the debates you’ll save.

Success is preparation. As a result of preparation we recognize opportunities when they come near, like old acquaintances, familiar with a lot of catching up to do.

Everyday your management and colleagues make decisions, schedule meetings, and buy and sell ideas; without your input. These opportunities are “lost” because you weren’t invited to the dance.

Some see this as the way of the world, “story of my career.” To be sure, you won’t be invited to every conversation (and if you were what a horrid use of your time). But there is one way to ensure that over time you are being invited to more conversations of significance:

Create less crap. Create more awesome.

Crap takes many forms; it is often disguised as an “urgent” request, a flooded inbox, or a Sisyphean task list that you have little say in developing and less say in discarding.

We’re intimately familiar with crap. It’s time to get more familiar with awesome.

An Indictment Against Crap

Crap creates ephemeral value, awesome’s value is durable.

Crap is inevident, no one knows when it was begun and no one knows when its done. Awesome is tangible; awesome changes people, behaviors, and ways of thinking.

Crap is often a justifying activity-a C-Y-A, or J-I-C action. Awesome is designing a future state, be it one word, one action, or one pixel at a time.

Crap is the task, while awesome is the objective- fight to get responsibility for the objective, aim to minimize the task.

You master crap through repetitive action, and processes; awesome is not mastered, it is created through one progressive action after another.

Crap begets crap while awesome is constructivist.

If you find yourself cut out of the conversation and decisions that matter, track what you are working on over a few days. Are you creating crap or are you being awesome?

Become Allergic to Crap

If you see a lot of waste, there is a simple solution. You need to develop an allergic reaction to crap. You have to learn to recognize it before the third syllable of a meaningless task is pronounced. Push back, say no, and communicate your priorities. If they insist, communicate when you might be able to get to it (hint: “sometime after next week” is an appropriate answer). You might simply ask, “what value is this task creating?” or you might just solve the problem through some other means: Person A meet Person B, B has it from here.

There is one caveat. When you successfully redress your priorities and minimize the your “task list”, you have to– deliver –awesome.

When you get there and you’re creating awesome, don’t worry if you’re not instantaneously invited to the conversation. Amesome is magic that way. It cannot be ignored for any sustained period of time, adhere to the principle of progress and continue to move forward.

Lastly, you’ll note from the diagram that crap is more role oriented, while awesome is a career investment. Does this mean that it’s wrong to focus only on delivering in your role?

In my opinion, yes. You must outgrow your existing role; your next role is predicated upon it. By investing in your career, your performance in your current role will increase—and you’ll get invited to more conversations that matter.

Create less crap. Create more awesome.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. You have signed up to deliver the improbable, your project is tracking better than you expected and against improbably odds you might even pull it off – if only you can figure out what to do next. This is a blog post about stories and the noesis that can results from stories applied to daily challenges.

If you have heard a lot of about stories recently, you can thank Dan and Chip Heath. Their accessible books, Made to Stick and Switch, combined research and written accounts to demystify how certain concepts take root where others are forgotten. The storytelling concepts are simple, easy to follow and can be applied to simple business problems; though I recommend both books the concept of applying stories to problem solving is not new.

The Case Method

Harvard Business Review’s Ben & Jerry’s case opens:

“As Chuck Lacy composed his thoughts before the September 1990 Ben & Jerry’s board meeting, he knew that the central decision of the day would set the tone of the company for years to come”

Like other HBR case studies, the Ben & Jerry case tells the story of a fractious business situation. At the world’s most renown business school, to be Harvard educated is to learn through narratives.

Turning the Pen Inward

The same methodology used to lasso complex business issues can be used to wrangle your own life. The power of story is the ability to articulate in organized thought the issues at hand as well as surrounding context. If we can apply our best thinking and identify coherent solutions to external issues by placing ourselves in the protagonist’s shoes, what happens when the protagonist is you?

When I face Byzantine projects, I like to write myself out of the problem. I begin with a safe and familiar opening, just to get my brain going:

“The protagonist Mikal Lewis finds himself in a familiar situation…”

Next I begin in free form to articulate the issues at hand:

“Management has approved his request, sanctioning his project, and with it come the expectations of success”

I then develop the surrounding context:

“The problem is with three weeks before the conference, Mikal has to find a way to reach shared understanding of the issue at hand, and recruit project team members, without setting off a political hailstorm”

Two quick notes, this is not based on a real situation and Mikal does not I do not typically refer to myself in the third person; but you get the point. Write out the background context, be sure to document the facts, it’s best to keep how you ‘feel’ off of the page, it clouds the action driven narrative. Pay close attention to background context and intertwined conflicts that exist but are convenient to overlook. When writing be very candid about your strengths and weaknesses.

Congratulations, you now have a case study for your unique situation. Now turn it into a story, and write the next chapter; how does the protagonist get him or herself out of this complex situation? How do other characters react to the main character’s actions; what alliances does the protagonist form? What is in it for the other characters in your story?

Challenge yourself, write your way out of the problem.

“And don’t you dare bring in a deus ex machina.”

Surely a few of them could be spent creating something awesome.  At the end of each week, what if we all asked ourselve’s- “what is my artifact of awesome?”

Be it a research paper, a song, a painting, a photo, blog post, or thank you card.

What would be the implications if you took on this challnge? At the least by the end of the year, you’ll be older, wiser, and the creator of 52 awesome things that the world cannot take back.

Why does telling an intelligent person they are wrong require hubris? Because it assumes one of four things (1) the person does not have information that you have (2) the person did not process information that you have (3) the person processed the shared information incorrectly or (4) the person reached the wrong conclusion through some other fault. In most contexts, you do not have enough information to identify which of the four factors are at play, yet it doesn’t prevent you from deducing another individual is incorrect.

This challenge is in circles of intelligent individuals and communities of practice. The embedded hubris of these environments tramples upon others without equal hubris or hierarchy. In these situations, experts are rarely questioned except for in deferential tones because they are well– experts. The embedded hubris can be seen in online communities as well, how much expertise or hubris it takes to edit a Wikipedia entry or respond to a Quora post- knowing your edits are going to live on to scrutiny to both those who know more and think they know more than you do.

I’ve been thinking about this recently because many of the people I think can make strong contributions to my work or their discipline’s discourse are discouraged from engaging. The embedded hubris of intelligence can be unforgiving to outsiders. But what opportunities do we as a society forego if others are not encourage to participate in the discourse that shapes our disciplines, our society and our world? The embedded hubris of intelligence encourages learning only at the helm of an ‘expert’ and only participating in the ‘discourse’ after you have paid enough tuition or gained enough credentials to participate.

Instead, what if we simply teach people how to participate in the ongoing discourse shaping our world? Even I need to learn to isolate the hubris of my professional interactions, to draw out information and discussion from those who have not researched using the same methods I have.

This is an ongoing challenge but it first starts with acknowledging that our communities of geeks, smart people, and high achievers have an embedded hubris that shuts out participation of outsiders.

Even if in many respects, this is by design.

Design is the New “Strategy”

No one knows what design is. More specifically, few know what design is or how to attain it. In short, design is the new “strategy”. In my observations many individuals think they are designers because their job titles label them so, further many individuals think they are “designers” by way of education. According to these subconsciously held beliefs, simply applying the ‘design’ tools of Illustrator, Photoshop, Axure RP or User Centered Design tools such as user interviews and usability studies makes someone a designer. Just as any genius with a copy of ‘Competitive Advantage’ by Michael Porter fancies herself a strategist. This dilution and ambiguity that surrounds these disciplines creates a fog that prevents the untrained from identifying what makes some organizations experience design success where others fail.

A New Definition

My favorite definition of design is “to design something”. If you are not designing, you are not a designer. Further, there is a distinction between ‘designing’ and ‘polishing’ – ‘designing’ and ‘styling’. The act of deliberately designing, learning, and redesigning everything from pixels to processes pushes individuals and organizations further. Overtime the acquired institutional knowledge, processes, culture, and rules of thumb result in a successful design organization. There is no path to success but through flirting with failure and expirimenting with the unknown. And if you don’t fail, you’re not designing you are applying design patterns. (This is not to say that your failures should make it to market.)

Design is Research

Further to design, is to research. Design is the act of building and creating solutions to new problems. Not every challenge is a design challenge, but you can turn every challenge into one. For example the decision process of a building is likely never to be completely automated, but as community developers have shown, it can be codified into a heuristic. But one can take the same piece of land and turn it into a design challenge– turn this ground into a contemporary castle. This act of designing requires research exploration to successfully deliver the desired outcome. Imputed within the challenge are questions that would make Socrates smile “what is a castle?” — “what do we mean by contemporary?” It’s here where the true definition of design surfaces, Design = Doing + Researching = To Design Something.

Back to Work

I’m firmly of the belief that Doing + Researching is the last formula for sustained competitive advantadge. And the organizations that succeed will prove to be better at balancing the equation than their industry peers. Accordingly, individuals need to begin to take on the challenge to design their work (not to mention their workday). This year I will spend more time mentoring and developing individuals who have identified the mix of doing + researching that pushes their discipline and personal performance to new levels. My first work related activity of the new year was spent documenting my personal formula for how I will push my personal efficacy and disciplines (business + design) to new frontiers. My professional aim is to apply my professional expertise towards challenges that benefit humanity.

Example:

•  Henry Ford: Discipline: Manufacturing; Business Management
• Bill Gates – Skill: Critical Thinking, Competitive Strategy; Discipline: Computer Science, Business Management
• Steve Jobs – Skill: Persuasive Communication, Negotiation; Discipline: Human Computer Interaction; Marketing
• Mark Zuckerburg – Skill: Strategic Thinking, Recruiting; Discipline: Computer Science, Service Design (an emergent field)

_ And be supremely lucky.

The work day suffers from bloat, 20 minute meetings turn into 30 minute meetings, 40 minute meetings turn into 1 hour meetings and on and on for a few simple reasons.

1. No one has an agenda, so everyone makes rough estimates for how long meetings should take. And no one under estimates of course.
2. Parkinson’s Law – Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Reinterpreted, meetings expand so as to fill the time available from its scheduling.
3. The defaults encourage it. Outlook calendar defaults to 30 minutes, which means that unless your meeting is in 30 minute or one hour increments its difficult to setup.

We have a product to tackle the agenda challenge. And the best way to guard against Parkinson’s Law is a good moderator.

The last point is also something we can easily do something about.

How to Change Your Default Meeting Length Settings in Outlook from 30 Minutes to 15 or 10 Minutes

1. Open up your Outlook calendar.If you’re using Outlook 2007 or 2010 your calendar should look something like this.

2. Right click the calendar and go to view settings.

3. Click other settings

4. Change ‘time scale’ to 15 or 10 minutes.

Note: this also changes the Zoom of your calendar, so you’ll end up with a calendar zoomed to 110-120%. You will no longer be able to view your full 8 hour day without scrolling down. I found it worth the tradeoff.

Presto! Going forward your meeting length will now default to shorter length. How about scheduling 50 minute meetings and allow people ten minute to transit from their last meeting?

Spread the wealth. Why not encourage your team to do the same?

And remember to go Allin.

Mikal

My favorite productivity tool of the moment is Dropbox. Dropbox is a simple tool that accomplishes two tasks; it backs up your computer data and affords automatic access across multiple PCs and your Phone of choice.

We need applications like Dropbox in a world where things go wrong. If you’re a Windows 7 user, Windows mercilessly reminds you to ‘set up backup’ in other words: create your contingency plan. Computers crash, files are deleted and coffee inevitably gets spilled on laptops; Dropbox and ‘data backup’ prepares you for this unforgiving world. However, PCs are just a tool that we use. They aren’t the only source of our accumulated knowledge and information.

Over a course of a day, we’re bombarded with information. Odds are if you’re reading this post- you have some other form of media going to at the same time be it music, radio or television. And I suspect that some portion of this information we consume in a given day has value; otherwise, why would we make it a part of our daily routine? 

It’s clear that only a minutia of our ‘knowledge’ resides on the PC. Yet I would venture few of us have a ‘back up’ for much of the data that resides within our brains. This is something we really need to change.

‘Backing Up’ Your Reading List

One simple step I’ve taken is to ‘backing up’ my reading list.

First, I’ve created both a simple goal to push myself to continuous learning “Read 12 Books a Year, One Book a Month”. With this goal as a guide, I drive myself towards bursts of reading at the end of each month as I push to complete my book cover to cover before months end.

Second, I write my notes on the book- every time. I prefer analogue, so I write my notes in a Moleskine Book Journal, though I may soon transfer my notes to GoodReads.com. These important steps allow me to reinterpret the key lessons from the book in my own words, the themes, the takeaways. It forces me to process the information presented in contrast to just absorbing it.

These notes also make handy cliff notes when quoting the book in email and small reports; forms of communication that are often too brief to warrant deep research.

This is just one simple idea. If you take inventory of your personal areas of growth, I’m sure you will find many clear opportunities to get more out of your accumulated knowledge. After all in this crazy world you need a contingency plan for the small possibility that …

You’ll forget.

-Mikal