When trust in relationship goes up, efficiency rises and costs are reduced. Trust refers to both intentions, actions, and competency. The Speed of Trust discusses these categories and their related actions, the observable evidence as a person or organization build or erodes a sense of trust.
The Speed of Trust is filled with tangible and memorable examples and stories. In each area is explicitly calls out each behavior that delivers a complete void of the desirable trust building behavior, such as an out-right lie. As well as the 'counterfeit behavior,' such as giving a false impression by telling part of the truth or misleading.
Another notable aspect of this book is the correlation between trust and the lower cost of doing business when business can operate with higher trust of employees and other businesses.
On Amazon On Kindle On Audible
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Review: The Perfect Thing
This is an awesomely entertaining book about the creation of the iPod and the effect is has had on our culture. The Perfect Thing discusses technology, design processes, vision, marketing, and viral cultural phenomenon. It has instant credibility in that it focuses on what happened rather than on extracting patterns of reuse that might lead to a repeatable success. The iPod has an interesting history and makes a great story.
On Amazon On Kindle On Audible
On Amazon On Kindle On Audible
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Review: Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Objects
This book does an excellent job of describing the three levels which the human mind processes experiences. The purpose is to design products and experiences so they are enjoyable for each for each level, visceral, behavioral, and reflective.
The visceral experience occurs at a pre-conscious level. This is where first impressions are formed dictated by appearance. The behavioral level is where the experience of use in function (does the product work), performance (how well is the function is done), and usability (does the user understand how to make the product work). These two levels experience only affect without interpretation of the feelings. The reflective level assigns interpretations to the feelings (does using this product satisfy me?).
The skydiving experience challenges us to achieve awareness of and discipline over our visceral fears so we can focus on our performance. The photo to the left shows myself and a couple friends (Ben and Barry) skydiving in Washington state. (Photo taken by another friend, Ken)
This book continues to offer great explanations of these three levels and how designs can account the needs of each level.
Intentional Hiring
There are as many hiring practices out there as there are managers. In order to excel at hiring the right people we must continuously improve our process and the way we think.
When asked what their intention is in recruiting, the most common answer managers give me is to hire the "best people." Here is where the first problem starts. If there are 10 people interviewing and they are all below our desired level of competency, we are better not to hire any of them unless we can afford to place them in an intensive training program.
Second, I suggest that hiring the "right person" is better than hiring the "best person." "Hiring big" is a practice where an employer hires people who are much more skilled and experienced than needed for the job presently available. Where this can be beneficial to have overly talented people, it can work against the company when those new hires get bored.
When hiring-big the job is "small" compared to the persons current talents. Combine this with a need to sell the job and this fact may be lost resulting in a new employee expecting to be challenged end up being bored and frustrated instead.
The Innovator's Dilemma discusses the need for a new business development to be within an organization that will be excited by the potential size of the business. Likewise, new employees should be hired into roles that will provide challenge and growth opportunities. This is why we strive to hire the "right person" for the job.
What should we do if we find a big-candidate when we are hiring for a small role? If you feel the person is strong and a self starter and you'd like to find a role for them, consider hiring them into the role of finding their own job within the company. Explain where some of the opportunities are and that they should spend the first 30 days meeting groups and discussing opportunities. Then decide the group and role they are most passionate about.
This strategy can also work very well for businesses that are working on very secretive projects. Since few details of the work can be disclosed to an interviewee, the person must be sold on the "kind" of work being performed. Once the person is hired, let the person meet the teams, see the work and the business vision, and choose the group they want to work on.
When asked what their intention is in recruiting, the most common answer managers give me is to hire the "best people." Here is where the first problem starts. If there are 10 people interviewing and they are all below our desired level of competency, we are better not to hire any of them unless we can afford to place them in an intensive training program.
Second, I suggest that hiring the "right person" is better than hiring the "best person." "Hiring big" is a practice where an employer hires people who are much more skilled and experienced than needed for the job presently available. Where this can be beneficial to have overly talented people, it can work against the company when those new hires get bored.
When hiring-big the job is "small" compared to the persons current talents. Combine this with a need to sell the job and this fact may be lost resulting in a new employee expecting to be challenged end up being bored and frustrated instead.
The Innovator's Dilemma discusses the need for a new business development to be within an organization that will be excited by the potential size of the business. Likewise, new employees should be hired into roles that will provide challenge and growth opportunities. This is why we strive to hire the "right person" for the job.
What should we do if we find a big-candidate when we are hiring for a small role? If you feel the person is strong and a self starter and you'd like to find a role for them, consider hiring them into the role of finding their own job within the company. Explain where some of the opportunities are and that they should spend the first 30 days meeting groups and discussing opportunities. Then decide the group and role they are most passionate about.
This strategy can also work very well for businesses that are working on very secretive projects. Since few details of the work can be disclosed to an interviewee, the person must be sold on the "kind" of work being performed. Once the person is hired, let the person meet the teams, see the work and the business vision, and choose the group they want to work on.
What is in a name? work+flow=workflow
More than 10 years ago Rhonda and I both worked on software platforms designed to coordinate activities within companies. Such systems have gone by many names such as "workflow," "process management," and "routing management."
I have yet to see a single marketing campaign capture the essence of the products or benefits. The focus all to often is on the technology; the work queues, reporting, control logic, rules engine, etc. This is akin to selling a car by focusing on the metallurgy of the piston heads.
The problem is that companies have three primary ways of communicating: verbal, email, and database records. With verbal communications the number of possible outcomes is infinite, limited only by the creativity of the people involved. Given a conversation about any piece of work the needs to move forward, the conversation could result in that piece of work going to literally any single person in the company. Where that is powerful on one hand, that power should only be wielded in a rare few occasions when warranted. A second problem with verbal communications is that there is no preserved historical record of the decision.
Email presents the same infinite possible outcomes as verbal conversations, though it does have the advantage of leaving a historical record for some amount of time. Often that record is limited by legal document retention guidelines which cause old email to be deleted after 6 months or 1 year.
Infinite outcomes works against what people want most companies to accomplish: consistent and repeatable outcomes. Reliability and efficiency are characteristics we look for in the companies we choose to trust with our business. We want to trust that the company will get the work done without us calling multiple times. We also want to trust the company will get the work done in a predicable amount of time.
To reign in this infinite flow of work, database systems are used for holding work requests and tracking what state the work is in. These systems often also track the history of state changes for the work. An order for a car might go through prospect, sales presentation, order received, awaiting delivery, and delivered states. The software in these systems restricts how a request changes from one state to another. These are referred to as business rules.
Companies frequently undergo strikingly similar learning curves as they mature. They first learn they are too big to operate exclusively in verbal and email communications. Work gets "lost" and customers complain. So the companies add a database to track customer requests and add states for the requests as each situation is uncovered. Next some customer issue arises that they cannot explain what happened, and the company realises the need for a change history on the customer requests. This audit trail will help them understand the history of a future request when a problem arises.
This is the point which many company systems plateau. Why try to improve from here?
First consider that to understand the progress of the company, this database can be a great asset. Reports can be created to demonstrate the amount of work the company or each department are achieving over time.
Second consider that the databases now implemented look very similar across a multitude of companies. Yes, the specific order details, materials, etc. are specific to the companies needs. The similarities exist in the request tracking and reporting. In short, there are work requests, work states, and work transitions. There is a work transition history, and reporting. This accounts for a lot of custom design and code that could be generic and cheaper.
Third consider that the business logic that controls the transition of work from one state to another is sometimes written in source code, and sometimes is a completely manual process. These both are difficult for managers to review and improve upon. In order to improve the company, we must be able to understand how the company works. We must be able to answer the question, "How does work flow through our company?"
To address this we need a system that allows us to describe the business logic that controls the transition of work from one state to another. This description would be in a format that is close to what managers are familiar with while at the same time can be interpreted by the software. This results in their only being a finite number of ways work can flow through a company.
Why has workflow management software not become a part of the standard suite of business software?
First the companies that need it don't realize the need until the are several years into the development of their own custom software. They are heavily invested down the path of implementing and using proprietary database software. Change is a daunting prospect.
Second, the companies offering workflow solutions do not promote and demonstrate solutions that can augment existing database solutions. The products are often sold as all or nothing packages.
An easier to adopt workflow system would include web service calls to denote actions on work items. The services would simply track work items, states, and transitions as arbitrary entries relating back to the customer's database. The existing database reports would still show the static state of the work, while the workflow system would offer reports to show rates of progress. Over time, business rules can be added to the service as well as small bit of user interface implemented as HTML/AJAX code snippets.
In essence, the workflow management, reporting, business rules, and workflow specific user interface components can be offered as a light weight web service based product that is easy to try out, buy, and use increasingly over time.
I have yet to see a single marketing campaign capture the essence of the products or benefits. The focus all to often is on the technology; the work queues, reporting, control logic, rules engine, etc. This is akin to selling a car by focusing on the metallurgy of the piston heads.
The problem is that companies have three primary ways of communicating: verbal, email, and database records. With verbal communications the number of possible outcomes is infinite, limited only by the creativity of the people involved. Given a conversation about any piece of work the needs to move forward, the conversation could result in that piece of work going to literally any single person in the company. Where that is powerful on one hand, that power should only be wielded in a rare few occasions when warranted. A second problem with verbal communications is that there is no preserved historical record of the decision.
Email presents the same infinite possible outcomes as verbal conversations, though it does have the advantage of leaving a historical record for some amount of time. Often that record is limited by legal document retention guidelines which cause old email to be deleted after 6 months or 1 year.
Infinite outcomes works against what people want most companies to accomplish: consistent and repeatable outcomes. Reliability and efficiency are characteristics we look for in the companies we choose to trust with our business. We want to trust that the company will get the work done without us calling multiple times. We also want to trust the company will get the work done in a predicable amount of time.
To reign in this infinite flow of work, database systems are used for holding work requests and tracking what state the work is in. These systems often also track the history of state changes for the work. An order for a car might go through prospect, sales presentation, order received, awaiting delivery, and delivered states. The software in these systems restricts how a request changes from one state to another. These are referred to as business rules.
Companies frequently undergo strikingly similar learning curves as they mature. They first learn they are too big to operate exclusively in verbal and email communications. Work gets "lost" and customers complain. So the companies add a database to track customer requests and add states for the requests as each situation is uncovered. Next some customer issue arises that they cannot explain what happened, and the company realises the need for a change history on the customer requests. This audit trail will help them understand the history of a future request when a problem arises.
This is the point which many company systems plateau. Why try to improve from here?
First consider that to understand the progress of the company, this database can be a great asset. Reports can be created to demonstrate the amount of work the company or each department are achieving over time.
Second consider that the databases now implemented look very similar across a multitude of companies. Yes, the specific order details, materials, etc. are specific to the companies needs. The similarities exist in the request tracking and reporting. In short, there are work requests, work states, and work transitions. There is a work transition history, and reporting. This accounts for a lot of custom design and code that could be generic and cheaper.
Third consider that the business logic that controls the transition of work from one state to another is sometimes written in source code, and sometimes is a completely manual process. These both are difficult for managers to review and improve upon. In order to improve the company, we must be able to understand how the company works. We must be able to answer the question, "How does work flow through our company?"
To address this we need a system that allows us to describe the business logic that controls the transition of work from one state to another. This description would be in a format that is close to what managers are familiar with while at the same time can be interpreted by the software. This results in their only being a finite number of ways work can flow through a company.
Why has workflow management software not become a part of the standard suite of business software?
First the companies that need it don't realize the need until the are several years into the development of their own custom software. They are heavily invested down the path of implementing and using proprietary database software. Change is a daunting prospect.
Second, the companies offering workflow solutions do not promote and demonstrate solutions that can augment existing database solutions. The products are often sold as all or nothing packages.
An easier to adopt workflow system would include web service calls to denote actions on work items. The services would simply track work items, states, and transitions as arbitrary entries relating back to the customer's database. The existing database reports would still show the static state of the work, while the workflow system would offer reports to show rates of progress. Over time, business rules can be added to the service as well as small bit of user interface implemented as HTML/AJAX code snippets.
In essence, the workflow management, reporting, business rules, and workflow specific user interface components can be offered as a light weight web service based product that is easy to try out, buy, and use increasingly over time.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Review: Change The Way You See Everything
This visually awesome book was given to me by Jon at Microsoft. It uses a series of stunning photos, visual effects, and inspiring quotes to motivate the reader to try a more positive approach to thinking about challenges as opportunities.
Though the message is not extremely new or deep, the rich visuals make this a book worth sharing.
Blue Ocean Strategy and Positioning
Both of these books discuss how avoiding competition by selling products that are distinct from competing products makes competition irrelevent. Positioning takes a more marketing driven approach whereas Blue Ocean Strategies presents a methodology for analysing what the characteristics are of existing products including a technique for drawing the profile. This allows us to draw a unique profile then define a product that delivers on the new profile shape.
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
On Amazon On Audible
Blue Ocean Strategies: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
On Amazon On Audible
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
On Amazon On Audible
Blue Ocean Strategies: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
On Amazon On Audible
Monday, January 14, 2008
iWoz and "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs"
I am not really interested in famous people per se. I am quite interested in what traits allow people to succeed. These two books complement each other quite nicely. Both books discuss the trials and tribulations of building products and organizations. They also capture a variety of personality traits and conflicts that are interesting to see develop and play off of each other.
In iWoz I particularly enjoyed Steve's accounts of developing electronics as a kid. I brought back fond memories of the excitement I felt in building electronic devices at age 8.
I enjoyed both of these books, and find myself wanting to hear more stories of the creation of great products. Having created a couple great products and quite a few mediocre ones, and a couple phenomenal flops I'd like to know more about what work environments succeed at building bold innovative products.
iWoz
On Amazon On Kindle On Audible
The Second Coming of Steve Jobs
On Amazon On Kindle On Audible
In iWoz I particularly enjoyed Steve's accounts of developing electronics as a kid. I brought back fond memories of the excitement I felt in building electronic devices at age 8.
I enjoyed both of these books, and find myself wanting to hear more stories of the creation of great products. Having created a couple great products and quite a few mediocre ones, and a couple phenomenal flops I'd like to know more about what work environments succeed at building bold innovative products.
iWoz
On Amazon On Kindle On Audible
The Second Coming of Steve Jobs
On Amazon On Kindle On Audible
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