Category: Innovation

Living in a multi-track world

One of the challenges of being a reasonably early adopter of things is that it take a while for people to catch-up.

Lake District SnowIt take some people even longer than others.

And then there is another group who are even further behind.

If I want to communicate with all of the groups I need to span all of the tracks.

Perhaps, one day, we’ll be able to turn some of the tracks off, but I don’t see much evidence of it.

And, I’m not just talking about my personal life, the same is true at my employer. Actually, as I think about it, it’s even worse amongst my colleagues.

Feedback is important

We have all sorts of ways to communicate these days. One of the things I’ve noticed with the newer communication mechanisms is that they drive us to a level of informality.

Within the formal communication mechanisms we have built in ways of providing feedback, even if it was just a simple salutation at the start or the end of a letter.

With informal mechanisms we need to be careful to think about the feedback that we give. There are a number of times when I’ve read through twitter conversations where it would be easy to assume that the individuals are in violent and personal disagreement, when the reality was far different.

We need to think about the feedback that we give:

http://onefte.com/comics/2011-04-05-no-news-is-good-news-right.png

The Future: A Day Made of Glass

A really interesting concept video from Corning.

A Day Made of Glass… made possible by Corning

Much of this might seem a bit far out to many, but the reality is that much of it already exists, at least in experimental form.

Life in the Long Tail

This blog lives in the Long Tail.

If you are reading this blog you too are dwelling in the the Long Tail.

The concept of The Long Tail was popularised by Chris Anderson of Wired. There’s even a book, and it’s been around for a while now.

Here’s a really clumsy explanation of the concept. The top 20% of a probability curve of popularity are very popular, but there is more volume in the other 80% of the less popular. In other words, for those watching in colour, the yellow bit is bigger than the green bit.

I know that some people get millions of visitors to their site, and still others get tens and hundreds of thousands.

I’ve been writing it for years, and I enjoy doing what I do, but I don’t get tens of thousands of visitors. On my busiest month I got 1261 visits.

There are some pop-star blogs, this isn’t one of them, but there are a set of regular readers and I get comments from all sorts of people. I’m not invisible, I’m just out there in the Long Tail.

The other day Seth Godin talked about being Famous to the family:

The way my family plays 20 Questions is that one person silently chooses a famous person and then everyone in the car has 20 yes or no questions to figure out who it is.

A variation that was briefly popular was to redefine "famous" as "famous to the family." You could announce that you had chosen this variation and then pick, say, Ziggy the painter. Zigmund might not be known to the public or the history books, but in our family, he’s famous.

I’m fascinated by a new category, though. "Famous to the tribe." Is Xeni Jardin famous? Merlin Mann? What about Anne McCrossan? Never mind that Warhol thing about 15 minutes…

Everyone is famous to 1,500 people.

Welcome to the tribe folks it’s great to have you along for the journey.

Video and Free Learning

Once upon a time people in the UK would stay up late to watch Open University programmes shown after the normal schedule of programmes.

BorrowdaleAlternatively you’d buy an expensive set of videos from a professional training outfit.

You might even go to a training seminar. If you wanted to hear someone really special you’d almost certainly have to travel. This seminar would cost you.

Today, there is a huge wealth of video learning available for free. Some of the most brilliant thinkers are available at the click of a few buttons.

Today I’ve been reminded of the wonders of this while watching a number of videos.

This was today’s selection:

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Neil Pasricha talking about the Three ‘A’s of Awesome. Some great thoughts about how to look at life and go after the things that are genuinely you.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

A great set of science experiments from Charles Limb. What is it that happens in our brain when we are improvising?

http://positivesharing.23video.com/v.swf

Alexander Kjerulf encouraging us to think about the positives at work in the 4 minute video.

Oh, and I nearly forgot I also watched a really interesting video from Microsoft Research on MirageBlocks which looks like a really interesting way to think about the convergence of the physical and the virtual.

Facebook Productivity Impact

I was reminded this morning of a study from 2009 that tried to assess the productivity impact of Facebook.

It’s conclusion was this:

Nearly half of office employees access Facebook during work. Nucleus found companies effectively lose an average of 1.5 percent of total office productivity when employees can access Facebook during the work day.

I’ve heard this 1.5% impact repeated a number of times since that time even though it’s nor nearly 2 years old and a lot of things have changed since then. I’ve also heard the same statistic apply to social network sites in general and that’s definitely a stretch of the research.

If you look into the details of the research it’s done on the basis of interviewing 237 office workers and for 2009 is, in many ways, revealing an opinion for the time which still lives on today. That opinion being – while people are on Facebook they aren’t doing the work that they should, and would be doing.

My personal view is that it’s not that simple.

The first point to acknowledge is that I think for a number of people Facebook, and many other web sites for that matter, is a problem. It’s attention grabbing, it’s interesting, it’s a whole set of things that mean that it will be a productivity drain if we let it.

But my second, and more significant point, is that it’s very simplistic to assume that people are “productive” between 9:00 and 17:00 in the office location.

For starters, I don’t know many people who simply work from 9-to-5 these days, travel and collaboration requirements make this impossible for many people.

Then there’s the assumption that people are machines and are “productive” all of the time. They’re not, nor is it healthy for them to try to be. We provide facilities in offices because they are needed by the people who work there. But beyond that there are all sorts of times that could be measured as “unproductive”, but are actually times when it would be more accurate for them to be classed as “undefined productivity”. Most meetings, phone calls, coffee machine conversations, office chats could all be classed this way. it’s not clear what is being achieved in clear, unambiguous productivity terms – but they are all a necessary part of office life.

There are also a set of external distractions and activities that people already undertake during the working day. It would be interesting to know whether people who have access to Facebook have more, or less, distractions overall. I suspect it’s higher overall, but I would also expect there to be some level of offset.

Finally there’s the biggest productivity impact of all – morale. it would be interesting to know whether people feel a higher level of morale in companies that trust their staff to manage their time. I’m not sure whether lack of Facebook access would have an impact on my morale, but I do know that corporate blocking rules can have a negative impact overall. That’s not to say that corporate blocking rules are wrong, just that they have an impact.

To conclude, I don’t think that turning off access to Facebook in a corporate environment will get you a 1.5% productivity increase there are a lot of other factors to consider.

Music to work to and other office improvements

I find that I am very influenced by the music that I listen to as I work. Sometimes it’s a bit of a distraction, but most of the time it helps me to focus and concentrate.I even have a special set of music that I almost exclusively listen to while I’m working.

This music is primarily classical in nature, and definitely instrumental.

I’ve acquired this music at my own expense in order to be more productive.

It’s not the only thing I’ve acquired to add to my working life better. I’m sure, as I look around the office, is that it’s a growing trend.

I wonder how many employers really recognise this as a good thing?

Shortcuts

While in a meeting with some friends at the weekend we filled out a survey. It was one of those where you answer a set of questions by giving it a score (1 to 5), you then have to add up all of the scores a divide them by the number questions. This survey was in sets of 5 questions.

I filled in a the questionnaire, summed and divided. After a little while another person at the table, who was clearly struggling a bit with the maths said “oooh get you, working it out to the decimal place”.

It took me a little while to realise what was happening. They were struggling with their remainders, but I didn’t have any remainders, why? Because I was using a short-cut.

I was simply taking the sum of the answers, doubling them and then putting the decimal point in the right place – 17 divided by 5 is easy this way, it’s just 17 times 2 = 34 divided by 10 = 3.4.

That got me thinking about shortcuts in general.

We have shortcuts all over the place; keyboard shortcuts, maths shortcuts, we even have acronyms which are shortcuts in speech.

Calling them short-cuts suggest that in some way they aren’t normal. If you know a shortcut from Preston to Ribchester you’ve not going to go the normal way,

Why isn’t the shortcut the norm though?

Why would anyone divide 17 by 5 without using the shortcut?

Why would anyone cut and paste on a computer without the keyboard shortcut?

Why do we even teach people how to do things without the shortcut?

If it really is a shortcut then surely it’s the best way of doing it? Why bother learning how to go the long way around?

Do work – Delight in work

I’ve always tried to be in a position where I love what I am doing at work. I’m not a mercenary who is just doing it for the money – I need to feel a value in what I do. The money could never make up for the feeling of achievement.

That need to feel value often means that I’ll go beyond the bare minimum so that I can get to the real meaning of what I am doing.

We have a standard methodology for some of what we do as an organisation but I regard it as a privilege to be in a position where I have a reasonable amount of autonomy over what I do. This freedom means I can go above and beyond when there is value in doing so and delight in doing it – a bit like this ice-cream seller:

I could spend my life delivering ice-cream, but I’d rather be delighting the customer and myself while I’m at it.

Hat tip to The Chief Happiness Officer for the video.

Things Don't Get Done in Meetings

I’ve been an observer of meetings for some time. It’s something that we do in business but I’m sure most people have no idea why.

This morning I’m struck by two thoughts.

The first comes from listening to a Daniel Pink podcast talking about “autonomy”.from his recent book – Drive.

The other comes from Leadership Freak and states wonderfully a set of 4 ways that Managers roadblock productivity one of which states:

Meetings – Too many meetings that include too many people that share too much detail. Here’s some motivation to abbreviate or cancel meetings. They are expensive. A one hour meeting with 8 people in attendance costs their combined salaries plus lost productivity. Remember, you don’t get anything done in a meeting. Things get done after meetings.

(Highlights mine)

Meetings are nearly always the opposite of autonomy.

They are there to serve the purposes of the person who organised the meeting, and no-one else.

Mutually beneficial meetings are the rarest of all things.

Meetings rarely produce any meaningful outcomes and all too often come to the wrong conclusion that is changed at a later date.

I could go on, but I’m determined to write shorter blog posts in 2011 – and I’ve got a meeting to go to.

Information, Information, Information

I really enjoyed today’s infographic from Flowtown showing just how much information we are going to be creating in the future.

  • There are 65 million tweets every day
  • More than 70% of the Digital Universe in 2010 was generated by users.
  • Nearly 75% of the data stored in our digital universe is a copy.

Have we reached a world of infinite information?

Getting noticed

When my children were younger and we were driving between places we would point things out along the way.

Most of times we said "did you see that…?" the response, particularly when they were really young, would be "what…".

It just wouldn’t be on their radar. It didn’t matter whether we were pointing out a squirrel by the side of the road or Wembley stadium they would miss it.

When we talked to them later they would tell us about other things that they had seen. They weren’t looking at nothing but they weren’t looking at what we thought was important.

While I’m on parental stories. What is it about children that gives them selective hearing. Shout as loud as you like for some attention and you’ve got about as much chance as a hedgehog crossing the M6. Talk about them in a whisper and they are there in a shot.

We’re not too different in our working life.

Business attention is rarely focussed on the truly important things. Much of the time so much attention is looking at the business belly button fluff that it’s practically impossible to get the right people to contemplate the important issues.

It’s almost as if we need the opposite of stealth-mode for the activities that really need to be noticed. The problem, most of the time, is that the radar is so alight with things to be noticed that it’s difficult to see them as anything other than a big amorphous blob.

So how do you get noticed? Here are some thing that I try to do which I think make a difference:

  • Regular communication is better than great communication.
  • Keep it simple and direct – if you need people to understand something don’t leave them to work it out, they probably won’t.
  • Understand that they don’t care the way you do. There emotional and rational perspective will be different to yours.
  • Sometimes it’s the person communicating, not the message, so try getting a different person to say the same thing.
  • Pictures are your friend.
  • If you can make it a headline – do. But realise that there is a science to headlines.
  • Keep the message consistent.

Unfortunately, even after doing all of this, there are times when you still won’t be noticed.