Totally Doodgical

If one of four people didn’t show up, projects would stall at my previous employer.  One guy ran the back-end/operations, another constructed the prototypes, I did programming and IT support, and my boss did programming and sales.  All the passwords and network configurations were located in the operation’s guy’s palm (I didn’t set-up the network, I just inherited it and would write down stuff as I worked with it).

I soon discovered that we could live without a programmer for weeks, without an IT person as long as the infrastructure didn’t break down, without a prototype person for days, without a sales person for a few days, but never without operations.  The operations guy had probably only taken a handful of sick days and even fewer vacation days in the 10+ years he worked at the company.  Every time he was gone, due dates got moved back, customer orders were late and we lacked the passwords and information to fix IT issues.  It was insane, and very stressful for the operations guy when he returned.  It’s almost as if he had to make up on nights and weekends, the hours he took off.

As I look back on the situation, I note there was a lack of Organizational Knowledge.  Every person had their fiefdom and when someone was gone, the people who covered had to make it up as they went.  Organizational Knowledge is the howto of the business world.  It is the time saver and organizer of the company.  It’s the encyclopedia of how things get done around here.

My friend, who was the operations person had to order supplies and parts, gather production kits from inventory, ship orders and debug prototypes.  Not only did this require knowledge of the production planning software and store, it required knowledge of SED’s (export declarations) lead times, parts distributors, channels of contact for the distributors and a process to complete each task.  It was overwhelming to jump into his shoes for a day (and I was next in line!).

The problem was that we never took the time to write down the process.  There were so many other things to do.  Yet, we would have been far better off, had we known how to cover for him.  The hour of process mapping would have saved at least a half day of thinking through it (and still getting it wrong).  We need organizational knowledge.

Some companies take it to the other extreme.  A handbook/manual is only as good as it ability to communicate.  I’m not going to read 200 pages of how exactly something was done unless its a project that requires significant investment.  Give me the guiding principles and bullet point summary.

When I google on how to fix something, if it is a multi-page article or string of text, I skip it.  The knowledge of how to fix the problem has to be clear, concise and organized.  The company Organizational Knowledge should be the same way.  The better the access, the more people in the organization will use it. 

Think of Organizational Knowledge as the path of the least resistance.  If it is accessible, understandable and digestible, people will use it.  Most people do not like to reinvent the wheel unless they think there is a better way.

We make Organizational Knowledge by giving the people in the know the tools, the motivation and the time to create it.  The tools can be anything from a blog to a content management system.  The motivation can be monetary, recognition or both.  The time taken must be encouraged and rarely, if ever, punished as a bad decision.  What’s more is that a content review before publishing can be given as a positive because the company cares about what is being written and cares enough to read the organizational knowlege before publishing.

Organizational Knowlege gives employees the tools to succeed, be recognized and feel good about their legacy.  Organizational Knowlege gives employers an increased productivity and employee satisfaction, when implemented correctly.  Sounds like a win-win to me.

One of the most interesting and scary courses I took during my JD/MBA career is consumer psychology.  I learned a great framework for describing how I interact and reinforce my purchasing habits.

One of the points that really hit home to me is about differentiation.  It seems like a lot of my entrepreneurial friends work hard to make new points of differentiation that the consumer can see between themselves and others.  My education hammered home the importance of differentiation avoiding commoditization.  My friend Stormy started Maoomba.com with such differentiation in mind.

The strange piece is that the consumer only need perceive a difference between you and the competition (think store-brand vs. brand name medications).  That difference need not be tangible or apparent.  It can simply evoke a feeling.  And the crazy part is that consumers want you to reinforce that difference.

What this means is that a company can take an internal look at itself, an external look at its competition and then look for differences.  These differences can be thrown at a panel of people and see which ones don’t stink (ie which ones people see as smoke and mirrors).  These differences can be highlighted in marketing campaigns to consumers.  The more (frequency and length) this message reaches consumers, the more accepted it becomes (familiarity breeds acceptance).

I see this play a lot in ads that play on the past.  Ads in this category often use trust, parent’s habits and experience.  Consumers value these ideals, but the organizations didn’t change to get them.  They’ve just communicated them to the consumer as part of their offering.

Following this recipe, the company has now taken an intrinsic part of its product or organization — without change — and turned it into a competitive advantage because the consumer sees it as such.  I was shocked not because I knew a good marketer could do this, but because the recipe was so easy.

So I had this friend that told me about the rabid stealing of rss feeds on sites that would claim credit for your work.  He encouraged me to install a plug-in to give notice to people about the stolen content.

 That was great when I was just posting to my own blog.  However, when ConnectBlogs offered to syndicate me (and I accepted), the copyright infringement accusation came through as well.

In short, please ignore the trailer to the last post.  ConnectBlogs has full permission to syndicate me and my ramblings.

Although I am not a mac owner, my uncle is and he just got an iPod classic for his son.  As it turns out, if you have Mac OS 10.3.9 and an iPod classic, iTunes refuses to sync to the new iPod and gives an error requiring an upgrade to 10.4 or later.  The Mac boards are some help, but it took piecing together a few things to get the iPod Classic to work with 10.3.9.  Here’s our outline:

1. Have someone format your iPod through iTunes (we went to the SLC apple store)
2. Find out your fwid (the SLC apple store was helpful there as well)
3. get yamipod and install
4. plug in ipod
5. tell yamipod that you have a ipod classic
6. tell yamipod the fwid
7. add songs!

If you don’t have an apple store nearby, I’m not sure what to tell you.  Google shows that getting the fwid might be difficult.  You also need to have a friend with 10.4 to initialize the iPod.

I can only think of a couple of reasons for the restriction for 10.4.  None of them make much sense.  Apple wants people to upgrade their OS; Apple worries about the user experience of people taking days to sync their library over USB 1.X and won’t allow it; Apple programmers use a function available only in 10.4 and apple is too lazy to add it to 10.3.  With my uncle’s iPod classic playing music and syncing to yamipod running in Mac OS 10.3.9, the restriction is obviously not a hardware problem, but a software restriction put in by apple.  Not cool.

Edit: 1/8/2008:

yamipod has a faq on how to find the fwid.

How many of you have visited shoreline ridge’s website within the past weeks?  Despite our difference in space and time, I can tell that the answer is 0.  The reason is that someone had a few “good ideas” and put up a website without a plan.  Unless you’re lucky and stumble upon the right idea, you need a reason, a mission to get the job done.

 That means that you need to start with purpose and an idea of the “squishy” words of how you want your users to feel.  For shoreline, the answers are “community,” “fun,” and “friendship.”  Everything that we put on that page should be relevant to those words.  So if I have a widget, let’s say a calendar, I need to make sure that my calendar has the capability of forming community, fun and/or friendship.  If my calendar events relvove around when rent is due and fees go up, I’ve probably missed the boat.

 So where do the ideas of what we need come from?  The target market!  If you are connected, you can run ideas past them, and get an initial impression.  For instance, the Shoreline community wants a classified section.  People are not only motivated to get rid of stuff they don’t have room for or don’t want to move (especially the international students), but also residents that are looking for cheap stuff.

 Keep an eye on shoreline.utah.edu.  You’ll be able to judge how well I follow my own advice and target my market.

Its fun to have a boss that is willing to brainstorm and expand outside the zone of comfort.  Bateman IP is doing just that with its marketing presence.

For those of you who saw the title and said, “duh, fundamental principle.”  You’re right.  And yet, new businesses don’t seem to get it.  Even old ones put on the stupid - see Johnson & Johnson suing the Red Cross (if you don’t see how selling products that heal people and suing healers conflicts in terms of marketing, ponder awhile).

Business fulfills unmet needs.  Those needs are latent or active, which means that either people seek you out or you have to convince them to seek you out.

If consumers seek out your product category, then you have to convince them that your best attributes are the most important attributes.  Remember that Charmin toiletpaper is cuddly soft.

If your consumers don’t know that they need you, you have to convince them that life is better as your partner.  Pessimists call this creating a need.  Optimists call this discovering a need.  Its probably somewhere in between.  Think about anything that gets “buzz.”  Remember the need to watch American Idol, Survivor or Harry Potter?  Its sure not a need we just have at the forefront of our brain.

Pretty fundamental, eh?  Well what happens if you mix it up?  You fall flat on your face.  Sending consumers info about how your washer/dryer/toaster combo has all the great features and long-lasting does nothing to create the need (I’m not sure I want my carbs tasting like laundered underwear).  On the other hand, if you convince more people to buy toiletpaper instead of using bidets, then you’ve just worked hard to increase the market without helping your bottom line.

Take some time to notice the ads around you.  Ask yourself if they are activating a need or steering me to their attributes.  Then ask yourself if that is the correct strategy for you.  The more you think about it, the more you’ll be able to leverage it in your own life.

I was talking with a friend about how a new IT person came in and without notice, rewrote the website template and asked for approval to migrate the website to the new template.  In the time it took to write the website and the email to get approval, the green IT guy might have set up his demise.

He’s probably lucky that I was talking with my friend before my friend visited with her colleages and lynched him.  There’s two sides to the story and thus two solutions, but let’s hit the problem first.

The Problem

My friend (who is not in IT or marketing) spent a year with her colleagues coming up with the design and layout of the website.  It was a fusion of ideas, and had a coherent look to it.

The IT guy saw a website that lacked web 2.0 features and knowledge such as usability, minimalism and reducing the amount of glaring white.  Unfortunately he didn’t understand the company, the users nor did he have any taste in color schemes.

My friend was planning on talking with other leaders and asking if they had assigned a website revamp after all that hard work.  As they all would have likely said no, then the IT guy was going to look like he didn’t have enough to do and didn’t get the organization.

The Solution

Communication before action.  If the IT guy had talked with my friend and proposed some changes, like usability or user focusing through color, my friend would have appreciated the desire to work with the team and expertise.

On the other hand, leaders should recognize that people fresh out of college (like this IT guy) don’t have all the skills, especially organizational culture ones.  A frank conversation about how to handle cases like this in the future, while recognizing his contribution will go a long way toward building a good working relationship.  The key is to remember that this IT guy is motivated.  He just needs some direction and people skills.  Whatever you do, you don’t want to kill his motivation.  And, yet, this situation was headed exactly that way.

So how do you fix your feelings?  Get a fresh perspective.  My friend asked me why he would redesign the website without asking and what was so good about his version.  I was able to show her that while his color and design lacked coherency and attractiveness, he had used some good design principles and technology that was lacking on the original.

The guy straight out of college wants to make a name for himself.  Instead of standing in his way, teach him how to do it.  The organization, and dare I say it, you will be better off if everyone shares how to succeed, instead of everyone clinging to their own successes.

Ever wonder why there’s a whole lot of sparring and not a whole lot of understanding these days?  It’s because people only argue from their point of view.  A persuasive argument leverages the other’s peson’s beliefs and speaks from their perspective.  Today’s “debates” with their “sound-bites” are just rallying cries and not true argument.  A true argumentor finds the kernel of disagreement and sifts through the chaff of agreement.

Here’s my rules of argument:

 Rule #1:  If you don’t understand the other side’s argument AND can justify it — don’t start arguing, start asking.

For rule #1, I think about the abortion debate.  I think about all the people who accuse each other about being “killers” or “legislating my body.”  If you’re berating the other side, there’s no use arguing because neither side will give in.

A good persuader will ask first, rephrase their beliefs looking for confirmation and then argue. 

For argument’s sake let’s take the side of pro-life.  We would ask someone when they believe life exists and choice retreats.  They would likely answer “at birth.”  So it might seem that our kernel of disagreement is at what point life exists.  But that’s not true:  you need to test it with an assumption.  Try asking this question:  if at any point during a pregnancy, with minimal invasiveness, an embryo could be transferred to a test-tube with no ill physical or mental effects, would you support this alternative to abortion?  Notice we’re still talking about their beliefs, but we’re finding out whether their objection is to a chain a woman’s body to pregnancy without a say or something else.  If the answer is negative, then follow-up questions should find where or if that switch could ever be made.

Rule #2:  Be willing to do the same exploration AND change your mind.

It’s not worth talking with someone unless you both can benefit from the other’s experience.  However, if you’re following rule #1, it is difficult to have a closed mind.  You might be sure of yourself, but not closed.

Turning the last situation around: a pro-choice person would ask the pro-life person when a person should be forced to sustain someone else’s life.  Should I be required to give up one of my kidneys to save someone else’s life?  my child’s life?  Should I be required to feed my child at the expense of my health?  What if there was only enough sustenance for one of us - which is right?  which should be required by law?  How far should a pregnant person be required to go to save the baby’s life?  bankruptcy?  house?  to protect the baby’s life?  alcohol?  seatbelts?  Find the limits where people switch and then confirm in your own words.

Rule #3:  Talk in their language, not yours. 

If you are arguing you should have 2 goals: acquisition of information and persuation.  You’re not going to be effective in either one if you force someone into your framework of understanding.  Use their words and their framework.  Their foundation and beliefs are different and that’s GOOD.  Its your job to understand it.

Notice my word change above depending on who I’m talking to:  baby vs. embryo.  A framework is not complete without terminology.  Look at math and physics.  If you don’t know the terminology, you can never hope to understand the framework (proofs).

Rule #4:  If it changes to violent, stop and walk away.

There are a few reasons to be violent, either by raising your voice or getting physical.  The only things that come to mind are protection from robbery or protests against the majority stomping on the minority (think Martin Luther King).  Generally, there are better ways to solve things.

In fact, if you stop when someone gets hot under the collar and don’t give them a reason to label you (that guy is just a bully, or he was blowing smoke because he came unglued), you just made them think about why they’re steamed and why you’re not.  People like to be consistent and don’t like to be mad without justification.  If you don’t give them that justification, they might just think about what you said.

If you’re the one hot under the collar, consider why you feel that way.

For example, I don’t get mad at people who call my wife or mother nasty things.  I know they are fantastic individuals.  I usually comment about how their comment says more about them than my family and walk away.

Without getting too personal, my long hiatus is over, school and family have calmed down (at least more than they were) and I can get back to more enjoyable things like blogging.

If there is one book I would recommend, I would recommend Crucial Conversations.  It’s like the miracle cure, the miracle gro, the fix-my-work-and-home medicine.  That’s pretty big talk for anything, let alone a book.  Even if you don’t believe me, then consider that American Express gives classes on it, Steven R. Covey wrote the forward, Dain Hancock from Lockheed Martin endorses it, and Wolf Creek Nuclear gives training on it.  This is not your ordinary self-help book.

 So it’s important, but what is it?  It basically outlines why we are awful at important conversations, when to recognize important conversations and how to achieve mutual success in important conversations.  If you’ve ever seen someone tackle a difficult conversation with finesse - whether stopping the boss from doing something unilaterally stupid or achieving harmony in their marriage despite discussing “the promotion” that requires a move - you’ve seen someone understand what’s really important in a Crucial Conversation.

This is not a book about getting your way.  It is about bring knowledge out of everybody while keeping everyone involved in the conversation.  Its about why we clam up or fight and destroy any good things that could come in conversations that are important to us.

In short:  Read it.  Its a lifechanger.