I came across Taylor Davidson’s How to Fail post through John Wilken’s Our Start Up Story blog. Imitating John I’m going to add my tuppence to three of Taylor’s topics: Meet to discuss, Build prototypes, mock-ups and samples, and Focus on the long-term.

Meet to discuss

I have previous on this topic, having written here on effective meetings and ten ways to ruin a perfectly good one. We’re all experts on how to ruin meetings on a practical level but one of the biggest man-hour traps of all is a meeting-as-talking-shop. As Taylor says,

If you need meetings to “get everyone on the same page” then you have bigger problems the meeting will probably not address.

So many companies have meeting cultures with managers running between days scheduled back-to-back. Almost everyone could benefit from fewer meetings. I’ve found the best way to break a meeting-as-update culture is to force managers our of their offices to perch on the edge of someone’s desk, finding out how things are going, what roadblocks they’re having to deal with, and offering support and connections. Fifteen minutes of this can save man-days of meeting time.

All of my best manager/managed relationships (in either direction) have involved this style of management-by-arse-on-desk.

Meetings, when you have them, should really only be held for one reason – to make decisions. I confess to a secret secondary objective of team-bulding. Teams get built faster when they’re active (discussion with the purpose of making a decision) rather than passive (pretending to listen to John’s update when really worrying my own update that I’m about to give or have just given).

Meetings are certainly not to stroke anyone’s ego. Don’t go to meetings just because you have an opinion, are flattered to be asked, or just to be busy. Don’t call meetings to find out about things (go sit on desks). Don’t invite people simply so they won’t be offended.

If it’s your meeting, ask who you really need in order to make the decision? Invite them. Discuss with a purpose. Make the decision. Move on.

Build prototypes, mock-ups and samples

The thinking goes like this; don’t build the whole thing, but build something that looks like the whole thing, so we can see if the whole thing (kinda) works. It seems to make sense. But as Taylor points out,

“Nothing saps the spirit more than creating mockups and designs without making progress toward a completed product. Most often the product cannot be created exactly as it is designed, and thus it is important to learn through working on the product itself, not the design.”

Having wasted far too much time and money over the years on mock-ups, I have an idealistic two stage process in mind whenever I start something.

First, boil the idea down so you can explain it with one graphic and two sentences.

Second, when everyone gets it, build the simplest version that people will appreciate enough to get a definable benefit from, and iterate.

This is the launch early, launch often philosophy – which doesn’t mean launch buggy code, or a boat that leaks, or a pacemaker that can’t stand walking past a speaker magnet. Launch a simple version that works brilliantly, and then improve it every day.

Focus on the long term

This is probably the hardest one for a planner like me to do something about, and the one I struggle to overcome every day. I love change, I see “a rich landscape of opportunities” and my job has always involved working out how to get there. Vision is great, but what to do today? I’ve developed a system that seems to work for me called GOYA management.

Get Off Your Arse. (The name at least was inspired by my old hero Frederick Herzberg’s famous Harvard Business Review article which debunks KITA management, and everything else on the way). GOYA is what I tell myself to do after I’ve worked out what I want to achieve, how I propose to achieve it and what I won’t be able to do because I’m doing the other stuff (which all fits into my personal planning joy). So then I tell myself “GOYA and do it.” The planner in me prints out special note pages with sections headings. My inner manager lifts my chair and puts me to work.

So that’s my homage to Taylor Davidson’s How to Fail. Make sure you take a look at the original, what are your lessons learned?

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Neatly filed under Focus,Managing on July 30, 2009

I’m in the market for a little outside help – which leads to the question, how to choose good people?

Whether looking for lawyers, accountants, developers, consultants, or anyone else, finding the right kind of help can be a challenge.

It seems to me the problem breaks down into three parts:

1. Deciding you actually need help in the first place
   In my world, I look for outside help when I know I want something done but I don’t have the vital ingredients of time, talent or inclination to do it myself.
   Time – like most people I’m pretty busy, there’s plenty of things I’m capable of but just can’t (or shouldn’t) prioritise the time to actually do.
   Talent – which really stands for talent or training. Some things I can’t do, like design or programming, whilst others I’m not qualified to do, like drafting contracts.
   Inclination – some things I could make time for and have the ability to do, but they’re just not high enough on my personal priority list. For example, B might need attention but all my focus is on A.
   There are obvious grey areas around things I could squeeze in, things I can do but am not very good at, and things I feel like doing but am not wholly committed to. Sometimes I have to force myself to be realistic.
   When I do decide to look for help the first port of call is always inside the organisation, there’s often someone looking for a challenge and who has the ingredients. But this article isn’t about them, so who?
2. Choosing the right people
   Two issues come to mind here – the right person to do what? and the right person? – that are often wrapped up together.
   Wouldn’t it be great if every time I needed help I knew exactly what was needed, I’d lay out the brief and ask for quotes. How much for this? Sometimes that even works. More often than not, working out exactly what needs to be done is actually part of what I need help with. What should we do?
   The harder the question, the more I have to rely on trust. Here’s my hit list in no particular order:
   1. A strong track record – can they point to their existing work or previous customers who can vouch for them?
   2. Informative – I like to work with people who know what they’re doing and can explain it in words I understand. This might mean a good web site or well written proposal but it certainly means someone who understands the why of what they do as well as the what.
   3. Attitude – will this person work in the trenches, getting elbow deep in mud if necessary?
   4. Focus – will they stay on point and get the job done, or would they rather be doing something else?
   5. Consistent – this is a catchall. Do they always turn up on time, sweat the small stuff, behave with courtesy and build their reputation in every meeting? In short, will they to continue to behave the way they did when we first met?
3. Getting along
   Having decided to get help, and then chosen the right help, it’s time to get specific and get the work done. Getting specific means deciding exactly what success looks like which normally happens after I’ve chosen my outsider and just before the actual work begins – it’s the final test. After that, it’s all about relationship and management.

The most common trap I’ve experienced is letting the project get off brief – both sides can be responsible.

Also, it’s easy to forget than even the most well paid, highly qualified and supremely confident person is still a person and likes to be told they’re doing a good job every now and again. If they’re not doing a good job, and they’re worth their salt, they like to know that too. In other words, managing an outsider is just like managing an insider.

There are certainly more robust ways of finding the right kind of help which are especially useful when making the most enormous decisions, but on the whole, the question that’s at the back of my mind whenever I’m sitting across the table from any kind of consultant is, “can I trust you?”

Neatly filed under Focus,Managing on May 6, 2009

Image copyright: balakov

55 years ago tomorrow, 6th May 1954, Roger Bannister became the first man to break the 4 minute barrier, running the mile in 3:59.4. The report only made page 8 of the next day’s Times but it changed the world.

After being dropped six times during the war years the mile record was stuck. For nine years every attempt to push the record below four minutes had failed. Was the four minute barrier an absolute?

Bannister settled it. 46 days later Australia’s John Landy broke the mark again.

Now everyone realised what Bannister had known all along. The clock wasn’t the problem, there was no four minute barrier, they was only a psychological one.

Bannister was convinced that he could break through the barrier. His goal was clear, he had a plan, and used bucket loads of commitment and determination to see it through.

Organisations can suffer from old time milers’ fear; failing to deal with self imposed barriers.

He won’t support it, I’ll never get the budget, they won’t let me, I can’t call her, it’s too hard, it’s impossible.

But it is possible. Bannister showed the way; set out a clear goal, work out what has to be done, put the pieces in place, execute.

Neatly filed under Focus on May 5, 2009

Innovation, independence, curiosity, collaboration, character, integrity, tradition, style all its own, authentic, risk takers, hardworking. All words used to describe craft brewing and craft brewers in this wonderful video by Greg Koch of the Stone Brewing Company.

The line I find most telling is,

We don’t put corn in our beer.

When I got over the obvious irony, I got to thinking – the difference between good and great, between ordinary and skippy, may well be the willingness to settle, to compromise, to cut corners, to take out the joy. Crafting the business you want, is a craft business. As they say in the video,

We are all craft brewers.

I love this kind of hokeyness, chapeau to David Meerman Scott for pointing out the video and giving me a little-morning-lift.

Neatly filed under Focus,Skippiness on April 29, 2009

Take 20 minutes to watch Hans Rosling present statistics third world issues. You heard right, take 20 minutes for statistics on issues. Can’t do it? Take 1 minute. Commit to watching 1 minute from any place in the presentation.

Stay for longer than a minute? Why?

The data, the presenter, the story?

Neatly filed under Focus on April 15, 2009