Image copyright: pipiwildhead! via Flickr

At its simplest, life comes down to a series of choices, or more often, a parallel of choices.

After deciding which new market or new product to go for, two types of choice dominate the day to day: how should we prioritise our time? and, should we go with option A or option B (or C, D, E, or F)?

This is no time to sway back and forth. You have to make decisions.

How do you decide what to do?

As I was looking in to this I came across a speech given by YCombinator founder Paul Graham at the StartupSchool2008 conference last year, he dealt specifically with the “how do you decide” question. His answer?

Do whatever is best for your users. You can hold on to that like a rope in a hurricane and it will save you if anything can. You can pull on that rope and it will guide you through everything you have to do. Figure out what they want, make them happy doing more of that.

Is he right? Absoloodle! Any choices that are best for customers tend to be pretty good for getting customers too. And customers make everything else possible.

If I could though, I’d add “in the long term” to the end of Mr Graham’s sentence. Running any kind of sustainable business, especially one that skips, is about winning in the long term. So doing whatever in the long term is best for your customers feels better to me.

Whether you’re prioritising time or choosing a fork in the road, put the customer front and centre, think long term, and swallow the results.

Neatly filed under Managing,Skippiness
Tags: customers, decisions, doing

Image copyright: Corscri-Daje tutti! via Flickr

Inside any kind of organisation bigger than the land of Me & My Mate, you’re probably surrounded by people who do a job that’s completely different to yours.

What do all those people do?

I’ve been thinking about the doing part of that question lately, rather than the people part. The way I see it, no matter what the job title or department, the doing falls in to one of only five categories:

Making Promises – easiest to think of as all the things that happen in sales or marketing, some customer services and board functions. Anything that makes any kind of commitment on behalf of the company is a making promises action.

Keeping Promises – everything that even vaguely fits into operations: all the tasks that make the product, perform the service, look after customers, pick up, package or deliver the thing.

Measure and control – all the things involving numbers or making sure nothing gets out of hand.

Support – what gets done in order to make everything else function; what normally happens under the headings of IT or HR for instance.

Leadership and innovation – without getting bogged down in book style definitions, leadership is about direction setting and steering to the compass whilst innovation is all the processes that aim to improve things.

These are not departments, they’re functions, and whilst every person spends most of their time in one kind of role, they probably undertake processes in others, if not all. For example, a production worker is mainly employed to keep promises, but they probably also try to innovate to improve things, keep an eye on production rates and quality, put their arm around colleagues when they need it, and continually make commitments within and for their department.

Ok. So what? Is this anything other than yet another way of thinking about organisational structure?

If every process is about making, keeping, ensuring and supporting promises, or improving the way the whole thing gets done, then every job is about the customer.

So what do all those people do? Let’s hope they’re not wasting any time discussing, deciding or doing anything that doesn’t draw a straight line to improving the life of the customer.

Neatly filed under Innovating,Keeping Promises,Leading,Making Promises,Managing
Tags: customers, doing, people

Start big things by doing small things

The main thing is to begin – do it now

Write down your commitments

Don’t commit to what you can’t do

Finish what you start – follow through

Leading others starts with leading yourself

Neatly filed under Leading
Tags: doing

I’ve been a fan of the Honda ads for a long time. The first one I remember getting all evangelical about, in 2006, featured the line, “It’s good to hate.” Officially about their new diesel engines, for me the ad was a call to arms – let’s change what is bad.

See what you think:

This morning I came across “Keep Doing.” Like the first, it was made by UK agency Wieden & Kennedy, voiced by Garrison Keillor, and riffs on the theme of sorting things out.

I can’t imagine playing Keep Doing for people whilst we wait to start a meeting – which I did countless times with the 2006 ad – but I can already feel this quote working its way into my world.

Doers do things, things to move us forward, to make stuff better.

Neatly filed under Making Promises
Tags: advertising, doing, Untitled

One of the world’s most famous inventors said, “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.”

Leonardo da Vinci, certainly knew a thing or two about getting things done.

The urgency of doing suggests doing the urgent, which is nothing but a very deep bear trap. Stuff comes up, email tumbles in, do you have a minute? could you …? I’ll just do this before …

All those little urgent nothings get in the way of actually doing something that matters.

Steven Covey says the heart of personal effectiveness is to spend time on the non-urgent important stuff. Putting time into the slow stuff today – like relationships, purpose, maintenance, planning and preparation – means less (quick) time fire fighting stuff tomorrow.

Here’s the full da Vinci quote,

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Don’t be so impressed with the urgency of doing that you do whatever comes along. Be willing to prioritise the important.

Photo credit – mallorcaquality who has a bunch of photos showing replicas of da Vinci inventions.

Neatly filed under Managing
Tags: doing