The Dark Matter of the Information World

"Books are the dark matter of the information world". For that quote alone it is worth reading this article by Steven Johnson in the Wall Street Journal.

I would recommend though that you take the time to read the entire article. Steven believes that with the coming of the Kindle the rules have changed forever. He says "....the book's migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write and sell books in profound ways". He then goes on to speculate what these changes might be.

Recommended reading for all, compulsory reading for publishers

How to stifle innovation

Thanks to NPR I discovered this terrific video on You Tube:



It was produced by an astronaut, Andy Thomas, and tells the (fictional) story of an engineer at Johnson Space Center who has a great new idea. The video shows how the idea is stifled and killed. The pithy text comments that overlay the video and provide commentary are wonderful.

I am sure you will laugh as you watch the video. I challenge you to look in the mirror after you have watched it and tell yourself that this would never happen in your company.

I suspect that the innovation-blocking behaviours shown in the film are all too common.

The fact that this is NASA is especially poignant. After the space shuttle Columbia accident, the investigation board said NASA's culture had stifled dissenting opinions from engineers who were concerned about potential dangers. Your company may never face life or death situations as NASA do, but I think this little homemade video has much to teach us all about how easy it is to stifle innovation.

How much do you trust me?

It was Switzerland. On a boat on the Brienzersee near Interlaken. The date was May 2002. Morris Tabaksblat, our then Chairman, gave an after-dinner speech on the topic of trust and how this would be the next big issue for business to deal with. We laughed. One wag commented that it was like "greetings from the Planet Zog". Oh how prescient his words were in hindsight. Nowadays it seems as if aliens from the Planet Greed have invaded many boardrooms and have set about exterminating trust.

Trust is important. Without trust there are no relationships. No relationships between people. No relationships between companies and their customers. And without relationships you are left with only transient transactions. It is very hard to build a sustainable, profitable business based on transactions.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately and especially on how you might measure trust. Net Promoter Score, the current favourite metric for many, doesn't quite do it for me. It is perhaps an indirect measure of trust. Perhaps. If you simply ask "how much do you trust me?", the first response will probably be "to do what". So that doesn't help.

Or does it. Suppose we define a "trust to" metric. A metric that measures how much our customers trust us to do what we promise to do. I think all business makes promises to its customers, even if that promise is implicit and not immediately obvious. For example, a delivery company makes a promise to its customers to deliver at the agreed time, so perhaps they might define a "trust to deliver" metric: how much do you trust us to deliver when we say we will. An airline makes a promise to fly safely: "trust to be safe". A publisher makes a promise not to publish crap. A bank makes a promise to take care of your money....

I wonder what promise your company makes?

Once you have defined your promise, the next step is to turn it into a "trust to" metric, then go ask people. How much do you trust us to do what we promise? And if you know how to measure it, you can start to work on influencing it. You can use this metric to filter ideas and business initiatives: will our customers trust us more if we do this? Or less? What else could we do for our customers to trust us more to do what we promise?

Obviously this will not by itself rebuild trust, but making trust measurable just might help people care about it a little more. And that would be good for everyone, wouldn't it?

Make me smile

"We have an air traffic delay.....blah...blah...blah". It's the usual stuff and I stop listening to the pilot as we are waiting on the 'plane at Amsterdam airport.

Suddenly I find myself listening again. The pilot is telling us to pay attention to the safety briefing, but he's doing it in a funny voice with a strange emphasis on the words. He almost shouts "safety". Wow that's unusual. The stewardess takes over and tells us that we should really watch the safety video because it's new and much, much less boring than the old one. It's not a great joke but again it has me listening. Listening to something I have heard many times before and usually ignore.

I am smiling. Smiling at British Airways - they have taken the trouble to think up a new way to grab our attention. It seems that they really care that I listen, at least that's the impression I have. The humour is surprising, unusual and very effective.

I think the use of humour in user experience is underrated and underused

I've mentioned before the surprised squeal of the Nintendo Wii Fit when you step on the balance board. That makes me smile. The Twitter Fail Whale is another great example. Even the simple "Ooops there seems to be an error" is infinitely better than the usual useless jargon you get upon failure. Apple of course are the masters of emotional engagement - I smile just thinking about their products!

With so many examples to learn from why are so many corporate websites still full of impenetrable, stifling blurb? What does that say about a company? I suppose someone thinks that fun equals frivolity, and that doesn't match the corporate image. Didn't anyone notice that humans make jokes about even the most serious of things? Laughter keeps us alive. Literally.

So this is a plea for more fun.

Think of ways you can liven up your websites and products. Quirky, amusing, unexpected little details that will make your users smile.

Book Review: Agile Retrospectives – Making Good Teams Great

Retrospectives are a critical part of agile methodology and this book is a must read for anyone doing anything agile. I would go further and say that this book is also a must read for anyone involved in any flavour of project management. In fact, I’d strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to improve the way they do things! There is much talk these days about learning organisations and then much gnashing of teeth about how hard that is to achieve in practice; my advice is: buy this book and start doing retrospectives as often as possible, in projects, team meetings, events, even by yourself at the end of a week.

Retrospectives help us inspect what we have done, what went well and what went less well, and adapt so that we do things better next time. I am sure this sounds logical to everyone yet it amazes me how infrequently retrospectives are used. Even if they take place it is often at the very end of a project (a “post-mortem”) when it is way too late to do anything differently. Moreover, even though most retrospectives identify what went well and less well, they often fail to result in any action. So we continue to make the same mistakes instead of learning from them.

This is a practical book with tips on how to do retrospectives and make them more effective. It makes it easy for anyone with basic facilitation skills to run retrospectives. The book starts with a simple process of 5 steps to follow in any session. The rest of the book describes 30 activities organised per step that help to structure the retrospective and get the most from the group. There’s also some handy tips and tricks for facilitating, even including a checklist of office supplies needed for a successful session.

Perhaps one of the best features of this book, at least if you buy it directly from the publishers (Pragmatic Programmers), is the DRM-free pdf version that sells alongside the print. If you buy this you can print out the activities you plan to use at a session as an aide memoire for yourself or as a handout for the participants. What a great idea! It is terrific to see a publisher that truly understands what it’s products are used for. If you have bought the book in a shop or from a leading online purveyor, you can download the eBook pdf at a discount. Just go here. You are prompted to fill in the first word on a random page in the book in order to qualify for the discount.

PS Check out Esther’s blog here

Twitternovels version: ask not what your project has done for you: ask what went well, what went less well, & what will I do differently next time

Agile Retrospectives – Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen

Book Review: The Art of Innovation

This is a great book. Probably the most inspiring book about innovation that I have ever read. I defy anyone not to be moved to action by such infectious story telling.

The book is a collection of case studies and vignettes that illustrate how IDEO view innovation. One of my favourites is the shopping trolley challenge. The brief was to completely redesign the old, familiar shopping trolley in just five days. The almost blow-by-blow account of those five days shows you what can be done with a clear focus and a dedicated team.

The IDEO beliefs are clearly presented. Chapter 3 is called "Innovation begins with an eye" and describes how they rely on observation-fueled insight and why they are not big fans of focus groups. IDEO also believe that innovation is a team sport, indeed that the myth of the lone genius can actually hamper a company's efforts in innovation and creativity. The story of the start-up of Amazon is a lesson in rapid prototyping. And there's much more.

There are also some terrific descriptions of the early days of portable computing and handhelds. Of course you'll find the ubiquitous Apple tales but in many ways I found the Handspring and Palm cases to be more interesting. There's a helpful index too so that you can find them again when you need a good story for your next workshop.

The one I find myself retelling the most is the kids Oral-B toothbrush. For decades kids toothbrushes have been smaller versions of adult brushes. The IDEO team put brushes in the hands of children and they quickly noticed the "fist phenomenon". Little kids grip the brush with their whole fist, unlike older kids and adults, who use their fingertips. The insight that smaller hands need fatter toothbrushes seems counter-intuitive until you see them in use. Today you would struggle to find any kids toothbrushes that are not chunky and fun for kids to hold.

My only quibble is the Amtrak case study on designing a new train. Anyone who uses the words "Amtrak" and "innovation" in the same sentence needs their head examined IMHO! Why they went to all that trouble to mock up a train carriage when they could have flown to Japan, Germany, or France and simply copied a bullet train, ICE or TGV is beyond me. Perhaps this is evidence that some of the cases in the book have been touched up a little in order to make a point. There is also a little too much "isn't IDEO incredible" about some of the stories that some readers may find mildly annoying.

Those of you familiar with ?WhatIf! will recognise many of the principles, beliefs and concepts in this book. What makes The Art of Innovation different from Sticky Wisdom (the ?! book) is that it lets the case studies tell the story. In the end, that is the power of this great book; to read how so many people have invented so much is truly inspiring. By the end, you believe that you too can invent anything and you cannot wait to get started.

Twitternovels version: IDEO's inspiring innovation stories

The Art of Innovation by David Kelley

I arrivedOK to london

I arrivedOK to London. I am beta testing ArrivedOK. I set this system up to auto-blog this message upon arrival. If you see this then you know that I just arrived at London Heathrow Airport and that ArrivedOK works! . Jonathan Clark

Conference Calls

Do you like conference calls? Personally I hate them. I much prefer meeting face-to-face meetings or if that's impossible I like to use a webcam or videolink. The worst case scenario is when dialing in to a meeting with all of the other attendees in a room together with only you on the 'phone. It is so hard to stay engaged in a conversation without visual and physical cues as feedback. And if you are not engaged then what is the point of joining the meeting at all? More often than not it feels as if the 'phone participants have been invited to make sure they didn't feel they were left out.

Love them or hate them, they seem to have become unavoidable and in the current climate I suppose there will be even more. Timely then for some top tips on how to stop worrying and love the conference call. There is plenty of etiquette-type help out there but Sasha has some great advice which Seth Godin picked up on and added his own. Here's a summary of their top tips and some of my own:

• Create an “in the room” role. Assign someone to be the voice of the sentiment “in the room,” explaining to people on the phone what’s going on. This person fills in the silences with comments like, “Yes, everyone agrees,” or “Angela, you look like you’re not convinced by that last remark, can you tell us what’s on your mind?”
• Create a norm that when an important question comes up, you’ll go around the horn and ask everyone to say something
• Have people who are not “in the room” lead the call. Keeps them engaged and validates that just because they’re on the phone doesn’t mean they are less important
• Never equate silence with agreement. It’s bad enough to do this in person. Worse still on the phone.
• Keep calls short. More than 30 minutes on the phone and you’ve probably lost the person dialing in.
• Keep groups small. Less than 4 is ideal, but 6 or fewer seems to work.
• Calls should be accompanied by an online chat room with text chat in parallel with a voice conference call. It helps participation and breaks the "silence"
• If you have to present while on the 'phone, invest in a wireless headset and stand up while presenting (try it! It really works!)
• If most of the participants are on the 'phone, have everyone dial in separately from their workplace even if some could gather in a room together - it helps keep a "room" from dominating the call
• Play "just three words" game - ask for feedback or comments from everyone using just three words - the antidote to long, drawn out 'phone comments
• And one last suggestion: if you’re asking people to call in to a conference call at an inhumane time (very early or very late), be religious about starting the call on time. It’s the easiest way to show respect for people who aren’t in the room

What are your top tips for conference calls?

Book Review: Tribes by Seth Godin

This brief book is a hotch potch of stories, ideas, quotes and inspirational urgings on leadership. Some of it is trite and even annoying, but other parts are astonishly insightful. Overall though I'm very glad I read it and, my friends, I would recommend you read it too.

At the heart of Tribes is the notion that leaders are defined by their followers. Followers gather together in tribes with a shared interest and a way to communicate. Seth argues that the Internet has made it easier than ever for tribes to form. And easier than ever to take the lead and make things happen. Along the way he goes a long way towards explaining the remarkable success of community sites such as Facebook and services such as Twitter. Seth himself is remarkable. Much of the content of his books seems to be published on his blog first. And yet despite this (or maybe because of it?) his books become bestsellers. That's seems to me like a business model worth investigating. In more ways than one I think the publishing industry could learn a lot from Mr Godin.

This book is even structured very much a blog. 125 pages of short bloglike entries each with a little nugget of insight. My favourite is entitled Belief:

"People don't believe what you tell them They rarely believe what you show them They often believe what their friends tell them They always believe what they tell themselves. What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change."

This last sentence gives a clue as to why I think the book is so relevant to innovation. For me innovation is all about thinking and acting differently. For Seth "the very nature of leadership is that you're not doing what's been done before. If you were, you'd be following, not leading". We need leadership in order to create something remarkable, we need bravery to take the initiative and to make things happen. That's what Tribes is about and why I'm glad I read it.

#Twitternovels version of this review: Leaders need followers. You too can be a leader as long as you can find yourself some followers. Social media helps

Twitternovels

Listening to Peter Sagal, the presenter of the NPR News Quiz Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, I learnt about keitai shousetsu, novels written on mobile 'phones in Japan. Of course there are now all sorts of people writing novels one tweet at a time. Peter had a slightly different idea: Twitternovels - book summaries in 140 characters or less. Here's some examples that really made me smile.

Pilgrim's Progress: Are we there yet?
The Hound of the Baskervilles: The entomologist did it.
Pride & Prejudice: I hate that guy. Actually, he's kinda hot
The Grapes of Wrath: Times are hard. Sister breast feeding homeless guy. I am so outta here.
Lion, Witch & Wardrobe: 4 Brits find magic world, talking lion, & witch in closet; kill witch, become royalty, accidentally go home
Watership Down: A stirring tale of trust, leadership, and epic battles. With bunnies.
Jane Eyre: Plain girl takes up with a posh man after a harsh childhood. Only life is still harsh cos she has to look after man
Catcher in the Rye: Kicked out of school again. Drunk-dialed some friends. Adults suck.
Huckleberry Finn: Buddy & I rafted this weekend. Rapids were bitchin'.

Here's a couple I tried myself

Of Mice and Men: Lennie loves rabbits. And dreaming. Curley's Wife dies by accident. Lenny shot before mob lynch him. Loneliness is all there is.

HHGTTG: That's a good answer. I wonder what the question is? Infinitely improbable.

Sticky Wisdom: How to have fun and innovate

I wonder if anyone has tried to write an entire novel in just 140 characters.....