The tradeoff between simplicity and features has been around for ages, but it was hotly debated on the web by two of the most forward thinking software luminaries: Jason Fried and Joel Spolsky.  Their back and forth debate hit a crescendo last year around the time I attended the wonderful Business of Software conference put on by Spolsky.

The general notion is that the 37 Signals crew sees simple designs as not only better for users, but better for the product as well.  Doing less means less code, less bugs, less training and among other things, a more focused clear experience.  They advocate having a real point of view about your application and driving it from your own compass.  Customers can ask for things, and they may get em, but not just because they asked and the tie goes to 37 Signals.

There is a lot to like in this model and I have always been a huge 37 Signals fan.  Through their blog and book, I have learned many new things and validated some things I already figured out.  No doubt they have helped countless others as well.  Incidentally, the same can be said of Joel and his books.  These are smart, experienced people.

Joel and his product FogBugz would of course agree that simple is better.  The issue arises when customers actually want something you don’t provide and they have options.  See in the world of no competition life is easy.  If you are the only car maker and you don’t have cupholders, big deal.  People still need a car and you are the only game in town.  Life is substantially different if you are an email provider who doesn’t allow attachments.  You can be sure your customers are heading elsewhere.

But wait, adding attachments means another icon or label.   More code.  Perhaps a bit of training and potential confusion over how the feature works.  Over time the storage of big files may me performance hit or storage issues (for you or the customer).  What about maximum file sizes?  You have to document that limitation and probably have some code to check and provide error messages.  Should pricing change in this model?  Hmm, this gets complex fast.  Again, simple is so smart because software is so hard.

As you can see the rubber meets the road when you have two things: (1) unmet needs and (2) viable alternatives.  Where there is profit, competition soon shows up.  Whether you like it or not you are being compared.  Even if it doesn’t matter to you, it matters to them.  How do you decide what is a fair price to pay for a bar of soap or a burrito?   You compare.

The trick is to be aware of competition, but not to let it drive you.  I have written on this in the past.  There are always alternatives (sometimes custom coded) and there are always features asked for that you don’t have.

IHMO you cannot ignore either missing features or competition in enterprise software.  However, this does not mean you need to add every feature asked for or copy your competition.  There are better ways, but first, let’s look at the big three drivers of scope issues in big business software: (1) Analysts, (2) Complexity and (3) Stakeholders.

(1) Analysts are paid to add more, ever complex/advanced features to their latest must have list.  Customers read this and ask vendors if they do it.  Vendors need to be positioned well in the latest magic grapefruit so they build away.

(2) This stuff is just complex.  Approvals, workflow, audit trails, internationalization, integration, and more make it tough.  Dealing with all these situations causes complexity.

(3) Very rarely is there one “buyer”.  The “stakeholders”.  Many times cross functional with different ideas on features and priorities.  The less people involved, the easier the decision making, but it just isn’t reality most of the times.  It is why you have countless sales books written about this exact topic.

So what if you take a stand?  You listen to these ideas and politely state “we view payables or opportunity management or recruiting a bit differently”.  “We know what is best”.  “We understand your idea and see that you might think it is important, but we don’t think it fits with our perspective”.  “We like our product as it is and we are the experts.”

You can imagine how that would go with the sales team, or the analyst relations crew, or your own management.  Why?  Because saying “no” is the death of the sale. The secret is to make sure that saying “yes” isn’t the death of the product experience.

The reason this fascinates me is that I see both sides of the argument as valid having built and run an internal social network for a number of years and having run product teams in the past.  If you go ultra simple you inevitably limit your own business.  If you go for the checkbox approach you get a very difficult to use product that looks good on an RFP.

Additionally, you end up creating a place for small competition who does one thing really well to come in.  Incidentally, pride comes in as well.  No one is proud of a product they have to apologize for – this has to be avoided as well.

Like most things in life, black and white views are great for marketing, but nothing is ever that simple.  Here is where I ended up (doesn’t mean it is right, just my latest thought).

1. Cut Corners (cases): Make a feature work hard to be in a release.  It should be something customers really need and something you agree with as a product manager.  I have seen way too many things in products because someone, somewhere said something.  This cannot happen.  Any chance of simple ends with that type of process.  This is your first gate.

2. Think holistically. Once something makes it into scope you now need to think about both design of the feature and impact on the system (most ignore this part).  The real issue with new features is when it messes up something else.  You have to look at the whole product and be willing to change things dramatically if need be.  Otherwise you’ll have a confusing house of cards.  Done right, a new feature may even add simplicity if it replaces something that was not quite right beforehand.  Look for these opportunities.

3. Focus on Goals not Features. Users love to provide feedback in terms of features.  The key is to listen to the intent. The problem. What are they trying to do?  Users are not the best people to design your feature, you are.  They are however very important and you need to listen.  So listen, but when you understand the need see how you can best meet it.  It may be they nailed it, but there may also be a more appropriate answer.  Done well, this solves the sales issue.  Being a product manager does not mean you are collecting requests unvetted.

4. SKU v Over Bloat. I favor new skus over a bigger single product.  More features leads to more code that is harder to move and difficult to market.  Try explaining to a friend the features of outlook or excel.  Now explain the key features of a to do list or twitter.  Different conversations.

The art is finding the natural break points.  The joints.  When you do, make sure they work well together.  I like point solutions that naturally fit.  I think it is a model that scales both in simplicity and sales.  Incidentally, the iphone app model so popular now is playing this game.

The tough thing is that there are some really successful products (like Outlook) which do a ton of stuff.  Wouldn’t we all like to fail like that?  Then we look at Twitter and think how simple it is and how well they have done.  But I think pointing to these high water marks is less than helpful.  Correlation is not causation.  Microsoft wins for a lot of reasons and maybe those reasons just overpower the feature bloat via brute force.  In fact MSFT has recognized their challenges here with their UI revamp recently in Office.  And Twitter works, but in that “buying cycle” there is no rfp, no analyst, no stakeholders – just you.  You like it, use it.  If tomorrow you hate it, stop using it.  Life behind the firewall is just not that idyllic.

In the end, I find both arguments have valid points.  Simple is smart for a lot of reasons and should be seen as a design goal.  Making sales easy is also the right answer or else you won’t have much of a future.  Being able to say “yes” to customers is a wonderful feeling, but there is a balance here that should not be ignored over a certain dogma.  The art is in the middle and it is why being a product manager is so fun.

Enterprise software can stand for something.  It can have an appropriately simple and elegant user experience.  It can in fact have users who delight in its use and it can be explained clearly to the target users.  Too often we give ourselves a free pass in these areas and this is the biggest challenge – our own standards and a sense that good enough is definitely not good enough should be our guide.

PaulPossibly Related Posts:

• Ignore Your Competition, Focus on the Stable
• Why 2.0 Didn’t Start in the Enterprise
• On Product Management
• Hug a Developer
• Driving Innovation, Get It?

In life if something doesn’t work out, at least you can learn from it.  That is the power of doing.  The beauty of being a human being is that we are exceptionally good at learning from others.  As I watched Google launch Buzz, and the ensuing mess, it got me thinking.  Why did a project like Buzz not exactly work out (as of yet) when something like Twitter did?  They are both kinda the same, right?

I am sure the guys at Google have a whole lot so say on the matter, but from my outside perspective I gleaned a few lessons:

1. Big Bang is Tough – Anytime you do a big launch you are placing a bet that you got it perfect.  The fact is that you never will.  There are always people who love you and those that can find something bad to say about a free pizza.  Such is life.  So we best just accept it and do something we think is great and hopefully, slowly, others will find us, and agree.  Making everyone happy is not a real goal.  Let’s just make ourselves, and maybe a few others happy.  Remember Cuil?

2. Solve A Problem, Don’t Create More  - The reason a site like Twitter worked was that it filled a niche.  It enabled very simple broadcasting (and consumption) of information.  No one on twitter expects a reply.  Email is different.  IM is different.  Those are tools for private communications and they work very well.  However, when you want to tell the world that you slept in and missed the bus, where do you turn?  Thankfully we have Twitter.  Whether we think it is useful or not is irrelevant, it fills a missing element in the communications continuum.  Buzz was just doing the same thing.  Was anyone really asking for more noise in their inbox?  Doesn’t everyone already feel overwhelmed by the volume they already have? If not, just turn off the spam filter and enjoy.

3. Networks Hate Competition - Why is it that we are ok with a million twitter clients but not Buzz?  It comes down to the network.  Personally, I’d love a single network, but my request to the Internet Gods has fallen on deaf ears and I have both Twitter and Facebook. The problem is not having the network or assembling it – It is managing it. The whole point of a network is to communicate with it.  I don’t think people have the energy to be witty in 3 places – it is hard enough to blow people’s minds regularly on Twitter.  In fact, I have even linked my Twitter and Facebook publishing to avoid just this issue.

4. People Hate Change - I don’t care what you are doing, if people are even remotely content, you will lose.  You need some serious dissatisfaction for people to change what they do.  If you ask them to lift a finger, even the baby pinky finger in zero gravity, forget it.  You ever wonder why there are no Facebook group called “I can find 100,000,000 people who can’t live without the next Facebook redesign”.  Did you ever wonder why iphone apps took off and dashboard widgets never did?  We are all lazy, and telling me I now have to do something to get what I already have is a non-starter. Uh, no thanks.

Ok, so I never like pointing out issues without at least shining a light on possible answers.

The net of this for me is that if you want to play in this space, don’t copy.    If you are into collaboration, realize that the 1:1 and 1:Many problems are solved quite well.  However, that means that the small group collaboration (1:Some) market is wide open. Being able to share very, very easily with a few people privately could be a very useful tool people might adopt.  They might also just stick with email (see #4).

Another possible answer here is to tame the noise, as Rich has alluded to.   Now if you want solve this problem and unify existing networks and magically figure out what is important I commend you.  Just realize (a) that is a monster problem, (b) do it for yourself and no one else, and (c) you need something to call your own.  No product built on someone elses value lasts long without their own value.  Amazon sells other people’s books, but has an incredible end to end buying experience. Google maps uses someone elses map data, but now adds user maps, street view, etc.  So aggregating is not enough, think hard about what you will do that no one else does.  Yes, I know, it will be your algorithm.

Technology is tough.  It moves very fast, people can be unforgiving and failures are very public, but don’t let that stop you.  Every now and then people will root for you if you step out into the darkness like Google did with Buzz.  The fact is that no one remembers the critics.  So get out there and be amazing.Possibly Related Posts:

• My Anti-Social Experiment
• The Obligatory Google Buzz Review
• These Are Our Users
• You Know You Love Email
• Too Much Information Makes People Something Something

Last week my imac (home computer), that my wife uses to run our little lunchbox company begin having some serious issues.  Slow access times, constant rebooting and as of yesterday a complete inability to boot.  Just a lovely grey screen of solitude much like the image above, until it refused to even show that little folder after numerous frustrated reboots.  I am quite certain that this would never happen to the Jesus Tablet, but I digress…

So I grab my trusty Snow Leopard install CD (Family Pack, yes I am a sucker).  Throw it in, hit the button on the back of the imac, holding the “c” key of course, and it happily boots to the disk. I confidently launch the disk utility and low and behold, no hard drive shows up.

See this is where I get kinda worried.  Usually you are able to at least SEE the hard drive.  Then you do all the fun repair, repair permissions or worst case reformat and move on with your life like a bad first date.  In my case, this baby was lost beyond all recognition.

Once again I pay a visit to the gods of the Internet for advice.  Turns out a few nerds (here and here)  have actually taken their imac’s apart and swapped the hard drive.  So I figure, how hard can it be, I own a drill.  I pick up a 1.5TB Seagate drive ($128), a set of Torx wrenches ($18.51) and a suction cup ($10.95) for removing the screen – all from Amazon with 1 day shipping for $3.99 – Have I told you how much I love Amazon?

Here is how it went down:

1) I removed the glass with my new favorite toy, the suction cup.  It was a real Mission Impossible moment for me.  Life changing.

2) Here I have the outer casing removed and you can see the lower front as well as my kick ass Bosch drill in the reflection.

3) After removing 8 torx bolts you can see the innards in all their future human killing Skynet glory – along with the awesome drill again – show off.

4) There she is.  What a quitter.  Never again Western Digital.  You get one shot with me.

5) The crime scene as it went down.  See the LCD on the floor with the purple bear.  Yeah I was pretty nervous at this point.  Hold me.

6) It’s alive, alive!!  I totally knew it would work.

OK, so now I have a functional computer (after about 40 minutes of open screen surgery).   I partitioned and formatted the drive, installed the OS and everything is good, right.  Uh, not so fast, what about my data, my passwords, my bookmarks, my life (it may not be much, but it’s mine)!

The good news is that since having my laptop stolen last year I have been pretty rigorous to keep EVERYTHING in the cloud.  Here is what I use for serious peace of mind:

XMarks – This keeps all my bookmarks in sync between browsers and computers.

DropBox – ALL files I work on that I care about live on DropBox.  They are AWESOME.

1 Password – Keeps all my passwords and login details for important stuff like my Safeway Club Card.  Incidentally, I use Dropbox to keep the vault file remote.

Mozy – This is my second line of defense and I do a daily backup of EVERYTHING.  Dude, it is $5 a month, c’mon.

Between these services I literally lost zero data.  Photos, music, passwords, work files – all safe and already my “new” machine is on par from a data perspective with my old.  I did have to install a few desktop apps like iwork, ilife, and illustrator, but that’s a breeze compared to re-buying your itunes library.  In the end I also went from a 500GB drive to a 1.5TB drive – which is pure awesomeness.

Never to be underestimated, I saved my wife a ton of hassle and worry, which means I saved myself a whole bunch of hassle and worry.  Yep, more time for me to cuddle up with my PS3.

Be safe out there and stay in school!

PaulPossibly Related Posts:

• Air Sharing Gives You iPhone File Sharing Goodness
• Dropbox is Sweet
• Weekend Project: Macbook Surgery
• More Fun with Virtualization
• Taking the Plunge: Part 3

Foursquare

Also titled: “What I learned from FourSquare.”

A few years back when we started exploring new technology, one of the ideas that seemed to stick with me was around gaming.   The processes that made something enjoyable seemed to be an essential, yet elusive ingredient in business software.

In truth, I felt there was something magical about games, even if I could not articulate it.  For many people, games are an escape – a respite from the day to day.  A chance, even for a moment to be someone, or something, they are not.  Whatever the call, the reality is that millions of people choose to spend their precious free time paying to game.  If you don’t believe it, you can look to the hundreds of millions of game consoles currently out there (DS, Wii, XBOX360, PS3, etc) or the recent online examples like Zynga and their 50 million daily active users playing casual games.  Zynga is especially interesting since users actually pay for virtual goods.  They amass hundreds of millions of dollars from people buying better (virtual) guns in MafiaWars or more productive (virtual) tractors in Farmville.  Think about that.  People pay real money for stuff like hairstyles for their avatars. If that doesn’t blow your mind you should exit at this point.

Still here?  Cool.  Now, let’s contrast this to work.   Work is a place where employees provide a function for a certain amount of pay.  Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but this is the general model.  I hire you to do a job.  You agree to do that job in return for compensation.  Repeat.  Work is the OPPOSITE of a game.  In fact, if you even hint at the idea of work having the potential to be a game (or at least gamelike in some small way) you are relegated to the padded corporate room never again allowed to send an email to your bosses boss without your bosses careful review.  No promotion for you!

One of the problems here is a genuine lack of respect.  It is hard to take people’s ideas seriously when you don’t respect them.  If we don’t appreciate games for the amazing things they do, we will never pay attention long enough to actually learn.  As software developers and product managers of “valuable” software we could use a bit of humility, and perhaps games can be a great source of inspiration.

Games are the highest form of application development.  They have tackled extremely challenging problems that would cause most software developers to wake up in a sweaty mess.  Take Halo as an example (a game several years old).  Incredible graphics…sure.  Real time interaction…got it.  Physics modeling for gravity, destructive environments… done.  How about connecting people from across the world, as if they are in the same room, fighting an alien race, in real time, while talking on headsets to each other…why not?

And the web software world is abuzz with an ajax pop up menu?

Games are not trivial technology, but more interestingly, they are not trivial in how the do what they do.  The magic is that they get you to return again and again to do things THEY want you to do while thinking it is what YOU want to do. Does this sound like it may be useful for work?

Indulge me in a walk down memory lane…Remember that old school tabletop/cocktail pacman from the local pizza place?  Remember how much you wanted to get to the top of the high score list?  Remember how you wanted to express your originality with a cool three letter handle? (Hey self-expression wasn’t so easy back then!)  I always went with the boring “PDP”, but maybe if I made it to the top I’d have been emboldened to go with “ACE” or “XXX” or something else my 14 year old self would have found cool.

The point is that I pumped quarters into that thing for the street cred and lavish lifestyle that a high score would inevitably bring.  But the rabbit hole is deeper.  It’s not just about the leaderboard and the praise that would have most surely been showered upon you.  It’s HOW you got there in the first place.  You had to pick up dots,  throw the javelin and hit the albatross, or get the second space fighter to drop to double your firepower.  Every game had its own little tricks to up that score – unlocking secret levels, extra lives, and more.  The game designer kept you exploring, learning, developing, growing, wanting.  Not a moment was work.

I bring that up to express that there is in fact an art to game design.  A balance between ease of use and depth.  The interplay of challenge and frustration.  I once read an article by a member of the Bungie development team (of Halo fame).  He basically noted that all shooters have to get a single experience right.  That moment when you happen upon a group of enemies and dispatch them with extreme prejudice.  That simple act, repeated over and over, has to be fun.  You can do a million other things, but that one thing must work, and work well.  Said another way, if jumping barrels in Donkey Kong, no leader board would save it.

Back to the present day.  If you have been following the location based services out there, you have no doubt heard of FourSquare.  They are in the same game as earlier rivals such as Loopt, Google Lattitude, Dopplr, and FireEagle.  All of these bring their own flavor to the concept of broadcasting your physical location, but Foursquare was the first that made me want to play.  In fact, for years I have been bearish on location since I really didn’t want to publicize where I was at all times.  Why did FourSquare work for me when the others did not?  Foursquare is a game that happens to feature location.

Let’s look at a few examples of how FourSquare is a game:

1. Collecting: You get points for various actions like providing your location (ie. checking in), checking in multiple times at a venue and more.  You can earn badges (eg. medals) as well.  Examples include a local badge for checkins in a given area or you can become the mayor if you check in enough at a single given location.

2. Competitive: The game puts leaderboards in an easy to reach place.  This gets you to strive for being the top point earner among your friends or your geographical area.  What do points do for you?  Nothing, just status.  Prestige.  I am not sure why you want em’, but trust me, you want em’.

3. Powers: Everyone starts with basic abilities like checking in, but you soon gain more capabilities depending on your “level”.  So you can do things only the experienced can.  Feeling special is cool.  Ever wonder why they have that velvet rope and a line at empty nightclubs?

4. Shared: The game is not played alone (much).  Solo games are OK, but the great games include others.  How fun is reading Trivial Pursuit cards on your own.  “YES!  Nailed another Arts&Leisure – Sweet”.  As an aside, what was the last “business” app you “played” with someone else?  Bueller, Bueller?

5. Expressive: Foursqure allows users to co-create.  You augment the reality.  In FourSquare you can add venues or badges.  You play a part in crafting the experience for other players.  Truthfully, this is FourSquare getting the masses to do their work for them, but you don’t care cause you get to show off a bit and express your greatness.  People like to brag.  Who knew.

6. Purposeful: You don’t think about it, but games have a purpose.  Save the princess.  Eat the little dots.  In FourSquare it is to check in.  That is the goal above all else.  They get you do do that over and over again, willingly.

7. Surprise: Every time you check in you may be the “mayor” of that location.  You may also find someone you know there already.  There is some exploration going on.  The element of suprise and the search for the unknown keeps you coming back.

Of course this is not a complete list of game mechanics, but they were the most obvious ones I saw in FourSquare and I thought they were implemented well.

So let’s return to the world of business software for a moment.  Hopefully I have convinced you that games are serious stuff and that we can learn a lot from them.  The challenge is that it takes courage.  I say courage because all product development is the application of resources to create a solution that you hope people will use and pay for.  Given that perspective, you begin with a problem like “people can’t track billable hours” or they “need to manage accounting”,etc.   People don’t start with “we need a game that can do accounting” – for obvious reasons.

That means that if you want to make a game you need to put the game first (like Foursquare did).  It needs to be a first class citizen and in the end, FUN must be a design principle.  If I was building a task management application I’d have to be asking “is it fun to add a task” as much as I’d consider things like categories, sorting, due dates, owners, and milestones.   This is extremely tough.  Adding gaming means something else does NOT make it.  Resources, scope and time are a zero sum game. I’d have to ask myself, do I create yet another task management application with the “features customers are asking for”, or do I create something that will really inspire (a few).  Do I accept the fact that most won’t like it or understand it?

Incremental is without risk and real innovation is definitely not for everyone.   Snapping a leaderboard on your application is fake innovation for those who want credit from others.   Real innovation means you must say no to a lot of things that everyone will tell you are a must have, but if you want inspiration it’s the only way.  Find that core of what your application is.  The one reason it lives (eg. adding a task, tracking time, sharing a file, whatever).  Find it.  Honor it.  Strip away the noise.  And then work like hell to make it FUN.

If you do that you will most surely be laughed at.  You will almost definitely fail, but you will have pushed the needle of innovation a wee bit ahead.

Until next time.Possibly Related Posts:

• Mayor of Simpleton
• Geo Me This
• Checkin to Foursquare by Taking a Picture
• Foursquare Launches an API
• Learning from Entertainment

Photo Credit: FoxTongue

I watched a recent interview with Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose the other day.  In it, he was questioned as to how he, against the odds,  “beat” the various etailers of the day pushing books online.  His answer was fantastically elegant and straight forward.  He is fanatical about aligning his organization to his customer’s needs.  This may mean making short term decisions that do not align with shareholders, and if you are an Amazon customer (and I am for life) you have probably experienced this via their incredible return process.  However, he feels that in the long run, there is always alignment between customers and shareholders.  Brilliant.

Now you may be thinking, oh I have heard the customer-centric story before.  The good news is that Jeff went a bit deeper into their actual approach to a customer driven business.  In essence, he focuses his organization on excelling at the things customers want that do not shift over time.  To Amazon, that means, wide product selection, low price and fast delivery – those will always be important to his customer.  In his words, “I can’t imagine a customer saying, I really like Amazon, but I wish their prices were higher”.  I should note that this concept applies to software as well, as conveyed recently by  Jason Fried in his talk at the Business of Software Conference, only for him, the unchanging were things like ease of use and performance.

Back to Bezos – The other lesson conveyed subtly was to ignore the competition.  You may be sitting there saying, oh yeah, that sounds great, but I can’t ignore my competition.  I need to know what they are doing so I can contrast the differences to my customers or so I can talk credibly to the analysts.  On that point, I would agree, but it is a matter of intent and degree.  The problem arises when you use that competitive gaze to consume all your time or to drive your strategy.  Michael Porter may disagree, but strategy, from my perspective, must be driven primarily from your customers needs.  Everything else is secondary.

The intersting thing about these notions is that they are in many ways ignored by companies of all shapes and sizes.  Far too often I see firms chasing market hype or the latest competitive move in a copycat feature race to oblivion, while customers sit on the sidelines with their popcorn.  Competitor A adds AJAX, we need it.  Competitor B has a Facebook app, we gotta have it.  Competitor C is on demand, let’s get on it.  Perhaps it is just easier or more fun to spend time talking to your co-workers about cool new features as opposed to reaching out to customers and potentially hearing about what you can do better.  Who wants to hear that right?

As you ponder this you may be tempted to return to your cozy old ways of thinking and acting.  The usual line that I hear to counter this approach, is that customers really don’t know what they want anyway, so why ask them.  That comment is usually followed up with something pithy like “Would a customer have asked for the ipod?”.  To that I say, rubbish.  Customers are very bright and if you talked to a few you might have already known that.

Let me leave you with three simple reasons why a strategy driven by competition is a fools errand:

1. Time Is Limited: Every moment you spend on our competition is time you could have spent working with a customer.

2. Competitors Could Be Wrong: The strategy they are implementing, and you are choosing to follow, could be off the mark and a total waste of time and money.  Oftentimes we think people at other companies are smarter than us – that could be wrong too.

3. Your Strategy Must Be Yours: Not all companies are created equal.  Each has their own assets, skills, resources, relationships and more, that they can, and should, bring to bear on a strategy.  If you copy your competitor you just may be ignoring your best assets and playing a game on their home turf.  If you have a great running game, do you play a passing offense because that is what the other team is doing?  The answer is obvious and no different for business.

In the end, my favorite part of this is the simplicity.  As humans, we love complex things.  They make us feel smart and special, but more and more, in life and in business simple wins the day.

Now where is my phone, I need to call a customer…Possibly Related Posts:

• Tracking The Competition, Socially
• Software is Hard
• Is Simple Viable In Enterprise Land?
• Simple: It’s not about the UI
• Guerrilla Tactics, the iLife Effect and the Center of Gravity

I am spending some cycles these days thinking on the integration of play and work. I happen to believe that there is some real magic to be had here for organizations and for firms looking to supply the next generation of software.   Sure making work a game seems a bit out there (I get that), and I guess I could go back to thinking about RSS and Twitter, but I think that is pretty well covered by a host of others.   Knowing my current fascination with this topic, Jake passed along this TED talk by Stuart Brown:

Although I agree whole heartily with the message, and his story about the wild polar bear playing with huskies is incredible (watch it just for that), the section on the integration of play into our adulthood was sorely lacking in actionable information.  We are told the diagnosis (“Play is important to everyone”), but are abruptly kicked out of the hospital without any treatment and a draft from the back of our robe.  To be fair, Stuart did share some work done in his class on play at Stanford that endeavored to connect play with adult work life.  The short video showed how his  students  would “re-invent” the meeting.

As the video rolled, I was hoping for something incredible, and unfortunately was left feeling frustrated.   The idea presented by the students was to put on full body white painters overalls and then use dry erase markers to keep notes on each other during the meeting.   Sure, set to music and fast motion editing, it seems fun, but I think it hurts our cause more than helping it.   No “serious” executive will ever see that as anything but a waste of time.  In fact, no one that works anywhere, at any level, would see this as valuable.  I am sure it was fun to do, but if we want to make any inroads we simply cannot ignore the firm footing “getting something done” has in the mindset of the modern worker.

To give credit where it is due, they are at least trying.  Just because we do not have a great solution today, does not mean that the problem does not exist.  The imbalance of play and purpose that most people feel at work cannot be ignored.  These are just the crude early efforts.  My sense is that we will have to take smaller, bite size approaches of integrating play with work for it to be effective, but that does not mean that more ambitious concepts like the one presented at Stanford will not provide the fodder for more practical initiatives.

In my next post I will give a practical example of how I think play can be integrated with a product management role inside a company.  Stay tuned.

——————————

Cross Posted to GameTheMachinePossibly Related Posts:

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Photo Credit: Timothy Hamilton

I recently watched this excellent video of Nick Fortugno at the Meaningful Play conference in 2008.  If you are into designing games with a message behind them it is worth a watch.

Among other things, he highlights the basic split in entertainment between “form” and “content”.  Form being the mechanics used to convey the message.   Using examples from the past like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he shows clearly how known formulas have been used effectively to deliver what some might call, socially responsible messages.  In the case of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, she used a fairly common literary model to inject a social discussion of abolitionism into the mainstream social conversation.

If you ponder formulas, you can find them in all types of media and entertainment.  From a gaming perspective, you see them as First Person Shooters (FPS), Simulation, Role Playing Games (RPG), Board games, and more.  From a film perspective, you might think about Action, Drama, Comedy or Documentary.  It is essential to understand that each of these formulas attract a specific audience with clear expectations well trod by their previous experiences.  People are attracted to a specific formula because of what it provides.  How many nights have you said, “I am in the mood for a comedy”?  – It is much more rare to say you are in the mood for a comedy about golf, or an action movie about the African diamond trade.

If you go see a horror movie, you will expect some blood and gore, creepy imagery, and most likely some scantily clad teenagers at a deserted lake.  As long as the director provides those key elements, you’ll leave (to a degree) satisfied.  You got what you ordered.  If the entertainment meets that core need and provides the emotional experience you sought, then you are open to receive the message they are delivering.  From a design perspective, you just have to honor the formula and provide the desired experience or it will cease to be enjoyable to the audience.  If you deny them the pleasure of a deep belly laugh when they yearned for comedy, no matter how interesting you may find your message, it will be lost.

If you are a web designer you may see a parallel here when you consider  Steve Krug’s views on convention.  His opinion is that using expected behavior is good no matter how cool you think that flash widget is!  Use a search box that looks the same as everyone else.  Have a shopping cart icon that leads to the shopping cart.  If you plan to reinvent how the shopping cart, search button, or the hyperlink work – you better have a very, very good reason.  So your website formula is standard, the message (ie. content) is up to you.

So let’s connect this with the world of software that people use to get things done – email, task management, payroll, bookkeeping, project management, etc. – collectively “business software”.   If entertainment like films, games and books have taught us anything, it is that you must first create something enjoyable.  Play is paramount.  In the world of entertainment, purpose is largely ignored (on a percentage basis), but you can see it shine through in films like Erin Brokovich, The Insider, and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, among many others – documentaries are great at this.  In the world of business software, the report card is skewed in the other direction, with purpose being the leader by a wide margin, and fun being largely ignored.  The very idea of fun seems at odds with something of value.  Both worlds could do with a bit of balance.

My hope is that the future of business software can assimilate the lessons of entertainment by making something people want to play consistently as opposed to a tool to get something done.   We are already seeing simplicity as a key design principle, but I believe that the dimension of fun is next.  My guess is that we will as an industry need to adopt or invent a new formula for software and apply them to the problems we are trying to solve in a novel way.

Who is up for a game of email?

————

Cross posted at Game The Machine.Possibly Related Posts:

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Play is our natural state.  It is healthy and fun.   In that state, we are engrossed and engaged.  Time, as they say, “flies”.  As we grow up and put aside childish things, we lose this connection to our natural state and a strong division between play and work emerges.  In fact it is worse than this, because in the adult mind, play itself has not only changed, but in many cases, it has been lost altogether, morphed into some hobbled likeness of itself.  Play becomes a scheduled 30 minute block on the treadmill or a set of reps that some trainer mandated be completed before gulping a protein shake of predetermined size.  The once energizing activity becomes goal driven and miraculously, it loses it’s magic.  Did you ever ask a child why they play?  What exactly is the objective of climbing the monkey bars?

photo credit: Strocchi

In many ways, this subtle mental shift from play to work marks the end of innocence and a firm transition to adulthood.   At some point that we can’t quite pinpoint, this new mode of being, becomes the norm, and yet the vast majority of us move along, day in, day out, in some Orwellian food line, without questioning why.  We assume that work simply must be this way, for that is how it has always been.  After all, that is why it is called “work” after all. Work is about getting something done – there is a purpose, a goal, an outcome – something of value beyond the individual is created by the activity.

work (see definition)

“exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something”

This is where things get interesting…

Let’s return to our example of kids playing in a playground.  If you asked an adult about the value of such an activity, they would list off several: physical fitness, learning group communication skills, imprinting gross motor movements, and the list goes on.  So clearly something worthwhile is being produced, but that is an observer’s perspective.  That is looking at results and outcomes.  That is the objective thinking of management.   To the player – there is only one objective  – to have fun.  The moment the fun slips through their fingers, they drift to another activity meeting that simple criterion.

This distinction is essential since I posit that we can see work as an adult in the same way.  The key is to understand that  making an activity fun in itself does not remove, change, or eliminate the benefits of the activity – it just makes the activity inherently enjoyable.

Our historical view seems to be that the world is binary – either you work at something or you play at something and never the two shall meet.  I question that assumption.  I not only believe that work (and other activities) are capable of being simultaneously fun and valuable beyond the individual.  I see nothing inherent in purpose or utility that precludes enjoyment to the point that it ceases to be work in the mind of the doer at all.  The cause of our current conundrum, as I see it, is a lack of creativity.

It is my goal to bridge these two worlds of play and purpose to highlight the art of creating products, services, and a way of work that embrace a new, higher standard.  However, we should be clear there is a method to the madness.  There is a reason to embrace this new model, other than it being new.  From a human perspective it is the most healthy – people should be living lives of play, but it also works from an economic perspective as well.  If we endeavor to make what most people do more than a task to be completed, we can drive  loyalty, passion, usability, and use.  It could just be the secret weapon to making something people remember.

Designers of products and services today spend a majority of time on fleshing out purpose.  What are the features?  What does it do?  Why would someone buy this?  All valuable questions, but my hope is that we can add a bit of balance to the process.  It would serve us well as providers and consumers to ponder the role that play could have in our creations.  More play not to the detriment of purpose, but to its enrichment.

Your move.

——————————

I started a new blog to track my personal work to come around gaming applied to products, services, and more.  For those interested, I’ll keep it at http://www.gamethemachine.com, but will cross-post for a bit.Possibly Related Posts:

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I presented the above at Defrag 08′ in Denver yesterday.  The idea was to take some
known concepts around understanding networks and apply them to how we manage a
community.  This is new ground for us at the lab, but based on the reaction from the
crowd, the direction seems right.  We are working on doing some deeper analysis on
both Mix and Connect in the coming months and will certainly post that content to the
blog as we draw our conclusions.  Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and ideas with me after the presentation.  Keep em coming.

I’d also like to thank Valdis Krebs at Orgnet.com for helping me to solidify some of my
early thoughts and for running the initial data on our social networks.  I encourage
anyone interested in this area to check out his writings and his software.

-PaulPossibly Related Posts:

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I am a bit of a closet designer. No I don’t have the funky glasses, but I appreciate great design and get a good laugh at poor design. Sometimes I run across designs that I just don’t understand. Here are two of my recent gems:

The first is this novel coffee mug from Delmonico’s Steakhouse in Vegas. I wondered what was wrong with the current design…

This one is from a physical therapy office in Northern California. This switch is to move the massage table up and down. I don’t know which does which, but it’s funny to watch people figure it out.

If you have other designs to poke fun at, drop the links in comments…Possibly Related Posts:

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There is a common thread in driving change. No matter what you are working towards, or where you are doing it – change is hard. You’ll run into challenges on time, budget, resources, personalities, vision, objectives, and more. Sometimes you’ll want to throw in the towel. We have all had those days.

I recently watched a fantastic lecture by Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon CS professor diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. At one point he mentions “brick walls”. He said “Brick walls are there for a reason. To keep the other people out”. This is gold for anyone who works towards change. Never, ever give up and if the thought crosses your mind, just remember that those brick walls are not meant for you. You can watch the entire fantastic lecture here.

Randy passed away last week at age 47.Possibly Related Posts:

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Do you have a vision for how technology can transform what your company or department does, but no one will listen?  Do you spend your day “evangelizing” the merits of social networking behind the firewall but finding it fall on deaf ears?  Do you find yourself explaining how a wiki works to everyone who emails you the 8meg ppt deck (that you already received 3 times)?  You are not alone.

In our capacity as an innovation team inside a big organization, we end up talking to quite a few individiuals who live and breath this whole Web 2.0 thing, feel it has great import to their business, and yet, can’t get the ball moving.  This article is for you.

How do you win over the naysayers in your company?

There is a great book on storytelling called The Story Factor. In it, the author mentions this concept of mental stories. A story is simple a set of notions, beliefs, concepts, ideas or mental structures you have in place in your mind.  It’s what you believe on a given subject as filtered through your background and experiences.  I find this model to be a great way to think about the disagreements we have with others. A disagreement is simply a conflict of stories.   Because these stories arise from out personal viewpoints, challenging them can be deeply emotional.

Take something simple. Imagine you believe that a site like Facebook would be great for your company to start using to work with partners and customers. You think it will tap into a group of people already there, make work more fun, improve collaboration, and be free to boot. What could be bad about that?  That is your story.

Now you mention this to a co-worker and they bring up concerns about privacy, they ask if people will be spending “too much” time on this kids site, and how you will measure the effectiveness of this program? All they see is risk.  That is their story.

Here is where the problem begins. Most people become so enamored with their story, that they become ineffective in driving change. Oftentimes, what started as a simple mismatch of two stories spirals into personal attacks, ending with the ultimate innovator’s insult – “they don’t get it”. This term attempts to absolve the speaker from any further reasoning. Mark Cuban makes this point well on his blog. My point however, is that it shuts down conversation. It is the easiest way out and I have rarely found the easy way to be the best way. In the words of Thomas Paine:

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; ‘Tis dearness only that gives every thing its value, Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods”

How do you win others over?

In my experience, you begin by being open to the possibility that they actually have something to offer to the conversation. A healthy dose of mutual respect will go far. You need to abandon the notion that you are 100% right.  If you don’t there is really no dialouge.  Anytime I bring any idea to another person, the idea is improved upon.   Sure there will be days when you think you have it all figured out, but rest assured, you don’t.

Now that you are open to actually hearing other perspectives; listen. This means paying attention to the other story. Finding the elements of another’s view that diverges from your own and really working to clearly hear the root of that position.  In our above example, you would deeply listen to the concern around wasted time, the fear of private information being disclosed, and the honest query into the ROI of the project.  If you take each issue, one at a time, and talk it through, you will in most cases have a mutual solution.  It can be a set of guidelines on what a site is meant for (and what it is not meant for).  It may be a clear privacy and terms of use policy.  It may be up front metrics and monthly tracking reports on activity.  The point is that respect for the other viewpoint and a bit of flexibility with both sides looking for a creative answer goes a long way.

This seems like a lot of work, do I need to listen to everyone?

Yes and no.  You need to understand where everyone is coming from, but that does not mean you spend all your time equally with each person.  In order to maximize your effectiveness, consider looking at your critics in a few buckets.

The Haters: These people are against you all the way and actively work to stop you.  They are set in their ways and typically argue against big concepts like openess or social networking.  They use broad brushes and rarely spend enough time to really understand your position.  These people are not worth talking to, and certainly not worth keeping up to date on your activities.  Cut your losses.

The Herd: Anything innovative is by definition, not yet mainstream.  Most people are in the mainstream, but don’t take it personal – It’s just a bell curve after all.  This group may not agree, but are most likely just ignoring you.  They have seen one too many fads and are waiting for this new thing to either become real or die.  This is another area where time can be wasted.  Juse keep them up to date (say with a monthly email) and draw them in with successes along the way.  Over time you may just find them joining in – once it is proven of course.

The Wannabes: This is the most important group for making change.  These are the ones that love the things you are doing, almost.  They really want to be a part of making a difference, but they feel your solution is just missing the mark.  You are over the hardest part with this group since they are not arguing in broad terms, so now just need to deal with the finer points of what you are offering (ie.”we really need file versioning, but this is cool”). These are the ones you bring into your discussions on the roadmap, you explain your vision, and you get engaged.

In the end evangelism is a bit like politics - you focus on the swing voters.  It’s about good time managment. The only caveat to this is that in some orgs there are just some people or teams you must have on board for a variety of reasons. Even if they disagree (sometimes violently), you have to engage.

Have you run into any of these people in your company?  How do you get others on board to your plans?  Sound off in comments.Possibly Related Posts:

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The family and I decided last Friday that we all deserved cheeseburgers for dinner (ok, my 4 year old daughter decided, but let’s pretend I had some say in the matter. We decide on Chili’s and commence to enjoy a fantastic heaping helping of saturated fat and salt. On the bright side, the kids had milk. But I digress.

At the end of the meal, our waiter closes out our tab and he makes a point to show me a link on the receipt to an online survey. Now, I have seen these in the past and never paid much attention to them…until now.

Our waiter explained that if he receives good feedback it will help him not just look good, but it will actually make him more money. It seems that the Chili’s manager looks at all the feedback ratings weekly and awards the better shifts (think Friday and Saturday night people) to the top servers.

Finally collaboration with a goal and a pot of gold (albeit small), at the end of the rainbow.Possibly Related Posts:

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Yesterday in Denver, Jake and I had lunch with a few nice folks from NewsGator, one of which was Jeff Nolan. As you may know, Jeff writes Venture Cronicles. In friendfeed, I noticed that Jeff had posted to his blog, so I went to have a read and ended up reading several posts. This one caught my eye.

The company mentioned prominently was RivalMap. They are a service purpose built for tracking competition. I took a look at the site and watched a good overview of the service (haven’t signed up). Overall I really liked their UI and found it very simple and intuitive and they do a nice job of focusing on the tracking of competitors although I would have liked to see a bit more automation to the process of gathering information (ie. google alert integration, etc).

The real question for me on RivalMap was its applicability to the typical user at a company. Of course every company has competition and they need to stay abreast of it, but does it warrant its own dedicated solution? Will people spend the time to add the content to make it valuable? Wouldn’t companies be better served by a more generic service that allowed say groups for competitor discussions, or similar?

My sense is that very large companies with dedicated competitive intelligence teams would absolutely love this service. I could see those teams signing up and running their organization on RivalMap, but again, how many of those teams are there?

In the end, I have always thought that you should spend your time on your customers instead of your competition, so not a large focus for me, but I have to commend RivalMap for building a product that looks great and goes after a specific challenge. I hope they do well.Possibly Related Posts:

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Every year I attend the Under The Radar conference held at the Microsoft Silicon Valley location. The organization is flawless, the companies interesting, and the facilities are wonderful.

If you don’t know, UTR is a showcase for start-ups that are not (yet) in the limelight. In fact, this is where many launch to the world.

The format is that each start-up is given 6 minutes to pitch their story and then a panel (or the audience) asks a few questions. Typically, each company is talking for about 15 minutes. It is long enough to get a real sense of if they are onto something, but not too long to bore you to death. The only downside is that you really only see about half of the companies since they have two tracks and you are forced to pick one.

Here were the most common themes:

1. Flash UI – Everyone had one. Some needed it. Some didn’t.

2. Virtualization – Storage, computing, identity, etc. Why own anything anymore?

3. Developers – The api and the people who use them. Very important.

4. Platform – You mean you don’t have a robust, open scalable platform?

5. Marketing Matters – The best feature DEFINITELY does not always win.

A couple of interesting companies:

Vello – A great service for audio conferencing. Never again remember a pin or meeting ID. Works very, very well – but expensive. It also smells like a feature instead of a full product. If they took a lesson from Chris Andersen I would use them all day.

NetBooks – They are basically quickbooks online for your entire business (not just finance). I loved their focus on true small business. I think they will do very well. It only makes sense to move from accounting to business management – plus they have a good founding team. Downside – their UI is awful. They need to work on that asap.

Blist - Online “database”. They are great for tracking lists of stuff. Beautiful UI. Downside is that when they say Beta, they mean it. I do wonder if excel is really broken…

Ribbit - They are what the phone company would be if they set up shop today. Pretty cool features worth checking out – downside, you can’t get an account.

Magento - Open source ecommerce. I am rooting for these guys since I find most of the solutions out there very bad. I can’t wait to see their SAAS version. So far looks like good traction though.

LiquidPlanner – A new take on project management ( I thought).  I was excited to see these guys talk about the death of the Gantt chart, but then they went into a demo of one!  So in the end, they just added a probabilities to estimates.  My quest for the right project mgmt tool continues (sigh).

HiveLive – Another social community tool, but I like their angle on configuration for future enhancements.  It is a big issue and if they nail it, they will do well.  Frankly, I couldn’t tell from the brief demo, but I’ll take a closer look soon.

At the end of the day, it was very obvious who started a business based on a real pain they lived with and who got funding to try to make money. I know who I am betting on.Possibly Related Posts:

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I am not sure why the power (or danger) of the global economy never really hit me before, but I was checking out elance.com as it was mentioned in a recent book I read. If you don’t know, elance is a services marketplace. Anyway, I searched on there for design providers. Guess what, 11,144 companies and individuals popped up. What is really cool is that you can filter that list down by number of reviews, how positive those reviews are, and more.

The clincher is that many of the best rated firms were not US based. Interestingly, a large chunk of the ones that caught my eye were not India based either. Bulgaria? Argentina? Who knew?

This is really important when you consider a few years ago you’d be dropping well over a hundred dollars an hour for a solid web designer and even more for flash skill. In a whopping 5 minutes I found a handful of very well rated firms with large portfolios of good work for $20 – $30 per hour. If you are in need of these skills, it’s good news. If you do this for a living, it might be a bit scary. From my perspective, this underscores the need for a personal brand, discussed earlier.

So the question is, are you next? And are you ready for that?Possibly Related Posts:

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Blogging is tough. Some do it well (like Jake) and others don’t spend the time to make it happen (like me). I have found very few that keep it up. It is just another thing that takes up time.

Here is what I think makes it work for a person:

1. They have a passion for the subject. If you are bored by your job, don’t blog about your work.
2. They have a focus. Most blogs are personal ramblings. It’s ok, but tough to build an audience that way.

3. They have readers. I know, chicken and egg, but if you knew there were ten thousand people waiting on your next word, you’d write something.

4. They have perspective. Take a position (honestly not for show). I find that type of content more interesting.

5. Be an expert. I don’t like reading people’s thoughts who are as ignorant on me on a topic.   I want to read about the Fed from Greenspan.
6. Get something out of it. It can be ads, ego, etc. I like the concept of personal branding and building a name for yourself. It’s the most achievable goal.

If you think of the above, there are lots of people just not cut out for blogging. There are also areas that have no real audience for a certain topic. BUT, if people are smart and have something to say about something they care a lot about, it can happen.

Agree? Do you blog… why? What do you get out of it? What makes it successful?Possibly Related Posts:

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Ok, per Rich’s post. Here goes:

1. I like lots of things, but nothing as much as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I run Norcal BJJ Academy and it consumes me. I had my first introduction by being soundly beaten by someone I outweighted by 50lbs over 9years ago. After that rather humiliating experience, I knew I had to learn it. Once I saw that it really amounted to a physical chessmatch, I was hooked. Incidentally, I also love chess. If you do to, check out Best Lessons of a Chess Coach. Fantastic book.

2. I have tinnitus. I broke my ears playing too loud in a band in college. Seriously dumb. I pay the price every day. If you see me at the bar, movies, restaurants with earplugs in, now you’ll know why. And no, there is no cure, no treatment, nada. So far my best results have been with masking via the DTM System that I was a beta tester for nearly 10 years ago.

3. Both my parents were in the medical profession. My father is a practicing dentist and my mother gave up a career as a pharmacist to raise three kids. Good for us, bad for her .

4. For a long time I was into fitness and nutrition. I cut back on my “research” in the last few years once I found what worked for me. It’s pretty simple. No grains, lots of veggies, some fruit, lean protein and short intense varied workouts. I recently added Kettlebells to the workout and love them. The credit to this style goes to lots of people but check out crossfit, Performance Menu, Art De Vany, and Rob to start.

5. I have always loved entrepreneurship. I have started a few companies, none of which ever went beyond the garage phase. I learned a lot in the process and had fun while I was at it. I guess I am always thinking about what’s next. That’s how I stay passionate. To this day I get a little sad when I see small businesses go under (think dry cleaners not funded start-ups, those aren’t really small businesses).

6. I am big on balance. I have a wife and two kids and I am not sure I could forgive myself if I didn’t give family it’s due. In the end, we get way too caught up in jobs, titles, and material things. They are all so transitory. I think a lot about old age and death. It is a constant reminder to not sweat noise like “who owns what” or “who gets credit”. No one owns anything. Work is a part of life, just a part – and it should be fun, if it’s not ask yourself why.

7. I have traveled a fair bit and even lived in Geneva for a while. I would love to travel more. One of the best trips I ever took was skiing in the French Alps at Val D’isere. If you get over there stay at the Barmes De L’Ours – It’s incredible. Tell em’ I sent ya. While were at it, I need to learn another language. Language changes people. It can open you up. Italian or Spanish. Check back with me next year.

8. My father grew up on a farm (a real one – milking cows in the morning, bailing hay, planting crops, you get the idea). Farm life gives a person a firm grounding in how nature really works and what a work ethic is all about. I thank my father for some of those lessons. I worked for a summer on the farm. I was paid minimum wage. I was the only one in the crew (of about 30) who spoke english. It was lonely, hard work. I’ll never go back. Oh, I also dealt 21 at Harrahs in Tahoe – much easier. Hit on 16 (if dealer shows 7+ of course).Possibly Related Posts:

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Google recently launched Knol. It is essentially a Wikipedia where authors can build up a personal brand. In addition, they can even monetize pages they author via, surprise surprise, Google Ads. Personally, I think the concept is brilliant. It plays on everyone’s need to feel special and that can’t hurt participation.

As I dove deeper into this new concept, I saw the folks at ZDnet had a piece contemplating if this new web app could be more of a knowledge management play. As we all know, KM has been plagued over the years and never made much of an inroad – not for lack of trying. I have always loved KM, and too wondered, why the failure? Here is what Larry Dignan thinks:

“The biggest reason: Employees like to hoard knowledge and don’t want to share much because they become less valuable.”

This got me thinking. Maybe it is time to just accept the reality that we are all free agents. Apart from sales, one someone is hired, they tend to go to work without the pressure of day to day performance. The irony is that, the pressure to perform is certainly there, but outside of sales, performance is shrouded in mystery. Why are some people promoted? Who is really a team player? Who is doing the best work? The inner workings of companies are tough to make clear under the current model of operation.

The obvious challenge is measurement. I agree with Larry that a system like Google is proposing could change this dynamic. If we solved the measurement problem, a kind of market economy for free agency could be achieved (at least inside an organization and ideally across organizations).

What would it look like if we all acknowledged the inherent free agency in the employee/employer relationship? I would argue that if we made this leap, both employees and employers would be better off. How?

Let’s take employees. In a world where your personal contributions, skills, expertise, and attitude were on display, I imagine it might “light a fire”. People would work harder, care more, and generally do more to promote the common good. The fact is, transparency changes behavior (ever not wash your hands leaving an empty bathroom?). Sometimes this change is for the worse, but on balance, I like the model for how it drives people to improve themselves and that can only help them in their current job, future job, and life in general.

Employers on the other hand would now have at their disposal a wealth of performance data. How can this help the organization? Well, there are a ton of ways, but let’s just take the simple idea of differentiation. I think most would agree that higher performers should be paid more, average performers should be mentored to higher level skills, and the weakest players should be moved out to more appropriate roles or organizations. This model has been made infamous by Jack Welch. I should note that the ire Mr. Welch inspires in others is primarily due to his percentages while the concept itself is generally liked as it has a sense of fairness which people tend to immediately appreciate. Doing this well just makes companies stronger and people happier. Period.
So if we found a way to enable people to build their own personal brand through activities we want to incent (like sharing, collaboration, etc), both employees and employers could be substantially better off. Batter up! (fyi steroids still don’t increase typing wpm)

-PaulPossibly Related Posts:

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Ok, this post may not be what you expect from our blog, but I had to share two great examples of excellent customer service that I experienced recently.  It is my opinion that excellent service is ever important in this time of low switching costs and doing it right has approximately zero marginal cost.

Example 1: My family went to Cirque du Soleil last weekend in SF.  The show was Kooza.  I have been to 5 or 6 of their shows and this was perhaps the best.  Of course “O”, Mystere, and KA are amazing as well, but they cheat with the uber expensive permanent stage.  Kooza was literally set up on a concrete parking lot.  It makes the show even more amazing.  Now for anyone who knows me, I have sensitive hearing due to playing in a band during my more foolish college days (guitar in case you care).  So I tend to go everywhere with ear plugs to avoid feeling ill the next day.   So in the middle of the show,  a stagehand comes up to me and offers me (in a french accent) earplugs.  Since I had my own in already, but he couldn’t tell, I politely refuse and thank him for the offer.  he then proceeds to offer a set to my 3 year old daughter next to me.

Think how amazing that is.  Some guy working the set during the show saw me hunched over with fingers in my ears (as discreetly as possible) and thought enough to leave his job for a moment to make sure I was comfortable.  What an amazing show of true customer service.

Example 2: My wife and I have been together now for 13 or so years.  So we figured it was time to get a King bed.  You’ll find that the longer you are with someone, the more room you need.  So we bought a new bed and of course had to get a new frame as well.  The local furniture store delivered it the other day and as a first stroke of genius, they delivered it themselves.  They didn’t outsource it.  The owner was there and kind as ever.  As a final touch, they left us with a nicely decorated candle.

Neither of these things cost much, they are just examples of great customer service.  A lost art these days, and it all begins with caring about your customer.  Well done.Possibly Related Posts:

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