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…

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.

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Cross Posted to GameTheMachine

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.

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.

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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.

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.

-Paul

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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).

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)

-Paul

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.

The really cool thing is that we built the whole thing in about 6 weeks, from start to finish. That includes the very brief design sessions we had to flush out requirements, wireframes, etc. If you ask Jake nicely he might post a few of our really fancy whiteboard wireframes that he captured on his iphone (can you say Agile development?) The other cool thing was that as a part of this project we were lucky enough to connect with a fantastic team from ThoughtWorks. It was collaborative from start to finish. We each brought a few necessary components to the table along with a mutual desire to do something not only different, but special. I can tell you that without their professionalism and expertise, we would not be where we are today.

It should also be noted that launching anything as ambitious as a community for such a large group of people is not done in a vacuum. There were unsung heroes throughout Oracle in groups like legal, hr, operations, marketing, customer programs, and more that really made this happen. There are challenges in any project, but the people we ran into always seemed to find the answer, happily. To them we simply say thank you.

So here we are, day 1. Now the real fun begins. Seeing how everyone who cares about Oracle applications uses this new tool. We are excited to see what works and what doesn’t. There will without question be issues as we figure out what this new world means to our community. So pardon our dust if you see it, and thanks for coming along for the ride!

Since the new web is a lot about enabling people to share information, it seems likely that some portal vendor would have nailed this years ago…

I used to manage the portal product line for PeopleSoft. We spent a lot of time talking with customers, consultants, and analysts, yet we didn’t go anywhere near the direction of Web 2.0. In fact, no portal vendor did. However, now that tools like blogs, wikis, and social networking are becoming mainstream, they are being incorporated into portals by nearly every vendor in the space, including Oracle.

So what happened? Why didn’t all this social, open goodness show up in these products and by these companies? We’ll, if you understand the way products are driven, it will become clear that they could never have started there. I’ll save you the suspense before I dive deeper; the new web couldn’t happen for business customers first, because they are business customers. Let me explain…

You see, when you are selling software to enterprises you actually have a buyer (this goes for small vendors and large ones). This buyer has certain things they are looking for that are non-negotiable. In the case of portals, you had to have the ability to let admins post content (and not let others post content), users needed homepage personalization, search was a must, and the list goes on. Incidentally, this list of must have features was in most cases the same list that the analysts used to evaluate if your product was “enterprise class”.

The truth is that this list of capabilities was a joint effort between the analysts and customers. Customers call analysts with questions and analysts listen to their issues. Over time, analysts convince customers that the analyst list is important enough to look out for, and analysts learn a thing or two about what real users are facing. What emerges from this process is a super set of features that no product can hope to achieve (not everyone can be a “leader” or what point is the evaluation?).

So here you are. Managing a product that has a set of requirements you can’t meet fully, but nonetheless you have a set of deep problems to solve and a mandate to solve them. If you skip anything on either the customer or the analyst list, you will have sales complaining that you are losing in head-to-head evaluations or you have analysts leaving you in the dreaded lower left of whatever report they care to print. If you need to keep your job, to earn the money, that pays the bills, and keeps the kiddies in ipods, we’ll…the path is clear. Fill in those RFP checkboxes pronto!

You see, it turns out that resources are not infinite. Imagine if you were running a product and saw a really cool new idea come up. One that no customer or analyst had even mentioned or noticed yet. They hadn’t put the pieces together, but you had. You’re a wizard at this, a veritable Nostradamus. So you go to your manager and share this stroke of genius, fully expecting to be showered with praise and end your days being fanned and fed grapes.

Alas, no luck. Mr. manager wonders if you have customers asking for this? Uh, no. Mr. Manager asks if it’s a part of the latest analyst evaluation criteria? Uh, nope. Now, Mr. Manager is no fool. He sees the value in the idea and thinks its supercool, so he asks about resources, got enough to do it? Now you’re excited, cause you knew this was coming. You proudly say, you’ve found a way to do it by just reducing the scope a bit in a few areas. Mr. Manager spins his chair around, stares out the window into skyline, pondering your idea. He wants to do it. He’s dying to innovate and show everyone what he’s got, but if those darn analysts drop us in the next magic square we’ll be in real trouble - people look at those things, ya’know?

It all really comes down to priorities. There is a lot of known value to be fulfilled and a lot of unknown value to be created. With limited resources, people do the known and the unknown loses every time. This of it as an internal product development view of the 9x problem.

Now let’s look at the world of a two guys (or gals) in a garage. Not the funded team, but the two folks just doing something cause they love it. Trying something new because it is new. Because it is different. No boss to answer to. No customers to respond to (yet). No analysts to pander to. These guys don’t think they’ll look bad in the quadrant - they don’t even plan on being in it. In fact, they don’t really care about analysts at all because end users are their customers and as we all know, they don’t buy analyst reports. So they hunker down and code the new world.

Now at some point this all changes. Investors come on board, customers ask for features, and code can’t be refactored every time a new idea comes up. Progress becomes more linear and more directionally obvious. You can’t afterall re-invent yourself every time a new idea comes up. You have to stand for something lest you become confusing. This is why all revolutionary companies become evolutionary. At some point, they just get a bit better at the same thing with each release. How much better is the new Mac OS X going to be than the current version? Not a lot.
In my experience, the most innovative products are new to the orgnization. They also tend to find a new way of doing the same old thing that everyone already understands and it already trying to solve - but they do it in a novel way.

ipod: At some distant point in the past, there was no mp3 player sold by Apple. Everyone had a walkman, so we knew we needed to carry around music, but this one changed the game. Now they just get bigger in storage, smaller in price, and prettier color choice.

iphone: Apple never offered a phone, but everyone knows what a phone is, and why you need one. They just made it dramatically better. Where do they go from here? Ringtones, new colors…evolution my friend.

TiVO: Everyone had a vcr. We all wanted to record shows, but couldn’t get that damn clock to stay set. TiVO is just a joy to use. Now what? HD, two tuners, etc. A steady climb up the feature hill.

Digg: We have read newspapers for news, listened to the radio, and even used pages like MyYahoo and the New York Times. We all need our news, but Digg gave us a better way. What now? I don’t know, but I can guarantee you it will be evolutionary, and it wont be big.

You get the idea. Once you have a product with customers your path is set. It is one of the reasons why the new Microsoft Office 12 release is so gutsy. It comes about as close to revolution as you see in software. I am not sure it will pay off - personally, I am having a hard time with it, but time will tell.

From an Oracle perpective, understanding this history is important because it speaks to why we like our lab approach.  Of course, we aren’t the first company to have a lab, but the model is sound.  Let people experiment with new, sometimes crazy, ideas.  See what works.  Take the small wins and plug them in to existing products.  Take the really revolutionary stuff and create new products.  For any lab, one of the metrics for success should be how much of what you do makes it into real product.  If we do our jobs well,  I expect to see some of our stuff in customer’s hands in the coming years.

Cheers!

I used to work with the CEO of Mindscape and he would often quote the ephemeral 10x rule when I would bring up crazy ideas. The problem today is that I have no idea how to measure this axiom. If I sit down with my team and we design a blog feature for our social network, is that 10x better than someone sending an email, or a newsletter? I doubt asking users (before they are users) will yield any reliable data. I am at a loss for how to measure this value before actually deploying a solution. Ideas welcome.

As I watched Dr. McAfee speak it also became apparent that he has his own 9x problem. His slides all look like they came from the standard power point template (not that there is anything wrong with that). To his credit, he added his name in the footer of each slide, but no other substantive changes. I assume he sat down one day and said, “I can spend a bunch of time on a new template, but the message is the same, so why bother”. Thus another “good enough” solution of today lives on in the face of prettier, if not better, solutions.

While everyone else was focused on swimming, sangria and poolside chit chat. I was wondering just how smart a group of eight year olds really was. Fresh off the heels of reading the Wisdom of Crowds, I felt I was ready to put on my research cap.

The voting was done in plain view (a distinct break in the rules of what makes crowds smart), but since I didn’t run the experiment, I had little choice in the methods used. My sister assures me that next year the voting will be via ballot to avoid the bias caused by kids seeing other kids’ votes before they make their guess. You can see a sample of the Voting. I took each of the voting sheets and spent some time in Numbers doing a quick analysis of averages. Here is what I found…

In most cases the crowd did quite well. For example, the actual count of mints was 51 and the average of 13 kids yielded a mean of 53. The winner of this candy jar was Tom with a guess of 50. The actual number of pixie sticks was 111 and the mean of our group was 77 with the best guesser being Patrick who chose 100.

In these two the crowd did OK, but they were beat by individual ankle biters. However, note that the same person did not win both the pixie sticks and the mints. That is a key factor of the crowd. A single person may win a few, but over time, they will not beat the crowd’s average. There is no reason to think that a persons rightness will continue. The search for an expert is a fallacy.

Let’s talk gum. The actual number was 87 and our average was 94. Better than the best guess of 78 by Garrett. However, Garrett had his revenge in the final category of Jelly Bellies, winning handily with a vote of 704 and an actual count of 692. Our group failed miserably here with a mean of 336.

So what did I conclude? My main observation was how important independence really is. The only real area where the theory fell apart was in Jelly Bellies and in that area, my three year old, with my “help” voted first with 325. That vote clearly set the tone and a ceiling for what was “ok” and tarnished the results.

The other conclusion is my surprise in how well the group actually did in a few areas even with our complete lack of adherence to what makes crowds smart and small sample size. In fact, crowds seem resilient if nothing else. I plan follow-up studies with more tartar causing items and children. Perhaps throwing a few pets into the mix for some diversity.

You can see the full in-depth, highly scientific analysis in this pdf. (widsom of eight year olds)