Viewing entries in
#lifehack
This weekend, some of our friends were having car trouble. They had ruled out a dead battery or a low gas tank and they resigned themselves to call roadside assistance. The tow truck arrived and before it was hitched up, the technician did some trouble-shooting. He then shimmied under the car and tapped the starter with a hammer. It started right up. If they had gotten a bill for this service incidence, the invoice might have read:
$1 – hammer tapping
$499 – knowing where to tap the hammer
Never undervalue experience.
Each of us have had similar experiences when bringing in an expert has made all the difference. Costs avoided. Disasters averted. Downtime reduced. Customers delighted.
And yet, we all romanticize the do-it-yourselfer. Those Pinterest-fueled upstarts who can tackle professional-grade projects and make it look easy. There are television networks to celebrate their accomplishments. These shows give us confidence. Maybe even over-confidence. After all, we are seeing huge transformations in a 30 minute show. A few time lapse videos between the opening credits and the big reveal. That is certainly true in the personal world.
But it is also true in the professional world. Sometimes executives find it tempting to think they can do marketing, business development or even legal work, without trained experts. It is an all-too-common scenario to over estimate our own abilities and our time and to experience “Pinterest fail” type experiences in the work world.
So, when do you call in an expert?
1. When the risk of being wrong is extreme.
This obviously applies to litigation or regulatory compliance issues or any area where specialty knowledge is required, but it also applies to areas where the strategic risk is high. If you can experiment with little impact, then, by all means, feel free to do so. When you need a decision that is warranted or that requires technical expertise, call in the guru.
2. When time is of the essence.
Do you have a limited market window to get a product to market before big competitors sabotage your chances? Then you might want a professional sales and marketing team with industry experience who can hit the ground running. If you want to avoid delays in getting your product certified, setting up an efficient assembly line, or launching a new website, find someone who has done the work before and has a proven track record.
3. When you are better suited for other priorities.
My grandpa, who has a contractor, told a story about how a doctor client of his took vacation time to paint his own house instead of hiring someone. If he had worked that week, he could have paid a painter and had money left over, plus ended up spending more time than a professional. “It’s hard to beat a man at his own craft,” he would say. Each one of us has things that we are great at and the more time we can spend doing those things, instead of doing a mediocre job, that others could do. Know what you are good at focus your time there.
This article was featured on LinkedIn Pulse.
"Don’t say 'yes,' just because saying 'no' is scary."
- Isabelle Roughol talking about Volkswagon engineering cars to cheat emissions test instead of admit that they fell short of their public emissions goals
“Unable to reach the lofty PR goal, engineering chose to lie rather than disappoint the boss, which is how every other corporate disaster begins,” she continues.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is all the rage today with companies like Salesforce.com racking up huge profits and trading multiples, and companies like Microsoft introducing their own versions of the same. The same is true with people turning data insights into a business model (data-as-a-service or analytics-as-a-service). But the “as-a-service” business model isn’t new. Here are some examples of other products that have been sold as a service.
Alcohol-as-a-Service (AaaS): a bar
Food-as-a-Service (FaaS): a restaurant
Equipment-as-a-Service (EaaS): equipment rental and staging
Personal-hygiene-as-a-Service (PHaaS): beauty salons and barber shops
Reading-as-a-service (RaaS): story time at the library
Exit-as-a-Servce (EaaS): what a doorman does when you leave the hotel
Wayfinding-as-a-Service (WaaS): what the hostess does when she shows you to your table
Shelter-as-a-Service (SaaS): a hotel or even Airbnb
Investors and advertisers love networks that have captive audiences. They love that fuel dispenser toppers catch people when they are tethered to a gas station with an 8 foot hose. They love that people waiting for a movie to start in a cinema have to watch something when the lights are down and their cell phones are put away. The captive audience that can’t escape the message you are trying to deliver.
But, think about it from the user’s perspective. Who wants to be captive? “I want to be a captive audience,” said no one ever.
People want to be captivated, not captive. It’s a higher calling that we should all strive for.
We don't care about diversity because it's in vogue. We care about it because we like winning." - Mike Gamson, SVP Global Solutions, LinkedIn
"Some moments are meant to be forgotten. You can't dance at weddings anymore." -Jared Ficklin
I know it’s true. And you can join me in blaming the internet. I am nearly 100% sure you have never actually read the Terms and Conditions to which you just agreed.
I recently heard Heather Andrew from NeuroInsights speak at a conference. She explained how our brains are separated into right and left sections. Emotions are on the right, but language is on the left. So, to express your feelings is to pass them between the two lobes of the brain.
This has several implications. First, it can be difficult for some, as men, for instance, have less pathways between the lobes. And secondly, the act of putting emotions into words, changes them. Makes them more rational. Our anger, becomes righteous anger or defensiveness. Our shame becomes blame. Our irrationalities and impulses get sanitized when they get communicated.
Perhaps instead of speaking our emotions (and passing them to language on the left), we should instead use our right brains to sing them, paint them, or act them out in dance. Or perhaps, that is precisely what the performing arts already do?
It has long been said that if you really want to learn something, you should teach it. But research shows that the same can be said for tweeting. When NeuroInsights ran focus groups with consumers who were shown programming and told they would need to tweet about it, paid more attention and retained the information better than those in the control group. So, instead of “pay attention, it might be on the test” perhaps we should say “pay attention, it might be in a tweet.”
#CreatorsRule
Start-ups are the laboratories of the economy. Doing things that established companies don’t do, won’t do, or can’t do.
Who designed the now ubiquitous wireless logo? The one with three curved bars above a dot. You know the one. Someone surely was the first to sit down in Illustrator or with a pen and paper and draw out the picture. The ones that the world now uses. One of our most powerful and universal icons and it’s anonymous and unowned. Perhaps that is a metaphor for some of the new, powerful technologies and ideas that will be as disruptive as wireless internet.
I wrote recently about Google’s efforts to provide the whole product in my article Y is for You: Google's Alphebet and Personal Branding. I learned recently that one of the founding father’s pioneered some of these strategies himself: Ben Franklin
Ben wanted to be a printer. His biographer (Isaacson) talks about the lengths to which he went to procure a printing press from Europe. He wanted to own a communication machine.
He started printing things for his friends and customers.
So, to use the machine, he started a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. If one flyer was good, then having a weekly or daily publication was even better. Those who wouldn’t afford to print a flyer, could afford an advertisement in a larger publication.
He printed books. The most popular book was the Bible. But most people only bought one of those in their lifetime, so how could he get people to want to buy a book every year. He started the Poor Richard’s Almanac which would have repeat customers every year.
Then he began to think bigger. He wanted people to read his books and magazines, but many people were far sighted and had trouble reading. So he invented bifocals.
He noticed that in the cold New England winters, people weren’t reading as much, so he invented the Franklin Stove.
He wanted to broaden his distribution channel to allow people outside of Philadelphia or the region to read his books and publications. So, he championed the US Postal System.
And realizing that it was inefficient to print things in Philly and move them around the country, he franchised and shipped the plates to a friend in the Carolinas so she (yes, she) could build a business serving that community.
A man with Ben’s broad curiosities and diverse background pursued these and many other ideas in service of his main themes and principles. What are your main themes and principles that are worthy of the height of your creativity, enthusiasm and focus?
“Feedback…it’s the breakfast of champions” – Dharmesh Shah
Every morning I unlock my computer with the keystrokes that I used to use to reboot it in case of terminal errors. CTRL-ALT-DEL were the keystrokes of triage and now they are “hello.” Maybe it’s a sad commentary on our world where “that was a disaster, let’s try again” is how we greet the day or maybe it is Microsoft’s way of reminding the computers that if they get sentient and go Terminator on humanity, we still remember how to do a hard reboot. In fact, we’ve been practicing every day.
At the end of the day, when the final numbers are tallied and the results are analyzed, it is all relationships.
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Much has been written in professional and personal development circles about the importance of doing things that scare you. Tackling projects that take you out of your comfort zones. Roles that challenge you to grow. This has been the justification for exhilarating thrills like climbing Mt. Everest or life-changing moves like leaving an abusive relationship or embarking on a new career.
I have never thought of myself as a risk-taker. I generally had a “big fish, small pond” mindset. I liked to tackle projects that I believed I could do successfully. I have prided myself that my hobbies, my relationships, and my work are not drama-filled. I don’t even like horror movies. Alas, I am missing all the tell-tale signs of a risk taker, so I figured I wasn’t one.
Until now.
I now see that I am just a different type of risk taker and here are three things I am learning about managing risk.
1. Sometimes it’s the stop-watch, not the altimeter which measures the risk
It might not be the altitude of the mountain that is the risk, but the speed at which you are trying to ascend or the number of hills you are climbing at once. When I get overwhelmed or scared, it is generally not because of the enormity of any individual task or commitments I have made. It is rather because I am trying to do them all at once. I scare myself in this way regularly and I know I am not alone. Recognizing that deadlines and commitments, served up simultaneously, adds stress and complexity to otherwise reasonable tasks, is important to acknowledge. Those of us who rush to do more can give ourselves permission to recognize the risk for what it is and pull back or lunge forward as necessary.
2. “But isn’t multi-tasking bad?” is a trick, and surprisingly personal, question
Behavioral scientists say multi-tasking is a fallacy and that this lack of focus costs organizations millions of dollars a year in lost productivity. I respectfully, I don’t believe it. Maybe for some it is a bad thing. Making people work outside their natural work style can certainly backfire, but for me, it’s the only way. Experience has taught me that when I multi-task I accomplish more. I achieve better results. I think more clearly. I make connections between things that lead to new insights. I remain more open to ideas from others. I have certainly had professional failures and disappointments, but throughout I have found that action itself is a source of energy. The busyness isn’t the secret sauce, but it is certainly in the winning recipe for me.
3. Managing risk is about knowing your risk tolerance
You don’t gamble, what you can’t afford to lose. Whether you are analyzing the risk of an investment portfolio or contemplating bold moves in your career, managing risk appropriately requires an appreciation of risk tolerance. My risk tolerance has to do with judging my commitments against my priorities. Despite my multi-tasking ways, or perhaps because of it, I am a big believer in looking at my life in chapters. There is a time and place for everything. The good things need to find more time and space in my schedule and attention, crowding out things of lesser importance or urgency. Avoiding the fallacy that tasks or priorities are permanent or immovable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson summarized it well when he said, “Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’” So, you might just scare yourself busy.
This article was published on LinkedIn.