The Arc Of The Story

There are a lot of management books published every year. Some are great, some are good, many are awful.

Creativity, Inc. : Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace is not about organizational development, so much as organizational transformation. For many readers, that will be like trying to see infrared, but if you are careful and attentive, you can learn a lot.

Ed Catmull wanted to do a computer generated animation feature film. That took him over twenty years. He started as a Unix programmer at the University of Utah building tools that were shared in the community. He was doing open source before open source.

That led to working for George Lucas to provide computerized backgrounds for Star Wars. He was working at the edge of what supercomputers could provide feature films, but it wasn’t enough, yet.

When Lucas had to sell his computer operation, they were almost sold to twenty companies. Finally, they were bought by Steve Jobs, post Apple, and so began a twenty five year partnership, the longest Jobs had.

Now I read the tech press, Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs  and Haunted Empire, by Yukari Kane.  I even worked for Steve Jobs as an organizational transformation consultant, until he got fired from Apple, before he met Ed Catmull.

I never bought into the Steve Jobs is a genius, Steve Jobs is an asshole reputation the media loved. He worked me hard and appreciated what I brought. For a time we were moving mountains.

Ed Catmull worked constructively with Jobs for far longer, and sees a better arc of the story, about a talented person who kept getting better at using his gifts. I like Ed Catmull’s appreciation of Steve Jobs. It is better, more nuanced, more valuable, than anyone else’s.

While he was in that relationship, he was running a supercomputer company called Pixar, and they quickly sold all the installations they were going to sell. So the same people who were building and selling the system became the best users of the Pixar system and did computer generated short movies that won Oscars and other awards.

Next they tooled up and created Toy Story,  the first feature length computer animated film. Ed Catmull had overrun his vision, and it was way more profitable than selling computer systems.

Catmull talks about the letdown of achieving his life work and formulating a next vision, to build a company that would do incredible work and nourish the people in the company. Once he defined it, he set out to build it, keeping the same key players while constantly expanding the team.

I noticed that he has been with the same posse for over thirty years. Their situation kept getting better, but people were by and large not replaced, they were developed, and kept on getting better and meeting new challenges. That’s an heroic perspective to emulate.

One of the points he keeps coming back to is the arc of the story. A great film needs a great story. He writes that if you give a great story to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre story to a great team, they will either fix the story or develop a better one. This book is a great story

A key message of the book is that all movies originally suck. The work of the team is to make them not suck. And he provides gripping stories of how that was done for every Pixar movie. This is one value of the book.

Page 103 - The difference between criticism and constructive criticism is that with the latter, you are not just criticizing, you are constructing.

Page 141 - There is a difference between reviewers who pounce and kill and reviewers seeking and promoting good ideas. Negative feedback may be fun, but it is far less brave than endorsing something unproven and providing room for it to grow.

Page 171 – Hindsight is not 20-20. We barely know what happened in our past. We only see a small part of what happened. So if you can’t see the real past and you can’t know future, the best strategy is to behave well, work hard, and not kid yourself.

Page 203 – How do we enable our people to solve problems is the correct perspective, not how do we keep our people from screwing up. The “keepers” can never see that they don’t contribute.

He has some awesome stories of casual heroics from the members of the team, how a mistakenly erased feature was not lost, how six months of rework was done over a weekend. Catmull takes a fierce pride from belonging to an organization that does heroics regularly. So does everyone else at Pixar.

But wait, there’s more!

The Promised Land  for animators is Disney Studios. But Disney Animation hadn’t done a successful feature in over a decade. Disney Animation management decides their most original work will be making sequels to Pixar movies.

Relations get frosty. Finally Steve Jobs tells Catmull and team they have to sell Pixar to Disney. Pixar needs Disney’s marketing and distribution capabilities.

There is a new CEO at Disney, who has been through two mergers, one good and one bad, who says this will have to be a good merger, otherwise the money is wasted.

Ed Catmull becomes president of both Pixar Animation and Disney Animation. The game becomes can he and the Pixar team bring their magic to Disney Animation: from building a successful culture to installing a successful culture...while keeping Pixar moving forward?

That is not easy, and the short answer is that they do. Both teams are winning awards, creating top grossing animations, and making money. To find out how they do this, you’ll have to read the book.

Ed Catmull reinvented himself at least three times, and brought his team along. Pixar’s celebration of Steve Job’s death had me crying, but I cry easy. If there was ever a CEO who saw through the bullshit and bravado to an honorable course in a changing environment, it is Ed Catmull. If you’re serious about being better, this is a book to read.

Looking for more? Check out The Final Frontier.

Focus Frameworks

Last Friday I attended a fascinating presentation, Why Do People Do Stupid Things? by Thomas Hoffman of PScience Associates. There was a lot of meat in his presentation, and the most valuable idea I took away is that there are a half dozen exercises I can do before taking action that will improve my results (reducing common stupidity).

That doesn’t mean I will always succeed, but I believe I can improve my results on a case-by-case basis. Valuable morning.

Here’s the kicker. Doing all six exercises on a formal basis should take all of ten minutes. Oy!

I spend a lot of time in meetings. My butt is not shy about communicating when I’ve spent too much time sitting instead of moving forward.

So if there is a ten minute rocket docket to better performance, why do committees continue to keep the minutes and waste the hours?

One time I was installed to run a startup after an investor coup. I met the new VP Administration, who was also recruited by the investors. She was very accomplished, but curious how we were going to make headway with a mulish workforce. I bought her a copy of Robert’s Rules Of Order, and said we would run every meeting for the benefit of the minutes, since we were being closely watched by the investors, and had to report several times a week anyway.

Documentation quickly trumped chaos, and shortly thereafter our direct reports became barracks parliamentarians. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was better than what they were wallowing in before we arrived.

Often I see that managers want a system to improve their decisions and without a formal framework, spend their time going round in circles like Little Johnny With One Foot Nailed to The Floor. Especially in the current economic climate, they end up fully engaged in paralysis by analysis.

Better to adopt one system, any system, and start moving, because as soon as the system is mastered, it starts being modified, sometimes for better, often for worse.

The point is that you can’t lose if you never leave the planning/consideration stage. Of course, you can’t win, either. In the end, it’s the number of wins, not the number of losses that count. Indeed, it is most often a series of quick losses right up to the ultimate (and important) win.

Join us at the Capital Technology Management Hub on February 12 at 6:30 for 300 seconds of Rainmaker 18 – Leadership, Technology, and Change before Michael Clark presents Social Media: Evolving in the Work Place at TeqCorner.

Tips 4 The Big Chair

Looking for quick new ideas?

Here are some short insights on how business is changing. 

Might make you feel better. Fresh insights for new energy, increased resolve, and motivation. 

Joy’s Law

Tactical Compass

Excellent

Boomerang Management

Pirate, Executive, or Administrator?

Event Marketing - Why See People One-At-A-Time When You Can Sell Groups of Twenty?

Loyalty Up, Loyalty Down

Encouraging Is Courageous

Truth and Time

How Right Comes From Wrong 
 

The Myth of Nuvo Quo

The Difference Between Promised and Produced

Moments of Truth - New Strategies for Today's Customer-Driven Economy

Where Solutions Are Created

...And there is more at http://www.saleslabdc.com/big-chair

Kick off the New Year Right at Talk Your Business - How to make more and better sales right away! Wednesday Jan 30, 11:45 - 1:00 at the Arlington Chamber Small Business Roundtable

Making The Point

I was trying to get through M Street at New Hampshire and a bicyclist ran through a red light, running over several pedestrians.

He was a young yup going home from his policy job, and he started yelling at the pedestrians, the drivers, the air.

He was also stopping two roads with nothing but a bicycle and an attitude...at rush hour.

People started walking around him, shaking their heads. He figured if he yelled louder more would understand him, like his mommy. He was enjoying his moment.

There was a minute of silence as he inhaled and the man next to him said gently, “I ride a lot, and you’re giving us all a bad name.”

The traffic jam resolved in seconds. We’re all in this together despite what you’re told.

Becoming a Better Student

My favorite continuing education is golf lessons. Every summer, I take a rack of lessons down at HainsPoint.

Last Sunday I went to my first makeup class, as I hadn’t been able to make my normal time. We’re in the middle of a good process, but this time I have a new teacher I’ve never met before. Not only that, none of the students in the makeup class knew the instructor.

Charles had some different ideas. The first few times I attempted a new motion usually produced a foozle (a highly technical golf term I learned from a caddy in Scotland. Don’t ask...).

I quickly decided my most productive response was to say “Thank you,” and then repeat what I was about to do. Sometimes I would get it wrong, or he would have a further clarifying comment, but we both knew what I was attempting.

After I shanked one very much, Charles said “Next week, be sure to tell your regular instructor Henry taught you that.” 

After an hour, my ball striking was much better. The teaching was taking hold.

It could have been my imagination, but I noticed that the teacher was paying more attention to me with my “Thank you, and now I’m gonna...” routine than to the guy two stalls down who kept saying he didn’t want anything bad to happen to to his golf game due to makeup instruction.

By the end of the hour, I was hitting farther, and bending them at will, and making trick shots, it was a great lesson. I told Charles/Henry about the improvement and stayed to hit another 30 balls.

The guy who didn’t want his game changed huffed off, said he had wasted an hour, and was quite loud about his stupidity.

I figured out the guy at the front of the room needs love too.

Perfection...Or Excellence?

A client had just completed managing a thousand person global technology gathering and we were conducting the post-learning.

Before the event, her strongest team had been the planners. Granular she called them. Material was ordered and inventoried, prepackaged and pre-staged.

As the event started, the plan blew up, and another team came to the front. I call it the maitre d’ function, “How can I help?” and ‘Here’s what you can do...” A dizzying flow of problems and requests, not relying on planning or inventory to fix the problems.

In hindsight, the plan took care of most of the transactions, the maitre d’s took over when the plan was not enough.

The feedback was that the attendees had a best ever five day party, the customer had a blowout success.

Our planning team had major complaints about the maitre ‘d team ignoring their plan. They wanted to know, what was appropriate punishment?

The maitre d’ team didn’t bother coming to the meeting. Their job was done.

Later I complimented the client on keeping a sunny disposition through the event and through an emotional review meeting.

She said, “I learned a long time ago not to be concerned about attaining perfection. I am very concerned about maintaining excellence, and I did that when I was recruiting the teams for the event. When things get tense, I remind myself that now is not the time to be the leader.”

How do you make the most of whatever you’ve got?

Traffic Optimization

Most of what I read about SEO, metatags, website tuning, is aimed at attracting citizens of a global web. That certainly sounds impressive, but I haven’t had much use for it.

Most of my web promotion is targeted to a specific community, for a limited time, a specific event. The web destination delivers the experience, or the information, or enables admission to a next level.

How do you create traffic for that?

Not everyone lives their life on the internet. Most of the people I want to attract are full up with other responsibilities. There is always more work left over at the end of the day.

Clay Shirky writes, It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure. And successful people adjust every day, honing in on the important, the strategic.

Before I go to a search box, I need a concept, a desire. Still I look to find a reason to believe.

If I can create that initial impetus, an initial value, my audience will respond.

Jack wrote a wonderful post explaining our Hot Sheets. That’s somewhere in the middle of the process. First they see us doing something additive, then they can get a piece of paper that offers some good information. This is the Information Age. Information is a store of value.

The impetus for Jack’s post was being approached at a recent meeting by an executive who said he already knew Jack, but couldn’t place him. Jack gave him a current hot sheet, and the man realized how he knew his, and accused, “But this handout is different!”

Did you ever ask ask a four-year old, “What’s new?” The answer, “EVERYTHING!”

What new with you?

What Happened To The Management Pyramid?

The traditional management pyramid became popular after WWII, showing one guy at the top and a majority of people at the bottom. There were successive layers of fewer people going up, and business types thought their career was moving up the pyramid.

American Pyramid

I don’t think I got the memo that said that the likelihood of getting to the top was less than one percent. Fifty years of expansion makes that easy to overlook.

Those people in the middle were adding value by messaging up and down, and to salve their pride, they were also supposed to know more than the people below them. A lot of comedy has been written about that particular misconception.

I was involved in a Seagull Management exercise last week. She came in to help with the busiest day. I turned to the former leader (who was pretty good) and said, “That’s your boss right?”

She observed my observation was correct.

I said, “Why don’t you take her out for coffee and ask her how we should do this and keep her talking until we get done?”

And so it came to pass.

Two years ago I read a piece (I can’t find) that the management pyramid had bloated to a management pentagon, with more people watching the people on the bottom doing the work, than were doing the work. Last week I read that the Department of Homeland Security has over 85 Congressional Oversight Committees keeping tabs on the proceedings.

Management Pentagon

One possible reason for a pentagonal management structure is a desire to keep people, when they have a desire to stop doing the work. Most people who go to a staff role attach increasing value to their work over time. I also find mid-levels staffers have often developed a mission that is quite different from the doers.

I measure three criteria for defining value of an activity: Does your work product change physically? Did you get it right the first time? And does the customer care?

You have to achieve all three to be providing value. And no fair defining a new customer no one else is serving.

Over the past three years we have seen a severe loss of middle management in the private sector. These were the people with clipboards, the checkers. When I was a union carpenter, older guys wanted to “stop working with the tools.” Those were exactly the positions that have been axed more recently.

Skinny Pyramid

We’ve changed our business processes to take advantage of computerized communication. One computer can communicate effectively with thousands of workers, and monitor results for management. This result is a skinny pyramid, the opposite of the organizational pentagon.

In preparing The Direct Economy, I discovered I have gone post-pyramid. I figured out I was working with 15 people in 9 distinct ventures, some paid, some under development.

Network

It’s not a management pyramid structure, it’s a hub and spoke system, some projects I am leading, others I play a supporting role. At the time I noticed this, I was just reporting my experience.

A year later, I found this great video from Clay Shirky at TED, about  Institution vs Collaboration. It's 20 minutes and makes a powerful case.

I don’t have a “best” model or even one that I favor. I have seen where each of these models has delivered. What I am seeing is that organizations are changing due to many pressures, and that adopting a better model is often a key to continuing.

What organizational models are you observing?

Have They Seen Your Work?

I was talking to a business owner who requested a three minute whine to express how hard life was in general, with some fairness examined for good measure.

He was worn out networking, chasing business, things had changed, and what was it going to take to have someone buy something???

Have they seen your work?

Well, who knows what they will like, it’s not like I know the market any more, that would entail a lot of work just getting ready...

Have they seen your work?

How can you do that, who will choose what to show, what if it’s the wrong stuff?

Have they seen your work?

Well, no. I guess I could...

And that marked the end of getting ready to get ready.

And so, in Comments, tell us...Have they seen your work?

Couch Potato

One of the problems with the explosion in instructional video is that watchers can confuse watching with learning.

Consider the milquetoast who watches Bruce Lee movies and figures that makes him a threat, a dangerous man, legend in his own mind. Humor invariably follows when reality sets in.

Learning is not just being exposed to instruction, it’s making something with it. Doers, Makers.

And people who have a habit of making something useful out of what they observe find new applications, which are sometimes valuable.

Last week I went to the DC outlet of Google IO 2012 and heard a good quote from a doer, Larry Page, “Have a healthy disrespect for the impossible.” 

Why not remember that when you are charging out of the locker room and go make something fun in the next half?

Customer Orbits

A previous post, Target Markets, finished, Mastery is having your finite resources satisfy the entire market...

Let’s define that market.

Seth Godin has already debunked the myth of prospects. Nobody wants to be a prospect. It’s a code between the salesperson and the sales mangler to identify who they intend to commit sales upon. Seth thinks a better term is “citizens.”

We have a good model for how sales professionals spend their time to maximize sales taking advantage of social media advantages.

Today we’ll define not from what our citizens think, but what sellers can observe. Otherwise it’s fiction and suspection.

Think of electrons orbiting around the nucleus of an atom. There are many orbits, extending outward, and the electrons don’t spiral toward the center, they jump to a different orbit in reaction to stimuli.

That’s a good model for observing people in a buying process.

The farthest orbit would be Awareness, when they notice you.

Next in would be Potential, when they are aware that you might provide something they need.

Then Benefit, when they harness how you might help them.

After that, Observation, because seeing is believing.

Inside that would be Acquisition, the area where old time salesmen spend all their time.

Getting closer is Installation, where they get access to use it.

A further step is Adaptation, where they change their work processes to gain advantages from it.

Then comes Belief, based on internal stories of value.

With luck we get Expansion, where your offering spreads to more of the customer organization.

Then the fantasy, where your customer begins to Refer new citizens, who want to repeat your customer’s experience.

Finally there are the Zealots, who decide they would rather work with your product than theirs, and come over to you.

I think we’ve all seen isolated instances of each to these orbits. Applying the opening definition - Mastery is having your finite resources satisfy the entire market... how would you change your focus to accomplish this?

My experience is as you broaden your focus to strengthen the before the transaction, and apply resources after the “love ’em and leave ’em stage, total cost of sales is greatly reduced, on the order of 50% or more. The pitfall is maintaining your expanded process over time and new managers who see the value of the check writing part of the relationship.

Target Markets

My favorite user group has announced a change of direction. A user group is usually independent of a specific software, made up of enthusiasts, rather than company representatives. They provide a friendly forum for the company representatives.

The company feels they can get greater traction in the market appealing to wizzerd programmers instead of buyers. I’ve seen that a couple of times from inside a company. Usually it means a new market manager has a bigger quota.

Ten years ago I learned that when the new executive director wanted to change the name of a successful organization, she didn’t understand the mission, leading to rounds of rightsizing.

Yesterday, I was driving up US 95 through Virginia next to a truck I recognized. Fifteen years ago, one of my government customers had the third largest transaction website in the world...written entirely in COBOL. They published a monster catalog, like the old Sears big book...entirely in COBOL. These guys could do anything with my product.

Then some marketers in my organization figured out that what they had bought was worth more than they paid, so they instituted retroactive “value pricing.” Took my customer six months to rebuild their web empire in Microsoft. I lost the world’s greatest reference account.

Last month Ardell Fleeson gave a powerful talk at the Virginia Leadership Breakfast. What stuck with me was her observation that we divide our focus into two groups, “target markets” and “all others.” Did you ever look at how much business comes from “all others?”

The lesson I’m getting is to respect and aid everyone who has an interest. Mastery is having your finite resources satisfy the entire market, both who you think is your buyer and those who just buy.

Changing Education

Video is a powerful educational tool. With internet distribution and storage, a world class video can easily be shared globally. Salman Khan of the Khan Academy has been making short videos that teach specific technical skills to students from elementary school to graduate level. These are available for free on the web.

One of the challenges of internet based video education is that students aren’t really learning, they just feel like they are learning, let’s call that couch potato syndrome. That’s a small, easily addressed problem. The larger problem is presenters faxing in their performance while standing at the front of a classroom.

Sebastian Thrun, who knows something about education, puts it this way, “You don’t lose weight by watching someone else exercise,” he says. “You don’t learn by watching someone else solve problems. It became clear to me that the only way to do online learning effectively is to have students solve problems.”

So lesson one is Go Make Something. Come to think of it, that’s what work is these days.

A major change in learning is information is available anywhere. In the old days, students went to University to learn the Canon of Western Civilization, all three books, because there was a good chance that when they went back home, they weren’t going to see another book again. Scholars were walking search engines. They weren’t expected to work, they were expected to provide answers and educate the baron’s whelps in their downtime.

There are still people who think their job is to have an opinion and opine. Nice work if you can get it.

For most of us, job one is to turn that knowledge into something valuable, on demand.

The purpose of video education is to provide the knowledge. Education comes from using it to make something useful.

Another value of video education is modeling behavior. Kipling provided Victorian behavior modeling through his writing, and The Man Who Would Be King shows heroic behavior, like High Noon, and even Leroy Jethro Gibbs or Frank Reagan.

Let’s take the best parts of video and work it like a rented mule in the interests of better education.

Google Plus Is Quietly Making Gains

When I was talking Jack into blogging, I said, “I touch 200,000 people twice a week.”

He said, “How do you know?”

I said, “I counted.”

A month later, he told me a post had gone to a quarter of a million people. I said, “That’s nice.” I wasn’t going to take the bait. He was planning to tell me that he had counted.

My metrics are making a count when something major changes. Not weekly, not monthly, and often not annually.

Last week I saw one of my posts was retweeted, and following the link I got to see the Sales Lab Posts mobile display for the first time.

I thanked the tweeter who replied, would I retweet their stuff?

Nothing wrong with that. What’s the metric? Before I jump in, I want to know how much is enough.

Response? “World domination”

Say what? Well, that’s not coming from my twitter following!

Then I checked and saw I had close to ten times the following on Google Plus. Honest Officer, I have no idea how that happened.

I also prefer monitoring the incoming stream in Google Plus because I can see more of the posts without clicking on them. Twitter has an art form of attention grabbing headlines that are more interesting than the underlying posts.

I know my Plus followers. They have built some space with what they know, what interests them. My Twitter followers are often incomprehensible, although I suspect more than a few are followers of Charles Ponzi.

I have a sense of pressure that I’m wasting time when I read on the Internet. Turns out I am covering much more ground per minute, and having the search box right on the browser means I don’t have any research tasks waiting when I am done.

I can read a newspaper in 15 minutes. I cover much more ground reading the Plus stream or Reader.

We’ve noticed that there is a definite crewe saying, “I never see Google Plus. They’re not doing so well.” We’ve also noticed there is a 100% correlation with them not having a plus page.

The most common response from Plus users is that they had no great expectations of Google Plus, but it was easy to set up and they use stream, hangout, photos or whatever feature more than they had expected they would.

Google Plus is quietly making gains. How are you moving up? 

Second Wave Innovation

Patterson made a lot more money from moveable type than Gutenberg.

Alfred P. Sloan had a bigger General Motors than Billy Durant.

Startups are for young guys. Finishups are for rich guys.

Moving Parts

I was having lunch with a friend who is the Assistant Deputy Director to the Deputy Assistant Director, after she came back from vacation.

In a week off, she realized that many of the offices around hers are vacant, and that while once safely in the midst of the horde, she had been exposed by years of attrition. Last woman standing.

She is paid well for skills that are somewhere in the middle of the business development process, probably earning more than 90% of the people in her vacation state. However the results that are now required go far beyond the capabilities of any skills either of us know.

You know why you didn’t win that re-compete? It wasn’t because your team wouldn’t cooperate with you. It’s because the customer didn’t want you back.

If business gets any worse, they may let her go, too. What, you thought you were family?

So we started discussing Plan B. She has spent 30 years honing big company skills. Needs a cast of thousands.

“I’m concerned that by concentrating on getting results, I haven’t developed any management skills.” Don’t worry, management skills are over-rated.

I started naming the three key factors of disruptive innovation – lower price, fewer features, larger audience, and she got excited.

“That’s my college roommate! She has her own business, works with two other one-person businesses in Chicago and Atlanta, no one else like her, and she makes over a million dollars a year!” Now my Assistant Deputy Director has a believable model. Doesn’t know what hers will be, but knows it can be done.

If you’re going to strip out the moving parts, it’s good to think about the three requirements for work to have value, get it right the first time, customer has to care, and the thing must change physically. Then think about what’s the minimum process and organization that will provide what someone wants.

June 12 is the next Capital Technology Management Hub featuring Sales Lab'sRainmaker 14 – The Myth of Full Capacity - 300 seconds of pure profit. The featured speaker will be Cory Lebson of Lebsontech LLC, presenting User Experience: What it Means & Why a Technology Manager Should Care!

Stages of Innovation

Innovation is not “out there,” it’s a process. Looking at it historically, technologically, geographically, and developmentally can make innovation familiar and straightforward.

Innovation in the United States in the 1700’s, was often British mechanics emigrating to make their fortune, building other people’s inventions they had learned in Britain. The work was often pirated tools for production, built by immigrant craftsmen.

Recent waves of innovation include agricultural innovation, mechanical innovation, electric innovation, distribution innovation, retail innovation, electronic innovation, software innovation, and digital innovation.

Clayton Christensen has defined disruptive innovation, where fewer features and lower price create a much larger user base. Disruptive innovation is currently seen in enough industries to be observable, measurable, and predictable. As a disruptive innovation matures, it adds features and costs, becoming vulnerable to subsequent disruptive innovators.

Fred Wilson wrote Darwinian Evolution of Startup Hubs charting innovation cycles through time and space to predict when and where innovation will show up.

Jay Deragon shows unsuspected entry points and several unique strategies for innovation with New Business Models In The Middle.

Cory Doctorow demonstrates organizational models for current innovation in Makers.

Wondering where to start your innovation? Some observations:

• My innovations are the result of focusing on something I know. Innovation is making.

• Innovation is starting up where the last person stopped, and

• James Patterson made more money from moveable type than Gutenberg did. (Innovation is not just about new technology. Historically, greater gains come from better application of an existing technology.)

Looking at it that way, there is an unlimited amount of meaningful innovation just waiting to be hacked.

What’s next for you? 

June 12 is the next Capital Technology Management Hub featuring Sales Lab'sRainmaker 14 – The Myth of Full Capacity - 300 seconds of pure profit. The featured speaker will be Cory Lebson of Lebsontech LLC, presenting User Experience: What it Means & Why a Technology Manager Should Care!

 

Lathe Or Dedicated Machine?

I was a master carpenter at a factory that made blasting caps. Part of my job was rigging, safely moving large, heavy things.

We had many single use tools in our factory - jigs, templates, reams, crimpers, burnishing tools, but the toolmakers, the top of our heap, had lathes, great big steel beds that would transform metal pieces into anything we needed.

An assembly worker could learn to use a single use dedicated tool in minutes. That’s why they were designed that way. But making the tools, from tiny wire punches to 10 foot wide rotating drums for mixing explosives, that was all done on lathes.

I ran the crew that relocated the toolmakers shop. We unbolted and moved a dozen multi-ton lathes. Then we had to install them in the new shop, dead level from all directions. The toolmakers were “helping” us, so I had to learn a lot about work.

A lathe operator is similar to a steamboat pilot. He has a different way of looking at the world, full of shifting sandbars, a different way of solving problems. His skill was imaging how to use a single mechanical turning motion to create whatever was needed.

I feel the same way when I watch a master programmer create a solution within the limits of a coding language, making something other experts said wasn’t possible.

I’m feeling the same way about computers. I do a lot of work on client site, so I favor a smaller laptop. I had one vice president order me a huge laptop, so I could “work on spreadsheets.” When I build spreadsheets, I give extra points for a single page with a portrait orientation. Easier for buyers to read. Easier to see if there is a big error hidden inside.

Recently, I got to watch an Android smartphone artist. Of course he didn’t need a watch, a pen, or a notebook. But he was also plugged into the internet as well as I can be. He was monitoring people communicating with him, answering questions, getting alerts, posting, seeing who he knew in the surrounding buildings, much more than I can do, when I take time out to withdraw to a quiet space with my laptop.

He reminded me of a toolmaker. Rethinking his assignments so he could complete them on a computer that he keeps in a pants pocket.

Me? I’ve got a “send and end” phone. It’s venerable. Works great! Maybe it’s time to change... 

June 12 is the next Capital Technology Management Hub featuring Sales Lab's Rainmaker 14 – The Myth of Full Capacity - 300 seconds of pure profit. The featured speaker will be Cory Lebson of Lebsontech LLC, presenting User Experience: What it Means & Why a Technology Manager Should Care!

 

Government As A Platform

Government is a lot like the weather. Everybody complains about it, nobody does anything about it.

I was once told, “The problem with government workers is they don’t have any customers.” That would create behavior. No customers means no meaningful feedback, no praise for doing right. That’s an ugly career.

Something has to change. Our current system is too expensive in money, exertion, citizen effort, and value created.

Tim O’Reilly has a three minute video on the next generation of government where he says we should consider government as a platform.

What’s A Platform?

When was the last time you got a message from Amazon that said go to the back of the line and spend two hours coming back to the counter, as the form we just gave you is out of date?

I’m a library addict. I know the staff, and we’ve been through some entertaining years adopting technology.

I now order more than half of my books from the library over the Internet. They send an email when the book is available. They send daily emails when a book is about to be overdue.

Yesterday was the first time they scanned, but didn’t stamp, card, or write a return date on the book. The Librarian said, “We’ll send you an email before they are due.”

A completed system, easier for the librarians, much easier for the customers. More books checked out per hour, better control of the assets, maybe even time to guide readers. Not a clerk, a librarian!

And that’s government as a platform.

One Expert, Two Experts, Three...

With one expert you get your messiah. They named a street after that guy, One Way.

With two experts you get a discussion, also called an argument.

With three or more experts you get the beginnings of transparency.

With Mr. Google and his Internet, we have more knowledge than we need.

Education used to be about getting enough knowledge. Now education is about determining the useful knowledge out of all the knowledge available.

My role with my advisers is making sure they recommend what I really want, which takes more effort than I expect. I generally have good advisers. I am trying harder now to make sure they understand the things I understand about my problem before they create a solution.

How are you using your experts?