sift everything

I used to plant trees in the summer to put myself through university. It’s tough work but it pays well.

Tree planting is one of those few jobs that are so hard, so miserable, and so deeply testing that those who’ve done it have a respect for each other that’s nearly unshakable. I was fortunate to plant with one of the best crews and one of the best planters that the company of 4oo+ people, 2O-year-old company had ever seen. And my foreman was bright enough to realize that he would make more money in the long-run if he taught me to plant well. So, rather than dilly-dally, he threw me in with that great planter on his crew.

Now the best planters see their work as a bit of a game: every tree is part of the puzzle, the landscape’s a giant, multidimensional checkerboard, and you’re the queen of chess. As you can imagine, it nearly blows your cerebellum when you start out.

So, I watched this phenom do his thing and spent a month trying to keep up. By the end of those four weeks I was as good as anyone else on the crew and making as much money as any of the veterans but I still wasn’t anything compared to the phenom. He continued to plant more trees, more quickly and of higher quality than me — every single day.

He so thoroughly out-planted me, I was convinced he buried trees while I wasn’t looking. Most bitter was watching him plant his last tree, knowing full-well that he had started with more trees than me and I still inevitably had 1/4 of mine still to go. He’d usually finish with a grin and offer to help me finish off. But being arrogant, I’d refuse.

One day, after seeing this happen for far too long, I finally spoke up.

“How did you do that?” I gripped, glaring down at my bag full of trees, ”I’ve still got a butt-load of trees here … you do that every-friggen-run.”

He shrugged and started to walk back to the truck, “You’ve got to find another gear Jer.”

Another gear. One of my life’s best lessons.

Somehow it’s easier to work harder and pedal faster than it is to find a new gear. There’s lots of times that I’ve been pedaling like a madman and suddenly realize there’s another gear I can grab. As on bikes, so with entrepreneurs. There is usually another gear you didn’t know you could grab — better strategy, more efficient, sharper information. You simply need to find it.

Matt Blumberg has a good post on this. It’s worth a gander.

[link via a vc]

This is fun stuff. Olivier Toubia, a Ph.D. candidate at the Marketing Group (MIT) has an article on Idea Generation, Creativity, and Incentives.

He writes:

“Idea generation is critical … However, there has been relatively little formal research on the underlying incentives with which to encourage participants to focus their energies on relevant and novel ideas.

This paper examines whether carefully tailored idea generation incentives can improve creative output.”

Previous research suggests that incentives enhance performance when it relies on making simple, routine, unchanging responses but that the role of incentives is far less clear in situations that depend heavily on flexibility, conceptual and perceptual openness, or creativity. Interestingly, one of the conditions under which incentives will have a detrimental effect on performance is when the solution to the task is open-ended enough that the steps leading to a solution are not immediately obvious (what does this mean for wicked-problems?).

Toubia used three conditions or types of incentives to trigger idea generation:

A “Flat” condition where participants got $10 for showing up,

An “Own” condition where participants got $3 for every idea they submitted, and

An “Impact” condition where each participant got $2 for each time an idea they submitted built on one of their previous ideas.

Table 2 is interesting and you should check it out, but the figure I leached below is a surprise. 20 hours?!?

Ideas really started to take off in the impact scenario but only after 20 hours of building the underlying foundation. There’s a lesson here for entrepreneurs because this represents individual effort. If you can’t spend this kind of time, how can you hope to come up with deep, novel, thought-provoking ideas?

I’ve read this for almost two years - trendwatching.com. These guys can sift.

Brian Scudamore, CEO of 1-800 Got Junk?, on his his company’s success (two franchises in 1997 to 152 today; expects revenue of $72 million this year, nearly double last year and 30 times higher than revenue from 2000):

“Superior customer service in markets with weak competition.”

Paul Graham on how to start a start-up:

“I can think of several heuristics for generating ideas for startups, but most reduce to this: look at something people are trying to do, and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t suck.”

Don’t suck. Dig it.

This article is a really tight overview of the principles of design.

I just keep saying this over and over but: designers have lots to teach entrepreneurs.

Design works because it’s a natural interface with the ways we subconsciously gather information and make value judgments. How many times have you thought, “Geez, that i-Pod looks cool.” And how many times have you thought, “I wonder how to translate i-Pod design into that white paper I’m working on?”

Part of the viral framework.

Interesting piece on design. The return on investment pieces are worth the trip through the 1OO+ slides.

This what I’m looking in my search for the viral framework. Any other leads out there? Tag it here.

Another believer in the advantages of innovating on someone else’s (or your own) creativity.

I’ve been thinking about a Board of Directors — a group of advisors — chosen from a wide range of professions to give an eclectic spectrum of perspectives. This what I’d like to form to aid other companies. But I think I could use one to aid me.

A good illustration of the benefits can be found here.

My question: what would it cost to build a Board of Directors for my life?

This is stunning.

I’m sure it will gum up in a matter of weeks, silly people will pile on the crap and Fred will abandon the feed but what a cool innovation. It’s such a great way to reach into the life of a busy person to deliver information - website, mpg, mp3 - in a tailored way.

I plan on using this with my clients. A tailored feed for each one so I can keep them up on what I’ve found abroad. I want to try it for myself too: if there is something you want to me to read or listen to tag it as siftit — it will show up in my aggregator.

A client has given me the not-so-small task of helping make his company viral. This seems like an incredible challenge and I’m not sure if it’s even possible with a company like his.

Nevertheless, I think about this assignment constantly and have slowly started building a conceptual framework for understanding “viral companies.”

I’ve always believed that economics was the study of incentives - the drivers of decisions. And to understand incentives, I needed to understand how people perceive their options. It is in the understanding of perception that economics gets a bit wobbly.

Having long been a student, I’m quick to grab a book when faced with something I don’t well understand and in this case I’ve turned to George Santayana and his book “The Sense of Beauty Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory“. Why here?

Well, first I agree with Daniel Pink - we live in an age where commodities are many but beauty is rare. Second, I think being viral requires becoming the standard and ideal by which all other competition is judged. And, finally, I think this is a field still undeveloped despite the 1OO-year gap between the time when Santayana wrote the book and now.

Santayana wrote:

“Psychology has studied first the function of perception and the theory of knowledge, by which we seem to be informed of external things; it has in comparison neglected the exclusively subjective and human department of imagination and emotion.

We still have to recognize in practice the truth that from these despised feelings of ours the great world of perception derives all its value. Things are interesting because we care about them, and important because we need them.”

I think Beauty has been ignored for the sake of understanding how knowledge is built and leveraged but at the cost of not understanding how to best employ that knowledge. I think those things and those companies that do go viral somehow manage to combine both knowledge and beauty to, as Santayana says, furnish works of art that are so far beyond any measure of excellence that they become the standard by which critics measure inferior effects.

Plus, I like feeling smart reading 1OO-year-old philosophy texts.

ln the end I hope my clients don’t need me. Well, hope is a strong word — maybe it would be more honest to say that “should” be the case. I believe that my business will be more whole if this is true.

“I am training you to take my place.” That’s far more reassuring (and healthy) than, “When we’re done this project, you can pay me to do it again next week.” But teaching my clients to never need me is still a bit frightening.

Yet, despite this benignly altruistic ambition — training others in the way of knowledge management, innovation, and creativity is no mean task.

Jim McGee asks, “Where are all the Jedi Masters of knowledge work?” How does one apprentice creativity? Where is the 4-year one-on-one mastery of crafting innovation?

Over at Idea Flow, Renee echoes Jim and writes, “You can teach someone creative skills, but you can’t teach them explicitly how to think more creatively. Or to be more innovative.”

Both writers stop at the same spot: being expert in these meta-human skills requires a lifetime. Passing them on to another person takes exactly the same amount of time. So, to put it bluntly, if you can’t do it yourself — you’re screwed.

Jim points out that we stand at the foot of problems so large and looming that we are all novices in the shadow of the challenge. There are no solutions, no perfect joints, no master form — these are wicked problems and our best will be the people that hold the the rudder as we paddle through.

But I think we would be short-sighted if we didn’t acknowledge the characteristics of the masters. The masters pause to think. They collaborate. They understand the difference between complicated and complex.

These are practises I can pass to my clients — along with bright blue light sabres.

A friend just handed me a chapter from Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline. In it Peter writes:

“At one of our recent programs, I talked to a manger who has worked in both U.S. and Japanese firms. She said that when a person in a Japanese firm sits quietly, no one will come and interrupt. It is assumed that person is thinking. In America, we assume that when a person is sitting quietly they aren’t doing anything very important.”

One of the greatest problems I see among entrepreneurs, business leaders and any sort of executive is the lack of time to think. And, as a result, the lack of an ability to be strategic and tactical. This understanding is what has driven my career choices in my daily work and the sift experiment. I consciously chose a career path where I can train myself to think. I chose sift because I’m interested in thinking on behalf of entrepreneurs.

Peter continues the chapter:

“Even when there is ample time for reflection and facility for retrieving all manner of relevant information, most managers do not reflect carefully on their actions. Typically, managers adopt a strategy, then as soon as the strategy starts to run into problems, they switch to another strategy, then to another and another. Managers may run through three to six different strategies, without once examining why a strategy seems to be failing or articulating specifically what they hope to accomplish through a change in strategy.”

Peter writes “manager” but he could have easily written “entrepreneur”. Because an entrepreneur has the intuition to sense and grab a previously hidden opportunity doesn’t mean the same entrepreneur has the ability to be tactical or strategic in the way he pursues it.

The challenge then is two-fold: building the ability to be strategic and finding the time to exercise that ability. Too few entrepreneurs have both. Those that have the ability, tend to lack the latter while those with the time tend to lack the former.

I’ve had it in mind to find a Getting Things Done guru to compliment the things I think sift delivers. Free up time, use your brain. Anyone know who I should talk to?

I’m such a novice. I fixed the comments in the most inefficient of ways. The door is open for comments but also an unabating torrent of spam. Not only that but every comment must await my almighty moderation.

Moderation involves trudging through a field of Texas -holdem, poker chips and giant, ever-enlarging penises. The glories of bogging….blogging.

I know I’ve been giving Dave Pollard props; but the guy does good work.

Today he has another piece I like. Today he’s describing four types of innovation and overlays it with the methodology from Blue Ocean Strategy.

Of particular value are the ten paths to innovation:

• Product attributes or performance: How you design your core offerings 
• Product system: How you link and/or provide a platform for multiple products (e.g. the Microsoft integrated productivity suite)
• Core processes: How you create and add value to your offerings (e.g. Wal-Mart’s reinvention of retailing as shelf-space leasing)
• Enabling process: How you support the company’s core processes and workers
• Service: How you provide value to customers and consumers beyond and around your products
• Delivery Channel: How you get your offerings to market
• Brand: How you communicate your offerings
• Customer experience: How your customers feel when they interact with your company and its offerings (e.g. the Harley Davidson owners’ community)
• Networks and alliances: How you join forces with other companies for mutual benefit  (e.g. Sara Lee sticking strictly to branding and outsourcing all manufacturing)
• Business model: How you make money (e.g. Dell’s pay-in-advance for a custom-made PC model).

But I think it can be even more subtle. The examples Dave gives are all of funky innovations, which are great if you can get them - but I think the real value is in the opportunities that may exist in these areas of your company.

For example: instead of seeking to innovate one of your core processes, consider how one of your core processes might lend itself to new business models. Maybe you have a unique way of handling the flow of supplies - think about replicating that system to handle customers. Maybe you’ve got this tight system for interfacing with a printing agency in another part of the country - consider using that system to interface with remote clients.

Innovation can be brand new or it can be replication; as I’ve written before: replicating systems is good.

Lately I’ve been asked about writing business plans. Rather than bomb through all I’ve said, go here instead.

He’s done a good job, my contacts are gritty, and at 8:59 my bed is looking really fine.

True to his style, Dave Pollard has a giant post with lots of implications for business. To toot my own horn, I’ve written on complexity too, here the most topical piece of the bunch.

Favourite insights:

• In a complex world, assume unorder.

• In a complicated world, objective reality is possible but in a complex world, perception is our greatest hope.

• Instead of focus, a complex world demands experimentation.

• Innovation today is driven by networkers, not by scientists or marketers.

• Management science is finally getting more like real science, through the use of complex adaptive systems theory, cognitive science, and anthropology etc.

• The adoption of complex adaptive systems theory seems to be currently strongest in the pharma, telecom, defence and banking industries.

The last seems very important to me. Each of these industries is very organic. Except, at least from my completely ignorant perspective, pharma.

Turns out no one could comment for who knows how long. Sheesh.

Still not sure what the problem was but at least you can now comment. Though you may have to wait until I approve (again for reasons I don’t quite understand).

Every few years there comes a moment where technology reaches into my life and shakes my brain. Today is one of those days.

I am sprawled out on my coach with a Tablet PC perched on my lap. Hugh Mcleod is bantering about something through the speakers - streaming in on some one else’s internet connect.

I’ve been surfing for an hour in a fashion remarkably human - surprisingly real. Unlike almost everything technological, this feels good.

Pen in hand, I’m scrawling out my ideas in the living room instead of crammed into the incredibly hot computer room upstairs.

All this to say - these tablets are wonderful.

Now all I need is a button to mute the insanely annoying dog downstairs.

Just found an article at HBS that compliments the things I said earlier today.

Part of the strategy for small niche businesses: leverage the capabilities of other players in your niche.

Last Fall I bought a copy of Seed magazine to read their piece on Revolutionary Minds: 18 icons and iconoclasts who are redefining science. The story on mathematician, Erik Demaine, tattooed itself on my mind and I’ve thought of it constantly since.

When Erik turned 12 he enrolled in Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, at 20 he was teaching at MIT, and now he’s 23 and co-author of more than 100 papers including the 50 he wrote in 2004.

One of his colleagues describes him as “promiscuous”. Erik is interested in everything and can make a contribution to anything. In the past year he’s worked with biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, designers, and architects on some giant, difficult interdisciplinary challenges.

His story is inspiring to me and an example for entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs and scientists share at least one thing in common: a vicious sense of intellectual territory. Erik’s story is exactly the opposite. He’s built a wildly successful academic career on reaching out researchers in other fields. Entrepreneurs could too.

Like a mathematician or physicist, entrepreneurs are often masters of a small slice of intellectual property. And like most scientists, entrepreneurs are pretty aggressive about keeping everyone but themselves off the field. But looking at open-source and the collaborative success of guys like Erik, is that model becoming obsolete?

When you read an article like the one I posted earlier you recognize how complicated the opportunities available today really are. Is the one-man-show still the best strategy for addressing these issues?

I have a dream of starting a collaborative-solutions-tank. I’d like to build a team of guys like Erik — scientists, artists, CEOs, musicians, and architects — and give them the facilities they need to do their work. But put those facilities in the mountains of B.C. or on the coasts of Nova Scotia, somewhere so beautiful it makes you cry. And invite people with the world’s biggest problems to come solve them with me and my group.

I think this model can be replicated by entrepreneurs. Whether you realize it or not, you are part of a collaborative-solutions-tank. The suppliers you use, the customers you have, and everyone else that inputs or outputs from your company is in the tank. You need to recognize the latent potential in the tank and exercise it.

The brightest guy in the room won’t be the one violently waving his own flag. It will be the guy that points all the tank members in the right direction so he can achieve something far greater than he would alone.

I’ve got a rule. If I read and highlight more than 40% of an article, I don’t summarize it. I just send the whole thing.

In today’s mad rush for productivity, a paper worthy of being nearly half covered in highlights deserves some recognition. It’s a small way to put on a pedestal something sorely missed.

Here’s a piece by E. Jeffrey Conklin & William Weil from the TouchStone consulting group.

Both Johnnie Moore and Chris Corrigan had good things to say about it.

The quote they placed right at the front is a perfect summary:

“Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.”

Laurence J. Peter

If you want my highlighted version, send me a note.

There are two aspects of business that are immeasurably important but poorly understood. These are meekness and love.

Two of the companies I work with pay me to “think on their behalf – about the company’s strategic direction.” Know what they really pay me for? To remind them to be meek and to love.

Almost everybody in business understands how to “love” their customer. At least they can get by. But many stumble when they have to care for the people inside their companies – especially entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs stumble because they are driven. I’m driven too and I know how hard it is to stop for others when I’m trying to get things done. It’s so much easier (at least in the short-term) to ignore everyone and just plough through. I need reminders every so often to pay attention to the people I work with.

Another reason these guys need reminders: they don’t know what these words mean at work.

Now I haven’t wiki’d this nor googled it nor looked at a recent dictionary – my friend, a fiend for words, told me about it. Plus the story is beautiful.

My friend says meekness is a term used first by horse trainers. In particular it was used by those that trained battle horses. The inexperienced trainer (and novice wordsmith) would assume that the ideal horse to ride into the fray is the biggest, baddest stallion in the pasture. And there’s no damn way you want to ride a sloop-backed nag. Everyone would naturally ignore the quiet, proud one standing alone in the field - but that’s the one you’d want.

You don’t want the stallion. He’s too unpredictable. And you don’t want the nag - her spirit is broken. You want the meek one.

The horse you want in battle will get you to the fight and carry you both through it. You can’t have it going rodeo on the way and you don’t want it running scared when the fighting begins. Meekness is strength under control.

When horses were first used in battle they were the most powerful weapon in the field. But off the field, all you wanted was a horse.

At work, the temptation is to act either like a stallion or a sloop-backed nag. For the entrepreneurs I know - it’s stallion all the way and all the time. But any wise trainer would see that as a monumental waste of energy and usually it’s inappropriate.

Your strength is best used in battle and as an entrepreneur you need to realize: you aren’t always in battle. In fact, you’re hardly ever in one — especially when you’re in the company of people you’ve hired.