agent of change

I saw a review today of a blender that struck me as an important reminder in having good tools.

One day at Costco my wife and I were going past one of those product demos where a salesman wearing a headset a-la-Madonna was showing off a blender. As we stood and watched I commented to my wife about how all of these people were just waiting to try a smoothie, and that there was no way this guy was going to get one of these suckers to pay $350 for a blender. A BLENDER. But who walked out with one? You guessed it.

Well, we also bought it because the guy reminded us about Costco’s liberal return policy. So for the next month, we used it…and used it…and used it. Each time, I’m thinking, $350 for a blender! But man, this thing is an incredible MACHINE. It made short work of blending anything and everything we’ve ever put into it.

First, most likely a great sales job from the sales rep. Did you know that they are outside vendors and not Costco employees? The thing that clenched it for the gentleman was Costco’s return policy. I use a guarantee every day in my online marketing efforts and in my hypnotherapy practice. Having essentially no risk is comforting for people and generates huge amounts of sales.

Second, this man is like most people when confronted with a great tool without having any knowledge about why they need it yet. They don’t see the benefits of owning a great piece of equipment to do a job. A superior programming language, a better saw, a maintenance-free computer, a great car, and yes, even a great blender, can enhance your experience and make the work you do with it amazing.

We use it every single day, often multiple times. Some times it is only for simple little chores that could have been done with a lower powered tool, like mixing up a mocha, but this thing is quiet on low speeds, and a barracuda at high speeds. I once believed that a blender only needed two speeds: off and high, because that’s pretty much all anyone ever uses, but I’ve changed after using the 10 variable speeds on the Vitamix.

This is a common reaction from someone who discovers nuance in their tools and work. It is at this level of mastery of a task and tool that fine distinctions of 10 different speeds come in handy. Only a few short days before, he couldn’t distinguish that level of precision and why he would use it.

Ultimately, I decided that though it’s $350 when you use something EVERY day, usually multiple times a day, and that tool works really, really well and you actually enjoy using it, it’s probably worth it. My previous $45 blender that I once thought was pretty good now sits gathering dust. I’m spoiled now.

People often wonder why experts buy such high quality tools when many times a simple one will do the work, but this gentleman has nailed it. When you use something that often, you notice things others don’t. It’s not about being spoiled though, it’s about having the distinctions of quality that come with continued use of a tool. A $45 blender isn’t bad, per se, but it just doesn’t have the range of use in the skilled hands of a user.

I have hesitated to send in this review because of it’s considerable expense, but it truly has been one of the most quintessentially cool tools that we’ve bought. I think anyone who uses a blender regularly, or might, will find this to be the best blender they ever own. Well worth the savings in time and grief over the less powerful, less tough brands.

And there we have it, savings in time and grief. My time is worth considerably more than what I pay for good tools. The best of tools only make you better at what you do, saving you time (money) and grief (time, or money).

So where does this leave us? Pay extra attention to your most important work. Things that you do often, things that cause you joy, things that give you the most out of your day. Then look at the tools you use to do that work, nay art. Could they be improved? Is there something out there you know is better? If there is, seek it out and try it for a while. ASK for a liberal return policy or some other type of guarantee if there isn’t one already. The best tools and people stand by their work. They give you a guarantee not because they fear things will break, but because sometimes it’s the only way to get people over their own fears and give the best a try, changing them forever. It’s a high mark to hit, but only the best ever get there anyway. Take the leap, get good tools for the work you do.

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/005318.php

Jonathan Rasmusson wrote a great post reminding us to Pretend you are going to be there forever.  His post is really great for contractors who mostly just come and go.

What works equally well is to pretend you are leaving tomorrow.  It’s a great exercise if you really do think you’ll be at your company for a long time and will have to maintain the software you create.  If you’re leaving tomorrow, what would you fix, document, clean up, or write tests for?  Who would you be nice to? We used to call this the “Hit by a bus” effect, but some people liked to use “the lottery winner” effect as the name. It really helped people get that they had to maintain their systems better and not become bottlenecks and share information.

Let’s see if we can make it a bit more general so that everyone can use it.

“Invert, always invert.” — Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi

If you haven’t heard of Jacobi, you should check him out. Anyway, basically, all you have to do is think of the opposite of whatever position you are in. Have lots of time? Now pretend you have little. Have lots of people? What if you only had a few? Have only a little money? What if you had a lot? Stretching the constraints in your projects can really help you see new solutions. It’s helped me solve problems countless times for myself and my clients.

Seth Godin has a good post up today that succinctly describes the barriers to change in an organization.

People who fear they will be hurt by a change speak up immediately, loudly and without regard for the odds or reality.

People who will benefit from a change don’t believe it (until it happens), so they sit quietly.

After working with dozens of organizations, I can tell you, this is absolutely true. It always bothered me though, that I couldn’t seem to figure out why people were acting this way. After years of thought, I came up with an answer that changed how I viewed organizations and how I did change work with people. I realized that to each side, their view of the organization was true. They worked so hard to keep their position on the matter because it was so true to them they knew it in their bones. Everyone did.

Only, they were wrong of course. I had the benefit of being able to see the world differently through all of the experiences I had. While they saw the world as flat and knew it to be true, I was able to see the world as round, as it truly is. Before I realized this, I spent a large amount of time trying to convince people that the world was round (they needed to change), but after realizing that I was fighting against “truth” I completely changed my strategy.

I no longer needed to convince them that they were wrong and I was right. All I had to do was change the conversations they were having with themselves and each other. Getting rid of fear for some and convincing others, once people got on the same page and realized they were all on the same team and were trying to get somewhere better, I could begin to lead them where they needed to go. It took significantly less time and actually stuck with organizations much better than I ever thought it would.

I had stumbled on how to really change people’s minds. All I had to do was change their moods, which changed their conversations, which changed their positions and knowledge on the organization, which led to the changes they needed in the first place. Go out and try it. You’ll be surprised how effective you can be.

Great video from Jason Yip, one of my favorite former colleagues, about starting less things to finish more. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before if you’ve worked with me and it’s nice and short.

I must have some secret employees at the Financial Times writing for me or something. Atul Gawande wrote ‘Airline Pilot’ protocols in finance today and it caught my eye.

Some choice quotes:

He also found he made mistakes in handling complexity. A good decision requires consideration of so many different aspects of a company in so many ways that, even without the cocaine brain [confirmation bias], he was missing obvious patterns. His mental checklist wasn’t good enough. “I am not Warren,” he said. “I don’t have a 300 IQ.”

So he devised a written checklist.

Sometimes you don’t even know you’re making the mistakes over and over unless you get reminded of them by using the checklist. It’s there to keep you safe from your own mind. The easiest person to trick is yourself.

Even in his own firm, he’s found it a hard sell. “I got pushback from everyone. It took my guys months to finally see the value,” he said. To this day, his partners still don’t all go along with his approach and don’t use the checklist in their decisions when he’s not involved. “I find it amazing other investors have not even bothered to try,” he said. “Some have asked. None have done it.”

As I said before, people think checklists are beneath them. I’ve had a hard time convincing people to use them in any aspect of project work. Clients don’t like it because they think that’s why they hired you in the first place; you’re the expert. Consultants don’t like it because they think it will somehow make them look incompetent.

I’ve tried many different ways of motivating people to use the list, but in the end nobody seems to want to listen even when I show them measurable results. Ego.

Atul has a book out as well. I’ve already ordered it. Will you?

Remember learning to ride a bike or drive a car? It was hard at first, with all of those things to remember and do at once. Put your foot here, your hands there, look straight, now look in your mirrors, gas, brake, turn signals, WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!

Driving that car or riding that bike seemed like a very complex activity. You didn’t know the simple steps to take and they weren’t natural for you yet.

What we didn’t realize then was that those things were sophisticated, not complex. They only seemed complex because we were trying to learn and remember and do things all at once.

Breaking something down into smaller, easier to understand parts allowed us to master those things. We had training wheels for a bike, someone to hold us and push us when we needed it. Learning how much pressure to put on the brakes of a car while going straight in a parking lot.

We could then put those things together into a sophisticated process that became more than the sum of its parts. It just looks complex to those who don’t know.

The next time you are learning something complex, remember it is probably just sophisticated and you need to break it down into smaller parts and master those things before trying to do the rest. Agile adoption is a good candidate for that breakdown.

So if you are learning something new like Agile, find out where you can break it down and learn small things at first. If you are being taught or coached by someone else, make sure they teach you this way. It is much easier. If they disagree, ask them why.

I’ve spent a good chunk of my life building houses with my family and also Habitat for Humanity.  Most people know the cliche that having a strong foundation is key to building a house.  That doesn’t make it any less important.  Today, Seth talks about the five pillars of success.

The five pillars of success

1. See (really see) what’s possible

2. Know specifically what you want to achieve

3. Make good decisions

4. Understand the tactics to get things done and to change minds

5. Earn the trust and respect of the people around you

It sure seems like we spend all our time on #4.

Seth doesn’t answer the question of why we spend so much time on #4.  The same reason we spend so much time on #4 and so little time on the others is fear.  Fear that we’re not good enough, fear that our dreams are too small, fear that we’ll make the wrong decisions, fear, fear, and more fear.  That fear brings all of the pillars crashing down.

For people who have never felt they could lead, I say take the first step.  Spend your time on something you find worthwhile and just start doing it.  Here’s the secret: you’ll make mistakes.  Probably a lot of them at first, but that’s often the best way to learn.  Learning to be alright with and recover from failure will help you get over your fear.  It will certainly help you with #5.

via Seth’s Blog: The five pillars of success.

My friends and fellow ThoughtWorkers Michael Schubert, Jay Fields, and Stephen Chu were just complimented by Martin Fowler.

This isn’t to say that there’s no benefit in a business-writable DSL. Indeed a couple of years ago some colleagues of mine built a system that included just that, and it was much appreciated by the business. It’s just that the effort in creating a decent editing environment, meaningful error messages, debugging and testing tools raises the cost significantly.

What Martin doesn’t go on to explain is that this project vastly improved efficiency for a whole organization.  They went from a situation where it took months with dozens of programmers to change some business rules in their software to minutes with all sorts of extras they couldn’t get before like “what-if” simulations.

Jay wrote about some of the things they learned in this presentation on InfoQ and much more on his blog about DSLs.

via MF Bliki: BusinessReadableDSL.

Agile is about a shift in attitude more than process. It requires a shift in focus that is easy to explain, but hard to put in practice.

A useful way to view making the change is as an investment. There are many advantages to thinking this way about how you change an organization.

Being disciplined about investing in people, testing out theory, evaluation and constant improvement go a long way.

When you look to implement this kind of change, process only takes you part of the way. The mechanics of analysis, for instance, can be taught in a few weeks, but it takes a deliberate shift in thinking as well as practice to get good.

Shifting language is a good first step to shifting attitudes. Language around collaboration rather than commitees and processes. Shifting from requirements to goals and priorities.

When you change language, you can start to change minds. It’s a long road and it helps to have experts to guide you along the way. Don’t expect a magic process and if you work with me, expect a conversation.

As we begin our latest downward slide in the economy, people are starting to lose their jobs at an alarming rate.

Instead of looking for some other job, why not create one for yourself? It is easier than most people think if they simply choose what’s right for them.

“What is the right company to start?” I can hear you asking. Something you know and that can be tested easily with minimal costs. I don’t know what that is for you, but you do.

It’s old advice, but worth repeating. Look for something that comes easily or happily to you. Something you are an expert in that you can turn into something to sell to others. If it is hard to replicate, even better.

Once you know what it is, start small and test out the results, but start today. That is the key. Your business model is only going to be perfect by accident. Be willing and able to change.

How does this help the economy? By creating jobs, tax revenue, etc.

If you’ve gotten this far, let me know. There are so many people out there that are willing and able to get you even further.