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?

I’m always trying to find new ways to use technology to keep track of what’s being said out there.  Be it websites, RSS, mailing lists, twitter, etc. I try to know what’s going on for myself, my clients, and my colleagues.  As with most other things in life though, I always find someone who is doing it better than I am.

I created a twitter account using my name and not more than 24 hours later, Jason Calacanis followed me.  While this is not huge news (Jason has 62k+ people he follows), it was to me.  It means that Jason or a script is parsing his mailing list subscribers and finding them at places like twitter.  He can hear the train coming from miles away.  Can you?

I had a conversation with a colleague about doing consulting and that there’s really no such thing as an “organization.”  There really is just a bunch of people who need their minds changed.  The CxO’s I work with usually only need a minimum of technical help, mostly they need an outside change agent to help get their people in the mood to do their best work, so they hire me.

You already know how to deliver excellent service that blows people away. You just don’t feel like it. Your organization has the resources to buy that machine or enter that market or change that policy. They’re just not in the mood.

If I accomplish anything on a good day, it’s helping you change attitudes. I’m working hard at getting you in the mood to do the things you already know how to do. I think that’s what your boss/the market wants you to do as well.

via Seth’s Blog: In the mood.

Joey at 7 Years By Ruth

Last night, as I sat with my grandsons reviewing their five and seven year old accomplishments, I was drawn again to memories of my own childhood experiences. Joey, my seven year old, proudly displayed his ability to write in handwriting, which had mostly been learned through self teaching, some of his capital letters. This, despite the fact that his mother was repeatedly requesting that they say goodnight and get ready for bed. “Let me show you a capital T, Gramma”, he said, laboriously outlining his project. “Oops!” I remarked, “You shouldn’t have crossed the T, honey, that makes it an F.” There was a stricken look on his face, and with an “Oh no!” he left the room. He returned shortly with his specially wrapped gift for his parents which had a large beautifully made capital F in “Fo Mom & Pop.” I whispered to get an eraser and we would fix it and he went and desperately began searching the drawer where such things were kept. Mom, by this time, and not knowing what was going in, demanded that bed time was now! And she forcefully directed him toward the stairs. The enormity, to him, of his predicament, started a totally frustrated cry, but he went upstairs. When she returned I briefly told her what was happening and went to call the sobbing child for just one minute. I explained to him that if he added a small “r” to the “Fo” it would change the word. With brimming eyes, and a moment’s thought, he realized it would say “For” which was perfectly acceptable. Tears stopped, the correction was made, and a true weight had been lifted in his young mind.

It is the tendency of busy adults to forget the importance of the little tragedies that are as monumental to a small store of experiences in children as larger ones are to adults. Showing them how to deal with and minimize error is one of the best and kindest tools to give them. The humiliation and lack of self esteem that comes from not doing what is acceptably correct can leave a scar no different than the scar an adult gets from the same type of things. The child has within him the adult he will be. Treat him with the respect you would afford, and the kindness you should use, in your dealings with all people.

The enormity of unresolved calamities of my own childhood, though they are small by adult standards, still come back to haunt me. Not that adults were uncaring, but there was an opinion that because children were small, their feelings were relative to their size. Not so! The adult is wrapped in a small confining package, straining to find answers to enormous complexities in the child’s body.

I miss you Grandma.

I normally love the Mac’s design decisions, but one thing that’s always maddened me is that by default you can’t tab between all controls on webpages, etc. I finally got that fixed today with an article from lifehacker.

Click the “All Controls” radio button at the bottom of the Keyboard & Mouse pane in System Preferences to right this wrong.

Bliss.

[via]

Someone I know recently took over a housing community board by getting organized against the old board and running an effective campaign. The strategies used to do this can apply in many areas of life. Here’s how they told me they did it.

*Know What You Want To Accomplish*
The old board was being run by 5 residents of the community and they had contracted with a management company that wasn’t doing an effective job. On top of ineffective management, the board was illegally charging landlords an extra fee for being non-residents. This was strike one for this person and was the whole reason that a group of people decided that the board needed to be replaced. This single goal united 3 people to run for the board.

*Make Sure You Are In The Right*
In cases of legal judgement, it is best to get a lawyer’s advice. The more specific the lawyer’s experience, the better. In this case, one of the landlords was a lawyer and confirmed that the fees were illegal and even sent letters to the board requesting that they discontinue the fee and refund the landlords in the form of a credit on their association dues. When the board ignored the letters, this was further cause for action. Strike two.

*Plan Your Campaign*
Now that there was no choice but to take over the board to effect change, the leader of the 3 did some research on past elections to the board and found that the largest vote count for any one member was around 90 votes. Each resident gets 5 votes, so each of the 3 needed to get around 20 people to vote for them and they would pretty much be guaranteed a seat on the board.

*Know Your Audience*
The people that were being affected by the extra fee were non-residents, so the 3 needed a strategy to communicate with them and explain what needed to be done. The 3 printed up fliers about the problem and mailed them to all of the landlords of the units in the community. They also went around to each of the units and knocked on doors telling people about the problem and to come and vote on the day of the election.

*Stand Your Ground*
On the night of the election, the ballot box was filled with a large percentage of the votes going to the 3 wanting to take over the board. The old board members had set a deadline of 6pm for all of the ballots to be in. They decided to change their minds and open the ballots to anyone who was at the meeting. The old board members went around the community and asked people to vote on the issue. This nearly doubled the amount of votes cast in the election. The 3 were still confident that they would be able to get a majority on the board. Strike three for the old board.

*Move Quickly*
Once all of the ballots were counted, the results were read and the winners announced. The 3 were on the top of the vote count and each got a seat. One of the old board members and a newcomer got the other two seats. Immediately, the management company, seeing the writing on the wall, resigned. The new board members immediately put the extra fees to a vote and the fees were immediately reversed and all past payments were credited back on the association fees.

*Plan Ahead*
Knowing that they would win, the leader of the 3 had already gotten bids several weeks before from several management companies to replace the one that had just left. In my state, you’re required to have a new management company within 30 days. Having these bids in place would speed up the process and allow the board more decision time to choose the best management company.

*Don’t Burn Bridges*
The 2 board members left on the board were upset that they no longer had a majority and couldn’t make decisions the way that they wanted anymore. Being gracious, the 3 board members included them in the process of managing the community, but made it clear that any illegal activity would not be tolerated and that they would need to decide on issues as a board. The 3 knew that it was important not to alienate the community and make sure to listen to their concerns and manage fairly.

*Recap*
So the lessons I took away from this are that in order to get something done, you need to have a clear goal, a flexible plan for getting there, research to back up your claims, and organization to pull it all together. Once you’ve gotten what you want, it’s important to make sure that you make good on your stated goals quickly and work with the former group to keep things running smoothly in the future.