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

Using these tricks (along with flying to work), I racked up enough miles to have a week long vacation (hotel and airfare) every 2 months, for free, pretty much anywhere in the world. I’m STILL using points 2 years later to fly around the world and stay in great hotels for next to nothing.

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.

How often do you think about the basics? If you’re not executing perfectly on the basics, how can you expect to be executing at any higher level? Two bones in my burrito and you lose me as a customer for life. That’s potentially thousands of dollars. You might lose other customers at just one. Those bones just became pretty damn expensive for you. Quality is not just free, it’s money in the bank.

Of course, I’m not just talking about burritos and bones here. As your customers get more educated on what you do, they’ll begin to notice those bones. They’ve noticed them before, but just couldn’t pinpoint them. Now they can. What are you going to do?

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.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -Leo Tolstoy

Except really, you just have yourself to blame. You’ve told yourself “I can’t change anything” or “They won’t let me do what I need to do” or “The problem is impossible.” The good news: yes, you can change something. They aren’t holding you back, you are. And no, it’s probably not impossible, just hard.

How do you change something, become free, expressive, and get hard things done? Stop blaming others. Stop holding yourself back. Realize that you are lying to yourself. You lied to yourself a long time ago, but here’s the worst part: you forgot you lied to yourself. You said “I’m not good enough” or “People are mean and uncaring” or “Life is unfair.” And then you forgot you told yourself that. Really, you did.

“Holy crap!” you say, “I did lie to myself! I forgot!” It’s ok. Here’s how you fix it. Now that you realized it’s a story, you can realize it’s not true. Because it’s not true, all that stuff that was hard, impossible, someone wouldn’t let you do? It’s gone. Now you can create a great testing framework so you aren’t obsolete or show people how much time they waste with their meetings to get your point across. You can do anything you want without all of that junk in your way, crowding up your head, eating up precious cycles.

Go. Right now. Create something.

We don’t talk a lot about the subconscious mind, but we should…because when it comes to personal achievement it can explain things like lack of motivation, procrastination, or self sabotage. And business wise, it can explain why your prospect hasn’t bought from you yet… whenever we’re deciding to do something, we think we’re evaluating the immediate task at hand. But subconsciously you may be thinking 6 moves ahead, and evaluating the decision based on the final move (all without even realizing it).

A great explanation of the subconscious and one that I use all the time with clients.

For example, let’s say you can’t get yourself to go to the gym in the morning. Consciously this may show up as laziness. You may just not feel like it. You may be thinking about how far away the gym is, or the fact that you can’t find your sneakers (how convenient). Or rationalize to yourself how an extra hour of sleep will do more for your health than the hour at the gym (yeah right). These immediate impediments might end up winning, and prevent you from making it to the gym.

An extremely common problem. Many of us face situations like this.

But is that rational? Going to the gym and losing weight is a major life goal of yours, one in which you have no shortage of motivation. How is it that general laziness won in the face of the long list of major benefits that going to the gym would result in?

Nope, it’s not rational. The subconscious isn’t rational. It makes connections and thinks very, very fast. As for how laziness wins? Let’s find out. Doing really well so far Al, I’m proud of you.

Well, consider that what really drove your decision actually lies 6 moves ahead…let’s lay out the gym scenario like it were a game of Chess…

Move #1: Go to the gym this morning
Move #2: Stick to my exercise routine this entire month
Move #3: Lose 10 lbs!
Move #4: Gain it all back (I always do)
Move #5: My friends will look at me like a failure
Move #6: I’ll become depressed, gain 10 more lbs, and I’ll be heavier than when I first started!

When you see these future moves, isn’t it clear why you wouldn’t want to go to the gym? As irrational as it seems, this is how we think, and this is what often determines our behavior.

Did you catch it? Normally it’s not this easy. I’ve taken hours just to get this list out of people. Here’s a pro tip: look for what I call the “unconscious moment” and/or the logical leap that gets made in this thought process. It’s Move #4. Gain it all back (I always do). Ouch. How did your mind reach that conclusion? It may not make sense to you rationally, but to your subconscious, it’s perfectly rational. That’s where things go wrong. They continue to go wrong in #5 and #6 as well, but #4 is what starts things rolling.

The subconscious mind is powerful and real. And when you can recognize that it often can lead to irrational conclusions, you can fight it, and help your soon to be customers too.

This is where Al goes a little off track. You don’t fight your subconscious. You train it. “But how?” you ask? That’s left as an exercise for the reader. I’ll help you because this is so important to so many things in your life. If you can solve little problems like this, it actually makes a huge difference.

4 Steps to Solving Any Problem by Training Your Subconscious

1. Get a Ballpark. Get the general description of the problem. “I can’t get myself to go to the gym in the morning” is perfectly acceptable.

2. Get Specific. Ask the person to get very specific about the problem. You want something like “Last Wednesday, at 7:04am, as I was sitting in bed, I thought about getting up to go to the gym, but I just couldn’t and went back to sleep.” If you hear words like “every time” or “sometimes” or even “a few times” that’s not specific enough.

3. Storyboard. Use that specific story now to create a storyboard. It helps to write this down. Imagine it like a movie and you need to look at every single part of the scene. Write down the thought process of the person from beginning to end in steps just like Al did with his example above. Leave room in between each step. This is where you’ll find those logical leaps. If you see the person go “um, then this happened” and you can’t tell how they got to that, start over from the beginning, then focus there.

4. Repeat and Defeat.You’ll be repeating this storyboard back to the person a lot. It may seem annoying. It probably is, but only to you. The other person will be into it. You’ll be helping them relive the experience and give you more details. Write them down. Now, once you’ve uncovered those unconscious moments, it’s time to break those down and change how that person thinks. Think you’ll gain 10 pounds back? Why? Help the person realize the error their subconscious made (not their fault) and then make a new connection and you’ll watch as the ballpark problem disappears.

There are plenty more advanced techniques you can use with this method, but this works for many of life’s problems including helping your customers buy from you. Just work the system and see how many results you can get out of it.

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?

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’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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 tend to use a lesson learned long ago to escalate problems I’m having with people.

First, talking to the person is often the earliest and easiest way to give someone feedback. Often people will not know something is wrong and are more than willing to fix it.

Second, if the person doesn’t respond, let them know you will take your feedback to their boss if needed. Give them a timeframe to improve and tell them what you will do if they don’t.

Third, evaluate how the person is doing and possibly even get a second opinion.

Finally, putting honest feedback into a review will help teams evaluate the person’s strengths and weaknesses for the future. Even bad feedback with a good outcome can help someone’s review for the future. Who doesn’t like to see someone improve?

When you sugarcoat a review, you hurt the person by not letting them improve and future teams they will work with by not letting them see where they need to cover or help someone.

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

Bliss.

[via]

The present study investigated the vocal communication of naturally occurring smiles. Verbal variation was controlled in the speech of 8 speakers by asking them to repeat the same sentence in response to a set sequence of 17 questions, intended to provoke reactions such as amusement, mild embarrassment, or just a neutral response. After coding for facial expressions, a sample of 64 utterances was chosen to represent Duchenne smiles, non-Duchenne smiles, suppressed smiles and non-smiles. These audio clips were used to test the discrimination skills of 11 listeners, who had to rely on vocal indicators to identify different types of smiles in speech. The study established that listeners can discriminate different smile types and further indicated that listeners utilize prototypical ideals to discern whether a person is smiling. Some acoustical cues appear to be taken by listeners as strong indicators of a smile, regardless of whether the speaker is actually smiling. Further investigations into listeners’ prototypical ideals of vocal expressivity could prove worthwhile for voice synthesizing technology endeavoring to make computer-simulations more naturalistic.

This is real science folks. Remember all those times you had to cold call and you heard “smile and dial” from your biz dev manager? Well, it turns out she was right. Your customer sub-consciously heard, not only that you weren’t smiling, but that you were gritting your teeth in anger.

*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.

The pricing is inflated from the normal plans.

*iPhone Pricing*
| *Price* | *Talk Time* |
|$60/mo | 450 min|
|$80/mo | 900 min|
|$100/mo | 1,350 min|

*Regular Pricing* (Cingular)
| *Price* | *Talk Time* |
|$40/mo | 450 min|
|$60/mo | 900 min|
|$80/mo | 1,350 min|

The regular pricing includes rollover, unlimited nights/weekends, and unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes. I’m not sure if you get those with the iPhone plan. You do get unlimited data access which normally costs around $20/mo.

And that is the whole point of calling this out. The iPhone plan comes with unlimited data access. So the first company that comes up with a VOIP web app for the iPhone is going to make a killing. I’ll bet it’s already in development.

For those outside the US that don’t know, we Americans get a ton of junk mail from a bunch of credit card companies and other companies we could care less about because these credit bureaus keep a mailing list with our names on them and then they sell the list to direct marketers. It’s a great business for them and they can even qualify you as a good lead because they know your credit score. What turns out to be good business for them is really annoying to those of us who have to receive this mail.

So, I call the number and I get a computerized greeting. The nice computerized voice tells me that there are no operators to take my call, but that I can still opt-out. She asks me if my phone number is the one that I’m calling from (I’m assuming they have caller ID, but that can be blocked or I could call from a pay-phone) and I say no. The computer then asks me to say the phone number for the residence I want to opt-out for. I give them the number to my house and the computer starts reading back my home address to ask me if it is correct. _Wait, what?_ A little concerned, I say yes because it was my address. It then proceeds to say my full name and asks me to confirm. I say yes because that’s correct too.

Thankfully, that’s all the information that it decided to give to me without asking for any sort of verification, only a phone number which I could have picked out randomly, or worse yet, given to someone who now wants to find out where I live.

The rest of the call asked me to enter in my social security number and date of birth to confirm that I was who I said I was.

This seems backwards to me. Shouldn’t I have to tell you who I am with some information that I don’t just readily give away? I don’t go around printing my social security number on business cards, but I do print my phone number on business cards. My information is in their systems if they are using what I enter to verify the transaction. Ask me this information first before you disclose my name and home address to anyone I’ve given my phone number to.

Here’s the number for those interested: 1-888-5-OPTOUT

For those who are going to say that this number was fake and that I just got my identity stolen, I used the web browser on my phone and checked this number out before I called. That is also where my feed reader is. The number is listed on the Federal Trade Commission’s website along with a link to a free website where you can enter in your information to opt out. I was going to use the form, but typing in a whole bunch of data using your phone is not ideal with a simple 12 button keypad, so I decided to use the number. The website gets things right. I have to enter in tons of information about myself including my address. The phone number just gives it up willingly.

Go ahead and read the article. It makes me really glad that I work for a company that extols virtue and taking care of their people before making money. At ThoughtWorks, we don’t have this level of employee count, so I can’t say what would happen if we did.

We’re also trying to become more lean, but we are doing it in a different way. We’ve already adopted agile as core to the way we work a long time ago. This time, we’re applying lean to our processes and tools, not to our people. That’s the important point. When you treat your employees like family, you do things differently.

Hundreds of thousands is a big family and I’m sure that the execs at IBM GS don’t know the large majority of them. I guess that makes it easy to cast them aside in the name of pleasing Wall Street.

I was a lifeguard when I was younger and the lessons that I learned training there were unforgettable. As a lifeguard, you don’t just react to problems, you scan your water and look for potential problems. You are taught all sorts of strategies to minimize mistakes and keep everyone safe. While at work, I applied the skills I learned as a lifeguard to protect our clients from things I could see on the horizon.

Lifeguards overlap the areas they are watching so that there’s always a second pair of eyes on any given situation. This worked very well for us when we adopted this strategy. For example, if I had a press release I was working on, I made sure to always run it by the managing partners to ensure I got everything right before publishing it. Another example was to watch companies in our portfolio that could indicate problems for the other companies that were our clients. Because each of our clients were minding their daily business like they were supposed to, they couldn’t always look up and see trends that could affect them. Part of our job was to see these things coming and warn (or save) them if needed.

Lifeguards constantly scan the waters without focusing on one particular area. When you are sitting up in the tower, it can be easy to focus on just one person or a group of people. It’s called tunnel vision. The safest thing to do is to look for typical problem signs, make a quick head count, and move on to the next group of people. This lesson translates to business really well. As a CEO, you have a bunch of things you have to worry about. Payroll, internal initiatives, investors, competition, and growing the company are just some of the huge tasks you have to take on. Making sure you give each their due attention is important or you become reactionary and will never get to focus on looking forward for your business.

Lifeguards ignore unneeded distractions and maintain constant focus. If you’ve ever seen a lifeguard at the beach, they always have their eyes on the water. They will walk up their towers backwards to stay facing the water. People will come up to talk to them and they’ll rarely look at them, instead focusing on watching the water. It’s not that they are trying to be rude, but that they are focusing on their job, not someone who just wants to chat about Baywatch. In business life, there is plenty to keep you distracted from doing your real job. Surfing the internet can waste whole days of productivity. Worse yet, spending your whole day on something that _seems_ productive like rearranging the office furniture can make you feel like you are doing something good, but is usually just a way to procrastinate on something more important that could be done. When you learn to control the time you spend on unneeded activities, all sorts of time opens up and you’ll find much more time to run your business.

Lifeguards cover each other’s water when an emergency comes up. Emergencies happen; it’s a fact of lifeguarding as well as business. This is a hard lesson for some businesses to learn, especially in cyclical situations like cashflow or business development. Lifeguards typically have a phone they pick up or button they push to signal the other lifeguards that an emergency is happening in their water and they are taking care of it. The other lifeguards immediately respond by calling for backup and covering the lifeguard’s water while they are making a save. Some businesses will see emergency situations and rally their employees to help fight the fire. While this is good, they often leave other parts of the business unattended. That’s a quick way to becoming a firefighter and only reacting to your business instead of acting to control your business.

Lifeguards and firefighters have their place in business. Both serve useful functions, but if you have more lifeguards, hopefully you won’t need so many firefighers.

Here’s my typical interview strategy for when I am interviewing Business Analysts for ThoughtWorks and some tips to help you if I ever get picked to interview you.

1. Show Up On Time And Be Ready

I know that you are busy, but this isn’t college. You’re such a hot shot Analyst that you could land a job anywhere, right? Well, first you are going to have to show me that you want _this_ job. Our recruiting department sends out a confirmation to you usually 3 days in advance of my call. I also get a confirmation sent to me. If I can’t reach you on the phone number you give on the day of the call, I’ll usually try again about 15 minutes later. If I can’t reach you, I’ll send a note back to recruiting to reschedule the call. However, if I reach you and you are not ready to take my call and don’t have a good explanation (I’ll understand if the house is on fire or something), that’s an automatic *No Hire*. My reasoning for this is simple: it takes nearly an hour to do an interview with you and you know about it in advance, so you should have that time blocked off. If you don’t treat that time as important, it means you won’t treat our clients that way.

2. Prepare

Do your homework on ThoughtWorks. Find out how we like to work; our company culture. Read our website, learn about agile, visit some blogs, talk to us at conferences. I’m going to ask you some questions about what you know about the company, so show me that you did a little bit of work and I’ll be happy.

On the flip side, I do almost no preparation for my interview with you. All I know is your name, phone number, and what position we are hiring you for (that determines my questions, more on that later). I get all of your information like your resume and notes from other interviews you’ve had with us, but I don’t look at a single bit of it before the interview. This is by design. I don’t want to know anything about you that will influence my decision to hire you.

3. The Interview

I have a pretty consistent interviewing style that helps me be more objective about your skills. ThoughtWorks has a set of questions that they like me to ask and I also mix in some of my own. Here’s how the interview typically goes:

1. Ice Breaker
2. ThoughtWorks Questions
3. Domain Question From Your Most Recent Position
4. Random Domain Question
5. Questions For Me
6. Wrap Up

Ice Breaker
I start off by letting you know how the interview is going to go. I care more about your thinking process than you getting everything 100% right on my questions. By this time, I still haven’t looked at anything about you.

ThoughtWorks Questions
The ThoughtWorks questions are mostly softball questions so that I can go over some logistical things about the job. Are you alright with lots (and lots) of travel? Have you worked with Agile professionally? Why do you want to be a BA? There are a bunch of questions, but they give me an idea of what to ask you further. I’ll go into something in detail if I get the sense that you are stretching the truth. While you are answering my questions, I’ll pop open your resume and look at your most recent job and title.

Domain Question From Your Most Recent Position
By now, you should be warmed up and I have a good sense of what I am going to ask you. From your most recent position, I’ll ask you something about the business domain. This way, I get a sense of how well you can understand what a business does. If you’re a TWU candidate, meaning you are just out of college, this question changes to ask about some of your classes. I’m looking for a deep understanding of what you are talking about. I’ll dive into small details to make sure you really know your stuff.

I may also ask you about some things you have done for your previous job (or school). Special projects, clubs, whatever. I want to see that you haven’t simply gone to work or school and taken the minimum to get by. It’s for your own good because you’ll get burned out quickly at ThoughtWorks if you aren’t into the work.

Random Domain Question
This is my favorite part of the interview. I’ll ask you about a domain that has nothing to do with business and run through a few exercises with you to see how well you can understand what I am talking about. It’s always something off the wall and will have nothing to do with what you have done before, but that is the point. I’m looking to see how well you can adapt to a new situation and think on your feet. I’ll play customer roles and ask you to elicit questions about things I want to do. I’ll try to trip you up and see how you recover. This way, I can get an idea of how you will do with our clients.

Questions For Me
This is the part of the interview where you get to ask me anything you want about ThoughtWorks. Some people trip up here because they think the interview is over. If you are really serious, you will have some questions about how we do our work, what our people are like to work with, etc. I also get to sell you a little bit on what it’s like to work here.

Wrap Up
The whole process takes 45 minutes to an hour. I let you know about the next phase in the interview process and that our recruiting department will be getting back to you within a week or so. After that, I hang up and write the last of my notes about you and read them over again. I make them readable by someone other than myself and then I make a decision about whether or not to pass or pursue.

4. Pass Or Pursue?

After the interview, I have a pretty good idea of how I am going to recommend you. I ask myself lots of questions like: Is this person smart and do they get things done? Would I want to work with them? If the answer is no, it’s a pass. If I wouldn’t work with you, then I wouldn’t expect anyone else at ThoughtWorks to. If I feel like you aren’t smart enough to walk into a client and immediately start to figure out what is going on, that’s also a pass. If I have a good feeling about you, I’ll mark you as a pursue and send you on up the chain for our intense face-to-face interview process.

I hope this was helpful to future candidates. I’m looking for aptitude and attitude in the way that you present yourself to me. If you’ve got both, you’ll have no problem being a ThoughtWorker. Good luck.

UPDATE: If you are looking for a referral, please email me at jhoms at thoughtworks dot com and I’ll point you to the right people.

First, there was a program that they allowed me to download (if you use IE, it just runs right in the browser) that showed me exactly how much RAM I had and more importantly, _where_ it was installed. It showed me that I had 1GB of RAM in a single slot.

Then I got a recommendation for which RAM I needed based on Crucial knowing exactly what computer I had. Their suggestion was exactly what I needed.

Purchasing the RAM was my favorite part of the experience. In my opinion, this is where Crucial gets things _really_ right. I didn’t have to log in, sign up, or otherwise register for anything on their site. I just put in my shipping and billing information and I was done.

The last nice touch was this little gem that appeared in the middle of my order confirmation.

Nothing to fill out if I didn’t want to, but a genuine attempt at making my life easier if I was going to have multiple orders.

Thanks Crucial, it was a great buying experience.

I’ve taken it further a few times and actually written notes under each person’s name so that I knew who came up with the idea. It was a common practice for me at NeoTactix where we would meet a ton of new companies all the time and I could _never_ keep their names straight in my head. I find it equally important in my consulting life at ThoughtWorks, but rely on it less when I see the people that I meet every day and their name eventually starts to stick in my head.

The illustrious Brad Feld came up in our conversation about his work/life balance. I’ve always looked up to smart people like Brad and tried to learn from their mistakes. I learned a long time ago that it is the best to learn this way, but there are unfortunately some things that you need to go through yourself to make the lesson really stick.

I’m trying to strike the right balance in my own life. I’m willing to give up a little personal time to get a strong foothold on a career, but I won’t do it forever. My life outside of work is too important to spend it in an office building all day. I love my work. I especially loved it when I was at NeoTactix. I would get into these very focused times and work more than 80 hours in a week without noticing. Now, I rely on my family and friends to reel me back in when I’ve gone too far. I don’t listen to people who can’t handle the pressure, don’t really care about me. I listen to those most important to me because they sometimes see things that I don’t.

So, I’m still not sure if I work too much. I know that I am enjoying what I do right now and that family and friends still come first. Like Nick said, I’m practicing for something bigger. Hardships? Setbacks? Things I’ve never done before? Bring ‘em on, but somebody remind me about dinner…

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