Scott Berkun's Blog, page 29

Kindle editions on sale today: $3.49 (act fast)

Three on my books are heavily discounted on Kindle today. $3.49 for some of them.

Confessions of a Public Speaker is currently #1 in business, #37 overall for all kindle books
Myths of Innovation is #12 in business, #256 overall
Making Things Happen, #1 in project management, #769 overall

I have no idea how long they’ll be on sale for (Amazon works in mysterious ways), but grab them quick if you’ve been waiting to grab them.

I’ve heard some reports the sale is U.S. only but I can’t confirm that.

 

What are the toughest public speaking situations?

On Tuesday 1/28 I’ll be doing a free, live webcast (register here) about public speaking, hosted by O’Reilly Media.

In Confessions of A Public Speaker I explained how to deal with 17 difficult speaking situations. In the webcast I’ll coach you through some of them, or the ones you ask for in comments:

You’re being heckled
Everyone is staring at their laptops / phones
Your time slot gets cut from 45 to 10 minutes
Everyone in the room hates you
One guy won’t stop asking questions
There is a rambling question that makes no sense
You are asked an impossible question
The microphone breaks
Your laptop explodes
There is a typo on your slide (nooooooo!)
You’re late for you’re own talk
You feel sick
You’re running out of time
You left your slides at home
Your hosts are control freaks
You have a wardrobe malfunction
There are only 5 people in the audience

Would you like me to cover any of these in the webcast? Or are there other situations you want to learn to handle better?

Leave a comment and I’ll consider covering it in the webcast. Thanks.

Social Media, Free Speech and the Mob: input wanted

I was invited to speak at Seattle’s Social Media Club on Wed 1/22 (registration here) on the topic of Free Speech and Social Media. I’m inviting your opinions to help me sort out my own. It’s a subject Iv’e followed for a long time, but it’s complex enough I’d benefit from opening the floor here on the blog.

The initial premise of “Does social media help or hurt free speech?” is definitely a false dichotomy, but false dichotomies are useful in laying out a general landscape so I’m sticking with it for now.

Clearly there are so many facets to this wide question that both are true: social media improves people’s ability to make their speech visible, meaning the ability to publish, but it can simultaneously make the consequences of speaking up harder if more people pay attention to what you publish than you expected.  Mob justice, harassment and vigilante behavior have different dimensions online and the combination has some very destructive consequences.

Among other research I’m reading Tom Standage’s book Writing on the Wall: The first 2000 years of social media and it’s excellent so far. We have had social media for a long time and despite what the laws have said about speech, plenty of people have chosen to speak freely anyway (often at their peril). We have much to learn from look backwards.

I have 6 questions I’m exploring:

How has new media changed access to expression?
How has this made things better?
How has this made things worse?
What new challenges are we facing? (and what can we learn from how we adjusted to previous media innovations?)
What implications does all this have for individuals?
What implications does all this have for leaders, corporations and governments?

Here’s the list of articles and perspectives I’ve been reading recently. Suggestions welcome:

Death Threats On Twitter Are Meaningless
Why Women Aren’t Welcome On The Internet
The war over free speech, harassment and trolls
Be Careful What You Post
A Facebook like now covered by First Ammendment
No Apology for Pearl Harbor Joke
A guide to tweeting during a crisis (re: Boston marathon bombing)
Sacco fired after AIDS tweet
A&E calls off duck dynasty suspension
White house official fired for tweets
A dongle joke that spiraled out of control

Opinions welcome. The floor is open. I’ll reference useful comments in the talk itself. Thanks.

Issues with scottberkun.com

Hi there. Just wanted to drop a short note to let you know there have been performance issues with scottberkun.com. Most of it is increased traffic and some of it is wrestling with Mediatemple, my host, to sort out what can be done.

I’ve been posting every day this month, but those of you who get posts by email may have not received emails. You can see the list of new posts here of course.

I didn’t post yesterday as the site was having enough issues without adding more content.  If you have trouble accessing pages or other issues leave a comment here. Otherwise this will be resolved over the next week as I’m likely switching hosts.

Apologies for the inconvenience. Have a nice and issue free day. 

Seinfeld and The Heckler Therapist

It’s rare to get heckled when giving a lecture, yet it’s a top fear for many people. My own advice on dealing with hecklers is in the what to do when things go wrong chapter of Confessions of a Public Speaker.

In short the best approach is to acknowledge them briefly, and politely ask them to hold their comments until the end and that you’ll respond to their comment then. Then continue. The audience is on your side, even if they laughed at what they heckler said. They came to see you and not the heckler – so they always support you continuing on.

Jerry Seinfeld has similar advice but goes much further. Here’s an excerpt from his recent AMA interview:

Very early on in my career, I hit upon this idea of being the Heckle Therapist. So that when people would say something nasty, I would immediately become very sympathetic to them and try to help them with their problem and try to work out what was upsetting them, and try to be very understanding with their anger.

It opened up this whole fun avenue for me as a comedian, and no one had ever seen that before. Some of my comedian friends used to call me – what did they say? – that I would counsel the heckler instead of fighting them.

Instead of fighting them, I would say “You seem so upset, and I know that’s not what you wanted to have happen tonight. Let’s talk about your problem” and the audience would find it funny and it would really discombobulate the heckler too, because I wouldn’t go against them, I would take their side.

In all cases always remember you have the microphone and whoever has the microphone has all the power. No one can talk over you unless you stop talking.

How I Decide What To Read

This month I’m posting every day, taking the top voted question from readers and answering it.  With 37 votes, today’s winner was:

How do you decide what to read?

From what I can tell, you are a voracious reader. Do you read just one book at a time, or multiple books at a time? Advantages or disadvantages to either?

I read 20 to 30 books a year, sometimes more if I’m working on a new book and there’s research I need to do. I don’t worry much about what I read. I keep a big supply of good books around and what I read on a given day is driven more by whim that anything. If I buy good books, which one I’m currently reading doesn’t matter.

I read primarily on my iPad through Kindle. It’s convenient given that I travel often, it’s easy to buy new books on the fly, and I like their highlighting system. But I’m not particular: I read print books often too.

I try hard to read one book at a time. It’s very tempting not to, but like all multitasking you waste energy when you switch as it takes time to recall everything that was in the book up until the point you reached last time. If I switch away from a book it’s a good sign I should abandon it completely. If I’m not convinced by the 50 page mark I will abandon a book with no regrets. I used to have 3 or 4 partially read books around but I’ve gotten much better at avoiding that trap.

As long as I’m reading frequently I don’t worry much about what the particular books are. But if you forced me to make it into a formula it’d be something like this:

Books I should read. I’m interested in writing books that will be read long into the future and I read old books that are still read today to learn something about how it’s done. I read many books that were published decades ago and largely avoid trendy topics or bestsellers. There’s plenty of classic literature I’ve never read and I try to knock off one or two of those a year. Some books are purely recommendations from friends who know the kinds of books I love.
Books related to a book I’m thinking of writing.  I have a table in my office with 5 piles of books, each pile represents a future book project. I don’t know exactly when I’ll get to these projects, but I do look for books that line up with future ideas I have for my own projects. Sometimes I put them aside, other times I bump them to the head of the queue.
Books in different subjects. My strength as a thinker is I have wide interests and I grow that strength by reading books in many different subjects. The last few books I’ve finished include Glittering Images by Paglia, The Origin of Satan by Pagels, A Drive Into The Gap by Guilfoile, and Broken Music by Sting. I rarely read books about management or creativity anymore as I have far less to learn in those subjects than I do about art, religion, sociology and dozens of other ways of looking at the world. I also believe I become a better expert at what I already know by reading different subjects as there are always ideas from one field that can be applied to others and that’s where many  breakthroughs come from.
I rarely read bestsellers and seek more challenging books. The bestseller list is conservative in the kinds of authors and topics that will be widely popular immediately on the book’s release. Plus it’s not a level playing field, which is a surprise to most people. I prefer more ambitious books that are too challenging to ever see this kind of popularity. Zeldin’s An Intimate History of Humanity or The Great Big Book of Horrible Things are good examples. I love books where a smart expert who writes well takes on a big subject without ever claiming a gimmicky solution to all the world’s problems (a sad cliche of the non-fiction bestseller lists).
I read good writers. I sometimes read books purely because of the talents of who wrote them or the approach they took. Writing is a craft and I want to learn from other craftspeople. I’m a regular reader of The Best American Essay series since it’s an easy way to find new writers and essays are short enough that if I don’t like one I can just skip to the next one.

You can see My Favorite Books and Why I love Them for more on what I read and why.

When Is Something Worth Teaching?

This month I’m posting every day, picking the top voted reader question and answering it. With 37 votes, submitted by Andrew Holloway, is:

When do you know that you have something worth saying or teaching?

I often find myself caught between two competing thoughts: that I don’t know enough to help anyone, and that I should help anyone I can by speaking/writing to others about my experiences or how to do something. As a speaker and writer, was there a point where you felt you were “qualified” to speak or write? Did it evolve over time, or arrive at a moment?

The French Coin Drop is the easiest magic trick in the world to learn yet I never run out of people who have never learned how to do it. Even the most basic unit of knowledge will be new to many. In that case look around: if you’re the only one at the dinner table who knows the trick, guess who the best possible teacher is? It’s you. Worth is relative. If David Blane shows up yield the floor, but otherwise everyone is looking to you. Put simply something is worth teaching if the person learning it think’s it’s worthwhile.

The fear inexperienced writers have is that everything has been said already. Even if this is true, no one has read it all. You may be the first person that offers to teach them a specific skill, or tells a story in a way that they connect with. It’s Ok To Be Obvious since the person reading your work probably does not know everything you or your peers do. Oddly enough, there is always the largest market for people who can teach the basics in any skill, or tell stories that strike at the universal themes of heroes, love and loss. Experts and snobs complain about books that are too basic, but they’re in the minority on this planet. You don’t need to write for everyone, you need to write for your audience and you can’t find your audience until you start writing.

Personally I know I might have something worth saying when an idea resonates with me and stays in my mind. It could be a critique of something I heard, a powerful story, or even an interesting quote. I keep a notebook with me at all times and write these small observations down. The ones that stay in mind end up as drafts and it’s in the process of trying to write a draft that I learn if I really do have something worth sharing or not. I throw away many drafts and have many half written ones that maybe I’ll return to, but maybe I won’t. Creation is messy and accepting the mess is the biggest challenge for many people who want to make things.

I’m interested in writing and speaking about important things that go unsaid. I like to demystify, debunk and critique sloppy thinking and I try to be brave in taking on subjects that many people think are wrong but are afraid to speak up about. Even something as straightforward as How To Write A Good Bio is a radical simplification of the stupid things I constantly see people do. I try not to be a cynic, and even my critical posts like How to Call BS On a Guru are intended to elevate the reader’s thinking and not just tear down someone else’s thoughts. Even when I rant I work hard to offer an alternative.

My advice is to write and speak anyway even if you have doubts. It’s only through writing and speaking that you’ll improve your thinking and invite feedback from other people. That’s the only way to improve your judgement and craft further. I’ve been doing this a long time and if you like what I do it’s explained more by commitment and effort than talent. The worst that can in writing is no one will read what you have to say. So what? Most writers aren’t widely read, including successful ones. But it’s through publishing and calling something finished that you invite the most useful feedback and that’s the only way to learn better judgement about both what’s worth writing about, and how to write about those things well.

Why It’s Ok To Be Average

This month I’m posting every day, picking the top voted reader question and answering it. With 41 votes, submitted by Carey, is:

What is your advice to a guy who truly DON’T feel a calling/urge/nudge to be any other than an average Joe who loves his family?

My interest in this question is based on the fact that there are people who are pretty average and are meant to be. They are the blue collar glue that holds society together. With all the “you can be extraordinary” hype that is flying around these days, I wonder sometimes what those kind of folks take away.

In America we’ve perverted exceptionalism to mean something selfish. Much like the obsession with productivity, we’ve inflated people’s ambitions to the point where everything thinks they can be amazing at anything. There is an unavoidable arrogance in wanting to be great, an attitude of “Get the hell out of my way, I’m trying to be exceptional!” To which everyone around says “yes, you are an exceptional asshole.”

Exceptionalism is not necessarily good. Many of the worst people in history were exceptional, that’s why they’re in history books: they were exceptionally evil. Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pat, or even Madoff all did horrible, hurtful things to other people with their exceptional talents. They were also productive, shedding light on another value we’ve twisted into meaninglessness. Exceptional and productive people contribute only if they create positive value for others. Earning vast personal wealth or being a star-athlete doesn’t make you a good person, especially if your success has come at the expense of others. There are many examples of over-achievers who were assholes to their families and friends, as their obsession with becoming exceptional blinded them to their the destructive power of the own narcissism. For the fate of humanity, it’s better that you’re mediocre at doing the right things than exceptional at doing the wrong ones.  It’s ok to be average if you’re using your averageness for good.

If I were stranded on a desert island I wouldn’t want “exceptional people” as companions. There wouldn’t be enough space on the island for their collective egos. I’d want ordinary, good natured, honest, hard working people who were reasonable to deal with, had faith in collaboration, and wanted to build a community more than a shrine to their individual achievements. It’s folks with blue collar attitudes who have had the most resistance to the hype of over-achievement. It’s people who felt comfortable with themselves without a world record to their name or a fancy car to drive that provide the basis for civilization at all. Most all-star teams fail: there’s too much ego. In most kinds of work you don’t need that many exceptional people to do the work a team needs to do. At a certain minimum level, talent is less of a problem than attitude.

It has always been the salt of the earth among us, like firefighters and teachers, that make the largest sacrifices for the smallest rewards, for the greater benefit of the people around them. They don’t do it to be on the cover of a magazine, they do it because it seems the right thing to do. They are the highest form of exceptional people in that they don’t demand attention for their contributions. They’re more interested in living in a loving family, a great neighborhood, or an amazing country, than any personal achievement, which fundamentally changes the way they apply their talents and who they hope to help with them.

We are a social species and it’s clear what matters most to our own personal well being are our bonds with friends, parents, children, coworkers and neighbors. It’s our ability to share our daily experiences with them that defines a fulfilling life more than anything else we do while alive. And it’s this that is the greatest tragedy of people in pursuit of the exceptional: they believe it is their achievements that will win them the love and respect they need to feel whole, when the opposite is true since wholeness can’t be won. It’s only through the small, ordinary, humble participation in the lives of people around us that fulfillment can be found.

When is it ethical to sell low quality products?

This month I’m posting every day, picking the top voted reader question and answering it.  With 50 votes, today’s winner, submitted by Peter Colligan, was:

 Software Ethics – When is it acceptable to ship a low quality product?

I develop enterprise software. Sometimes the decision is made to ship when quality is low and more time is needed for R&D. However, I have as a professional software engineer no ethical recourse to such actions. Sometimes the direct impact is not death but extreme inefficiencies that cause overspending and unstable workforce conditions for customers of such software…which could be damaging. Other professions such as medicine, drug research, etc have a professional guild that extends beyond direct employment boundaries. Is this really a problem?

The short answer is there are no short answers on ethical questions.

If you sell something as “low quality” and the person buying it wants a cheap low quality product, what’s the problem? If both parties feel they got what they asked for, there is no ethical challenge regardless of quality (for addictive drugs or products producing toxic waste there may be communal ethics, but that’s another discussion). The rub then is what a product promises to do vs. what it actually does which leads to marketing ethics (e.g. are  infomercials ethical? What about alpha or beta-software?) 

Deciding when something is finished is highly subjective. The Brooklyn bridge was designed by Roebling to have cables 6x stronger than necessary, a very high engineering standard. This level of “quality” is rarely used in modern engineering work. Is this lower standard ethical? Or was Roebling unethical in wasting so much in city resources to build a “wasteful” bridge? Subjective indeed.

Quality, as the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance painfully explores, is hard to define. Creators and consumers often have widely varying standards for what good and bad mean (see Why Software Sucks). McDonald’s, the fast food restaurant, has nearly 2 million employees world wide. Is it unethical to work there because the quality of food is so low? Even if the quality is low, is it ok to sell low quality things if people want them anyway? When is it ethical to publish low quality writing? Could you win a law suit against a musician because you thought the song you bought was poorly sung? Is it wrong to post grammatically incorrect status updates on Facebook every day about your favorite socks? Objectivity in ethics is hard to find.

The simplest place to start is to spend as much time as possible with people who share your ethics. Does anyone else meet your standards? Can you find people who want to pay a premium for your higher quality work? If the answers are yes then your problem is solved. if the answers are no, then your standards might be too high.

The standards for many kinds of products are often set by the market. Progress often happens by companies making superior products rather than a committee decreeing a new higher standard. Sometimes there is a role for government to solve certain market limitations, e.g. automobile seat belts or fuel economy regulation, but that’s more of an exception than the rule.

The birth of medical malpractice and professional negligence as legal concepts are also worthy of study. The ISO had its first standard in 1951 and that standard was for… getting engineers to agree on how to measure things. Certainly an important development, but not a triumph of product quality. Professional associations are slow and even when they create good standards they mostly impact the reduction of the worst malpractices. The ACM does have a software engineering code of ethics but until doing research for this post I’d never seen or heard of it before and I bet most makers and consumers of software haven’t either.

It’s most germaine element for our interests is:

3.01. Strive for high quality, acceptable cost and a reasonable schedule, ensuring significant tradeoffs are clear to and accepted by the employer and the client, and are available for consideration by the user and the public.

The statement ensuring significant tradeoffs are clear is great advice for anyone making anything. In your case the decision to ship a lower quality product might be the best choice to balance out all of the clients tradeoffs. Software, unlike bridges, is easy to upgrade allowing for quality to be improved over time.

And in this notion of tradeoffs is perhaps the real answer you’re looking for. Improve your skills at selling the positive trade-offs of high quality work. Express how much clients will gain in the long term if they’re willing to invest more in quality work upfront. That’s an important skill that has nothing to do with design or engineering.

How to Overcome Cynicism

This month I’m posting every day, picking the top voted question from readers and answering it.  With 54 votes, today’s winner was:

How do you overcome cynicism in an environment determined to maintain it?

You overcome a toxic environment by walking out the door. Unless you happen to be a powerful person in the organization, it is not your fault that the environment is cynical, broken, dysfunction, toxic, demented, twisted or incompetent. Managers and executives are paid a great deal more than the average employee and the main thing that comes with that pay grade is accountability. If the place depresses you, look upwards: the people in power make it this way. It’s uncommon for people in power to be motivated to make big changes since they like being in power.

On a personal level, cynicism is for cowards. To be alive in this universe of mostly dead space is a miracle. To be born on this planet in a time and a country with clean running water, electricity and public schools is an additional miracle. To even be able to read and write and think well enough to have a professional job to complain about is a third. When it comes down to it, cynics are simply not paying attention. While I am all for skepticism, and by that I mean the intense challenging of of assumptions, I am an unrepentant optimist about the opportunities we have, simply because we are alive. We can do almost anything. The problem is most of the interesting things take significant effort to do and it’s far easier to be cynical and not try than to put effort in the uncertainties of change. In the worst of all cases I’d rather be Sisyphus walking up that hill every day, than the nameless guy next to him doing nothing at all for all eternity.

If you do have a powerful ally, talk to them. Come up with a plan. You can offer to do most of the work, but you will need their support to defend what you do, provide resources for you, and convince their peers to follow along.

If you are powerful, you can only change a culture one person at a time. See how to fix a team for advice on how to lead change. All change starts small. It must be grown, not constructed.

If you have no power, there is no shame in quitting. It’s brave to quit in our culture and we should do it when we’re convinced nothing is likely to change. Only by quitting a lame situation do  you give yourself any real chance of having the time and energy to find a great one.