Scott Berkun's Blog, page 68

Executives and fake decisions

We all do it now and then: we have a decision made in mind, but we ask friends and family for their opinion. Yet the whole time we're confident we're going to stick with our decision no matter what they say. We just want them to feel involved.

Professor Roberto aims directly at managers and calls this the "charade of consultation". It looks like involvement, but it's just for show:

I continue to be amazed at how many executives get themselves into trouble with their teams by engaging in what my friend and colleague Michael Watkins calls the "charade of consultation." The charade occurs when an executive makes a decision, and then goes to his team to "consult" them about the issue. The executive might even entertain a discussion of multiple options, yet then steer the dialogue toward the alternative he or she preferred from the outset. Naturally, team members see right through the charade. Such leadership approaches actually diminish trust and commitment.

http://michael-roberto.blogspot.com/2011/07/stop-charade.html

Sometimes we're open to changing our minds, but just aren't convinced by what we hear. But other times we go in knowing all along, it's just for show. Perhaps the answer is to express some level of confidence when involving others. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to do X, but I want to hear your argument for Y." Then opinions can be offered but there's no deception involved.

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Published on July 21, 2011 09:48

The end of Google Labs

Today Google announced they're closing Google Labs, their collection of living prototypes and experiments. It will be overstated in the press how much this means or doesn't mean. It's common for successful companies to close R&D groups (or more accurately in this case, portals for discovering R&D work), or start them, depending on the winds of politics in the company at the time. The effect of killing or starting these groups is always hard to measure inside, much less outside a company.

I wrote about the futility of having a VP of Innovation and sometimes I feel the same way about research groups. Some groups earn their keep, but few do. It's hard to invent whether you're on the front lines or in ivory towers, and all things equal, I'll put my money on the people on the front line. As I understand Google Labs from their FAQ, it was a place for the world to discover the pet projects employees were working on for their 20% time. How the world will discover these things in the future is something of an unknown.

But what is telling from the short announcement posted today, is how mature Google has become. We have on our hands a very straightforward, positively spun, corporate press release, that reads much like what Microsoft or Procter & Gamble might say:

Last week we explained that we're prioritizing our product efforts. As part of that process, we've decided to wind down Google Labs. While we've learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we're to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead.. We'll continue to push speed and innovation—the driving forces behind Google Labs—across all our products, as the early launch of the Google+ field trial last month showed.

When you see phrases like 'extraordinary opportunities', 'prioritizing', 'process' and 'huge amounts of learning', in reference to something being killed, you know you're in the fantasy land of press releases. Winding down sounds oh so graceful, like winding down a party. And mentioning Google+, their current darling, is a well-played card.

And the kicker of course is the by-line:

Posted by Bill Coughran, SVP for Research and Systems Infrastructure

When a company has two levels of VPs (SVP = Senior Vice President) you know the days of free willing autonomy and entrepreneurial inspiration have faded. I remember the day at Microsoft when I learned there were over 100 VPs in the company – My mind was blown – I realized all at once how it was no longer the company that hired me. It had more than tripled in size, and quadrupled in bureaucracy. David, as much as Microsoft was ever a David (see OS/2) , had now become a Goliath.

Success breeds unavoidable changes. Better leaders minimize the downsides, but only so much is possible.

The question is whether the people working at the old company are the right ones to keep working at the new company formed by success of the old. And when the path for how ideas get out the door changes, for better or worse, all the wise creatives ask "where is it exactly that I'm working?" When that path gets too long, it's time to go. Google, despite its size and success, still has a better path for ideas than most corporations in the world, but for anyone who has been there long enough, that might not be good enough.

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Published on July 20, 2011 15:44

Nothing is obvious to everyone

Nothing is obvious to everyone, but everything is obvious to someone. These two facts are something Socrates might have said. It's simple and true, but easy to forget. Once we learn how to ride a bike, we forget how long it took to learn. There can be value in forgetting, or remembering, depending on how you look at things.

In this post about Math, it's offered that things don't seem simple until they are understood:

It's a common malady of myself and my friends who study mathematics to think that we're stupid because it's taken so long to understand something so simple. As I recalled all this occurrences I had a new epiphany: It suddenly seems simple because we suddenly understand it.

But the opposite is also true.

Until you understand how something works, it can't seem complex. I drove manual transmission for years before I knew what a clutch actually did. It was just a lever I pushed with my foot that left me go faster. I'd never seen the gears, or a clutch mechanism, so in my mind it was simple.

But one day, out of curiosity, I read about how a clutch works. And transmissions. Not being mechanically inclined, it was complicated. Previously in my mind, the pedal was the clutch. But it turned out the clutch was something specific, and complex, that the lever merely activated. I could never have invented such a thing, much less constructed or fixed it.

If you study any trivial thing with persistence you will find complexity. Atoms yields quarks. Blood yields DNA. The more carefully you look, the more questions you find.

Everything is simple and complex at the same time.

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Published on July 20, 2011 09:00

Are PMs worth more than game designers?

It's daft to put faith in any single study, especially ones that make you and your profession look good. Confirmation bias, or finding the first example that supports your beliefs and running with it, is an easy trap.

Rather than point to this as evidence for why project managers or designers are most important (which is dubious – they're both important), I do find the question itself interesting. It's an attempt at a Moneyball, or +/- analysis, for creative teams.

Mr Mollick found that some 30% of differences in revenue between games could be attributed to the producer and the designer alone; and that the lion's share of this variation was due to the producer. The boring project manager, in other words, meant more to the success or failure of the project than did the flashy designer. Moreover, the effect seemed to persist even as the individuals moved on to other projects, so more than one game could benefit from the same competent producer.

via Business-school research: Game changers (From the Economist).

You can read the actual paper here.

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Published on July 19, 2011 11:15

Cover designs for Mindfire: vote!

In my continuing quest to involve you folks in the process of making this book, it's time to look at some cover design ideas. For those who haven't been following, the book is fun collection of provocative essays.

If you want to be notified when the book is out: join the list.

These are not final designs – they're round two. I've worked with Tim Kordik on exploring different directions and these were the three most different – I'm sharing with you to get the best feedback possible.

How to Vote

Our goals are: 1) simple & bold 2) Easy to read from far away 3) Positive & interesting
The blurbs and other details are placeholders (hopefully this is obvious)
We want feedback on direction – these are not final designs
First impressions weigh heavily: don't think too much
Comments welcome: be constructive please

Design A: Dynamite

Design B: Triangle

Design C: Blue flame

View This Poll

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Published on July 18, 2011 10:12

The new book is on its way: update soon

A few weeks ago I reported the results from your votes on the title for the next book. The winning title was MindFire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds.

Since then the book has been rolling along. Later today I'll have an update on the cover and interior design, and let you folks vote on which direction we should go in.

As a self-published book, I have more flexibility on timing, but right now we'll lining things up for a mid-September release. Say tuned later today for more.

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Published on July 18, 2011 08:38

The Paradox of Creative Confidence

To get off the couch and do something interesting requires confidence. The more interesting the thing, the more confidence you need. But if you have too much confidence, you'll be blind to the lessons you need to learn to make something as good as what you imagined in your mind.

But if you have too little confidence, you either won't get off the couch, or you'll give up when you hit your first wall. And no interesting thing is finished without hitting some walls.

The paradox is to be confident, but not confident. Or to posses the self-control to make yourself confident, or doubtful, whenever you wish, mastering the tightrope of your own mind.

People who make good things walk this tightrope all the time.

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Published on July 15, 2011 15:40

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Published on July 11, 2011 15:31

Even Jefferson had second drafts

After a writer is successful, and their works enter the canon, we quietly assume their work could not have been written any other way. That is until we study how they made their famous works. One reason I made the time-lapsed video of writing an essay is to show how much change is involved in writing even short pieces.

Here you can see one of Jefferson's drafts of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. He wrote several, and reviewed the document in detail with the Committee of Five. It's unclear how many revisions or discussions they had, but it's clear the document is a product of thoughtful revision.

You can see the full transcript of the above version of the Declaration.

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Published on July 04, 2011 12:35

The Tree of Life: Movie Review

I like Terrence Malick films, but I don't recommend them for everyone. The Thin Red Line is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's up there with Fight Club and Memento in the short list of films I've seen a dozen times or more. His latest film just came out, called The Tree of Life, staring Brad Pitt.

The problem with his movies for most people, particularly The Thin Red Line and Tree of Life, is they are long, abstract, non-linear and have fuzzy narrative structures that intentionally defy easy comprehension. They are not sitcoms or thrillers: you have to put more of your attention in to get something out. The upside is every moment in his films is beautiful and unusual. He reaches as far as he can with the medium of film to express ideas and feelings hard to capture any other way. If you made it through Koyaanisqatsi, Mallick is easy to watch, as there is comparatively lots of narrative – but most people don't make it all the way through Koyaanisqatsi. In fact in the matinée showing I saw of Tree of Life, one couple got up and left half-way through.

Actual review starts here: The main story is about a boy growing up in Texas (played as an adult by Sean Penn) in the 1950s, with an overbearing father and a loving, but submissive mother, and how they deal with joy and crisis in their lives. Like 2001: a Space Odyssey, there are many scenes wrapped around this story that are abstract, and about the nature of life and the history of the universe. The movie wanders in and out of the main story in epic, but sometimes disorienting fashion. Many epic themes: fathers, mothers, doors, trees (no surprise, love, hate, birth and death. The mystery of grace, a theme of the Thin Red Line as well, is central here as well.

And there's something about how he films people that feels like memory. The camera moves in unusual, but not distracting, over-the shoulder ways. His colors and textures magically feel more like my own memories of childhood, warm and slightly worn out, rather than the perfectly sharp and clean feeling most films have.

Every negative review I've read of the movie is accurate. Mallick could use a sense of humor. His vision is overbearing and relentless. But so are the positive ones: he makes art unlike what you will find from Hollywood. He offers a different kind of uplifting experience in the theater. Something about his films acts like a seed in the mind, growing in potency after you leave. There were moments in the film I've been thinking about again and again since I left, and the stretches where I felt bored have been reduced away. Unlike most movies where the pleasure is only found in the watching, Tree of Life, if you have the patience, pays off in the thinking and feeling for long after you leave the theater.

Trailer below – it's in limited run in the U.S. – if you're interested, definitely worth seeing in the theater. You can find a list of theaters where it's playing by zip code:

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Published on July 01, 2011 08:33