Bill Jensen's Blog, page 10

Knowing Is Easier Than Doing

We can all recite tons of things we KNOW we should do. But actually DOING them....Well, that's something altogether different.



For example, a recent LinkedIn discussion group asked people to list the difference between a leader and a boss. Easy peasy, right? We all know that we're supposed to act more like leaders and less like bosses. But do we actually do that, day in, day out?



Check out the following, samples from that discussion group. If asked which of the two columns you fit into, you know what the "right" answer is. But if I asked you to name a percentage that you practice each of those behaviors — day in, day out, 365 days a year — what percentage would you pick? 90%? 80%? 70%? Half? Less than half?



That's because doing is harder than knowing. No matter what percentage you picked, set a goal to move that higher this week. And again next week. And again. Knowing that you could do better, and doing it, day in, day out. That's what counts.

Best Guide to Creativity and Success Ever!

I've been searching since the late 1970s for a better brainstorming guru or resource...Still haven't found anything better!


The Universal Traveler: A Soft-Systems Guide to Creativity, Problem-Solving and the Process of Reaching Goals by Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall is easily in my Lifetime Top Ten Resources!



The intro says it all: The Universal Traveler is more than a guide to creative problem-solving and clear thinking: it is your passport to success. It is! Just about every great idea I've had or implemented since college was somehow rooted in its teaches. And most every failure I've encountered was when I forgot what it had taught me.



The back cover also summarizes the best definition of design since my first Design 101 course: Design is a process of making dreams come true.



What I love best about it is its humble simplicity and clarity. Aside from the occasional trip into academic-ese — soft-systems, synectics — it uses very plain language to explain every idea and the structure of being a traveler's guide to pull all the ideas together.





One of my all-time favorites is "Forced Connections," where attributes from one thing are randomly "forced" together to great something new. This is one of the ways I've been able to think so far ahead in the fields of employee engagement, culture and workplace design. I simply create a list of early-adoption consumer issues — privacy, app empowerment, workarounds, etc — and ask "What will that look like when consumers start realizing they want the same things at work?" Seeing those connections sooner than others is the basis for all of my books and consulting.



If you work or learn or play, this life-resource should be your best friend! Get it! Internalize it. Live it. You'll be very glad you did.

2014: 100 Crucial Choices Per Day

First... Some perspective...

• If you are reading this blog post...

• If you have food in your fridge and a roof over your head

You are already richer and more well-off than 75% of the world.

With that said, and all your struggles put in the proper context...



2014: FOCUS ON HOW YOU MAKE CHOICES

Your biggest challenge in 2014 is that you will make about 100 choices per day which will directly impact your success or failure that day, that month and throughout the year.

(5 to 7 crucial project/business/career choices per every waking hour, every day. Source: Search for a Simpler Way study, 2013)





Sound crazy? Think about these few examples...



• Emails/Texts: You get between 150 to 300 business emails per day, a lot more if you include all your texts. Your ability to select the most critical 5-10 to that truly deserve your full attention will impact your productivity, your effectiveness and your success. That's 5-10 choices right there.



• Meetings: You attend at least 62 meetings per month, and half of them are a waste of time. To eliminate that wasted time, you should be making the tough love choice to ignore at least one meeting per day — possibly lots more! 



• Social Media: Conservatively, 2 hours per day, likely lots more. You know most of that is not as productive or effective as it should be, right? Again, selecting which apps to focus on, which posts to read, review or bookmark — that's another 5-10 crucial choices.



• Project and Business Triage: This is where your highest-impact choices come in. Triaging is your ability to continuously take in lots of conflicting information and mixed priorities and rapidly make sense of it, organize it, synthesize and simplify it, prioritize it, plan immediate next steps, then coordinate those next steps with others. Jensen Group findings show that you are involved in 2-5 crucial project and business triaging moments per day and that each of those moments will require you to make 5-20 rapid-fire yes/no, stop/start, change/continue, rethink/recommit, agree/push-back decisions that will impact both your short-term and long-term success. That's between 10-100 super-critical decisions right there.   



Simplicity is key: Your ability to continue to refine and improve how you make 100 choices per day is both your biggest challenge and biggest opportunity in 2014.



NOBODY can master all 100 of those choices. Trying to do so will drive you off a cliff and be a huge waste of time. What you need to do is...



• Know Yourself and Your Needs vs. Wants: If you're like most people, most of your choices are poor or, at best, less than optimal. Most are guided by what you want vs. what you need. You need to be more disciplined in choosing needs over wants. 



• Think 80/20 Rule: Learn which 20% or so of those choices will get you about 80% of where you need to go.



Doing our part at SimplerWork: During the first few months of 2014, most of our blog posts and Bill's speaking engagements will be focused on making it easier for you to make great choices. Stay tuned for each new post! Check out this week's other posts! 

2014: Disrupt Yourself

If you have worked longer than even just one year:

2014 is your year of transformation, reinvention and reexamination.



Doesn't matter if you work on cutting edge technologies:

You need to disrupt yourself.



Doesn't matter if you are riding high on the best successes you've ever had:

You need to disrupt yourself.



Doesn't matter if you did that in 2013:

You need to do it again.



This idea is even more crucial this year after emerging in my research for Disrupt! Think Epic, Be Epic.



I was reminded of how crucial this was when searching for a tune I couldn't get outta my head after watching a Nissan Rogue commercial: M.I.A.'s Y.A.L.A. It's a rejection of 2013's viral theme You Only Live Once (YOLO), stating that You Always Live Again (YALA). (See video below)



While I agree with with FlameXgames' comment under the video — "Amazing Beat, but damn, the lyrics is just nonsense" — the closing set of lyrics are a call to disrupt oneself... A call we all need to heed: Why keep doing the same shit?!

YOLO?!!!


I don't even know anymore

What that even mean though

If you only live once why we keep doing the same shit?

Back home where I come from we keep being born again and again and then again and again

That's why they invented karma 


YALA! 

2014 is the year to disrupt yourself.



A few suggestions to get you started right away:



• If you haven't already, define success for 2014 with only three words . Why this is crucial: Super-simplifying (like an entire year down to just three words) "forces" oneself to intensely weigh and prioritize options. With only three words, at least one of them will likely end up being a major shift for you.






• Ask 5-10 of your geekiest friends about their newest and most favorite apps. Last year iTunes uploaded about 700 new apps per day. NOBODY can stay up to date with that volume! Use your network to figure out how outdated yours are and how you should be changing how you work and play. 




• Pick three of your favorite disruptive technologies: Maybe it's Uber, reinventing how to get a taxi. Or airbnb, reinventing where to stay. Or how today's CG FX are blowing your mind, eyes and imagination. Ask yourself: Is somebody applied these disruptive technologies to what I do, how would it change my field, my career?



• In case you're still not getting off your ass: Remember this Call to Action by Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, "Sometimes I just feel like I’m in this endless competition with an imagined successor." Realize: If you're not disrupting yourself, someone else will do it for you.




Then rethink, reimagine, reinvent how you do what you do! 

5 Habits of Resiliency and Disrupting Oneself

2014 is the year you must be resilient!

So many changes coming at you so fast — you must find the Force within you to be extremely resilient.



If resiliency alone was enough, I would simply refer you to the excellent FastCo article by Gwen Moran — 6 Habits of Resilient People — and that would be it. Case closed. Those 6 are:

• BUILD RELATIONSHIPS: We all need others

• REFRAME PAST HURTS: "You have the power to determine how you're going to look at a situation."

• ACCEPT FAILURE: Understanding the lessons it teaches you also teaches you optimism

• HAVE MULTIPLE IDENTITIES: Don't rely on just one portion of your life for joy, energy and passion

• PRACTICE FORGIVENESS: Crucial to letting go

• HAVE A SENSE OF PURPOSE: "You have to know what's important to you to be able to take action."



Awesome! But resiliency alone won't cut it. 

Implicit in those habits is that the outside world is disrupting you, and that you need to be able to adapt. You must ALSO Carpe Disruptus. You also must disrupt yourself!





5 Habits Crucial to Disrupting Yourself








1. Demand More Accountability One of the challenges with ANY corporate job is that there are so many places to hide. Accountability for success is so spread out. Start asking for more and more accountability. Especially for things that are beyond your control. Yes, that may sound crazy, but it's necessary for you to disrupt yourself. "You'll never know just how much of an impact you can make until you get in there and flex your disruptive muscles," says Bud Caddell is this FastCo article on disrupting yourself.




2. Have Lots of Affairs On Your Boss 2014 is the year in which no one — NO ONE — can be solely an employee. Everyone — E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E — must ALSO be an entrepreneur. Even if it's just a very small side business or freelance job, you must do this! Everyone must. Not just for the financial security reasons. (Whose job will ever be safe again?) 




Entrepreneurship is the best, most direct way to disrupt yourself. "More and more people are going to require the freedom to work on their own projects while they’re under the employment of somebody else," says Jude Goergen, of SBN Interactive. "Freelance projects. Businesses on the side. Pursuing their own ideas. Employers need to understand that in order to keep tomorrow’s employees, they’re going to have to loosen their clutches." Don't wait for your employer to do that. Start now!



3. Audacity Matters "When you think nothing else can be done — that's bullshit. You have to have the courage to take the leap of faith. The amount of possibilities is infinite." That's Mariquel Waingarten and Gaston Frydlewski, who launched the number one boutique hotel in Argentina in their 20s, sold it, then came to New York to start a new business. 



Everyone else's belief in you and your ideas begins with you. Get aggressive with your ideas. Now. Disruptive times (which include everyone being on overload and every idea fighting for attention) call for epic dreams, goals and actions. You've got to be more audacious with your ideas and your advocacy for them.

  

4. Question Everything "How would you design a healthcare system if there was no such things as doctors? Or if we weren't so tied to chemical [pharmaceutical] solutions?" That's Jamie Heywood, co-founder of PatientsLikeMe, which bypasses the usual double-blind, secretive approach to collecting and sharing health information, and opens it up so everyone can learn from everyone else.



We are in the midst of a digital revolution, where all the rules for everything are changing. Beyond the digitizing and the tools, that means most of our assumptions about how everything works or should work are being thrown out the window. That means you need to begin everything by questioning everything...

• "What if..."

• "Why?..." or "Why not?..."

• "Let's do it differently..."

...need to be the new norm for how every project begins, how every day begins.



5. Make a Mess Fail fast, fail forward is the idea that began with tech start-ups and is now on the lips of most every senior exec. And yet, for most of us in most companies, we know that that's hardly practiced the way it should be and could be. Most of us have good reasons to fear failing, as their are usually unpleasant consequences afterward.  



One exec who practices what she preaches is Francois Legoues, who heads up Innovation Initiatives for the CIO's office at IBM. "Nobody is smart enough to know what will work and what won't," she says. "We try, we fail, then adapt. You have to embrace failure."



We all do. One way you can do it — even when your boss or culture are not as enlightened as IBM's Legoues — is to assign yourself Failure Projects. That doesn't mean intentionally failing. What it means is taking on at least one project per quarter where you are going to push your own boundaries: Ask more and tougher questions, go with your gut more, speak out more, etc. Try it at least once. You'll find that soon your risk tolerance for failure is much greater and your concern about failing or looking bad is much lower.



Resolve to yourself: "2014 is the year I will put all five of these habits into practice!"



For How Tos on These Five Habits and more: Download Click , the FREE How To addendum to the book, Disrupt! Think Epic, Be Epic

  

Culture Is Your Phone Is Innovation

Will 2014 be the year in which leaders and companies  'get it'?


One of the most crucial areas of focus for cultural change in 2014 will be an organization's ability to drive innovation. Annnnnnd, most everyone leaves out a super-crucial ingredient!



This FastCo article, 6 Ways to Create a Culture of Innovation, nails much of the topic perfectly:

• BE INTENTIONAL WITH YOUR INNOVATION INTENT: Most companies are pretty vague about innovation, and so are their results!

• CREATE A STRUCTURE FOR UNSTRUCTURED TIME: The companies that win at innovation allow for unstructured discoveries, explorations and serendipity

• STEP IN, THEN STEP BACK: The companies that win at innovation ensure that their project leaders and teams have the time to think big and play outside their current sandbox

• MEASURE WHAT'S MEANINGFUL: What you're measuring has to change beyond today's restrictive norms

• GIVE "WORTHLESS" REWARDS: Informal recognition and bonding opportunities are crucial

• GET SYMBOLIC: Cultural symbols (e.g., the founder's kitchen table where the original idea was hatched, etc.) are central to rallying everyone around an idea


Great stuff! Except it's missing the crucial ingredient that makes it all work TOGETHER. How we share all that stuff, how we organize it, make sense of it, put it to use: Corporate IT's User Experience. Or UX for short.



The experience you have (UX) with your company's rules, tools and processes either makes it easy to innovate or hard to innovate. The more digitized our work becomes, the more your IT structure IS your culture. (Or at least is the tool that makes your culture work...or not.) It either values and enhances your efforts or it slows down, detracts from or destroys your efforts. And currently...



Corporate IT sucks when it comes to being user-centered

For the past two decades our Search for a Simpler study has researched the top sources of complexity at work. One of the biggest offenders: Corporate IT systems and tools are designed to help the company succeed (corporate-centered) but are rarely, if ever, designed backwards from the employees' needs to help each and every employee succeed (user-centered).





It's so bad that our 2012 Ten Year Report on the state of Work 2.0 was subtitled: Is Business At War With Its Workforce? About 50% of us work in a confusing messed up mix of Work 2.0 and Work 1.0 rules and tools, and it gets worse from there.



Your phone to the rescue!

For the past three-to-five years UX has taken historic leaps! Not in most Corporate IT departments. (Still sucks.) But in your phone. The apps explosion is heightening your phone experience on a daily basis. So much so that the art and science of phone UX is now being designed around your body and quickly making standards that we're still just learning obsolete. (See Why Curved Glass Will Change Gadget Design Forever and Why The Pull-to-Refresh Feature Must Die)



A 3-Point Plan to include IT/UX as integral to your culture of innovation...



1. Your senior execs 'get it.'

Best of all possibilities. They start focusing on internal user (employee) UX with as much intensity as all other cost-saving and customer-focused efforts. (Wouldn't advise holding your breath waiting for this one!)



2. You start tracking UX and brainstorm what's within your control to improve it.

For how tos: A great freebie tool to use is Jensen Group's Simpler Company Starter Kit.



3. You start hacking around all the stupid stuff your company makes you do. Using the apps on your phone for many of your hacks.

For how tos:  As a special offer to all our blog followers, here is Josh Klein's and my book, Hacking Work, for FREE! Enjoy!




If you wish to increase your organization's or teams ability to innovate, remember:

Culture Is Your Phone Is Innovation

What We Can Learn from Competing Platforms

January 1 wasn't just the start of 2014. It was also the official death blow to Thomas Edison's legacy: On that day, U.S. federal energy efficiency rules barred to manufacture and import of traditional 40- and 60-watt incandescent bulbs.



We can all learn innovation and career lessons if we go back to the beginning: The Chicago World's Fair of 1893, dubbed The White City for its amazing architecture and its extensive use of street lights, signage and building lighting.



Page from my 1894 book:
The Magic City, Photographic Views of the 1893 Great World's Fair



The Battle of Direct vs. Alternating Current. General Electric, backed by Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan, proposed to power The White City with its direct current at a cost of $1.8 million. Westinghouse ultimately won the job for $339,000 with its alternating current technology, which we still use today. 

Lessons Learned: 1. Cost is usually (although not always) crucial to the adoption of new technologies. He who brings new stuff to market cheaper may not always win, but certainly has a better shot at viral growth. 2. While GE, as a company, won over the long-haul, they lost the war electric-current platform war in Chicago that year. This is why so many startups are shooting more for immediate customer adoption and less on profits. There is a long history of winning product wars by fighting for platform adoption.



Geeks Rule. Crucial to Westinghouse's winning bid was Reginald Fessenden, who was personally recruited by George Westinghouse and who would later become the Father of Radio Broadcasting — the first person to transmit voice by radio as part of his work for the U.S. Weather Bureau. His modifications to Edison's lightbulb design not only sidestepped Edison's patents, but also greatly reduced costs and increased lamp life. 

Lesson Learned: As Steve Jobs knew in the 1970s, first to invent may not matter. First to make things better is often most crucial. Edison invented the first long-lasting light-bulb. Fessenden just made it cheaper and last longer. Xerox PARC invented many of the technologies that went into to the first Macs, Jobs put them together in ways that no one ever had before.



Learning from History

1. The first few years of platform battles are always messy. The best technologies don't always win. The fight is always for fastest adoption.

2. First to make it better is often more important than first to invent.



The Big 'So What' for You:

1. The disruptions coming at you ain't gonna go away! Deal. Cope. Learn. Adapt. It's only gonna get messier and more crazy!

2. You don't have to be first or the best. But you do have to continuously take what others and have done, and make it better.

Success Will Always End

My dad served in the 3rd Armored Spearhead Division in World War II, the tank division named for its job to spearhead the drive after the Normandy invasion, through France and Germany.



General George Patton led the charge. My dad served under one of his reports, General Maurice Rose, the highest ranking Jew in the U.S. Army ever to be killed in battle. Trivial Pursuit factoid: Elvis Presley, the King of Rock'n'Roll, would later serve in the 3rd Armored.


This weekend I came upon this later among Dad's WW II stuff, dated May 29, 1945. It reminded me that success — all successes, including yours and mine — will always end. It was also usually morph into something else, and then, ultimately be relegated to the past by newer successes.



All successes come to an end. This letter announces to everyone in the Spearhead that their division is being disbanded — because they did their job. Their drive through France and Germany was key to the end of WW II in Europe. From this we need to remember: Once we achieve something in our lives, it, too, will be the beginning of the end of that chapter in our lives. 



Successes usually morph into something else. Shortly after the 3rd Armored was disbanded, it was reactivated and sent to Germany to act as a deterrent in the Cold War. They remained crucial to U.S. military strategies through the first Gulf War. From this we need to remember: Whenever we achieve something, we need to accept that we must morph too, changing and adapting. No one gets to rest on their laurels.



All successes are eventually relegated to the past. Tanks are still used in warfare. But much less so. Official retirement of the 3rd Armored as a division took place on October 17, 1992. Since then, the U.S. Army has been in a battle with Congress. The Army wants no more tanks. They have way too many stockpiled in the Nevada desert. But Congress keeps trying to spend more on tanks. Why? Pork. Our representatives listen more to the manufacturers of tanks than those who have to man them. (Gzeesh. And we wonder why our Federal budget is so bloated!) From this we need to remember: Stop beating a dead horse. (Or tank or career or business strategy.) Once successes are officially part of the past, it's time to move on! Faster the better.



  

See Things Differently

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

Join the Disruptive Movement!

  




Rodger Dean Duncan

Author, Change-Friendly Leadership

Blog







MY FAVORITE DISRUPTIVE HEROES

“Early in my career, I was a journalist. One of my heroes was one of my editors, Jim Lehrer — you know him from PBS’s NewsHour, which used to be called the MacNeil/Lehrer Report. Jim taught me to assess the gap between what people aspire to and what they actually accomplish. Achievement in life is about closing that gap, and Jim helped me see that.



“Another hero was Stephen Covey. He was a colleague for more than 40 years. I knew him back when he was an anonymous college professor. He taught me a lot about self-actualization. One of his seven habits is: Begin with the end in mind. That very simple principle has been an important force in my life. 




“Heroes like Jim and Stephen have been disruptive in my life in that they caused me to see things differently.”


FOR MORE: See her video below




Let's Disrupt This!

Begin with the end in mind… Assess the gap… Those bits of wisdom came from Rodger’s heroes. Your heroes are just as wise.



Somewhere in your past, present and furture, there are generous and wise people who will help you see things differently. Your job is simply to be present and accepting in that moment, so that their wisdom gets internalized inside of you.



Seek out and embrace those who help you see things differently.



What do you think? Please post...

• On Twitter: #DareToDisrupt

• Or on DisruptMovement.com

A Most Amazing Birthday

Me, me, me. Of course, my birthday yesterday was all about me. That's the way it's supposed to be, right?



Google tailored it's search page just for me, tons of Facebook posts and texts and phone calls came in with best wishes. All was going great. Until it wasn't.



My New York Giants continued to suck. My main celebration was cancelled. The roads were snowy slippery. Man, this is really sucky. Woe is me, right? I deserved a great birthday!



Then the world slapped me upside the head. 



Dear friends, Pam and John, had lost their 10 year-old daughter 13 years earlier to Cushing's disease — and the anniversary of Paula's death fell on the night of worldwide candle lighting for all children who died way too early.



The candle lighting was sponsored by The Compassionate Friends, a global organization that helps parents and families grieve after the loss of a child and, eventually, "transform the pain of grief into an elixir of hope."





I joined Pam and John and about 50 other grieving parents at the local candle lighting service. Wow. I was stunned out of own silly self-centeredness and experienced a most amazing birthday — remembering what truly matters. Each parent remembered their son or daughter with stories, poems or prayer. As we went around the round, the tears and sobs enveloped the room.



Then came my turn in the circle. Thankfully, I have not lost a child. So I felt I had nothing to say. Then I realized what I was witnessing. I shared that, over the past 13 years, John and Pam had shown me what true love and strength looked like, and now everyone in the room had too. I thanked everyone present and asked them to remember that they, like John and Pam did for me and my family, will touch the lives of many others with their love and strength. Their son's or daughter's gift to the world will live on through them.



Everyone there was so amazing. Coping and living and loving in ways that I don't think I could do.



As I left the service, I listened to the NYCity NPR station airing a tribute to John Lennon, whose death occurred on my 25th birthday. I remember not sleeping at all that night, sitting on the couch, stunned, half watching the news throughout the night, half in deep reflection about what had been taken from us.



These two events, 33 years apart, reminded me about what truly matters on one's birthday.



Thank you John Lennon, thank you Paula, for the gift you gave me. I'll do my best to remember for the next 364 days — until I need another kick-in-the-ass reminder on December 8, 2014.