19 days ago / 4 Comments

What do rock bands and guitar heroes have to do with management theory? This was the topic of my most recent presentation:

Groups and organizations, just like musicians, don’t all work and behave in the same way. In this presentation, I look to the music industry to describe four organizational archetypes—each with a different set of values and ways of working. By understanding each of these work cultures, the culture we work in, and the work style that best fits us personally, we can make sense of the conflicts we face at work and become more effective at our job, whether we’re employees, managers or—rock stars!

Where this originated
Needless to say, I’ve been really excited to share this with everyone. It was during the Q&A for my Star Wars presentation-- over a year ago— that I made a spur-of-the-moment comment about George Lucas and how his leadership style was quite different from that of Gene Roddenberry, the visionary behind Star Trek. That presentation was focused on various lessons we can learn from the making of the original Star Wars movie, lessons about change and making innovative ideas a reality. Of course, at least one thing I was left wondering about was the group dynamics behind great innovations. What personality traits are needed to lead a successful, innovative team? Do we have to be strong, demanding visionaries like George Lucas, Steve Jobs and Richard Branson ? How much credit should go to those people the team? What about innovative groups, like those at Pixar or the original Xerox PARC folks? It was this line of thinking led me to reflect on another popular form of creation that involves different personalities: songwriting (and performing).

Anyone who has ever been in a rock band— especially more than one— can testify to the interesting group dynamics that go on. Sometimes these groups are in constant conflict, sometimes everything is pure bliss. Sometime a few changes in lineup can dramatically alter the group and their output. Rock bands (and other kinds of musical groups) are a great petri dish for exploring team dynamics.

So based on personal experience and observations, I began looking to for patterns and archetypes. Along the way I discovered a fabulous book by business guru Charles Handy The Gods of Management . In it, Handy describes four organizational cultures, and identifies each with 4 different Greek gods. His four cultures matched closely with the where my research was leading (and certainly influenced my thinking, moving forward).

What I saw emerge were 4 (potentially 5) different kinds work cultures. Each culture values different things, operates in radically different ways and has their own sets of strengths and weaknesses. Mostly importantly, by understanding these cultures (and which one you value), it’s easy to push the fastforward button on most conflicts you might have at work. Forget the stereotypes (“creatives” vs “suits” being a popular one). It’s much deeper than that. Does authority come from what you’ve done, who you know, or seniority? Does your business operate in relatively stable environment, or are things changing all the time? What motivates people professionally? These archetypes have proven to be a great lens by which to understand different types of organizations.

So, what are the four types of organizational cultures? They are:

• The FrontMan – Though more common with small companies, folks like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Martha Stewart or George Lucas represent this organization. These are visionary leaders with pretty strong ideas about how things should be done; Power is the dominant theme of this group and success depends on how close you are to and how well you imitate the leader. If you want to work here, you will be executing someone else’s vision.

• The Studio Musicians – This is the dominant corporate work culture, where structure, rank, and hierarchy keep things going. Workers are hired to fill a role. Titles and promotions are key motivations.

• The Rock Band – This culture is typical of smaller, creative groups. Teams work together, focused on the project. Collaboration and creativity are valued here.

• The Rock Star(s) – These are your ‘A-Players.’ But they also tend to be mavericks, adhering to their own ideas about things, which often isolates them from other workers. They create tension, but it’s often in the best interest of their employer. and if you can tolerate their dissension, the rewards will be great. Loyalty to their profession and themselves is the dominant theme of this group.

Obviously, there’s much more to this. But, you get the idea. Anyone who is familiar with personality assessments like the four humours , the five love languages or more academic assessments like the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator will understand how useful these tools are for relating to people who don’t think like you do. In a similar fashion, these four organizational archetypes are useful for understanding different work cultures that exist, and the unique role each one plays. To be clear, this is a diagnostic tool. It’s not going to solve your conflicts, but it will help you gain a deeper understanding of where the conflicts come from— and how to overcome them.

Even more important now
The dominant work culture of the last century was the role-based organization. While this culture is great for manufacturing, where predictability and regulation are critical to success, it is the worst kind of culture for knowledge and information workers, especially in a space where things are in a constant state of change and businesses must deal with uncertain situations. Most of the information architects and user experience professionals I work with deal with uncertainty everyday. Our practice is about taming complexity. Unfortunately, the same thinking skills that makes us good at our practice also put as at odds with how most companies are run. This is also true of other “creative” groups—developers, architects, entrepreneurs, scientists. Few industries or businesses are immune to constant change, and the workforce needs more “creative” thinkers. Unfortunately, most businesses of any size struggle with how exactly to manage the entrepreneurial spirit within a culture of routine. Likewise, these individuals don’t understand and value the positive qualities of an organization focused on routine, predictability and efficiency.

Over the last decade I’ve led four different entrepreneurial (and intrapreneurial) teams. I cut my teeth at a startup. Moved on to consulting for many years. Became an “innie” for a some time, before returning to the startup world. I’ve been fortunate to work in a lot of different environments— each with their own unique management challenges. I’ve read plenty of books and articles by so called gurus. But it wasn’t until I framed things in exactly this way that all the conflicts I had observed (and been a part of!) suddenly made sense. “How do I manage a maverick employee?” “How do we prevent attrition following a merger & acquisition?” “Why are my boss and I always at odds?” “How do I manipulate that VP who is in the way of this project?” “Why am I so miserable in this position— I thought I’d be happier…” “What is the ideal job for me?” This way of thinking about different organizations with different value systems has helped me understand and respond to persistent management challenges. I’d love nothing more than to share this with other people. So, here’s looking at 2009 and taking this show on the road. What do you think— world tour?

30 days ago / 2 Comments

One of my passions is managing high-performance, collaborative teams. Accordingly, I like to note the subtleties that distinguish one team from another and affect overall success. Here’s an observation I made recently.

In collaborative environments, there’s a huge difference between saying “John’s idea” and “the idea John suggested.” A small semantic difference, perhaps. But consider the object of each phrase. And the effect.

“John’s idea”
In the first phrase, the object is the person. It is their idea. Their comment. Their opinion. Put this in context of an open and contentious dialogue about, say… how to implement a product feature. In this scenario, you are pitting people against each other. It is my idea against his idea. Someone wins. Someone loses. Moreover, even casual feedback and comments become associated with a person, who eventually has to defend what was merely a contribution thrown into the mix.

This is a destructive way to manage team dynamics. Not only does it create adversarial conditions, it frustrates coming to agreement on great ideas that are actually a fusion of contributions from several people. Instead of ‘this great idea we came up with’ you end up with ‘my idea with some of his thrown in’ is the idea that won.

Let’s contrast the first scenario with this second one…

“The idea John suggested”
In this scenario, the object is clearly the idea. Authorship is secondary, and only as a label. In fact, in these situations it good to get to a description of this idea that separates it from the contributor. What you end up with here is a gathering of people, all contributing and ‘playing’ with an idea— the thing being discussed. Think of this as the stewed pot that everyone is gathering around. What are people focused on? Not each other. The focus is on the thing being formed. And, if someone introduces a great idea (or a bad one), it’s more detached from the person.

Moreover, because the focus isn’t on individuals, but on the merits of the idea, people do feel more at ease to both contribute and comment on the ‘thing’ everyone is discussing. You get more ideas, because people feel at ease throwing in things that they would keep to themselves if their identity was tied to the merits of the idea. And it’s far easier for others to criticize an idea when it isn’t so inextricably linked to a person. End result? More conversation, for starters. And when you reach the ‘end result’, it was a collaborative effort. No one won or lost. And everyone (who participated) gets credit. They were part of a team.

One lingering question…
Does John ever get credit and recognition for his great idea?
Of course. If the great idea that saves the day can be traced back to an individual (and it’s not the result of a group effort), isn’t it obvious who came up the idea? They know it. You know it as their manager. And so does everyone else. But it’s not during a session that’s supposed to produce great ideas that you should recognize individual contributors. Or call out bad contributors. No. Save performance feedback for later. Use these collaborative sessions to produce ideas. And to create the best conditions for generating good ideas.

167 days ago

If you’re interested in some of the thinking that went into things like Target’s ClearRX program, or Karen Schriver’s redesign of the 1040 form, then you’ll want to make it out to Refresh Dallas tonight.

Wait. Scratch that.

If you build or design Web/desktop apps or Web sites for a living, or perhaps you customize business intelligence packages, or maybe you’re a technical writer or an IA or… Whatever your situation, tonight’s refresh meeting is for you! Co-worker Travis Isaacs and I are going to be speaking on information design. Specifically, we’ll be sharing some of our approaches to making ‘better’ screens (and forms). And, we’ll be running it a bit like a workshop, with some hands on activities…

Here’s the description:

“See What I Mean?”

We all work with information. In our web sites. Our web apps. Print communications. Graphs, and charts. But how exactly do you present information in a way that simplifies the complex, communicates powerfully, and actually delights people?

Join us, as Travis Isaacs and Stephen P. Anderson share their information design secrets. From travel plans to search results to quarterly earnings statements—they’ll present a handful of information design and data visualization case studies, identifying those principles we can apply to just about any project.

Learn how to identify and group related information, create a visual hierarchy, draw focus to the most important content, use images appropriately, see familiar data in a fresh new way, and much more!

As always, dinner will be provided, this time courtesy of Viewzi. I hope you can make it out! More details can be found at the Refresh Dallas Web site

177 days ago

For those of you in the DFW area, I’ll be speaking at Tuesday night’s DFW-UPA (Usability Professionals Association) meeting. That’s this Tuesday, July 15. If you can make it out, the meeting starts at 6pm; I’ll be presenting shortly thereafter (more info on meeting time and place here).

I’m excited, as this will be the first public appearance of my ‘Eye Candy’ presentation. I’m also curious as to how it will be received, especially by this audience. As I indicated in my original post on the topic, visual design— so called “eye candy”— get’s a bad rap, for the wrong reasons. This presentation is my way of stringing together some of the solid research and perspectives supporting the functional value of aesthetics.

Formal Description:
Graphics, eye candy, sexy interfaces— while these aren’t as seemingly strategic as say a mental model or BCG Matrix, it’s time to stand up for these misunderstand elements. Aesthetics play just as critical a role in business as picking the right server or insuring your data is accurate. But here’s the catch—it’s not about shiny buttons or gradient fades in and of themselves. Rather, it’s about “the psychological response to sensory stimulus.” It’s about people. And how people respond to these elements.

If we truly care about making things work for people, then we should care about aesthetics, or the science of “how things are know via the senses.” And it’s much more than graphic design: Sights. Sounds. Smells. Motion. Aesthetics is concerned about all the senses. And it’s about how people respond to these elements (and not the elements themselves).

To understand so-called “eye-candy” in proper context, it’s critical that we stop focusing on particular design elements (rounded corners or drop shadows, anyone?), and instead look at the response that is triggered by these elements. We’ll do just this, looking at a variety of design details, focusing not on their stylistic qualities but rather the cognitive and affective responses these details elicit. In doing so, we’ll skim across a variety of research findings from the last decade that will both confirm and challenge many of our assumptions about design.

Oh, and what do the chopsticks have to do with this presentation? You’ll have to make it out to find out! Hope to see you there.

197 days ago / 1 Comments

So, a bit about my ‘not-so-new-anymore’ gig.

As some of you already know, I joined Viewzi, a small startup in the Dallas area, back in mid-December. For various reasons, it was a fairly quiet transition. Why? For starters, it’s been a busy time!! I’ve also been speaking and writing more on topics that didn’t seem consistent with my being at a startup, topics pertaining to management, design thinking, being a corporate change agent, social design, innovative thinkers... Topics more fitting of a consultant or director at a large company (exactly the positions I had prior to this, which afforded me the experiences to write and speak about such things). Just as investors consider the financial investment they make in a startup, I’ve had to consider the professional investment I’m making. “How is this furthering my career?” Honestly, I struggled a bit with this. But in the end, I chose to invest myself in Viewzi because it’s something I really believe in (more on that in a moment).

That said, my biggest hesitation in not being more vocal has been a personal struggle to find the deep rooted story that gets someone truly fired up.

On the surface, there are a ton of cool things going on at Viewzi. Our product manager Jay Horne sums these things up rather nicely as ‘food, folks, and fun’. From Viewzi cafe on Fridays to getting to work with some of the best talent I know, to a really fun work environment and a fun product-- there’s plenty to love. But these aren’t the things that keep a curious, passionate learner around for the long haul. As I mentioned earlier, one of the most critical things a leader can do is to find that ‘story’ that gives everyone a sense of purpose in their role. The “we’re putting a man on the moon” message that gets everyone up in the morning and gives context and meaning to all the exciting and mundane tasks that will be required of you.

For me, I have to have a vision and a passion for the idea. To be clear, I’ve had various stories I’ve been trying out, but these weren’t the deep-rooted motivation I was searching for. It wasn’t until we started looking at the feedback and taking a long hard look at our core message that I finally ‘found’ my story, why I am here. And here’s the ironic part— it’s the same message I’ve been giving for the last 3 years…

“It’s all about experiences”
In 2006, I developed a model for understanding where exactly a product is in its maturity. Think of this as a ‘UX hierarchy of needs,’ with six levels ranging from useful/functional up to meaningful (the highest level a product can achieve). This was my way of resolving a lot of different ideas around what makes up an experience, and the relative priority of those things:

Moving from bottom to top, you have a basic product maturity continuum:

Functional
Ideas typically start off as functional solutions to a problem— something useful. Think of the first Motorola cell phone. Sure, it was a brick, but it allowed you to make calls untethered to a fixed spot!

Reliable
From there, things have to be reliable. This can be reliability of the service (5 9’s uptime?) as well as integrity of the data. If I purchase tickets on a travel site, the ticket prices need to be current and reliable. If I host with a site, I need to know my data is backed up and accessible at all times. This is reliability.

Usable & Convenient
It’s not enough to allow me to simply do something— it has to eventually be less awkward to use. This is where the next two levels, usable and convenient, come into play. I draw a distinction between usability and convenience. Both make something easier to use, but in my experience most usability groups focus on fixing known problems— removing the hurdles. A focus on convenience asks “is there a more natural way to make this work?” MapQuest and Google Maps are a great example of this contrast. MapQuest was perfectly usable. But Google Maps, with it’s draggable interface, physics, and other more ‘natural’ behaviors was a much more convenient way to interact with maps data.

Pleasurable
Whereas convenience focuses on cognition, the next level— ‘pleasurable’— focuses on affect and emotions. How can we make something emotionally engaging? (And a memorable experience!) This is typically accomplished through things like friendly language, aesthetics, humor, arousing curiosity, creating flow, leveraging game mechanics and other similar tactics.

Meaningful
The highest level is of course ‘meaning. And no, you can’t make something meaningful— that’s a personal area. But you can design for meaning by focusing on the preceding levels as well as shepherding beliefs and the communities surrounding the product or service experience. Also, whereas the other levels build on each other, a product can be meaningful without any of these levels (I have a 1966 Karmann Ghia that doesn’t even run— ‘function’; sheer ownership connects me with a group of people in a way that is meaningful to me).

The big takeaway from this is that if want to truly create a revolutionary product, you have to shift you’re thinking from a ‘bottom-up’ task focus (which will only get you so far) to a focus that starts from the ‘top-down’ with the experience you want people to have. By approaching things from this perspective we see a host of new ideas, not to mention better ways to implement the same ideas that have been around for a while.

But there’s another takeaway: In mature markets, where you have stable, usable products, taking it to the ‘next level’ means focusing on more experiential things like emotions, clever language, aesthetics. This was the topic of my pleasurable interface presentation, where I gathered dozens of examples of these experiential qualities:

But search?
So, all that’s nice. But what about a search engine? Can a utility tool like search offer an improved experience? And I’m not talking about the algorithms or the results themselves. But the experience of interacting with the search results themselves. Can, or should, searching for information be a fun activity?

The problem with search:
Travis has written an excellent and accurate description of Viewzi. I encourage you to read his explanation of what we’re about. But for the purposes of this post (and to understand why I am so excited by what we are doing at Viewzi), here’s a short description of what we are doing…

Viewzi is changing the face of search. Literally. We’re asking the question: Is there more than one way to look at search? Does everyone see things the same way?

With traditional text-based search engines, no matter what or how you search, your results are delivered the same way. Searching for “Bono” looks the same as searching for “chicken recipes” or “sports cars.”

We think there are better ways to present information than in a simple list. We start with specific topics or search terms and ask: “Is there a better way to present this data?” The result? Dozens of new, unique ‘views’, or ways to look at information, each custom-tailored for that content. It’s the right data, presented in the right way.

Changing the experience of search
When I first described Viewzi to my friend and mentor Rob Moore, he commented with some enthusiasm “you’re changing the experience of search. Most search folks I know are still focused on how to improve the performance by a few milliseconds. No one has really focused on how people actually interact with the data being returned.” (Or something like that!)

Rob nailed it on the head. We’re changing the experience of search. More specifically, we’re changing the experience of searching for [insert topic of choosing or manner of searching]. Contrary to some of the press that is going around, we are not a visual search engine, not exactly. We do place a premium on aesthetic considerations. However, we’re more about the right data presented in the right way. I like to think of ourselves as a designing custom search results for very specific scenarios. I was excited when Brian Oberkirch asked: ‘what can Stephen Anderson do with hyper-niched search contexts?’ That’s exactly it!

With Viewzi you can, eventually, experience search results however you prefer. On one end, this could be a crazy digg labs style visualization. On the other end, you could have something very much like Google, but with ‘that one little change’ you’ve always wanted. Think of Viewzi as ‘search results, exactly the way you want, how you want.’
We are really the platform upon which hundreds of ways to view information will eventually reside. We currently have 17 views, with many more planned. Some are “all purpose” search views (different ways to view and interact with general search results) and many more are specific to a niche topic (recipes, music, celebrity photos).

Here is an example of what I mean by scenario-based search views:

Searching for recipes
Here is what you get if you search for ‘chicken recipes’ on most search engines.

If our goal was simply to create better search results, you’d get little more than some light typographic treatment, or perhaps some subtle information design changes. Hardly the stuff of dreams. But, if you change the question to something based in the experiences people have, in this case ‘how can I make searching for recipes more enjoyable?’, you might end up with something like our current recipe view:

I’ll be the first to say, this is one of my favorite search views. It is (for many contexts) a far superior way to search for recipes. But is this the best way to display recipe search results? No. This view supports the offline behavior of flipping through a book to discover an appetizing recipe. But what about the scenario where…

• someone has 4 ingredients on hand and they want to find a recipe that uses those ingredients

• someone is focused on finding recipes that fit certain nutritional criteria

The resulting recipe view for these scenarios would be (a) quite different and (b) much less visual, as we would focus more on ingredients than appetizing photos. This is what I mean by search results custom-tailored for specific people, activities and contexts. And from this perspective, you can easily image dozens of different recipes views, many of which we will never think of, which leads me to my final though…

“But wait, there’s more…”
So far, I’ve only described the search views we are creating. But it’s ridiculous to think that a bunch of designers and tech geeks might know everything there is to know about [you name it]. The bigger story is the search platform we are creating, a platform that will allow anyone to create their own search views. For now, it’s an API than anyone with Flash AS3 or JavaScript skills can start using right away. In the future, we’d like to enable anyone to begin creating their own search views. That, is exciting. Whether it’s a better niche view or an entirely different way to experience search results— we’re building the platform that will enable user-generated (viewzer generated?) search views.

Pleasurable Interfaces + Search
And here’s why I am so fired up about Viewzi: everything I was talking about in the upper half of my pyramid— taking usable products and making them more convenient, pleasurable and meaningful— that’s exactly what I’m responsible for at Viewzi. I get to test out these ideas in a maturing field that is ripe for a focus on better experiences. When was the last time you described a search engine as fun? Viewzi is a company who’s business model is precisely that— to make search a pleasurable experience!

It’s a crude comment, but more than a few people have described Viewzi as the“‘iPhone of search.” If we can do for search what the iPhone did for mobile phones—change how people do what they’ve been doing for a decade—wow. Now that’s something I can believe in!

What about you?

236 days ago / 3 Comments

I’m excited to share with you my presentation from Adaptive Path MX.

It’s a version of my Star Wars presentation. But, only 6 of the 15 lessons are represented. (I joked that this was the first in a trilogy!) And I’ve made a few critical additions.

In the original presentation, I identify and share 15 lessons that might apply universally to anyone with a visionary idea. Basically, ‘You got an idea? Here’s some advice to help make that idea a reality’. Anyone could be someone founding a startup, or the maverick leader inside a large organization. But, while the lessons might apply universally, I wasn’t thinking of startups when I created this…

The backstory
Between my interview with Todd Wilkens and the opening slides , I think you’ll get a good idea of the backdrop that led to this presentation. There’s a lot of resistance to change inside large organizations (no surprise), but most resistance has little to nothing to do with the project or idea you have. In his book The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun dedicates a chapter to the myth that ‘People love new ideas” (no, they don’t).

On the surface, you’d think that people— companies— are looking for the ‘next big thing’ to invest their dollars in. The truth is, no one really wants to take a risk on the next big thing. We’d rather have “brave souls like Magellan, Galileo, and Neil Armstrong take intellectual and physical risks on our behalf, watching from a safe distance, following behind (or staying away) once we know the results.” Or put another way, “Innovation is expensive: no one wants to pay the price for ideas that turn out to be not quite ready for prime time.”

But, it’s about more than risky, or even safe ideas. It’s about a fear of change. Or an inability to understand truly new ideas. And this is where many innovative ideas fail. Again, Scott Berkun:

Many innovators give up when they learn that ideas, even with dazzling prototypes or plans in hand, are the beginning. The challenges that follow demand skills of persuasion more than brilliance.

And this…

Every great idea in history has the fat red stamp stamp of rejection on its face. It’s hard to see today, because once ideas gain acceptance, we gloss over the hard paths they took to get there. If you scratch any innovations surface, you’ll find the scars: they’ve been roughed up and thrashed around— by both the masses and leading minds- before they made it into your life.

“Behind the Music”
And here is the part that intrigues me: What are the stories behind the truly great ideas? What are the obstacles that got in the way of these ideas? And, what’s the real story behind visionary products that do manage to make it through otherwise hostile environments? From sticky notes to the RAZR phone, the stories of how these things came to be typically includes some form ‘rebellion’ against business as usual— which in large organizations has a tendency to be about power, position, predictability, and a score of other concerns fairly well-removed from the idea itself.

Somewhat familiar with Star Wars, I wanted to explore what it took to get this visionary film completed and in theaters. For starters, I love this film. But I also knew there were a host of challenges, as well as lessons about leadership, craftsmanship, and business that seemed to parallel much of what I have seen in the business world. That, and I can’t help myself— I love exploring patterns and connections between seemingly unrelated things.

Adaptive Path MX
So, when Adaptive Path contacted me to present this at MX, I was thrilled. Here was a chance to (1) share these ideas with a larger audience, but (2) bring out and comment on some of the elements that led to these musings (what I’ve shared here in this post), and (3) it was the perfect venue for my real topic: leading change.

The MX Conference is about ‘managing experiences’, and is targeted at PMs, Manager, Directors, and even VPs— those people ‘managing toward a vision’ (one of six MX themes). It’s not a conference about moving resources around on a Gantt chart. It a conference about promoting the value of a great customer centered strategies inside our organizations. And that can be a rebellious idea. One that may very well lead to adversity.

A business management perspective
Which leads me to a very encouraging paper: Gary Hamel’s ‘Strategy as Revolution’, published in the July-August 1996 issue of Harvard Business Review. Hamel speaks directly to executive leadership, urging them to embrace the revolutionaries within your company, as they may be the key to some much needed revolutionary ideas. Some notable quotes:

... in all too many companies, the entrepreneurial spark is more likely to be doused by a flood of corporate orthodoxy than fanned by resources and the support of senior executives.

If you’re a senior executive, ask yourself these questions: Has a decade or two or experience made me more willing or less willing to challenge my industry’s conventions? Have I become more curious or less curious about what is happening beyond the traditional boundaries of my industry? Be honest.

If you go down and out into your organization— out into the ranks of much maligned managers, for instance— you will find people straining against the bit of industrial orthodoxy. All too often, however, there is no process that lets those revolutionaries be heard… So, like economic refugees seeking greater opportunity in new lands, industry revolutionaries often abandon their employers to find more imaginative sponsors.

These were all very comforting words, especially coming from a credible business management guru. But for me, perhaps the most poignant statement was this:

Revolutionaries are subversive, but their goal is not subversion.

I’ve had profound difficulty articulating this sentiment is as concise a fashion. It’s not that visionaries are immature or obstinate. Quite the opposite: We’re rebellious because we care— not about politics, power, position, or the game (though perhaps we should). We care deeply about the business— creating value for our customers and the companies we work for. “People who care about their country— or their organization— don’t wait for permission to act.” (Hamel)

And this leads to a sad irony, “the secret tragedy of innovators is that their desire to improve the world is rarely matched by support from the people they hope to help.” (Berkun)

Words of advice?
So, what can we take away from this, if you are a revolutionary in your organization? Off the top of my head…

• Be realistic. A good idea is not even half of the challenge
• Politics are a part of corporate culture. Learn to play the game, or saddle up to someone who can.
• Don’t be discouraged when things don’t go smoothly— it’s human nature to resist the truly good ideas.
• Good ideas can and do come out of difficult situations.
• Rejection doesn’t necessarily mean your idea is wrong or bad.
• If you truly believe in the idea, keep shopping it around. Go around the roadblocks if necessary.
• If you must break some rules (we are talking about a rebellion here!), first understand the intent behind the rule you might be breaking or bending
• These are universal, human struggles, present wherever large groups of people gather together.
• Accordingly, encouragement and ideas can come from anywhere—even movies!

With that, I hope you enjoy the presentation. And, maybe you’ll find a few of the 6 (or 15) lessons we can all learn from the making of Star Wars useful or inspiring.

263 days ago

If you enjoy the leadership and management themes I’ve been focusing on recently, then you’ll certainly want to look at Adaptive Path MX. AP has pulled together a stellar lineup— Chip Heath, author of ‘Made to Stick’, Chip Conley, founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, California’s largest boutique hotel company, Julie Peters, Brand Manager at Virgin USA, the stellar folks from Adaptive Path— the list goes on… If you’re managing or leading a UX Team, this looks like the conference not to miss. In speaking with Brandon Schauer and some other folks at AP, they basically describe it as the conference they would want to attend on the topic. And it shows. I’m really excited about this event.

While it’s a little late to be plugging a conference that starts in a couple days, if you are planning on attending and haven’t yet purchased tickets, you can reference ‘MXSA‘ for a 15% discount. That’s if you haven’t already registered.

I’m also very excited to be among the speakers presenting. A few months ago, I had a chance to speak with Todd Wilkens at Adaptive Path about my presentation (if you’ve seen my Star Wars presentation, it’s a version of that talk, with new content and an emphasis on some of the things that I glossed over in earlier versions— namely pushing visionary ideas through a corporate culture). I’m pleased with how the interview turned out. Todd asked some really great questions, which allowed me to comment on many of the more strategic leadership themes that I haven’t yet written about here. If you haven’t yet read the interview, please do. And then let me know what your thoughts are…

And if you’re planning on attending MX— come say hi!

264 days ago / 2 Comments

If you’re managing (or part of) a team inside of a large corporate organization, then you’re familiar with the difficulties of juggling strategic and tactical concerns. This was the focus of my poster for the this year’s IA Summit. So, for all you ‘innies’ running a strategic User Experience Design group, here’s a model for you:

Download the Managing A Strategic UX Team Poster (pdf file)

[CLARIFICATION: Since creating this, I’ve joined Viewzi — I no longer work in the corporate environment in which this was produced…]

The Problem that led to this model
In my experience, we’re frequently asked “what are you working on?” Many times this is just a conversation starter. And other times, if it’s a project owner, that person really only want to hear you say “yes, we’re working on your project.” But at the executive level, the question is a strategic one: what is it that you are working on that is either going to make me look good and/or benefit the business. In these circumstances, we’ve two challenges:

1. address their concerns, but also
2. communicate how the things about the UX practice that they may not understand but are linked to top level strategic goals.

This is a communication problem. And a difficult question for UX groups to answer succinctly, given the breadth of activities that we are working on at any given moment—from ‘order taking’ on interface efforts to design research, internal presentations, technology experiments, or perfecting our ping pong skills.

But more than a communication problem, this is a strategic planning challenge: As a leader in a company, I have to be able to defend how every bit of our time fits into the overall strategic direction. This is especially the case where resources are tight and you have to make trade-off and priority decisions that don’t sit well with some.

3 Boxes Model
I’m a big fan of models—especially models that ‘get it right’, making simple the complex and providing a platform on which people can map their activities.

So when I came across the 3 Boxes Model from Vijay Govindarajan, I found it to be one those rare occasions where someone has framed the strategic conversation in a way that is easy (very easy!) to understand and can be built upon by almost any group inside an organization.

The ’3 Boxes’ are:

• Manage the present
• Selectively Abandon the Past
• Create the Future

...which are then rolled into these into 2 groups:

• competing for the present
• competing for the future

Brilliant. The 3 Boxes apply to all business units, project teams or disciplines. The resulting groups— competing for the present / competing for the future— are the perfect frame by which to evaluate where you’re time is being spent. Which leads me to…

Proactive and reactive work
When I arrived at my corporate gig, it was agreed that to be successful (truly successful), the UX group would need to split our time between ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive’ work. Different words, same idea.

Reactive work consists of funded projects for this year— enhancements, incremental changes, new projects building upon existing structures. It’s this kind of work that most folks expect from a tactical UX group (aka ‘order takers’). And this is the work that demonstrates short-term value. Of course to a good design team this is the work that can be immensely frustrating—like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic. But, to quote Thomas Dolby: “A few years in the music business taught me that you don’t invest ahead of the revenue curve.”

Proactive work consists of those future ideas we have around how things should be (and could be, given a reframing of the problem to be solved). This could simply be the ‘ideal’ version of the reactive projects we’re working on. Or, these ‘future ideas’ could be a radically different take on what’s possible and valuable given our understanding of business and customer goals. Of course, these solutions might potentially poke at the business model or challenge the technology infrastructure—which is to be expected as one leg of the 3-legged stool.

One problem with this language— proactive and reactive — is that they only suggest user interface or project related work—which is only the end result of a bigger process. Between ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive’ efforts, there are a score of other initiatives that have nothing to do directly with any particular project or product design—training, brown bag lunches, design research, persona creation, guidelines and standards, etc.

There was another big problem. Not surprisingly, this language didn’t stick. ‘Proactive’ work began to be associated with the ‘fun, sexy stuff’ that was keeping us from doing the real work. Of course, this perspective is flawed— there’s a world of difference between work and progress. And anyone spending more than a few days with us quickly recognized the strategic value our UX group offered. We would never be satisfied with ‘putting lipstick on a pig’.

Putting it all together
So, a simple change in language sent me down the path that led to this model. I had already listed the many different activities we were or would need to be engaged in, and thinking in terms of competing for the present or the future proved to be the perfect base to layer these activities to… End result, this was a great framework for me to explain all of our efforts to my peers and upper management in a way that is strategic and not tactical.

And now…?
What I’m most curious about is whether this framework would work elsewhere, or is this only applicable to the culture in which it was created? I’m curious to see how these generalized activities translate into other companies and other UX Design groups with different cultures and roles within the organization.

So, now it’s your turn, innies. How does this work (or not work) for you?

266 days ago / 4 Comments

This past weekend I had the pleasure of presenting at the IA Summit in Miami. The topic of my presentation? Other places to look for UI inspiration, specifically, other digital interfaces, such as the Wii, Tivo, Club Penguin, etc.

The Presentation:

The Description:

Want a fresh perspective on UI design? Look around. Not at other web sites or desktop applications but at other interactive media. Tivo, the iPhone, the Wii software interface, the ‘Sugar’ OS for the XO Laptop… there’s a world of new UI inspiration that is already being proven out in other devices— yet much of what we see in application design is more of the same. Tabbed menus. Drop downs. Form fields. Sure, patterns and conventions are important. But is ‘familiar’ always better? What might be more natural? While years of usability studies assert that consistent UI elements are a critical requirement, we also know that people quickly adapt to new patterns of use, new game interfaces, and new hardware-specific interactions.

To increase our field of vision, we’ll take a macro view of interface design, focusing on alternative UIs— and emphasizing patterns that can be leveraged in a business context. What might World of Warcraft tell us about improving our business intelligence tool? How might Club Penguin, a virtual destination for young children, influence the information architecture of our new CRM tool? How might designing for the iPhone affect our desktop UI designs? These are the types of questions we’ll explore, along with how skills in abstraction and synthesis can open our eyes to see new opportunities all around us.

Overall, I believe the presentation was well received. I had a great time preparing for and presenting this. And yes, this time round, I’ll be adding audio to my SlideShare presentation! :-)

To all who were in attendance at the Summit— thank you! I was blown away by the packed room and by all the compliments that followed. Oh yeah, I now have a complete set of the UX Methods trading cards. Whew!

But wait, there’s more…
A lot of folks asked about where (and how!) I collect all these reference screenshots. No secret really. Given how many people asked this, I’ll write a post listing some of the sites I frequent. However, here’s a much better option: Kevin Cheng has started a grouptweet called @inspiring where we will post interesting designs and ideas (web or otherwise) as we come across them. Spread the word!

273 days ago / 17 Comments

Confession time: I do not consider my self a good manager. I do however think I am a good director or leader. So what do I see as the difference?

In short, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. And providing a clear, actionable, inspiring plan.

Managers are great at making sure things get done. Directors are great at making sure we’re getting the right things done-. [UPDATE: As Joe points out, this idea originated with Peter Drucker who said this much more eloquently, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”] And that everyone’s inspired and empowered to make valuable contributions.

Managers are largely focused on the minutiae of day-to-day details: Are you getting done the things assigned to you? Have we communicated with the client? How well are we tracking to the project plan? When are you taking your vacation? Those sorts of things. While I can certainly be anal about my own work, I just don’t care to be that involved in what other people are doing. Isn’t that their responsibility?

What I do care about with regards to other people is whether or not we are clear on our roles and responsibilities. Aligned around a common, shared vision. And motivated— intrinsically motivated and passionate about what we, as a group, are building. Given the right circumstances, I think I’m good at creating this environment.

To be honest, I’ve felt a bit guilty about not being a better manager— I’m not good at crossing my t’s, dotting my i’s, or being able to account for what everyone is working on at any given time. I’m just not wired that way. Fortunately, I’ve been placed in leadership roles where I was somehow able to skip past the traditional managerial duties.

But as a director at various companies, I’ve also discovered something interesting: much of what managers do seems unnecessary when you have the right people on your team. I’ll say that again: much of what managers do is unnecessary when you have the right people. With the right people, self-management takes over for you. I think Jim Collins nails this when he says:

...if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.

When you have the right people on your team, what qualifies as management is really about creating a platform from which everyone can track themselves. That, and figuring out how challenge folks so that they are delivering their best. This assumes a lot of trust and faith in their abilities, and not in your ability to handhold. Beyond that, management, in the traditional MBA sense, has been largely unnecessary in an environment where everyone has a clear raison d’être . Again, I’m talking about a specific kind of information worker. This doesn’t apply to all groups.

I think this quote from Michael Hillenbrand sums it up rather nicely:

Managers do things right; leaders do the right thing. This is the primary difference between a good manager and a good leader. A good manager can accomplish only what has been defined and documented for him or her, yet a good leader constantly questions why things are done the way they are and is able to recognize the value and potential of doing things differently. A good leader is passionate about excellence and must therefore strive for continuous improvements and change. In other words, a good leader knows that insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. [ Source ]

Next up: what qualities do I think makes for a good leader?