Year: 2008

Kids, waterfalls and subways (NYC)

Posted on in architecture (real)by Scott Berkun

I got back from NYC last night – that city will always be my true home. More on that later.

I did see the waterfalls – hard to love these things, as they’re so far away that their scale works against them. They just sit out on the horizon and seem small compared to the major landmarks nearby. Driving on the FDR gives the only decent view of the largest one, the one off the Brooklyn bridge – and even then it’s somehow underwhelming. The Brooklyn bridge holds more than its own, and its hard to be impressed by a line of water falling from the bridge deck.

To make up for it, a friend sent me this series of drawings about two kids obsessed with the NYC subway.

As an adult obsessed with subways, I loved it.

How to learn from from the Boston Celtics

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

Here’s an interesting e-mail I received recently:

Dear Scott,
I know you played and love basketball. What are your thoughts on Boston Celtics regarding their championship run. The context I am referring is with respect to your essay #47 – Teams and stars – All star teams lose. It seems stars sacrificed a lot to get an NBA ring. Do we have some thing similar to a NBA ring in IT world where people can sacrifice and commit for the greater good. How can we get there? Please advice and thanks very much. -Joson

Great question Joson. Here you go:

  • Great managers hire great talent. Boston’s theme this year was ‘the big three’. They managed to secure three high profile, veteran all star players on the same team. They didn’t call it the big one, or the big one and a half, or the big one and the little two. “Hiring great talent” is obvious advice, but few managers invest big. Danny Ainge bet his job to get these people. Would you do that? If you do go way out of your way to get great people, including paying them what they deserve, and providing an environment where they can thrive, many problems ordinary teams face go away. Even the Laker’s playoff run hinged a great mid-season aquisition: Pau Gasol.
  • Focus on the fundamentals. The Celtics in some ways are a boring team to watch: they bet heavily on defense, the most fundamental strategy in the game. The analogy to management is avoiding fancy methods and hype: instead rewarding people for focusing on the core activities that make the business function. Coach Doc Rivers did a great job at helping his team to focus on what mattered most: not scoring averages, not clever plays, but solid fundamentals.
  • Reward team based behavior. Sports teams have a huge advantage in that at the end of every game the entire team either shares the win, or shares the loss. A smart manager finds ways to get teams to feel that their fate is shared. Either by giving individual bonuses tied to team performance, letting the team decide its own goals, or providing other incentives and rewards for behavior that contributes to the greater good. When your best talent (Boston’s big three) is committed to putting the team first, everyone else falls in line. Even the Laker’s Kobe Bryant, league MVP, was noted this season for worrying more about helping the team, than his own individual performance.
  • Trust your people. True, this is even more obvious advice everyone knows: but few practice it. Doc Rivers and Danny Ainge had more than 4 lousy seasons before this year’s championship. Paul Piece had 8 years as the team’s main star with frustrating playoff loses and losing seasons. Ray Allen had the worst shooting slump of his career in the playoffs, but was kept as a starter and had a fantastic final series. There was a lot of trust in the Celtics organization to keep these people in key roles despite prior outcomes. By contrast, Avery Johnson, another great coach, was fired from the Dallas Mavericks this year for his team’s failure to reach the 2nd round of the playoffs.
  • Use the past as power. The Celtics franchise has a long history of success. This season they called on that tradition dozens of times, using it as leverage to motivate players and attract fans. A good manager finds a tradition in their own org, or borrows one from another org, and uses it as leverage. Steve Jobs hung a pirate flag over the Macintosh team to rally them and use the past, even someone else’s past, as power.

The irony of creative change

Posted on in Creative Thinking, Innovation, Managementby Scott Berkun

Making a good part of my living as a public speaker means many conversations with potential clients about their events. Recently I had the following phone conversation about giving a keynote talk at a large manufacturing company:

Potential client: “So how much do you know about our industry?”

Me: “Honestly, not much. But the way innovation works, its often better to hear ideas from outside your industry, as it will give you new ways to think about how you do your work.”

Potential Client: Silence.

Me: (Brain scrambles to fill the silence) “…well think about this. Ford got the idea for assembly line cars by watching his butcher take cows apart. Anti-virus software uses the language, and tactics, of biology, not computer science. Leonardo da Vinci got most of his engineering ideas from watching birds and rivers. It’s by seeking out different ways, systems, perspectives, even vocabularies that many creative people find their great ideas. If you let me talk to your organization I can help them get ideas from places they’d never expect to find them.”

Potential Client: (The sound of crickets, over a phone line)

Me: (Brain in scramble overdrive) “If Innovation is something new, how can you expect to find it looking where you’ve always looked?”

Potential Client: “We’ll think about it. Thanks.”

A few days later they decided to go with someone in their own industry, primarily because… (drumroll)… they were in their own industry. So much for my skills of persuasion, eh?

The irony of creativity is this: people want to be creative without change. They want innovation with no risk. They want a new result with the same exact behavior. They can talk for hours about how passionate they are about creativity, but when it comes to actually changing anything, they’ll find a way to repeat the same thing again and again. That’s why books, seminars, courses and lectures on creativity rarely translate into much actual creation. No one can make change happen except the person who must accept the fears, and consequences, of change.

Situations like the above always make me wonder: if an organization isn’t open to taking a creative risk with a public speaker for an event, an entirely non-critical kind of business decision (whats the worst that can happen? A room full of bored people?) what hope is there for taking any real creative risks on the big decisions that matter? Not much.

A useful indicator of a company’s openness to change might just be the small things. How creative are they about the small decisions that govern the details of a company? While it is true many HR groups that govern the little decisions (like event speakers) can be more conservative than the rest of the company, looking at small decisions can reveal tons about the creative culture in an organization, especially regarding the ironies of pursuing creative thinking.

Whenever I visit a company and I’m shown around, I wonder: where are people allowed to take risks and be creative with little or no approval? In their dress? Their language? Their hours? Their processes? Their office setup? Where in all the daily decisions is change allowed, or encouraged? I’d bet that most places that are successful with making big changes are better with accepting small changes too. And the small examples of creativity, since they happen so often, can be easier to spot as an outsider (or perhaps, as an interview candidate) than the big ones.

Why I loved George Carlin

Posted on in personalby Scott Berkun

Shit. Piss. Fuck. George Carlin is fucking dead. The man changed my life. I grew up listening to his act and his listening to his tapes was a staple on my regular drives through college from Pittsburgh to NYC and back again (What am I doing in NJ being a classic as I drove through NJ). Whole minutes of his riffs on sports, including putting minefields in the outfield to ‘liven up’ baseball, were quoted verbatim between my brother and I growing up in Queens.

Despite his reputation for focusing on obscenity, he was the smartest comedian I’ve ever heard. His ability to make cynicism funny, to communicate well and comically about tough things, going to dark, true places most comedians would be afraid to go changed the way I think about what’s possible. If he can make people laugh about that, what is it I can do? What can i use humor to do for me? How can I use clarity about a tough topic to make it easier to talk about?

Through his pitch black cynicism, he helped me figure out how to be an optimist – or at least, at times, optimistic. And I can’t think of higher praise to offer a creative person than to have helped people find better ways to deal with being alive. His work has become more than entertainment – lurking in the outlines of how he constructed his work is a strawman philosophy for living: life is here, it sucks sometimes, don’t pretend otherwise, find a way to deal with it (and making fun if of it is a damn good one).

I never went to see him perform, thinking there would always be time. I’m devastated to learn today I was wrong. Rest in Peace Mr. Carlin.

“You can’t be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don’t like words that hide the truth. I don’t like words that conceal reality. I don’t like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation. For some reason it just keeps getting worse…

And we have no more old people in this country. No more old people. We shipped them all away and we brought in these senior citizens. Isn’t that a typically American twentieth century phrase? Bloodless. Lifeless. No pulse in one of them. A senior citizen. But I’ve accepted that one. I’ve come to terms with it. I know it’s here to stay. We’ll never get rid of it. But the one I do resist, the one I keep resisting, is when they look at an old guy and say, “Look at him Dan, he’s ninety years young.” Imagine the fear of aging that reveals. To not even be able to use the word old to describe someone. To have to use an antonym.

And fear of aging is natural. It’s universal, isn’t it? We all have that. No one wants to get old. No one wants to die. But we do. So we con ourselves. I started conning myself when I got in my forties. I’d look in the mirror and say, “Well…I guess I’m getting …older.” Older sounds a little better than old, doesn’t it? Sounds like it might even last a little longer. I’m getting old. And it’s okay. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to die. I’ll pass away. Or I’ll expire, like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they’ll call it a terminal episode. The insurance company will refer to it as negative patient care outcome. And if it’s the result of malpractice they’ll say it was a therapeutic misadventure.”

Great event for Seattle independents – Bizjam ’08

Posted on in Seattleby Scott Berkun

This is an independent’s dream event – a local business networking group runs an affordable ($390) two day event, packed with people who provide all the services independent professionals need. It’s easy networking, high quality sessions, and a personal, friendly vibe that’s hard to find.

I spoke at the first Bizjam last year and had a good time. Highly recommend checking this out if you’re an independent, or are thinking of leaving a corporate mothership for a career on your own.

Full schedule, Speaker list, and Registration details.

Wednesday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

This week’s links:

My favorite living artist: Olafur Eliasson

Posted on in Creative Thinking, Travelby Scott Berkun

Eliasson's Tate exhibit

One of the great coincidences of my life is that my girlfriend in college (now my wife) was a painter. I didn’t know it at the time, but by tagging along to events at the art department at CMU, and at times helping her with her work, I was unintentionally exposed to what the world of art is and what artists actually do. These are experiences I doubt I’d have had. My family and friends had no interest in art. And more to my work these days, few people in the computer science or business world get this kind of exposure, and I think it’s a shame (Paul Graham is a notable exception). Anyone who talks about creativity without talking at all about art is a poser – these are the folks with one of the longest creative traditions we have.

But more on the history of art and creativity some other time. I’m posting today to talk about the guy I now recognize as my favorite: Olafur Eliasson. Five years ago I stumbled into the Tate museum and was blown away by this, this thing, in the ten story Turbine hall. Frank and I spent more than an hour playing and dancing under this enormous simulated sun. We watched kids dance and play with the huge mirror hanging across the entire football field sized ceiling. It was, without hyperbole, sureal. I didn’t know what it was, or what it was for, and that, like much of the art I enjoy, made it accessible to me and everyone there.

Eliasson's MOMA exhibitThen last month, at the MOMA, I stumbled again into Eliasson’s work. Here the works are at at smaller scale, but like the Tate exhibit the works lend themselves to interaction. Rooms are filled with lights and mirrors that dared me to step inside the work (one eye on the security guard to make sure it was ok, which it was). Walls covered with distorted metal windows, or shifting patterns of light (reminiscent of Turrel’s skyspace), that make it impossible not to look. Or touch. Or stick around and wait to see what’s going on. It’s experience as art.

I’ll be in NYC this summer and hope to catch Eliasson’s latest exhibit, Waterfalls. The scale of this project looks to be more like Christo’s wrappings, interesting for their awesome scale, and interactive only in that they get people to stop and look. But I’ll go and hope to stumble again into another memorable experience.

Practicing what I preach: Innovation abuse

Posted on in Innovationby Scott Berkun

For kicks, and to help practice what i preach, I’ve been tracking the use of the word innovation in the CNBC Business of Innovation series. It’s not good. In fact it’s embarrassing. Part of the problem is the word Innovation appears in the title, which means the I-word gets used at least 6 or 7 times per episode for that alone. And since episode 2 was titled “Innovate or die”, the count jumped again.

Anyway, here’s my count so far. I included all variants (innovative, innovator, innovation, etc.):

Episode 1: 79
Episode 2: 110

Ouch.

A few of the experts chatted backstage during the taping of the first episode about this problem, and we mentioned it to the producers, but it doesn’t appear to have made much of a difference. For a 45 minute show, 72 means 1.6 uses of the i-word per minute. 110 = 2.45 per minute. Wow. If any word gets used that often its a good sign folks aren’t being as clear as they should be.

Innovation by firing people

Posted on in Creative Thinking, Innovation, Management, Microsoftby Scott Berkun

If the goal is to get a stagnant project to be more creative or productive, the best move is often to get people out of the room. Young ideas are fragile. The more people that are involved, the higher the odds someone will find a reason to kill good ideas before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. The more people in the room, the more politics and private agendas negatively influence conversations. Diffuse authority can mean no one feels they’re accountable, or even wants to be.

Firing people, or eliminating positions, is on one extreme end of the spectrum and it has its place. Sometimes there is no other way to create room for progress to happen. But on the more conservative end of the same spectrum, simpler decisions available include:

  • Get people off the project by assigning them elsewhere
  • Reduce the invite list for creative meetings
  • Clarify who is in charge of creative decisions (e.g. who is the equivalent of the film director)
  • Clarify whose role is to give feedback, but not to drive the show

If your meetings are too slow, or arguments go on for too long, rethink your invite list. Why do so many deserve a say on so many things if their feedback is so uninspired? Pick the least useful people and make their power over creative decisions match their usefulness.

Often referred to as Too many cooks, no matter how smart the people are, if they all think insist on fighting for their own vision, misery ensues. Start-up companies thrive in part because there are way more decisions to be made than people, granting individuals tons of autonomy. When there are 10 decisions to be made, but only 2 people, there’s little motivation to fight over decision making power. But when a company grows and the ratio of people to decisions runs the other way (2 decisions to be made by 10 people), the thriving ends and the bureaucratic misery begins.

Firing people, or simply eliminating the number of leadership roles, recentralizes authority. It empowers those remaining in leadership roles to do far more in far less time, since overcoming the objections of dozens of peers are no longer part of the process of developing news ideas and projects. In organizations were there are far too many project managers, producers, and middle-managers, roles prone to measurement and process, eliminating those roles is the only way to give creative leaders the space they need to excel.

When I was at Microsoft (’94-’03) the biggest inhibitor to innovation was too much democracy. Hard to believe, but it’s true. There is a long history of internal projects with great ideas that never made it out of Redmond – they were killed by the culture of rough consensus. If a handful of middle managers couldn’t achieve rough consensus on your idea, your project got thrown into the closet (and often you with it). Grand ideas are often divisive, and a rough consensus decision making system will kill them. Many companies I’ve visited over the years suffer from the same pattern of behavior. They mistakenly believe the problem is the quality of ideas, when in fact the problem is the conservative psychology inherent in democracy. Pure democracy is not the political system that will create the most change – it’s a system geared for stability, not for innovation.

I’ve seen many great designers, engineers, and even managers hired in to well known companies, who prototype great things, and propose grand ideas, but watch in slow despair as the corporate culture’s insistence on letting everyone have their say watered their ideas down into mediocre, barely recognizable, intellectual sludge. You could throw a Johnathan Ives, a Rem Koolhaas, or a Will Wright, into most of corporate America and the output of those companies would barely change. Why? Too many cooks.

Some would argue this is by design – consistently mediocre is better than what many companies produce, and it can be enough to be a market leader (Look around: the best selling music, food, or software is unlikely to be considered the best by anyone in that field). And that’s fine: success and creativity are two related but different things. However if you ask for more innovation without changing the authority structure, I’ll call you crazy. Consensus is prone to slamming on the brakes – Autocracy is prone to putting the pedal to the metal.

The answer for many organizations is to shift the pendulum of authority two notches away from democracy and towards autocracy. I’m not saying create a tyranny – don’t go all the way – but do identify the creative leaders and give them leadership power based on those talents. To be a VP, or a General manager depends on political acumen, not creative insights, despite how the hubris of power muddles the distinction. If instead a VP or GM grants the best creative mind on the team license to lead, and rallies the majority of the team to accept the role of followers, the rate of positive change will always rise. Look to the autocratic models of building architecture, film making, and pop music – one or two creative minds are granted huge amounts of authority, disproportionate to the corporate hierarchy.

So when in doubt – look around the room. If your team is flailing or struggling to resolve a creative decision, create more autocracy. Either get the dead weight out of the room, or pick the person in the you as the leader believe has the best perspective and grant them your authority – let them make the call. If you can’t change the balance of power by any other means, thin the herd. If you have no other alternative, pink slips might be the best thing for everyone involved: the talent you fire may find, or create, the autonomy they deserve elsewhere. But either way, do what you can to give the creative minds in your world the autonomy they need to thrive.

Also see: Innovation by Death

Backstage at CNBC: a day on the set

Posted on in On Tourby Scott Berkun

Beyond collecting my ten minutes of fame, the real thrill for me of being on TV was learning about how television shows are made. One of the big points of my book Making things happen was how the core challenges of making anything are the same (decision making, leadership and communication) and I love visiting different kinds of businesses just to see how they handle these things.

One of the big things the folks at CNBC were excited about was their virtual set – I’m surprised they haven’t mentioned it anywhere, as it is, for them, an innovation in how to produce these types of shows. Take a look at these two pictures.

On the left you can see the set as it looked in real life: it’s a blue screen. On the right you can see what the set looked like for the broadcast. All of the graphics, backgrounds, and talking heads were placed virtually, and designed in post production.

If you’ve watched any of the first or second episodes (follow the respective link to watch online), what do you think? Was the set a plus, or a distraction?

Thursday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Are we reading less or more? (WSJ)

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

Here’s a good Wall Street Journal article that examines the recent claims of declining reading rates in the US (Primarily the NEA report from last year). He takes the statistics to task and points out quite a few places where changes were overstated in the
report.

It’s worth reading the comments – the question of how online reading compares to book reading comes up in a few places.

(hat tip, metafilter)

Big news: on CNBC next Monday (updated)

Posted on in On Tour, Public Speakingby Scott Berkun


Last year CNBC put together a 5 hour series on the business of innovation. They’re doing it again this year and I’ll be one of the expert panelists on the show.

The website for this year’s series is up, and the first episode airs Monday June 2nd, 9pm. Each new episode will air every following Monday night. Plus there’s an online forum for people to discuss the show.

The show will be on in the US, Europe and Asia, and the full show schedule is posted here.

Hope you’ll tune in and check it out.

Asshole driven development: revisited

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

With the recent post on the problem with consultants, I wanted to point out the impressive inventory of failed management methods that have grown in the comments section for last year’s post on asshole driven development.

Some are tech specific, but many apply to just about any kind of management. The comment count is over 250 – if you’re looking for a laugh or to give a name to what’s wrong in your world, check it out.

Did you review art of project management on amazon?

Posted on in art of project management, Making things happenby Scott Berkun

One of the frustrating results of renaming a book is the listing on amazon.com for Making things happen doesn’t include the reviews for the first edition of the book. I’ve asked the folks at amazon.com about this, and, by policy, aren’t willing to move the old reviews over.

So as a favor, anyone out there who reviewed the first edition of the book – could you take two minutes minute and re-enter the review for the new edition? The review count for books makes a big difference and I’d appreciate the help.

Cheers.

The problem(s) with consultants

Posted on in rant, Teaching/Trainingby Scott Berkun

Over the last month I’ve spent more time than usual with consultants and it is making me miserable. Is there a support group I can join? A ten step program? A nearby happy-hour? There are some great consultants out there, but damn, I wish there were more of them.

My passion for trying to get to the heart of things, to be clear and direct, makes it impossible for me to talk with most consultants for more than 5 minutes without wanting to punch them in the face. This might not be their fault – my spine shudders in revulsion when I’m faced with people who go out of their way to make things sound as complicated as possible. Consultants aren’t alone here – some academics, politicians and doctors are just as guilty, but I haven’t been dealing with those folks recently, and today, they get a free pass.

The inherent problem is this: I look at the English language as a good thing. Shakespeare did some good with it, didn’t he? Although he did invent some words here and there, I don’t think most of us need to create new words to get our points across – 200,000 is plenty to work with. In fact unless your new word enhances my understanding of what you’re trying to say instead of diminishing it, it’s hard not to see you as either a fool or a blowhard. You’re not making a new word or using obscure language to help me, you’re doing it to help you. If you look at how most consultant talk, you’d think they hated English, had a personal vendetta against it, as they seem to take such pride in burying clear thinking under layers of vacuous, disingenuous jargon.

My recent experiences have convinced me many consultants see jargon is an advantage – how, I’m not sure. Perhaps like the bait on a hook, it distracts potential clients into error, just long enough for them to open their wallets and bite on the hook. But for whatever reason I personally don’t know how to take the bait. And the result is many of my conversations with consultants (note I say many – there are exceptions) leave me feeling one of three things:

  • They are trying to deceive me. If they know what they are selling is advice on managing creative people, but they insist on calling it ‘ideation flow’, an ‘idea capitalization market’, or some corny trademarked term like ‘Ideaness(tm)’, I can’t help but feel deceived. If your advice is good, why all the camouflage? Why give me a chance to believe you have something to hide? Especially if this first conversation is one you hope will lead me to hire you.
  • They believe their own bullshit. Consultants do have to differentiate themselves and make claims – I get it. But some consultants have lost all ties to reality – they pathologically believe in their own hype and will die before confessing a simpler story of their work exists. If after a ten minute conversation I can’t get someone to stop using trademarked phrases, made up words with too many hyphens, or concede some of their clients get less value out of their efforts than they claim, I can only conclude they’re nuts.
  • They have no idea what they are talking about. Some consultants have never done the things they consult on. In innovation circles this means they’ve never managed a team of people making something, never prototyped an idea, never filled a patent, never taken creative risks, so instead of banking on their experience, or even their knowledge of the experience of others, they make stuff up. Often it’s a magic process or system they claim will transform your organization, described in frighteningly similar terms to the latest diet craze.

Certainly (bad) consultants aren’t entirely to blame for what they do – some clients want the made up stuff, they want to believe in things they don’t understand, or they want to rely on a outsider simply so they can blame the outsider later on.

So how do you separate the useful, well-meaning consultants from the less savory ones? What are your biggest gripes from past experiences working with consultants? I’d like to know.

(Update: also see How to call bullshit on a guru)

Wednesday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun