Author: Scott Berkun

Sacred places: NYC architecture tour report

Posted on in architecture (real), designby Scott Berkun

nyc-sacredAs part of the GEL 2006 conference I ran an architectural tour through NYC, focusing on sacred places. What makes a place sacred? Answering that question was part of the  challenge of the day. Half of the stops had some religious affiliation, but the other half were secular (A park, a train station and a square). Since the goal of the tour was to explore these powerful places as designers, I wanted a wide definition for what a sacred place is.

Questions we asked:

  • What feelings did the architects want people to have when inside? When entering? When leaving?
  • How does the design achieve those effects?
  • What is the visual focal point of the space? How is it supported?
  • How are rhythm and symmetry used?
  • What senses are activated by how the space is designed?
  • What are the sacred places in your home? How do you use and honor them?

In my studies of architecture, especially sacred architecture, I realized that churches, shrines, and temples are all designed by people. There are no blueprints, and few descriptions, for them in most bibles or holy texts – so what you see in them is an expression of design imagination and talent, as much as anything else. I’m confident that most people can appreciate these buildings and designs in a non-religious way, if they choose to.

Where we went

sacredmap.jpgWe only had half a day, and NYC has several hundred sacred places. Here’s the list of stops we made:

1. St Vincent Ferrer
2. Christ Church
3. Central Park
4. Strawberry Fields
5. Times Square
6. Grand Central Station
7. Central Synagogue
8. St. Thomas Church
9. St Patrick’s Cathedral

We also took time for a few impromtu stops at interesting buildings on Park Avenue, W44th and elsewhere. There are so many interesting buildings and I wanted to make some side stops along the way based on what the people in the group seemed interested in.

Sacred brochures and paying attention

sacred-small.jpgTo help set the mood and get people’s attention, I worked with designer Jill Stutzman to design a brochure for the tour. We made something simple, functional, but that presented itself as a sacred thing. We wrapped it in vellum, and sealed it with wax: two things that signify a gift or something personal that should be handled carefully.

But we didn’t want to go too far: after all this handout was supposed to support them on the tour, and it should feel ok to put it in a back pocket (note the 3.5″ width) or write some notes on the inside. One trap all designers can fall into is making things too pretty, which can kill the comfort level people have with actually using the thing for its intended purpose.

What we did

times-small.jpgI confess I hate guided tours. They treat you like children, lecture you to death, and bury the pleasure of discovery and learning under the weight of itinerary. I think anti-tour tours are the best possible experience. And since this was a group of designers, people who know how to look at things, I planned to provide some context, teach a few architectural concepts, but mostly get out of their way and maximize people’s time exploring on their own.

The brochure gave background info on each place for those than wanted it, and I pointed cool things to look for and brief explanations of architectural theory (positive/negative space, form, flow, etc.) to round the experience out.

Tour design challenges

central-small1.jpg I found the challenge of tour design echoed the common issues designers face: tradeoffs, compromises, logistics. The challenges of moving 16 people around NYC forced me to concentrate the locations we picked.

I had to dry-run each location and make sure they were open (churches have services, receptions, etc.) and, in the case of secular places, had spots suitable for a large group to stop and talk together (see photo).

If you look at the map above we hovered around midtown. I had wanted to hit more contrasts, and visit a Mosque (The Islamic center at Lex/96th is awesome), a Synagogue, and a Buddhist temple, but the most interesting buildings were too far apart to fit a half day.

Then there was the question of lunch: turns out there is a pizza place built out of an old church near the Village, but that would have meant another cab or subway trip, costing us valuable time. Instead we chose the relatively ordinary City Pie on 72nd.

I found it much more fun to talk and look at design you can step inside – it’s a more powerful way to explore design concepts than the flat 2d screens software and website provide.

If things work out for GEL ’07 and I do the tour again, I’m sure I’ll try another combination of places. Like all designed things there’s always another, hopefully better way, to make things work.

(Thanks to Kevin Fox and Kareem Mayan for the photos above)

Added 6/10/13: I found this route map, showing the order we used.

sacred route

sacred-places

Three great machines and innovation limitation

Posted on in design, Innovationby Scott Berkun

threemachines.jpgI’ve owned only three great machines – three devices built so well that they not only lasted more than a decade, but served their purposes so well that I never replaced them with newer models. And by my count, I spent more time interacting with these products than many of the other machines I owned combined.

All three are examples of complete design: they satisfy my needs, work simply, and are perfectly reliable. They’re not stylistic gems, but their low key aesthetics fit their function: work without getting in the way. They are better than newer models in many ways, including the fact that innovation and change would likely eliminate what I like so much about these products.

Yet from a business standpoint, these three have some problems. They perfectly captured my needs on the first try, which killed any motivation for upgrading.

Goldstar Microwave: purchased 1992

My wife bought this little guy for her dorm room at CMU. It has survived 4 moves (2 in Pittsburgh, 2 in Seattle) and dozens of parties. It has one of those spinning trays, and can fit a large plate full of food if you know the magic angle of entry. It’s the only microwave oven we’ve ever owned.

Hewlett Packard 4L Printer: purchased 1994

This quiet tiny laserprinter has only required a new toner cartridge every few months. Otherwise I’ve never opened the case or read the manual. It’s outlasted the half dozen or so computers I’ve purchased, and still sits comfortably in the same location for more than a decade.

Panasonic Bread Machine, SD-BT56: purchased 1994

In the early 90s bread machines were trendy yuppie fare. No one who knew me thought I’d make bread, much less on the same machine for years to come. No single part has been replaced and I’ve never misprogrammed the timer because it’s so simple. I’ve made bagels, pizza, Pierogi / Piroshki, and countless varieties of bread. Nothing beats waking up in the morning to the smell of a fresh loaf waiting in the kitchen.

The limits of innovation

In the years since these purchases many advancements and innovations in each product line have developed – but I haven’t cared. Even if I did, the odds that the designers combined all the features in a simple, reliable, charming way is slim. These devices served a need so well, I didn’t bother to check in again with what the market was doing.

For me, with these products, innovation is low on the list of requirements. I don’t want for features or long for breakthroughs. I just want these guys to continue to serve me in the quiet, simple, stoic way that they do. There is a limit to the value of product innovation: for many things the highest consumer goal is what I’ve described: do what I need done and do it well. Which is something obtainable in many products (including software and technology) without any major innovations at all.

What are your great machines?

So what great machines have you used or owned in your life? What made you finally leave them behind? Or if you still use them, what’s held you back from replacing them?

Gel ’06 re-cap

Posted on in design, On Tourby Scott Berkun

Gel is my favorite design conference – this year did not disapoint.

Four really smart things GEL does:

  1. Short presentation slots (20 & 5 minutes).
  2. Single track of speakers.
  3. Notable people who (appear to) enjoy public speaking.
  4. Uses location (NYC) as an advantage by empowering locals to share with attendies through Day 1 “experiences”.

All contribute to making the event itself an experience: single track means you saw what everyone else did easing chats with new people at breaks. Short sessions mean presenters have to be sharp (and if they’re not they’ll be off stage soon).
Here are my speaker notes (note: I missed some talks):

  • David Rushkoff – The opening slot is tough, and Rushkoff was a good choice. I wasn’t clear on his key points, but watching him try to express them kept my attention. He talked about outsourcing and confusion over the best use of talent – why can’t people make a living doing something good for the world, instead of trying to do what pays well, squeezing goodness in afterwards? He mentioned various web 2.0 type themes, customers as amateur employees, and the failure of management as an abstraction, but ocassionally invented unfortunate phrases (such as the dreadful “mandala of participation”) I didn’t have much in my notes from his talk – it’s possible his points, and their relevance to experience, were over my head.
  • Craig Newmark – It’s hard not to like Craig. His presentation style was as unassuming as and unpretentious as his website. He told the craigslist origin story – an e-mail list in 1995 that he set up to tell people about things going on. Years later, it was a website and the rest is history. His key points were 1) Power can be redistributed 2) There is hidden potential for good in customers 3) Mainstream media will always disappointingly emphasize commercial interests – I can’t recall the context, but he had a great quote “If you want to tell the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you” – Oscar Wilde
  • Jane McGonigal, Game Designer– Jane designs and uses games to explore, teach and learn about people. Her talk focused on a project to help return cemeteries to their original function: as parks. The game illustrated her 5 step approach to game design: What is the history of social use of the space? What are the universal physical affordances? Do I have any personal experience with the place? What are most likely obstacles? She closed with the question “What makes you think you’re supposed to pick up a ringing phone?” posing the idea that a good public game makes you feel ok about participating and wanting to get involved. I love the use of games she promotes and it was great to see her speak.
  • Seth Godin , Author– This was the most entertaining, but also least potent talk of the day. Godin’s talk was pure chocolate – an entertaining review of bad designs from the thisisbroken.com site, getting the most laughter and positive audience vibe of the morning’s speakers. It was great, but I didn’t walk away with much – I didn’t mind at all, as it was freeing to be entertained, but wondered what he’d do if asked to go for a higher degree of difficulty (why are there so many broken things in the world, yet the world goes on?) rather than preaching to the design choir about bad designs to at a design conference.
  • Leni Schwendinger, Architect – I love Gel’s cross discipline ambition and Leni was a crossover highlight. She talked about her design process for relighting a neglected urban bridge in Glasgow, providing the best case study at the conference. The project, called Chroma Stream (at Kingston bridge), mapped traffic rates to a system of artistic lighting elements, making for a piece of urban art that changed dynamically with the use of the bridge. The organic/digital/aesthetic combo was both ambitious and inspiring.
  • Marc Salem, Mentalist – Quote of the talk “Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between an entertainer and an educator doesn’t know anything about either”. Marc explained how much we depend on non-verbal communication, with several exercises (e.g. simon says) that quickly made his point (Though neglected to mention the role of group psychology on behavior) – Of note was the concept of using body language and facial expression to punctuate what we say, and that different punctuation, with same language, creates different meaning. His final exercise had 5 people on stage, privately drawing pictures, and he successfully guessed who’s picture was whose by asking each one, and having them all lie (Tells included: saying yes, but nodding no, Maintaining eye contact, Turning to look at other people on stage). He was solidly entertaining and had clearly done this particular routine dozens of times before. Mindgames.com
  • Cathy Salit, Improvisation Coach – As an improv class survivor myself, it was cool to see Cathy connect theater to life. After having the audience move in slow motion for a few minutes, she noted how easy change is – that we all have the ability to perform and change, and moreso we are performing and changing all the time. She suggested that theatre of any kind (including gameplay, Hi Jane) is a fun way to escape the burden of our rigid-sense of self, and try new roles/behaviors/feelings out. Quote: “What should I do with skeptical people? Leave them alone.”
  • Erin McKean, Editor – This was the most well performed and designed talk of the day: fun, smart, informative, surprising, sharp. She’s editor in chief of the Oxford University U.S. edition, and her talk simulatenously explained what lexicographers do, why dictionaries are important, the limits of dictionaries, expertly demonstrated various gems of presentation skill and style, defined the word asshat, explained why Noah Webster was nuts, explained her most interesting attire, and fit snuggly into her time slot of 20 minutes.
  • Ji Lee, Designer – what if you could leave blog like comments on things in the physical world? Well you can. Ji Lee, an advertiser/designer/creator, decided to explore what would happen if adverts in public spaces had comment fields. He created large comic book bubbles, stuck them on various ads in NYC, and captured what happened. His goal was to change a corporate monologue of boring, stale ads into a public dialog of fresh interaction and real commentary. Half of his talk were examples from the field and included high comedy, sarcasm, wit, but also raised questions about rights, defacement, and the rights of corporations or artists to control their work. More about the project at thebubbleproject.com
  • Dennis DiFlorio, Bank Executive – Dennis seemed like the kind of guy you’d want to have as your boss. Reasonable, funny, warm, smart. His talk covered two topics: some ideas from the NYC bank he runs, and commentary about service in general. On innovation he pointed out that people have always said the world doesn’t need X, such as more coffee shops, doughnut stores or search engines, but that didn’t stop Starbucks, Krispy Kreme and Google from revolutionizing those businesses. I only wish he talked more about how his ideals manifest in practice.
  • Geoffrey Canada, Director – Statistic: it costs $60k per NYC prison inmate per year, but $30k per NYC elementary school student per year. See something wrong? He runs the Harlem childrens zone, a non profit focused on building communities to help children. “Schools are not designed to catch people up. One year’s progress in one year’s time.” He pointed out there is no escape velocity for children – people are always products of the community they live in no matter what they did before they got there. The school is not enough, it takes a community to make a difference, which is what his organization is focused on. He’s also the author of Fight, Stick, Knife, gun about a history of child violence, through his experiences growing up in the Bronx.
  • Linda Stone – Gave a short talk on her concept of “continuous partial attention”, which describes our fractured state of experience. I liked her focus on questions such as “How does desire meet technology?”, emphasizing that the interaction between those things is what matters, a point relevant to the design crowd. She also noted that “Innovation depends on reflection”. Her talk appears to be the same one given at e-tech in March, with a transcript here.
  • Jason Fried, 37 Signals – I loved Jason’s characterization of More and Less: More is a guy who corrects your grammar, fixes your spelling, and arrogantly does tons of things on your behalf that you didn’t need. While Less, clearly Fried’s best friend, gives you what you need done well. As much as I like the philosophy, at times this talk itself felt like More – the presentation itself dictated and proclaimed, more than it convinced, enlightened or shared with the largely design centric crowd. My small brain exploded at the anti-matter/matter paradox this generated. (I had similiar consumption challenges with the 37signals book “Getting Real“, which I recommend). I half expected him to talk for 7 minutes instead of 20, pulling a less is more stunt, but I doubt I’d have the balls to do that either.
  • Rases – Gave a short talk on his run for city council. Notable quotes: “All politicians suck” and “You run because you believe in yourself, and if you believe in yourself you always win”.

I’ll report on the sacred places experience tour I ran at GEL in a follow-up post.

Kudos to Mark Hurst, Dawn Barber, Laurea de Ocampo and the rest of the GEL staff and supporters for running a great event.

Improving unconferences

Posted on in Teaching/Training, Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

In thinking over my experiences at various unconferences, I’ve noticed one consistent problem: The people who get to run sessions aren’t the smartest or most interesting people. Instead it’s those who chose seats closest to the session boards, run faster than everybody else, or are pushier at grabbing fistfulls of whiteboard pens.

Of course this is by design – unconferences intentionally give up on hierarchy, beilieving that all things being equal, the good stuff will rise to the surface. However if there are only 8 slots at an event, and the 9th person in line happens to Bono or Einstein, everyone is out of luck. And worse, since rooms are self-selected, you may end up with 500 people trying to fit into a closet to listen to Bono, while the three sprintly organziers for the talk on “COBOL – the future” sit quietly with the crickets in the empty 500 person theatre.

This is a design problem with philosophical constraints: how do you introduce some controls or weights for who gets a slot, without violating the purity of the unconference vibe?

Here’s some ideas:

  • Hot talk reserved slots. Every pre-unconference wiki has requests for someone to talk about topic X. If these are popular, organizers could reserve a room for a topic but without a speaker. So the topic is assigned, but the speaker, or speakers, aren’t. If organizers want to seed the sessions with more diverse or highly requested topics, this does that without killing the unconference vibe. One hot talk per hour. If no one signs up, the hot talk is killed.
  • Priority for previous speakers. Can you say hierarchy? Much like how first class passengers get to board early, previous speakers at the event (or previous speakers who earned good feedback), can get first crack at the session board. Not a huge fan of this, but it’d be easy to do.
  • Put the sign up list online. Why not put the session sign up board online before the event. It’s dynamic and open, but since it’s days or weeks ahead, there’s the chance for organizers to join or split sessions, help popular sessions find bigger rooms, etc. It’s still open, but with a guiding hand. The footspeed effect is nullified, and the rush is spread out over a couple of days before the conference.
  • Filter the session board. Once the session board is filled, an organizer goes through the board, and tries to match talk popularity with size, swapping rooms or even talk times. I’ve yet to see an unconference board that didn’t have obvious overlaps and avoidable confusions, and it wouldn’t take much for someone to clean things up for everyone’s advantage.
  • Rules of order. It’s stupid stuff, but people rarely put their name in their session. This makes it impossible for someone in a conflicting or related session to track you down before hand to either join, split or generally get your shit together (or ping you afterwards if they missed it). And of course there are always people who put a session on the board, but then forget to show up and run their own session. A big X through your session saves everyone else some time, and opens the room to Bono or Eintsein, if they’re still around.

Are there downsides to all this? Sure. Unconferences feed on the belief that you are witnessing real time conference creation – so any sort of structuring might kill that energy. But then again, unconferences do have registration, mailing lists, wiki’s and other organizing tools – perhaps a few small, well crafted additions can make unconferences even better.

Any other ideas for improving unconferences? (See also, how to improve unconference sessions)

Mindcamp 2.0 re-cap

Posted on in On Tour, Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

Seattle Mindcamp 2.0, a local self-organizing conference, took place two weekends ago – I arrived at 1:30pm and was surprised to find the entire matrix of session slots filled. It’s a self-organizing conference, so you can’t t argue with first come first serve – fortunately Bryan Zug grabbed a slot for he and I to run his Good thing rapid discovery slam.

The thing I noticed most was how different the vibe of a conference is depending on the physical space it’s in. Mindcamp 1.0 was in a big empty floor of an office building. 2.0 was in a community center, basically a small school. The energy was very different – it was harder to get around, and even though the number of people was 20% larger, it felt much more crowded. The area by the session list, a narrow hallway, was jammed tight between sessions. At 1.0, it seemed easier to meet people as folks were always sitting around at tables in the main area, but here standing was the rule. The main lounging area was pretty small and crowded.

Highlights:

  1. Bryan Zug‘s idea for a slam, where people can talk briefly about any cool inspiring thing, was tons of fun. People read from books, showed gadgets, told personal tales of woe or connection, and I had no idea, as one of the organizers, what I’d see next. (But we totally blew the post event coverage: we have no record of all of the cool stuff people showed – mea culpa).
  2. Ario brought a trunkload of gaming gear, and I got to play Warlords 2600, in full four player glory, for the first time in a decade. A bunch of us spent a couple of hours in some poor woman’s tiny little office, eating pringles and having a great time.
  3. Donte’s ancient video of animinations for computer search algorithms. It was shown as a bizzare, kitchy early geek thing, but I’d actually seen it before, somehow, somewhere in my fading CS education. It’s a noble effort, but oddly sad and annoying by modern standards – however it’s hard not to be drawn in once you start watching, even now.
  4. The Billmonk talk: I had no idea who these guys were nor what to expect, but they ran the best session of the day. They talked about their start-up without falling victim to all the annoyances talks by start-up founders do: they were honest, they were funny, I believed what they said, and they were trying to be of use (and not self-serving). The Q&A session was highlighted by excellent commentary from another local start-up veteran standing at the front (I spoke with him later, but alas, didn’t get a card).

Only one lowlight:

  • Lack of diversity of sessions and attendies. This might be entirely unfair, as most people seemed pretty happy. But despite the overflowing session board, I struggled to find sessions of personal interest. A large percentage were “Do something cool with technology X”, which is right for this hacker-ish audience, but not my kind of thing. Someone called the event geekcamp, not mindcamp, and that might be a more accurate, if less flattering, name, given the dominant Amazon, Microsoft, 20-40, geek, male, demographic. The result is a gadget, geek, tech-centric notion of what minds are capable of.

On most counts the event was run better than last time – There were some reasonable complaints about the venue (parking, some of the room sizes) but given the low cost of this event, that would be entirely unfair. Most complaints about v1 (wi-fi, pre-event info) were solved, and for a volunteer run event they did a great job and deserve kudos: well done!

(Photo above by Chadm)

The things you never hear

Posted on in Management, Philosophyby Scott Berkun

The other day, at drinks after visiting a company, I chatted with some of the team. The star topic of conversation was an unpopular manager – someone said: “He’s a good guy, but someone really needs to tell him how broken his approach to management is.” It didn’t seem like anyone at the table was willing, yet everyone seemed to nod their head in agreement.

The next morning, half asleep on the plane home, I wondered what conversations go on around me, about me – the information I need to know, that no one is willing to tell me. What stupid avoidable things do I constantly do? What hurtful, frustrating behaviors do I have that I don’t even know about? I wondered how much better or more self-aware a person I’d be if I could hear just a fraction of the things I needed to hear, but never heard.

There’s a potential energy circling around all of us, of the things we need to hear that will change our minds, but never get the chance.

I wrote a short list of ways to try and get more of that energy:

  • Ask for it. Everyone I know probably has advice they’d like to share, but don’t think I want to hear it. If I ask for it I’ll push some of that potential energy over the tipping point. I just have to be able to graciously handle all of the difficult things they might say.
  • Reward those who give it. I have a handful of friends who will tell me the things no one else will say. I’d like to have more friends like this, but they’re rare and hard to find. I need to make sure I go out of my way to express how important this quality is to me – and reward people for it. I think I’ve lost some friends for not honoring what they gave me.
  • Act on it. If someone goes out on a limb, risking friendships or work relationships to express something, and then see nothing happen, they’re unlikely to take that risk again. But if I can act on what they say, even in some small way, then I’ve built a connection with them that they’ll use the next time around.
  • Make a pact. It can work best to be reciprocate – I’ll tell you if you tell me. Not every relationship can survive this kind of honesty, but having a pact in place to try and tell the other person what they should hear puts a useful tool in place. You can say, at any time “hey, remember that pact we made about telling each other stuff? And listening without getting mad” which helps soften the blow. And of course if the other guy gets pissed off and throws a chair at you, you’ll know it’s time to give up on the pact and find a new friend (or improve your chair dodging skills).

Who knows if I’ll have the convinction to do all of this – but we all have someone important in our lives harboring thoughts/ideas/gossip that we need to hear, and it seems like such a shame not to try and be open to more of them.

How do you make sure you hear the things you need to, from those important to you? And how do you tell other people things they need to know, without telling them too much?

License to manage? (On PMP and certification)

Posted on in Managementby Scott Berkun

Do you know what PMI is? I bet half of you don’t. I didn’t when I became a manager and it was years before I met anyone in the software industry who was PMP certified. A common question I get is this one:

What do you think about the PMP? Is it a necessary certification? It seems to mechanize management, something I find to be fluid and organic. Does it take a certain personality to be a Project Manager? You seem to be far more atmospheric, relational in your writing – not reflective at all to the rigidity of the PMP – and you wrote a book on project management.

Certification is bizzare: When did this start and who can we blame for the mess? It’s required by law for doctors, lawyers and accountants but not for senators, programmers, parents, and CEOs. No certification is required to run for president, but you need one to drive a car. There are rational reasons for this, which I’m sure I’ll hear in comments, but it’s still nuts, isn’t it?

The software industry is split on PMI: in the IT sector, and in many cost centers, it’s often required for management jobs, but on the product side, the profit side, it’s the opposite. At companines like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Yahoo people who manage profit hopeful/generating projects have rarely heard of PMI. Where you go to college matters as these places (they recruit at the same dozen universities), but certification matters not so much.

The certification question is about value – what does the piece of paper mean? People get certified because they believe:

  1. They’ll learn needed skills
  2. It will help them get a job
  3. It’s fun, cheap and a great way to find romantic partners (sadly, no on all 3 counts. Unless of course, it’s a free PMP/Dating combo program, which are hard to find)

Since the PMP focuses on an exam, it has the limitations of standardized tests: people study to the exam, not to the world. What do they know besides the minimum required to get a passing grade? Who knows. I can’t blame them: I didn’t study for the SATs to become a better person, I did it to get a good score, and would have happily memorized the French national anthem or claimed faith in UFOs for a few extra points (And yes, both the PMP and the SAT are primarily multiple choice tests). The PMP does have experience and classroom requirements, and does require people keep learning to maintain their PMP, but the exam gets the lions share of attention.

In that sense certifications differ from college degrees – if someone tells me they studied business for 4 years at University X, I can assume something about the experiences they had (what their peers, professors and study environments were like). But I can also ask questions like:

  • Why did you take the courses you did?
  • Did you get what you expected?
  • What else do you need to learn?
  • What projects did you work on? What happened? Did you like any of it?

Their answers reveal their passions. I can consider if their skills and passions match each other, and the job opening I have.

But an exam-centric certificate tells me only that they passed a test. Unless the job I’m hiring for matches the problems on that test, I’m not going to be impressed by the fact that they passed. I can ask why they took the test, but I’m pretty sure I know (see above). I might be impressed that they are willing to work hard and chose to invest time and money in their career, but there are other ways to do that, and it’s only one part of what I need to believe to want to hire someone.

Particular to product development jobs, I’d prefer someone who does well in situations when there is less structure – no single scoring system and no study guide. The person that aces a test, who perhaps likes rules and systems, might not excel when required to invent new rules, balance messy human tradeoffs and deal with the 31 flavors of uncertainty you get when trying to make new things. No certifications today measure this – if they did, I’m sure I’d be cheering all the way.

But until then, I’ll have mixed feelings about the PMP or any certification for management roles. They’re nice to have, but far from a requirement.

However, I have clear feelings about people who answer questions by pointing to framed pieces of paper. As soon as somone emphasizes their PhD, PMP, or M.D. when they should be thinking and answering questions loses 50 credibility points. Will they point to that paper when their team is in trouble? When their patient is dying? When the space shuttle is crashing into the sun?

If that piece of paper was so transformative, they should have great experiences, useful ideas, interesting opinions, or examples of their work to talk about, instead of exam scores or honors certificates. Unless they think I’m a moron, they should be willing to explain their ideas, make arguments based on facts or opinions, rather than assume a piece of paper can replace the need to think and act for themselves and to treat other people, with or without degrees, as equals until proven otherwise. I’ve seen this in every field (note the M.D. above, doctors are particularly guilty) so perhaps it’s just human nature.

I’m not anti PMP/PMI/university/PhD/establishment or anything at all – Obtaining these things is very difficult and people who have them have every reason to feel proud. If it helps employers and candidates make matches, fantastic! I just don’t believe that on their own these things signify much about the ability to perform, especially as a manager. To be fair, I doubt any exam or degree can do that, which explains my general opinion about certification programs.

Despite my opinion, it’s clear the PMP exam is a huge success for PMI and lots of folks swear by the program. There are over 200,000 PMP certified people out there (some of whom, I hope, will keep reading this blog). And the market for PMP study programs is huge: The PMI body of knowledge book ($31), is a perennial best seller, as are PMP exam prep ($56) type study guides.

So what’s your opinion? I’m sure many with PMPs want to tell me how great they are, and those without will hapilly confirm the opposite – so please consider showing a sprinkle of love for the dissenting opinion, before you fire away in the glory of grandiloquence.

See also: How to interview and hire people.

This week in ux-clinic: The horror of the small screen

Posted on in design, UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum – the horror of the small screen:

“WooHoo! We just shipped a massive redesign of our online banking website. 6 months of work finally launched and we’ve been partying like mad. The bad news is that the launch was so successful, our CEO has committed us to making a mobile version of the site: cell phones, PDA, you name it, we need to design a version of the site that works on these tiny formats.

Mind you, this was never a requirement – we fought over this months ago and all agreed we wouldn’t do this. But ha ha – now we are.

Has anyone been in this situation and can give advice on how to plan/manage/shape/design so that it doesn’t suck? Our organization has never tried to do this before and I fear they’ll expect an experience as good as the full site, which is impossible.”

– Signed, The horror of the small screen

This week in pm-clinic: Management at start-ups

Posted on in Management, PM-Clinic, Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum – The softer side:

I’m working at my third tech sector start-up company. This one is a web 2.0 type shop (consumer facing web service) comprised of me and four other programmers. We divide up the work to avoid conflicts, giving each programmer great autonomy and minimizing the need for any kind of manager role. It has been good so far, but we’re fast approaching bigger decisions (e.g. financial, strategic) that impact all of us, and I fear our anti-management/consensus approach will eventually be a burden.

So how do you know:

  1. When is it time to create a dedicated manager or PM type role? Is it defined by the # of people you have? Other factors?
  2. How do you transition from a totally organic model to one with defined roles?
  3. Or do we even need to worry about this at all? Most of my peers think we’re successful because of our lack of any formal management knowledge or structure whatsoever.

– Signed, Start up management

This week in ux-clinic: Leading the design skunkworks

Posted on in UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum – Leading the design skunkworks:

My UX team is convinced that to achieve their goals they need to go underground – go off and build a prototype, on their own, and show it to th team only when they have something amazing. They don’t want to partner or negotiate: they want to create their blue sky vision and return, so to speak, from the mountain.

Historically i’ve been a politician between UX and the rest of the org, but I would like to try a skunkworks approach, however I’ve never done this sort of thing before. If we go too far on our own, why will anyone listen? How do we keep the project underground? I’m looking for a primer on leading the secret design effort.

– Leading design skunkworks

This week in pm-clinic: Managing the middle talent

Posted on in PM-Clinic, Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum – The softer side:

(Note: please remember that just because I post these situations, I’m not their author: these things aren’t happening to me, but folks on the pm-clinic list. I get mail now and then that assumes all of these situations are *mine* which I find quite entertaining, but worth clarifying).

How do you keep the middle talent on your team motivated? I manage a team of 10 and I find the stars and the low performers easy to manage: it’s clear what i should do and how to do it. But the middle third is tough: i can’t reward them as well the top, and I’m not inclined to manage their performance like I would a low performer: the result is they get less attention from me. I’d like to push them to compete with the top, but I’m not sure I want my team competing with each other too much – so how do you manage for a happy middle talent pool on your team?

– Managing the middle

Review: 37signal’s Getting real, the book

Posted on in Book reviews, Recommendedby Scott Berkun

The folks at 37 signals have well earned their reputation for making great web applications. They’ve established a strong identity for with a line of web tools for project management (Basecamp), To-do lists (Backpack) and simple collaboration (Whiteboard).

They recently published a short book called “Getting real” about how to build web apps – and here’s my review.

The book is short – 170 pages with lots of whitespace and heavy quoting. If you’ve used any of their apps you’ll feel right at home as they do a fine job maintaining the same voice and style.

The highlight is their passion for making good things. They are most effective when they boldly express their ideals, using them to slash through common assumptions about features, big planning, organization and customers. It’s a brisk and optomistic read. At turns clever and confident, but ocassionally nieve, this book will generate strong opinions and can spark healthy debate even if you don’t like or agree with what they say.

The lowlights are the how – While I’m philosophically aligned with these guys, this book is more mantra than guidance or instruction. I imagine it working as a boost for people who believed some of these things prior to reading the book who, now reaffirmed, can point others to it as an external and respected source. There are obvious counter examples to some mantras, but they’re beyond the point, as the questions raised are worthwhile.

But for those in old-school organizations or with dysfunctional teams, this book doesn’t give the tools needed to turn things around nor provide individual readers with “Real” practices they can employ on their own. Most of “Getting real” is about approach and attitude, and it requires your co-workers to share it with you to work.

The book’s strength and weakness is the experience of the authors: they started 37 signals on their own, and advise largely from that context. While they don’t try to direct readers for how to convert older, larger, slower, less talented teams of people into “Real” teams, there is the vibe througout the book that the world would be a better place if everyone did.

Summary: I recommend this book – it’s a fast and opinionated read. It’s most valuable to small self directed teams, as a reference for how one small, talented, self directed team has successfully built quality software or as a hand grenade for teams that have been doing things the same way for too long. However it doesn’t quite justify the $19 price: there are tragically no references and no links to other sources, something I hope they’ll remidy in a 1.1 book update. (For reference: McConnell’s Rapid Development, with a 5 star average over 100 reviews at amazon, covers similiar ground with near opposite highlights/lowlights, for $22, with thorough links to other sources to go deeper than the text. These two books make a fine pairing).

The Book: Getting real by 37 signals ($19, online PDF only)
Free Excerpts: Scale later, Meetings are toxic, and more

This week in ux-clinic: Blog-‘O-rama

Posted on in UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum – Blog-‘O-Rama:

We’re a tragically hip start-up and recently we’ve gone blog-mad. There’s pressure to reframe much of our website into blog style designs, most notably, by designing pages in blog chronology style. This makes sense some of the time, like for press releases, but for other parts of the site it makes no sense at all (page about our executive team that isn’t updated often). What’s are some good guideliens for going blog/chronology centric, but also for staying away?

-Blog-‘O-rama

This week in pm-clinic: The softer side

Posted on in PM-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum – The softer side:

Most of our PMs have some type of technical or business background, and the area of growth most pressing for us is softer skills – things like collaboration, leadership, negotiation, conflict resolution. My question for the clinic is: how are these skills best obtained? How do your organizations value/reward/grow these types of skills (or are they not valued much at all)?

The top 100 most innovative companies (BW)

Posted on in Innovationby Scott Berkun

BusinessWeek Online has just posted their top 100 list.

The rankings were determined by votes from 1000 executives from large corporations: probably not the the best folks to make rankings like this, but it is the audience of the magazine, so there you go.

The top 5 are:

  1. Apple
  2. Google
  3. 3M
  4. Toyota
  5. Microsoft

More curious is their abuse of the word innovation:

Today, innovation is about much more than new products. It is about reinventing business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer needs. Most important, as the Internet and globalization widen the pool of new ideas, it’s about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time.

Since when does selecting ideas and bringing them to market on time have anything to do with innovation? Don’t these things apply to running any kind of bussiness at any time?

Specific to their list, Google is in the search engine and advertising business (at least that’s their largest current revenue) – which are entirely old markets: at least a decade old. Apple’s ipod was not even close to being the first digital music player – and the market, personal music players, is also years old. Shouldn’t the first search engine and the first digital music player get the lions share of innovation credit?

Or perhaps a better question: is there a way to seperate out innovation, which should be hinged on development of new ideas, from execution, which is delivering a good, timely product to market? Lists like this one entirely confuse the difference between these two concepts.

Ten things Bad VPs never say

Posted on in Management, Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

Being an executive is a tough job, no doubt. However there are a set of things any rational person has to believe about executives, that don’t match their behavior. Sometimes there are good reasons for this, sometimes not.

So for fun, here’s my top ten list of things Bad VPs never say.

  1. It’s my fault. Many leaders fear admitting failure for their projects, much less taking personal responsibility for them. But if a VP says this and means it, they absorb blame, freeing their orgs to focus on learning from failure, rather than pointing fingers. “It’s my fault” or “I’m accountable for that” are power building phrases. You bring power to you when you re-establish responsibility for things you’re responsible for, especially in failure.
  2. I’m ending project X and here’s why. It can easy to let misguided or inefficient projects live are far too long. One of the roles of a VP is to be decisive, and make clear decisions, including the decision to end efforts that aren’t working to free up resources for other projects. The VP has to find a way to do the right thing (end the project) but not whitewash it. The failure however is that if too much face is saved, the lessons from the failed project are not learned by others (and those failures will be repeated).
  3. I’m firing Y and here is why. See above.
  4. Team A is more important than Team B. Like parents, most VPs tend to project equality over things that are not equal (“You’re all my favorite children” – Sure we are). In reality every VP knows which teams matter more to his organization and in private treats them as such. The fear is that people on team B will be upset if they learn their status – but I’ve seen the opposite. If team A is clearly more important towards the overall goals, and team B wants the org to succeed, it’s in their interest to prioritize around team A when appropriate. There’s no shame in playing a strong supporting role. Every team sport in history teaches that some roles, at some times, are more important. You win or lose based on how well everyone plays their role at the right time.
  5. The CEO and I disagree about… In rhyme: Leaders fear showing dissension, despite signs for those paying attention. Hearing a VP politely discuss a disagreement with his superior makes it acceptable for his reports to acknowledge their disagreements with him. But if instead he pretends everything is great, there’s a mismatch between what’s said and what’s believed. People know instinctively when something is wrong: decisions that don’t line up. E-mails that hint at contradiction. it’s a relief to hear it articulated, even if only in passing, especially if how that disagreement is being resolved is made clear.
  6. My morale is low. What happens when the leader, the figurehead, doesn’t believe? I want to argue that there are ways to communicate this to a team without killing their morale, but this may be something best held in confidence. Many of the things we wish VPs would say may be based on to only those in their confidence: a handful of people in their organizations. However, there is every way for a VP to communicate his/her concerns. A short list of top concerns every month or quarter, presented with the right vibe, can go a long way towards surfacing solutions to them.
  7. No, I don’t want to be on the cover of Time. To want to be a VP requires an ego. No person in the history of the corporation has been forced, at gunpoint, into executive status. All VPs are highly visible and either enjoy it or think that they deserve it: to decline attention would contradict much of their sense of value. Having an ego isn’t necessarily bad: being in the press brings attention to the company, which is an asset if handled right. But some executives confuse media attention for themselves with the job of running a healthy organization whose products and services are worthy of media attention.
  8. I will work as many hours as you do. While it’s true that executives often have intense schedules, it’s rare to see them point to line level employees and say “I will match your average week hour for hour.” I’ve never seen it. Especially during crunch time when overtime is common, seeing a VP put in similar hours and make similar commitments as the org is a tremendous morale boost. I have seen senior managers stay around and do near all-nighters on crunch night, and the effect it always had, if done without fanfare, was powerful. It’s something everyone talks about the next day.
  9. Here’s exactly how much I earn and what my bonus structure is. I’ve often wondered what would happen if corporations had transparent pay scales – public jobs often do (teachers, senators, police officers). No law prevents an employee from posting their paychecks on their office door. In specific to executives, knowing how they’re rewarded explains tons to their organization. Good VPs do communicate what their personal goals are, but knowing even the non-financial elements of their rewards (what are they rewarded on?) might be more useful to the organization that what’s in the project vision. (Of course, this would require that CEOs define the rewards. Begging for a list of “ten things CEOs never say”).
  10. What did I miss? What are other things VPs never (but should) say? And why?

The next book: an invitation

Posted on in Innovation, Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

The next book I’m writing is about innovation: how and why new ideas develop the way they do. I’ve signed a deal with O’Reilly, publishers of my first book and work is well underway.

I’ve chosen innovation because it’s central to everything many of us want: for things to get better. But it’s also a misunderstood and violently misused term. It’s commonly abused in the tech sector, where you see it used as a filler word in naming and describing things: Innovation is the lorem ipsum of current bussiness and technology marketing filling in when people are too lazy to say what the mean.

The word even surfaces now in marketing literature for ball point pens and pizza, begging the questions:

  • Have we forgotten what innovation is?
  • How is innovation different from ‘good’ or ‘new’?
  • What are the common misconceptions about how innovation happens?
  • Can anyone innovate or just those born to do it?
  • What can we learn from innovations of the past, if anything?
  • Is the internet age that different in how innovations are found, developed and promoted than the work of Newton, Edison and Ford?

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and my aim is to explore these kinds of questions and answer them.

This blog post serves to invite all of you to participate in the development of the book. I’ll be discussing my ideas on this blog, linking and commenting to related findings along the way. I’m hoping you’ll chime in, give feedback and participate in the writing of a good book.

For starters:

  • I’m looking for nominations for people to interview. Who is the most innovative person you know? Have worked with? Have ever heard of? Give me a link or an e-mail address and I’ll put them on my list.
  • Are there other books, references or websites I should know about? What’s the best story of innovation you’ve read?
  • Or just say “Go Scott! Looking forward to the book!” :)

(Update: get interviewed for the book online and share your innovation stories.)

This week in uxclinic: Death by comparison

Posted on in UX-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum – Death by comparison:

I’m a usability engineer on a major web site. Our senior managers are addicted to data. Hard core data. They make all decisions based on metrics and what the call “the metric function” – the equation that best determines what success is.

So when it comes to usability, the only studies they’re interested in are comparative ones, where I do A/B testing, or in some cases A/B/C testing. Even when we prototype or experiment, they always want the data housed in comparative data.

How do I get them out of this data rut and recognize that usability engineering involves more than generating numbers to put in charts? Or is this how most of the tech sector sees usability: a number factory?

This week in pmclinic: Mutiny

Posted on in PM-Clinicby Scott Berkun

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum– Mutiny:

Mutiny

This is one for the history books – I have quite the situation on my hands. I’m the PM for a 15 person team. My peer is the lead developer, who manages 6 programmers (of the 15). We disagreed on a major project decision, brought it to the VP, and he went my way. But since then, the lead developer has stopped talking to me. I mean, he won’t even answer my questions.

Whenever possible he tries to backfill the decision, directing his team towards the outcome he wanted, despite the VP directive. At first this was just frustrating (for me and the team), but now it makes me look incompetent and puts the project at risk. Morale is dropping, as we’re like a family where the parents have stopped talking to each other and programmers are taking sides.

Help?