Everyday Excellence

Bryant April 16th, 2010

I recently finished the book Rework by the 37Signals founders. The book was a quick read and is definitely written for the blogging generation with illustrations and quick, scannable pages. In fact, it’s more like a collection of one page essays than a book, but even so, there is a lot of knowledge in those short paragraphs.

For those that don’t know, 37Signals run a web development firm here in the Chicago area and have created some phenomenal web products – most notably Basecamp.

Their mantra has always been keep things as simple as possible, and even though they work on technical web products, I think their lessons could apply to many other industries. Here are the ones that stood out to me the most:

• Inspiration is Perishable: So true. If I’m excited about getting a project done, I try to carve out as much time as possible right then to work on it because I know that time will be very productive. Inspiration should be used immediately.
• Planning is Guessing: They decry the long-term business planning as nothing more than guesswork and the harm is that they prevent you from being nimble. In Me, Myself and Bob, Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales, describes how all their long-term projections showed double-digit increases so they would easily have the cash to self-finance a movie. Unfortunately, those double-digit increases didn’t happen and VeggieTales went bankrupt. Don’t lock yourself into long-term plans that have no bearing on reality.
• Make a Dent in the Universe: Do something that matters. People are happier when they feel like they’re making a difference. You don’t have to cure cancer, but you’d hope that people would miss you when you’re gone. You don’t have forever.
• Start Making Something: Their section on this topic focuses on what I discussed in one of my first blog posts on the myth of the great idea. Ideas are cheap. It’s execution that matters.
• Meetings are Toxic: The true cost of a meeting is often overlooked. If there are 8 people in the meeting then you are actually using 8 hours of company time, not just one. For that hour, there are 8 people who can’t be working and moving the project forward. So if a meeting’s going to happen, it had better be important.

The one point from their book that I disagree with is their denial of the workaholic.

Not that I think you should work all the time, but I’m a big believer in the fact that the hardest workers are the ones that win. If you look back through history at successful people, you will see that they were obsessed with their one thing – whatever it was. And they didn’t just do it from 8-5. The fact of the matter is, the more you do something, the better you get at it.

That said, overall it’s a great book and highly recommended!

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Bryant March 29th, 2010

In life, there is an uneasy balance between ambition and happiness. If you are too ambitious you may never be happy. When you reach one rung on the ladder, then you’re desperately scrambling for the next. On the other hand, if you’re just happy with the status quo, you may never do something truly extraordinary.

Recently someone told me “I’m happy with a good library and a thrift shop”. Now, here’s a person that’s going to be happier than most—her expectations are pretty easy to meet. BUT she may never reach her full potential. And would a company want to hire someone like this, or would it be better to hire someone who says they won’t be happy until they’ve earned a million dollars?

The sad truth is that most highly successful people err on the side of ambition. They’re never satisfied with the status quo and so they’re usually not happy people…

Steve Jobs is known to relentlessly push his people to build the next killer device. He’s often been called an egomaniac and we know he’s a screamer.  But Jobs isn’t alone here. The same is true for Gates, Disney and Edison. Does being great mean being unhappy with how things are? After all, no one less than the Governor of California (“the Governator”) said the secret to success is to “Stay Hungry”.

Doesn’t personal growth require some ambition? And isn’t there something about personal growth that leads to happiness. It seems that the answer must be in the following:

• Finding a Balance: There is a balance between enjoying what you have and pushing yourself to achieve the next level. It can be difficult to strike, but it’s there. And the best growth is supposed to come by pushing yourself just barely out of your comfort zone.
• Enjoying the Journey: Because you never know when you’ll reach the next rung of the ladder, you have to enjoy the process. As long as you’re moving forward, you have something to be happy about. It’s not just the destination.

Where ambition ends happiness begins.
- Hungarian Proverb 

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Bryant March 7th, 2010

Take a minute to watch the above video. I think it captures something profound and inspiring.

For some reason in our culture failure is seen as this taboo that must be avoided at all costs, yet some of the the best in the world have failed many times over. There’s a classic Thomas Edison quote about inventing the light bulb:

I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps

-Edison

So it’s not really about failing, it’s more about when you give up. Maybe success is just around the corner?

The Dip

One of Seth Godin’s books is dedicated to this concept. He calls it The Dip, and it’s all about pushing through failure. As we all know, new projects are fun in the beginning, but the rewards lie for those that can push through the long hard slog at the end. Godin explains:

It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. But it’s that reflex that creates scarcity. The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.

-The Dip, Seth Godin

Suck Less Everyday

I think the key is to suck less everyday. Start out knowing that you will suck and strive for 1% daily improvement. Pretty soon you’ll be amazingly good.

I remember when I first started running seriously — I really sucked. After running a couple of miles, I was winded. But I told myself that I would stick to a plan and run an increasing number of miles every week. Somehow, by the end of four months of solid training, I ran a marathon with a pretty good time.

The Fringe Benefits of Failure

One of my all-time favorite speeches is by JK Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series). She gave it at a Harvard Commencement and her subject was the “Fringe Benefits of Failure”. She talked about how she royally failed in the early part of her life:

So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

She was a huge failure, but she goes on to describe what she learned from that failure. It stripped away the inessential and let her focus on the only that ever mattered to her – writing. She says, that if she had been an astounding success at something else, she may never have sat down to write the novels we all know and love today.

In fact, I hear this all the time. Whenever I’m talking to people about taking time out to build a great software product they always talk about the fact that they’re making good money doing this or that and they don’t want to risk taking time out. They settle for the good rather than the great. By failing dramatically, Rowling didn’t have that option.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius

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Bryant February 19th, 2010

“If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensable.”

-Seth Godin

Seth Godin has a fascinating new book out called Linchpin. If you like Godin’s other books then you’ll like this one. It’s written in his classic style of storytelling and enthusiasm. Some would argue that his books are just extended blog posts – that there’s not enough meat to actually make a book. And while I agree that his books can get repetitive the message is so good that it’s worth hearing repeatedly.

One of Godin’s past books was called Purple Cow and it talked about how to create a remarkable business that people talk about.  Linchpin is about becoming a remarkable person that people talk about. After reading through the book, I would summarize it with these five quotes and lessons:

1) Be Different

You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to become indispensable is to be different. That’s because if you’re the same, so are plenty of other people.

You can’t become a linchpin by doing what everyone else is doing. You have to be remarkable and to do that, you have to be different. No one will talk about you and say you have to hire this person if you are the same as everyone else. Being different almost always means going beyond the training manual because anyone can follow the manual. What matters is the person that takes initiative to take the customer experience or product to the next level.

2) Give Gifts

When done properly, gifts work like nothing else. A gift gladly accepted changes everything. The imbalance creates motion, motion that pushes us to a new equilibrium, motion that creates connection.

In his book, Godin gives the example of an expert sales coach that gives away all of his secrets in a free online book. Is that stupid because now everyone knows his secrets? Or is that wise because now everyone knows that this guy has knowledge to spare and if I ever need a sales coach he’d be the first one to call. Now that I’ve seen his work, I know he’s good.

3) The Web Makes it Easier to Shine

The Web has made kicking ass easier to achieve, and mediocrity harder to sustain. Mediocrity now howls in protest.

On the web, remarkable content spreads quicker than ever before. I once wrote a blog post entitled how long you can wait that talks about how delayed gratification is the key to success. On a whim I submitted it to stumbleupon and the next day I had thousands of views. The post struck a chord and traveled faster than I could have imagined.

In the world we live in, if you do something wonderful (with the help of twitter, digg, stumbleupon and facebook), news can travel like lightning.

4) There is No Map

There is no map. No map to be a leader, no map to be an artist. I’ve read hundreds of books about art (in all its forms) and how to do it, and not one has a clue about the map, because there isn’t one.

In the book, Godin talked about his favorite negative review which said (and I’m paraphrasing): “Godin has all these great ideas but he doesn’t tell you how to do any of them”! To which Godin replied, there is no map — if I could tell you how to do it then it would be a commodity and wouldn’t be remarkable anymore.

Some people just want to be told what to do, and in fact some businesses encourage that. Godin spends a lot of time talking about the old-school factory mentality of getting people that are just cogs and replaceable parts. You give them a manual and they do the work and everyone’s happy (or are they?). Maybe the business makes money, but are they really remarkable or are they just racing to the bottom? And what about the employee, they are just interchangeable cogs.

According to Godin, a better model is one where people bring their talents and creativity to help a business race to the top rather than just following a map.

5) Work is Your Platform for Art

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in the other.

This was my biggest takeaway from the book. The idea being that “Art” is something that changes someone by making a human connection. And to be remarkable, you must bring your art to work. The greatest business people are the greatest artists. They change people and the world with their art.

Jonathon Ive, who designed the iPod and the iPhone, is an artist and he’s impacted millions with his art even if they aren’t hanging it on their walls. Not only has he impacted millions of consumers, but he’s made millions for his company.

Perhaps Ive is a little too blue sky for the average person to relate to, so Godin goes on to talk about the barista in a local coffee shop that is always smiling and welcoming. This barista goes out of his way to make sure customers are comfortable and happy. He’s the reason that people go the cafe and therefore is highly valuable to the business (ie – a linchpin). His art is his connections that he makes with people, and according to Godin everyone has some kind of art that they can bring to work.

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Bryant February 5th, 2010

What is Genius?

With all the hoopla surrounding the upcoming Superbowl and Peyton Manning, it’s not surprising to see articles like this one in Slate stating that Peyton Manning is a genius:

After a tenth 4,000-yard passing season, a career-best 68.8 completion percentage, and a chance to win his second Super Bowl ring this Sunday in Miami, it’s time to state the obvious: Yes, Peyton Manning is obsessive. But he’s also a genius. The two go throwing-hand in football-glove. It’s understood that extraordinary athletes like Manning and Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are freaks. But they’re respected freaks because they do something valued by society.

As well as stating that Manning is a football genius, the article goes on to point out that an interesting point. Society only calls you a genius if you are obsessed with something it finds valuable (like football). What if your “genius” was jumping the further than anyone else on a pogo stick. Would people actually call you a genius or would they call you insane?

So in order to be a genius you at least have to be great at something that society values, but what are the other common attributes of a genius? Malcolm Gladwell gave a speech in 2007 at the New Yorker Conference where he described three traits common to geniuses: Obsession, Isolation and Insight.

1) Obsession

Genuises are obsessed with the one thing that they do. Andre Agassi was hitting 2500 tennis balls a day — a million a year before he was even a teenager.
And what about Peyton Manning? Here’s how the Slate article described his obsession:

A common theme in virtually every profile of Peyton Manning is the Super Bowl quarterback’s legendary devotion to football. At age 12, he exhorted his pee-wee linemen to block harder. He started deconstructing NFL game video in high school. He arrived at college six weeks early to work out with upperclassmen. A few days after the Indianapolis Colts made him the first pick of the 1998 draft, he had the team playbook memorized. He orders rookies to meet him on the field at 8 a.m. the Monday after they are drafted. He falls asleep watching tape in the basement of his Indianapolis home

Wow! This guy is football crazy, but you gotta love his devotion. I imagine the hardest thing would be keeping up this level of interest in one thing. Agassi got to a point where he hated tennis because he played it so much. It has to be hard to maintain that level of intensity.

2) Isolation

Geniuses typically work on their craft at the expense of social connections. A biography of Warren Buffet described how his wife would have people over, but instead of visiting he would spend his time in his room reading financial reports.
It reminds me of quote from Randy Pausch, author of the bestselling Last Lecture. When asked how he got tenure early, he replied:

Call me at my office at 10 o’clock on Friday night and I’ll tell you

While geniuses may be physically isolated they typically build on the research and key discoveries of others in reaching their key insight.

3) Insight

Usually, after years of toil, the genius comes to a key insight that garners him long-lasting recognition. The canonical example of the flash of insight is the story of Newton sitting under an apple tree. While sitting there an apple dropped on his head and in a flash of insight he had the theory of gravity.

While this story sounds great, there are many who doubt its authenticity, including Scott Berkin who wrote an excellent book on the Myths of Innovation:

Now my point here is not to say epiphanies never happen. Most creative people have them now and then, and I do too (but I argue they are overrated and do not eliminate the hard work and risk that follows them. Newton worked for a decade to complete his theory on gravity that he became famous for). I’m also not questioning Newton’s genius – he was one. But reasonable doubt about this legend is warranted given the extremely thin evidence we have.

So for you future geniuses out there it’s time to start getting obsessed, isolating yourself and focusing on an insight. Don’t worry, it should only take roughly 10 years of focused study.

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