Tom's blog

Deliberate defiance and the 15% rule

I came across this article which talks about how some organizations promote an environment of deliberate contempt and disobedience in the workplace. Specifically it talks about that fact that in creative workplaces senior managers frequently don't recognize good ideas and then kill them, along with any potential revenues they may bring.

A perfect example of this can be seen in 3M's development of Masking Tape. The engineer working on the product, despite being told repeatedly to stop working on it and let it go, didn't, and the product is something we all know and love today.

An interesting offshoot from this event within the 3M organization, is that now the creative folks can spend 15% of the working time on whatever project or idea they choose, without question. What a great idea this is, I wonder how many interesting products have come out of that organization because of that rule? Seems like an awesome idea to me.

I remember reading a book many years ago Slack, Tom DeMarco) which talks through all of the benefits of leaving some open time in the working schedules of your employees, creativity is better, productivity is better and overall the results seem to favor happier, less burned out employees (as well as a better bottom line).

I have personally experienced the gambit of environments, from the insanely creative and employee driven, to the stereotypical pressure cooker where the only acceptable results were nothing more and nothing less than was originally requested. I can attest to the Slack theory and have seen the sorts of results that can come as a result of that. If we have worked together in any of these places, you have probably experienced what would be described at 3M as deliberate defiance. In the right environment, this has worked really well for me. The trick is to create the right environment I guess.

So many thing's go into the creation of the right environment. Godin writes about the various drivers that are often found at the root of an organizations being. I fully believe that an organization with the wrong driver at heart, will never create the right environment for its employees or customers. This organization WILL miss out on the big success that might otherwise await it.

On a completely separate note, this time to the ultimate destroyer of great corporate ideas: Happy 20th Birthday to Microsoft's PowerPoint. See my previous post with some ideas on how to make this better.

Technorati Tags: 3m, creativity, design, getting things done, gtd, happiness, lifehacks, productivity, seth godin, slack, tom demarco

An interesting take on ignoring your task list

A friend of mine sent me this essay, Structure Procrastination (by Prof. John Perry) sparks and interesting thought train when it comes to productivity and Getting Things Done.

The essay draws and interesting comparison between Important vs. Urgent actions. Prof. Perry points out that it is possible to achieve what's really important by feeling comfortable with ignoring other more urgent tasking regardless of where it appears in your lens, until such time as you do, in fact, have to do something with it. He gives some good examples of the positive effects in his role as a teacher. I imagine that most of us find ourselves doing exactly the same thing from time to time.

This is backed up somewhat by Dr. Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits who often cites urgent vs important. He provides examples such as a, a ringing telephone, urgent because you have to pick it up and talk. But it may be a tele-marketer or important things, things that are truly fundamental to your primary purpose/goals, such as planning for your offspring's higher education.

I guess the most import thing about the mechanism in this case, is that everything is actually captured somewhere in terms that specify the end goal, regardless of priority, and then making the priority calls happens at the point of review.

I suppose that I like the idea, because I get to choose what is most important to me, despite outside opinion.

Technorati Tags: getting things done, gtd, life, lifehacks, productivity

Mac vs. PC Southpark style

On YouTube - South Park Mac vs. PC.

Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: apple, commercial, mac, pc

PowerPoint revisited...

I found this site dedicated to the use of PowerPoint from a semi-military (hence the service patch idea) view point, Jim Placke's PowerPoint Humor. Well worth a visit if you are forced to present / endure countless PowerPoint presentations.

It would be interesting if in industry, we took the dissemination of information as seriously as they do in the services where lives depend on the timely movement of current, accurate information. If those of us in industry to a similar approach to the spread of information, I imagine that the ratio of business success to failure would increase simply because people were focused at a current situational picture. Unfortunately, if these comments are true (and most humor reflects a current mindset), it seems that the military machine is coming closer to the model of the corporate world.

Some of the comments from Jim's page are pretty telling

"Using PowerPoint is like having a loaded AK-47 on the table: You can do very bad things with it." - Peter Norvig

"I must say I started to see more bad plans with good slides approved over good plans with no slides." - Robert Walsh

"You can't speak with the U.S. military without knowing PowerPoint." - Margaret Hayes, National Defense University

These are links to Really Bad PowerPoint - Seth Godin, a really useful post and e-book with some interesting ideas on the use of presentations.

And finally, here are Microsoft's recommendations on the use of PowerPoint.

Technorati Tags: business, consulting, Funny, getting things done, gtd, military, powerpoint, presentation, seth godin

Microsoft have done something cool

Check this out Microsoft Surface.

A few weeks back I wrote about a research team who were doing some stunning things with touch screens, producing some really intuitive user interfaces. Microsoft seem to be pursuing something similar with their Surface ideas.

I wonder how practical these sorts of interfaces actually are? For example, if you put the displays in public applications as Microsoft suggest here, how will they be kept clean? Protected from scratches? Saved from the drinks that are spilled on them?

I think their ideas around the linkage of a display area to a digital device are really innovative. Set down the camera, telephone, pda or similar on the display. The two magically discover each other and then you can drag and drop to or from the hot spot around the device to access it, now thats neat!

It really is very cool, but the opportunist in me can see a whole new set of customers for hand cleanser.

Technorati Tags: business, commercial, cool, microsoft, multi touch, multi-modal, surface, touchscreen, Video

An 80 cent refund from XM.

Over the last couple of days, my XM Radio has been suffering from some pretty poor reception. It turned out be be a software issue somewhere in their system (there's a surprise). Here is their, rather lacking statement.

On the radio this morning they announced an 80 cent refund to subscribers for the outage, the catch, you have to call in to get it. I guess they are hoping no one calls in.

Perhaps, they could try a different take on the topic and maybe salvage some loyalty out of the situation. Just give every subscriber the refund.

Technorati Tags: business, commercial, getting things done, gtd, Marketing, music, XM Radio, self-service, Wireless

It's inhumane

This article caught my attention, Bots on The Ground from the Washington post.

This article tells of a robot that is designed to clear mines by sacrificing one of it's many robotic legs. The colonel supervising, became upset at the fate of the robot and stopped what was apparently a very successful test with the words "It's inhumane".

Isn't that kind of the point?

Technorati Tags: business, life, Products, mine clearing, robot

The air car...video

The air powered car I mentioned in my previous post.

Check it out.

Technorati Tags: air car, business, Conservation, ecology, energy, environment, global warming, Products, tata

A cleaner alternative

Here is another version of an alternate fuel vehicle. This one runs on compressed air and apparently will provide 60 miles [100kms] at an average cost of around $1.50. TaTa motors (an Indian automotive company) have signed a license to build production models.

The vegetable oil used in the lubrication system only needs to be changed every 30,000 miles and the car has a range of 250 miles between fills and has an internal air compressor to recharge the tank.

Oh, and I am pretty sure the only thing that comes out of the exhaust will be air too.

Technorati Tags: air car, business, Conservation, ecology, environment, global warming, Products, energy, tata

I hate e-messaging

I do, I really do hate e-mail. It's intrusive, attention demanding, never ending and very, very difficult to pick out what is really important from the fire hose that is my email account.

During a typical day I will receive (to 3 or 4 different mail accounts) somewhere in the region of 150 emails. These are all mostly not actionable items for me and as such only a small proportion warrant a reply. The real issue with this situation is that a huge part of my available time ends up being consumed with trying to weed out the important items from the other stuff. Inevitably, something important often slips through the net and ends up down the list, off the visible page. And as the adage goes, "Out of sight, out of mind".

Now add to this the newer messaging medium, Instant Messaging. Where people who often have something a little more urgent than would normally require an email or too small to warrant an e-mail, will ping me directly to try and spark of an interactive, albeit abbreviated dialog. Because of the nature of instant messaging, it happens at any time, wether your in meetings, on the phone, at home or in the store, this form of messaging is even more invasive than e-mail. At an ever increasing rate, people are sending me an IM to ask if its OK to call on the telephone or asking if it's OK to have a quick conversation.

I am going to try a couple of new ideas around the message handling like this

• IM hours. I wrote about this a few posts back after a post from Brian Oberkirch; . I think I am going to schedule some IM hours...probably something like 11-3. If anyone has anything important enough to need an instant answer outside of those times, they can come and find me.

• Classify email on the fly. I will create some new folders "Now", "Today" and "Later" and attempt to classify mail into these categories as it arrives. When one folder is clear, I'll move onto the next. If anyone sends me an FYI note, I will probably just delete it on the spot and consider myself FYI'd. I wonder if I will ever get the the "Later" stuff?

I will let you know how this works [or doesn't].

Update 5/28/07: So far this seems to be working for me. The only change I think I am going to make is to merge the today and later folders. If the email ends up in there, it's not a "Now" item. For "Now" items the qualifier is the true GTD qualifier, will it take less than 2 minutes? If it does it gets done. If not, it goes into the "Later" bucket.

Technorati Tags: business, collaboration, email, instant messaging, multi tasking, tag