photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakeandlindsay/

This is the 9th in a series of posts on Agile Marketing – the working definition of which is to “Create, communicate and deliver unique value to an always-changing consumer (or business) in an always-changing market with an always-changing product.” (see the original post here.) Another tenet of your Agile Marketing strategy should be you – how are you making yourself or your team better, so that you are changing along with the conditions and market around you?

Principle 9: It’s your Job – be good at it.

The best measurement or yardstick of your success is going to be your own assessment of progress against your own goals (so, you should have some goals.) These might not be the traditional goals of money, promotion, things, or success – they might be moments in time that you can identify that will consistently make you happier – and the rest of the world might not know when you achieve them. Living well is your job, so get better at it.

Here are a few ways to measure how you are making yourself better:

• Identify individual moments of excellence that you can prototype today, solidify tomorrow, and cement through practice and process.
• If external validation is important to you, observe what sorts of behaviors get external validation, and practice those behaviors
• Don’t be too hard on yourself – failure is a sign that you are calibrating your goals high enough so that you don’t meet them constantly

Everyone’s had that “a-ha” moment – you might experience it in the doing, when you experience a state of flow or a runner’s high – or realize it afterwards, when you solve a problem that’s important to you. These individual moments of excellence might be big (running a marathon, completing a big deal, or understanding a difficult concept) or small (realization that you can take the afternoon off, eating pie for breakfast, or instantly nailing a problem on the first try.) If you catch yourself doing something right, make sure to recognize that event as a prototype, and think of ways that you can repeat it and solidify that feeling or action.

Give yourself bonus points if you can determine a way to practice that feeling and develop a process around it. Your practice and process might only enable you to set up a condition where the success might occur again (think going to the batting cage to practice your swing so that the next time you see a curve ball in a game you’ll really be able to pull it down the line) or might be the exact copy of your success (remembering to stretch each morning so that your muscles don’t get sore.)

The things that make you better might not be the things the rest of the world cares about or for which it offers external validation. So if it’s important to be recognized by the outside world (where you measure that in money, fame, awareness, or generalized success) go watch successful people and see how they behave (or how they portray their behaviors in the media. There are many ways to learn about successful people online and to examine the things that they write and the way that they interact with their public through social media. Just like professional ballplayers don’t hit a curve ball overnight, many successful people that you meet are the product of years or decades of learned or intended behavior. So the tiny habits they start today are likely to be the trends tomorrow (or months or years from now.)

And, don’t be too hard on yourself. Failing is a sign that you are setting your goals high enough so that the success can be meaningful and not just the result of showing up. Yet, paradoxically, the just showing up is a necessary and not sufficient component for success. It’s your responsibility to make yourself and your team better, and you should be working at that every day.

photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirtaph

It’s easy to think that the next thing you’re doing might not be the right thing. It could be the wrong thing. It could be a sideways thing. But taking a step forward gets you somewhere.

One step forward gives you the ability to look back and see if your assumptions were wrong.

One step forward gives you a bit of new perspective.

One step forward allows you to go before you are ready.

One step forward demonstrates who will follow you.

One step forward promotes leadership, even if it’s in the wrong direction.

One step forward removes the possibility that you will do nothing.

One step forward might mean you’re about to take two steps back.

One step forward opens the ability to do a new thing. A really new thing.

So what are you waiting for? Take one step forward.

True – the recommendations of friends and the ability to pick almost any song or album at any moment has given us an almost infinite ability to listen. And it has also given us an almost infinite menu of choices. I’m late to the party on this one, and I’m really enjoying the combination of Spotify when combined with Last.fm to curate music I might like based on my choices. It leads me to believe that the next step in app development and service development overall is the shift from mass customization to real personalization based on behavior.

Why should we care? Because too much choice can be paralyzing and prevent you from acting. Barry Schwartz is a psychologist who studies the effect of choice – here’s his TED talk on the effects of too much choice on our overall happiness.

So why is it that so many of our product cycles are devoted to “users” who can learn new “features” that will allow them to “achieve their goals” instead of understanding better what people need by listening to them?

Every Designer’s Fear of the Customer

When you talk to a really good designer, one of their great fears is that a simple, elegant design might be ruined by incessant demands from customers who want lots of capabilities that they will never use (and in fact, don’t really need.) A good example is this concept video by designer Philip Pauley of his “helicopter-boat-plane”: it sounds cool, but the market demand seems to be … underdeveloped as of yet.

Even if the customer is not always right …

Customers (or prospective customers) give you valuable signals when they ask you for things that they want. I agree with the idea that the customer is not always right, but they always feel that they are right. So the more of their helicopter boat plane ideas that you can build (quickly, without a lot of extra frills), the more you will be able to test to see if the idea of one customer actually fosters a habit that other customers might follow.

You can get closer to the customer’s actual (or perceived) need by asking them for only one change: “If you could choose anything to change about this product to make it better for you to use more often, what’s the one thing you would pick to change?”

Gain credibility by delivering some of the things they ask for.

As a team, if you make a list of these “one thing items,” periodically deliver some of them, and highlight the customer who asked you for this change, you will win brand advocates, customer evangelists, and generally understand who your “hero users” are. This will not necessarily translate into market success or market validation. But it will give you much more room and capability to try to build an everyday product that real people use, instead of crafting an application that is utilized by users.

standing desk

I’ve been standing at my desk now for two weeks. I wanted to provide an update on my original post about using a standing desk for a couple of different reasons:

• the overall response has been overwhelming – I know the old adage about “when the only tool you have is a hammer, all you see is nails” but I do believe that both the interest in and information about standing desks is really gaining momentum – and more of my friends are using one and commenting about it
• there is new research suggesting that the more hours you sit, the higher the likelihood you will die prematurely
• I think (anecdotally) that standing makes me more effective, gives me more energy overall, and makes me more effective

It turns out lots of people use standing desks

The most amazing thing about the last two weeks has been the process of finding out how many people I know are either using or considering the use of a standing desk. These people have made the choice for a variety of reasons – many, to resolve back issues – and the constant theme among their comments is that they feel better, get more work done, and that it has been a habit that they’ve been able to maintain.

The discussion spanned people from all walks of life. I thought that this was mostly a trend for geeks, and found that it’s much wider than that.

The other interesting observation about the people who use standing desks is that they are among the most productive and successful people that I know. I don’t think there is a correlation here yet – but it’s still interesting – and worth more thought in the future.

The media is starting to pay attention

For the average person, the standing desk probably seems like a weird fad that will fade. But the media is starting to pay attention to the possibilities raised by the long-term effects of sedentary behavior. So what? It means that whatever you can do to reduce the amount of time sitting is good – either taking a brisk walk once a day, making sure that you do your household activities in a burst of activity so that you are standing for a longer period of time. Note: there is definitely a segment of the population that can’t exercise this way – and it would seem that other low-impact activities like swimming might be a great substitute.

It still feels great to stand

I was really tired the first week of using the standing desk. I’m doing better now, and still feeling the same benefits of being intentional, feeling focused, and getting good amounts of work done. I look forward to seeing how I feel after a few months of this activity, and whether anything else has changed.

Fearless Riders

There are lots of things you can do with a fiver. I’d really like you to consider donating a fiver (one day’s coffee, a bus ride, a sandwich) to support research to fight Diabetes.

I’m doing my part by riding in the Seattle Tour de Cure on May 12. I would really appreciate it if you could chip in $5 to help. The last several years I’ve raised over $3,000 for this cause, and I’d like to make the number higher.

Please go here and donate what you can today.

(Update 2: Now above $2,000! as of 5/1/12 – how high can we go?)

(Update: I’ve exceeded my original $1500 goal as of 4/26/12 – can you help boost me above $2k?)

You can see the decisions that matter by looking at the results

This is the 8th in a series of posts on Agile Marketing – the working definition of which is to “Create, communicate and deliver unique value to an always-changing consumer (or business) in an always-changing market with an always-changing product.” You’re a smart person. You work with smart people. And yet inevitably important events can be marred by mistakes, carelessness, or just the occasional dumb move. You don’t have the time or the energy to check 100% of the decisions 100% of the time (in fact, you probably barely have time to check the 20% of your decisions that have 80% of the value), so what should you do to get more things right most of the time?

Principle 8: Plan for everyone to get it right 98% of the time, and double-check the important stuff.

The idea of “getting right 98% of the time” sounds sort of like “waste half of your money on advertising, and never figure out which half matters.” But it’s a lot simpler than that. Getting it right 98% of the time means using your head, building common sense-driven decisions, and asking for help on the important decisions that matter.

Don’t do it all by yourself.

You can start by delegating decisions – you won’t be able to make all of the decisions yourself (and if you are, you are the definition of a bottleneck.) When you effectively delegate decisions, you state clearly what needs to get done and when, you make the rest of your team accountable (think “CEO of your own job” as a performance goal for your team), and imagine and communicate the end state, or what things will look like when you’re done.

Confine mistakes to the decisions that don’t matter

You should make lots of mistakes. In fact, you should be making them every day. (If you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably not moving fast enough.) But you should confine your mistakes to the decisions that don’t matter. In other words, do sweat the small stuff – but only the right small stuff.

You can get a better idea of what the “decisions that do matter” look like by trusting your gut. Double-check the important decisions by asking a team member or your boss for input. Write a rough draft for the important presentation or idea (don’t worry if it doesn’t seem done to you.) And be honest about what matters and what doesn’t. If you don’t know, ask your boss or someone else on your team.

Involve your larger team, especially for the decisions that matter

When your gut (and your boss) tell you that a decision is important, it probably is. The 2% that matters (the inverse of the 98% of decisions that you make and that conversely don’t really matter all that much) is important to get right – decisions that do matter should get extra care and attention from the whole team.

So when it does matter, involve key players. The key players might not be who you think they are, so please ask people from the entire team to contribute to get more (and different) perspectives. And overall, pay attention to the 2% that matters. This may not be a statistical observation, but it shares the point well – the little things that are done right are a tell for bigger things done right.

Build a board around an idea

Pinterest is an addictive, visually-oriented way to highlight ideas, arrange and gather images, and understand what memes, colors, and things appeal to your friends and to the marketplace as a whole.

You might be tempted to just “PIN. ALL THE THINGS” and spend lots of time endlessly scrolling the service, and here are three ways you can use Pinterest to find information in new and different ways.

1. search for a concept, not just a person or a thing

Pinterest allows you to search for ideas in addition to people or things. Try searching for something abstract, like freedom and see what you find. You’ll find like-minded individuals (or not-so-like-minded individuals) and people who have expressed your idea in different ways.

2. Find the people who are talking about a meme or a thing

When you’re interested in a certain topic, you may start to see it everywhere. I just started using a Standing Desk, so I used Pinterest to search for all mentions of standing desk to see if there were great setups to learn from and people who were interested in the topic

3. Set up a board to capture ideas on a topic

Pinterest isn’t necessarily set up to be an idea capture, but in a way grabbing pins to link to articles and notes that also happen to have appealing pictures is a perfect method of combining the visual simplicity of Pinterest with the power of Evernote or other note-taking methods.

How are you using Pinterest in an intuitive (or counter-intuitive) way?

my modest standing desk - 15 minutes of effort to transform a drafting table

In a word, intentional. I’ve been reading a lot about the dangers of sitting for many hours a day and I took the time to watch a video by James Levine on moving around more. I also read an article that suggested that sitting may be deadly and thought, “what’s a small thing that I can do to test this theory and to get a little bit more exercise at the same time?” So I took my drafting table and raised it to 40″ height, added a few books to prop up my monitor, and started standing.

Here are a few things I’ve learned after Day 1 of using a Standing Desk – I’m recording them here to see how I feel after week 1 and month 1 of this process.

It’s Hard to Stand Up All Day

This standing up thing is much harder than I thought. Previously in environments when I’ve been standing, it’s been at a trade show or at an environment where I knew there was a definite endpoint, not just a goal to change my lifestyle and a habit that I’ve been in for … (gulp) decades. Today, I kept looking around for my chair and wondering when I would reach my hour mark so that I could take a 5-10 minute break on a chair.

I feel much more focused

It might just be because the other stimuli involved in staying upright and trying to focus are distracting me less, but I feel much more focused and able to power through what I’m doing and stay on task. This is a potentially neat side effect that I really didn’t consider when I thought about the general goals of standing to improve health and overall posture.

I’m looking forward to the next steps

I like how I feel after day 1. I’m sure that the next few days and weeks are going to be challenging as I get tired or fatigued and think of lots of reasons why I’d like to stop doing this. So here’s what I’m doing to help myself keep this habit:

• Keeping a time clock – I’ll continue to keep an idea on time and take a walking or sitting break every 45-60 minutes, which is probably good for me anyway;
• Staying focused on a single task for at least 15-30 minute blocks – staying on task and focusing on one type of work at a time is also a good habit that I’d like to keep and refine;
• Acquiring a bar-style chair to make it easier to rest for longer periods of time if necessary.

A goal I’d like to have longer term once I’ve been doing this for a few weeks or months is to consider getting a low-speed treadmill like The Tread - I’m a little wary of buying one without having a way to try it out but it seems like a great compromise between hacking up a used treadmill and buying a “treadmill desk” which is neither great for computing nor for being a treadmill. I hope the standing continues to feel intentional, and am looking forward to what’s next.

We don’t move enough, and this is a great video on why we should add more intentional small movements to gain greater fitness. It’s a worthwhile 13 minutes.