Humans are driven by emotions, and the feeling that nothing is being accomplished is one of the nastiest moral-breakers of all. Especially if you look ahead at something that requires months or years of effort. The trick of getting around this is to split the humongous task we have before us into smaller tasks and take it one step at the time.

This is nothing new, all project management tecniques work with some sort of a milestone system, very smart people like Tom Peters make a great case about how milestones can be used.

However, the best example I have ever seen of how milestones can be a life-saver, literally, is the movie Touching the Void, as Imdb puts it “The true story of two climbers and their perilous journey up the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985″. Besides the amazing story and will of the two look at the movie from the point of view of milestones. One of them measured his milestones in meters, as he inched down from the mountain.

Same happens in a marathon, you set your mind to get to the next bend, one more kilometer, a few more steps. If you think that you still have 30km to go, you have the real chance of your moral letting you down. In the same time, you need to know why you are running one more kilometer, and that is to be closer to the finish.

For me the story in Touching the Void is the best, real-life example of milestones used to get an unthinkably difficult task finished.

Have you ever watched a friend or family member work frantically, almost in panic to do some task, while you inexplicably seemed to want to just get out of the way and do as little as possible, although you know you should be helping? Have you ever asked yourself why you might be doing this?

I am convinced there is a strong tendency, in every social group, be it family members, freinds, a project team at work, the local reading club, to keep an acceptable level of excitement or placidity, acceptable by all. No one likes people dancing on the tables at the book club or people reading a book, sitting quietly in a corner at a night club. That part of our brain that wants only safety does not like extremes.

You can call it acceptable behavior or whatever you like, I will call it the Excitment vs Placidity Index (EVPI). All is well while the EVPI stays glued to the commonly accepted level. However, life has is not as predictable as some fantasize and sometimes things don’t go as planned.

And so you get the family meetings when the self-labeled black-sheep defends an idea that is completely opposite to what everybody else think they believe in, a group of coworkers in which one person depicts with such energy and fury some idea that the rest seem to shrink in their chairs. Or the reverse. A group of friends at a concert, excited and jumping, and the one guy who seems more bored of attending concerts that a cow is of chewing grass.

What goes wrong here? What’s with this differences? And what happens when the group is faced with this discrepancies. As I see it there are two outcomes:
- conflict
- equilibrium

You either get somebody stand up, usually a power figure in the group, and say ‘Geroge, just sit down and stop making a fool of yourslef’ or, the group works toward adjusting the EVPI to the usual value or a new level of acceptability for this EVPI is considered, at least temporarily. Big words for simple things. If somebody starts dancig on the tables the rest will wither make that person feel emarassed and come down, they’ll follow the example or they’ll get into a fight and put the wild dancer outside the boundaries of the group. Check out this guy (it gets interesting after around 1 minute):

Read Seth’s comments about this clip, written from the perspective of his book Tribes.

I believe there is a very strong social force, in every group, that fights to preserve the usual acceptable level of the EVPI. Not too much excitment, not too much placidity, just enough to make you be part of your group. A Rock concert is heavy on the excitement, a bus ticket line is high on placidity.

Next time when somebody, maybe from your friends, family or coworkers seems to be more than usually excited and you seem to be sitting in you chair and beeing more quiet that usual ask yourself, what are you doing? are fighting to keep the acceptable level of Excitment vs Placidity? And if yes, why? And should you?

The same force is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to move a group of people with a very well established level of acceptable excitement vs placidity entwined into the very fabric of the group. I believe that understanding this is hugely important if you want to bring change inside a group.

Picture taken by Liviu on one 42 E and 3rd in NY

There are some things that need to be seen to be believed or understood. For sure such a place is New York. As someone who spent his life in Europe, out of which around 5 years in Russia and the Ukraine, understanding how a city like New York can even function is tough. The amount of people going there and back, the relative small surface of the city, which gives the incredible density, the noise, the trucks. It is truly the city that never sleeps.

It’s hard to describe after seeing it for the first time so I’ll just shamelessly use a comparison I’ve heard which said that New York is like a big maze, you run around blindly without having the need to exit it, the high buildings are like walls and you can only see what’s in front, left or right. It’s the perfect place to disappear in the crowd.

So, if you ask me to describe New York, as I see it, I’ll just say – It’s like a giant maze for people in search of something. It is also amazing. If you never been there and have the chance to see it, DO IT. You might like it, you might not, but you will be impressed in a way or another, trust me on this.

This article is part of a short series about the U.S. through my eyes, a first time visitor.

My first thought when I heard about Google TV yesterday was – are they for real? But then I kept watching and I saw, together with the rest of thousands of people watching the Google I/O conference that these guys were serious about it. When Eric Schmidt lined up 6-7 CEO’s from big companies on stage it became very apparent how much they are pushing this.

So we know Google is serious and it seems like a cool product and everything and you might ask why was I so surprised when I heard about it. It’s simple, the thing ain’t new and it’s not solving anything unsolvable.

For some time now I’ve been planning to buy me a NAS with a media server on it, hook it up to the TV, hook my PS3 to the TV and take a cable from the router and put it in my PS3 so I can stream movies directly from the laptop without any problems. Oh, yeah, and figure out and easy way to output my laptop screen to the TV (not that hard at all, as most laptops come with and HDMI output, these days).

What that would give is not very far from what Google wants with the G TV thingy. I already have tons of hardware lying around, do I really need a TV that is essentially a specialized computer?

But while walking home, after watching the Google I/O conference at Bucharest Hubb (than’s Petrica for setting things up), I thought to listen to an audiobook, so out comes my iPod and with it a revelation. It’s not about me! It’s not about the geeks who know what a NAS is and how to set up a media server and who have a box of wires under their bed (I do) to connect everything up. It’s about the rest of the world, consisting of people who barely know how to use their remote. TV is a 4 Billion users industry! There are a lot of people who want to do it easier.

And the Google approach makes it easy to have web + apps + video + tv all in one, like the iPod made possible to have ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ hassle free. Same goes here. Watch out Apple, Google is after your ass. But they don’t need me to tell them that. Plus Apple already made an attempt with Apple TV.

After this revelation everything seems to have more chances of success, but I’m still skeptical. In 1.5 years we’ll know if the G TV thing will fly or fall. What’s your take on it?

Just finished reading the book Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs. Reading is a an over-enthusiastic way of saying that I’ve listened to the audio version of it. Lately this has been the primary way of how I consume books, but that’s another story.

What’s it about? The authors Craig Stull, Phil Myers, David Meerman Scott talk about how to make products that are succesful. Or ‘resonate’, as they call it. I can’t help but find similarities with Seth’s Purple Cow book, or Free Prize Inside book.

Is it any good? Yes, it makes you think, it tells things that you probably already heard or read in other places but it does it in an entertaining way and it’s always good to hear interesting ideas from a different point of view. The three authors seem to know what they are talking about.

What are the main takeaways?

1. Your opinion, although interesting, is not important. This is a phrase you will hear a lot in the book and it’s something you need to understand, no matter what you do. If you don’t have valid data to support your claims, you are just stating an opinion, no matter what you are talking about: the background of your new website, the packaging, the color. Same idea, from a different point of view I’ve read in a web-design book (can’t recall the name). The guy was saying that changing endlessly the color from green to red to blue to whatever is just a matter of opinion and taste, the whole package counts, not your opinion, so you should stop thinking about the color and start thinking about the whole thing. Simple and powerful. Try it, it works!

2. Your slogans and missions statements should show your distinct competencies, the things you do that solve a users problem. The already famous iPod tag line ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ is a perfect example. Don’t make missions statements that talk about what you want to do, talk about what your customers need to solve.

3. When you build a product don’t talk to your existing customers who will just want a better / more colorful / bigger  mouse trap, talk to your potential customers to figure out what they’re problems are (getting rid of rodents) and how to do it. Incremental changes don’t make resonators / purple cows / remarkable products (depending on the author).

Overall? Read it, it’s worth your time. Read also Seth’s books, they are very good, if not better, in some ways. These kind of books make you think and that’s an excellent reason to pick them up.

]]> http://www.zaGeex.ro/tuned-in-the-book-review-takeaways-after-reading.html/feed 0 http://www.zaGeex.ro/shoot-the-donkey.html http://www.zaGeex.ro/shoot-the-donkey.html#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:02:52 +0000 Liviu http://www.zageex.ro/?p=687

In the movie Patton, from 1970, there is a scene where the convoy of the whole 3rd Army is held up by a couple of donkeys stuck on a bridge, not wanting to move. Patton gets out of his jeep, takes out his ivory-plated gun and shoots the animals, pushing them in the river. Problem solved. This animal-cruelty story is based on real events.

Later on Patton said that he didn’t like killing the poor beasts but compared to the alternative of his army getting massacred by an air raid, while crossing the bridge, he preferred to do that. Sensible choice, if you think about it. Tough choice, something he didn’t like to do, but he did it, he had to.

We have to shoot our own donkeys every day, we have to take choices we are not necessarily found of but which can save our army. It takes guts and it takes brains to do it.

This story is so powerful because it’s simple – killing a poor creature to save a great number of people. In real life it’s not that simple, is it? Work a couple of hours on a weekend or spend them with your family. Quit your job or linger on. Buy a new car or invest the money. What is the donkey? In every case you have to decide for yourself, but once you find it, shoot the long-eared thing.

This story is also inspired by the book Tuned In, where they speak of the “Shoot the Donkey” series by Expert Access

Some of the greatest start-up of the past decades have been up-starts. Think Starbucks, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and so on. What do you think? Is there a link between them?

I got the idea by listening to Tuned In, a good book with some interesting ideas. They were taking about the up-start Starbucks.

When you read books by people who think they’re smart and talk to people that believe they poses wisdom which is beyond your current state of development (a fancy way of saying they think they are better than you) and here I think mostly of teachers, who are responsible for so much of the brain washing that goes on in the early years of our life, you’ll get a lot of advices. Tons. Which ones are good, which are bad? Which are status-quo defending things that only beat you into submission and which are pieces of common wisdom or genuinely insightful thoughts we should pay attention to?

The sad part is that you have no way of telling, the good think is that there is a trick to dealing with this. The trick is to listen. Listen before you do, watch and learn, just long enough to make your own decisions. Maybe these are influenced by others, most of the time they are, but they are your own, you’ve thought about them.

Suddenly a piece of advice somebody gave you will become your decision, not his advice. Even if you choose to do exactly what that someone recommended you, it’s still your decision, your making. This has a downside and an upside. The downside is that, if it goes wrong, the advice doesn’t work and everything goes crushing down and you can’t blame it on the one who gave you the advice. The upside is that you can’t blame it on anybody else but you.

“What? Did he just said the same thing twice?”, you might ask. Yes I did. The easiest way is to blame bad decisions on somebody else. Sometimes people who give advice are plain incompetent, and have no interest to put too much thought in what they say. Sometimes they are well intentioned and wise and put in the thinking time into it but they can’t see it from your point of view or have different values (think of your parents) and all of the times, they are not you. Advices have to be filtered through your brain, your values,.untill they become your decision, not commands from somebody else. You can’t blame it on others.

Another thing you must learn is to take the risk. It sucks, it’s uncomfortable, failing sucks big time, there is no one but you to blame, but it’s the only way to take a decision. In the long run in pays of in confidence and experience. Learning to filter what everybody else is telling you that you should do and making you own decisions is the first step in doing. Doing is the first step in succeeding or failing.

So if you want my advice: “First listen, than do”.

I leave you with a song mildly related to this post.

Read on, my dear reader.

Thinking back it’s stupid, of course. The whole idea of having a role model is stupid. What the heck is a role model anyway? According to the source of all digital knowledge – Wikipedia, role model is a "person who serves as an example, whose behavior is emulated by others".

Emulated? Like in trying to be somebody else? Like in being somebody you are not? Like in not feeling ok in your own skin? Well that just sounds wrong. That also is against everything I’ve learned so far in life, that it’s good to be yourself, to follow your dreams, to stand for what you believe.

Main words here: yourself, your, and you.

What my teacher (I believe that was in 8th grade) horribly missed is that there is nothing wrong in aspiring to be great, as some people are, and to be inspired by great people but it’s completely wrong to try to be like that person.

If you like Einstein, don’t try to prove that E=mc^2 is wrong and that it should be E=mc^3, try to do what he has done, and do it your way, revolutionize the way people see the universe. And you don’t have to grow the crazy hair either.

And if Superman is your role model, good luck with stopping bullets with your bare chest, If you want to be like Superman, just look at what the whole idea of Superman is- doing good, stopping bad guys.  Who’s stopping you to do good, your way? Nobody! And you don’t even have to have x-ray vision to do that.

The whole role model philosophy is flawed in many ways and it’s one of the teachings of school and society that manages to put a big nail in the coffin of feeling good about who you are and, ultimately, of being happy. If I learned something over the years is that there is one way of doing things right and that way is your way.

I will end with an note of caution – if you feel like hitting somebody on the head with a lead pipe, please don’t do it, even if that is your way of showing sympathy. Working in the boundaries oh right and wrong is a must. Knowing when and where to push and shift those boundaries is an art that makes the artist who wields it one those people that are labeled as role models.

P.S. The previous two post had some clips that were supporting, in one way or the other, my arguments. This post, however, has none, because the ideas in this one are based on believes formed over the years. However, if what I said makes some sense to you, I do recommend reading two books by a person who I greatly admire and who has been an inspiration more than ones, Seth Godin. The first one is called Tribes, and it’s about learning how to become a leader and how communities grow, and the second one is Linchpin and it’s about being yourself in what you do, or so I see it.