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NFL Coaches, CEOs, and VCs Take a Lesson from Your Kids

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We Learned How Business Works When We Were Five Years Old

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I was re-reading “The E-Myth Revisited” last night. It reminded me of a book I read in 1989, called, “The Game of Work.” Both got me thinking about how the idea of work is so much more important than the task at hand. Those thoughts took me to jobs I had, the work I do, and the games I played as a kid.

I looked around at the world and found that everything that is hugely, remarkably successful has the same things that make it work as our back yard games did.

  • The guy who’s house it is — the place we’re playing — sets the culture. That’s how it’s always been. Everyone takes a cue from the owner, that personality has power. He might keep kids out or share his yard with everyone. He might change the rules in his favor or consistently help others win. Steve Farber, Extreme Leader describes what works remarkably on the playground and in life when he says, I’m convinced that the ultimate rule of the Extreme Leader is to make others greater than yourself.

  • Rules and roles give us freedom to act. — Nothing was worse than when everyone wanted to be king in the drama or sheriff in the old west. Forgive me, but it was chaos when kids would get “shot” and refuse to stay dead. Playing baseball was no fun when we argued about what was a fair ball and was what out or even worse, where the bases were. Learning the rules and working with them make us smarter and give us benchmarks. Seth says so.

  • Sometimes a “do over” is the right answer, sometimes it’s not. — But even the smallest kids know that doing everything over is boring and gets you no where. Guy Kawasaki has some great advice on when and when not to respond to mistakes.

  • Whining, yelling, and tuning out make you look like a baby. — Kids soon enough ignore whiners, yellers, and kids who tune out as not worth the time they take away from the game. Kathy Sierra talks about what to do if stress brings out one of these traits when you should be learning.

  • Don’t break a promise unless someone will get hurt. ,

  • You have to CARE for the game to be remarkable and successful. — Kids know that they put their hearts and their heads into whatever they do Christine Kane explains why everyone wants to do business with people who think like she does.

That’s why experts call play the “work of childhood.” It’s true.

So, let’s get playing.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help with a problem you’re having with your business, your brand or your blog, check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

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Time for Everything: Letting Go to Find Flow

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A Time for Everything

To everything there is a season,
A time to drive, a time to eat,
A time to type, a time to hear,
A time to connect, a time to reflect,
A time for phones, a time for elevators.
To everything, there is a season — paraphrased from Ecclesiastes 3

A few days ago, Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users wrote about a product called Twitter.

For those of you who don’t know about Twitter, it has one purpose in life–to be (in its own words)–A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? And people answer it. And answer it. And answer it. Over and over and over again, every moment of every hour, people type in a word, fragment, or sentence about what they’re doing right then. (Let’s overlook the fact that there can be only one true answer to the question: “I’m typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now… which is typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now.” Or something else that makes my head hurt.)

Click the title to see the product page

twitter

Why would anyone want to do that?

Twitter also a tool for

  • Social Networking System
  • Chatroom
  • Microblogging
  • Multiplexer
  • Group Communicator
  • RSS Feed
  • Salon
  • Meme
  • MLM

For me, that makes it worse. I had seen Twitter, and frankly I hoped that it would just go away. I see it as one of the weird worm holes of an overly plugged-in culture that I’m trying fiercely to avoid.

Kathy Sierra makes fun of twitter for the same reason that I avoided it. We both see it as one more way to fragment our attention in a world that already does a great job of doing so.

Finding focus is impossible when we live in a state of constant interruption. Call me cold and unfeeling, but I don’t care about some stranger’s cat named Fluffy — and it irritates me when that stranger makes a call in an elevator to find out about Fluffy, invading my space, my thoughts, making me virtually invisible — practically screaming that I don’t exist. Exactly how rude is that?

I’m all about finding Flow.
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Brats: The Highly-Adapted, New Model Human!

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Not Just Kids at Heart

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Have you bumped into full-grown adults lately who seem to have missed the maturity train? Maybe you’ve been one. I know I have. I’m not talking about kids at heart. I mean kids in most all behaviors including these.

  • short attention spans
  • unexplainable sense of fashion
  • heightened need for fast action, novelty, and sensation
  • lack of respect for tradition
  • unpredictability, and lack of balance in priorities
  • a tendency to overreact

When I was a kid, we had a name for when we acted too much that way.

I found out his week — we’re no longer brats!

Now at least one scientist, B.G. Charlton, is saying that immature behavior is the best thing going for the human race.
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Don’t Design for Comments: Design to Give Readers an Experience

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The Right Thought, Not Far Enough

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I talked about design and comments in a post Friday. My theory, based on my experience and continuous conversations with readers, was that design has an impact on whether we leave a comment in response to what we read. I was on the right track, but my thinking was just short of where it should have taken me. I should have gone deeper. I also should have left more room for other folks to add their experiences. Details in such conversations are the the nuggets and the takeaways.

We Break Stuff Said It Better

This morning I read an article from We Break Stuff on design.

What We Break Stuff says is crucial and brilliant.

I’m not talking about large type, gradient and rounded-corner design, but the understand user needs, develop meaningful experiences design. I’m talking about the art of tailoring products to the necessities of the user, creating emotional connections and building compelling solutions.

Emotional Connection — I felt that thought, I recognized it when I read it. We Break Stuff had nailed it.

Let’s take a look at how they propose we give readers a complete and compelling experience.
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Qualitative, Intuitive Thinkers vs Quantitative, Data-Based Thinkers: How Not to Make Each Other Crazy

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I've been thinking . . .

It was a chain of thoughts this morning, that started with a post at Seth’s blog. I so agree with what he said, but I should warn you, this post is not about his content. His post title got me thinking about the ways that people think.

This must be hard

Seth’s title, “This must be hard,” reminded me of a woman I once worked for. Joan believed that all good things must be difficult. She often said that anyone who achieved a 3.9 grade point went to an easy school — no exceptions.

Joan sought out the hard road. She liked hard data. She strove to have her “ducks in a row.” Her details never fell through the cracks. Her entire knowledge of gut feeling was how to spell it. Working smart in Joan’s world meant taking the easy way out.

Joan was mostly a quantitative, black and white, data-based thinker.

I was an intuitive, “seat of the pants,” qualitative thinker. At times, Joan’s boxes, details, and ducks all lined up made me crazy.

Thoughts of Joan led me to remember a comment made on Bloggy Question 31. in which Chris Cree said, ” . . . Life doesn’t always fit into a tidy calculated box.”

Chris made the comment of a qualitative, intuitive thinker.

That single sentence would have made Joan crazy. No facts, no concrete to support it. She’d say it was too easy.

Folks who prefer one way of thinking often frustrate folks who prefer the other. Gosh wouldn’t it be nice if everyone thought like we do? Well, not really. Both kinds of thinking are important to making great decisions.

No one seems to dispute the fact that every person has a preference, or that we all can do both — we just don’t like one nearly as much as the other. Still we need both.

How Not to Make Each Other Crazy

The trick is knowing when to be intuitive and when to get to hard data. It’s figuring out how to work together without driving each other crazy — knowing when a situation calls for folks who are good at one or the other.

It works a lot like writing — go for ideas, then edit and test them.

Qualitative thinking is a valuable skill when we need ideas, possibilities, and solutions. Creativity needs the room that qualitative thinking allows. Even qualitative numbers — somewhere around a billion — work when we’re trying to imagine or wonder our way out of old assumptions into new options.

Once we’ve gathered possibilities with potential — likely suspects — that’s when we turn to the switch to quantitative thinking. Move over to the black and white, gather folks who think well in concrete, hard data terms.

Quantitative thinking in binary black and white is a valuable skill when we need to test and validate ideas, assumptions, and action plans. Getting grounded in reality needs the “yes or no,” the “go or no go” of solid numbers and “best and worst case” scenarios.

Two kinds of thinking challenge each other to make an idea and test it. One to imagine, one to validate — that gets the best of both minds, both kinds of thinking.

When I figured that out, I began to value folks who think differently than I do, It became a pleasure working with them. They like to do the things that I find frustrating and painful — herding ducks into a row.

Imagine or calculate it. It doesn’t have to be hard. Two kinds of thinking beat one.

Take a look at who makes you crazy. What does that person do well that you really hate to do?

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Bookcraft 2.0: Why Consistency Makes Authors Look More Intelligent

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books

This week Phil and I reached a benchmark. We finished the first edit on the first of four parts of his book. This first section will serve as the prototype for the rest of the book. As the prototype section, we used it to test our ideas for how the book would work. Could the vision we talked about be a reality when we tried it out across a complete section of posts from Phil’s blog?

As we moved through the section, we were to careful keep to these standards.

  1. The content and structure work together.
  2. If one isn’t working, don’t force a fit. If the structure works for all but one page, that page doesn’t belong. If many pages don’t fit, the structure needs to be refit.
  3. Consistency is a value, a benchmark of quality, and a support for readers. It also makes authors look smart.

That’s right. Consistency makes us look more intelligent.
In fact,

It’s better to be consistently wrong than inconsistently right.

Why Being Consistently Wrong Is better than Inconsistently Right

When we meet someone who thinks and talks like we do, we call that person someone who “gets” it. We think people who think like we think are intelligent . . . and those who don’t, well, they’re not.

I can adjust when I talk to someone. I can put my “best brain” forward. I can listen actively and organize what I say to meet how someone takes in information. Teachers do that every day.

But how does an author do the same thing? Book readers think in many ways. An author can’t adjust for each reader.

The answer is one word, consistency.

Why is it better to be consistently wrong than inconsistently right?

You can spell the word house as hous, and if you do so consistently, readers will accept it as an alternative spelling. Miss once and they will see the mistake.

How Does Consistency Make Authors Look Smarter?

Consistency is key to a predictable book. When a book is predictable, readers know where you’re going without thinking about it — they “get” how you think. Giving readers consistency in every facet of a book means they can concentrate on what you’re saying. Your message and it’s brilliance can shine right through.

  • At the Book Level — A consistent structure offers orderly navigation. Readers know what to expect and what will come next. The experience is predictable and repeatable. Readers can feel safe that they know where the author is going. That can make an author look smarter, because readers feel the author is following a logical, predictable progression.

  • At the Detail Level — Many companies have a house style that determines how they phrase terms and spell certain words. Publishers and journalists follow a style manual for the same reasons. A consistent style provides credibility and accuracy. If an author is consistent in matters of detail, he or she establishes trust on matters of accuracy — inconsistency undercuts that bond and makes readers wonder whether the thinking is equally inconsistent and flawed.

Staying consistent lets a reader know how an author works and where he or she is going. Authors can’t adjust for readers, but they can make it easy for readers to follow their thinking. When authors do that, readers feel like the author “gets” it.

We all know that someone who “gets” it is really intelligent. — as intelligent as we are. It proves itself out consistently.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find or make a book from your archives, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

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