Evolving Web

Curbing Crap From Your Mental Diet

It takes 72 hours to fix your feed

Your Facebook feed feeds your brain.  It can feed it with positive messages or real world things.  Or it can act like Cable News and feed you fear of the “other”.

So, stop making Facebook your amplified CNN or Fox News.  Stop eating crap.

You, every day, are amplifying messages that you see.

Facebook likes to tout how sophisticated and mysterious its algorithms are.

They are neither.  It’s a pretty simple equation.

RC*WC = CYS

Read Crap times Write Crap = Crap You See

So, the more political crap you read the comments on times the number of political things you actually write yourself results in your feed.

I altered my diet on Facebook for three days.  I glossed over the political posts and commented on posts that talked about friends, family, food, or fun. Amusingly the only political post I participated in was the one I wrote saying I wasn’t going to participate in any more political posts because it became a discussion about political posts.

This didn’t mean I wasn’t still worried about all the things there are to worry about.  But it did mean that I received most news from sources other than the same source that I use to communicate with people that I love.

In three days, the experiment paid off.

Day I – 10 of 20 or 50% of the posts in my feed were directly political and angry.

Day 2 – 6 of 20 or 30% of the posts were directly political and angry.

Day 3 – 3 of 20 or 15% of the posts were directly political and angry.

During or just before this time, two of my friends, people that I care about, who are on the other side of our current political wall from me (a wall none of us constructed, a wall of assumptions, a wall of unnecessary burden), had personal crises. One of them even said, “I can’t believe you’re helping me with your politics.”  Not like there was a whole lot I could do, but this guy is someone I’ve known since I was a little kid. Not a close friend, but certainly part of the life that made me who I am and he who he is. Extended family, if you will.

That’s what this thing should be for.  That’s what social media should be for.

Putin used our naïve social media systems with their touted “social graphs” and alleged algorithms and realized it was information overload that could be easily, trivially, exploited.  Now, he has set up such strong divisions in the US that we do his work for him.

Everytime we take some news article, no matter how correct it might be, and share it, we are playing up Putin’s charge.  Every Occupy Democrats post is doing Putin’s work.  They’re short, they’re pithy, and they are designed to do one thing:  incite.

Americans done need any more inciting.

We need civility.

I have seen friends on both sides gleefully post Obama or Trump videos taken entirely out of context and point and say “see how bad they are?!”

Putin wins. America, democracy, and a civil planet lose with every post.

I am not saying put your head in the sand or ignore what’s going on.

What I’m saying is, write about things in your own words. Reposting is way too easy. It doesn’t help you or anyone else. Use the posts as primary sources, let people know where you got your information, don’t just recklessly tweet, but listen to the last Republican president we had.  For all his flaws, there was one thing that George H. W. Bush was not – he was not clueless.

When he said his silly line above, it wasn’t so silly. Inside us all are opinions, ones we hold on to tightly, even though we feel the fear behind them.  Even though we know they drive a wedge between us and others. 

In three days, I was able to undo Facebook’s insipid little algorithm. I did it by looking at David’s grandkids or commenting on Tonianne’s flower photos or cheering on Kathy as she hits the spa after the most altering of surgeries.

With just a few posts, I can shift it back.

But know this.  When I was a kid, we had feed. It was what you gave to the animals you would later eat.

Right now, we are in Animal farm and we are not in the farmhouse. We are clearly less equal than others. But, we have the ability to set our own diet. Right now, we have feeds.  Let’s take control and turn them into meals.

Focus and Finish

Be like Mark: Ignore Facebook.

Today I have three things to do: write this blog post, format a follow up package for our classes in Iowa last week, and get my cleaning to the cleaners so I have clothes for New York next week.  Oh, and get a ticket to New York.  Okay ... four things.  Five if you count being available for a client call if they schedule it today and not Wednesday.

So .. five things.

Anyway, I sat down about an hour ago to write the blog post. It went all over the place and was deleted ... in about 15 minutes. Then I went for a second to see what reply happened on Facebook and now it is an hour later.

I didn't follow my own rule of not touching an open social media channel until I was done with my focused work.

One thing needs to be clear here ... we give Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and that picture thing too much credit - the social media most people are distracted by first thing in the morning is e-mail.  I think most people have given up on inbox zero, but that's not the point ... the point is actually when to inbox at all.

So, your brain starts each day with a certain amount of creative energy.  If you start each day in e-mail or social media, you are likely sending that creative energy (cognitive capacity) in the wrong direction. Yes, sometimes my first task is writing an email or responding to one - but it is a directed task with one recipient for a specific purpose (like a proposal or other "deliverable").

E-mail, Facebook, etc. aren't a problem because of their structure, they are a problem because they are streams of context switching. From personal to political to project A to planning to project B to spam to cats to cats to cats to cats.  Streams are context switching and our brains love it because we are saying "New New New New New!!!"

But what your brain is not doing is creating something of value that will make someone happy, you money, or solve some problem - maybe even all three. 

That stuff ... the good stuff ... comes actually completing things and focusing on them. We don't get sucked into social media and email holes because they build anything ... we get sucked into them because they are high-yield distraction.

So, this pomodoro is done.  Blog post is delivered. Now going to get some coffee and jump into that formatting.  Where is that Illustrator icon?

Preparing for a whole lot of Kaizen

The last few weeks have been busy. We’ve launched Kaizen Camp which is bustling with activity. We have three Kaizen Camps scheduled for New York, Los Angeles, and Boulder – with more on the way in Tel Aviv, Sydney, Melbourne, and Ho Chi Minh City.

We started Kaizen Camp here in Seattle in 2011, now we’ve held three and the requests to host these worldwide are like a flood.

A Kaizen Camp discusses continuous improvement – at the office, at home, and anywhere else. No matter which way we approach our work (from process, from waste reduction, from psychology, from economics) the fact is that we create better product when we can improve our processes and enjoy our work.

Past Kaizen Camp topics can be found in this lengthy list. The low-down on Kaizen Camp is also interesting, but deep.

Right now, I’m just looking forward to some great conversations, deep problems to solve, and to meet people actively improving, creating, and innovating.

Portfolio Careers / Portfolio Lives

My friend and microbusiness partner Jeremy is a well-rounded guy. He has a few consulting clients that give him the income he needs to get by and maybe a little more. But that doesn't take up all his time. In his spare time he's also dancer, and with his wife and a few friends is opening a Montessori school. But that doesn't take up all his time, so he worked with two other guys and myself to create iKan, the Personal Kanban iPhone app. But that doesn't take up all his time either, so he got together with a bunch of other guys and created Crowdmap an awesome shared mind mapping tool for the iPad.

So Jeremy is, as I said, my microbusiness partner. iKan is a microbusiness. The application has helped many people take their Personal Kanban with them when they are away from their home or office. But it's also only $4.99. With four partners, it would take a very long time for any of us to become wealthy from it.

But what I'm noticing is this: The new entrepeneurs the media  keeps touting are not out building companies with just sweat equity. That is nothing new and completely misses the point of the transformation that is taking place.

The previous career models of "I'm going to get a stable job and go to the office every day" or "I'm going to launch a startup and we're going to become huge and make millions" are increasingly viewed as the self-defeating, zero-sum games that they are. People are recognizing that full time-work is fleeting; that at-will employment means you have no job security. And hopping from job to job is stressful and forces you to give up all self-control.

Instead, people are collecting portfolio projects with residuals that, over time, will result in reliable income streams. This is a vital distinction, because when you have a huge time-sucking job with no hope of residuals, every hour you spend working is worth a set amount – regardless of how much effort you put in or how much value you create. 

This means that trade-offs between the rest of your life and work will always fall in favor of work. If your boss tells you to work until midnight during your daughter’s recital, you need to work. If you don’t, the zero-sum game means you lose disproportionately to the cost of the action. Going to the recital will always lose to not having a job and health insurance. But the action that night at work compared to your daughter’s recital? That individual trade off was likely in favor of your daughter.

Building a portfolio of microbusinesses with an underpinning of paid project work means you are building both good short and long term income opportunities. For a portfolio holder, the option of working that evening or spending quality time with your daughter will, appropriately, come down on the side of the daughter – and if it doesn’t, it will be because the trade-off was really worth it.

So Jeremy and others I know are placing themselves in a position where they can exercise life’s options with the least amount of external costs. This allows them to build not only a portfolio of projects they have worked on, but also greatly expands the portfolio of projects they can work on. In doing this, Jeremy and others have bought themselves a great deal of freedom.

The next time you think about work/life balance, consider this: have I placed myself in a position where I pay a penalty for choosing activities outside of work? Have I placed a tariff on my own happiness? Have I left myself unable to work on projects that will make me money, expand my capabilities, and provide an interesting challenge? How many of my options have I closed off?

The original image can be found here by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Working with the United Nations

Over the last six months, Modus Cooperandi has had the good fortune to participate in three United Nations projects. The UN's missions lend themselves well not only to collaborative management, but to lean and social media, too. While the UN will be quick to admit they aren't early adopters of the last two methods, they are nevertheless appreciative of the power of lean and social media, and are ready to begin implementing them in earnest. It's been exciting and rewarding to watch, and we feel privileged to be a part of this work.

Our three projects so far have been:

Collaboration eLearning Packages

UN Food and Agricultural Organization - Rome, Italy

Modus Cooperandi worked with a team of 20+ authors, editors, and eLearning specialists to build a comprehensive set of lessons around collaboration, community, and team building. Jim and Tonianne helped devise a group writing system using a variety of online tools to facilitate communication and collaboration. Additionally, we were principle authors on three sections of the eLearning package itself. Once complete, the system will be translated into six languages, and made available to UN staff and those interested worldwide.

OzonAction's 2010 Social Media Plan

United Nations Environmental Programme, OzonAction Unit - Paris, France

OzonAction is the UNEP's group which, with the ambitious goal date of 2010, helped phase out the manufacturing of ozone depleting substances (ODS) such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Now, in its second phase, two additional ozone-depleting chemicals are on the chopping block: hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and MethylBromide. While OzonAction could certainly use their existing and successful methods to meet their deadline for the removal of these two compounds, they've chosen to incorporate social media to eradicate them ahead of schedule. Their success in the past has not made them complacent, and Modus Cooperandi is helping to create a social media plan that will provide the organization with actionable steps that won't overtax their budget or their staff. The goal here is to provide the maximum benefit for OzonAction without getting caught up in the fads or hype of the social media movement.  OzonAction's goals are serious, and so their use of social media should be directed in a way to reflect that sense of gravitas.

2010 Human Development Report for Vietnam

United Nations Development Programme - Hanoi, Vietnam

Over the past two decades, with the rise of globalization, Vietnam has experienced unprecedented economic growth. With one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, Vietnam has graduated to a mid-tier economic power. For this nation in transition, the current global economic downturn has left Vietnam with both options and opportunities. Countries in the United Nations need to provide a Human Development Report (HDR) to guide policy and funding both internally and externally. In many cases, the HDR can be several years between issues, and Vietnam is no different. For this project, UNDP and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) have gathered researchers and scientists from several different agencies within and outside Vietnam to create the HDR. The goal of this project is to have a full-fledge HDR, with detailed and directed recommendations, ready for the Vietnamese General Congress in October. Modus Cooperandi is facilitating this effort by implementing a collaborative management system, coaching researchers on collaboration as the document is authored. Rather than merely having a document constructed of distinct sections authored by independent researchers, the goal here is to bring all the researchers together and inform the sections with one voice, and in real-time. This should result in an end-product that makes consistent points throughout, as opposed to individual points in each section. Recommendations will then be bolstered by coherent arguments threaded throughout the entire document.

Bigger Ears Make You Dumbo

Consider how the movement of a meme across the social media landscape spreads what looks good on the surface, but is fetid logic underneath.  A few months back I spoke at Social Media Breakfast, Seattle about Social Media, Lean and the CIA. A big part of that talk covered the danger of companies assuming that merely listening to people through Twitter was a standard of success.

Now let me tell you a little story about a recent experience I had with Delta Airlines, and how it relates to Chris Brogan's quote regarding assumptions on the Internet.

I was flying back to Seattle from Viet Nam. I had a ticket, but no seat assignment on the leg from Tokyo to Seattle. I was told that this wasn’t a problem, I could get one when I checked in at the desk in Tokyo.

My layover in Tokyo was nearly 10 hours long, before my 10 hour flight back to the States.

No problem, I thought. I would quickly check in, and then enjoy the day exploring the city.

I wend my way through the intricacies of Narita Airport, finally finding the transfer desk. It was unmanned. It was about 7 am at this point, so I went to the information counter and asked when the Delta people came to work. 

They told me 11:30.

Well, that’s pretty inconvenient. But I got myself some breakfast and proceeded to wait. 11:30 came and went, and yet there was still no one at the Delta transfer desk. A little after noon the desk finally opened. It took 15 minutes for them to process my request, after which they informed me I would get my boarding pass and seat assignment 15 minutes before departure.

I inquired why, and was told my ticket was so cheap I didn’t get a seat assignment. I said that this was leg four of a ticket that went from Paris to Beijing to Hanoi to Tokyo to Seattle and all the other legs had seat assignments. At that point I was told tersely that I simply didn’t have a seat assignment.

“Okay, how do I avoid having this happen in the future?” I asked.

I got my papers pushed back at me and never did receive an answer. I have no idea how to make sure this doesn’t happen next time.

So, I’m stuck in Narita for 10 hours now because I need to make sure that the moment they open the gate, I’m first in line for a seat assignment. I do what any red blooded netizen would do. I tweet that I’m annoyed with Delta.

The next day, Delta’s big ears hear my pain and tweet to me:

So they heard me.

And so I DMed them. Now…look up.

My story wasn’t short. But I had to mash it into several 140 character statements because Delta didn’t actually give me a higher bandwidth way to have the conversation.

I told them the fastest possible version of that story. Without any further communication, Delta gave me 2,500 frequent flier points. I don’t even fly Delta! This was pretty much the equivalent of Charlie Brown winning 5 free haircuts. “My dad’s a barber and besides, I don’t have that much hair to cut!” he lamented.

 Delta’s ears might have been big, but their execution sucked. No, their listening is not what I will remember them for, but rather, it is their consolation prize I will forever associate them with. I still have no idea how to not get stuck somewhere waiting for a seat assignment. That was all I really wanted: simple information.

What should Delta have done? Let me now share a story from an earlier part of that trip.

Due to a communication snafu, Orbitz messed up part of my flight. At one point, I was in real danger of being stuck in Paris with no way to fly onto to Hanoi or, to return home.

I tweeted my frustration and Orbitz responded within minutes.

They immediately gave me a direct email address and a phone number to Kristi, a real person, who could help (and who could take the time to get the whole story). Orbitz then fixed the problem I had and one other I didn’t know I had. Then they told me how I could avoid having that ever happen to me again.

Orbitz had big ears, but more importantly, they also had helping hands.

Delta’s system is built on productivity. They feel they did a good job by moving me through their process and giving me something. Orbitz is build on effectiveness. (I cover the difference in this post). They found the real problem, solved it, and made sure I was taken care of. Rest assured, both experiences will have a lasting impact.

(Oh, and Kristi later wrote to say she was glad I made it safely to Hanoi, and to thank me for the tweet.) 

Personal Kanban Discussed on the Business 901 Podcast

In late March, I had the good fortune to be on Joe Dager's Business 901 Podcast.  The topic, of course, was Personal Kanban. Joe edited the conversation into two parts which can be found below:

Part 1

Powered by Podbean.com

Part 2

Powered by Podbean.com

Building iKan Without Pain

In record time, the Apple Store has accepted our iKan Personal Kanban app.  This means that Modus Cooperandi’s first iPhone app is up and ready for sale. That link there tells you about the app itself, but this post is going to discuss how it came to be and why it is significant to me.

You see, the way things get built is changing rapidly. It’s exciting – but it’s also not surprising when it fails. But when it works, it is a beautiful thing.

Here’s what happened.

Over the last eight months, people kept asking me “Where is the Personal Kanban iPhone app?” I usually answered something like, “We just came out with Personal Kanban a few months ago, give me a break!” I was expecting other developers to do the iPhone app, but after a time it became clear no one was going to do it.

After a Seattle Lean Coffee, I found myself talking to Jeremy Lightsmith, Gary Bernhardt and Corey Ladas. We discovered a shared vision for what iKan would look like and how it might evolve. We were all keenly interested in the future of work and lean. Things clicked.

We negotiated a quick equity-for-effort model, designed to evolve with the product. As we move forward, equity stakes in the product will change as groups of us (or others) work on the product. No pain, no bickering.

The next day we had our first pre-alpha of the software. Everyone pitched in with the time they had and the expertise they could bring. Jeremy and Gary doing the coding. Corey and I finalizing the feature set and guiding the release plan. And finally Jeremy and myself getting all the rigmarole with getting Apple certification for the developers, Modus Cooperandi and the app itself.

We set up a dropbox folder where Jeremy and Gary fed versions of iKan to Corey, the beta testers (Thanks Ann and Patty!), and myself. We used a development kanban on Zen to track features, progress and tasks. All in all it was about eight weeks to completion.

Why is this beautiful? It was refreshing to have an idea, come up with the first minimal release for that idea, and just build it. No angels, VCs, loans or legalities. Just four people who wanted to get this thing out and working.

Between this, the Personal Kanban book and the work Modus has been doing with the United Nations, I’m feeling pretty good about the state of collaboration in my world right now.

Again, check out the iKan Personal Kanban app and maybe buy a few.

 

Three Podcasts for Personal Kanban

Over the last few months, I've had the good fortune to be a featured guest on three different podcasts discussing Personal Kanban. In the Yi-Tan calls, we discussed Personal Kanban and Personal Kanban for teams. In the Social Media Breakfast Seattle Podcast, we explored the relationships between Lean thinking and social media. Of course, Personal Kanban comes up there as well.

Yi-Tan Call #261 - Personal Kanban With Jerry Michalski's group, I discuss Personal Kanban, how it started, and how it works.

Yi-Tan Call #268 - Personal Kanban for Teams Again with Jerry's virtual roundtable, I discuss how Personal Kanban and other kanban applications work for teams, groups, and organizations.

For Social Media Breakfast Seattle Lean Management and the CIA Heidi Miller interviews me about lean management, social media, Personal Kanban, and what's happening in the Intelligence Community.

Later this month I'll be featured on the Business 901 podcast, talking even more about Personal Kanban, but this time interviewed by Joe Dager, who focuses on marketing and lean principles.

Collaboration and Clarity Make Us Greater than the Sum of Our Parts

A year-end retrospective.

Imagine Yo-Yo Ma performing a solo.

Now imagine him performing a duet with Hai-Ye Ni.

Now imagine him performing the duet on his own. First he’ll play his part, then he’ll play hers. Sure it’ll take twice as long … but he’ll get there.

Eventually.

I've never been more productive than I've been over the past year. This was not due to a tool. It was not due to Personal Kanban. It was not due to energy drinks or hot yoga. 

It was due to the powerful combination of collaboration and clarity. Everything that was successful about 2009 I attribute to the potency of these two forces.  

Anything that fell short, can be easily traced to a lack of it.

Tonianne first came on board with Modus to help me write my book. During the first six months of the year, we pounded out about 80% of a fairly decent manuscript. We felt really good about this, but we were just getting our sea legs.

It wasn’t until June when we raised the sails and the effortless race began.

In the latter half of the year, Tonianne and I:

• Wrote three white papers, two for a major company and one for a groundbreaking new organization
• Conceived of and launched Personal Kanban with hundreds of articles on personal and team productivity
• Created three InfoPaks that described in detailed and illustrated richness what Personal Kanban is
• Worked with the World Bank and the CGIAR to create and implement a system to teach local government officials in forested countries how to calculate and distribute carbon credits to landowners
• Worked with (and continue to work with) the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to create an eLearning module on collaboration and knowledge sharing
• Managed the process to create an iPhone app (almost done)
• Helped a client refine the concepts for - and launch a development effort to build - a system that employs social media and real estate information to better define where we actually think we live
• Helped a client who owns and operates a drug rehab agency for street kids use Personal Kanban to focus his clients and his staff

and I know I’m forgetting things.

The UN Work and the World Bank project have shown me that David Anderson and I shouldn’t have been surprised when he used Kanban at Corbis and achieved 400%+ gains in productivity.

We should have expected it.

Collaboration and clarity through the kanban dictated it.

There were only two projects that Tonianne and I worked on this year that we were less than pleased with, and that is due to a lack of collaboration and clarity. Engagements where people lacked clear understanding of their role in the project or the purpose of the project or the direction of the project led to collaboration breakdown and failure.

The World Bank/CGIAR project was a wake up call. The group we worked with was comprised of people from around the world, all dedicated professionals, all very intelligent. Previously, the project was all but paralyzed. We got them in a room and working and together they took off. Vertical take off. They went from almost nothing to a clear concept of purpose and a tremendous amount of documentation in five days.

Why? Because in that conference room they had clarity and they were able to collaborate. And they did it gleefully. Why didn’t they do this before? No clarity and no feeling of collaborative momentum. They had jobs in their isolated offices and this project (no matter how important or interesting) was just another thing begging for attention during the course of their day.

The UN Project showed me that collaboration and clarity can be effortless in a distributed team as well. One of the lessons we are writing is in a module where other lessons are being written by Nancy White and John Smith. Instantly and elegantly, everyone began collaborating organically, which has made our work much easier. Our individual creativity and expertise is providing immediate quality improvements to our respective sections and the document as a whole.

So, if Tonianne and I can do all that in six months, and if David can get a 400%+ rise in team productivity, what does this mean?

That with a team that has clarity, the number of team members does not necessarily provide linear gains in productivity. I’m not saying it’s exponential. I’m just saying that 1+1 > 2. 

Imagine Yo-Yo Ma performing a solo.

Now imagine him performing a duet with Hai-Ye Ni.

Now imagine him performing the duet on his own. First he’ll play his part, then he’ll play hers. It’ll take twice as long … but he’ll get there.

Eventually.

Life cannot be a solo. Ma and Ni are two of the most accomplished cellists in history, but they can’t perform a duet on their own. Their art, their accomplishment, comes from knowing when they are soloing and when they are part of something larger than themselves.

This does not mean they lose themselves in the process. They don’t become cello-bots simply because it’s not their solo. When Yo-Yo falls back and Hai-Ye’s part is in the forefront, he’s playing his piece with the same grace and attentiveness as if he were on stage alone. Grace and attentiveness that comes from clarity is the bedrock of successful collaboration. You know your part, you know your place, you feel the whole being created because - and only because - you are playing your part perfectly.

As for 2008, I just wanted it to end. It was a year plagued by muddy thinking, half-completed projects, and soloists trying to collaborate. 2008 physically hurt.

2009’s successes have existed not only because Tonianne’s and my duet was able to operate on its own, but also because that same duet could easily shift and become part of an even larger entity, like our UN quartet and CGIAR’s 14 piece orchestra.

Beautiful music.

I want to thank Tonianne and those who truly understood Modus’ mission, helped make Personal Kanban what it has become, and prepared us for what looks to be a stunning 2010.

Thank you all for this year.

Photo of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by Jordan Fischer.