Evolving Web

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.

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

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Part 2

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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.

 

Social Media, Lean and the CIA

At the end of March, I spoke at Social Media Breakfast, Seattle (See their recap) at the Waggener Edstrom offices in Bellevue. They were live streaming the talk, but had some technical problems – so the video is in two parts. If you want to see what the audience saw on the screen, there’s also the Prezi I spoke from here.

This talk is covering the challenges that organizations have with collaboration, both internal and external. Social Media and Lean need to be applied together to provide both a set of principles and a collaborative foundation. I also talk about being a punk rocker.  So, if you want to know how punk rock, twitter and the CIA all mean the same thing … take a look!

Part 1 Part 2

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.

The Priority Filter – A Prioritization Tutorial

I finally finished the first Personal Kanban video. (There are way too many videos that never made it past the cutting room floor).  This first one is a quick tutorial about prioritization.

Prioritization is often even more difficult and daunting as the tasks that confront you. A priority filter in your Personal Kanban helps you determine what tasks are ready in your queue, and the order of importance they should assume. 

Note: This video is best viewed full screen.

My Enterprise 2.0 Toolkit – Q1 2010

Lately I've received several requests for my most current Enterprise 2.0 toolkit.  I've hesitated writing it down because it really does seem to change from month to month. But now I'm thinking that having a placeholder for future posts is a good idea. So I'll try to revisit this every quarter or so, to see what tools endure and which are just flashes in the pan. The applications listed here are my core, I use them several times a day.

Gmail - I know some people fear Google and their penchant for searching our information. But there is only one email tool ever created that comes even remotely close to the utility of Gmail - and that is Evolution. But Evolution is Linux only and not on-line. Always having your email available via your phone or other device and having it totally searchable is reason enough for me to consider Gmail unparalleled.

Google Docs - Google Docs is pure magic. More than any other tool, it has hands down, increased my productivity, my ability to collaborate, and my overall satisfaction with life in general. Does it have some major limitations? Absolutely. Does it format documents as if it is intoxicated? Sure does. But does it allow me and 16 other people globally collaborate on and edit a  document in real-time seamlessly? Yes. Does it care if people are in Kenya on a netbook or that they don't have the most recent version of the latest software installed? No.

Zen - Our Personal Kanban has been given life by Zen. Zen is an online Kanban tool that gives us the ability to visualize our backlog, our workflow, and our work styles - greatly increasing our productivity, effectiveness, and (again) satisfaction. With a functional yet elegant interface,  Zen lets my entire team know who is doing what, when they are doing it, and what problems they are having. We can help each other get past sticky points, we prioritize better, and we now understand our business better. 

CoTweet - Robert Frost sort of once penned: I doubt that I shall ever meet, an app as lovely as CoTweet. Why? Because there is no wasted effort in CoTweet. It allows me and my colleagues to manage Twitter accounts together. It allows us to build permanent searches. It allows us to annotate who certain people are, why they are important, and how we can best engage them. In short, CoTweet squeezes the noise (the cacophony) of Twitter until just the signal remains.

Facebook - There is no escaping the fact that Facebook has become a major information conduit. In a hyper connected world, one has little choice but to participate in Facebook - it's the 800 pound social media site. But what I've come to  appreciate most about Facebook is that it has humanized the world of business. Perhaps unexpectedly, virtually gathering our business contacts, friends and family in one place shows - rather than tells - business contacts that there are real human beings behind that corporate logo. Perhaps now we can get rid of that awful notion that "Business is Business," that our lives should be bifurcated between work and play. For as messy as Facebook's interface can become with live feeds of Mafia War updates and Farmville announcements,  it has given us all insight into what really makes each of us tick.

Flickr - I write lots of blog posts, educational materials, white papers. Like A LOT of them. And they all require pictures. With an advanced search function that lets me select Creative Commons licensed images, Flickr is a godsend to me. I credit the original author and include a links back to them. I  also share many images with the Flickr community. Not nearly the quality as what I use in documents  - but Flickr is unique in its focus and its reach. Every organization should be using Flickr for its images.

Dropbox - Google Docs is excellent for first drafts or collaborative projects, but Tonianne and I still need to share a wide variety of other digital files. We use Dropbox to share files like PDFs, Adobe Illustrator, or print-ready Doc files that are formatted beyond Google's capabilities. With dropbox, we simply create shared folders that allow my PC and Tonianne's Mac to enjoy seamless, web accessible file sharing.

Honorable Mention

Zoho CRM - To be honest, I've fallen off the Zoho CRM wagon but I still maintain it is the best CRM I've found to date. It is not overweighted, it is customizable, and quite easy to use. I know that as Personal Kanban grows, I'll be returning to Zoho to manage our customers.

Things I Am Missing or Seldom Use

Feedreader - I have been using Twitter as my defacto aggregator, but it is proving to be less than optimal. There's a huge difference between tracking blogs and letting your network recommend posts to you. Over the next quarter I plan to find a more robust and appropriate feedreader, and get back into it.

Tagging Engine - While I have tried many, I still use Delicious more than any other social bookmarking site. I've yet to find one with its simplicity and utility.

Photo by bre pettis

Join Me for a Conversation on Personal Kanban

Personal Kanban Chat (Voice and IRC)

Monday, January 4th at 6:30 PM GMT / 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST / 

Join me on this week's Yi-Tan call. I will be discussing Personal Kanban - how visualizing your work and understanding your expectations can reduce stress and make you more productive and happy. 

Their last guest to talk about personal productivity was David Allen. So I'm in good company.

Get a leg up on those resolutions. Join Monday's @yitan call featuring @ourfounder discussing Personal Kanban http://bit.ly/5GWKMn 

Read about Personal Kanban here: http://www.personalkanban.com

There's a quick primer here: http://www.slideshare.net/ourfounder/personal-kanban-101

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.