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.

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.) 

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

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

Personal Kanban at the World Bank: Modus Cooperandi Info Pak 1

Personal Kanban at the World Bank - Small Team Rapid Development

View more documents from ourfounder.

This is the first in a series of Modus Cooperandi's Info Paks. They are downloadable, and work like a narrative whitepaper. Think of them like graphic novels for business.

In Info Pak One: Personal Kanban at the World Bank, we discuss the experience we had leading a rapid development project at the World Bank, specifically, how visual controls work with small groups, and why they are preferable to traditional team management. 

This Info Pak is best read by clicking the “Full” button above. It’s also designed to be downloaded to distribute to others. Over the next few weeks, we will post more Info Paks on Personal Kanban. Please feel free to comment and let us know what you think.

Have My People Tweet Your People

“You don’t give your Twitter duties to an intern” – Morgan Johnston from Jet Blue at #140TC

 

Business is lazy.  If business doesn’t understand something, it quickly assigns it, outsources it or otherwise gets it off the to-do list.  At the Twitter Conference #140TC in Mountain View this wee, Morgan Johnston talked about how important it was to have someone in the company with authority interacting on social media.

He had several stories about directly helping customers because Morgan had full penetration into the organization.  To the extent that he held the door open on a plane for two extra minutes so a family running from one delayed flight (on another airline) to that flight could make it.  The family had a member who was tweeting his pain while they ran.

Outsourcing your social media activities to an intern or a consultant means you stand a pretty good chance of working with someone who may well know how to use Twitter, but knows nothing about your business.  Don’t get me wrong, I know some people who are free lance community managers, have more than one client and do a great job.  But these people make it a priority to know their client’s business and ensure that they can quickly get to people capable of acting on a customer request.

If you must outsource your social media interaction, make sure that the person you are hiring cares, that you take the time to train them in whatever they need, and that you give them access to resources.

If you can’t do this, then don’t outsource.  Do it in-house – which you probably should be doing anyway.

Technorati Tags: social media,twitter,social media outsourcing,outsourcing,lazy,jet blue,morgan johnston

Privacy in a Post TMI World

Lisa Hickey has a nice piece today about the bit of our private lives that we are discussing publicly.  The crux of the matter is trust and expectations.  Lisa says:

Anyone who has been on Twitter for a while has seen this phenomena: Spouses, children, boyfriends, girlfriends will say to someone who Twitters a lot: “You’re not going to put that on Twitter, are you?”

Yes, it’s funny. A sign of the times. My kids say it to me all the time. But here’s the thing: there’s a trust issue going on here.

There’s an interplay here.  I trust you with information that I’d rather not be distributed via Facebook.  To the point now that we have FriendDA which was originally created, such that it is, to let friends talk about business ideas, but is now routinely employed as a statement of “Don’t put this on Twitter.”

FriendDAs usually aren’t printed out, people are tending to say, “So I’m invoking FriendDA here….”  The counterpart nods, and the conversation continues.

So, socially, we are creating new conventions to plainly demark where privacy begins and ends.  Whereas privacy was previously assumed, it is now transparency that is assumed.  Information we’d like to keep close now comes with a wrapper.

Photo by Hamed Masoumi

Technorati Tags: Lisa Hickey,Facebook,Social Media,FriendDA,Hamed Masoumi,transparency,privacy

Open Faced Book

Facebook takes your information and hoards it.  Facebook lets you connect with your friends, but not really great ways to manage them.  Facebook lets you join groups and then makes it hard to ever find them.  Facebook is rather annoying that way.

Today David Recordon said in O’Reilly Radar that he thinks the doors shall fly open and Facebook will join the ranks for the enlightened.

Stranger things have happened.

I am not nay-saying here.

I see David’s logic as quite solid.

But who says business is logical?

Facebook is a company with an energetic, driven staff that firmly believes in the company and its mission.  But what if they believe they have to choose between the company and its mission. 

What if a faction at Facebook sees openness as a threat to the organization?

I guarantee you, these are the conversations happening in Facebook’s Palo Alto glass block right now.  How much openness is too much?  How does Facebook retain its identity if they can be an non-credited information source for other applications?

I have answers to these questions and you might too. But what answers are being put forth from the Facebook corporate culture?  That is what will drive its openness.

Technorati Tags: facebook,walled gardens,community,david recordon

Blogged at Modus Cooperandi in Seattle, WA

Photo by Avlxyz creative commons 2.0 by-sa

Immediacy in all Things – Social Media Principle #8

This post is eighth in a series of my Social Media Principles.  The base post is 10 Social Media Principles.

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Principle #8. Immediacy in all things – Strike while the iron is hot.  Eat when the food is fresh.

 

We’ve discussed in previous principles how information wants to be free, information should be findable and searchable and that people want to be good community members.

Have you ever been on a mission?

We consider ourselves on a mission when we have clear goals, we have an idea of how to satisfy those goals, and we are somewhat excited about achieving them.  A mission differs from a task by our emotional investment.

Previous chapters have also discussed how people’s emotional investment in an activity or organization relies heavily on transparency and the availability of information.

Delays are insults to missions.

Any delay in a mission belies the importance of the mission.  Delays say to the missionary: your important task is far less important to me than it is to you. This is invalidating and demotivating.

Immediacy therefore becomes crucial to maintaining motivation. 

If people within an organization remain motivated, they work faster, they are more creative, and frankly, they give a damn.  Demotivated team members simply do not perform as well.

When devising rules around information provision and flow in an organization, principle #8 should be kept in mind at all times.  How important is this information when compared to slowing down the company?  Is it more important to hide this information than to allow people the opportunity to use it for inspiration? 

Note that here immediacy doesn’t necessarily mean speed – it means respect.

Technorati Tags: 10 social media principles,social media,information policy,collaboration

Photo via Morguefile and Shelly Kiser

Written at Modus Cooperandi in Seattle, WA