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Archive for April, 2010
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Per request, here are the opening remarks from the 4/27/2010 TEDxSF event, Courage and Resilience, held at the Cal Academy of Sciences. Thank you to all speakers, guests, volunteers and attendees. I will put up links to videos as soon as they are ready.
It’s 5:30, the sun is hinting at the sky, you’re in deep early morning problem solving, until the free ranging mind is overtaken by the beck and call of living and working: A dog barks to be let out, your feet hit the floor, the coffee’s put on, the laundry changed up, and it builds from there.
That day you may find great love, fight with your sister, get the news that your white blood cell count is too low. Your phone or router or printer or laptop may power down inexplicably. There may be a speeding ticket; a child in the emergency room; a sudden death of a great aunt. An inexplicably overdrawn bank account from having eaten at the local pizza shack and getting your debit card caught in an international scam. A summons. You may be fired, or there may be a moment of brilliance, or a leak in the kitchen ceiling… a plane crash, an earthquake….a volcano. Oh, and your taxes are due. And your wife has left you. And your investments have dried up, and there are rabid white people protesting health care in the street outside your window.
What determines whether this thing called living makes some people walk away, give up, drop out, settle, get bitter, turn to drugs, get overpowered by any number of systems? Why are some almost organically short-circuited by trauma, or deadened? Whereas others lay new wires, build new circuits, dig deeper, transform, lead change as a result of what happens to them?
Why are some people zealously able to focus on their mission in the face of all kinds of subtle and overt repressive efforts- whether as minor as social disapproval or as major as imprisonment, harassment or physical threat?
How are these ideas related to tenacity, and the long arc of a lifetime of achievement? Whether it someone known, like wonderful TED prize winner EO Wilson who, after a lifetime of scientific leadership, has just published his first novel… or unknown, like the Sansomes, a beautiful couple in their 80s who run a sustainable Christmas Tree Farm together in the Sierras, and rise each day to plant baby sequoias to restore the forests? How do they do it?
Is the difference in character, genetics, beliefs, experiences? A combination of those? Something else?
All of these questions were in our mind when we set the theme for this TEDx.
Neither Courage nor resilience by themselves seemed to be adequate. It was the two in combination: Resilience, that effortless almost physical property of systemic bounce back, and its more conscious relative, courage- the act of taking heart and stepping again, even when you’d just rather not.
We could have taken these topics at any number of levels: resilient communities, in an ecosystem- how can we create resilient and courageous cultures? But ultimately, in TED fashion, we chose to show case individuals, as that somehow roll up into the greater whole of our human systems.
As these wonderful speakers share their stories, we invite you not to sit back and be entertained, not to think is this speaker good or bad, not to judge, but to interact… to dance with the speakers ideas, to listen deeply. Maybe actively considering your own cosmology and belief systems, how you interpret things, what meaning do you attach to them, and what impact that is having on how you are able to show up.
Tonight it is our hope that you will step out of your daily routine in true TED fashion, taking a big renewing breath, and opening your mind to roam into the oceans, into the genetic code, into Love & Aging, into the heart of the Entrepreneur, into the land of Terror and Peacekeeping, into the territory of fighting and coming back with dignity and purpose, into the magic of music and spoken word. It’s our intention that you will leave with more ideas about what it means to be courageous, to be resilient; with new stories to share; and with new friends and connections that will produce an impact in each others lives, and in our world.
TO SEE SPEAKERS and video archives: www.TEDxSF.org
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
Simplicity and ease used to tease me from just outside my grasp. I was constantly seduced by the new idea, the new friend, the next big thing, and just wanted to be in motion – that felt like really living. I said yes to almost everything out of enthusiasm and exploration, or maybe even out of a misplaced desire to belong. Now it seems that it was all an exercise in seeking clarity on what I really valued, trying everything on the menu so that later I could choose.
This had its cost: I struggled in keeping up with forms, compliance, maintenance. I have been known to run out of gas, run out of money, and pretty much constantly run late. Moreover, my day was often interrupted with emotional ups and downs, complex relationships, and distractions- an internal level of clutter that wouldn’t go away. Deeply frustrated with the inherent noise of modern life (such as time in traffic), I often felt alienated and diffused- like I was scattering my mental seeds across the planet and not tending them, not reaping healthy nourishing harvests.
In all of the busy-ness, there was a constant drumbeat- a longing for personal and professional simplicity: the easy effortless line on paper, principled living, clean forms, the swing of the bat, the long stride, the deep breath, the ordered home, the sense of things in place.
So I embarked on an exploration of what creates the elegant arc, and since then, have derived my own rules for simplicity, the things that have worked for me.
I know there are some long term movements to simplicity that are part of a larger cultural phenomena (such as the Voluntary Simplicity movement, a concept that has been evolving since the 1930s, and includes material simplicity, human scale living, self determination, ecological awareness and personal growth), but my exploration has been outside of any movement- solely the product of desire of wanting to feel better, to live a more beautiful, meaningful life.
I offer this in the thought that it may connect with someone, somewhere and make a difference.
1. Master your Mind: Simplicity is Fed By Awareness
Many years ago, I started a yoga practice, and a sporadic meditation practice came along with that. Over the years, I had those moments of awakening that come with great beauty, grace or even loss- hearing poignant music, feeling real love, seeing what words can do to people and shifting tiny bits at a time. Learning what feels good and what feels crappy. Meditation lets you come to understand who you are in no uncertain terms, and puts a buffer between actions and reactions, so that you can bear witness to and change unhealthy patterns. As a foundation, I have come to believe that mind mastery is required for the rest of all this to work.
2. Know What You’re About: It Simplifies Every Decision
To live simply, you must know what your cosmology is. What matters to you? What’s your go-to philosophy? You must know the few things that you are here to do now, and allowing that those may change over time, this clarity allows you to only say yes to the things that are tied to the important stuff. You can then put your time where your values are. If something’s not tied to that, and it keeps coming back again and again to your consciousness, then you might consciously raise its importance.
The corollary to this is to cultivate The Art of No, as your time is your most valuable commodity. Now that I know what I am here to do, It makes it easy to say yes or no to a project or opportunity. As in, “No, I won’t be able to stuff envelopes this Friday night.” “No, I’m not available to work on your gadget company’s project.” “No, although I love you, I’m not interested in supporting a charitable event to fund space travel.” That is SO hard sometimes, because I really like people, and am super curious about the world, but there’s only so much time in a day.
This also lets me think about time in relationship to values: if I say I love being with my kids but the last time I had a one on one outing with my son was 3 months ago, is my time where my mouth is? When the what I say doesn’t match the what I do, then its time for a reality adjustment.
3. Numbers 1 + 2= Straight Talk and Saved Time.
If you know your own thoughts, you can communicate clearly and directly, without blame or shame, even in conflict situations. This saves enormous time and avoids huge amounts of misunderstanding.
4. Make your Motion Meaningful.
Oh how this will grate on those that knew my frequent flyer ways. And I still love to travel, but I don’t run off on a moments notice, and I don’t run away. I trip combine, I get Gilbrethian (as in Frank and Lillian, motion study pioneers). I move because something matters, not because something is beckoning or demanded of me.
5. In Simplifying, Use Awareness to Turn Habit to Ritual.
The risk of knowing is that you might stop seeking to know- and then maybe you get stuck in a rut. Maybe you end up making your coffee exactly the same way every morning or brushing your teeth with the same strokes and walking an infinite loop in your home, beating the rug with footstrikes in the same places. Keeping things that really do work in your life is definitely a successful simplification strategy. But to keep habits that serve you from becoming rote and meaningless or unexamined, turn them into ritual, conscious of the motions, so that when they no longer sit well anymore you will be aware of it an thus you can move on.
6. Surround Yourself with Living Things and that which is Beautiful to You.
Keep green food, fresh water, blooms, circulating air and sunshine around you no matter where you are. Connect to the living planet, living foods, living creatures and community. Move like you are alive, too! Dance for no reason, walk out in all kinds of weather. It makes all the living in a society kind of stuff just fall away.
7. Follow Steve’s Rule of Stuff
My friend and branding guru Steve Beshara has adopted a new plan for stuff (another post on simpifying in business coming soon frm the both of us). It’s something we started doing around our house a few years ago out of both intention and necessity. Steve states it elegantly, though. Whether for you or a friend, simply cut out frivolous purchases. Steve says, “It’s just junk that adds no value or meaning to your life.” Steve’s 1st rule of thumb: don’t buy anything. If that’s not possible, then he asks, “Will I, or the recipient, cherish this artifact years and years from now?”
While I still have lapses, I am please to report that these practices are bringing ease, the internal conflicts have diminished, life is lighter, I have richer friendships, the quality of work and love is more satisfying and stronger then ever.
Where things are still clumsy and messy or full of friction, it’s because my practice of these personal rules of simplicity has lapsed and old habits have taken the hill again. Mostly, life feels like the easy arc I longed for at 25 or 35: many green things, big open heart- and the daily motion feels like a vigorous, rhythmic, uncluttered freestyle stroke in an 80 degree mineral pool under the Sonoma sun.
Hey younger me, can I tell you that it’s really cool?
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
Written for Portfolio.com
Running a team can be a challenge. Running a virtual team? A bigger challenge. Now imagine running a virtual team with people all around the world, with all of the language and cultural barriers that can arise. Done right, it can be great; done wrong, it can be downright unworkable.
For the last several years, we’ve been working with development teams and outsourced service providers from all over the world—from our own backyard to India and the Philippines. It’s a global economy, even if your company (or maybe especially if your company) is only a handful of people.
Why do we outsource?
We do it for cost reasons, we do it to be able to access “spot buys” of specific capabilities to build our business that we couldn’t otherwise afford, and we do it to create global peace (but that’s for another article). Also, we find a lot of rapport with our partners (and freelancers in general) in the inherent hustle and entrepreneurial attitude in their approach to work. They want it, they are hungry, and there is no sense of entitlement—just like the founders of startup companies anywhere on the planet.
Here are our suggestions for building a great working relationship with an offshore team. You may notice that many of these suggestions apply equally to building a local, in-person team.
Know what to outsource and what to think twice about.
There’s something that we internally call “the specification tax,” or the “requirements tax.” There are some things that can be very easily outsourced because there are well-documented international standards in place, or a task with an easily defined process.
Where there are no such standards, be very careful not to get seduced by low rates—the overhead and opportunity cost for managing revisions and changes will more than make up for the savings. More importantly, you may not ever be able to get it right. Please note that this is not about the skill of the offshore team, but about the ability to communicate.
What’s easy to outsource?
Technical, development, or process tasks that are easy to document. From a development standpoint, database creation and maintenance, open-source installation and configuration. For example, “install Magento e-commerce on our server”—that’s something that requires skill, but there is not a lot of variability in execution. Other repeat tasks, where a defined process can be put in place, such as link building or structured data management and data entry.
Conversely, it’s hard to specify some tasks at a level that will get it done right.
Here are some development tasks that are culture heavy: language/copywriting, brand, usability, and visual standards—even user interface. To get this to work, we really have to slow down and say, down to the button level, what we need. As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his book Blink, there are countless “thin sliced” observations and decisions included in any one judgment or thought, especially when the person has a lot of experience in a particular realm. That’s pretty hard to tease apart enough to communicate to someone without that lifetime perspective. The corollary to this: Always be more detailed and specific rather than less any time you’re working with outsourced providers. And use pictures!
Know what you’re getting into—global outsourcing isn’t for everyone.
Physical rapport, nonverbal communication, time-zone issues, and language all pose significant adjustments to the standard way of working. For example, the hardest thing for my business partner was firing up the computer for an 8 p.m. call with India, where they were just kicking off the workday. As he put it, “that’s critical family time, really valuable time with my wife, and the hardest part for me about outsourcing.”
There’s also the immediacy question. If you need a quick answer during the workday, there’s a good chance that your offshore partner may be in deep REM sleep. Many providers have worked around this issue, extending or adjusting their core hours for better client service. It’s a good question to dialogue with your provider about at the beginning.
Get to know the provider’s real skills.
In some cultures, there is a tendency to say “Yes, I have done that many times,” and then to try to figure it out. After a few uncomfortable experiences, we started to approach work with new partners not only by seeking referrals first, but also by putting small projects out as tests, and then putting out bigger and bigger projects until we hit the providers’ capacity limits. These kinds of baby steps build trust on both sides and let you get a sense of how your partner, and individual members on their team, work and think.
Perhaps most importantly, invest the time to understand your partners’ culture.
This could be really simple stuff, like formality of communications. The seemingly casual nature of American communication can sometimes be really off-putting, especially to people who haven’t worked with Americans before. Just by taking the time for salutations and cordial sign-offs, and to inquire how the team is doing, makes all the difference, instead of rapid-fire task notification. When in doubt, be more formal and polite rather than less.
Even simple things, like knowing when your partners’ big holidays are, show consideration. Our Indian partners always wish us a Happy Fourth of July and a Happy Thanksgiving—and we wish them a Happy Diwali or a fantastic Holi , and (probably more importantly!) we don’t expect them to be working on those days.
More seriously, there are real work style issues that can come up between cultures, and those should be addressed from the beginning.
Specifically, some cultures have a more regimented approach to responding to customer requests: Do what the customer says, even if the customer is wrong. Americans tend to like “pushback” and thinking for oneself—and really appreciate it when a developer who sees an edge case or a maintainability issue in any given proposed approach argues back. Make your preferred approach clear from the beginning, and choose partners who are willing to do that.
Finally, make use of the host of Web-based tools available to you.
Things like DimDim, Skype, and online project management or collaboration tools such as Basecamp or Intervals are a global worker’s best friend.
Our conclusion
If you have a well-defined task and can communicate the requirements well, then you’ve got people all around the world who are available to get the thing done on a moment’s notice. It economically speeds the velocity of venture creation and creates interesting new global relationships.
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