Tag: Productivity

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            ... no not the final frontier, but rather an acronym that I developed for my last company. It was designed as a 'guiding light' for all staff as they went through their day to day business. Thought you might find it useful.

Speed – move quickly, time is of the essence.

Process – it’s there for a reason. use it. improve it if you can. funnel the mods back into the system.

Accountability – say what you are going to do, do what you said you’d do. don’t point fingers. be responsible.

Customers – without them we are nothing.

Engagement – don’t fill up a chair for the sake of it – add value.

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            9 Draft Posts sitting on this site waiting for me to finish them and release them into the wild world.

9 entries sitting in my blog catalogue from yesterday – while I work out if they will make it into my Blog Post Ideas file.

21 Blog Post ideas already sitting in myBlog Post Ideas file, while I decide if there is value I can add to the story, or if it is interesting enough just to release as a ‘well now – there’s interesting’ kind of post.

The more I get behind, the more impressed I am by the writers who not only keep their posting rate going at the rate they do, but with the level of quality that they achieve. Impressive.

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            I was reminded of <a href="https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this post found here</a> - but detailed in full below - in case the source is ever taken down. <a href="https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/bwJ7kAELRnf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Like the original was</a>. Came to mind while thinking about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this</a> ... and then <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/technology/amazon-bezos-workplace-management-practices.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this</a>.

Meanwhile – I used The Rant as a framework when I first arrived at Lyris, calling out the Bezos mandate – highlighted below. Somehow we didn’t quite have the same success! But I still think it was right – and powerful. So I have reposted.

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            If you track my thoughts, you will know that I am a big believer in 'breaking down the silos'. I mean REALLY break - not pay lip service to it - through the introduction of 'account managers, single point of contacts etc .. the fact is that these are just veneers to hide the real issues that enterprises have. Mid level management protecting their jobs, fiefdoms - even 'empires' to try to hold on to what they consider is 'there's.

Seems like Andrew Spittle a ‘Happiness Engineer’ at Automattic agrees …. though he is coming from a different angle – my bold in the quote below.

This whole trend of customer success is a tired repetition of customer support as an entry-level-dead-end job that people simply seek to move out of. Customer support, when done well, is a career. Every conversation, whether it’s reactive or proactive, is an oppotunity to learn from your customers. That is immensely valuable no matter your departmental definition. Every time you try to isolate certain elements into a single department and declare that proactive support won’t, and cannot, work with customer support you do the broader community harm. Every one of us is in this to help people succeed.

[ Source : Andrew Spittle at Automattic ]

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            Ben Evan's writing about the eternal conflict between getting the balance right between 'here's everything' and "here's a few we think works". Answer ? It's tough.

Looking at these companies, it strikes me that actually, saying that ‘Yahoo’s directory didn’t scale’ misses the point. What we’re really seeing is a trade-off between two problems. You can have a list, solving discovery and recommendation, but once the domain gets big then your list is either unusably long or partial and incomplete (and perhaps uneconomic to maintain). Or you can have a searchable index of everything but you’re on your own working what’s good and finding things you didn’t know to search for. Time Out is an interesting attempt to sit in the middle of that scale – enough coverage to be quasi-universal, and to promise something good nearby wherever you are, but also enough curation that you don’t just get 5,000 listings all with five stars.  ProductHunt is an attempt to use community to surface quality at scale, as is Pinterest (both are a16z investments). In contrast, Canopy uses hand-curated selections on Amazon. The question for all of these: do you filter crowdsourcing down enough to get quality, or scale up editorial to get coverage, or you give up on coverage and do a purely curated product?

And … on a related note, Apple and Twitter versus Google and Facebook. It’s a similar conundrum discussed in Fortune.


[ Source : Ben Evans ]

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            ... to the carriers

There is a free hotspot almost everywhere you need one (In Helsinki). It’s fast enough to allow video calling and HD streaming. And it doesn’t require a reading of lengthy terms and conditions, nor a password, nor the need to divulge your age, gender, or email address. Helsinki doesn’t want your identity, or your money, or your data—indeed the only warning before you hit “accept” is a reminder that public networks are insecure, so be careful out there. All it wants is to get you online. Fast.

… and a $40 per month cell bill will include around 50gig data.

[ get the full 411 here ]

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            <a href="http://beyondbridges.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Unknown.jpeg"><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-3164" alt="Unknown" src="http://beyondbridges.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Unknown-150x150.jpeg" width="150" height="150" /></a>I worry that when Black Pixel FINALLY come out with a syncable News Reader (<a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/2042835/netnewswire-4-for-mac-public-beta-debuts-with-sync-and-ios-versions-to-come.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">first hinted out here</a>) ... it is going to be too little - too late - that said - I am not aware of any other good Mac client for RSS - are you ?

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            <a href="http://beyondbridges.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/frameworks.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-3054" src="http://beyondbridges.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/frameworks-150x150.jpg" alt="frameworks" width="150" height="150" /></a><strong>When offered a solution that would positively affect their company in the next 12 months - but could impact their results in the next 3 - 80% of CEOs in large US corporations said they would not go ahead.</strong>

… funny – Paul Polman must read the same stuff – see below – though he remembers 75%) … still either number is fundamentally depressing. (I will ‘re-find’ that quote and post it when I do !

Yesterday, I posted this piece about long term thinking in a short term economy. Of course the problem is driven by the quarterly financial reporting that IS the US business world. Everyone plays the game – with one very interesting and notable exception that I heard about yesterday …. Unilever  – who have “putting an end to quarterly reporting and (are) changing the company’s compensation system accordingly.”

Great interview on NPR with Kai Ryssdal BTW.

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