Monthly Archives: July 2010

The Pause Has Power

The power of the pause – Bobulate:

We tend to think of the pause as awkward. In speech, pregnant pauses connote uncomfortable silence; we veil silence with fillers. As professional communicators, we’re trained to deliver smooth speech, censoring out “um” and “ah.” This distaste for the pause — and the inverse, seeking an always-on state — is a battle we face at work, at school, and in industry at large.

I propose that we’re too impatient with the pause, and as a result, we’re missing out on a great deal. What would happen if, as communicators and designers, we became more comfortable with the pause? Because it turns out we can add by leaving out. The pause has power.

Standards That Can Stand the Bright Light of Day

Design View / Andy Rutledge – Plato’s Cave:

Too often… what passes for professionalism in the experience of designers, even company CEOs, is but a shadow of what is possible and what is right. When that ignorance is reinforced by what is deemed to be success, it forms an armor that is difficult or impossible to penetrate with any sort of challenge.

To use the analogy from the Plato’s cave allegory, after years of seeming success with compromise and false professionalism, actual professionalism becomes unrecognizable. Having spent a career among those with a similarly stunted perception, stunted rules seem logical and compromise becomes not just common practice, but the coin of the realm…

The difference between professionals and those who understand only the echoes and shadows of professionalism is that the latter evaluate things according to an external, transient standard — to the point that only subjective, situational evaluation becomes useful. When compromise brings what passes for success, compromise becomes indistinguishable from virtue. At that point, shadow becomes reality. Professionals, by contrast, evaluate things according to consistent, uncompromising, internal standards based on individual and professional responsibility; standards that can stand the bright light of day.

Each of us could likely stand to do some periodic, brutal evaluations of our practice to ensure we’ve not wandered into Plato’s cave. Self evaluations, however, are difficult to perform accurately. Sometimes we need an objective view to give us the appropriate kick in the pants. If our first reaction to that kick in the pants is an indignant and defensive position, chances are something has hit pretty close to the mark.

(Via @dburka.)

The Idea of Good

Plato’s Cave:

[In] the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and… this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.

(Via andyrutledge.com.)

Start to Lead Like a Multiplier

Coach: Good Managers Appreciate Others’ Genius : NPR:

Diminishers tend to hold this belief that there’s only a few smart people out there, and that people will never figure it out without them, which creates a kind of dependency on them. It incents them to be a micromanager.

Multipliers have, really, the opposite belief. They see all sorts of smart people, all types of intelligence, and they hold this belief. It’s almost like a ticker tape that just sort of runs across their mind, and it’s that people are smart and will figure it out.

And so we found that people who just show up to work every day with an assumption that people are smart and are going to figure it out can very quickly start to lead like a multiplier.

(Via @timoreilly.)

How To Solve It — G. Polya

Understanding The Problem
First.
You have to understand the problem.

What is the unknown? What are the data? What is the condition?

Is it possible to satisfy the condition? Is the condition sufficient to determine the unknown? Or is it insufficient? Or redundant? Or contradictory?

Draw a figure. Introduce suitable notation.

Separate the various parts of the condition. Can you write them down?

Devising A Plan
Second.
Find the connection between the data and the unknown. You may be obliged to consider auxiliary problems if an immediate connection cannot be found. You should obtain eventually a plan of the solution.

Have you seen it before? Or have you seen the same problem in a slightly different form?

Do you know a related problem? Do you know a theorem that could be useful?

Look at the unknown! And try to think of a familiar problem having the same or a similar unknown.

Here is a problem related to yours and solved before. Could you use it? Could you use its result? Could you use its method? Should you introduce some auxiliary element in order to make its use possible? Could you restate the problem? Could you restate it still differently? Go back to definitions.

If you cannot solve the proposed problem, try to solve first some related problem. Could you imagine a more accessible related problem? A more general problem? A more special problem? An analogous problem? Could you solve a part of the problem? Keep only a part of the condition, drop the other part; how far is the unknown then determined, how can it vary? Could you derive something useful from the data? Could you think of other data appropriate to determine the unknown? Could you change the known or the data, or both if necessary, so that the new unknown and the new data are nearer to each other?

Did you use all the data? Did you use the whole condition? Have you taken into account all essential notions involved in the problem?

Carrying Out The Plan
Third.
Carry out your plan.

Carrying out your plan of the solution, check each step. Can you see clearly that the step is correct? Can you prove that it is correct?

Looking Back
Fourth.
Examine the solution obtained.

Can you check the result? Can you check the argument? Can you derive the result differently? Can you see it at a glance? Can you use the result, or the method, for some other problem?

P�lya, George (1945). How to Solve It. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08097-6.

The “Aha!” Moment of Insight

The Creativity Crisis – Newsweek:

The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful… There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result)…

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.

Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with.

Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.

(Via @timoreilly.)

Care About One Person at a Time

Interface Design is a Conversation | Build Internet!:

There are very few group interactions with the internet. It’s rare for more than one person to use the same computer and browse a website together. There are obviously times when everyone in your office gathers to watch a cute cat video on YouTube, but you get the idea. This one-to-one relationship has a few important implications:

  1. The site can typically speak directly to a single person rather than an entire organization. Instead treating the visitor like a faceless representative, they are now an individual.

  2. You can start by addressing individual needs, then (if needed) the needs of the visitor’s group. This means that a site could have “You and your team will benefit” as opposed to “Your Company”. This is a subtle change, but as we’ll discuss later, it can pay to appeal to individual ego.

You only have to care about one person at a time. That’s a powerful direction.

(Via @smashingmag.)

The Weight of the System

Lessons Learned: Founder personalities and the “first-class man” theory of management:

In the early twentieth century, before the advent of scientific management, the overriding management philosophy was that of the first-class man (and they were always men). The idea was, for any job, if you can simply find an individual with just that right combination of virtues, talents, and experience, you could safely delegate all decisions to them. Sound familiar? This kind of reasoning is almost impossible to disprove. If you empower someone to make decisions and then something goes horribly wrong, does that disprove the first-class man theory? Probably not; it’s much easier to blame the particular person who made the mistakes. In fact, making mistakes is seen as “proof” of being second-class.

In management jobs related to operations — that is, the people tasked with actually making and distributing physical products — this kind of thinking is now considered ludicrous, thanks to a century of progress. Our modern philosophy of management has this core belief (taken straight from scientific management) at its heart: that the performance of companies is determined by the systems they create, not just the people they hire. No amount of individual superstardom can overcome a badly organized factory, because the weight of the system eventually overwhelms any well-intentioned but poorly organized resistance.

(Via @ericries.)

Invent the Future

Why You Should NEVER Listen to Your Customers « blog maverick:

Entrepreneurs always need to be reminded that it’s not the job of their customers to know what they don’t know. In other words, your customers have a tough enough time doing their jobs. They don’t spend time trying to reinvent their industries or how their jobs are performed. Sure, every now and then you come across an exception. But you can’t bet the company on your finding that person at one of your customers.

Instead, part of every entrepreneurs job is to invent the future…

Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made [happy]. Listen to them. Make them happy. But they won’t create the future roadmap for your product or service. That’s your job.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Words that should always be part of your product or service planning.

(Via performable.com.)