automatic pilot

Weekend Project: Qualify the Automatics

March 5, 2011 by Rosa Say

Posting this one for the weekends we choose good work (leisure can happen on week days too!) Other than my title I ‘bury the lead’ a bit in writing the beginning of this post. Hope you’ll bear with me as I get to the point” this will introduce a new MWA3P project for me, one I am calling App Smart.

Killer Apps

The first time I heard the phrase “killer app” was back in 2002. I was in San Diego for the Fast Company RealTime Conference (no longer held, and a conference I sorely miss). A guy on stage was explaining how we could all become ‘lovecats’ and ‘share our intangibles’ and he was very convincing: I went to the conference bookstore afterwards and bought a first edition copy of his book. He was Tim Sanders, and his book, Love is the Killer App, How to Win Business and Influence Friends is a book I still keep close, and recommend constantly for every manager’s library.

I was somewhat cloistered in corporate life back then: My employer essentially defined my world, and it had taken a lot of convincing to get my boss to approve the conference at all (he said people from New York were dangerous). I was in awe of the shift taking place on the web at the time, and had a new learner’s zeal, but I was cobbled by our passwords and firewalls at work: the newly emerging technology then was still far from my reach. Anything tech we had at home we’d bought for my kids’ homework and not for me: my son taught me more about computer hardware than my employer did — I called the IT guy for all that stuff, and yeah, he was the firewall guru / censor too. I remember being shocked at the number of laptops glowing during the RealTime conference presentations, thinking, “These people are so rude!”

I met Tim and his wife Jacqueline later that same night at a wine reception on the beach, and I asked Tim what he meant by ‘killer app’— exactly what was it?

Tim was then the Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! but ignorance was bliss for me: I had no embarrassment at my naivetÃ© to swallow, for I’d yet to even visit yahoo.com and hadn’t a clue. My question was sincere, but it was mostly small talk at the time, and there was so much more to be shared about the other ‘intangibles’ he was passionate about (3 of them: your knowledge, your network, and your compassion). I don’t remember Tim’s answer exactly, just that he was very patient and gracious about it.

Amazing how quickly things have changed, and how dramatically.

We’ve gone from “killer app” as simply short for ‘application’ to ubiquitous smartphone apps. Today our children know both hardware and software (remember when we needed tutorials?) and they create APIs for us!

An application programming interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software, similar to the way a user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.
— the Wikipedia definition

I love most of it.

Time Flies - Super Simple Event Tracking — My newest, and current fave app toy. Click the photo to learn more about it.

I write this blog, publish ebooks, flickr linkin kindle tumble and tweet (interesting” to me they’re all verbs now), and I have several websites of my own. I’ve become a white-cords-only Apple Girl and mostly work “in the cloud” hiring web designers who live and work in different time zones. Friends give me links to png files as art they created for me (best.gifts.ever). I said goodbye to my IT guy when I became a small business owner working for myself, and an empty nest causes other shift… my son has gone the Android route, sticking with Windows.

Now I’m often the one on stage presenting, and open laptops no longer offend me. I can even cruise the ‘back channel’ of social media later if I want to.

Wrote this a little over a year ago:

The evidence is overwhelmingly clear to me that being more tech savvy helps you in three significant ways:

1. Tech tools CAN boost your productivity significantly when you choose the right tool for the right job, and not as a new “toy.”
2. Tech has enhanced the way we communicate, making every workplace a more mobile, and thus more nimble one.
3. Tech tools and their updates foster lifelong learning, making learning much more cool and sexy in today’s world.

So managers, don’t snub your nose at tech tools. Get with the program, and improve the quality and efficiency of your life and your work. Bring advances and progress to the workplace as a means of culture turbo-boosting.
~ The Tech Life of a Manager, 2010 and Beyond

Automatic however, may not mean Tech Savvy

One thing you’ve heard me rail about here every so often, is automatic pilot. As with habits, automatic pilot can be both good and bad. Good: How our chosen values can put our behavior on auto-pilot with value-mapping. Bad: If we’re not careful, shortcuts, old conventions and the mindlessness of mediocrity can lead us down a path where our actions aren’t synced up or value-aligned with our intentions. Automatic pilot can allow complacency to set in, and it often does.

What I’ve become more and more aware of, is how those seemingly cool and time saving APIs can deliver results that are convenient, but not fully intentional. They are sort of like an automated version of my old IT guy. He was a smart guy and good person: I admired his skills, and understood his work, but he had to get it done in a way that served him well by keeping me contained and manageable.

Well, call me the untamed beast! I wanted to learn more, understand more, and do more for myself. I wanted to decide on the wisdom of my own filters and never be censored.

This process has repeated itself in several ways over the years since. There’s a balance to achieve, and a decision to be made: Okay, now that I’ve learned more about the inner workings of this, do I still want to do it myself, use an automatic techno-whiz shortcut, or hire someone? I may get delayed on my learning curve, but at least I’ve gone far enough with my own knowledge to understand exactly what I need to apply or hire for if I call it quits. Ignorance is NOT my bliss.

The App Smart Weekend Project

Thus the weekend project I have started is this:

Once my Weekly Review is done, I’m picking one of the apps I currently use to newly qualify and re-certify it for The Fabulous Utility of my Rosa Say Productivity. One app a week, until I’ve reviewed them all, a project which also syncs up with my declaration of having 2011 be devoted to much better habits.

If you like the idea, as a potential habit to build for yourself, you can do it any day of the week. Cobbling this project onto my Weekly Review works best for me because I’m already in the best context for it — tweaking my own productivity strategically, within the mindset of strengths management (MWA Key 7).

For instance: Twitter. Truly an example of open source API nirvana for developers if there ever was one. As part of my App Smart Project I dumped @Hootsuite (sorry guys, we had a good run), only use my iPhone Twitter app for reading, sharing sightings or replying to DMs, and returned to using the web client (and only one Twitter account, retiring the others I had played around with). I got rid of most of the lists I once had on Twitter, in favor of a single private list where I narrow down my public follows to a mere handful rotated every week so I can focus on their streams better, learn from them, and better connect to their current interests and most passionate conversations. This is something an app like @formulists could do for me (supposedly), but I want to make those decisions for myself very purposefully, selecting individually and not automatically — and as a carefully crafted habit, not early-adopter testing that creates more forgotten about rubble that I will have to clean up later, again.

Now don’t get me wrong: This is not about going manual, for I love the automated wizardry which saves us from tedious effort. Back to my Twitter example, I still use a bit.ly bookmarklet in my browser for url shortening, and I’ve strung my Twitter, Tumblr and LinkedIn accounts together with APIs so they complement each other in the way I use them. But again, I’m doing it for my purposes, and I’ve intercepted the sequencing a bit: The API developer was probably thinking syndication, whereas I’m thinking sharing and aggregation.

Focus takes a lot of work! Mastering one’s productivity takes intentional diligence. But you know what? I feel better already having a plan with tackling it. Planning curates your attentions, and delivers something I much prefer: Intention.

What (else) does your workplace finance?

June 24, 2010 by Rosa Say

How would you answer the question? Think of ‘workplace’ very literally, as in a physical place of communal work, where other things can, and do happen besides the work itself.

On one morning of my recent vacation I sat in Tamarind Park (Bishop Square, downtown Honolulu) having coffee and doing people-watching with daughter and boyfriend while hubby fit in a doctor’s appointment in one of these tall buildings:

Boyfriend asked me if I ever missed the very, very nice office I’d had while a resort ops vp, and my answer was that I once missed some things about having that office, but I have since discovered my nostalgia to be a temporary state of affairs. The work, the conveniences, and the social relationships have all been replaced in some way to maintain or better the good (the pros), and discard the rest (the cons). Nothing is exactly the same, but the change has been good for me, forcing the shifts of new, and timely learning.

We three then began to talk story about how much work has changed since then (2003 was the year of my ‘corporate retirement’) because of our technological mobility today.

We also spoke of how you notice it more when you don’t have it — and thus you adjust faster in making those pro/con adjustments.

Others still have the office, still have the work, still have the conveniences and social relationships, and because they are “still in” them, they haven’t bothered to adjust at all, when fact is, they could have done so too.

Both daughter and boyfriend (both 26, and who both have a workPLACE) then stated quite correctly (in my opinion), “These people working here: Bet at least half of them could be sitting at home doing the exact same work they are supposed to be doing here.” “Heck, I bet it’s more like 80% of them. And why are they down here buying coffee and bagels at 9 in the morning instead of working anyway?”

Good questions. Great observations. So little is truly a brick and mortar business these days. That said, there are quite a few Downtown Everywhere office building property managers who are nervously relieved their tenants have yet to come to that aha! moment.

Another passing thought… Intriguing to imagine how many homeless we would help get off Honolulu streets and beaches if converting a single one of the skyscrapers in my photo…

What might you be “still into” with your automatic pilot? Are you financing place-of-work necessity, or someone’s too-long walk-about coffee and bagel break?

Want more? Try these:
Model Me This: There’s little use having a model you’d get an “A” for in some business course — including one of mine, because those are get-your-training-wheels places that at best, will steady you in your seat.
~ ~ ~
Manager’s Skill: Separate Signal from Noise: One of the best skills you can cultivate as a manager is separating signal from noise, understanding what you pay attention to, and what you ignore as irrelevant.
~ ~ ~
Embrace your Systems Thinker: I truly value and appreciate systems thinking; it’s the drool-over-it detail stuff of the stellar projects that dynamic workplace teams prosper within.

Read the story behind the book: Imagine having a Thought Kit
Get your copy from the Kindle Store, or on Smashwords.com

“Paper or Plastic?” Wrong Question.

September 15, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

I stopped by the market yesterday afternoon for a carton of milk, and chose the express line to pay for it; this would be a quick visit, but one with a good lesson ”“ those kinds of lessons you can get if you just pay attention to what’s going on around you.

There was just one woman in front me, unloading a few things from her basket to the conveyor belt, and as the cashier began to scan them the bagger asked her that all too familiar question, “Paper or plastic?”

She didn’t bother to hide the disappointment on her face when she looked up at him and answered, “Canvas” slipping the dangling bag off her arm and handing it to him to use instead.

“Paper or Plastic?” has been the wrong question for a long time now, yet it’s probably asked in that market hundreds of times a day.

There’s more: That market sells that canvas bag she handed to him. Sold for a dollar, it has their logo on both sides of it, and a rack full of them in three different colors sits between every two check-out stands. If you use it, the clerk gives you a dime credit on your purchase.

I hadn’t remembered to bring my own canvas bag with me, and to his credit, the bagger learned a quick lesson, for this time I saw him look me over first to see if I had one. But he didn’t change the question, and again he asked, “Paper or plastic?”

I did have a different answer though, and I said, “Neither one thanks, I can carry it without a bag.”

I have a very simple leadership challenge for you this week: Listen for all the wrong questions you’re still asking your customers. Wrong questions give terrible impressions, and we can do better.

Can we help each other out? What are the wrong questions you still hear in the businesses that you frequent?

Two related posts from the archives:

The 3 Sins of Management

February 10, 2005 by Rosa Say

In the coaching I do with managers, I’ve found that there are three different pitfalls that constantly rear their ugly heads. I’ve come to call them the 3 Mortal Sins of Management.

One has to do with tripping yourself up in basic good supervision.

Another has to do with the way we revere the truth.

And the last has to do with keeping the working environment dynamic.

Let’s talk about them one at a time.

1. Tacit Approval

As a manager, you give someone your “tacit approval” when you do not take action on some transgression they know you are aware of. Confronting the staff involved, and following up when correction and disciplinary action are necessary, is critical within your role as Keeper of High Performance Expectations — for everyone, fair and square.

As unpleasant as it may be to deal with these things, eliminating any trace of tacit approval in the workplace is one of the reasons managers are needed: it’s one of the key reasons why self-directed work teams have not been able to exist totally on their own in most businesses. Managers are the ones who treat those playing foul tactfully but consistently, conducting themselves with distinction as they treat others with dignity and respect (ho‘ohanohano) while firmly, assuredly correcting and guiding their better behavior. Great managers groom talent: they do not ignore the opportunities they have to do so.

Managers must learn when it’s best to take care of staff issues individually versus collectively, and they must be the ones to discover all root causes, but they must, must, must take action and not look away. If you don’t deal with things as they happen, the message you silently give is that it’s okay as long as you don’t get caught, or that mediocrity is okay until it gets chronic. Then you end up doing crisis management because situations have festered and gotten far worse. At the very least, you allow the onset of apathy.

Update: Brand new post dedicated only to this: Tacit Approval: Don’t you dare give it!

2. Lies of Omission

This is one of those coaching lessons you get a lot of aha! moments in when you are a parent as well as a manager. With both my children and my employees I took care to teach them that a lie not spoken aloud is still a lie, and it still hurts someone or something in some way.

I would much rather deal with a big ugly truth than a small white lie, and I did my very best to cultivate a safe atmosphere wherein my children and my employees would give it to me straight no matter how awful a situation may be. I want to know what I must deal with — or what we must deal with — as soon as possible. No matter what it is, it is always far easier to deal with something that is out in the open and exposed in all its ugliness. Lies are never totally hidden and tucked away: in some way they affect someone’s health and spirit. Living with lies will kill a person’s ability to completely share their own aloha with others.

The positive flip side of this is that knowledge — any knowledge — is empowering and transformational. I’ve come to think of knowledge as food: food for mind, heart and soul. Learning inspires us, and when we “come to know” something and we seek better solutions, we can give birth to creativity. At the very least, we create new energy.

Three things for managers: first, openly talk about lies of omission with your staff. Introduce the phrase as newly known vocabulary (same with tacit approval, for many do not use that phrase either) and inculcate it into the language of your company. Second, seize personal responsibility for creating a safe atmosphere where anyone can talk to you about anything without fear of repercussion (tip: start with the Daily 5 Minutes). Third, lead by example, and admit when you’re wrong and need a better truth yourself. Apologize when you should.

3. Automatic Pilot

A car left on cruise control will ultimately run off the road or out of gas. Same thing happens to any process in a business that is left on automatic pilot. Great managers learn to love this question: “Tell me again – why is it that we do it this way?”

You can fill in these blanks with a whole myriad of systems and processes in your company:
Why is this paperwork so necessary when we __________ ?
Are we absolutely sure that this is the best solution for __________ ?
Have we ever tried to __________ when we do this?
How long have we been __________ this way?
When was the last time we put __________ back out to bid?
Why are we replacing __________ instead of reinventing __________ in the company?
Word association: red tape and bureaucracy for us, equals __________ ?

Why does it have to be this way?

It probably doesn’t. It probably shouldn’t. Create, innovate, change: just try something new and surprise yourself. Surprise everyone. Pull the plug and turn off the life support: Actively heal.