I had the pleasure of spending the past week with three beautiful women on a beach in Mexico. I know – tough life, right? Yes, one of them was my wife, and two friends came along for the ride. I learned two important things from this experience – 1) SPF 15 is completely useless under the June sun in Cancun 2) Men are universally predictable around beautiful women
I am accustomed to getting preferential treatment when I travel with my incredibly beautiful wife. When we go out for dinner, waiters will always treat us (well my wife, actually) with more preference than other tables. I started noticing this a while ago when we would go to a place that I also tended to visit alone or with male friends – the attention was always better when I took my wife. Apparently there is also a multiplying effect.
This past week I was vacationing in the Mayan Riviera with my wife and two attractive friends when I realized I was experiencing something called “the beautiful is good effect” and it does indeed seem to have a multiplying effect. The bar tenders at the resort pool treated me like a king with my own harem. One of them was offering service of some kind every 15 minutes with complimentary drinks, food service, you name it. The beach crew even came by and offered a selection of activities (para-sailing, scuba, etc). While these are normally available to anyone, you normally have to go to them for the service, not simply lay there on a deck chair waiting. We seem to have proven empirically that the “beautiful is good” effect is very real.
It’s not fair, and it sucks for not-so-attractive people, but this remnant of our evolutionary path does serve a purpose. It is completely logical that more attractive people are likely to be healthier mates, better for breeding and propagation of the species. It also makes sense, in an evolutionary way, for the attraction to be stronger in groups – strength in numbers and all that.
It got even better on Friday when two more beautiful women joined us for a day on the beach in Playa Del Carmen. Different location, different environment, different service staff, but same effect. The server came short of offering us complimentary foot rubs, but I am sure they would have been provided if asked. Needless to say, I highly recommend traveling with beautiful people. I am sure if Hugh Hefner walked into a New York hotel alone and unannounced people would barely recognize him, but when he appears with five bunnies in his entourage, people say “hey, there’s Hugh Hefner… with his harem”.
I found it fascinating to watch and it stirred a desire to read more on sociology and anthropology in the future. OK, maybe that is just the Margarita talking 🙂
Congratulations MUST go out to the amazing team at SpaceX today. I have been waiting a very long time to see the day when private citizens had the power to step into space.
They did it… 1) On Time 2) On Target 3) Under Budget
That is something that NASA has NEVER been able to accomplish.
The drive and determination of private citizens fueled by the immensely creative thinkers at the corporate level made this possible. This was not just a victory for private science development, but for the changing face of corporate power as well. SpaceX is successful because it values the brilliant minds that make up their teams. This is also a victory for the whole new generation of corporate giants that are led by open minded, free thinking, creative people who grew up in a world governed by the rules of the Internet, unbounded by the constraints of governments and borders.
The future is here and now and being shaped by amazingly creative people who work in “teams” not hierarchies. These new companies have names like Facebook and SpaceX and Valve and Google. They don’t care much for traditional corporate structure, they are nimble, inventive, and are crushing old-guard competition.
Congratulations to the entire team at SpaceX on an amazing feat that should not be lost in the wash of news today.
I recently participated in a sales skills improvement meeting that ran for 4 days and was very focused on presentation skills as well as the information in the presentation. One of the interesting tools we used in the meeting was the controlled use of Nerf Guns. Mike Hillyerand I concocted the evil plan to keep presentations on track and avoid bad words like “ummm”.
“Nerf Guns”, you say? Yes, that is what I said – and they work great. We work in a customer facing environment where a good presentation can win a deal and a bad one can mean death (of the sale), or at least leave a bad impression with a client. As Sales Engineers, we are tasked with presenting complex information, typically with PowerPoint and live demonstrations. We need to avoid “death-by-PowerPoint” as well as droning on for too long and overrunning the meeting. Worse is annoying a customer with incessant “ummmm”s throughout a presentation. When the customer stops listening to the information and starts counting how many times you say “ummmm”, you have lost the sale. We chose to discourage bad behavior with a little fun and only minor pain.
So the deal is this: all participants with the exception of the presenter, are issued a Nerf gun with ample ammunition. There were 5 of us, so we had 4 guns and about 900 rounds of Nerf darts. The rules of engagement are simple. 1) Your colleagues are armed and dangerous 2) During your presentations, you will be SHOT… – Every time you say “Umm…” – Every minute you are over your allotted time 3) Only the presenter can be a target (no shooting across the table) 4) Unlike Zombieland, head-shots are discouraged 5) Reloads are permitted at any time 6) Not wrapping up logically within 3 minutes of overtime is worth a “Double Tap”
It worked like a charm. In the initial sessions, presenters including myself were pelted with darts. It is amazing how many times you fill empty space with that annoying noise and don’t even realize it. Running overtime was also a cause for bombardment and as in the real world, bad things happen when you run over your allotted time. However, by the end of the second day, the dart guns were oddly silent. Speakers had learned to slow down, think about the next words and find alternate, more pleasant ways to fill that empty space. Presentations finished within the allotted time with enough room for questions while not impairing the information. By the end of the week, we were all very conscious of our speech patterns and time frames.
I sat in on several client presentations over the next few weeks and was pleasantly surprised to see that the training stuck. Client receptiveness to the information was also up which is a great thing for sales.
It may be extremely unconventional, but hey, that’s how we roll. Feel free to adapt this to your own internal training sessions. Credit for the idea would be appreciated.
The choices we make in business affect customer service even when the actions are seemingly removed from the customer’s immediate knowledge. Too often companies make the mistake of believing that customer service is the job of the Sales department or Marketing team, but that could not be farther from the truth. In reality, sincere customer service needs to permeate an organization at all levels and should be part of every decision every employee makes.
As a Sales Engineer, I fly to remote locations almost constantly to present our product offering. When you travel to a customer location, do you book a hotel close to the customer’s office so that you can be early to the meeting, or do you book close to the airport for your travel convenience? This may seem like a small thing and the customer will likely never know, but it is a decision that affects how well you are prepared for a presentation. Being close to the customer relieves the pressure of travel before the meeting. It allows you to be more focused and the customer will notice.
A less obvious place for customer service attention is in product engineering. A common misconception is that product development and software engineering are too removed from the customer to really be concerned about it, but in the most successful companies, every engineer is acutely aware of the end user experience. Understanding how the end user actually uses the product gives the developers a deeper understanding of the real customer needs and the developers tend to see solutions as opposed to code.
If you know me, you know I am a Disney nut and a lot of that is about their business attitude. Every Disney employee understands that the goal is exceptional customer experience. Whether it is Cinderella or a popcorn vender, a street cleaner or the shuttle driver, every employee is focused on the end result of providing an exceptional customer service experience. Why should any other organization be any different?
Can you honestly say that every person in your company puts customer service first? If not, maybe it is time to take a closer look at what really matters and how the little things like service attitude mean big things to the bottom line.
Fellow blogger Chris Shifflet recently blogged Ideas of March as a call to revive the art of blogging, and I think for good reason. The immense success of Twitter combined with a 140 character limit has created a situation where more people are communicating than ever before, but they are doing it in short, disjointed and poorly spelled blurts.
The internet has done amazing things to expand the ability for people who would not have normally ever been connected to each other to have a conversation about critical subjects. Tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the myriad assorted blogs now allow people to communicate on a global scale without having to invest in travel or take valuable time from work, family or school. Even just ten years ago, it would have been difficult to place 100 like minded people from 100 countries in a room together to discuss an important issue. This has changed dramatically in the last few years and we saw the evidence of this in North Africa where protesters literally tweeted a revolution. The recent Occupy Wallstreet protest would likely not have been possible without the massively interconnected society we have today using the vehicles of Twitter and Facebook. However, the short burst nature of tweeted communication creates immediate but disjointed conversation. Having 100 people in a room all talking at once is still conversation, but it is difficult to pull constructive conclusions from.
This disjointed conversation is why I like blogs. A blogger has the ability to form a statement, create an argument for an idea, and share it as a complete thought. Readers have an opportunity to digest the thought and provide counterpoints or questions in an equally thoughtful manner. An intelligent dialog ensues. This is more like having that same 100 people in a room, but moderated with one person having the microphone at a time. Much more civilized.
Blogs also have the added benefit natural archiving. Since the communication is all in one place, on a single page, each blog post adds to a catalogued archive of conversations. A reader can go back months or years in historical blogs to follow a theme or collection of posts to get a full understanding of the conversation.
One of the concerns with 140 character text blob updates is that brevity leads to a perversion of the language (any language). A whole generation is communicating in acronyms, emoticons and abbreviations. They post their statement and watch for replies, but parts of the conversation may be hours or days apart and parts of the conversation get lost. Bloggers have the privilege of using full sentences and real words to express ideas.
I primarily blog about business, technology and customer service with the odd sprinkling of robotics and electronics. Sounds a little spread out, I know, but… oh look a bunny! … yes, I am a little A.D.D. I have been trying to keep to a once a month schedule, but have plans to increase that frequency to help improve the quality of conversation through blogging. As always I am open to sharing ideas and expanding the conversation
I recently spent a week at Disneyland California with my family and many readers will know that my wife an I are Disney freaks – possibly for slightly different reasons, but fanatics all the same. I have taken some sideways glances for my love of Disney and even left my last job primarily because the leadership did not “get it”. I have a Disney watch that I used to wear to work all the time (I don’t wear watches anymore) and have taken criticism that wearing a “cartoon” watch makes you look unprofessional. When I left that employer, I made a point of explaining that he was the fool for not understanding what that cartoon mouse actually represents.
So here is the deal – and this will not be news to anyone who does in fact get it – Disney is more than amusement parks or animation studios or a legacy of great movies. Disney is about the experience. It is a philosophy that says “do it right and the money will happen. Give people value and they will pay for it.” This is diametrically opposed to conventional business thinking that is geared to extracting the highest profit from the least expense. Running a business that way is like managing a stock portfolio with a “buy-low, sell-high” mentality – it only works in theory.
Good evidence of this is seen every time I visit Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. We usually also visit Universal Studios because we also enjoy that place, but to a much lesser extent and here is why. If you visit both places in short succession, you will likely also notice that Universal is a profit center and Disneyland is an experience. At Universal, it is obvious that they have taken shortcuts with things they think are minor like food, lines, bathroom locations, site maps and the main gate entry process. When you enter Universal for the first time, you say “OK, now what? Lets look at the map to see where we should go first”. When you enter Disneyland for the first time you say “WOW” and you migrate to the first (of many) cool things that slowly transport you down main street. You may be halfway across the park before you open the map to figure out what to do next.
Disney spares no expense to create an illusion that completely envelopes you. They do this in their parks, movies, games, and is core to their business philosophy. This comes from a deeply ingrained understanding that if you really understand a person and involve them in a story, they become part of it – there is personal investment and when people feel they are part of something, it is no longer about “product” but “experience”. Disney sells the experience and they do it very well.
As a coincidence, I just finished reading “The Pixar Way” which is similar to “The Disney Way” by no accident. These two companies were made for each other (and now are all one family). The top brass at Pixar share the same ideals as Walt Disney did when he was running Disney Corp and these ideals are shared by some of the most successful business enterprises in the world. Pixar’s attention to the philosophy is evidenced in their string of extremely successful movies. In each one, the characters are exceptionally endearing because the creators draw them the way they “feel”, not the way an opinion panel or marketing report dictates what they should look like. The whole concept breaks down to a simple phrase that I keep churning in my head – “forget the money, just do it right.” It is a simple thing, but so often ignored by mainstream business management who are too focused on profit and sales targets to see a much easier path – just do it right.
Doing it “right” means paying attention to details and understanding real customer needs. It means ignoring the cost/profit analysis while you are designing. It means remembering that people are all children inside who forgot how to play and creating experiences to cater to that hidden child.
My favourite Walt Disney quote is “Too many people grow up. That’s the real trouble with the world. They forget. They don’t remember what it’s like to be twelve years old.” When I visit Disneyland, I am suddenly 12 years old as soon as I walk through the main gate – it really is a magical place, but they don’t force feed you pixie dust, so everyone experiences it in a different way.
One day at Universal is enough for me. After you have been on all the rides and taken the backlot tour, it is just concrete and street vendors. Disney is different in a way that is hard to explain, but easy to experience. I can spend a day in Disneyland park just wandering the grounds and looking for all the small but important details – like the tiny functional vegetable gardens between the attractions, or the live orange groves spread throughout the park. Each attraction spills out into the queue so that you start to experience the ride while standing in line, long before you have to keep your hands and feet inside that car at all times. There is a story behind every rock and tree, each pathway is designed with the surrounding experience in mind. The walkway leading to the new “Ariel’s Undersea Adventure” attraction in California Park was torn up and re-poured with seashells at the surface to enhance the experience for people standing in line for the ride. Universal would not have considered such an expense. In New Orleans Square, the pathways are made so that you actually believe you are walking on cobblestone streets in the French Quarter. I barely noticed the ground at Universal because it is all the same bland concrete.
I know it sounds like I am on the Disney payroll, but that is just the side effect of pure awesomeness. Disney does not just want to sell you a park admission or a Mickey Mouse hoodie – they want to turn you into ambassadors AND IT WORKS. To put an extremely fine point on this for you, I was the Los Angeles area for 7 days with my family and in total we spent approximately 8 TIMES as much cash with Disney than we did at Universal Studios. Does the Disney philosophy really need more evidence than that?
I was out for dinner the other night with my friend and his family. He mentioned a new movie that was coming out and said that his daughter, who was also sitting at the table, had already seen the trailer for it although the trailer had not yet been released to TV. He followed up the statement with “I don’t know how she finds out about this stuff before we do”.
“It’s called the Internet, Dad” she quipped from across the table.
This is the new reality. This is the new world. The beachheads of the next war front are not in Africa or Europe or the Middle East, but lie in bit-streams flowing from server farms distributed across multiple data centres in multiple countries. The next generation of humans on this planet are growing up and taking a stand in a place few over 40 can comprehend. The youth of today cannot be localized anymore to a particular country or culture, they live on the net, in a global community that defies borders and transparently crosses cultural differences.
Today’s students access information the moment it *becomes* information. They process gigabytes of information daily on portable devices that use multiple protocols. They are not tied by cables to physical places and they don’t go to libraries to do research, they google data.
This is why such things as the US SOPA legislation are not only moronic, but completely useless. This is why Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, and other countries have been powerless to stop the political unrest from protesting youth. This is why the entire concept of global commerce is changing, and this is why the geo-political climate of the entire planet is in upheaval. The Internet has tied together bright young creative minds into a whole new community that has no borders or politics or restrictive government. The Internet is pure democracy.
Unfortunately the physical world is mostly governed by politicians and lawyers who are typically over fifty, don’t understand the Internet, are funded by protectionist lobbyists, and have to answer to a political structure that was instituted when ox-carts were a common mode of transportation. Pick a country, they are all the same. What the middle aged lawyer-politicians running countries don’t understand is that the eighteen year old students tweeting revolutions don’t care about politics, they care about right and wrong and morals and fairness and human rights. Those things typically conflict with political agendas.
The global economy is changing and growing. I’ve said it before and I will say it again – conventional business needs to adapt and embrace the new reality or they will be left behind. The students of today are tomorrow’s captains of industry, and I guarantee you they will not be bound by “conventional” business constraints. I find myself becoming a de-facto evangelist for this concept and I am certainly not alone, a quick google search for “internet entrepreneur 2011” reveals a plethora of young creative minds poised to change your perception of the world yet again and as many other evangelists telling the rest of the world about them.
Brace yourself, for 2012 is already shaping up to be a revolutionary year in technology – not just in the internet, but the bleed over into automotive, construction, and communications as well. A few peeks into this year’s hot new tech from CES will give you an idea of how your world will change in the next 12 months, like the transparent display from Samsung or the Sony SmartWatch. The future belongs to those who can ride the wave of innovation and avoid drowning in it.
January is always an interesting time of year, full of contrast and change. The end of one year brings the beginning of a new one. Resolutions for change are made by people world wide. I have a few resolutions myself.
I will focus on interesting things. I am looking forward to doing more creative work with robotics and automation, reviving some old projects and starting some exciting new ones. There have been many interesting technology changes in the past year and I want to spend more time investigating them. I plan to automate “everything”, and of course, document it all.
I plan to give more time and thought to everything through the year. 2011 was a very busy year and I, like many, found I spent more time “doing” than “thinking”. Somewhere near the end of the year I had an epiphany – A few extra minutes of evaluation and planning can save hours of wasted or duplicated work. 2012 will be my year for contemplation and think-before-doing.
I will golf more and work less. I have a wonderful family and fantastic friends, but last year I worked an average of 16 hours a day so I never got to spend any time with them. 2012 will be my year for re-connecting – golf with friends, hockey games and picnics with family. Seriously looking forward to it.
2012 should prove to be an exciting year. Are you ready for it?
As 2011 comes to an end, I have reflected on many of the blogs, rants, opinions, and post-comments I have thrown out to the Internet this past year. There is, as expected, a common theme and it really does come down to “Save the [Jimmy] Wales!”
For those who don’t recognize the name, Jimmy Wales is one of the co-founders of Wikipedia (arguably “The” founder of Wikipedia). It is not that Jimmy is in any kind of trouble, not at all. In fact Wikipedia has grown to become one of the go-to sources of information on the planet. It is wildly popular, usually accurate, and most importantly … free.
Yes there have been issues with conflicts, inaccuracies, security.. big deal, I can say the same about NASA. Wikipedia is a volunteer driven project funded by a Not For Profit organization that has a goal of bringing free information to the masses. – Awesome.
THAT is what my message has been about and will continue to be about. Be Awesome. Feed the masses. Share the wealth. Wikipedia has done just that and they saved me from dropping $900 on paper encyclopedias that were out-dated before they were printed. If you feel like donating to the cause (as I have done) then you can do so HERE.
However, this is not just an appeal to help fund Wikipedia, it is about ALL open source, freeware, feed-the-masses projects. Jimmy was just an example, and his last name made for a cool title 🙂 There are tons of open source projects in Software, hardware, social engineering, political restructuring, etc, etc you just need to find them and fund them. The Internet is a pure democracy that allows us to vote with clicks and opens and likes and hits… and cash. If you use an open source service on the Internet or have a free program you downloaded from the Internet and you really like it, then please consider sending a donation to support the author. That makes good programs better and feeds the awesomeness engine.
I wrote my first piece of free-ware in 1981 and have been a strong proponent of the concept ever since. I also write commercial software and have no conflict whatsoever selling a thousand-dollar piece of code in the morning, then releasing a different piece of share-ware to the Internet in the evening. This is the new economy, the new political engine, the new audience that will drive the socio-economic reality of the coming year. Embrace it.
A time for most Christians around the world to celebrate the life that was given to Jesus Christ 20 centuries ago. A time for people to gather with friends and family, to remember what is really important in life. Jesus Christ walked this earth for 33 years and spent much of that time teaching. His legacy has been translated, into every language on the planet, interpreted and misinterpreted, used and abused, praised and vilified, but has survived none the less.
We light trees and houses to symbolize the bringing of light into the world at the darkest point of the year. We give presents to show our unconditional love and gratitude to the ones we care about. We gather with friends and loved ones to share a meal and song and good times, all to celebrate the life we have knitted together.
To all my friends and family, colleagues and clients, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and all the best success in the new year.
The Bleeding Edge 