Don’t Listen to your customers, Understand them

 
Courtesy of TheBusyBrain, Some Rights Reserved

Thanks to the post Inefficiencies are what make you special in the 37 Signals site, I had the possibility to read an interesting story called: Customer Feedback Not on elBulli’s Menu

It’s about a famous Spanish chef, Ferran Adrià, and the experience he’s going to provide if you are “lucky enough to be one of the 8,000 who get a booking that year”

He has an interesting opinion about innovation and how you should treat requests from your customer (please note that Norton is the Harvard Professor interviewing Adrià):

[there is a ] distinction between understanding and listening to customers. "Adrià’s idea is that if you listen to customers, what they tell you they want will be based on something they already know," Norton observes. "If I like a good steak, you can serve that to me, and I’ll enjoy it. But it will never be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. To create those experiences, you almost can’t listen to the customer."

Is this a paradigm applicable in your business?

PierG

If it doesn’t connect, why bother?

To all the sw dev who are reading this post: take some time and watch this video of Seth Godin!

Don’t try to resist, this is an hypnotical command: you have to!

From: Seth Godin on why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department)

Feedback?

PierG

Does Micro-Managing Help You Succeed?

I have often written that micro management is a bad habit in some way indirectly sponsored by companies themselves.

I wasa talking about micro managing your directs, I’ve never thought about what some colleagues of mine define “PierG’s driver” that is micro managing UP.

In How Micro-Managing UP Can Help You Succeed, they guys from Management Craft writes:

Leaving your manager in the dark is not a good strategy, and can hurt your career.

Read the post and tell me: does micro-managing UP help you succeed?? What do you think as a manager and as a direct?

PierG

IT Dashboard of the US government

Thanks to this post in the FlowingData blog, I’ve discovered a very interesting site for IT people: the IT dashboard of the US government.

I think it’s a great initiative, an example of transparency, and I’m sure it’s going to be a mine of information and an important source for reasoning about IT dashboards.

What’s your feedback? Do you use dashboards to control your IT?

PierG

Making Someone Angry

Courtesy of freeparking, Some Rights Reserved

Few days ago I made someone angry, very angry: he was really upset and sorely disappointed .. and it was not my intention.

It’s probably the second time in my life that I see that look of sorrow in the face of someone. No matter the reason, I don’t think it’s worth it: it is, in any case, a failure for both.

Have you ever had the same feeling?

PierG

I want an ice cream!

Courtesy of bjortklingd, Some Rights Reserved

Interesting article in the Harvard Business Publishing site called: How to Counter Resistance to Change. I’ve been fascinated by the story Peter Bregman tells: a story I know very well having a young son:

“Daddy, what’s for dessert?" Isabelle was six at the time. Willpower was not one of her "areas needing development."

"Well let’s see, you can have an apple or some grapes."

"I want ice cream."

"That’s not one of the choices, Sweetie. Do you want an apple or grapes?"

"Ice cream."

We went on like that for a few minutes and then she said, "If I can’t have ice cream then I want a banana."

"Hmm," I responded, "that’s not one of the choices but that’s OK too. I’ll get you one."

"Thanks Daddy," she said, clearly happy. Was she happy to have a banana or happy to have gotten something that was not one of the choices I offered?

Read the article for the full conclusions and let me underline two extra ‘lesson learned’:

#1

It doesn’t matter [if she is happy to have a banana or to have gotten something what was not one of the choices]. Because my goal wasn’t to break her will or show her who’s boss. I was going for a very specific and clear outcome: nothing less than to build in her a lifelong habit of healthy eating. I wanted her to eat fruit for dessert and (this is the challenging part) be happy about it.

#2

Because people don’t resist change, they resist being changed.

Tell us your experience on this topic!

PierG

Lifestream of a Team

 
Courtesy of ooOJasonOoo, Some Rights Reserved

After this Easter long week end, I’ve marked ‘as read’ around 80% of the email I’ve received. I’m in almost all the mailing lists of my dept (that’s why I receive so many emails) but I’ve filters, well tuned in these years, that ‘protect’ important emails so I’m pretty sure no damages has been made.

But a question arises: if I can mark as read so many email, why don’t I delete myself from those mailing lists?

Because reading those emails is almost like being on Twitter or Facebook: they are the lifestream of the Department … you don’t need to read all of them and they are useful to have the gut feeling of what going on ‘under the radars’. They don’t substitute other reporting processes and are another important direct touch of reality.

What’s your experience?

PierG

All Things Workplace: Nothing Happens Until People Talk

Suggested reading: All Things Workplace: Nothing Happens Until People Talk.

Add these four thoughts to your leadership communication kit:

• Never assume that anyone knows anything.

• The larger the group, the more attention needs to be given to communicating.

• When left in the dark, people will fantasize their own reality. Do you want their fantasy to trump your reality?

• Effective leaders are obsessed with accurate, frequent communication.

I especially love point #3: When left in the dark, people will fantasize their own reality. Do you want their fantasy to trump your reality?

PierG

Five Questions Every Mentor Must Ask – Anthony Tjan

You are a mentor and have a mentor: haven’t you?

If yes or if in any case interested to this topic, have a look at:

Five Questions Every Mentor Must Ask – Anthony Tjan – HarvardBusiness.org.

PierG

How To Make Better Presentations

 
Courtesy of laurenmanning, Some Rights Reserved

First, please put in your RSS feeds reader the slide:ology blog: a must have if you have to make presentations even once on a while.

Second, watch at TED presentations, all of them, great content and great delivery techniques: this stuff rocks!

And now put the two stuff together and you’ll have a great post: Lessons from TED: 5 Simple Tweaks. 5 suggestions from the slide:ology team on how they made presentations with the TED constraints: limited budget, no template, 18 minutes. As these are quite common constraints in corporations, I thought to suggest the post to my readers.

Here are the suggestions (even if of course you need to read the whole post ):

1. use a custom background
2. choose your fonts wisely
3. use animations and transitions appropriately
4. one idea per slide
5. take care of your images

What are your personal suggestions?

PierG