Simon

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Following my own advice

How in the world did I end up with three blogs (and plans for several others)? Several of the posts that might logically have belonged here have been showing up in other places so I am going to follow the thinking with which I started this blog and consolidate everything over at the Bank of Brian.

Stuff We All Get

I just got back from the Leadership Las Vegas Gateway, a two and a half day retreat preparing the Class of 2009 for our 10-month program. It was terrific in several ways and you can read some about it here and here.

There was one thing during the experience that I couldn’t buy into it: the SWAG…WTF? I don’t get SWAG and not because I don’t understand marketing. On the contrary, I don’t get SWAG because I DO understand marketing. I understand that a load of free stuff you drag out in a free bag doesn’t register at all when it comes time to make a decision about (as my bag suggests):

1. Voting
2. Selecting insurance
3. Choosing a hospital
4. Hiring a lawyer
5. Deciding where to bank
6. Supporting a charity
7. Picking a place to shop
8. Answering any other question

When I was setting up this photo my kids each had a question: “What’s all that junk?” and “Don’t we already have a calculator?” Sounds insightful considering most seven year old children love to collect all sorts of stuff, especially if it is something I can’t imagine keeping.

By the way, to answer the question, yes, we already have a calculator and no we don’t need two more, ten pens, six writing pads, three mouse pads or anything else that was included. I wanted to inventory the entire contents, but I would have been forced to write a post about myself. I shudder to think.

There were three useful items.

1. 1. Tickets to the Opportunity Village Magical Forrest (except we make a donation each year)
   2. One “Caution – Laser Radiation” label (too bad it wasn’t attached to whatever is apparently dangerous)
   3. Another similar caution label (similarly, it was unattached)

Page2 Now?

I don’t like printing email because it is (almost always) so counter-developmental. From time to time it needs to happen. Of course print dialog will allow the user to print the exact page(s) needed, but in an effort to move faster, I skipped this feature. It was a small email after all. Below is a full scan of exactly what was included on the second page.

I know I was in complete control of this and Outlook had absolutely no control of this, but isn’t it ludicrous? I use the Aardvark add-on to Firefox 3 to get rid of the superfluous when I am printing content from the internet. I’m looking for the technology that knows as well as I do that it just isn’t necessary to print somet things (even when I haven’t bothered to tell it).

How Do You See It?

I don’t know when other Time subscribers get their delivery, but mine always comes on Monday. When the magazine was re-worked last year, I thought part of the goal was to deliver in time for weekend readers.

Regardless, it’s Wednesday and as I was reading several things struck me. First, Mark Twain graces the cover of the annual Making of American issue. That in itself is cool. John Jantsch at the Duct Tape Marketing blog wrote today about POV Reading which is reading “any book, almost regardless of the topic… with a single point of view or filter” in an effort to glean new ideas. I think I’ll try this with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

There was another piece on the lack of progress rebuilding at the site of the World Trade Center which reminded me very much of the Evolving Excellence blog where Kevin Meyer writes about lean manufacturing and enterprise leadership. I suppose that is POV reading for me.

Another stiking article included a pretty simple list of 10 things you can like about $4 gas. I won’t go into any of the 10 items; I am sure they are at least in some way refuteable. However, while rising fuel prices may be bad news, it really is just a matter of perspective. More POV.

Too Much Thanks?

I’ve been a devoted Toastmaster for about 13 months and I couldn’t sufficiently summarize everything I have taken away from my experiences including speaking, listening and leadership tools. I learned a bunch about fixing meetings from Patrick Lencioni’s Death By Meeting. I recommend reading the Patrick Lencioni Library but that’s for another time. Toastmasters has re-introduced me to the idea of effective meetings and dispensing with wasted efforts, after all, we have other things to take care of and an agenda to maintain.

However, during the course of the two Toastmaster Leadership Institute and Office Training meetings I have attended, the audience has been subjected to a long, monotonous listing of countless individuals and their titles. I have no doubt that every person, present or absent, is deserving of recognition and I wouldn’t be so tough on any other organization, but is this really the most effective way to pay tribute to these people? Turns out that it isn’t.

I first read of Seth Godin’s idea of the Gratitude Loop at Lifehacker.com and today I was reminded when I read Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools. The gist of the Gratitude Loop is that by creating a looping slide show with photographs of everyone you are intending to recognize you accomplish not just the intended, but additional goals. Let’s count the ways:

1. Individual recognition by name (the intended consequence)
2. Visual recognition of individuals (TLI recognition happened too fast for the us to see who we were applauding)
3. Relieve the audience of the suffering of listening to a list
4. Relieve the speaker of the suffering or reading a list
5. Hold the audiences attention prior to the meeting
6. Show the audience how inventive you are
7. Show the audience how technically inclined you are
and my favorite
8. Show the audience you had some forethought

Of course you will need some forethought: how many groups or individuals will be included, how long the slides will need to run, how will the slides transition, and how will the slide show end. However, that effort will pay dividends.

I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.

Like most things in my life, I thought long and hard about creating a blog before I ever did. I shoved countless ideas aside because I didn’t think I could build enough content to support a theme. When something came to mind, rather than start to write, I would set it aside until I could muster a few thoughts I could convince myself would make worthwile reading. The truth is that I never could muster enough thoughts to make worthwile reading. That was until the Address2 experiment.

Following the Address2 experiment, I had convinced myself that I had nailed the theme. After all, I could stretch the idea from extra data fields to other unnecessaries like waste. I’m big on eliminating waste. I have a habit, and I think it’s a good one, of always trying to find the most effective way to get something done. I will gladly take five minutes to figure out the best way to complete a ten minute task in three minutes. Net savings two minutes: I win.

But here I am, six weeks after the initial Address2 blog post and I am barely gutting out post number four. And post number four feels like something I am forcing. What a let down. Considering my trouble in getting this far, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

So I’ll be stretching the theme a bit further as the we go. I don’t think anyone will hold it against me if the post doesn’t directly related to Address2. If they do, they can (will) just go away.

My Failed Declutter

We just finished our garage sale. It was substantial enough for us to open both Saturday and Sunday and again the next Saturday. It all followed a pretty intense declutter of our entire house.

Not as intense as I first thought I learned after reading about the 100 Thing Challenge in Time. It seems that some folks are pledging to reduce their total possessions to no more than 100 things. The rules appear open for interpretation as some are calculating one pair of shoes as one thing and other are measuring all of their shoes as one thing. Regardless, we didn’t get close. My sister mentioned something more along the lines of what we had just done: reducing your possessions by 100 things.

I’ve purged all use of Address 2 fields and much more and although we didn’t set out to conquer the 100 Thing Challenge, I have to admit that we did not achieve our more modest goals. Without keeping time sheets, I estimate we wouldn’t have earned much better than minimum wage and as I sit here and scan just this room I find more that we could have (should have) parted with. Of course not all lessons are learned easily: we did just purge the idea of having another garage sale.

I Won’t Say “Mission Accomplished”

There has been too little time, to say nothing of the lack of readers, for me to claim any responsibility, but it appears we are all better off because there is one less Address 2 field to confound anyone that might be responsible.

I am an avid reader of the Freakonomics NYT blog. After reading a recent post and following a couple of clicks, I found this page free of an Address 2 field. To be honest, I can’t calculate the limit of the field, but it seems it will accept 20,000+ so I am assuming your address will fit in. Hell, maybe all of our addresses will fit in there simultaneously.

This of course says nothing about how intriguing the book is, how clever the blog is, how they are willing to work around a logistics problem by assuming the burden, or how demure they seem if someone goes so far as to ask to collect their autographs.

I may not be on the same pace, but knowing I am working in the same circuit as Levitt and Dubner leaves me with a pretty good feeling.

Ridding the World Of Address 2 (as a metaphor)

Just the other day I placed an order at frys.com for a pretty non-descript router for our training center network. Like many of the web transactions I’ve conducted in the past, there wasn’t anything peculiar about the order: found the item, added it the shopping cart, and entered payment information. It wasn’t until the final step – the shipping address – that I thought I would try to get cute. I decided to use the Address 2 field.

Over the years I done my fair share of internet shopping and I’ve had my fair share of orders shipped to addresses that included apartment numbers or office suite numbers. Over the course of those years, I feel I have had my fair share of deliveries delayed because the information I keyed into the Address 2 field was ignored. Several years ago, after one too many muddled shipments, I wised up and started to ignore the Address 2 field myself and cram, if necessary, all of the information in the Address 1 field, even if it meant turning the address into an over-abbreviated Nifty Nickel classified.

Because the order for the router wasn’t time-sensitive and the order total was $62.38, I wasn’t worried about having the item replaced so I thought I would conduct a non-scientific experiment and fall back into Address 2 mode just to see what would happen. Sounds like fun to me, too.

Considering I was conducting a (non-scientific) experiment, I was vigilant in the tracking of the order. (Not) surprisingly, the order didn’t arrive as soon as I had expected. I received a phone call from DHL (eventually) asking for clarification regarding the shipping address. They needed a suite number (apparently). With the suite number, the package was delivered (finally).

I understand that I subjected myself to this hassle. I’m not complaining about that. I also cannot presume with which party the responsibility rests for ignoring the Address 2 field. Was it Fry’s that didn’t record Address 2? Did Fry’s not transmit Address 2? Did DHL disregard Address 2? I don’t know and never will. What I do know is that I won’t subject myself or anyone to whom I might ship directly, to the aggravation of Address 2. For that is what Address 2 now represents to me: an annoyance. Maybe worse than that: an annoyance without a cause. We transport parcels across the country without the use of Address 2 and if it is going to continue to be ignored, what purpose does it serve? Address 2 is the kidney of the shipping address – except you can’t give it to someone who needs it.

It is not my aim to simply complain. I know there are instances when the Address 1 field just is not sufficient. I do contend that if developers expanded the Address 1 field and we were not expected to over-abbreviate, most of these instances would be addressed. Outside of these times, let us agree to use the Special Instructions field. Hell, the name of the field is just begging for you to pay attention to it.

And so it is my stated mission: to rid the world of Address 2 (as a metaphor). I will do my best to not simply complain but to find alternatives: shorter, simpler, smarter methods to do just what we need to do.