Brain Breach

As a dedicated software adventurer, Chandler has been on my radar for a very long time.  Since 1.0 came out today, I thought I might give it a go.

What Chandler is: a project that hopes to sync with great services (gmail, outlook, etc) and is therefore quite welcome.

What Chandler is not: functional or useful

Ouch!  I am quite sorry to give such a review of this project.  I know what it takes to pull something like this off, and how much Mitch Kapor’s heart has been poured into it.  Let’s hope this isn’t a pattern for later releases of Chandler.

Four Reasons why Chandler 1.0 is found wanting

1. It doesn’t do anything that I need

Sure, it syncs my to-do’s and calendar with other stuff, but does that matter when the to-do’s aren’t useful, and calendar has nothing new to offer?  In other words, who wants to sync something they don’t really don’t need? Sync a mess at home, and it will appear at work also!

2. Tasks are a mess

Chandler is supposed to follow the GTD paradigm.  The problem is it just uses the most minimal implementation possible.  So if you want to mark something beyond just now/later/done, you have to schedule it on the calendar.  This poses a few problems. Mainly, there is no abstraction, which is really the heart of GTD, i.e. “don’t stress over that now, you can only do one thing at a time”.

Thankfully, they do have “note”(the universal item in Chandler) categories. You can’t even drag/arrange tasks.  Their idea of abstraction is a star. Your note can have it, or not.  Well, after you mark a dozen of those, they start to loose their meaning.

With so much competition in the tasking arena, Chandler is certainly nothing to get excited about.

3. No contacts

Really, this program wants to be a PIM (personal information manager).  It’s my opinion that nothing is really going to take over this market until they take a truly SMART comprehensive view of PIM. There have been many brave attempts, but since there is a large gap between great ideas and solid implementation, we probably have to wait for a couple more years before something killer comes along.

So how are you supposed to link a to-do to a contact to a calendar entry?  You can’t right now.  I bet you a nickel it’s in their plans, but that doesn’t help us today.

4.  Memory Muncher

The Python runtime jumped to 140 mb after some very average usage in Chandler. Python has its own memory management, but how well will it do under heavy usage?  Remember Python on the desktop isn’t a terribly popular scenario, and Chandler could find themselves with low level programming they aren’t ready to handle.  But, that is a risk I bet they have wagered well.  You have to take risks to move ahead in the tech world.

Really, I do hate to be so down on fellow entrepreneurs and developers.  Truly, I wish them the best.  Please, own this category! Until then, I am sticking with ToDoList and a medley of other apps.  My prediction is that Google will be the first to confront the ugly monster that is PIM with poise.

+ update : I found Thinking Rock, and so far, I really love it. It will probably take the place of ToDoList.

Productivity, organization, and collaboration software excite me.  Just recently I decided to upgrade my task tracking system, and that is just so fun!  The following is a review of some desktop task management suites.  After many hours in review of online project/task management, I wasn’t prepared to go that route.  We already use Trac internally for dev teams, and each of them has their own way of tracking tasks.  There is just no killer project management suite as of today, sorry.

Certainly there is a fine selection of personally task management software, or so I thought.  After all, mastering ourselves is the key to mastering our dreams.   Let me explain what tools I tried, and my opinion of them.

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TaskJuggler

This project is attractive because of its robustness.  You can do nearly everything.  It might very well be a pain to do it, but you can.  See, this program manages tasks via its own markup.  I would be able to pull out reports with any level of abstraction and specificity I wish. That’s HUGE. But a new markup to learn? Well, darn.  But I figured it was worth learning because the task management landscape is terribly malnourished.

I make my way to the download page and………surprise…Linux only!  You can get it running under Cygwin, virtualization, or just run it remotely on your Linux server.  Gees.  No thanks.  Looks like a great project, but until its ported, or I move to Linux full time, I shall look elsewhere.

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Nomad Pim

My hopes are once again high.  This PIM is programed on the Eclipse platform.  That means programmers can focus on functionality over platform robustness, and the ensuing app has great potential.  The app has a short learning curve, and the interface for contacts and tasks is the same.  That’s a new take, but it seems to work.  You can search through your contacts quickly, and schedule tasks.  Its usefulness ends there for me.  When I flick on the PC, and open my task lists, I can’t have 100 tasks staring me in the face.  I need abstraction! In other words, give me the top priorities.  That’s the essence of GTD, except they are called next actions.  Note: “GTD” suites suffer all the same problems in my opinion.

A neat start for Nomad, but that’s all.  It really would leave me stressed at the end of the day from not knowing exactly what I need to be doing. I am starting to think my requirements are impossible, but they seem simple to me.

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Abstract Spoon’s ToDoList

Deciding I have to disperse PIM functions into different apps, I look solely for a task management application. So many! I am not going to list everything I have tried or researched.

Do you know that I fell in love with ToDoList? It is open source, a few minutes to learn, only has minor bugs, and you can truly arrange and filter tasks. If you are looking for an app that is great for collaboration, keep looking or hire Bixly to build one that considers such usability topics as abstraction. ToDoList is magically simple and smart. Sure, it can be a bit awkward to use at times, but it just leaves these other programs in the dust when it comes to getting things done without stress. Good work!

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WikidPad

For a neat desktop wiki that tries to employ a task system, try Wikidpad. It’s the best desktop wiki I have seen. Its attempt to tackle “globals” such as tasks, is darn interesting. I think my dream PIM app lay somewhere in WikidPad, just not yet. It’s rather cumbersome right now as a task or contact manager. But the idea that you can create tasks or contacts from anywhere on any wiki page is fantastic. Also, having the navigation tree decided completely by the wiki script is cumbersome. I just haven’t given thought to exactly how it should work, because the alternative is quite robust. I am truly rooting for this project.

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Another program that really disappointing me was TaskCoach . It just…..doesn’t get it. Nothing is intuitive or easy, and it certainly doesn’t help me manage tasks very well. Now I am thankful to all these programmers for giving us free software, so don’t misunderstand my purpose here. I hope to save you time in your search for great software.

Also you might find collaborative mindmaping useful for knowledge management and simple tasking within the enterprise. The earliest program to do it right was Comapping .

Research has shown that we certainly possess risk aversion. Ambiguity aversion should be considered its hidden twin in the proliferate duo that is worth understanding for your business. An awareness of this principle is certainly important enough to add to Paradigms I Follow .

It is simply this: Being psychologically prohibited to expanding decision options because of ambiguity. See, you can have a two or more choices in front of you with greater/lesser/equal worth in the end. You will most likely choose the one which requires the smallest amount of thinking. Please check out the Thirteen.org video that inspired this post. What a neat show! Further:

Frisch and Baron (1988) emphasized that the subjective experience of missing information relevant to a prediction may lead to ambiguity aversion.
Keller

This has so many implications for business and brands. A great example of popular usage and profit from Ambiguity Aversion is the show Deal Or No Deal . Forward to the middle of a show and the decision usually looks like this: Take $300,000 right now, or possibly get $800,000. It’s silly really to choose the $800,000 because the chances are still 1 in 5 or 1 in 10. Since we are averse to ambiguity, it’s easier to calculate “hmmm, I want more money, and this could work”.

This opens up a whole new field of Neuroeconomics to us, which is definitively worth further brain breaching.

Interestingly, ambiguity aversion in pairs of users actually gets worse!

The majority of the dyads exhibited a cautious shift in the face of ambiguity, stating a smaller willingness-to-pay than the two individuals’ average. Our study thus confirms the persistence of ambiguity aversion in a group setting and demonstrates the predominance of cautious shifts for dyads.
Keller

Additional resources:
Four types of Ambiguity Aversion link

Evidently there are good and bad flavors of perfectionism. Learning this was eye opening because I always thought that perfectionism across the board was bad. Perfectionism that is based on what others think is mal-adaptive. In other words, it can’t adapt to your expectations of their expectations, ever.

Adaptive perfectionism(the good one) is the type that learns from others, and is continually improved by ones own vision of perfection, knowing that it will never be fully achieved, but always held as the target.

Resources:

The subject is interesting and merits more study. Here is a neat article on the subject

Here are my notes from Pfeffer’s eye opening talk . He is the Author of

This has really got me excited! Some great information and paths to study. I hate to just have recycled content on my blog, but it’s so good. Let the fairly disorganized notes begin.

Premise is that organizations are stuck in established traditions that mostly don’t make sense, and don’t make decisions based on facts.

Casual benchmarking is harmful

• doing something because folks better than you did it that way

We should examine why they made that decision, and understand the context rather than just blindly applying it.

Ideology and belief

• More than 200 studies prove that giving top management stock options has no effect on company/financial performance.
  
  

Don’t comprise on providing evidence to your team that can lead to them uncovering issues.

One manager did this by titling certain things “we do not have this information” in hopes of having the team find it. That forced management to find ways to that information. If he wouldn’t have done this, they wouldn’t have realized they even needed the information.

Devita CEO

When Pfeffer was consulting for him, he didn’t care about compliments, but cared about the problems.

Yahoo business guru is quoted as asking “why not customers what they want instead of debate about it”

*note: interestingly this comes from Yahoo which isn’t the greatest at useability

Time for reflection is important

Joe Benaducci- COO, Fireman’s Fund and Insurance company

“What makes you so successful?”

1. Read one book a week

2. Critiqued himself after every significant meeting on a notepad

Put your feet up on desk, close your eyes and think.

Debunking common myths

You need the all stars

• the system the company has, not the all stars determines quality and output
• GM operated a lousy plant in Fremont Ca. Low quality, productivity, and large amounts of drug and alcohol abuse.

• Toyota, under New United Motors, ( a toyota/GM partnership ) took over that company with the SAME people and had twice the productivity and quality.
  
  

Financial incentive work

• reward system signal what matters. (Is it money?)
• seems fair
  truth:
• we believe other folks are motivated by money, even though we aren’t
• pay incentives loose effectiveness after a month
• folks that are payed per piece rush through work

** garbage truck example: they got paid for 8 hours of work no matter how long it took. Turns out they just skipped trash cans to go home early

• other rewards must be more creative
  
  

Teacher incentive pay case
Paying teachers more for higher test scores

• it turns out it didn’t work, as you can assume. A study on 100 years of merit pay shows it.
• Teachers are interested in teaching not pay. They would have chosen different field if money was their goal.
• Incentives work on effort, not ability

60% of companies use the Forrester rating system

• This rating system allows the manager to subjectively judge/score every employee and hand out benefits accordingly
• a study showed that if the manager hired a employee, they were given a much hirer review
• this study showed this rating system doesn’t work

Results

• treat your organization as an unfinished prototype, always trying to change, optimize and challenge the norms
• It’s about being the master of the obvious and the mundane
• Test every assumption by its evidence

Resources:

Evidence based management webiste

Facts-Dangerous-Half-Truths-Total-Nonsense

What could the benefit be with being able to get over and assessing our failures quickly, and handling our success with emotional intelligence?  Failures wouldn’t be devastating, but just lessons strongly learned.  Success wouldn’t ruin us and our kids, like we see so often, but simply spice our lives a bit.

Consider your success and failure not as a state you are in, but as events that are happening to you. Certainly you have much control over these events, but not complete.

There is an important reason to taking this angle.  Your monetary success can’t bring ultimate fulfillment, and your failures shouldn’t be allowed to bring you ultimately down.  Success and failure should not be considered states that you are in or out of.  Being “in” failure implies a few things that might not be true:  You are a failure; you fail more often than others; you have lost.  Likewise, being in “success” implies some things that shouldn’t be considered true: You job is now finished; sit around; you have arrived.
Success and failure happen to you, they are not you.  React to them as you do with other things that happen to you, and fix them.

Thanks to Lawson for Sparking this idea.

Voice of the customer. Great companies listen to it, and mediocre companies try to listen to it.

The issue of truly hearing your customers isn’t as simple as just reading complaints and comments. If you don’t think it’s a tricky task, think of these issues:

• Who will analyze the problem?
• Who reports it to CEO/COO?
• How will the customer be notified problem is fixed to see if they are pleased?
• How to we effectively sift through the mounds of data to make sense of it all?
• Will the CEO see these as important money making resolutions?

A sound VOC system will take care of these issues and more. This is where it helps to thrive in ambiguity. It’s obvious that a great company needs to hear their customers. The real problem is how does that happen with piles of data and teams already swimming in tasks. Shall we make a system, outsource it, rent software (which one!), hire a consultant, train employees in house, etc.

Regardless of the attack, a great company must attack it.

Goodman, in a study of 100 companies over three years, identifies 8 problems that great companies have already fixed, and mediocre ones haven’t, when it comes to their VOC process:

1. Inefficient and costly data collection
2. Analysis in a vacuum
3. Inconsistent classification schemes
4. Old data
5. Analysis without priorities
6. Analysis that is not actionable
7. Ineffective presentation of data and findings
8. Failure to track the impact of corrective actions resulting
   from the VOC process

Another interesting observation is the need to reward the marketing department for their attention to the data:

While many companies have satisfaction related incentive systems for operations and service management personnel, they rarely exist for marketing and sales. This is a critical oversight;
TARP’s research has shown that 30% to 40% of customer problems are tied to marketing and sales.

Resources:

Stay Close to thy customers

EFM (enterprise feedback management) blog

Goodman, Depalma: Maximizing the Value of Customer Feedback

A colleague at work suggested I read The E-Myth . After picking it up Friday, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and finished it Saturday. It’s on my top 5 for business, so far. Here is what I learned.
The E is for entrepreneur. The E myth, which Gerber goes on to dispel, says entrepreneurs are super-human. Only these heroes have the right to start businesses. Really what goes on in the rest of the book is a intro to business development. But that would have made a terribly boring title. What’s so exciting about business development? It’s the fact that you didn’t know you needed it.

Gerber first starts with a bit of psychology. Inside of everyone involved in business, there are three personalities:

• Entreprener – This is the dreamer
• Manager – Likes order and predictability
• Technician – Likes the art of the craft, the end product.

According to Gerber, most folks start small businesses because they are a good technician. Technician meaning anything technical; baking pies, programming, styling hair etc. . They make a faulty assumption:

The Fatal Assumption is: if you understand the technical work of the business, you understand a business that does that technical work. pg 13

A clear difference from a bird’s eye view, but this misunderstanding is the most common reason small businesses fail. Each of these personalities has a vital role. For example, you inner technician should be the master of the product, documenting exactly how to reproduce it. You inner manager should implement that system, and be consistent. Your inner entrepreneur should always ask, “what would the customer want?”, and not be contented until they have it.

The enigma with a start up happens after your first couple of employees, when you hand off management by abdication, not delegation. For some reason, the widgets have scratches on the, or they come unglued all the time. In other words, your employees aren’t doing as good as you did when you wore every hat. It only gets worse as you get a larger workforce, until you get so stressed, that you throw your hands up and go back to a one man shop.

So why are the big guys big? The big guys had systems in place to control and reproduce everything worth doing right. Everything! They had a system to teach every employee that process. See, every time you are getting something done, you have to think how can this be reproduced exactly right, thousands more times. A franchise mentality! This is a major shift in thinking for a technician. Many folks start businesses because they don’t want their lame incompetent boss directing their life. The problem is technicians aren’t good at running businesses. Managers and Entrepreneurs are, so you must give them space to work.

My favorite idea found in the E-Myth is not to create a business to work at, but create a business that works. Every piece of your business should be perfectly documented, and adhered too. It should provide a structure for employees to flourish, a “game” for them to play. They can flourish and earn rewards by following the rules. It’s a rule of thumb to document the position well enough for the lowest skilled employee can become great under it. Money saver!

There are more tasty morsels that I didn’t mention, and some good insight on what your system should look like. Worth a read if you ask me.

The fun part about business is the raw challenge of having to face SO many important decisions. It’s not that these are simply a sea of inch-deep and mile-wide decisions, but truly miles deep and wide. It’s like drilling for oil. Look at the decisions you have to make today: you can create a new product, you can re brand your old one, you can expand or change your target audience, you can hire at a low or high wage, you can school or buy books, you can buy books from well established authors or fringe insightful ones, you can get take funding from the big guy, go find a few small guys, or bring your product to market and self fund. I faced all those this month! There is seemingly no clear path. Ambiguity!

To illustrate, consider Microsoft and the Zune. You have to ask yourself, with the billions they spend in R&D, don’t you think some important decision makers in the Microsoft team thought “hmmm, we could make mp3 players much better”, even before the iPod? I am sure of it. However, they didn’t release their mp3 until 5 years AFTER the iPod.

The sea of ambiguity takes style, and intuition to navigate. Microsoft lives in the same world that Mac does, and with way more capital, but the didn’t display the clarity of mind. Maybe all their market research is hurting them! Steve Job’s isn’t big on market research for a reason. I don’t think he is any type of strategic genius, just a great sense of what he wants.

Interestingly, Warren Buffet dealt with ambiguity by lessening it. When living in New York he told reporters he had 100 ideas a day come across his desk, when he only wanted a good one every year. That’s why he moved back to his home town of Omaha. Not a bad system.

Look at so many large companies today that started of with such clarity. Some still have it, others don’t. Ford was maligned for doubling employer wages and cutting hours. That move shortly double Ford’s income. Though, they don’t seem to display that same clarity now don’t you think?

The Success Commandment prevails: Thrive in Ambiguity. Enjoy the sea of decisions miles deep and wide, and know what you want out of it. The folks that can’t will never be seen as powerful leaders.

Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s as we know it today, worked 30 years in restaurant supply sales before making his big move. He knew what worked with customers, and was known to give his clients such advice. Such valuable insights he gained from knowing his costumers over so many years. Along came an opportunity to make a restaurant his way, and out comes McDonald’s.

Charles Merrill had a bottom up philosophy, responding to the public’s lack of education about stock ownership, gave them free education through his advertising. Listening to his customers more deeply than anyone else in his market guided the sale of his service.

Cyrus McCormick, inventor of reaper, would tweak, change, and overhaul his product based on product exhibitions and feedback. 70% of America’s workforce was in farming before the reaper.

Maintaining a tight feedback loop allows the product to meet those needs which you can easily miss.

Notice the commandment doesn’t read “Your customer knows best”. They don’t always. Your customer knows best their problems. It’s your job to translate their problems into your product. If folks new what they wanted, they would be buying Ruben Studdard’s cd’s by now. America voted, right?

Too many times do we see business of high status distance themselves from their customer. Consider this: You have a killer idea for your LG phone. An idea that probably hasn’t been thought of, that would add value and simplicity. How many people would it have to go through before it ever reached the product manager’s desk, and in what condition?

Jun 08 Update :  Closely related to this article is the entry onVOC

Also, Cheers to Ohmar Amad of Commapping.com.  He stay’s tight to his customer base, and that’s rare.