Work, in Plain English

“To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.”

- Jean Rostand

Otherwise known as the Color Cue®2, I read an ecstatic review for Pantone’s photospectrometer thingy on buy.com. Me, every time I look at it, I want to point it at a Pokemon.

I am helping a large corporate client organize their purchasing system for routine print orders.

Here are the questions I am asking:

1. What is the Old Guard used to? What do they LOVE and take pride in about the present system?
Usually, early systems in an organization are based on trust and feeling trustworthy. Why would I want to mess with that? These are the people who got us where we are today.

2. How and where can we open up better communication between the departments who use and request printing?
At the moment, the folks in Finance might request stationery just days after Marketing has received their delivery. In the world of printing, combined orders can save a whole lot of money, not to mention the frustration of discovering that big box of letterhead at the front desk isn’t for you!

Amid proliferating departments and quickly changing roles, we just need to improve the way we turn around to key users and say, “Need some, too?”

3. Where else are we wasting time, effort and money?
Stick real close to the order process (all the way through to delivery and storage of materials), and ask lots of dumb questions.

We set up an order log, and entered all routine print orders for the previous 18 months. We included quantities, requestor’s name, printer’s name, price and print specs. By breaking the order log into sections, we could see the history of each item (such as letterhead, envelopes and window envelopes) separately. This was a very simple, but powerful way to see trends emerge and anticipate future needs. The order log lives on the company’s Wiki site, so anyone can access the information at any time.

4. Who gets the price before the order, and who gets the bill after it is delivered? If it’s two different individuals, how do they compare notes?
For the person who ordered, it’s a matter of closure. For the one who gets the bill, the need is for context. By facilitating communication, we’ve restored accountability.

Remember, the pluses of the original system are an excellent place to look for new systems. Often, all we need to do is make it easier for people to do what they were already doing. Make adjustments for growth within that strong foundation.

I’m still staring blankly at huge parts of it, but that’s a good thing: iA’s 2008 Web Trend Map is ready to download, admire and puzzle over.

For the third time, iA has selected the websites they consider to be most influential and successful, and pinned them down to the greater Tokyo-area train map. Not only that: There are some great related posts, including some intriguing head-butting with Microsoft’s Steve Clayton.

iA has adopted a “magazine” format that I find maddening. Thank goodness, I was able to scrabble through the admittedly enjoyable and forward-looking jargon, and figure out that the Notebook is the simple chronological archive I was looking for. In other words, it’s the “blog view” of their blog.

Check out the Notebook to find more posts discussing the Web Trend Map. Or, tell me how you navigated the site to find related articles.

A site called Donate a Gift Card has taken care of this sticky issue. You can take those remainder amounts you’re never going to use on old gift cards and donate them to the cause of your choice.

If there’s absolutely nothing left on a gift card, you can check out this coaster idea covered in a Treehugger post, or get in touch with the folks at Earthworks. They recycle scrap PVC (which is what most gift cards are made of). After I finish (or get tired of) cleaning the kitchen, I’m going to drop them a line to find out how to do it.

I’m perusing the Forrester Research website, taking in Provocative Predictions based on Rigorous Research. As usual, it’s exciting, but I’ve always been an annoying student. The more I read, the more there is to question, and sometimes it’s only a matter of minutes (this time I made it past 20) before I hit critical mass, and have to battle the urge to bolt. Usually, that means: Tackle something productive, like return to the project I was taking a break from. That is, “Stop watching, and start making.” In the case of one particular bit of information, however, I experienced the intense desire to go find some sci-fi pulp.

Well, yes, it’s a lovely way to escape the realities of an accelerating world. But look: Simon Yates, in a summary for a lengthy and expensive forecast on Worldwide PC Adoption, says that not only will the number of consumer users double from one billion to two billion within seven years, but that this vast population is “a market that no one really understands yet ” (italics are mine).

I love statements like that, partly because the author is no longer making authoritative proclamations that an adult reader must continually evaluate as little more than conjecture. Yates has now joined me in saying, “I don’t know,” and, “What if…?” and, “I wonder…?”

Hence, the urge to hit the used book store to root out some forgotten paperback with an intriguing cover.

The impact of another billion computer users – readers, participators, contributors, and a questionable proportion of buyers – will be terrifically complex. There will be obvious changes, and subtle changes. Beneath and within those, there will be layers and layers of unimaginable change. The more we look, the more we’ll find. And because reality will likely be unexpectedly, outrageously different, the best prophets may be those who are unfettered by Rigorous Research. It may take more than one, with Book A exploring the essence of western cultures, Book B upending possibilities about overlooked cultures and Book C tromping across the collective human experience. Somewhere, in some yellowed and mildewy book about future battles and future love, I’m betting somebody’s musings have already become hindsight.

And you know what they say about hindsight.

Saw this above my gmails this afternoon:

“The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.”

– Oswald Chambers

There is a place for blame, particularly if it’s a place that’s visited briefly, on the way to somewhere else. The key is to remember that when we judge someone (or ourselves) for blaming, we’re not improving things.

More often than not, blame is a tiresome game we catch ourselves and others using to avoid responsibility. It’s not pretty, and most of us work hard to root it out. After all, blame is considered one of the greatest impediments to effecting change.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross included feelings of blame (along with anger) in her “Five Stages of Grief”. A critical part of her contribution was to make us aware that all the feelings that go along with extreme change are normal and acceptable. In fact, she originally presented her ideas as “the Five Stages of Receiving Catastrophic News”. That’s any catastrophic news: Even positive experiences can trigger some or all of the stages of grief if the change is significant and/or sudden.

The US Army has an interesting page on change management that uses Kubler-Ross’ model to help program managers deal with emotional responses to change. And the study of change management itself—from managing small, personal changes, to project changes, to massive organizational or societal changes—often looks to that same model as a way of addressing how human beings deal with change. In fact, there is an enlightening chart that not only illustrates the stages, but also serves as a simplified road map for navigating some of the sticky pitfalls (“Everybody’s furious: I’ve failed!”).

Consider the possibility that we may use blame as a handrail to pull ourselves out of even more debilitating feelings. If we keep reaching for the next handrails past blame, rather than stopping there, we’ve moved ourselves into more positive and productive states of mind. I haven’t seen the movie, The Secret, but I’ve read some of the Abraham Hicks material that sparked it, and there’s an awesome list of emotions, called the “Emotional Guidance Scale”. It climbs from the darkest, most helpless, to the grandest and most elevated feelings (well, actually, it starts at the positives and works down, but I tend to read it the other way around). He warns against attempting to pop from fear and hopelessness directly up to happiness and joy (have you watched anybody attempt to do this?), and suggests allowing even a few of the in-between steps.

Both Kubler-Ross’ model/chart and Hicks’ list are profound tools for seeing emotions—even “bad” ones, like blame—as part of a continuum. Remembering that it’s a continuum, a process, can help us deal with change, respond to negativity, and guide challenging projects through to great ends.

I am up to my ears lately because I have succeeded in attracting an abundance of dream clients: Creative, innovative, deeply thinking, open to possibility… Ayeee!!

The past two weeks have mostly been spent creating flowcharts, communicating, adjusting flowcharts and communicating some more. For once, I’ve been thankful for the boring little projects one can sweep together quickly, fold into a zip file, and Send.

Of course I love those dream clients.

That’s why I call them Dream Clients.

And as I had hoped, they’ve got me thinking. At the moment, I’m thinking about how to encourage all this creativity and innovation I’m deluged with, and still get the work done.

My key tool is what I call “mirroring”: I mirror the client’s ideas back to them, but in as organized a way as possible. Mostly, that involves a flowchart, a short list of project deliverables, and a rough list of tasks.

Unfortunately, all that accomplishes at the moment is a friendly letter thanking me for clarifying thoughts, and an inspired, stream-of-consciousness fountain of new ideas.

I’m convinced there is a way to encourage creative clients, but still finish projects and make a living. At the moment, however, there’s such an abundant flow of creative thought, I feel lifted off my feet, and the solid ground of specific, productive tasks.

Let’s trust that all is well, and let that creative flow do its thing for a bit. We’ll keep track of hours, and add emphasis (big, bold, red letters) to a note I included in a recent project estimate:

Planning, project management:
This includes charting the site, which I’ve already done, as well as correspondence, distilling meeting notes, creating and keeping to schedules, and confirming the best software resources for your requested features. Keep in mind that—particularly, but not only, once we get going—changing feature requests means more time spent in this department!

Hm… should I say “more time and money”? What are the pros and cons of making that crystal clear, down-to-earth statement? It’s certainly costing me both time and money. But there is also something else I gain when I do a little flagrant, time-wasting Dreaming.