Small Basket

Just a reminder (Brad spoke at Chase Oaks this past weekend) that the number of things under my control is small and the number of things God controls is monumental. Don't poach His eggs. Pun. I made this drawing and put it in my cubicle.  

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MVV #1

I am not finding much time to write so I decided to get out of my own way and use the YouTube Capture app to do *something*.  

Unrelated. I need a haircut.  

It's a Little Bit Scummy...

“.. this soap residue. And I'm not the kind... To let it accrue”

Please enjoy this amazing segment from NPR's Ask Me Another.  

Let me know if it's not a little spoonful of sugar as you're catching up around the house.  

Fire Your Customers

I'm not trying to shock you when I say that you need to figure out a way to get rid of some of your customers.

I saw this when I worked in wireless: Some customers were literally more trouble (in dollars) than they were worth (in dollars).

Wireless carriers today aren't that different from insurance companies (ting, notwithstanding) when it comes to their business model. As a customer, you are paying an access fee (a premium), and the carrier (insurance company) is hoping you use less than what you bought.

In the early days of cell phones, it was different: Carriers passed most of their costs to you. Even though it was more confusing, it was actually way more transparent. For example, you, as a customer of Carrier A, paid for the roaming minutes you used on Carrier B’s network because Carrier B charged Carrier A for those minutes.

It was my job to verify the correct capture of those minutes according to how business rules were written — i.e, what was the carrier cost if a customer started a 30-minute call at an “off-peak” hour and then stayed on the phone into “peak” time while roaming and returning to his home network and running out of billed minutes at the 25-minute mark? We called it “bucketing,” and it was no picnic to verify that a bill was built correctly.

But one day, a smart marketing guy figured out that nobody liked worrying about roaming or how many minutes he had left.

So he got a statistician to calculate the average calling behavior that of customers and extrapolate how much an average customer cost the carrier (roaming, non-roaming, network capacity wise). With that baseline, it was time to start experimenting with unlimited plans and bolt-on features (early nights and weekends, anyone?) to both increase and simplify revenue potential. That's when carriers stopped charging customers for roaming — even though theywere getting charged for those minutes.

Carriers took on the potential for more cost to reduce complexity.

It made it easier to get people to sign up when you could tell them that he service cost $100 a month instead of telling them they'd pay a lot or a little depending on where they were standing and what time it was over the course of a month. The result of that shift was that some customers (who roamed a lot) started costing carriers more than their peers — even though they were paying the same fees as their peers. In extreme cases, when roaming time actually exceeded on-network time every month, this was a real problem.

I'm no accountant, but when someone pays me $100 and costs me $200, I don't think I can make that up in volume.

So the high cost folks got letters and calls with a lovely “it's not me, it's you” message and the phone number and website of Carrier B. In many cases, we even “allowed” them to leave their remaining contracts early, graciously waiving any termination fees (bighearted, I know).

All that to say, no matter what business you're in, I guarantee you that there are customers you that cost you more than they bring you in revenue.

Maybe they call a lot and eat up your support team's time. Maybe they're frequently late to pay bills. Maybe they only use coupons and badmouth you when you don't offer their friends discounts. You should consider whether you should keep these folks around or kindly introduce them to your competitor.

(rerun alert: Originally posted here on Apr 17, 2013)

How to Think

I definitely think out loud and I know it drives a lot of people crazy.

I just did it to one of my leaders at work. I do it to my wife constantly and if we're friends and you've never noticed me doing that to you, um... you're lucky?

And yet, when I try to come up with an idea or solve a problem, I often sit down on the sofa and just try to think. Usually, the more complex the issue, the more I stress out and isolate myself. But instead of picking up a pen or the keyboard, I try to muscle through it without actually using any muscles.

This is dumb.

When you write, it's like thinking out loud but it's better. I'm doing it now. I'm telling my screen what I think. And then I'm reading what I think, tweaking the thoughts that I can now see with my eyes. Something something neuroscience. It sure works. And I'm trying to turn it in to a habit.

I was at a conference and heard Cameron Moll, an internet hero of mine, speak and give us a generous Q&A session afterward. I asked him about the writing and why he did it and what it had to do with the work he's famous for - building amazing websites and creating ridiculously awesome letterpress posters. I wish I'd written word for word what he said, but he called writing and publishing his blog one of the most transformational parts of developing into the type of professional that he wanted to be.

Sorry if this is meta...

... and obvious, but I recommend you take Cameron's advice. I plan to. If you want to do anything well, you need to be  a clear thinker and a hard worker. And writing builds both skills.

Thinking with your fingers on the keyboard, even when you may not feel like you have anything to say, and teaches you what you believe and teaches you that you should try it again tomorrow.

Talking may be one way of thinking out loud, but writing forces you to refine your thinking and leaves you a time capsule of what it was that you thought, even as it changes over the days, weeks, months, years.

Bonus:

Go read Cameron's interview on the Great Discontent.

Friction

To paraphrase Jeff Veen, it's essential to make the right thing the easy thing. And conversely, to make the harmful thing impossible or nearly impossible to do. In the Heath brothers' book, Switch, they apply the concept to discuss how to effect change. To cause disruption, even...

What killed Napster? Conscience? Ethics? Nope. Friction. The same friction that makes music piracy still a fringe activity.

iTunes killed P2P music sharing by charging Napster users and their less techno-savvy friends a buck a song. They nailed it by putting payment negotiation behind a simple password (and later a fingerprint). The card stays in the wallet, the mp3 conversion and metadata management tools sit on archive.org while people tap, tap, tap their phones and tap Napster into obscurity.

Convenience is a killer feature because friction is so powerful. To borrow another Heath Bros. concept, it's the opposite of sticky. And it's all relative - a race to the bottom.

 

I was diagnosed thirty years ago with Type 1 Diabetes. There's no cure but thanks to the miracle of advancing biotech and the dicey human enterprise of self-discipline and private insurance, a long life is within my grasp. But managing this disease serves as a great lesson on how friction cannot only increase engagement with a product, but also can save lives.

To be a healthy diabetic, you have to know your blood sugar, the number (normal is within 80 and 120) that communicates whether you need food (too low) or insulin (too high). Too high over time leads to blindness, loss of vision, heart disease and  too low means you better not be doing anything that requires clear thinking or communication (think: intoxicated).

These four images represent three decades of progress in monitoring blood glucose. 

The Glucometer M was a revolutionary development back in the late 1980's. Before this generation of monitors, you had to hold a test strip up to the vial and guess which range your bg was closer to kind of like the first image. Imprecise. Nightmare.

But even then, checking your sugar with this technical marvel required the following steps:

  1. Prick finger, apply (a lot of) blood to test strip. Push button on meter.
  2. Wait until you hear beeping (usually 90-120 seconds).
  3. When you hear the beep, wipe the strip with a tissue, Insert strip into the machine.
  4. Wait another minute or two for your reading.
  5. Repeat 3-8 times daily.

Fast forward 15 years (for example that Contour Next USB) and the steps go like this:

  1. Push button on meter.
  2. Wait until you hear beeping (usually 2-5 seconds).
  3. When you hear the beep, prick the finger, apply (a drip of) blood to test strip..
  4. Wait ten to fifteen seconds for your reading.
  5. Repeat 3-8 times daily.

But in 2015, it's even easier. And it's way more data rich. It goes like this.

  1. Once a week, use a device to insert a tiny sensor under your skin.
  2. Twice a day, check your sugar with a strip meter (as above)
  3. Anytime you want, glance at your watch to see not only what your sugar is at that moment, but where it's been and where it's going.

I tried that Dexcom Continuous monitor for two weeks and it seems impossible to go backward to spend even the 2 minutes 6x a day when I can know my number as easily as I flip my wrist. 

You want to make your thing irresistible?

Simple.

Kill the friction.

And you can disrupt and create the future. Plus you'll create friction to keep your customers from going to your competitors.

 

Small Stakes

Not a rhetorical question: Is it better to set small and safe goals or set crazy ambitious ones and fall short?  Which one makes for a life worth living?

It seems like I'm setting up a strawman, but I'm not trying to. I'm trying to examine my choices and my goals in order to discover what my aims are. And how I model those ambitions and priorities to those that follow me, my own kids - this matters as my life is a jumping off point for them. 

I need to be clear which way my thinking lies so let's start with a question whose answer damns me presently. 

What would my kids say really makes their dad happy?

If they cleaned their room? Did their chores? What do they say I'm always after them to do? I wish it was "live a life of wisdom and adventure" or "be a blessing to others" - maybe I'd get a “be nice to my siblings” if I were lucky.  

I grew up in a Christian home - where we truly trusted in Christ to meet our needs and guide us into wisdom when we needed it. But that home was a household of two and my mom was always worried about me because of some health issues and well... because I was the one and only - the hope of the next generation.

So we trusted God but we worried a lot. We majored in the minors (or so it seems to me - a man who hasn't yet parented adolescents). We trusted Christ but we were far from the fearless, generous way I wish I could say that I am - not exactly trying to fail fast and make as many affordable mistakes as possible in the service of finding ultimate purpose. Looking back, my mom was pretty brave in her choices (moving away from security at times toward opportunity) ... but I was usually encouraged to continue in my natural (read: fearful) caution. So conservative, so so fearful. 

Fast forward twenty years and I'm majoring in the minors because I am afraid of missing an opportunity and afraid I've lost the plot. I worry about my kids getting sucked into the Internet and having their minds warped (just like my mom feared the music that my 8-bit Nintendo would mesmerize me into a trance). I worry that angry and deceitful actions that I see in them in weak moments could determine their future if not conquered now! I know that's bonkers. I know there's grace. My weaknesses never dropped me into an inescapable hole. 

So how do I regain perspective and remember that wisdom is the opposite of foolishness but fear is also the opposite of trust?

I know better - that growing up (for us and for them) is scary and messy stuff, but you really don't emerge victoriously merely by valiantly dodging smut and conquering clutter. Those stakes are too low. You fight for what matters and win when you habitually taste the full expression of your gifts in the service of others. And if you miss it by your fingertips sometimes, that's how it's supposed to be.

Saturday I was reflecting on what young me could learn from old me about work. Today I think young me is shaking his head at the things I worry about. 

I am tired of playing for small stakes. Not when there's so much to win and even loss is gain. 

Generosity is the Mother of Invention

Tesla? How about a Maverick? 

 

How's this for a use case? Missionaries in remote jungles need cars to traverse rough and expansive terrain, but they can't drive over trees and bodies of water so they need to fly.  

Ingenius. Had never heard of it until I saw this movie (and did post-movie googling. Y'all do that, too, right?) 

The Only Way Out Is Up and Other Lies I Believed About My Career

When I was in high school and college, the last thing I dreamed I'd do was get a job in Corporate America (hear the empty echo?) and give my talents to someone selling widgets or insurance or whatever it was that 17 year olds thought you could “make a living” doing. In my third year at UTD, I was in the full swing of what Christy calls my “post-adolescent idealist phase.”

So since I do everything in 3s, here are three lies I believed.  

1: Advancement is linear

I was hired as an analyst 1. In a year or so, I'd be a sophomore, I mean an analyst 2, my pay would go up 10% and before I knew it, I'd be at double my salary and a manager, like the guy that hired me. After all, everyone who tries advances and the only thing separating upper management from me is tenure and effort. 

In reality, I met lots of analyst 2s in their 50's. But those guys maybe didn't try? And they guys that were managers, a lot of them didn't work their way up through the ranks. And the ones that did? Quite a few were in multiple departments and even other companies before they had that "up the ladder overnight success"

Ah, young Rob, so many things you didn't know and worse - things you needed to unlearn, like...

2. Loyalty is always rewarded

I don't mean to be cynical, but loyalty is not what any company (especially a large one) hires you for  in 2015. They hire you to plug a hole in their leaking dam (which is a reference to this business parable). Ok, maybe that is a little cynical, but the real truth is your skill and dependability is why you're there not your ability to bleed company colors. 

I saw this again recently in my organization where folks that were well loved (and skilled and there for decades) were let go because the last projects they worked on were discontinued and the projects that were still running didn't have open seats they could fill.   

Sad yes, but not evil, which brings me to:

3.  If you're not as successful as you want to be, it's because someone is out to get you!

I added the exclamation point because I wasted (and even still sometimes waste)  so much energy and time looking for imaginary foes to vanquish or prove wrong. Definitely buy Jon Acuff's book or Ryan Holiday's latest for a better treatment, but the short version is this:

It's not you against the world. It's you against the squirrel.  

You're not being opposed or even ignored as often as you're just being briefly noticed and forgotten.  It's indifference not enmity.  

Don't believe me? Tell me the life story and deepest longings of the last people you gave head nods to on your way to the elevator. For bonus points, forward me the email you sent their bosses, demanding they get to do more of the stuff they like for more money. You shouldn't feel guilty for not being everyone's dreams sherpa, but it's healthy to acknowledge that we root for a lot of folks that we like without making their agenda ours, all the time. 

Does that help?  

I've gotten a lot of great advice over the years. At its core, it's been don't stress yourself out about being “on track”, be loyal to the people you love most, and be nice to people. Oh yeah, and I always remember what my dad says, God is your broker. You can't even fathom the deals that he's making for you. It does all work out. So young Rob...

chill out.  

 

1-800 dotcom

I heard from Cheryl Hall of the Dallas Morning News about “1-800” Roy Weber of AT&T - the scientist that invented and demanded the adoption of the 1-800 number, an institution that certainly has (among other things) been the dominant metaphor in how we communicate that someone is the source of some service. 

Everything from 1-800-Flowers to 1-800-Need-Him has used the ubiquity of the telephone and the simplicity of the call to action to drive people to connecting with them. And we used it as a joke to mock friends who represented the epitome of 1-800-SuperNerd or 1-800-Need-a-date. 

Which got me thinking...  

As a culture, the technology changes but the path is the same. We are always searching for that dynamic duo of ubiquity and simplicity.  

Once the web browser was a thing, we needed a simple way to point it at what we wanted. And thus, we needed a simple way to tell others how to get to us.  

WWWDotCom was and is way more compelling than AOL keywords or ugh - directions (go to google search for cats, I'm the third one down). It's so compelling that even as the triple dub has fallen out of fashion, people of a certain age still type it and longtime web denizens still have to buy the .com domain and redirect to what they'd prefer you bookmark in your pinboard or what not.  

Cf. the place you land when you visit www.daringfireball.com

I don't think the hashtag has supplanted WWWDotCom and I don't think Facebook pages will either because while everyone has a browser (even on the same device they can dial 1-800 numbers) nobody wants to type a prefix as long as Pages require or google a hashtag when they want a piece of specific content.

 

So I wonder what's next and laugh a little at the false assumptions future web citizens will make about the 19th century while visiting 1800flowers.com. 

Keeping It Real

The reason we measure anything is because we want to change. It's the same at work as it is at home. 

The business world says what gets measured gets managed. And that's why we invest in BI, in RCI, in Continuous Improvement. 

I had the Advocare app on my phone for awhile. When you first open it, before you buy product of any kind, it makes you measure yourself in all kinds of unpleasant places you'd rather not. 

Management gurus call this a baseline. But around your waistline?  You might call this intrusive. 

But it's pretty clear it has to be done. It is possible and totally deflating to get results without being able to see results.  

The more you care about the outcome, the more you'll need to take a baseline. And the less likely you'll want to.  

 

 

Belief

To believe in someone.

 

What does that actually mean to say I believe in you? Does it mean I believe in your abilities? Your talent? Your character? 

And does that mean that I expect something from you - that I believe that I know how you will behave - what you will or won't do?

I said it to my kid. And what I meant was that I will support him - that I will be there for him and that I believe he will be who he's supposed to be. That he will come through. When it counts.  

So can that belief be shaken? Or taken? Or is it like respect - given not earned.  

Is this kind of belief faith? Or something else? Devotion? Determination? Actualization? A seed of prayer?

 

For my boy, it does mean I *know* he'll come through. And I'll be praying for him.  

Word of Words

 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

‭‭John‬ ‭1:1‬ ‭NIV‬‬

 

 “On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords.”

‭‭Revelation‬ ‭19:16‬ ‭NIV‬‬

If Jesus Christ is the Word, the spoken and living verbal manifestation of God, the breathed syllables that made all life and everything else...

And if He is the king of all kings, lord over all lords, the finest and most majestic of past, present and future rulers... 

Then He is also the finest word ever spoken, the Word of all words.