Making people take the stairs

How do you get people to take the stairs instead of the elevator? How do you encourage people to throw their trash in the bin instead of the floor? It turns out if you can't pay people to do it, at least make it fun.

The Fun Theory initiative by Volkswagen did just that. It's a competition to encourage people to come up with ideas of how to make things mundane, well, just more fun. Some of the ideas are indeed wonderful, like making stairs look and sound like piano keys making it fun to use them instead of the elevator next door.

Parents understand this concept very well. It's easier to make a chore into a game than simply make their kids do it. Of course the caveat is once the novelty has worn off you have to find new ways to keep them engaged.

But it did make me think why most managers are not trained to think this way. When I ran software teams, there was only one objective to be a successful leader (note, I used the word lead and not manage on purpose). The objective to create situations where the team could and would initiate the tasks themselves because of the following reasons:

• Passion - the overwhelming desire to want to do something because of a force within
  
• Creativity - the result of a challenge that is often extremely difficult or seemingly impossible
  
• Fun - the sense of achievement and the execution of the task that makes you smile no matter how tough it may be
  

Of course to do so, you have to empower and part of it means making sure they understood and were aligned with your intent. The primary reason we hate letting go? they may do something contrary to our intent. If they are aligned, you can be sure they often come up with even better solutions than you could think of on your own.

My job then? was to Inspire, Initiate and Imagine...

Their job then? was the same to Inspire, Initiate and Imagine...

It's takes a lot of guts for a master to become the apprentice but if you reach that point, you have either lost your job to your protege or made your company infinitely more powerful.

Looking out the window

This is my first official break from work this year. I'm staring out the window onto the slopes of Mont-Saint-Anne, one of the most beautiful mountains in Quebec. Not having touched the keyboard for 3 days is definitely a foreign experience, confirms my condition as a workaholic.

I have noticed how times have changed. Just a few years ago, arriving at a hotel, the first thing the kids would check was if they had a television in the room. This time, the first question was do they have Internet access. I resisted for 2 days amidst protests, you would have thought we were putting them on bread and water.

Today they are out tubing at Valcatier while I catch up on email, checking out iTunes accounts etc. It also means I get to catch up on my blogging that has fallen the wayside. Not that I didn't want to. I had a ton of thoughts but there never seem a good time to quietly put them down concretely. You may say I'm too much of a perfectionist to be a good Twitterer. Saying something flippant and off the cuff is not my style unless it is a bad joke to annoy my kids.

Skiing, even as badly as I do, is an amazing pastime when you get to do it on a large mountain. For an hour (because I'm particularly slow), you get to see the world seemingly frozen in time. The snow damps all noise and if you happen to stop at a spot all by yourself, the silence is pretty amazing. For that moment you can imagine what it would be like to be the last living thing on earth.

The slopes are relatively empty this year as are most restaurants. I hope for the sake of the locals it is because we are a little earlier this time, getting here before the peak season. Perhaps it is a sign of the economy being tougher than we all care to admit.

Happy Holidays!

Making your blog memorable - step 3

People love stories because stories stick. They are tangible and the details are concrete.

A 5 year old can tell you how many pieces of candy he has left because he gave 2 to his friend and dropped 3 during his Halloween trick or treating. But he couldn't probably remember the mathematical equations that support his logic.

Urban legends are novel and unexpected but invariably they happen to people just like you or me and the events no matter how far-fetched are real.

We remember fables and parables because they are a) stories and b) contain real objects and people.

Even though someone may love your blog post, it may not be memorable enough to repeat it. Notice how viral stories are always simple. The Mentos experiment for example. Everyone knows what a Mentos mint is and what Coke is too. If it were about mad scientists sprouting chemical formulae, regardless of how wonderful the effect was, the story would not carried because the message bearers would simply forget the details.

Step 3 is a natural progression of the earlier two steps I talked about, keep our messages simple, unexpected and now in Step 3 concrete.

Experts have a hard time convincing the masses unless they are talking to peers because they have transcended the concrete. For them, the interesting part is how to take a thousand concrete events and predict them with one abstract theory. Unfortunately, the rest of us on the other side of the fence can't make the mental leap to their level of abstraction because we neither have the experience, knowledge or perhaps we really don't get excited about the same things as they do.

Next time we blog, we should ask ourselves are we explaining our experiences or conveying our message with Mentos and Coke or using complex scientific formulae that may make us look smart but at the end of the day far less memorable.

How many people would prefer a simpler web?

I do.

It's a question that continues grow more prominent in my mind over the last few months. Developing for the iPhone taught me to keep things simple. There are only so many things you can do one screen and since you have to tap with your finger, there are only so many hotspots available. While you can scroll on the iPhone, the objective for me is not to require the user to do so.

It's harder than you think. Simple is hard. The rule of web entropy is that like the bedrooms of our teenage sons, if left alone, simplicity usually ends up in chaos.

Nothing is more evident in today's websites and blogs. Given that the resolution of screens are increasing, people are adding more and more, links to flash based ads, double row tabs, links to other websites. Probably only 5% or less on any given webpage is relevant to the topic at hand. The rest is fluff and represents the paranoia of web designers and blog owners that you'll go away without consuming more content.

As web publishers we should think web cuisine, not web buffet. A little content done well goes a long way in getting that user back. A bad buffet really makes no one happy. The consumer learns to filter rapidly. If you asked me what I saw on any given page, I would struggle to tell you beyond the content I was looking for.

So why do we do it? Because the technology allows us to.

That is not to say it is a good thing.

Perhaps it's age but I grow tired of content overload. What I do seek is relevancy and experience. We have yet to learn how to take a white piece of paper and put just enough content to satisfy our hunger.

With that being said, I should heed my own advice and stop right here!

Hopefully Web X.0 will be a simpler, kinder web.

So you think you can dance

That's name of a very popular TV show that finds the country's most popular dancer. One of the best parts are the auditions. Like American Idol, there are clearly people who not talented but nevertheless stand in line for hours for a chance at stardom.

We are all alike. I remember as a child, watching an action movie and for the next week, every kid who went to the movie wanted to be that hero, donning capes, swords and pretend guns.

Nothing's changed really. We still watch TV ads and buy stuff that promises we'll cook like an Iron Chef or make renovations like Mike Holmes. Last week, I accompanied my wife to an art store. It was like Christmas was early. Every shelf had crayons, pastels, paints of every shade and color. Hundreds of books showing you how to draw perfect pictures and paint beautiful landscapes. Air brush kits, projectors that could project any image on any wall, the list goes on an on. I wanted to draw again, paint again.

Then realized that anything I bought would sit on my shelf at home like many other things I bought in the past in the spur of the moment.

It was all aspirational.

That was when the penny dropped. Most of what I feel in life is aspirational. Something lit a fire and emotionally I wanted to do something. In reality, when that moment passes, nothing would be done.

So now before buying something, I make the mental calculation, is this aspirational or inspirational. Aspirational means it got me excited but I either wouldn't have the time or the talent to follow through. Inspirational meant I was capable of finishing what I will start. It is a call to action and there is a happy conclusion.

Of course advertisers appeal to our aspirational side. The people who show off makeup are the most beautiful people in the world. Toyotas are driven by racing drivers. The food is cooked by chefs. "Buy this and you could be like me, rich and famous."

Aspirational means, don't buy that snowboard for myself because I saw my son do some pretty neat stuff on the slopes the other day. Inspirational means try that new recipe for breakfast because there are only 3 ingredients and I can actually cook it.

So next time you pull out your credit card, ask yourself.

Is it aspirational or inspirational?

Making your blog viral - Step 2

Boo!

Think about how people will respond to your blog post. Ask why people will talk about it or, better still, why they will write about it.

Why are urban legends viral? They have a sense of incredulity. People can't believe it, it makes them sit up and they want to share it because of how they responded to them.

People love surprises. Remember how the office loved the fact you brought in doughnuts to the weekly meetings. Remember how they grumbled after 2 months that you're bringing doughnuts again to the weekly meetings?

The unexpected doesn't have to be fictional. It can be a piece of knowledge that people feel compelling to share. That is the power of gossip. The delight of communicating something you know that someone else doesn't.

Did you know there are almost 95,000 applications on the iPhone and you can only load 148 of them at any one time?

I'm willing to bet if you read this post, you'll tell someone in the next 24 hours!

Next time you write a blog post, think Boo!

It's been a while...

Sometimes we get caught up in our lives, our careers, our families, we forget to live in the moment. I was listening to some music today while I was coding. Got caught up by the voice, the inflections, the breath at the end of each phrase.

It made me stop and wonder.

When was the last time, I sat down in the quiet of the evening. Just a glass of wine, headphones and my favorite CD.

With eyes closed, I would focus on each instrument, anticipating the sigh, the breath of every well-known phase. Basking in the moment, letting the emotions wash over me. It made me feel complete, at one with the world. Nothing else mattered.

It's been a while...

We do ourselves injustice to have to share our moments with each other, when each moment deserves its own soapbox. It's like looking at your date with one eye on someone else in the room. But alas in our frenetic world, that's what we do. It's called multitasking.

In the end, it's like eating soup, entree and dessert all at the same time. It fills you up but you would hardly call it appetizing.

We should never have to say, "it's been a while..."

Making your blog sticky - step 1

TheGoodBlogs have been running for over 3 years. I've blogged for almost 4. I've seen a lot of good blogs and a lot of bad ones. Here's my first tip for making your blog posts sticky.

Step 1: Keep it simple

What does simple mean? One idea. One clear idea. For something to be sticky, it must be memorable. We all have short memories.

Bad example: How to make the ultimate 3 course meal. French Onion soup, Filet Mignon and New York Cheesecake.

Good example: Wowing them with the Killer New York Cheesecake.

Question. Which one do you think you will remember? Which one makes you want to share your information.

Blogs are great because they let us ramble, like our diaries. They let us put a lot of ideas in one place. Blogs are bad because most of us ramble and most of us put too many ideas in one blog post.

So rather than give you 6 steps to great blogging. This is all you get. Step 1.

Step 1: Simple means one idea. Make people want to remember it. That's it.

Stay tuned.

Halloween Bunnies

Maybe a little early but the last time we added the Easter Bunny to our iPhone app, it was approved and released the day after Easter. So for Halloween, we didn't want risk being late. And as it so happens we way early. Nevertheless, if you're looking to send a cute bunny to someone for halloween, our iPhone Send a Bunny apps have one just for the occasion.





Shameless pleas for your support... if you like the bunny, download our free iPhone app for the bunny or collect all the bunnies for 99c.

Visit us and get your Halloween Bunny

The subjectivity of value

I was watching a YouTube video about virtual communities called Another Perfect World. Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life talked about how we have a perceived value of ourselves and others have a different value they place upon us. When the large number of people believe that value to be true then you have great wealth.

It's a sobering thought because that is equally applicable in the real world. It's a paradox really because we are taught not to care about what other people think but to be true to ourselves. Yet it the real world, for us to succeed we have to convince others to agree with our assessment of our value before we have a chance of success.

Think about an interview. On your resume you have state why you would be a valuable player and deserve a particular salary. On the other side, they have to agree with that assessment before they will hire you. Are baseball players more valuable than the president of the United States. Based on their salaries you would believe so. It is truly about market forces. Does it really cost $200,000 to build a sports car and is it really worth 20x that Toyota sitting in your driveway? It is because they made you believe it via marketing and scarcity.

So while it is not wrong to have a high esteem of oneself, it is important to remember that at the end of the day, our job in any interview or meeting is to be able to convey that value and what impact it has on the organization. Most of us do a terrible job at marketing ourselves because we are taught at a young age that is wrong and when we see others do it we think they are vain or precocious.

Sometimes letting our actions speak for ourselves is not enough. It is up to us to be heard and to be proactive in setting the price.

There are always two sides to a mirror, how we see ourselves and how others see us. Unfortunately, the latter in reality is what counts if we want to succeed. That is the absolute reality of charging what the market will bear.