The tragedy of our time is that we’ve got it backwards: we’ve learned to love techniques and use people.
[ via Herb Kelleher former CEO of Southwest Airlines - via Chip Conley CEO of joie de vivre hospitality ]
love people, use techniques
why would a company hire people they don’t trust?
I am fortunate enough to work for a company that has a great culture. But, plenty of my friends and colleagues battle the long slow death of a painful relationship with their workplace. The longer I’ve been at Zappos, the more unbelievable their stories have become.
Meanwhile, more and more research is released every day that points to the benefits of providing great benefits to your employees, and taking time to cultivate a great company culture.
Imagine that, happy employees are good for business.
Netflix provides one of my most recent favorites stories in this space:
So if you think people in your organization are predisposed to rip you off, maybe the solution isn’t to build a tighter, more punitive set of rules. Maybe the answer is to hire new people.
To paraphrase one Netflix executive, the company doesn’t have a clothing policy either. But – so far at least – nobody has shown up to work naked.
But for me, the question at the core of all of this that I am most interested in is, WHY WOULD YOU HIRE SOMEONE YOU DON’T TRUST?!?
update: You should probably also read Startup Culture Lessons from Mad Men by Brian Halligan of HubSpot.
customers don’t go to your site for the features, they go for the content
I really enjoyed Karen McGrane‘s talk (embedded below). Some of my favorites:
- “People don’t go to your site to look at your templates. They go for the content.”
- “Emphasize the real goal: not new navigation buckets, but better information for site visitors.”
- “Our new web strategy said, ‘Organize the site around user needs rather than [features].’”
- And, just a general recurring theme, that content creation wasn’t included in any project plans/workflows.
Karen McGrane on Web Content Strategy or “Avoiding the Eleventh hour Sh*tstorm Problem” from UX Melbourne on Vimeo.
Content Strategy at UX Melbourne
View more presentations from Karen McGrane.
5 Secrets of Highly Effective Twitter Users
There’s no way to guarantee success with a Twitter campaign, but you can stack the odds in your favor by following some simple tips to vastly increase your effectiveness. Here’s how to get the most bang for your tweet…
[ via 5 Secrets of Highly Effective Twitter Users ]
You can go read their suggestions. (I might add, “6. If you write articles about twitter, include a link to your twitter account.” But, that is just me. I’m sure Inc. didn’t give Minda Zetlin a say in the matter.)
Personally, I’d stick with:
- follow whoever you want – there is no “follower strategy”
- listen
- be helpful
And a bonus biased comment: twitter is social, social is relationships, if you need a strategy to your relationships something is broken.
Apple Support Communities – Discussions aren’t Social?
“Apple Support Communities brings together thousands of Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad users from around the world to discuss Apple products and topics,” the official introduction reads. “Apple Support communities provides a wealth of information about your favorite Apple hardware and software products to help you get the most out of your purchase. And, in the spirit of community, you can also help other Apple Support Communities’ users by answering their questions.”
[ via AppleInsider | New Apple Support Communities social network to replace Discussions (thank you for the heads up Scott) ]
This announcement triggered a mini-avalanche of undigested thoughts for me:
- Are discussions not social?
- Can you call any website that includes an avatar, a profile page, and a couple of widgets a community? A social network?
- Is every new feature this year going to be called a social network?
I definitely don’t intend for these questions to be a sarcastic attack. I do not think we have come up with good answers to those questions yet.
What would it look like to graph your attention?
Chris has got me pondering what an attention graph would look like, after reading his thoughts about Internet, Social, Interest, Taste, Financial Trust, Local, and Endorsement graphs.
Maybe, in an attention graph, the nodes are attention sources, and relations are time? But then, the relations would have to be measured in a zero-sum game?
I’m still just thinking out loud here, so I’d love someone smarter than me to help out in the comments.
may happiness alight upon you
Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
[ via Nathaniel Hawthorne ]
Posted in quotations 4 Comments
Users Are People Too
Just ran across my new favorite #loveyourcustomer hack!
Back in the video days of Seesmic it was very easy to ‘humanize’ our users. They were real talking faces streaming down our screens all day long. I got to know many of them very well. Literally watching them laugh and cry, some at their lowest moments without hope, others during a wedding ceremony or the first moments with a new child. We flew from around the world to cram ourselves into a basement in the middle of winter, just to hang out with each other. So many of these people are still my good friends today.
For many companies, however, it is not that easy to see the people behind the usernames. Especially not on such a consistent and personal basis. But, no worries, Joe Heitzeberg came up with a wonderful solution:
How do you take a team that’s swamped with work and make them become incredibly customer focused overnight? … Every day, print out a few hundred new user photo thumbnails and post them on the walls.
[ via currentlyobsessed.com ]
Three-minute Rule is a Great first step into Customer Development
Most companies I have spoken with–who are reluctant to explore the customer development process–feel that talking to customers is too hard and don’t even know where to begin. The secret (there is no secret) is to just start. It is much easier to have done something, than to think about doing something. In other words, JUMP IN!
Anythony Tjan has provided a great exercise that should make it easier get started:
You can learn a great deal about customers by studying the broader context in which they use your product or service. To do this, ask what your customer is doing three minutes immediately before and three minutes after he uses your product or service…
[ via The Three-Minute Rule - Anthony Tjan - Harvard Business Review ]
If you still need a little help, (i.e. want to wear a life jacket and an inner-tube before jumping in) then you need to learn how to ask your customers questions. The secret (there is not secret) is to just start. Pick one customer you have spoken to before (not so scary) and ask them those two questions: (1) What were you doing 3 minutes before you last used our product? (2) What were you doing 3 minutes after you last used our product?
Don’t create a form. Don’t send out a mass email. Don’t assign it to your sales team. Don’t make your intern do it. Pick up the phone and call one customer. You don’t need to promise them anything, and you better not try and defend yourself or your product. Just listen, learn, and share the love by saying thank you.
Now, you’re ready to swim in the deep end.
photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenneth_hynek / CC BY 2.0
The question is, are you trying to reach your goals in your business with bricklayers or cathedral builders?
What?