Developing from ‘Blue Sky’ Requirements can be exciting, scary, and confusing for some teams without a healthy vision and a certain amount of boundaries to work from. This has been my experience in the past.
With constraints come interesting boundaries that force designers and marketers to think creatively. If something were easy, everyone would do it, right? Constraints stretch us out of our comfort zone of what’s ‘known’ and predictable. It’s where true differentiation comes from. Sometimes, constraints even force us to simplify.
Look out for Inspiration!
A carefully drafted vision statement can give people a purpose and a hero’s call to action. Some people generally need to believe there is a cause in their work. I know I do!
I think there are generally three ways to react to work:
The Pessimist reaction: “Aw, man! We have to do this again? It’s [stupid / hard / tiring / etc.]” translation: “I don’t wanna do it!”
The Optimist reaction: “Well, this may suck, but let’s try to make it [fun / less of a beating / over quickly / etc].”
The Opportunist reaction: “Hmmm…. considering the root problem, and the fact that practically all people want to be lazy, there can be money made in fixing this problem. We just need to find a way to reuse whatever we put into it…”
The Cycle of Emotion in Development
Sometimes, I react to a situation in all these ways in the same project (!), but it’s exciting to be the opportunist– even though, ultimately, you know the idea may be brushed aside. It takes a lot of work, people, convincing, salesmanship, numbers, and dedication to sell good ideas … regardless of company size!
Inevitably, I always end up thinking, ‘Oh well, perhaps someone else with more energy has already thought of whatever it is’ 
… Well, hurry up and build it! I wanna use it.
Tags: thoughts, inspiration, opportunity, strategy, laziness, inspiration, optimist
So, an old kindergarten story, The Little Red Hen comes up in my head from time to time, and it always happens when someone says they can’t help out on a new project. I’ll explain by rewording the plot…
The Little UX Architect finds an idea seed; She goes to a Marketer and says, “Will you help me flesh out this idea ?”
“Not I”, said the Marketer, “I have my plans set for the year, and no one has told me to do that.” and the same for the UI team, and Developer [enter alternate excuse here]
The Little UX Architect says, Fine. I will do it myself!”. And she did.
Next, the idea gets fully grown and is ready to sell. She goes to a Marketer and says, “Will you help me sell this idea?”
“Not I”, said the Marketer, “The organization is not built to handle a concept like that right now .” and the same for the UI team, and Developer [enter alternate excuse here]
The Little UX Architect says, Fine. I will do it myself!”. And she did.
Then, the idea gets some buy-in, but it really needs a prototype to get off the ground. She goes to a Developer and says, “Will you help me build this concept?”
“Not I”, said the Developer, “I don’t have the time and bandwidth, because I’d rather work on assigned projects .”
The Little UX Architect says, Fine. I will do it myself!”. And she did.
Finally, the UX prototype is built and it is demonstrated to the company. The Little UX Architect says, “Who will take the credit for this awesome concept?”
“I will!” said the Marketer, “I can really sell this internally to some key folks!”;
“I will!” said the UI Designer, “I will help you make it gorgeous and super intuitive!”;
“I will!”, said the Developer, “I can really tweak the back end for kickass semantic markup and sweet database mojo to accomplish earthshatteringly good reporting.”
And unlike the selfish Red Hen who hogs it all herself, I say, “YES! Let’s make this friggin ROCK!”
I believe that the difference between Innovators and the rest of the pack is their headstrong perseverence after someone says no. Actually, I usually believe it is something really good and novel when people are dead set against it from the onset, because that means change from what is being done today — or at least what has been planned for today. Most people get discouraged, but I just hear, “Fine. I will do it myself!” in my head!
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So, it’s not likely that the people you know will admit this, but… you may very well be WAY more kickass than you realize! .. hey now, don’t let that get to your head, because if I’m right, it can be pretty damn frustrating!
The first step is admitting there is a disconnect. Then, you realize there are some options. You can be patient and strategically influence others or maybe realize your passionate and extraordinary talents are aimed at the wrong people… and could even be more lucrative with the right focus and opportunities!
Admitting you are a revolutionary
Okay, how do you know for sure that you are revolutionary? Let’s throw some scenarios out there and if you find yourself nodding your head while reading most of these… you could be the person I am talking about. Here it goes:
- You plead a case that makes perfect and clear sense to you, but somehow people need to hear it from someone else before they can really “take it in” and buy into it — Almost like you need a “translator”
- Sometimes in meetings or projects you look around and wonder “I am speaking English, right?”
- You propose ideas that take years for an organization or group to “get” and most times they still don’t quite implement it “right”.
- You jump to the problem, solution, or innovation before anyone else. (Sometimes, this means people disagree with you right away, think through it, and end up agreeing with you– even if they don’t realize it themselves!)
- You find it hard to completely relate to other sharp people around you 100% of the time — not because you don’t get them, but because sometimes, you get the feeling that they are smiling, nodding and just trusting your perspective.
- You find yourself often getting introduced to new products, services, or ideas, and saying.. “Hey, I [thought of/tried to sell/tried to build/tried to convince others about] that a while back! I should have stuck with it.”
Well, if those descriptions strike home for you, congratulations! Odds are, you are a KICKASS Revolutionary!! People, bosses, organizations, cultures, and civilization as a whole need you! You are a bold problem solver with strong mental skills. You ROCK, and most people don’t give you enough credit or let you know how important you are. (You may even shy away from the limelight and fanfare, because you just want to get stuff done.) You also seriously share the ranks with successful CEOs… Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Steve jobs, and those guys from Google and Youtube. Yes, you have a shitload of potential. REALLY.
Now, the real downside… who wants to work in an environment of being mostly misunderstood!? Are you happy in that situation? That’s where choices come into play. Maybe you have already subliminally found your way to happy and productive growth, and that’s really cool. Share your secrets! Maybe this will be validation for you. I would venture to guess that for most revolutionaries, they are oblivious to their mental kungfu and it’s been a series of compromises and acceptance that the world doesn’t work the way it should.
Back to the choices, I see primarily 2 options for Revolutionaries. Neither is better than the other per se and, in fact, they may be switched around when it comes time to assess whether you are happy with the success in your situation at the moment.
Plan A: Strategically herd the cats
This is a perfectly acceptable option, and just takes a personal focus shift to master and navigate political BS. It’s completely doable with a little preparation and awareness around where your skills compare and make the most sense for the organization in your view and those at the top.
Speak your mind to the top and get an amicable dialogue going
Look to a political mentor to champion your cause or buy into your ideas. Look for small opportunities to prove your point. The approach of doing so is up to you. Note, that it may be easier phrasing your position through questions that are based as a clarification around something recently announced publicly or your company-wide goals. This technique can be useful in what I call “boiling the frog”. It’s more commonly known as the Socratic Method. look it up.
Try to finagle a “Labs” project or just start out rogue
Sell the idea of looking into a small project with just getting paid to dedicate a few hours per week to developing an idea or prototype. Also identify some other key people (I call this the garage band) that will help you get it going and keep you motivated.
Look for opportunities to point out successful examples of similar or slightly larger organizations have had. The companies don’t have to be in the exact same field. Many times themes from general aspects like merging ecommerce with social networking can get futuristic ideals across. Basically, you have to be willing to plant seeds in the right people’s minds… even when they don’t know they are ready for it.
If selling the idea first is more effort than you are willing to do, don’t ask permission. Just do it! Work on a prototype. The tradeoff you make here is that you may not be getting paid for the hours you put in, and no one is expecting the elevator demo pitch, but maybe you can finesse a middle ground. Also, I have found that even garage bands need a little fire under them. Working towards a committed deadline can give more immediacy and make the decision for committing off time harder to procrastinate. (I definitely don’t have this skill honed)
Key things to know about Plan A
It will be rewarding, frustrating, and most of all a learning experience about people, pressures, and business BUT knowing your worth and your skills, you can jump to option 2. but be aware that when selecting option 2, you always have SOMEONE to convince… investors, board of directors, clients, etc. Jumping ship or being your own boss can be harder than your current situation. Grass is always greener.
If you can’t get buy in from coworkers to be apart of the voluntary garage band, look outside. Check out local events like barcamp.org. There are tons of passionate people that are looking for a hobby and want your vision to create something great! Trust me.
Plan B: Look at other ways to Focus your skills
Are you focused on the right job? What are your strengths and weaknesses? How can you best focus your sweet skills? What team set up works best for you? What schedule is your “I kickass mostly at this time of day/week/month”?
You could look at other job postings
This could be internal and external. Perhaps your role doesn’t currently have the more strategic influence that it should. Roles like that are out there. Notably, most organizations that post job descriptions don’t always mean what they say .. or mean it the way you read it, so getting to know the company and contacting ex-employees in that group, can help set you up for appropriate questions to ask the interviewer or recruiter. Oddly enough, you are interviewing the company and position — not the other way around. (Yes, you are that needed!)
Think: Will that job give you the appropriate leeway and respect to do what you do best.?That is the list of REAL benefits. (read my earlier post on why your title is meaningless and your department may be a joke) HR perks are the bonus. They won’t keep you bought into a dead end that forces you to execute on misinformed organization — unless you really decide on sticking to Plan A. The good news is… it’s still your choice.
You could go out on your own
This is a tricky endeavor and usually includes careful planning, great contacts, pretty good reputation, and realistic fall back plans… or some risky dumb luck and a sugardaddy. I am definitely not the expert on how to do it, but I can say that with the right strategic navigation of your skills, there is a booming market where your futuristic ideas as silly and obvious as you may seem to think now.. are the next big thing in a few years!
Going out on your own can be much like the exercise of putting a garage band together. It takes discipline and self awareness about the skills you do and do not have and frankly your thresholds and boundaries. Many CEOs needed the partnership of a different personality to balance out a successful business. The financial and business sense of it is just as crucial if not more so when you go out on your own. I’ve heard it’s a real learning experience. For more experienced detail on stuff like this, lookup Garret Dimon, Brian Fling, Jeff Corkan, Brian Oberkirch and Jake McKee for insight.
Another touchy soft skill and Intellectual Property aspect to be aware of is in the transition from worker to possibly competitor can be a big political awakening. I don’t know about you, but I am not a big fan of being sued. Don’t let it scare you off by any means, but cover your bases.
Key things to know about Plan B
Know when to ask for help, and be very careful about burning bridges. I can speak from experience that bottling up frustrations and letting them out at a key interval may feel really good at the time, but its a small industry. It can be overcome, because revolutionaries can be notoriously hard to work with, yet respected for their work and contributions. Just be aware that when you think that person that violently gets on your nerves because they “doesn’t get it” or “is just a worthless ladder climber”, you may directly or indirectly be impacted by that person’s perception of YOU. That means lost jobs, clients, projects and MONEY! I’ve seen it happen AND I’ve burned bridges and even repaired one or two.
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About Success as a revolutionary
Most of all, realize what the hell you want and what makes you happy and productive. Winning as a revolutionary is about using your assets and skills while continually learning about what works and doesn’t work. Keeping a zest for playing with the “experimentation” of non-revolutionary thinking is what makes you a revolutionary in the first place! The risk has the potential for great success or great failure for whomever the “owner” of your endeavor is. Food for thought, maybe you have more tangible suggestions for plan C “don’t quite your day job, but innovate on the side” but, most of all… Don’t lose hope in your ideas, and keep KICKING ASS!!
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I made this at Hero Machines 2.5 at underground online, but I uploaded it through FLock in a stupid simple way!
Read more on my Flickr description Notice the “error message”. LOVE IT!
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So yesterday at Mobile Jam Sessions there was a pretty provocative and passionate discussion about influencing the wireless operators to evolve. Gregory Gorman started an ineresting and passionate debate to refute the idea that carriers are just a bit pipe. At first, I was really puzzled as to why I would even care. Then, after explaining the interesting challenges and stellar opportunities that come with a Billion dollar dinosaur that handles virtually all your personal information, location, and frequency of behavior- like who do you call, text and even email and how often… with the potential to even data mine tex messages and so on. Well, after all that, I realized they actually are a platform after all! They just may not have the right talent or experience/focus to monetize these assets in positive ways that would give consumers another reason to switch carriers besides the typical free phon and cheap plan reasons. Now THAT is pretty compelling food for thought. Here is an idea I have come up with so far…
If an operator treated their “older brother” program as an opt in beta for customers for which, in return, customers got either free or subsidized billing to test out ways to use data to make consumers lives EASIER instead of an advertising aproach for monetization (like throwing it all to Google). I think that would be worthwhile. I’d love to be part of an ideation brainstorm in any operator labs that may be thinking the same thing.
The truth is in the mobile and even web world, convenience is in all the little use cases where people are hassled to get stuff done. I bet if you consciously logged each and every little hassle you have in an average day it would be staggering. Now back to this Billion dollar company that you already pay anyway. Wouldnt it be great if it got better at other things besides logging your minutes,texts, and kB transfer, tracking your billing info, and giving you quick access to 911 and information. What if there could be a two way conversation? I wonder what Mace would say to that!
Also, check out Cellspin on your mobile. It’s pretty close to the intent of a mobile flock browser.
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Something is technically wrong.
Thanks for noticing—we’re going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.
I totally prefer personality over ROBOTIC ERROR MESSAGES (must say while making robot motions and using Asperger tone). Can you guess who this message is from?
Answer:R-E-T-T-I-W-T (backwards)
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I wanted to share the features of my favorite and VERY USER-focused social media browser with you. I have used it for 2 years or so, and they keep making so many AWESOME improvements to the firefox-based browser! I demo’d this at Community Camp earlier this year and there were still a lot of folks that may have HEARD of it but never used it.
I can’t wait until a mobile version of this paradigm comes out.
Anyway, here is an overview of Flock Features:
- “My World”
- “People” sidebar
- Media Bar
- Feeds sidebar
- Search Engine options
- Email Inbox
- Favorites
- Accounts and Services sidebar
- Web Clipboard
- “Blog This” feature with builtin remote editor
- Photo uploader
… all
built right in to the browser! It’s a ME platform instead of a web platform. This will be an image-heavy post that I plan to share as a web demo.
“My World”
“People” sidebar
Media Bar
and Media detection
Feeds sidebar
Search Engine options
” style=”" title=”" alt=”" />
and Search engine detection
Email Inbox
Favorites
(which can also be set to post to del.icio.us)
Accounts and Services sidebar
Web Clipboard
” style=”" title=”Web clipboard” alt=”" />
(for
dragging and dropping bits of content from pages– instead of favoriting whole page)
“Blog This”
feature with builtin remote editor
Photo uploader
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The 10 Changes a CEO needs to make to win young consumers – #8 Give up on owning the brand
I love this site
Blogged with Flock
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I have had an interesting debate with my mobile web friends over the recent Michael Mace post for which he finally wrote a follow up that I believe clarified his real aim was criticizing the top-down distribution!
I am a huge fan of Mace, but my take on it is… there are THREE blatant things that make me believe RIP is considerably overstated and a bit further off.
—————————————————————————————————————–
1. Exposure - Average people (not just us “dot com” and mobile junkies) have to be able to discover the functionality and be willing to evangelize it over the stupid simple way of being on deck and thinking “ooh what does THIS do?”.
Also note that carriers are savvy enough to find ways to make more money. Verizon has already capped their “unlimited” plans so that people have to watch their usage again. More than likely, they will try to use this influence to make specialized/highlighted services (driven by ad dollars) that seem to help users save money again. Wireless providers won’t go down easy into “dumb pipe” land.
2. Experience of Functionality - Some things like games that don’t involve syncing or remembering important information and require instant gratification or unique to leveraging the usability of the unique device (like Golden Tee or centipede on a blackberry pearl) don’t make sense via an undependable web connection.
That has nothing to do with the method of distribution though and in many cases why not go to centipede.com or something similar to download it over-the-air (instead of allowing all the networks to slice off the developer’s profits). Going direct is a Win-Win for Developers and End users! … but what business model makes sense for 3rd parties like Nokia, Handango, and wireless providers?
3. Big Business needs some controls and will continue to negotiate special devices, tools, and services to support their closed networks. That’s how BlackBerry and millions of other custom B2B development shops got to the success they have today.
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… All that said, Yes! there is a huge opportunity to cut out the middleman and creating kick-butt, stupid simple apps (web where it makes sense and mobile specific where it makes sense) that people love and are worth telling people about. The ability to circumvent the networks and their greedy pocketbooks is getting the attention of distributors.
Content and services that are in good terms with the Customer are King! On that note, check out Google Gears going mobile… Google Gears in Your Pocket
“…the ultimate goal of Google Gears is to create a standard, web-based mobile platform …” - Fierce Mobile Content
“Mobile browsers simply cannot do much of what you want applications to do,” writes Google software engineer Chris Prince on the web services giant’s official blog. “The mission of Gears is to extend the capabilities of web browsers. It is clear to us that mobile browsers can benefit just as much as desktop ones. By adding features to mobile browsers, it becomes
possible to deploy an increasing number of mobile applications as web apps.”
Yes, I irrationally heart all mobile apps!
What do YOU think? Will killer mobile web browsers and Google-like services along with improved coverage, like wimax prove Mace right?
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