Introspection – Powerful Stuff

In my last post, I mentioned I’d been doing a lot of introspective thinking lately but what I didn’t mention is that I’ve had help with that.  My friends at Whakate sent me an advance copy of their Introspection Handbook and I have been putting it to good use.

The book (published as a PDF) has an accompanying workbook.  The two artifacts work together to guide you through a process that takes you through various aspects of your life experiences, attitudes, and what not.

You start with the ever-popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test to get a better feel for how you’re wired (Whakate has an online version of this test to get you going).  There are also some in-depth materials about your type – very helpful whether you’ve done the MBTI before, or not. 

As you go through the book, you are encouraged to analyze your thoughts around different scenarios to help you figure out what’s working and what’s not in each area.  They may be a little tough to see on the diagram at right  but the areas are:

Personality Assertiveness Values Script

Influence Goals Journal

As you can see, “You” are at the center and this book is about helping you understand yourself better and getting more deliberate about how you live your life and influence the world.  As my wife often says, “You need to teach people how they should treat you.”  This book will help you in that journey.

I must say, the results I’m getting are better than I expected.  I am also finding some things I don’t really like about how I’ve done things in the past, and am working to improve myself so I get better at them in the future.  Not a bad outcome from a book, eh?

If you’ve been avoiding that objective look in the mirror or you want to spend more time analyzing how you’ve gotten where you are, I highly recommend this book.

By the way, it helps to set aside some “quality time” and put yourself in the right frame of mind to get the most out of this book.  When I first read it, the book didn’t really resonate with me as much.  However, I revisited it following a disappointing setback and found it to be just what I needed.

Do You Have A Permanent Record?

One skill I wish I could acquire from someone else is to be more disciplined about writing things down.  OK - so I do write a lot of ideas and tasks down (thanks to GTD I’ve gotten much better at this).

What I mean is “bigger” things, and writing them down more explicitly and earlier.  I have a friend that is very good at writing ideas down even while they are vague, then refining and clarifying them over time.  I, on the hand, tend to wait until I think the ideas are almost “done” before I write them down.  That means a lot of things get thought about, talked about… but not recorded.

You’re only hurting yourself with this rambunctious behavior…Right?

As a consequence of this tendency to leave things open-ended, it seems a lot of my grand  ideas don’t go anywhere because I never finished developing them, or I just move on and forget about them.  This, I believe is caused by a combination of:

• my introverted thinking style (I’m an INTJ / INTP on Myers-Briggs),
• my love for “fluidity” in the options I pursue, and
• fear of failure (or dislike for being held accountable?), at some level.

Until recently, I didn’t think of this as a big deal.  However, I have been very introspective lately and thinking about a few problem situations where I can see the negative consequences of not writing things down…and it bothers me.  You see, I have seen situations where the lack of a written record of ideas, commitments, and such has led to ambiguity that caused problems later.

Revising Verbal History Is Pretty Easy

In my opinion,the problem lies in the fact that human memory is fallible, and is much weaker than the human ego.  In the situations I’ve observed, this inherent conflict has led to things like:

• people not getting credit for some great ideas, because others didn’t remember where the idea came from;
• people not being held accountable for commitments they’d made because the commitments were never documented;
• people “adjusting” what they committed to, bringing it more in line with where things actually ended up;
• people moving accountability to someone else, when that wasn’t the original intent (sort of a scapegoat maneuver);

and things like that.

In most of these cases, the “revisionist historians” weren’t malicious – they were just trying to turn things to their own advantage and, I believe, in some of the cases they actually believed the altered back-story was true.

Permanent Records Are Harder To Change

What do I take away from this?  Writing plans and “big ideas” down is important – even when they are in their formative stages.  That will help you hang on to your ideas so they don’t drift away, help you keep track of where the good ideas (and bad ones) came from, ensure accountability, and – perhaps most importantly – give you the means to compare what happened to what you thought was going to happen so you can learn from your successes and failures.

So – my question to you:  what’s your advice to someone trying to develop this habit?  How do you overcome a tendency to take life as it happens and move to a more concrete model where plans, goals, and intentions are actually written down? 

Do tell.   And in writing, please!

So much for Exercise…

Thanks to Twitter, I found out about a new gadget Honda has created, called the "UX-3."  It is like a Segway but intended for use in the office, while seated.  The video below is in Japanese, but the coolness transcends all languages - check it out (here is the link if you don't see the embedded video).

From a technology perspective, I think this is extremely cool.  But come on - we have enough challenges with people becoming unfit from a sedentary lifestyle!

I still want one, though.  If you work for Honda and want a US-based blogger to do a review of the UX-3, just let me know!

"The paper accepts everything"

The title of this post is something I heard from someone in a meeting today, and what it means is something like:  "You can write anything you want - but doing what you wrote is another story."

In a sense this is a double-edged notion - while it can be very liberating to create grand plans, they can also be very intimidating.  When it comes down to execution, what you wrote can be very hard to do.

Accountability is crucial in a team

This quote came out during a discussion in a team meeting, and was triggered when an "idea guy" was creating a wonderful vision filled with fantastic possibilities for our products. 

The "doer guy," whose team had to actually implement all of the ideas in our software is the one who said, "The paper accepts everything.  My team can't accept everything.  Now, let's get real about what we're going to do."  In other words, he wanted to take the possibilities down to a list he could commit to, and be held accountable for.

The interesting thing is that our team hasn't always been this way.  Typically, we would just say "yes" to everything (or at least to too many things), then try to make it fit during the product development cycle.  The consequences of this approach?  Disappointment in one form or another - either we fell short on product functionality or we missed our delivery date.

What changed?  Well, we agreed we'd be more resolute about creating specific commitments, and more diligent about enforcing accountability for those commitments.

We're not perfect at this yet, but the direction is right and the impact has been positive for us.

Even if "The paper accepts everything," that doesn't mean the team has to.

Marketing in the Time of Cholera

Just finished reading a book by a friend of mine, Mark Gaydos, who’s chosen the provocative title, “Marketing in the Time of Cholera: : 6.5 Fundamentals for Thriving in a Toxic Economy.” Mark’s an industry veteran in marketing, as well as a university instructor on this topic, so he really knows his stuff.

Mark’s premise is that you don’t have to create some wild, crazy, Kanye West-like incident to stand out in the market, and that “marketing fundamentals” can guide you on where and how to invest for maximum success and revenue influence from marketing programs.

The book is very instructive regarding how to view your marketing programs from the customer’s perspective, and what kinds of metrics and indicators you can use to measure your success.

The book include sample analyses of marketing programs, examples of effective & ineffective web sites, banner ads, newsletters, etc. which help illustrate how to take a customer-oriented marketing approach.

The best news?  The book is free, and Mark doesn’t even ask for your email address (I guess he’ll make it up in volume…) 

You can download your free copy at the Marketing In The Time of Cholera book site, where you’ll also find a couple of videos in which Mark discusses how the book can help you.  Enjoy!