Evernote, convenience, and habits

I was recently catching up on some of my favorite blog stops, and just read an article from a few months back on the Success Begins Today blog, where John talks about the lovely marriage that is Evernote+iPad 2.  John and I are usually of like mind, and our fondness for Evernote is no exception.

Background

I'm a long-time user of Evernote which, if you aren't familiar with it, is an excellent capture and recall tool for storing all kinds of digital information.  You can take pictures of things and add them as a note, you can type things in, you can forward emails and PDF's to it, and much more.

Everything you send to Evernote gets indexed and stored in your account on its cloud-based service.  Once the information is indexed, you can quickly retrieve it based on tags, location, or keyword searches (it will even convert text in pictures to a searchable form - it is awesome for retrieving pictures you've taken on whiteboard diagrams with lots of text on them).

Evernote offers a robust free account, as well as a subscription option (faster indexing of your files, and more monthly storage - most people will be fine with the free version).

Evernote makes it easy to collect and interact with this data - you can run desktop clients on your computer, access it in a web browser, or from mobile clients on most tablets or smartphones.  Very simple.

Challenges

For me, the hardest things with adopting Evernote were:

1. Developing the habit of using Evernote
   • The number of clients available for Evernote (see above) makes this easier but, like with any new process, it took me a while to develop the habit of entering my notes into Evernote.  I wish there were some magic potion that would make this easy, but I don't know of one.
   • One thing that can help is to ditch your paper notepad for a while so you are encouraged to take notes directly into Evernote.
2. Taking notes directly into Evernote in meetings
   • There were a couple of problems in this area:
     • first, my computer was a bit bulky so I didn't carry it around to all my meetings;
     • second, the soft keyboard on my phone or iPad were kind of a pain to type on and I ended up spending more time concentrating on finger typing than I did on the contents of the meeting.
   • The best solution I found for this was to get the Zagg ZaggFolio for my iPad 2.  This is a combination iPad 2 case and Bluetooth keyboard.  When I use this in combination with the Evernote iPad app, I can use my touch-typing skills to easily take notes in my meetings.  The iPad's 10-hour battery life plus the long life of this keyboard (I charge it every month or two) makes this a much better alternative than my laptop.

So, if you're looking for a great way to centralize all your meeting notes, easily retrieve them, and you have an iPad, I think this is a great solution.

What can you change - yourself or others?

Just reading a thoughtful post on Management Craft, in which Lisa Haneberg raises two points:

1. You cannot expect people to be what you aren't.

2. You cannot expect your employees to think or act like you.

Interesting to think about, eh?  How does this match up with the notion that you should surround yourself with people who are weak in your areas of strength? It aligns very well, I think.

One of the temptations I fight is trying to get people to do what I would do in a given situation when, in fact, I may be asking them to fight their nature.  If I let them use their strengths instead of mimicking mine, maybe they'll come up with something awesome that I'd never have dreamed up on my own.

It seems to me that the finesse of managers is to stick to advising and steering our employees on the "how" instead of the "what."  In other words, letting people come up with their own solutions but providing guidance on the best ways to get the idea implemented in light of politics, personalities, and preconceived notions they may have to overcome to be sucessful.

What do you think?

Listen, don't just explain.

I've run into a bunch of situations recently (both work and personal) in which two people get more and more irritated at each other.  In each of these situations, both parties believed they were "right" and both parties went to great lengths to convince the other person.

This is "human nature 101" stuff, but why is it so hard for people to turn off their "explain" gene so they can listen to what the other person is saying?  It happens to us all, so what do you do about it?

If you can't turn off the urge to talk, sometimes it's useful to bring in someone to mediate.  I've found that in most of these cases, the viewpoints are not as far apart as they seem and a few tweaks can result in a solution both people can be happy with (or at least agree to live with).

What solutions have you found to this problem?  Are you a good mediator?  Please share your secrets.

"You - call 911!"

In times of great change, as in times of crisis, leaders sometimes need to jump into "directive" mode.

That's what I realized during some chatting today with fellow managers.  You see, we were talking about how managers and leaders can be more effective in times of change and uncertainty, as part of a discussion about 'situational leadership' and we reckoned that even experienced employees often welcome specific, unambiguous direction in times of crisis.  This is sometimes difficult for managers with experienced teams, as we often think the best thing is just to stay out of their way because they'll figure it out quickly enough.  In reality, even experienced employees can stall out and panic during these times of great change.

This rang true for me, and reminded me of my first aid / emergency medical training.  In that training, they tell you that when someone is having a medical emergency, one of the worst things you can do is trust / hope that 'someone' will do the right thing.  In medical emergencies, they tell you to take charge, look at a specific person and say to them, "You - call 911!" so you don't have to leave things to chance.  In other words, give a specific person a specific thing to do so they can focus on what's required of them.

In times of organizational upheaval or uncertainty, the same principle holds true.  Rather than hope that everyone gets back to work and figures out what to do next, many people look to company leaders to jump into "take charge" mode and start giving specific instructions.  "You - go work on x, and get it done by the end of the week."  This gets people working again, gets them focused, and takes their mind off the chaos.

I've been in uncertain and rapidly changing situations quite a bit in my life, and there are a lot of changes going on in my world right now.  Maybe it's time for me to be more directive to get people focused and moving forward.  What about you?  Any of this sound familiar?  Share your thoughts, please.

Team up - business lessons learned from volleyball

I was watching one of my daughter's volleyball tournaments this weekend and I made a few observations that I think will apply to our work teams:

• Know (and play) your position:  In volleyball,  everyone expects that their teammates will play their position and know where they should be on the court.  When this doesn't happen, it results in a lot of dropped balls.  The same is true in our work teams - people expect you to know your position and not drop any of the balls you're responsible for.
• Talk to each other:  One of the key attributes of a successful volleyball team is that they are constantly talking to each other on the court.  If there is any doubt who should grab a ball, one of the players yells, "Mine!" and everyone else on the team backs off and lets them handle it.  At work, if there is any doubt about who owns what, someone needs to overtly take responsibility for the commitment in question and everyone else needs to back off and let them handle it.
• Celebrate the "aces":  When the server on the volleyball team serves the ball and the other team is unable to return it, the "ace" gets celebrated immediately.  And not just by the players on the field - the ones on the bench celebrate, too.  In our work teams, we should recognize wins as they happen and everyone on the team should have the chance to celebrate - even if they weren't directly involved in the win.
• Reassure and support each other:  When someone screws up, let them know it's OK and move on to the next point (if it's appropriate, tell them what they could've done differently in a constructive way).  In our work teams, the same concepts apply - remember, it shouldn't be personal - it should be about how to recover and learn from mistakes.
• Ask for help when you need it:  On a volleyball team, the setter works really hard - they have to move all over the court and their job is to set up the ball so the "hitters" can make a big play and get a point.  However, sometimes, they just can't get to the ball in time.  The moment they notice that this is the case, a good setter yells, "Help!" or something similar, signaling to their teammates that they need someone to cover their responsibility.  In a team, this kind of behavior is also necessary.  The moment you realize you can't meet your commitment, you need to ask for help - it's much better than a dropped ball with no warning.
• Don't let your attitude wreck the team's attitude:  I've seen huge performance variations between one game and the next in volleyball.  The pivotal difference is often the attitude or confidence of one or two girls on the team - if they are "on," they bring the team up; if they are "off," they bring the team down.  In work teams, never underestimate the impact your attitude and confidence have on the others on your team.  Don't let your negative outlook spoil the team's chances for success.

These are just some of the parallels I drew from watching volleyball.  Hopefully, they will get your juices flowing and help you be a better contributor to your team.