Genuine Curiosity

Wanna wiki?

In the past, I've written about Wikis and how useful I've found them to be for collaboration in my company. In the olde days, only geeky types used Wikis. Now, there are a lot of positive changes that make wikis more accessible to the mainstream (you've experience a form of Wiki if you've used Wikipedia, for example).

Here are a few Wiki options I know a lot about, and the links to get there if you really wanna wiki:

TWiki

TWiki is billed as an "enterprise wiki" and is the Wiki tool that has been in use in my company for the last 6 years or so. It is very flexible and stable, can be customized and is very scalable. However, you must install, administer, and maintain the platform yourself. This is better suited for organizations with a more technical user community and a dedicated (at least part time) Wiki administrator.

pbWiki

pbWiki is a Wiki "platform" including the software and service to get going on a Wiki without installing the software yourself. They have a free version of their Wiki platform geared toward individuals, students, and educators. From their home page, you can sign up for a free account or try out a demo Wiki they've published.

pbWiki also has a small business-centric version of their Wiki platform, with some setup and manageability improvements and more robust permissions management. This costs money, but the price seems reasonable for business collaboration. Here are some videos discussing their new features:

• What's the business value of pbWiki?
• What's new in pbWiki Small Business edition?

Wiki using Microsoft Sharepoint

Sharepoint has always been a group collaboration tool, but it can be a little (a lot?) clunky to learn. Microsoft has incorporated Wiki features into Sharepoint 2007 to get into this meme. Read more about Sharepoint Wikis here. We're just getting into this in our company, as a way for less technical users to collaborate.

Other options abound

The resources I mentioned are just scratching the surface, and were selected because they are the ones I've been personally exposed to. If you know of other options that you love, please add them into the comments on this post along with your brief review (even a thumbs up/thumbs down or short list of pros and cons).

You can’t coach height...

I've just returned from a week in Japan where I was speaking at a conference on JSOX (Japanese Sarbanes-Oxley). While I was there, I visited with a bunch of customers, prospects, and partners. My goal in these meetings was to develop a more tangible understanding of some of the business drivers in the market so my company can provide a stronger solution in Japan.

In the course of these meetings, I was extremely impressed by one partner I met with - not just by what they do, but by how they have built their company. When we started the meeting, they wanted to begin by explaining their company philosophy to me - before we talked any "real" business.

They explained that, though they operate in a very technical market space, they don't hire specifically for technical skills or expertise. I was intrigued - "What do you look for when you hire, then?" Their answer: "We hire first for integrity and core values. We can teach technical skills, but we cannot teach integrity and ethics. Our customers trust us with their IT infrastructure, including things that have sensitive data on them - and we must be trustworthy. If we start with employees with high moral character, we can help them learn the skills they need."

I asked for a copy of their mission and values - which they really apply in their business (I saw some great examples of this even in my short visit with their President/Founder and members of his team). I'd like to share them with you - maybe they'll inspire you, as they do me:

Embracing a global philosophy

Here is an excerpt from the English version of their company brochure:

"All of us at [the company] firmly believe that having the strength 'to safeguard things that don't change' and 'to strive to see the things that cannot be seen' is essential, and that improving oneself is a daily challenge. With that in mind, our philosophy is: Cherish the immutable. Enjoy in moderation. Value the people around us. Observe propriety. Be attentive when communicating. Persevere to the best of our abilities. Apply imagination and creativity in forming ideas. Share knowledge and experience. Have an altruistic heart. Appreciate opportunity and use a critical eye in analysis."

Very inspring.

Their results

I don't think it's an accident that this is a rapidly growing, profitable company (they've tripled in the last couple of years). And I imagine they have a very loyal employee base (they were training about 30 newly minted university grads in one of their training rooms when I was there - all hired for core values).

I think they are headed for greatness - and I think we can learn a lot from this approach. Another interesting benefit of this approach: the space they operate in has traditionally had a scarce hiring pool in Japan, but their method should be very insulated from that scarcity since they can create their own workforce on demand. Way cool.

Oh - and the significance of the title of this post? The notion that this company understands that you "can't teach integrity" reminded me of an observation I once heard from a basketball coach. He talked about how certain, uncoachable attributes made it easier to succeed in basketball. In his example, he said he could help players improve in just about any skill, but he could never coach height.

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Related items:

• Not what, or how - but why? (9/27/2005)
• Quiet actions speaking loudly (12/9/2006)
• Hire on... Fire on... (6/10/2005)

Productivity and Efficiency Mojo

A couple of productivity-related items have come my way recently that I think are well worth sharing.

Time Management Manifesto

The first item is a manifesto that Francis Wade has written at ChangeThis, called "On Time Management: Toss Away the Tips, Find the Fundamentals." Great stuff - click through, vote and encourage him to write it. [NOTE: The manifest has expired - click through the link below to see how this guy thinks]

Francis lives in Jamaica where he can truly enjoy all the free time he creates with his time management kung-fu. If you want to see more about how Francis's head is wired, you can see some of the concepts he's developing on his blog.

Time Management Resources

Mother of pearl, this is a nice list! Rich sent me a note bringing my attention to his awesome list of productivity resources, Freelancer's Hyper-Drive: 131 Productivity Boosters for Email, Instant Messaging, Word, Excel, and More. Some of my all-time favorites are on there, including ClearContext, ActiveWords, and Jott. But wait - there's more! To be specific, there are 128 others, many of which I was totally unaware.

The only one I'd add is the freebie utility PureText that remaps the key combo [Windows Key]+V to paste whatever is in the clipboard as pure text without the formatting. You'd be surprised at how handy that is!

Enjoy!

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Artistic? Want $500?

If you want to pick up $500 fast, just impress Lisa Haneberg with your artistic skillz. She's got a Web 1.0 thing going on with the current cover of her book High Impact Middle Management (a book I love, by the way), and she want to bring it up to at least Web 2.0.

You can find out more on Lisa's cover art competition here - this is your chance to make the big time!

By the way, I always thought this book should be called "Badass Middle Management" because it has some fantastic advice for anyone who wants to be more effective as a manager, particularly those of us "in the middle" of an organization. Another reason to love this book is that it takes you through an abbreviated version of one of my favorite topics: Goldratt's Theory of Constraints.

Automate your grocery list-making

If you're tired of writing and re-writing your shopping lists (and you've got some cash to spend to solve this problem), you should check out "SmartShopper." This is a device you can hang on your fridge to capture your needed items as they make themselves apparent.

You press the Record button, it listens to what you say, it shows you what it thinks you said and asks you to confirm, then stores a running list of items you need. Then, when you're ready to go shopping, you press the print button and it prints out a categorized list (click here for a sample).

It has a glossary of about 2500 common grocery items, along with a bunch of common errands ("Go to the dry cleaners" for example) so you can use it to manage your list of errands. And, you can add your own items to the database if your item isn't found.

It's pretty cool (you can see an online demo on the SmartShopper site) but it's spendy - $150 at this writing (though I found SmartShopper on Amazon for $131.15, with free shipping for Amazon Prime members like me). If list creation is a real pain for you, it may be worth it. If you get one, let me know how it works.

Funny how time flies...

A friend of mine pointed out a very cool Firefox add-in called MeeTimer that I really think is a good idea. If you've ever spent waaay too much time on YouTube after someone sent you a link to a video, you should check this out. Same goes for getting sucked into web "research" that causes hours to go by without you noticing.

What's MeeTime do? Well, I think they describe it pretty well on their site:

"MeeTimer has a simple role: it records where you spend your time online. It does it in a rather useful way, by allowing you to group websites into activities (e.g. Facebook = procrastination; Gmail = communication) so you can make sense of where your time is going. Finally, it accumulates time spent on a site over the course of a day, so when you think "just another 2 mins won't hurt" you realise that actually, yes, it will ;)"

Meetimer provides some easy-to-understand reporting to make it easy to tell what's sucking your time online, and they provide some good tips for reducing procrastination online.

And, if reporting isn't enough for you, you can configure MeeTimer to popup a warning dialog when you spend too much time on a particular site.

Like most Firefox add-ins it's free, though the author does accept donations if you find that this tool is useful (and you probably will). If you're a Firefox user and want to reduce the time you waste online, install MeeTimer right now.

Improving the Craft

Lisa Haneberg has recently shared a couple of great items at Management Craft:

• First, check out her excellent post on recovering from bad decisions. In particular, I am intrigued by her observation that great managers make more bad decisions than mediocre managers.
• Next, listen to Lisa's podcast with author Dr. Michael Stallard, where they get into some excellent thoughts on how we sometimes become "unintentional disconnectors."

Good stuff. Also, Lisa's book "10 Steps To Be A Successful Manager" cracked Amazon's top 5000 titles the other day (actually way cracked it - this book was at #3876, and its companion workbook was at #3882). Congratulations, Lisa!

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Related items

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• My favorite books from 2005 (1/4/2006)

Sit on your luggage?

I know from personal experience that sitting on top of your rollaboard luggage is generally not good for it. Most rollaboards are just not made to support the weight of a human.

I found out that a local company (they're based in Oregon area where I live) has decided to change all that. The company is "SeatKase" and they are making some nice, carry-on sized luggage with a fold-out seat that you can sit on. SeatKase luggage has been tested to hold up to 250 pounds, so it's really tough stuff.

SeatKase uses a patent pending design for the wheels that make them stop rolling when you sit on the luggage so you don't end up sitting on the floor. The luggage is also designed to make it easy to create a laptop stand so you can couple the luggage with any chair that's handy and create an office on demand.

On the SeatKase site, you'll find data on the wheel locking mechanism, as well as ordering and pricing information (the bags are $99 US - a great price for something that looks to be very well made).

I haven't seen one of these in person yet, but this seems like a great idea for road warriors.

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Related items

• Packing tips, part 2 (6/8/2007)
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Save your data - and a little cash

Just found out that Mozy (the online backup I reviewed a while back) is having a sale this month. You can save 5% on an annual or 2-year subscription to their excellent online service.

To get the discount, just mozy on over by clicking here, go to the signup page, and enter "OCTOBER" in the "Promotional Code" box when you check out.

By the way - I've been using the service for over 6 months and still think it's great. I've had to restore some of my data a couple of times and it worked flawlessly.

Not convinced yet? There is a freebie plan that will let you back up 2 Gigabytes of data.

If you've lost your data and need laptop repair on your notebook computer, we have all the laptop parts needed to fix the problem. In addition to data recovery, we also specialize in laptop screen repair for those accidental drops and screen damage to fix your computer right away.

Manage your energy - not your time

Am I getting a cosmic nudge? I am in the midst of reading a great book called "Finding Your Focus Zone" which is about managing your energy levels to achieve maximum productivity. I'll probably review it here at some point, as I really like it.

Then yesterday on the plane, I was reading my latest issue of the Harvard Business Review, and there is an article called, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time," which has a different take on a similar concept. Both are well written, well researched, and seem to have some tips I can really use to maintain my energy levels, focus, and productivity at work. They also both deal with ways to combat procrastination.

The HBR article is available right now as free content (you will be asked to "Agree" to their terms and conditions but you don't have to pay), so there is no reason for you to procrastinate - click on over and read it.

You can also see how doomed you are with the HBR's online questionnaire, "Are You Headed for an Energy Crisis?"

These resources provide some good information and advice for even the most productive among us. Enjoy!

Learning in a different context

Last week, I had the privilege of being a chaperone for my daughter's sixth grade class as they went to "Outdoor School." I wasn't familiar with this concept until we moved to Oregon but, apparently, it's pretty common up here. Basically, the whole class goes to an outdoor location (some classes go to the coast, my daughter's went up to a Kiwanis camp on Mount Hood).

For several days, we worked with the kids on a variety of physical, mental, and team-building activities, and it was extremely effective. We went to a couple of mountain lakes to do water studies, went on night hikes to observe the stars and constellations, went on nature hikes to study things like microenvironments, and went on an 11.5 mile hike to a peak where we could see 5 nearby mountains all at once.

For each activity, the students were asked to answer a number of questions in their science journals to enforce what they's learned. There was also plenty of time to reflect, enjoy nature, and get to know each other in a new environment.

One of the things that really struck me was how well some of the students did in this environment. In many cases, students who are usually disinterested or "just OK" in the classroom dove into the activities with tremendous focus and passion. Just being in a different context -- along with combining learning, physical activities, and a more social, team-oriented approach -- really unlocked their curiosity.

If you ever feel uninspired when it comes to learning, maybe you can unlock your own curiosity or create a new spark by changing how you approach it. Find a way to get outside, make it more hands-on, or get involved in a supportive group environment to make it more fun and change the context of learning.

For example, it's one thing to read about the life cycle of fish but one of the "big moments" we experienced was standing on the banks of the Salmon River watching a couple of salmon spawning. Way cool - you can get a glimpse of it in the short video I captured of salmon spawning.

This was at the Cascade Streamwatch project in Wildwood, Oregon. If you're ever out this way, it's a wonderful place to do some outdoor learning!

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Related items:

• Teaching To Learn (6/11/2007)
• Of broken glass and Boy Scouts (4/5/2005)
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