Genuine Curiosity

What’s gonna work? (Teamwork!)

One of my daughters watches a show called "WonderPets." She loves it - and I like it a lot, too. One thing I like is a consistent theme: Teamwork helps you solve problems (there is even a catchy song about Teamwork - see link at end of this post) that I can't get out of my head).

In the real world, one of the tricky things about teamwork (particularly if you have distributed or remote teams) is keeping everyone "on task" and on the same page about joint projects. I recently heard from some folks who are doing something about that, in the form of a web-based tool called "TaskBin." I've tried other collaboration / group project approaches, but this one seems awesome so far.

Dirt simple (but elegant in its simplicity...)

One of the things I like about TaskBin so far is it simplicity. And yet, it's very powerful. Some highlights:

• It is really easy in all aspects. Easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to invite others to your project.
• All the tasks in the project are visible to everyone else, and ownership is clear.
• TaskBin handles time zone translation for you - very transparently.
• It's really easy to add and update tasks.
• There is a private "Notepad" area to capture thoughts you haven't decide to act on yet.
• You can make others administrators, so you can have multiple project owners share responsibility.

• You can subscribe to updates via RSS, or get email updates.
• You can view and update task status on mobile devices (as well as receive notifications that way).

I'm sure there is more, but I'm still a newbie.

Don't pin me down...

Another interesting thing (that seems to fit well with my team's psyche) is the vaguely specific time frames you can assign to a task. Rather than a specific date, it seems much easier to assign TaskBin's due "time frames" - Today, Tomorrow, This Week, or Sometime Soon. Very liberating.

As free as you want it to be

TaskBin is currently in Beta, so it's all free. When they become a production product, you'll have two models to choose from:

1. Cost-free - an ad-supported, no cost model.
2. Ad-free - no ads, but you pay for service.

So, what are you waiting for? You can start a free TaskBin project in about 2 minutes from their home page. If you're not ready to take the plunge, at least test out their demo TaskBin group.

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Teamwork Song:

[Review] Strategy and the Fat Smoker

I've been involved in a lot of strategy work at my company lately, and have been doing some research on how to develop, influence, and lead others through this process. One fascinating (and very good) book I encountered was David Maister's "Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy."

Knowing is easy; doing is hard

Maister starts this business book with an analogy rooted in personal life: He knows that smoking is bad for him, and he knows he should eat healthy - so why is he still a fat smoker? He knows what he should be doing differently, he periodically declares he'll change (even making New Year's resolutions to that effect) - but it's too easy to not make changes in what you do, so nothing changes. The same thing happens in business - organizations come up with ideas, strategies, and plans but don't do anything differently.

This book is loaded with pithy "wisdom bites" in the margins - and the first one in the book sums it up nicely:

"Real strategy lies not in figuring out what to do, but in devising ways to ensure that, compared to others, we actually do more of what everybody knows they should do."

Collected wisdom

What follows is a collection of wisdom, examples, and tools that Maister has gathered during his years of work with a variety of organizations around business strategy. Not only does he give examples of effective and ineffective companies, he also provides tools for individual leaders to assess their own strengths, weaknesses, and motivations to determine what changes - internally and externally - are needed for success.

Fresh Gear: How about a Monster power up?

When you're traveling with a notebook computer or other electronic essentials, a power outlet is like an oasis in the dessert (and you can usually spot them by looking for clusters of tethered travelers huddled nearby, drinking up the precious current). When you're low on juice, it can be frustrating when you're in an airport with only a few outlets.

Well, Monster has a great way for travelers to increase their access to power on the go: It's their Outlets To Go 3-Outlet Portable Powerstrip and it's pretty cool. This allows you to expand a single (grounded) outlet and turn it into 3 outlets. This extra capacity can come in handy in several situations:

• In the aforementioned scarce outlet situation, you can provide the means to share an outlet with other travelers
• For international travel, simply carry this power strip and a single international power adapter, and you'll be able to plug in 3 devices at once
• Its short length of cord allows you to more easily utilize power outlets in tight spaces - especially if you have clunky power supplies for some of your devices

There are a few other nice features on this little power strip:

• It rolls up small (as in the picture) and you can plug it back into itself to keep the cord tidy, and maintain a small profile
• The outlets have enough spacing to accommodate even large power bricks (there are 2 outlets on one side; 1 on the other)
• The power connector is flat and exits to the side, so it is less likely to interfere with other plugs or devices
• The "Monster Power" logo glows blue when the strip is "live" so you can tell when the circuit is hot
• It has a built-in circuit breaker to protect you from dodgy power situations

You can get the US version of this for about $12 on Amazon so it's reasonably priced.

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Related items

• Fresh Gear: The flattest wallet ever (5/2/2007)
• Travel Light: I've got the power... (9/25/2006)
• Things to do in the middle seat (6/28/2006)

[Review] Remarkable Leadership

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in my post about New Year's resolutions, I've been reading Kevin Eikenberry's book, "Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Leadership Potential One Skill at a Time." The book opens with the question, "Are leaders made or born?" - and Kevin provides the answer: Leaders are made.

Sure, we all know people who seem to be "born leaders" and make it look easy, but the premise of this book is that remarkable leaders learn many of the things that make them remarkable. I agree with that premise - I know people with great charisma, brilliant ideas, and other things traditionally associated with great leaders. But I've known some great leaders, and their leadership goes beyond charisma and great ideas. Remarkable leadership is about what leaders do day in, day out - and how they learn from their interactions with others.

This book feels like an "on demand mentor" for developing your skills as a leader.

What do you need?

Eikenberry provides a bunch of "modules" in this book, each focused on analyzing and developing a narrow facet of leadership. In addition to background and case studies he provides a bunch of little self-assessments to get you to think about what you really need to be a better leader. I found these assessment questions to be very focusing, and they helped me decide which chapters I needed most.

Why not just read the whole book? Sure - you can (and you probably should). But another cool thing I found in this book is a description of 3 other ways to use the book:

1. Start with a quick read, and then decide where to focus.
2. Browse quickly, then decide where to start.
3. Start with the skill you are most interested in.

In the first two options, the self-assessments are excellent tools to guide your choices (for the third, I guess you could use the table of contents).

Whip your office into shape

Hot off the presses: My friend Ariane Benefit of the Neat & Simple Living blog has just published the Neat & Simple Guide to Organizing Your Office. I bought and downloaded it last week (she's offering a special introductory price of $12.95 through February 1) and read it on the plane the other day.

If you're struggling with clutter and organizational challenges in your office, this guide was meant for you. You'll be led through some background about chronic disorganization, motivations for getting more organized, and why you may be "stuck" in a messy situation.

Organize to fit your style

Ariane takes you through an analysis of various working, thinking, and organizing "styles" and discusses how to tailor your organizational scheme to better support your own style. She provides a step-by-step guide to analyzing and dealing with the clutter in your workspace. Another useful section of the guide provides examples of various kinds of organizing tools (bins, shelves, stands, etc.) and discusses the merits and potential pitfalls of each tool. I found this section to be valuable and thought-provoking.

She also offers quite a collection of tips for filing, electronic organization, reinforcing and maintaining you systems, and other hints to help you achieve and maintain success in your quest for organization.

And if you still feel overwhelmed after reading the book, you may need professional (organizational) help. If so, Ariane has a brief discussion on selecting a professional organizer to get you on track.

One last comment on this guide: it just feels organized. It's loaded with useful pictures -- and the layout, graphics, and flow of the book are awesome.

New tools for resolutions

Well, we all know that this is the time of year for New Year's Resolutions, and we also know that a lot of people's resolutions don't get very far. With that in mind, some friends of mine have come up with some tools to help with this. I'd like to share them with you.

Remarkable Resolutions

The first tool is from Kevin Eikenberry, and it's a free guide to creating Remarkable Resolutions. This is a a kind of "workshop in a box" approach, guiding you through 26 thought-provoking questions designed to help you achieve greate clarity and depth in your resolutions.

I say it's like a workshop, because the document is actually a workbook designed so that you can print it out and write our your thoughts and answers in the book. You can then use the workbook throughout the year to remind you what you identified as important, which things you want to achieve, etc. It's generally known that writing things down helps make ideas more "real" in your brain, and I found that writing my answers down also felt good - like I was taking concrete steps to plan for 2008.

Kevin's also sharing his answers and thoughts on these questions at his blog. Incidentally, Kevin is the author of "Remarkable Leadership" which I'm reading right now. It is an excellent book - I'll be reviewing it soon.

Aim for the Goal Post

Keith Ferrazzi (author of "Never Eat Alone") is also adding to the toolbox. He suggests getting some skin in the game by making your commitment public, and choosing three friends to serve as your accountability buddies. Knowing they are watching you will help you to stick to and reach your goals - he calls it "peer-to-peer pressure". Your friends can cheer you on and send you inspirational songs and helpful website links.

To help keep you moving toward your goals, Keith and his team have developed a Facebook application called "Goal Post." It is an easy and visual way to set your goals, choose your accountability buddies and keep track of your progress.

To get started, login to Facebook (or register if you aren't Facing already) and then search for the "Goal Post" application.

Some of you may know that I turned off my Facebook account a while back because I found it to be a little needy in terms of how much attention it expected me to pay to it. This Goal Post application is tempting me to reactivate... If you try out Keith's tool, let me know how it goes.

Both of these approaches will be useful in getting you to go beyond thinking about what you want to do, and into writing things down and developing a plan - and I've heard stats that most people don't have written goals. If you're in that club, maybe these tools will help you take that important step toward success.

Some things feel more “done” than others

I took some time off around Christmas and the New Year, and decided to get a bunch of things done on my "Someday Maybe" list. Most of the items were of the "clean up" and "fix it" variety, and some of them were things I'd been putting off for a long time. For example, I rented a 3 cubic yard dumpster for a day and did a massive clean up of our garage (filled the dumpster to the rim and brought a van full of stuff to the Salvation Army) and now we can park in the garage again!

I noticed that checking each of these old projects off my list felt really good -- like a real, satisfying accomplishment. In other words, they really felt "Done."

When I compare cleaning my garage to a lot of the things I do at work, the feeling is a bit different. You see, at work, a significant part of my job is managing long-term, ongoing relationships with other companies and, even though there are lots of deliverables on the way, they don't feel as "Done" as cleaning the garage or filling a dumpster.

When I think about why, some of it is just the "nature of the beast," I suppose. But I think another aspect is that I tend to think of my job as an ongoing stream of "stuff" - and I don't regularly break it down into smaller, more deliberately-defined subprojects. The result? At the end of the week, I see a lot of little check marks, but they aren't nearly as satisfying as checking off a whole project as "Done."

That realization came to me while re-reading David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (GTD) the other day. Part of David's GTD philosophy is to break big tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks, then identify small steps (Next Actions) that you can pick off one at a time.

As we move into 2008, I am re-visiting my approach to GTD, trying to re-establish better habits. One of the changes I'm going to make is to be more deliberate about defining my projects more discretely (and doing more thorough Weekly Reviews to keep on top of them).

And if you haven't read Getting Things Done in a while, I highly recommend it. In the realm of personal productivity, it's a great way to spotlight things that aren't working as well as they should.

Hit the GTD mother lode

I was just checking out a tremendous list of GTD resources at Bootstrapper: "The GTD Resource Motherload: 100+ Links." There are 103 links there - I haven't been through them all yet, but have found a few gems already so I wanted to share this resource with you.

A few of my favorites:

99. A Roadmap to Spectacular GTD Failure: This article tells readers what NOT to do if you want to implement a successful GTD system.
This includes such gems as the following (which would be funnier if it didn't hit so close to home:

"Do your weekly review when you're damn good and ready - Make sure to never even attempt to schedule a regular time for your weekly review. Friday afternoon, Saturday night, Wednesday during lunch. You're a busy person with a dynamic life - you clearly can't be expected to block out 1-2 hours per week!"

67. GTD-Tools.com: GTD-Tools.com publishes articles and reviews of the "best GTD tools and productivity software tips." Readers can also catch up on the latest GTD-related news.
Visually, this is a bit busy but it contains some awesome info!

52. Time Management, Simplified: This post teaches readers "how to be productive with no worries" by simplifying the GTD system so that it works for your life.
I really like this "in a nutshell" summary of the essence of GTD.

These three samples are just barely scratching the surface - go check out the other 100 GTD resources!

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Related items

• [Updated] A great GTD "aggregator" site (3/24/2007)
• My GTD Odyssey - Part 1 (10/10/2006)
• Uncluttering my inbox (6/27/2007)