Pujji like Gucci

A term I coined today after an interesting chat/observation about how some people take a while to ‘snap out of it’ after they’ve been really busy – but actually aren’t anymore. I give you:

Busy-daze

When you aren’t really that busy, but have just come out the other side of a hugely busy period and haven’t stopped pumping the adrenalin – a bit like comparing an unfit person to an athlete: a huge difference in their fitness is not their performance, but their recovery. The better you are, the faster you ‘snap out of it’ and refocus on today’s challenges – instead of reeling from yesterdays.

It’s uncanny how some things coincide. I’ve been thinking about exactly this in the last few days.

I’ve been incredibly frustrated lately by the growing pool of people, unfortunately often leaders, who are too busy to do what they do. A warning bell always goes off for me when I see someone, especially a leader making dumb moves, to make time to make smart moves… you know they’re in trouble.

In my career I’ve gravitated to high-pressure environments. Like most of us, I’ve been completely drowned in my work at times – sometimes for long-periods, but underneath it I feel relatively cogent in those situations. I spent nearly ten years playing live music, a nice entrée to pressure. I trained and worked as a chef – a textbook pressure situation (where ‘oops’ came with un-reversible consequences). I worked as the system support guy in one of New Zealand’s busiest call-centres, which at the time also happened to have some of the most disastrous technical platforms in the country. I worked in and managed web-projects before, in and after the dot-com bust. And more recently, have been working in an insanely busy creative agency. 

So, quite common for me, is the pressure to do more than I (think I) can do. I’ve tried heaps of approaches to achieving a good balance – both personally, and in my roles. Finding the sweet spot of effectiveness is something I enjoy looking for – and rarely do perfectly (more about my current work/personal situation here).

What I find most interesting though, is how many people are beyond struggling with this problem. These are the people (bless them) who are under so much pressure they seemingly can’t stop dropping the ball. For average Joe, I would often suspect that this a management problem (I’ve been on both sides of this one) – but when it’s the leader who is failing, I’m more interested in whether the cause is short-term, or something more. Often you just need to zoom out a bit to see the overall leadership environment, if the same problems are occurring at the top – then: “Houston, we have a problem”. This is all the more complicated when it’s not clear who is actually ‘in charge’ (again, I’ve been on both sides of this one too).

I love Marshall Goldsmith‘s view on this sort of dilemma (or crisis?) and as luck would have it, this issue was on his mind too recently. He asks, and simply answers the question “What prevents us from making the changes we know will make us more effective leaders?”.

In my view, worse than excuse making, is denial of responsibility. When someone who clearly needs to take responsibility for something which they have not delivered chooses to deny their responsibility, they show their hand as armchair (or caretaker) leaders – not just overloaded/struggling.

When I’m not delivering, I generally know it and accept it, but that’s worth nothing until I stop making excuses and make the changes necessary – somehow. That’s a part of my worldview that has seen me stick when others have bailed, quit when others have stuck, and learn to spot which one I need to be doing.

It’s bloody hard, but I reckon we all need to stop and remind ourselves: If I’m not doing what I need to be doing – I need to not make excuses, and stop denying it’s my problem (especially if you are a leader). That includes not doing something quick but dumb today in an attempt to buy time to do things properly later – it’s just another excuse.

It doesn’t work unless it’s built. But it won’t work well unless it’s designed.

I visited the Vehicle Testing New Zealand (VTNZ) website today because I need to take my car for a warrant of fitness. They have a good offering, independent review (they don’t do repairs so are not likely to stiff you for the hell of it) and a strong brand. They have McDonald’s like service systems (blank stares, underpaid staff, who generally keep things moving ok) and as far as I know have bugger all serious competition.

They’ve obviously spent some $$ on their website, it looks ok, there seems to be lots of information like fancy service-searching and detailed service descriptions. But what annoyed me is: no prices.

Come on it’s 2008, you have no competitors to speak of (at least not with the same offering) but for some reason you think your prices are super special. They’re not. You’re not. I want to know your prices before I drive half way across town to pay for things. I know from experience they are just a fraction more than what I think is good value, but your service is what I need, so I am stuck with you.

Put them up. Get over it. Come on!

When I didn’t know how that system worked, you didn’t get frustrated

When I logged in, you never again asked me to tell you something you already knew

When I missed my slot for an unavoidable reason, you didn’t charge me

When I corrected you, you weren’t a dick about it

When you told me what you did for a living, you didn’t embellish it

When you messed up, you didn’t deny it 

When I phoned you, you didn’t make me wait, and you didn’t make me pay

You offered, but you didn’t insist 

When your product wasn’t right, you didn’t make it difficult to return it

When I was interested, but not ready to buy, you didn’t ruin things by trying to force the sale

You didn’t make your problem my problem

You didn’t show up late, and if you had, you’d never done it again

You didn’t shrug, and say ‘it’s not my problem’

You didn’t give my email address away to spammers

You didn’t phone me every five minutes but refuse to leave a message

When I came back to your site, you didn’t forget

You didn’t take forever to get back to me

You didn’t pretend you knew, when you didn’t

For some reason recently I’ve been in lots of conversations about how good the ‘experience’ was somewhere, or with some thing.

What’s strange, is that most of the time when evaluating experiences we jump to observing the the ‘things that happen’ or the ‘features’ – I guess you could call those the active parts of the experience. “I loved that they gave us…” or “It was great that they said…”

What about what didn’t happen? Or what wasn’t there? It’s often not until we’ve discussed everything that did happen and we’re about to change topic or move on that someone mentions what didn’t happen – the passive part of the experience.

Of course it often doesn’t matter what you observed, when having these conversations. That’s because in many cases you had the experience yourself, and it was really personal. That means when you’re sharing it, you’re not really doing analysis, you’re just recounting how it was for you – it’s limited to your personal experience, which is often not very objective or thorough. Of course that’s absolutely ok when you are just having a chat, but what about when you are doing this kind of work as part of a structured piece of research?

It’s really tempting to just riff about the active things and easy to forget the passive things. Of course each of those statements can be worded the other way around, but I think this is the ideal way. Instead of thinking about what you or your company can do -for- your customers – think about what you’re already doing -to- them – that you can stop doing. Or better, think about what your competitors are doing to customers, that you can stop doing, to improve their experience, and your competitive position.

TSB did it. Kiwibank are trying to do it. Virgin did it. Lots of companies do it.

Being known for what you didn’t do is powerful. But it requires you to be strong enough to stand by what you don’t do instead of always trying to shovel ‘more’ into your customers, into your systems and into ‘experiences’.

There seems to be a huge increase in people making decisions badly (at least I’m seeing more!). If you are in a ‘decision making’ role, have a think about how you go about it.

Are you desperate to shut down the (inevitable) uncertainty surrounding a matter? Are you more interested in ‘making the call’ than making the right call? 

I wonder what’s behind the compulsion to decide immediately and move on? Sure there are many times when a clear and quick decision is useful, but it seems certain types of people decide to always act like that, regardless of need. You know the people I’m talking about, “We’ve got no time to get into the detail John, so I’m just going to make the call”, or worse, involve you in discussion to tick a box beneath their foregone conclusion.

I’ve never been more than amused by this sort of thing until recently. I’ve been reading a recent De Bono book where he describes people, often very intelligent people, who use their strong intellect to defend their rubbish ideas, and in a way get stuck with their crap ideas, because they are smart enough to defend them. I immediately knew the people he was referring to. What’s interesting, is that they are not usually our ‘compulsive deciders’. 

My definition of the Compulsive Decider is someone who knows they’re not intelligent enough to even defend their poor ideas, who therefore actively avoid discussing, and reviewing them with others. Combine that with a role that gives decision making powers, and boom, you’ve got the Dim Compulsive-Decider Leader, or DCDL.

Sometimes we all act like a DCDL. Sometimes as parents, otherwise normal people turn into DCDLs as a coping mechanism. Sometimes in new work situations, or where we need to mark our territory we err towards being overly decisive and clear, over smart and considered.

What worries, and sometimes annoys me, is when an individual consistently avoids any conversation, discussion or debate surrounding important decisions. The key word is consistently, because they use this technique to systematically exercise control of the decision making process. By shutting down the processes that ‘reinforce’ a decision for all stakeholders, the decision is out on it’s own. It can quickly be disowned by everyone else, and if it turns out to be a bad one, can lead to serious damage to credibility and effectiveness for the DCDL. Strangely, this is a risk they’re prepared to take. Perhaps it’s some variation of the kiwi-loved view that it’s ‘easier to apologise than ask permission’ – which is great when you are competent.

I had a boss once who taught me something important (haha) about ownership, he said “If your job is going to be governed by a certain document or decision, you better make damn sure you had the opportunity to write it, or be involved in the decision”. That’s just one example, but it illustrates the point. Alienating the people who will wear your decisions (in particular) is dangerous and pointless.

We sometimes need to slow down, review how we’re behaving, look for patterns that could be more significant than our individual actions, and decide if we need to change.

I know I can act like a DCDL from time to time, do you?

I went to the new Indiana Jones last night. And it wasn’t that. It was this video I stumbled on today:

Wow.

I’m not an obsessive news-company-devotee, but as far as news sites go right now CNN is rocking the casbah.

1. The design execution is stunning.

It’s the best and not the worst of the 2.0 genre. CNN have nailed the category, it’s got real design substance. Spot something that was designed-in for no reason (you can’t). It’s nicely overcome that plaguing norm: design-by-crappy-wireframe. Clearly the design team had conceived a powerful conceptual experience before pixel hit page.

The whole site feels purpose built, and that’s saying something since we all know what pressure design teams are under to ‘just make it look like this (or that) other great built-for-a-different-purpose site’

2. It’s jam-packed with thoughtful pathways.

I read most news via RSS which means I get the bare bones format (plain text, heading + content + ad etc.). When I click through into the site I don’t want that format like a press release or RSS feed – I’ve changed mode, now I want to browse, expand, hop around – to be drawn to content I didn’t previously know existed.

I know how hard it is to create lots of damn good pathways on a site this size, it’s excruciating to plan, write, and manage. As a user I also know that if even one or two of those pathways take me somewhere stupid, that I’ll stop using them altogether, so the stakes are high.

3. The design makes old news interesting.

When I’m at CNN.com I feel kinda drawn to the content. I’ve watched videos, picture slideshows, clicked maps, toggled options, dragged things – all all by simply reacting to the design. It’s lured me in. It made Obama and Hillary interesting – now that’s interesting. Forget ‘sticky’ (you know what I mean) these guys created ‘slippery’ – I amuse myself for extended periods on the site because it’s so easy to slip-slide around.

4. Great signals vs noise.

There’s nothing worse than old news mixed with new news, crap news mixed with good news etc. CNN.com feels crystal clear, the various time-stamps, identifiers (e.g. “New!”), smart-groups of timely articles etc are all designed so well that they are there when you are looking and seem to disappear into the background when you’re trying to focus on something else. How do they do that?

5. The content does the section-theming.

I’ve seen so many designers unnecessarily struggling to ‘theme’ separate sections of a website instead of exploring how to bring out the richness of the content itself and let that do the ‘theming’. CNN.com does have some high-level theming, say, in the political section where there is a sort of stars-and-stripes design-riff but they’ve really let the content imagery to the heavy lifting.

Way too many news sites cheap-out on the imagery, probably cause they could get away with that in print, others have jumped on the stock-library wagon only putting lame cheap stock shots alongside content – like news sites run by half-arsed-Telcos. CNN have obviously got the budget and made the effort and it’s taken the theme burden off the design which stays calm site-wide.

6. Even from New Zealand the videos are watch-able, and the experience is polished

Unlike the NY Times these videos don’t take five years to buffer. The player is responsive, even when content is waiting to come down the line – it never hangs or stalls (aside from usual buffering) basically, it works well. Features like custom video playlists are awesome because the content clips are typically short. It allows me to do my clip short-listing in one go, then sit back and watch them play one after another. It’s these thoughtful features which make the video offering more than some re-purposed TV hacks.

7. The typography is awesome

I’m no type expert, but I know what works. News sites are by far the worst culprits online for having rubbish Type execution. Without resorting to images for everything, or siFR, both of which are unworkable on a site this size, this can be quite a challenge. CNN.com is extremely easy to scan, has very clear hierarchy, is actually readable, achieved in the most part by their strong grasp of Typography. I love the even pixel-fonts make an appearance, and totally work – finally!.

8. The ad spots are out of the way (if they must be there)

I hate banners. I hate people who make banners. I hate companies who buy banners. Banners are intrusive, and like people who interrupt all the time because they think they know where you going (and that they can help), I can’t abide them. As a seemingly necessary evil however, I accept they’re going to be there (that’s how quickly I can change my mind), so it’s with huge relief that I visit CNN and barely see the damn things. Actually thats not true I’ve happily looked at a few – how they pulled that off I’ll never know.

I also love that they are promoting their own features in the banner spaces – strategically that builds my trust in the spots, so they can then do a bait-and-switch on a different page and con me with an ad. At least they’re being clever about it.

9. They leverage their high-traffic into features that smaller sites can’t pull off

Polls on the homepages. I hate them on New Zealand websites because they ask stupid questions, and because only five of the websites’ one hundred visitors bother to respond. Not so on CNN.com. When they asked their readers “Should the U.S. drop food in Myanmar without the military junta’s permission?” They got a 60/40 split – from (get this) 142,363 readers. Now thats a poll. I don’t understand why New Zealand copycats can’t accept that since they’re different, chances are their challenges (and solutions!) are going to be different. It must be part of the lip-service strategy employed by so many.

10. Great for PC users

As a Mac user, nothing goes wrong on my computer, ever. But for all of you who fell for Dell, CNN.com has invested in filming ‘Data Doctor’ clips which you can watch on the site. They help you deal with things called “Error messages”, apparently these PC alerts appear on your screen and are useful for your Tech support people, who are unlikely to be able to help you with the messages, unless you know what they are verbatim. This video for example, provides a simple 45 step process to capturing what’s on your screen for the Tech support guys (see how easy it is?). We have something like this with just one keystroke, but I won’t go into it

Ok, I’m done.

Great post from Unconditional, the NZ Real Estate blog about design in the real estate industry.

I’ve wondered why these shameless self promoters thought paying thousands for billboards of their face would be a better investment in their personal brand then say, oh, I dunno, getting back in touch promptly after you’ve left three messages for them – or getting back in touch at all after you’ve used some dumb restrictive ‘contact the agent’ form such as the ones on the realestate.co.nz site.

An interesting observation in the Unconditional post was about how agents are essentially self-employed. This seems to me to be a root cause issue. When you think about it, what’s the point of being part of a company at all if you do all the big ticket promotion, end up building your own shitty little ‘my listings only’ website, building your own brand, fighting both competing companies AND your own colleagues. I can’t see the value.

All the while, we the home buyers and sellers get the brunt of the shitty experience. We have to go to a hundred separate websites to get ‘full details’, ‘more pictures’ or just to make sure we’re not missing out on some information.

Sites like realestate.co.nz know they are an aggregator, and know that agents will still try and get a visitor to go to their ‘own’ site for more info – yet they make this experience hard, because it’s in their interests for you to stay on site, but clearly they haven’t built the ‘dream site’ for agents – so agents prefer to finish what that site started, on their own sites. Agents aren’t winning, realestate.co.nz aren’t winning, and we’re not winning.

Anyway, back to the point, why are agents fighting everyone? They even can’t be bothered putting all the photos up on all of the websites they publish listings to, so are wasting their time, they fight with each other instead of finding ways to build value into their company’s brand, which they can then leverage etc.

So, putting their often ugly faces on business cards and billboards cracks me up, they are classic lip-service thinkers, they are behaving like self employed independent people wasting the economies of scale, can’t be bothered replying to emails (all too new for most of them), are often still rude, late, presumptuous …. ek.

Over the last few months I’ve been playing with the pre-release versions of a new eCommerce framework called Magento, which finally made a 1.0 release today. Now I’m not normally one to go bananas over this sort of thing, but this is incredible.

Compared to the incumbents like osCommerce, Magento is polished, incredibly thoughtfully designed, and most importantly well executed. The team behind Magento managed to get a stable 1.0 release out in record time too.

It costs nothing, it’s simple to use, it’s VERY powerful – it sets the bar.

I’m looking forward to seeing it in action around the web.