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Archives for February 2009

How to Negotiate in a Way that Produces Two Winners, and No Losers

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Alex Chediak has written a very helpful article on negotiation which has just been posted at Boundless. Alex points out that the goal is to pursue a win-win agreement — that is, two winners, and no losers. This means that we should pursue principled negotiation rather than positional negotiation.

Here are his four main points:

  1. Separate the people from the problem.
  2. Negotiation on the basis of objective merits, not subjective preferences.
  3. Brainstorm creatively to identify mutually beneficial solutions.
  4. Know when to walk away.

A helpful source for the article was the book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, which I highly recommend. If you read one book on negotiation, that’s the book to read.

And, with this, remember that negotiation is not only a “big event” that happens only once in a while, such as when you buy a car or a house. These principles are relevant every day in many different ways. And we are often participating in “mini-negotiations” throughout the day without even knowing it.

Don’t Skip that Page

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Excellent thoughts today from Seth Godin. In an era where all the highlights from everything are so easily available, it can be very, very easy to forget this:

The top of a mountain is rarely the best part.

You can watch “the good parts” of a baseball game in about six minutes. The web has become a giant highlights reel… the best parts of SNL, the best parts of a speech, the best parts of a book.

We can skim really fast now. This is a problem for marketers, because it means that if they don’t make the good parts easily findable and accessible (and bold and loud and memorable) then the whole product becomes invisible.

As consumers of information, though, I wonder if the best parts are really the best parts. Yes, you can read a summary of a book instead of a book, or watch the trailer instead of the movie, or read the executive summary of the consultant’s report instead of the whole thing… but the parts you miss are there for a reason.

Real change is rarely caused by the good parts. Real change and impact and joy come from the foundation and the transitions and the little messages that sneak in when you least expect them. The highlights of the baseball game are highlights largely because the rest of the game got you ready for them.

Don’t skip that page, it’s there for a reason.

One more thought: In his management book First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, Marcus Buckingham talks about how there are several stages to building an excellent work environment. Here’s what’s interesting: you can’t just skip to the final stage. If you do, you will fail. The stages leading up to that are the necessary preparation.

Mountain climbers know this well. As Buckingham states: “To reach the summit you have to pay your dues — if you just helicopter to camp 3 and rise to the summit, experienced guides know you will never make it. Mountain sickness will sap your energy and slow your progress to a crawl.”

The same is true with information and most things in life: If all we ever seek out and engage with are the highlights, the end result is going to be mountain sickness.

Now This is a Good Vision Statement

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This is what Jeff Bezos said about the Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device at a Monday press conference: “Our vision is every book ever printed in any language all available in 60 seconds.”

Here’s why that is a good vision:

  1. It’s simple.
  2. It’s clear.
  3. It takes things all the way: “every book ever printed in any language.” Yes! It’s not “most books” or “95% of books.” To be remarkable, you have to be bold and go the full distance. 95% does not inspire. But 100% — that’s amazing.
  4. Its fulfillment would be a tremendous service to the world.

Now, here’s something not so great:

Some publishers and agents expressed concern over a new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice.

“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

Here we have a recommendation that the kibosh be put on a really great idea because “they don’t have the right to read a book out loud.” This is another example of how innovation is stifled and how good ideas get killed. Sure, there may be issues, but let’s figure them out. Let’s not point to process and say “well, this shouldn’t be done.”

What about the copyright law, though?

An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won’t confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Kindle, or a device like it, could by means of this audio feature bring great access to books into societies with currently low literacy rates? In other words, such a device could perhaps make it possible for those who can’t read to still “read” some great books by listening to them via the text-to-speech technology. And what if everyone was given one?

Someone could say “well, you would run into problems with recharging those devices because electricity would probably not be reliable or available, and beyond that if the literacy rate is this low, probably food and water are higher priorities. Also, people just might not be interested in that.”

Well, good points. But the way forward is not to then stop and give up on the idea (whether this one or any other), but figure out if there is a way to do it which overcomes the obstacles. Maybe not. But don’t kill ideas too early. At the very least, exploring them could lead to something different, more workable — and better.

It Can Be Done

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I just read this story to my kids last night from The Children’s Treasury of Virtues. It represents an attitude we need more of and that all of us should have.

The story is called “It Can Be Done.” Here it is:

Brave people think things through and ask, “Is this the best way to do this?” Cowards, on the other hand, always say “It can’t be done.”

The man who misses all the fun
Is he who says, “It can’t be done.”
In solemn pride he stands aloof
And greets each venture with reproof.
Had he the power he’d efface
The history of the human race;
We’d have no radio or motor cars,
No streets lit by electric stars;
No telegraph or telephone,
We’d linger in the age of stone.
The world would sleep if things were run
By men who say, “It can’t be done.”

How to Stifle Innovation

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According to ZDNet, the above video was “prepared by NASA engineers to demonstrate the problems in any large bureaucracy that values requirements over new ideas, and process over [initiative].” It’s about ten minutes long, but the point is well made within the first two minutes.

Interview with the Author of The Myth of Multitasking

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Black Belt Productivity has an interview with Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done.

Of special note is Crenshaw’s answer to the first question, where he summarizes why multitasking is less efficient. In a nutshell, because it creates switching costs:

I like to use an economics and finance term to describe the waste of time; the term is switching cost. Switching cost usually refers to the cost and time and money of switching from one provider to another. In the case of multitasking, people feel that they are doing multiple things at the same time, but they are not. The brain is incapable of focusing on multiple tasks at the same time. When people attempt to multitask, what they are really doing is switching rapidly back and forth between tasks. Because of this, I prefer to refer to multitasking as switchtasking. It is because of these switches that people lose time in the switching cost. In this way, switchtasking causes us to be exponentially less productive.

What to Do at a 4-Way Stop

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Yes, productivity extends to driving!

At some point in the last few years — which I am reluctant to admit! — I forgot the protocol on what to do if you arrive at a 4-way stop at the same time as another vehicle. The result was a few occasions of awkward confusion for all drivers at hand. So I finally decided to look this up in my MN Driver’s Manual.

Here’s the protocol:

  1. If each car arrived at a different time, then they leave in the order in which they arrived. To repeat: Leave in the order in which you got there.
  2. If two vehicles arrive at the same time, the driver on the left defers to the driver on the right. In other words: The driver on the right goes first.
  3. If two vehicles arrive at the same time and one of them is signaling a turn across the path of the other, then the one who is not turning has right of way.
  4. If you had to wait in a line at the intersection to get to the stop sign, this does not change anything. Each car stops and then follows the above rules as if no one else had been in line before him. (In other words, you can’t conclude that you were there before the person at the other intersection just because the car in front of you was there before him or her.)
  5. If you are at a T-intersection with a 3-way stop, the vehicle that does not have to turn has right of way.

Also of note: Stop lights that are blinking red or not working at all should be treated as 4-way stops.

Finally, here’s another summary at E-How, and then a humorous one which came up at the top of the results when I just now googled this.

Managing Your Finances on a Mac

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For the last ten years, I’ve used Quicken to manage our finances. Last summer when I switched to a Mac, I discovered that the Mac version of Quicken is a much reduced version that is just not up to snuff. So rather than downgrading, I continued to run the Windows version of Quicken on my Mac via VMWare Fusion (which, in my opinion, is the best way to run Windows on your Mac).

This works well enough, but I still find myself wishing that I didn’t have to boot up Windows on my Mac just to manage my finances.

Here’s some possible good news: It looks like Quicken may soon be coming out with a much improved program for the Mac, called Quicken Financial Life for Mac. It’s due out this summer. The website states:

If you know your Mac, you know Quicken Financial Life. Designed from the ground up to unleash the power of the Mac, Quicken Financial Life for Mac brings you the clean graphics and intuitive functionality you expect from Apple software. Built for Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard and newer operating systems.

Hopefully this will be good. Although I don’t know why they didn’t just do it right the first time.

What financial management software do you recommend for the Mac?