The Lean Startup Machine – San Francisco

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending The Lean Startup Machine in San Francisco along with my friend Warner.  I’ve been reading a few books and watching quite a few videos on Lean Startup recently was very excited to get to go put it all into practice.

After a few awesome presentations on Lean Startup (Eric Ries), Customer Development (Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits) and business modeling (Dave McClure) we dove right into presenting our business ideas.

This is where I needed to first push myself outside my comfort zone and get in front of the group to present.  I decided to present an idea regarding creation of a gift registry for kids.  I thought it would be the perfect project to focus on for a weekend and to find customers in downtown San Francisco to interview.

It turned out my idea didn’t end up getting picked and I made my way over to one of the ideas I found very interesting which was the Social Change Log team.  The idea was to sell Twitter users a product which showed them a timeline view of their tweets, re-tweets and follows so they could correlate which actions were strengthening their community.

After an evening of debating where to start and getting comfortable with the team we decided to call it a night and hit things hard the following morning.  I went to bed really feeling like our team didn’t quite know which direction to head and was feeling that I should get up early and try to define our direction to get us on track.

That’s just what I ended up doing and where I began applying another skill I’m working on which is my leadership.  Considering I had only met my team members less than 12 hours prior I was a little apprehensive about taking charge.  Looking back, I feel I made the right decision.

We were off and conducting custdev interviews within a few hours and learning TONS about how many of the mentors were using Twitter to market their companies and personal brands.  We very quickly learned just how much we did not know about the market we were getting into.  We decided that the best way to get more data would be to put together an online survey and try to get feedback from people outside of the room.

This took up the remainder of the day and by the time we were ready to call it a night on Saturday we had about 35 responses to the survey and were ready to pivot.  We had learned that customers did not want to see the actual data or graphs, but wanted it as support to some sort of a specific recommendation.

Sunday, the final day of work before presenting what we learned was a little unnerving.  The team started to lose focus again and we decided to split into sub-teams to work on our final presentation while still trying to learn from customers.  Due to two of our members needing to catch a flight we volunteered to present our findings first.

We got up in front of all of the mentors and showed them what we had learned.  As a hook we thought it would be best to provide some specific lean-style recommendations for each of the mentors.   This hook ended up working great as we ran out of time with the presentation and the first follow-up question the mentors asked was “what are our recommendations?”.  We had obviously found something that struck a chord with the mentors!

More details soon…

Gist + LinkedIn = A Time Saving Match Made In Heaven

As most of you know, I’m a complete social media addict, but I just came across a great way to use Gist and LinkedIn together to save yourself a ton of time!

I use Gist.com to track all of my contacts.  It makes it SO easy since it automatically keeps my contacts up to date from my iPhone, 2 instances of Outlook, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter.  I literally don’t have to do anything except maybe add a tag or two to help organize these contacts into a manageable list.

The end result is that ALL of the people I interact with on a daily basis are always inside of Gist.

I utilize LinkedIn.com to connect to new people at specific companies, share with employers and customers.  It allows me to share an online version of my resume with folks which includes positive feedback from past co-workers and customers.

The problem I run into is that I need to go into LinkedIn every few months to connect to new people I’ve met and the chances of missing someone is REALLY high.

Here’s the trick:

1. Log in to Gist.com and go to your People tab
2. Make sure you’re viewing All People and choose the Select All XXXX people link in the header.  Make sure you only get 500 contacts in your list as LinkedIn has a limitation which is not displayed on their site anywhere.
3. Click Export just to the right of that
4. Save the VCF file that Gist just emailed you to somewhere on your PC
5. Log in to LinkedIn.com and select Contacts -> Add Connections from the top menu
6. Click the small / hard to find link titled “Import your desktop email contacts”
7. Click the Choose File button and select the VCF file you saved in step 4.

That’s it!  You can now connect to anyone on LinkedIn that you may have missed since the last time you updated!

Good luck networking!

Tips for better framing in e-mail communications

Tired of being asked for more context from your boss or co-workers?

I had a situation a few days ago where an co-worker sends me a quick instant message on the computer.  ”Should I set these two items to be dependent on each other?”  he asked.  A few hours prior we had been working on a project together, but the question didn’t really seem relevant to that.  I sat there for a few moments puzzled, staring at the screen.  Finally, I gave up on trying to put the mental puzzle together and asked “What in the world are you talking about?”

You hear over and over again in business that you must be sure to “frame things up” well so that you don’t lose your audience.  Unfortunately, we see this day in and day out, people assuming that the other person they are communicating with is psychic or knows exactly what happens to be on their computer screen.

I thought rather than just complaining about it, I’d put together some quick tips to possibly help others with framing things a little better using e-mail.  If this proves useful then I will probably write up tips for phone and presentation framing.

1. Before you write a single word, think about ONE thing that you want the recipient to do as a result of this email.
2. If this email requires action on the part of the recipient then include that in the subject.  This ensures that the reader can see immediately what they need to do.
3. Start the email by reiterating your requested action
4. Next, provide some framing around what you were doing and why it is you need the requested action.

Here are a few general tips:

1. Keep it short – If you need to have a conversation then pick up the phone, don’t send an e-mail.
2. Review before sending – re-read the entire message again from beginning to end, check your spelling, and verify clarity.

Please let me know what you think in the comments section below.

Know Thine Employee

Managers often try to motivate employees as a group rather than individually. It is extremely important for you to take the time to really understand each employee on an individual basis.  This will ensure that you are aligning any extrinsic motivations like pay increases, bonuses and recognition with the intrinsic motivations of each employee.  When it comes to employee motivation there is no “one size fits all” solution that can be designed.

Your first task is to take the time to clearly understand what motivates each of your employees.  I would recommend first looking at the sixteen basic desires theory.  This theory was created by Steven Reiss after he studied over 6,000 people and helps show why people do what they do.  Once you’ve taken the time to understand which of these qualities motivates each of your employees you can align your extrinsic motivation plan with their needs.

I will use myself as an example in this scenario.  I am motivated by curiosity (the need to learn), order (the need for organized, stable, predictable environments) and a little by power (the need for influence of will).  Based on these key areas we can put together an annual goals document that outlines key projects I can work on that best utilize my intrinsic motivational needs.

After the goals are documented you should utilized your one-on-one sessions with your employee to not only discuss status on their projects, but how they “feel” about their work and how well these intrinsic needs are being satisfied by the work.  The key here is to make sure your employee’s intrinsic needs are ALWAYS being met. They will not be happy with their work if these needs are not met.

Throughout the year I would suggest that you look for extrinsic ways to reward the employees for accomplishing their goals.  Some will be motivated by public recognition while others will prefer private.  Going back to me as an example, you could reward me by sending me off to training (curiosity) or maybe by giving me the opportunity to lead a sub-team for a specific project (power).  Again, this goes back to knowing your employee!  If you haven’t taken the time to do this you will probably default to giving the person a pat on the back during a team meeting, but this might not matter a bit to them.

When year-end comes and you’re working to determine pay increases and bonuses you can continue down the same path as you did previously by looking for ways to frame the rewards in a way that directly relates to their intrinsic motivations.  If your employee is motivated by saving then remind them about how much this bonus will contribute to their retirement fund.

5 Simple Steps To Your Dream Job

Have you been in your position for a while and are ready to move? Maybe you feel stalled out in your current role and want to move up or are just looking for a change. My goal with this post is to give some tips for those of you looking to move around and have a stable position currently.

Research

Your first step in this process is to figure out what your next job is.  I personally would take a blue sky approach to this task and really think about your dream job.  Don’t hold back!  Come up with a handful of jobs that you might be interested in doing.

Conduct Interviews

Once you’ve nailed down a handful of dream jobs you need to start conducting informational interviews with potential employers.  The point of these interviews are for you to learn about how different jobs are treated at a potential employer.

I would recommend using your friends & family as well as social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to quickly identify people that are working in your dream jobs.  When you are connecting to them you’ll want to make it very clear that you aspire to work in that role and would like to learn from them about it

There are many good resources on the internet for how to conduct an “Informational Interview” which I would recommend reading through before starting.  You don’t have to make this into a big deal.  You’re simply trying to learn from them and see if the “dream job” is all it’s cracked up to be.

Choose a Position

Now that you’ve learned all about your dream job inside different organizations your next step is to choose one.  Think long and hard about what you’ve learned and which one will be the best fit for you.  You’ve already made some in-roads with people at these organizations so you’re one step closer!

You should now start assessing gaps in your skills.  You need to identify key areas where you are lacking so you can either address them using your current position or be sure to re-work your resume to cover these gaps effectively.

Monitor

In many cases your dream job will not be available and you’ll need to monitor job boards like HotJobs and Monster to see when your dream job pops up.  Luckily you’ve already refined the search so it should be pretty easy to allow these sites to do the work for you.  This will ensure that you don’t end up with a slew of garbage jobs in your email box every morning.

Apply

Now that your dream job is available you should again tap into your social networks and gather some initial information about the job.  I would recommend using everything you’re able to find out about the job to ensure that you’re able to customize your resume to the position as well as nail the interview.
As you can see it just takes a little connection building, research and friendly talking to be able to nail your dream job!

Have you had success with processes like this in your career already?

What is Innovators Mix?

I’m sure that lots of my readers out there are wondering what all of this noise is about Innovators Mix over the last month or so.  Well, this is my attempt at explaining it. 

• Learn more about innovation and creativity – As with all things, the more you learn about something the more you realize that you don’t know much!  I would really like to be able to get to the point where I can call myself an expert in the field.
• Teach Others – This podcast allows me to not only learn, but teach others at the same time.
• Build my personal brand – By surrounding myself with experts in the field I will slowly build my personal brand through them.
• Network - I’ve read in many places that you should always surround yourself with people that are better at something than yourself.  What better way to accomplish this than to sit down and talk with those experts directly!
• Write a Book – Eventually, I would like to be able to take all of these things and write a book.  While today I don’t think that I have the right skills, I think that lots of practice and the right mentors would definitely get me there in the future.
• Take it to the schools – My long term vision with this project is to be able to put together content that can be utilized in elementary schools.  By teaching children creativity, brainstorming and ideation techniques they will be setup for success in the future.

I hope this helps clarify what I’m trying to accomplish, please leave me your thoughts and feedback below!