Hugh Garry

Map-making in an Earthquake Zone

The other night I was invited to talk at a brilliant event called The Fantastic Tavern organised by Matt Bagwell from AKQA. I was asked for my point of view on how we organise and plan for chaos. My point was that we should be careful what we wish for. 

So when I was reading this piece by the brilliant David Hepworth this jumped off the page. 

In the future, companies will no longer be seeking people who can execute the old plan. They want people who have a new plan and know how to put it in action. They'll need to keep bringing in people who've learned things that the companies don't already know. They'll need to tap into skills that they didn't even realise they needed and then, when it's fresh skills they need, dispense with those services just as quickly as they got them in. This is of course richly ironical and points out the Fallacy Of Planning - or map-making in an earthquake zone, as I've heard it described.

"Map-making in an earthquake zone". It's a new phrase to me. But I think it nails it. I wish I had it in my back pocket the other night. 

The smartest people...

I like this. Jason Fried talking about a visit from Amazon's Jeff Bezos to the offices of 37signals...

He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.

The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking...

What trait signified someone who was wrong a lot of the time? Someone obsessed with details that only support one point of view. If someone can’t climb out of the details, and see the bigger picture from multiple angles, they’re often wrong most of the time.

Lean Startup: From the boardroom to the Whitehouse (SXSW12)

If you believe in yourself...

...You will know how to ride a bike.

Great advice from a 5 year old.

Woody Allen on 'success'

"80 percent of success is just showing up!"

Showing up is more than just 'showing up'. All the people I admire know exactly what it means to 'show up' and do so in abundance.

Whilst we're rolling out the percentages I'd say 50 percent of showing up is a selfish act, whilst the other 50 percent requires selflessness. Showing up for others matters because there is always something to learn regardless of how much people ask of you.

The project Apple cancelled

Foraging through the archive of This American Life I came across this remarkable story of a software engineer who was sacked from Apple but refused to leave.

Having spent so much time developing software for a 'graphing calculator view' he simply refused to give up. Why take all the good work he had done and simply throw it away just because the company no longer needed him?

So, he continued to come into work every day, hiding out in empty offices, working through the night, just to get the project he so passionately believed in finished for a company that no longer wanted him. It's heartwarming to hear such a story about a man with passion and a desire to create regardless of his circumstance.

I won't give away what happens. You can listen to the story here.

Snakes and Ladders

I just found this and think it's great. Apparently this Threadless design was inspired by Conan O'Brien's last monologue on The Tonight Show. The final paragraph went something like this...

"To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen."

I'm not sure of the story behind his departure but you can see the full monologue here.

Work hard and be kind. It's such a simple but obvious bit of advice when you think about it. So why do we rarely hear it? You always hear people saying that they achieved their success by 'working hard', but rarely through 'being kind'. Personally, I think there's too much emphasis on the first bit and not enough on the second. Get the second bit right and the 'working hard' bit becomes a whole lot easier. I'm no fan of the 'nice guys come last' school of thought. That line is usually rolled out by people with a very different perspective of success than my own.

I've 'lucked' my way through a great career by creating my own opportunities for serendipity and being nice when the moment arrived. I got my job at the BBC by just saying 'Hi' to a passing stranger. Sometimes it really can be that easy. It always amazes me when I meet people whose default settings aren't locked on 'be kind'. It's quite remarkable how many of them you come across in an average working day. Count them.

Being kind allows me to achieve things I might not achieve otherwise, with the added bonus of keeping the smile on my face through to the end of the day. At the same time I watch colleagues stumble over obstacles left by people who don't know what it means to be kind. It makes the workplace look like a giant game of snakes and ladders. Be kind and good things happen. Don't be kind and you'll inevitable take a fall.

SXSW: Zappos Do Epic S**T

Yesterday I went to a panel on ‘being interesting’, an hour long conversation that could be summed up in one simple sentence, ‘Do epic shit and people will like you'. It’s not a new idea yet it still astounds me how brands just have not got it yet.

Today Tony Hsieh, a CEO that certainly does get it, delivered a keynote on how he has fostered a culture at Zappos.com whereby extraordinary customer service is the norm. Zappos is an online clothing store that doesn’t do advertising. No banner ads, no magazine ads, no TV ads, just $1 billion sales per year based on word of mouth and repeat customers.

He talked about how “good deeds can help you leverage the power of your audience to massively extend your brand”... Or in other words, he does epic shit.

To give you an example of Zappos ‘epic shit’ here are a few notes.

• To ensure that the people he hired want to be a part of the Zappos culture, he offers every new employee after training $2,000 to quit. Only 3% take the money.
• Shipping is free both ways with a 365 days per year return policy.
• With a free shipping both ways, 365 day return policy they encourage people to order 2 items if they are unsure of size and are happy to pick up double shipping costs.
• Twitter is part of Zappos' training. About 400 of their 700 Vegas employees are on Twitter because he believes it builds trust amongst colleagues.
• Occasionally they give their customers secret upgrades by giving them next day delivery (even if the order comes in at midnight).
• If they are out of stock they will find the customers request on a competitors site and talk them through the process of ordering from their competitor.
• View the telephone as a branding device.

What came across especially is how important the culture of the company is and how happiness for both himself and his employees plays a huge part in ensuring the culture is right. Hseis talked about Zappos’ 10 core values and outlines 7 steps to building a successful brand, both of which can be found below.

10 committable core values

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

7 steps to building a successful brand

1. Decide if you are willing to build a long-term, sustainable brand.
2. Figure out your values sooner rather than later. Build a team whose personal vales are aligned with corporate values.
3. Commit to transparency.
4. Chase the vision, not the money.
5. Build relationships (as opposed to networking).
6. Build your team thoughtfully.
7. Think long-term.

Quotes

“People may not remember what you said or did, but they will always remember how you made them feel”

"Luck is about being able to see tasks beyond how they are presented"

"If you get the culture right the rest will just happen naturally"

"Whatever you're thinking, think bigger"

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” (African proverb)

“Zappos is about delivering happiness, whether it's to customers or to employees”

“The telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. You have the customer's undivided attention for 5 to 10 minutes”

“Employees to customers became missionaries for the brand”

“The plus side to being open is having 15,000 pairs of eyes working for you that are not on the payroll”

“I prefer just meeting interesting people than networking”

Check out this excellent visualisation of Tony's talk

Management tips? Buy a baton

It would appear that there isn't anything you can't learn from Conductors. Following my earlier post about Benjamin Zander I beg anyone in a management position to watch this talk by Itay Talgam.

When he gave this presentation at Picnic08 the conference saw its first ever standing ovation, whilst Al Gore has described it as the best management talk he'd ever seen. In this instance music makes a great metaphor with the conductor's role in managing an orchestra providing many lessons for anyone that manages a team.

There are some incredible clips of many great conductors, but one in particular of Leonard Bernstein talking to a group of young students really struck a chord. He clearly has a magnificent presence and makes a huge impact in both how he speaks and what he conveys to he orchestra through physical performance. He empowers the musicians by telling them "Your world is larger than you think'. As a true leader he helps them get an understanding of not where they are but where they can be. For me this is the greatest skill you could wish for as a manager and one my former boss Dan Heaf had in abundance.

On Tuesday I went over to the Media Center to give a 'Masterclass' to some TV people. I was talking about Shoot The Summer to anyone with an interest in UGC and mobile. After my talk a couple of guys currently making a youth orientated show using mobiles stopped behind to chat about how I got the best out of the audience. I couldn't express enough how important it was for me to spend some time with the people before I gave out the phones. In some cases I know that they wanted to capture something really good for me because they were so happy I had shown any interest in them, bothered to spend some time with them and even struck up a friendship. When I told one festival goer that I found him far more interesting than any DJ or artist I's spoken to that weekend he cried. He just couldn't believe that he could be of interest to anyone from the BBC. For one moment I'd made his world much larger than he ever thought it could be.

What was interesting about the guys making the TV show was that when I asked them what was the aim of the project they said "To get as many people as possible to send in their videos". When I asked them "why as many people as possible" they had no answer. It seems like the first rule of UGC is 'more = better'. For me the opposite was true in making Shoot The Summer. The 'less = better' rule allowed me the time and space to meet the people and make their world feel larger.

Managing UGC and the people that create it is something we need to master and understanding how to strike the right balance between control and freedom will be a huge challenge. I think that in trying to find the answer I'll spend more time with some conductors. What they don't know you could write on the back of a fag packet.