Take complexity out and not the capabilities

I asked this question to my network -

How to bring simplicity in to the design of products – take complexity out and not the capabilities?

Here are a couple of interesting answers I got -

David Marshall wrote back -

It should all be driven by a proper elicitation process to define system requirements. This should result in an immediate protoyping session with the users without ever telling them what is technically possible. Find out what they need to be able to do their work effectively. Then build that and only that. Too often, designers build what they want to work on and with. The latest technological gizmos are cool. It is boring to keep reusing the tried and tested code. Except that users want only what makes their work easy. Anything that slows down the system’s performance or clutters up the GUI with redundant options is annoying and demotivating. It is hard enough to manage the transition to a new system. Giving the users the chance to take ownership of the design gives managers the best chance of a smooth transition. Thus, taking the designers out of the design is the best way to achieve simplicity.

Shantanu Sengupta says -

1st step – Forget you’re designing!!! Think you’re solving a problem!
2nd step – Once a solution is found, don’t stop… look for more solutions – at least 5 more!
3rd step – Apply logic and reason to see if these solutions are different and addresses the problem fully
4th step – If yes, see if they’re simple enough for applying in reality

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Get to know yourself

What a moment for America! Obama is the 44th president of the USA. A great inaugural speech by Obama which touches everyone on this planet.

One of the readers of Andrew Sullivan’s blog writes about the difficulty that the comedians have in mocking Obama. Interesting read particularly this line - “Obama has the realness that comes from the hard psychological work that it takes to really get to know yourself and come out on the other side unafraid of whatever might come your way. “

But what Obama seems to have is the ability not to appear as if he is acting, faking it.  That is why comedians were able to mock Clinton’s lower lip biting and other such gestures meant to show how much he cared. Why do comedians have such a hard time mocking Obama?  Some say it is because he is black, and they don’t want to be seen as racist; no, that’s not it.  They mock Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all the time.

They can’t mock Obama because he is not a faker, not a schmoozer,  not a dolt, not a skirt-chaser, not a charlatan, etc. etc.  Obama has the realness that comes from the hard psychological work that it takes to really get to know yourself and come out on the other side unafraid of whatever might come your way.  That is decidedly not funny.

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We Win or We Perish

This is an interesting short-story that gives a perspective for entrepreneurs’ risk taking abilities. 

A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, “You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice – we win – or we perish!“

They won. [From Napolean Hill's classic book]

 

Exceptional leaders (from the book “WHAT MAKES jack welch JACK WELCH”) had experienced exceptional personal growth in the following five critical areas:

1. Appetite to lead

2. Character

3. The confidence to seek challenges

4. Ability to engage and inspire others

5. and most importantly CONFRONT RISK.

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Interview with Bill George (Author of “True North”)

I interviewed Bill George, author of best-seller books “Authentic Leadership” and “True North”. Bill is not just a great author and a leader himself, he is a wonderful coach and a teacher too. Here are the excerpts of this brief interview -

Hitesh: What is “True North” and how does it apply in the context of a business student or a budding entrepreneur who is just starting on a leadership journey?

Bill George: “True North” refers to the deeply held beliefs, values and passions. It is how you see yourself as a human being at a fundamental level. As a business student, it is easy to get lured to the seductions of the job search. It is easy to follow the herd and live the expectations of someone else. At this stage it becomes all the more important for you to discover your real self and find your sweet spot.

The book “True North” provides a framework because that allows you to create your own direction. Instead of other cook-books on leadership that provide the “10 qualities that make a great leader”, “True North” provides an individual approach and a framework with exercises. YOU have to figure out yourself your own values and point of differentiation.

Hitesh: How does one “frame” or “reframe” one’s life story? Is framing not by definition twisting the truth and thus not authentic? How can you have flexible leadership styles and still be authentic? Please help explain these contradictions.

Bill George: Good questions and I wrestle with these myself all the time. If you start taking these recommendations from the book to an extreme, that could be a problem.

We all see this world through a certain lens. e.g. If one grew up in a fundamentalist religious family and later on got exposed to multi-religious or atheist view points, then that opens up the mind at a much deeper level. Oprah Winfrey came to a realization at the age of 36 that she is not a “bad girl” as she always viewed herself as. She reframed her childhood abuse experiences by tracing her actions there and came out a much stronger person.

The flexibility referred in the book is the tradeoffs in your values that sometimes you have to make. These are tough decision moments where you have to make decisions like layoffs and sometimes have to reprioritize your values. The leadership “style” is a different thing than your authentic self. e.g. If the situation demands quick decisions then a consensus leadership style will not fit and you will have to adapt.

Hitesh: Any words of wisdom for the younger budding leaders?

Bill George: Get into the game. Do not watch it from the sidelines. Don’t hold back. Take the risk of failing to learn a lot.

[Please note that Bill's comments are not verbatim and are based on the notes that I took. This was not a recorded interview]

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The MONK and the MONKey

I read Randy Komisar’s “The Monk and the Riddle“. I just could not stop when I started reading it. By the time I finished reading it, the clock struck 4 AM. I think it was a night well spent.

Randy Komisar is a Venture Capitalist with Kleiner Perkins. This book tells Randy’s evolution (thus the word Monkey in this post’s title) and search for his passion. Autobiographies are generally boring but Randy does a great job by weaving his life nuggets with a great story of an entrepreneur, Lenny.

“We will put the Fun back in FUNerals”, says Lenny. He is trying to sell an internet business called funerals.com to Randy. This story is set in year 2000, when the whole world was going online – from pets and groceries to well funerals and caskets. I could relate to this story since a number of my friends were pitching get-rich-quick-internet-business-plans those days (and with Web 2.0 they are doing it all over again).

Lenny is a vulnerable soul like many of us who go through life in two phases. In the first phase we do what we HAVE to do so that in the second phase we can do what we LOVE to do. Randy’s point is to start doing what we LOVE to do NOW. He asks us to not live a life plan which is always deferred till we pay our dues. How practical is it?

Randy does a good job explaining the importance of following our passion, but he lacks concrete steps and examples to find out what that passion is. That search for passion is a very individual matter and requires a lot of personal effort. Bill George’s “True North” does a great job providing a framework to search for that passion. “True North” picks up where “The Monk and the Riddle” ends.

This book is a must read for anybody who thinks business is all about the bottom-line and chasing money. It will convince you to look at business and your professional life through a new lens.

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Happiness: How To Find It?

HAPPINESS – It is the single most important goal of human life. All our actions could be traced to “seeking happiness”. While happiness is so important and sought after, it is not properly understood. There is a huge element of subjectivity involved and that makes it hard to define, measure, monitor and fix.

 Uncertain Future: Our brains have a number of issues that make it hard for us to predict “what would make us happy”. The most significant shortcoming is the lack of details in our imagination. When we think about a future event we tend to just imagine a few important aspects of it. Our brain misses on a number of details.

What differentiates human beings from other animals – our ability to imagine and “plan” for future. This long-term thinking is also responsible for our misery. Our super ancestors’ brains did not have a faculty to “worry” about future. Just like cows, cats and dogs they just had sufficient brain power to handle the immediate future. Our frontal-lobe in the brain is responsible for future long-term thinking and it was developed in the middle of our evolution cycle. This lobe is a part of brain which is non-essential for the basic functions of human body. We would still live if we don’t have this worrisome frontal lobe with our brain.

Unclear Past: Second shortcoming for our brain is related to our past memories. Contrary to common belief our brain is actually not a good storage device. The way it stores past events is by leaving out a lot of details and compressing what it stores. The problem that it manifests itself in is the fact that we are not able to do a good job of “looking back” and deciding what makes us happy. E.g. the only thing our brain might remember about our family reunion is the great panaromic view from the hotel balcony. It does not remember the details of pickerings with our cousins. Because of this we make irrational decision of going to our reunion every year.

What To Do?

Two things one could do to work around these limitations -

1. Consciously try to “Be Happy NOW”, instead of putting it off for a future event, sale or possession – enjoy the moment.
2. Talk to somebody who “IS” in that situation before making these decisions. That is the best proxy for finding our future happiness. This way we do not rely completely on our own faulty imagination. E.g. if you are thinking of moving to Raleigh from San Francisco for your next job – talk to somebody who has done it and is currently in North Carolina.

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Harmony in Decision Making and Happiness

We make so many decisions everyday, ranging from as simple as which brand of coffee to drink to as significant decisions as whether to use nuclear weapons against Japan.

How do we make these decisions? What is our personal compass that we use to navigate through this web of decisions? And, Is that compass directing us to our best estimate of “happiness” in future?

Happiness is so subjective and all of us have so different definitions. This subjectivity and variety in how we interpret our own compass of happiness results in this magnificent variety of life experiences that we go through. It results in so many different life stories.

What is important in all these journeys is the “seeking” part of happiness. We strive to be happy and thus we do all those things that we “think” will make us happy.

Three important decisions that one makes in one’s life are -

1. Place where we live our lives
2. People we choose to spend our lives with
3. Work that we choose to do

In the last couple of decades the possibilities in these choices have exploded exponentially. In this global world the way we decide where and how to live our lives is very different than how it used to be. A number of us end up being nomads or “global citizens” as we call ourselves. The happiness comes from the eclectic experiences that one gets by moving to different locations, meeting different people and doing different things.

The HARMONY that we can build around our three choices is important. The dissonance that arises is responsible for unhappiness.

Just follow the high-level personal compass instead of going into the detailed analysis and planning for future. There are so many variables anyway on your way – focus on the most important ones.

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How green is my purchase?

When we ask this question about “How green is this purchase of mine?” – Remember this -

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

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Discipline fosters creativity

Popular Belief: Discipline hinders creativity.
Reverse: Discipline fosters creativity.

The most prevalent way to depict creativity is Einstein’s photo with his shabby hairstyle and chaotic looks. Creativity does not always come packaged as this confused picture. The other well-behaved gentleman shown above is C.V. Raman – another physics Nobel Prize winner. It is a different face of creativity than what is popular. Raman was a disciplined scientist who performed ground breaking research while still receiving a gold-medal in college [Einstein got into repeated trouble at school].

Quantity of ideas is very important for creativity. Discipline provides a platform to create an “idea factory”. Discipline helps create a fine-tuned operational process to generate a lot of ideas. A lot of ideas are always better than the few ideas that shabby zealots find themselves boxed in because of their inflexible mindset.

Being chaotic has suddenly become hip. It is the current fad in the enterprise. We have gone too far when it comes to creating an “informal” culture. Being informal does not mean being dirty and messy.

A number of chaotic-creative-people never get to implement their creative ideas because they are not focused. They do not have a goal in mind when they start with their creative process. Disciplined thinking requires you to clearly state your goal in mind before you start any creative endeavor. With structured thinking you start on a stated goal, identify a compelling motive and follow a disciplined approach to finding creatively disciplined ideas.

Another related popular notion is that a shabby work environment is a sign of creativity. A clean environment is much more helpful when it comes to creating good ideas. A dirty environment breeds dirty ideas. A messy environment creates stress and stress in turn kills creative juices. A clean environment on the other hand lets you focus on the creative task at hand.

In conclusion, do not get rid of the basic discipline which is required in the creative process. Do not create unnecessary chaos just hoping that creativity is directly linked to dirty desks and lunatic looks. Discipline is a virtue – embrace it when you embark on your next creative endeavor. And, please get a decent haircut.

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