Adam Savage: Ground Rules for Success

The infinitely curious, brilliant, and kind Adam Savage gave the closing benediction at Boing Boing: Ingenuity theatrical experience at a former Masonic Lodge in San Francisco on August 18. The co-host of Mythbusters, co-founder of Tested, and Boing Boing contributor inspired us with his personal story of becoming a maker and outlined ten ground rules for success. 

Ben Chestnut: Creating an Environment for Creativity and Empowerment

Ben Chestnut is MailChimp's co-founder and CEO. After studying industrial design and physics at Georgia Institute of Technology and working as a designer for an mp3 website, Ben founded The Rocket Science Group in 2000. There, he built web apps—before they were even called web apps—for companies like BellSouth, CNN, Coca-Cola and The Arthritis Foundation. Within a year, Ben launched MailChimp, which grew alongside The Rocket Science Group. MailChimp was a hit, and he started focusing exclusively on it in 2005. Since then, MailChimp has grown from 9,000 users to more than 3,000,000. MailChimp makes it easy to design and send beautiful emails, manage your subscribers and track your campaign's performance. It takes powerful tools like segmentation, a/b testing and ROI tracking, and turns them into something anyone can use.

This presentation was recorded live at The Summit, hosted by The Youth Cartel on November 10 and 11, 2012.

The magic of a clear specification

Seth Godin's blog: 

Writing a spec is a kind of mind reading, which is why it’s so difficult. One half of the partnership has to take the time to not only specifically and precisely write down what’s expected and what the measurements and boundaries are, but then must do the challenging and risky work of engaging with the other half of the team to agree on that spec. Disagreements here are cheap, disagreements later cost a fortune.

The fear, of course, is that the spec will end the project, that without a lot of sunk costs on the table, a spec alone is too easy to renege on. In my experience, the most successful freelancers are also the most successful spec writers. Yes, there's some risk in clearly and vividly making your promises while the client/partner/boss still has time to back out. But professionals take that risk every day.

In praise of laziness

The Economist Schumpeter blog: 

The most obvious beneficiaries of leaning back would be creative workers—the very people who are supposed to be at the heart of the modern economy. In the early 1990s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist, asked 275 creative types if he could interview them for a book he was writing. A third did not bother to reply at all and another third refused to take part. Peter Drucker, a management guru, summed up the mood of the refuseniks: “One of the secrets of productivity is to have a very big waste-paper basket to take care of all invitations such as yours.” Creative people’s most important resource is their time—particularly big chunks of uninterrupted time—and their biggest enemies are those who try to nibble away at it with e-mails or meetings. Indeed, creative people may be at their most productive when, to the manager’s untutored eye, they appear to be doing nothing.

And Answers

I've always had a fascination with questions and answers. The how and why of asking questions and answering them. Lately this fascination has been rekindled because I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the processes of collaborative communication. 

You already know each other, you are clients or service providers, freelancers, interns, co-workers, you know each other. You've been working together for a while and have found the routines of how you share information.

It is at this stage that we begin to answer the wrong questions. Or more precisely answering most questions wrongly. 

We think we know how the other person works, and how the other person thinks, so we begin to answer collaborative questions with what we think they want to hear, or what we think is the answer to a better question. Collaborative confusion ensues. 

I am reminded of a great scene from an episode of The West Wing. I forget the episode's plot but despite paraphrasing it many times remember the scene vividly. 

The White House Press Secretary is being prepared for a deposition by White House Council. After a few hours of going back and forth the lawyer casually asks the Press Secretary "can you tell me the time?" 

She replies, "It's 2:35."

He becomes, well, angry. Sternly he tells her, "stop that, stop doing that. I asked you, 'can you tell me the time?' and the answer is yes. Stop answering the question you think you heard, answer the question I asked."

That's it. 

Stop answering the wrong questions. 
Stop answering the question you thought you heard. 
Stop answering the question you think they should have asked.
Stop answering the question with too much information and not enough answer.
Stop answering the question undecidedly. 
Stop answering the question by pivoting the subject and saying something else you want to share. (Technique used most frequently during political debates.)
Stop answering the question in a way that hides the fact you don't know the answer. (Just say I don't know. Let me figure it out.)
Stop answering the question by providing more questions so you can buy yourself more time. (Just say I'm not done. I need more time.)
Stop answering the question without providing a solution. 

Can you tell me the time?

Answer the situation, the problem, the question they asked.