Author: William Gallagher

Weekend read: What went wrong at Motorola?

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Apple is the hottest technology firm at the moment but it will die. It nearly did before. They all go. The unassailable get assailed. IBM was the big deal, now it isn’t. Microsoft ruled the world and now it’s more tolerated.

That’s not to say that Microsoft isn’t earning a lot of money. But it’s earning less and the facade that it was innovative hasn’t so much been seen through as turned away from. You don’t expect Microsoft to do anything interesting.

I mean, even if you’re into this stuff, you don’t expect Microsoft to do anything interesting. If you have no taste for technology, I lost you right back on line one anyway.

But I love this stuff and not because it’s technology. All tech does is speed up the process: companies that used to rise and fall over decades now boom up and collapse back much quicker if they are technology ones.

I went to some talk once where a speaker used Dell as an example of a fantastic business success story and a model for anyone who wanted to do any kind of business. Ahem, I said, haven’t you updated your slides recently? Dell really is a fascinating business studies case now because of all this speaker said plus the number of times the company shot itself in the foot and just how well it aimed. It’s no longer the model to follow but it is one to keep an eye on.

Whereas I knew nothing about Motorola. It did phones, I think I had one once, and I knew it made TV sets because there’s a reference to it in A Billion for Boris, Mary Rodgers’ little known sequel to Freaky Friday. Otherwise, zip.

Which makes this Chicago Magazine feature deeply absorbing. How a company became a great success but:

…great success can lead to great trouble. Interviews with key players in and around Motorola and its spinoffs indicate that the problems began when management jettisoned a powerful corporate culture that had been inculcated over decades. When healthy internal competition degenerated into damaging infighting. “I loved most of my time there,” says Mike DiNanno, a former controller of several Motorola divisions, who worked at the company from 1984 to 2003. “But I hated the last few years.”

What Happened to Motorola – Ted C Fishman, Chicago Magazine (25 August 2014)

Do get a coffee and read the whole feature.

Living in metaphor

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I’ve just been talking with someone who uses the word ‘manifest’ a lot. She says and she believes that if you do this thing, you will manifest what you want.

I stuck my hand out and said “And I just want a million dollars”. (It’s a Friends quote.) Still waiting.

But this is real to her. Think of something and you will manifest it. Don’t think of something and you won’t. This works for her every time, she says, without fail. It’s very important that you think of this thing you want and then you put it out of your mind and don’t think of it again.

Now, I offered that there might just be a touch of confirmation bias there: if you do what she says, then the only time you think again of something you wanted is when you get it. So you only remember the successes.

That kills the every-time-without-fail point for me. And you can tell that I’m not sold on this concept. But I agree with the thinking of it and it will come lark: if you don’t think of something, you can’t do anything toward getting it or being it or achieving it.

But I see that as having the idea and then working to achieve it. I see it as work. I reduce that whole chain to the one word. Whereas she reduces it to metaphor.

It is bollocks that if you think of it, it will manifest. (Still waiting.) But it is true that you can’t do anything without thinking of it first. I like that. I’m happy with that. I don’t need and really I don’t want magic. She doesn’t have magic, she just has the label, the term manifest.

It’s a shorthand, it’s a metaphor, and that’s fine. Metaphor compares and contrasts, it helps us grasp, it comments on reality, it is a connector. But it definitely sits in that area between us and what we don’t yet understand or maybe don’t yet have. If you treat the metaphor as the reality, then the metaphor becomes your aim. You’re no longer thinking of things to do or what you want to improve at, you’re thinking of the word manifest.

I think that’s like ignoring the bottle of pills and instead believing that the bit that says “Read directions carefully” is what you need.

Sorry, is that a metaphor?

Apple campus: less a spaceship, more Moonbase Alpha

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That’s what I thought at the top of this video, a flyby of a drone over the new Apple office buildings currently under construction.

And I would like to say now that no, I haven’t gone back on my word to not read Apple news stories – see The 319 News Stories I Won’t Read and, incidentally, the total a few days on is 947. I came across this while looking for productivity videos for you to watch.

Mindmapping iOS software iThoughts on sale (briefly)

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It looks to me as if there are really two contenders in mindmaps for iPad. I have one – MindNode – and the other is iThoughts, which is now briefly on sale.

I’m more of a text guy than a visual thinker, though that varies and I’ve found directing is like writing in 3D, but I’ve found mind maps useful for starting projects. You have this mass of ideas and you don’t know how or whether they fit together. Actually, you’re having a hard time getting all this stuff down because there’s so much and oh, yes, if I do that, I could do this, and then there’s that. And the other.

Mind mapping software lets you – forgive me – just vomit up everything you can think of. And keep adding. Keep doing your doings. Then drag two things that seem like they should be together. Drag a third. Drag these bits over to somewhere else. Delete something. Add something else.

You reach the point where your initial mess becomes rather structured – and with both MindNode and this briefly-on-sale iThoughts you can then shove the map off to your To Do list.

I love that. The visual mess becomes the organised visual mess becomes the text list in my OmniFocus.

Take a look at iThoughts on sale on the App Store.

Your boss can read your mind, a bit, with some help

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Imagine one of your managers walks into their subordinate’s office and says, “Our data analysis predicts that you will soon get restless and think of leaving us, so we want to make you an offer that our data shows has retained others like you.” Would your employees welcome the offer, marveling at the value of your HR analytics? Or, might they see images of Big Brother, and be repelled by a company snooping on the data they generate as they work? Predictive analytics can enable a customized employment value proposition that maximizes mutual benefit for organizations and their talent; but at what point do predictive analytics become too creepy?

Predict What Employees Will Do Without Freaking Them Out – John Boudreau, Harvard Business Review (5 September, 2014)

I think predictive analytics are creepy, full stop. I’m just okay with it up to the point when some bloke – you know it’d be a man – says anything to me like “Our data analysis predicts that you will soon get restless” and says it with a straight face.

But if figuring out that someone is going to leave means bosses take steps to keep you happy, I’m good with that. The full piece goes on to show that it’s worth these company’s time and investment in analytical software. Unfortunately, it also goes on to creep me out more:

Consider this object lesson from marketing. Pregnancy is an event that changes otherwise stubborn purchasing habits, so retailers want to know about a pregnancy as early as possible. Duhigg’s New York Times story reports that Target marketing analysts built a predictive algorithm to identify pregnant customers based on their purchasing habits and other demographic information. They sent those customers ads for pregnancy related products. What could be wrong with helping pregnant women be aware of products or services they need, as early as possible?

Apparently, women responded negatively if it was obvious that they received pregnancy ads before they revealed their pregnancy. They responded more positively if they received “an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers.” Duhigg reports one executive saying, “as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons…As long as we don’t spook her, it works.” Duhigg also reports that Target company executives said the article contained “inaccurate information,” so the story may exaggerate, but the lesson remains: Effective predictive analytics depends on how real people react, not just on the elegance of the analytics.

Let’s just repeat a sentence there: “Apparently, women responded negatively if it was obvious that they received pregnancy ads before they revealed their pregnancy.” I am torn between saying “Well, duh” or “You think?”

It’s interesting to me that these quotes are from the same Harvard Business Review article but HBR didn’t spot the connection. If a marketing firm can accurately predict when you’re pregnant, so can a personnel department. If given the same data anyway. So you’re at work, you haven’t told anyone you’re pregnant – because you’re never going to tell anyone before the first 12 weeks, are you? – but your boss knows. I don’t like where that’s going.

Caffeine Naps

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There’s a bit in The Blank Screen book where I quote songwriter Dar Williams. I’m prone to quoting her a lot but in this case it was to do with inspiration and specifically to do with caffeine.

Asked by someone about getting into the mood to write and create, she said:

You have to walk around a lot of museums, a lot of sculpture parks.
And time your caffeine so that you are in an open, wide, contemplative space for when it takes hold.

I like that and I like it a lot and I intend to do it more, but I’ve not connected it with another caffeine option before. The Caffeine Nap. When you’re tired and have to press on, drink some strong coffee, set your alarm for twenty minutes and have a nap.

Twenty minutes later, you’re woken by the alarm and the caffeine is in your bloodstream doing its wonderful job.

Samsung sells KITT or something

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I might buy if it were really KITT. As it is, the actual product isn’t all that clear in this new ad but I’m fine with that. Unfortunately, I could be wrong but it doesn’t sound like William Daniels doing KITT’s voice. Boo.

If your dad maybe mentioned the show, I can’t say you missed out. But I liked the car. Which is odd since I’m not a car kind of guy, but. Have a look at Knight Rider yourself.

Via The Medium Is Not Enough

Don’t trust public wifi

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You’ve done this: you’ve seen a public wifi and you’ve glommed onto it with barely a pause to send silent mental thanks to the shop that is providing it.

Fine.

I do exactly that.

But I won’t log on to any site that way. The login details are not safe because there could well be something watching that apparently free wifi signal.

If it sounds like I’m building up to saying you should always pay for you wifi, I’m not. I’m building up to saying this: if you’re on your iPhone or Android device and you use a free public wifi, come off it to do anything sensitive.

Just tap the Wifi button off and your phone reverts to 4G and away you go.

Switch back to the free wifi to download something big or just browser faster. And if you do this a lot, consider paying for a VPN.

The other benefit of writing To Dos as if someone else will write them

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First, the original benefit. The benefit I thought of and that I explain during The Blank Screen book and workshop.

Instead of writing “Email Tom”, write “Reply to Tom re secret tryst”.

Frankly, if that’s your task then I don’t know that I’d write it down my list. I’d just do it. I might call him on an untraceable burner phone, but that’s just me.

The thing is that tomorrow when I come to my To Do list, it’s right there. What I need to do, what it’s about. See that, do it, done.

But a woman on today’s workshop pointed out an extra benefit that I like so much I’m going to use it in all future workshops and claim it’s my own. When you write out a To Do as if someone else will do it, you soon see what’s important and what isn’t. What is important enough that it would really be worth giving someone.

I loved that. I’m having that.