Steve Neiderhauser

Wanted — An Option to Switch

While marketing research may suggest that we should build options into our products, just how do you create ambidextrous products?

It's easier than you may think. Truth is, all you have to do is shift thinking, shift your mental frame and you'll find yourself using options in no time. The software field offers a classic example.

With a small amount of design at the start of the project, you can infuse applications with an option to switch databases. Microsoft, for example, has created a tool called Entity Framework that enables a software product to switch between databases without changing one line of code. One minute your product is running on Oracle, change a configuration file, and the next it's running on SQL Server.

Think you customers may need this option? As much as Steve Nash needs the crossover dribble to beat stronger, taller, opponents to the hoop and leave them flailing at thin air.

Although the Real Options approach has failed to stick to most people's brain cells, the key is knowing how to frame the problem. What kind of option is it?

Option to Learn

Option to Wait

Option to Switch

In addition to providing an option to switch, the Entity Framework offers another game-changing benefit. Instead of programming against the database, a developer can now program against the model. This is like using an Excel spreadsheet to model an investment's cash flow instead of writing C code to hold 48 months of cash flow.

Allowing developers to spend more time focused on the application model means development times can be cut by as much as 40 - 50 percent in some scenarios.

An option to switch also increases your ability to negotiate favorable terms with a vendor or drop them like a hot tomato. When Apple had problems with IBM and its PowerPC chip, Apple exercised an option built into Mac's Operating System and switched to those crisp Intel chips.

Who else wants to learn the Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

— Maya Angelou

Have you ever wondered how Steve Jobs captivates an audience. When you read The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, you will learn proven techniques, giving you a competitive advantage.

Carmine Gallo structures the book like a classic three act story with scenes representing chapters. At the end of each scene, director’s notes enlighten the actor’s role like a Frank Darabont Shooting Script.

Because Carmine uses a teaching structure that parallels a Steve Jobs’ presentation, students will absorb lessons like a thirsty sponge. If the United States Government had this kind of delivery system for vaccines, the H1N1 virus would be a distant, dust-blown memory.

I want to tell you a secret about this book, a secret that will help you reach career goals. Before I reveal the secret, let’s review the book’s three acts.

Act 1: Create the Story

I’ve always been amazed by the parallels between story and selling solutions to business problems. Carmen’s book reinforces my sense of wonder about story and how we can create stories for business purposes.

In Act I, the author focuses on how to create a story for a presentation. What’s the most important question we can ask in relation to the story? Here it is: Why should the customer care?

Screenwriters ask a similar question based on the fact that all stories are about solving a problem. Is the problem a story-worthy problem? If someone has lost a cell phone and there’s no significant problem, who cares. How can you spin surprises from dross?

On the other hand, if an asteroid the size of Texas is rocketing toward earth, now you have customers who bolt upright and say, “Man, how are you gonna solve that problem?” James Bonnet writes that in solving the problem the solution formula is revealed. Elegant solutions contribute to the power of the story.

In the book, you see how Apple solves story-worthy problems with elegant products. And this problem-solution formula often leads to buzz-worthy catchphrases:

“New iPod Puts 1,000 Songs in Your Pocket.”

Act 2: Deliver the Experience

Steve Jobs uses a presentation as a delivery mechanism for experiences much like a director uses a movie to deliver emotions to an audience.

Mr. Gallo describes six scenes or concepts you can use to design the experience. Let’s look at three of them.

Simplicity - Jobs is known for eliminating extra bells and whistles from software and hardware products. Notice the elegance of the iPod interface. This design philosophy is reflected in his words and slides. He may put a lone word on a slide, “iTunes,” for example, or a picture of a MacBook Air. A sole picture provides the flexibility to speak freely while aligning with educational psychology principles.

Use Zippy Words - The words you choose also determine the quality of your performance. Screenwriters will go to great lengths to assure each character’s dialogue is artistically treated. Fragments, implied dialogue, and analogies are just a few of the techniques a screenwriter will call upon.

Carmine provides examples of Steve speaking at presentations:

“Plug it in. Wirrrrrr. Done.”

“iPod is the size of a deck of cards.”

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good, you’ll want to lick them.”

Steve speaks naturally. At times, even in fragments. And he crafts colorful language to bring features to life.

Reveal a Surprise Moment - Jobs loves to reveal surprises. In fact, he scripts moments to elevate the drama. For an example of this scene, consider MacWorld 2007 and the way Steve introduced the iPhone. For tips on reversals, drama, and surprises watch the movie North by Northwest and see how the master directed drama.

Mr. Gallo’s point is this: The way you design your slides, your words, your surprises determines the quality of the presentation.

Act 3: Refine and Rehearse

The author cites research that it takes about ten thousand hours of practice to master any skill or talent. I believe there’s one other quality that separates the mediocre from the masters. Top business professionals often posses the ability to organize information in a way that makes it easy for others to learn. Think of Steve Jobs. He takes complex technical information and transforms it into a performance that’s educational and entertaining.

Consider for a moment the author of this book. Mr. Gallo is a recognized expert in his field. What sets him apart? Is it the information in the book? That may be part of it, however, I think it’s the way he organizes the information, the way he presents the information, the way he shapes the information.

Truth is, I have a feeling that “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs” will become one of the most influential books about presentation skills. Why?  Because throughout the book Carmine uses a powerful teaching concept.

Write about a presentation principle, then tell a story to demonstrate the principle.  There are many good stories in the book... the stories alone will amplify learning. And yet, the author turns it up a notch by using a third teaching concept. He directs people to a video of a Steve Jobs’ presentation where Steve is using the concept as one of his colors on the palette of presentation.

Principle

Story

Model

Now students can actually model Steve's presentation dunks, just like school kids across America’s playgrounds imitated an electrifying, gravity defying Michael Jordan dunk.

And the book does something that all great stories do, it shows the transformation of Jobs’ presentation skills.  From the 1984 Macintosh presentation (considered one of the best) to present- day presentations where Steve's skills are at their highest art form.  

Let’s pretend the picture of Jobs dressed in a white shirt, bow tie, and double-breasted jacket for his 1984 presentation is the opening image of a movie. And the final image of the movie is Jobs dressed in his current performance suite — Black turtleneck, blue jeans, and white sneakers. In between the opening and final images is a story, a transformation engine holding the solution formula for becoming a presentation artist.

Next time you’re watching a movie, compare the first and final images. Then ask yourself, What transformation message is the movie sending to my subconscious?

One Last Thing

Just one last thing... At the start of this review, I promised to reveal a secret about the book. If the only thing this book did was gift wrap the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs that would be enough, wouldn’t it? In addition to making good on its promise, this book holds a second benefit: The book — and Carmine — show you how to live your life as an artist.

Why would we need to live as artists? Isn’t delivering products on time enough? Not anymore. Dan Pink writes convincingly about how we have moved from the information age to the age of the artist. And in this new age, story and design are skills that separate you from the sea of sameness. Jobs thinks of himself as an artist. Instead of products, his teams create works of art.

Products and presentations are table stakes. Today, you have to artistically treat your products and direct your presentations like a classic story. We no longer sell products or services, we sell dreams and experiences. We are creating delivery mechanisms for customer experiences. Using Steve Jobs as our model, let’s design experiences that delight customers.

Suspense. Curiosity. Surprise.

You don’t have to wait for your first keynote speech to practice the techniques in Carmine’s book. You can use his concepts to artistically treat all your work and produce remarkable experiences. Use the rule of three in an email, design software with Zen-like simplicity, orchestrate demos that thrill your customers. Your design and presentation skills will grow stronger, preparing you for that glorious moment in the theater of marketing.

Even though people may forget what you said, and people may forget what you did, it’s how you designed what you said and did that will sear the experience into your customer’s memory.

People will always remember how you make them feel. Make them feel great.

10 Core Capabilities of a Project Manager

Meridith Levinson writes that project managers need more than a deep knowledge of project management practices to deliver successful projects.

She identifies 10 capabilities of the next-generation project manager. She writes of flexibility and customer focus. These are all great skills, and the project manager will need business school training to give more than lip service to customer experiences.

For software projects, however, these capabilities are unable to guarantee project success. So let me give you the three legged stool of software project success.

Software Architecture Skills

Business Skills

Project Management Skills

Many universities are now offering a combined business and technical program. The University of Texas at Dallas for example offers a combined business and software graduate degree. And they also have a strong project management program.

If the underlying architecture of your software product is a house of cards built on quicksand, no amount of management will make the structure work. On the other hand, project managers who understand software design can make sure their projects are on a solid foundation from the start.

Enhancing Product Delivery

There is no loss to the customer by eliminating activities that provide no value.

— Peter Drucker

What would happen if you magnified your company’s ability to deliver products? Perhaps you’d land more customers. Increase revenue. At the very least, life would be easier for your team and your customers.

Let’s look at three areas that can be changed to deliver greater value to customers.

Product Architecture – Building better products will usually result in shorter implementation times and remarkable customer experiences. When you build flexibility into products, now you have an opportunity to design new customer experiences.

Customer experience design – Flexible products increase the chances you will be able to design experiences that delight customers. Remember, your customers are buying more than a product. They’re buying an experience, or maybe even a dream.

Project Management Methods – By simplifying processes or using Agile management methods, you can increase your company’s ability to deliver value and quality products.

Reducing clutter and creating elegant designs is an art form. Work on yourself first. Be curious and increase your own abilities. Then help those around you.

How to SWOT away Strategic Planning

This week I attended the University of Texas at Dallas Project Management Symposium and listened to the keynote speech by Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert. Mayor Leppert made one key point for today’s business: If you want to be successful in business, you need to build flexibility into your organization.

He expanded on the premise. Five or six years ago you may have been able to perform a SWOT analysis, determine your opportunity, and create a plan to enter that market. Not so today. Why?

The rate of change has become so fast, so deadly... that by the time you spend 12 to 18 months executing and delivering your plan, the target market has moved or is now nonexistent. Think of Detroit and the car business. These 100-year-old organizations are now on the cusp of extinction.

Of course, I agree that building flexibility into an organization is important and I would suggest that it’s even more important to build options into your products from the ground up, because your products create the greatest value for your customers.

Let’s look at an example. In 1996, NeXT Inc. had executed and exhausted all of its strategic plans. The company’s foggy future had many people guessing about its fate, until two NeXT software engineers took advantage of an option built into the NeXT operating system (OS). They modified the OS so it ran on an Apple computer, then called a couple engineers at Apple and said, “Hi, do you want to see NeXT run on an Apple?”

The rest is hardly a mystery. Apple bought NeXT and started to deliver cats like clockwork — Every 12 - 18 months, Jaguar, or Tiger or Leopard pounced on the market.

Just for a moment, think about the root cause of the opportunity that fell into NeXT's lap. Someone within NeXT made a design decision to build flexibility into the NeXT OS from the start, pulverizing speed bumps and empowering the team’s imagination to respond to changing conditions. For when imagination is unbound, it takes flight and lifts us to destinations unknown.

You gotta love options. I mean... when a company uses options in a disciplined fashion, it’s like wearing ice skates to play a hockey game while your competition wears tennis shoes. You gotta love those odds.

By now, I wonder if you’ve realized that design options create an advantage that long-term planning is unable to match. When the only option that remains is building options into your products and services, it’s high time to stow away the spreadsheets and set sail with design.

Prototyping tool for Mac

Axure has offered a powerful prototyping tool for the Windows platform for a number of years now. After listening to their customers, Axure has decided to create a Mac version.

Given the history of the Mac development platform and Cocoa, it's surprising there aren't more user interface prototyping tools for the Mac. It will be enlightening to see if Axure uses Cocoa as it's development framework.

If they do use Cocoa, they may be able to leverage other frameworks — Core Data springs to mind — to increase the fidelity of the models.

The Spaces Create the Attraction

It's been said, "The spaces between the notes create the music." The same can be said of great designs. In Matthew May’s wonderful book, In Pursuit of Elegance, he describes how spaces can be used in design and seduction.

"Seductive ideas rest on our ability to spark the kind of intrigue that will keep the imagination engaged."

Market research studies show that people like a product less when they know too much about it. This is labeled as the "Blissful Ignorance Effect." The research showed that consumers like a product better when there’s a moderate knowledge gap. The researchers identified three parts of seduction:

Arouse curiosity by demonstrating a moderate gap in the observer’s knowledge.

Provide enough information to make them want to resolve their curiosity.

Give them time to resolve their curiosity on their own.

Mr. May writes that the three parts of seduction all boils down to playing hard to get. So it’s interesting to notice that Elegant Design concepts can be applied to persuasion, design, and dating. That’s right, I did say dating. When a guy goes on that first date, he may have a tendency to talk to impress — Leaving nothing to the imagination, he describes his car, his job, and even his take-home pay.

Seduction by reduction can be a lot more effective. Describe a little about yourself and leave a lot to her imagination. Be mysterious. Let her fill in the spaces. Her imagination will attribute sterling qualities to you that you would have never thought of.

Of course, we’ve all had first dates with a potential employer, and our persuasion skills determined if we were able to attract that dream job.

Your persuasion skills are magnified when you arouse curiosity by demonstrating a gap in knowledge. Many managers resist great ideas even if the idea is a no brainer. So persuading people as though they were persuaded not, increases the odds of your idea being embraced.

This demo story shows how creating a space and an engaging experience, attracted managers to an idea they soon caressed and cared for as if it were their own.

Magnify the Map

From Annette Simmons' Territorial Games comes this inspiring story:

During World War II, destroyers had a maximum speed of 20 knots — except for one destroyer commanded by Admiral Arleigh Burke. Burke's destroyer sped 5 knots over the maximum limit. There was much speculation about how his engine room squeezed out 5 more knots.

While the topside crew could see planes fighting, hear artillery and experience the battle with all 5 senses, the engine room staff could see nothing and felt left out of the action. To remedy this, Admiral Burke wired the ship with a PA system that broadcast a blow-by-blow sports cast of everything that happened topside, complete with live sound effects. Now, requests for more power were met with added vigor, because the men understood why more speed was needed and felt part of the action.

In business, we can use the concept of making the map larger by including feedback that touches the five senses or magnifies the map. In software development, for example, you could magnify the project schedule by creating a milestone schedule, a schedule that shows only the key milestones.

I did this for one project and added a twist by printing the milestone schedule on extra large paper and taping the printout to a common wall. This made it a breeze for managers and developers to see at a glance the state of the project.

Tip: Use the milestone schedule for stakeholder meetings. Pay special attention to missed milestones, for those missed dates may mean the project is at risk.

The Imagination Economy

Last week, I received Ann Miller's newsletter. You gotta admire anyone today who is spreading a positive message, a message about taking control of your business and its future. Ann provided several examples of applied imagination that generated new business.

One customer succeeded by reversing her premise. Instead of selling Muncie as a solid, but second-tier convention site, she catapulted it into first place by calling it the un-Chicago site.

Ann also identified what I call the building blocks of creativity:

Substitute

Combine

Adapt

Maximize / Minimize

Put to another use

Eliminate

Reverse premise

Multiplication is another technique. How do you apply multiplication to product design? Intel did this when they created the Intel duo and quad core processor. Intel took one CPU and multiplied it to greater benefits.

When you read Applied Imagination, you'll see all the building blocks applied to creative solutions. You'll read and see how Walt Disney used multiplication: In a movie short he showed one violinist playing five violins at once, and then five violinists playing one violin.

When you tap into the creative source and are in the flow of the creative process, fears will be pushed aside and the window of opportunity will be opened wide.

So forget about the evening news and Katie Couric's baby blues. Turn your gaze to your gorgeous imagination — For the acts of your imagination is the only script you'll need to direct your movie of success.

In Pursuit of Elegance

In this blog post, Guy Kawasaki refers to an interview he did with Matt May, author of In Pursuit of Elegance.

I haven't read his book, although after reading the interview here is my main thought: Much of what Matt talks about relates directly to screenwriting or story concepts. It's the gap, or the subtext in your product that creates curiosity and engages people in your product and your story.

In Dialogue techniques, the pull and power of implied dialogue is described. These story concepts — the ones that create subtext and engage your audience — can be applied directly to new product development.

Writing a screenplay or novel is one of the most challenging endeavors I can imagine. So if you are able to write or understand story concepts at an artistic level, you should be able to apply story concepts to products at the same artist level.

Let's look at one of the answers that Matt gave Guy in the interview.

How do you define elegance?

Answer: Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. One without the other leaves you short of elegant. And sometimes the “unusual simplicity” isn’t about what’s there, it’s about what isn’t. At first glance, elegant things seem to be missing something.

Subtraction is one of the building blocks of creativity. By subtracting the right elements you're able to engage the audience. We talked about this concept in Stories in Interviews — To keep the audience interested and curious... imply information, leave a gap so the audience is engaged in the story.

By the way, Matt's definition of elegance (unusually simple and surprisingly powerful) is Apple Computer's value proposition for its desktop computers. A supercomputer wrapped in an easy-to-use interface.