If you're my sister, stop reading (You can come back after Christmas and finish). Giving gifts to support one's core competencies. MR says People have different selves and when we give a gift, we should give not to the economical self, but to the wild self, something they normally wouldn't get themselves. More than that, we should focus on the core competencies of the person so that our gifts actually enhance their innate abilities. This way we're not only giving a gift, but saying actually complimenting them at the same time. Like, "You have such an ability convey emotion through words that I want to encourage your development in that area." I'm proud of myself this year and so I want to share some gifts that I think hit at the core attributes of the person I am buying for. My sister is a great writer, but never has time to do it. I want to encourage that ability in her.

Lap Desk- This lap desk is meant for reading/writing/working in bed or in front of the TV. But I'm hoping that it gets used for midnight/morning twilight inspiration. You know when you wake up at 4am with a great idea, but the thought of getting up to find a pen and paper isn't appealing? This is a comfortable desk, just waiting for you. Built in lamp and heating unit with a storage box inside. I think this may be one of my greatest gifts ever.

Storyboard Notebook- Also to encourage writing, I bought a little notebook that has storyboard frames on each page. This is commonly used for advertisers, cartoonists, etc to frame their whole sequence before going to the final drawing board. However I think it is great for writers as well. Instead of laying an outline, they can use the creative side of their brain to layout the plot and storyline before bringing their characters or ideas to life. Thanks to 37signals.

These are both gifts to bring out the writer in my sister and support her core competencies. It was between this and a back massager and I like how this path is turning out.

What are some other core competency gifts that you've been looking at?

Labels: core competencies, gifts

With so many articles going around about gift cards' effect on holiday gift giving and on corporate revenues, I return to the questions I've asked myself and store employees many times about how gift cards are accounted for in corporate measurements. Corporations keep track of sales at each retail location and the locations are often rewarded depending on their performance. More sales means a certain location is going a great job. I would imagine that on all of the reports there is a redeemed gift card line item singling out the dollar value and percentage of sales are attributed to gift cards being redeemed. Do corporations take those out of the equation? If I buy a gift card at one Barnes and Noble and my friend redeems it at another, who keeps the sale? None of the sales associates seem to know.

There's another question that I often ask sales associates in response to a question they ask me. "Credit or Debit?" I usually respond, "Which is cheaper for you?" They never know. I know that Visa charges most places differently depending on credit or debit. I'd like to know the break down.

Labels: christmas shopping, credit, debit, gift cards, sales

There have been lots of stories written and movies produced that deal with the ethical dilemma of following orders when a superior is wrong. In the case of "A Few Good Men," the entire movie deals with the aftermath of following inappropriate orders and who is really to blame, the ones following or the ones ordering. In "Courage Under Fire," we see the frustrating problems that occur one does not follow the orders of their superior and just how far some will go to cover up their mistakes in doing so. Without a doubt, following orders in the military is a big deal. Lives often depend on it.

What about following orders at work? Of course with whistleblowing on the rise, there is an increase in individual accountability. However, the work place typically isn't like "A Few Good Men" were your being ordered to commit a crime or "Courage Under Fire" where not following orders results in innocent lives lost and physical injuries. Most often the problem we have with superiors orders are that we simply think it isn't the best way of doing things. That's an area that whistleblowing doesn't touch. If your superior is committing a crime, obviously report it. If your superior is just stupid Michael Scott, what do you do besides suffer and make jokes? Should whistleblowing extend that far? what if you will end up being responsible for actions that you were ordered to follow in the work place? I think we may have seen an actual episode of "The Office" played out this year at AOL.

Apparently AOL wanted to make it extremely difficult for members to cancel their memberships. Whether this was through direct orders or through incentives to the call center employees, it doesn't matter. The employees made it very hard to cancel memberships. And it wasn't one employee, as AOL claims. After the tape of an attempted but unsuccessful membership cancellation was aired, AOL fired the "responsible" employee and issued a public apology. So, the news stations decided to see if it really was just a horrible employee. It took CNBC 45 minutes to cancel the account after that. This appears to be company wide. In reading that, I just feel bad for that employee who for some reason or another felt like he had to hold on to this member. Whenever someone says, "It would be better for this person I'm talking to to hate me and my company rather than do what they're asking," I would expect to see a customer about destroy their lives or endanger others. I would do this with a child, "No, you can't have that" because I might know what is good for them when they don't. AOL can't decide if they know better than their customers or if their customers are always right. We're not talking about "customer service guidelines and practices," we're talking about company culture, the entire way of being for a company. This isn't a policy fix.

The transparency associated with the internet is apparently turning out to be really bad for AOL.

Most people are familiar with the six degrees of separation theory and if you've read "The Tipping Point," your familiar with Lois Weisberg. Six Degrees basically says that most people in the world can be connected by six or less social connections. Milgram started by delivering a letter to residents in Omaha and asked them to get the letter to a stockbroker in Massachusetts, supplying his name. The individuals could only pass the letter on to someone that they already knew. Of those responding, the average number of connections separating the first individual and the target was six. With the advancement of the internet and social networking sites, I wonder if six degrees of separation has really become much less. So I am going over to The Small World Project and signing up...there done. Columbia University is basically attempting the experiment again. I have received my target's info and have started scrolling through my head to try and figure who would best be able to get into contact with her. I thought that my internet connections would make this easier, but now I realize that I don't really know most of them well enough to trust that they would get any closer to this person. I have lots of internet acquaintances, so maybe social networking is spreading us out instead of bunching us closer together. Part of Milgram's and others' findings indicate that instead of a unified and connected world, there are smaller highly connected groups with a few nodes like Lois Weisberg linking them all together. Instead of accessing my online contacts, I immediately turn to my small highly connected groups of which I am a part hoping that someone in that group will be able to connect with her. I hope to think of the next person within a day or two. I'll keep you updated on how it goes.

Labels: malcolm gladwell, six degrees of separation, small world, stanley milgram, Tipping Point

Scott Ginsberg wrote yesterday about painting ourselves into good corners. He means that it's not always a bad thing to get rid of the negative options in our lives and force ourselves to be held to a standard we make public. Usually painting yourself into a corner means you're out of options with nowhere to go and Scott points out that we always think that is a bad thing when it doesn't have to be. We can paint ourselves into corners that force us to make right decisions. You should read his post for some examples. Though I don't think anyone should go tattoo themselves with their ideals, the point is a good one.

Most of you that come to websites we operate are trying to make positive changes in your lives. We can all paint ourselves into corners that force us to make the decisions we know are right and that we had previously committed to making. A teenage guy struggling with an addiction can set up the situations in which he finds himself so that no other options are available except to resist temptation. Deciding ahead of time what kinds of parties you'll go to, which friends you'll hang out with, what time you'll be home, etc are all part of painting yourself into a good corner. Most of the rules parents give their children are not so much about control as they are about the corners in which we find ourselves. Even dressing modestly is an attempt to make a public declaration about the type of person you are and the activities in which you will and will not engage. Options are good, but once you've decided, remove the options that you know will not make you happy in the end. Surround yourself with good people and good situations and you might be surprised how difficult you can make it to slip too far. So try and think about where the good corners are in your life. Where are the places that would be a good place to be forced into? And then try and think about what the paint is that will keep you from wandering from those corners. For a lot of people the paint will commitments (public or private), friends, ground rules, and adult influences (parents, leaders, etc).

I can think of two authors that would agree, both Barry Schwartz with The Paradox of Choice and Dan Gilbert with Stumbling Upon Happiness.

Sixty five years ago, the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. We know about this. There is, no doubt, a special on the History Channel or something else commemorating the event. Through my news scroll on Google Desktop, I've seen various article come up throughout the day discussing the event. After Sept. 11th, I remember hearing many declare that we would never forget, that generations from now we'd still be able to tell others where we were when we first heard the news.

In 1941 there were approximately 132,165,129 people living in what is now the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii) (source). According to Wikipedia, 2,403 individuals were killed in the Attack on Pearl Harbor. On Sept. 11, there were 2,973 deaths (source) and the United States had a population of 281,421,906 (source).

I hate to use numbers to quantify how great of a tragedy an event like this could have been. Lives were lost and thousands more shattered. However, in comparison, Dec 7th was a far greater tragedy. Does it matter that those on Dec. 7th were mostly soldiers and those on Sept. 11th mostly civilians? I don't think so unless the argument is that Dec. 7th was an even greater tragedy because the average age of those killed was 23 while the average age of those in New York was 40. Our young men were taken before having a chance to realize their lives.

So I suppose my question is, 65 years from now, will the History Channel be doing some virtual reality reliving of the Sept 11 attacks with an occasional news story (however news is communicated then) reminding people what had happened 65 years ago, or will the nation really remember? I don't hide my religious affiliations and as I read the scriptures, I am amazed to see groups of people turn so quickly from prosperous, righteous lives to wickedness and then annihilation. How could they had forgotten so quickly the blessings and promises that had been extended to them and accepted by them? Will the same things be said of us? How do we keep ourselves from forgetting?

Labels: 9/11, pearl harbor

I carry my portable music in my Creative Zen, which can also be used as a calendar organizer, alarm clock, flash drive, contact manager, and task manager. I know simple is the new way of doing things, but I like the extras on this product and I use them often. This will change on Dec. 25th when I will begin using my new Creative Zen Vision W which is also a video player (60GB). I'm very excited for it. I've seen the new satellite portable players that can dock to a stereo station in your house and we've all seen the iHome and other stereo equipment where you can dock your iPod. Maybe what I'm looking for is out there, but I haven't seen it yet so I'll ask the question here. Why can't I dock my MP3 player in my car? Why do we spend a couple hundred dollars to have music with us everywhere we go on a portable device, but then spend a couple hundred more to have music in our car where most of us plug in our portable device to play through our stereo? What I'm imagining is a stereo with an MP3 player face plate. Think about it, you don't need your MP3 player and car stereo at the same time, there's no reason to pay for two separate devices. I plug my Zen into the stereo's audio in plug, but I hate that wire and I don't want an FM transmitter. Plus, I paid money for a CD player that would not be needing if I could just dock my player there. Most people remove the face plate anyways when they leave the car, why not remove the face plate and have it be your MP3 player? It just seems to make sense. I sent my suggestion to Creative because I like their customer support. I imagine it will end up like my other ideas that companies seem to shoot down. Like Kraft's Lunchables. I still can't figure out why they give you the same number of crackers as they do cheese and meat. The point of the whole thing is to make a cracker sandwich, meaning you need twice as many crackers. Crackers are the cheapest part and no body wants to touch the meat while they're eating it. Kraft shot me down as did Dole and countless others. Nobody listens to the customer.

Labels: creative, customer service, MP3

I have not limited myself to one post per day because it's never really been a problem for me, as it is for others. The developer community at facebook recently brought back the interactive friend thing (or sociogram) of your own social network on facebook. This is huge. There is a big problem because it is so slow to use, but the interactivity is great and the analysis that you can do with it is great. The way our sociogram website is set up does not involve interactivity, but only provides a snapshot and some analysis of your social network in the classroom. But you can download the file and open it on your own computer with no problem. I am going to have to re-evaluate everything we are doing and find out if there is a way to include http://www.touchgraph.com into our site now. Schools need this and students will understand it better than teachers. Right now our site is designed to help teachers and parents, but ultimately I think that this information will be much more powerful in the hands of the students.

Just a side note. Not only does http://www.touchgraph.com provide the background software for this, but they have something amazing that I have never thought of. It's a network map of websites. Who links to who? Who do those that you link to or that link to you link to? (If that makes sense). This could be great for our network map of books starting with love is the killer app.

Labels: facebook, network mapping, sociogram

Okay, so I can relate to Guy Kawasaki's post on young people trying to get into the venture capital business. He basically says that VC work is for the end of your career, not the beginning and while young you should be focusing on working hard and developing products and gaining experience. This was all started because a young college grad wrote to him telling him that he would like to get some experience in the VC business. I greatly value my education at the Marriott School of Business, but I have to admit that one of the hard parts was listening to all of the guys talk about what they were going to do after they graduated. A lot of them had plans to get in on some startup that was going to make it huge and they were going to be doing all of the things that Guy was talking about (checking their blackberrys while listening to someone pitch, etc). The guys at BYU fell in love with the romantic idea of entrepreneurship. As completely inexperienced as I am, I imagine that there is a lot more work that does along with it that wasn't in the plans. Someone responded to Guy's post by bringing up Mike Moritz, who is undoubtedly an accomplished VC, but didn't meet any of the criteria that Guy had put out. It sounded like a very defensive remark when I don't think that Guy was attempted to make a blanket statement. Instead, Kawasaki specifically referred to to "...all the Biffs, Sebastians, Brooks, and Tiffanys who want to be kingmakers." Those that want to be more than they are right now and are hoping that the VC path will be the one that gets them there. He wasn't speaking to those that are willing to put in the hours or that have natural circumstances leading them that way. He in no way implied that there weren't exceptions. And to his credit, Guy's response was simply: "This proves that you can always find an example to prove or disprove anything." (source) I still try and follow all of those guys from business school and no doubt now as I thought back then that many of them are going to make a huge impact and be very successful, but those are the ones that are working (a lot harder than I am working). Like Chad Blodgett's post on those that "while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night." These are good people out to make a big difference but just like Shel Silverstein's adaption of the little steam engine that thought he could, "thinking you can just ain't enough."

Labels: entrepreneurship, VC, work