all posts tagged “lesson”
Explainer Tip: Remember the Curse of Knowledge
Posted by: leelefever on August 10, 2009- 5:00pm
Categories: Explainer Tip, Explanation, lesson, ourwork
The following post is a part of a series called "Explainer Tips" where we share lessons we've learned in crafting explanations.
One of the books that I read just before creating our first videos was Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. More than almost any other, this book helped me see new opportunities to present ideas in a unique way. One idea from the book really stands out - it's The Curse of Knowledge
We've all experienced it - in talking to a doctor, an engineer or academic, we get lost. Despite their best efforts, they explain a topic using words and examples that don't make sense to a beginner. These people are suffering from the Curse.
The idea behind the curse of knowledge is that the more we know about something, the harder it is for us to explain it to someone who knows nothing. We have a hard time being able to imagine what it's like not to know. For example, think about a lawyer who spent his life reading and writing legal documents, talking to lawyers all day every day, etc. When you ask this lawyer about tort reform, you're likely to get an explanation that confuses you more. This person knows too much to answer your question in a language you understand.
We're all guilty of having the curse. We all have something in our life that we know very well - perhaps too well to explain easily. The key is know that the curse exists. To be able to recognize the challenge before you. Here's how:
Consider every word. Sometimes a word that is completely natural to you can doom an explanation. For example, let's say you're a financial planner and you sit down with a young couple and they seem to get everything you're saying. Then you mention "amortization" as if it were any other word. You use it every day and the people around you do too. It may seem that amortization is perfectly normal. But it's not - their eyes glaze over and the explanation takes a turn for the worst. You have the curse.
The Remedy
Part of the problem with the curse of knowledge is that we assume too much. We make assumptions about what people do and don't know. The stronger the curse, the easier it is to assume. To get around the curse, you can either start with the basics, or get a feeling from your audience about what they know. Don't assume they speak your language or have your perspective. If explanation is your goal, impressing them with big words and details are going to work against you. Your time is better spent accounting for their level of understanding and their context.
Here's a great interview with the Heath brothers by Guy Kawasaki from 2007.
Next Up: Put the WHY Before the HOW
Explainer Tip: Stop Talking About Technology
Posted by: leelefever on July 27, 2009- 5:00pm
Categories: Explainer Tip, Explanation, lesson, our work
The following post is a part of a series called "Explainer Tips" where we share lessons we've learned in crafting explanations.
You likely have friends and family members who consider themselves non-technical. When discussion turns to anything related to computer, they throw up their hands and say "I just don't get tech stuff!" The truth is, this is the vast majority of people. And it's completely understandable why they feel this way. Technology can be very intimidating and many of the most popular tools are poorly designed for a new user.
But it's not just technology - it's how we talk about technology. The most simple and user friendly tools can sound intimidating if we insist on using terms like XML, extranet, APIs, etc. There is no end to confusing technology language.
The next time a novice asks you about technology, here are questions I want you to ask yourself:
- How can I explain this without talking about technology?
- Can I use a real-world example to explain this instead of the actual technology?
- What is this person likely to understand that I can use as a comparison?
A classic example is email. Let's say your long lost uncle emerges from the woods and says "What's email?" You have a choice: You can tell him about computers, SMTP, domains and headers or think of something that he already understands, like the Postal Service. To make it easy for your uncle, forget technology and start by talking about snail mail. Establish the value of being able to communicate written messages over long distance. Talk about using pens and typewriters. Talk about how long it takes and why it's painful. He will get it. Then, the jump to technology is easier. Email is the same as sending a letter but more efficient because we have computers instead of pens and typewriters.
By taking technology out of the picture in the beginning and speaking in recognizable terms, you can prevent your audience from throwing up their hands and saying "I don't get technology!" Instead, you're offering an invitation - an introduction to the subject that speaks in their language and lives in their world.
Other Explainer Tips:
Explainer Tip: Make People Care
Posted by: leelefever on June 25, 2009- 5:00pm
Categories: Explainer Tip, Explanation, lesson, our work
The following post is a part of a series called "Explainer Tips" where we share lessons we've learned in crafting explanations.
Looking back on my education, one thing becomes clear: I was a not a good math student. What I've learned since then, is that I had the potential to enjoy math, but there was a mismatch between the way I needed to learn and the way I was taught. I wrote about this previously in a post called "Talkin Bout My Education." Math turned me off because it seemed like memorization and formulas with no context. I had a hard time seeing the big picture. Had someone been able to help me care about math, to see why it mattered, I might not have recurring math-related dreams to this day.
This brings us to one of the big things we've learned: Explanations should make the audience care. Without this focus, an explanation is more likely to fall on deaf or daydreaming ears. In my case, math classes seem to drone on and on because I never fully understood why it mattered.
When it comes to your explanations, remember to spend time on building context. Early on, give the audience a way to see why their time is well-spent listening to your points. If you go too quickly to the how-tos and click-heres, you're likely to lose some people.
Of course, we're believers that brevity is important as well. There's a balance - you may not be able to get into as many details if you focus on context. From our perspective - context wins. Here's why: making people care is the hard part. Time spent on making people care creates motivation that can last long after the explanation is over. Once someone believes that the subject matters to them, they're more likely to listen to the explanation and go looking for details. And that's what making people care is all about - helping people develop a new interest.
So, how do you make someone care? Future posts in this series will help to answer this question - it's one of the biggest. For now, I'll start with this tip:
Make a connection to a real world problem. For example, to explain a new mobile phone service, don't start with features or shortcuts. Instead, tell a story about a real world problem that everyday people experience. For example, you could start with "If you take the bus, you know how frustrating it can be. You never know when it will arrive." These words say nothing about a mobile phone, features or brands. Your introduction is focused on the context and the problem. By making statements that reflect real-world problems, the audience can quickly say "I know that feeling!" Helping them with this realization is the goal.
This way, your explanation has a hook - something that grabs the attention of the audience and helps them feel that the explanation could be worth their time. And ultimately, that's the value proposition - spend time with this explanation and you'll learn about something that applies to your life.
Other Explainer Tips:
Explainist (yay! they're back) has a new post about Explanatory Filenames and how to think about the person on the other end. Quote:
But think about the guy on the other end who receives proposals from 10
different candidates on the deadline day, all with the same filename.
The first thing he has to do is rename each of them. If you’re thinking
about your audience, you’d save the proposal with your company’s name
in the filename — e.g. TomCo-Annihilatrix_Proposal.pdf.
I think the key point is about the perspective of the explainer. As I wrote in a comment, it’s this awareness of the other person and their needs that helps so
much with explanation - being able to put the idea in the other
person’s context.
Another example is giving driving directions (before Google Maps anyway). I bet that good explainers are also good at giving directions. When I've been lost in the past, I could see that the person giving directions had a hard time understanding what it was like to drive from A to B for the first time. Good directions account for the driver's perspective and context just like good explanations account for the learner's perspective and context.
I've been a Twitter user for just over 2 years now and I'm still trying to figure out how to 
use it well. A couple of weeks ago, We created an @commoncraft account that's focused on our business and looks behind-the-scenes. Now that I have an established account (@leelefever) and one that's just getting started, I've been thinking a lot about what's possible with Twitter. Some thoughts:
(If you're new to Twitter, watch our video Twitter in Plain English )
To Follow or Not to Follow
I take a decidedly lightweight approach to social media. If I haven't met you or don't know you personally, I'm not likely to add you as a friend or follow you. I currently follow about 200 people on Twitter and it's still too much. When I follow someone with the @leelefever account, I try keep up with most of their updates. This is how I've always used Twitter.
Now that I have a new, business-oriented account, I'm thinking about it a bit differently. With the @commoncraft account we're following most, if not all, the folks who follow that account. This way, we can receive direct messages from these folks (Twitter members can only send direct messages to members that follow them.) Also, it creates a stream of Twitter updates that represent people interested in Common Craft. I realize I can't really follow everyone, but having the stream gives me a source that I can manage later. And, I think it's a nice gesture.
Reducing Twitter Administration
As you know, I'm all about reducing heavyweight administration. The @leelefever account gets about 10 new followers a day and it's rare to see someone I know personally. I've started filtering the emails to help me manage my inbox. The side effect of this is that I don't see every email and may miss people I want to follow.
Again, I'm trying something new with the @commoncraft account. For now, I'm trying out a service called Tweetlater that automatically follows people that follow @commoncraft and sends them a quick "thank you" message. It's not as personal as I'd like, and some spammers are using it for nefarious purposes, but it allows me to accomplish the goal of following people without having to take an action for every one. It's lightweight.
Other Tools
I've done little experimenting with the @leelefever account in terms of tools. I think there is part of me that wants it to be pure - like the Twitter I used 2 years ago. I've linked it up to my Facebook account and on my Tumblr, but I haven't tried any Twittering services.
With the @commoncraft account, I'm all about experimentation. Just recently I started using TwitPic to publish photos like this to the @commoncraft stream. I want to bring people into our daily work lives and TwitPic makes it easy to snap a picture with my phone and post it in seconds. I've also hooked the Common Craft blog into the Twitter stream using Twitterfeed.
Having Two Accounts - Which Tool?
How do you manage two accounts? Right now I use Tweetdeck for personal and the Twitter web site for Common Craft. I know Twhirl allows more than one login.
TweetDeck and Twitter Groups
I'm using TweetDeck for all my Twitter needs. I have a column for the people a follow, a column for replies and a few searches (more on searches later). A feature I haven't used in TweetDeck is the ability to create groups. With groups, I can take everyone I follow and filter the stream by into "family", "must read" or "news" for instance. Because I'm only following 200 people, this isn't as useful for the @leelefever account. One day I may start to slice and dice the people I follow via the @commoncraft account into groups.
Search
Twitter Search is an amazingly powerful tool. We both use a search query that gives us an constant stream of activity on Twitter related to what we do. It's designed to capture the key words and phrases, across both accounts. It looks like this:
commoncraft OR "common craft" OR leelefever OR lefever OR "plain english" (Link)
Redundant Content
Having two accounts presents some issues in terms of content. For instance, a lot of people follow the @leelefever account because they are interested in Common Craft. Now that they have an oppotunity to follow @commoncraft, I have to consider redundancy. Do I post links to blog posts on both accounts? It's going to take a little while to negotiate what goes where. What do you think?
I'm curious what you think about these points. Is your use of Twitter similar to one of these models? What else should I be considering?
Perhaps you'd like to follow us? We're @commoncraft, @sachilefever and @leelefever. Also, here's a post I wrote after one year: Twittering for 1 year: a Retrospective.
Over my life as a dental patient, dentists have told me to pay close attention to brushing the back of my bottom front teeth. Unfortunately, this piece of professional advice had a hard time getting into my daily routine. That changed recently - I'm now much more likely to brush these teeth - and it's because a new dentist took an extra 30 seconds to explain something important - why.
There I sat, with a small liquid vacuum cleaner hanging off my jaw, waiting for the dentist to check in on the work of the hygienist. After some poking around, he said "you need to take some extra time to brush the back of your front teeth and the outside of your upper molars." Yeah, yeah, I'd heard it before... brush better whatever. He then said "Do you know why that needs extra care?" Hmm. No. "It's because those teeth are positioned near your saliva glands, which are constantly pushing saliva on them, causing them to decay more quickly." Whoa. I had no idea.
It was like a new world of dentistry opened before my eyes. It only took a couple of sentences to change the way I think about how my mouth is built and become motivated to prevent my own anatomy from working against me. The dentist didn't just give me some abstract command to be a better tooth-brusher, he made sense of it - he gave me a way to see why.
The last few weeks have been both frustrating and enlightening here at Common Craft headquarters. We're in the middle of an ambitious production schedule that has us working on two new series of videos that will appear on the Common Craft Show and Store. There are a lot of balls in the air - multiple scripts, storyboards and productions. It's a lot to manage.
Of course, the bottom line for us is quality explanations. Recently we put many hours into producing 3 videos in a similar theme - scripted, storyboarded and shot. A few days ago we recorded the voice-overs, and something became clear. A couple of the videos just weren't good enough. They were accurate and clear, but lacked heart. Despite all the investment of our time and resources, we had to make a decision.
Are the videos good enough? Are there small changes we can make? Do we need to re-think the stories? How long will it take to restart?
We've since talked about it and recognized we don't really have a choice as long as our goal is excellence. If we think a video is "good enough", it's not excellent. So, we've decided to suck it up and rethink two of the videos from the ground up - new scripts, storyboards and artwork. It pushes out our schedule and means we won't make our production deadline, but that's okay. It's frustrating for an afternoon, but then it feels better than it did before, as if we're traveling on an even better path.
It's certainly not the first time we've scratched an entire storyboard, and it surely won't be the last, but this is the first time it has happened on a series of videos. We're learning about our standards and how to judge our own work. We've always recognized that iteration is essential, and sometimes starting again from scratch is a necessary part of the process. To make an excellent video, we have to be prepared, at *any* point to throw it all away and start over.
Being Lightweight: Business Design
Posted by: leelefever on July 20, 2008- 5:00pm
Categories: beingsmall, business, lesson, lightweight, marketing, ourwork
This is the third in a series of posts about Being Lightweight. The first two were about Working with Clients and Tools We Use.
We are lucky to have a product that people like. Our challenge is to experiment and find the best ways to build a business around this product. To be successful we need the business to be profitable, but also work within the life we want to live.
We see this process as "business design" and as this series outlines, being lightweight is a big priority. Below are a number of ideas and thoughts about creating a lightweight business.
Two People - We are dedicated to being a two person company without employees. This is a fundamental constraint that guides nearly every decision. By making our size the priority, we have been forced to think hard about what is possible for two people and be prepared to focus on opportunities that work within this constraint.
Employees - We may work with contractors and short-term help, but we do not plan to hire employees. In the last article in the series I talked about the heavy nature of stress and anxiety. Growing the business by hiring would add potential revenue, but also add significant stress and loss of focus on our work in order to manage those folks.
Business Model - We ask ourselves - What business do we really want to be in? What do we want to be doing on a day-to-day basis? Consulting? Custom Videos? Licensing? Ads? Commercial? To be lightweight, we need to bring focus to the 1-2 models that get us closer to our goals and put others on the back burner.
Scalability - We are small, but we do want to scale the business. How? We consider business models. The custom video model does not scale - we would have to hire employees to make more videos each month. A more scalable model is selling licensed versions of our videos in the Common Craft Store. In this model, potential revenue is not tied directly to production time.
Not Doing it All - When opportunity knocks, it's hard not to answer. The problem is that we can't do it all and we've learned to say no, even if it hurts sometimes. The key is being clear about our future goals. If an opportunity doesn't take us there, then it's creating drag.
Marketing - We don't spend time on brochures, fliers or ads of any traditional sort. We believe that the best marketing doesn't always come from a campaign - it comes from the users of our products. We focus on making free versions of the videos easy to share.
Agility - About a year ago, a few companies started to become interested in our custom videos. We literally woke up one morning and decided to focus 100% of our business on these videos. The same thing happened when we decided to focus on the Store. Our goal is to retain this freedom to react to changes and opportunities efficiently, and avoid the need to seek approval from others. A beauty of being small and lightweight is the ability to react.
People Philosophy - We believe that people are essentially good and given limited resources, we'd rather focus attention on being open and helping them do the right things rather than trying to make the wrong things impossible.
Balance - We don't believe in working 80 hours a week, 51 weeks a year so that you can vacation when you're old. We work more hours than most, but we're not bashful about making sure that we live a fun, interesting and balanced life. Lightweight businesses make this easier.
Investors and Partnerships - Often, these are required for business growth. The problem comes when the requirements and expectations of others become a part of the business. We've been careful not to form agreements with investors or partners because the baggage these relationships create may not balance with the benefits they provide. It's added stress and anxiety that creates weight we would rather not have. Advice is great, but financial relationships weight a lot.
Limited Middlemen - Each person who handles a product on the way to the consumer adds weight and removes reward. We look for the best ways to get our product from an idea to the customer as directly as possible. Outside of us, The Common Craft Store doesn't have salespeople, distributors, marketers or support. We do it all, A-to-Z, using products like PayPal and e-junkie.
Contact Points - As our visibility on the web has increased, so too has our time managing communication. We recently decided to make email our most public source of contact and have removed our phone number from the web site. It's nothing personal, it just allows us to do a better job managing communications as lightweight as possible.
Supporting Two People - At the end of the day, we remember that we are two people. Sure, our model may not enable us to dominate markets or become a Fortune 500 company, but that's not our goal. We need our business to support us and the life we want to live.
So, you might be wondering about the result of all these ideas. Well, we've made a number of decisions lately. Our future is devoted to building a library of videos for the Common Craft Store. We are phasing out custom videos and devoting time to videos we can license to influencers and educators for use in the workplace. This model enables us to be lightweight and 100% independent.
Ultimately, we want to wake up each morning and know we are choosing what we do that day. For us, that's lightweight.
Being Lightweight: Tools We Use
Posted by: leelefever on June 9, 2008- 5:00pm
Categories: beingsmall, business, cooltols, lesson, lightweight, ourwork
This is the second in a series of posts about being lightweight. Our first was focused on working with clients and this installment is all about tools we use.
Tools, or the the wrong tools, become a risk when they create unnecessary drag in every day work. Often, we've found ourselves wondering if we're using a sledgehammer to drive a nail. If so, we look for alternatives.
In being lightweight, we also consider mental and emotional baggage that goes along with tools. We're often willing to pay for peace of mind and look for tools that remove anxiety. Anxiety is very heavy for us and we always want to reduce it.
Here are some of the tools, services and ideas that we use to be lightweight. Your mileage may vary.
Web Site - We're fans of content management platforms like Drupal, Wordpress, etc. We only know basic html, so when we're working with designers on a new Common Craft site, we make easy, lightweight management a big priority. I've wasted too many hours trying to write code. Technology often stands in the way of what I want to share on the web - and that's a shame.
Hosted Services - We're not technical people. Maintaining our own
server sounds like hell to us. So, we use hosting services for
everything we do. Our web site, our videos, our photos are all on
servers that are maintained by others. Choose them well, let the specialists do their
jobs and get out of the way.
Documents - Google Docs has had a huge impact on our workflow. We do a lot of editing together and there simply isn't a better way to work on the same document at the same time. Attachments are too heavy.
Video Sharing - Often we need to share a 50mb video file with a client. We could send a CD, we could FTP it. Instead, we use hosts like Vimeo.com that have good privacy options. This makes life easier on us and the client - all they need to share the video with co-workers is to share the link and password. Plus, they can watch the video in Flash and choose to download it it too.
Social Networking - We have presence on the major social networks, but they aren't a part of our day-to-day work. We have serious questions about the time it takes to really make the networks work, especially Facebook. It seems too heavy for me to have to use multiple inboxes across the networks. We love Twitter because it's lightweight - it's a direct line to part of our community that doesn't require clicking a link in email.
Bookkeeping - When I started Common Craft in 2003, I bought Quickbooks because I thought was what you're supposed to do. It was a way, way too much for me. Even today, we are more than happy using spreadsheets to track our books (Sachi is a spreadsheet ninja). For many small businesses, Quickbooks (and similar programs) are often a heavy, cumbersome way to deal with the books. Do you need all that?
Home Network - We have all our computers, printers and music system hooked together wirelessly. We used to have to take a laptop to the printer in another room to print. We used to have to get up to change the music. It's a small thing, but a nice home network (run by Apple's Airport Extreme and Express) makes life a bit nicer.
Home Environment - We spend a lot of time at home. Because we're here so much, we've agreed that we will invest in making home like we want it - comfortable and easy. Home should not feel heavy or cause anxiety. If you can't make home like you want it, what can you do?
Back Ups - Like most, we are horrible about remembering to back up our files. The thing is, we shouldn't have to remember - this is stress that has a cure. We use Mozy that keeps everything backed up automatically. Peace of mind is lightweight.
Selling Digital Downloads - We have been very impressed with e-junkie as a means for selling digital downloads. You upload a file and e-junkie provides an "add to cart" button that works on almost any web page and a flash-based shopping cart. It's a perfect solution for The Common Craft Store - e-junkie handles everything and provides the right tools for managing customers.
Mowing the Lawn - Yes, it's true. We recently purchased a rechargeable electric mower called a Neuton. We've gone through a dirty, loud mower every couple of years and those things are a PAIN. Our new mower is perfect - it starts immediately, mows for an hour on a charge, is clean and so quite you can hear the blades being chopped.
Reading - I'll write more about this later, but I recently bought a Kindle - Amazon's e-reader. It's poorly designed in some ways, but it makes books and especially newspapers feel heavy, cumbersome and wasteful. I am a big fan.
Future - I'm currently lobbying Sachi to get a scooter. I think we can get rid of one of our vehicles and replace it with a scooter over time. Scooters are lightweight in so many ways - gas, parking, convenience.
So, this concludes the tools part of the series. I hope that you will look at the tools you use every day and think about the alternatives - and don't forget about anxiety - what could be the heaviest thing of all.
Next Up - Being Lightweight: Business Design
Being Lightweight: Working with Clients
Posted by: leelefever on May 10, 2008- 5:00pm
Categories: beingsmall, business, lesson, lightweight, ourwork
It's a question we ask each other all the time - what is the most lightweight way we can do this?
We are a small company who is trying to do big things. In order to be
successful, we need to reduce drag - to remove the processes,
bureaucracies and commitments that slow us down and don't pay off.
Today we're kicking off a series of posts called "Being Lightweight" that will relate what lightweight means to us and hopefully help you think differently about how you focus your attention.
Working with Clients
Over the past year, we've evolved in how we manage our work with clients on custom videos. Here are a few things that we do that helps us move quickly and stay lightweight.
Face-to-Face Not Required - We've never met the vast majority of our clients face-to-face. I'm sure it would be nice, but we don't think it's required to produce a video. What it does do, is cost both sides a lot money and take a lot of time that could be used for creativity.
Project Pricing - In terms of the time it take to create a client video, our projects are similar. To keep ongoing billing and at a bare minimum, we price by the project. For us, billing by the hour would create another process that would create drag and introduce a time limitation that may impact the quality of the end product.
Video Development - We apply the 37 Signals concept of "getting real " to developing custom videos. We involve the client at nearly every step along the way, starting with the script. This lowers the risk that big changes will come late in the process and waste time on both sides.
Expectation Setting - Early in the relationship, we take a leadership role in outlining our system for completing the project. We've found that it helps everyone to have structure. We set an expectation about response times and work to make sure that the project lead owns as many decisions as possible.
Single Point of Contact - We ask that we have a single point of contact on the client side. This person is our contact, but also a filter for input from their organization.
Of course our business is somewhat unique and every project is different. However, I think that many projects get behind or off track because they are burdened with overhead, processes and bureaucracy that add weight without adding productivity. Being lightweight in client relationships requires setting expectations, shedding as much weight as you can and focusing on what really matters.
Next up - Being Lightweight: Tools We Use
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