Digital Digressions

The Death Star Canteen

Just en route to the States I came across this sent to me by both Alex Nisbett and Tracy Suff on Facebook so I owe you both for cheering me up in the midst of airport security, online check-in and bag-drops (here we come!!).. Imagine Darth Vader in the Death Star.. going down for some food..

For those of you who aren't familiar with the comedian doing the voice-over: check out Eddie Izzard and your world will never be the same!

Priceless comedy for a Monday

Many thanks to Mark over at Herd for reminding me of some of the classics in LEGO stop frame animation. These two were created by the chaps at Spiteyourface.com where you can find plenty more of their handywork.

Why Some of Us Give Up and Others Try Harder

How you react to adversity is really telling - some of us throw in the towel and simply give up, and others, facing almost insurmountable obstacles, don't think twice about continuing. What makes us strong on and how do people find the strength within themselves to carry on in the hardest of times?

As an avid cyclist, reading Lance Armstrong's 'It's Not About the Bike' is of course an amazing illustration of how he turned his life around, being diagnosed with cancer, battled four cycles of agonising chemotherapy enough to make the best of us curl up in agony and came back to win a total of 7 Tour de France victories. As he puts it in his consecutive book 'Every Second Counts'

"The experience of suffering is like the experience of exploring, of finding something unexpected and revelatory. When you  find the outermost thresholds of pain, of fear, or uncertainty, what you experience afterwards is an expansive feeling, a widening of your capabilities.

Pain is good because it teaches your body and your soul to improve. It's almost as though your unconscious says "I'm going to remember this, remember how it hurt and I'll increase my capacities so that next time, it doesn't hurt as much". The body literally builds on your experiences and a physique and temperament that have gone through a Tour de France one year will be better the next year, because it has the memory to build upon. Maybe the same is true for living too.

If you lead a largely unexamined life, you will eventually hit a wall. Some barriers can be invisible until you smack into them. The key then is to investigate the wall inside yourself, so you can go beyond it. The only way to do that is to ask yourself painful questions - just as you try to stretch yourself physically."

Professor Carol Dweck at Stanford examines exactly this. Through more than three decades of systematic research, she has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don’t—why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn’t ability; it’s whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed.

[from Stanford Magazine] "Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck’s insight launched a new field of educational psychology—achievement goal theory.

Dweck’s next question: what makes students focus on different goals in the first place? During a sabbatical at Harvard, she was discussing this with doctoral student Mary Bandura (daughter of legendary Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura), and the answer hit them: if some students want to show off their ability, while others want to increase their ability, “ability” means different things to the two groups. “If you want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something static that lives inside of you—whereas if you want to increase your ability, it feels dynamic and malleable,” Dweck explains. People with performance goals, she reasoned, think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed. (Among themselves, psychologists call the growth mind-set an “incremental theory,” and use the term “entity theory” for the fixed mind-set.) The model was nearly complete (see diagram).

To me this approach is really interesting, because not only can it influence the way we approach life, career and learning, but through the quote from Lance Armstrong - it can also be applied to physical performance. And to great result, as proven. So what does this all mean? Milton Chen talks about how children can be taught to "feed their own brains" through understanding that their brains and intelligence can be grown and how this mind-set actually improves their academic performance.

As Chen explains: "I asked Dweck about the implications of her research -- what teachers and parents should do, for instance. In an email interview, she recommended the following strategies:

 

• Teach students to think of their brain as a muscle that strengthens with use, and have them visualize the brain forming new connections every time they learn.
• When they teach study skills, convey to students that using these methods will help their brains learn better.
• Discourage use of labels ("smart," "dumb," and so on) that convey intelligence as a fixed entity.
• Praise students' effort, strategies, and progress, not their intelligence. Praising intelligence leads to students to fear challenges and makes them feel stupid and discouraged when they have difficulty.
• Give students challenging work. Teach them that challenging activities are fun and that mistakes help them learn."

Funnily enough - my own voracious appetite for reading anything and everything is very much in line with the same thinking. I believe we can learn anything we set our minds to and it is those moments that feel a little like vertigo, when new horizons of discovery open up in front of your mind's eye, that keeps me going and motivated. A full life isn't one without a continous expansion of our mind, abilities and  wisdom.

The Key to Social Media: Above all - Be Useful!

First I would like to dedicate this post to Mum of a LEGO Kid, because you just convinced me to drag myself out of my self-pity (I have a cold!) and reflect on what were my Aha-moments from last week's Conference on Social Media and User-generated Content.

So a rather intimate affair, we were around 50-60 people in total and from a refreshing variety of companies ranging from CNN, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, TripAdvisor, E.On, Honda, Habbo Hotel, Spannerworks and many more. Although initially I was expecting something bigger, the frankness of the discussion and the willingness of people to share their thinking and ideas was great - it seems a smaller conference is more conducive to that, rather than a bigger one where you never get to know everyone there.

Interestingly, there were also plenty of different approaches to the subject matter - from literally how to do corporate blogging by VisitBritain.com to my own talk about how we at LEGO strive to not only involve lead users in our product development, as was the case with LEGO Mindstorms NXT, LEGO Hobby Train and now the LEGO Universe MMOG but also have created ways for everyone to design their very own LEGO products via LEGO Factory and are gradually setting up structures to open up our business platform to our fans and LEGO certified professionals, creating an business ecosystem around LEGO.

Honda contributed with a case studies of their recent marketing campaigns on 'Hate Something Change Something' and 'Hondamentalism', both which I thought were brilliantly executed campaigns, but somehow I was a little disappointed not to see a truer user-focus from them - i.e users really having a big say in what Honda does, more than just interact around the campaigns.. perhaps it is hard to do as a car manufacturer, but somehow I would like them to be different and do it anyway! (call me a hopeless romantic!)

Coca-Cola talked about how coke music was the spring board for many a young aspiring artist and how the community here took off - of course needless to say, music has a strong tribal effect particularly on young people so hats off to Coke for making it happen. Another piece of inspiration came from Yahoo, whose Yahoo Answers is an interesting way to create discussion around a topic and find answers to all your questions, whatever they may be. Not that revolutionary you may say, but think of it this way - Wikipedia is great if you want to find the explanation to something you have stumbled on, but aren't sure of the details. Yahoo answers is great if you have a question, but don't know the answer.. You with me? Hmmm... perhaps not the best explanation - but essentially I'm trying to say that here community interaction is focused around problem solving, where the collective brain of hundreds of thousands of Internet users can come to your rescue whatever the problem.

Also, I can't help but love the pixelated world of Habbo, created by my fellow Finns at Sulake Corporation - also a massively multi-player on-line game, this one primarily at teen-agers and very funny in its approach to characters, locations - you name it.   

So ultimately if I was to distill my thoughts from the conference without making this too long a post it would be this:

1. Create an open platform - platforms work better than closed solutions, because you can never quite anticipate how people will use things you create. If you have a platform, more things are possible and it is easier to reconfigure stuff that doesn't work. Open platforms means its easy for advocates to get others on-board, and you do want a bustling community for it to make sense!
2. Unite people behind something they care about - Social networking is great, but after you've got all your mates on Facebook or Myspace, why would you go anywhere else? Good question. Ultimately we tend to be more open about meeting new people when it is around a subject we are really in to - immediately we have something in common with these strangers and it is easy to strike up a conversation. On-line it is very similar too.
3. Make it useful - Whatever fancy community you want to create, this links to the above point. Many an idea dies a horrible death, because beyond the novelty factor, it really doesn't do much. The bits that people come back to over and over again are the useful bits. Wikipedia is useful. Linked-in is useful too, these things have a purpose people get and hence I predict they will be around for a long while. Facebook has a chance of being around far longer than Myspace, because they went for an open platform, allowing people to come up with tons and tons of widgets and applications (some useful, some less useful), but at least they are there and things happen at a breakneck speed, so there is a reason to keep coming back for more than just checking on your mates.
4. Don't manipulate, facilitate - This one is very much about the approach. Meaningful things happen trough facilitation, only bad things happen through manipulation. Enough said. Help people to make a difference and you help yourself.
5. Be truthful and honest (and humble) - No, Social Media is not some sort of smoke and mirrors thing you can douse a failing product line in and miraculously see it recover.. it is essentially a dialogue and nobody wants to discuss anything with a liar and a cheat. To involve users you have to be honest and truthful, not think you can use this thing to warp people's perception from bad to good. Moreover, treat people with respect - always. I get so furious for instance when I hear people talk about driving traffic to websites by comment spamming - no, it doesn't work. You look like an idiot trying to advertise Cillit Bang by posing as Barry the character from the adverts on someone's blog..
6. Have some fun! Yes it can all be very serious sometimes and uniting people in laughter is a great one, however - it's more of an ingredient, as not all people will find all things funny all the time. Also, people who share a common interest or passion are more likely to be able to share something funny between them and boy, sometimes we all need cheering up!

Last, but not least I'll do a plug for our friends at Spannerworks, who have created a no-nonsense guide to all things social media in a nifty E-Book you can download and dazzle your friends with in-depth knowledge. Or as Forrester research puts it ‘Social Computing is not a fad. Nor is it something that will pass you or your company by. Gradually, Social Computing will impact almost every role, at every kind of company, in all parts of the world.’ Forrester Research, Social Computing - How Networks Erode Institutional Power, And What to Do About It

Understanding what makes your consumers and employees tick

Here's an excellent interview of Chip Conley, author of Peak - How companies get their mojo from Maslow by Mark Hurst of the GoodExperience blog, a treasure trove of articles on experiences and the thinking behind the design of them. Check him out at the GoodExperience Blog.

Chip Conley is CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the world's second- largest boutique hotel company. After a severe downturn in his business after 9/11, Conley read Abraham Maslow's works as inspiration for his turnaround plan. It worked: Joie de Vivre is again thriving, and Conley has written a book about what he learned - not only from Maslow, but from companies like Nike, Apple, and Harley-Davidson, which follow Maslow's thinking. Chip's book is

Chip will also speak at Gel 2008 in April in New York:

Q - What's the main idea of "Peak"?

The main idea is that we're all humans in the workplace - whether employees, customers, or investors - and those companies that succeed and become peak performers touch us as people in the workplace, by focusing on higher needs, as opposed to base needs.

Q - How is Abraham Maslow significant?

Maslow wrote about the hierarchy of needs in the mid-20th century. There's no psychologist or psychiatrist quoted more in business schools or corporations than Maslow. Drucker, Covey, Bennis, and Collins all write about him in their books - they mention him in two or three pages, mostly talking about the hierarchy of needs.

What's interesting is that the psychology profession - including Freud, Skinner, and others - commonly looked at the worst practices in behavior in defining the human condition. Maslow says, let's look at *best* practices - people who are fulfilled or self-actualized, who can "be all you can be" and have clicked in to doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Q - Describe the pyramid containing the hierarchy of needs.

There are five levels in Maslow's pyramid. At the base are physiological needs. Then come safety, social belonging, and esteem, and at the top, self-actualization, which is where people are more likely to have peak experiences - what ought to be, is, and life feels great. Reading Maslow woke me up to the idea that if there are self-actualized people in the world, then maybe there could be self- actualized *companies*, since companies are just collections of people.

So in "Peak" I break down Maslow's pyramid and apply it to key relationships - employees, customers, and investors. I took Maslow's five levels and turned them into three levels: the first two levels, physical and safety needs, are just survival. Levels 3 and 4, social and esteem, are just success needs, how the world sees you. At the top of the pyramid, self-actualization, is a transformative state, where you've moved beyond your own ego. So I created the "transformation pyramid": survival on the bottom, then success, and transformation at the top. I then applied those three levels to the motivations of employees, customers, and investors.

Q - OK, what do you say about employees?

For employees, what's the survival need? Money, compensation. Sure, some CEOs are almost exclusively motivated by money. But for most people, it's just a base need. Every survey I've seen shows that money is not the primary motivator for employees. As nonprofits will tell you, the base foundational need is important, but the differential from one company to the next is not huge. Money as a differentiator isn't important.

The success need is being recognized. Marcus Buckingham's book "First Break All the Rules" showed that the number one reason people leave their job is their relationship with their direct supervisor. People join companies, but they leave their bosses.

The top of pyramid is something different, intangible - in the pyramid we're moving from the tangible, to the physiological, to the very intangible. For an employee, it's meaning. This is somewhat blasphemous for companies; it's hard to measure what's intangible. Yet MasterCard says what's true, that what's most important is "priceless," and that's intangible.

How do you put your attention on the top of the pyramid? The three levels represent money, recognition, and meaning: let's translate each to a word that describes a person's relationship with their
work: a "job", a "career", or a "calling." Employers that move their employees up the pyramid get more happy and fulfilled and productive employees, who are much likelier to stay longer, and a positive spirit in that workplace. The fact is, I have 3,000 employees, and 1,200 of them clean toilets for a living. So it's a challenge for me to create that with my employees.

Q - What's the customer pyramid?

For a customer, the survival need equates to having one's expectations met. If you don't meet their expectations, you haven't met their survival needs; you've created buyer's remorse. It comes down to the difference between expectation and reality. Most companies get very focused on the base; that's what customer satisfaction surveys are about. "Was your check-in process efficient?" Well, sure it was, but I hated this and that other thing, which the survey won't ask me about. We most notice the intangible. Pure customer satisfaction is at the base of the pyramid.

The success need is having desires met, which companies deliver either via technology or training. Good examples of using technology are Amazon and Netflix, which use mass-customized technology. The more I use them, the better they know me and my desires. Similarly, Four Seasons hotels are more high-touch. Through great training, the people there know my desires. That creates customer loyalty - and this second level is where it builds, not at the bottom of the pyramid.

Now for the top of the pyramid. Henry Ford said, "If I listened to my customers, they'd tell me to get a faster horse." By meeting the unrecognized needs of a customer, which the customer may not be able to articulate themselves, you create a customer evangelist. So there's customer loyalty in the middle, and *evangelism* at the top. A self-actualized customer is so thrilled you've met a need they didn't know they had, that they become believer. Companies that do this include Apple, Whole Foods, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue. You get on a JetBlue flight and find your own TV at your seat. More importantly, you have some control at a time you'd otherwise feel out of control. Companies that do this well create not just loyalty but a marketing machine.

Q - What are some best practices of companies that use the customer pyramid to great effect?

There are four qualities that define companies that are creating these customer evangelists. First, they help their customers meet their highest goals - allowing a customer to achieve their ideal goals from using the product. Apple enables its customers to go out and exercise their minds. Nike encourages customers to "just do it." Google gives you exactly what you're looking for. These companies are helping customers meet their highest goals.

Second is giving your customers the ability to truly express themselves. By buying a Harley-Davidson, a middle-aged accountant from the Midwest can feel like a rebel. In the case of boutique hotels, you might say, "You are where you sleep." If a hotel has a personality that represents an aspiration for you, then hopefully when you check out it will have rubbed off on you a little bit. Similarly, there's a halo effect of being an Apple user; and Starbucks has tried to become a curator for a lifestyle for its customers. These are customers who feel like they can express themselves through the purchase of a product or service.

Third is making customers feel like they're part of a bigger cause. Hummer buyers may feel that connection, but most people would say that it's lacking a socially responsible element. Patagonia - the company, not the region in Argentina - runs its "1% for the planet" campaign, and its loyal customers are "Patagoniacs." They love being associated with Patagonia because it's part of a bigger cause. For people who buy from Apple, it's not just "I'm an iconoclastic rebel," but "I'm part of a bigger cause," the anti-Microsoft attitude. At Whole Foods Market, you may go there because you love the product, but lots of people buy there because they love the sustainability cause. People like buying a Toyota Prius because it makes them feel good about both buying a car *and* doing something for the planet, even though that's a rather oxymoronic thought.

The fourth quality is offering customers something of real value they hadn't even imagined. That's what JetBlue did with the TV screen. That's what FedEx did when they created overnight delivery. It was a remarkable thought, 25 years ago, that you could send something overnight. But that innovation became a commodity over time. A lot of people entered FedEx's market, and Fred Smith, the founder, said, "I thought I was in the transporting goods, and then I realized that I was in the business of creating peace of mind." So he created a logistics program to allow customers to track packages. Now the innovation, what people wanted, an almost unrecognized desired, was: if I'm sending it overnight, the person on either end wants to know where it is. FedEx went from being an also-ran to going to the top of the pyramid again and taking market share away from its competitors. FedEx's innovation in terms of tracking was addressing that peace of mind that customers were looking for.

Q - How can any company start to put these principles into practice?

The easiest way is to consider how Maslow's hierarchy can be applied to your customer. For example, for a hotel customer, the physical level is a clean and comfortable bed. Safety might be offering an electric card-key instead of a regular key, and making sure there's good lighting in the parking lot. And so on. Just remember that there is a hierarchy of needs of employees, customers, and investors, and you can help people around you understand that.
See also:

- More Good Experience interviews: where this interview originally came from! 

Lecture of a Lifetime

Many thanks to Tim Kirchmann for making my day today by passing this great article to me, which I simply have to share with you all (it's too good not to!).

Having just completed my lecture notes for the upcoming conference on Social Media and User-generated Content I was thinking about this only too recently. Should I concentrate purely on the topic, or should I impart wisdom of things I've learned along the way instead? The latter being far more tempting, I nevertheless decided to stick to my topic, assuming my audience will want to know more about this rather than hear my musings about the meaning of life. I could be wrong. In any case - here's something to inspire your day:

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - UPDATE | ETC Global News

September 20, 2007 Wall Street Journal Online
MOVING ON By JEFF ZASLOW

A Beloved Professor Delivers The Lecture of a Lifetime

Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor, was about to give a lecture Tuesday afternoon, but before he said a word, he received a standing ovation from 400 students and colleagues.

He motioned to them to sit down. "Make me earn it," he said.

They had come to see him give what was billed as his "last lecture." This is a common title for talks on college campuses today. Schools such as Stanford and the University of Alabama have mounted "Last Lecture Series," in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?

It can be an intriguing hour, watching healthy professors consider their demise and ruminate over subjects dear to them. At the University of Northern Iowa, instructor Penny O'Connor recently titled her lecture "Get Over Yourself." At Cornell, Ellis Hanson, who teaches a course titled "Desire," spoke about sex and technology.

At Carnegie Mellon, however, Dr. Pausch's speech was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and expects to live for just a few months. His lecture, using images on a giant screen, turned out to be a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life.

He began by showing his CT scans, revealing 10 tumors on his liver. But after that, he talked about living. If anyone expected him to be morose, he said, "I'm sorry to disappoint you." He then dropped to the floor and did one-handed pushups.

Clicking through photos of himself as a boy, he talked about his childhood dreams: to win giant stuffed animals at carnivals, to walk in zero gravity, to design Disney rides, to write a World Book entry. By adulthood, he had achieved each goal. As proof, he had students carry out all the huge stuffed animals he'd won in his life, which he gave to audience members. After all, he doesn't need them anymore.

He paid tribute to his techie background. "I've experienced a deathbed conversion," he said, smiling. "I just bought a Macintosh." Flashing his rejection letters on the screen, he talked about setbacks in his career, repeating: "Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things." He encouraged us to be patient with others. "Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you." After showing photos of his childhood bedroom, decorated with mathematical notations he'd drawn on the walls, he said: "If your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let 'em do it."

While displaying photos of his bosses and students over the years, he said that helping others fulfill their dreams is even more fun than achieving your own. He talked of requiring his students to create videogames without sex and violence. "You'd be surprised how many 19-year-old boys run out of ideas when you take those possibilities away," he said, but they all rose to the challenge.

He also saluted his parents, who let him make his childhood bedroom his domain, even if his wall etchings hurt the home's resale value. He knew his mom was proud of him when he got his Ph.D, he said, despite how she'd introduce him: "This is my son. He's a doctor, but not the kind who helps people."

He then spoke about his legacy. Considered one of the nation's foremost teachers of videogame and virtual-reality technology, he helped develop "Alice," a Carnegie Mellon software project that allows people to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.

"Like Moses, I get to see the Promised Land, but I don't get to step foot in it," Dr. Pausch said. "That's OK. I will live on in Alice."

Dr. Pausch's lecture, in the same way, became a call to his colleagues and students to go on without him and do great things. But he was also addressing those closer to his heart.

Near the end of his talk, he had a cake brought out for his wife, whose birthday was the day before. As she cried and they embraced on stage, the audience sang "Happy Birthday," many wiping away their own tears.

Dr. Pausch's speech was taped so his children, ages 5, 2 and 1, can watch it when they're older. His last words in his last lecture were simple: "This was for my kids." Then those of us in the audience rose for one last standing ovation.