ka-POW-er!

This story from DesignTaxi tragically exemplifies the differences between a pro and an amateur.

A woman, who I am sure had only the best intentions, took it upon herself to restore a deteriorated painting in a nearby Spanish church. Here is the result:

Before and after. It takes a trained eye to notice the subtle differences.

With only a slight exaggeration, this parallels some of the DIY technology I’ve seen at many Small Businesses. It’s a classic case of a helpful team member not knowing how little he knows and passing that off as “working” to a business owner who knows even less.

Setting something up and hoping that it’s right isn’t good enough. Technology that “works” isn’t  good enough. When business is at stake, we need higher standards and expert insight. There is a world of difference between familiarity and mastery.

It took a moment for the meaning of that phrase to sink in when I first heard it. I must have had a puzzled look on my face. “Ain’t no better than ‘works’”, he repeated. “Robert” explained that it was an expression from his home state, Mississippi.

I’m sure his words were meant to be proverbial – a truth made simple – yet every cell in my body resisted his “wisdom”. The context was that given the minimum system requirements, professional editing software would work; and it doesn’t get any better than that. I immediately thought, “of course it gets better than that!”

To be fair, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of teenagers in the rural South. We are rebuilding an old clunker with our friends - our sole chance to see the Saturday matinee – and the thing actual starts. We’d be proud of ourselves and pretty darn excited to say the least.

It seems many entrepreneurs approach technology in this same manner. In the exuberance of starting a new business, they run to the Apple Store or Best Buy, and purchase whatever the sales personnel recommend. And it “works” (as far as they can tell). “Don’t fix what ain’t broke!”

Yes, admittedly, a clunker will get you from point “A” to point “B” (much of the time). But you would risk your life if you were to take it on the highway and you certainly could not depend on it to get you to a job every day.

In a business setting, “Ain’t no better than ‘works’” is a dangerous LIE.

We are professionals; we have higher standards. Our teams depend on us. Our clients depend on us. Our loved ones depend on us to do a great job for our clients. We need to have higher expectations for our technology, too.

Technology that “works” isn’t  good enough. We need “dependable”. We need “robust”. We need “high-performance”. We need “agile”. We need “secure”. We shouldn’t stake our businesses on “works”.

Our teams, and ultimately our clients, deserve better than a jalopy. They need a high-performance, well-maintained SUV, with a spare tire, a jack, an emergency kit and AAA road service.

Business isn’t a joy ride. It’s a race where only finishers win.

Small Business Trends has a great article detailing all the various challenges in choosing the perfect name for your business.

The article covers legal aspects, domain names (which factor into your e-mail addresses) as well as Twitter and social media. Because so many .com domains are taken, you will likely have to get a little creative, perhaps using a company slogan.

It’s an iterative process fraught with setbacks. And you only have one chance to get it right! Be sure to work with a branding specialist, or at least a handful of brand-savvy colleagues.

Managing Space to Foster Networks over at Blogging Innovation offers some great insights on fostering culture, many of which have a direct application in creative businesses.

The post first provides some context by stating that “the foundation of innovation is what people believe, say and do” as an organization. In other words, the foundation of innovation is culture – creating the conditions for brilliant talent to share and manage ideas and knowledge. This is admittedly difficult.

“A lot of people say that knowledge management is like herding cats”,

says one manager, who prefers a different analogy,

“I say that it’s really like herding butterflies. You can’t make butterflies go anywhere – if you want them around you have to create a garden that attracts them.”

While job design and business processes which “encourage the generation and execution of ideas” are important to fostering  a creative culture, an often overlooked aspect is that of the workspace architecture. The “gardens”.

Does your workspace architecture feature “gardens” – oases to refresh frazzled minds? Perhaps games and areas of temporary distraction to allow creatives to step away from their challenges and see things from a different perspective? The means for various departments to congregate and cross-polinate?

Pixar, for example, is famously designed to create spontaneous encounters; it’s mailroom, meeting rooms, cafeteria and restrooms are all centralized.

Best Buy’s corporate headquarters’ most popular feature is an in-house café.

Patagonia’s offices are located on a beach and employees are encouraged to grab their boards whenever the surf is up.

What kind of gardens can we create?

Need some inspiration? Review some of our other posts on this topic.

There’s a thought-provoking post over at Harvard Business Publishing, entitled Why It’s Not Selfish To Take Care of Yourself, which happens to be a great follow-up to yesterday’s post.

Perhaps the reason it resonates with me is that I need reminders to implement this kind of advice in my life. As a husband, father of five, homeowner, business owner and church member, I have my fair share of responsibilities. Add to that a multi-generational “martyr complex” in my family (“willful suffering in the name of love or duty”) and its easy to understand why I feel guilty about sitting and watching a movie or a football game.

I would imagine many business owners and entrepreneurs face similar challenges – that of overextending themselves for the sake of several good things, and yet to the detriment of all. (This should not be confused with actual selfishness - ”placing one’s own needs or desires above the needs or desires of others”)

Quoting the post, “if you don’t take care of yourself then you can’t really serve those who depend on you.” ”While it might seem noble in the short run to sacrifice the needs you have to cultivate your mind, body, and spirit, over time it’s a recipe for burnout.”

“The key is to very specifically identify how, by better meeting the expectations you have for enhancing your mind, your body, and your spirit, you are indeed making things better at work, at home, and in the community.”

So I dedicate this final thought to myself as I try to squeeze 20 hours of studying for a certification exam into my week:

“What have you done recently to take better care of yourself and strengthen your ability to perform well in the other parts of your life? In these stressful times, it’s more important than ever that we all do so.”

Following up on an earlier post on Business Productivity, taking into consideration the often unmeasured and therefore under-accounted benefits of productivity. The first point was to buy Macs. The next was buying employees larger monitors or second monitors.

In the post that eventually led to this post, Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com does some math for us:

“(each employee) will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year… which is at least $2,000 a year…. which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you’re getting 10-20x return on your investment… and you’ve got a happy team member”

Also worth mentioning are studies by monitor manufacturer NEC (.pdf summary here) and Pfeiffer Consulting for Apple (.pdf summary here) which indicate even larger returns on investment.

NEC’s study has two findings which I find very interesting. First, if your employees are using a single 19″  (or smaller) monitor, you are adversely affecting productivity and “worker well-being”. Second, equipping employees who are less technically savvy with second or larger monitors, gives them an ever greater productivity boost than their co-workers.

As for the “best” size, it varies slightly according to the tasks, though for most, a single monitor of 24″ – 26″, or a dual monitor set-up with a pair of 20″ monitors is what the study finds offering the greatest productivity gains for typical office tasks; word processing and spreadsheets.

In my experience, for video editors and SFX artists, two 23″ monitors is assumed to be the bare minimum, and it’s clear that for other creative tasks, this would be a good starting point as well. So the next time your creatives ask for 30″ Apple Cinema HD Displays, buy them with barely an afterthought; the $1,799 monitors will pay for themselves many times over. In fact, the Pfeiffer Consulting report calculates a ROI of $5,875 – $23,500  within a year (!) depending on the salary of the creative professional.

Following up on an earlier post on Business Productivity, taking into consideration the often unmeasured and therefore under-accounted benefits of productivity. The first point was to buy Macs.

Being an Apple consultant myself, I’m almost blind to how much Macs improve productivity. I use Macs in practically every waking moment of my day, and my clients are Mac-only environments. It’s a no-brainer.

This article in CIO magazine lists a number of financial reasons why Macs cost about half as much to operate as similarly-equipped PCs, though it barely factors in the productivity gains, which are akin to the iceberg below the water’s surface.

It’s easy enough to find evidence of Macs requiring one-fifth to one-third of the man-hours compared with supporting Windows boxes. What few people notice is the downtime involved for the Windows users and the 2x – 4x more uptime for Macs!

Another study summarized here points out additional advantages in using Macs:

Mac OS X offers less “user interface friction” than Windows.

Mac OS X simply is faster when performing specific tasks compared to Windows.

The Mac OS X interface is more logical and intuitive.

It’s crazy to focus on the costs of hardware, software, support & training and not consider the value of ease of use and reliability (productivity) per creative times the creative’s salary per hour/day/week/month/year!

I mentioned this post, though from a very different perspective back on March 9th – (Fire the Workaholics). Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com offers some excellent tips on how to save money running a startup, which could be applied to any frugal business.  It is full of practical advice about spending money what really matters; for example, not spending money on desks/tables, but happily paying $600 for a good office chair.

What I appreciate most is that it takes into consideration the often unmeasured and therefore under-accounted benefits of productivity. Few businesses calculate productivity gains (and losses), and without dollar signs attached to these measurements, they often go unnoticed. A business’ largest expenditure is talent (labor), yet without an emphasis on training, and without providing employees the proper tools and an environment conducive to getting work done, we might as well be grabbing fistfuls of petty cash and throwing them into a bonfire every few minutes!

I’ll just highlight a few items, then go into detail on each of them in later posts:

• Buying Macs (Apple hardware, Mac OS, Apple software)

• Second or larger Monitors for everyone!

• Providing Meals, snacks, espresso

(Keep in mind, we already touched upon hiring workaholics and why that’s actually a bad idea)

Something for us all to think about!

This post, dating back to 2003, is mentioned in a Hivelogic post that I mentioned early last month and I want to ensure that it does not go unnoticed. In Bionic Office, Blogger Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software) details his (successful) efforts in creating an office which optimizes productivity for software programmers and attracts top-notch talent. Very interesting reading, containing lots of practical and inspirational ideas, all of which can be applied to a creative business. Let’s hope that we all get to take part in designing an office at some point in our careers.

A recent study by Gartner Research finds that only 20% of IT money is helping businesses grow or gain a competitive advantage. They call the other 80% “dead money” since all it does is keep things running; in other words, it’s an expense.

Personally, I think their methodology is wrong, since there’s no attempt to measure the value of the systems in place, which may *already* be leveraging IT for success. It is possible that these systems already bring value to a business in terms of efficiency and service marketing.

The study, however, brings up some great points:

• IT managers must understand businesses.

• IT should take the lead, providing a strategy for a business.

• IT must demonstrate the value it brings to an organization.

The takeaway:
Everything IT Departments/IT Managers do must add value to a business, first in terms of a dependable infrastructure, then in terms of simplifying business (efficiency), and finally, in terms of providing a competitive advantage. (For creative businesses, this usually means better creative, faster.) Otherwise, you have something worse than “dead money”; you have dead weight, *dragging the business down*.