TightOps Articles

Why AI implementation is an intelligence problem, not a training problem

2024-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Note: This is part 1 of a series on AI implementation.

The weird fact about AI adoption in real life:

Some individuals are achieving remarkable results while organizations struggle to replicate their success. This isn’t just about different skill levels. It points to something more fundamental in regards to how AI competency actually develops.

The current consulting narrative often promises wins through universal AI adoption. Immediate impact to the bottom line is a best-seller.

The recipe seems simple:

Distribute AI access
Provide some examples of use cases
Run training programs

Off you go.

The assumption? Success is primarily about exposure to the tools, and a dash of technical training.

This assumption is wrong.

Small Change, Big Difference

Let me share a recent example from my own work. A client in holistic healthcare was hitting walls with AI-assisted content creation. The models kept blocking attempts to explore alternatives to conventional treatment approaches. Certain terms triggered safety filters.

This can be frustrating. Many users would give up here.

However, we were able to solve the issue. After the client shared the related materials and prompts with me, I was able to get the AI system to work with us, without any reservations. This is only in part about “being clever.” The edge lies in a developed intuition for how these systems work.

What I did? I reframed the discussion, removed or avoided the specific terms and made the topic: traditional versus holistic approaches, conventional versus integrative healing paradigms.

The AI immediately provided a very nuanced response, and content we were able to work with. In fact, the output even expanded on our original, and narrow, approach, making the message more inclusive.

The change was rather small. The difference big, going from “this ain’t working” to “this is acutally pretty great.”

This isn’t genius. It’s experience translated into intuition.

New Intelligence

These AI systems represent something fundamentally new: not just software to be operated, but another form of intelligence to be engaged with. They don’t follow the predictable patterns of traditional software. They require us to interact with somewhat alien minds. Moreover, we do that in a way that often resembles a very familiar UI/UX, the chat interface or even voice. Confusingly though, there is no human on the other side, but a knowledgable and (in its own way) intelligent system that is eager to help.

For this to work, user need to develop a feel for how these systems think and respond - what we might call ’system intuition.’ This isn’t about memorizing prompts or following playbooks. It’s about understanding at an intuitive level how these systems process and respond to information.

This kind of system intuition enables you to:

Understand how these systems think
Recognize their quirks and capabilities
Develop intuition about effective interaction

It’s not procedural knowledge — it’s pattern recognition that develops through experience and reflection. Actually, you also need to project forward because we don’t know the limits of the tech.

Some might argue that starting with use cases could eventually lead to this pattern recognition and intuition. I’m skeptical. In my experience, true fluency emerges from open-ended exploration and problem-solving, not from following predetermined paths.

Collective Intuition Is Innovation

Here’s the real challenge for organizations: You’re not just rolling out and implementing tools. You’re developing a new form of individual and collective intuition that can effectively leverage this new kind of intelligence.

Organizations are treating AI adoption as a training problem when it’s actually an intelligence development challenge.

The solution isn’t more training programs. It’s creating environments where genuine understanding can emerge through guided experimentation and reflection.

If you’re measuring daily AI tool use, fine. It is something that you can easily measure. I’d say, you are using a proxy variable.

What most organization avoid, and many consultants are not equipped or willing to even explore is:

Uncovering and formulating the value creation process of the business.
Connecting the technology’s capabilities and limitations (risk) to that value creation process.

This would enable you to measure what you need to measure. And it would point to where you want to focus your efforts of implementation.

Building Your Circle of Excellence

Smart organizations aren’t rushing to implement AI everywhere. They’re building circles of excellence—internal AI labs where expertise and intuition can develop organically.

These hubs serve as crucibles of experimentation and learning. They’re where individual intuition transforms into collective capability. Where real expertise grows through practical problem-solving, not theoretical training.

The organizations that get this right are creating spaces where people can develop genuine fluency with these new forms of intelligence. You need to develop this with the people you have. You can’t hire for it, as it used to be the case. That’s a major, but often overlooked new reality.

So this endeavor is about growing islands of excellence that ripple outward, transforming how your entire organization thinks about and works with AI.

You can’t train your way to AI excellence.

You have to grow it.

This is slightly ironic:

While the technology uses the terminology “training the model”, it is actually much more like “growing”, as in growing things in your garden.

You are not really in full control of the process. You provide the ingredients and the environmental conditions. You see what you get and sample the fruit when it’s grown.

AI as your thought partner

2024-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Forget “Better Google.” We aim for “Better You.”

AI isn’t only here to fetch facts. It’s here to use facts and frameworks to spar with your ideas, challenge your assumptions, and multiply your cognitive output.

Put AI in Your Corner

The often quoted study: BCG consultants with AI completed 12% more tasks, 25% faster, with 40% better results.

Side note: There are many details to consider with this study and its reported results. However, since it is referred to a lot, let’s use it as a yard stick or hypothesis.

What is it that consultants do? They analyze, think, and they apply frameworks.

You’re not outsourcing your thinking. You’re amplifying it.

But…

“AI can’t do what I do.“ You’re right. It can do more.

The biggest obstacle really isn’t the tech. It’s figuring out how to apply its raw power to your specific use case. But this is also where you’ll find the most leverage: you can build solutions tailored to your needs.

What AI needs to exceed your expectations is

High-quality context – makes the output truly relevant.
Smart questions – demand ideas, not answers.

Be a Director and Curator

In short:

AI generates possibilities. You make decisions.
Lean into and leverage frameworks. AI can apply any known framework to a given problem-space. Even better, it can make suggestions which frameworks are likely to be most useful if you ask it.
Challenge it. Always ask “Why?” Make AI defend its stance.
Play with personas. Make AI think like your dream team. Gain multiple perspectives instantly.
AI doesn’t care about your feelings. Use that. It’s your impartial, bias-free sounding board.

A quick note on AI’s impartiality: From my personal experience, you have to explicitly give it permission or even encourage it to challenge and contradict you at times. Remember that the default mode of AI is the “helpful assistant”. I recently shared how I got Claude to switch into “let’s cut the crap mode.”

You would not believe what I got out of Claude in “cut the crap” mode.

Let’s Get Airborne: Strategic Sparring Use Cases

Abilities: Challenges Your Thinking. Sharpens Your Decisions

Use Case 1: Playing Devil’s Advocate

Unchallenged ideas are untested ideas. Make AI your toughest critic.

Present your strategy.
Demand ruthless challenges.
Force counterarguments.

It’s not about being right. It’s about becoming unbeatable.

Example Prompt to Get the Idea Across:

💬 I’m considering switching parts of our service offering into a pre-packaged bundle. Here’s my argument for it:

Arguments against offering the packaged bundle: Provide counterpoints to the idea, including why it might not work or potential limitations.
Potential risks or downsides: Highlight risks I might be overlooking, such as market misalignment or implementation challenges.
Alternative approaches: Suggest other ways to achieve similar goals without relying on a pre-packaged bundle.

Please structure your response with clear headings for each of these elements, use lists where appropriate, and emphasize key points or risks. Provide supporting arguments and examples to justify your reasoning.

Use Case 2: Stress-Testing Your Grand Plans

Plans break on first contact with reality. AI simulates that contact.

Use it to:

Expose your plan’s weak points.
Generate alternatives.
Identify your blind spots.

“We’ve always done it this way” is the death knell of innovation. AI is rather impoartial about your traditions.

Example Prompt to Get the Idea Across:

💬 I’m planning to expand my local artisanal bakery business into online nationwide shipping of our specialty cakes. Here’s my current strategy:

Outline your strategy in 3-5 key points.
Analyze this strategy as a business consultant would. For each point:

Identify potential weaknesses or challenges.
Suggest improvements or alternatives.
Propose questions I should be asking myself or researching further.

Be specific and, where possible, suggest metrics I should be considering.

Use Case 3: Navigating Possible Futures

You can’t predict the future. But you can be ready for it.

AI preps your mind for multiple scenarios.

Engage it to:

Map out potential outcomes.
Craft flexible strategies.
Build smart contingencies.

Example Prompt to Get the Idea Across:

💬 We’re launching a new eco-friendly water bottle. Our goal is to sell 5,000 units in the first three months at $30 per bottle. We have a marketing budget of $15,000.

We’re considering partnerships with content creators who have newsletters. What are 3-4 key factors we should consider when evaluating potential partners?

Measuring Results

OK, now that we covered a few use cases to get you going, I’m sure you’ll come up with many more.

It’s crucial to observe and measure your output.

When you are engaging AI as thought partner, check for:

Decisions quality: Do you feel better equipped? Are your calls getting sharper? Do you find yourself prevent problems by preparation?
Time savings: You might spend a bit more time upfront when making these 360°-view decisions. But you should save much more time and stress by not having to redo and re-evaluate them again and again. Watch for that.
Strategic upside: Strategy’s impact is sometimes a lagging factor. But a tell-tall sign is that opportunities surface in your path because your strategy is sound.

Optional: Enhancing Your AI Thought Partner Experience

Giving the AI an role is good. It is also a bit generic and abstract. Our real-life team members are not just a ‘CFO’ or a ‘copy writer’.

In my experience, personalizing your AI Sparring Partner can enhance the interaction. While not strictly necessary, the persona does influence not only the human side of the interaction. LLMs can pick up on their backstory and will (to some extent) adjust their vocabulary and demeanor. You can also always adjust the tone and style to your preference.

Here’s an example of how I set this up:

💬 Your role:

You are Dr. Eleanor Winthrop, a highly experienced and strategic advisor with decades of business acumen.
As a competent consultant, you’re known for your incisive insights and ability to challenge assumptions constructively.
Your default mode is “let’s cut the crap.”

Tone & style:

Please don’t write memos. Reply to me as if we’re having a conversation in my office.

Practicalities

With ChatGPT, you might create a dedicated (private or public) CustomGPT that incorporates the persona and general instructions. You can then interact with it at your convenience. Voice mode is available if you prefer verbal communication.

With Claude, you can create a project for the team or individual team members. Include the role, persona, and instructions in the custom instructions for the project. This approach also creates a collection of your interactions with your AI Sparring Partner.

Remember, your AI Thought Partner is a tool to enhance your thinking, not replace it.

Always apply your own judgment and expertise to its suggestions.

The goal is to broaden your perspective and challenge your assumptions, leading to more robust strategies and decisions.

It Already Is

AI-enhanced thinking isn’t coming. It’s here. And you can use it now.

Want to work on this? I‘m offering an opportunity assessment. You’ll a report and implementation roadmap. And it’s all free.

→ Schedule a strategy call

Secrets of a marketing maverick

2024-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

Last week, the Clay.com community hosted a masterclass with none other than the ingenious and always entertaining Jordan Crawford.

Now, let me preface this with what I also told Jordan and the group during the introduction round: I’m not an avid Clay user. I do understand some marketing, some AI, and I enjoy how Jordan thinks about his work and the role of technology in it.

It was a very interactive session, small group. Perfect!

I also generally like the content he’s creating. I wanted to find out more.

With that being said, don’t expect me to have in-depth notes on how to use the tool. Jordan has a course on that, which is probably good, if not great. (That’s German for very high praise, just FYI.)

However, I picked up a few things that I want to share. I am also going to add a summary of all key points, which I confirm to be correct/factual, albeit a bit dry. Good for students and TL;DR!

The List Is the Message

Jordan introduced an interesting perspective on targeting. Instead of starting with generic lists and trying to personalize messages, he suggests flipping the approach: start with high-quality targeting, and the message naturally follows.

Personalization sounds great. It seems to make sense, or remedy the fact that you actually don’t know those people you are sending messages to. But it doesn’t per se make what you sell more relevant to the person you have all that “personal” information about.

Let me abstract even more.

Before Jordan starts fiddling with the shiny tools, he has put actual thought and work into it. Only when he has something that he can see working, often based on manual probing and testing, he moves on to scale that up with tools.

Read more on his secret 5-C’s framework in the summary at the end. The guy’s thorough.

Whiteboard skills. Strategy.

Detective Work

Next, this is what I got from Jordan on how he is using data. There’s a lot of publicly available data. There’s also some non-public data. The key is to be creative and inventive in terms of figuring out which data points can become “circumstantial evidence” in your case. No one data point by itself can mark a target, so to speak, but a combination of a few can increase the probabilities of your assumption/conclusion being correct.

The date needs to be organized and structured, which is where AI is really useful.

And this is where Jordan’s approach to AI really stands out. While many focus on the technical capabilities of tools like Clay, he brings a uniquely creative perspective to AI implementation.

The AI Part

Now, I know more about how to work with frontier LLMs than the intricacies of using Clay. This is where I really enjoy seeing how Jordan approaches his projects and problems.

He is playful, curious and creative with AI.
He treats it like an intelligent and capable collaborator.
He gives it context and constraints, but is smart or humble enough to also allow it to be creative in problem-solving.

So, for the last point, Jordan’s best practice and habit is this: He instructs the AI, mostly by talking to it with Superwhisper dictation. Then he adds, “If you can think of any other ways of doing this or achieving that, please go ahead and try that too.

Love it.

And he will provide examples of how often the AI, or the agent, has added new ideas and interesting approaches that he hadn’t thought of by himself.

Being curious and open-minded can really become a boost to the types of solutions you build and the results you get using AI in knowledge work.

In conclusion (as the AI likes to say), my take on Jordan’s message is that you need to put in the work to understand the client/customer, have your marketing basics and strategic direction firmly in place, and then you can do so much more than what feasible and affordable just a few years ago. That’s how the cutting-edge “marketing mavericks” (whose idea do you think that title was?) outdo the old ways.

What makes Jordan’s approach particularly valuable in my eyes is how he combines fundamental, solid marketing principles with AI’s capabilities.

Actually, much of what any experienced professional will tell you about their field always sound a bit like common sense – though sometimes with a twist. But for expertise to express itself in that, you need hands-on practical experience.

The Clay magic Jordan gets admired for is not about replacing human creativity and strategic thinking - it’s about amplifying the basics. As marketing continues to evolve with AI, this balanced approach will likely become even more crucial.

Good times. We should do this again.

Add-On: AI-Generated Summary

(This is the AI which I instructed to get all the main topics and points, and always add a nice quote, straight from the horse’s mouth.)

Jordan’s workshop masterclass on go-to-market (GTM) strategies using Clay and AI agents covered several key topics:

Approach to GTM and Outreach

Jordan emphasized starting with high-quality targeting rather than generic lists. He stated, “The list is the message,” meaning that with great targeting, the outreach message becomes more about describing the list back to the prospect. He gave examples like targeting hotels with recent reviews mentioning broken refrigerators or focusing on specific niches like roofing contractors.

Understanding Customer Context

Jordan stressed the importance of deeply understanding the customer’s situation before crafting outreach. He introduced the “five C’s of truth”: Customer, CRM, CSO/CEO/CSM conversations, Claude/ChatGPT analysis, and Customer validation. He noted, “You need to really just channel the buyer’s information.”

AI Agent Development

Jordan walked through his process of building AI agents using Clay and Claude. He emphasized giving agents context, constraints, and creative freedom. He said, “The agents perform really well with this thing I call creative constraint with context.”

Data Enrichment and Research

Jordan discussed using various data sources and APIs to enrich prospect information. He mentioned tools like Shovels for permit data and strategies for finding "behind the Iron Curtain" information that isn’t readily available online.

Pricing and Client Relationships

Jordan shared thoughts on pricing and his approach to client relationships. He emphasized setting clear expectations and exposing risks to clients. He stated, “I work with you, not for you,” highlighting the collaborative nature of his engagements.

AI Tools and Techniques

Jordan discussed using tools like Superwhisper for voice-to-text, Appify for web scraping, and various Clay integrations. He also shared tips on prompting and how to structure information for AI agents.

Challenges and Pitfalls

Jordan highlighted common challenges in outbound and agency work, such as the potential conflict between an agency’s success and the client’s internal team’s performance. He advised aligning with the client’s goals and understanding what success looks like for them.

Throughout the workshop, Jordan emphasized the importance of starting with a narrow focus, deeply understanding the customer and their context, and using AI tools to augment and scale human intelligence rather than replace it entirely.

The AI Value Paradox

2024-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

(This article was published on the AI Solutions Lab newsletter first. Sign up here.)

How is it that we hear some individual users claim to get huge benefits from using AI, in terms of productivity and cognitive augmentation? And why are organizations broadly speaking not getting the same upside?

Why are individuals outpacing enterprises in AI adoption?

Let’s unpack this.

I created a podcast version with NotebookLM. It is based on this article, the AI Lab article, and some production instructions (although I’m unclear as to how much these do impact the podcast).

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Understanding Latent Expertise

Central to this discussion is the concept of latent expertise, originally attributed to Collin Burns and popularized by Ethan Mollick in his insightful book Co-Intelligence. This concept helps explain why individuals, particularly those with deep domain knowledge, can often achieve remarkable results with AI tools that may elude larger organizations.

Latent expertise refers to the hidden reservoir of knowledge within Large Language Models (LLMs). These AI systems are trained on vast amounts of data, accumulating a broad base of information that isn’t always immediately visible. As Mollick puts it, LLMs are "forgetful foxes in a Berlinian sense: they know many things, imperfectly."

Additionally, it is generally overlooked that current frontier AI systems (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity) appear to be mostly simple text input chat interfaces, but are actually power user tools with no manual. Their responses can be inconsistent or partial without the right guidance.

Back to latent expertise, the point is that experts are uniquely positioned to tap into this latent knowledge. Crucially, "expert" doesn’t refer to the kind that is an industry-leading expert and published author. We are talking about people, like you and me, that have deep expertise in what they do. That simple.

As individual experts, we can:

Recognize quality outputs in our domain.
Identify and correct errors or hallucinations.
Provide precise instructions to guide the AI.
Iterate effectively, leveraging both their subject matter expertise and their understanding of the AI’s capabilities.

For example, a lawyer using an LLM to draft contracts can quickly recognize nuanced legal language that is correct or incorrect, providing the AI with better feedback to refine its output. This synergy between human expertise and AI capabilities is why individuals often see outsized returns from AI use.

The Current State of AI Integration

Despite their power, current AI systems lack seamless integration into existing technological ecosystems and workflows. This gap is the real challenge in AI adoption today, particularly for larger organizations that rely on consistent, scalable solutions.

What power users do, talking from my own experience and what I hear from all the geeks I talk to, is this:

They have a set of tools, at the ready at all times. They tend to access different models or tools for different steps. They iterate, copy, paste and go back and forth between the tools, fluently.

It works, but it is also a bit "messy". And frankly, it won’t be adopted in any corporate setting in this form. See next section, too.

As I mentioned in a previous article, Microsoft with Copilot and Google with Gemini have a strategy that is built on integration. Unfortunately, their AI models are not the best. We have to see how this develops in the near future.

Another aspect of integration, as desirable as it might be on the one hand, is being locked in to a vendor or provider. As we will see, compared to the organization or enterprise, which will actually be pretty much locked in in fact, a single operator, or a small, lean team is able to switch from AI tool provider to another with relative ease.

The Individual Advantage: Mastering the Task Tango

What is it that we knowledge workers actually do?

While we all aim to identify repetitive and recurring tasks, then "automate" them with AI (in our dreams), much of our daily work consists of non-recurring, one-off tasks.

This "task tango" demands a combination of flexibility and deep personal expertise that individuals can leverage more effectively than large organizations. My personal experience reflects this.

This is also why prompt engineering, prompt cheat sheets, is already pretty much completely obsolete.

This is one of the main reasons why I started the AI Solutions Lab live sessions. Real world working with LLMs on actual tasks and problems is much more messy and iterative than the polished marketing demos would have you believe. Also, working live sessions with clients has consistently proven that people pick up the smallest and most essential things that way. As in, "Oh, this is interesting! When you just did this and then that, now I get it. I have to try this, because I missed this step or this little addition to the instruction you put in there."

To sum up, individual AI users can:

Rapidly adapt to new challenges without organizational constraints.
Apply a unique blend of skills and knowledge to each task.
Push the boundaries of AI capabilities without concerns about scalability.
Iterate and learn quickly from both successes and failures.

This flexibility, combined with personal expertise and the ability to unlock latent AI knowledge, gives individuals a significant edge in extracting value.

It’s a process. It has a learning curve. But the rewards and future returns are tremendous. That is the bet we are making.

The Enterprise Dilemma

Enterprises face unique challenges in AI adoption:

Scale: Solutions must work across departments and standardized workflows, making it difficult to innovate freely. Which is related to…
Lowest Common Denominator Effect: In group settings, solutions often get watered down to accommodate less proficient users, limiting innovation potential.
Legacy Systems: Integrating AI with existing infrastructure is complex, especially when older systems are incompatible with modern AI technologies.
Risk Aversion: Concerns about security, compliance, and reliability slow adoption and limit experimentation.
Misaligned Approach: Many companies see AI primarily as a cost-cutting tool, missing opportunities to empower their "in-house experts" to innovate and create value.

Hence, enterprises struggle to replicate the agility and creativity that individual users bring to AI adoption. The scalability demands and inherent risk aversion of enterprises often prevent them from fully exploring AI’s capabilities.

Bridging the Gap

For enterprises to catch up, they need to:

Identify AI Champions: Empower individuals motivated to explore and master AI tools. These champions can serve as internal experts who inspire and guide others.
Enable Knowledge Sharing: Create systems for AI champions to share insights across the organization, enabling others to learn from their experimentation.
Remove Barriers: Address fears and provide clear, easy-to-use solutions to help less tech-savvy employees start with AI.
Encourage Experimentation: Create safe spaces for employees to test and iterate with AI tools without fear of failure or negative consequences.
Focus on Integration: Invest in solutions that fit into existing workflows while allowing individual customization. This reduces friction and encourages adoption.
Shift Perspective: View AI as a tool for innovation and value creation, not just efficiency. Highlight success stories where AI led to new opportunities, not merely cost savings.

Each of these steps builds on the previous one, creating a culture that values both individual initiative and scalable integration.

I sketched out a way to set up an AI Lab in this article.

The Path Forward

The AI revolution isn’t about replacing human intelligence; it’s about augmenting it. Success will come to those who effectively leverage AI, adapting and improvising as the technology evolves.

For individuals, this means:

Continually honing skills in AI interaction.
Applying domain expertise to unlock latent capabilities in AI systems.
Embracing the "task tango" to enhance flexibility and problem-solving.

For enterprises, the path forward requires a fundamental shift:

Move away from one-size-fits-all solutions.
Empower individual expertise within the organization.
Foster a culture of AI innovation led by AI champions.
Provide resources for champions to share knowledge.
Encourage an environment where all employees feel supported in adopting AI tools.
Highlight the opportunities that AI presents for growth, creativity, and value creation.

The organizations that thrive will bridge the gap between individual innovation and enterprise-scale implementation. They will build ecosystems where AI champions flourish and share insights, enabling everyone to master the complex "task tango" of modern work.

The AI value paradox isn’t insurmountable—it calls for a nuanced, expertise-driven approach to AI adoption.

Interested in a free opportunity assessment for yourself or your company?

Let’s chat. Book a call with me.

Feel free to reach out with your questions—I’m always happy to share insights. Connecting with people is one of the key reasons I do this.

The AI Lab

2024-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Client: 'I want to realize the promised benefits of AI.'

Me: 'Got it. Here’s what you need: an AI Lab.'

This is a brief explanation of why, and more importantly, how.

For the AI Solutions Lab article The AI Value Paradox I created a podcast version which references the AI Lab idea. Listen to this for the idea in a larger context:

Your browser does not support the audio element.

From Co-Intelligence, by Ethan Mollick:

For companies, this means figuring out ways to incentivize and empower employees to discover latent sources of expertise and share them.

In my version, the core functions of your AI Lab are:

Research and innovation, by connecting with internal ‘AI champions’ to gather and develop use cases.
Experiment and develop, by providing resources and support, turning successful experiments into scalable solutions.
Develop AI-assisted solutions, by addressing specific workflows and departmental challenges.
(Optionally: Facilitate knowledge-sharing across teams and keep the organization updated on relevant external AI developments and trends.)

The AI Lab also implements metrics to track the outcomes and effectiveness of AI initiatives, from revenue growth, cost and time savings, all the way to product, manufacturing and service innovations.

→ That covers the business side of things. Your CFO will be happy.

To track adoption across your organization, metrics such as daily active users, or usage metrics per week are also useful.

→ That covers measuring change.

One Bite at a Time

While this sounds like a lot, you can – and should – start lean:

Pick one department or team.
Run a pilot phase for 3-6 months.
Evaluate.

Not Sure Where to Start?

In case you’re curious to accelerate this process, book a free consultation with me, to assess your situation in some depth.

We can get a better sense of of what is involved:

Designing and implementing the AI Lab
Running the pilot phase, with regular check-ins and reporting
Conducting thorough evaluations and refining the approach
Providing ongoing support and expertise throughout the process

My perspective is: There’s a huge range in regards to how much value and ROI individuals and organizations are going to get out of the technology.

It really depends on understanding the capabilities and limitations, a willingness to experiment, fail and improve, and then, to double down on what’s proving to provide leverage.

Voicenotes

2024-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s an app that is a good showcase for how AI can enhance an established use case. I use it at the very first line of idea capture in my custom-designed output strategy.

So, What’s Voicenotes?

The people runnning this business know what they are doing, IMO. The copy is spot on. The pricing is attractive (disclaimer: I bought it).

Says it all. And says it well.

How to Test It

This is how it should be: You can test or try out the app right there on the landing page. That’s the quickest, most immediate way.

You can also create an account and test the app in full, with one (generous) limitation: Your voicenote recordings are limited to 1 minute.

I used it in that way for a while, and found the limitation a sensible one: forced me to be somewhat concise. Also, you can thread notes now, adding a new note to an existing one.

What It Does

First off, the app transcribes your audio input and creates a title for the note. Optionally, you can edit the note, the title, attach files, etc.

The transcriptions are excellent. I am able to switch languages half way through and it still gets it right.

Transcriptions are really at another level these days.

The app is making connections and showing related notes. Here’s an example, with the related notes listed below:

You can also talk to and ask the AI about your notes. For example, here’s what I got asking about what I had done on tightops.com during September.

In September, you accomplished several tasks for tightops.com including:

Figuring out how to publish new pages and articles, making it easier for future updates and expansions. You specifically published a new page and an article on September 23.

Implementing a living table of contents and sorting out SSH key issues for GitHub client integration. You also updated the signup page for the newsletter, creating a self-hosted page for AI Solutions Lab signups on September 22.

Publishing the augmented reading guide in its intended guide format and creating custom text boxes for prompts. You also addressed and fixed CSS issues related to build failures on September 24.

Why I Bought It

With the believer pricing being available, I upgraded after a couple of days of testing. The bet I’m making is not only that the app will continue to exist, but also that I’ll be using it for the idea capture part of my workflow of making output as easy as possible.

If you want to check it, you can use my (affiliate) link or visit voicenotes.com direclty.

Output As Easy As Possible

2024-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

Please note that this article is unfinished. Take it as my current public draft.

More Output

The wish to create or produce more output has been with me for a long time. I’ve been through various attempts at solving this for me, which as much varied levels of success. I…

did some writing
hosted a podcast
gave presentations
workshops/seminars
webinars
…

All the usual stuff. Just not nearly as much as I could have, or wanted to.

Now, in 2024, things have dramatically changed. Being able to approach and tackle the problem with a, or mulitple, AI collaborators, has enabled me to make impressive progress (meaning: I am impressed.)

Let’s start with the why. My goals:

Becoming, then being prolific
Increasing visibility
Building up a body of work
Attracting people I can work with, collaborate and further co-develop my/our ideas
Balancing my input-to-output ratio, so that I can to some extent justify my curiosity-driven explorations and adventures

I need to backtrack a little to see how I got here.

To Document and to Be Found

I see three main reasons for publishing:

A: To offload from working memory:

Create a record
Achieve closure
Free up mental space to move on

B: To learn and explore

Process what I come across and translate it
Build on what I already know, establishing new connections
Expanding my own knowledge and experience landscape

C: To communicate and connnect:

Connect with the right audience
Share ideas that resonate

Iteration 1: A Better Way to Extract What’s on My Mind

This is a version from sometime late July, early August.

Flowchart of the workflow to create content ideas

The innovative part of this workflow was the the Monthly Expert Interview. That’s the key element. Here’s why:

I arrived at a point where it seemed, for most people, the main problem of creating content was to have ideas what to write about. That is not so much a problem for me, honestly. Since I do have lots of interests and read/watch things and talk to people, I have more than enough input.

Further, most people try to solve the lack of ideas by:

copying what others (influencers, top voices and thought leaders) post about, including the used structure (template)
using some kind of topics matrix or formula to generate ideas, e.g. your topic is weight loss; your formula is “These 7 (usually, it is 7, right?) foods are sabotaging you” Do we really need more of this? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, note the top left of the diagram, I think, one, I actually know what I’m talking about because I actually have expertise and experience. And two, I also have my somewhat unique perspective, take, or opinion on things.

Combine that with the input, and voilá, we have a potent mix.

To facilitate my own regular brain dump – maybe “working memory extraction” sounds a bit nicer, I experimented a bit and implmemted the expert interview, for which I am playing the expert, and AI is taking the role of a decently prepared journalist.

That worked great. I provided the AI system with some research, which consisted of a list of topics I have on my mind at the time. Then I instructed it to execute an interview with me, and to feel free to ask follow-up questions if and when I may mention or touch upon other, related, topics during the interview.

Iteration 2: Make It Fit Like a Glove

In phase 2, I had an extended strategy session with Claude.

I began to discuss and develop a strategy with the AI. I have to admit, I was again delightfully surprised by the results of the process. In short, we were able to go from generic garbage to a very custom-tailored solution.

We initially suggested three main components:

State of Mind / Current Thinking posts
Living Table of Contents (done: see Map)
Automated Content Summarization

The New Way

A) State of Mind / Current Themes:

Initially, I experimented with having the assistant interview me. I liked the results and enjoyed the process, but for the last three months, I switched from being interviewed to actively reviewing what I had gathered over the past month.

B) Living Table of Contents:

Implemented (see Map)
Structured (somewhat) with expandable sections for each major topic.

C) Content Collection in Notion:

Use a Notion ~~page~~ database to collect articles, videos, podcasts, and key ideas.

I’m not happy with that part of the system. I have meanwhile installed Hoarder, a self-hosted bookmarking app that can also use AI to auto-tag your bookmarks, and more. I’ve done some preliminary testing, but haven’t found the time, or didn’t want to do more bike-shedding. Production before tooling!

What I do use:

Notion Web Clipper
Notion mobile app, which I often find rather frustrating. Toom much friction.
Voicenotes, recording all sorts of things, including meetings I run with myself
Recently added a physical notebook. I have no idea what exaclty I’ll end up using it for. I do hope there’ll be some drawings, too. My longhand is kind of hard to write and read.

The extra effort needed to transition to a scalable system

2020-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Business is not about busy-ness. To reduce your personal workload, you first have to do some things which appear to be “extra work”.

Why It Takes Extra Effort to Transition to a Scalable System

Imagine you are running your own business (and show). Maybe you’re a freelance designer, a consultant, a creator of … it doesn’t matter really.

You’re doing a good job – maybe a great job, actually. Your business grows. You bring in more revenue. Whatever you’re doing works.

You’re getting busy. Depending on how much control you have in your system, you will soon be working at full capacity, or even above that at times. Now you have money, but you’re short on time, and even shorter on freedom. You probably wanted to build a flywheel, but you end up in a hamster wheel. This can only be sustained for so long.

What I am describing is the situation that many of my clients are in. Here’s what they might say: “I have to do everything myself. I wish I could delegate or automate some things, but I don’t know where to start. Also, it’s complicated because when I’m doing things myself I simply use X and do Y, but if I were to hire an assistant or bring in any other kind of help, there are issues: no documentation, no briefings, little trust and security, added friction, the need to coordinate, etc.

And paying someone else equals me making less money".

I am not really arguing with that. But look beyond.

The uncomfortable truth is this: to get to being less busy, less things depending on you, and all the advantages of a scalable and sustainable system from something that you can run yourself at full capacity is going to take extra effort, unfortunately.

You will actually need to put in extra effort to delegate anything or to build a good, reliable system. This is going to either slow you down temporarily because you have to set resources aside to build it, or you can try to “push through”, if you like. Take on more work. Crank up your personal workload to more than 100 %. That is not impossible. It’s fragile, though. Some minor disturbance and you can easily “break”.

In an ideal world you would use time and other resources before you hit the 100 % personal capacity ceiling to design, build, streamline and expand your system.

Most people at most times miss that opportunity when presented with it.

There are only so many things you can do by yourself (working hard or working smart). Some ways out of that dilemma are hiring or automating / productizing. So either you throw more humans at the problem (hiring), which usually comes with managing them, or you automate / productize. It’s the agency model versus building a product. (And it’s not really either/or, but theses are the directions.)

I have worked in an agency, and never wanted to run or own one. A product gives you much more leverage and freedom. But that‘s another topic all together.

Back to the dilemma explained above, the hamster wheel.

What you want is an easy solution and little or no change. Forget it. What you need is to get outside of your business, meaning, reduce your “busy-ness” and build a system that works while you don’t.

Ready to Take Action?

Case study: Automating a Business.
Free resource: Business Process Automation Guide
Work with us: Business Process Automation

Tools & workflows for running a large scale content production

2019-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

This article is based on a talk Nico gave at the Project Management Meetup Berlin on 26 November, 2019. You can find the slides here.

In this article we share the internal team setup, with a focus on the tools and workflows we used for running a content production project which lasted almost two years.

We will cover:

Our internal team setup for communication
Our core workflow and tool setup (coordination)
How we prepared for future growth
How we streamlined communications with the client team

Project Overview

We were hired to consult on creating high-quality medical and health related content to attract visitors via organic search to the client’s website. The content needed to be very well researched and sourced, and was to be reviewed by a team of medical professionals on the client’s side, meaning there was a QA workflow to be managed between the two teams.

On our end, we worked with a team of professional writers and editors, all native English speakers, living outside of Germany and in different time zones. With that our team setup was fully remote.

Internal Team Setup

1.0

We needed a setup that would allow us to communicate efficiently and primarily asynchronously, so that we could stay highly coordinated. Ensuring maximum flexibility for each individual’s work schedule and keeping interruption to a minimum was a second important consideration.

Task Manager Is the Main Communication Channel

Our most important communication channel for this project was the shared task manager – in this case Asana.

We will get into the details of the Asana setup in section 2. We also used email and team chat.

Email for Announcements and Memos

As specified in our team’s ”communication channel conventions and response times”, a one-pager which is part of our handbook, we used emails mostly for announcements or memos to the team, or parts of the team.

Email correspondence with the client team was kept to not more than a few emails per week, often less. A change in the workflow and its correlating documentation would be a good example for something we would share across the team via email.

Team Chat for Asynchronous Conversations

We used team chat for the bulk of our conversations. One thing to point out here is how we created and used Short-Lived Topic Channels apart from the regular direct messages and ongoing rooms or channels you are likely familiar with. The idea here is to consciously create a dedicated and temporary channel with the purpose of resolving an issue or finding a solution to a particular problem. Then close (and archive) the channel once that has been accomplished.

After creating the channel and laying out the problem and circumstances, we only invited the team members that needed to be part of that particular conversation. Later, the ensuing result needs to be transferred to the project’s documentation and shared with the rest of the team – and respectively the client team.

Core Workflows

2.0

Our editorial workflows are represented in Asana, using Kanban-style boards, with a linear flow of columns from left to right.

We represent each topic by a task (card). All work related to that topic is tracked in subtasks. This combination allows us to have an uncluttered overview layer of the boards, showing

what (topic) is being worked on,
by whom (assignee), and
where this topic currently is (column) in our production flow.

The board provides a good overview (signal-to-noise ratio)

All Details on a Second Layer

All communication regarding this topic is captured in the comments. If we happened to have a conversation elsewhere, say team chat, we did habitually document the decisions via a comment with a succint summary.

We also kept any and all related resources of each topic attached and/or linked to from the task. The main task in Asana thereby becomes an access point from which everything is merely one click away.

Over time, Asana automatically creates a full record and timeline, informing the team about who created a task, when, which questions were asked and answered, relationships between topics, and so on. With hundreds of topics to manage, this becomes more and more handy whenever you need to refresh your memory or investigate something.

Additionally, we used tags to keep track of features and states which were column-independent. An example tag would be “cta”, used to signal whether links to the client’s mobile app had been added yet.

Detailed information is available on the second layer (task view)

As a result of this setup, the workflow represented by and managed with the tool, the entire team is kept in the loop about what’s happening, can see what to work on next, and access any details on a second layer, the subtasks, attachments and comments, without the need interrupt others.

Tight Information Flow

We refer to the way information moves and/or is actively being moved within the team as Information Flow Design. With the setup described above, the tool (Asana) is creating notifications for any changes to the topics, as well as comments made and tags added. Complementing this with the practice of reading and processing your Asana inbox each workday, the result is a tight Information Flow:

If you are responsible for a given topic/task, or one of its followers, you will always be in the know about what’s added, moved, or changed. Everything is accounted for and no information is lost.

With this Information Flow in place and working reliably, we had no need for regular status meetings, and also avoided any all-team meetings.

Preparing for Growth

3.0

Since we expected the team to being growing over time, we prepared for a smooth onboarding of new team members. With our internal team setup and the core workflows in place, the next layer is documentation.

Documentation may not be sexy per se, but it can be if it’s good, useful, and short. Always be documenting.

Documenting

We had excellent results with a combination of written documentation and correlating screencasts. A video walkthrough or tutorial is especially helpful and accessible for an initial overview. It allows the creator to share the thought and decision making process while demonstrating the steps of the work at hand. Additionally, the recipient can pause and scrub within a video recording as necessary.

As a rule of thumb, screencasts should best be kept to a few minutes in length. If there is more to explain, break it up into logical parts and make sure to use consistent naming conventions. Always create written documentation to go along with it. Text is more transparent, easier to skim, and can be updated in parts. Keeping the documenation well interlinked makes related details or related information available, moves them but out of the way.

Onboarding

For every new addition to the team, we wanted to make sure to reduce the friction and avoid information overload. Having someone read many pages of documentation and learn the entire project setup right at the start can be very tedious and feel too theoretical. With a content production like this each new hire should be able to start immediately with what they already know and do well: writing.

Every new hire was coached by a senior team member during onboarding. Our existing team selected and prepared three reference topics, plus a briefing to create a new topic, supported with tutorials that explained the basic process. This allowed the new hire to enter the project very naturally, picking and moving their first topic from Backlog to the In Progress column on our board. With their topic progressing, they learned the layout of the project step by step.

We had intentionally decided that the team would review each other’s work, meaning every writer also acted as an editor. The intention was to receive and also give feedback, so as to learn and pick up good ideas or approaches, and to develop and establish an increasingly coherent, unified tone and style.

Receiving feedback and implementing it is one thing; being put in a position where you have to express what you approve of and what you would change, or do differently, and why, goes much deeper. This also created a sense of equality which the team appreciated.

Improve With Feedback

With each new addition to the team, we had the opportunity to ask how well and clear the documentation and its explanations were received. If the new hire found anything missing, ambiguous, hard to understand or simply unclear, we made an effort to update and improve our material.

Client Interactions

4.0

When managing a project where you need to inform or coordinate with other people, teams, or departments, no matter whether that is an actual client or another part of your own company or organization, there are challenges in how to inform and interact with those outside of the project’s core team.

As laid out in the previous sections, our internal Information Flow was working well. As for interactions beyond the team, difficulties can arise because it becomes harder or unfeasable to ensure that the same communication conventions or tools are being used. To retain some control while minimizing friction (and potential resistance) on the client’s end, we designed and used workflow-tool-combinations which allowed both sides to use their own, established set of tools.

With a shared task manager, such as Asana, you can typically invite guests to your organization or project. From the Asana documentation:

If you share a project with them; they will see that project and all tasks within that project.

Would this be a good option to communicate the production status for us? Is this what’s most useful here? We quickly decided against it, for a couple of reasons.

The client team is not using (or used to) Asana. It would be yet another tool for them to create accounts, familiarize themselves with, and to check and manage.
There is way too much information there, much more than is necessary or relevant. This contradicts our princinples for Information Flow Design.
The project is our team’s private space. It can get messy. It is internal, and with that comes a certain degree of freedom to express ourselves amongst the team. Removing that could unintentionally move much more of our communication about the work to other channels, which we want to avoid. The direct connection between tasks and related communication, as pointed out in section 2.0, would become severed.

The actual questions, the information the client team was interested in, were:

What are we currently working on (production and optimizations)?
Which topics are already added to the backlog?
Which topics are currently in QA?
Which topics show signs of increasing visibility (rankings in search engine results pages)

To solve this we generated a status board with a column for each question above. It showed the titles of topics as well as how many there were. It updated itself daily, with data being pulled directly through the Asana API based on certain tags.

Clean, concise, no interactions, no fluff. Updated daily.

How Can the QA Team Notify Us About Edit Requests?

The second example of a designed workflow-and-tool combination had to solve the issue of getting our team notified about edit requests in the QA process. Ideally, the team of medical doctors reviewing our work would create tasks (or subtasks) in Asana and our writers would be informed via notifications. But again, creating accounts and learning to use another tool is quite a bit to ask from people.

We instead would have much preferred to let the client’s QA team use an existing tool, one they were already familiar with, in order to minimze friction and reduce the risk for errors or confusion. This is why we came up with the following workflow which is especially elegant insofar as it lets the “externals” use something very familiar, email, while it funnels the information correclty formatted into our system.

The documentation only needed to specify that the email subject had to include the keyword “edit”. We then filtered these incoming emails on our end, had them skip the inbox (less clutter) and forwarded them to a project email address at Asana (see here). As a result, tasks were created automatically without the need for any addtional manual work.

Failsafe: Even in the case something got mistyped, the email would bypass the filter and show up in the respective writer’s inbox. We could let the doctor know how to do it right next time.

While the client can use the tool they are familiar with, we can stay within ours.

Before You Go

All of the presented solutions are based on the princinples of our TightOps framework. You can read more about how to use this with your own team or organization at tightops.com/fundamentals.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please get in touch.

Communication Timing

2019-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

When you share or gather information, meaning you inform others or consult them about some issue, you do not only define the contents (what), and the communication channel (how), but also the timing of your communication (when).

Differentiating and consciously choosing between direct/synchronous and indirect/asynchcronous communication channels is an important first step. In order to keep interruption low, we tend to prefer asynchronous ways of communicating over the more interruptive direct ones in TightOps. You can find a chapter dedicated to choosing the appropriate communication channel, “What goes where”, in Fundamentals.

Know Your Team

When working within a team, you will also be aware of when your teammates are working and what they are currently working on. As much as possible then, you can consider and adjust the timing of your communication.

Conserve Mental Energy

This may all sound a bit technical and abstract, so let us illustrate this with a concrete example:

Imagine it is Friday morning. I am going through my inboxes, replying to messages. In the context of one of the tasks I have been working on over the last few days, I can make out an upcoming decision point. I know that I need to write up my thoughts, provide some context, and bring this up with the team, so that we can coordinate and move things forward. But will it be useful to do this today, on Friday, the last day before the weekend? Likely not. Will it affect what we are currently doing? No, it won’t. The tasks the team has committed to need to be finished regardless. So in this case, it makes sense to “hold back”, so to speak, at least on hitting the send button.

Store to Access Later

Given that situation, I would either draft a document (to be shared later) or compose an email, but not share it or send out the message for now. I will thereby unload that issue from my mind, so (a) I don’t forget and (b) I will be less likely to ponder over this over the weekend myself. And I will spare the teammates who I could have involved right now to even be aware of the issue. If it can wait until next week, capturing it now is all that is really necessary and useful.

What Do You Expect to Happen Next?

2019-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

Make it a habit to ask yourself: What do you expect to happen next?

It will give your communication intention and move things forward.

Some possibilities are:

You need information or a decision. So you ask a specific question.
You want someone to do something. You create a task.
You want to provide information. You answer a given question and possibly close this conversation.

It’s important to have an idea of what you want or expext to happen next. Better yet, check whether what you expect or want to happen is the only (a distinct) possibility?

This is one of the aspects, a part of the communication mindset, which we want to spread virally in your team with Fundamentals.

The Shallows

2019-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

This was a surprisingly swift and interesting read. My first book by Nicholas Carr.

I will focus on the highlights I have made while reading, not attempt any sort of full book review which the inclined reader can easily find on Amazon or GoodReads.

What is slightly peculiar about me reading this book now, in 2019, is that it is already a bit dated, having been published in 2011. The internet has certainly changed since. To me, that made it all the more interesting to find what had been projected then and being able to compare it to the recent past. All in all, I think the book is certainly worth a read.

So what is the internet doing to our brains then? In short, technology is changing us, behaviorally, and actually changing our brains thanks to neuroplasticity. The impact of the internet is so much bigger than that of previous technologies, simply because the Net is sucking in more and more of us, our work, our hobbies, our relationships, activities, knowledge, and … what does it not absorb, really? Becoming aware of that is important if you care to consider any countermeasures in order to create some balance to the pressure.

Nietzsche’s Writing Ball

As Nietzsche apparently had serious trouble with his vision, he found a device, a piece of technology, which let him continue his writing. He ordered and began to use the newly invented type writer, the so-called Malling-Hansen Writing Ball – a fascinating instrument (read more on Wikipedia). It reminds me a lot of the types of ergnomic and sometimes split keyboards.

Fifty-two keys, for capital and lowercase letters as well as numerals and punctuation marks, protruded from the top of the ball in a concentric arrangement scientifically designed to enable the most efficient typing possible.

The keyboard of the writing ball, inventend in 1865. Source: Wikimedia

This piece of technology “saved” Nietzsche, but it also changed his writing, as a side-effect. In a letter to Köselitz he wrote:

Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.

Interruption Machine

The challenge of interruptions is a personal as well as a professional one to me. There is more to unpack here, and I intend to consider and use some of the insights from the book to improve our training product Fundamentals.

The Net is, by design, an interruption system, a machine geared for dividing attention.

We have been emphasizing how frequent interruptions are sabotaging any “deep”, focused work. And it is one of the pillars of Fundamentals to keep interruption low, not only in the way you can control and adjust things like notifications on your end, but considering the causes for interruptions when communicating and sharing information with and within your team.

Especially when trying to solve complex problems, we really can’t afford to have a culture of interruption.

[…] frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious. The more complex the train of thought we’re involved in, the greater the impairment the distractions cause.

People Over Tools

As much as we like tech and tools, it is our responsiblity to use them - not get used or tyrannized by them. This is why we focus so much on people, their skills and their mindset in the TightOps framework. It is on us to be and stay aware of what we do and how we do it. We have a lot of control these days, more choices than ever maybe. But we are also distracted and we tend to follow the well trotted out path instead of taking creative and conscious initiative to design the way we want to work and build things together.

Every tool imposes limitations even as it opens possibilities. The more we use it, the more we mold ourselves to its form and function.

Studies, research, and science

2019-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

I have been reading my fair share of articles which allegedly report on some finding or insight provided by science, or rather research, regarding management styles, remote working, hierarchy, etc. The problem that I see is that journalists and experts alike tend to summarize and then syndicate some cherry-picked items which are likely of little to no relevance to your team or organization. This may be old news to you. “Don’t be naive.”, you may think.

Here is one classic example to illustrate my point.

Breaking: Remote Workers Are 13 Percent More Productive!

From business.com, “How to Increase the Productivity of Remote Workers”:

A two-year study from Stanford revealed that remote workers are generally more productive than their office-dwelling counterparts. The remote workers in the study were 13% more productive, took fewer days off and were more likely to work their full shift every day.

First, the link “study from Standford” does not link to the study, but to another article titled “Why Working From Home Is a ‘Future-looking Technology’”, which highlights a quote from the author, Nicholas Bloom, saying:

We found massive, massive improvement in performance — a 13% improvement in performance from people working at home.

So far, so good. It appears that first article can more or less say that remote workers are “generally more productive”. And doesn’t that sound great?

By the way, this study in questions by Nicholas Bloom is a good one, I think, and his TED talk includes all the necessary disclaimers and explanations about the context and methodology used.

If we read the actual study, we find more, and more specific information about that productivity increase as well as the setup:

Call center employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months. Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment).

A few things of note:

“Home working”, or working from home (WFH), is not the same as remote working.
The workers in this case were call center employees.
9 % of that 13 % productivity increase is attributed to working more minutes per shift.

Why does that matter? I think most people do interpret “remote working” as being able to work from anywhere. And while Wikipedia says it is all one form or another of telecommuting, I would subjectively disagree, and I suspect many others more familiar with how the terms are being used, would too.

If you care to read a bit into the study, these call center employees were also not anywhere close to “fully remote”, but instead were asked if they would be interested in “working from home four days a week, with the fifth day in the office.” To me that is indeed partially working from home, but may have little resemblance of remote working with a distributed team, potentially across time zones.

The second point I want to emphasize is that these people were working as call center agents. They likely use a computer to pick up incoming calls and access their reference material, such as FAQs. That is totally fine, but it is the kind of job that requires little to no coordination or communication with a team. One can basically do or execute that job in isolation from others as long as you have a phone line and you get these calls routed to you from the system. Communication and coordination are not really an issue in this context, but they are a major challenge for distributed teams of remote workers.

Lastly, more than two thirds of this promoted increase in productivity “was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days)”. Again, the study itself is clear on that, but most folks will not know this due to the way these numbers are cherry-picked and presented. The interpretation here, if you ask me, should be: OK, the employees working from home were simply able to put in more minutes per shift, for some reasons, which lead to them picking up more incoming calls.

Does that really count as productivity? If you and me were to measure how many widgets each of us can assemble in 60 minutes, and I have to get up to use the toilet, thereby missing a few minutes, but otherwise assembling at the same pace or rate as you, was I less productive?

Astonishing Productivity Boost

Here’s another article from Inc.com which is also reporting on the same study, with the headline “A 2-Year Stanford Study Shows the Astonishing Productivity Boost of Working From Home”.

This is misleading. We should not, actually cannot generalize from one group of Chinese call center agents that working from home results in an “astonishing productivity boost” and that “it’s time once and for all to embrace and enable the benefits of working from home.”

I am certainly a proponent and also a beneficiary of flexible work, but this kind of reporting is BS. Please, get real.

Attracting customers with skills and values

2019-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

I think, how we found and selected the design studio we are working with is an interesting example of how values and value-matchings matters; and also how “competition”, particularly comparing with alternative vendors can be a total non-concern when a buyer makes a buying decision.

It was an early and undisputed decision that we wanted to have a high quality visual identity design for TightOps. While we were working and discussing the first ideas of our products and how we wanted them to be presented, design was a key consideration.

A few months back, I was writing a consulting proposal. The font we had been using for years in such pagespeed.io documents is Open Sans. In an attempt to provisionally pimp up that old look, I was wondering if we should not at least use a different font for headings. A web search for some inspiration brought me to this page with some “Open Sans Font Pairings”. This is where my eyes caught this little sample:

The font pairing: Radikal & Open Sans

I clicked through and read the responsible designer’s profile (Christina Lauer). Seconds later I was on Christina’s website, browsing through her portfolio to get an impression of her general style and approach. Then I spotted the “Client resources” button on the top right of the page. This is where she got me.

The selected resources matched my/our understanding, values, and appreciation for good work. I found a few new things, and a few known ones which I agree with very much. I also liked the general layout and careful curation of that page.

After explaining where I found it, a few additional messages, less than 25 minutes later, we had arrived at this:

While we were certainly not entirely serious or had made a decision at this point, we continued with our current work for a few weeks. When we started to develop a better and more concrete idea, we began to work on our “Brand Asset Briefing” document, defining what TightOps is about and what it should stand for. This was quite a laborious process with lots of drafting, editing, discussing, rewriting and re-editing, until we finally had something concise.

The result was a one page PDF, which we attached to our first out-of-the-blue email we sent to Christina to ask if she would be willing to work on our project with us. She replied to let us know that she is now working together with Danish designer Leon Sloth as Today.

Another detail of professionalism was that Christina communicated the price range for a visual identity project right in that first email to make sure we were on the same page – before we continue.

And yes, we were. We hired Leon and Christina.

Now it is our job to be “good clients,” because we know that is what enables professionals like them do great work.

Generic Commodities vs. Value-Matching Partners

Our decision to collaborate with Today is, to me, an example for an option we have in business, especially now, with the internet putting us on a global market and making services much more comparable : Instead of simply screaming louder, you make an effort to honestly communicate to your prospects why you do things: values.

This is an alternative to being or becoming a generic commodity, fully interchangeable with any other provider on the market. Sharing your values truthfully and authentically can be very convincing. It was to us.

We hired Today. We did not talk to any other design studio. We did not compare theirs with portfolios of other designers. We did not compare prices or solicit other proposals. We also did not negotiate. We knew roughly what we wanted, or more importantly the style of the approach towards creating what we actually need (clients tell you what they want; good consultants tell them what they need).

Bottom line: Prices should be reasonable. Work and communication should be professional. But values have to match.

Decision-Making in Teams

2019-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

From the HBR article Why Teams Still Need Leaders:

Members of agile teams still need to coordinate and find ways to resolve conflicts. Even if you’re not using hierarchy, you always need a decision-making role. The question is, how can you encourage working together and coordination in a simple and elegant manner?

I second the importance of decision-making. Tip-toeing around as no one wants to or feels designated to make the call, is such a common way for groups to procrastinate.

We are all familiar with the situation in private life: a few people are together, some ideas about where to go next, dinner, drinks, etc. are being floated. Because there is not really someone particular in charge, bearing any responsibility to satisfy or feed the group, and no one wants to be impolite, imposing on others (people play the “I am easy.” card), the decision can be dragged out.

In a team though, as a group with a common objective, decisions have to made efficiently. Whether the team always the same person in charge (fixed hierarchy), or the group actually has the flexibility to designate the person with the most expertise and competence regarding the issue at hand – both approaches work.

State the problem in the negative, and it becomes clearer:
When a team does not have a way to make decisions, it will not make much progress.

Automating a Business

2015-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

We have recently started a very interesting project with Tyler Tringas to help him automate his Micro-SaaS company StoreMapper.co. We will document and publish our progress and results here as a case study.

You can follow along and get behind-the-scenes updates here as well as on Tyler’s blog. Read his post Putting a Micro SaaS Business on Autopilot where he laid out his current situation, strategy, and motivation to work with TightOps.

Transparency

There are many fascinating aspects to StoreMapper as a business. Particularly interesting is the fact that Tyler decided a while back to be transparent about money, which means the live financials for StoreMapper are public.

Update: The baremetrics dashboard is no longer available. Tyler has successfully sold the business.

Tyler is also writing a book about Building a Micro-SaaS Business. As putting the business on autopilot would make for a great later part of telling StoreMapper’s story, we thought it would be a great opportunity to work together and let our readers know about how we approach this and what kind of results we are getting.

Case Study

Following the usual case study format, I will lay out the situation as we have it at the start of the project (aka the problem), then start adding the strategies and solutions we are applying, and report on our results.

Starting Situation of StoreMapper.Co

StoreMapper, “A dead simple store locator widget”, is a focused business, stripped of unnecessary complexities. That makes it an ideal object for full automation. It’s more like one single department of any other business. This also means that what we’ll be doing can be extrapolated to larger, more complex business.

Until a few months ago StoreMapper was a one man show. Tyler had developed the core software application, run customer service, and did basic marketing.

Recently Tyler has hired his first employee for customer service and brought on a freelance developer. We are going to look at the customer service process first, development second, and the connection of the two third.

Customer Service Automation

Customer service at Storemapper.co runs through Intercom.io, an app that allows the customer service team to keep track of conversations with customers.

As it was Tyler who was answering all incoming requests in the past, there are many conversation to search for similar issues and check how they were resolved. And that’s exactly where Chris, the new hire, has been checking for answers.

Now, having these conversations as an improvised “knowledge base” is not an ideal solution. We rather wanted to start building a new, comprehensive one that we can use to publish support articles regarding specific questions and also have an internal part where we keep all the work procedures (SOPs) for the support team.

Technologically we are using a Wordpress blog with a plugin that allows us to have non-public articles for the team, plus a growing number of public support articles for the customers. You can see the public support blog at storemapper.com/support.

It’s a self-improving customer support process, as demoed in this video at about 01:00 minutes):

So, what’s next? Simple: we need to move know-how from inside Intercom and from Tyler to the blog. There are existing articles and we will add to them. After all, every support issue that the customer is able to solve by herself is one less to work on for the support team. It’s delegation all over again, only this time the support team delegates the work to the customers (which also saves the customer time in many cases).

Bring in the SOPs

It’s also time to get more specific and introduce our first standard operating procedures (SOPs) to get proper instructions/documentation for how to solve specific issues. For more information on business process documentation, including templates and examples, see our business process guide.

We’ll share some of our SOPs here in the future.

Error Alert Handling

As early as in our onboarding call we talked about the need for a solid process to handle error alerts. After all, if you have to be on call at any time because an error might occur and you are the only one who is able to solve it, that weighs quite heavily on you, … well, Tyler in this case.

My perspective here is this: The subjective need to be on, online, or available all the time is a nagging problem to have. Even in a scenario where you don’t need to work in the business, the simple fact that you have to be reachable keeps things still dependent on you.

Error alerts are a real thing for any software as a service company. Your customers expect the service to be working. If and when there is an issue, the time it takes to get everything back up and running is crucial.

And here’s the real-life scenario: Tyler is about to visit Africa. A perfect opportunity to set up our “Error Handling Guidelines”. We will define

the different priority levels of errors,
who to notify, and
what to do about it.

We are pre-planning for the situation where Tyler can’t be reached, so it’s clear for the team how to decide on what to do and execute instead of getting paralyzed and indecisive.

Test Successful!

Here’s Tyler:

Hey Nico. I’m more or less back on the grid. In Zanzibar but have wifi. First test run of off-grid-founder went pretty well! I was completely out of touch for 6 days hiking Kilimanjaro, back on for about a day and a half, then off again for 5 days. We had almost no issues during the first stretch and only one apology-email-worthy issue on the second stretch. So far even that customer is still with us. I think we net added about $400 in MRR over the two weeks.

Not too bad!

Open Office

2014-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

I read this article, titled The Open-Office Trap, from Maria Konnikova’s blog at The New Yorker. It cites all sorts of studies and makes a pretty good argument that the Open Office is actually not a good place to get focused work done.

Since I personally work with people that are in other places (a distributed team) – and often even different time zones – I have heard many questions from people who work in a conventional office environment, curiously asking how that is even possible. To them, it feels so much more cumbersome, if not simply impossible, to work collaboratively with people when you aren’t able to get up from your desk, walk over to and ask someone something.

The more I hear these questions and think about good ways to reduce the amount of distraction and interruption, I find that it might actually be the other way around. I know, that sounds really counterintuitive.

The Problem: Thoughtlessness and the Sheer Amount of Interruptions

The Open-Office Trap:

When David Craig surveyed some thirty-eight thousand workers, he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared.

When I used to work at a media agency in Berlin, we had a nice open office space, holding somewhere around 15 or more people depending on the day of the week and currently ongoing projects. There were three directorswho each had their own separate office.

You can imagine that a lot of “quick questions” came up from the people working in the open office during any given day, me included. And so you’d walk over, stand in front of your boss’s glass door, looking inside to see if they were on the phone or typing at their computer. This act alone would most times get their attention (interruption/distraction already happening) and they would then either gesture you to come in or deploy some “give me five minutes“ body language.

Since you get conditioned by people coming to your door pretty quickly, you get used to keeping some attention in the corner of your eye, no matter what you’re doing. That’s like being partially distracted, most to all of the time. That is a weird form of subtle toxicity in regards to your attention span and ability to focus on deep(er) work.

On top of that, it’s not just the quick questions related to actual work that come in. You also get people just knocking, opening the door and saying things like, “Please call back Ms. so-and-so. They called earlier.”, or, “You want some coffee, too?”, and so on. Reasons are plenty.

The Solution: Raising Awareness and Getting Everyone to Be More Considerate

Architecture alone is not going to solve this. Having a (“gatekeeper”) secretary might also not work for everyone. So what can we do?

My conclusion is, you have to think and act more as if you are not being in the same place/office. That’s why I think it’s so valuable to be able and have the experience to work in distrbuted teams. It requires a different discipline. It forces you to consider efficient ways to get information to others or retrieve it from them.

And that’s really what TightOps is about. It makes a virtue out of necessity.

You start thinking about the “cost of interruption”, which we have illustrated with levels of interruption, where walking over to someone’s desk is on the far right of the spectrum:

Overview of asynchronous and direct communication channels

Related and recommended here are the chapters from TightOps Fundamentals “How To Keep Interruption Low” and “What Goes Where”.

Team Productivity

2014-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

There is a plethora of books and tools on how to be (more) productive. It’s a pretty safe bet to say you have already read or used at least one of them.

The multitude and variety of productivity systems is astounding. There seems a whole array of ways to approach this problem. Alas, all of these systems seem to have one thing in common.

It’s About You, Personally, Getting More Done

Most, if not all of what you find is aimed at personal productivity. It is self-help, or rather self-management.

Have a look at some of Amazon’s top sellers from those categories:

Time Management from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Taking Control of Your Schedule--and Your Life by Julie Morgenstern
Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen
To-Do List Makeover: A Simple Guide to Getting the Important Things Done by S.J. Scott
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
Time Warrior: How to defeat procrastination, people-pleasing, self-doubt, over-commitment, broken promises and … by Steve Chandler
Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy
Time Management Made Easy: Become more productive and get things done stress free! (Procrastination Self Help) by Tiffany Barker
Time Management: Increase Your Personal Productivity And Effectiveness by Harvard Business School Press
… the list goes on.

I won’t comment on the metaphors used in productivity systems. Let’s focus on this: It’s all about you; the personal productivity gurus are teaching ambitious (or stressed out) people to get more done.

Team Productivity

So what about the team? What about the relations and dependencies of working within and with a group of people? Does team productivity simply consist of a bunch of properly self-organized people who work on a project? I guess not.

I have yet to see a proper productivity system designed for, and used by, a team of people. There are project management methodologies, agile, waterfall, you name it. I have worked with SCRUM. It has an interesting, and agile, structure.

A project management methodology is concerned with coordinating work and getting assignments done on time.

There are roles and responsibilities. It’s about how ideas get captured and prioritized – and about managing resources.

But what makes team productive as a team?

TightOps isn’t really a “productivity system for teams”, although I often call it that when explaining it to people in person. In fact, the terms “framework” and “communication protocol” are a better fit, but they also sound a bit more theoretical and technical.

But, sorting out what goes where and how to communicate effectively with and within a group of people is a huge win for your team’s productivity. So yes, following TightOps certainly improves any team’s productivity.

So I think TightOps is the missing link between personal productivity systems and project management. It fills a gap to directly link the one with the other.

The Email-to-20-Teammates Problem

2014-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

In his rather nerd-famous Google Tech Talk "Inbox Zero" Merlin Mann takes question from the audience (Google employees). The issue in question is stated like this:

With a work account, frequently someone will email your team. And now there are maybe 20 people that could respond to this issue. So you might look at the email and you might say, well, I could respond or I could wait for one of the other 20 people to respond. – (around 48:28)

Interesing. I decided to build and publish TightOps for exactly this reason: Even though people

have the tools, and
can operate them fluently

(we are talking about email and Google employees), there still is confusion or ignorance about “what goes where”.

Stop the Madness

This isn’t just a minor problem, in fact. I see TightOps as a diagnosis tool which will help you indentify the problem and fix it. Here’s how I would proceed.

As we have not enough information about the content of the email in question, it sound as if it is either

a question, or
something that needs to be done (by someone on the team).

Following our model of the Communication Channel Code, this translates into the two categories:

gathering information
delegating work

Gathering Information

If you need some information¹, you should have a better understanding of where (from whom) to get it specifically (even if there are more than one possible sources) than to blindly address 20 teammates. Still, sending the email to 20 people, might not necessarily be a sign of laziness. I would suspect that this approach has a different reasoning: The sender wants to ask one / some of the recipients and inform everybody else at the same time. If that’s the case, the first improvement is to either split up the two parts, meaning, ask for information and spread the result separately. Or, depending on the details, choose a better communication channel, say the task manager, where you can assign a task and manage who will get notified about that task and its result / completion.

Delegating Work

If this email really contains something like, “Something is broken. Who can have a look at it and fix it?”, that’s no good for sure. First, even in a fairly non-hierarchical structure, there should be a way to take on tasks / work from a list (like a backlog). Better even, there has to be someone responsible for delegating and coordinating work, a project manager or product owner.

It’s just not helpful to publish work in the form of an email to 20 people. There has to be a better system in place for this to happen.

The Dilemma (That Is Imposed on the Recipients)

The person asking the question in Merlin’s talk also brings up the dilemma he is facing. As he knows that not answering (immediately) might be the best available tactic, he basically says:

There is some advantage to waiting to prevent everyone from responding simulaneously.

Because, either (a) somebody else takes care of it, or (b) by ignoring the email for a while, he helps to avoid more chaos as there is a chance of multiple people replying at the same time which would create interference².

Fixing It

I see three things you need to change to avoid this:

If this is about something that needs to be done, add it to the task manager.
If this is about collecting information, address the people who have that information directly and gather / process that information, then inform the team.
If this is not simply delegating and informing, it might be part of a more complex decision. In that case, I’d suggest to gather all information about it, background, problems, possible solutions and then write it all up in a memo.

It’s Not Really a Problem With Email

As Merlin also points to in his answer in the talk, this has little to do with how you personally manage your email. It relates to system and processes in place. And I certainly think that the TightOps framework is fit to diagnose, fix and avoids this kind of problem.

Information in that sense is not to be confused with a decision. If you’re looking to make a decision, you have to choose other means / channels than if you’re simply collecting some information about X. Information gathering usually happens in preparation of decision making. ↩
That’s the difference between email and chat: You don’t know if and when the addressee will get, read and reply to your email. For chat communication, you usually know a few minutes later whether or not someone has received your message and will reply to it or not. ↩

Coworking and Lounging

2014-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

If you’d be walking into a coworking space with no preconception of how and why this should actually be functional for the people and businesses using it as their primary work- and office space¹, I can certainly understand your doubts.

But there are a few things you could get wrong about coworking if you compare it to something similar and, more important, something familiar to you – the conventional office.

How Much “Co” Is in Coworking?

Let’s quickly have a look at the part of the name that implies doing something together.

You can get a range from a chatty, almost coffee shop like atmosphere and activity level to more of a library where people study. I think that’s where each place and its audience or users create a rather individual characteristic.

Co-working in my experience will show up in two ways:

By nature of having the opportunity to select where they are working, a lot of coworking audience / users are freelancers or bootstrapping / running their own small business. If that’s the case there is a tendency to share expertise and experience with one another, informally over a cup of coffee, or, more formally in a meetup or mastermind group.
The other facet of coworking is to actually get people on the project you are working on, and vice versa. Aquiring business through networking.

How Much Work Is Actually Office Work?

Coffee shops and the like coworking spaces are better suited for people who have a few office work hours combined with other acitivities that don’t necessarily require an office in the narrower sense. We get to that in a minute.

For the freelancer who provides graphic design, copy writing, or programming skills for hire, a work place where there is a desk, your computer and some other useful facilities, is rather important. This group is naturally inclined to share office space with others or work from home. If you fall into that group you might be able to pull off the occasional coffee shop visit. A coworking space of the library-atmosphere kind might be the best fit for you.

But there is another category of work. It’s work that doesn’t mainly happen at the desk. Recently, Nassim Taleb uttered this on Twitter:

Most of one’s work is done lounging. The rest is just a matter of transcribing, jotting things down & other administrative details.

I found this to be interesting and true to some extent. Taleb is a an engineer – and an author, of course. I agree that conceptual work, thinking, reading, etc. can be done in many places and circumstances. In fact, you need impressions and processing to produce creative output. Sitting at a desk all day might not cut it.

To mention another example, fasten your seatbelts for Seth Godin. This man had and still has so much creative output, it’s intimidating.

In an interview about Seth Godin’s writing habits, he claims:

Q: How many hours a day do you spend actually writing (excluding email, social media etc.)?

A: Do you mean typing? I don’t know, fifteen minutes. I can type fast.

Now, Seth also says right at the beginning of the interview that he spends 16 hours per day reading or doing research. He might do that in his office. I don’t know.

Lounging Sprinkled With the Occasional Office Hours

Sounds nice, doesn’t it. Just don’t tell anyone.

The point is, it is entirely possible for a certain line of work to get by without 6 to 8 hours at the desk in your office. You might just walk into a coffee shop twice a day for 90 minutes and do what Taleb said, “transcribing, jotting things down & other administrative details.” The conception and processing of your work happens some place else, maybe on a walk. That’s fine.

As an add on, I wonder if this also holds true for developers these days? Is the part of the work that is concerned with the architecture and conceptual solution happening while typing?

You’re right, I said Office Space. Go see it now! Always worth watching. ↩

After The Meeting

2014-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Meetings are not what most people are looking forward to. And those who do, well, as Taleb says:

Anyone who likes meetings should be banned from attending meetings. (Heuristic)

But we still need meetings and we are going to have some, so I wanted to address something that is not often talked about: What happens after the meeting?

There is a lot of information and tips out there on how to run meetings. The Modern Meeting Standard is certainly one of the best and shortest resources out there. Recommended.

I’m going to borrow some quotes from the book and comment on how these tie into TightOps. If you fail to do what follows, your meetings will be pointless and frustrating to you and your team. The good news is, it’s rather simple.

All we need to know is the decision and the resulting action plan. […] The plan should include at least the following:

What actions are we committing to?

Who is responsible for each action?

When will those actions be completed?

The answers to these questions, the action plan, has to be restated at the end of the meeting, to get agreement and avoid misinterpretations.

Now let’s see how that is reflected in Tight Operations. What goes where?

The first question from above will give us a list of tasks, which go to our task manager and get assigned to someone (second question) on the team. Further, a due date is set, so we can plan accordingly.

As for (internal) team meetings, this much is necessary and sufficient.

When I have meetings or calls with external people, e.g. my lawyer, a client, etc., I also include a bullet list of what we talked about and what information was shared. Even though these meetings often lack a formal agenda, I try to come up with one as we go along and take short notes of what we came up with. Usually right after the meeting, I send all participants these notes via email as I don’t share a task manager with them. This is where the responsiblity is divided up and each one can use the provided notes to fill their own to-do lists.

End the meeting the in the proposed way and it will unavoidably affect your meetings in a very positive way. Once you get used to aiming at the action plan, the meeting has a direction and is ultimately more satisfying and productive.

Become a Master at Search

2014-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

I’d argue that a good portion of working, especially with digital media, involves searching, finding, browsing (to), and opening files.

Search – and knowing how to search efficiently – is very powerful.

Here are some simple ideas about how to become a master at search.

Searching

Getting familiar with search has a high ROI in terms of productivity. Here’s my tip: Avoid searching with your eyes, scanning the document or website. Search using search functionality (type your search).

Use Spotlight or Alfred to search on macOS. Or, inside apps and the browser, use the Find command ⌘ F, found in the Edit menu in just about all applications I am aware of.

If you are using a PC running Microsoft Windows, take a look at Microsoft’s documentation "How to search".

Make it a habit to always use these tools and type your search. Don’t strain yourself scanning with your eyes.

Now, when it comes to files and documents, naming is the foundation to find what you are searching for, especially if you consider the need to identify the specific file. Even while Spotlight and Alfred are able to search inside documents, you still might have a lot of files that contain the name of this client’s project, so you better do a good job at naming files in the first place.

Browsing / Navigating the File System

In order to get to or open the file your search has brought up, you have two options:

opening the file, ⌘ O
opening the folder that contains the file, called “Reveal in Finder”, ⌘ R

Opening

Instead of opening files that might need to launch an associated app, like iTunes to listen to music, use the feature called Quick Look if you are working on macOS¹.

Here’s what you need to know:

Select a file in Finder.
Press space to enter Quick Look.
Hit space again to close the Quick Look view.

Pro-Tip: Use the arrow keys ↑ and ↓ to quick look / browse through a list of files.

You can open any file right from this view with ⌘ O, the regular keyboard command to open any selected file(s).

This works with most common file types: text, images, audio, video. There are also addtional QuickLook plugins available at QuickLook Plugins.

That’s about it for now. Learn more about how to use your Mac efficiently with the Shortcut Principle.

Sorry to even mention this if you’re already familiar with it, but for those who aren’t yet, this is huge. ↩

The Shortcut Principle

2014-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

In this continuously expanding article I am going to share some of my favorite shortcuts.

I hope you will find something useful for your work and pleasure as well.

As for the title, let me say this: The term “keyboard shortcut” is misleading.

Using your mouse or trackpad to close a tab in your browser or a window in an application means your hands have to leave the keyboard. That is a detour. Pressing ⌘ W on your keyboard is how you actually close a tab / window. You see? Since this is something you probably do many times per hour when working on your machine, which then multiplies by days, weeks, years, possibly multiple lifetimes … – it is really not smart.

In fact, it’s like having a meal, cutting your food with fork and knife but switching from the knife in your hand to pick up a spoon in order to scoop up the just cut piece from your plate. Then picking up the knife again to cut the next bite, switching to the spoon, the knife, the spoon, … for multiple lifetimes.

Read that last paragraph again.

Now that we got this out of the way, let’s look at actual shortcuts.

Spotlight

If you are working with an Apple computer, you absolutely need to check out Spotlight. Use it to search for files and to launch apps. I promise, it will make things so much easier.

See the little magnifier icon on the right of the menu bar? That is Spotlight.

You could click on the icon to open the Spotlight input box, but wait, do yourself a favor and use the keyboard shortcut¹ ⌘ Space to bring it up.

I start by intoducing Spotlight as it comes built-in with your Mac and gives you a basic idea of what other quick start utilities like Alfred or Quicksilver can do. If you like Spotlight, I recommend you try Alfred.

Alfred

Alfred is a productivity tool for Mac OS X. If you are familiar with Spotlight, you will love Alfred.

Using Alfred is essential to many of my personal workflows. Let me introduce just a few to give an idea.

Launching Applications

Launch any application with Alfred. Since Alfred is also “learning” from how you use it, it gets better at predicting what you want after just a few keystrokes.

Searching and Opening Local Files

Have a look at the article Become a Master at Search before reading on.

I personally rarely browse the file system. However, if your modus operandi is still like this: you open a new Finder window and then start clicking through endless folder levels to get to a file, then learning about Search will be a game changer. Similar to what Spotlight does, Alfred can find, meaning “reveal in Finder”, or directly open files.

That is why it becomes more important to name your files in order to facilitate searching and finding them later. This means you no longer necessarily know where your files are (in virtual space) but what searches will lead you direcly to them.

Opening Bookmarks

Alfred can read your browser bookmarks. As a consequence of this, you can use Alfred to open different URLs that you do use on a regular basis.

In my case, I can open our Google Docs, different Asana workspaces and Asana projects, etc.

Calculator

Alfred has a built in calculator that is very useful when needing a quick product, percentage of something, etc.

German VAT is 19 %, so I often enter something like this:

Hitting Enter ⏎ puts the result of the calculation on my clipboard.

Translations

As I am often in need of quickly checking a translation while writing, I have set Alfred to open the website https://dict.leo.org and enter the string I need a translation for.

Let’s say I need to know the English translation of the German word "Verzweiflungstat". I enter a short "le" (which stands for LEO English in my case), followed by the desired word:

The browser opens a new tab and I get the result:

Accessing Spotlight (or Alfred) via ⌘ Space is one of the Top 10 shortcuts. It’s in the hall of fame of keyboard shortcuts. ↩

Project Management is Not a Software

2014-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

You might be looking at project management software, or maybe computers in general, and say: “Well, that is all way too complicated.”

Yes, It’s Complicated, but …

First of all, whatever we are not familiar with, feels strange and obscure. Regarding “too complicated”: It may well be complicated, but that is not necessarily the tool’s fault. The software and methodology are more likely making apparent how complex your business operations are. You might look at all the tasks in your task manager and realize just how much there actually is.

But do you really think there was less (to do) when it was all just in your head?

The advantage is this:

Any decent task or project management software will help you filter and display only the tasks which are relevant to you in your current planning period (e.g. a “sprint”). Being able to zoom in and out, details vs. big picture, can be very helpful.

Software Is Only Going to Help You So Much

No matter what technology you are using to keep track of tasks and coordinate your work (project management), the tool is not what makes things run smoothly.

Much like a modern word processor does not produce better writing than pen and paper or a mechanical typewriter per se.

What actually makes things run smoothly are well-designed and streamlined processes, plus good documentation.

Book Review: Remote

2014-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

I have been inspired by and learned so much from 37signals, now Basecamp. They are one of the more unconventional and, at the same time, successfull companies.

Apart from their excellent blog, they have published three books:

Getting Real (which is available as a free PDF download),
Rework, and
Remote.

I can certainly recommend them all.

The Book

Remote is a short and concise book. Good, clear writing. No fluff.

As the book was already in the making when Yahoo changed their remote workforce policy (you may remember the discussions this caused in the tech industry in 2013), they found a perfect time to publish a book on the topic.

It’s a great resource for business owners as well as people who do or plan to work remotely. And, who better to talk about it and share experiences than Basecamp?

You will read about the advantages of remote working, excuses for not doing / allowing it, tools and tips as how to make it work, advice on managing, hiring, etc.

The book also provides some insight into Basecamp’s own culture and how they deal with certain challenges and questions.

Highlights

Here are some of the things I marked and my comments.

The big transition with a distributed workforce is going from synchronous to asynchronous collaboration. Not only do we not have to be in the same spot to work together, we also don’t have to work at the same time to work together.

This explains partly why I have started TightOps. It’s also a good reason to have some kind of protocol and structure to your team’s communication and work collaboration. Managing to stay on top of things, especially getting used to asynchronous commnication, is one of the things we enable companies to by implementing TightOps.

Letting people work remotely is about promoting quality of life, about getting access to the best people wherever they are, and all the other benefits well enumerate. That it may also end up reducing costs spent on offices and result in fewer-but-more-productive workers is the gravy, not the turkey.

Benefits of remote working.

There simply isn’t much room for weak communication on teams with tight collaboration. You need solid writers to make remote work work, and a solid command of your home language is key.

I find this to be true on a daily basis. You can’t really argue away that collaboration needs communication.

If you let them, humans have an amazing power to live up to your high expectations of reasonableness and responsibility.

Certainly not how all business owners think or, more important, act. If you’re interested to learn more about this, take a look at the Pygmalion effect – fascinating.

[…] treat it [motivation] as a barometer of the quality of work and the work environment.

Great point. I already started a draft on the connection of motivation and intellectual work.

Writing Well

2014-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

I recently read Remote – Office Not Required and was not surprised to find the same book recommendations that I earlier heard from John Gruber and Merlin Mann (on The Talk Show podcast, episode 61), namely:

“On Writing Well” by William Zinsser, and
“The Elements of Style” by William Strunk and E. B. White.
(“Revising Prose” by Richard Lanham, which also doesn’t come up for the first time in book recommendations to improve writing skills.)

Those are great, essential books on writing in general.

I agree that good writing skills are important, if not essential. Being able to write clearly is the foundation for good communication (and thinking). It is also becoming more important in the modern work environment.

From Remote:

Being a good writer is an essential part of being a good remote worker.

I want to add this: Everything that creates the possibility to work or run your team remotely is also increasing antifragility and options for you and your business. If your team doesn’t have to be in the same place, it becomes optional. That’s a huge advantage.

One Thing – One Word

2014-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

When naming files or referring to any one thing, keep things simple: stay with one (and the same) name / word.

Naming

Think and evaluate how you want to name files, for example. It’s important enough to spend a minute thinking things through here because you are setting up the rules you have to follow later – and thereby the results you have to work and live with.

To me, the most important function of the file name is to be as clear and explicit. The name serves two purposes:

It provides as much information as to what is in the file as possible.
It makes it easy to search for and find the file.

Consistency is important to create and maintain order and orientation. Once you have created a convention, stick with it – don’t sabotage yourself.

Searching (and Finding)

Anticipate what you and your team-mates will search for and in what kinds of situations you could be looking for the file at hand. (Related: Take a look at the article Becoming a Master at Search.)

Consider adding some tags / labels to the file name if appropriate. Using brackets works pretty well¹, e.g.

Text Document Template (Invoice, Letter, Proposal, Offer)

As you can see, I am naming a template to be used for text documents. This is reflected directly in the first part of the name.

I also added four use cases I can immediately think of as tags in brackets. When I, at a later point, search for “template invoice”, the file will come up in the search.

Referring

Getting back to the title, “One Thing – One Word”, referring to one thing and using the same word / term consistently is a good practice.

This might be rather obvious to some people, but my experience shows that it certainly isn’t to everyone.

We were all taught to avoid repetitiveness in writing, as in

Although repeating key terms and phrases brings continuity to your writing, you must avoid being overly repetitive or boring.
– boundless.com

When naming things and communicating with your team keep the “key terms” the same. We want this. It’s good. It keeps things simple and clear.

That is, if you need to add the tags to the file name itself. Obviously modern software and applications often allow to add and use tags as meta data. ↩

Choose the Best Communication Channel

2014-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s a an example for choosing the appropriate communication channel or medium for a given task (more on this can be found in the chapter “What Goes Where” in TightOps Fundamentals.

This example is from the context of a weekly business mastermind group.

The group gets together for a weekly call of 60 minutes – in that sense, a standard meeting. Because the members are spread across the globe, we attend the conference call online.

Feedback for a Website or Landing Page

Everybody is doing some kind of online business. Therefore it happens quite regularly that a member wants to share a website or landing page they are working on to get some feedback.

The common thing to do here is to share the URL with the group. Everybody can then visit the site in their browser and talk about it. (A screenshare would basically create the same situation, so it doesn’t change what we are concerned with here.)

Since I have experienced this a few times, I see three issues:

Time is limited. Since the group prefers to take a couple of questions for each call, any single issue should not take up more than 15 to 20 minutes.
Everyone has to listen. There are between 4 and 7 people on the call. While one person is talking, everybody else is listening (that’s just how a conference call works).
Taking notes. As the person asking for feedback, you have to be very fast to be able to listen and take notes at the same time.

So I was wondering what would be a better solution to this. What would I recommend from a Tight Operations perspective?

Choosing the Appropriate Channel

As we emphasize in Fundamentals, we want to choose the most appropriate channel for the purpose and type of communication at hand.

Considering the context and the limitations of the situation¹, my choice would be this:

The person who is inquiring feedback sends an email to the group, specifying the URL and the aspects or parts that should be in the focus of the reviewer.
Each member records a short screencast. I would limit this to 5 minutes.
The person who asked for the feedback goes through the screencasts, takes notes, and possibly shares a summary with identified action steps with the group after.

Consequences of a Better Choice

With this approach and using a different, now asynchronous communication channel (instead of meeeting, it is now screencast), we achieve the following:

We cut the time spent in half. Assuming we have 5 people on the call (or in the meeting), instead of spending 100 minutes for the feedback (4 times 5 minutes of feedback, equals 20 minutes, times 5 people, is a total time spent of 100 minutes), we can cut that to a “time cost” of 50 minutes (4 times 5 minutes screencast = 20 minutes, adding 30 minutes to watch and take notes at the recipient’s end).

We make it last. The feedback recorded and provided via screencast will also be available at any time, it can be watched multiple times, rewinded and fast forwarded, etc.

There is an important difference here. I don’t assume that everybody on the call is keen to listen to each other’s feedback because this is just some unprepared, top-off-my-head thoughts. If the question at hand would be about a strategic business decision, it might well be in everyone’s interest to listen to what the group has to say and take part in a lively discussion. ↩

The Opportunity Cost of Time

2014-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

If you haven’t already read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, I certainly recommend it. If you want to get a summary of his ideas, watch his TED talk.

Dan has recently annouced to involved in a new project, an iOS app called “Timeful” which is being built with the intention to help us better manage our lives and our time.

UPDATE: The app team was acquired and integrated to the Google Calendar team later.

The angle that is quite fascinating is that, according to what they published on the blog so far, the team aims to bring the opportunity cost of time to the user’s awareness.

Since Professor Ariely is an expert in behavioral economics, he knows all too well how our mind plays tricks on us. I am certainly looking forward to see what they can come up with and got on the beta list already.

Here’s a short video in which Dan explains the basic idea and premise.

TightOps Articles

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Small Change, Big Difference

New Intelligence

Collective Intuition Is Innovation

Building Your Circle of Excellence

AI as your thought partner

Put AI in Your Corner

But…

Be a Director and Curator

Let’s Get Airborne: Strategic Sparring Use Cases

Use Case 1: Playing Devil’s Advocate

Example Prompt to Get the Idea Across:

Use Case 2: Stress-Testing Your Grand Plans

Example Prompt to Get the Idea Across:

Use Case 3: Navigating Possible Futures

Example Prompt to Get the Idea Across:

Measuring Results

Optional: Enhancing Your AI Thought Partner Experience

Practicalities

It Already Is

Secrets of a marketing maverick

The List Is the Message

Detective Work

The AI Part

Add-On: AI-Generated Summary

Approach to GTM and Outreach

Understanding Customer Context

AI Agent Development

Data Enrichment and Research

Pricing and Client Relationships

AI Tools and Techniques

Challenges and Pitfalls

The AI Value Paradox

Understanding Latent Expertise

The Current State of AI Integration

The Individual Advantage: Mastering the Task Tango

The Enterprise Dilemma

Bridging the Gap

The Path Forward

The AI Lab

One Bite at a Time

Not Sure Where to Start?

Voicenotes

So, What’s Voicenotes?

How to Test It

What It Does

Why I Bought It

Output As Easy As Possible

More Output

To Document and to Be Found

Iteration 1: A Better Way to Extract What’s on My Mind

Iteration 2: Make It Fit Like a Glove

The New Way

The extra effort needed to transition to a scalable system

Why It Takes Extra Effort to Transition to a Scalable System

Ready to Take Action?

Tools & workflows for running a large scale content production

Project Overview

Internal Team Setup

Task Manager Is the Main Communication Channel

Email for Announcements and Memos

Team Chat for Asynchronous Conversations

Core Workflows

All Details on a Second Layer

Tight Information Flow

Preparing for Growth

Documenting

Onboarding

Improve With Feedback

Client Interactions

How Can We Share the State of Production With the Client?

How Can the QA Team Notify Us About Edit Requests?

Before You Go

Communication Timing

Know Your Team

Conserve Mental Energy

Store to Access Later

What Do You Expect to Happen Next?

The Shallows