To achieve quality in something requires;
- quality people
- insightful thinking
- great execution on details
- just enough time
To achieve quality in something requires;
“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”
Leonard Bernstein
“Yes . . . Damn!” effect, as it’s been dubbed by Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch Jr., who are professors of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Colorado at Boulder, respectively. This occurs when we agree to a future commitment in the belief that we’ll have more free time later than we do now — and then, when it comes due, discover we still don’t have time for it.
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/procrastrinating-pleasure/
from http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/arming-the-donkeys/id420535283
Apple’s term for the owner of something – who is the directly responsible individual DRI.
This concept helps to drive accountability, and combat diffusion of responsibility
http://genecloud.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/diffusion-of-responsibility/
Reasons, situations and excuses all matter in some jobs, and are acceptable at certain seniority levels. Achieving goals, regardless of the situation matters more and more with seniority.
“Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when has asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: the locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn’t have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. “When you’re the janitor”, Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, “ reasons matter.” He continues: “Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.” That “Rubicon, “ he has said “ is crossed when you become a VP.”
quote from Fortune on Apple
“The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote that if authors could infuse their stories with enough "semblance of truth," readers would suspend their disbelief of the clearly fabricated tale.”
and advice on using suspension of disbelief in convincing others in business and life;
“In order to inspire others and convince them to suspend their disbelief, you must celebrate, through language, the idea above yourself. Treat the idea as if it were a character you were embodying on the stage. Compelling others is "a function of your capacity to imagine and to subsume one’s own ego in favor of whatever character or idea it is that you’re trying to portray," says Wright. "The idea becomes larger and more powerful than you and there is then hopefully some type of levitation that happens and the story touches people."
A calm despair… is the essence of wisdom
“Above all, we must abolish hope in the heart of man. A calm despair, without angry convulsions, without reproaches to Heaven, is the essence of wisdom.”
Alfred Victor Vigny
"In the old days, again, we were talking about the golden hour – you had to catch the player in the golden hour to get them to love it enough and tell their friends and whatever. These days it’s more like the golden 15 seconds," he commented. "You can actually watch the little waterfall graph of the longer the bar goes for loading, the more people you lose forever for first time players.”
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/zynga-on-why-triple-a-developers-fail-at-social-games/
Understand and empathize with consumers of your product to stimulate innovation.
“Internalizing the values of your users makes innovation easier, but getting there is hard …the goal is not to ask them what we should design, but to gain insight, absorb it, and translate it into a language our clients understand. Without that insight, any attempt at innovation is no better than a wild guess.”
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663453/true-innovation-starts-with-the-user
“If we can see that questions are linked to innovation and problem-solving, why are so many of us reluctant to ask them?….”
“A recent University of Michigan study found that people in business are generally loathe to raise questions—primarily because they fear that anyone who asks fundamental questions will be perceived as incompetent or uninformed. And if anything, this problem seems to worsen over time as people gain more experience and expertise in their fields. After all, experts know they’re supposed to supply answers, not more questions.”
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663429/innovation-starts-by-questioning-the-right-assumptions
Comedian Jack Benny: ‘When you are speaking, timing is not so much knowing when to speak, but knowing when to pause’
Seven types of pause:
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663337/method-what-s-so-funny-about-innovation
“people remember the people details not the thing details”
http://herd.typepad.com/herd_the_hidden_truth_abo/2011/02/people-stories-vs-thing-stories.html
“The myth that mobile players are experiencing games "on the run" is wrong, said Boatman. 47 per cent play when at home, 14 per cent at work and only 12 per cent whilst commuting.”
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-02-10-ea-core-gamers-under-served-on-mobile
Get out there and observe and talk to your audience.
“In our socially-mediated world, marketers must place greater emphasis on understanding their audience as people rather than as consumers.
To build a social brand, marketers need to discover who these individuals really are. This requires research that can elicit stories about how people feel about their world, the subtext of which defines their identities.”
http://www.allfacebook.com/how-to-target-social-tribes-on-facebook-2011-02
IDEO say it is human-centered;
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” —Tim Brown, president and CEO
Online games provide many forms of structure, language, opportunity for ritual and belief systems.
Here are five things that characterize a social tribe:
- Possession of a unique revelation: An ideology that in some way rejects the mainstream and is symbolic of an uncompromising idealism and certainty that is expressed with romantic passion and cold logic.
- A belief system: A mythology about how the world works and how tribe members, and the tribe, can maximize “self” in relation to that world.
- Ritual: The creation of recurrent, exaggerated or stylized behavioral routines that represent the tribe’s belief system; this helps establish institutional memory.
- Distinctive lexicon: A characteristic lingo and a set of emblems to display membership.
- Boundaries: A pseudo-speciation that defines where the tribe begins and ends — i.e., the “other” is not like me.
http://www.allfacebook.com/how-to-target-social-tribes-on-facebook-2011-02
Folk wisdom:
“Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.”
Which is good advice when looking in to the future, trendwatching or forecasting.
Sensation – as sense-pleasure
Fantasy – as make-believe
Narrative – as unfolding story
Challenge – as obstacle course
Fellowship – as social framework
Discovery – as uncharted territory
Expression – as soap box
Submission – as mindless pastime