This has some real potential!  Campfire is a new tool by 37signals that enables real-time group chat.  And there are lots of uses for this one.  In our consulting work with lifetogether.com this will be huge!  How about running it in conjunction with a conference call?  Imagine a situation where you’ve got 10 collaborators around the country, listening to a speaker, waiting for the chance to jump in and discuss the topic.  Meanwhile, a 10 way discussion is happening around the campfire!

Very nice!

Out.

What if "an organization’s capacity for innovation is the product of creativity and execution?"  Get it?  Not the sum.  Not adding the creativity level and the execution level.  Instead, what if your innovation capacity, your ability to accelerate innovation, is the product of the two?  If it is the product, then you better be working on getting better on the execution end at the same time you’re generating exciting new ideas.

20 pages into a very interesting new book by Dartmouth’s Vijay Govindarajan, Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution.  So far, lookin’ good.  I love the concept that your innovation capacity is the product of creativity and execution.  As a follow-up, consider this: "what matters more–a great strategy or great execution (p. 4)?"  Answer: "the case for execution is strong…[because] the value of the innovative idea is limited, simply because it is so speculative and uncertain…it is not the idea that counts; it is what you do with it (p. 4)."  Whoah!  That is good.

Think about all the times that you’ve spent two hours talking through ways to improve what you’re doing, or new ways to reach a certain customer, or a whole whiteboard full of ways to grow the business.  Guess what?  If you don’t execute you might as well have been watching the Super Bowl!

Out.

On what assumptions are you basing your most important decisions?  You’re not basing these critical decisions on assumptions?  Riiiight.  You’re basing your decisions on facts.  Riiiight.  When we’re really honest, our decisions are based on a combination of "facts" and assumptions.  For example, we can survey potential customers and determine that Sunday morning is when they think church happens.  And that’s repeated over and over.  To a degree it’s based on the fact set of the survey.  But what if you begin to run out of seats?  Is it true that you can only fill 80% of your seats?  The 80% idea is another commonly accepted fact, based on the experience of a very large undocumented sample.  And on the basis of that fact we begin to argue about what to do when we get to 80%: start another service, develop another venue, expand the building, do an Andy Stanley and tell people not to come unless they bring an unchurched person with them, or as one of my friends told me yesterday…start a capital campaign (and you won’t be running out of seats anymore!)

What if the foundation for our decision is only an assumption…and not fact, not really true?  Talking with another friend yesterday about how many more people we could fit in by pouring our sloped, theater style auditorium floor flat and converting to individual seats (and taking out the remaining pews) his response was different enough to create a pause.  He said, why not give your student ministry enough additional budget to make Saturday night really cool, move student ministry to Saturday only, and allow those families that have jr. and sr. high students to move to Saturday.  I said, "but I’ve never found a student ministry that really worked on Saturday night."  He said, "that’s why we gave them more money to make it really cool, bring in bands, pizza, etc.  Six months later we began offering student ministry on Sunday again and Saturday remained larger even after we began doing exactly the same program at both times."

Over at 800-CEO-READ today, Todd commented on Peter Drucker’s well known statement that "the future has already happened" (meaning that the new ideas that will lead to tomorrow’s common practice are already being implemented).  His take is that practice comes first almost all the time…not theory.  In other words, we can theorize that student ministry wouldn’t work on Saturday night and make another decision re the number of seats we need, based on an outdated or inaccurate assumption, or we can look for the new handwriting on the wall.  I love Todd’s action point:  "Are the premises that you base your decisions on obsolete? DO you need a new intellectual framework to win in the market, as it exists today?"

Out.

Really getting a lot out of my re-reading of Clued In : How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again.  Chapter 6 details an "approach to experience value management" (I know, it sounds a little arcane, but trust me…we could all benefit from an awareness of the importance of experience in our particular effort.)  Basic idea is that the total quality movement stopped short of an important development, that of the recognition and managing of experiences.  In fact, "quality management in and of itself cannot provide the framework for designing and adaptively managing the total value created by experiences (p. 101)."  Now, why is this helpful?  Think about your organization’s effort to improve performance.  Now think about how individual silos might actually become really good at providing a great product or service…but one that is inconsistant with the real mission of what you’re trying to do.  Great on its own.  But irrelevant to what you’re really trying to accomplish.  That is totally what happens in many instances.  Great sub-ministries, doing really neat stuff, that is actually counter-productive to the major efforts/mission of the organization.

Check out this great insight from chapter 6: "Focusing on process improvement runs the risk of getting better at doing the wrong thing if it isn’t fully aligned and supported by a system focused on customer-based value creation (p. 102)."  That, friends, is very helpful.  It calls for the examination of everything that we’re doing.

Out.

Are people more likely to talk about what you’re doing if they’re satisfied…or delighted?  Okay, that’s a no-brainer.  How about this one: are they more likely to talk about it if they’re pleased or just a little disatisfied?

In an interesting post over on Seth’s blog he talks about how sneezers are born.  Seth Godin popularized the idea of a sneezer, an enthusiastic and vocal early adopter of a product or service.  In today’s post he asserts that sneezers are born when "when the early adopters are dissatisfied with some element of the experience. Pleasing customers doesn’t always lead to conversations. Delighting them, enraging them, hospitalizing them or surprising them–that’s how sneezers are born."

That’s a little counterintuitive.  If what they’ve experienced is just ok, there’s no need to tell anyone about it.  If there was something really dissatisfying…but maybe within the context of a bigger, cooler, experience…Seth’s saying that’s where sneezers begin sneezing.  If that’s true, what is it telling us?  It may be that trying to engineer perfection at the expense of the mystery or drama of a great try is like an antiseptic for sneezers.

What do you think?

Out.

Are you working as hard on your FAQs as you are on the actual event or product you’re producing?  Is your training session actually a cool thing in its own right? 

Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users asks some great question in today’s post, "but is it interesting?‘  The main question she’s asking is why does interesting matter in getting past two very critical barriers*.  And I love the very simple answer!  Her position is that "technically accurate" or "high quality enough" is not good enough because "the brain pays attention to–and remembers–that which it feels."  And that is huge.

So what makes something interesting?  Here are a few ideas from the post:

* Surprise, novelty, the unexpected

* Beauty

* Stories

* Conversation

* Emotionally touching (the whole kids and puppies thing)

* Counterintuitive failures or mistakes

* Fun, playfulness, humor

Years ago I read Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, still one of the great marketing/advertising books out there and learned about the Reticular Activating System.  Basically, you are designed to notice three kinds of things that always make it past your reticular activating system: things you value; things that are unique; and things that threaten you.  When you think about your work that way, are you doing the right things in order to get past the barriers of your customer’s mind?

By the way, I heard about Positioning from Rick Warren in the early 90s.  Here’s an article that highlights Rick’s take.

Out.

* The barriers are represented creatively on a cool graph that I’m trying to figure out how to translate for my readers!  Check it out, though.  Concept is very good.

Ever been in a world that has its own lingo?  Ever been tempted to become buzzword fluent in order to schmooze your way into a connection or a sale?  The blogosphere is totally that kind of world.  In that world I’m only a few months old…but I found this post over at Creating Passionate Users very relevant.  Thanks to Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion for the tipoff to the blog.

Here’s the real point to their whole post, in their own words: "My take: Some of the coolest people have no frickin’ clue what these buzzwords mean, and don’t care. They aren’t building to flip, they’re building to engage and inspire."  Translation?  Getting the buzzwords isn’t the point.  It’s being able to actually make a difference and not just being down with the lingo.

Still, you’ve gotta check out this classic cartoon from their great post:

Have you heard about Pandora?  This is VERY cool.  Pandora takes your music choice and designs a "radio station" for you, based on a genome like analysis of your selection.  Check it out and let me know what you think!

Out.

I’m testing out gtalkr, Google’s new instant message application.  Anyone using it already?  Thanks to Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion for the lead!

Out.

What is the mission of the Church?  I posted a great Peter Drucker quote the other day that reinforces the need for clarity of mission.  If you’ve lost sight of your mission (or have dreamed up a different one) this really interesting article on how megachurches are using technology to reach more people and then take care of them more effectively may rub you the wrong way.  Thanks Tony Morgan for the link!

Out.