the [non]billable hour

May I have your attention?

Watch this video:



Remember, what we look for is what we see. It is only when we open our eyes to see everything that we notice what should be obvious.

What are you looking for in your practice? Billable hours? Maybe you should look for something different. You might be surprised at what you'll find.

Need a Vacation?

Brad Feld has a great recap of the ways he takes time off to recharge, including a quarterly, week-long vacation and semi-regular weekend getaway:

Go Dark Weekend: When I find myself feeling burned out, I do a go dark weekend. I turn off my computer and cell phone at 6pm on Friday night and don't turn it back on until 5am Monday morning. I cancel anything that is scheduled for the weekend and just do whatever I feel like doing. This is usually a once a quarter event; occasionally more frequently depending on how busy I am. I'm considering doing this around each of my marathon weekends also.

Anyone reading this feeling burned out? How about "going dark" this weekend and reconnecting with your kids?

Your Brain Rules!

Want to learn more about what's going on inside your own head? Check out Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School by John Medina. The site (linked to above) has lots of pretty cool, short videos explaining why our brains work the way they do. Working for XPLANE, I especially liked Rule # 10: Vision Trumps All Other Senses, and it contains this rule of thumb for presenters:

You'll get 3x better recall for visual information than for oral. And you'll get 6x better recall for information that's simultaneously oral and visual.

Here's why:

• We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you'll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65%.
• Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.
• Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it's how we've always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity.
• Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It’s text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads—all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones.

Wow!

The Devil's In the Details

The New Yorker has created a series of 10 second animations for several of their cartoons. If you are a PowerPoint (ab)user, check out this one.

Let's ReThink LexThink

If you head over to the LexThink! site, you'll see it is "Under Construction."  We'll have some more info soon after Techshow.

This Speech Sponsored by ...

My pal JoAnna Forshee has (finally) started to do some blogging at her new venture InsideLegal.  She recently hosted the InsideLegal Summit, and it appears to have been a fantastic success.  The one topic that really caught my eye was the debate surrounding the "Pay to Speak" trend.  What is Pay to Speak?  It is when conferences (like LegalTech*) allow vendors to "sponsor" a conference track.  The controversy, which has been brewing in the legal conference industry for a while, is over what level of control the vendors have over their sponsored track, and what responsibility conference organizers have to disclose that control.

Why is this a big deal?  If a (fictional) company XYZ Discovery Solutions pays $25,000 to sponsor the "Electronic Discovery" track at a conference, what do they get for their investment?  More specifically:

• Does XYZ get to pick the topics for the track?  
• Does XYZ get to choose the track's speakers, favoring those who sell or promote XYZ products, and excluding other speakers who don't?  
• Does XYZ have a responsibility to present information the attendees want to hear instead of information they want attendees to hear?

If the answers to any of these questions are yes, do the attendees know that the "CLE accredited" sessions they attend are given by a hand-picked roster of sponsor-friendly speakers?  And are any CLE accreditation rules compromised?

Right now, the answers to these questions aren't clear, and I'm sure each conference organizer and each sponsor approach the "sponsored track" differently.  I don't think the sponsored track should go away, but I do think some disclosure is in order.  Just as lawyers must avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest (which in some cases can waived by agreement), conference organizers must recognize the inherent conflicts that arise when a for-profit vendor sponsors, designs and staffs a CLE accredited, "educational" session  

At a minimum, the conference must disclose whether the speakers in a sponsored track are chosen by the conference or by the sponsoring vendor, and whether those speakers are paid by the vendor.

I applaud JoAnna and her InsideLegal partner Jobst, for getting this out in the open.  Your comments are welcome.

* I use LegalTech as an example here only because I know they have sponsored tracks, and the InsideLegal Summit happened in NYC at the same time of LegalTech.  I don't know what the vendors get for their investment and what rules (if any) LegalTech places on the speakers or the content in those sponsored tracks.

(How) Do You Take Credit?

Here's a great idea for ways to remember the folks who've helped you along the way, from this post on How to Take Credit:

So when the time comes to take the stage, remember that you didn’t get here alone: go ahead, grab the microphone and acknowledge your team. Do it before a crowd and in e-mail. Say it with bonuses and baked goods -- but be sure to say it. No one likes to be left out. By sharing the credit the right way, you won't diminish your own accomplishments, you'll add to them by building a reputation as the kind of person people want to work for and for your focus on developing others.

Not sure whom to credit? In their book, Becoming a Resonant Leader, Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis and Frances Johnston suggest keeping running lists of peers who have helped you along your route to success -- along with notes about what you actually learned from them. Keeping such a list will likely help ensure that you don’t forget them in your acceptance speech.

I really like the idea of keeping a running list of people who've helped you along with a note or two about how they've helped.  This is a pretty powerful way to not only remember how you've gotten to where you are, but to also remind you to give help to others who seek it from you.  More on this in the next post.

Six Word Memoirs

If you liked my PowerPoint Haiku exercise, you've got to check out this Six-Word Memoir video (thanks, Magda).  Can you write your memoir in six words? 



My first shot:   Stopped lawyering. Having way more fun.

Simple Solutions, Informally Delivered

Paul Graham shares his product development strategy in a wonderful essay:

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly. When I first laid out these principles explicitly, I noticed something striking: this is practically a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction. Though simple solutions are better, they don't seem as impressive as complex ones. Overlooked problems are by definition problems that most people think don't matter. Delivering solutions in an informal way means that instead of judging something by the way it's presented, people have to actually understand it, which is more work. And starting with a crude version 1 means your initial effort is always small and incomplete.

Paul suggests that his technique extends beyond startups to any type of creative work, and I'm inclined to agree. 

In the delivery of legal services, what are the overlooked problems that can be simply solved?  How many of us ask our clients (before, during or after they've engaged us) about the one thing we could change in our practices to improve their experience?  Is it something as simple as shifting our office hours to be available when our clients can see us?  Or, is it something more profound like changing the way we charge for our services?  No matter what that one thing is -- and it could be a different one thing for every client -- what's keeping us for trying it?  Just once.  To see if it works.

New Research Explains Billable Hour's Staying Power!

Well, not exactly, but this article in the Telegraph discusses an experiment exploring humans' preference for a familiar (though less efficient) path, and found:

most of us are happy to play follow-my-leader, even if we are trailing after someone who does not know where they are going and taking the most meandering route.  Even more striking, even when we are shown a faster route, we prefer to stick with the old one and tell others to take the long road too, a finding that could have lethal implications when it comes to evacuating a building or ship in an emergency.

In the study, participants were led from one room to another. When asked to return to the first room, almost all took the familiar path back, even when they were aware of a shorter path:

All but one person took the route they had been led. What we were surprised by was how strong this effect was, even when the alternative route was much shorter .... They preferred the long route even when the experimenter had drawn attention to the alternative route, or when the experimenter took the long route solely to pick up a fallen poster, eliminating the possibility that participants thought the experimenter had a good, but unknown, reason to take the long route. By asking participants to collect the next guinea pig in the experiment, the scientists observed that each person in the chain copied the route of the participant before them: a simple tradition that meant the alternative route was never discovered.

Interesting food for thought, don't you think?

Here are Some Posters for Your Waiting Room

Need some subtle reminders to your clients as they wait for their appointment?  I ran across this online poster shop titled Advice To Sink In Slowly that has well-designed posters containing GREAT advice. My favorite (and there are many I absolutely love) is Work Hard. Play Hard. Create something amazing.  Check it out.

Go Ahead, Write on Your Walls

I'm certain that I think better when I'm standing in front of a dry-erase white board, so my perfect office (or house, for that matter) would have dry erase boards everywhere.  If you are like me, check out Markee Dry Erase Paint.  According to the website, it is a clear paint that turns any smooth surface into a dry-erase board.  It is about a hundred bucks a gallon.  If you've tried it, I'd love to know your results.     

Tags: Markee, whiteboard

Use Haiku to Get to the Point

I just returned from VizThink, where I facilitated a few exercises for the nearly 400 attendees.  My favorite -- and the one I used to close out the conference -- is one I call PowerPoint Haiku.  Here's how it works:

1. Everyone gets three "slides" (one each for the questions they have to answer) that can be notecards, 8.5 " x 11"  cardstock, or even (gasp) actual PowerPoint slides.
2. You pose three questions to the group.  At VizThink, they were:  "Why did you come to VizThink?"  "What did you learn?" and "What are you going to do next?"
3. Each question is answered on a separate slide with this Haiku-like twist: The first question MUST be answered in 5 words, the second question in 7 words, and the third in 5 words.  And yes, I know that in true Haiku, you count syllables instead of words.
4. Everyone can then take their "slides" and add a drawing, picture or other visual images to each one.
5. The mini-presentations are then shared around the table.

Here's the VizThink recap from the VizThink Blog.  I love this exercise, and use it in almost all of my XPLANE sessions to understand "what good looks like" to the stakeholders.  It is fun, and often provides startling insights.  Give it a try with your clients.  Ask them:

1. Why are you here?  (5 words)
2. What can I do for you?  (7 words)
3. Why is it important to you? (5 words)

Let me know what happens.    

Tags: vizthink08, presentations, powerpoint, haiku, facilitation

In San Francisco Next Week? Come to VizThink!

I've not written much about my work at XPLANE on this blog - ok, I've not written much of anything, lately -- but I'm really enjoying my work at "The Visual Thinking Company."  I've had an amazing time working with some really amazing clients.  One of the super cool things I'm going to be doing happens next week at VizThink, a conference for visual thinkers that takes place in next week San Francisco from January 27-29th.  I'm going to be facilitating several visual "icebreakers" for the 325+ attendees before each of the plenary sessions.  I'll also be hanging out a lot after the sessions, so if you are in the S.F. area, give me a call on my cell 314-541-6412 or email me if you'd like to meet up.

One more thing.  Here's a Slideshare presentation about why you should go.  Enjoy!

| View | Upload your own

Tags: vizthink, xplane, visualthinking, homann

Big News Coming Tomorrow

I've got some big resolution-themed news coming Monday.  Until then, make sure you spend an hour or two with the NY Times Magazine's annual Year in Ideas issue. 

A "Business Card" for Litigators

Do your clients think you are full of hot air?  Here's a business card that might just prove them right:



Check out several other cool "cards" here.

Ideate for the Holidays

Church Marketing Sucks continues a great series on Lessons in Not Sucking with this post on Building an Ideation Team.  There are some absolutely great tips in the post, including: "Invite People You Don't Like," and "Invite People with Unusual Professions."  Read the post, and then think about ways to do a firm-wide ideation session at your holiday party this year.  That's right, gather up some of your people and your clients and spend a bit of time thinking of ways to get better as a firm -- perhaps by focusing on what your top-ten firm resolutions for 2008 should be.  You might be surprised at the result.

A You-Tube for Legal Docs? Check out DocStock

Here's a profile of DocStock, a site allowing people to find and share professional (including legal) documents. 

The profession is changing, my friends.  What are you doing to be ready?

Boise, Idaho ... Here I Come!

I'm going to be in Boise, Idaho on Monday (November 5) to speak about innovation for lawyers to the Idaho Bar Association.  If you are in the neighborhood (and really, who isn't?) come on by. 

15 Thoughts for Law Students: A Mini-Manifesto

I've written a few mini-manifestos for clients and lawyers before and remain quite enamored with the format.  Here's one for law students with some random (semi-related) thoughts on law school and the legal profession.  Let me know what you think, and feel free to add your own in the comments.

1.  Law school is a trade school.  The only people who don't believe this to be true are the professors and deans.

2.  Want to piss off your professors?  Ask them if they've ever run a successful law practice.

3.  Being good at writing makes you a good law student.  Being good at understanding makes you a good lawyer.  Being good at arguing makes you an ass.

4.  You can learn more about client service by working at Starbucks for three weeks than you can by going to law school for three years.

5.  Law school doesn't teach you to think like a lawyer.  Law school teaches you to think like a law professor.  Believe me, there's a huge difference.

6.  You can get through law school without understanding anything about what it is like to be a lawyer.  That is a terrible shame.

7.  The people who will help you the most in your legal career are sitting next to you in class.  Get to know them outside of law school. They are pretty cool people.  They are even cooler when you stop talking about the Rule Against Perpetuities.

8.  Your reputation as a lawyer begins now.  Don't screw it up (and quit bragging on your MySpace page about how drunk you got last night).

9.  Law is a precedent-based profession.  It doesn't have to be a precedent-based business.  Be prepared to challenge the prevailing business model.  Somebody has to.

10. Experienced lawyers work with clients.  Young lawyers work with paper.  You like working with paper, right?

11. You are about to enter a world where getting your work done in half the time as your peers doesn't get you rewarded.  It gets you more work.

12. Except for prosecutors and public defenders, nobody tries cases anymore.  Especially not second year associates.

13. You have a choice:  You can help people and make a decent living, or you can help corporations and make a killing.  Choose wisely. 

14. There are plenty of things you don't know, and even more things you'll never know.  Get used to it.  Use your ignorance to your benefit.  The most significant advantage you possess over those who've come before you is that you don't believe what they do.

15. People don't tell lawyer jokes just because they think they are funny.  They tell lawyer jokes because they think they are true.  Spend your career proving them wrong.

Outsource Your (Non)Legal Practice

I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss' book The 4-Hour Workweek, though some of his suggestions are a bit impractical for an office-dwelling professional.  That's why I really liked this post on 43 Folders that gives several realistic examples of ways to outsource your personal and professional life.  Well worth a read, if only for this fantastic advice for those to whom "delegation" is a four letter word:

It’s easy to tell yourself that it would take too long to figure out how to explain a project to someone else than to do it on your own.  After all, you’re the only person who has the grand picture, understands the purpose of the work, and is familiar with the details. But with a bit of pluck and a capacity for seeing projects for what they truly are (collections of discrete actions,) you’ll be astonished at how much you can rid yourself of.  I have often found that what at first seemed daunting to explain to someone else actually just required a few moments thinking about how the problem needed to be approached—which is a process I was going to have to go through anyway if I were ever going to complete the task in the first place.

 

Making Partner (Over)Bites!

From Indexed:

"Build a team you shall, young Skywalker."

Want a team-building activity for an afternoon that "only" costs $500?  Got a few geeks in your office?  Have I got an idea for you:  the LEGO Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon.  Check out this post, and make sure to watch the YouTube video of seven people putting one together in just over two hours. 

And if anyone wants to get me something cool for Christmas...

20 Slides. 20 Seconds Each. Pecha-Kucha

How would your next presentation go if you only had twenty slides and could show each one for "only" twenty seconds (for a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds?  A format embracing these very constraints is called Pecha Kucha, and was started by two architects in Tokyo as part of a designers' show and tell.  It seems like a natural fit for an Idea Market, as a replacement for a panel presentation, or any time a lot of presenters have something to say.

I'm doing a very short speech (nine minutes) on innovation in two days, and am going to give this presentation format a try.  I'll let you know how it goes.  In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more, check out several examples on You Tube, or this recent Wired magazine article.  If you are in the St. Louis area and want to have a Pecha Kucha night, let me know.

Idea Market in the News

I've written about my Idea Markets here before.  Here's an article from the local Suburban Journal that talks about one I did for the International Association of Business Communicators.

The Mobile Lawyer 2.0

It has been a long while since I've been so WOW'd by a business model as I've been this morning.  Simply put, this is the BEST template I've seen for building a home-based practice from, of all people, a physician.  Dr. Jay Parkinson, MD is building a web-based medical practice.  From his website:

• I AM A NEW KIND OF PHYSICIAN.
• I strictly make house calls either at your home or work. 
• Once you become my patient and I've personally met you, we can also e-visit by video chat, IM and email for certain problems and follow-ups.
• I'm based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  My fees are very reasonable.
• I'm extremely accessible.  Contact me by phone, email, IM, text, or video chat.  Mon-Fri 8AM-5PM.  24/7 for emergencies.
• I specialize in young adults age 18 to 40 without traditional health insurance.
• When you need more than I provide, I make sure you wisely spend your money and pay the lowest price for the highest quality.
• I've gathered costs for NYC specialists, medications, x-rays, MRIs, ER visits, blood tests, etc...just like a Google price search.
• I mix the service of an old-time, small town doctor with the latest technology to keep you and your bank account healthyl

How much for this service?  According to the "How it Works" on his site, his fee is "far less than your yearly coffee budget but a little more than your Netflix."  His web site also provides "Real Life Examples" that describe, in plain English, how you'd use his service.  Oh, and he's blogging, too.

Lawyers, if you are looking for a real dose of inspiration (or a glimpse to the future of mobile practice) you HAVE to check this Parkinson's site and business model.  Simply brilliant.  Great idea, great web site, amazing copy.  If I were still practicing, I'd steal it in a heartbeat.  Look at it now.

Via: Zoli's Blog.

Lose Your Receptionst's Desk?

Via Brand Autopsy comes a pointer to the Building Better Restaurants Blog's Top Ten Reasons to Take a Sledgehammer to Your Host Stand.  I think a lot of these are also good reasons to rethink/redesign/remove your receptionist's desk:

1. It accumulates clutter that is an eyesore.
2. It does not have any functional utility for the guest.
3. It allows staff to “hide” from the guest.
4. It forces the guest to come to you, and not the other way around.
5. It becomes a hub for business other than the business of the guest.
6. It becomes a leaning tool and not a Hosting [verb] tool.
7. It will force you to talk to your guests and actually “Host” [verb] the guest experience.
8. It will force more physical contact with the guest and thereby a more meaningful greeting.
9. It will allow the guest to take in the whole “show” as they enter and immediately be caught up in the experience more.
10. Because you don’t have one at your house when you host people there!

Dis[is the]place to be Creative

My friend Scott Ginsberg has another great post on building your own creative environment.  The best tip:

Make a list of five alternate environments for your creative success. Perhaps your art is more conducive to the park, the bus station or sitting in a public square. If so, great! Experiment by displacing yourself regularly.

Once you’ve narrowed your list down to a few options, visit them regularly. Learn to incorporate various components of creative stimulation into your “portable creative environment.”

That way you can thrive anywhere!

As someone who has been on the road a lot lately, I'm going to give it a try.

Youth Plus Inexperience Equal Success

I ran across a paper published by my friend Betha L. Whitlow, the director of the Visual Resources Collection at Washington University, titled "The Shock of the New: Using Youth and Inexperience as Tools for Success."  In the paper (link to Word document), Betha argues that newcomers to her field of Visual Resources should view their youth and inexperience as distinct advantages to be leveraged, not handicaps to be overcome: 

[Because] there are still many people at your institution who are unable to let go of the previous culture, thus limiting their ability to move forward and offer your institution a new and highly productive perspective ... [i]t is my belief that by the very nature of being a [young] Visual Resources professional, you are uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of changes in the culture of your institution. With just a little bit of a brave and diplomatic push forward, [you] can embody the new role of the resource provider, promote interdisciplinary teaching and learning, be the model of the flexible professional, and tread the fine line between providing access to solid yet technologically innovative resources.

Young professionals, take this advice to heart.  There are plenty of things you don't know, and even more things you'll never know.  Get used to it.  Use your ignorance to your benefit.  The most significant advantage you possess over those who've come before you is that you don't believe what they do.  Because you've never "always done it that way," you're free to do it differently.  Question the business model.  Deliver products (yes, products) and services your elders would never consider.  Embrace technology.  Innovate.  Revel in your inexperience.  You have but one opportunity to start from scratch.  Don't waste it.

Idea Market X

The tenth Idea Market takes place Monday.  We are going to be doing some cool things, including working on personal mission statements and learning how to give better presentations by using children's books.  If you'd like to come, sign up here.

Get Your Clients Home Free

The Springwise Blog has a story on a pilot program in Minneapolis (where I'll be next week) called Get Home Free.  Here's how it works:

Launched in eleven Minneapolis suburbs this month, Get Home Free is a flat rate, prepaid cab card that gets its holder home safely. Mainly targeted at teenagers and college students, the concept's initiators are aiming to help out kids who are stuck with car trouble, have been drinking, or whose ride home has fallen through. Cardholders place a call to the Get Home Free hot line, and a car is immediately dispatched to bring them home, no questions asked.

If your firm is looking for a image-boosting promotion, this one just might work -- especially if you regularly represent clients accused of DUI.  Having your firms name and number on the back of each card isn't a bad idea either.

Meet Musicovery

I LOVE Pandora, and listen to it almost all day long.  Today (courtesy of VSL), I found Musicovery.  Hard to describe (think Pandora meets a mood ring meets the Visual Thesaurus) but if you like music, check it out.

Funky Fun with Fotos

Here are 15 Crazy and Cool Photo and Video Web Sites.  Worth a peruse.

Travel with Children?

This is brilliant.

BlawgWorld 2007

I am honored to be one of the bloggers featured in BlawgWorld 2007, the one-of-a-kind e-book from my friends at Technolawyer that collects the best posts from the best writers in the legal blogosphere. If you'd like to download your own copy for free, you can do so here (pdf).  Enjoy!

Idea Market is Tonight!

I've been so swamped with a couple of cool projects that I forgot to announce one of my favorites:  The Idea Market. Tonight's takes place at XPLANE's offices here in St. Louis.  I'd love to see you there.  RSVP Here.

AILA Presentation

Here's the presentation I did at the AILA convention on Building an Innovative Firm.  I'd love to know what you think, though it loses a lot without my narration to accompany the primarily visual slides.  All but four of the photos used are ones I've taken myself. (Direct Slideshare Link)

PowerPointing Audiences to Death

I'm going to be posting my presentation from the AILA conference later today.  Until I do, check out this video:  How NOT to Make a Powerpoint.

Remind Yourself It is Your Money You're Not Earning

Just got back from the American Immigration Lawyer's Association annual convention.  I presented twice there, hosted an Idea Market and an Idea Gallery (more on those later) and hung out with a bunch of cool immigration law practitioners.

One tip I shared at a round table discussion that really resonated with a practitioner who had a mountain of accounts receivables is this one:

Every month, when you print out your bills and your accounts receivable statement, clip a family photo to the top of the stack.  Whenever you are tempted to write down a bill or not try to collect on one, look at your family before you make the decision.  While there are dozens of great reasons to reduce a bill or not collect upon an amount owed, every dollar you don't collect is a dollar your family doesn't get to spend on something important, or you don't get to donate to a worthy cause. 

Boise Idea Market on June 8th

I'm going to be in Boise, Idaho next Friday to speak on innovation to a group of Idaho lawyers.  While I'm there, I'm going to be hosting an Idea Market with Steve Nipper and Tac Anderson for a group of entrepreneurs and technology folks.  Here are the details from Steve's Blog:

I’m thrilled to announce the Boise Idea Market. It is something I’m putting together with Tac Anderson (TechBoise) and Matt Homann (http://www.realBIGthinking.com). I’m really looking forward to it.

What is an Idea Market™? Think brainstorming + collaboration + networking + happy hour. The brain child of innovation consultant, retreat facilitator and conference planner Matt Homann, an Idea Market is part think tank, part focus group and part social club. At the Idea Market, attendees bring their business challenges, questions and (of course) ideas, and share them with some of the most creative and generous people in the community as they participate in fun exercises designed to cram the most innovation into a two-hour collaborative experience.

Who Should Come: If you are a blogger, entrepreneur, speaker, consultant, designer, webmaster, writer, artist, salesperson, or technologist, you’ll enjoy the Boise Idea Market. We only ask that you be passionate about sharing ideas and helping others. Everything else will take care of itself.

When: Friday, June 8, 2007 at 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Where: Louie’s Pizza & Italian Restaurant, 620 W Idaho St, Boise, ID 83702-5930

Cost: $10.00 (to cover pizza & soda & tip)

How To Attend: We’ll have room for around 35 people for the Idea Market. We’ll use Renkoo to handle the invite process. Email me (snipper@gmail.com) and I’ll send you an invite.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Explaining XPLANE.

As I wrote the other day, I have joined XPLANE as a full time consultant.  I want to thank everyone who has reached out to me to offer me their congratulations and support.  I also want to answer several of the questions I've received, and figured it was far easier to do in a blog post.  So here goes:

WHAT IS XPLANE?  XPLANE (Wikipedia Entry) is one of the pioneers in Visual Thinking, which is the process of distilling complex processes and concepts into easy-to-understand and visually striking XPLANATIONS.  In short, XPLANE helps companies improve their business communication.  XPLANE has offices in St. Louis, Portland and Madrid.

WHY XPLANE? Since I returned to St. Louis over a year ago, I have been spending many of my Thursday afternoons at XPLANE's Visual Thinking School, a weekly design and thinking exercise conducted primarily for internal XPLANE personnel.  I was invited by XPLANE CEO Dave Gray to attend, and found myself intrigued by the way XPLANE used drawing and visuals to communicate complex business processes.  At the same time, XPLANE folks started coming to my Idea Markets, where I began to incorporate many visual thinking and drawing exercises and found it startling how much more effective a little "out of comfort zone" drawing could be than simply a verbal-based exercise.  After several months of VTS, Dave asked me why I didn't work for XPLANE.  Surprised by the question, I began to consider it.  Six months later, and after a trip to visit the Portland office, I'm here.

WHAT WILL I DO?  My official title is "Consultant," though that really doesn't describe what I'll be doing.  Part of XPLANE's unique process is pairing up a consultant/facilitator (me) with an artist/concept designer (the people with real talent), and going to a client's office for a day-long discovery session.  Instead of taking written notes, the artist will actually use live drawing to help visualize the client's story, audience, goals and needs.  By combining this live-sketching with a number of brainstorming and drawing, XPLANE is able to elicit a far more complete picture (literally!) of what the client wants to communicate.  Here's an overview of the process.

My role is to be the consultant/facilitator in the client sessions.  In addition, I will work within XPLANE to expand the consulting practice and further develop the  process for multiple client scenarios -- not just those that need an XPLANE "product" delivered at the end of the engagement.  Finally, I am going to work on a "visual thinking module" that will bring the benefits of visual thinking to workshops, conferences and retreats. 

In short, I get to do the same kinds of things I was doing before, but within a really cool organization, with amazingly talented people, and for much larger clients.

XPLANE will also begin to sponsor the Idea Markets.  More on that soon.

WHAT ABOUT THIS BLOG?  I will keep the [non]billable hour going.  I am working on a redesign, and you will see some cool new things in the next 90 days. I am also going to be re-purposing much of the older content in ways to make it more accessible to newer readers.

WHAT ABOUT LEXTHINK?  Dennis, JoAnna and I will be having a sit down soon to figure out what's next.  We have too many cool things planned for LexThink to let it go.  Stay tuned.

WHAT ELSE?  If you have any more questions, shoot me an email at homann@gmail.com or mhomann@xplane.com, and I'd be happy to answer them.  I am so excited to be working for XPLANE.  I have spent most of my working life as an entrepreneur, and to find an employer where the entrepreneurial spirit is part of the fabric of the organization is really cool.  Thanks for all your support!

Matt

Sweat the Outline

From the Church Relevance blog come Perry Noble's 6 Preaching Tips. Two worth remembering for your next speech:

1.  Prepare your messages weeks in advance.  You’d be amazed at what the Holy Spirit will reveal in a month compared to what he reveals in a week.

4.  Sweat the outline not the manuscript.

Raise the Roof or Lower the Ceiling?

I found something interesting in a study titled The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing People Use (via Science Daily -- my new favorite RSS subscription):

“When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,” said Meyers-Levy. “They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to focus on specifics.”

The research demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can evoke concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. The authors theorized that when reasonably salient, a higher versus a lower ceiling can stimulate the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. This causes people to engage in either more free-form, abstract thinking or more detail-specific thought. Thus, depending on what the task at hand requires, the consequences of the ceiling could be positive or negative.

If you are designing your next office or workspace, should you build in different ceiling types and plan to do different kinds of work in each one?  For lawyers, should you take your depositions in low-ceilinged rooms?

Idea Market VII is Tonight!

My seventh Idea Market (link to Meetup site) happens tonight, April 16th, at 6:00 pm at Lucas School House.  I'm going to be trying out a new networking/relationship-building activity that I'm really excited about, and we are going to figuring out ways to make the Gateway Arch blue for Autism awareness.  I hope to see you there!

Cool Tool(Bar) for Clients?

How about giving your tech-savvy clients their own firm- (or client-) specific toolbar for their browsers?  Techcrunch profiles Conduit, a company that makes it easy to "roll-your-own" toolbars.  Here's the Techcrunch Toolbar, for an example.

An Unreasonable Request

I am a big fan of making Unreasonable Requests -- requests that I don't expect a "Yes" answer to, but that I make nonetheless.

I'm going to be sharing several on this blog over the following months.  Here's the first:

I need someone to redesign my blog.  I've got quite a few projects I'm working on, and need to incorporate them in a new, non-template based site.  I know what I want, but don't have the HTML and CSS chops to do it myself.  In exchange (in addition to ample credit) I will work with you to make your business better -- and I promise you'll find the trade more than fair.

Extreme Outsourcing

I just happened across Timothy Ferriss' site (blog) and saw this article on "Outsourcing Life" that I'd like to share.  If you are experimenting with outsourcing work in your firm, check out some of the extreme suggestions on outsourcing a few other things.  Timothy has a book coming out.  I've asked for a review copy and will share my thoughts if it comes my way.

PowerPoint Bullets Kill Comprehension

Garr Reynolds has a good summary of the newest PowerPoint controversy started by this article in the Sydney Morning Herald that describes a study suggesting speakers who essentially read their bullet points from their slides are ineffective communicators.  The study's author suggested:

It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented.

Another way to Bill for E-Mail

Postful is a pretty ingenious service that creates and sends written snail-mail correspondence from e-mails forwarded to the service for just $0.99 each.  This could be a KILLER application for lawyers, especially if confidentiality issues, firm branding and other details could be worked out.  Imagine being able to send real honest-to-God letters from your blackberry, without secretarial help.  Very Cool!

Getting Less Done With a Messy Desk?

Not sure if there is any scientific basis to extend this study to productivity, but people eat less when they can see how much they've already eaten.  When there were visual cues (an un-bussed table) of how much food study participants ate, they continued to eat less.

This makes me wonder:  If we can see how much work we've already done (a long timesheet, for example), are we less likely to do more?  The same goes for a messy desk.  If we are surrounded by cues of work we've done, do we work less?

Ultra-Rapid Focus Group

Kathy Sierra talks about an Ultra-Rapid-Design Party with some great brainstorming tips that I'm going to shamelessly steal for my Idea Markets and Innovation Retreats.  Here's how she describes it:

Forget focus groups. Forget endless meetings and brainstorming sessions. Throw an ultra-rapid-design party, and do it in a single day. This approach exploits the wisdom-of-crowds through a process of enforced idea diversity and voting, so no consensus, committee, or even agreement is needed. And it's way more fun.

The Product Design Dinner Party takes 9 people, a pile of diverse "inputs", and has each of the 9 people voting on--and pitching--one another's ideas to continuously reconfigured groups of 3 people, letting the best ideas rise to the top. The process is a little complicated, but it's derived/modified from an existing rapid-prototyping design I'll talk about later in the post.

Go to the post for a step-by-step guide.  Definitely worth a try.

How to "Black Out" During Your Next Presentation

Bert Decker has a great (and easy) tip to improve your next presentation:  Use Black Slides.  According to Bert, a blacked out slide (as opposed to justing hitting the "B" key) accomplishes three things:

1. Clear the screen.  Once you’re done with the picture, graph or supporting information, you want to remove distraction, and go to a black slide so you can amplify, tell a story, or make an additional point, etc.

2. Black out the screen.  Simply put, so you can walk in front of the projector. Almost all meeting, board and conference rooms are poorly designed so that they have the projector screen right in the middle of the room or stage. It should be at the right or left, so YOU can be in the middle. After all, YOU should be the center of your presentation, not your slides.

3. Totally change your mindset.  Change he creation and emphasis of the presentation. This is by far the most important of all, and needs it’s own paragraph.