None of us is as stupid as all of us

We have trouble working together. Within our own groups we share a common language. Marketers, programmers, and designers, contain a dialog among themselves. They distinguish problems differently from one another, but all create with an eye towards a business solution. We sometimes fall short as a team when we try and share ideas across departments. Unfortunately, these three groups together can form a Bermuda triangle where good ideas vanish into thin air. The push and pull can be a real turf war, but each group offers more than just a narrow scope of responsibilities.

The designer is a visual problem solver. Programmers are engineers. Account service and sales focus on clients. But, we all focus on business. We have to keep our ears open to really listen to what other groups are saying to understand the different angles. I am not talking about the details of how we work, but ideas about what we doing and why. They are not the territory of any one group nor should they be.

Ideas have a life of their own. Ownership of an idea is like the relationship parents have with their children. You first conceive the idea. Next, you give it some time to let it grow and develop. You are the sole owner at this point, because you haven’t shared the idea with anyone. The day comes though when you have to let an idea stand on its own. You give it over to other people who push and pull it in different directions. They will form and influence the idea just as you have. As the originator you can be proud, but the idea doesn’t belong to just you anymore. Remember, the moment you speak about an idea is the moment you no longer own it.

I am strong believer in teamwork. A team is strongest when everyone plays their positions, but focuses on assisting each other. It can be a very positive and rewarding experience. My college design teacher liked to use the word synergy. Synergy happens when a group of people feed off each other’s input to create something that is better than any one person could have made. Conversations with true synergy are a thing of beauty. It’s how we jump from good to great. But, it’s not without its difficulties.

Opening yourself up to a creative dialog can be a bit like walking into a punch. It can really sting when people start jabbing at your work. But, if you leave your ego at the door, you can get through it. I’ve always tried to emotionally distance myself just a bit when I get into these situations. No one is attacking me, not usually anyway. I have had many successes in my career and I am not looking for validation, I am looking to improve my work. I accept what people say, valid or not. I try to listen to what they are getting at, even if they’re not communicating it very well. Some people mean well and say bad things. Other people just say bad things.

I spoke to manager once who told me that you want some level of competition between employees. I suppose that makes sense if the competition is healthy. The reality of it can be a cold smack in the face. I have seen just about every bad intention pursued.

There are the defenders of the status quo. Usually, their background has no training in creativity or problem solving. The head of the pack throws out a thought and everyone nods their heads in agreement. It’s silly. No creative dialog, just egos and assholes looking to be top dog. For them it’s not about leadership, it about control.

Sometimes you have ideas pissed on because someone just wants to mark their territory. They didn’t add anything relevant, didn’t make the work better, and in most cases watered it down with a full bladder to claim some level of ownership. And that’s what they do when they like the work.

If you are in a position where you can offer feedback, be careful. I was in a situation once where a business team put together a baffling presentation that accompanied a Web design I created. So I offered constructive criticism. In response, I received a demeaning e-mail letting me know I didn’t understand the first thing about presentations and they called out my design as “graphics” for their proposal. Having worked on dozens of proposals, I can say the response wasn’t valid. Criticism is not a personal attack, but when you are dealing with people who don’t understand creative dialog, they will fire back like angry children.

If we have an opinion that isn’t demeaning to other people and is purely intended to improve the work, we should take the time to articulate our thoughts and assert them. It does take some level of personal honestly. Are you criticizing the work because you don’t like the person who is came up with the idea? Do you not like how much attention other people are getting? I could go on and on about the wrong reasons to criticize. Personal egos can infuse dialogs with spiteful pettiness. Maybe, you are dealing with people who just don’t understand. Management should step in and help educate them. And if management doesn’t get it either, you’ve got quite a bit of work cut out for you.

We are in a people business. What happens if you don’t make an effort to respectfully listen? People won’t like you. And when we start to make enemies of our coworkers, it’s the work that suffers. They have their jobs, I have mine. I always ask people what they think, but I never tell them what to do.  I expect nothing less in return. We are educated professionals who have to trust one another. A creative dialog isn’t about forcing another person’s hand or dragging them down. It’s about opening yourself up to better possibilities, better work, and honest relationships.

Tell Them No, Just Never Use that Word

I was at an agency meeting some time back, when the head of the company addressed the sales team requesting they take programmers to client meetings as needed. It was at this point I witnessed a lead salesman turn to his colleague and say, “not a chance.” This event didn’t go unnoticed and got around the IT department fast which led to a few conversations. The one concern we got back from the sales team is that the IT people always say no. There is a solution to this, but we need to understand the problem first.

From the time we are little kids, we live in a world of no. No dessert until you finish your vegetables. No, you didn’t clean your room. There’s a lot of big frustration around such a little word. We all want to run around and do what we want. As children, the first part of being punished for misbehaving starts with your parents yelling the word no. It takes our heads out of the clouds and puts our feet back on the ground.

As adults, no gets internalized. We don’t kick and scream when we hear it, although that would be funny to see a board room full of executives “expressing” themselves. Under the calm veneer of professionalism, we are all emotional animals that get mad when we don’t get what we want. That’s not to say we are all boiling under an icy exterior, but telling someone no has real consequences.

No comes from the head, but goes straight to the heart. A programmer rationalizes why something can’t happen because of logically based perceptions. These opinions are not formed out of malice or petty dominance, but far too often are treated like they are.

Before you whip out the big N-O, remember it’s an emotionally charged and potentially damaging word. People are scared to hear it. In the world of business, you will be judged for using that word and the negativity will come right back at you. People will make up all kinds of reasons why you told them no without diving in to deeper issues. It can be a little ridiculous, but it’s the world we live in and we need to adapt.

There are ways to disagree without saying no.  And before you call me out on being manipulative, I am not advocating any level of political doublespeak and clever misdirection. Not because it doesn’t work, but because programmers are smarter than that and we don’t need to lie. So you take no out of your vocabulary, but what happens when you find yourself in a no situation?

The two situations I normally encounter are when requests are literally impossible to achieve and the other is when they makes no business sense whatsoever. Programmers are problem solvers. So use your talents and think about what can happen and what does make sense. Focus on the reasons why something won’t work and develop a solution that fixes those problems.

A common situation is being given an unrealistic deadline. So instead of saying no, tell them about what you can accomplish in that timeframe. Figure out how to stage multiple releases and let the client know that you will concentrate on getting the core functionality right. This helps the team focus on what’s important. If you come up with a better solution, everyone wins.

It’s an educational process that involves the programmers, account service, and the clients. Don’t be mad at them for not knowing. You have to educate them about what reasonable possibilities are and they will educate you about what their problems are. When you fully understand the problem, you should have the confidence to offer up an alternative if what they are asking for doesn’t make sense. And remember, you’re employment depends on your company’s ability to sell something. I would rather be coding than playing salesman, but a good team has to help each other out.

Sometimes a dumb request can be a smart one with a little work. And sometimes despite everyone’s best effort, our clients won’t be persuaded at all. Even if you fail, the best part is you learn what will and won’t work. In time you find ways to shelf the word no in favor of a conversation, at least that’s what works for me.

I love the responses I get from my posts. What I would like to do this week is for those of us out there who have had success in dealing with these situations to post how they handled themselves to help others who might be struggling. After a week, I will take my favorite top three and repost to the main blog as guest entries. Thanks!

The Business of Beautiful Code

A little while back I had a technology director tell me it doesn’t matter how well code is written as long as it works without breaking and gets the job done on time. Why sweat it using complicated techniques that not everyone understands when there are more simple ways to do the work. After all, things can look the same on the surface regardless of it being well engineered or put together with duct tape and glue.

This guy liked the intellectually lazy, brute force approach. Don’t think. Just start coding now and get it done. Copy and Paste are now your two best friends. Well, mankind did build the pyramids with Stone Age technology. So I suppose there’s a lot you can accomplish with brute force, but I prefer to use my brain.

Writing software is a very creative discipline that requires a lot of abstract thinking about organization and performance. There are thousands of ways an application could be engineered. It first involves thoughtful planning at the beginning before a single line of code is ever considered.

Writing beautiful code is not just some nerdy game programmers engage in to see who can sit atop nerd mountain with their 4x scepter of insight. It’s about pure design that solves a problem. And there’s a real benefit to business. Beautiful code saves money. Beautiful code makes money. Ugly code gets work done quicker, but it’s like winning the battle, and losing the war. In time, bugs pop up and clients make changes that are impossible to accommodate. Sounds like time for an analogy.

Web sites and applications have a lot in common with cars; they both have a purpose and a personality. Just as we judge a car as being good or bad for a multitude of reasons, we can draw our analogy from these similar evaluations.

A car is designed around the driver, but for many it’s what’s under the hood that counts. Engines can be a mystery though. Sure, people get the basics, but it takes a mechanic to be able to take it apart and put it back together and an engineer to create one from scratch.

When we run a piece of software we look at obvious performance issues. Does it run? How often does it break? Most people you work with will get it up to this point. And from what I have seen, they only care about it up to this point. But, what about real performance?

In the automotive world, performance is well marketed to consumers. They take a certain feature, give it a name, and tell the consumer to want it. Traction control, dual overhead cams, and fuel injection are sold to the public regardless if they have a clue about what it means. The car nerds understand dual overhead cams makes for a more powerful engine. The general public just knows it goes faster.

Beautiful code is high performance. And everyone wants that because it’s faster. Google markets their speed. Type in any topic and you will see at the top of each page a list of how many things were returned and how fast you got them. It’s really impressive when you stop to consider how much data is being sorted to return relevant information. It doesn’t matter if you are writing code or building an engine, you can’t get good performance from a lack of engineering. Speed is good, but maintenance is even more import.

Cars are expensive to maintain and so is software. A study conducted by Human Factors International found that 80% of software life-cycle costs occur during the maintenance phase. Okay, cars aren’t as expensive to maintain as software, but you get the point. Well written software is designed to be updated, changed, bitch-slapped or whatever. It should take it like a man. There are real financial consequences when code takes a long time to update. It can even cancel a project. What I have noticed over the years is regardless of what I am told; I always end up having to go back into something to make edits. As important as this is, there is one more reason why the quality matters.

If an engine is well built, you can put it in several other cars. Good reusable code works the same way. If it’s done well, it can be placed in many applications. There is a business law that states the cost of products and services go down over time. It’s called the experience curve. Businesses find cheaper and quicker ways of getting the work done. When a cheaper way to do business is found, a company charges less to increase volume, or operates with higher profit margins. Either way competitors are adversely affected. Beautiful code can become that competitive advantage to manage the curve.

It’s all about money. It usually is. Ugly code may look like the practical choice. It’s an easy solution when you become defined by deadlines. Some programmers work that way, but surviving isn’t thriving. For businesses to grow and stay competitive they have to have a culture that prizes beautiful code.

Never Trust a Programmer

Programming is a bit of mystery to people. It breeds a lot of distrust in an organization. In general, when you don’t understand what it takes to make something, anything seems plausible. You might think a house can be built in couple of weeks if you’ve never gone through the process. In truth they probably could finish construction in that time, but not as a sustainable business. If you watch a house being built and track the progress, you can physically see the foundation being poured, the framing of the structure and so on. It’s easy to understand because you physically see it. Writing code for a computer application or a Web site isn’t so apparent.

Code is invisible to everyone but the programmer. It’s like the magic that takes place behind the curtain. Any team has to just trust a programmer about what is and what isn’t doable. The best course of action, estimates, and progress updates are all subject to the programmer’s opinion. There’s plenty of Type A personalities that have trouble with this, but it goes deeper.

First issues arise when a client decides what they want and when they need it by. Sales people want to sell. Telling the client they have unreal expectations doesn’t close sales. And holy shit, is that a recipe for disaster. I have seen account service cut estimates in half and move money around to accommodate their sale and their commission. At the end of the day it looks like the programmers are screwing up. They do it because it’s easy to blame the programmers.

They don’t teach office politics in school. They should, but that’s a different story all together. A programmer has to be quietly focused doing mental gymnastics to produce clean working code. It’s difficult and takes all your energy. There’s no time to run around to see whose throwing you under the bus. The games account service plays have consequences.

At a previous agency I worked at, I saw a 7 figure project go down in flames. Who caused the problem? Was it the group of industry leading programmers who worked 70 plus hour weeks to accommodate the client’s arbitrary schedule or was it the account service people who agreed to everything the client asked.

I don’t want to say programmers never cause issues. If you have ever seen the TV show Seconds From Disaster, catastrophic problems arise from a mix of people not doing their jobs. But, I did see the programmers doing their work. Not sure what everyone else was doing.

So what did the agency think? They laid off (fired) every one of those programmers. All the account service however, still works there. After that demoralizing death march, no one wanted to be there anyway.

The programmer’s path to hell is paved with the word yes. In order to police their own world they have to be vigilant about what is feasible. Being analytical, they usually put a lot of effort into an estimate. From what I have seen, it’s usually more effort than most put forth because they’re adept at thinking through multiple scenarios. Unfortunately, I have seen good estimates ignored or challenged. The more realistic they are, the more it is scrutinized from some reason.

It’s tough going back to the client with a set of realistic expectations. It makes closing far more difficult. You run the risk of someone else agreeing to the work (who will fail). But the programmer’s job isn’t any less difficult. Actually, they are the one group of people who are capable of understanding all of it. They know the code and they know the business problem. They may not be good at managing clients, but they certainly can understand what’s going on.

Trust your programmers. They are not only engineers and craftsmen, but businessmen as well. They will know from experience what happens to client relationships when someone makes promises no one can keep.

One Bad Apple

So the plot thickens. Can consumer focused shinny gizmos change the face of the Web? Apple has created a new policy to keep mobile advertising from Google off the iPod and iPad.

It’s been well reported from many sources that the mobile Web is the next big thing. And Apple knows this as well as anyone. The have the number one smart phone on the market and they want to keep it that way.

So yep, Apple has set up an ecosystem that allows them to maximize their profits by controlling the media, development, and the advertising that is displayed on their devices. A lot of people say why not. They are doing what’s in their best interest. I happen to think that strategy is flawed. And I know, I am just some dork with a blog and Apple is great and all powerful. But, here’s what I have trouble with.

Do you want a Web enabled device that allows a free market to decide what gets put on it? Or do you want Steve Jobs telling you what you can and can’t do. I promise you, we will see more of these policy changes arise as new threats to Apple’s bottom line arise. Their new mantra is, if it doesn’t make us money were blocking it. Doesn’t matter if it’s something better than what they have or if consumers want it.

The consumers lose. People who are accustomed to Flash no longer get content they were looking for. Now with advertising, most people would rather not see any, but really they just don’t want to see bad advertising. Effective advertising is good advertising and Google is effective. So now Apple users can expect a lot of lame advertising on their devices.

User focused design is catching on. That was Apple’s competitive advantage. If consumers can get a device that is just  as easy to use and doesn’t have all these restrictions, that’s what they will gravitate to. The market will balance them out and all they will be left with is their iron grip.

Has this level of dictatorship ever prospered on the Web? In policing their devices they are going cut off their users from everyone else. I like the iPhone, but it’s not special anymore and Android phones are just as if not more capable.

I won’t be goose stepping out to get the next iAnything. This Nazi level of control is a bad thing for the Web and ultimately will be bad for Apple.

What I Learned From 9 Years of Advertising

I never wanted to work in advertising. I grew up pressing the mute button during commercials. When the music stopped on the radio, I switched channels. And when the DVR came out, I was first in line to get one. I didn’t know much about advertising, or even care, it just annoyed me. That’s not to say I don’t believe it works. But inherently, I went out of my way to tune it out.

I went to college to learn how to be a good artist and designer, so that’s all I focused on. I deeply appreciate good design and I love to create things. The goal was to be a professional artist, although I had trouble nailing down an exact direction.

After working at a failing dot-com, I somehow landed at an advertising agency doing both design and development. I had a lot of ideas about design and what it meant, but I quickly found out how much I didn’t know about business and marketing, let alone advertising.

I taught myself how to write code, so I figured why not get some books on marketing and learn about this other world I was then a part of. All along, I was surrounded by smart people doing interesting work, so it was easy to absorb.

I kept learning by reading book after book. I wasn’t producing any traditional advertising, but the culture, the creative process, and my creative director made each day a lesson. I learned about branding, psychographics, and of course the big idea. To the initiated, the big idea is the guiding concept that becomes the hub of all strategies and tactical executions. Most importantly advertising teaches you how to create a story that people will listen to.

Any good communication is a story. It doesn’t matter if you are talking to friends, giving a presentation, or creating a 30 second spot on TV. It’s all about story telling. Dan Roam, the author of The Back of the Napkin, talks about how the best story wins. This means that when you are in a competitive situation, the person who can tell the better story will do more to engage and persuade an audience than the other guy. It’s not a new idea by any means, but it’s very well stated.

The old Coke commercial with Mean Joe Green, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc0izCGKxP8, is a prefect example of advertising story telling at its best. It’s the story of opposites having something in common. Joe Green is a mean large black man. The kid is an innocent small white boy. Yet, these two have a common interest and they make a connection. Coke wants to appeal to everyone and that story delivers the message is a way a room full of marketing executives could never imagine. It’s genius.

The day to day business of advertising when it’s good is about having a creative dialog with intelligent people who will synergistically build an idea that creates deep meaning in the mind of a consumer. It’s rewarding when you have something that not only solves a business need, but is artistically brilliant. And it’s exhilarating when your work is nationally recognized. Showing up to work in shorts and sandals to talk about possibilities and ideas on top of getting paid a great salary is a dream job. But, there’s a dark side to it.

There are the prima donnas. These people are the worst. Everything in the world exists to do nothing more than reaffirm their greatness. Then you have the award grubbing creative directors. These people reject advertising work before clients can respond to it base on the fact that it won’t win an ADDY. Doesn’t matter if the work is what the client wanted, dead on target for the consumer, and solves a business problem. Bad management is rampant too. Temperamental and untrained, many people who run the show have no idea how to treat another human being let alone manage a team. The worst of it is the number of hours you work including weekends and holidays. They all lie to their employees about how a work life balance is important. 10PM Friday night meetings, 6:30AM calls to London on Sunday, and 60-75 hour work weeks were my reality.

I sometimes complain about advertising and the people who live in that world, but I really have learned so much from them. I understand what they do and I actually watch commercials if they are done well. Their culture of ideas is wrought with highs and lows. You have to be emotionally tough. I will always appreciate how difficult the job is. Hopefully, I have learned how to tell a good story.

Mobile Coupons are on the Rise

Why Mobile Coupons
Coupon use is on the rise. Businesses issued 367 billion coupons last year and consumers redeemed 3.3 billion. Redemption grew by 27% in 2009.~The Nielsen Company

The redemption of internet coupons is leading this trend, rising 263% in 2009.~The Nielsen Company

When it comes to measuring market performance, digital coupons have proven to have a greater effect on purchase intent, awareness, memory retention, and emotional engagement.~The Nielsen Company

Right now, paper coupons account for the bulk of coupons distributed and redeemed. This is changing radically though.

Why Now
The number of consumers who can use mobile coupons is growing by leaps and bounds. The use of mobile devices for connecting to the Web is outpacing personal computers. Today, the majority of coupons are distributed in Sunday newspapers. But, U.S. newspaper circulation has hit its lowest level in seven decades and is projected to continue to decline.~The Washington Post

By 2013, mobile phones will overtake the PC as the most common Web access device worldwide.~Gartner

Currently, 58% of online consumers own a mobile phone capable of connecting to the Web.~PriceGrabber

By 2011, over 85% of new handsets will be able to access the mobile Web.~Gartner

And in 2011, over 87 billion dollars in sales will be generated by 3 billion mobile coupons.~Juniper Research

The trends are clear. The preferred channel for coupon distribution is going away. Consumers are using more coupons. Mobile access to coupons will be omnipresent and in the new future, billions of dollars will be spent creating and distributing coupons on mobile devices.