How To Give Direction To Designers

Assume that they know what they’re doing better than you do. That’s why you’re paying them. (Right?)

If you want the header to stand out more, don’t say “What if we make the font bigger on the header, and give it a brightly-colored background?”

Instead, say “Can you please make the header stand out more?”

Then, shut the fuck up.

The main reason there are so many mediocre designs in the commercial world is because of failure to adhere to this one simple rule.

If you really think you know better than the creative does how to make a good creative, then either a) you hired the wrong person, or b) you missed your calling, and you’d better hurry up and catch it, before it runs over somebody.

p.s. I’m not a designer either, but there are some aspects of my background that could be used by a skilled rationalist to label me as “creative.”

image by whatleydude

Incomplete Parties And The Art Of Pushing Back

Back when I was a host at a snooty restaurant outside of Los Angeles, I had a weekly dilemna that has become a useful metaphor in every job I’ve had since.

On Sundays, the restaurant (heck, let’s call it Solley‘s) was packed for brunch, and we did not take reservations. We also didn’t seat incomplete parties.

Suppose you’re coming to bruch with a friend. You get there first. You approach the host (me) and “put your name in.” I write down your name, with the number 2 next to it. Then I refuse to seat you, and turn to the person behind you, asking how many are in their party.

Why am I refusing to seat you? Well, because you are an incomplete party. You are a party of two, and only one of you is present.

But why, you ask reasonably, does the restaurant care whether your party is complete? You yourself have arrived and asked for a table, have you not? You have money to spend, right? So what if your friend has to come in and find you?

It’s not that simple, I say. And then I refuse to explain further. Steam comes out of your ears. You hop up and down. You plot my death as I escort the two people who walked in behind you to the only available two-top in the place. You point emphatically to the window.

“She’s coming!” you cry. That’s her, walking from the car right now! She’ll be here in five seconds! You have to seat us!”

“I’ll definitely seat you as soon as she gets here,” I say, gesturing to some doofus who clearly just wandered in off the street, and might not even pay. Read the rest of this entry »

Things I’ll Never Do Again: Wear A Name Tag

I’ve done a lot of thinking about whether are really any limits to the kind of situation I’d be wiling to find myself in to acheive a meaningful change. And I’ve decided that the main criteria is this: I’m not going to wear a name tag.

I’ve done it before, when I was the host at a restaurant. There’s a very old and true idea that naming something gives you power over it. The customers don’t have nametags, and the staff do. So any customer can look at any staff member and know something about them that’s very important and personal: what their parents decided to call them. Read the rest of this entry »

The Importance Of Having A Mission Statement

I first read about mission statements in The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People (as far as I know, maybe that’s where the idea originated). Simply put, a mission statement is a company’s over-arching goal. Here’s what most people, if forced to say, would tell you the mission statement of their own companies are:

To make as much money as possible.

But this is a bad mission statement. Not because making money is bad, but because focusing only on money undermines the basic idea behind a mission statement, which is:

To provide one simple, singular directive that can serve as a guidepost to solve any problems that emerge.

There are many ways to make money, and there are many arguments as to whether any given decision is really going to lead the company toward the largest possible profit. It’s understood that nearly everyone in business wants to maximize profit. Therefore, nearly all arguments about the direction of a business take place inside of this basic agreement. Something farther reaching is needed. Take Microsoft’s mission statement from the 1990s:

To put a computer on ever desktop, and in every home.

Notice the lack of mention of money or software in the mission statement of the most commercially successful software company in history.

Statements like this provide a friendly guidepost for making major decisions. Suppose that a senior VP of business development at Microsoft suggested that Microsoft open a restaurant. A team wows Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer with a presentation on how they’ve used MS tools to determine the perfect location, menu, and chef. Profitability is virtually guaranteed. The presentation ends. After a minute of silence, Ballmer remarks:

“This all may be true. But tell me this. How is opening a restaurant going to help us put a computer on every desktop, and in every home?”

The world is a complicated place, things are increasingly interconnected, and there may indeed be some way to answer that question. Suppose the exec argues that MS will get publicity from the restaurant, which will ultimately drive software sales. Ballmer answers:

“Maybe so. But even Microsoft has limited resources. Are you really saying that, given our mission statement, this is the best possible use of our resources?”

Hard times make mission statements both more important, and more difficult to follow. If not guarded carefully, a statement like:

To put a computer on ever desktop, and in every home.

…can easily become:

To put a computer on ever desktop, and in every home. Unless we just had a rough quarter. In which case, fuck, I don’t know, maybe we should open a restaurant.

image by janetmck

What “Post-Mortem” Really Means

You’d think this is obvious. “Post-mortem” is an examination that takes place after someone dies, in order to find out how they died.

Metaphorically, then, “post-mortem” is often used in the world of business to describe a meeting that examines how and why a particular piece of business fell apart.

If there’s one thing you can’t find much of in the day to day life of corporate America, it’s irony. But the use of this metaphor is an exception. Because usually, when you hear the word “post-mortem” bandied about at the office, the project in question is still active. In other words, the patient is still alive.

You’ve heard it. You’ve probably said it. “When this is all over, we need to have a post-mortem.” Can you imagine a doctor saying that? He’s scrubbing down, wheeling some poor sap into surgery, shaking his head at the lack of planning that has led up to this moment.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he says as the panicking patient loses consciousness to anaesthesia, “this is the wrong thing to do.”

“Well,” says the other doctor, nodding in sympathy, “we’ll have a chance to go over all the missteps in the post-mortem.”

And then they operate.

image by Ned Dunn