4 books I (actually) read this summer.

I skim a lot of books. That’s one of the benefits of having an excellent public library. The San Francisco Public Library is excellent in 2 ways:

1) Breadth and depth of collection

2) Netflix-like system for reserving books

I drop interesting books in my request queue on sfpl.org as I come across them.  The library has the book I’m looking for over 90% of the time.  Then three days, three weeks, or three months later I receive an automated e-mail telling me my book is ready.

Perfect.

I’d guess that I only actually read one book for every three or four books that that I skim.

So here are four books that I actually read this summer. All four have spoken to me on a business and personal level. In fact, I’ve found that the less that a book has to do with work, the more impact it ends up having on the way I think about our company and our customers.

Momofuku

David Chang and Peter Meehan

My wife Denise found this cookbook / autobiography and thought that I would enjoy it. She was right. 

The food looks amazing and we’re going to hit up at least one of their restaurants when we’re in New York in October.

Yet it is the story of the restaurant that stayed with me. David Chang and crew scrapped, hustled, and invented their way to a new form of restaurant in one of the toughest markets in the world. Their passion for teamwork and focus on execution is contagious. I understand that David Chang’s swagger is off-putting to some, but I ate it up. This is a guy who wants to cook killer food, his way, and is not going to let anyone stop him. Great stuff.

Born Standing Up

Steve Martin

I fell asleep to Steve Martin’s records when I was a kid. I had dozens of his bits memorized. This came in handy one day in the seventh grade. One of my friends told me that he was auditioning for the school musical and asked me if I was going to try out. I thought that sounded fun, so I went along with him.  It turned out we were supposed to have prepared a monologue and a song. Crap. I had decided to stay after school and audition on a whim and wasn’t prepared. Or was I? Luckily, I had unknowingly been rehearsing for months and when my turn came to perform, I nailed a monologue and song of Steve Martin’s. (I wish I could remember which ones.)  I got the lead in the play and that was the beginning of my theater days.

“Born Standing Up” is a must-read for fans of Steve Martin. But I also think it is a must-read for anyone who speaks, teaches, or sells for a living.  Steve Martin started performing when he was 12 years old. He worked at his craft for decades before any of us learned who he was. He failed repeatedly and experimented wildly. He never turned down an opportunity to work on his material, “speaking” in front of small audiences and giving his all. His endurance is breathtaking.

The Razor’s Edge

W. Somerset Maugham

Steve Martin wrote in “Born Standing Up” that his favorite book of all time was “The Razor’s Edge.” So I requested it from the library immediately.

Steve Martin’s favorite character in “The Razor’s Edge” is Larry Darrell, who dedicates his life to acquiring knowledge and searching for meaning at the expense of love and wealth. Larry spends 12-14 hours in the library a day reading. Languages, classics, history, science, and philosophy. He doesn’t know exactly what he is looking for, but he is resolved not to stop reading until he finds it. When his fiancé asks him what he wants to do with his life, he tells her that he wants to “loaf.” That’s what he calls reading 12-14 hours  a day, “loafing.” Classic.

Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!”

Richard Feynman

Do you ever find that you have gone your whole life without hearing about a certain person or book and then three or four times in one week you come across them?

That happened to me with Richard Feynman.

I noticed that people spoke and wrote with a certain reverence for Richard Feynman that reminded me of the way people talk about Kurt Vonnegut or Richard Brautigan.

“You don’t know about Richard Feynman? Oh man, you’ve been missing out.”

And I had been missing out. I read “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” in one sitting. I couldn’t stop. He’s a scholar, inventor, prankster, and teacher all in one.

If teaching is part of your job (and I would argue that’s everyone) then you should read this book.  Or if you are like me and have a grandfather and father in law who love to tinker with mechanical things just for the fun of it, then this book will give you a good laugh.

So that’s me…

What have you been reading this summer?

Chris

New Technologies | Alliances | Practices. A “travel-optional” conference from the AIA TAP Knowledge Community.

The New Technologies | Alliances | Practices conference will be held in multiple venues and virtually on November 12th, 2010.

From the AIA Technology in Practice (TAP) Knowledge Community website:

AIA Technology in Architectural Practice Knowledge Community, in collaboration with Project
Delivery KC, Center for Integrated Practice, and International Facility Management Association, is
planning a very special nation-wide conference for November 12, 2010. The conference will cover
aspects of technology in project design, delivery and facility management from a variety of AECOO
community viewpoints. This “travel optional” conference will be held simultaneously at AIA National
Headquarters in D.C. and internet-linked regional venues in selected major cities around the US.
Presentations will also be available in real-time to individual internet viewers.

Participating venues as of August 17th are:

Washington D.C., Albuquerque, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Salt
Lake City, San Francisco

You can learn more about this event on TAP’s Ning site or by e-mailing tap@aia.org.

Join Knowledge Architecture at the 2010 Best Firms To Work For Summit.

The summit will be held in Las Vegas on September 28th and 29th.

Here’s what the Best Firms Summit website has to say about the event:

Presented by CE News, Structural Engineering & Design,
The Zweig HR Letter and the Environmental
Business Journal, the two-day conference will explore
topics such as retaining top talent in tough times,
workforce planning in an economic downturn and beyond,
firm cultures that motivate and inspire commitment,
retooling your current workforce, diversification
strategies, staffing and cash flow, managing overhead,
training and workforce development, benefits
integration, legal issues, and best practices, as well
as provide unlimited networking opportunities for all
involved in the business of architecture, engineering,
and environmental consulting.

Here’s what I have to say about the event:

“KA-approved” Speakers

The opening and closing keynotes are going to be given by KA Connect 2010 speakers. (Randy Deutsch on keeping employees engaged and Markku Allison on collaboration.)

John Soter and Pam Britton, also KA Connect 2010 speakers, are speaking on leadership and training.  John promises not to talk about apes this time.

Marjanne Pearson and Christine Brack, both friends of Knowledge Architecture, will be speaking about talent management and benchmarking.

And somehow…they let me slip through the cracks.

Twice.

I’ll be flying solo presenting “Beyond Marketing: Leveraging Social Media Tools for Thought Leadership, Recruiting, and Knowledge Management” on Tuesday afternoon.

Then I’ll team up with Marjanne Pearson on Wednesday morning to lead a workshop called “Harnessing the Power of Social Media to Enhance Competitive Advantage.”

Critical Topics

Employee Engagement. Collaboration. Leadership. Training. Organizational Learning. Talent Management. Benchmarking. Knowledge Management. Social Media.

That’s the stuff I see HR Directors, CFOs, COOs, CMOs and practice leaders wrestling with at architecture and engineering firms every day.

I’m really looking forward to digging into these topics with some of the best thinkers in the industry.

See you in Vegas

Kudus to Amy Walsh and the rest of her team at Stagnito Media on putting together a great program.

You can visit the Best Firms Summit 2010 website for registration information.

Hope to see you there.

Performing is great. But I’ll take rehearsal any day.

                                                    © 20th Century Fox Broadcasting Company

I was a theater and choir nerd in high school.

My wife Denise cringes when we watch “Glee.”

Denise: “Is there any truth to this show? Please tell me this is over the top.”

Me: “It is shockingly close to true. It was really like that. You know, except for the fact they have cooler costumes, killer sets, and can actually sing.

Other than that – yeah, that’s what high school theater and choir was like for me.”

Denise: “Oh my.”

I bring this up because I have found myself thinking about theater lately.

Not because of “Glee,” but because of work.

We just deployed Synthesis 1.4 in beta at our first customer site. (Synthesis is our social intranet platform for architects and engineers.)

This is our fourth release of Synthesis this year, but we all feel like this one is the game changer.

Releasing the product today after three months of intense focus was a huge high. The team has been cranking for weeks and our hard work paid off. High-fives all around. Great work team!

But I can’t help feeling the way I used to in high school after opening night.

In a word, melancholy.

In retrospect, the thing I liked most about theater was the rehearsals.  You start with a script and an empty stage. Your final performance is still a fuzzy sketch in the back of the director’s mind. The team comes together over several months and day by day you discover what “the play or show wants to be.” It emerges. Your job is to help uncover it.

In “On Writing,” Stephen King likened this process to excavating a fossil. You see a small piece of bone sticking out of the ground. You don’t know if it is a tooth or a T-Rex femur. You start to remove dirt around the bone, careful not to damage it. After several minutes, or hours, or days you get your answer.

Now perhaps I’m overdoing it.

But when I think back to my high school plays I remember the people. I remember the process of discovery and creating something great together. I barely remember the performances.

So one day, twenty years from now, when nobody cares about social intranets anymore, I’ll remember days like today.

Thanks Brian C, Susan, Chad, Brian W, and Paul.

CP

Are you a multiplier or a diminisher?

The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20^th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing.

The most important contribution management needs to make in 21^st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker.

The most valuable assets of the 20^th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21^st-century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.

Peter Drucker, Management Challenges of the 21^st Century

You’ve probably read this quote before. If not this exact quote, then something like it.

If you are like most people that I talk to, you probably agree with it.

Then what’s the problem?

If we agree that knowledge and knowledge workers are our most important assets, why do so many firms have such a hard time leveraging those assets?

Actually that’s not going far enough.

Why do firms prioritize the urgent but tactical issues of the day over the development of knowledge and knowledge workers ?

I’m not going to write about that today.

But I will tell you that I just read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown.

Their take is that there are two types of people – diminishers and multipliers. Diminishers are primarily concerned with being perceived as geniuses.  Multipliers would rather be perceived as genius makers.

I think that many of the answers to my questions above can be found in this book.

It seems to me that a multiplier/genius maker mindset is a fundamental precondition to effective organizational learning and knowledge management.

(That’s my way of saying that I think you should read the book.)

We’re bringing the tribe back together.

KA Connect 2011 will take place beside the San Francisco Bay at the Fort Mason Center.

April 27th and 28th.

We just thought you’d like to know.

Software Tools of Genius: Deltek Vision – Active Directory Connector.

                                                                               © Anheuser-Busch Companies

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. 

Knowledge Architecture writes software.

(And we’d like to sell it to you.)

There, I said it.

We’ve got some sweet new products out and I’ve been wrestling with the best way to tell you about them.

I’ve been reading lots of product management books lately. And marketing books. And product marketing books. And while they are full of good advice, I have to admit they aren’t much fun.

If I’m going to pitch you software, it should be fun.

So I thought back to one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time, Bud Light’s “Real Men of Genius” for inspiration.

Here’s what I’ve cooked up so far…

Draft Transcript for “Software Tools of Genius”

Knowledge Architecture presents, “Software Tools of Genius.”
(Software Tools of Geeeeenius.)

 

Today we salute you, Mr. Deltek Vision – Active Directory Connector.
(Mr. Deltek Vision – Active Directory Conneeeeeeeeector!)

 

Phone numbers.
Titles.
Office locations.
Departments.
Is there anything you can’t sync between Deltek Vision and Active Directory?
(Where’s my Lady Gaaagaaa?)

 

Your simplicity is legendary.
They tell you the field they want to sync.
They give you a direction.
Just like that.
For as many fields as they want.
And then you make that data flow.
(Once a day or once an houuuuur!)

 

Some may ask … ”Is this software too good to be true?”
Not anymore.
Just ask the satisfied customers who left work early for happy hour.
(Don’t forget the chicken wings! )

 

So here’s to you Mr. “I brought HR, Accounting, and IT systems together and eliminated unnecessary duplication and improved data quality.”
You put the connect in connector.
(Mr. Deltek Vision – Active Directory Conneeeeeeeeector!) 

So what do you think? Should we go with it?

Contact us to learn more about the Deltek Vision – Active Directory Connector.

Why we need a Story-Driven Agenda for Sharing Knowledge.

                              Bret Tushaus shares his story at KA Connect 2010 

I just listened to an excellent AIA podcast called “The AIA’s Knowledge Agenda: Transforming a Profession” featuring Walter Hainsfurther and Markku Allison.

There are lots of excellent takeaways in there. Randy Deutsch did a nice job of cataloging takeaways and then building upon them in his latest Architects 2Zebras blog post.

A Story about Research

I teased out one theme for group discussion on the KA Connect LinkedIn Group. I’m paraphrasing:

"We need to move the profession from sharing knowledge through oral history to becoming research-driven."

I agree with the general premise that our industry could benefit from creating, sharing, and leveraging design solutions and practice methodology based on research.

However, I think we should keep our old friend oral history around.

In Walter and Markku’s podcast, they reference the well-published findings of Walmart’s research into the effect of daylighting on sales volume. If someone on the street asked me if I thought that natural daylight in a store makes a difference on sales volume I would say yes, and explain my answer based on Walmart’s research.

Now I’ve never actually read the formal research Walmart conducted on the impact of daylighting on sales. But I have heard the story at least a dozen times. I think the story stuck since it was a bit unexpected (Walmart, design, natural light in the same sentence) but also quantifiable and concrete.

A Story-Driven Agenda for Sharing Knowledge

So here’s what I think:

Transitioning the AEC (and AIA) to a knowledge-driven agenda will ultimately need to be anchored around sharing stories. We’ve been using stories for millennia to convey complex moral, technical, or political concepts from generation to generation. Stories are the most powerful way we have to embed knowledge and pass it from person to person or organization to organization.

Stories referencing well-executed research instead of “I did this 20 times and it works” would be a welcome change. But stories will still be the primary mode of communicating knowledge, even if they take the form of blogs posts, podcasts, videos, and online discussions.

What do you all think?

Should we keep oral history around for a while longer? Do you agree that stories will help our industry to become more knowledge-driven?

Feel free to respond in the comments below or join the discussion on LinkedIn.

What tribe are you going to lead?

                                                         Image courtesy of Denise Parsons

Thought leadership as a strategic marketing and knowledge management initiative.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 6,500 the day I founded Knowledge Architecture. It was March of 2009 and I had been meeting with prospective clients and strategic partners to test-market our services. I told them that we were going to build a knowledge management and information systems consulting practice for the AE industry and that I was interested in getting their feedback.

I received reactions which ranged from supportive to doubtful. One trusted advisor told me that people would not invest in knowledge management consulting because “knowledge management is squishy.” He was convinced that despite familiarity with the term “knowledge management,” few people could define it or enumerate the benefits.

My trusted advisor was right. As I talked to more and more firms I discovered the following:

• Firms agreed that their people were their company’s greatest asset
• Most firms did not have a systematic approach for creating, capturing and sharing knowledge
• People were interested in what we had to say

We had to educate them one by one. I realized that we had two challenges as a new company: not only did we have to build brand awareness around Knowledge Architecture, we had to build a market for knowledge management services.

In short, before people could hire us, they had to understand what they were hiring us to do.

A knowledge management tribe for the AEC industry

Over the summer of 2009, I came across Seth Godin’s TED talk called “Tribes are what matter now.” In 18 minutes, Seth Godin articulated the benefits of creating a community for disconnected individuals with common interests. He called these undiscovered communities “tribes.” Tribes have a yearning to share what they know, learn from each other and connect with their peers. They are just waiting for someone to lead.

I was inspired. I knew from my history in the industry and my recent experience with Knowledge Architecture that there was a latent demand for a knowledge management tribe in our industry. However, I also knew that I didn’t have all of the answers and that Knowledge Architecture could not make knowledge management a standard business practice in the AEC industry alone. I realized that the fastest way to build the case (and market) for knowledge management was by inviting a bunch of smart folks to share their ideas and stories. Like TED, we would record all of the talks and release them for free over the web as embeddable videos to encourage sharing. KA Connect was born.

That weekend I announced KA Connect 2010 on our blog and LinkedIn. KA Connect 2010, in April of 2010, was our first knowledge management conference for the AEC industry. 36 speakers gave short talks over two days on topics such as social media, integrated project delivery, collaboration practices, and organizational learning.

As a result of launching KA Connect we have:

1. Connected thought leaders from AEC firms, academia, consulting and software development
2. Developed new strategic partnerships and deepened existing alliances
3. Connected with dozens of prospective clients and included a complimentary admission to the conference for our subscription clients
4. Built a platform for creating, capturing, and sharing new knowledge with our clients, partners, and staff
5. Positioned ourselves as a “tribal leader” in knowledge management in the AEC industry

What tribe are you going to lead?

Let’s go back to the two marketing challenges I laid out at the beginning of the article - building brand awareness around Knowledge Architecture and building a market for knowledge management services. I work with enough AEC firms to know that you are also facing differentiation and positioning challenges.

Here are 5 steps your firm can take to position your firm as a thought leader, deepen your relationships with strategic partners, and provide a learning experience for your clients and staff:

1. Find an emerging issue which connects your clients, strategic partners, and firm in which you want to plant your thought leader flag. (For example, the impact of Integrated Project Delivery on K-12 school districts.)
2. Book a venue.
3. Invite the smartest people you know to share their ideas and stories. (Yes, this will probably mean your competition. The benefits of collaboration with your competition, or co-opetition, on strategic industry issues are for another post.)
4. Invite prospective and existing clients and strategic partners.
5. Capture and share lessons learned. (This is a great way to assuage that guilt you’ve been feeling about falling behind with social media. Sharing knowledge on issues your clients, partners, and staff care about via video, your blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social platforms sure beats press releases.)

Good luck! Your tribe is waiting.

The truth about doing less. (First you have to do more.)

Jason Fried at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Easy for you to say…

I’ve been working on this blog post all morning. I thought this post would be simple. Most of the information management challenges plaguing the architects and engineers we work with can be simplified by doing less. All I should have to do is write about what we see and do every day.

Here are three examples :

• A user-friendly intranet? Do less. Less content actually makes an intranet easier to use.
• A project history database? Do less. Less fields to maintain mean that the important fields will actually get captured.
• An expertise database? Do less. Nobody cares if a team member has Microsoft Word expertise. Focus on the skills such as space planning, water-proofing, or feasibility studies that your staff can really leverage in their project work.

So why has this post been so tough to write? Because I felt like I sounded too much like this guy:

Some free advice on how to do less.

Imagine that you’ve finally decided to move from a network-based image library towards a database-driven solution. You’ve never implemented one of these systems before. You decide to start asking around for advice on a successful implementation. I’m one of the people you ask. Guess what my advice would be?

Chris: “Do less.”

You ask me to elaborate.

Chris: “Start by going after the most important projects. You don’t need to chase down images for every project your firm has ever done. For example, seismic upgrades or executive bathroom remodels can probably wait until round two, or three, or never.”

You thank me for my advice. I’m not done.

Chris: “I’d also limit your scope on the number of images you try to harvest from your teams. You should focus on the images that will help you tell the project story now and in three, five, ten years down the road. Focus on the images that endure, not every version of every rendering or site photo that your team took during the project.”

That’s helpful you think. Less projects and less images. Focus on the stuff that matters. You thank me again for my advice.

(I’m still not done.)

Chris: “I saved the most important advice for last. Limit your image keywords to 20 to 30. Your users are going to howl at first. They are going to come with lists and lists of keywords which they “must have” if the system is going to work for them. Their combined lists could easily top 250 keywords. This is fine. This is beginning of the process. Your work, and your team’s work, is to eliminate the fat. A system with 250 keywords won’t get populated and will be difficult to use. Fight for 25 keywords at launch.  Stare them down. Play chicken. Do not bend.”

Now you have what I think is the best advice possible on implementing an image management system. I’ve seen it work firsthand with many of our customers and followed the same approach when I was a CIO.

Scope ruthlessly. Design more. Do less.

Here’s the thing – doing less is more difficult than doing more and requires more upfront work. Doing less requires more thinking and more prototypes than doing more. Doing less requires more political savvy than doing more.

You could take the easy way out. For example: 

• The easy way to implement an image management solution would be to placate your users and just add more keywords.
• The easy way to design an intranet would be to let your users go nuts and upload whatever they want and design their own pages.
• The easy way for Jason Fried and his software company 37Signals to please their customers would be to implement every feature that his customers ask for.

Each of the three approaches above will end up in solutions that are complex. Complex solutions are expensive to maintain, difficult to support, and horrible to use.

Doing less requires more work in the short run but leads to simple, sustainable, usable solutions in the long run.

Somehow “Scope ruthlessly. Design more. Do Less.” doesn’t have the same ring as “Do Less.” But I think that it’s the complete truth.