This is great news (for me anyway) for two reasons.

First, I’ve wanted to write some ‘real stuff’ for a while now and this is a great way to start. Their Pocket Guides are short books dealing with one specific topic which makes this more achievable than trying to publish a huge tome. They also come with a deadline meaning I’ll have to get it done :-)

Secondly, doing this with Five Simple Steps is really cool. I’ve admired their style and books for a while now and I’m really looking forward to being part of their process. Being part of their author list is at once exciting and daunting.

I haven’t started writing properly yet and can’t yet announce the title and topic. All that will happen over Summer. For updates you should follow me on Twitter or subscribe to the blog!

In the meantime you should check out the long list of really awesome books in their collection.

In the meantime I thought I’d share a simple technique that I’ve found to be hugely effective in running meetings involving small groups. Between 2 and 6 people.

It has nothing at all to do with the agenda or the stickies or fancy brainstorming techniques. It’s simply about how you sit.

The Theory

Really and truly this all begins with Socrates and his peripatetic school of philosophers. He believed that walking about while talking was a better way of exploring philosophy because it forced people, even of differing opinions, to ‘walk to same path’ together.

Modern thinkers and researchers describe it differently but the principle is unchanged. Edward de Bono came up with the concept of “parallel thinking” which underpins the success of his 6 Thinking Hats method. The idea being that any subject under discussion has many facets including factual data, pros and cons and needs clinical evaluation as well as creative ideas. A group is more effective if they look at each of these facets in parallel rather than confrontationally. I.e. everyone first looks at pros together, then cons together, then facts, and so on. This gives the group a sense that they are exploring all facets of a subject together instead of arguing for particular points of view.

Anthropologists Tim Ingold and Joe Vergunst also deal with this topic in their book Ways of Walking in which they explore the value of friends “walking abreast” and the closeness and understanding that engenders. (I admit I haven’t personally read this particular book but I’ve had the detailed summary from my other half who works with him closely. Ingold’s stuff is worth reading by the way, particularly his book Lines: A bref history.)

The Practicalities

So how do you apply this in day to day life? It’s not alway easy to take your boss for a 30 minute walk in the Socratic fashion.

When you have a 1-1 meeting with a colleague or client, this is the default position most people take:

Subconsciously this sets us up a confrontational context. It is subtly reminiscent of interviews, strongly held opinions and power struggles. So many people fall into a non-collaborative mode of thinking focusing instead on oneupmanship and “winning” an argument.

A better way is to sit like this:

Sitting not quite side by side but not facing each other creates the feeling of facing a problem or decision together. You’re not staring each other in the eyes and you can see what each other is writing creating a sense of openness and trust.

For larger groups, you can create the same effect by not spreading evenly around a bigger table and instead clustering more closely towards one end:

These ideas work equally well in a variety of scenarios like team meetings, working lunches/meetings, 1-to-1 reviews and even interviews.

Trying it out

Is simple. The next time you have a meeting quietly move your chair to take up a position as I described above. There’s no need to make a big deal out of it. If its a bigger meeting and you’re chairing it simply ask attendees to politely come closer indicating where you’d like them to sit.

After you start doing this for a while it becomes easier and you’ll start seeing your meetings progress more constructively and collaboratively.

Full refund guaranteed. Just follow me on Twitter.

A wonderful video montage by “Camillu” perfectly capturing the essence of Malta by somebody who truly knows the islands.

Kien xi programm ta’ diskussjoni fuq Television Malta; na niftakarx l-isem ezattament ghalkemm ghandi amment li kien ta Lou Bondí. Forsi Pjazza Tlieta?

Dak iz-zmien konna nkunu ta spiss flimkien id-dar filghaxijiet naraw it-television wara l-ikla tal-familja. Hafna drabi dan kien jinvolvi xi Varietá fuq ir-RAI jew Canale 5 u fil-weekend dejjem issibna naraw Cinema in Famiglia u Domenica In. Pero ommi w missieri dejjem kienu jinsistu li naraw l-ahbarijiet fuq TVM u meta bdew jixxandru dawn il-programmi ta diskussjoni malajr saru parti mir-ritwal taghna. Allura ta tfal kont imdorri nisma, nara u “niddiskuti” grajjiet kurrenti u politika.

Izda f’dak il-programm rajt xi haga gdida. Dan ir-ragel li kien qieghed jitkellem b’mod differenti hafna mill-politici li naraw issoltu kellu caption mhux tas-soltu li kienet tghid “Hassieb u filosofu”. Sa dak inhar ma kontx naf li dak kien titlu li wiehed seta jaspira ghalih b’mod realistiku. B’dak il-mod stramb li certi memorji tat-tfulija jibqghu ittimbrati f’mohhok, dik l-istampa baqghet f’tieghi. Meta aktar tard f’hajti xi buffu (jew tnejn) qaluli “U ajma, mela int tista tkun XYZ”, dik l-istampa kienet tigi quddiem wicci u tghamilli l-qalb.

Izda lejn l-ahhar tal-programm smajt xi haga hafna aktar straordinarja. Il-Prezentatur saqsa lil Father Peter “Kieku kellek taghmel xi haga ohra b’hajtek x’kont taghzel?” Kwazi minghajr hsieb huwa rrisponda “Kont inkun buffu.”

Buffu? Father Peter elabora.

“Il-Buffu huwa dak ir-ragel jew mara li xogholu huwa li jdahhak in-nies. Mhux bil-bravura tieghu izda bl-inkompetenza. Dejjem lest li johrog fuq il-palk fejn xi hadd iehor ser jghaddi z-zmien bih. U dejjem jghamel dan b’dahka fuq wiccu anke jekk forsi m’ghandux dahka gewwa fih. Jista jkun li kellu gimgha hazina, li forsi ggieled ma xi habib jew tilef lil xi hadd li jhobb izda dan ma jzommux lura milli jpingi wicc ta ferh biex jaqdi dmiru lejn l-udjenza tieghu. Izda fuq kollox, il-Buffu, jaqa kemm kemm il-darba jaqa, wiccu fit-trab u fit-tajn, dejjem jerga jqum fuq saqajh u jkompli b’dak li kien qieghed jipprova jaghmel.”

Ghalkemm Father Peter ma kienx buffu ghex hajtu b’dan il-mod li ddeskriva tant snin ilu. Karriera bhal tieghu ma tigix b’xejn. U zgur ma ssehx jekk dak li jkun jaqta qalbu ma l-ewwel intopp.

Kwazi ghaxar snin wara kelli l-opportunita li niltaqa mieghu regolarment bhala ir-rapprezentant ta’ l-istudenti fuq il-Bord tal-Junior College. Fil ftit diskussjonijiet li kellna sibt fih li mhux talli kien ragel ta intellett kbir izda ta umilta kbira wkoll. Ta sittax il-sena min jaf kemm kont nghid, minghajr ma ndur mal-lewza, cucati. Izda dejjem tani wicc u sema x’kelli nghid bl-akbar serjeta u attenzjoni.

Nies bhalu, u bhall-Professur de Marco ma tantx kellna, jew ghandna, Malta. Nies li lesti jiddedikaw ruhhom ghal-hsieb, il-filosofija u kburija umli. Nispera li l-Maltin li kienu jafuh ma jinsewx l-ezempju tieghu u li fil-gejjieni ikollna aktar politici, akkademici, kittieba u hassieba li jgibu ruhhom bl-istess mod.

U nispera li Father Peter, skond it-twemmin tieghu, jerga jqum, ifarfar it-trab u jkompli jispira lill-istudenti Maltin.

——

English Version
Father Peter, the Clown
I must have been around eight or nine years old when I first saw Father Peter talking on TV. I’m not sure of the exact dates but it must have been around that time because we still lived in Rabat (making it late eighties) but newspapers were already being printed in colour (so post-1987).

It was definitely some discussion programme on TVM; although I don’t quite remember which one. It might have been Lou Bondí’s “Pjazza Tlieta”.

At that time our family used to often be gathered around TV of an evening after supper. More often than not we’d be watching Italian TV. My parents however were quite adamant on watching the local news and as these sort of programmes became more commonplace they also became part of our daily life. As a result my childhood tended to include political and current affairs “discussion” on a fairly regular basis.

However in this particular episode I experienced something new. This man, who spoke in a manner quite different to your average politician, had an unusual caption to his name. It read: “Thinker and philosopher”. I wasn’t aware until that point that that was a job title one could realistically aspire to in Malta. That image stuck with me in the way some childhood memories are wont to do and came back to me later in life at those points in time in which certain people would skeptically say that certain dreams are out of reach or just plain ridiculous.

Towards the end of the show I heard something else which struck me, at the time, as being even more unusual. The interviewer ask Father Peter “If you had to start over and pick a different career what might that be?” Without hesitation he replied “I’d be a clown.”

Seriously? A clown?

“You see, a clown is somebody whose job it is to make people laugh. However not through his cleverness but by his incompetence. He makes people feel good about themselves. He’s always prepared to go on stage where somebody else will be making fun of him. And he does this with a huge grin on his face, night after night, even if he’s possibly not laughing so much inside. But most of all, however many times the Clown may fall down flat on his face, he will always get back up, grin, and continue with the job at hand: giving his audience what they came for.”

Now Father Peter was no clown but he certainly tried to follow his own advice in this regard. A career such as his does not come about lightly after all; and certainly not if one gives up at the first hurdle.

Around ten years later I was lucky enough to run into him on a regular basis in my role of student rep at sixth form. In the few conversations we had I found him to be not only a clever man but a humble one too. At the age of sixteen God only knows how naive I must have been, especially when discussing student “politics” and college policy. He never once disregarded me and always made me feel like what I said was valuable to him.

People like him are rare in the world, even more so in Malta. People who are both deep thinkers yet in touch with life’s practical challenges. I hope that Malta doesn’t forget him too quickly and that those who knew him personally or were taught by him continue to be inspired by his work and ethos.

Above all I hope that he will get back up on his feet, grin and continue to inspire Maltese students now and in the future.

Brief back story…

About a year ago AOL acquired TechCrunch and as a result, less than a year later Michael Arrington was ousted over claims of a conflict of interest between tech reporting and tech investment. In the subsequent months we saw TechCrunch’s star bloggers MG Siegler, Paul Carr, Jack McKenna and Sarah Lacy leave the company. Now CEO Heather Harde is reported to have been fired as well. Erick Schonfeld has taken Arrington’s place as editor-in-chief of TechCrunch.

My unconscious reaction…

This morning I realised that my reading habits have subtly changed recently. One by one I’ve added Michael’s, Sarah’s, Paul’s and MG Siegler’s personal blogs to my RSS reader. I surprised myself when I fired up Google Reader this morning by hitting the “Mark as Read” button on the 50 or so TechCrunch posts and then proceeded to read every word on the other blogs.

The surprise was really my realisation that I’ve been doing this unconsciously for a few weeks now.

The thing is…

For the past two years or so, as TechCrunch has become exponentially more prolific, I’ve really been scanning their headlines to pick out the ones written by these authors. (The only exception being Alexia Tsotsis.)

Why? Well, the ‘tech reporting’ aspect of TechCrunch I can happily live without. Or, rather, I can get that very same info from any number of sources; including my colleagues at work who will excitedly scream at me in the morning that Microsoft has acquired Skype or that its totally ridiculous that some photo-sharing app has raised $40 million.

On the other hand, these 5 people have presented opinions: controversial, disrupting and insightful ones. Often openly disagreeing with each other right there on TechCrunch. They’ve looked at the landscape of tech and drawn patterns and conclusions that go beyond merely relaying the facts. I’ve not always agreed with them but they’ve challenged the status quo and made me think.

Companies you love to love…

I recently did some research back at the office into what we call “Customer Experience”. One of the folks we spoke to was TJay Belt, a long-time customer of ours who recently penned this blog post about us.

One thing I realised — or re-realised if that’s a word — is that as customers and users we attribute human attributes to organisations and if we like the organisation’s personality we can often literally fall in love with them. I love Google because despite their humungous size they’ve retained a visible engineering culture. I love Balsamiq because the company’s software and communications matches their founder’s and they’ve retained that despite the painful growth period of a young software company.

I used to love TechCrunch because their writings made me think, stimulated me to write myself and I could identify with the strongly opinionated approach taken by Mike and his gang.

You just need to look at AOL’s “company values” to see something terribly corporate, meaningless and impersonal. And as part of AOL, TechCrunch is slowly becoming impersonal, transforming itself into a useful but bland stream of facts.

I’m not unsubscribing from TechCrunch anytime soon but I hope that they manage to forge for themselves a new and distinct personality. Otherwise they will just become ‘another tech news site’, ripe for disruption by the next up and coming Valley smart-ass…

If you liked this post you should follow me on Twitter for more like this.

During his session he gave us some practical work to do in pairs and for doing so he distributed a small pack of “stattys” to each of us.

They are absolutely awesome!

They’re basically post-it notes that, instead of having a tiny adhesive strip along the top, attach themselves to a surface by some form of static electricity magic. You get 2 great advantages: 1) you dont get that irritating curly effect when peeling them off the pack and, 2) you can slide them around a surface easily with your finger.

Love ‘em.

Partly because they’re awesome and mostly because they show innovations are available to all of us even in the most ‘established’ products.

If you liked this post you should follow me on Twitter for more like this.

The speaker line-up was amazing as were all the attendees. There’s no way I can do the event justice in a meagre blog post however, while its all still fresh, here are my key takeaways:

1. Clay Christensen, author of the Innovator’s Dilemma, blew our minds with grounded stories of how companies can make all the ‘right’ management decisions right up until the point they die. The key lessons for me were:
• Try to ‘compete with nothing’. RCA ignored transistor technology because it’s high-end customers would never have bought inferior (at the time) technology. Meanwhile, Sony was selling $2 crappy portable radios to kids who otherwise would have had no radio at all. History relates who won.
• Companies have a life-cycle; and that includes decline and demise. An organisation set up for a particular business model can’t easily adapt to a new landscape. IBM survived 3 major disruptions by setting up completely new business units and giving them the flexibility to do things differently. Do this before you have a problem. It’s very likely that when you have a problem its too late.
2. Jason Cohen of Smart Bear passionately and convincingly advocated the value of honesty in business. Are you really the “leading provider of X” as your website claims? If you’re honest about your limitations – eg we’re only 2 people in our company; our software doesn’t have these features – then you set yourself up to be infinitely more believable when you describe the value that your company truly delivers.
3. Josh Linkner rivalled TEDster Ken Robinson in advocating the importance of creativity education both at a very young age and in mature companies. Creativity is a discipline that you can learn and become better at, and his ‘RoleStorming’ idea (amongst many others) sounds exceptionally good at removing inhibitions and unleashing people’s ideas.
4. Rory Sutherland, of Ogilvy Group, was probably my favourite speaker of the lot. With my design bias I found it exceptionally brilliant to see how a talented and experienced speaker can demonstrate to a bunch of engineers the supreme value of psychology in business. Rory based a lot of his talk on the Austrian School of economics – a longtime favourite of mine – to show how rationality is very often not the key driver of buying behaviour and how to leverage that.
5. Peldi and John Nese, the former of Balsamiqfame and the latter a non-software guy who runs a boutique soda pop store in LA gave us a frank discussion on motivation in business. My favourite quote was “it’s very easy to make decisions when you’re broke” which in everyday terms means: don’t rest on your laurels and some element of pressure is good for business.
6. Finally, the awesome Paul Kenny spoke about how to speak to customers on sales calls and how to close deals. Easily the most motivating session of the lot Paul had me itching to pick up the phone again and try selling to people.

I hope to write a bit more detail about a couple of these but in the meantime a huge well-done to Mark Littlewood and Neil Davidson for one of the best software and business events on the calendar.

If you only attend one conference next year, make it Business of Software 2012.

If you liked this post you should follow me on Twitter for more like this.

Anyone see the ironic contradiction?

I’ll write more at some point about this because it’s interesting.

In the meantime, get a copy of Small Giants dear Lawrence and have a good read.

My workshop, together with Chris and Helen, will be tackling how UX and Agile can work better together.

After some back and forth we came up with (what we think is) a pretty cool approach for this topic. That is, since we’re talking about Agile, why not run the session as a typical Agile retrospective?

Retrospectives are those meetings Agile teams have at the end of a sprint to review the past sprint and plan out ways – ‘experiments’- for improving the next one.

The only difference for our workshop is that the retrospective will be looking at the last 10 years or so of Agile + UX development rather than a wee two-week sprint!

Read the full post here…

As he explained over the phone round about May or so, ICON – already a leader in bespoke web development – is working on being more innovative and creative in the long-term. As part of this process they are inviting various people from different backgrounds to come and talk to the team about the experiences and challenges they face in business life.

Needless to say, I was very flattered to be asked and accepted very happily. So I spent an hour or so nattering away about some of my experiences working at Red Gate, including things like our Down Tools Week and why we organise our own learning events.

However, what I mainly wanted to write about is, how pleasant and genuinely refreshing it is to see this sort of approach to learning and knowledge sharing being taken by a Maltese company. As Edward de Bono correctly pointed out in a recent interview we have a tendency in Malta to “stand on our shores and look inwards”. More bluntly, because of our small size, we have a deplorable tendency to engage in petty wrangling, mud-slinging and a never ending game of one-upmanship.

With a very small shift in thinking ICON is doing something different in a very important way, both for themselves and for the Maltese entrepreneurial community.