by @berkun
business
Design: Show Your Work
Design can’t speak for itself any more than a tamale can take off its own husk. You’re presenting a solution to a business problem, and you’re presenting it as an advocate for the end users. The client needs to know that you’ve studied the problem, understood its complexities, and that you’re working from that understanding.
Stop trying to get your clients to “understand design” and instead show them that you understand what they hired you to do. Explain how the choices you’ve made lead to a successful project. This isn’t magic, it’s math. Show your work. Don’t hope someone “gets it,” and don’t blame them if they don’t—convince them.
Mike Monteiro in Design is a Job
Anyone who is the least bit connected to the design world needs to read Design is a Job. Too many people think design is solely the pixels on screen or the ink on paper, ignorant that design is all of the decisions and knowledge that lead to those pixels or ink.
Seriously, go read the book.
On Acquisitions
The thing you want to buy reflects a different way of thinking, which has value, but that difference is at odds with the culture you already have. Like an organ transplant, natural antibodies will fight against having the new organ fit in. And the more you do to force it in, the less of what you wanted to acquire in the first place remains. The vast majority of acquisitions fail for this reason. Few executives recognize the paradox, or think themselves immune to it.
Scott Berkun in The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work
Core Concerns & Fair Agreements
Here are a couple of my recent highlights from Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, which resonated with me.
Pay attention to “core concerns.” Many emotions in negotiation are driven by a core set of five interests: autonomy, the desire to make your own choices and control your own fate; appreciation, the desire to be recognized and valued; affiliation, the desire to belong as an accepted member of some peer group; role, the desire to have a meaningful purpose; and status, the desire to feel fairly seen and acknowledged.
Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties. (A wise agreement can be defined as one that meets the legitimate interests of each side to the extent possible, resolves conflicting interests fairly, is durable, and takes community interests into account.)
The book by Roger Fisher, William L. Ury and Bruce Patton has been an enjoyable read thus far, chock full of insight, while remaining easy to read.
The Capitalist’s Dilemma
Most theories of growth are developed at the macroeconomic level—at 30,000 feet. That perspective is good for spotting correlations between innovation and growth. To understand what causes growth, however, you have to crawl inside companies—and inside the minds of the people who invest in and manage them. This article (which builds on a New York Times piece Clay wrote in late 2012) is an attempt to form a theory from the ground up, by looking at company experience.
“How will they make money?” is the wrong question
A must read for product people, entrepreneurs and developers building “the next big thing”.