I’ve logged into Highrise hundreds of times, but the other day I logged in via the corporate preferred browser, Internet Explorer 6. I was surprised to be greeted by this splash screen, which concisely and clearly told me:
An excellent communication all the way around. Thanks 37signals for sweating the small stuff!
I enjoy most of the ads that Apple puts out, and a recent one, “Off the Air” was no exception. It had a line that gave me pause: PC guy said “fear of switching is the foundation of customer loyalty for PCs.” I wonder how much truth there is in it.
There are many valid reasons to change or not to change. But in all of my own observations, fear seems to be pretty consistent as the number one reason not to change in any situation. What has your experience been?
I’ve discussed multitasking before, but it was top of my mind after Merlin posted a quote by Eideteker:
Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.
Mr. Mann says:
“Multi-taskers” are really just splitting their time and attention into smaller slices than you; no one can really do more than one thing at a time.
Be sure to check out the related podcast episode on the topic, or the post How Doing It All Gets Nothing Done over at Get Rich Slowly.
Update: on a reread of the post, it appears that I said “Merlin” one to many times. It’s fixed now.
After the US just dedicated $1 Billion to Georgia (the country), Thomas Friedman writes for the Times how innovation, which is America’s “most important competitive advantage”, is not present in either political party’s conversation:
While we still have enormous innovative energy bubbling up from the American people, it is not being supported and nurtured as needed in today’s supercompetitive world. Right now, we feel like a country in a very slow decline – in infrastructure, basic research and education - just slow enough to lull us into thinking that we have all the time and money to play around in Tbilisi, Georgia, more than Atlanta, Georgia.
[...]
As Chuck Vest, the former president of M.I.T., said to me: “Both candidates have spoken a lot about ‘change,’ but in most areas of need, innovation is the only mechanism that can actually change things in substantive ways. Innovation is where creative thinking and practical know-how meet to do new things in new ways, and old things in new ways.
[emphasis added]
According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, to innovate means:
make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products : the company‘s failure to diversify and innovate competitively.
• [ trans. ] introduce (something new, esp. a product) : innovating new products, developing existing ones.
Zen Habits discusses embracing change in the workplace:
The traditional office work environment and tools are still around, but at a very rapid pace, they’re being supplanted by newer and better tools, newer and better ways of working. The old rules are being broken, and new ones are emerging.
You could call this the Workplace of the Future, as not all businesses have adopted these models, and it will be a few years before these new rules are the norm. But for many people (myself included), this is the Workplace of Today — there’s no need to wait for new technologies or tools, because they’re already here.
So you could wait a few years, resist the new trends, talk about how great things were back in your day … or you could embrace the new rules, and be a part of the change.
[...]
If a new technology or way of working is better, let’s go with it. That doesn’t mean we should just adopt things because they’re new and shiny and trendy — sometimes the old is actually better. But if the new ways are better, let’s embrace them.
There are some great specific examples pointed out in the article (cloud computing, collaboration, decentralized office, archiving over filing, small teams over large ones, single-task over multi-task, etc), and I’d highly recommend the read.
The one question I’ve always struggled with is: how do you prove the new way is better? What seems obvious to one person, often doesn’t to someone else. For example: I have had wi-fi at home for 7 years, but never had it at work (still don’t). Seems obvious and natural to use it, but then again, what exactly would the business value to wi-fi be? We have internet-connected computers at our desks, and wired access in the conference rooms … do we really need to loose the wires? What’s the value?
Of course, I’m being a bit facetious, but the question is serious. How _do_ you get a new way or new technology accepted in the work place? Putting together a return-on-investment paper on the value of something so common as wi-fi seems a bit ludicrous.
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