• Blue Skies
• Corporate Policy on Social Networks

[Highrise] worked great for keeping track of things associated with people I wouldn’t normally add to my Outlook contacts. But Outlook is such an integrated part of my day-to-day life, I have a difficult time imagining how Highrise could enhance that without weighing me down with extra effort to keep everything in sync.

I use it for a variety of things. Here are the highlights for me: 

Follow-ups

When I need a response from someone to keep a project moving, I blind carbon copy my Highrise email address (dropbox+tomorrow.xxxx@highrise.com or +thisweek or +nextweek) . This sets up an automatic to-do that will remind me later to follow up. And when that reminder does comes up, I’ll have a copy of the email at hand, their phone numbers right there on right side of the screen, and a full history of my communications with that person. Last year alone, I used it to track some 1,000 follow-ups.

Not just you, but your company

From any contact’s page, only a click away is the full history of all the conversations I’ve had with anyone at that company. I find that useful, especially when trying to keep track of hundreds of different conversations with people all over the country. This would be of high value for our team to coordinate communications since we all talk individually to our customers in the field. But for now, I just use it to remember my own conversations. 

Beyond companies, you can also create add-hoc groups by tagging people. Example: give me a all conversations with people from the local .NET user group, or all conversations with Sales Managers.

Track Important Topics

I also use it to track specific topics. For example, I have a Highrise Case that tracked all of the things around our kitchen remodel from last summer. Cases work well to group all project-specific conversations together.

Better than Outlook Folders

Folders are nice, but they have their limits. When you create a folder in outlook, you can only keep email in that folder.  Highrise lets you keep files, emails, and phone-call notes all in one, easily accessible place.

Anyway, I like it

And it seems to work well for me.

Many projects actually take longer to get started than they do to get completed once started.  Both times are delays to market and need to be shortened.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Here’s the part that so many companies that study Toyota miss: at Toyota they don’t believe that efficiency by itself can guarantee that Toyota will be a success. Instead, Toyota believes that its long-term success lies in its workers. It believes that the wisdom of its workers is what will allow it to improve.

Since its workers are its knowledge repositories, Toyota takes the time to invest in its workers and in its organizational capabilities. This is not a one-way street. Instead, Toyota is also open to new ideas no matter where they come from: production, development, sales, etc.