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Years ago, when I was running my own little web business, one of my clients was a car insurance company. We designed their website, but had inherited an online quoting system written in approximately 100,000 lines of terrible Perl code.

Every few months, my client would send me updates that required me (back in my programmer days) to dive into this horrendous tangle of if-then conditionals and half-assed subroutines. In short, it was a mess. But their business depended on it.

One day, I got a call from the president of the company. He accused me of holding their website hostage because I wouldn’t let their marketing person, Becky, update the quoting system. Becky was very nice and I’m sure she was quite good at her job, but she wasn’t technical and there was no reason she should be plunged into code. I tried to explain why this was a bad idea.

“You don’t think she’s smart enough?”

I pointed out that it was a specialized skill and I’d been programming for many years – and it was hard enough for me to do it.

“You don’t think she can learn?”

I grasped at straws. Knowing that he was a car collector and had a full-time mechanic on his staff (to work on their beautiful showroom of classic vehicles), I asked him,

“Would you ask her to work on the engine of your car?”

He immediately responded with an emphatic “hell, no.” From there it was easy to connect the dots and convince him it was in his interest to keep Becky out of the code and leave it to the professionals.

The right job, the right tools, and the right person.

Since then, I’ve learned a valuable metaphor. If you need to hammer a nail, chances are you can learn how to hammer a nail. If you need to cut down a tree, you might learn how to use a chainsaw. But it’s a lot more dangerous. You can hurt yourself. It only takes a small slip-up to do a lot of damage. And it certainly takes more training. At some point, it’s better to pay someone else to do it for you.

Note: I know very well that the word is spelled résumé but for whatever reason my blog won’t display the é character unless I explicitly state it with an HTML entity code . Argh.

I’ve been doing a lot of hiring lately. This time around, I took careful note of the factors I considered as I reviewed resumes, interviewed candidates, and made decisions. If you’ve read the book Blink or had to pore over dozens or hundreds of job applications, you’ll know what I mean when I say that decisions are often made very quickly and sometimes arbitrarily. But it can help to be aware of your process and biases, which is what I’ve documented here.

1. Scan resumes

Look at the overall look and feel of the r̩sum̩. You can often tell where the applicant falls on the designer to programmer spectrum. See what info they put in the headers Рusually name, address, phone, email. If they have a Hotmail email address, go no further. Generally not good: comcast.net, sbcglobal.net. Better: gmail.com, yahoo.com. Best: Your own custom domain name. Why are some email addresses better than others? They tell me whether the candidate fits into the culture. A web candidate with his or her own website and domain name is more credible than one who slapped together a MySpace page and listed a Hotmail address.

2. Resume content

Check out their most recent two or three jobs and see what they’ve done. Look for specific URLs to check out. Scan their education, but I don’t really pay much attention to this. The best have a wider array of experiences with different web technologies and kinds of projects. The current job market is tough, so I don’t put a ton of weight on this. Some great people are jobless or have been working outside the industry and I won’t count it against them. Keeping busy and being involved are good signs of a self-motivated candidate.

3. Portfolio or sample links

This is a major part of how I decide. Quick glance at the sites or pages, and the next step is to View Source and check out the code. It takes five to ten seconds to see whether it’s decent code (semantic, web standards, no tables for layout) or not (tables, software-generated, etc). Show me your best work and I will mentally rank you on a scale from 1 to 100. This is important – I’ve already decided where on that scale I need to hire. If I’m looking for someone with relatively little experience (maybe a 30) and your work suggests that you’re a rising 60, my next thought is whether I can afford you. But that’s a good problem to have.

4. Look for a trail on the web

Do they have a website? LinkedIn? Twitter? If they’re out there, they’ve left a trail. This can be tough if it’s a common name, but this industry involves a good deal of self-promotion and if you can’t be found you’re not doing a very good job. Blogging is hard work, and someone who has invested that time in their professional development is bound to continue it after being hired.

5. What have they done?

If I’m hiring a designer, I look for little signs - good padding, decent typography, etc. Not that I’m skilled at these myself, but I do recognize some good design work when I see it.

For developers, I look for contributions to open source projects and the source of any pages they’ve posted. I tend to be pretty lenient on these.

6. Ask loaded questions.

I’m not psychologist, but it’s worth paying attention to how people answer the questions you ask. For instance, I like to ask about how they would solve a problem they didn’t know the solution to. A good response involves knowing how to find the answer. Self-determination is a good thing.

7. My favorite question: Tell me a joke.

I don’t ask this in every interview, but for some jobs and some candidates it can be a very helpful test. I simply ask the candidate to tell me a joke. The response is very informative. How quickly can the candidates think on their feet? Is the joke appropriate? What’s their personality? What’s their delivery style? Do they have a sense of humor? I don’t count this against people usually, but I certainly give major props to those who can handle it. When I’ve asked this and other people are in the room, they are usually horrified that I would do this to a candidate.

Process

Hiring takes a lot of time. Reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, conducting phone and in-person interviews, etc. are all time-consuming. I like to try and make a choice as soon as possible, paring down candidates quickly and decisively. 50 resumes might turn into five phone interviews, and that may lead to 2-3 in-person interviews. Or I may have a clear choice after conducting phone interviews, and may only proceed with one candidate.

So how do you get a job on my team? Let your work speak for itself and make sure your resume isn’t the only way I can evaluate your reputation.

On my non-profit blog I write a lot about strategic planning. But it’s clear that most people don’t understand what a strategic plan is or why it’s important.

Strategic plans aren’t just for big organizations. They are useful to departments, small groups, or even individuals in their personal or professional lives.

What the heck is a strategic plan?

It’s a roadmap. It lays out the vision – here’s where I want to go – and the strategy – here’s how I’m going to get there.

It’s made up of some simple parts:

• Mission: What do I do?
• Vision: Where do I see myself?
• Strategies: How I’ll get to my vision.
  • Strategy 1
    • Specific steps I’ll take.
    • Measurements: How I know I’m on my way.
  • Strategy 2
    • Specific steps I’ll take.
    • Measurements: How I know I’m on my way.
  • Strategy 3
    • Specific steps I’ll take.
    • Measurements: How I know I’m on my way.

The hardest part of a strategic plan isn’t producing one, it’s deciding on the vision, strategies, and measurements. Strategic plans can be simple one page summaries of the mission, vision, and strategies. Or they can be long, detailed specifications of the exact process. I prefer the simpler versions – they’re easier to produce and convey.

Why do I need a Strategic Plan?

The whole point isn’t to have a strategic plan, it’s to execute it. But most people go through life without a stated vision or strategies for getting there. Stating your goals (vision) and the steps you’ll take to accomplish them are a critical part of achievement.

Some Tips

Think big. It’s OK to want to conquer the world.

Get over the constraints in your vision. What would you do if you won the lottery? What do you want your legacy to be? The answers to those questions should inform your real vision and strategies.

Get input. Bring others into the process – including outsiders – to provide feedback and insight into the plan.

Share your plan and progress. If you make a plan and it collects dust on a shelf, it’s worthless. So tell people about it. Have update meetings to share your progress. Celebrate your victories. This is how you can be accountable, and without that you’re wasting your time.

I’ve been working with clients since college. I’ve always had a client-service type of job, working on projects of all sizes. And I’ve learned a few things about how to do great work – in spite of the difficulty of working for clients.

1. Set Expectations

The absolute key to customer satisfaction is expectations. Always meet or exceed a client’s expectations. Some people translate this into “under-promise and over-deliver” but that’s a load of crap: do you really want expectations set that low? A real rockstar “overpromises and overdelivers.”

2. Let the Measurements Speak

Having measurable outcomes is key to real success. If you don’t know what you’re shooting for, you won’t know if you got there. This comes in really handy when meeting with clients and trying to overcome a conflict. Defer to objective measurements – analytics, surveys, whatever you can.

3. Be Prepared to Compromise

This doesn’t mean you have to compromise your principles, it means you have to pick your battles. Sometimes it really doesn’t matter. After all, the project isn’t about your ego or portfolio. The best battles to fight are the ones where personal opinions (subjective) are putting success of the project at risk (objective).

4. Educate

If people fear what they do not understand and they oppose what they fear, then education is the first step to changing minds. But you can’t just make it up or you’ll lose credibility. If you know what you’re talking about and can speak intelligently and decisively then you can build a case for your point. Even better, teaching sets you as an authority.

5. Find Common Ground

At some point, you may find yourself disagreeing simply to disagree. After taking a contrary position, it may not be that you’re truly opposing each others’ positions. If a person closes his mind, he may not agree to anything. The key here is to find something to agree on. Agree to come back to that issue later. Focus on another area for a while. It doesn’t always have to be project-related, either. If you both agree that the sky is very blue today, it might help open minds enough to revisit the point and shift perspectives.

6. Test it out

In web projects, usability tests or A/B testing (Google Site Optimizer) can be the easiest way to win an argument. Cut the argument off and agree to go whichever way the test leans. If the overwhelming result is in your favor, great. But be prepared to lose this battle if the test goes the other direction. Whatever you do, don’t invalidate your testing process by ignoring the results when they don’t suit your own opinions.

7. Offer Something Extra

If you are finding it difficult to find common ground, you can also make outlandish promises and then keep them. “I promise I will do an extra mockup for free” can knock people off-guard and leave them with very little to argue about.

8. Apologize

An apology is the great defuser. It doesn’t have to be personal or intentional – if you fail to meet the client’s expectation then sometimes an apology is what’s called for. No, it won’t make things right – but it can clear the air and get the client back on the same side of the table.

It’s Not Really About Winning

After all, winning in the conference room is not about being right and the client losing. It’s about both of you winning: doing the best work for the client possible, achieving their goals, and still being proud of the work when all is said and done.

Sometimes I think about what it would have been like to be born hundreds or thousands of years ago, when so much of our taken-for-granted world was yet-to-be-invented.

Would you have been able to grasp the concept of gravity? The number zero? Basic geometry? What would it have taken for such a breakthrough?

Up until the late 19th century, technology seems to have advanced quite slowly. Innovations where largely physical and each new scientific consideration could create thousands of new products or technologies. From my (admittedly limited) perspective, improvements were few and far between.

It’s long baffled me that innovation and invention have accelerated so fast since then. We had the 1870s discovering the telephone and alternating current. Within 30 years, we had the radio, automobile, airplane, submarine, photography, and dozens of other huge improvements. How many things were invented between 440 A.D. and 470 A.D.?

Now flash forward to 1970: what major inventions have happened since then? TONS! You can see from this Wikipedia Timeline of Invention that the last century has competed with most any other period from our past.

So why is it so hard to invent something new? Because new creations require a substantial knowledge of the current technology, a process for developing and testing your work, and the resources to make it happen. Invention isn’t necessarily an epiphany: it’s a slow trudge through failure to find success.

Grad school is a great place to start inventing: you’re acquiring the knowledge, have access to tremendous tools, and a funded Ph.D. program will pay you to do it. It’s not a perfect scenario, but it’s an opportunity that’s hard to find elsewhere.

This line of thinking inevitably leads me to the future; what might be invented in the next 5, 10, 50, or 100 years? And what can I contribute?

Most people hate cold calling. Even if you can turn your connections into a visit or a phone call, you’re still starting off with nothing: no reputation to precede you, no interest, no warm lead. Chances are, you’re walking into a cold brick wall—someone who knows they’re going to humor your sales pitch.

This is the trick I’ve used to overcome the cold call and turn it into a warm – or even hot lead.

It’s a pretty simple phrase, actually:

“Let’s take a look at what your competitor is doing.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to Roy’s Hardware or a Fortune 500 company: people are competitive. If they’re best in the industry, they are desperately looking for something to help them keep their lead. And if they’re not the leader, then the customer is going nuts realizing that their competition is winning.

I used to go into a sale from the angle of “here’s how I can help you.” But that implies that the customer needs you to fix them. People don’t like feeling broken.

The competitor angle speaks to a more definite urge. You’re on the same team, now. Their competitor is your competitor, and your expertise can help the customer kick their butt.

As a web marketer, I’d pull up the competition’s website. I’d make notes of what they did right and what they did wrong. I’d make lists of search keywords that the competition performed well on. Where they were winning. I’d make careful note of their weaknesses.

The competition’s weaknesses are opportunities for your customer. They’re positive things they can focus on.

When you call or visit your prospect, start off by making informed assessments of their industry. Ask if they saw what they competitor has been doing recently. Ask how much time they’ve spent on their competition’s website. Mention the competition by name.

That’s when you tell them you can help them beat (or extend their lead on) the competition. Now you’ve got key points from your research to carry it on to the next meeting. Don’t give it all up then – use this newfound interest to schedule your first meeting, make a presentation, send more information about your business, etc.

What’s the difference between inventors Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Edison?

Da Vinci created. Thomas Edison innovated. Edison (and his team) methodically processed hundreds or thousands of options for filament materials until they arrived at the best result. They prototyped, tested, revisited, and revised.

(Flickr Photo by Sam the sham)

Innovation isn’t luck. It’s a process. Even when the figurative light bulb pops on, the idea needs nurturing and development before it can be carried out.

The Ground Rules of Innovation

1. Generate ideas first, evaluate ideas later.
2. There are no bad ideas. The worst ideas are often stepping stones to good ideas.
3. Nobody owns an idea. Evaluate ideas on their merit, not based on who came up with them.
4. Be inclusive.
5. Maintain the team.

The Right Team

Who can be innovative? Everyone. Creativity can come from the most unlikely people, given the environment and framework. It’s better to be inclusive. Innovation requires different thinking, and an approach from the outside is a great way to help spur a change of perspective.

More importantly, the team needs to work well together. If team members don’t value each others’ ideas, refuse to contribute, or overpower the other members, remove them. Get the right people on your team, and get rid of the wrong ones.

The Process of Innovation

A process can draw innovative thinking out of the furthest corners of our minds. It’s an iterative process: one idea builds on the last.

Step 1: Start with Something

Take something familiar and start there. What could you do to change it? What would make it better? What might improve on it? It’s really hard to start from scratch. A blank canvas is creation; innovation is about incremental improvement. A starting point gives you something to react to, to build upon.

Let’s imagine we’re starting with a simple square. Changing a square is easy – add some colors, change the width of the lines, etc.

Step 2: What are the factors?

Identify the individual factors that make up your starting point. List them all out.

• A square has four sides
• Connected at 90 degree angles
• The sides are all equal in length
• The inside of the square can be filled with color
• The square can be rotated to any angle

Get as detailed as possible. Don’t take anything for granted, such as the fact that a square is two-dimensional.

Step 3: What factors could you change?

Go through your list of factors and ask how you might change them. How would it affect the square? Could you combine these changes?

Obviously, we could switch up the colors and lines, as we figured above. But we could also change the length of the sides (a rectangle), angles (a parallelogram or trapezoid), or replace the colors with a texture or anything you like. Let’s add another side (a pentagon).

Step 4: Go nuts

What about the off-the-wall ideas? Here’s your blank slate. You’ve already identified incremental improvements, but you’re not limited to small changes anymore. What huge changes or new ideas could you try?

So forget about our square. Let’s throw a bunch of sides in there, and make it three-dimensional. Let’s add gradients and make it bigger. A little big of texture… And voila: dodecahedron!

Application: The Real World

It’s important to apply this process within the real world. Combine your idea generation with research, customer input, and testing. Prototype, apply, revisit, and revise. Edison’s team would revisit their experiments and tests once they acquired new information.

Acknowledgements

Much of this post is borne out of a fantastic seminar put on by Linkage. I’ve spent a month kicking these ideas around and letting them settle before trying to share them.

Seth Godin writes about being irrationally committed

Entrepreneurs who are irrationally committed to their business are far more likely to get through the Dip. Salespeople and service providers and marketers who are irrationally committed to customer service can completely transform an ordinary experience and make it remarkable.

He’s right…sometimes. Sometimes, irrational commitment pays off. Sometimes, buying lottery tickets wins millions. And sometimes, irrational commitment is what’s needed to make real breakthroughs.

But most of the time, irrational commitment results in bankruptcy. It results in losing good clients because you’re irrationally committed to the wrong customers. It’s why people refuse to lower the selling price on their overpriced homes. It’s also why I tend to get lost when I make a wrong turn and feel like my destination is just over the next hill (when it’s actually behind me).
It only works out for you when you’re right.

By the way, this ‘newly-coined’ phrase is just a synonym for the sunk cost fallacy.