So, news... BoostCE (A Work-Related Post)

Excited to announce that my startup (Boost Customer Engagment) has finally exited stealth mode. I have started a consultancy aimed at helping companies improve their customer engagement.  Our approach is to first "fix email" - so many companies jump straight to Twitter and Facebook while neglecting the money-printing direct, just-in-time, mass-personalization potential of their email program.  

Every email that makes it into your customer's inbox is another little advertisement for you. Every email, another chance to interact, reinforce brand, provide customer service, engage, acquire, retain and delight.

Done well, your emails are an engaging, ongoing conversation. Of course, done well means an end to batch-and-blast, it means using what you know about your customers to your benefit (and theirs) and it means being intentional. We're all about using data, testing and measurement to increase engagement and keep customers coming back over and over again.

We're not going to pledge to do everything - for instance, check out our site - design's not our strong suit. You probably already have great designers who know your brand. We'll just help them create appropriate layouts for email. (Though I do know designers and web people and can help with referrals there as well for those who who are still on the sidelines trying to see if this internet thing is going to hit critical mass.)

So, yeah, that's the big news. I'm kind of excited. Our first engagement has come to us with some interesting challenges that we're tackling head-on around deliverability, mobile and keeping an audience engaged for repeat business in the desirable luxury necessity category. (Yep, that's a term I just made up, but I think it fits this business well.)

So please check out the site: http://www.boostce.com/

For my colleagues at big orange, there is no change to my "coworker of yours" status. I'll just be putting even more of my hours to better use. (Don't worry, TLHOA, I'll still mow my lawn.)

Nevertember Eleventeenth at 1:67 dm.

We were joking about fake dates the other day and "Nevertember" came to mind. I figured that I wasn't the first to think of it, but when I searched Google, I was surprised to find so few. (Or Twitter - one single entry?? Wow.)

Here is, of course, another great date thanks to our brilliant friends at Parks and Recreation:

"Bring Me Solutions, Not Problems" (A Work-Related Post)

I've been giving the phrase "Bring Me Solutions, Not Problems" some thought today, trying to figure out what it really means.

If you've ever heard the phrase uttered, or said it yourself, you probably had a very particular meaning in mind (the last one on this list). But how else might it be interpreted?

That's Not What I Meant! (Hopefully)

I don't want to hear your problems. // I can't be bothered with your problems. // I don't have time for your problems. - I'm overwhelmed - everyone's telling me their problems. I've got problems of my own and no one to take them to. I'm tired of it. Or, maybe it's just you. I'm not interested in your problems because I'm not interested in you. (You're whining, not bringing me a serious problem we need to solve for.)

I don't want to fix your problems. - I don't want to be involved. I want to keep my hands clean. If you fail, I'm not responsible. These are problems, but they're not problems for me and I don't care that they're problems for you.

I don't know how to fix your problems. // I don't understand your problems. - Your problems deal with a specialized subject that I'm quickly out of my element when we talk about.  Frankly, I'm uncomfortable talking too long about the subject, lest you uncover my ignorance and judge me for it.

I can't fix your problems. - You're right, that is a big problem. In fact, you regularly bring me intractable problems that I can't figure out the answer to. And I hate feeling like that. So don't bring the impossible problems to me.

Your problems aren't really problems. - Most of what you bring me aren't problems. They're easily solvable, we've solved them together in the past. You're not thinking broadly, clearly, you're not bothering to leverage past learnings or you're not stopping to consider the context of our business. The cost to address/solve isn't economical when compared to the cost of accepting as-is. This isn't a priority for the business/bottom-line/my scorecard.

Don't wait for me, just fix it. - If I solve your problems, you're not growing. I do not want you to grow complacent, to become trained to look to me to fix everything for you. I might not always be there, or waiting for me may cause unnecessary delays.


This is What I Really Meant

You are authorized, deputized and empowered to go forth and solve it. I will back your decision as long as you can prove you've thought it through. - This is what 100% of people will claim they intend when they utter this phrase. The problem, however, comes when people are not truly deputized, or if they feel micromanaged or that they will be second-guessed, challenged or that their solutions will be picked apart, dismissed or aborted. The person who truly means this phrase has developed a culture that rewards initiative, innovation, has a strong reporting/feedback structure so that when a solution isn't optimal, everyone learns from it to better inform future solutions.

There must also be a mechanism for bringing problems to light where the escalator isn't responsible for the solution - because it's not their area of expertise. Not silos, per se, but respecting areas of authority/responsibility.

Unless it's truly a bad boss, the ideal is somewhere in the middle: Don't bring me a problem you haven't thought through. Think about the problem, validate that it truly is a problem. Investigate some possible solutions. If you can execute the solution yourself, do so. If you can't identify the the optimal solution, then come to me. Bring me the clear, concise and well-articulated problem statement. Bring the recommended solution(s). Anticipate my follow-up questions as I seek to understand the problem, including business rationale and be sure to think about how it would impact me at my level, or how it would impact my boss. Be prepared to act upon the solution selected (or a new solution identified) by the boss. A well-prepared plan of attack will look like validation from your boss for the hard work you've put in.

But never should it be a reason to fail to bring problems to light nor should there be any whining.

Of course, all of this presumes something's not on fire. This is why there are procedures put in place in advance to guarantee consistent response when there's an emergency, including the notion that when a problem needs to be escalated quickly that one person attends to the problem while a second person is sounding the alarm.


Further Reading

Positive examples:

• Wholehearted Leaders
• Forbes
• Both Sides of the Table

Negative examples:

• Harvard Business Review
• Kellblog
• BusinessWeek
• Jamie Flinchbaugh

Your Turn

So... what about you? What do you hear when you hear the phrase "Bring me solutions, not problems."?

Book Review: Angelfall by Susan Ee

Angelfall by Susan Ee

Review by James Lamb (July 27, 2014)

I tried to give Angelfall a fair shake, but I ended up giving up. I had just finished Dreams of Gods and Monsters which is also about angels/seraphim but the contrast may have helped to underscore the difficulties I had with Angelfall. Angels have come to earth and been responsible for destruction and mayhem.

Penryn, her wheelchair-bound sister and her insane mother have decided that it's time to try to flee the city. They're the only ones left in their apartment complex and the gangs are getting more ruthless in their attempts to control territory. They wait until dark and then set out. No one in their right mind is outside at night because that's when the angels attack. They figure, however, that they might have a better shot than in the daytime when the gangs are more active.

Before too long, they encounter angels - who are busy attacking one angel. This is when it went south for me - the angels have different wing colors and are described as "snowy angel" (and "Snow"), "Burnt Angel" (and "Burnt"), "Night Giant" (and "Night") and "Stripes." I realize this is an attempt to describe a brutal fight scene and differentiate between characters from the point of view of a character who's trying to describe characters she doesn't know of a race of beings new to the planet, but it was just really distracting.

I did like that after things go horribly awry that the heroine makes a beeline for an industrial park, figuring there will be few people (or angels) there to contend with and there will be plenty of offices and kitchenettes where food may have been overlooked by looters. I love this, I must keep this in mind in the event of an apocalypse.

I really tried to give this a go, but after about 72 pages, it was too much and I had to set it aside - there were other books I could be reading and so it was time to move on.

The Sift (July 25, 2014)

Happy Friday. As always, five stories that caught my interest.

WEB URBANIST -- Shape-Shifting Furniture: Interactive 3D Surfaces from MIT

LIFEHACKER -- Build a DIY Sliding Door Bookshelf to Hide Your Secret Lair

ENDGADGET -- New York's next big neighborhood is its smartest

WEB URBANIST -- Gritty City: Dark Oils Capture Essence of Bustling Urbanity - neat artwork

HUFFINGTON POST -- 'Calvin And Hobbes' Kid's Bedoom Makes Us Want To Be Little Again (PHOTO, VIDEO)

Book Recommendations

I've been asked a few times recently for a list of books I'd recommend. Here's my current recommended list. These are all YA fiction unless otherwise noted.

The 5th Wave - Rick Yancey - Aliens (I just finished book 1, I think book 2 is out now but book 3 hasn't been released yet)

Divergent - Veronica Roth - post-apocalyptic Chicago, people live within four "factions" (books 1 and 2 are good, I'd skip book 3) - good pairing along the Hunger Games vibe.

Shadow & Bone (Grisha Trilogy) - Leigh Bardugo - Warring kingdoms separated by an artificial rift. A ruling class with special powers. Have completed books 1 and 2, will be reading book 3 next.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Smoke and Bone Trilogy) - Laini Taylor - a girl with a really odd job discovers that just about everything she understood about the world is wrong - these are amazing, each one an epic and really long. I'm on page 400 (out of 600) on book 3 currently and there's still new things being introduced, but in a way that makes sense, not as revisionist. Amazingly original.

Ruby Red (Ruby Red Trilogy) - Kerstin Gier - time travel runs in the family, attempting to unravel a mystery in multiple times

The Enemy (The Enemy series) - Charlie Higson - was supposed to be 3 books, but so popular that it's been expanded to 7, only 5 of which are out so far. Everyone over the age of 16 has become a zombie. Book 5 wasn't as strong as the previous 4, but they're hard to put down. Takes place in London so you can creep yourself out by going on Google Maps Street View and finding the places mentioned. We're thinking of bribing our friends in the UK to mail us copies since they'll get the new books many months ahead of the US release.

Enclave (Razorland Trilogy) - Ann Aguirre - really, book 3 could have been two books. Small pockets of humanity exist, eking out a meager existence in a world filled with zombies. I don't know if Charlie Higson's Enemy series had any influence on this, but the two worlds go well together without Razorland feeling like a derivative or rip-off. Solid.

The Looking Glass Wars (The Looking Glass Wars Trilogy) - Frank Beddor - The premise is that there really is a dangerous and mysterious place called Wonderland, that there was a girl named Alyce and that she was forced to flee to England. But Louis Carroll took her stories as fantasy, watered them down and profited from them as his own. An incredibly imaginative series.

Lexicon - Max Barry - words have power. People have learned to harness this power for good and evil. One phrase exists so powerful that if read or spoken aloud, it can kill. (Adult)

The Fear Index - Robert Harris - the investment firm's newest autmoated stock trading AI is so powerful that it's making trades before events occur. Or is its trades causing the events? (Adult)

Enchantment - Guy Kawasaki - A wonderful guide to influencing others without it being so overt. (Non-fiction.)

You can reviews for all about Looking Glass (not sure why I never reviewed LGW) here: http://tvjames.blogspot.com/p/books.html - I try not to spoil.

What about you? I'm always looking for recommendations. Please post them in the comments below!

How To: Delayed Sending for Outlook 2011 for Mac

All of the "Getting Things Done" time management experts will tell you to stop checking your email. (They'll also tell you to turn off the little alarm and any other popups or indicators that you've got new mail.)

This is all well and good... unless you work in a place with lots of email.  I would constantly find myself working through some email, and then new email would come in and I'd pop over and read and handle that and then get back to the rest of my email.  I've worked on some other tricks to help me prioritize (like using categories or moving email out of my inbox and handling it in a different folder) but still, new email would come in.  Another trick I'd use was to compose my message and save it as a draft to send later.  That would prevent someone from replying immediately like a hot potato, but it did nothing to stop the flood of new incoming email and worse yet, sometimes I'd forget to send the outbound email.

We recently transitioned to Outlook and with its connection to Exchange, mail delivery is near instantaneous, regardless of what the schedule says, new mail is pushed right away.

Delaying outbound email had several benefits - I could make changes to an email after I'd hit send and sometimes I'd rethink the entire email and delete it altogether.

I researched but could find no method for delaying email in Outlook 2011 for the Mac until I stumbled upon some AppleScripts.  With a little research, I stumbled upon a method that's worked really well for me.  I created a small script that sets Outlook into Online mode, syncs with the server, waits 5 seconds, flips into Offline mode, waits 600 seconds (10 minutes) and repeats the pattern.

This is a bit of a cheat - it means I could send an email and have it delivered seconds later if I sent it right before the sync. But it's good enough - new emails don't go out right away, new emails aren't pouring in constantly.

I just plugged this into the AppleScript editor and hit Run. I haven't done anything fancy with it, but it gets the job done.

repeat 100 times

     log "Sync at - " & (current date)

     tell application "Microsoft Outlook" to set working offline to false

     tell application "Microsoft Outlook" to sync

     delay 5

     tell application "Microsoft Outlook" to set working offline to true

     delay 600

end repeat

Caveat: If you're trying to schedule a meeting with someone or book a conference room, you'll need to flip back into Online mode first to see availability.

If this works for you, or if you have other suggestions, please leave me a comment!