Month: September 2014

Change is hard

It isn’t said enough, I don’t think, that change – particularly in big organisations – is hard. Really hard!

If it wasn’t, it would be happening all the time.

At events there are regularly discussions that go on along the lines of ‘my boss just doesn’t get it’ – tales of woe where someone wants to do something new but is stopped by management or bureaucracy or a combination of the two.

What makes a someone a real force for change is the ability to get knocked back, dust themselves down, and have another go.

Again, and again, and again.

It won’t happen the first time, or the second time. It might not even happen at all in one organisation – you might need to move on to get the chance.

But nothing worthwhile is ever easy and if you’re committed to making a difference, you’ll recover from setbacks, never get too disheartened and keep coming up with new ideas, new strategies and new ways of persuading.

It’s easy to have a go and give up. The ones who make the difference are those who stick at it.

How to show utter contempt for your users

I was never a regular user of Whatsapp, the mobile messaging app recently purchased by Facebook for gazillions of dollors, but now I’m never touching the thing again.

Why?

Well, after a recent update, every single time I open the app, I am greeted with this:

Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge

It’s an annoying pop up thing telling me to turn on notifications for Whatsapp.

Only, I don’t want to. I’ve never had them on, and I don’t want them on now.

I cannot, however, turn off this nagging screen. It appears every time. It would appear the only way to get rid of it would be to switch on those damn notifications.

Well, that’s not happening. I won’t be bullied by software, for goodness’ sake!

So those few people i converse with on Whatsapp I will start to chat to on something else, and Whatsapp is gone from my phone.

If you’re looking for a replacement, Glassboard is a great bet. Not that well known and not overly polished, but a nice indie solution.

The lesson here is to let your customers use your system the way they want to, not the way you want them to – else they might just go elsewhere.

Update: the app store on my phone tells me there is a new version of WhatsApp is ready to download. And guess what?

wa2

At least they are listening.

Use what you already have

When planning a new project or activity, it’s easy to decide to get something new.

For instance, you might see it as the perfect opportunity to buy a cool web service to help you deliver this piece of work.

Or maybe you know that you could do a great job customising WordPress to do exactly what you want.

Hold on for a minute, though. What have you already got available to you that you could use to make this happen?

It might not be the perfect fit you would like in a perfect world, but it might be good enough. It might also come with a few advantages:

  • you can start work right away
  • no problems with access or other IT issues
  • your users will be more likely to be familiar with the way it works
  • there will be internal knowledge of the system to help you get stuff done

I’ve an example to share in a future post, where I resisted the temptation to do something new, and instead used what was already there and already familiar, in my work at the Department of Health.

Loving lurkers

I couldn’t agree more with Mozilla’s Laura Hilliger:

We can’t force people to participate, and if we really care about educating people, we shouldn’t try. We should build and design for the people who are participating, and we should be careful to ensure that the lurkers feel welcome. We should create safe spaces of learning and mentorship where even those who don’t complete the call to action still start to develop trust in us, in our products. The fact is you are always a lurker before you participate, so we should be careful not to push people away by implying that they don’t count if they aren’t like us. If we work to love our lurkers, maybe some of them will find their reason to participate.

Embrace constraints

Sometimes it’s better to embrace constraints. Why not even invent some?

Constraints don’t need to make things harder – they can make things easier.

Why take a year to deliver something if you can get it out of the door in months?

Constraints focus the mind, especially on what is important and what isn’t.

Say you’re handed a project at work. It feels like something ought to be delivered within six months. How about seeing what can be achieved in six weeks?

It might end up being a bit rough and ready, but there’s lots of pros to outweigh that con:

  • The positive feeling of having delivered something
  • The ability to get feedback from users on what you’ve done
  • Reducing the level of risk in the project

So rather than playing safe and asking for more time, more money, and more people, why not embrace some constraints and see what can be done quickly, cheaply and with a small group?

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