Word geeks have long loved impressing our audience during demos by typing “=rand(x,y)” where x is the number of paragraphs and y is the number of sentences per paragraph. What it would do in version of Word through Word 2003 is repeat the sentence “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”

Not so in Word 2007. Now it uses this mundane and “helpful” set of Word instructions–boo. You’d think they’d just go with lorem ipsum if they wanted to use different sentences. Anyhow, the new result repeats the following paragraph over and over:

On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document. You can use these galleries to insert tables, headers, footers, lists, cover pages, and other document building blocks. When you create pictures, charts, or diagrams, they also coordinate with your current document look. You can easily change the formatting of selected text in the document text by choosing a look for the selected text from the Quick Styles gallery on the Home tab. You can also format text directly by using the other controls on the Home tab. Most controls offer a choice of using the look from the current theme or using a format that you specify directly. To change the overall look of your document, choose new Theme elements on the Page Layout tab. To change the looks available in the Quick Style gallery, use the Change Current Quick Style Set command. Both the Themes gallery and the Quick Styles gallery provide reset commands so that you can always restore the look of your document to the original contained in your current template.

I understand that this offers better demo text than repeating a single sentence, but I wish it could’ve been a little more creative. This is just begging me to write a new random generator that takes lines from Stairway to Heaven or The 9/11 Report or something like that…

Filed under: Technology, Word
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I’ve had a lot of debates in the last few weeks about motivation and incentives. From money to benefits to praise to penalty and everything in between I’ve been asking people what they do to make their employees (or partners, peers, and friends?) motivated. But before I delve into some of these conversations, I want to make sure I’m clear what we’re talking about.

When looking for a definition of motivation, it immediately brings up the controversies surrounding the topic–i.e., the difference between personality and motivation. From wikipedia:

Motivation is having the desire and willingness to do something. A motivated person can be reaching for a long-term goal such as becoming a professional writer or a more short-term goal like learning how to spell a particular word. Personality invariably refers to more or less permanent characteristics of an individual’s state of being (e.g., shy, extrovert, conscientious). As opposed to motivation, emotion refers to temporal states that do not immediately link to behavior (e.g., anger, grief, happiness).

In the business context, things get more muddied. At its most basic level, motivation is about a desire to get work done without having to push too hard. But invariably it gets into questions of quality of work, responsiveness, and helpfulness/proactive-ness. In other words, much as we want people to get things done, we want them to do things sooner than later, perform the work well, and genuinely seek out ways to stay occupied or improve things for the business. I know I’ve clearly just mired motivation with personality-traits like discipline, interest in quality, and loyalty…but how can they be separate? What would be the point of just getting things done if someone’s job is more than just cranking a widget? If it’s a high level task that has things at stake and many possible definitions of “completed”…?

And this again goes back to the wikipedia definition–there are issues of personality (which might arguably be considered nature) and issues of raw performance/throughput (which can sometimes be addressed through nurture aka incentives).

In conversations with peers about this, some brought up the point that it’s all about personality and that you can incentivize more work or new skills…but not a desire to do better or for the company to grow. Other issues were raised, such as how certain personalities may fit the skills or conditions of some jobs, and that those personality types actually go against some of the motivational aims. That is, people with a strong desire to please others aren’t necessarily the ones who can spend 12 hours straight on a single and at times monotonous project. There’s a big difference between the stereotypical techie/geek/engineer persona and the stereotypical salesperson or consultant. And there’s some basis to that.

So what is the answer to all of this? Can employees be motivated? Well, they can be given goals and incentives. That much is obvious. As for what kind of an effect monetary and psychological benefits can produce–well, I don’t know the answer to that.

Filed under: Business
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In the last day I have seen a couple of emotional reactions to business-related decisions–one by me and one by a peer. I hope learned a lesson, and if this lesson is not true then I may have difficulty accepting the alternative, much less positive outlook. Essentially the lesson is twofold:

1. People you regularly work with (partners, co-workers, clients) generally want something that will work for you as well as them, but often they’re not particularly adept at expressing their case
2. When dealing with these people, in almost all cases it’s better to proceed under the assumption that their intentions are good rather than react strongly when their expressions come off negative or threatening

In relationship psychology, John Gottman talks about the concept of positive sentiment override, or PSO. It basically states that the success of a relationship is directly related to how a couple interprets neutral events. The more likely a couple is to assume a positive interpretation of something that their loved one does and the less likely they are to react negatively, the more healthy the relationship is. The greater the likeliness to interpret an event as positive, the greater the PSO. The less likely, the less PSO.

Sometimes in our businesses we forget about PSO. We don’t assume the best because we’re allowed not to. Let me explain.

In a relationship, at least in our contemporary Western society, equality is idealized and there is a perceived obligation for the relationship to continue. In the workplace, while there is ideally balance and exchange, there is neither equality nor an obligation for the relationship to continue. We need business relationships to function this way because we need to be able to perform and effectively grow our businesses–with the right employees, partners, and clients. And at any time we’re allowed to dump one of them for another. While the stakes may be high, we’re allowed and expected to casually or directly end some business relationships.

But in the process, at least in the last day, I’ve seen where a little PSO would’ve helped us to see more clearly. In one case it was interpreting an email hastily and negatively. In another case it was questioning the motives of a business partner. In both situations the people involved reacted strongly and somewhat harshly to the other parties.

It would be naive and perhaps a little too forgiving to say that the other parties had been professional or appropriate in the way they’d gotten themselves into their positions. However, looking back, there’s no doubt in my mind that both parties had the all right intentions but just didn’t know how to express it. Neither party had done anything particularly egregious–they just approached business opportunities in a way that completely turned us off.

It didn’t become clear of the “lack of PSO” to either myself or my peer until discussing it with folks outside of the situations. But it did become clear. And I don’t think either of us were proud of our getting upset with the other party involved.

So I’m offering up the concept of PSO to you businesspeople out there, and I’m hoping that you’ll let it into your dealings with those who you work with… Good night.

Filed under: Business, Professionalism
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One of the problems being in a super small company is that a lot of decisions are made exclusively by the SBO (small business owner). But just because the final decision is made by the SBO doesn’t mean that the process of deciding needs to be an independent one. Here are two less obvious reasons for involving other people in the process:

1. A scheduled meeting may make the SBO show up with the research needed to make a decision at the meeting (i.e, s/he has a deadline for completing the research)
2. A meeting creates accountability that would not exist if the decision were made solely between the SBO and the SBO.

The result of these two items is often that a decision will be made sooner than it would have if the SBO had made the decision him/herself.

In the past (and to this day) I work with outside consultants and close friends to help make important decisions. But I don’t think I’ve relied on my coworkers enough for decisions that don’t relate to specific projects they’re involved with. For instance, when automating a client’s proposal process we might discuss what custom features that particular client needs. However, rarely will I sit down with coworkers to brainstorm what general features most proposal processes should incorporate.

As such, many of the bigger processes for SET (i.e., the things that don’t relate to specific projects but are still day-to-day operations) that I’d like to script out never get done. There’s not much push and I don’t like wasting people’s time outside the company with them.

The answer I’m suggesting here is to look at coworkers who are there anyways and bring them into these projects just like any other project.

I see that many of my larger clients decide everything in meetings. It’s not the best approach–taking people away from their work for a decision that’s not particularly relevant to them. But it does bring accountability into the picture and it alleviates procrastination.

I think that in the coming months I’m going to have more conversations/meetings with coworkers about things I’m working on–just to force me to make some decisions sooner than later. Even if I know I could do it myself, it’ll force the decisions to take place sooner. And, if all goes well, we’ll likely arrive at better conclusions and everyone will feel more a part of the team.

Filed under: Business, Productivity
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I hear people talking all the time about how different Word’s interface looks. But the skeleton of documents looks completely different as well. Here are some initial observations on the differences in default fonts/behavior:

Here’s how it looks:

This is a huge change. People aren’t used to having the cursor skip a line when they press Enter. (Even though After Spacing is more precise and better maintains consistency). I wonder how long it’ll take people to find this command:

On the one hand, they’ll find it and fix their problem…but then if they use it I think people are going to have trouble deciding when to use the Before command when to use the After command. I’m just afraid consistency is going to be difficult for people to achieve at first–when things are unfamiliar and the old way no longer ways.

Well, Microsoft, you’re certainly going to give me work as a trainer…

Filed under: Technology, Word
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