Campaign Planning

Kindle

So for my birthday this year I received my first Kindle from my wife. I love it.

Indeed, it's just like this.

It's Hard to Make Predictions

Philip Tetlock is a professor of psychology and political science who set up a 20-year experiment that involved 300 experts in politics. He asked them to predict the future. And they didn't do very well. Those who assigned probabilities to rosey scenarios found out that those came true only 15% of the time. But the ones who assigned doomsday scenarios were only right 12% of the time.

For some reason I find some delight in learning that the doomsday-ers did worse, if only by a few points. It's comforting to know that, odds say, the negative and the dramatic are often incorrect. So it's probably good to use such doomsday speak as only a general guide for re-evaluation and prompting of further thinking.

In any event, the book Future Babble looks good.

Flip Thinking

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When it comes to education, what if we flipped around the way things were done? What if during the day students worked on their homework in class and then listened to the lectures at home? During the day homework would be done in collaboration with teachers and fellow students and then outside the classroom students would be responsible for watching the lectures over the web--on a computer, on a phone, on a tablet--however they wanted to. 

That's a terrific thought isn't it?

I first heard it while attending a speaking event by Kevin Kelly. (I'm right in the middle of What Technology Wants and enjoying every page.) After some further digging I found this great piece.

The education flip idea is in its infancy but it just seems like it has the potential to have a fundamental, positive effect on our education system.

Which got me to thinking... We think so much about the big questions that we sometimes forget to ask the basic ones. Big question: How do we improve education? Basic question: What if lectures were done at night and homework during the day?

Education has been around for thousands of years. And during that time scholars have been trying to figure out how to vastly improve it. But the education flip solution has only been possible within the last several years. It's the answer to a basic question, not a big one.

People have been asking the big questions about their industries for years. But the ongoing proliferation of accessible technology should perhaps encourage us to ask more basic ones. More flip thinking questions. Because there's probably a solution available now. And that basic question might, ironically, just be the one that answers the big question.

Pleasantly Thinking

Last weekend I found myself most re-centered and balanced. It happened through a combination of being up on the South Fork of the Boise River and spending time with two books. 

If you haven't been, the South Fork is a tremendous place for fly fishing. Truly one of the premier spots in the Pacific Northwest. I'm told fishing experts go below the dam where the fish are bigger and smarter while those less experienced typically go above the dam.

While others fished I mostly threw a muddy ball for the dog...

And I also caught up on a few books...

I had never read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations before. Above all I found it to be one of the most empowering books I've read in quite sometime. Yes, it's about economics. And yes it was written around 1776. But the primary takeaway is the power of individuals. The idea that people, overall, can be very similar but that it's our unique talents that set us apart. And when combined together our unique talents build nations.

Among men, the most dissimilar geniuses are of use to one another.

The work is about nations. But it's equally interesting to apply this concept toward everyone's own microgroups... How they too are equally enriched--like nations--when individuals within them are free to become their best selves. Could Wealth of Nations thinking and living also be applied to the wealth of friends, families, groups, companies and industries? I think so. If we're not differentiated within these groups, are we maximizing our potential and enjoyment?

Then I transitioned to perusing The Great Reset by Richard Florida. It talked about how, contrary to many re-occurring reports, our recent times aren't so much like the Great Depression of the 1930s but rather like the Depression before that in the 1870s. It also talked about how during Depressions huge amounts of innovation are bottle-necked.

Innovation does not slow down during crises, but because the economy is depressed, they tend to accumulate and bunch up. They then come bursting forward as the economy recovers.

Take for instance some of the inventions that were introduced immediately following the 1870s:  the gas-burning engine, the infrastructure of electricity, interchangeable manufacturing, the bicycle, the cable car, state colleges and the telephone.

Makes one think about what's bottle-necked now that will soon come rushing forward... In terms of marketing-related things I'm guessing it's probably around tracking, measurement and the connected world. 

I also really enjoyed this excerpt in the book from Fareed Zakaria regarding America's current state in the world.

This transition is defined less by America declining than by the rise of the rest. We're to look forward to a world economy defined and directed from many places by many people.

This philosophy, of course, ties right back to the premise in The Wealth of Nations. I love it when things tie together. Especially when they're centuries apart in their authorship.

And then when you read stuff like this in the outdoors you ponder it around a campfire in the evening...

So it all felt nice.

The Importance of Mastering the Fundamentals

"At the very center--the heart of the structure--is skill. Skill, as it pertains to basketball, is the knowledge and the ability quickly and properly to execute the fundamentals. Being able to do them is not enough. They must be done quickly. And being able to do them quickly isn't enough either. They must be done quickly and precisely at the right time. You must learn to react properly, almost instinctively."

From They Call Me Coach.

One of the best books on life, leadership and teamwork I believe there is.

Change By Design

Over the holidays I had a chance to read Change By Design by IDEO CEO, Tim Brown. If you are at all interested in design, creativity and how these things can influence business, you should read it. Pick up a copy here. Some highlights include the importance of prototyping, the role of a blueprint and finding "T-Shaped" people. These things can apply to every business.

But more about those later...

For today, the thing that stuck out most to me is the importance of Empathy. Or, in other words, truly understanding the business challenge from the mindset of users.

If you work in marketing, ask yourself: How often are you in the field? How often are you out watching customer behavior? My guess is, not often enough. Especially these days...

It's tempting to think that we are connected because we are reading consumer tweets and blogs. But that's only half of it... The small irony is that the more we stop and read the less we physically observe. And if there's one thing that comes screaming out of the case studies in Change By Design it's the sheer amount of time that was spent in the field by IDEO design teams understanding, talking with and observing the needs of people in the user environment prior to concepting.

So in 2010 it's important not to be solely focused on the screen in front of us... be it a computer a mobile phone or a Kindle. Look up, watch, listen and take the time to link things together.

Change By Design is about "Design Thinking." And while the definition of Design Thinking is pretty much the entire book it was summed up nicely at one point as "translating observations into insights and insights into products and services that will improve lives."

Good stuff.

Outliers: The Story of Success

Reminder: Next Tuesday, November 18th, marks the release of Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers. I'm a huge fan of all his stuff and the premise of this book sounds equally fascinating.

It seems the theme of Outliers is to uncover the commonalities of why certain people have become hugely successful, beyond just being really smart. I'd try to sum up all I've read about it, but it's probably best just to send everyone here.

The pre-order link on Amazon contains a 2 minute video of the author discussing the book... Pretty cool. I had never seen this before on Amazon, but maybe I've just been missing them. See it/order it here.

Gossage

I'm just about to begin reading The Book of Gossage. (Thanks Ben.) Hard to believe I haven't read it yet... but we can only do what we can do.
 
I'm a bit suspect considering the publisher misspelled Dan Wieden's name on the back cover. (That's a pretty big name to fumble.) But nonetheless, I'm looking forward to it. Quite frankly, it's been awhile since I've read a good ad industry book.

I'm excited to see how someone who ran a relatively small agency in San Francisco could achieve such notoriety and mystique. I hope to find 1 part Carl Ally,1 part David Ogilvy and 1 part Alex Bogusky. But we'll see.

Apparently, he would sometimes end an ad right in the middle of