Seth Godin's 3 laws of great graphs

I couldn't have written it better. Master marketer Seth Godin has three laws of great graphs:

1. One Story

A single story, one story per chart. "Oh," the attendee says, "our costs are going through the roof!"

2. No Bar Charts

The problem with bar charts is that they should either be line/area charts (when graphing a change over time, like unemployment rates) or they should be a simple pie chart (when comparing two or three items at the same scale).

3. Motion

Here's the surprising one: You should animate your charts.

Interestingness: The Reptilian and Limbic Minds

Lizards have a brain, which we can refer to as the reptilian brain. Rats have the same exact brain, except with more crap on top of it, we can refer to this as the Limbic brain. Humans, have the same brain as rats, with even more crap on top of it, the Neocortex.

• The Reptilian: SURVIVAL! This section of the brain is all about survival: Food, shelter, and fight or flight.
  
• The Limbic: FEELINGS! This section is all about emotion. Feelings of love, anger, passion.
  
• The Neocortex: LOGIC! The boring, rational, 'thinking' part of your brain.
  

The brains are listed strongest to weakest. When more than one brain is 'talking' humans tend to listen to the stronger one. When you feel highly passionate about something, it will trump your better judgement. If you are starving, your not going to be feeling very adoring.

One very important note is that humans will rationalize everything, and even if they are listening to the reptilian or limbic brains, they will rationalize and give a logical reason for their behaviors.

20Something TakeAway:

Appeal to people emotions whenever possible. Be passionate and enthusiastic. It appeals to the stronger limbic brain instead of the weaker neocortex.

Use this interestingness:

When you are giving feedback to others. (Don't just tell me it's important, make me FEEL it's important.)

Source: Made to Stick

The magic beans behind reaching your potential.

A reader of this blog sent me an article from the NYT called If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow

Those who believe they were born with all the smarts and gifts they’re ever going to have approach life with what she calls a “fixed mind-set.” Those who believe that their own abilities can expand over time, however, live with a “growth mind-set.”

Adopting either a fixed or growth attitude toward talent can profoundly affect all aspects of a person’s life, from parenting and romantic relationships to success at school and on the job.

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I found that as I dedicated myself to actively growing my career, I started succeeding in my personal life as well. The same traits that lead you to corporate success also apply to your personal life.

20Something TakeAway:
Mindset has everything to do with succeeding. Be positive and be willing to overcome your self doubt and push yourself. We as a generation are nowhere close to reaching our potential yet.

Interestingness: Homo Economicus vs Homo Sapiens

Homo Economicus is the economic man. One who always uses logic and reason to make decisions. One who never forgets to pick up milk at the store, or call his mother. Contrast this to Homo Sapiens, who often make mistakes and forget anniversaries.

Use this piece of interestingness:

1. When people are being over logical.
2. When people assume that rational decisions will be made.
3. You make a mistake.

Source: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Interestingness: Purple Cow

The "Purple Cow" concept is about being remarkable. Nobody stops when they drive by a herd of cows, but they would certainly stop, take pictures, and talk about a purple cow.

The big take away is being remarkable is better than being perfect. Remarkable is defined as 'worth making a remark about' -- NOT being good or excellent.

I wear a studded belt when giving presentations. Why? Because it's remarkable. It's not necessarily better than wearing a regular belt, but it certainly makes people remember me.

20Something TakeAway:
Think of ways you can be remarkable (hint: interestingness is one way). It doesn't have to be good or bad, but just worth making a remark about.

Use this piece of interestingness:

1. When you are proposing a new idea.
2. When complimenting a peer on something remarkable.

Source: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. Seth Godin

Interestingness as your competitive advantage

Being interesting should be one of your greatest assets in the workplace. Remember, we shouldn't directly compete with others (boomers and Gen Xers) on domain knowledge, but know a little about a lot.

This has a huge benefit to your interestingess level. Basically, anything that makes you seem interesting and knowledgeable. Don't you think it would be fun to work with someone who is filled with fascinating proverbs, business concepts, stories, and anecdotes? Done right it can even be your personal competitive advantage / personal brand.

However, telling stories is only effective if you can relate it to the situation at hand. If you tell stories but nobody can understand how it relates, you are wasting your time!
Being interesting really helps build your political capital. If you are in a meeting with management, one way to make sure everyone remembers you is to tell relevant stories or interesting facts.

When people talk about too much data, I tell the story about the space shuttle Columbia. When a meeting takes place on how to deal with a spoiled client, I tell the story of the man who drank wine and forgot the taste of water. When our company makes a mistake, I bring up how Lexus turned a defect in their flagship car into the launch pad of the biggest luxury car brand in existence.

The benefit of telling stories?

• Be more interesting
• Be knowledgeable about many different things.
• Stimulate discussion in meetings and discussions.
• Helps you network, because it demonstrates that you can provide value.
• Hear great stories in return!
• Helps you make friends.
• I have collected many examples that I use, and moving forward I will start posting them.

20Something TakeAway:

1. Relate stories from disparate industries to your own situation. It may take some creativity, but it is great for your interestingness level.
2. You can tell stories in the positive (We did a great job just like company X) and the negative (Let's sure we avoid what company X did) or just to stimulate conversation (company X did this, can we draw any lessons from that?)
3. You will know when you are being successful in story telling. People will say, "Wow, I hadn't heard that before" and will come out and say that you are full of interesting things.

Comment Roundup: The IN crowd, acquaintances are better than friends, etc.

You guys are leaving great comments! First off when I blogged about networking while waiting in the iPhone line, Ryan Fehr said...

It's more useful for job search to have a lot of weak ties (people you know only a little) than a strong redundant network where everyone knows each other, since weak ties provide you with access to new people, jobs, etc.

And...

Promotions are predicted by forming ties with people in the dominant coalitions of organizations, not just anyone who happens to be around.

I can't agree more with both points.  Your regular crew does not really provide any new opportunities, since you already know everyone they know!  The weak network is where it's at. Spend time expanding your weak network instead of solidifying already strong relationships.  Remember, switching jobs is the name of the game when your 20Something, because with every job hop comes a raise!

Just like in High School, there is the cool crowd and the losers.  And, just like high school, you want to be in the cool crowd. 

When I blogged about the Naysayer, Jeff Yang said...

In a previous post you say to seek out the Naysayer, but in this post you say not to be the Naysayer.  I agree with both actually.  The Naysayer is beneficial, but can hurt their careers by doing so.

I wonder if there's an area in the middle where you can get the positives but not the negatives.  Maybe it should be something like "be willing to give frank advice and opinions, but only if the recipient wants you to"?

Terrific point.  I would add that their are much better ways to give negative feedback without being the Naysayer.  You should never be the naysayer, but instead be the realistic optimist.  Always give feedback with "Yes, and" approach instead of the "No, but" approach.  This is a topic for another post however.

I gave some tips on creating a presentation. Jenelle responded with a great tip...

If you have a picture, anecdote, quote, etc. from someone in the audience that you know will be in attendance, try to add it in. When used in the correct manner this can ensure greater credibility and relatability. Find a way to relate to one audience member, especially one this is liked, well-known, or influential, and you have a better chance of gaining clout with the rest of the audience. This is especially helpful when you have to deliver a persuasive presentation.

I talked about texting as a fundamental shift in communication patterns.  Yao said...

It's getting to the point where alternatives [to texting] are both cheaper and more flexible... if both parties have push email or instant messaging, there's no point to text messages!

The power of texting comes from two things, its disposable nature and its 144 character limit.  The first lowers the psychological barriers to sending, because it goes away instead of being recorded 'forever' in the case of email.  The second forces people to be concise.  It's much harder (but much more useful) to be concise than long-winded, and being limited to 144 characters forces people to get to the point.  Give people the option to type as much as they want and it looses its effectiveness.

Thats all for now.  Keep the thought provoking comments coming!  You can also email me at bruceyang [at] gmail [dot] com.

"They only text to rebel against me!"

While flying into Europe, I overheard the gentleman sitting behind me talk about his children, which were Gen Yers.  He was complaining about how his children love to text and expressed that they would prefer to text than to talk on the phone.  He was going on and on about how he can talk on the phone way faster than they could text.  Finally, he concluded that his children were only texting in order to rebel, saying that as long as they were doing something different than their parents, they were happy.

I was pretty taken about that this person though that people only text in order to do something that their parents didn't do.  To me, texting shows a fundamental shift in how humans communicate.  Historically, the phone was used to communicate, and you would have to hold everything that happened during the day in your head until the next time you placed a call to your friends.  With texting, now we can communicate instantaneously.  I see texting as a less urgent way of communicating than phones are.  Texting is a hybrid communication device between placing a call (urgent) and meeting in person (not urgent).

The second thing that texting shows is another fundamental shift in communication.  This is a shift away from "planning" and a move towards "coordination".  In the past people would spend hours planning something, i.e. meet me at 5:45 sharp at the left hand pillar in the sculpture garden.  If something happen, your only alternative was to wait and hope they arrived.  Today, planning is out, and coordination is in.  You make tentative plans to meet and do something this evening.  As the day goes on, you periodically get in contact (texting) and make sure your on track.  Then, when both parties are prepared and ready to meet, you text, 'leaving now, see you in 30'.  And again, when you get there a quick text 'Here! where are you?' 

20Something TakeAway:

1. As we shift into a coordination driven society, it's important to realize that many Gen Xers and Boomers are still in the 'planning' mindset.  Usually, they feel uncomfortable with "winging it", which is what we call 'coordination.'
2. Older folk will immediately discount you all the time.  You can see that gentleman on the plane's first come from is to discount texting as 'rebel' behavior, without ever even considering that there are ligitimate reasons for texting.  I'm sure it never occurred to him that texting was a positive shift in communication style and that it is here to stay.  It is attitudes like this that 20Somethings need to overcome on a daily basis.  Don't get pissed about it, but realize some of the hurdles we need to get over.

Eureka! The secret reason why people wait in line for the iPhone

Networking! This came as a huge shocker to me because the only reason I decided to wait in line for the launch of the iPhone 3G is because I was going to leave the country for a month on Monday. I needed the GPS features of the phone so I could find my way around the cities of Europe, and I did not want to take a chance on buying it on launch weekend, thinking they would be sold out.

I dreaded waking up at 5:30 to wait in line. I dreaded sitting around 2.5 hours until the store opened next to smelly people who have been sitting there for even longer than I. But I was in for a huge surprise.

As soon as people got in line, they were like self assembling robots.  They immediately started interacting and talking to each other.  Business cards were passed out, and contacts made.  It was pretty amazing to watch.

I thought the people who wait for hours in line would be insane, but they weren't, but insanely interesting. One owned his own jewlery manufacturing company that used 3D printers to make models. Another 2 made routing hardware for satallites. I also met a brilliant 20Something DC area resident Steve, who started his own video game company. He is working on some cool flow engine stuff, and has gotten lots of attention from various people. Unfortunately, he had to take down his game due to "Pong" being trademarked by Atari. However, he is definitely someone to keep an eye on.

20Something TakeAway:

1. Movers and Shakers: The people waiting in line next to you are typically affluent, educated, and tech savvy. They have the means to miss a day of work. In short, they are not your average grunt, but a passionate higher level person willing to wait hours in a line for a gadget -- just the people you want to get to know.
2. Shared Passion: You automatically have an "In" with everyone in line. Just start off your conversation with the iPhone and steer the conversation where you want it to go. Unlike starting a conversation with the guy behind you in the airport security line, it's guaranteed that the person in line will walk to talk about Apple. 
3. 7 Hours with nothing to do but talk:  It took me 7 hours from the moment I got in line to the moment I got the iPhone.  That gives you a lot of opportunity to not only get to know the people directly next to you, but also anyone remotely near you in line.  If you are active you can probably meet 20 people all together. 

7-Eleven - Free Slurpee Today

7-Eleven - Free Slurpee Today 
Free 7.11 ounce slurpees every year on 7/11.

Why is this pertinent?  People love free stuff.  Mention it at work.  It will make people happy and it will also add to your interestingness level as well as.  This is another value adding method.

Benefit of giving an internal presentation.

When I gave my Business Analyst 2.0 presentation to my company, the reception was good. I had people come up to me afterwords and thank me, congratulate me, and even introduce themselves if I had not formally met them before. Soon after, I received this email:

I really enjoyed your presentation yesterday. Everything was great from the content, to the delivery, to the presentation itself. You did a really good job of engaging the audience. I don't think you need to change a thing.

On another note, I am working on developing a people vision/strategy for [company name] and wondered if you might have some time to meet with tomorrow, preferably after lunch, to brainstorm a few ideas with keeping in mind "drilling down to the essence". Let me know if you are available.

My reply:

I would absolutely be delighted to meet with you tomorrow. I think its so important to have a good people strategy. It's one of those things that can really transform an organization for the better, and I'm very glad to hear that you are working on it! I would love to talk about it tomorrow. (I love talking about things like this - which is rather unfortunate for my friends) Let's meet at 1PM?

20Something TakeAway:

1. Express your passion in your response. Don't for for the "Yes", go for the "HELL YEA!"
2. Say that what she is working on is extremely valuable. This validates a person, and is a way of saying "You are working on something worthwile, and as a result, you are worthwhile and valuable"
3. Throw in some personality or a joke. Personality is good.
4. Start researching people vision/strategy when you go home. Put in a significant amount of time doing this. Have a vision in your own head before you walk into the office for the meeting. Know a lot about the subject. What I do is I copy down all ideas into google docs, and then review it for 30 min before I walk into the meeting. This is how a 20Something shines! Use your awesome JIT Learning Skills to your advantage!
5. Just giving one presentation has transformed me from a nobody (from the perspective of this top executive) to someone that has great ideas and is interested in my opinion! This is the power of a great presentation. It can build your political capital immensely with people who would never otherwise even know who you are!
   

Use the JIT method of learning to get ahead

Historically, people would spend a lifetime in one knowledge area, and become masters at it. They learned via on the job experiences. They would change companies, but stay in the same role and knowledge space. If you wanted to be VP of procurement, you would start off as a little peon moving boxes that have been procured. Through this experience, you would learn about the box moving part of procurement. Then, 2 years later, you get a promotion to the order taker part of procurement, while working here, you would learn the how to take orders. All of your learning takes place as experiential learning, where you learn only through on the job experiences.

20Somethings are masters of JIT learning -- Just In Time. We realized that learning everything through experiential on the job experiences is hugely timeconsuming, inefficient and stupid. We grew up in an age of internet. If we need to know more about box moving, we go ask someone who is a box mover! This way, we learn about box moving without having to even doing it. Of course, there is no substitute for experience, so we only learn 80% of what the experts know. Because we learn the most important stuff so fast, we can build up a wide variety of knowledge very quickly. We won't be as good as the experts, but we will have a broader knowledge base. I've tried to illustrate the difference here:

20Something TakeAway:

Use this style of learning to your advantange! Don't try to become the biggest expert in your field! Just learn a lot from the people who have been doing it for 30 years and branch out your knowledge base. You will never compete with the greyhairs if you go head to head. Get involved in different areas in your company, and learn from the experts in each one. A mile wide and an inch deep is so much better than an inch wide and a mile deep.

Rewrite emails to be positive and remind bosses you are an equal

I think an integral part of my success is that I have a very optimistic outlook on life! It goes hand in hand with passion, and if you give off negative vibes, you will never be successful. People don't want to be around negative people because it saps all of their energy and makes them feel like crap.

Negative people are WAY worse for your team than you think. Most people think the negativity is confined to that one employee. Not true. Negative people are like a virus, they spread negativity to everyone on the team. As a result, people have their energy drained and feel crappy and perform crappy. When I deal with the Naysayer, it often saps so much of my energy that I do not want to publish my article anymore, much less work on it! Basically she finds all the self doubt in my entire soul and puts it front and center. Please please don't be that negative person. You don't want to suck.We need to start doing the little things to be positive. Here is an email I found myself writing today:

I think I found all the major timeshare companies information. However, I did not manage to find emails for all of the contacts. Is this ok? If you want me to make any corrections, let me know. Otherwise, what should I do next?.

I read it over and it sounded pretty negative to me, like I didn't do a good job. I actually spent a lot of time reasearching, and I think I did a pretty good job. So I rewrote the email.

I researched all of the major timeshare companies information. I manage to find emails for almost everyone, but am still missing a few. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, but if I manage to find them I will let you know. Can you let me know if I should start on other companies on the list (the non-major ones) and if so, which ones? Or, if you need help on something else, Let me know!

20Something TakeAway:

1. It's rewriting everyday emails that will make a difference. Each time you communicate with someone, you should convey a feeling of accomplishment and positivity. Not only that, the first email says, "I finished 90% of my task, and I can't do the rest, so I'm stopping." The second one says, "I finished 90% of my task, the remainder is very difficult, but I will work on it just for you"
2. You are a chainsaw for work. Almost all employees do their one task and say, "I'm done!" Then they surf Facebook until they get another task. You will really differentiate yourself if you are very productive and get a lot done. Generation Y is so good at getting stuff done that we can do twice as much work as anyone else. Don't be a slacker, go full force ahead and embarrass the rest of the team by how much more work you can get done than they can.
3. Subtly remind that you are helping them. Look carefully, I said "if you need help on something else". This reminds them that I'm not slave labor, and don't treat me like one. Instead, I'm a benevolent friend that is assisting you with something. Never give the impression that you are below them, even if you are.