10 Terrible Online Design Techniques

Your site is ugly.

Or, is it hot?   I have a side project running with a web designer and an IT consultant.  It’s an online design site called Website Idol.  It’s designed for Australian business owners (big and little) to find real, Australian online designers who can make hot web designs.   You can look at their work and decide if you reckon they’re good enough to build a site or redesign a site for you.   Also, online designers can upload their work and get feedback from the online community.

Anyway, I just wrote an article on that site about 10 Terrible Online Design Techniques.  It’s based on our expertise (which did help Nick Dube and I win “Best Law firm website in Australia” award).

Happy reading!

Time to change your thinking?

The Law of Exposure says that your character (and so your future) is shaped by what you expose yourself to (books, places, cultures, music, people, etc).

Well, expose yourself to this:

On Saturday 17 April 2010 (that’s in 2 days from the time of writing), Peter Daniels will be speaking at the Clarion Hotel on:

How to Go Into Business and Win Every Time

Over a hot breakfast, he’ll be talking about:

• Negotiating business deals
• Handling banks
• Buying and selling a business
• How to run a business

He’s worth listening to.  Why?

• He’s consulted to a range of world leaders: Country leaders, Nelson Mandella, Oral Roberts, Archbishop Desmont Tutue, and more.
• He’s on a few global company boards (like Amway and the Combined Insurance Company of America).
• He’s written 17 books (so he has a lot to say).
• He’s amassed an large empire (and fortune) and has given a lot of it away.
• He’s toured for many years with Dr Billy Graham and also the Father of positive thinking, Dr Norman Vincent Peale (Author of arguably the first ever self-help book “The Power of Positive  Thinking”).
• He’s in his 70’s so he’s learned a thing or two along the way.

Online credit card registration and event details are here.  We only have a couple of seats left, so register yourself and a colleague now!

Compulsory 15-min video if you want to do something HUGE

After a significant re-visioning process, this blog is back.

And, it’s going to be more useful to you than ever before.  Blogs won’t be as regular, but they’ll be better.

This blog will help you think beyond your daily routine by exposing you to top-class people and stories.  We’ll also give you some opportunities to engage with organisations that are truly making a difference somewhere on the globe, via Saturday-morning events (if you live in Melbourne).  We’ll try to stream them for everyone else on this blog.     You’ll get a a combination of blogs and events that will take you beyond business.

Here’s a starter.  This should be compulsory viewing for leaders or people who want to create change – it’s Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) talking to Stanford graduates for 15 minutes.

How to use the bottle-of-wine-for-your-lover concept to make meetings better

“Buying a bottle of wine for your date is strategy.  Getting her to drink it is tactics,” says Robert Muir.

One of the biggest problems with meetings is that some people want to talk strategy, and others want to talk tactics.

I say: “We’ve got to send our brochure to the printers by 4pm today!!!” (that’s tactics).  You say “Wait! Is the brochure in line with our branding?  Is it going to achieve our objectives?  We should check that first – I haven’t seen it.” (that’s strategy).

Most people don’t realise that blending tactics and strategy in the same meeting is a problem.  What you do know, though, is that after the meeting, there’s always lots of actions to be done, and not everything got sorted out.  This problem largely goes away if you separate tactics from strategy.

Here’s a simple take on getting something done:

Step 1: Set your Goal (eg. to have washboard abs before Christmas)

Step 2: Decide on a strategy (Use a nifty ab-machine that folds up nicely under the bed)

Step 3: Execute the strategy with tactics (Buy the ab-cruncher, use it before work, 5 times a week and cut down your daily diet of deep fried oreos from 3 to 1 per day)

Interestingly, that’s how you achieve something.  This applies to:

1. A 30-year old flabby-bellied dad wanting to trim up for Christmas;
2. A 90-year old global corporation; or
3. A 3-person business selling ab-crunchers.

They all use this process.  They may not articulate it like this, but they do.

Here’s the secret: If you can distinguish in meetings between when you’re talking tactics vs. when you’re talking strategy, you can get a lot more done in monstrously less time.   Imagine this: your strategy is effective and inspiring.  Your tactics (which always follow strategy) are seamlessly decided upon then executed, because there’s already a clear strategy in place.

Strategy meeting example: Get big picture, strategic thinkers into a room for a few hours, with a clear goal in front of them.  Park any great “to do” ideas that you come up with during the meeting on a board for discussion later (because they’re just tactics).  The focus here is solely on creating the most awesome roadmap to achieve the goal as humanly possible.

Tactics meeting example: Get your doers together.  Show them the strategy.  Get them to contribute and discuss how they can execute that strategy, for exactly one hour.

(To know more about this, read Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni.  It’s a winner of a book, and will transform how you do meetings, and how you plan your life – by separating strategy from tactics).

How to Boost Your Workplace Productivity by 66%

If you work in an open plan office, then research has found that your productivity reduces by up to 66 per cent, because of…

*Orchestral music builds slowly, then reaches crescendo*

Background noise.

So, how do you snatch your productivity back?

Simple.  Just get an MP3 player, put on some headphones and listen to soothing music or sound effects that don’t include words or lyrics.  There’s heaps of apps for your iphone or ipod that can do this, like White Noise Lite, Soothing Sounds Pro, iYuleLong, etc.

Here’s a 5-minute video by Julian Treasure.  He studies sound and advises businesses on how to use it in their workplace.  It’s fascinating.

Survive on less sleep with this latest discovery

I’ve written before about surviving on less sleep, but I’ve made a recent discovery which will help you even more.

I’ll tell you my discovery in a second. But first, let’s agree on what’s the most important starting point in the world of getting things done.  It’s:

• Not using lists.
• Not prioritizing.
• Not getting the right killer-app or productivity hack.

No, it’s more subtle, and it starts with the quality of your sleep.

Better sleep = more energy.  More energy = explosive productivity.

So, what’s my discovery relating to a better sleep?   Let me explain:

I wear a SleepTracker watch.  It measures when my sleep is really deep (Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep) and when it’s so light that you could sniff and I’d wake up.  The deeper the sleep, the better.  Here’s a typical night’s sleep for me, as mapped by my SleepTracker wrist watch:

Here's a map of my average sleep cycle

In the above diagram, the fluctuations between light sleep and deep sleep are about 20 minutes apart, on average.  The longer the time is between “light” sleep, the better.

In the next diagram, here’s a graph of my sleeping patterns during a night when my 7-month old daughter woke me up 10 times because she was teething:

Being woken up by a crying infant results in this sleep pattern.

The final diagram shows my sleeping patterns after I had a huge Indian takeaway meal at 9.30-10.30pm, just before going to bed:

A late Indian curry affects my sleep as shown here.

That morning I was a zombie.

As you can see, eating a large meal just before going to bed gave me an even lower quality sleep than if I’d been woken 10 times throughout the night.

So.  Wanna be more productive?  Don’t eat (or at least keep it light and healthy) for 2 hours before bed.  It will seriously impact your day. You might have heard this before – but this time it’s backed up with hard data from my sleep tracking wrist watch (never argue with the wrist watch).

PS.  Your chance to get  a seat for Saturday 17 October is disappearing fast!  Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia is speaking on “The Art of Influence” with a Q & A at the end.  We’re limiting seats to 60, so register online NOW.  Tickets are only $40.

Confessions of a Productivity Geek

Productivity geeks love getting things done.  They love David Allen, LifeHacks, time tracking software, lists, GTD apps and gadgets that should (in theory) make them more productive.

They study sleep patterns, alertness, procrastination, positive psychology, and self management.

I love those things, and I do those things, because yes, I’m a productivity geek.  (I even have an expensive, ugly wrist watch that measures my sleep biorhythms).

And here’s my confession:

Despite knowing in my head how to be massively uber-productive, there are times when I deliberately ignore that knowledge.

• There are full work days when I don’t complete even one single item on my perfectly-prioritised to-do list – other seemingly critical stuff just springs up.

• There are times when I don’t look at my calendar, and then suddenly rush off late to an appointment (or cancel it because I’ve missed it).

• I’ve written about “not having favourites” in a to-do list, and yet I sometimes sacrifice important tasks for favourites.

• My sleep biorhythm watch tells me that I’ll sleep better if I don’t eat too much food late at night, but I still do it.

• My calendar tells me to go to the gym, and instead I go and order a meat-ball Subway with 2 macadamia nut and white choc-chip cookies (I did that today – admittedly I had a few other tasks to do in that time, too).

So, why the disconnect?  I can recognise a few reasons:

1. Energy levels are variable.  Being productive requires a minimum level of energy or things start to fall apart – even if you have a supposedly bulletproof, simple system that even a dummy can use.
2. Productivity techniques sometimes don’t match a person’s wiring.  (No matter how hard I try, my extroverted, creative tendencies make it hard for me to plug my way through a boring list – I need to consider this when preparing my tasks).
3. Human interaction is messy.  Things don’t always go according to plan.

For a change, I’m not going to suggest a list of solutions to this problem.  Other than constantly evolving and reassessing what works and what doesn’t, I believe that the solutions to the problem are limited because it is a natural part of the human condition.

Do you agree?

PS: Have you registered yet for our next event on 17 October – “The Art of Influence” with Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia? Seats are running out.

Your Unique Opportunity to Ask this World-Changer a Question

Tim Costello will be speaking about the Art of Influence at our next event on 17 October 2009. Then, he’ll be doing a Q and A session.

You can post your questions in the comments section below.

Few people are more influential in the realm of social justice than Tim Costello.  As CEO of World Vision Australia (the largest NGO in Australia), Tim Costello has been at the forefront of creating social awareness and public engagement on issues such as poverty, climate change, homelessness and community development.

If you want to develop your ability to influence, then you need to come to this.

Register your seats online for AUD $40 before they run out (we’ve sold a few seats before we even advertised the event)!

One thing you never thought you had

Go and ask a married man the following question: “What percentage of the time do you wash the dishes?”  He might look at you sheepishly and say, “Aw, about 25% of the time.” (photo by Silas216)

Big Dan washes the dishes about 25% of the time, according to him.

Then, go and ask his wife the same question: “What percentage of the time do you wash the dishes?”  She’d probably roll her eyes and say “That’s easy – about 90%.

Hey! (you’re probably thinking)  That totals 115%.

So, who’s lying?

The answer is interesting: Neither.  Although both are probably missing the mark by a few percentage points, a number of studies have shown that in a team environment, team members over-estimate the extent of their contribution.

Think about the projects that you’ve been involved in.  Have you ever felt like you contributed more than others?

Chances are, you have.  But there’s one thing you now need to factor in: the I’m-giving-more-than-I-really-am bias.  It’s sobering.

It’s also useful to keep in mind when you’re setting expectations before a team project, and when you’re giving feedback to your team after it.

(Think this is useful?  Email it to a friend or subscribe to get this in your inbox.)

Don’t do this and see what happens.

You don’t have to love confrontation to be a good leader.

It’s true – even Oprah Winfrey confessed that she hates confrontation, in her video podcast with Marcus Buckingham.

The same goes for friendship – you don’t have to love confrontation to be a good friend.

Joe just told me that you called me a monkey face. Is that true? (Photo by Dan Taylor)

But if you avoid confrontation, and just vent about someone to everyone but that person, you won’t be their friend for long.  As a leader, you probably won’t have very happy followers, either.

Confrontation is the only way forward. Deal with it head-on.

There’s a gazillion articles on how to get better at it, but here are 2:

1. Confrontation for Sissies (3 pretty decent steps to confront someone well).
2. How to handle confrontation (6 “essential” steps plus a confrontations quiz).

A Special Recipe To Get a Response When Emails Don’t Work

“They’re all stupid” a close friend said to me.  “Why?”

“Because I’ve emailed them all twice, and not one of them has responded.

Not a single one.

Idiots.”

My friend tearfully explained that she needed to get a response from about 12 people that she worked with.  The task she requested would take each of them about two minutes.

So, why didn’t the emails work?

There’s a few ways to elicit a response out of a group of people in this kind of situation.  They are:

• Work on your copy writing skills so that you’re an influential writer, and then convince your readers by email to drop what they’re doing and respond (effective but time consuming to learn).  Subscribe to copyblogger’s blog if you want to get good at this.

• In your email, shout with CAPS and machine-gun your reader with written threats and insults (effective in the short term, but not great for relationships – particularly if a recipient includes your own spouse).

• Learn how to use sticky-notes (extremely effective). (Photo by Zarprey)

Tailored Post-It notes (or Sticky-Notes) are an effective recipe for eliciting a response from your readers.

Randy Garner is a social scientist.  He did a study that compared the effectiveness of different ways in convincing his target audience to fill out a survey.  The survey was sent by mail in three different ways:

1. With a handwritten sticky-note on a cover letter to the survey; or
2. With a cover letter to the survey which included a handwritten note directly on the cover letter; or
3. With the survey and a cover letter and no sticky note.

The results were staggering.  The percentage of recipients who completed and returned the survey were (in the same order as above):

1. 75%
2. 48%
3. 36%

So, next time you want people to do something for you, try delivering your request to them in hard-copy, with a hand-written sticky note.

The fact that you’ve gone to the effort to tailor your request to each individual will encourage them to reciprocate.  It’s very effective.

If you have any tricks to get a good response, put them in the comments below.

Do You Remember My Presentation?

If your audience remembers one thing, you’ve done a great job. If they remember two, you’re a genius! So how do we get them to remember even just one point? There are a few simple tricks that you can use to engage your audience, deliver a memorable presentation, and leave them with one thing worth remembering:

1. You need to know what you’re talking about. Sounds simple doesn’t it? But for many presenters, they fall in love with the act of presenting their topic and share many “lovely” but essentially useless details, and forget that their audience is wondering “where is he going with this?” Crystallize your topic into one Big Idea (the umbrella reason for saying what you’re saying) and let your audience know what it is.
2. Figure out the one thing you want your audience to remember (we’re not going for two yet). Think of your audience as gold fish. They only remember things for 30 seconds and then they’re gone. Tell them the one thing they need to remember, then repeat it, rephrase it, repeat it and then, reintroduce it. Stories are helpful too.
3. Tell me a bedtime story. Rich, engaging stories with emotion, humour, and a moral response are the ultimate method in communicating ideas. Think through your past experiences and find an example: if you can’t find an example then you probably shouldn’t be speaking on that subject. The weight of your word is often found in your life experiences. Rule of thumb: no story = no experience.  No experience = no expertise.  No expertise = why should I listen to you?
4. Get visual. Use props to reinforce your message. They are often hook points that reengage the audience’s attention. If you can, throw them out to the audience and break the invisible wall between them and you. Note: never build a presentation around a prop, they are there to compliment your Big Idea, not become it.   Check out the visuals that Tim Brown uses in this Ted.com talk on creativity:

What methods do you use to give great presentations?  Go here for more presentation tips, or look at our most popular blog post ever – 19 Offensive Presentation Techniques.

(4 days to go until our next event: “Build your A-Team by Putting the Right People in the Right Places”, presented interactively by CEO of a successful talent management firm, Dr Gavin Didsbury.  Register now for $40.

Note: If you miss out on a seat, we will put you on a shortlist for our next event in October.)

The 24 Hour Rule

Do you sometimes learn something great but then forget it?

There’s two people in my life that do the same thing but end up with dramatically different results.

Friend #1 is constantly reading.  Great books, too.  Classic leadership books, personal growth books, understanding-people-better books, spiritual books.  You name a popular book in these categories, and she’s read it.   But, for some reason, she doesn’t seem to apply the stuff she’s reading.  I haven’t seen her change much over the years, and she still has many of the same insecurities that she’s always had.

Friend # 2 is also reading.   Lots of the same books.  He’s a bit different from #1, in that he’s not just learning from books, he’s learning from everything.  People, situations, experiences.

Friend # 2 is constantly changing and growing.  He seems to absorb the nutrients from anything positive that he comes across.  He’s a thirsty learner.  Over the long period I’ve known him, he has grown in his maturity as a leader, and he is the embodiment of a lot of stuff he’s been reading about and observing in other people that he looks up to.

So, what’s the difference?

The 24 hour rule.

Friend #1 reads stuff, thinks about it, forgets it or disagrees with it and keeps going.

Friend #2 obeys the 24 hour rule.  In other words, he applies anything useful that he’s learned (from a book or experience) literally within 24 hours. “Otherwise,” he tells me, “I’ll forget.”

• Next time you do some internal training, use the 24 hour rule.
• Next time you go to a conference, apply the 24 hour rule at the end of each day.
• Next time you read a great book and get something useful out of it, apply the 24 hour rule.
• Next time you watch a video on ted.com and get inspired to do something, apply the 24 hour rule.

Even if what you learn can’t be applied in 24 hours, you can at least take some sort of positive action to get the ball rolling.

Try it today – within 24 hours.

(5 days to go until our next event: Build your A-Team by putting the right people in the right places, presented interactively by CEO of a successful talent management firm, Dr Gavin Didsbury.  Register now for $40.)

How to get the right people in the right places

Do you have the wrong people driving your business forward? Are they in the wrong positions?

(Photo taken from Fail Blog)

According to Businessweek.com, Cornell University associate professor Christopher Collins says that managing employees is one of the top three things that keep business owners awake at night.

Jim Collins made the famous statement that getting the right people in the right seats on the bus was the most important questions business owners need to ask themselves, in his seminal book Good to Great.

The problem is, most employees and bosses understand this, but they don’t know practically how to address it.  There’s a million “team” models out there that are great, but have been flogged to death:

• Myers-Briggs
• Belbin
• DiSC
• Trimetrics
• StrengthsFinder

So, what do you need to do?  Here’s two tips:

During staff reviews, ask 4 questions (these come from Peter Irvine, co-founder of Gloria Jeans).

1. Describe your job
2. How do you think you’re performing in your job?
3. What would you like to be doing?
4. How can we help you get there?

Both the boss and the employee answer these 4 questions separately.  The boss gives his/her 4 answers to the employee a few days before the review, so they have time to digest any differences of opinion.

Here’s a second tip.  On 1 August 2009, you can attend (if you’re in Melbourne) a 2-hour interactive breakfast with CEO Dr Gavin Didsbury, who runs a talent management company.  Over a hot breakfast, he will be taking us through How to Build your A-Team by putting the right people in the right places.

Click here to register online now.

Avoid banner blindness

Why do the best books seem to be so original, fresh and compelling?

Why are the highest ranking blogs so successful?

Why are some people so good at selling or influencing?

The answer is found in the concept of banner blindness.  Banner blindness occurs when you surf the internet, and your brain ignores flashing, colourful banners.  Can you remember the banner ad on the last site you visited?

Probably not.

The word's first banner ad - released in 1994 by AT & T

You’ve seen it before.  You’ve trained yourself to just ignore and move on – quickly.  Your brain has seen the same thing so many times it develops an immunity to it.

In the same way, you can get banner blindness towards old “tested and true” types of communication.  That’s why the best new books and blogs repackage old ideas using new words and new examples.   Instead of a “following”, you have a “tribe”.   Instead of “influential” you have “viral” (in certain contexts).

As culture evolves, the way your words and ideas are packaged evolves.    Today’s thought leaders are often just repackaging old ideas with their own twist.  Their books and presentations don’t quote heaps of old-thinkers (who they’re in fact repeating).  Rather, they choose their own delivery, and they’re passionate about it.  Because it smells original, your in-built banner blindness doesn’t stop you from receiving the ideas and acting on them.

Here’s the point:  If your communication methods don’t continue to evolve with the culture you live in, your listeners will be less and less responsive.  Selling gets harder.  Church attendance drops.  Influencing becomes more difficult.  Market share declines.  Banner blindness sets in.

Top 10 Productivity Tips

A few days ago, Lifehacker.com published their top ten productivity tips.  It covers:

1. Doable to do lists – how to separate email from to-dos, the best to-do lists methods and more.
2. 10 Obscure Google search tricks – how to find more specific answers.
3. How to use your calendar or tickler file to remind yourself of stuff in the future.
4. Different applications to capture your ideas on the go.
5. Using a timer and doing a “work dash”
6. How to do web quick-searches.
7. How to do local quick searches.
8. Inbox Zero theory (we’ve written about this before).
9. Keyboard shortcuts.
10. Text expansion tools – how to automate those times that you write blocks of text repeatedly.

Click here to see the article in full.

What do Amazon, PayPal, Walmart and BIC have in common?

Survival Is Not Enough is a book written by Seth Godin, and it’s excellent. He basically says what you’ve heard before about change:  Get used to it, embrace it.  The old-school c0gs-in-the-machine-factory methods don’t work any more. Change or be willing to become insignificant, etc etc etc.

But he also talks about what made Amazon, PayPal, Walmart and BIC famous. The answer is feedback loops.

The right feedback loops will help you lead the pack, and continue to change and evolve in small movements.  Set up loops to:

1. get feedback from your employees and team.  Use a simple system involving email, a poll, voting, a suggestion box, a best-idea competition, whatever.
2. get feedback from customers.  Billing hourly or project rates that allow the client to mark up your invoice by 10% (for good work) or mark it down by 10% (for disappointing work) is a feedback loop that works for professional services.
3. give feedback to employees.  Throw the annual review out the door – provide feedback consistently and periodically and see what happens.
4. measure the success of your meeting, website design, marketing campaign, sales initiative, fund raising drive, employee application process, or receptionist phone-manner.

With the data you receive, make incremental adjustments.  Learn from it. Communicate good feedback from people who are doing it right, to people who need to improve.

Asking for feedback stimilates creativity because you’re getting more opinions from more people with more collecting experience.  You’re seeing what does work, and what doesn’t.

Giving feedback provides accountability and benchmarks to measure performance.

Giving feedback can be easy, fast and cheap.

Where can you install a feedback loop, personally or corporately?

Casting Vision is a Waste of Time

It’s assumed that if you can cast a compelling vision, then people will line up behind it and you might lead something. Start a following.  Influence a tribe.  Do something effective without being a loner.

There’s lots of books written on how to shape and cast a good vision.  A sticky, memorable, effective one.  People even make up words or catchphrases: Visioning, Envisioning, Visioneering, Creative Visualisation, etc.

Most people think vision casting and visualisation is mandatory for successful leadership.

Some think it’s satanic.

But, initially, it can be a waste of time.  For most, if you embark on something new, you can’t really cast a true vision until you’ve put wheels on some sort of strategy, and seen what happens.  It takes a few years to get some real clarity on the mind-picture.  Your vision will change, because the hard work and the passage of time helps you clarify the why of what you’re doing, which informs the what of how it will look in the future.  You also realise that rapid change is permanent, so the what is less concrete than you initially thought.

That’s when casting vision is not a waste of time.

Until then, if you’re a leader, people have just been following you.  They might say that they’re following the vision, but they’re not.   Your passion about why you’re doing something, and your character, will be enough.

10 Microsoft Word Tricks To Save You Time

Do you spend more time with Microsoft Word than your own spouse or family?

If so, it’s worth making sure you know about some of its more subtle tricks and shortcuts so you can get more done in less time.

Here’s an excellent article which helps you:

1. Move table rows up or down
2. Go back to your last editing location when you open a document
3. Save changes to all open documents at one time
4. Make a vertical text selection
5. Quickly add a series of numbers
6. Gain fast access to formatting/layout options
7. Use Replace All to globally reformat text
8. Quickly transfer formatting from one piece of text to another
9. Duplicate selected text or objects using the mouse
10. Create a shortcut to launch Word using a particular template

Click here to read the article, written by Jody Gilbert from TechRepublic.

How to Handle Stress

Have you ever been trying to just get some work done, and stuff is coming in so fast that you can’t even categorise it or sort it?

Initially, you make all the tasks add up and you keep things under control.  Then, things speed up.  It gets harder to line up your jobs.  Your desk gets messy.  Your inbox gets crowded.   Priorities go out the window.

More emails.

Suddenly the pieces don’t fit together so well and your shoulders hunch around your neck and your breathing gets shallow and your chest tightens.

It’s just like playing tetris.  Check out this guy playing Tetris – he’s a freak.  It’s worth watching right to the end (2.5 million people seem to agree):

.

So how do people handle stress? Not everyone can shut their door or turn their phone off.    Conventional wisdom says:

• Go to the gym.
• Stop and assess the situation before acting (or reacting)
• Eat right
• Drink water (seriously)
• Pray
• Prioritise (sometimes this is impossible)
• Ask for help
• Ignore the clock
• Stop and write everything down

What do you do?