Brady Uselman's Blog

I have found it interesting that often times people will pay for advice and then ignore it.

“Ignore” may be a stronger word than needed. It’s more like, take it for granted. People will surround themselves with an abundance of expensive information, talented resources and then kind of brush off the input and go their own way. Sometimes that is a great idea, but if you do that consistently, it may prove to be a useful exercise to dig a little deeper and ask yourself why?

I think the best thing to do with a consultant or outside talent is to do exactly what they say (at least within reason). This is only after they have gone through a thorough due diligence process. Often times, choosing the right consultant/employee/exper is more difficult than following their lead.

Here’s why, if you do what they say, the results should speak for themselves. However, what often happens is that people will cherry pick the advice, half execute the specifics and then wonder why the results are what they are.

Part of my interest in writing this post stems from the fact that I have recently hired a coach. I am viewing this as a personal consultant. Really now the question becomes, am I going to do what he says?

I think so. This is week one, so we will see if I eat my own dog food. Additionally, I can see that for myself professionally, when I look to work with companies, do I have access to the totality of what I need to be effective? If I don’t have that access, then I need to be sure I have a team in place to fulfill that role, or else I am doomed to fail.

bradyu3 Business Related Posts, Personal advice, coaching, consulting

“The Shadow”, that I am referring to in this post is largely an expression of the human unconscious. More specifically it is the repressed, false self, disowned self that every person creates in response to their upbringing.  (see MyILP Handbook pg 75 for more info)

The concept of the Shadow is explained by Robert Johnson below:

“In the cultural process we sort out our God-given characteristics into those that are acceptable to our society and those that have to be put away. This is wonderful and necessary, and there would be no civilized behavior without this sorting out of good an evil. But the refused and unacceptable characteristics do not go away; they only collect in the dark corners of our personality.”

-Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow

Read more…

Brady Books & Resources, Random Authenticity, Productivity

Last year I posted a series of blog posts on Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind” (First Post, Second Post, Third Post). As a result of those posts, Daniel sent me a copy of his book before it was released this last December. This book made it through my reading stack in a record 90 days! Here is my review:

Synopsis:

Drive is a book about motivation. What motivates and demotivates employees, citizens, kids, parents and people at large. His findings are surprising and cause the reader to reevaluate some of their most simple and basic human behaviors. The books primary focus is devoted to people who have a problem before them that requires creativity and thought. One could say this book is an inquiry about the accuracy of the common place assumptions that people are best motivated by rewards and punishment. This book lays out the science and logic that says other wise. The final section of the book provides useful ways to apply this information from raising children to managing employees.

One of the central themes of the book is Motivation 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0. Motivation 1.0 is essentially the actions that humans take to survive at the most basic level. This involves hunting, gathering and our most primal urges to fight or flight. One could say that the natural order of things required one to take action or die. This is motivation at the most basic level.

As human beings and civilization has advanced, Motivation 2.0 has taken hold. Motivation 2.0 says that people are organized by extrinsic rewards and punishments. (pg. 17) This is obvious right? You don’t speed or you will get a ticket or work hard and your boss might give you a raise. Pink’s book and research shows that this type of organization of motivating stimuli has a ceiling.  Listed below are 7 deadly flaws of Motivation 2.0 (Carrot and Sticks) from page 54.

Carrots and Sticks: The Seven Deadly Flaws

1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.

2. They can diminish performance.

3. They can crush creativity.

4. They can crowd out good behavior.

5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.

6. They can become addictive.

7. They can foster short-term thinking.

This book then further delves into what Motivation 3.0 actually is and how organizations and individuals can organize themselves for higher levels of productivity and fulfillment. Motivation 3.0 is grounded in people doing the things that they are intrinsically motivated to do. Lets take the example of a kid taking out the trash. In Motivation 1.0, the kid would do it because he knows that keeping the trash in the house may attract unwanted smells or a beating from his dad. (Survival) Motivation 2.0 would be that the kid is taking out the trash as part of his chores, the completion of which he is rewarded $20. (Reward) In Motivation 3.0, the kid takes out the trash as an expression of being a part of the family and doing what needs to be done. The kid may also recycle the cans and start a compost for thrown away food without being asked.

My take away from the book is simply this. Brady, what do you want to do with your life? How can you take care of your financial needs and minimize the conversation of payment  with yourself and customers as little as possible. Really, if I am not doing what I love to do, then I have a problem. Every time I make my work about money, I need to be careful that I don’t replace Intrinsic Motivation, with Extrinsic Motiviations. If your life is not about what intrinsically motivates you, then you are not living for yourself, you are living for someone else and missing out. Thanks Daniel.

Below I have included Daniel Pink’s Ted Talk on Drive, enjoy. (For more information on Drive and additional resources, you can visit http://www.DanPink.com or buy his book on amazon.

Brady Books & Resources, Business Related Posts Book Review, Performance, Productivity

This is the 3rd post of my series on Daniel Pink’s Book: “A Whole New Mind”

Please review my previous posts:    Book Review: A whole new mind, by Daniel Pink (1 of 3) & “Today we’re all in the art buisness.”

Daniel has constructed something of a concept that we can refer to as the Right Brained Economy. Perhaps not explicitly, but it is a useful construct.

Here is a rather interesting excerpt from the book: “Consumers now spend nearly as much on decorative ( and nonfunctional) faceplates for their cell phones as they do on the phones themselves. Last year, they purchased about $4 billion worth of ringtones.”

A ring tone was definitely not created by an engineer. Sure, some type of manufacturing engineer made the speakers and wiring for the music to play. But people bypassed the normal/standard rings and opted for something more….. interesting and meaningful than a beep.

These six senses that Daniel writes about are: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, Meaning. They represent the corner stones for the new Right Brained Economy. Lets look at the Cell phone Ring Tone and Faceplate. It took someone with an eye for Design to make an attractive face plate and an beautiful ringtone for this product. Not only that, the ringtone only has value because someone was able to create something that evoked emotion and meaning.

Brady Books & Resources

This post is a continuation of my review of the book by Daniel Pink, “A Whole New Mind.”

The following are a collection of interesting points that I have collected from Part 1 of Daniels book.

“Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker’s knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of living in much of the developed world that would have been unfathonmable to our great-grandparents.  … The prosperity it has unleashed has placed a premium on less rational, more R-Directed sensibilities – beauty, spirituality, emotion.” pg. 33

Largely what Daniel is referring to here is that the average person in the US lives really in an age of abundance. The average person in the modern world has a lifestyle that exceeded that of Kings and Pharaohs long ago. Secondly, this abundance has created a new market for things that were previously overlooked. Lets call this the right-brain economy. Knowledge workers have created much of the wealth of this world, and now that work is being automated and shipped over seas. What is left in terms of careers must pass this following test.

.

“To survive in this age, individuals and organization must examine what they’re doing to earn a living and ask themselves three questions (page 51):

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
2. Can a computer do it faster?
3. Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance?

Some more evidence of this trend. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more Americans today work in arts, entertainment and design than work as lawyers, accountants, and auditors. (pg. 55) Also nationally, there has been a explosion in growth of people getting Master of Fine Arts degrees over the last few decades. By some economist measurements, art and design will be responsible for $6.1 trillion dollars of the global economy by 2020. (pg. 56)

Daniel then begins to break the ground of what this new emerging Right Brained Market demands. I will be cover a couple of those in the following posts.

Brady Books & Resources, Random

“Taken to heart, this book is a wonderful guide for any person looking to be proactive in creating their future career and the necessary capacities for that career today. The book is full of useful actionable tips and fairly detailed analysis on a broad range of topics. This book is about the future and does a good job of making balanced speculations about what that entails for all of us. For being such a conceptual topic, Daniel does a great job staying grounded in facts, figures and artistically culminates a collection of people’s advice into focused edible concepts and paradigms.”

“High Concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new.” Pg 2

“High Touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.” Pg. 3

• DESIGN – the ability to create that which is beautiful, whimsical or emotionally engaging.
• STORY – the ability to place facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact
• SYMPHONY – the ability to put together “the pieces.”
• EMPATHY – is the ability ot imagine yourself in someone else’s position and to intuit what that person is feeling.
• PLAY – finding humor and joyfulness
• MEANING – to create and live beyond one’s immediate needs/desires

I must be clear that I took a little liberty of my own in condensing the book to this level.

Brady Books & Resources Book Review, the workplace

The other day….a client made a rather interesting assumption that I could do something rather miraculous with my CRM system. Come to think about it, this happens all the time.

Here is what I have learned. For people who do not know or understand a technology, everything that a tech expert does is “magical.” They have no idea of the boundaries or limits of the technology. That being said, some requests seem completely obvious and sensible…others not so much. It is important to consider this when educating your customer on what you do. Helping them know your boundaries proves useful in setting reasonable expectations.

But sometimes, customers requests are far outside your “perceived” boundaries and are really possible. People with no prior knowledge of a technology offer a tremendous opportunity to give you feedback on how to manipulate or modify the tool to do the “seemingly” impossible.

Brady Business Related Posts CRM, customer

I thought it would be fun to share a little trick that Brian from WeblifeLLC and I pulled off the other day. Specifically we had the question, what is the best style of webform to use for a particular client.

We devised this little scheme to be able to see which landing page is most effective and getting people to submit their info. A person, that ends up at our url is randomly directed to 1 of 3 different webforms. We measure the effectiveness of the click through rate on each form by comparing the site traffic and the quantity of the webforms that are filled out. The end result is that we know the most effective webform.

What is really great about this simple test is that it takes out the guess work of which is the best layout. Given that we have a lot of different marketing campaigns going….it is possible to even see if people from different marketing sources prefer a particular webform.

Yet another way to use webforms and a good CRM system.

Brady Technology CRM, marketing, Technology, Website Tips

It is all thanks to a wonderful man by the name of Patrick Bagley. He is a writer for Rock & Ice. Somewhere around a year ago I was rock climbing at the Front, in Salt Lake City. On their promo table they had a stack of free magazines. I happened to pick this one up.

A few days later I skimmed through it and read some articles and put it on an end table in my home. The next day, I start to hear Amber (my wife) talking about Boise Idaho. Before now, I had never heard her mention anything about this town or the prospect of moving there. Then I remembered the article “Top Digs: 10 Climbing Towns To Live For.” Amber had read this article and was now willing to look at Boise for a place to apply for work.I remember mentioning the article and she giving me this innocent shrug and doe eyed grin.

Several months later and here I am, packing  our stuff and moving to Boise. It leaves me to ponder on how small and simple actions have huge impacts on what happens down the road.  : )

Brady Personal Personal

Here is a little tid bit about me. I am always paranoid about creating and managing the “value” I am providing to clients.

This weekend I am in Las Vegas for a conference for all types of business owners and entrepreneurs.

In between meetings I was roaming the casino and I had a rather small epiphany. What does it mean to create value for another person? Lets say that a market reflects a consumer demand or need. Gambling, most notably slots, has got to be a huge industry. At least 100’s of Millions of dollars annually. From what I can tell, a person is no better off from when they started playing their slots to when they finish.
I had always considered it a moral imperative that people always be better off because of your services. I am a bit naive and perhaps an idealist. Really, the market is full of people that provide a service that people pay for and no “substantial value” is create. I say this from my judgmental, lofty perch of infinite wisdom. lol ……

Really, I am just stunned that I have no clue on what creates value. From what I can tell some people love setting fire to their money and watching it burn. Now the question I am facing is what is reasonable for me to manage. Where do I draw the line between my responsibility and my clients responsibility in communicating the value. If I just relied on the economics, I could rationalize that any money paid is a representation of value being recieved. Then again, I would remember that ultimately some people prefer flushing their money down toilets.

Even if that is the case, do I want to be a plumber?

Brady Random Money