Development Agencies and the Bold Filter

Some weeks ago I read a piece of advice for tech startups that struck me as also being great advice for development organizations.

The suggestion was that any startup should have a goal that all other goals are subordinate to; a filter that all company actions must be able to pass through to be deemed worthwhile. It should be something simple to express. Something you can print in giant bold letters and stick on the wall of the office so that when people get lost in the world of spreadsheets and memos and way too many emails they can look up at the sign and ask themselves: "Is what I'm doing right now serving that goal? Can I draw an unbroken line from what I'm doing now to the ultimate objective of this organization?"

Even for profit making organizations, this final filter in bold print should never be "Make Money." Everybody wants that. Reminding yourself of it won't help you do better work.  For Facebook the sign might say "Connect People." For the New York Times it might be "Educate and Inform."

According to Kathy Sierra's guest post on Hugh MacLeod's blog, the final filter for many companies should be "MAKE USERS AWESOME." She argues that all marketing jujitsu is doomed to fail if the product (term used loosely) you're selling doesn't help its users be better in a way that they want to be better.

 J., of Tales From The Hood, touched this idea in a recent blog post, when he wrote of humanitarian aid products:

"...the main point is that if the people we say we want to help don’t want the thing, then it doesn’t work."

For humanitarian aid and development organizations, the ultimate filter should be "Help People." But everyone in the aid/development sector wants that. It isn't specific enough. NGOs should carefully examine Why They're In Business, and figure out what makes their organization helpful to people, exactly. Are you trying to empower people financially? Provide food security/sovereignty? Promote sanitation? Reunite families that have been separated by political/military conflict?

Whatever the organization's ultimate goal, they should know it well, and the workers should regularly double check whether what they're doing at the moment is aligned with that raison d'etre.

Having visible reminders of your crucial, simple goal can help keep people in touch with each other and with the real importance of what they're doing.
Everybody likes to be reminded that what they're doing is important.

Workers are happier, and do better work, when they know what they're working towards.

Customers, whether social network users, newspaper readers, or recipients of humanitarian aid, are happier when the organizations they work with help them be awesome.

Tools Matter

My Macbook Pro quit its job this week, and during the few days between when it stopped working and when I took it to the repair place, I felt a surprising sense of relief...that the computer was out of my life for a while.

When I first got this computer, it was shipped to my dad's office so it wouldn't be stolen off our porch or something. I remember feeling euphoric and breathy when I finally got my hands on it, and rode the elevator back down to the office block's main floor thinking of all the projects I was going to do with it. I could make music with it. Electronic music. (I had failed to master an instrument.) I could make music videos and web sites. I could finally learn to animate. Now that I could compute anywhere I'd basically be living my creative dream during every waking hour.

Fast forward almost five years, to last week, the day before my computer stopped working. I watched six episodes of Gossip Girl on DVD that day, on my laptop. The endless creative possibilities offered by my laptop had been overruled by some horrible, sexified Stepford teens on teevee. When my computer broke, the weight of all that "creative potential," (and all that teevee that needed watchin',) was magically lifted. I was able to look around and ponder what I should really do, with what I had, where I was.

New creative tools always give me goose bumps.

"With this, I'll make something awesome!" I always tell myself.

...and then, whatever-unit-of-time later...I find myself staggering under the guilt of not having actually done as much as I had imagined I would.

I have misconceived the relationship between tools and creativity. Tools can't make me create. By being creative, I make space in my life for tools.

Inevitably, after pretending for too long that I'll become a productive, creative genius if I buy the right...markers...sketchpad...software...computer...I have to dig myself out from under my pile of tools and their weighty potentials and decide, without the help of inanimate objects, what I should actually do.

The above cartoon's caption comes from a Twitter exchange I had with Hugh MacLeod. I was gushing about these pens that I really want (which he draws his cartoons with), and I said "Tools Matter."

He said, "Yeah... Until they don't."

Creative processes get easier with tools. But the real creative spirit can use any raw material to make something great.

I am constantly forgetting and relearning this.

Platonic Form

Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid) just tweeted "People think 'success' exists out there in the ether, like some Platonic form. It doesn't."

I do so much reading about how to succeed, and by succeed, I mean make goals and then reach them within some reasonable timeframe (if there is such a thing as reasonable.) Ultimately, none of the reading helps at all, unless, in a moment when I am on the fence, it pushes me to make a decision...to translate an amorphous 'goal' in my mind into a schedule, a set of activities, and a plan. Whether I reach the actual goal in the end doesn't necessarily determine whether I have succeeded. But there is no possibility of success at all unless I drag it out of the "Platonic form" state, and into reality.

Thanks for the continued inspiration Hugh.

P.S. As of this posting, Hugh's tweet is only about half an hour old. Am I quick on the draw (and on the pun) or what?