How to Do the Best Work of Your Life

James Yurchenco metacool

Jim Yurchenco is the design engineer behind everything from the first Apple mouse to the Palm V to the Plié Wand from Julep. He just retired from a 40-year career at IDEO creating products which brightened the lives of millions.

Jim’s work was also about helping everyone around him excel. I was fortunate to have Jim as a mentor, coach, and project leader at IDEO. I did some of the best work of my life working with him. And the “how” was great, too: we never pulled all-nighters, but we always hit our deadlines, routinely achieving extremely innovative outcomes.

How to do the best work of your life? Well, here is Jim’s secret:

“Don’t accept done for good. And don’t accept good for excellent.”

Jim’s approach to excellence is anything but passive. It is rooted in action, passionately and optimistically pursued. He’s never one to sit back and procrastinate, waiting for inspiration and perfection to magically appear. He is constantly thinking, building, pushing, failing, learning—always striving to figure out a way to make things better. All of this coupled with an urgency to make decisions quickly and be productive, but with the sage perspective to step back and let things percolate when need be. In Jim’s world, excellence is both something you pursue, and something that comes to the prepared.

One morning in the late 90’s, while noodling on ways to cool the chips in the Intel Pentium II cartridge we were designing, Jim decided that our pursuit of excellence demanded access to a temperature-controlled, variable-speed wind tunnel. Today. Of course, we didn’t have one. But by that evening, after scavenging all of Silicon Valley for parts and applying some scrappy ingenuity, we had a twenty-foot long wind tunnel up and running in an unoccupied office we found at IDEO (whose owner was mildly surprised when she returned from her business trip). And then we used that wind tunnel to create a breakthrough design solution.

When you’re committed to excellence—and when everyone you work with knows it—failure becomes a mere bump in the road along the way to success. Once you stop accepting good for excellent, you can transcend limitations that would stop a normal team. Scarcity becomes abundance, hurdles becomes ladders, and you start doing the best work of your life.

That’s how Jim did it. And you can too: commit to excellence, believe there’s always a better solution, and make it all happen with optimism.

You can hear more of Jim’s wisdom in this wonderful video:

Innovation Lessons from Video Gaming

metacool video games

I’m a believer in William Gibson’s dictum that “the future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” When I’m part of a team designing something new, we always search for inspiration from existing products that are running a few meters out in front of the pack. More often than not, the most future-forward ones are video games.

An edgy brew of technology, design, and business, video games are a wellspring of innovation. Moore’s law dictates that the processors they run on are always getting faster, and games in turn push computing technology to the max, so performance constantly rises. Games have to be reliable and desirable, a fiendish design challenge. Their complex algorithms must not only work perfectly, but also make us marvel in the beauty of their output. And we’re willing to pay for it: this year’s global video game spending is expected to surpass $100 billion. The competition for that big pie feeds a lot of radical business model innovation.

So if innovating is your business, why not shell out a few quarters on video game research? Not only is it a lot of fun, but you’ll learn a ton. Here are four ways video games can help you become a better innovator:

Experience World-Class Experiences
Good experiences bring you joy and make you happy, great ones get you to flow—that sense where time slows down and you’re in the groove. World of Warcraft (WoW) is a masterful flow-inducing game, with the best digital interaction design in existence. Period. With WoW, in the first ten minutes you’re given a challenge that’s just a little more difficult than you can handle, so you immediately experience learning and growth. Before you know it, you’re on the road to personal mastery. That feeling continues at ten hours, ten days, ten months, and beyond. For pointers on how to make flow happen with your own product or service, WoW is a master class. To see an analogous experience on a mobile device, check out Monument Valley.

Grok New Business Models
The rise of free app ecosystems, Facebook, and networked gaming environments has forced video game makers to focus on business model innovation. For example, WoW generates $1 billion in yearly revenue via a mix of upfront payments and monthly subscription fees. Others have created new ways to claim value by seamlessly interweaving payment with game play and narrative. Clash of Clans is among the very best at this, helping its developer Supercell rake in $892 million in revenue in 2013. Want that Level 5 P.E.K.K.A.? With just a couple of screen taps, iTunes processes your $19.99, and she’s ready to go bash down some Inferno Towers.

Become a Better Creative Leader
Creative leadership is about managing uncertainty, surfing serendipity, and navigating the future with a compass, not a map—all skills that video games often require. Great creative leaders are able to:

  • communicate effectively with teams of diverse individuals
  • make quick decisions in dynamic situations with a high degree of uncertainty
  • digest regular feedback to grow their leadership acumen, lest they lose their following

Leading people in a multiplayer video game is an amazing way to develop your creative leadership skills. Even if in “real life” you’re not in a leadership position, in an online game you can lead big teams of people for weeks at a time in order to hit challenging goals. Along the way, you’ll amass many more hours of real leadership mileage than you could by attending a training program or reading books.

Joi Ito, my erstwhile WoW guild leader (who also happens to be the head of the MIT Media Lab) believes that the “…leadership method of…World of Warcraft and open-source projects is actually really similar to doing something like leading a bunch of super-smart, creative academics and students.” Former Xerox Chief Scientist John Seely-Brown recently said, “I would rather hire a high-level World of Warcraft player than an MBA from Harvard.” * I share their sentiments: WoW is one of the best leadership academies out there.

Raise Your Own Innovation Game
Behind every great game is an equally fascinating creative backstory. How did they make it sing? How do they work as a team? How might elements of their approach work for you?

Killer Queen is a five-on-five video game that’s at once retro and progressive. Josh DeBonis and Nik Mikros—the creative duo behind it—nailed the game dynamics by having real people run around fields with foam swords—an epic, quick way to create a minimum viable product. An evidence-driven process—one built around employees actually using the stuff they create—is a great way to promote (or kill) new game ideas. The video game industry is as technologically sophisticated as they come, and more competitive than Formula 1, so rest assured that learning what makes it tick will make you a better innovator, too.

Although the stickiest learning is in the playing, I’m not suggesting that you need to develop a 24/7 World of Warcraft habit to master the four lessons above. You can learn a lot just by watching over the shoulder of someone else playing. Or ask your kids why they’re a master of a particular game, and what’s so cool about it. You will find myriad things to inspire better solutions to the challenges of your own work.

We’ve only scratched the surface of the thousands of superlative video games out there. As an innovator, which ones do you learn from? And what are the other big lessons to be had?

 

 

* to which I must ask, “Why not have both?”

Why your creative culture needs a few kooks and spoon benders

A few weeks ago, I was hanging out with a person steeped in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, and they made a profound observation: every creative culture needs a few kooks and spoon benders.

I thought about it and agreed, but it didn’t really click until I witnessed the following rendition of My Way.  I’ll explain why this is so after you watch a few minutes of this video (be sure to watch through to the part with the drummer…):

Watching this, your reaction may fall into one of two categories.  Or you may start in the first camp and transition to the second, as I did:

  1. This drummer’s demeanor is annoying! He is an insecure, narcissistic, attention-seeker.  Were he a teenager, he’d be sporting blue hair.  Who does he think he is?  Why is he distracting from the nice vocals of the woman upfront?  And please stop with the twirling-drumstick trick, and what’s up with that stand-up cymbal?  Above all, get him away from me, and please don’t make me be in a band with him.
  2. This guy’s energy is inspiring, infectious, and makes me want to get out there and embrace my unique creative ability to make things happen!  In his stick twirls, manic expressiveness, and unabashed joy in banging on drums, I see myself on a great day, when the muse has arrived, I’m in flow, and creating like nobody’s business.  Give me more of this—let me watch that video again.  Oh, and I want a white tux jacket.

Here’s the deal: This drummer is a spoon-bender, he’s definitely kooky in mannerism and presence.  He’s deviant.  He’s not afraid to be what he is, no matter whether it’s a fit to his immediate social context.  We think spoon-benders are kooks and weirdos because doing something out of the ordinary is pretty strange, when you stop and think about it.  But since having the courage to do so publicly and risk criticism, embarrassment, and failure is the price of entry when it comes to innovating, shouldn’t more of us be taking cues from the kooks?

I’m not saying that you should literally go out and hire a spoon-bender (though it would be cool if you did).  But I do think that a high-functioning creative culture is populated by a subset of individuals who can’t help but be who they are, and what they are is someone put on Earth to do remarkable things.  These are your kooks.  Their unrelenting confidence in their own unique mode of creative expression—even if it be the transmogrification of metallic feeding tools—helps everyone else have the courage to go after things in a big way, too.  If you don’t have them, you won’t have any good examples of what extreme passion of expression looks like.

Have a few kooks in your organization, shine a light on their creative behaviors, and watch the positive effects ripple through your culture.

Entrepreneurship is a Mindset

If you’re seeking wisdom on the nature of entrepreneurship, look to art, literature, and popular culture. For example, in my experience the best guide to the nature of vision and leadership is that seminal fictional character Don Quixote. His story epitomizes how courage and clarity of vision can win the hearts and minds of others. And who hasn’t learned the brass tacks of power and influence by watching Tony Soprano in action?

If you’re open to it, there’s a wealth of inspiration and insight to be had out in the world, like this fabulous profile of entrepreneur and racer Dave Marcis:


 

Whether or not you’re interested in racing, if you want to know what it’s like to think like an entrepreneur, it’s well worth its seven minutes of run time.

I particularly love the segment that starts at the 3:28 mark, where Marcis talks about how running a small business on a shoestring budget taught him to be scrappier than scrappy. What caught my eye was this slogan hanging on the wall of his shop, pictured above:

“We have done so much, with so little, for so long, that we can now do anything
with nothing.”

This deceptively simple phrase captures the essence of entrepreneurship—that with enough persistence, optimism, and confidence, no challenge is too big. It reminded me of my favorite quote by Professor Howard Stevenson of Harvard Business School:

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources
currently controlled.”

When Dave Marcis talks about what he’s accomplished and how he’s done it, it becomes clear that his frame of mind was key to his success. Likewise, mindset is what enabled Elon Musk to go build rockets and cars, or Richard Turere to make peace with lions. It’s not about being in high tech, or living in Silicon Valley, or having access to a network of venture capitalists. It’s about what you tell yourself in your head: that you can build something new for the world, no matter what seems possible or reasonable.

Entrepreneurship is a mindset, one that allows you to do anything with nothing. When you decide to relentlessly pursue a dream no matter how little you’ve got, you’ve already taken the biggest step on that journey.

Failing. And dealing with it.

A few of my Principles for Innovating are more popular than others.

When I give a talk on those principles, the first six are received with a lot of enthusiasm, which is to be expected, because they’re all about design thinking, always an empowering subject. People who get excited about principles seven through twelve tend to be in management positions, because that collection deals with innovating from a manager’s point of view. Principles fifteen through eighteen make organizational design aficionados salivate, and nineteen and twenty always make me want to cheer when I talk through them. I love nineteen and twenty.

Principles thirteen and fourteen are really bummers. I hate talking about them. They suck the energy out of the room. In fact, when it comes to that contagious buzz and energy you get when things are going well in a talk (for both presenter and audience), Principle 13 is nothing if not a black hole. “You will fail,” it says.

There’s a reason it’s sitting at that number.

You will fail. That’s the reality of trying to bring new things to life. You will fail, and may fail over and over and over. You may never suceed, actually. But, some folks are able to take that failure and get to the mantra of Principle 14, which is Failure Sucks, But Instructs. Today’s New York Times has a wonderful article titled “Following Your Bliss, Right Off the Cliff“, which examines the failures and recoveries of several entrepreneurs, including my friend and d.school colleague Michael Dearing.

Here’s an excerpt from the article. It talks about Michael’s experience with a shoe retailing startup which ended up going out of business:

He struggled to keep the business afloat because, he said, it felt dishonorable to let it go. “I personalized the outcome to a degree that it was unhealthy,” he said. “I thought failure was total and permanent — and success stamped me as a worthwhile business person.”

…Mr. Dearing liquidated his business in what he called an “excruciating” time. He turned to eBay to sell shoes, cash registers, delivery trucks and warehouse equipment to repay creditors and pay his employees’ severance. “I was dead broke,” he said. “This was probably one of the hardest times, deciding whether I was going to buy food for my animals or dinner for me.”

…“I thought I had one shot to be successful,” he said. “I had no idea that my career — or anybody’s career — is actually a multiround process and that you had many, many at-bats.”

…Mr. Dearing would approve. He tells his students that the “suffering comes from being attached to the outcomes.”

As paradoxical as it sounds, he said, “If you stop worrying about the outcomes, you will achieve a better outcome.”

Let’s read that last one again: “If you stop worrying about the outcomes, you will achieve a better outcome.”

What a profound statement from Michael, and it works on so many levels. When you stop worrying about the outcome, you let go of the fear of ultimate, soul-crushing failure, which in turn allows you to focus on the here and now. Being in the moment is what allows you to see and hear clearly to what life is telling you. That feedback helps you understand the true nature of what is going on with your new venture, and leads to better decision making. Being freed from fear not only adds a few points of IQ to your total, but it gives you the courage to run that test, to build that prototype — today. Taking action now and failing on a smaller level each day, while listening to the resulting feedback coming your way, ends up giving you a much better chance of succeeding in the end than if you ignore those small doses of daily feeback.

Michael’s advice is a very Obi-Wan Kenobi feel-the-force-flow-through-you-Luke kind of thing, but it really does work. It’s also the hardest thing for would-be innovators to do. In my experience, you learn how to stop worrying about the outcomes by building up the mileage that only comes by shipping stuff. The more you ship, the better you get, and the better the odds become of the outcome being great.

Wise words from a five-year-old

This isn’t one of those posts where a parent brags about their kid. I do think she’s pretty special, but I’m not going to go there today. However, my daughter said something this morning which I think really nails an elemental truth about what it means to go through life with an open mind, hungry to grow and learn.

This morning my daughter and I arrived a little early at her nursery school, so we sat down together on the floor of its library and read a book together while we waited for her classroom to be ready for a new day of play and learning. Being there with her is always a highlight of my day.

We selected a picture book told in the voice of a grandmother telling her grandchild about what the child’s father was like as a baby and young child. Some of the illustrations showed a kid being happy, some frustrated, some sad, some hungry, and one was about being afraid.

Upon seeing that last one, my daughter said, “It’s okay to be a little afraid, it just means you’re about to learn something.” I teared up there for a second or two. And then I thought about Czikszentmihalyi and flow theory and what it means to live a life of meaning: if we’re engaging with things a little beyond our current abilities, we’re learning and growing.

It’s okay to be a little afraid. I think she’s right, no?