When Google Wave came out i didn’t like it at all because i knew it meant adding another inbox to my list 
So i basically ignored it for weeks. Then my friends and colleagues started popping up in wave. They invited me to all kinds of waves and i still ignored it. LOL.
So they started working without me. Eventually i got in on the action and started WORKING with them on some waves. And that’s what it really is: You don’ t mail, you don’t instant message… you work with a group of people around a topic. Once you have a serious cause and once people don’t just test out all the formatting options Google Wave offers, the tool is actually really good, you know.
I was starting to understand the true value of Google Wave. It is the tool for collaboration around text. Not the best at emailing, not the best at messaging or any of that. Its specifically a collaboration tool. Maybe it’ll get better at email like stuff (filters, etc) or instant messaging stuff but it doesn’t really matter for me.
You WORK on a wave. There is no more emailing ABOUT work or about a document that needs to be changed. You do it directly in the wave. So really it safes a lot of time when it is used right.
Right now we are creating the training manual for a social media class we are about to give in Munich through my new social media consulting company greenYonda (german).
5 or so people work on the wave at the same time hammering out all the topics involved. For that kind of stuff Wave is really good.
In the past is used Skype a lot for that kind of collaboration work but now i have to admit Google Wave has the upper hand. With Skype you always needed another tool (like Google Docs). Also you can’t simply invite someone to a Skype conversation and he goes back in time to see what happened and how the conversation came about. Plus a wave is not a conversation… It’s so much more. For example you can edit everywhere and not just in your part of the wave. Whereas in Skype editing is very limited.
I think the time is ripe for me to use the word wave now. Instead of finding ways of describing what Google Wave does. A wave is wave. It’s not email, it’s not instant messaging and its not a document. It is a wave.
Once there are more plugins available that kind of collaboration is really possible in a lot of areas. Working together on code or graphics could be built on the basis of Wave.
Start using it!
Sooo…. time does not exist. Right?
There is no time. It is a fictional construct. You cannot show me time. What we perceive as time is actually thoughts. But thoughts are not real. There is no way of bringing back a past experience or experiencing an event in the future right now. They are just thoughts. Thoughts of the past are usually influenced by our emotions. So they are subjective aka. mostly pointless.
We can make predictions about the future but that doesn’t mean that they are right. In fact when it comes to business and especially when working in tech startups. They are almost NEVER right.
There is an old saying in tech that says to get the project time for any tech project you need to take the original estimation use the next higher time factor and multiply by 3.
So here is an example:
Original project time estimation: 30 days
Next higher factor is weeks. So it becomes 30 weeks. Multiplied by 3 = 90 weeks.
In my experience that is usually true for tech company projects. There are simply too many variables and what is called invisible threads (Another path or problem of a project that is only revealed when you reach a certain point in the project)
So what point is there in planning. There is none. It’s basically a meaningless excercise to make people feel secure. And when you approach the deadline it makes people insecure. And all because you didn’t live up to a purely fictional estimation… LOL!
In fact i recommend not to plan or if you have to plan then do it without taking time into account.
I recommend:
Knowing what you want to do and doing it no matter how much time and money it costs.
I know it sounds crazy but think about:
If you follow that piece of advice i am pretty sure a lot of projects would get stopped immediately. Most projects only exist because there was a fictional assumption that said it’s gonna take x amount of time and costs x amount of £££.
It also means you have to know exactly what you are working on OR accept failure as a possibility from the beginning. But how else are you going to learn? So in fact you even DETACH from the outcome of the project. Hahaha!
So why are you doing the project then at all? Well because of the only acceptable reason: You enjoy the work and it makes you happy -> ALWAYS!
So since i am doing it like this I ALWAYS WORK ON WHAT IS IMPORTANT AND FUN TO ME.
This is then also the reason i earn more money because my heart is in it -> always!
When i work for a company i try and apply these principles as much as possible. If i am a partner in a company or have a say in the company i ALWAYS refuse to plan and i am only working on stuff that we want no matter how much it costs.
The company in return can be sure that i deliver top-notch stuff and it’s always in time … LOL. “In time” get it? .
So instead of talking part in long planning sessions and talks about vision etc. I get stuff done ALL THE TIME. Instead of thinking what is important in 1 year i think about what is important RIGHT NOW and work on it. Baby steps all the way.
A word about company visions:
The funny thing with start-ups in tech is that they change their vision usually a lot over time. With todays development methods, a companies reason of existence changes sometimes within days. So why bother… A vision is like a cage. It confines you to work within a certain frame. So what if you start with a project and end somewhere completely different you thought you would? If it works it works.
So again: visions are not for me. I just judge the project and decide what is important on the fly. Then i work on that because it is important it NEEDS to get done anyway. As i said I ALWAYS work on important stuff that way.
A word about regular meetings:
Same thing… How do you know one week earlier that the meeting is what the company should be doing at the time when the meeting is planned. Well, you don’t! So what’s the point.
When something needs to be said. Do it NOW. Obviously it’s important so why not do it now? If it’s not important enough to get people out of their current activity… well then… I say: don’t bother at all. Write an email or bring it up when it is actually important.
The following is a blog post that i released on one of the companies that i work for. It’s about the transition that is going to happen to a company if they take the leap from email/IM based messaging to a system like yammer, wordpress based prologue2 or twitter.
This post was meant to engange people within the company to start using yammer more and more.
Summary:
Using more yammer is good for us. It fosters open communication and community! Move more of your discussion from email and skype to yammer, use it on a daily basis and answer your direct messages (received tab in yammer). It will make us stronger!
Here more in depth:
First: A reminder of the real value of twitter or yammer. Especially in relation to email and skype and also how it can actually DECREASE your email load / information overload.
What one has to understand is the big advantage of open (or open company wide) communication. This is something you can only grasp fully if you actively engage in it.
Soooo… what are some of the big advantages:
The team can answer for you
If you drop a message on yammer it’s very likely that if you are not around the team will answer it for you. One of your colleagues or someone else who knows it.
No more catching up with email.
ITS A STREAM. you are not supposed to read everything. The stream is more forgiving. This co-relates to people answering FOR YOU. You dip in, read, and go out. Nothing happened if you miss something. Obviously with yammer we’d appreciate it if you could check it daily. 
OPEN direct messages.
If someone asks a direct question (via the @name function), chances are other people are interested in your answer. Next time this question is being asked you can almost be sure someone else in the stream read your answer before and in case of your absence, can answer it for you —> true hive mind! The information is stored in the hive/community.
Yammer messages (and twitter messages of course as well) are shorter by nature.
Although there is no limit on yammer people don’t write excessively. You don’t want to spam the stream. Keeping it short is good for everyone. As some famous president once said: I only write a long speech when i am too lazy to write a short one
Messages have less overhead
Compare writing an email to writing a yammer post
email:
step 1: open gmail
step 2: press compose
step 3: start typing recepients
step 4: decide on subject
step 5: write text (NO LIMITATION)
step 6: press send
yammer post:
step 1: open yammer
step 2: write message (that may or may not include direct adressing via the @name)
step 3: press send
It may not sound like a lot but doing this on a daily basis many times adds up. you get my point.
You can see that you can continue this list on and on.
My point is this:
———–> I want for everybody to treat yammer with the same importance (or even higher) as email/skype.
We have vowed anyway to be an open company that doesn’t have secrets. So we can only gain from a more open communication.
Check your direct messages daily
It’s called Received in yammer and theres a link on the right hand side.
Write direct messages instead of email
Unless its something that absolutely HAS to be written in privacy post it on yammer instead of writing a mail. Chances are that someone of you COULDN’T think of answers is for that person the question was originally directed to. This happens already ALL the time on our yammer. I just want it to be for the topics that we for some reason keep in email.
Don’t forget yammer has attachments.
Unless like twitter (which uses short urls to make up for it) you can actually attach stuff. So no excuses here
Move more and more communication from skype and email to yammer
Don’t just use it for “just getting started – got a lot of mails”. By all means keep doing it. I like to know whats going on with you all. But also post IMPORTANT stuff there.
A lot of people in this company take an active interest in technical development. If more stuff would be discussed via yammer then people would be up to date AUTOMATICALLY.
And this is the big one: Stop being afraid of information overload!
What EVERYBODY needs to realize is: Information overload is a MINDSTATE. Don’t tell people not to post something. The stream has NEW rules. And you need to get with it. If you are upset by information overload it is the same thing as if you would be upset by being stuck in a traffic jam. its YOUR CHOICE!
The stream as i pointed out above doesn’t want to be read completely. You go in and you go out. Become cool with missing something. Trust that the community can (to a certain extend) make up for the stuff you miss -> hive mind!
I hope you can see how this all will strengthen our communication!
For more information on this topic:
I got an beta invite to creately. I have to say i quite like it. It definitely goes in the right direction.
It is, as i said still in beta mode. And when i compare it to Axure Pro, which is a desktop app, it’s still lacking features.
Creately is not only for wireframing like Axure Pro is, it is also for all kinds of flow charts and diagrams. I hope that they really further optimize the wireframing aspect of creately. There are quite a lot of tools missing when you compare it to Axure.
Here is a fake wireframe i created in like 5 mins. just as a test in creately:
What i really really like about creately are the sharing options. You can publish your wireframe to a create.ly url within a second. Here is the URL to mine:
http://create.ly/fxp730g23
Also another highlight are going to be the collaboration options. That’s what i really need most for my kind of work. I need to be able to share my wireframes quickly with my team and have them adapt them if needed. So looking forward
Check it out at www.creately.com
I had the realization that work is no different at all from any other area in your life. Everybody who says business is like war… I am not buyin’ into it. You don’t wanna do things with a negative intention, you don’t want to lie and you don’t wanna set out to hurt someone else in order to gain something.
Instead one has to set out to improve other people’s lives and their life situation. I believe this should be the core purpose of any work one does and also the core purpose of any company.
In order for a company to fulfill that purpose each of that company’s employees has to live that purpose as well. You have to constantly serve each other, the company and your customers.
Not being able to let go
One of the bigger factors that prevents people from doing so is letting go of things that went wrong in projects or letting go of situations where they were in a disadvantage. This usually causes a lot of disruption.
The Buddhists believe that non attachment is the solution to end suffering. And my personal opinion that is so true when it comes to the workplace. If everybody had the gift to forgive each other mistakes in an instance,
every workplace would be a happier one.
A lot of people do not understand the principle because it is so alien to us. A lot of us are not used to letting negative thoughts go easily. We carry them around with us and let them ruin our and others mood.
By all means try and clarify any unjust situation but do it right here and right now and then let it go completely. Don’t postpone it and don’t have it on your mind anymore. Do it and let it go.
I think that everyone who had the realization that suffering stems from attachment has also the duty to show according behavior in life. Very often it is inspiring for other people to see it and they may start to adapt it.
Everybody else who doesn’t fully understand it should at least try implement as much as possible for obvious reasons.
Moving on and forgetting about any mistakes as quickly as possible is on of the keys for a positive work environment.
The truth is everybody has always the power to decide what their thinking about. Thinking about things that went wrong is a guaranteed way to demotivate yourself and others.
I have been doing quite a lot of HR work recently: reading CVs and interviewing potential new employees. I never really considered HR to be a really super important topic until I actually started thinking about it more.
Here’s my approach to HR: I hire a person only i they have an exceptionally positive mindset.
My judgment about that is mostly down to gut feeling. If That means that my decision is based more on the vibe that I had with that person in the whole communication process (first e-mail to last interview) instead of their qualifications.
Obviously a certain amount of skills for the position is required. However I found myself recently neglecting the factor a lot of times if the person has an exceptionally positive mindset. That means if the person has a skill only down to 80% I would still hire him over another person that had a 100% but a more negative mindset.
Why is a positive mindset so important?
Psychology knows a principle called emotional syncing. It goes something like this: if you are together with another person in a room after 15 minutes you and that person have roughly the same mood. In short: emotional states are being transferred to other people. A negative person makes other people negative and if you have a negative mindset chances are, you are not able to perform at your best.
I believe the two most determining factors in making a company successful are effectiveness of communication and a positive attitude. You simply cannot have a positive attitude within the company if any of the team members has a negative attitude.
And to be honest and I personally don’t want to work with negative people. Bitching and moaning is not something I like around me.
How to find out if a person has a positive mindset?
This is actually surprisingly easy as it is mostly based on gut feeling. I simply almost completely ignore what my head says and focus on purely my gut feeling. If it isn’t 100% positive it is automatically a no.
In fact we do it like this: if anybody from our company that the person spoke to doesn’t like his attitude the person is out. This is copied, I think, from google. Makes a whole lot of sense.
Another thing to do is to simply ask them directly about it. I say for instance “Would you consider yourself to be a happy person?” or “How do you react if something doesn’t go your way?”, “Are you worrying a lot?”. Most people are actually honest about it and if they lie most of the time I can tell. Another thing that I found out is that a negative person does not want to work in an environment that emphasizes a positive attitude.
After I have hired someone I keep monitoring for their mood levels. If a person goes on with a negative mood for a longer period of time I will have a talk with them.