I talk a lot about customer success here, and that will likely only increase over time. It’s what I focus on every day, after all. If you're new to the “field” or are curious of what it entails, this guide from Lincoln Murphy is a great place to start. It’s a longer piece of writing and covers his definition of customer success, several tangential thoughts about what it is and isn’t, then he gets to the practical. The end of the guide is broken into a list that covers “the role of customer succ…
I’ve resisted the idea that tasks should be added to your calendar. Something of a purist in me rejects the idea, but it may be that I’m coming around. Shane Parrish makes the case for the practice. He starts with bravado: > SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE DON’T MAKE TO-DO LISTS. His solution: > The real value in life comes from saying no. To help you say no you need some friction. The solution to the to-do list problem is actually pretty simple. You have to make one change: schedule it. Anything you want…
The act of walking around frees your thoughts and enables better thinking.
Austin Kleon shares how he and wife try to cultivate a space and a time where one can get away from the world. > Kids, jobs, sleep, and a thousand other things will get in the way, but we have to find our own sacred space, our own sacred time. I give this a hearty, “Amen!” As one who values some daily time away from all the activity and people of my life, I appreciate the idea. And I can understand the need for both a space and time. Oddly enough, I appreciate both. During the workday, I appre…
Dustin Senos shared how getting value from creating wireframes eluded him early in his career. Now, every bit of his work benefits from this practice. What changed? He started using paper. > I want to share a simple technique I now use to force myself to explore and validate multiple directions before I dive into visual design. For the rest of this article, a “wireframe” is a sketch on paper. Paper wireframes are quick to make and reinforce that ideas are cheap and safe to throw away. Paper, al…
The act of using your hands enables better thinking.
From the department of “Captain Obvious”, this article in HBR makes the case that teams who share about their lives are stronger for it. Of course they are. How many times have you made that first impression judgement of a person, only to later revise your opinion when you learned more about the person? Sharing our lives allows us to see how our teammates are the same as us, to see where we have shared experiences. This results in increased empathy. Hearing about the details of our coworkers ou…
When it comes to teaching my kids about distraction and the digital life, I'm trying my best not to be a hypocrite.