Should You Sit Or Stand At Work?

Treadmill bike

According to Cornell University ergonomics experts, the key is to "build movement variety into the normal workday." The bottom line:

Sit to do computer work. Sit using a height-adjustable, downward titling keyboard tray for the best work posture, then every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE. The absolute time isn’t critical but about every 20-30 minutes take a posture break and move for a couple of minutes. Simply standing is insufficient. Movement is important to get blood circulation through the muscles. Research shows that you don’t need to do vigorous exercise (e.g. jumping jacks) to get the benefits, just walking around is sufficient. So build in a pattern of creating greater movement variety in the workplace (e.g. walk to a printer, water fountain, stand for a meeting, take the stairs, walk around the floor, park a bit further away from the building each day)

This gels with my own experience. I thought of getting a Geek Desk when I moved offices. But I just don't write as well when standing, and my knees hurt after awhile. Conversely, I have an easier time talking on the telephone when standing. And I do my best reading when slouched on the couch or leaning back in a chair. The best workday, physically, seems to include a steady variety of these activities and postures.

And walking down to the water cooler might actually help your productivity.

(Via John Gruber and Dan Moren)

The Aesthetics Of Order

Interesting and elegant conceptual photography from Ursus Wehrli:

This video shows how one of the photos sets was made. Watch as the artist organizes a group of sunbathers, and all their gear, into well-ordered groups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuBg06Oc5i4&feature=player_embedded

Any lessons here?

Organizing takes work! [Suggestion: the next time you have to organize people and beach equipment on a hot day, don't wear a three piece suit].

Some things are more functional and useful in a disordered state. Think of your desk covered with support materials while engaging in a major project. What's the point of going to the beach to lie in a line and segregate beach toys into individual piles? Maybe certain aspects of your work would be more productive and fun if you allowed more disorder.

Apparent disorder can actually be the true state of order. Again think about the sunbathers. True order is when each sunbather is gathered alongside his or her own beach toys and umbrellas. Not when all the umbrellas are grouped together. Most of us put our pens into one area of a drawer, in a group. Maybe true order is to scatter the pens around the office. Several on the desk, one in a notebook, one in the briefcase, and so on.

Finally, order can be beautiful. But disorder -- even with the same constituents which could be ordered -- may be more beautiful.  Such is the night sky.

(via Kottke)

10 Things To Check Before Every Presentation

There's a lot to remember when giving multimedia presentations. PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations involve the complex interaction of your computer, your software, the presentation file, a display screen or projector, your remote, and the audio system. And increasingly, presentations are given as webinars, where the presenter (i.e. you) may be in charge of an even greater scope of technical requirements, including gadgets in your office that can interfere with your presentation. Not to mention that co-worker who barges into your office without knocking. A lot can go wrong. So how can you minimize the risk of technical problems? Don't spend valuable mental RAM thinking about the little but important things you might forget. Here's a simple checklist:

1. Screen saver....................................Disabled

2. Power settings.................................Never turn off (all modes)

3. Multiple displays (for webinars)........Disconnected

4. Email notifications...........................Turned off

5. Other popups and notifications..........Disabled

6. Ringers (cell phone, office phone)......Turned off/DND

7. Sign on door (for webinars)...............Displayed

8. Glass of water...................................Filled

9. Outline............................................On podium/desk

10. Presentation.....................................Open/slides loaded

This is a work in progress and I welcome your comments. And for any particular presentation, there may be more to add to your list. Also consider having multiple backups of your presentation ready to go, as detailed in this excellent post.

Now go knock 'em dead.

To Be Profitable: Focus On The Customer, Not Profits.

(updated below) I finally had the chance to watch the Steve Jobs presentation on the iPhone 4 antennae issue. You can watch it here. I was impressed by this statement in Job's opening remarks:

We want to make ... all our users happy.  If you don't know that about Apple, you don't know Apple. We love making our users happy. That's what drives us to make these products in the first place.

Look, everyone has an opinion about Apple. And I have no special insight into how things actually work inside the organization. But it's fair to say that Apple's customers tend to be a very happy and devoted bunch. And its huge profits are clearly the result of staying customer-driven, by consistently turning out products people want.

As a result of focusing on the customer, rather than directly on profits, they're very profitable. Students of Lean will understand that this is not, in fact, a paradox. For long-term success in Apple's particular market, "Customer Focus" cannot be just an empty marketing slogan.

Stephen Covey alludes to this in Principle Centered Leadership. Businesses focused on profits will, in the long term, cease to be profitable. Businesses focused on higher principles - the reason they're in business in the first place -- will thrive. Apple seems to be a good example of this in practice.

Bonus Steve Jobs: To follow up on an earlier post about creative problem solving, I noticed when he said: "We want to find out what the real problem is before we start to come up with solutions."

Update:  Is buying Apple a mythical experience?  See this interesting post from Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic.  (via Kottke)

(Photo credit: Apple Store)

The World's Got Talent

Among the many ways the web has changed the world, I'd like to add one more. For me, at least, it's engendered a greater appreciation for the variety and extent of human ability. Sure, some of what gets posted to the web is of questionable taste (or worse), but I can recall dozens of times reading someone's writing or watching a video and being, not just impressed, but surprised a fellow human was even capable of doing that.

David Letterman used to have a segment called Stupid Human Tricks, and maybe he still does. For the most part, they were, in fact, pretty stupid tricks. The web is full of those too.

But what I'm referring to is genuine talent: artistic and creative, athletic, literary, and intellectual. Okay, so the slip 'n slide video wasn't real.  But the web is a massive repository of human ability. And it's easily accessible through a computer and phone.

In doing this, it's helped me to realize that "ordinary" people can do "extraordinary" things. The world is full of talent. Human ability is everywhere. And never underestimate human potential.

On that note, please enjoy this video:

Psychological Techniques For Boosting Creativity

Looking for ways to increase creativity, methods grounded in actual research?  Take a look at this two part series on psychological techniques to boost creativity.  One of my favorites:

People often jump to answers too quickly before they've really thought about the question. Research suggests that spending time re-conceptualising the problem is beneficial.

Mumford et al. (1994) found that experimental participants produced higher quality ideas when forced to re-conceive the problem in different ways before trying to solve it. Similarly a classic study of artists found that those focused on discovery at the problem-formulation stage produced better art (Csikszentmihalyi & Getzels, 1971).

◊ For insight: forget the solution for now, concentrate on the problem. Are you asking the right question?

So many knowledge workers -- lawyers in particular  -- rush to solve problems, because that's what they're good at. But stopping to thoroughly examine the problem not only serves to identify the real issues at stake.  According to these studies, it also helps apparently stimulates creative thinking.

(via Kotte)

How A Burglar Changed Gravity

The New York Times has an interesting article about a new approach to understanding gravity led by physicist Erik Verlinde. Rather than treating gravity as a separate fundamental force, it can be seen as a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. Basically, gravitational attraction is the result of the universe's natural tendency toward disorder, or entropy. This makes no sense to me, since I think of gravity as an ordering force, coalescing mass and maintaining the proximity of objects in space. But apparently I'm in good company -- the idea is pretty controversial among scientists.

Besides its radical nature, however, what I found interesting was how Verlinde came up with the idea:

That inspiration came to him courtesy of a thief.

As he was about to go home from a vacation in the south of France last summer, a thief broke into his room and stole his laptop, his keys, his passport, everything. “I had to stay a week longer,” he said, “I got this idea.”

Up the beach, his brother got a series of e-mail messages first saying that he had to stay longer, then that he had a new idea and finally, on the third day, that he knew how to derive Newton’s laws from first principles, at which point Herman recalled thinking, “What’s going on here? What has he been drinking?”

When they talked the next day it all made more sense, at least to Herman. “It’s interesting,” Herman said, “how having to change plans can lead to different thoughts.”

So the next time you're forced to change plans, or otherwise bumped off your routine, it may be an opportunity for a breakthrough idea. Try to create some time and space for creativity. And be sure to capture any imaginative sparks so they can flash over later. For more on routines and creativity, see this interesting post from Jack Cheng.

5 Things Science Tells Us About Motivation

What does science tell us about motivating people to do good work?  Here's an interesting ten minute video combining illustrations with a Daniel Pink lecture, and discussing five key findings:

1. For rewarding simple straightforward tasks, money is a good motivator.
2. When a task involves more than rudimentary cognitive ability -- some conceptual, creative thinking -- monetary rewards actually result in poorer performance.
3. If you don't pay people enough, they won't be motivated to do a job.
4. The best way to motivate people is to pay them enough to take the issue of money off the table.  Allow them to think about the work, rather than the money.
5. Three factors lead to better performance and personal satisfaction: (1) Autonomy, (2) Mastery, and (3) Purpose.

Watch the video for a full explanation of the three factors and some examples involving real organizations.  This reminded me of the ideas underlying Google's "20-percent time."  And for a great example of these ideas in action, I highly recommend checking out Netflix's presentation on its "Freedom and Responsibility Culture."

(txs, Elan!)

An Overflowing Inbox Is Not A Kanban System

From David Allen (no link available):

It is a residue from the industrial and agricultural world, I think, when the things to be done were much more physically self-evident. The "piles" in most offices nowadays seem just meager attempts to reproduce the self-evidence of the crops, the machinery, the things to be made and moved of bygone times. But self-evidence is not forthcoming without more discrete focus and more self-directed thinking.

From a lean perspective, I think what people are looking for is a kanban system and visual controls to manage their work in the office. When the inbox starts to overflow, time to sort through it. When the mailbox gets overloaded with email, and the anxiety level gets high enough, time to scan the messages.

But these are emotional rather than rational cues.

Better to have cues built on an optimal worklow.  This means emptying all the buckets on a daily basis, and using your organizational system to cue when to take action on items. Get the mailbox down to zero three times daily, even if this means putting some of those emails in an @Action folder, until you have time to fully process them. Then cue up the work based on deadlines (i.e. customer demand) and maintaining continuous flow.

Overflowing buckets also indicate excessive inventory and poor processes. Time to rework your system.

And your inbox usually operates as a push system, rather than a pull system.

The point here is to use real cues instead of the artifical and misleading physical cues that emerge in an office environment.  The height of paper stacked on your credenza doesn't (or shouldn't) tell you what to do and when to do it.

When Does Choosing A Better Computer Become Wasteful?

No, I'm not referring to green computing devices. Though, apparently computers account for 2% of the world's carbon emissions. I'm swapping my nearly four year-old PC notebook for a new 15" MacBook Pro. Can you say upgrade? Like many buyers, I'm tempted to get the fastest possible machine with the most memory, given my budget.

But I keep thinking about over-processing. It's wasteful to get a tool that's more powerful than what's needed for the job. Here's some of my thinking.

• How fast? I do minimal multimedia work. Mostly, I access databases and documents on a local network and remotely, create text-based documents, and work on the web. But time is money (my time ends up being my clients' money, to be precise). So, I decided to get the fastest available processor along with a solid state drive. I can always upgrade RAM, but predict 4 GB will be plenty for 95% of my work.
• How much memory? With a 500 GB hard drive I can save data for years to come without worrying about usable disk space. But I've only got 65 GB of data now. So I decided to get the 128 GB drive. I can always upgrade when I near capacity. And who knows what cloud storage options will look like then.

The hardest decision was whether to get a solid state drive. Ultimately, I chose one because they're more reliable (no moving parts) and run cooler (no motor). The result is a more efficient machine, with the related benefit of a longer battery life. I decided to go with the Apple OEM drive rather than with a third party upgrade. There may be better after-market drives out there, but I'd rather avoid any potential problems with warranties and service. If there's a problem, it's Apple's to fix. Period.

Now, it wasn't that hard to identify the right machine for today's work. The over-processing analysis would have been easy from that standpoint. But predicting the appropriate tool for two to four years from now? Given the extraordinary rate of change in consumer electronics and the web -- who knows what we'll all be doing then. That's what made this a challenge.

Has anyone else experienced this challenge when buying a computer? From an enterprise IT perspective, our firm certainly has, and larger organizations must have it even worse.

Guest Post At Lean Blog

I'm honored to have a guest post up today at at Mark Graban's Lean Blog.   My post is on seven ways lawyers can use Lean in their practices.  Please stop on by!

5 (Other) Reasons To Go To The Gemba

The gemba is the place where the work is done. Lean managers "go to the gemba" to see it for themselves (genchi genbustu). This might be done during a continuous improvement (kaizen) project. Recently, I've had the pleasure of spending many hours in the gemba with our support staff. We are going firm-wide with a new document workflow, which we've been testing with a pilot group for the last six months. During our sessions, we've identified a lot of waste and generated great ideas for improving our processes.

I've also discovered -- or maybe rediscovered -- five other reasons for going to the gemba.

1. Reaffirm respect for people. As a manager, it's easy to get preoccupied with your own work demands and forget about the day-to-day contributions others make to the organization. Seeing your people in action reminds you of their talent and dedication.
2. Communicate. Organizations usually use email, intranet posts, and large meetings to communicate their goals and plans. But one-on-one meetings and small groups allow for more frank and focused discussions. And some people aren't comfortable talking at formal meetings. The gemba might be just the right context for a critical interaction. It also gives people the chance to ask questions, in person and in real-time. Sometimes the gemba is the first chance you get to really explain why you are doing a particular project.
3. Remind people that you care. This might sound overly sentimental, but spending time with your people reminds them that you genuinely value their work and talent. It also reinforces the message that you appreciate their ideas and contributions to designing work processes.
4. See other important issues. You might observe a problem that demands an immediate response. Perhaps it's a major form of waste with a quick or even an on-the-spot solution. Sometimes a person's worklife can be radically improved just by realizing they need a new $6.00 tool. And though hopefully there aren't any safety problems, but if there are, this is a chance to correct them before someone gets hurt.
5. Learn something new. By watching and discussing the work with your people, it's guaranteed you'll learn something unexpected about your organization, your industry, and the work.

It's hard to take time away from your work to go to the gemba. But these reasons make it well worth it.

Over-processing: Too Much Of A Good Thing

Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. has an interesting post on how the views on quality held by corporate in-house legal counsel diverge from outside counsel. Referencing McKinsey, he divides quality into three segments and explains how he thinks corporate America views them:

• Good enough: Sufficient for almost all purposes almost all the time.
• Excellent: Occasionally needed when germane to reputation, marketplace perception, or positioning.
• Superb: Very rarely required, perhaps only when genuine organizational threats are in play.

He contrasts this with the perspective of outside legal counsel:

• Superb: Why you come to our firm, what we do, and who I am. (Don't for a second underestimate that third element; it's why you get up in the morning and how you hold your head high.)
• Excellent: When we try to execute a representation with some degree of sensitivity to costs, based on a longstanding relationship.
• Good enough: Who do you think we are? You've come to the wrong place.

Assuming outside counsel does the work at a "Good enough" level, Bruce poses the question: "who's to blame-your firm or the client-for the fact that merely sufficient legal advice has come back to bite?"

Good question. And one I'm not prepared to answer.

But let me add a comment from a Lean perspective. The problem with outside legal counsel's view is the willingness to engage in over-processing, one of the seven traditional forms of waste (muda). Over-processing is doing more work, or higher quality work, than is desired by the customer, or using tools that are more expensive or precise than needed.

Outside counsel sees the high quality work as an unqualified good thing (who would want lesser quality?) In-house counsel sees the work as "wasting" their finite budget for legal services. The company wanted a Corolla. Its attorney just built a fully loaded Lexis LS600hl.

The key here is open communication between the client and outside counsel.The client should be clear about what it needs. Counsel should be clear about what it will deliver and at what price. Also, counsel needs to explain the risks of opting for work of lesser quality. And to the extent possible, the client needs to sign off on any such risk.

We also should be careful to distinguish between the quality of work product and the quality of representation. Work product almost always should be high quality. It's the amount or type of work product that should vary depending on the client's needs. For example, a legal brief should be very well written -- no matter what. But whether the brief should be filed should be considered at the outset.

Given the current economic climate, there's sure to be a lot more discussion about the appropriate level of quality, for legal services and virtually everything else we have to pay for.

Are You A GTD Black Belt?

If so, hear what David Allen expects to find when he meets you in this 2 minute podcast. Or read the answer under the fold (it's not the answer you're expecting).

1. You'd have a "sparkle" in your eye about whatever you're doing-- you'd be appropriately engaged and not distracted.
2. He wouldn't find a "numbness" or "crazy busyness" that made it hard to get your attention or engage in communication.

In other words, GTD isn't about better lists.  Rather, it's about being a more engaged and effective person.