Control: Never had it, don’t want it.
– Herb Kelleher. ex-CEO of Southwest Airlines
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Why features don’t matter anymore
The success of the Apple iPod should serve us all as a reminder of this fact: Simple is good.
And in case we forget, there’s this excellent article by Andreas Pfeiffer who formulates it very succinctly using 10 simple rules. Here are some examples:
10 fundamental rules for the age of user experience technology:
1) More features isn’t better, it’s worse.
Feature overload is becoming a real issue. The last thing a customer wants is confusion-and what’s more confusing than comparing technical specifications, unless you are en expert? Only nerds get a kick out of reading feature lists. (I know – I’m one of them.)
2) You can’t make things easier by adding to them.
Simplicity means getting something done in a minimum number of simple steps. Practically anything could be simpler – but you don’t get there by adding features.
3) Confusion is the ultimate deal-breaker.
Confuse a customer, and you lose him. And nothing confuses more easily than complex features and unintuitive functionalities.
Which reminds me of the time Mark Twain wrote a letter saying:
I apologize for writing you a long letter but I didn’t have time to write a short one.
And then there’s this wonderful quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes:
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
And that is what we must seek in business: We must seek complexity and then try to discover the simplicity beyond complexity. If you only know enough about your product to present it in a complicated way – one that makes everybody think you must be really clever – then you’re not ready to sell it.
When you can present it in a way that makes everybody realize they’re as clever as you are, then you’re good to go. And that’s when you can create breakaway hits like the iPod.
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Thank you, Istanbul
A great big thank you to:
- The conference team from MCT and Eventus who were an amazingly nice bunch of people
- The other speakers for many great conversations
- And especially to those who attended my presentation on happiness at work in Istanbul
See – they look happy already!
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Back from Istanbul – and the future of HR
I’m now back in Copenhagen after a nice, sunny flight home from Istanbul. Most of the way, I could look down on a snow-covered Europe which looked amazingly beautiful from 10 km up.
The conference was a great experience which touched on the many themes that are (or are becoming) central to HR, such as:
- Innovation
- Talent development
- ROI
- Organizational culture
- Eliminating bureaucracy
- Leadership
I went out to dinner thursday evening with a group of other speakers and we ended up talking about what the common, unifying theme of the “new HR” might be.
It will probably surprise noone, that I believe that unifying theme to be happiness at work. The basic challenge of modern business is to activate the full potential of the people who work there. For this to happen, peope need to be happy. It’s that simple.
This makes happiness both a goal and a tool, and it is my claim that happiness at work will become the most important strategic goal of modern businesses over the next few years.
I also predict that we will see a trend, where happy companies will put unhappy companies out of business, simply because happy businesses are much more efficient and profitable. It’s no contest.
What does this mean for the future of HR? I think it mainly requires a new focus, namely this:
The role of HR is to make people happy
If businesses make this conceptual leap and start prioritizing accordingly, we will see HR becoming an even greater asset than it already is and we will see many workplaces change for the better. And it’ll help the bottom line.
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Happy at work slides
A big thank you to everyone who participated! If you have any comments or questions, please write a comment here and I will try to answer.
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Istanbul HR conference
I’m writing this from the VIP room at the MCT HR conference in Istanbul (it’s good to be a speaker). The conference was kicked off by some good presentations:
- Lars Kolind launched his crusade against bureaucracy
- Elisabet Sahtouris used her background in evolutionary biology to show us that businesses are living organisms
- Ricardo Semler spoke via satellite from Sao Paulo on how Semco manages to do things incredibly different and incredibly well
After a very nice lunch, there are several sessions to choose from this afternoon – we’ll see who wins the race.
And of course the best part of any conference is making new friends and having great conversations – and this conference certainly doesn’t disappoint. More updates later.
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Colbert cartoons insults Danes
Last night, american TV-pundit Stephen Colbert on his show The Colbert Report attempted to “fix” the growing controversy over the Muhammed cartoons by insulting Denmark with his own scribblings.In two cartoons, which he drew himself, he managed to offend such major Danish icons as Hamlet, Hans Christian Andersen and Queen Margrethe. To top it off, he even went after Lars von Trier. We Danes cannot let this pass. Colbert admits to being afraid of muslim retaliation – let’s show him that Danes are not to be trifled with either.
You can see the segment here – but be warned, it is strong stuff. (5MB, 1 min, wmv).
I hereby declare a special Danish Fatwah over Stephen Colbert, to be removed only after he apologizes unreservedly to all of Denmark.
Sign your name in the comments, to support our protest! If you have any ideas for specific Danish penalties we might threaten Colbert with, please add those also. Maybe we can exploit his irrational fear of bears.
(Image taken from Madsenblog who also spotted these horrible slurs).
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Moving soon
There will be no new posts for a few days, while I prepare to move this blog to a new server and onto WordPress (which is of course open source and free :o)
The blog will be back later this week with new posts, a new design and (yes, finally) an RSS feed. The URL will remain positivesharing.com, but all permalinks to previous posts will change. Sorry.
