It Takes a Village to Raise a Factory
These days there is a great deal of debate raging around the topic of manufacturing, with many former and aspiring manufacturing centers looking to attract factory investment from the worlds multinational corporations.
At this very moment I am in a hotel in Bangkok, which is seemingly the only place in town where one can escape the barrage of stakeholders extolling the advantages of opening a factory in Thailand. Their reasoning is not unfounded, and it does not take much looking around to see the fertile ground where upon the next global manufacturing powerhouse may arise.
Scotch on the rocks: The importance of context in outsourced manufacturing
In the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, we witness our protagonist, Eddie Valiant, order a “scotch on the rocks” from a cartoon waiter and we laugh when the waiter returns with a glass that contains scotch and, literally, rocks.
This humorous aside illustrates a very important lesson about conducting business in foreign lands: The context of the
conversation matters just as much as, if not more than, the subject matter. When making the move to outsourced manufacturing, context is easy to take for granted.
When placing an order with a supplier accustomed to doing business with US customers, there are countless contextual items that I know they understand without a long explanation being necessary. These contextual items range from the complex, for example, understanding how to package our order into logical kits for multi-store rollouts, to more obscure, as in stipulating finishes that are LEED compliant, to simple things, like ensuring that all of our electronics and digital signage components have the requisite regulatory approvals.
The combination of our knowing what we need to deliver to our customer and my suppliers knowledge of all of the right questions to ask combine to provide a system of checks and balances that is often absent in supplier-client relationships that cross international boundaries.
In outsourcing some or all of our manufacturing activities, we must be cognizant of the need to provide context around what it is that we are designing and building, because more often than not, our manufacturing partners overseas lack the contextual understanding necessary to understand not just the parts that they are building, but how those parts fit into a larger ecosystem.
I’ve set out to create teachable context with our suppliers many times, and I’ve found that often it is the simplest lessons that have the most impact.
Keep it visual:
Whether you’re up against a language barrier, a culture barrier, or simply find some concepts difficult to articulate, using photos and videos is one of best ways to share your teachable point of view. I’ve often found that what would take me hours to express in words can be understood quickly with just a few photos or a quick video store tour.
Keep it simple:
I find that the more technical the details are, the less I need to talk about it. I rarely discuss critical dimensions in an initial presentation, because the drawings and solid models express that to a precise level. What I have found much more valuable are simple overviews. An explanation of how a particular store is laid out, an overview of the products we are displaying, even a brief description of the types of shoppers that we are targeting all come together to instill in our partners the context around what is it that we want to build. Picture yourself as a tourguide moving through the experience of a store, a display, a product; leave out the technical details and focus on the highlights.
Focus on what, not how:
One of most important skills to hone when outsourcing is to detach yourself from your roots as a manufacturer, and reframe your projects in terms what you want to do, not how you want to do it. Our instincts often tell us that the way to remove risk is to specify every part of our project with as much detail as possible, yet this is often counter productive. By demanding an exact bill of materials and assembly methodology, we tie the hands of our partners, whereas they might be able to make the same product that we want better or at least, more efficiently. Furthermore, by demanding a supplier use an unfamiliar process, we increase the likelihood of errors, adding needless rework costs to our bottom line.
Imparting a sense of context in your suppliers empowers them to create the experience that you want using methods with which they are familiar. The small time investment that you make at the start of your project will pay countless dividends in current and future projects.
Lessons Learned in International Sourcing
I still remember my first international fixture sourcing trip. Way back in 2005, I traveled with the founder of my previous employer (a fixture manufacturer) to China to explore our asian sourcing options. I remember it well because it left an impression on me that I will never forget. In a few weeks of being on the ground, and visiting suppliers, I left knowing that we had seen the future; this is where manufacturing was gravitating now, and it was only going to accelerate in the future. I also remember how “in over my head” I felt when trying to conduct business in a place where I knew almost nothing of the language, culture, or expectations. Read more
What a difference a year makes
The theme for this year at south by southwest conference is “What a difference a year makes”. I found this to be true in my own experience of the conference, and many of my fellow attendees made similar comments about the evolution of the conference in general. As in my past year of attendance, my head is full of inspired writing that I am busily getting down onto paper. So, consider this the first in a series of posts. Read more 
Retail Design, New York City Tourism, and New Beginnings
My wife and I just returned from a trip to New York to visit with my family, and while there we managed to spend one of our days in New York City, where I grew up.
(my family just recently realized that I have nearly reached the point where I have not lived in New York for as long as I lived in New York, and they took this opportunity to remind me of this newly discovered fact several times. Thanks mom!)
We had a chance to have dinner with some friends, who asked my wife what quintessential “New York Things” had I taken her to see. She quickly responded by recounting our first trip to New York, which we spent riding the subway and visiting every Best Buy in Manhattan, along with a few other smaller retailers. In hindsight, probably not the best first impression that I could have provided, however, it serves as a great metaphor for the motivations that drive me as a retail design thinker. I am passionate about what I do. A little too much at times.
I started my career in manufacturing, designing and building merchandising solutions, Read more
South By Southwest Wrap Up
This past week I had the opportunity to travel to the South By Southwest conference, and now that I’ve had a chance to digest everything (well, mostly), I’d like to summarize my impressions here.
Overall, attending South By Southwest was one of the most amazing experiences that I have ever had; not because of the panels or events, but because it really helped me look introspectively at what I want out of my life and career. I came back from the conference more focused and energized than I have been in a long time.
Focus
During the five day conference, there were over 300 panels, speeches, round-tables, and workshops. At any given time slot, I had a dozen or more panels that I needed to choose from. At first, I started sitting in the back of the room so I could panel-hop, but I quickly realized that my best course of action would be to choose one or two subject matter and focus on the panels that would fit in best with those subjects. I choose to focus on the two subjects that I am most passionate about, Open Source and Entrepreneurship.
At first, I simply looked at these two topics as just that; two different topics that I have an interest in learning more about. As time went on, I soon realized that there is significant overlap. From a very over-simplified perspective, Open Source is based on the premise that by sharing information freely serves to benefit everyone.
As a student of global entrepreneurship, I am driven to empower entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to reality. Never before have I been in a place where so many people have so many great ideas that have the potential to change the world. In consulting with early stage entrepreneurs, I started to see that the guiding principles of Open Source can also be of great benefit to the entrepreneurship community as well.
In this current economic climate, there is ever increasing pressure for entrepreneurs to go further on their own than they have before. By sharing information and best practices together, everyone can benefit.
I returned from South By Southwest committing to make more of a contribution back to the entrepreneurship community; look out world!
Energy
I said that South By Southwest energized me, and it even manifested itself in behavioral changes throughout the week. Those of you that know me know that I love coffee, and I can easily have 2-3 double espressos in a day. During South by Southwest my coffee intake fell dramatically, often only 1 per day, and I think I know why:
As a technical business professional, I spend a great deal of my time translating information between technical and non technical employees and clients. This activity is very much akin to translating between two different languages, and can be, at times, equally exhausting. Attending South by Southwest was like showing up to a conference full of people that all speak my native language, room after room of people that are just like me, people that understand technology and business; people that “get it”, without requiring long explanations. My theory is that being in this environment allowed me to survive on less coffee, and food for that matter, than I need in my normal day to day existence.
Connections
There were many great, great presentations that I attended at South by Southwest. One of my favorites was a presentation by Peter Shankman titled “How Self-Promotion Will Save the World” which was a lot less cheesy than the title would lead you to believe. One of my favorite points made during the presentation was the importance of building and maintaining strong connections among all of your contacts. I was inspired by a lot of his points, and this one especially. As soon as I returned home, I started emailing a few people that I know I have not spoken to in a long time, and I even have a few appointments to grab lunch or coffee with long lost classmates and business contacts.
I also had the chance to finally meet a lot of other young professionals that I have known for some time via sites like Brazen Careerist; it was awesome to meet people that I’ve know by reading their writing, and finally putting faces to a names.
The SXGenY panel was another panel that I was excited to attend. As a GenY employee, I am always looking for more input and experiences from other GenY employees in the workplace. This panel was very active, probably the largest amount of people from the audience waiting to address the panelists; I would say questions took up nearly half of the panel. It is obvious that the entry of Generation Y into the workplace has created a lot of opportunity for understanding on the part of all generations. The only other thing that I would have liked to have seen was for the panel to have had an older panelist to talk about working with GenY from the other side of the table.
Conclusions
For years, I said that I wanted to go to South By Southwest, and always found a way to not go, and regret it later. A good friend (and SXSW veteran) told me that I needed to just stop thinking about it and go. He was right; I still have a hard time articulating how great of an experience this was for me, and at the same time I know that I’ll be there in 2011.
The other major take away that I gained during South By Southwest was the rekindling of my passion for entrepreneurship. Having studied business in grad school, I found my passion for entrepreneurship came right back to the surface when I arrived in Austin. There are some many people there in this one place, all inspired to make the world a better place. It was an inspiring feeling, and something that I miss being a part of. I came away inspired to make a better contribution back to the world of entrepreneurship. How? Don’t know yet. My brain is still a little mushy for all of the information we crammed in last week. But keep your eyes open, it won’t be long.
Creating Great Demos
As a Sales Engineer, I spend a great deal of my time either speaking to customers or planning to speak to customers. Recently, I have started to create short recorded videos to demonstrate products or to teach quick lessons on how to use our software.
It is understood today that the best way to create long term customers and evangelists is to engage those customers, both in your firm as well as in your product. One of the best ways to get users engaged with your product is to get them using it as soon as possible, and I have had great luck using short videos to engage with users, and get them excited about using our product. I’ve also had terrible luck with actually making these videos, and my present methods are the result of 6 months worth of refinement to my process. Today, I had the opportunity to discuss some of the lessons that I had learned over the past few months, and I thought others could probably benefit from this knowledge as well.
So today is going to be a short look into the tools that I use to create screen casts and demo videos.
Here are some of the techniques that I use now when creating content:
1. Create a basic storyboard - I’ve found that videos need to be either very quick and functional (e.g – here is how you restart the server) or they need to follow a narrative that engages with your viewers (e.g. – Let’s look at how Bob can do his job better with new widgets2.0). In either case I usually set a hard stop of 10 minutes; anything beyond that is usually pushing the limits of your viewer’s attention span. You would be surprised at how much content you can fit into 10 minutes with good editing. Even this badly edited first draft of me demonstrating how to install and configure a MindTouch server stays under 10 minutes. So staying with the 10 minute or under guideline, I create a storyboard of what high level topics I need to express in the video. I use MindTouch, but Google docs or any word processor works nearly as well. I start with section headings for each of the high points, then I start writing the actual script for each section; just do a brain dump, refinement comes later. Which brings us to our next point.
2. Have a practice read-through with the teleprompter - You will feel like Ron Burgundy at first…and that’s ok. There is nothing that can help you become a better writer than reading your content aloud. And you don’t need a real teleprompter, or even teleprompter software at this point; just read your writing off the screen. I add in keys for myself in appropriate places, adding in bold comments like
[SLOW DOWN, DRIVE HOME HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS]
I spent a lot of time listening to webinars and watching videos, and I found that the presenters that I found most engaging had a very even cadence when speaking; whether this comes naturally to them or they just read well from a prompter, it doesn’t matter; the end result is the same. So when I start reading my script, I speak with this same even tempo, and feedback from viewers has been very positive. Lastly, record yourself. I initially had a hard time listening to myself speak and giving objective feedback. I got past this issue quickly, and then I was able to hear how I needed to change my speech to improve my presentations. You will make a lot of changes to the script here, which is why I don’t really worry about writing the perfect script when I am storyboarding in step 1.
One point that I really want to drive home: Don’t Rush. Videos take a lot of time to make. A lot. As in, way more than you think. So be prepared to take a break and come back to it later. I estimate that I put in 2-3 hours per minute of finished video. Borrow some advice from moviemakers: break movies into scenes, and be prepared to have multiple takes of each scene.
3. Don’t Waste Film - I know, I know….but really, before you waste time screen-capturing, do a dry run. Does everything behave how you thought it would? I always seem to forget about some option that is not enabled by default or some extension that users need in order to make everything work right. Your viewers are not using your computer. Think for a minute about what they will need in their own computer to do what you’re doing. At startups we always seem to forget that most of the people that we’re talking to have never seen our software before, whereas I can work the control panel with my eyes closed. I continuously remind myself to be on the lookout for anything that I might be taking for granted. Remember, “PC Load Letter” made perfect sense to anyone working at HP.
4. Use the right Tools - The right tools make all of the difference in the world in terms of quality of capture and ease of editing. Here are the tools that I use. Your mileage may vary.
- Camtasia Mac – I’ve used a lot of screen capture tools, and Camtasia from Techsmith is the best that I have found. In addition to being a fantastic screen capture tool, it is also a very capable editing studio, allowing you to add transitions, graphics, text, and even other videos and images into your project.
M-Audio Microtrack II Digital Audio Recorder - I have recently started recording the audio and video portions of my videos in separate takes. I get the video exactly right, and then simply play back the video while reading from my script. It adds surprisingly little extra work, as you can drag the .WAV or .MP3 from the Microtrack right into Camtasia. Lastly, if you are using video of yourself in your production, the audio quality from the Microtrack is going to be vastly superior to that from all but the most professional camcorders. If you don’t want to spend money on a separate recording device, the Open Source Audacity software does a great job of capturing audio, although you will have much better luck with an external microphone.
- Sony HandyCam MiniDV – Making video for the web means you don’t need anything flashy. Certainly nothing HD. Your average single CCD miniDV cam from 5 years ago will do a fine job adding your face to a web video. If you want to get really crazy, get a 3-CCD cam or a used Canon XL-1S. Since most of your takes are going to be short, the easiest method to capture the video is to stream it right into the computer using firewire or USB.
- Apple MacBook - It’s simple to use, comes with great video editing software (iMovie), and runs all of the
applications that I need to create great videos. - Ample hydration - when you’re talking a lot, drinking water is key to not sounding like Patty and Selma when you’re reading your lines. And a beer or some scotch when work is done for the night is optional.
5. Get feedback – Doesn’t matter who it’s from, and in fact, the less technical the user, the better. Listen to feedback, and don’t be afraid to change something around and make a second (or third) version of the same video to address the feedback that you receive.
That’s it. And as always, practice makes perfect. Start by making a video about something that you’re an expert in, whatever that may be.
Compare my most recent video, below, to that 10 minute install video that I linked above. What a difference!
Lessons Learned at Grad School: Part 1
About halfway through my coursework in the pursuit of my MBA, I remember pausing for a moment to take stock of where I was, had been, and was going.
In the one year since starting school, a lot had changed; mainly, I quit my job and moved to California. I had left my former employer, as they were closing the office in which I had been working, and they wanted me to relocate to Siberia Minneapolis. I decided that this was as good of a time as any to leave the company on a high note; I had just finished launching our most successful project to date, and I had no desire to live in Minneapolis. So with that, we packed up our things and headed out to San Diego, a place that I had been trying to return to for the past decade.
A short time later, I remember remarking that had I known a few years ago that I would resign from my job less than a year into a 2-year executive MBA program, I might have done things differently. I thought that, had I known this early enough, I would instead have just taken a year off and gone back to school full time, or even considered going to INSEAD instead of Thunderbird (Gasp!), at least partially so that we could have a reasonable excuse to live in France for a year. I held this belief until I joined the team of my second startup, MindTouch, here in San Diego.
While I was coaching some of my colleagues here at MindTouch, I had an epiphany. I realized in that moment that in addition to all of the business knowledge that I gained over the past 2 years, I had learned another very valuable lesson; I had learned to manage my time extremely well. I had no idea what a valuable asset this was, both to my team, as well as to my mental health, until I came on board at MindTouch.
Enrolling in an EMBA program taught me to containerize my time very well. Working at a startup, it is very easy to fall into the trap of working nearly every waking hour. In having to balance school, work, and personal life, I learned to turn off “Startup Employee Mode” and turn on “Focused Student Mode”; on top of that, I made sure to turn off both modes and turn on “Personal Life Mode” to spend valuable time with my significant other, which was very therapeutic. For those of you that have worked at (or even with) a startup, you know how hard it is to turn off “Startup Employee Mode”. I was in a situation where I had hard deadlines created by others, as at work and school, which taught me to create some of my own deadlines, like scheduling date night, and workout times and sticking to these as unmovable commitments as well. The truth of the matter is, if I didn’t schedule time for all of the other things that I wanted to get done, all of that time would be eaten up by my company and my school. Startup employees know this pain well; you start work early in the AM and suddenly it’s 10PM; unstructured environments like startups demand a great deal of personal time management.
Following graduation, I have continued to set deadlines for all of my commitments, personal and work related, and this time management has enabled me to get a lot done (or at least feel like I get a lot done) and keep my stress down to a reasonable level.
Always be Learning
People tend to either be listening or taking at at any given time. Something that I have noticed recently is that one of the most common traits in people with true leadership skills is that they are always in learning mode. It seems especially prevalent these days that everyone is racing to call themselves an expert on a range of topics (with “social media” being the worst offender, but there are plenty of others), but I fail to see a rush of people looking to pay for this expertise.
(sidenote: if you actually hired a “social media expert”, please let me know; I have yet to even see an ad that reads “Looking for social media expert. Must twitter constantly, have lots of followers, have unhealthy relationship with iPhone. HASHTAG ABUSERS NEED NOT APPLY”)
One common thread that runs through many successful members of the business community is that they never stop learning. Before you accuse me of having an inappropriate sample set, I assure you that I am not just speaking about observations of my MBA class, but many people that I have met in my personal and professional life as well. Those that are the best leaders are the ones that are always listening and analyzing and if there is one trait that has been developed over the past few years of grad school it has been my ability to slow down, listen and most importantly, ask questions. Jim Collins, the Auther of “Good to Great” recently said that leaders are not the ones that have the answers, they are the ones that ask the right questions.
The simple irony is, once you call yourself an expert you now have incentive to stop learning; the best leaders however, have the opposite trait. It seems that the best leaders are open to learning all the time, living the phrase “you learn something new every day”.
Breathe!
“I’m too busy getting things done to get things organized!”
For anyone that has worked or is working at a startup, you are sure to hear this all the time; things are hectic, crazy, disorganized, and everyone is so focused on bringing in revenue or designing the next killer product that they never take the time to step back and analyze what they are doing to determine if that is what they should be doing.
I have been very lucky in my career to have had some absolutely great mentors to guide my way over the years; more often than not, these mentors have been people that I worked for, often after convincing them that they should hire me and help guide my career path to the next level. Did I mention that I’m in sales? I recently read a great blog post by one of my fellow Brazen Careerist bloggers, Sydney Owen, on how to find a mentor. The basic premise is you need to identify the right person and be assertive with them, offer them something, and listen to what they have to say. Seems obvious, and Sydney does a much better job of highlighting how to go about the care and feeding of your mentor.
One of my first mentors was Kenneth Burrow, a division GM at Circuit City. He taught me the value taking time to be introspective in the workplace. His lessons to me have stayed with me through my entire career. One of the most valuable of these was to instill in me the importance of taking a moment to step back and look at a situation, large or small, as just one part of the puzzle. There were many times when I would let some tasks slide at the expense of others, but yet I had not taken the time to analyze which of those tasks should be priorities and which should not; to act without being analytical is a recipe for disaster. Kenny was a great mentor in that he let me learn my lessons my way, by trying and changing until I found my groove.
Although I was working for a fortune 500 company at the time, these lessons in “taking a step back” were extremely valuable in later years working for several startups. In many of these companies, everyone is so busy moving forward that they often forget that we have to steer as well; being able to take a step back, looking at how I am allocating my personal resources, seems so obvious, yet it takes a lot of effort to execute.
So next time you feel overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done, STOP! take a moment, step back, breathe, and analyze the situation more objectivly. The time spent taking the time to organize your project or analyzing how you are spending your time will pay back tenfold. There are only so many hours in the day, the best thing that we can do is make sure that we are spending them well.
