Next Monday, March 30th, I’m teaching my full day course on how to lead and manage breakthrough projects in San Francisco.

(UPDATE) Winner was announced yesterday.

There are only a few seats left, but as a perk I get one golden ticket to give away - So here’s your chance.

For reference, highlights of the course include:

• A top rated, world class, fun, interactive heavy kick-ass full day course
• Skill development for creative leaders on important projects
• Tools for developing, managing and executing on big ideas
• High energy, fast paced, minimal bs agenda (full agenda listed here).
• Interactive lessons on creative thinking & management from the great innovators of all time
• Covers material and exercises that go well beyond what’s in my books
• Free consulting or Q&A with me over email after the course
• A signed copy of the bestseller, The Myths of Innovation

If you’re in the SF area, or will be on Monday, and want a shot at a $600 ticket, leave a comment. I’ll pick one lucky winner for FREE entry to the course.

How to enter:

1. Leave a comment
2. Wait (and cross your fingers)
3. Winner chosen end of day Wednesday

If you don’t want to gamble, registration details for the course are here. Use the promo code berkunproj25 to get 25% off.

Posted in Innovation, Management, On Tour, Teaching/Training | 20 Comments »

Thanks to the kick-ass work of Kathy Gill, the first ever presentation camp in Seattle is scheduled to run all day Saturday April 4th at the University of Washington.

$10 gets you in for the whole day if you register by March 31 -  Registration and details here.

PresentationCamp is an ad-hoc gathering of passionate folks who want to share, interact and spread the love around the topic of presentation design and delivery. Come to learn, come to share: everyone walks away knowing a little bit more. (Not in seattle? Other camps are listed here )

The day will be run in unconference format, meaning every attendee is free to volunteer to run a session. The wiki is used to help sort out who is interested in what, and what sessions are already being planned. Don’t see what you want? Add a note for what you want to see, or what you’d be interested in helping run.

Right now odds are good I’ll be doing a big talk to start the day, and will definitely run a session or two during the event.

If you’re interested, please asap, leave your name on the wiki to help us plan the day, or go ahead and register.

Posted in Seattle, Teaching/Training | No Comments »

The longer I’m in this profession of lecturing and writing, the more I worry about becoming one of those guru asshole types. You know who I’m talking about. People who talk as if they’re always right, never wrong and lecture to people as if they are morons and are too stupid to do in a year what the guru could do in a day.

Frankly I hate these people. I always have. And it’s ironic that this is what I do for a living now.

I do my best not to sound or be like one, but I admit I can use your help.

When I’m hired to speak or teach, people want me to be the know it all genius expert, even though I’m not.  I’m an expert, yes, but I’m far from perfect. But since I get hired to be a know it all expert all the time, it’s easy to eventually believe your own PR.   I’d rather not have this happen.

Here’s my list of ways you can help me detect bullshit, my own or in other expert/guru type person. I promise I’ll never get mad if you do. Having good people ask tough questions forces me to think about what I’m saying and learning to be wise is essentially what I’m in all this to do.

Here’s my list:

• Ask “have you done this yourself?” Most gurus haven’t been practitioners in a long time. It’s easy to forget the difference between giving advice to do X and actually doing X.  And the longer its been since they’ve done X, the easier X will seem to be. Of course, just because a guru hasn’t done it doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it just means they might need to ease up on the arrogance, or seek out more examples.
• Ask “How do you know what you know?” Phrases like “studies say”, “I have seen”, “the leading theory is” are all possibly bogus phrases. What study? Where did you see this? Who says it’s the leading theory? Don’t let an experts assumptions not sound like assumptions.
• Ask “When is the theory you are advocating wrong?” Nothing works all the time. A smart person is aware of the limitations of any idea or practice. Ask them to explain the alternative of their position, and when they might take it.
• Look for admissions of mistakes and failures. Someone who never admits they are wrong is dangerous. If they’re so smart, and they’ve never failed, it just means they’re a coward. But if they’ve failed and never talk about it, they project an unreal image of what is to be a human being. It’s harder to learn from aliens than humans, I think. Ask for stories of mistakes and failures, their own or others. This will force any true guru into open and honest territory where they can be of greater use to you.
• Ask “Why do so many people fail at this?” A wise person will answer this with some acknowledgment of how hard the thing is to do.  But there is an ego trap in this question: I once heard a famous software consultant say, in response, “because not enough people follow my advice”.

Things not to do:

• Find a factual error and treat it like discovering gold.  Factual errors are everywhere. Many good books contain them and it’s hard as a writer to sort through the origin of every statement or fact. The existence of a mistake does not mean the theory or premise of the author, or lecturer, is wrong. It indicates a mistake in research, which just about all popular research has. It drives me nuts when someone finds I misquoted someone, or got a fact wrong, and jumps to assume all of my quotes and dates are wrong. You can criticize someone’s research but still buy the premise and theory, as some facts are less important than others. More important, look for gurus who make changes to their work when they learn of mistakes and that their work grows from it. (Just fyi, there is a list of mistakes from Myths of Innovation up here, that will go into the next edition).
• Use an expert as your negative stepping stone. This is the definition of a heckler. They want to steal thunder and use someone else’s platform as a launching point for their own.  This rarely works as it doesn’t earn real fans. Critiquing, especially harsh venomous criticisms, is always easier than creating. I think in life you score points for being insightful and building on what people say, not tearing it town. If tearing something down is necessary to build your theory, that’s fine, but people passionate about tearing down often forget that second part.

What other points would you recommend to authors and experts who want to avoid becoming jerk gurus?

Posted in Teaching/Training | 11 Comments »

A few weeks ago Ze Frank had an interesting post about the challenges of short term consulting.

If the client and I do a good job on defining goals of the consultation before I visit, the answer is yes - a consultant can absolutely be of use in 8 hours, or even less.  Sometimes an hour is enough - they’re paying for my experience and perspective, and if they have a clear problem they are facing and can describe it well, I’m a cost effective way to reach a quicker resolution.

But on occasion I find myself in an environment where there are too many cultural issues or nuances for me to be effective. This means I’ve failed to explore the needs beforehand. I hate this for many reasons, but sometimes it happens despite my efforts.

There are three situations in particular that makes one day consultations hard:

• I’m hired for reasons other than I’m told.  The person hiring me only grants me their perspective, and I only learn of the other perspectives when I arrive in a room and watch them get played out in my presence. To be extreme, the dude bringing me might be Darth Vader, but I think he’s Yoda until I’m an hour in the meeting and realize I don’t agree with him, or his reasons for bringing me in at all.
• I’m hired by the wrong person. If the issues are truly with the VP of Products and his organization, but I’m hired by the VP of Marketing, and they don’t get along, my efficacy is likely limited to her sphere of influence. As an outsider I have no real power other than influence with whom I’m allowed to speak to.  If I can’t talk to the VP of Products the best I can do is advise on how someone else can work with him or around him.
• Consultants can not make change happen no matter what you pay them. Sometimes leaders know there is a tough decision to make, but as a group are struggling to make it, and thus want outside advice. No matter how good I am at what I do, I can’t make big decisions for any company that hires me. I can suggest, argue, prove, provide context, give insight, inspire, motivate, entertain and make recommendations, but I do not work at the company. When I leave they still have the same burdens of living with their choices as they did before I arrived. Consultants enable through insight, but they can’t do the actual thing. If they expect me to somehow make and live with the decision for them, or make a tough choice go away, it’s impossible for them not to be disappointed.

The difference between two days and one is enormous. A second day gives a night for observations to grow into better questions, and suspicions into hypotheses. There’s often a chance to get a drink or dinner off the record, and get the background you need that wasn’t provided officially or even by the person who hired you.

On the whole, writing, speaking and teaching are better deals for myself and my clients than consulting. There are fewer risks, and the transactions and expectations are clearer to everyone. It’s easier to see the value of what they are paying for.  If I’m brought in to talk and it goes well, there is a natural sense of what else I can do for them in a consulting capacity.  Then even if the consulting engagement is just for one day, we all have the benefit of what we’ve learned from the talk working to help each other get the most from each other.

Posted in Teaching/Training | No Comments »

At Adaptive Path’s MX event this week (my write up here), 5 teams were given an afternoon to attack a UX organizational challenge. The assignment was to come up with a plan, based on a design brief, for how to plan the future of design at a corporation. The center of our work was to pitch a plan to the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer).

The team I facilitated did 3 things:

1. Dissect the brief. We made a list of assets and liabilities from the brief, including questions we wanted answered that the brief did not tell us. (e.g. who made the personas? Were they BS or was there any data? etc.)
2. Tactics inventory from dangerous powerful people. We made a list of possible models to list, but settled on four: P.T. Barnum & ShamWow!, Genghis Khan, Machiavelli, and 007. For each we made a list of tactics or techniques they would use and put them up on the wall.
3. Divide and conquer. We split up the work into three piles: Work before the pitch, the pitch, and work after the pitch. And then split into three teams that came up with a plan for each one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Design, Management, Teaching/Training | No Comments »

One of my favorite things at Adaptive Path’s MX event this week was how they had designers assigned to make large drawings based on the current talk, as the talk was happening. It was real time art/design/creation - super cool.

Here’s Teresa Brazen’s drawing of my talk, Why designers fail:

The cool thing is that as I watched other people’s talks during the day, if ever I got bored I could watch their drawing being made in real time and see what the designer was calling out as key points, or even how they interpreted what was being said. I found it was a great, non distracting way to add to what was being presented. I really hope more events do this kind of thing.

Posted in Teaching/Training, creative thinking, public speaking | 4 Comments »

I was recently asked by a high school teacher about ideas for teaching leadership to teenagers (She heard about Making things happen, and is considering applying some of its content). They start in middle-school and the students are hand picked to continue throughout highschool:

The Middle School Leadership students are in seventh and eighth grade (12-14 years old). Every year they are hand picked or re-picked. If they demonstrate “leadership skills” they may apply to the High School Leadership class. These are the students who will primarily benefit from your perspectives on project management and leadership.

In an effort to stave off senioritis I would also like to incorporate some of the project management and leadership lessons in my twelfth grade honors and regular curriculum this year. Any suggestions?

I have my own ideas, but I’m hoping some of you will offer thoughts or experience. Anyone know of other programs like this? Or have experience running leadership programs for high school age students? Please leave a comment. Cheers.

Posted in Teaching/Training | 22 Comments »

The Personal MBA folks have released a update to their reading list, the core of their program for people who want an MBA style education without the formal program and bank-breaking costs.

I’ve asked the question, Was your MBA worth it over on Harvard Business. If you have an MBA or have thought about one, I’m curious to know what you think - head over a check it out.

Posted in Management, Teaching/Training, books | 1 Comment »

Background: Foo Camp is the legendary annual social/tech event O’Reilly Media runs for Friends of O‘reilly. Two things make the event an amazing experience: 1) high quality invite list (except myself of course) and 2) Everyone camps out on tents on the lawn. This drops pretension to near zero, and combined with a self-defined agenda, people are set up to have their minds opened. Put 1 & 2 together and crazy, funny, wild, open, smart, thought-provoking, unexpected conversations happen all on their own. FOO Camp is a true highlight of my many travels - and it puts in relief how limited most conference experiences are, despite how easily replicable the lessons of unconference style formats can be.

If you want a general write up on this year’s FOO Camp, read this piece on TechCrunch first, and I’ve written before about past FOO camps and unconferences here. Instead, what follows below is a sanitized list of notes from my moleskin.

• High quality is good for the environment. One session by Make’s Arwen Oreilly was about luxury and nature, and how buying a $50 hairbrush that lasts 50 years isn’t a luxury, it’s actually better for the environment. Low price items often have low long term value (e.g. IKEA). Good quote “High-technology is what your parents did not use, and what your children will not use either” - Saul Griffith said it, but attributed it to someone else. How well designed can a cell-phone or laptop really be if it lasts 1/25th of a lifetime?
• Zoe Keating is cool. Didn’t know who she was until after I’d chatted with her here and there, which is funny because had I known she was a musician I would have chatted with her about totally different things. Her stuff sounds amazing - from what I’ve heard so far it’s best described as kick-ass experimental, yet melodic, electronic chello - just downloaded from itunes. I wish someone had done a talk on “how composing music is like writing code”.
• Why do adults stop making up games? As a kid in Queens we’d make up new games all the time, every day. A zillion variations of tag. Basketball with no traveling. On and on. Why not now? At FOO I played The lost game of Olympia, a crazy race game involving humming, blindfolds, mazes and lots of laughing. You can watch a video of my team playing at FOO here. Worked great to meet people, touch people, and focus on movement for awhile instead of thinking. If the world can be saved, I suspect gamemaster Jane McGonigal at AvantGame.com will have something to do with it.
• Beekeeping is cool. Turns out there are quite few beekeepers in the tech elite, or at least people who have read The art and adventure of beekeeping which include two of my favorite people I’ve met at FOO - Brian Fitzpatrick and Nat Torkington (And Pathable’s Jordan Schwartz is a beekeeper too). I ordered a copy. The vibe of this session was the value of observation. How learning patience and skills of seeing leads to the insights people struggle to obtain.
• Everyone has public speaking disaster stories. I ran a session where everyone told stories of their own public speaking horror stories. Turns out, everyone has a public speaking horror story. The only collection of public speaking disaster stories I know of is Mortification - I wish there were more collections like these.
• I know the secret of happiness. I went to a session on happiness hacks (Run by HB Segel, Kim & Linda Stone), and the funny thing was how happy all the people who came seemed to be. Most of the advice are things I suspect most people know, and I found myself circling the same core idea over and over: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night follows day, thou cant not then be false to another man”. No one can follow all of these hacks. Every person will sort out what to try on their own, and the better people know themselves, the better their odds of choosing well. As fun as the session was, I want the same people in the room again for a session titled “How to know yourself”.
• Related quote “Being happy is separating the difference between what I care about, and what I think I care about” - I’d been drinking and can barely read my handwriting (so the quote itself might be wrong), and I suspect it was said to me by Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction.

Posted in On Tour, Teaching/Training | 4 Comments »

Over the last month I’ve spent more time than usual with consultants and it is making me miserable. Is there a support group I can join? A ten step program? A nearby happy-hour? There are some great consultants out there, but damn, I wish there were more of them.

My passion for trying to get to the heart of things, to be clear and direct, makes it impossible for me to talk with most consultants for more than 5 minutes without wanting to punch them in the face. This might not be their fault - my spine shudders in revulsion when I’m faced with people who go out of their way to make things sound as complicated as possible. Consultants aren’t alone here - some academics, politicians and doctors are just as guilty, but I haven’t been dealing with those folks recently, and today, they get a free pass.

The inherent problem is this: I look at the English language as a good thing. Shakespeare did some good with it, didn’t he? Although he did invent some words here and there, I don’t think most of us need to create new words to get our points across - 200,000 is plenty to work with. In fact unless your new word enhances my understanding of what you’re trying to say instead of diminishing it, it’s hard not to see you as either a fool or a blowhard. You’re not making a new word or using obscure language to help me, you’re doing it to help you. If you look at how most consultant talk, you’d think they hated English, had a personal vendetta against it, as they seem to take such pride in burying clear thinking under layers of vacuous, disingenuous jargon.

My recent experiences have convinced me many consultants see jargon is an advantage - how, I’m not sure. Perhaps like the bait on a hook, it distracts potential clients into error, just long enough for them to open their wallets and bite on the hook. But for whatever reason I personally don’t know how to take the bait. And the result is many of my conversations with consultants (note I say many - there are exceptions) leave me feeling one of three things:

• They are trying to deceive me. If they know what they are selling is advice on managing creative people, but they insist on calling it ‘ideation flow’, an ‘idea capitalization market’, or some corny trademarked term like ‘Ideaness(tm)’, I can’t help but feel deceived. If your advice is good, why all the camouflage? Why give me a chance to believe you have something to hide? Especially if this first conversation is one you hope will lead me to hire you.
• They believe their own bullshit. Consultants do have to differentiate themselves and make claims - I get it. But some consultants have lost all ties to reality - they pathologically believe in their own hype and will die before confessing a simpler story of their work exists. If after a ten minute conversation I can’t get someone to stop using trademarked phrases, made up words with too many hyphens, or concede some of their clients get less value out of their efforts than they claim, I can only conclude they’re nuts.
• They have no idea what they are talking about. Some consultants have never done the things they consult on. In innovation circles this means they’ve never managed a team of people making something, never prototyped an idea, never filled a patent, never taken creative risks, so instead of banking on their experience, or even their knowledge of the experience of others, they make stuff up. Often it’s a magic process or system they claim will transform your organization, described in frighteningly similar terms to the latest diet craze.

Certainly (bad) consultants aren’t entirely to blame for what they do - some clients want the made up stuff, they want to believe in things they don’t understand, or they want to rely on a outsider simply so they can blame the outsider later on.

So how do you separate the useful, well-meaning consultants from the less savory ones? What are your biggest gripes from past experiences working with consultants? I’d like to know.

Posted in Teaching/Training, rant | 30 Comments »

The more I learn about creative thinking and about teaching, two subjects of great interest, the more depressing organized education in the U.S. becomes. I’m familiar with Montessori, Waldorf and various other well known private school brands, as well as public school programs here and there, but it’s all vaguely disappointing. I’m often left feeling there is no substitute for parents and extended family: they are the best hopes young minds have for learning what it means to think free. Perhaps that’s as it should be.

Two bright spots I’ve found are these two programs, aimed at giving kids exposure to creative problem solving in team environments. I’ve yet to see these things in action but I’d love to visit and maybe even help out with a local chapter.

Odyssey of the Mind - An international program that focuses on creative problem solving projects. It’s a world-wide competition with regional finals and programs.

Destination Imagination: Similiar to Odyssey of the mind, but offers 5 different tracks each with a different creative focus, from technical, to artistic.

If you know of other resources for parents who want to augment their kids exposure to creative thinking and problem solving skills, or have experience with either of the above programs, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear more.

Posted in Teaching/Training, creative thinking | 20 Comments »

Rube Goldberg was an engineering student who quickly realized he preferred making fun of engineers more than engineering things himself. His legendary cartoons of bizarre, over-engineered devices for trivial tasks have lived on well past his own lifetime.

So what do we make of people who actually try to make Rube Goldberg machines? Are they simply creative enthusiasts with a sense of humor or are they entirely missing Goldberg’s point? You decide.

This year, at one of four Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, a team from Purdue won with a 156 step machine for making hamburgers.

Video highlights of the event on gizmodo.

And you can see photos of the winning machines from the last few years on the Purdue website.

Posted in Innovation, Teaching/Training, creative thinking | No Comments »