The Blog Of JF Grissom
Build Something To Sustain You Financially And Emotionally.
Launching the ShipIt Workbook
Sep 1st
Six months ago, I put together a workbook that would help Linchpin readers ship.
After testing it out on hundreds of people, it’s now ready for retail sale.
You can find details here, or jump right to the buy page. The goal? To make you uncomfortable at the beginning of a project (and successful at the end).
Here’s the core idea: it’s weird to write in a book. When you do, you’re making a commitment. You’re combining the open-mindedness that reading brings with the physical action of writing. If you do that at every step in a project–and if your co-workers do too–the seemingly slippery decisions that get made appear a lot more solid.
Responsibility and authority
Sep 1st
Many people struggle at work because they want more authority.
It turns out you can get a lot done if you just take more responsibility instead. It’s often offered, rarely taken.
(And you can get even more done if you give away credit, relentlessly).
Just launched: Linchpin on the Vook on the iPad
Aug 31st
The details are right here. Created by Vook, based on the hardcover.
Includes new video and interviews with some interesting folks…
The long tail challenge of the iPad store is getting more and more obvious to people. The ratio of “shelf space” to inventory is about the worst of any retail experience in the world. There are more than 24,000 apps listed in the iPad store, and yet the front window (equivalent to the window of a bookstore) shows the user six choices. The spotlight coverflow up top shows another sixteen, fairly randomly. Meaning there’s a little worse than a one in a thousand chance that your app will appear in front of someone interacting with the store at the first level.
The corporate conscience
Aug 31st
There isn’t one.
Corporations don’t have a conscience, people do.
That means that every time you say, “It’s just my job,” or “My department has a policy,” or “All I do is work here,” what you’ve done is abdicated responsibility–to no one.
It’s convenient and even comfortable to blame the anonymous actions of many working in concert on a evanescent brand or organization, but that starts you on an inevitable race to the bottom. Organizations have more power than ever before. They are better synchronized, faster, and possess more tools to change the economy and the people in it than ever before. And the only option available to the rest of us is for individuals to take responsibility (it’s not given) for what they do and how they do it.
Professionals, amateurs and the great unwashed
Aug 30th
If you want something done, perhaps you would ask a professional to do it. Someone who costs a lot but is worth more than they charge. Someone who shows up even when she doesn’t feel like it. Someone who stands behind her work, gets better over time and is quite serious indeed about the transaction.
Or perhaps you could hire a passionate amateur. That’s a forum leader doing it for love, not money. An obsessive in love with the craft. A talented person willing to trade income for the chance to do what he loves, with freedom.
Blogging by Numbers: How to Create Headlines That Get Retweeted
Aug 30th
There is an art and science to getting blog posts to travel like wildfire.
This post will look at both, based on number crunching with 281 posts, 39,000+ comments, and almost 2,000,000 click-throughs via my Twitter profile and Facebook fan page in the last six months.
Here’s what I’ve found to work well…
The Art
In this context, more than anything else, the “art” is coming up with good headlines.
Don’t forget about color
Aug 29th
The airport in Minneapolis is expensive and reasonably thoughtful in its design.
But the signs are monochromatic. As a result, the tired traveler wanders in circles, looking for her destination. Imagine how much easier it would be to find out where you were going if every sign with the word TAXI on it had it in yellow instead of white. Once you knew the color of where you were going, you’d just naturally scan for it.
A little out of sync
Aug 28th
All those devices in your bag make it easier than ever to stay in sync.
You can reap what you sow in Farmville, keep up with your email, know what’s going on on every important blog, be in the right room at the right time earning badges, etc. You can synchronized at all times.
And if you get a little out of sync, just a little, it’s painful. One more reason you might want to stop reading this and check your feeds.
Building your success on being more in sync than everyone else is a sharp edge to walk on. You’ll always be near the edge of perfect sync, but never there.
The blizzard of noise (and the good news)
Aug 27th
As the amount of inputs go up, as the number of people and ideas that clamor for attention continue to increase, we do what people always do: we rely on the familiar, the trusted and the personal.
The experience I have with you as a customer or a friend is far more important than a few random bits flying by on the screen. The incredible surplus of digital data means that human actions, generosity and sacrifice are more important than they ever were before.
Senior management
Aug 26th
A newly-retired executive takes a job as an adjunct professor and really shakes things up. Both the school and the students are blown away by her fresh thinking and new approaches.
A forty-year old internet executive who has been running his company for decades misses one new trend after another, because he’s still living in 1998.
One thing that happens to management when they get senior is that they get stuck. (As we saw with the new professor, senior isn’t about old, it’s about how long you’ve been there).
