management

September 11, 2013

Some Mistakes Are Too Much Fun To Make Only Once

One of the hard lessons I’ve learned over my career is that anything worth doing needs to be done several times before you can evaluate it. The Experience Curve as a concept has been with us since 1885, yet many are still unaware of this common sense insight on how people learn and what it means for management decisions.

Here are a couple of examples, one from observing schools adopt new curriculum materials and one from my experience as a CEO. Both are relevant to education companies.

New Curriculum Materials

December 5, 2012

Education Spending Downturn – What Is Different This Time?

By Lee Wilson

Foot on nails Last December I penned (keyed?) a relatively optimistic piece about education spending, with the conclusion that the textbook adoption market was in a crash but supplemental materials were in a short-term stall. I had it right on the first point and wrong on the second – we have seen a full blown market crash across the board this year. There are still sound reasons for long term optimism, but the near term remains grim.

After the election I decided to read Nate Silver’s book “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t”. I was hoping to find insights on why I’d gotten it wrong, and so far I’ve not been disappointed.

Early on he outlines the distinction between risk and uncertainty in a way that is highly relevant to how we understand where we are in education publishing.

January 11, 2012

Email Prime Directive

By Lee Wilson

Keep it short and simple.

Brevity is a sign of respect for your reader’s time and attention.

Really.

June 1, 2007

eMail Is A Behavioral Problem

By Lee Wilson

There are solutions to the frustration of managing email. The fundamental answer is a shift in behaviors and expectations. David Allen’s Getting Things Done has helped change the conversation from a technology focus to a behavioral focus. Technology is part of the solution – but only if we use it differently. I have not needed a vertical scroll bar on my email for 3 months, something I would not have believed possible a year ago. The technology didn’t change – I did.

The scale of the problem has grown so rapidly that cultural norms and behaviors have not had time to adapt. As a result feelings of guilt and frustration are widespread as people watch their inbox grow faster than they can clear it. Anger at spammers is epidemic (I hope there is a special place in hell for them involving all the devices they are trying to sell us). These are not healthy emotions.

Some have taken to declaring email bankruptcy, throwing up their hands and cleaning the slate. As usual Scott Adams is brilliant on the subject of email as a weapon. But the best description of the problem I’ve seen was recently posted at 43 Folders.

“Email is such a funny thing. People hand you these single little messages that are no heavier than a river pebble. But it doesn’t take long until you have acquired a pile of pebbles that’s taller than you and heavier than you could ever hope to move, even if you wanted to do it over a few dozen trips. But for the person who took the time to hand you their pebble, it seems outrageous that you can’t handle that one tiny thing. “What ‘pile’? It’s just a f#@$ing pebble!”

Theres more…