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No dashboard, just an ironing board

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As if to renounce one more convention of business, a Berkeley-area businessperson I know couldn’t find data, so he went out and got some of his own. He had to evaluate market areas.

For three days, he stood by an ironing board with a map on top in front of the Cheese Board in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. Each customer coming in or out got handed two stick-on dots, red to mark home and blue to mark work. His map quickly revealed patterns and commute routes.

It was easy. “Everybody’s curious,” said Terry Baird, who had made a career of cooperative/collective food retailing.… Read the rest “No dashboard, just an ironing board”

Beginner’s mind in IT

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A young information technology worker in a large organization follows his common sense — and his boss scolds for it. The question is how to respond.

Back in 1980, he had just started at his first job, at the CBS Television Network. He soon noticed that every week business people asked him for the same data from the same source. So he did the logical thing: he wrote an algorithm for himself to save time.

Then he did the next logical thing: he gave the algorithm to the business people. They could do it themselves, and he didn’t have to do it for them.… Read the rest “Beginner’s mind in IT”