Keep it Simple, or you’re Stupid

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Scott Gould

Have you ever made the mistake of making something too complex?

I remember when I was about 12 years old at school and we did a project called “Make a Million.” The idea was the children had to team up in pairs and then run a project that, during break times, would create revenue. Looking back, it was a great way for the school to instill some business and entrepreneurial skills into us as kids.

However, my project didn’t go down so well. Whereas some teams sold posters of clipart that they printed from their computer, or sold a set of 5 penalty kicks, or charm bracelets that they had made, my business partner and I decided to make a complex game which was a mix of snakes and ladders fused with monopoly. Suffice to say that when break time came, we normally sold one run on the game as it took the whole break to play it. But even then, people were reluctant to play because it was, well, just so complex! It was easy to buy a poster or kick a ball, but this was just too much.

Thus it was here that I learnt my first business lesson. Keep it quick, simple, and scaleable. I’d like to tell you that I learnt my lesson there and then, but my perfectionist mindset has struggled with this one for a long time as I have often defaulted back to building the perfect system as opposed to a profitable one, or even a useable one!

The simple one wins. Ask Dropbox.

I read a similar, more grown up version of the same story on Quora. Isaac Hall, co-founder of Syncplicity discusses why Dropbox is more popular than other tools that have similar and often better functionality. What he boiled it down to was simplicity. It just works. No tweaking necessary. (You can read his answer here, just click on “change log” to see his full response.) The most pertinent part of it was this:

In the end, it really came down to one incredibly genius idea: Dropbox limited its feature set on purpose. It had one folder and that folder always synced without any issues — it was magic. Syncplicity could sync every folder on your computer until you hit our quota. (Unfortunately, that feature was used to synchronize C:Windows for dozens of users — doh!) Our company had too many features and this created confusion amongst our customer base. This in turn led to enough customer support issues that we couldn’t innovate on the product, we were too busy fixing things.

After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: “Why don’t you support multi-folder synchronization?” His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldn’t get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved.

I like this – Dropbox could have multiple folders, but they don’t, because people just don’t get it.

Making things simple is about making sure people get it. It’s realising that too many options paralyzes people (which one should I do?), that asking for settings scares people (what if I get it wrong?), that an unclear benefit deters people (why spend my time on this?)

Starting with simple

My friend Darren Smith is an expert in user design and experience and he tells me that when it comes to design there is a general rule to ensure that no matter how advanced a design gets its core remains simple, ensuring that any further levels of complexity advance the feature set without compromising the simplicity of the core.

This useful point helps us with something that Brian Driggs and I have been discussing on the subject of making meaning and also writing SMART email. When it comes to building a platform for people to live their lives on, it needs to be simple with optional further levels of complexity. As to how that looks, I’m not sure – but I’m up for discussing it.

5 ways to keep it simple

So what are the main lessons here? My main points, in contrast to my failures with my efforts to make a million at school, would be:

It can be explained in a sentence. My game couldn’t.
You can look at it and know what it is. You can look at a poster and know that you buy it. But when you look at a peice of card with directions scribbled on, it’s not that obvious.
You don’t need a manual. What is good about the iPhone is when you get it, it’s ready. No configuration. This isn’t the case with many phones that I’ve tested!
It’s quick. The great thing about Dropbox is that you install and it’s done, and you can use it right away. Again, no more configuration.
Any complexity is guided step by step. I loved playing this pinball game that I downloaded on my iPad a while ago that taught me how to use it step by step in a test run. This isn’t anything new, but it’s amazing how many platforms lack this and just expect you to figure it out through trial and eror.

So those are my 5 lessons. Now over to you:

Your Leading Thoughts

Thinking offline, how do we take the platforms that we are building and ensure they are simple, with further levels of complexity?
When does simple harm you?

Photo courtesy of visualpanic

Video: Making It Matter

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

I engaged with the participants at IYCF 2010 is Pakistan this week, telling them to Scatter, Gather, Matter. Whilst I’ll be posting a video next week to wrap up my experience of the week, I wanted to bring some understanding to what I mean by “Matter”.

Mattering is about creating platforms that enable and empower people for their lives. A platform is something that we build on top of. For instance, Facebook is a platform that we can build a social presence on. My church and the teaching we provide is a platform that people can live their lives on. Guardian’s Open API is a platform that bloggers and journalists can build their writing on.

Marketing Mattering

Smart organisations have positioned themselves like this for years. It’s nothing new, but before we didn’t really understand what it was that we were doing. It seems now that more and more service providers in particular are releasing that they must therefore market themselves as less of a service provider and more of a life enabler.

So, cue this video that I adore from Vodafone earlier this year:

This is how to market mattering – by showing how your platform enables people to live their lives in a more empowered way. Don’t focus on the platform, focus on the potential for life change. Don’t make it about the features of your platform, make it about the tangible benefits.

Your Leading Thoughts

How do you see the change from service provider to life enabler taking place amongst other brands?
How would you apply this in your market? (In order to help others learn from your application)

Ecosystems: Riding on Them, and Creating Them

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

My friend Chris Brogan wrote a thinking peice last month on “Amazon and the Kindle Conspiracy” that many overlooked but I think warrants a deeper leadership discussion.

Chris discusses how Amazon went from book distributor to pretty much anything distributor, and how he suggests that the Kindle could do the same thing. He talks about how the Kindle also isn’t just a phyiscal device. You can have the Kindle on your iPhone, iPad, desktop, etc. It’s a distribution platform that lives on other platforms, something we talked about recently with Your Business, Ubiquitous.

That’s a big discussion there. Then Chris goes deeper into what is my favourite part of the post:

Don’t look at the device. Don’t fret about the device. Think of it as yet another way to gain ground in distribution. Keep your eyes on this, and also think about how this impacts your business. Think further on whether there are ways you could do distribution differently (better, partnered) and what that would give you.

This immediately makes me think of ecosystems. Consider Apple’s App Store and iTunes ecosystem. The devices that they can plug into this are potentially numerous, and as Chris suggests, it’s not really about the device – it’s the distribution of the ecosystem.

The way I see it, ecosystems are about flow of the river, the devices are the boat, and the person is the person. A good ecosystem means that a number of different boats can be on it in order to get people where they need to be. iTunes and the App Store is an ecosystem that allows many boats – the innovator boats, the late majority boats, the home boats, the work boats, etc.

I’m now seeing what were boats now become ecosystems in their own right. Consider Evernote, which is the handy note tool that remembers everything. Evernote created an API, and now with Evernote Trunk, serves as an ecosystem to boats that now ride upon it.

Facebook is an ecosystem, and so is Twitter. They are rivers that boats can flow on. Applications can be built for them. Communities live on them. You get the idea.

Riding on The Wave

The trick for startups and new things now is to use these ecosystems – to ride on their waves – in order to get our users to where they need to be. As Chris said in starting, the Kindle is about distribution. Why create a new ecosystem when a perfectly good ecosystem already exists that can distribute your boats where they need to be?

This is where socialising channels comes into play. Socialising our channels means getting your content to the places where people already are – the water coolers. If Facebook is where your people are, use that. If it’s Amazon, use that. If it’s the Kindle, use that. Ride the wave that gets your content distributed.

Creating Waves

The other option is to be the one building ecosystems – buliding the distribution channels that others can use. I’d be careful here. I’d only build an ecosystem where one doesn’t already exist.

That’s what we’re doing with Like Minds. I’ve noticed that the communities which are the most useful are the ones that become an ecosystem for others to sail on. The community and the events attached to it become enablers for the lives of others.

But the trick here is that we have to do it in a unique way – one of which being the Like Minds Club, something that I don’t know of any other event / community doing. The aim of the working club is to be an enabler for others to ride their boats along – whatever business, endeavour, need, etc, they might have.

I would say therefore, if was trying to define an ecosystem in a digital way, I’d say they are a platform that enable third parties and users to build and live from in a way that enhances their productivity through synergy with other users and shared benefits.

Your Leading Thoughts

As a leading and thinking person, your input here is valued and adds to the discussion and to this blog. Focus in on ecosystems right now, and use these points to help the discussion:

On a smaller scale, are blogs working as ecosystems?
What are the prerequisites for calling something an ecosystem?
What are the ecosystems that you are tied into?

Photo courtesy of Storm Crypt

10 Insights Into Guidance, As Opposed To Governance

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Scott Gould

Yesterday I attended #1pound40, courtesy of Thomson Reuters and Amplified. Naturally, it was very informative, lots of fun, introduced me to some wonderful thinkers, and gave me an opportunity to see people from the London Twitter scene that I’ve been getting to know better. And, of course, there was some great discussion that really got me thinking, which is what I want to talk about today.

Continue reading →

Uniting People Around A Platform

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Scott Gould

If you don’t know, in exactly one week I will be running the inaugural Like Minds conference, on the subject of ‘measuring social media.’ I’m going to skip over the back story (which you can read here), and instead get to the point: Like Minds is an example of uniting people around a platform. And I’m going to show you some of the concepts I’ve employed in doing so.

In 2003 I started an initiative in our church for young people called Feedback. In just under two years we went from nothing to 1,000 young people attending our events every month. Of course, what I didn’t say was that the first year was a failure in terms of numbers – bouncing around the 30 people mark for 11 months. It wasn’t until we ran a Hip Hop event that we broke through 100 people. What changed? We found something that people cared about, and we just provided the platform. In this case, we provided a hip hop competition, some DJing, and let the youth come. Up until then, it had just been a nice evening, but there was nothing compelling or spreadable about it.

The following months, we let bands from high school and college play at our events, and not only did the bands unite around the platform we provided, but the bands brought all their fans too. We found something that young people united around, and we just provided the platform. Over time, we nurtured the bands and helped a handful of them get signed to labels and go onto greater things. Seth Godin talks about this – this idea of platform - but in a stunning act of triumph, I can brag that I discovered this truth before he blogged about it. Go, me.

The other lesson I learnt from Feedback was to allow people to take ownership. Every Friday, we had 40 young people who came to help build the event, plan it, and do the work for it – and believe me, it was serious work. Because they were building Feedback, the brand became far more compelling and spread to their friends and family. When it came to our monthly event, it was these 40 who set the tone in the building. And that’s another important thing. When you have people uniting on the platform you have built, it is easy for the message to become skewed, so you must set the tone.

Over the years since then, I’ve learnt a lot about building communities – not from studying them, but from actually building them. I have built up tribes of young people, tribes of men and women, media groups and student groups – and even to this day I nurture an ever growing group of interns at Aaron+Gould (including the current office star, @tuckshot ), where forward thinking individuals unite around the idea of growth, change and fresh thinking.

From my experience I have found that you must discover what unites people, and then provide the platform for them to do it. Seth, on the front cover of his book ‘Tribes‘, wrote “we need you to lead us.” It’s true. There are large groups of people who want to unite around a platform, but don’t have someone to impart vision, provide direction, and guide with conviction.

Let’s drop the nostalgia, head back to 2009, and we’ll find that Like Minds is the same model. Finding what people want to unite around – collaboration, innovation – and providing a platform.

What this takes perhaps more than anything else is leadership. But don’t quote me on that, I’m still finding out.