If you’re into food, retail, and innovation, the legendary Zingerman’s of Ann Arbor, Michigan rises to the top. This is a good company.
They are great editors
All the products they sell are good. You can’t get crap olive oil from Zingerman’s. You can’t get bad vinegar from Zingerman’s. You can’t get bad bread or bad cheese or anything bad at Zingerman’s. They seriously care about the quality of their products and often have a personal relationship with the people who make them.
They let you taste stuff
If you go to their store in Ann Arbor you can taste the oil, taste the vinegar, taste the honey. They’re confident in their product and they want you to be comfortable with your purchase. I’m sure it increases sales as well.
They have fun
Go to their store or pick up their catalog and you’ll see what I mean. They don’t take themselves too seriously. Their entire catalog is hand illustrated too which is always fun.
Are you struggling with how to grow your business? Do you feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of “opportunities” that confront you? Does the idea of growing as big as you can as fast as you can leave you uninspired (and exhausted)? In researching his book, Bo Burlingham uncovered a whole group of companies that chose alternative routes to success. Learn what qualities distinguish these organizations and explore whether or not the Small Giants’ path is a viable route for you.
No, we’re not talking Enron-style bending, but solid, ethically-oriented ways to make great finance a successful part of the organization at every level instead of just hiding it in the accounting office. We do weird stuff like teach finance classes to line cooks; post our financial performance on wall-mounted white boards; calculate how many scones we have to sell to buy a new oven; teach costing and pricing classes to our front-line crew; post service and quality bottom-line measurements right next to our financial scores; and share the winnings with as many people as possible.
They’re curious
If they find something they really like they’ll sell it even though it doesn’t fit into their traditional categories. Here’s a list of “the great unknowns “ they’re currently offering.
They’ve taken their time
They’ve built their business the old fashioned way and stayed true to their roots in Ann Arbor. They’ve been around since 1982. Started as one small corner deli. 25 years later, the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses employs over 450 people and generates annual sales of over $30 million.
Buying my first place has been a really educational experience. I posted earlier about how I got boxed in with paint colors. Today I reflected on another lesson. When it comes to software development, I always try to follow a step-by-step approach. Mock something simple, see how it feels, decide what to do next. Rinse and repeat, and let the design unfold. It’s a slow game of patience and confidence, and I swear by it for the best results.
Why then, am I doing the exact opposite with our condo? We still haven’t closed, and I have a precision scaled floorplan in Illustrator full of furniture arrangements. I have a Backpack page detailing the exact sofa, sideboard, console, shelving, and landing strip gear. It’s a master plan with every piece fitting into the puzzle. And I haven’t the faintest idea if I’ll actually like it all.
I know I’m doing it all wrong. I should go to the real space and start with one thing. Pick the perfect sofa, put it in the living room, and feel it out. What is needed next? What would compliment the room now? What’s the next-most-important thing? My top-down plan is the total opposite of such a sensible bottom-up approach. So what’s going on here?
Here’s the secret: Uncertainty. It’s the same reason why so many people balk when we tell them to throw their functional spec out the window. I care so much about the design and feel and function of my condo-to-be that I can’t stand the uncertainty of not knowing how it will turn out. I want to know NOW so I can stop worrying about it. And of course, it’s impossible to really know what the best design will be without actually building the real thing step by step. But still, I don’t want to wait for such realities. And so I plan, and I plan, and I plan.
Plans are a strategy against uncertainty. The problem is, they only make you certain of your imagination. I’m lucky enough to know that my plan is a nervous occupation, not something I’ll follow. I haven’t purchased that sofa, that sideboard, or those shelves yet. And the next time someone furrows their brow when I tell them to slow down and go step by step, I’ll remember the feeling.
Update: Some folks are saying the video above isn’t playing correctly for them. If that’s the case, here’s an alternate version. It’s not as high res, but hopefully it will work.
“All too often, articles on typography are rather bland and, although informative, do little to elicit feelings of wow. So, iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that is around them. We really cannot escape typography; it’s everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online…the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so.”
“Examples of great design using little more than typography are virtually numberless. Some of the favorites I’ve spotted recently include designs by John Arnor G. Lom, Coudal Partners, and NB:Studio, linked respectively…”
“I’m sure that the moment man discovered fire, there was some guy nearby saying, ‘Too smoky. Can burn you. Lame.’ In the modern age, we’ve found a much more efficient way to express disdain, distilled into only four letters: FAIL.”
“To illustrate his point, [Director Doug Liman] recalled a commercial he was shooting for Nike in the late 1990s starring golfer Tiger Woods. Liman noticed Woods bouncing a ball on the edge of a club during breaks from shooting. Liman grabbed a shoulder-held camera and, away from the crew, asked Woods to bounce the balls while being filmed…The shot, which became a classic, was natural, unrehearsed, and driven by imagination rather than millions of studio dollars, Liman said.”
”’Imagine the product comparison grid on the back of the box: our product has to have more check marks against more features than Quicken. Even if they never get used…’ And there you have it. The high-tech product managers believe that in order to sell to consumers, they must first seduce the major reviewers. And to do that, most believe they have to offer ‘more check marks in more boxes’ than their competitors.”
“Each day, we are bombarded with options — at the local coffee shop, at work, in stores or on the TV at home. Do you want a double-shot soy latte, a caramel macchiato or simply a tall house coffee for your morning pick-me-up” Having choices is typically thought of as a good thing. Maybe not, say researchers who found we are more fatigued and less productive when faced with a plethora of choices.”
Chapter 14 is “Simple Project Management: Basecamp”. Maybe it’s time to change my mind about lawyers.
Thanks to Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell for including Basecamp in the book. A lot of lawyers ask us about how they can use Basecamp in their practice. Your book lends credibility to the cause.
For about the last year we’ve been using an internal app we developed called In/Out. This tool grew out of our need to keep track of what people are doing right now, plus the last few things people have completed.
We used to do this in Campfire. At the beginning of every day people would check [in] with a list of things they wanted to do. At the end of the day they’d check [out] with a list of things they actually did. It was a good way to see what people had planned for the day, and what actually happened that day.
Twice a day updates weren’t enough
But once in the morning and once at the end of the day wasn’t really enough information to know what people were working on right now. So we often asked “Matt, what are you working on?” or “Sam, what’s keeping you busy right now?” We knew there had to be a better way. Interrupting people just to find out what they were doing was counterproductive.
In/Out was born
So we built a little tool in a couple days called In/Out. In/Out let everyone set their current status (“Working on the Affiliate Program” or “Preparing for my presentation on Friday”), plus In/Out allowed you to make journal entries for the things you’ve finished (“Updated book proposal” or “Modernized list reordering” or “Deployed Backpack calendar reminders”). People were encouraged to be as specific as they wanted to be.
One screen, left and right
Your stuff was on the left and everyone else’s stuff was on the right. It was a one-screen app with everything right in front of you. It was killer. We quickly got a handle on who was busy on this and who finished that.
We’re mainly targeting people who have never used products like ours before. These people especially crave simple solutions. They were nonconsumers before because the alternatives had too many features, were too confusing, and were too expensive. We’re addressing a hungry market that’s been ignored for way too long.
Instead of trying to win over people who love Gantt charts, we built Basecamp to win over people who had never used project management software before.
Likewise, Obama isn’t trying to steal a share of “the existing market,” he’s trying to create a new one.
Rather than relying exclusively on special interests and big money donors, he’s gotten a large number of smaller donations from first-time donors via the web. (Long tail anyone?)
And instead of merely competing for the votes of currently registered voters, he’s focused strongly on getting blacks and people younger than 35 registered in prime states. (Encouraging first-time voters “is going to be a very big part of how we win” according to Obama’s deputy campaign manager.)
Whether you’re competing for an election or customers, there’s a lesson to learn here. If winning over the existing market is a longshot, woo those who aren’t even in the game yet.
Last week we released a redesigned project switcher in Basecamp. The project switcher lets you move between projects when you are inside another project without having to go back to the Dashboard.
A video
The best way to get a feel for the change, and why we made the change, is to watch a before and after video (below).
NOTE: Unfortunately the text on the video is distorted when scaled down to the size required to fit in this post, but you can watch the full size version which will bring it all into focus.
How we got there
Ryan started by mocking up the first version of the idea. It was a two column list of the last 20 projects you accessed. The grouping by client was derived from the project list in the Dashboard sidebar. It was basically a miniaturized version of that list.
Then we added a “(continued…)” blurb at the top of the second column if the client’s projects spanned two columns:
The idea was OK, but it wasn’t really clear enough. All the projects were still being treated equally. 20 most recent is nice, but there are probably a few on that list that are accessed a lot more than the others.
I mocked up a new version with more recent projects on the left and the rest on the right:
Dave Bednarski, a Signal vs. Noise reader, sent over a really cool Mac OS X Automator script (download the script) to pull the front pages from the papers you like and combine them into a single PDF. It’s a great way to build your own front-page-only headline newspaper!
