Nuts and Bolts: Figure It Out

“Quit reading casestudy porn and get on with it.”— Tweet from Euan Semple

I was at local music-and-crafts festival on the Fourth ofJuly (OK, I was playing with my ukulele ensemble, if you must know). There wereseveral stages for audiences of varying sizes, and over the years theorganizers have moved increasingly toward booking lesser-known localmusicians. 

So over on the smallest stage a fun bunch of guys whocomprise a band called Chocolate Suede found out just before their start timethat there was a power problem. While it was being reconciled they took theirnon-electric instruments, hopped down off the stage, and performed a fun ad hocacoustic folky set for whoever cared to move closer to hear. Once the power wasfixed they went back up onstage and delivered a great rehearsed jazzy-bluesy electrifiedshow completely unlike the one they had just done on the ground. They startedand finished on time despite the challenges.

Compare this to something that happened over on a biggerstage, where a better-known, established local group was setting up and foundthe sound quality wasn’t quite to their liking. There were tantrums. There wassulking. There was the hurling of insults at The Sound Guy, who was doing hisbest to deal with a different band every hour, in an outdoor festival setting,among milling craft shoppers and sometimes competing noise from other bandsnearby. There was refusal to play. The band started late, and they ended late,putting those who were there specifically to see them at risk of missing theshuttle buses back to the parking lot three miles away.    

Well, first of all: Don’t be that band.

Second: Learn from Chocolate Suede. Make it happen. Figureit out.

And apply that to nonmusical endeavors:

• Don’t have money for a solution you’re after?Find a free tool, or just do what you can to satisfy a stakeholder now to buyyourself more time for a better solution later.  
• Charged with designing a great course from terrible(think dry, policy, technical) source material? Don’t blame your content. Figureit out. That’s your job.
• Don’t have support or money for an“enterprise-wide” solution? Try working with a test group, or a pilot, or asmall group of volunteers, or a single work unit, or a collection of peoplewith the same job title. Or maybe even try something outside the organization.Many of my social media “experiments” start with good-sport Facebook andTwitter friends.
• (Don’t know how to or have no support for)getting started with showing your work? Stop storing files in My Documents andput them somewhere—anywhere—that offers the chance for someone who could usethem to find them.
• Not “allowed” to? Find out why. At one point yearsago I was the only person in the whole organization who had Skype access. Whenit was blocked, I’m the only one who asked why, then was the only one to offera business case for needing the product. Turns out there were concerns aboutvulnerabilities due to file sharing in Skype … so I said I wouldn’t use Skypeto share files. Have you asked if it’seven true that you’re not “allowed” (sometimes that’s just a myth)? Have youlooked for negotiation points? Organization “doesn’t allow” social mediause? Really? I bet your marketingdepartment, or customer-relations shop, is using something. How can you startthere, where they are?
• Paralyzed from starting for lack of someoneelse’s best practices and similar data, which is often just another game calledResistance by Delay?  As Euan Semplesays: “Quit reading case study porn andget on with it.” Then YOU write the cases.

You know what? Sometimes you just gotta punt. And when the power goes out, don’t be thatguy who throws the tantrum. Start on time. Finish on time. Develop the skillsyou need that will help you improvise in a pinch. Make it work. Do your job. Figureit out.