100 This month’s tip:

Never sell anything once.

This tip originally came to us from Michael Wiese, a filmmaker and film educator who's perhaps best known for producing the classic 1977 parody Hardware Wars. He's candidly admitted it was primarily a ploy to meet George Lucas. It worked.

In a terrific seminar on low-budget film production, Wiese explained that success was often a matter of finding ways to repackage content in interesting ways. Telling the story of a documentary about dolphins, made as a labor of love, he pointed out that he wasn't able to make money with it until he got new ideas for distribution. His long-form documentary could be cut down into a shorter version and sold to secondary schools. He could cut out pieces and sell them as stock footage. He could turn it into a three-minute commercial for Qantas airlines. He was loaded with options!

This has come to mind because next month will see the 101st tip published in the Street Smarts column. Time for an eBook, perhaps?

December 2011 - Volume 9, Issue 12

The Turning of the Year 

We can be creatures of habit at Knowledge Street, and we have two traditions that come into play each December. The first is to make Directions a little shorter, as a way of giving you (and us) a little extra time. It's the gift that keeps on giving! The other is to do our own little year in review, and reflect on some events of the recent past.

So 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, which certainly started well but seems to be losing momentum. We saw an incredible, perfect storm of a disaster in Japan, that combined a tsunami with a nuclear meltdown. The economy is still creaking along, and can't seem to decide between recovery and a double-dip recession. And we said good-bye to Steve Jobs.

It was year of many endings. We saw the last flight of the space shuttle, the last issue of News of the World, and the last of the Harry Potter movies. We'll soon be seeing the last troops come home from Iraq. On the other hand, Angry Birds is holding on as the most popular game for mobile devices.

So 2011 was a bit of a mixed bag; some good things, some bad. Here's wishing the best of the holidays to all of us. Let's have a happy end to the year that's passing and hold good thoughts for the one to come.

Best of 2011

For many years now, we've featured a best-of-list in the December issue of Directions. It's a sneaky way to re-cycle some content during the hectic holiday season, as well as an opportunity to let you read (or re-read) some stuff from earlier in the year. What we do is focus on articles we particularly liked, those that inspired direct comments from readers or titles that had more hits than usual. Hope you like them:

Windshield Wiper Knowledge - This is a brief meditation on the volatility of understanding, the way that knowledge spreads through observation and human interaction and the sad fact that even good ideas can be lost when they're not continually reinforced.

The Kids These Days - Surveys suggest the younger generation is abandoning email in favor of shorter, more immediate forms of communication: text messages, Facebook status updates, tweets and the like. It's not clear if this is a good thing, or a bad thing for human beings.

Taking Chances, Making Mistakes - No one likes to make mistakes, but it's important not to sweat the small ones. If you're not making enough mistakes, it means you're not taking enough risks. Playing things too safe puts you in danger of stagnation.

Losing Our Memory - Most of us have grown accustomed to using a quick Web search to find the answer to most any question. And in fact, the technology is rewiring our brains. It’s changing both our perception of what things need to be remembered, and our ability to remember them.

We Shall Overcome - There's a Knowledge Management lesson to be learned from the Occupy Wall Street movement. When you build too much structure into a collaboration platform, you're really designing something to support the knowledge you already have. Less structure gives you more freedom to explore and innovate.

The Dark Side of Collaboration - Working with a team can be a great experience, but there's a danger when collaboration is ungoverned, especially if roles are not clearly defined. Given that technology is making collaboration much easier, the role of the leader is even more important.

The Abilene Paradox

If you've ever found yourself swept along by the momentum of a group's mindset, you may have experienced The Abilene Paradox. The terms refers to a situation in which a group of people collectively decide to do something that is actually counter to the desires of the individuals involved. It happens when one or more folks feel they're the outliers, and agree to go along with things for the good of the whole. The name comes from a story told by management expert Jerry B. Harvey, in which a family opts to take a hot and dusty trip from Coleman, Texas, to Abilene, only to discover later that none of them really wanted to go.

We think it's a cool name, sort of like a Robert Ludlum novel, and it can also be a good tool for probing group decision making. If you find yourself in a situation where you suspect group-think is replacing deliberation, ask your team if they're aware of the Abilene paradox. They don't want to go there. (And thanks to our old colleague Alan Brompton for suggesting this article.)
 

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