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Number
21: September 24, 2003
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This week in Katydid:
Survival
Skills Develop Leadership
One never knows where one will find inspirational material. One of the
best lessons on leadership came by way of an article in Outside,
a magazine for hiking and outdoor sports. "Between
a Rock and the Hardest Place", by Mark Jenkins (p. 51, August
2003) talks about survival strategies for climbers, but the lessons make
sense for any aspect of life, especially business.
Jenkins writes about Aron Ralston, the man who went climbing by
himself in Utah and ended up trapped by a boulder that shifted and
trapped his arm. Alone and with noone aware of his absence, Ralston
tried to free himself for five days, but after running out of water, he
amputated his own arm to free himself. I'll spare you the details, but
he climbed back down the mountain to safety.
It's not very likely that we'll ever have to face this kind of
decision. In fact, according to the article, despite the media attention
these sorts of stories receive, it's not very common for climbers.
(Turns out lightning strikes are the number one natural-hazard cause of
death.) However, the article goes on to discuss the traits that make a
survivor.
Jenkins quotes Al Siebert, author of The
Survivor Personality:
Survivors rapidly read reality. When something horrible happens,
they immediately accept the situation for what it is and consciously
decide that they will do everything in their power to get through it.
Depending on your personality type (extraverted or introverted), you
might react with one of the common responses: becoming angry or passive.
According to Siebert, "Getting angry is just a waste of precious
energy, and playing the victim dramatically increases your likelihood of
dying"
Take away the life and death aspect and you have a good prescription
for dealing with any kind of emotional or physical stress. Often in
business, the decisions we make seem to be life and death. The
livelihood and money of others ride on our choices. Often we may feel
trapped by the responsibility.
Jenkins also quotes Peter Suedfeld, who has researched survival
psychology at the University of British Columbia:
People under high stress are more likely to become rigid, which
only decreases their chances of survival… Survivors are extremely
adaptable people. They know how to improvise. If one solution doesn't
work, they try another. They don't fixate on one answer. They keep an
open mind, searching for options, developing strategies.
Like any emotional proclivity, you can develop the skill to face
these situations without panic, but with optimism and unflappability.
The first step is to pay attention to your own emotional meter. In
stressful situations, you may be good at appearing calm on the surface,
but perhaps you notice your heart races and your stomach churns. Maybe
you're a person of action; you may feel calm, but are you running over
everyone in an effort to "get things done?" Both of these are
more subtle expressions of anger and passivity.
You can also imagine how you would react in an emergency. Have you
ever been in a car accident? Did you get out and take charge, or did you
sit still and take account?
Once you have a bead on your natural tendency, just being conscious
of it is enough to modify your behavior. It's like when someone tells
you that you use a certain word (or gesture) excessively. Afterwards,
you notice every time you use it. It's the same with behavior. In time,
you can modify your own behavior (without the expense of an analyst).
While you may not find you ever need your new survival skills, you
may find that it's easier to survive day-to-day life. You may also find
that others look to you for leadership in a crisis.
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Turning
up Usability
In a
previous article, I reviewed the Netflix.com
web site as an example of online usability. Recently, the company
redesigned the site and the improvement is amazing. I felt it was worth
a fresh look. Anyone looking for an example of how to handle services on
the web should really look at this site.
Netflix, for those who have been able to avoid the ubiquitous
advertising, is a DVD rental service. Customers pay a fixed rate per
month depending on the number of DVDs they have at one time (3, 5 or 8),
and they can rent as many DVDs as they like. Customers browse for titles
online and add them to their queue. As soon as they return one DVD,
Netflix ships the next.
The new look is a model in restraint. They've reduced the
architecture of the site and removed extraneous navigation. The focus is
clearly on making the process easier for their customers.
One major step Netflix took was separating the enrollment
architecture from the membership architecture. They realized that once
you're a member you don't need to constantly deal with the sales
material. In fact, if you're not a member the only content you'll see on
the site is marketing about their service. If you are a member, you
won't see any kind of enrollment info. This killed about 50% of their
online graphics, greatly improving page loads, and making it easier to
guide both targets into making decisions.
The enrollment architecture leaves the marketers much more room to
explain the offer. They've also showed restraint in the details. One of
the features they don't mention is the ability to rate DVDs and get
recommendations based on your preferences. Often companies can't resist
the impulse to talk about everything. In this case, Netflix saves the
rating feature for the customer to discover during their free trial.
For other audiences such as analysts, the press, and investors, the
footer contains navigation to provide links to information such as the
pressroom and about us. On pages with corporate content, visitors get a
menu with local navigation.
For members, the service only provides global navigation for browse,
recommendations, and the queue. It also provides local navigation for
browsing categories of DVDs. This leaves more room for browsing titles
by thumbnails of the DVD covers, much the way customers would browse at
their video store.
Since they've paid so much attention to the architecture and visual
design of the site, you would think all their marketing would be
stellar. However, perhaps because banners are so inexpensive these days,
Netflix has over saturated their advertising. I imagine it must be
working or they'd lay off, but I'd recommend they be more selective.
They still use pop-ups, which annoy nearly everyone and they show up in
sites that also advertise less legitimate offers such as herbal
supplements.
Of course, it's hard to knock one of the Internet's few true success
stories.
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Thanks for Reading
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Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
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