Cook 'em Dan-O

The Wall

(Credit to Arve Johnsen for this great picture.)

Calla. Maybe Edward Calla, maybe something more Hispanic-sounding. His name was etched on the tiniest sliver of polished black granite, no more than a few inches in height.

I was beginning my visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, in reverse order as I would later discover. It was a crisp February morning, the sun just beginning to brighten the haze. The day promised to be warm, in the 50's, but at this time of morning the puddle of water from yesterday's rains was still covered with ice. There were one or two other visitors, far ahead of me. For all intents, I was alone.

Vietnam was my war, if any war was. I was required to register for the draft when I graduated from high school in 1975, even though the war was winding down. I refused to register, although this was hardly a brave or consequential decision. By this time, draftees were no longer being called up; the last soldiers would lift off from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon in less than a year. The government hadn't yet figured out to tie the award of college aid to draft registration, so there were no practical repercussions resulting from my decision not to register. I threw the Selective Service postcard away.

I didn't fight, and I didn't have any friends who fought. I knew people who did go, friends of my older brothers. They all came back, alive but broken. Jimmy Keliher's brother, a helicopter pilot, died in a small plane crash less than a month after he returned. George Turk opened the door to my brother Bill and attacked him; apparently George had some sort of flashback. Jamie's boyfriend Rick, son of a Stanford Aeronautics professor, hung out at the Coffee House, playing Asteroids for hours on end.

Vietnam was tearing my family apart. It wasn't just that, of course. Revolutions in sexuality, pharmacology, civil rights—there seemed to be no end to the national struggles that intersected with adolescent rebellion in our family. The result was family conflict, sometimes violent, around the kitchen table. My Lai, Kent State, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Reports of abuse at the POW simulation camp at the US Air Force Academy. As I approached my 18^th birthday I had come to terms with the fact that I wouldn't do the only thing I'd thought about doing since I was eight years old. I couldn't apply for admission to the US Air Force Academy. I love planes, and loved the idea of flying them. But knowing what happened when I would release the bombs, after they fell from the sky… I just couldn't sign up for that.

And now, here I was in Washington. I'd snuck a peek at the Vietnam Memorial earlier in the week, when Brian and I visited the Lincoln Memorial. It was in view, the quiet black granite like a sponge holding so many emotions. Later, Brian and I saw an exhibit at the Smithsonian of some of the items that people have been leaving for more than 20 years at the Memorial. Letters, photos, pins, uniforms, hats. I read the letter that accompanied someone's high school letterman's jacket. "Here, you deserve this," it read. "You went to Vietnam and died, and I got to be the big hero in high school. It turns out you did the heroic thing, not me."

I could understand the emotion that would accompany visiting the Memorial to find the name of a friend, a brother or sister (yes, even back then…), a son or daughter, a father or mother. I didn't know what it would be like for me. I didn't even know if I belonged there.

But I had promised Brian I would take some pictures of the Lincoln Memorial, and I had promised myself, many years before, that I would visit the Memorial. So, as the flock of Canadian geese stirred on the lawn behind me, I started down the path. As I descended down toward the middle of the Memorial, the granite tablets grew in size. The lines of names grew larger and longer. I noticed that the tablets were numbered, and that the names weren't in alphabetical order. I stopped every so often to focus on a name. The three Callahan's in a row: Paul, Fusco, Kelly—man or woman? There were a few pins of military origin. There was a piece of paper describing the medical helicopter crew that had gone down in February, 1968. The helicopter had been found—intact—in 1970, but none of the soldiers were ever heard from again. Their chopper went down on February 12^th—Lincoln's birthday.

As I headed to the middle of the Memorial, I felt like I had descended into hell. I looked to the east, at the outlines of the names that stretched away in front of me. It was there that I learned that the names were placed on the Memorial in the order of their death, starting in 1959 and ending in 1975. I thought about that last name, about all those killed in Korea during the "Talking War" as negotiations for an armistice went on, and wondered if that last soldier's death seemed more or less futile than the first name on the first tablet. I looked toward the Lincoln Memorial and asked myself how these sacrifices were connected.

I walked up toward the beginning of the Memorial now, reading the names. As I neared the entrance to the Memorial a man went by me, crying. I imagined he was visiting a friend, maybe a war-time buddy. His grief seemed as fresh this morning as it must have been when his friend first died, maybe 30 years ago.

As I walked further I saw what looked like phone books, protected from the weather under Plexiglass. I saw that they were directories of names, there to help visitors find a particular name at the Memorial. They listed the person's name, date of birth, date of death or disappearance, home town, branch of the military, and location on the Memorial. I thought about these lives described in a single line. Here was someone from Los Angeles, born in 1947 and killed in 1969. There are dozens of lines on each page, and hundreds of pages in each directory.

I had always wondered how I would react to the Memorial. What would I do? What would I say? The tears must have been rolling down my cheeks for some time, judging from how damp my face was. "I'm sorry you had to die. And I'm sorry we didn't love you" was all I could say to these people I would never know.

I slipped my hands into the pockets of my overcoat and walked away from the pain and the sorrow.

Afterword

I wrote this in February of 2002. After I scribbled the story on the back of my printed calendar for the month, I filed the pages away. Having opened that wound, I sought to bury it again, for who knows how long.

Some months later—I can remember it as clear as day—I was driving up Highway 17, just before the Summit, when it hit me. This pain I had felt since I was little, this feeling that Vietnam had scarred me (I had always imagined someone asking me, "Are you a vet? I imagined answering, "We're all veterans of Vietnam")… it wasn't about Vietnam at all. It was about my family, about the crises we went through as each of my older brothers and sisters came of age and sought to start their own lives. Bobby Kennedy's assassination, the Watts Riots, Crips and Bloods. These were the dramatic backdrop, but they weren't the story. The story was a family trying to grow up, of kids trying to figure out how they could still love their parents and move away. As my own children were approaching that age of independence, I saw the war in a new light.

Other notes:

• The name I first saw was Jessie C. Alba.
• The order of names starts at the apex of the Memorial, then continues east, toward the Lincoln Memorial. The names then continue from the west-most part of the Memorial (where I saw Mr. Alba's name) and continue back to the center of the Memorial.
• I didn't get the names of the Callahan's right, either. There are fourteen Callahan's listed on the Memorial.
• Here are a couple of related websites:TheWall-USA Wikipedia entry

My guest post, "Managing Conflict Within the Team". http://www.productmanagementexchange.com/pmex-view-article.php?id=70

What Caltrain Could Learn from Staples

One morning I looked out of my window and watched as a woman just missed the train. Experienced riders know that when they hear the "caution, the doors are about to close" announcement, it's already too late. The doors are closing, and unless you want to dive onto the train before they shut, you're out of luck. (And I wouldn't try the stick-your-arm-in-and-the-doors-will-reopen trick.)

This would-be rider looked like a new passenger, not one of the "regulars" who get on the train in Gilroy. And as we rolled away from the station I wondered, will she be back?

When a for-profit business sees that its customer base is in decline, its costs are up and its revenues are down, it faces a "code red" moment of decision:

• Can we reverse these trends? At what cost?
• Do we "double down" (I hate that phrase) and work to turn things around? Or do we determine that these trends cannot be reversed, and exit the business?

Notice that nowhere in this line of thinking does the business say, "hey! I have a right to exist!" or "but look at all the good I do!"

When a non-profit organization faces these same challenges of declining customers, growing costs and sliding revenues, the moment of decision often revolves around raising prices, cutting services, and asking for more subsidies.

I won't get into the discussion of whether organizations that provide a public good (like transit agencies) should be fully funded, fully self-supporting, or something in between. That's a discussion best left for others.

First You Commit, Then You Make it Work

My main point is that transit agencies, in this case CalTrain, need to think about the problem from their customer's point of view. Why do people ride the train? You could probably come up with a set of reasons.

• It's cheaper than driving.
• It's my only transportation option.
• It's good for the environment.
• It's less stressful than driving.

In most cases, few of these answers are valid justifications.

• Given my commute, gas has to be priced above $4 per gallon before the gas-vs.-train ticket option tips in favor of the train ticket (lately, that's been the case).
• Most people have transportation options, especially a car.
• Riding the train is probably better for the environment that driving a car.
• Riding the train is definitely less stressful than driving.

But it's also true that

• Riding the train takes longer than driving… in my case it's about two hours each direction, when you include getting from the train station to/from work. Driving time can be anywhere from one to two+ hours depending on traffic conditions.
• Riding the train means you have to work around the train schedule. You have certain windows of opportunity to catch the train. If (like many people) your day has undefined starting and (especially) ending points, you have to work to incorporate a fixed train schedule into your day.

My point is that the decision to ride the train, especially on a regular basis, is a lot less rationally based than you might think. Sure, if you happen to live and work near a CalTrain station you can just fall into the habit. But for everyone else, riding the train means making a commitment to it. You have to think about your work schedule, how you're going to get to/from the train station, arrange to purchase tickets and so on.

What Were Once Vices are Now Habits

Department of Obscure References

So when that woman missed the train, you have to wonder: how committed is she now that she was unable to take that first step? And what could CalTrain have done to make it easier for her to follow through on that idea of riding the train?

I remember when I figured out why the old book and record clubs were willing to sell you 10 books or CD's for a penny. It wasn't about marginal cost vs. marginal price. It was about the requirement that you buy a certain amount of product over a certain number of months. And that was about establishing a habit of purchasing. These companies knew that once they got you into the habit of at least considering a book or CD purchase each month, they were more likely to get you to buy.

Hitting the "Easy" Button

So here are some free tips for CalTrain, ones that would focus on encouraging the budding commitment of passengers to ride the train, and that would reinforce the decision for more established passengers.

Simplify Ticketing

Today you have three ticket options:

1. Buy a ticket at one of the CalTrain vending machines.
2. Buy an "8-ride" pass and use your Clipper card (a reloadable debit card) as your ticket.
3. Buy a monthly pass and use your Clipper card as your ticket.

The first option is challenging because only a few stations have working ticket counters, and some of the ticket vending machines don't work. One of the two machines in Gilroy has been "temporarily unavailable" since at least 2007. Also, the vending machines sometimes will bill your card twice for a ticket, or fail to authorize your card for no clear reason. There's nothing like the pressure of trying to buy a ticket while the queue behind you builds and you're mentally counting down the seconds until the train is ready to leave.

Oh, and buying a ticket on the train? What do you think this is, 1990?

CalTrain has begun moving to a reloadable debit card, the "Clipper Card" as an alternative to ticketing machines. This is a good move, but is way behind the curve when it comes to simple, mobile payments. If you have less than $1.75 on the card, it gets screwed up (and the conductors think you're freeloading). If you try to use it to travel between other zones than the ones you specified when you charged it, the card is inoperable. You can load funds onto it automatically, but you have to wait up to three days for the funds to transfer and clear.

Imagine how much easier it would be if you just loaded a specific dollar amount onto your Clipper Card, and then had it deduct the right amount depending on the length of your train ride. And if you want to offer discounts for multi-ride sales, just offer a flat percentage discount.

Maybe the architecture of the Clipper Card makes it hard to deliver a more flexible payment experience. But here in the heart of Silicon Valley, many CalTrain riders carry smartphones, and there are any number of mobile payment companies—startup's and established companies. So why not partner with someone to offer a smartphone-based payment option?

Convert Unticketed Passengers to Paying Customers

As I mentioned earlier, you can't just walk onto CalTrain and buy a ticket. CalTrain is a "proof of payment" system, meaning you have to be able to prove you've purchased a ticket or face the possibility of a large fine.

In all the time I've been riding CalTrain, I can't recall an interaction with an unticketed passenger that was the result of someone trying to get a free ride. Inevitably, the offending person had a problem getting a proper ticket, got frustrated/confused, and boarded the train anyway. Then there's a discussion (sometimes tearful) between the train conductor and the passenger. The conductor has to play the "heavy" (a role they don't enjoy) and threaten to write a ticket, but they don't have an incentive to do this as they're busy checking everyone else's tickets and making sure the train runs on time.

A much better solution would be to have a way of selling a ticket to the ticketless passenger. CalTrain could make the ticket very expensive as a disincentive to relying on this method for buying tickets. Companies like Square offer very simple card-reader capabilities that work with a smartphone to process payments.

Partner with Large Employers

Remember the "80-20 Rule"? How about partnering with large employers, like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Lockheed and so on? Give these companies some incentive to encourage ridership among their employees—special shuttles, discounts, etc. Getting a few of these companies lined up gets you to a large portion of the potential ridership.

Make it Hip

Department of Obscure References

How about giving people a reason to feel good about riding the train? Some of the riders who bring their bikes are making a statement about avoiding oil consumption and the like. How about letting people know how much CO₂ emissions they've avoided by riding the train?

Focus on Your Customers, and the Funding Will Follow

Maybe agencies like CalTrain focus on making sure they can serve all constituents equally. For instance, perhaps the idea of paying via smartphone was rejected because not everyone has a smartphone. I'm in favor of making sure that everyone has access to public transportation. But implementing programs that require everyone to be served equally doesn't work. Or it works too well—everyone is served equally poorly. It makes much more sense to provide a great experience to those riders that are choosing to ride, and let their ridership subsidize those that are riding the train out of necessity.

If you're a non-profit or other ortganization dependent on goverment funds as well as paying customers to survice, how do you want to succeed? Do you want to convince the public and your funders that y ou deserve to exist? Or do you want to make people feel like they can't live without you, that it's easy to say "yes"?

The folks at Sequent Learning Networks got in touch and asked me to write a guest post on Product Management for them... here it is

http://www.productmanagementexchange.com/pmex-view-article.php?id=70

You're welcome!

Where Are All the Great Product Managers?

Marty Cagan, of the Silicon Valley Product Group, is a guy I really respect. He knows what it takes to be great at Product Management. If you're not subscribing to his blog and reading his stuff, you should.

Marty's most recent post discusses what it takes for a Product Manager to make an impact, especially in a small company. Go read the post, but here are the bullets:

1. Deep knowledge of the customer
2. Deep knowledge of the business
3. Deep knowledge of the industry
4. Reference customers
5. Motivation

Sounds good. So why is it that, with unemployment in Silicon Valley at the better-than-before-but-still-high 8%, I see so many Product Management jobs going unfilled? You would think that, with such a large pool of available talent to draw from, finding the right Product Managers for these roles would be like shooting fish in a barrel. (Maybe it is; shooting fish in a barrel doesn't sound that easy to me, unless the fish is really big and the barrel's really small.)

The challenge is that developing "deep knowledge" takes time and experience. If I need someone with deep knowledge of the video conferencing business, I'll go see who I know at any of a number of video conferencing companies. Their hard-earned experience will be just the ticket. So finding the right people should be straightforward; getting them to leave their company for yours may be another challenge altogether.

The bigger problem is this. If you're a startup, then by definition you're trying to do something new. You're trying to create a new business, address a new customer segment, disrupt an industry. So the people you want are going to have experience in what for your company is your past--not your present or future. How do I find the right Product Manager in the online collaboration space if I'm still inventing that space?

I'd suggest two approaches. One , from Kenneth Norton, argues for the "hire smart people" approach. More accurately, hire really smart people, preferably smarter than you. Why? Because their job is to figure out the customer, approximate what the business will be, and predict who will be both partners and competitors in the emerging industry. You're not hiring them for what they know. You're hiring them for their ability to know.

The other approach is to take Marty Cagan's direction, and modify it. You need to ask, "what business out there most closely approximates what our business will be?" And ask the same about customer type and industry. If you wanted to build a company around licensing academic course content and distributing it online, who has that kind of knowledge? Are you going to look for ex-Blockbuster people or Netflix people? Or YouTube or Vimeo? The point is, you have to think about what Product Managers in what industries/companies are most likely to have the skills and experience that are going to become relevant for your company.

These approaches may feel hard and risky; that's because they are. But if you can get a good outcome using them, you've put yourself ahead of your competitors. And isn't that where you want to be?

Social Media: DVR Killer?

I remember (from my visits using The Wayback Machine) when certain hit shows like MASH and Friends had their final episode, and people would gather at someone's house to watch together.

Then along came the DVR—Digital Video Recorder, the collective noun version of TiVO—and forevermore we were "time shifting"… recording shows and watching them whenever we wanted, as opposed to when the networks wanted. Media people wrung their hands and worried that this was the end of television advertising, since viewers now had the opportunity to fast-forward past the commercials.

Fast forward to the world of social media. People at an event are "live-tweeting", meaning you're getting a stream of messages that are directly or indirectly telling you what's happening at the event. So for instance, you didn't have to be watching or listening to know how the Stanford-Oklahoma State football game was going… Cheer, groan, cheer, etc.

And if they're not tweeting, they're using Facebook. Or texting. Or using any of a number of other commenting and sharing services. What's happening here is that the community that at one time would have gathered in someone's house, or a bar, or at the event itself, is now gathering in a virtual way. We're all watching, and social media gives us a way of staying connected and sharing the experience.

And here's where the traditional media people should pay attention. The trick is, you can only connect and share as the event is happening. If you recorded the Stanford-Oklahoma State game for later viewing, all this sharing is going to ruin the ending. And if you want to connect and share, you have to do it live. Which means you have to watch the commercials.

So if the traditional media people are on their game, they'll be creating all kinds of opportunities to share their shows, games, tournaments and so on as events.

Fast-forward that.

Happy International Women’s Day!

I was mentally channeling Seth Godin this morning, imagining this blog post…

When You're a Woman and You	Prevailing Wisdom Says
Are a star athlete	You're lesbian
Are a strong business or political leader	You're a bitch
Advance quickly through the organization	You're sleeping with the boss
Are in a relationship with me	You're my property
Like Math and Science	You can't get a date
You're angry with me	You must be having your period
Leave work to pick up your kids	You aren't committed to the organization

When I found out (thank you Google) that today is International Women's Day, I figured it meant I should not just think about this post, I should actually write it.

So here you go.

Road Show Road Kill

I'm doing some consulting these days, and one of my assignments is to help a small managed service provider transition into selling cloud-based services. It's fun work, as it puts me at the intersection of sales and product.

As part of this work, I attended a "road show" put on by one of the (very large) companies whose products/services we currently sell. The focus was on their "cloud" service offerings, and the audience was schmo's like me looking to figure out how to sell these kinds of services… without drowning in a sea of collateral and sales documents available on the company's web site.

I'm well-acquainted with the "road show," at least from the presenter's side. You barnstorm through a bunch of cities, pitching your particular product/service to the audience of customers or salespeople that have been assembled and coerced into staying by the free food and the prize given out at the end of the event. The days are long, the travel numbing, the presentations become increasingly difficult to do with enthusiasm. On the other hand, you're bonding with co-workers and drinks are on the house.

This was one of my first opportunities to experience a road show from the audience side. The free food was fine, a little light on the fruit and vegetable side. The give-away at the end (a video game console) was also fine, though it didn't hold my interest. And some of the presentations were really well done: focused on the needs of the audience, simple but still informative, and delivered with enthusiasm and humor.

But the presentation that stood out, of course, was the one that seemed to break every rule of presenting—in seemingly sequential order.

• The presenter started with an apology, having to do with not having the usual technical support person available to handle the really tough questions. She may as well have started by saying, "you're not going to get much out of this, but it's not my fault".
  • Don't EVER start with an apology. You immediately take yourself out of the "driver's seat" and undermine your own credibility. Better to wait until you actually have something to apologize for.
• The presenter's slides had WAY too much information on them. And apparently much of the information wasn't that important, because the presenter made no attempt to communicate it.
  • I've harped about presentations elsewhere, but here's the main point: do you want people listening to you? Or reading your slides? And by the way, are you saying anything interesting that's not already covered on those slides?
• The presenter said, in so many words, that "Version 1" of the product sucked.
  • NEVER bad-mouth your own product. I've seen presenters do this, thinking it's their way of bonding with the audience. All it does is make the audience wonder, "What kind of a loser would want to work for a company that put out such awful products?"
• The presenter went on to say (again, I'm paraphrasing), "Eventually, we'll be best in class." So, am I supposed to check back when you actually have something worth selling? It turns out that what she meant to say was that the cloud-based product would eventually offer the same features as the locally-hosted product. But that's not what I heard.
  • It's OK to have a better product later. But don't imply that your product is bad right now.
• The presenter talked about the product's "agility" and in the next breath discussed six-month (!) release cycles. I'll admit this is more of a nit, as "agile" has special meaning to those in the product development world. And it's true that this product's release cycles are much faster than the locally hosted version's cycles. But most people looking to do "Agile" product development are planning for weekly release cycles, not half-yearly ones.
  • Be careful with your language. You don't want to claim you're something (e.g., "Agile") when the evidence isn't there to support it.
• The presentation (slides and spoken words) was filled with company-specific jargon and acronyms. Your TLA's are your own. I no more want to adopt them than I want to order a "Venti" sized coffee.
  • Circle every acronym and piece of jargon on your slides and ask yourself, "Do I really need the audience to use this term or know what it means?"

If you don't want this to be you, pay attention to your presentation: its message, focus, and delivery. Or you could make sure I'm not invited to your show.

Remembering the Potato Chip Man

Ken Booker, a truly good man, passed away last week. I'm hardly qualified to write his eulogy, but his life and work are worth sharing.

I would see Ken once, maybe twice, a year. He always had a good word for me, would inquire about my life, and we'd share a laugh. He liked his extended family, but in limited doses. He drove a Lays delivery truck, and worked hard. But he never complained about his work, never talked about "the man" getting him down. He approached his work the way he approached his life: you did what you had to do, and you didn't complain about it.

He married his wife, Sue, at a time when she was emerging from a stormy period of failed relationships. He "inherited" a couple of boys to raise, and eventually had another boy and girl to add to the mix. I never once saw him treat his adopted children any differently than his biological children. Ken wasn't flashy or dramatic. I'm not sure I ever heard him raise his voice. But it was clear that his kids knew the rules, and knew to follow them. As his kids grew up and started their own families, you could see that same sense of calm, no-nonsense fathering in each of them.

When Ken's son Josh passed away, Ken spoke at the funeral about how he and Josh would sit and watch college football together, and how they would go fishing together. I hadn't previously known that about Ken, but I wasn't at all surprised to hear it. Ken found a way to relate to his kids, to communicate his values without being heavy-handed about it.

They say that women seek immortality by bearing children, and that men seek it by creating monuments. Ken's immortality is seen in the way his children act, the way they treat their kids. And I have no doubt that Ken's grandchildren will exhibit the same parenting qualities.

It's common to see children, especially ones that come from families in crisis, grow up and repeat the same behaviors as their parents. Ken, along with Sue and many others, brought stability to his family. He brought clear-eyed values and an appreciation for the things in life that truly matter. He gave that gift to his children, and their children, and to who knows how many generations after that.

Not bad for a guy who made his living delivering snack chips.

Yin and Yang

It's been a tough couple of weeks. We've experienced a number of deaths in the extended family. In a couple of cases, those that passed away had led long and fulfilling lives. In some other cases, death brought relief from suffering and terminal illnesses.

I'm the first one to blather on about death being a part of life and so on. But I'd much rather complain about imagined slights on the train, or rail against those who I believe to be supplying the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, than accept the yin that goes with the yang.

So Death, I acknowledge you. You're a part of life—but just a part.

Now, I'll return to complaining about Stupid People on the Train.