Niek de Greef, Author at Niek de Greef

The Mockingbird, a moral story

Bericht gepubliceerd op:03/07/2016

I got the Mockingbird for my birthday. Along with Go Set A Watchman. I had not read it before and thought it was time now to catch up.

There seems to have been quite a debate about Go Set A Watchman, the Mockingbird sequel. Originally, the early version of the Mockingbird was published only in 2015, about 55 years after the Mockingbird. According to some, the publication was against Harper Lee’s will. According to other sources, Lee was not mentally capable anymore at that late stage of her life to put off the publication.

Harper Lee recently passed away, in February this year.

I only knew her name as the writer of the classic Mockingbird. She grew up in the south of the US, and some of the stories in the book, let’s say, show parallels to biographical facts in her life. After writing The Mockingbird, she slowly disappeared from public life. Her biography is shockingly uninteresting.

The book breathes the southern small-town countryside feeling I associate with William Faulker’s books, such as As I Lay Dying.

And Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw The Angel. Rotten characters, Euchrid Eucrow-like. A lazy mood caused by early-day booze.

The introduction is the second-best book introduction.

“Please spare Mockingbird an introduction”

(The best is the Salmon of Doubt introduction by Terry Jones).

I also found a place where J.K. Rowling may have gotten her idea for Dementors in the Harry Potter series from Hot Steams.

‘A Hot Steam’s somebody who can’t get to heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads an’ if you walk through him, when you die you’ll be one too, an’ you’ll go around at night suckin’ people’s breath -‘

Hot Steam is a southern US superstition.

Boo Radley, a dark small town legend, a potential Euchrid Eucrow, prefers to live indoors. Because he wants to. Because he hates the small town outside. But unlike Euchrid Eucrow, Boo remains on the light side and becomes a hero, saving the kids Jem and Scout from the real dark Euchrid Eucrow character of the story, Bob Ewell.

The story’s hero is Atticus Finch, the father of Jem and Scout. The story is told through Scout, who observes the small-town manners, flaws, prejudices, and discrimination. Atticus Finch is the moral champion. Against the will of the white people in the village, he defends the black Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white girl, even though Atticus knows the case can not be won and the jury has already convicted the black man.

Good To Great Big BIG Things

Bericht gepubliceerd op:21/06/2016

Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

I was astonished, reading Good To Great. It has so many findings about great companies, that are massively ignored.

Many business leaders have referred to this book as a guide in their leadership practice. While in their own organisations the findings they cast aside the findings in this book on a day by day basis.

Let’s go through a couple of these themes.

Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.

So no need to attract expensive business leaders from the outside. What we hear about their compensations schemes we sometimes find unethical and excessive.

We found no systematic pattern linking specific forms of executive compensation to the process of going from good to great.

Not only does the compensation not necessarily need to be very high. Moreover, the leaders of these companies stand out in humility. Leaders of great companies are to themselves, focused on the company, not themselves, have a big sense of humility and do not have big egos, are persistent calm and determined.

Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

As surprising, great companies are not great because they have such a fantastic strategy. Nor is it technology or acquisitions, a very promising industry or special program.

Discipline and perseverance are the most important traits of great companies.

Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

…

In confronting the brutal facts, the good-to-great companies left themselves stronger and more resilient, not weaker and more dispirited. There is a sense of exhilaration that comes in facing head-on the hard truths and saying, “We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.

…

No, those who turn good into great are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

It is doing the work, a feel for business, grit, a lack of arrogance, not taking anything for granted, that distinguishes the great companies
It is in such a sharp contrast with what you see in the large majority of the Fortune 500 companies, that I wonder how the leaders in these companies, and the big consulting companies advising these companies, and likely the investors in these companies can continue to ignore such fundamental findings.

When you put these two complementary forces together—a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship—you get a magical alchemy of superior performance and sustained results.

Read on:

Tom Peters, for example The Little BIG THings.

Collins refers to Stockdale’s In Love and War, a book I would like to read next.

On the business of Design: Design is a job

Bericht gepubliceerd op:28/05/2016

“The biggest myth ever perpetuated in the design field is that good design sells itself.”

I wanted to learn about design so searched the web for “best books on design”. Design is a Job by Mike Monteiro was consistently high on the lists. So I bought it.

Design Is A Job is not about design. It’s about the business of design. About running a Design practice. About getting work, selling proposals, agreeing contracts. And the knowledge in the books can very well be applied to other (creative) businesses.

Mike Monteiro is the owner of Mule Design, a Design firm. He is also the author a books on Design practices. He is famous for being clear on getting paid: F*ck You. Pay Me speech. In the book, it provides the same clarity.

Design is a business

Work for Money. You are in business.

…

Anything I have to tell you can be summed up thusly: charge as much as you can, deliver an honest value, and never work for free. Unfortunately, most designers feel such pangs of guilt about.

…

The secrets to getting the price you want for your work are having done the homework to know you’re asking for the right thing, the confidence to ask for it, and the willingness to walk away when you can’t get it.

Monteiro breaks down the magical mystery of design and creative work. It’s all well and good, but it’s also a business.

The myth of the magical creative is alive and well, and it’s powerful.

…

A designer requires honest feedback and real criticism, and that’s not going to happen in a realm where colleagues or clients are worried about crushing the spirit of a magical being.

A designer is solving a problem. Design has no purpose in itself in itself.

A DESIGNER SOLVES PROBLEMS WITHIN A SET OF CONSTRAINTS.

… any design task you undertake must serve a goal. It’s your job to find out what those goals are.

To achieve these goals, the designer must gather information about her clients and their goals. What do they want to achieve? What is their context? What are their financial constraints?

She does not operate in a vacuum.

Figure out what the client really wants early Most clients will approach you with a wish list of desires. If they don’t you should actually work with them on coming up with one. Assign a cost and a benefit to each one.

Finding a fit between client and designer is not just a concern that the client should be concerned about. You as the designer should also be critical to what customers you ‘hire’.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you are evaluating the potential client as much as they are evaluating you. Prospective clients sometimes find this surprising.

…

I totally encourage you to go after clients you want to work for. Let’s just be realistic about the return on this type of business development. It is very, very low.

…

The clients you choose to take on define you. Your portfolio needs to tell a story and each client you add to it is another chapter in that story. Make sure you’re consciously building the story you want to be telling.

Monteiro recommends a free customer screener tool he provides on his web site:

If you’re here it’s probably because you bought my book and read all the way to page 18, where I promised you a screener for ferreting out whether you’re talking to the right clients or not. Well, here it is.

[See http://muledesign.com/designbook/screener.html]

Interaction with the customer directly is essential. You should never just deliver the work and leave it with the client.

Selling your work directly to clients is extremely important. Not only should you be able to explain why you made the decisions you did, but you’ll get first-hand feedback on where the work needs to go next.

…

Look for clients who have clear goals, not detailed punch lists. This is especially true of RFPs that require you to reply directly to each line item at the risk of being disqualified from the process. You don’t want to sign up for a process that you know is broken from the start. Once you set sail on a boat you can’t convince a captain to take to the sky.

The job of a designer is not just doing the design work; it is also doing the research and selling and ensuring great interaction with the client. You will have to make an effort to help the client understand what you have created.

Not knowing the design language doesn’t make someone a bad client. I doubt very much that most of you could have a medical conversation with your doctor on par with a conversation your doctor could have with another doctor, and that doesn’t make you a bad patient.

…

It’s your job as a designer, and a communication professional, to find the right language to communicate with your client. When you say a client doesn’t “get it” you might as well be saying, “I couldn’t figure out how to get my point across. I am a lazy designer. Please take all my clients from me.”

…

The biggest myth ever perpetuated in the design field is that good design sells itself.

This not only allows the designer to differentiate from the competition, but it also helps build a good relationship with the client by giving him the opportunity for feedback.

Being able to present your own work is a core design skill. It helps build rapport with the client. It puts the person directly responsible for the work in front of them. It shows them that you’re presenting that work with confidence. And it gives them an opportunity to ask questions directly of the person who did the work.

With this feedback, discuss improvements with your client. But do not let them change the core of the product you have designed for them. Negotiate.

Your first job is to separate the actionable feedback from the non-actionable feedback. Sometimes clients just like to document their thought process. Your job is to sift through and find the actionable from the non-actionable.

And smartly negotiate the changes a customer wants.

“I once argued with a client for an hour over an issue I didn’t care about (eventually letting him win!), because I really cared about the next issue coming up. At that point, he was so tired out and savoring his victory

Monteiro is also idealistic about the jobs you choose and the way you design. Your work should improve the world, serve to create a better world, leave something lasting behind, ignite change. He refers to Victor Papanek’s seminal work.

Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World, which I will bluntly summarize like so: you are responsible for the work you put into the world.

I urge each and every one of you to seek out projects that leave the world a better place than you found it. We used to design ways to get to the moon; now we design ways to never have to get out of bed. You have the power to change that.

Then, it’s about organizing the work—making sure things get done, that everything is coordinated, and that all the people are working together.

Working with the project manager.

Just as you’re responsible for the quality of a project, your project manager is responsible for getting it done on time. And with the maximum amount of profit. This doesn’t mean you’re not both thinking about those things. It means you each own your part of the project. This often leads to tension, as your ultimate goal is to do good work, and the project manager’s ultimate goal is to do the work on time. And that’s pretty much how it should work.

The book is packed with great advice on business practices for creative businesses. It includes an extensive categorized book list for further reading. Because

Perpetual intellectual curiosity is the greatest resource a professional designer can have. Barring that, an island hideaway is nice.

What to read next.

Viktor Papanek’s Design for the real world.

Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell and others.

Copywriting tips from How to Write Seductive Web Copy by Henneke Duistermaat

Bericht gepubliceerd op:24/05/2016

Copywriting Tips from How to Write Seductive Web Copy — Henneke Duistermaat

“Each page needs to have one main call-to-action. In a color that stands out. And that tells people exactly what to do.”

I took the advice at heart to dig into copywriting. I didn’t know anything about copywriting. So this was going to be fun.

Learning something new every day

With another advisory voice in my head – learn something new every day, read broadly, have wide interests – I purchased Henneke Duistermaat’s How To Write Seductive Web Copy, after doing some research on the web looking for the best books on copywriting. (Why not some webinar or YouTube video? I feel so lazy when I do that. I don’t have that when I am reading. Video learning is challenging to me. Like exercising on a home trainer. Boring. Can’t concentrate.)

So I read the book. This book is outstanding in conciseness. Duistermaat gets to the point and is very practical.

Henneke Duistermaat is an internet marketing expert and founder of Enchanting Marketing and author of a number of very practical books on copywriting, blogging and marketing.

Know your customers and their problems

I learned a lot. Very simple messages.

Get a clear picture of who your audience is – write their biography.

Your value proposition is what you write on a billboard: a headline, a few bullet points, and an image.

What is important as well is to have a simple but clear view on the problem you are solving for your clients.

Let’s start with writing your headline. Four different options exist: You state simply what you offer. You mention the key benefit of working with or buying from you. You tell readers which problem or hassle you help avoid. You ask a question to target customers who are right for you.

Your product page shouldn’t be descriptive; it needs to sell your products or services. This is how: Write for your ideal reader. Focus on the benefits you offer and the problems you avoid.

The question your about page should answer is this: Which problems do you solve for your customers? Don’t talk all the time about your product, your service, or your business because nobody’s interested. Talk about your prospect’s problems. Explain how you solve these problems. Tell your readers how much happier they’ll be if they let you solve their problems.

No bullshitting your audience

Gain the trust of your customers. Show them you are not bullshitting or wasting their time. Get personal.

When you engage emotion and the senses, people get transported to a different world. Allow prospects to experience working with you, and their defenses against sales pitches are lowered.

You need to work hard to gain the trust of potential buyers. An easy way is to provide case studies and testimonials, or to include logos of business you’ve worked with, or publications you’ve been published in.

Often people want to get to know you more personally. Rather than focus on an immediate sale, get web visitors to sign up for your e-newsletter.

Clear Advice

Also, on your website, Duistermaat provides very clear advice.

Each page needs to have one main call-to-action. In a color that stands out. And that tells people exactly what to do.

Remember that the way you design your web page has a big impact on your persuasiveness. A few tips: De-clutter each web page and simplify your navigation. Have a lot of white space to create an inviting environment. Use color and font size to show what’s your most important information. Promote readability with large, easy-to-read fonts. Guide your visitors with clear, stand-out calls-to-action.

And links to cheat sheets and other useful materials. Worth every cent.

What to read next

The Copywriter’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells — By Robert W. Bly

Everybody Writes: The Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content — By Ann Handley

And everything by Seth Godin, for example The Practice.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time — review

Bericht gepubliceerd op:22/05/2016

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time book of mark haddon cover

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

I got The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time as a present for my birthday. My kids were polite and only later told me it was a children’s book. My son said he had read it for his English class.

Mark Haddon has created an extraordinary story about a boy with Aspergers syndrome. I had read two books with a comparable first person perspective of a person with Asperger: The Rosie Project (Which I actually selected hurriedly in an airport kiosk for it’s interesting cover design) and the Dutch book Wat Is Er Toch Met Kobus (What’s wrong with Kobus). The first is written from the perspective of a full-grown scientist, with a light Asperger syndrome. Kobus is even more similar to The Curious Incident: in its first-person narrative form, and the young main character is a high school boy.

the rosie project by graeme simsion book cover

Haddon writes from the boys perspective in a special style that enforces the feel of being in the mind of the protagonist: many sentences begin with And or But or Because. In school we we discouraged to do this in our stories, but Haddon uses this throughout the book without getting dull.

In the Curious Incident, the protagonist Christopher is quite dysfunctional though. When things get difficult for him, like being in crowds, or being lied to, he decompensated. Get sick and throws up. Or hits a policeman. Or runs away. Refuses to speak.

His parents have their own problems, with each other, and with Christopher’s awkwardness.

Christopher is able to analyse his own behaviour. For him man is a machine and the mind is a machine. And his views have interesting metaphors.

The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes the slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there’s a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.

And that is why people think that computers don’t have are minds, and why people think that their brains a special, and ( different from computers. Because people can see the screen inside their head and they think there is someone in their head sitting there looking at the screen, like Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek The Next Generation, sitting in his captain’s seat looking at a big screen. And they think that this person is their special human mind which is called a homunculus, which means a little man. And they think that computers don’t have this homunculus. But this homunculus is just another picture on the screen in their heads.

And the mechanistic views extends to human emotions.

…Also people think they’re not computers because they have feelings and computers don’t have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry.

And not only is man a machine, but life itself logical, though incomprehensible.

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

And religion is incomprehensible to Christopher.

I said that there wasn’t anything outside the universe and there wasn’t another kind of place altogether. Except that there might be if you went through a black hole, but a black hole what is called a Singularity, which means it is impossible to find out what is on the other side because the gravity of a black hole is so big that even electromagnetic waves like light can’t get out of it and electromagnetic waves are how we get information about things which are far away. “

Like Rainman in the movie, the autistic main character is despite his handicaps highly skilled in (too many?) specific areas. Christopher loves mathematics and physics. He is very good at it. He nominees for the A level in Math. In his school for people with learning disabilities he feels different.

All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I’m not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are. I’m meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding Relativity is difficult, and also everyone has special needs.

He compares his special skills with these of Sherlock Holmes, probably the most famous Asperger from world literature.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is my favourite book […] I also like The Hound of the Baskervilles because I like Sherlock Holmes and I think that if I were a proper detective he is the kind of detective I would be. He is very intelligent and he solves the mystery and he says the world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. But he notices them, like I do. Also it says in the book Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. And this is like me, too, because if I get really interested in something, like practising maths, or reading a book about the Apollo missions, or Great White sharks, I don’t notice anything else and Father can be calling me to come and eat my supper and I won’t hear him.”

And like Rainman he has a photographic or rather filmic memory.

My memory is like a film. That is why I am really good at remembering things, like the conversations I have written down in this book, and what people were wearing, and what they smelled like, because my memory has a smelltrack which is like a soundtrack. And when people ask me to remember something I can simply press Rewind and Fast Forward and Pause like on a video recorder, but more like a DVD because I don’t have to Rewind through everything in between to get to a memory of something a long time ago. And there are no buttons, either, because it is happening in my head.

But he is unable to recognise or express emotions. Simple emotions are impossible for him to read. But he also can not related emotions to his dead mother.

And sometimes, when someone has died, like Mother died, people say, ‘What would you want to say to your mother if she was here now?’ or ‘What would your mother think about that?’, which is stupid because Mother is dead and you can’t say anything to people who are dead and dead people can’t think.

All serious matters. A great insight in the Asperger’s mind. A children’s book?

And then for some free association with this book.

These days I feel there is some more compassion for Aspergers. Nerds are hot, and nerds have many things similar to Aspergers, if not they are right out nerds. Being socially inapt is somewhat acceptable for techies. There are nerd books, nerd websites, new podcast, nerd fighters. Hank and John Green are popularisers through Nerdfighteria http://nerdfighteria.wpengine.com/.

Second, since I had just read Purity.

This book could be called Purity as well. Christopher has the same purity as Purity in Purity, by Jonathan Franzen.

And one more thing that’scommon in these books. Purity grows up without a father, and his mother tells her the father has disappeared. Christopher grows up without his mother, while his father make him believe his mother is dead.