Pajunas Hosts More Than Your Website

Like a midwestern version of Gate 3 Work Club, Allie at Pajunas is offering monthly office subscriptions.

That’s right, for a couple hundred dollars a month, you can move your start up out of your house and into downtown St. Paul’s fantastic Renaissance Box.

I spoke with her at the Pajunas open house tonight. We had a great conversation on the value of community, quiet, and internet access in getting a business off the ground.

If Pajunas doesn’t have the right space, check out the $50/month writer’s refuge elsewhere in the building. Perfect for your great american novel (breaks down to $1 / word) .

Find Failure Fast

“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” – Thomas J. Watson Sr, founder of IBM

“…fail faster so [you] can succeed sooner.” – David Kelley of IDEO

I’ve got any number of projects in the works at any given time (current count is north of 20). Last year, there was a different twenty. Some of the same, and I’ve found the sign of a good project is one that sticks with you for years. Some of the projects I started last year worked out extremely well (VINE360, MNteractive.com) others were obvious (in retrospect) failures.

Ultimately, my work is to capture and apply feedback to business strategy. Failure gives clear feedback – and it will persist until you listen. The usability evaluations and ethnographic studies I conduct are about listening for failure early. When it’s easiest to accommodate.

Failure will occur, whether you like it or not. As the earlier quotes illustrate, it’s better to find failure fast than procrastinate. For procrastinating failure only puts off success.

Best Buy Focuses on Personas

Best Buy has taken the first step in their persona-centric model. According to the Wall Stree Journal’s Analyzing Customers, Best Buy Decides Not All Are Welcome, the sales associates have received training to briefly interview customers to determine if they are a Barry, Jill, or Ray Buzz.

In an effort to keep their store relevant in an increasingly e-commerce industry, Best Buy is also reducing rebates, promotions, and sales. Others may disagree, though I commend them in that decision.

This was also picked up by iaslash.

A Systems Thinking Overview

As an introduction to the perspective Working Pathway’s brings to your project, I present this excellent overview of systems thinking from the late Donella Meadows: Dancing with Systems.

Here are some highlights to get you started:

“Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.”

“Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself.”

“Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.”

“The way you learn is by experiment—or, as Buckminster Fuller put it, by trial and error, error, error.”

“A decision-maker can’t respond to information he or she doesn’t have…”

“Look for the ways the system creates its own behavior.”

Here’s an additional link to Dancing with Systems. Yes, it’s that good.

Thanks to Willem Van den Ende for bringing this seminal work to our attention.