Yesterday, Benj talked about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg establishing the core values for Facebook. He talked about how the values laid out a clear, concise, contextual boundaries for the company. In true eyespeak fashion, let me play devils advocate. I LOVE that he laid out the values, but think most of them are glorified fluff. Let me take you through them with grading:

1. Focus on Impact
While I agree the intent here, the value is neutral. “So Bob, did that action really focus on impact?” “Well yes, I impacted the company by deleting all our content from the servers so www.facebook.com no longer exists.” Not the kind of impact you want.
C-

2. Move Fast
Great! Something you can hold people accountable for and very important in this type of business!
A+

3. Be Bold
Again, I like the intent here. Unfortunately “be bold” just isn’t enough for me. I would have used an action word here to keep the same intent such as courage.
B-

4. Be Open
Gag me. I can hear it now in a performance review, “Well Bob, you really just haven’t been open.” From the explanation, words like accountability or accessibility.
C+

5. Build Social Value
So close to something great here. I am close to loving it, but the other side of me see something seemingly vague. Can’t say exactly what would need to be changed here, it’s just not exactly right.
A-

All in all the values are a B- for me. Could be a lot worse, but certainly have  room for improvement. Love or hate them, Benj and I can certainly agree on one thing: If these values are not defined and regarded by all Facebook employees, they mean nothing.

How do you ensure your company USES your values?

So hats off to you Mark. Although I am not sold on your semantics, I genuinely LOVE seeing companies take a step in the right direction.

In case you missed it Benj talked about his feelings on Facebook’s Core Values yesterday. Check it out.

Click Here for Facebook’s Core Values

Benj’s 3 Questions

1. Does your company have values?

2. Can you name your company’s values? (no cheating)

3. Do your values provide a clear context for how to make decisions and what’s valued within the company?

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“We are tomorrow. The future rides on our shoulders. We see brokenness and we want to make a difference. On one hand we are hopeful, and on the other we are filled with fear. Our passion to bring good pushes our dreams forward. We believe we can make the world a better place. Even if we only influence a few, it is worth every minute if only we can overcome our apathy. A poetic view on life may seem unreasonable, we know others can’t understand what is being birthed withing us, and the ideas in our minds are much larger than may seem possible. But to create something from nothing is our mission. To address social needs is our progression. What is to come is bright. The difference we can make is worth the sweat equity. Collaboration with like-minded is essential. More than one working together only makes our canvas stronger. The hope is too big to not pursue. Nothing will hold us back. We will create something new. We will be known by the problems we solve. We are Plywood People.”

Inspired yet? You should be! Taking ideas and solving problems… count us in. Speaking at this Plywood Mornings was our very own Benj Miller.

For me, it was a reminder of what a unique culture we have here. Since we are here day in and day out, how we handle life around here can begin to seem normal. Hearing Benj talk about our culture and work/life balance was an encouragement for many who attended.

We loved having some new faces around the office and re-connecting with others! Here is some more information about what we talked about.

And of course… we had some fun in the foam pit!

With our visual brand projects, we have a whiteboard phase that includes people who have great ideas but can’t sketch to save their life. It’s ugly but yields more and greater ideas that can be fleshed out further at a later time and by someone whose gift it is to make those types of images come to life. Plus, we come up with more and greater ideas by allowing all to contribute…not just the whiteboard-drawing-talented ones.

With our application process, we start with sketched wireframes. They are far from pretty but provide an outline that makes the application process move along faster and with more focus.

If you demand perfection at each step in your process, you are wasting valuable resources. 90% of what we create in the ugly stage never gets to market.

We’ve learned to trust our team and our process. The messy doesn’t scare us anymore; we know it can be a valuable step in a process built for success.

Where could you use a little less perfection in your process?

2.) Stereoscopic photos: I wouldn’t even know where to start on how to take pictures like these.

3.) Need4Speed: Who doesn’t love some BASE jumping?

Need4Speed: Insight from Phoenix Fly on Vimeo.

4.) Super Bowl Commercials: Tis’ the season. Bueller?

5.) Ballista Kit: Our office is full of Nerf guns, footballs, rocket things, and of course flying monkeys. This could be the cherry on top.

Back in the “old days” we relied heavily on email. Email email email. It was sickening. If something needed done, we would send an email. It was then up to the technician (developer/designer) to keep track of it themselves and be responsible for that task. However, this system was just setting us up for failure. There are great project management tools out there and over the 6 years I’ve been here, we’ve tried MANY.

We finally ended up on basecamp in 2010. MAN, what a difference. Finally, a place where messages, files, tasks, writeboards… virtually EVERYTHING can live in one place. Another added advantage to basecamp is that we can invite clients to join us.

As a project manager, one of my daily goals is to become more efficient with my workflow than I was the day before.

Here are some cornerstones of project management here at eyespeak:

1. Stop using email – it’s cluttered and unorganized.
2. Over-communicate with clients.
3. Don’t overwhelm technicians with tasks if they aren’t due for some time. Let them focus only on what they need to be working on in the immediate future.
4. Do prepwork for technicians – they’ll appreciate it and it will help you stay more involved/knowledgeable with the project.
5. TASK YOURSELF!!!

Task yourself? Really? Yes, and do it immediately! Get an email from a client? I’d guess that many people’s instinct would be to read the email, mark it as unread, and come back to it when they can. While this may work for some people, I can’t help but think that it slowly weighs on your conscience to the point where if you have 50 of these, you’re darn well near a panic attack.

Get an email from a client?

1. Put it in your project management software as a task right away.
2. Copy the email over as a comment if possible.
3. Task it to yourself or to a technician. If you task it to a technician, task yourself to follow up with technician at an appropriate time.
4. Lastly, email the client that you’ve received the request and let them know when it will be completed or when they should expect to hear back from you regarding the task. (remember the over-communicate part?)

It’s that simple. You’re more organized, it only took 3 minutes, and you eliminate risk of an inbox panic attack.

1. Confront. 
You have issues you haven’t dealt with. This is like bloatware on a dell you bought at Best Buy. It burns unproductive cycles all day long in the background without you even realizing it. Some of these issues are with other people, and you need to be assertive in a productive conversation. Most of these issues are ways that you have hurt yourself and need to deal with the regret, shame, disappointment, frustration, etc.

2. Change the relationship.
There are people we don’t like and things we don’t like to do, but we have the power to change the way we mentally relate to those things. When I got serious about working out and eating right, it wasn’t from guilt or a “I should”; it was from a perspective that I needed to fuel my body for the demands of my life. If I wasn’t doing those things I might miss out on bigger things. The workout/nutrition were not the end but the means to get to something I was passionate about.

In the same way, you have the power to change the way you relate to other people. What if that lagging employee became your concentrated project? What if your wife became your “the hot girl” you once pursued? What if your difficult father-in-law became a chess game to win instead of an annoyance to deal with?

3. Seek help.
God created three things for you if your struggling: community, Scripture, & prayer. Use them.

Pretty incredible right? The Japanese Institute of Science and Technology must have spent years perfecting this technology. Except there is one little caveat, a quick Google search reveals that the Japanese Institute of Science and Technology doesn’t even exist. Dig a little deeper around this video and you will know that this is all fake and is for a new video game that Sony is releasing this year.

One more video to check out:

Your first inclination is to the say that the video on the screen was added in after the video was shot, right? Check out the big video screen at the end and notice what is playing right before the video of the guy is on the screen. It’s a trailer for the movie Limitless, which is really what the video is for.

There are two ways to view this kind of marketing:

1. That it is brilliant. People on the internet are gullible, and with advances in technology, both of what these videos are showcasing are feasible. (I fell for the first one when I first saw it.) It drives millions of people to the videos and in turn can use the label “viral.”

2. That it really doesn’t market the product. The Limitless video is a prime example of this, nothing with what those guys created has anything to do with the movie. So does it really drive traffic to the movie? Or the video game?

Where do you stand? Do you think this is great marketing or just another way to deceive viewers?

Often, our eyes are only opened to “building” when there is an immediate need. We wait until we have outgrown our current home and have a baby on the way, or wait until we are out of a job with no where to turn but our network that has been seriously neglected over the past year.

The best time to build is now. Your “building” may not be a physical act, but rather the act of staying ahead. If we continually wait to plan for the future, we will never be ready.

The simple act of having a plan in place can save you time, money, doubt, etc. Perhaps your website has barely been doing its job over the last year, but it wasn’t a huge deal to you. Suddenly, (insert mega company here) is interested in buying your product/using your service and you need a top notch site ASAP. You are going to be hard-pressed to get it finished. If you had been gradually making adjustments through the year (for something you KNEW was bad) you would find youself in a better place.

Identify the three most important parts of your life. For many this would include areas such as religion, family, job, finances, health. Find simple ways to to prepare yourself for the “what if” in these areas.

Trust me, you would rather spend an extra hour per month preparing for a bad situation, than to find yourself in that bad situation and not be prepared for it.