The aptly named Hardlywork.in displays your Facebook newsfeed as a spreadsheet for the ultimate in clandestine slacking.
Just authorize hardlywork.in to access your Facebook account. It will a generate a fake Microsoft Excel document that lives in your browser, with each row corresponding to newsfeed post, and columns for notes, comments, and more.
Go for it!
Bad-Ass Hack: Evaluate your manager, and make him/her responsible for YOUR productivity.
photo: under30CEO.com
How It Could Save Business’s Ass: Managers who walk over their employees are under a mistaken impression that they are supposed to be serviced, when in fact they’re supposed to be helping those employees be more productive. Fixing this misunderstanding helps the company succeed.
Potential Downsides to Avoid: Managers with Napoleon complexes really don’t like being held accountable for their laziness, and will probably be really pissed off. Be careful; don’t get yourself fired.
Getting Started:
1. Create a wiki list associated with your department or team goals and/or activities. List some useful metrics, like dollars saved by your manager’s department, and track them carefully, Key will be that the data must be able to be validated by your manager’s boss.
2. Circulate the page among your coworkers, so, as a team, you’re all documenting complaints and anything that will help the team improve. Keep working on the list as a team until you feel you have enough data to show specific areas that need improvement.
3. Now it’s time ingratiate yourself with your manager. Share the wiki list with him or her and explain how concerned you are that his/her team is getting their due credit or support. (Reverse psychology: You’re really tracking his/her report card and about to turn it in to the Big Boss…But by first inviting him/her to participate, you’re giving your boss a chance to improve on those metrics first.) It’s only fair to give them a chance to address the complaints, right?
4. If your manager does participate, you all have a powerful tool with which to present to the Powers That Be to get more credit or support or change for your team. If your manager chooses not to participate… Oh, well…Then it’s either time to take it directly to his/her boss, or, failing all that: you now have ample evidence that it’s probably time for a new job.
• • • • • • • • • •
12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours!
THE NEW WORK CONTRACT
OUR VIEW, FROM THE WORKFORCE TO LEADERS
DEAR LEADER:
A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution.
Your emphasis on productivity and cost-cutting forced us to change how we think about the war for our talent. For that, we thank you! Your ability to stay focused on the bottom line has inspired us.
We had gotten lazy about controlling our own destiny. We figured if we focused on customers and profits, continuously changed and grew, drank the corporate Kool-aid, and did great work — we’d be the masters of our own fate. Boy, are we glad that the 2008-2010 financial crisis woke us from that fairy tale. Wasn’t a fun way to get it, but get it we did.
So we watched what you do. We studied how you constantly push for greater returns on investment to ensure your own future. Based on what we learned, we have rewritten our work contract. You are not effectively managing the assets we provide, and we’re calling you on it.
Decent pay, appropriate benefits, great culture and leadership — all are givens in this contract. Important… but baseline issues. After that, it gets interesting, and personal.
This new covenant between us cuts to the heart of who owns, controls, and sets the rules for productivity. Specifically, how much value you create for us when you organize our work.
It’s pretty simple, really.
More and more, a big piece of the working capital you leverage to get stuff done is ours. You want us to spend our assets — our time, our attention, our ideas, knowledge, passion, energy, and social networks — on work that you think is important. That means, more and more, we’ve got to think and act like investors.
We are students of the marketplace, have learned quickly, and need to audit your efforts: Are you making productive use of our assets? Would an hour invested in a competitor’s firm provide a better return? Are you creating better communities than we can find outside in the networked world?
We were becoming slaves to your infrastructure: That which was supposed to help us now dictates too much of what we can’t get done. The tools we have outside of work are leapfrogging past what we have at work — your love of lingering bureaucracy, legacy technologies and deeply embedded procedures are killing us.
Throw out much of what you thought you knew about creating a “great place to work.” A new work contract is hitting your shores. We call this new covenant Work 2.0. Our relationship with you must return more value on our working capital.
And here’s the thing: Don’t treat us like investors and we’ll hack our work. We’ll join the underground armies of top performers who are bypassing your sacred structures and breaking all sorts of rules just to get their work done. Like them, we’ll take matters into his own hands to increase our own productivity and achieve better results that way.
HACKING BIG BROTHER: Reduce Your Digital Footprint…Now!
Bad-Ass Hack: Workaround Corporate Spying and Bypass Corporate Firewalls. Why should Big Brother have all the control? Why do you have muddle through without access to tools and resources you need? Why should you tolerate them spying on you? If you need access to YouTube or social media or freeware email and messaging services, you should have it! If you don’t want The Man spying on your every keystroke, you should be able to bypass that!
What Makes This Hack Bad-Ass: What can be more bad-ass than working around, bypassing and ignoring the very things that were designed to keep you in line?!
How It Could Save Business’s Ass: Ooooooo, this blasphemy. Anarchy. Breaking the rules must be bad for business, right? Quite the opposite! While there are always some trouble-makers in most any crowd (…people will be people, right?), the vast majority of the workforce want to do their best for the company and for their customers. But because their employers put in so many safeguards to protect against the actions of the few baddies, the good people have way too many barriers placed in front of them. Risk-aversion is killing business’s ability to get stuff done, to be productive and efficient, to be great.
This bad-ass hack is fantastic for business’s ass! It frees good people to do great stuff.
Potential Downsides to Avoid: 1) Never share information with anyone who wasn’t authorized to have it, *especially* when jumping the firewall, 2) Never hack selfishly. 3) Never hack for any of the seven deadly sins. (No porn, no greed or hoarding, no revenge or wrath, no lack of diligence or getting out of virtuous work, no enhancing your own vanity.) 4) Do no harm. Don’t jump firewalls or surf banned sites in ways that will harm anyone else.
But how can you get around Big Brother? Here’s how…
Getting Started:
1. Go here. Follow the instructions to download and install Ubuntu on a USB stick.
2. Go here. Follow the instructions to set up a VPN account.
3. Boot your USB stick onto your laptop or workstation and follow these instructions, to configure VPN connection for Ipredator.
What This Does: Accessing the internet through the VPN encrypts all your internet usage! Running your workstation or laptop with this configuration on your USB stick (with the USB stick plugged in) means everything you do is stored in “virtual space” on the hard drive. Do anything you want online with that USB stick installed and Big Brother will never “see” what you’re up to. Simply unplug the USB stick and reboot your machine… The VPN on that stick encrypts all your internet traffic, and the reboot drops all the data off your machine. Cool, huh?
Alternatively, you can try this, which accomplishes the same thing, but is a little slower.
For more “how to” and “how does this work?” information and advice, go here.
Voila! No more Big Brother! Almost as good as throwing a sledgehammer through a big screen! (To psych up for this hack, check out Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad above. When 1984 [or, now 2011] won’t be like 1984.)
* Obligatory Disclaimer: There is no magic bullet, and your boss may have done something clever we hadn’t thought of here. Be careful out there!
• • • • • • • • • •
12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours!
We all need heroes. During October 2010, we got many. On Oct 13, the entire world cheered! After more than two months entombed half a mile beneath the Chilean desert, the last of 33 trapped miners was pulled to safety. Not only were the 33 hailed as heroes, so were the hundreds of individuals and firms from around the world you united to save them. Amazing story that many of us will remember forever!
At the time, the entire world was focused on all the ways those behind-the-scenes heroes help. From oil-drillers lending their expertise to how to go get them, to manufacturers of the capsule that brought them out, to iPods sent down fully loaded with Elvis and lots more…even to the psychologists helping them deal with the effects of long-term entrapment. NASA was even called it for its experience in helping crew members deal with long periods of isolation while in outer space.
At least those were the official stories.
Later, after the men were saved, we learned how those official strategies and tools were hacked.
Drugs were smuggled down to them in letters from wives, girlfriends (sometimes both), and friends.
Porn was also smuggled down to them because officials were not dealing with their “greatest need” after air, food and water.
Yes, the official channels of tools, support, discipline and structure were absolutely necessary.
But so were the underground channels…the hacks. Those 33 men made sure to workaround the system to get their needs met.
Maybe there’s something we can all learn from these heroes?
Simple, to the point. Get your head into the clouds! (Your mindset, your attitudes about change, about risk-taking, about taking charge of your career and your work…)
When Business Week wrote this great article, The Power of the Cloud, they were writing from an entrepreneur’s perspective. “World-class business technology used to require millions of dollars and months of installation. Now all you need is a couple of days and an Amazon gift card.”
The opening diagram that accompanies that description is a comparison of a tech startup in 1999 and in 2011. Entrepreneurship and the Cloud: Play it again, Sam; I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
But, oh how the biz world is still missing the point! The cloud is not just a boon to startups…It’s a kick-ass jump-start for any benevolent hack inside any company!
Corporate IT still making you jump through hoops to their tune? To the Cloud! HR or Accounting or Logistics still forcing you to do things their ways? To the Cloud!
When we did the early research for Hacking Work, we found that the number one hack was to jump over Corporate’s firewall, doing your work “out there,” then bringing it back “inside.”
With the explosion of the Cloud, that’s just getting easier and easier!
Hack away, hack away, hack away, all.
Up, up in the clouds!
THEY ARE CALLED LESSONS. VALUABLE LESSONS.
My first job out of college was art directing a hippy, drug-culture alternative newspaper in Syracuse, New York. Amazingly, that led to my first job in the Big Apple, art directing for the New York Times.
Woohoo. Hit the big time. In 1979, went from making about $12k a year (including freelance gigs) to over $60k a year, just cuz the newspaper guild said that art directors were the lowest level of management and that’s what they should get paid. (It certainly was not based on my skillsets.)
popartmachine.com
One day I touched the type with the tip of my finger. “Could we move this from here…to…there?” I asked.
“FOREMAN, FOREMAN!!” shouted the not-laid-off-previous-linotype-operator-now-paste-up-artist. “He touched the type! He touched the type!”
For about 20 minutes over 200 hundred huddled in the composing room debating whether or not to go on strike. And there I was alone, the subject of their scorn, surely staining my paints and whimpering inside, wondering whether the Post and Daily News would run the story as “Stupid Kid Shuts Down NYTimes.”
Eventually, they decided I’d been punished enough, graciously deciding not to strike.
Yes, as in this case, there are always consequences to trying to work around any system.
But the most important consequence (…which, BTW, is a neutral term: consequences can be good as well as bad…) is learning valuable lessons: they could be…
• Learning how to better engage others
• Learning the difference between stupid rules and good rules
• Learning how to be smarter about workarounds
• Learning which workarounds yield the best results
• Learning when to go solo and when to pull in the team
• and so many more
Do not fear consequences. Use them. Leverage them. Work with them. Learn from them.
The only consequence that’s truly bad is one from which you do not learn.
We’ve all heard that tired parental outburst: “Eat your parsnips. People in India are going to bed hungry.” And many of us had an equally lame retort: “Then why don’t you send them what’s on my plate.”
Although their approach might have lacked meaning for many of us, our parents’ message is worth remembering: “Be thankful for what you’ve got. Others are less fortunate than you.”
This message is particularly poignant when we compare the current woes of our world. Thousands dying of a tsunami in Japan vs. one U.S. state stripping the rights of public workers to collective bargaining. Radiation tainting food supplies vs. the price of fuel raising the prices of fresh fruit. Private citizens in Egypt encircling a museum to protect its ancient national treasures during an overthrow of its government vs. private citizens encircling state capitals to get more charter schools. And, of course, not being able to get a wifi connection when you realllllly need it, or having to walk more than three blocks for a latte is horrifying, right?
Don’t get me wrong. All woes, big and little, complex and simple, deserve meaningful solutions. And heaven knows, money and education, healthcare and more are super crucial issues.
But as I travel the world consulting on corporate change, I hear howls and groans focused on wasteful meetings, lousy managers, or being thrown into [company name here] jail for standing up for yourself in front of senior execs.
C’mon. Grow a pair. Deal with it and move on.
Compared to the real woes of the world, the majority of workplace woes should be hacked without any hesitation at all. Just do it. Period.
Hack the shit out of corporate stupidity, NOW!, so you have the energy and passion and time left for real woes, that are even more deserving of your attention.
CAREER MANAGEMENT: Shove slackers and others overboard…now!
Bad-Ass Hack: Get your peers fired. We all have to work with douchebags at some point. If we could ensure that they got shit-canned, everyone’s life would be sooooo much better.
illus: art.vassar.edu
What Makes This Hack Bad-Ass: You work hard, and they’re making you work harder. Getting them fired gives them an opportunity to improve themselves — somewhere else.
How It Could Save Business’s Ass: Bureaucracies have a hard enough time succeeding as it is without having to put up with human wastes of space. Sadly, HR has few means for getting rid of them unless they’re axe-murderers or worse. In many ways, these bad seeds keep HR in business… creating all sorts of rules and procedures and boundaries and checklists that have to be enforced and forced on all of us because the slackers and cheaters remain un-fireable.
This hack saves business’s ass by ensuring that more of the best and brightest stay instead of getting frustrated and shackled by stupid rules designed for the bad apples…and by ensuring that the laggards who are pulling all of us down get booted.
Potential Downsides to Avoid: 1) You probably won’t be going to heaven if you inappropriately get people fired, 2) If you get caught, bad things can happen to you. 3) making enemies is never good.
So how to shove the slackers overboard without encountering those downsides? Here’s how…
Getting Started:
1. Figure out who you just can’t keep working with.
2. Determine what metrics would make a really solid case for them getting the boot. Good examples are: Numbers of reports written, lines of code developed, customers obtained, hours spent in the office, numbers of donuts eaten — whatever it is that your bosses will find compelling. This is key: metrics that your bosses care about! You may have other compelling (and extremely valid) reasons for booting them off your team…But what keeps this hack good and not evil is that you’re focusing management’s attention on what the company cares about.
3. Make a graph that you post anonymously, with no labels indicating what the chart is about and definitely WITHOUT the offender’s name on it, and post their numbers every day. Slowly, on the sly, explain what the unlabeled chart means to those on your team — people you trust and who have similar views of slackers. Over time, everyone in the office *except* the target will watch the chart, chuckling as the end drawns nigh. Eventually, word will make its way up the food chain to your boss. That boss will be compelled to take action, nobody will have to point any fingers, and the office as a whole will breathe a little easier.
We have seen this hack work again and again. Sometimes it’s to get a slacker fired. In one example, a team posted on a white board all the local stores and eateries where the corporate credit card (which they were forced to use) was NOT accepted. No one said anything for months as the list grew longer and longer. And the boss passed this whiteboard every day. Eventually, the boss figured out that it was time to address the situation. Other credit cards were finally permitted for corporate expenses.
Go forth: Manage your career. Get slackers fired.
It’s good for business, it’s good for your team, it’s good for your customers.
• • • • • • • • • •
12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours!
Safe Zone Hack from Steve: I’ve just finished your book “Hacking Work”. I absolutely agree with the need for it, and was overjoyed to see that others see this need besides myself! I’ve been working in SQA and business analysis for 13 years, and have pushed for this entire time, thinking I was alone.
officepolitics.com
I have a perfect example of this sort of self-destructive behavior…
Several years ago I was hired as a manager on a project critical to the companies’ survival. I received carte blanche from the parent company CIO to make all changes needed. My user-centered workarounds: I immediately redesigned all tools for users, removed penalties for reporting problems, instituted penalties for NOT reporting them, restructured the team, and built custom processes to identify and eliminate the sources of issues. Performance improvements were 300% within 2 months, documented annual ROI was solidly 7 figures and everyone on the project loved the new working arrangements.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: However, I later learned the CIO was angry because someone else came up with successful ideas. He reversed my changes, created new draconian reporting rules to cut performance, and doubled our workload twice. After still meeting deadlines, he laid off the entire group. Major clients left because their needs weren’t met, and company morale dropped to nearly zero because of this one person’s ego. This example is also only one of many.
The Root Cause Reason Behind Our Need to Hack: The only way I see this issue changing is to remove the executives as a hindrance. Since they refuse to choose to change, they need to either be forced to change or removed. By force, I don’t mean logically. I mean they do it, or their ego is shattered or they get fired. This means putting in corporate controls that allows workers to control the fate of executives, attaching negative consequences to executives for poor company performance (i.e. lead anchor and gold staircase, no gold parachute). Either that, or start new companies using these new principles that are vastly more efficient. Then push the dinosaur companies into extinction one by one until they either change or completely or get replaced by the new generation.
I’d prefer a more cooperative way of doing things, but the global economy isn’t waiting for us to change. Besides, you can’t have a logical discussion with irrational people, and the people making decisions usually fall into that category.
Safe Zone Hack by Alan: A free book goes to Alan Hill for this two-part post on Hacking Your Jerk Boss. Congrats!
This hack requires the following:
Courage: Cold Sweat
Difficulty: Master
Yield: Beyond eternal bliss, Victory
(In case you’re wondering, Alan is following Bill’s format for his Courage Meter, an interviewing and reporting device he employed in his book, Simplicity Survival Handbook)
bp.blogspot
Part 2: Emotional Leverage
In another link to his own blog post, Alan refers to Norma’s arch-nemisis, Sergeant First Class Ojheda, and that he got what he deserved — a transfer away from those he was bullying. Alan’s key lesson: Hack workarounds, but never become one of the bullies…they’ll get theirs, eventually.
image: technabob.com
In my role as Mr. Simplicity, I train everyone from admins to senior executives on how to get to the point… (BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front… and… Know, Feel, Do: How to quickly connect w/ people on three levels… Intellectual, Emotional, Action.)
hooverzbiz.com
image: flickr.com
Then maybe what you need is FollowUpThen. Just type in reminders to yourself, or others, and they’ll email you a reminder at the time and date that you specify. Best of all, it’s free!
HR GROWS A PAIR: Finally! HR Becomes An Employee Advocate
Bad-Ass Hack: HR Adopts, Champions and Tracks New Organizational Measure: “How easy is it for me to do great work?”: HR finally gets that the new collaborative tools are the operating system for talent in the 21st century. It finally gets that HR has been MIA when it comes to being a workforce advocate, and it’s time to grow a pair. HR’s early 21st century role is to make it a lot easier for everyone to do a lot more great work.
TM Staples
Yet, in reality (…of course, with the stellar exceptions that everyone cites…), HR is mainly a cost-cutting, reactive advocate for short-term changes, under-performing on the strategic needs of the C-suite, and a no-show when it comes to being an Employee Advocate. And when it comes to growing a pair: When was the last time you heard of an HR exec going toe-to-toe w/ a superior to push hard and relentlessly for his/her employee’s needs? Exactly.
How It Could Save Business’s Ass: The workforce needs to get shit done. Faster. Better. Smarter. Yeah, we all know that. But the way that most every company approaches this need keeps everyone working harder, not smarter. If HR actually stepped in as the workforce’s advocate and made it easier to do great work, most everyone would be working smarter.
In most every company, there are way too many barriers to doing great work.
According to the Jensen Group’s Search for a Simpler Way, among the biggest barriers:
• Usability and user-centered design of tools, processes: Only 27% Favorable
• Speed in addressing bottom-up needs: Only 21% Favorable
• Appropriate, effective use of each individual’s time: Only 12% Favorable
Only 12% favorable in how we use people’s time!?! Where is HR on this? Who is the employee’s advocate on this?
If the workforce had an advocate on these and similar issues, most of the barriers to MoreBetterFaster would be addressed. This is why the top of the list of Best Companies to Work For, are all adopting some variation of “How easy is it for me to do great work?” as a central corporate measure. Removing barriers to great work is the work of a great company.
Potential Downsides: HR execs, be forewared: If you grow a pair at a company that doesn’t appreciate that, you might actually have to find a better company to work for.
Suggestions for Getting Started:
1. Download Jensen’s Simpler Company Starter Kit
2. Use the Survey Tool to assess your own organization’s barriers to great work
3. Use Your Own Data to start a new conversation w/ C-Suite execs about making it easier to do great work
4. Kick Ass: Become a true Employee Advocate
• • • • • • • • • •
12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours!
Watch this entire video to see how…
(If you wish, ignore the product/service plug at the end…Focus on the IDEA within the video. Tell STORIES!)
http://www.slideshare.net/stateoftheart/is-powerpoint-a-media-4617126
As we studied thousands of hacking case studies for Hacking Work, we found four basic kinds of hackers:
image: scifiwire.com
2. Imagineers. These dreamers also see better ways of doing things and are willing to tackle the big problems, but rarely go solo. Most often they hack by building sizable networks or taking their ideas viral. There’s safety within numbers and wisdom within the crowd! A common hack in this area is for a team to rebuild any tool or process to be more user-centered, and to lobby for its use throughout the company. Both Pioneers and Imagineers adhere to classic hacking philosophies: Learn by taking things apart and making them better; Information is best when shared with all, completely transparently
3. Craftsmen. This is where most work hacks occur. These are the people who do workmanlike hacks to solve everyday problems. From redesigning tools and processes to bypassing a lousy boss or a stupid procedure, these hacks keep the wheels of business from falling off. Craftsmen may do their hacks explicitly or supportively, but their hacks address our biggest day-to-day challenges.
4. Tweakers. This group creates relatively minor hacks — tweaks and changes around the fringes of work and one-time efforts — but when you add up their combined efforts, they make a big difference in keeping businesses running and people employed
In this TEDx talk Jonathan Fields talks about how to turn fear from a source of anxiety and paralysis into fuel for action and achievement. That’s what makes his talk — filled with 9/11 tragedies and entrepreneurship and more — super-relevant to hacking. “This is my one chance…We don’t get do-overs. Do I rise above my fears and anxiety?” The answer for Jonathan was a resounding “Yes.” Is that your answer too?
Getting beyond fear is about the new questions we need to ask and the answers we need to discover around: 1. Fear of Failure 2. Fear of Being Judged 3. Fear of Success.
Will you rise above your fears about breaking away from how things are “supposed to be done” to begin benevolently hacking? Will you begin a new path of success through forbidden innovation?
EMPLOYEE AS ENTREPRENEUR: Work both sides of the street.
Bad-Ass Hack: Leverage your company’s throwaway IP and create your own startup. We all know your company is bleeding great ideas like a leaky bucket — mop some of that up and go make some money! If they won’t, why shouldn’t you? It’ll either open up a whole new market for the company to crawl over to later (giving them an opportunity to buy their idea back from you for a gazillion dollars), or help them die a little quicker.
For example…
• Maybe they’re locked in to a specific way of recording expenses, but your innovation (or one you’ve seen) could save each employee many hours, and still leave an appropriate paper trail. There’s a business opportunity here! Combine procedural smarts w/ a software programmer and you have a Silicon-Valley-type startup.
• Maybe your boss is one helluva gatekeeper, and your team has great ideas that keep going nowhere. There’s a business opportunity here! PowerPoint or videotape the ideas and send them to ten people above your boss. If your ideas are any good, they’ll go viral and the slap on the wrist you’ll receive will be worth it.
• Maybe your company is so locked into a specific process and specific tool (…let’s say it only works on the workstations you’re forced to use…), but you see a way to do it ten times faster by tweaking the process or tool (…let’s say by adapting it all for iPhones…). There’s a business opportunity here! Pull your team together w/ an app developer and with a minimal investment of time and money, you idea could be the next Big Thing!
What Makes It Bad-Ass: Most corporate culture is designed to prevent innovation and cross-market leaps in exchange for guaranted quality and replicability. Taking ideas they keep abandoning and delivering them to market brings more value to everyone — especially you!
How It Could Save Business’s Ass: Companies need to innovate or die. The quicker they grapple with this and start maximizing value in line with customer’s evolving needs the more successful they will be. Abandoned IP should be used by those with the courage to do so; this forces corporations to be leaner and more responsive. Survival of the fittest, baby!
You’ll find gazillions of examples of this approach throughout the history of capitalism. Here’s just one: Chris Pearson created Thesis, a WordPress theme used by top bloggers from an idea he had while working at a software store. He discovered a customer need that was going unmet by the store, and he delivered it without the need for a store.
Potential Downsides to Avoid: Don’t go to jail: corporate IP theft is no joke and those big companies have got some badass lawyers. We are not advocating stealing corporate IP like trade secrets. Focus only on the throwaways, the stupidly wasted ideas that you have a paper trail to evidence availability for.
Getting Started:
• Pay close attention to when you say something like “but that’s freaking brilliant! What do you mean marketing didn’t approve it?”
• Write that idea down. Over time you’ll start noticing this happening more and more, and at some point one of those ideas will be too damn good to ignore.
• Create plausable deniability (anonymously posting it on the internet is always helpful) and write up a business plan.
• Optimally, get it developed in your spare time and line up an investor before your company even knows you’re doing it. Then you can quit and have cash to run with!
• • • • • • • • • •
12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours
In this TEDx talk Chris Guillebeau talks about “writing your own permission slip.” That’s what makes his talk — filled with crocs, killer whales, and his volunteer work in Africa — super-relevant to hacking.
Benevolent hacking requires each hacker to face your fears and write your own permission slip to take the leap into forbidden innovation. As Chris says “at some point, if you’re going to overcome your fears, you have to come up on the stage…you have to become a believer and not a cynic. At some point you have to step forward.”
As he concludes, “A lot of us live our lives out of fear of what other people think. We’re waiting for someone to give us permission to live our lives.”
Write your own permission slip! Give yourself permission to hack the problems and barriers that are preventing you from doing your best.