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A common problem we often face is to ask the right questions. When you are developing something, you want to know if you are really going where you want to go.

Here are some examples of people asking the wrong questions:

  • what do I have to do to increase my cash flow?
  • why I don't get more service requests? 
  • how can I make more sales of this product?
  • how will I stop being invisible?
  • how can I have more visitors to this site?
  • how we can have more users?
  • why there isn't more volunteers joining this movement?
  • why I can't get more votes?
  • what do I have to do in ...
by Sebastian Sastre - february, 7 2010
There are two ways to read (or write):

1. to be informed of something and
2. to see something differently

For the former you need stuff and for the later space.

Stuff to understand what and how and space to have a good perspective of the new-old-thing.

That's why I'm making this post short, plenty of space, and here is how I put what design is in two words:
 
Design: ultimate language.
...
by Sebastian Sastre - december, 16 2009
The other day I was in a deliberation and after concluding some ideas I've reached to a term:

business therapy.

For an instant I've though I was being original but 2 seconds later I've searched internet to see what others wrote about this term.

Here is what google says for today (December 13, 2009) in:

English
62,900 links for "couple therapist"
52,500 links for "pet therapist"
13,100 links for "business therapist"

Portuguese
57,600 links for "terapia de casal"
48,600 links for "terapeuta de animais"
1 link (wow!) for "terapeuta de negocios"

Spanish
491,00 links for "terapia de pareja"
19,600 links ...
by Sebastian Sastre - december, 13 2009
Here is something you can do with any idea that doesn't work:

get rid of it.

At once.

They already proved to you that they won't work so, seriously. Do it soon, before they do more harm to your budgets: moral, political, social or monetary.

Hey.. if this doesn't sound like a revelation is because it shouldn't.

Right? ...
by Sebastian Sastre - december, 3 2009
Ignoring when to stop being creative ensures compromise of value.

Corollary 1: Usefulness over innovation.

Corollary 2: Usability over engineering.

Corollary 3: Oversupression of selective creativity builds status quo.

Applicability: it can be used to induce an interesting value seeking behavior: selective unconditioning.

...
by Sebastian Sastre - december, 1 2009
The problem of strategy is that it becomes obsolete in the very moment you finished your best version.

In '80s having a strategy for a business was logical. The problem is we are not moving at the pace of '80s anymore. We have lifestyles that got accelerated.. How much? I don't know.. about 10? 100 times? maybe more.

So.. we are in a context that's moving far faster than '80s.

If you make a strategy now, you'll make a plan to implement it, and all the context around you will be changed and you'll be pissed off about it. A radical way ...
by Sebastian Sastre - november, 2 2009
Very few people seems to find natural to think zooming all things in and out. You'll find familiar the  zoom in and out concept in two ways:

1. passive: you watch a TV show, a documentary or movie and you see a scene getting more and more panoramic.

2. active:  you use tools like google maps or the iPhone touch screen to navigate visually.

What happens when we need a zoom out to get the point about the architecture of an idea?

We need ways to perceive the birds eye view. ...
by Sebastian Sastre - october, 30 2009
The problem of meetings is to feel progress after them. Well, the best is when it depends on what you did about those before they occur.

In order to feel progress after meetings here is what I think you can do:

Value only this two kinds of meetings:

1. the meetings with the "I can buy from you" person
2. the meetings to show

Manage to make them happen. And seriously don't work for other kind of meetings.

The meeting with the "I can buy from you" person could be more difficult to appoint but is the only relevant for the decision taking process. If ...
by Sebastian Sastre - october, 25 2009

Fundation

Our eyes are separated about 2.7 inches (7 cm). They are setup to point at the front of the cranial box.

We look forward by design. Birds for instance have a great lateral view. They even see what is coming from behind. We don't. We can't look back. Humans, as many other mammals, are weak to a predator attacking from behind. So we used something a lot of mammals use: cover my back and I'll cover yours.

While some are feeding or caring for the little ones, there are others watching for them. They provide security for the ...
by Sebastian Sastre - october, 15 2009
I love eolic energy, but this is not about it. It's about what do you need to transform your context.

A transformation of context only occurs when a leader helps a group to process something. Like when everybody was expecting the same result as any other day but your intervention made a difference for the better.

What do you think has more sense?

to ask if {guyNameHere} is a leader? or

what {guyNameHere} is leading?

Being a leader is about leading leaders. Unless you need wool you don't lead sheeps. You take full advantage of the homo sapiens and build a ...
by Sebastian Sastre - october, 4 2009
What happens if you set this as your goal?

An explicit goal.

Sure you'll have strategies and plans but those will came as derivatives of that goal.

Context will change but not that goal.

Your audience may notice or not that you want to achieve that, but it's something clear you set to achieve. Why? What will make this to have sense?

Profound

By being profound people will talk about your brand under more points of view. They will start to tell their own stories about that. Their own versions in their own words. That means they'll talk about your ...
by Sebastian Sastre - september, 25 2009
A woman goes to this cute lingerie shop of a friend of mine and stops to say thank you to the owners because something good happen with her daughter. Again, she was the mother. Do you know a better word of mouth than that?

How do that happen?

Days before that, the shop owners had organized a lingerie parade. In the end this woman's daughter won the parade's price. It was a unique cute piece. Turns out the owners didn't know this girl was having a personal difficult time and this made her to feel better about herself.

So, while the ...
by Sebastian Sastre - september, 6 2009
When you trust your content is when you can forget it. At that point you get that Context is King.

"...to make a Leonardo you need more than his innate ability. You also need Florence in 1450." Paul Graham.

Yes I know... we are not da Vinci, we don't have Florence in 1450 nor we have a Medici patron for our talent.

Florence in 1450 is context. The problem is that without an appropriate context talent is useless. That's why knowing how to build appropriated contexts will open you more doors than working on the content. The good part: today is simpler and ...
by Sebastian Sastre - july, 7 2009

Your community is broken.

How?

Talk to a honest neighbor or a member of your community for ten minutes and you'll be able to take notes. Soon you'll figure out that you have a lot of examples of your own. Detection of broken things is easy. You hear other's complains all the time. But can something be done about it?

Richard Avazino chose to fix the adoption of saved cats and dogs in San Francisco bringing down the animal euthanasia rates. We are talking of millions of cats and dogs per year. He not only lowered the rates. He's influence lowered those to the lowest in the ...

by Sebastian Sastre - july, 6 2009

Why so much is being said about social media? You'll even see it being called web 2.0 because of the focus on the reinvention of the Internet. But what is it? 

Is about AJAX or cool effects in our internet browsers?

Yes. But no. Let me explain you with a recent story. 

More than 80 thousand users "dumped" more than 230 thousand "friends" in a non traditional advertising campaign. This campaign lasted only ten days and then was shut down. It is a fact, so the question is how can be possible that so ...

by Sebastian Sastre - june, 19 2009
That's my definition of blogs. Is the conversation in written words. So I thought for a while about different  ways to start my blog and I've decided we have two ears. Yep. And one mouth... so maybe someone can tell me why we like to talk the double of what we hear??!!

I think it's because is in our nature to try to get attention is amazing the feeling of having an audience. And a blog is a wonderful vehicle to drive your messages to your audience. One have to think big but ofen you have no option ...
by Sebastian Sastre - june, 15 2009
what do you think about...
"The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."- Alvin Toffler
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