sacha chua living an awesome life

Here are the next chunks in my personal business curriculum: validating business ideas, and working with other people in order to make things happen. I might be able to learn both at the same time. In fact, that’s probably the only way I can learn either. If I validate business ideas but take on all the work myself, then I’m limited by my time and what I can do. If I work with people without checking that the end goal is something that’s valued by others, then that would be a very short experiment indeed.

I talk a lot about the intersection of what people value, what you’re good at, and what you enjoy doing. Reviewing my archives, it boggles that the core of the diagram I drew in 2009 is still true. Going deeper into my passions leads me to things that people value more. I’m building the foundation of my 5-year experiment on things I’ve loved doing for a while, and that’s working out decently. I could spend five years validating ideas and building businesses within that intersection. It wouldn’t need as much work. People have blazed those paths before. Proven business needs in proven business models.

But the hardest part of drawing is to see familiar things in an unfamiliar way. One way to break yourself out of drawing what you think you see is to draw the negative space – to focus on the gaps. If I look at business and life and focus on—what is it? the gaps? the missed opportunities?—and not just the hammer-looking-for-nail gaps I instinctively see because of my own skills and experiences (oh, yes, there, that just needs a web app, an Emacs Lisp script), but gaps whether or not I know how to solve them myself—who knows where that can take us?

If I want radical growth instead of just incremental growth, I’ll need to be able to work with lots of other people’s Venn diagrams, orchestrating the intersections in order to make things happen, and helping people get closer to their own sweet spots.

This path is rougher and more uncertain, but I’ll learn a lot in the process. I want to get better at scenting value and scale, getting a sense of where the opportunities are. I want to figure out what things really cost in terms of time and energy. If I do that, then I can go after the things that turn out to cost (me? someone? a loosely-knit team?) much less than the value they create.

Reinforcement is good. For some things, I can reward and attune that sense by earning some of that value back (another fun experiment). For other things, I can get the value back in intangible ways. So I’ve been working on making more things happen: nifty ideas and trial balloons. The more ideas I can move through this experiment of creating value, the more I can learn from the successes and failures. It’s easier to start with something that’s already a good idea. Besides, it’ll work out wonderfully; it always does.

I’m still learning how to draw with different colours. Now I’m learning how to do that with life, too. Whom should I learn from? Who does this amazingly well?

My first full day back at consulting after a month-long vacation, and it felt great. I started digging into the REST API for the system we were using, and I figured out how to build a simple command-line client to get data. I’d built a similar community analysis tool while at IBM, and that one saved lots of people hours and hours of work. Since we were starting to need similar reports, it made sense to build a tool instead of manually crunching the numbers. This time,

I decided to build the tool using Ruby instead of Java, packaging it into an .exe with Ocra. I found Ruby to be much easier to write in. The interactive mode made it easy to prototype my ideas. Gems meant that I didn’t have to hunt all over for packages and figure out how to make them work together. It was fun to come up with more ideas and add them to the tool.

I love making tools. I like digging into the wires behind web-based services and making up new ways to use stuff. The value isn’t as visible or as easy to appreciate as, say, web design work, but it’s much easier to build something quick and then tweak it to fit specific people. I like that part a lot – tailoring tools to specific ways of working.

I was thinking about the different things I might like to be really, really good at in twenty years’ time. My current shortlist: writing, drawing (mostly sketchnotes), and toolmaking. I think writing and drawing are like toolmaking for me too. They’re about making tools for the mind, helping people learn faster or more effectively or about more things. =) Maybe if I practise and learn more about writing and drawing — the way I’ve spent most of my life programming — I’ll be able to make wonderful little things too.

I’m happy to share that one of my favorite Enterprise 2.0 tools within IBM is now available on the Internet. IBM Pass It Along is now available on Alphaworks, a public IBM site for people interested in trying out emerging technologies–all you need is a free ibm.com account. IBM Pass It Along is about sharing what you know and learning from other people. If you have a how-to you’d like to share, create a topic for it. If you’re curious about something, request it. If you’re just curious about the crazy tools we use within the enterprise, check it out! =)

Here’s what I love about Pass It Along, and I think you’ll love it too:

• You can find out who’s learning a topic and see what else they’re interested in. Sharing what I know becomes a lot more fun when I can see who’s learning, because it gives me feedback that what I’m sharing is useful. Lists of people are much better than anonymous hit counts because I can view their profiles to see what else they’re interested in.
• You can learn from other people’s contributions. People can add links, related presentations, discussion topics, and other updates. For example, the "How to Make the Most of Your Commute" topic I started within IBM drew lots of interesting suggestions.
• You can create a place for discussions. I give a lot of presentations, and Pass It Along topics are a terrific place to hold follow-up discussions and reach out to more people. I post my presentation material using the Presentation Wizard and include the URL of the Pass It Along topic on my slides. It’s a great way for learners to connect with each other, too.

I also really like how a newbie like me can create value for other people by sharing what I’m learning. =) Whee! I’m copying some of my public content over, and you can find my topics on Pass It Along.

IBM Pass It Along on Alphaworks is a public site open to everyone. Access controls will follow soon, so you can limit topic access to just your organization if needed. IBM Pass It Along is even better inside your organization, where you can link it up with your employee directory or do all sorts of other cool stuff.

Check it out – it might be a great fit for your organization!

IBM Pass It Along