How To Get Where You Want To Go

                             
GPS? 

Yes, but No.

I'm not talking about travel. I'm talking about how you achieve goals, objectives and non-physical stuff like that. We have all had the experience of making a plan or setting a goal that proved hard to implement or achieve. Somewhere in the process, often right at the beginning, obstacles appear. Not tasks, but real ’how am I supposed to do that’ obstacles. I am going to show you why that is a good thing and not the ’killer’ that you might suppose it is.

I have been using this free graphics tool for three years. Canva is a graphic design program that anyone can use. It is drop-dead easy. Check it out here.

Canva has proven itself to be so helpful that I recently started using the Canva For Work version that has a few bells and whistles I like. $12.95 a month saves me at least an hour a month, but you won't need that. Canva is free and really powerful.

I got the opportunity to design some school buildings right out of college. They were fairly large projects taking six months to a year for the design phases. There was lots of time to recover from missteps. After a couple of these I got an admin building for a small school district. By comparison this was a three-bedroom house in scale. Before I had a handle on what the project would entail, I started focusing on the entrance and how I wanted that to work. After a day or two, the question came. "What the hell are you doing?" I explained about the importance (to me) of the entrance. "Do you even know if this is going to be 1-story or two? Does it fit the site?"
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When you are looking for work, this may seem counter-productive; but it is a good practice to evaluate every job beforehand. 
Your insurance agent, your attorney, and your marketing advisor will all agree that making sure this project is worth pursuing is a good thing. The insurance agent and the attorney are looking at the potential for trouble that working with this type of client, this particular client or this project type can lead to. 

Your marketing advisor is looking at the big picture of where you want to go and whether this opportunity is a step forward, sideways or backwards. The type of work you do and the people you work for speaks volumes to all your clients and potential clients. Choosing the right projects and the right clients is a key element in developing your niche and reaping the rewards that come from not being a commodity. 

From a purely business perspective, a project is like a new product line. You should evaluate both before jumping on board. For a project a detailed evaluation doesn't need to take much time, especially if you have an established method for doing the evaluation. The attached form came from combining several processes that were recommended to us over the years. 

The thrust of the evaluation is to uncover any concerns you have about the project or client beforehand, and then to develop a plan for addressing those concerns or "passing" on the project.
We found it works best with just two or three people involved: the person who found the opportunity and who knows the most about it, a principal of the firm, and perhaps one other senior person.

Once you go through the process a few times you will find that you want to keep the form handy as a kind of questionnaire to use with potential clients.

I’ve read recently that organizations are starting to recognize that they no longer function like a hierarchy, which comes to us from a military model that is probably 10,000 years old. Instead they recognize that a network is closer to reality. In a network each node (person) is connected to several others. Sometimes there is a client-vendor relationship. I would include boss-employee relationships under client-vendor for the sake of simplicity. Simplicity might be at odds with clarity, though. Other times the relationship is more peer-to-peer or even resource-researcher.

What nodes do you see in a smallish design firm?

• Owner/client (client-vendor)
  
• Principal-in-charge (client-vendor)*
  
• Project architect
  
• Structural engineer
  
• M/E engineer
  
• Civil engineer
  
• Hardware consultant
  
• Bookkeeper
  
• CAD tech
  
• Resources:
  
• AIA Contracts
  
• RS Means cost data
  
• ARCAT specs

* I tried labeling each node above and quickly learned that many of them will have multiple labels. ’Lesson learned’ is that words aren't a very helpful tool in describing networks. Graphics are needed.

It's kind of odd that you can't easily draw a network because there are very few tools that can handle it. CAD is the handiest (lucky for us), but outside the design field what would you use? Lucidchart, mind mapping, drawing tools like the Inkflow app? Because until you draw the network, it's pretty hard to think about it. That’s one reason hierarchies have worked so well - just assign people to roles: soldier, squad leader, platoon leader, company commander, etc. No need to draw it.

Mind mapping doesn't work unless your program allows interconnections - this one (iBlueSky app) doesn't. Fig 1.

Lucidchart works pretty well. Fig 2. A Lucidchart network diagram lets you use shape, color, line types, and arrow heads to convey information about your network. This might be better than CAD. Lucidchart’s toolbox makes it pretty easy to recognize all the subtle relationships in a network. (In Fig 2 I used their ’Flowchart’ shapes with one of the simple themes.)

I tried Inkflow, too, but I didn't see any benefits of drawing the network by hand, even if you can cut and paste easily to re-arrange nodes. Fig 3.

I think we are in for some really big changes when you combine this management concept, the prevalence of contract workers and the move to embrace more telecommuting. Design firms don't seem to be in a leadership position on these changes except maybe contract workers, thanks to the Great Recession. Not being a leader, though, doesn't mean you won't be affected.

I tried for years to sketch our organization; now I see that I wasn't using the right concept/tool to tackle the job.

Here is an article with an interesting comparison.

http://www.digitalinnovation.pwc.com.au/hierarchy-vs-network-business-models/

There are probably thousands of ways to estimate design fees. My method has evolved over 30 years into this approach that I am sharing with you. 

Estimating design fees is part science and part art (OK...it’s math and guessing). The approach that I use is dictated by the size/complexity of the project, who the competition is, and who the client is.

Before we get into the nuts and bolts, let's dispense with 'competition' and 'client' considerations. These two issues affect what you do about the number that you have arrived at as 'the fee'.

Every time I have used this technique for understanding cut and fill, an engineer has told me "You can't do it that way" or even "That doesn't work". And yet I always get useful information that engineering can't provide. Well, it can provide it but there are impediments. First you need an engineer on board. Second you need a proposed topo to give him to work from. And third you have to convince him to do this several times. Of course all this takes a week to get the engineer on board, a day to create and send the proposed topo, and an indeterminate amount of time to get the revisions. I can use this technique to get a 'good-enough' answer in a couple of hours.

Why do I want to know about cut and fill? Basically I want to know because I don't want everyone to get excited about my fabulous site plan only to learn later that earthwork will cost more than the building. So I want to know that my idea will be defendable. Plus I love this site planning stuff.

My grandson likes to explore. Anything will do - sea shore (his favorite), woods near or far, or ... basements. "What kind of junk do you have in those boxes, grandpa?" The basement has a poor record of revealing treasure, although the walkie talkies that we got working last week were a hit for almost an hour. The boxes in question contain old drafting supplies - souvenirs would be a better term because the chances of using them again are almost zero. 

The watershed year for your reaction to these souvenirs is about 1965. If you were born before then, they stir up nostalgia or whatever is the negative version of nostalgia. If you were born after 1965, then we are talking curiosity about historical artifacts.

I can't recall who told me about HootSuite, but it was likely a post on TechCrunch. I used to be an avid reader of their posts. Anyway I tried it, then set it aside, and then picked it up again and, now, I use it constantly - the free account, that is. My blogging process uses HootSuite as an integral part. I work out a concept/outline in Inkflow. Then I use iA Writer to write it up. Cut and paste from Writer into Weebly where I add formatting. Publish the article. Grab the URL and post to Google+. IFTTT sees the RSS update and posts to LinkedIn and Facebook. I go back to Writer and turn out some tweets. Cut and paste the tweets, with URL added, into HootSuite to post them at the selected times. Rinse and repeat. So I use HootSuite almost every day. 

Being able to schedule all the tweets about the new article at one time is a real time-saver and makes my process achievable in one to two work sessions a day. Somewhere along the way I heard about Buffer and ignored it because I had HootSuite. This past week I read a post about the best blogging tools, and Buffer was mentioned. So I checked it out again, thinking "what do they know that I don't". So I signed up for the free account and started kicking the tires.

You know how you keep hearing about change?  And how everything is going to keep changing even faster?

Well, here is the first wave - the Structure Sensor. It is a device that captures the shape of the real world around you. Every architect, designer, sculptor, and contractor on the planet will “need” one of these. I know I do. And at under $400 for the device that mounts on your iPad, you will be seeing these devices everywhere. Maybe you already have. This Kickstarter Project reached its goal in November and should have shipped a lot of them by now.

Here are three links to check it out.

This is the home page for the device’s website.

This link is to the Kickstarter page.

This link is to a short review of the Structure Sensor.

I have confessed to being “distracted” when it comes to Business Development. My favorite tool for overcoming the distracted-ness is a contact management tool developed by 37signals called Highrise.* The thing I like about Highrise is that with the minimum of effort you can track the development of a relationship with a prospect. I blind copy or forward my emails into the prospect’s page, set tasks for making the next contact or the needed follow-up, and add notes from meetings and phone calls. I end up with a chronology of all my interactions. With just a few minutes a day, which works much better for me than once a week, I am able to keep all my efforts moving forward.

The four main features I use in Highrise are Contacts, Tasks, Cases and Deals.

Contacts: individuals or organizations that you want to manage a relationship with

Tasks: TO-DOs related to contacts or other efforts, say, your website. You can get notified by email or SMS when due.

Cases: this is a way to pull together multiple contacts to make it easier to manage the effort to win a potential project where several people are influencers. Perhaps members of a board or building committee...

Deals: once a project is formed, you can use a Deal to track RFPs, interviews, value of the fee, wins and loses.

Check this all out at their website.

Everyone's heard of AIA Documents. I just saw this ad in a magazine and wondered what the buzz was all about. They are now a browser-based resource rather than a computer-based tool. So you can be anywhere when you work on their contracts and forms.

I think AIA Documents do a good job for all parties, and they have a good reputation as an industry standard. These days they are very easy to use, and the browser-based aspect is very nice. The other thing about AIA Documents is that they cover way more types of situations than you can ever do justice to - all types of construction contracts, change orders, BIM, sustainability, and on and on. There are 180 documents. Many of them would appeal to non-architect design professionals, too.

I think they are especially good for public projects. If you get into a legal shoot-out, you don't want to be 'armed' with your home made documents.

So how do you get them and how do you use them?

Back in the day, you bought them from your blueprinter or the local AIA office; then you filled them out with a typewriter. That was only slightly easier than stone tablets and chisels. Now, as I mentioned above, the AIA Documents are browser-based. In a nutshell:

• you go to the AIA Contract Documents website with this link
  
• decide what kind of account you want
  
• open the account
  
• preview documents if needed
  
• select the document that you need
  
• fill in the blanks 
  
• circulate the document to get comments or edits or approval 
  
• then finalize and print as a PDF for signatures 
  

The service is kind of pricey but there are buying options. And under the terms of an AIA Agreement, the cost of these forms for bidding or construction would normally be a reimbursable expense! At least with the unlimited licenses, maybe the individual document service too, you can save standard clauses for re-use. Here are the purchasing options from most to least expensive. The cost for AIA members would be less.

I have Kraig Kramers to thank for describing how this tool works. The tool is called a ’Trailing 12 Month’ chart. You can find a lot of useful tools for managing a firm at his ceotools.com website.

What does a Trailing Twelve Month [T12M] Chart do?

Hopefully, you are tracking how much new work you sign up each month. This is good data, but there can be many, many reasons why a given month is either up or down when compared to recent months. So the idea of the T12M chart is to also look at the total sales for the past 12 months by simply adding up the past 12 months.

What's the benefit of the T12M?

By totaling the past 12 months, these ’reasons’ for ups and downs month get wrung out of the data and you are left with the trend. An increasing or upward trend is good, and you want to keep doing more of whatever you are doing. A decreasing or downward trend means corrective action is required right away. The 12 month total for sales is like looking at your batting average for the season. There is no positive story that explains a lower batting average. It simply needs work.

How does it work?

As the example in the image shows, you simply record three bits of data every month - the amount of sales, the month-year, and the total of the past 12 months. This last piece of data is calculated by a simple SUM formula. Each month ’fill’ the formula into the new month’s 12-month-total-cell. Very simple. This example shows the process step-by-step. The only tricky part is setting up the charts to display the graphs. The graphic above came from the ceotools website. You can also buy the XLS spreadsheet already set up and awaiting your data ($20).

The beauty of the T12M chart is its ’early warning system’ effect. A downward trend will always predict a cash flow or loss of profit. Immediate action will minimize the situation. And of course there is no end to the things you might want to track - monthly revenues, monthly number of blog posts, client contacts, ...

Evernote
I suppose some people haven't heard about Evernote, space travelers, perhaps. Evernote is a database, but without the aggravation. You store notes, pictures, files, audio clips and just about anything else that is digital in Evernote. Years ago these things would have been physical items and you would have put them in manila folders and binders. Why? Just in case you might need them sometime. Of course, you could never find them later.

Evernote is the digital equivalent of folders and binders of your stuff - except that you can find that gem again, usually in less than a minute. AND it is on your phone. You don't have to find the folders and binders first. If lots of your gems are physical, take pictures of them, scan them, and drop them into Evernote.
Besides being great at abetting pack rats, Evernote can be used to help you with more day-to-day real tasks. But before I describe other ways you might use Evernote, let's review the features.

First is cost. It is free. I used Evernote for about three years before I got a Premium account which costs $5/mo or $45/yr. The reason I went Premium was to share stuff that others could edit or add to. The free account allows sharing without editing. The free account has a 60 MB limit on how much stuff you can add per month. I haven't come close to hitting the limit, but I can see how you might. You can see all the limits here. There isn't a total limit! Check out the Premium features, too, while you are there.

After four years I have 3244 Notes, 21 Notebooks, 83 Tags to give you a benchmark. This screenshot of my tags will give you an idea of how I use Evernote.

Another really nice thing about Evernote is that they have continually improved their product. One improvement theme is adding Integrations: Penultimate, Skitch and several others - Post-It Notes, Business Cards/LinkedIn, Moleskine notebooks, clipping webpages with extensions. Each of these make Evernote more powerful and more useful. (Skitch is a markup tool that also lets you crop and re-size.)

Back to uses. I like to use Notebooks for subjects like IFTTT Feed, personal, a journal, Office Receipts, Project Records, Office Records. Some of these choices are driven by integrations and automation. You can upload just about anything by email and using # before the Notebook name and @before the tag name places it right where you want it.

Tags are like categories or folders. Some I use almost like notebooks, because when you select a tag just notes tagged with it are shown. Other tags help find things. Examples: project designations, CEU records, iPhone notes/records, house, PAID, topics and published. You can exclude tags as well as add them. I search my store of 'topics' all the time and it helps to exclude the topics that I have 'published'. Reminders work for me for long range one off tasks. Shortcuts I use for a short list of frequently used notebooks and tags.

One little feature that I really use a lot is the checkbox on the formatting menu. Whenever something is likely to become a task, add a checkbox. This would just be window dressing if it wasn't possible to search your entire database for all the notes containing unchecked checkboxes. Love it.

Searches are very powerful on the desktop app and the iPad, less so on the iPhone. The difference is how you can add multiple search terms. My workaround for the phone is to tag things I expect to need as favorites or to save the search so it can be used. Having all this information available on your mobile devices is really handy. 

One of the techniques I picked up is that starting a tag with a special character will cause it to be listed first. It also has the effect of grouping all those with the same initial character. I use a ’/’ to begin a project tag, e.g. /SL-TR, which stands for Stevens Library Toilet Rooms. Searching for ’contract’ and ’/SL-TR’ finds the contract for that job.

I think that as everyone gathers more and more information it becomes increasingly tedious to wade through your file folders to find a document like a contract. Evernote solves that problem. The only shortcoming of a database approach is that a drawing file, for instance, can be shared but managing updates requires a new version to be saved. This isn't automatic like it can be with Dropbox where files in use on your computer are kept in synch with everyone else's computer. 

Nevertheless Evernote is a strong collaboration tool for sharing research (screenshots), reference (PDFs), pictures and notes. Unlike files like a dwg, spreadsheet or Word doc which can't be edited in Evernote; a note can be edited and remains up-to-date for everyone sharing the note.

You may have noticed that I have a poll running. Take a sec and vote. Polldaddy is embedded in Weeby and is pretty easy to use. I think the actual free Polldaddy account is even easier, and it has the benefit of offering a few more features - like quizzes! Take my Masonry Expert Quiz below to learn a bit about masonry and see how Polldaddy works/looks. BTW there are several themes/color schemes for your polls, surveys and quizzes.

How did you do?

Marketing Tool? 
Well I explain here why I think surveys are a handy marketing tool. With a survey you accomplish several things at once. 
First, you get feedback - you learn something from your audience. 
Second, with a properly worded survey, you can leave a marketing message by, say, giving the impression that you are on top of some topic that interests your audience. 
And third, you put yourself in front of your audience another time, reminding them of your existence and your brand.

Besides Marketing
There are other more mundane things that you can do with a poll, or survey. For instance, find out which date is workable for a meeting; see what the crowd thinks of going bowling; test out an idea with ratings (thumbs up/down or number of stars); you get the idea. There are a number of ways to collect the data. Besides code to embed in a website or blog, as I've done here, there are links that you could add to an email; or even create a group email with the tools on Polldaddy's site. 

My new toy will probably appear here a few more times before I am distracted by the next shiny thing.

A lot has changed for both Basecamp and Nozbe since this article was first published in 2012. Nevertheless the comparison is still useful, and both services are worth serious consideration.

Two of my favorite To-Do List / Project Management tools are Basecamp and Nozbe. Both are browser-based. I think both are excellent, but they have their own characteristics and are each better at some things. If you want a tool that helps you manage all your personal, social and work projects, Nozbe has an edge. If you mostly want to manage work projects with a team, consultants and even your client, then Basecamp offers more.

Below is a comparison of Basecamp and Nozbe followed by the Comments on the features. If one of these helps your productivity, it will almost certainly pay for itself. I suggest testing both.

Basecamp is a service of 37signals. Visit Basecamp here.

Nozbe is a service of apivision and is developed primarily by Michael Silwinski. Visit Nozbe here.

COMMENTS

1. Pricing is generally comparable, but your needs will likely make one or the other more attractive. However, cost is not a key issue. If one of these helps your productivity, it will almost certainly pay for itself.
2. Basecamp shines in this regard. Nozbe would take some fussing with to make sharing with clients work well. In many cases sharing your project management tools might not be needed.
3. Multiple task lists are simple with Basecamp. Nozbe uses just one task list per project, but it would be simple to set up multiple lists using similar but distinct names to monitor the lists, e.g. New School - DESIGN and New School - ADMIN.
4. Both tools work well on mobile platforms. Basecamp uses a mobile view of the website that only allows viewing. However, you can change to normal website view and with some enlarging of the view make edits and additions. There are several third party paid apps that overcome this situation. Nozbe has a paid app that works very well on a phone.

N1. Nozbe doesn't use templates. However you can enter multiple tasks at once so it is a simple matter to assemble the standard tasks in a text document for re-use and insert them when and where needed.
N2. Nozbe does have a calendar, but it contains all tasks across all projects. Upcoming tasks cannot send reminders or alerts.
N3. Nozbe uses the 'Getting Things Done' concept of Context. This allows you to tag tasks with one or more category of your creation. You can then view all the tasks of one category. For example, you could tag tasks that need to be done at the project site, or by phone, or that involve a certain person or company. It is a nice feature.
N4. There are a number of things that you can add by email, but comments on a task is not possible.
N5. Nozbe does send out notices by email when a task is completed, but there is no way of indicating what you are working on. If this is important a separate Google Chat could provide a similar functionality.

B1. Discussions are a place to set out a goal or status for everyone's benefit. All team members can contribute to the discussion. Preparing for a presentation might be done this way. Team members can give feedback and ask for help / ideas. Discussions can be real time but remain available until deleted.
B2. Basecamp has a page that shows everything that has been going on in all projects.
B3. 'Looping in' is a way of soliciting input from someone who is not part of the project team. Their response becomes part of the project record automatically.
B4. Text documents can be anything - strategy planning, a new spec section, etc. - multiple people can contribute in real time over the Internet.
B5. Archiving a project saves it but takes it offline. It does not count against you project limit. The archived project can be activated anytime.