Michael Rill

Einfach machen

Category: Leadership

  • Dear Library, Thank You!

    Dear Library, Thank You!

    The end of the year is an opportunity to look back and be grateful. When we moved here, the local libraries of King County and Seattle welcomed us with open arms. No credit history or social security number required, not even a monthly fee. We’ve been continuously surprised by the local libraries and their commitment to excellence. Their dense network of locations for pick ups and drop offs, the amazing collection of books and their great electronic options to name a few.

    They have been particularly helpful for our daughter. Not only did story times and a generous limit on book loans help us nurture her interest in books, it even helped her deal with daily life challenges. When she became a big sister picture books prepared her for what was to happen. When she was afraid of going to the doctor “Leo gets a check up” showed her that it will be OK. When she showed interest in diggers and construction vehicles, there were lots of picture books about how all that heavy machinery works together.

    The adults in our household enjoy the electronic selection, in particular Kindle loans for eBooks and Libby for audio books. The latter blew me away. Searching, checking out and listening audio books all from within one app is a great user experience. The user interface is intuitive (better than Audible) making it easy to take notes and set bookmarks. I very much appreciated the option to search by “What’s available”, which helps me get through household chores. The collection of physical books is amazing as well. And if a book is not available right now, we can just place a hold and are pleasantly surprised once it turns up in the future – deferred gratification, a rare treat in today’s world.

    We recently also discovered their Kanopy and Hoopla services, where we’ve now watched a couple of movies. They don’t encourage binge viewing, but limit consumption to five movies a month. That’s a good amount. We like the selection of movies, ones that we often wouldn’t find on other streaming services. And it’s all included in the membership.

    And how much does all of this cost? It’s part of our tax dollars at work. Do they track my data to target advertising? Not that I know of. Libraries have been these shining oases nurturing our souls that we are very grateful for. If you are looking for a New Year’s resolution for 2020, making more use of your local library is a great one.

    Let me close with quotes from two articles from last year that put it so much better than I could. Khoi Vinh on his blog:

    Even more radically, your time at the library comes with absolutely no expectation that you buy anything. Or even that you transact at all. And there’s certainly no implication that your data or your rights are being surrendered in return for the services you partake in.


    This rare openness and neutrality imbues libraries with a distinct sense of community, of us, of everyone having come together to fund and build and participate in this collective sharing of knowledge and space. All of that seems exceedingly rare in this increasingly commercial, exposed world of ours. In a way it’s quite amazing that the concept continues to persist at all.

    Your Public Library Is Where It’s At

    And one quote from the New York Times:

    Libraries are an example of what I call “social infrastructure”: the physical spaces and organizations that shape the way people interact. Libraries don’t just provide free access to books and other cultural materials, they also offer things like companionship for older adults, de facto child care for busy parents, language instruction for immigrants and welcoming public spaces for the poor, the homeless and young people.

    To Restore Civil Society, Start With the Library

  • Consistency > Intensity

    When we left Australia a little over two years ago, we left behind many friends. One of them imparted a piece of wisdom I’ve come back over and over:

    Don’t worry about our friendship. Friendship is not about intensity, but rather consistency.

    His point was that friendships are less about the grand gestures and more about staying in touch. Even if it is just once a year for a birthday note. A quick photo to share an experience or a message to share a thought.

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  • Culture is not one-size-fits all

    Culture is not one-size-fits all

    The Wall Street Journal recently had a story on Netflix’ corporate culture. It reads similar to the 2015 New York Times piece on Amazon’s culture or going way back to the late 1980ies piece on Microsoft’s culture. There are probably a lot of pieces about other high performing companies that hit a similar note: high performance comes at the expense of a humane culture. I’m not sure whether I agree with that.

    An anecdote between Steve Ballmer and Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of Facebook comes to my mind. Mark asked for some leadership advice and Steve recommended writing down “what it means to be one of us”. The story goes that Mark took that advice to heart and compiled a list of ten-ish traits, which were highly opinionated. Most people who read the list would have a hard time identifying with those traits, but the few who that list spoke to were highly attracted and motivated by it.

    The lesson here is that culture is not one-size-fits-all. In that it can produce work environments that look very odd and even hostile to most, but appealing and accommodating to some. In that I wouldn’t view those articles as condemning write ups, but rather an (at times sensationalist) account for a moment in time. I’d even go as far as saying that those cultures drive higher employee satisfaction and performance than most cultures that don’t take a stance.

  • Alan Watts & David Lindberg – Why Your Life Is Not A Journey on Vimeo

  • From the Job Loop to the Knowledge Loop

    Interesting article by Albert Wenger from USV in the context of US Labor Day: From the Job Loop to the Knowledge Loop. 

    People do need a purpose in life and they do have the need to be recognized by others. But we have to stop trying to define and find purpose in labor and instead seek it in knowledge and in our relationship to other humans and to nature.

  • Keep calm and carry on

    Keep calm and carry on

    If you haven’t spent the last 24 hours under a rock, you know by now that the UK voted to leave the European Union. Living in Australia, it was easy to follow the vote count live. At the beginning it was a nail-biter, but early in the afternoon it was clear that ‘Leave’ got the majority.

    Born and raised in Germany, the European Union was always a given for me. I can barely remember ever using my passport for inner-continental travel. My first full-time pay-check was in Euros. While I’ve never been in business, directly benefiting from EU trade reliefs, I always assumed and felt that it was a good thing. Working together across countries makes everybody better off. Even celebrations like the Eurovision Song Contest were part of bringing nations closer together creating solidarity.

    Beyond free travel, I tremendously benefited from the EU. I was raised by two loving parents, my father a policeman, my mother a nurse. We’ve never been wealthy, but there was always more than enough. Given free education in Germany, I was able to go to university and by means of an Erasmus grant I was able to study free of charge for a year in London. It was an amazing year that allowed me to live in the middle of London and immerse myself not only in the British culture, but even more in the mixed company of other Erasmus students from France, Denmark, Spain, Italy and many other countries.

    My parents were especially very grateful for this year. They’ve told me many times that in this one year I became more open to other people’s opinions and matured into a much more positive human being, more friendly and kinder.

    So, while I saw the results coming in yesterday, I became sadder and sadder. I will probably be able to let my children spend time abroad and experience foreign cultures, but I’m worried that other people might no longer be able to afford the privileges I enjoyed.

    It just seems paradoxical to me. Technology makes it easier to connect with people across borders and continents. Out of Australia I can call my parents in Germany using FaceTime virtually free of charge anytime I want to. I can send them messages and pictures and let them participate in my life. Distance and borders become less and less of an issue to stay in touch. However, at the same time in many countries, both East and West of the Atlantic, voices become louder to protect borders and national interests, to no longer work together, but rather use tactics of fear, uncertainty and doubt. I still don’t understand why.

    Yesterday, the world grew a little smaller and at some point I just had to stop reading Twitter and news sites. I’m sad for the European Union and hope that the UK’s example will be a wake up call for the rest of the EU to not take the EU’s privileges for granted, but rather nurture the idea of collaboration, openness and understanding.

    But for now, I’m going to follow the British motto to “keep calm and carry on”, still believing in the idea of the European Union that working together is better than working alone.

    Photo credit: Free Grunge Textures – www.freestock.ca via DIYlovin / CC BY

  • Writing well, often

    Writing well, often

    I very much believe in the power of good writing. As such I admire the good work of companies like Mailchimp and Slack to promote good writing that is more approachable. Hence I was delighted when Anna Pickard started publishing some of Slack’s content style guide and writing principles. They follow Mailchimp’s great work, who published their voice and tone style guide already last year.

    At work me and my team started writing a monthly newsletter. It started out as a mailing just for the broader team to help us understand what everybody else is working on. However, people enjoyed reading it and started sharing. Now we have a group of family and friends throughout the organisation that loves reading this newsletter every month. Although it might seem insignificant, it is one of the highlights of my job. It is a chance to connect with people, find out what they are working on and spread the good news. The newsletter is very different from other corporate emails, as we aim to write it in very accessible language (thank you Mailchimp and Slack for setting such good examples). We spend a good amount of time to get it right, and people appreciate it.

    When I saw Anna speak earlier this year at Webstock, it clicked with me, why it was so hard and how we can make our job easier: Each month we were trying to figure out how to write a good newsletter from scratch, based on our experience. And even worse, we all did it individually. As a result, writing the newsletter took a lot of time and effort to make it sound right with good content and a consistent voice. We needed to reflect on what people love about the newsletter, why they read it despite their own email overload and write it down. This helps February-Michael be as good as January-Michael, and James write with the same passion as Elizabeth and vice versa.

    Below are the guidelines we came up with. In fact, the whole thing became a manifesto that was fun and empowering to write in itself. It borrows heavily on Anna’s talk and if we’ve done a good job, hopefully somebody will borrow heavily from us. Maybe it provides inspiration for somebody to start sharing more of their own story through a blog or a newsletter. Believe me, it is fun and better things will happen the more open you are.

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  • Courage

    “. . . may you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.”

    – John O’Donahue

    Hat tip Swiss Miss.

  • Webstock 2016 – Celebrating the web’s values

    Webstock 2016 – Celebrating the web’s values

    Webstock turned ten last week. It is a conference that celebrates the web and its makers – the creativity, the magic, the craft and everything in between. Although Webstock is hosted in Wellington, they have an excellent reputation and attract great speakers from all over the world. It has been on my radar for a couple of years and this year I finally managed to go to Wellington. It was an amazing experience, an emotionally exhausting ride on the rollercoaster – in a good way. Hands down, the best conference I’ve ever been to. 

    Speakers typically have a tech background (web development, software engineering, UX design, long-time bloggers), but the presentations were mostly non-technical. While the Above All Human conference three weeks ago in Melbourne focused on startups and entrepreneurship, this conference focused on the web and its values and culture. You get a good idea of what Webstock is about from last year’s closing note by Natasha Lampard, where she talks about onsens, entrepreneurs and the long-game (also written up here).

    A key asset of Webstock is the diversity of its speakers regarding gender, background, race and topics. None of the talks could or should be compared with each other. Therefore, by the end of the first day I stopped trying to figure out what my favourite talk was – they all were really good. Because of this diversity in topics, it took me some time to recognise the common thread: They all talked about a shared set of values, promoting and preserving values like openness, contributing, inclusiveness, simplicity and caring deeply about your work, not your ego. It is a conference that is undeniably, beautifully, human.

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  • On writing – Where Creativity, Fear and Action go on a road trip

    On writing – Where Creativity, Fear and Action go on a road trip

    Any creative endeavour is an adventure. It takes us from here to somewhere new, hopefully somewhere exciting. That sounds simple and exciting in itself, but the devil is in the detail and once we embark on our adventure, we notice that things turn out to be trickier than previously imagined.

    Let’s take writing as an example.  Everyone knows the situation: we’ve got a wonderful idea, something to say and we want to share that idea. So we sit down and start with a blank sheet or screen. We write our first words, realise that they don’t really work so we start over again, start differently, it still doesn’t work. We get frustrated, doubt creeps in. Maybe we aimed too high and the idea was not as good as we thought it was. We really want to put ourselves out there, but worry that we are not good enough. We start checking our email, then Facebook, then Twitter, post the picture of our lunch on Instagram, then go back to email. At some point we declare defeat and leave the idea altogether.

    That’s how many writing efforts end – the adventure stops before it even really begins. And that’s sad, because the world likes adventures and needs more of them. Let’s find out why it is so challenging by borrowing from two concepts:

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