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Welcome to The Diamond
Insights & productivity from the world of tech, ft. swimming pools, ChatGPT, OKR & data
We get it.
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99% hit the back of your retina and slide down into the recycle bin inside your brain.
They’re not even worth the effort to unsubscribe.
So we’re making it easy for you.
If you never want to hear from us again, click the button below. If you haven't decided yet, keep reading (you can unsubscribe at the very bottom of the email too).
“How did you get my email?”
We’ve got your email address because we’re your monday.com partner. That means we help manage your company’s monday.com account.
“Who are you?”
We’re Work Perfect.
We help businesses get up and running on monday.com. We build custom solutions to power-up monday to do exactly what you need. We train people to use the platform better too.
We happen to be a pretty darn good partner. Last month we won the monday.com Partner of the Year award for Asia Pacific.
Our HQ is in Sydney & we have people in Adelaide, Melbourne, Singapore & India.
“What do you want?”
We’re creating a newsletter to keep you in the loop & help you get s$%t done more efficiently.
We’re creating a newsletter you look forward to reading.
It’ll be full of insights & productivity tips from the world of tech.
It’s called The Diamond.
The first edition is below.
To tailor your experience, let us know what you’d like to read about:
In this edition of The Diamond
Why ‘The Diamond’?
The 4-question test to see if OKR is right for your org
Someone put a data centre at the bottom of a swimming pool
Get something useful out of ChatGPT with the ‘expert imposter’ method
Steal our favourite monday.com automation (we call it the Deadline Fudger)
This week’s album cover: Death By Excel
Why ‘The Diamond’?
No, it’s not because we love Bling. Although we do.
The title of our newsletter comes from our approach to solving hard problems: The Double Diamond method.
We live by the Double Diamond.
It's a design thinking process with four stages:
1. Discover: We ask open-ended questions to get a deep understanding of the problem you're trying to solve.
2. Define: We take insights from the Discover stage to define the problem and set clear goals, so we design the right solution.
3. Develop: We use our creativity and expertise to develop a tailored solution that meets your specific needs.
4. Deliver: We implement the solution we've developed and give you ongoing support to make sure it works.
4 questions to ask your leadership team before implementing OKR
OKRs are a strategy & goal-setting framework popularised by Google and others in the 90s and 00s.
When used effectively, OKR is known to enhance innovation & drive massive performance improvement. OKR is not just for the tech industry, but it’s not for all businesses either.
Before embarking on an OKR change project, consider these 4 questions:
1. Is our current goal-setting process effective?
If the answer is yes, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
However, if you want to set clearer, more lofty goals and improve collaboration & innovation, OKR could assist.
2. Do we have a clear Vision?
OKR without a vision will not work. The beauty of OKR is its ability to align people to big, hairy audacious goals. Without a clear organisational vision, those goals will veer off track.
3. Is failure an option?
Truly innovative companies like Google measure themselves on how much they fail, not how much they succeed. Failure is key to innovation.
Truth is, 99.9% of organisations aren’t wired like Google. You may not have room to fail in your environment. OKRs may not be right for you.
4. Are we willing to commit the time & resources required for implementation?
OKR is not a set-and-forget solution.
It’s designed around a regular cadence of updates & alignment across work groups. Early on, you may experience more meetings, not less.
Plus, any change project takes significant resources to communicate the benefits, enable users, overcome resistance and embed new ways of working.
If you answered these questions favourably, OKR may be a way to break down silos & achieve better business outcomes.
Click here for a more in-depth look at OKRs & how to set them, or steal our trail guide below.
OKRs in 3 parts
You’ve heard of a data lake, but this hits different.
The heat generated by a small data centre in the UK is being used to heat an Olympic swimming pool in a bid to fight rising energy costs. We’ve definitely wanted to chuck our computer in the pool once or twice so we love the idea.
ChatGPT is so hot right now. Try these ‘expert imposter’ prompts and see how it could help you (or steal your job).
Knowledge workers everywhere are half stressing, half celebrating over the rise of AI tools. The best-known among them is ChatGPT. If you’ve ever mucked around with it, you’ll have a feeling for its power.
Use these prompts from LinkedIn creator Sam Szuchan and you might get ChatGPT to produce something you can actually use.
Our favourite monday.com automation
This simple automation (we call it The Deadline Fudger) will give you some breathing space on projects :) Use it sparingly...
Today’s album cover
Each edition we’ll use Canva’s AI to generate the cover art, and share the prompt we used.
This week’s piece is called Death By Excel
Prompt used: A Salvador Dali painting of a person staring into a computer screen displaying an infinite Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with endlessly complicated figures and details.
“Death by Excel” in the style of Salvador Dali