The thing is...

The "We" inside of "me"

If you have not seen Jill Bolte  Taylor's speech at TED this year, watch it now.

Quantifying the value of a story

A report today in the New York Times revealed how human beings are naturally inclined to remember and understand information that is presented in the context of a story, rather than as a list with no other context.   

Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and author of the 2006 book, “The Redemptive Self” found that that "these narratives guide behavior in every moment, and frame not only how we see the past but how we see ourselves in the future.”

The thing is…as a writer, I’ve always known this (haven’t you?).   I got to thinking about the value of storytelling in a marketing context, namely, "Can you quantify the investment of $1 in producing good content?” I think you can.

Amended: "A Short Course in Human Relations"

Got an email from someone last week regarding a previous post called "A Short Course in Human Relations."  He pointed out that I forgot the "kicker" - LEAST IMPORTANT WORD:  "I"   That's a big one to forget, huh?   

The thing is...my post came up on page one of his Google search because he was searching for the exact terms "A Short Course in Human Relations."  Shows the power of directed, specific searching. 

Click through to read the full amended course.

Fitness at work

This is not a post about stretching at your desk, but rather how you can determine whether your organization is a good cultural "fit" for you. Certainly that's a pretty loaded issue.  Nonetheless, I've developed a little tool that can help you test yourself and whether or not you have a good "fit" in your company.  Click through to see the Power Point, and find out what "the thing is..."

When you wiki, get the why

In the spirit of "learning by doing," I recently got involved with a couple of "wiki" projects.  My skills are particularly suited to "gardening," or being an editor (as I mentioned in my profile on one project).

The thing is...collaborative creation or "peering" can be totally cool and engrossing, but if you don't know what you're creating, it's tough to be productive.  Read on.

Short course in Human Relations

Short course in Human Relations

• The Six Most Important Words: “I admit I made a mistake”
• The Five Most Important Words: “You did a good job”
• The Four Most Important Words: “What is your opinion?”
• The Three Most Important Words: “If you please”
• The Two Most Important Words: “Thank you”
• The One Most Important Word: “We”

The thing is, these words of wisdom (which my dad once had on his bulletin board at work) apply to us as individuals but also to organizations.  Does your company live by these rules?  Does it even come close?

You got an "F." Congratulations

My man Steve Coulson is at it again (can I call you my "man"?).  In this week's crayoncast (#10) he quotes the British inventor James Dyson, he of Dyson vacuum fame, who said that we should embrace failure, because we only learn from failure, not from success (or something like that).  As Thomas Edison said "I have not failed.  I have merely found 10,000 ways that won't work."  Here's a great blog post about Dyson.  And a great interview. 

Another man with the initials "JD" thought similarly, American educator John Dewey.  Dewey believed that children learn best by doing, by "acting on the world."  It doesn't stop with children, either.  We're all still trying to make our mark.

The thing is...Plowing into the world of social media is all about trying.  So much of what we are seeing in the world of marketing today will require dozens of failures before we get it right.

"I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals"

Todd Henry, in a recent Accidental Creative podcast, discussed being a victim, particularly when a creative person complains that s/he can't get anything done because "they (whomever they is) don't know what they are doing," or because "the client is putting up obstacles," or "if I only had the chance, I could really do some good work."

Being a victim is a structure.  Not a physical one, but what I call a perceived structure.  A perceived structure is one that exists in the mind of the individual and reflects a deeper world view.  These structures are incredibly powerful and are built up over years, hammered into place by our own experiences and how our family, friends, teachers and colleagues have reinforced them over the years.  While these perceived structures are powerful, often they are not real, meaning they cannot be independently verified by empirical evidence. 

Like paranoia.  That's a powerful perceived strucutre.  By the way, for more insight on this line of thinking, read Robert Fritz.  He's  the king of this stuff.

...victim-hood is easy to slip into and even easier to step out of.  More than likely the things you think are victimizing you, don't really exist.  Is anyone really going to prevent you from doing something you love, or you're good at?

Anyone recogzine the quote in the title? 

Hoop it up

So a friend of mine looked at "The thing is..." and asked "when are you going to add some basketball posts?"  Dr. J thought he was being funny, perhaps expecting me to continue our multi year dialogue on college and pro basketball.  He's getting the better of me these days since the Knicks stink and his team, the Wizards are kicking major ass...and Gilbert Arenas is on fire...check out his swag here.

Anyway, basketball provides some of the best illusrations of the interplay between creativity and strucutre, particularly basketball offenses.  The "creativity" here is the combined talents of the individual players; the strucutre is the particular style of offense.

Some coaches implement very rigid systems in which each player's particular role is defined during practice and by the point guard who calls out the number of the play or set.  Other coaches, such as Bobby Knight and Coach K., run so-called motion offenses, in which players are expected to continue moving within certain parameters, yet always look for opportunities to go one-on-one. 

A great example of these principles would be the Princeton offense, one that has confounded opponents for more than thirty years.  Watching it you might think that there is no strucutre to it, that it's just freelancing.  You'd be wrong.  There are some basic tenets of the offense that require each player to react based on what the defense does, and what his teammates do.  Understanding the tenets of the system requires practice, and teamwork. To run the offense, you gotta have the right kind of players, particularly ones who are willing to share the ball and can "see" the floor.

Finding those players is Joe Scott's job.

• ..that's the challenge of any organization.  Not only do you need to figure out how you can develop a culture and processes that will maximize output and creativity, you have to find the people who can do the stuff you need them to do.

So there it is Doc.  A post about hoops. 

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"But Lord Admiral, methinks I have no fountain pen."

There are a couple of anecdotes that are attributed to Winston Churchill that illustrate some of the things about creativity and structure that make me go, “Yeah!  Exactly.  That’s it.”   Anyway, I’ve heard others relate these stories so I’m not going to vouch for their accuracy…but here they are. 

Number One. When he became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Churchill sent a letter to all the admirals—there were hundreds at the time—asking them to describe “the state of the British Navy.”  But he told them to do so on a single side of a single sheet of paper.  Churchill knew that without telling the admirals exactly HOW to respond that he was likely to get lengthy and long-winded responses of various shapes and sizes. 

Number Two.  He once opened a letter to a friend apologizing, “I’m sorry this letter is so long, but I didn’t have time to write you a short one.”

…Churchill understands how the container for something actually dictates what that something will become.  Kind of like McLuhan’s statement that “the medium IS the message.”  By specifying the container or structure into which he wanted the creativity poured, Churchill forced his admirals to think harder about what they were writing, and (as the story goes) he got a swifter response from his admirals.  Didn’t stop the decline of the British Navy in the 20th Century, of course.  His comment about the letter tells the same story but in a different context.  Every writer knows that coming up with the truly pithy phrase takes writing, editing and re-editing.  Shorter is harder.

Yes, these are the things that get me excited.  And this. And this.