“Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.” – Hugh McLeod
“ … doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime.” – Hugh McLeod
“The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.” – Hugh McLeod
Well.
So you want to be more creative in art, in business, whatever … let’s just say Life.
Hugh MacLeod tells you how.
Beware <part 1>.
He’s funny, sadly insightful about Life and highlights the value of authenticity and hard work.
He says some really smart things.
And in a way that makes you sometimes scratch your head. And sometimes laugh <while crying on the inside having lived through a version of it>.
But in the end his ramblings reveal the real challenges and rewards of being creative, and a creative thinker, in not only a creative business but in any business.
Here are some tips he shares on how to be creative.
Beware <part 2>.
This is long. There are 26 tips on how to be creative. Some are focused more on advertising but most have some fabulous Life lesson inserted into the prose.
There are so many great tidbits I wanted to highlight them all … but instead share them in their full glory.
Enjoy.
1. Ignore everybody.
The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.
When I first started with the cartoon-onback-of-bizcard format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest, i.e., cutie-pie greeting cards or whatever? You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else.
The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us. And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It’s not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It’s just they don’t know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain.
Plus, a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don’t want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that’s how they love you—the way you are, not the way you may become.
Ergo, they have no incentive to see you change. And they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That’s human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe were on the other foot.
With business colleagues, it’s even worse. They’re used to dealing with you in a certain way. They’re used to having a certain level of control over the relationship. And they want whatever makes them more prosperous. Sure, they might prefer it if you prosper as well, but that’s not their top priority.
If your idea is so good that it changes your dynamic enough to where you need them less or, God forbid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they’re going to resist your idea every chance they can.
Again, that’s human nature.
Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.
Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.
Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.
2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to change the world.
The two are not the same thing.
We all spend a lot of time being impressed by folks we’ve never met.
Somebody featured in the media who’s got a big company, a big product, a big movie, a big bestseller.
Whatever.
And we spend even more time trying unsuccessfully to keep up with them. Trying to start up our own companies, our own products, our own film projects, books and whatnot. I’m as guilty as anyone. I tried lots of different things over the years, trying desperately to pry my career out of the jaws of mediocrity. Some to do with business, some to do with art, etc. One evening, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and life in general, I just started drawing on the back of business cards for no reason. I didn’t really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.
Of course it wasn’t commercial.
Of course it wasn’t going to go anywhere.
Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time.
But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to be thinking about all that, for a change.
It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to impress anybody, for a change.
It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.
It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change.
To feel complete freedom, for a change.
And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will change the world far more than the the work’s objective merits ever will.
Your idea doesn’t have to be big.
It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.
The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more it will change the world.
That’s what doodling on business cards taught me. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.
3. Put the hours in.
Doing anything worthwhile takes forever.
90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and
stamina. I get asked a lot, “Your business card format is very simple. Aren’t you worried about somebody ripping it off?”
Standard Answer: Only if they can draw more of them than me, better than me.
What gives the work its edge is the simple fact that I’ve spent years drawing them. I’ve drawn thousands.
Tens of thousands of man-hours.
So if somebody wants to rip my idea off, go ahead. If somebody wants to overtake me in the business card doodle wars, go ahead. You’ve got many long years in front of you. And unlike me, you won’t be doing it for the joy of it. You’ll be doing it for some self-loathing, ill-informed, lame-ass mercenary reason. So the years will be even longer and far, far more painful. Lucky you.
If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he works harder at it than you do. Sure, maybe he’s more inherently talented, more adept at networking, etc., but I don’t consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.
So yeah, success means you’ve got a long road ahead of you, regardless. How do you best manage it?
Well, as I’ve written elsewhere, don’t quit your day job. I didn’t. I work every day at the office, same as any other regular schmo. I have a long commute on the train; ergo that’s when I do most of my drawing. When I was younger I drew mostly while sitting at a bar, but that got old.
The point is, an hour or two on the train is very manageable for me. The fact I have a job means I don’t feel pressured to do something market-friendly. Instead, I get to do whatever the hell I want. I get to do it for my own satisfaction. And I think that makes the work more powerful in the long run. It also makes it easier to carry on with it in a calm fashion, day-in day-out, and not go crazy in insane, creative bursts brought on by money worries. The day job, which I really like, gives me something productive and interesting to do among fellow adults. It gets me out of the house in the daytime. If I were a professional cartoonist, I’d just be chained to a drawing table at home all day, scribbling out a living in silence, interrupted only by frequent trips to the coffee shop.
No, thank you.
Simply put, my method allows me to pace myself over the long haul, which is important.
Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it’s managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong.
Put the hours in; do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually.
Being good at anything is like figure skating—the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That’s what the stupidly wrong people conveniently forget.
If I was just starting out writing, say, a novel or a screenplay, or maybe starting up a new software company, I wouldn’t try to quit my job in order to make this big, dramatic, heroicquest thing about it.
I would do something far simpler: I would find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it productive. Put the hours in; do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually. Sure, that means less time watching TV, Internet-surfing, going out, or whatever.
But who cares?
4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain. I was offered a quite substantial publishing deal a year or two ago. Turned it down. The company sent me a contract. I looked it over. Called the company back. Asked for some clarifications on some points in the contract. Never heard back from them. The deal died.
This was a very respected company. You may have even heard of it. They just assumed I must be just like all the other people they represent—hungry and desperate and willing to sign anything.
They wanted to own me, regardless of how good a job they did. That’s the thing about some big publishers. They want 110% from you, but they don’t offer to do likewise in return. To them, the artist is just one more noodle in a big bowl of pasta. Their business model is to basically throw the pasta against the wall, and see which one sticks. The ones that fall to the floor are just forgotten. Publishers are just middlemen. That’s all. If artists could remember that more often, they’d save themselves a lot of aggravation.
Anyway, yeah, I can see gapingvoid being a ‘product’ one day. Books, T-shirts and whatnot.
I think it could make a lot of money, if handled correctly.
But I’m not afraid to walk away if I think the person offering it is full of hot air. I’ve already got my groove, etc. Not to mention another career that’s doing quite well, thank you. I think the gaping void-as-product-line idea is pretty inevitable, down the road.
Watch this space.
5. You are responsible for your own experience.
Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the lonelier it is. Every creative person is looking for “The Big Idea.”
You know, the one that is going to catapult them out from the murky depths of obscurity and on to the highest planes of incandescent lucidity.
The one that’s all love-at-first-sight with the Zeitgeist.
The one that’s going to get them invited to all the right parties, metaphorical or otherwise.
So naturally you ask yourself, if and when you finally come up with The Big Idea, after years of toil, struggle and doubt, how do you know whether or not it is “The One?”
Answer: You don’t.
There’s no glorious swelling of existential triumph. That’s not what happens. All you get is this rather kvetchy voice inside you that seems to say, “This is totally stupid. This is utterly moronic. This is a complete waste of time. I’m going to do it anyway.”
And you go do it anyway.
Second-rate ideas like glorious swellings far more. Keeps them alive longer.
6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”
So you’ve got the itch to do something. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, whatever. You don’t know where the itch came from; it’s almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person … until now.
You don’t know if you’re any good or not, but you’d think you could be.
And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of business. You don’t know any publishers or agents or all these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who’s got a cousin in California who’s into this kind of stuff, but you haven’t talked to your friend for over two years.
Besides, if you write a book, what if you can’t find a publisher? If you write a screenplay, what if you can’t find a producer? And what if the producer turns out to be a crook?
You’ve always worked hard your whole life; you’ll be damned if you’ll put all that effort into something if there ain’t no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rainbow.
Heh. That’s not your wee voice asking for the crayons back. That’s your outer voice, your adult voice, your boring and tedious voice trying to find a way to get the wee crayon voice to shut the hell up.
Your wee voice doesn’t want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something.
There’s a big difference. Your wee voice doesn’t give a damn about publishers or Hollywood producers.
Go ahead and make something.
Make something really special. Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it. If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed. The wee voice didn’t show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it.
There’s something you haven’t said, something you haven’t done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now. So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die … taking a big chunk of you along with it. They’re only crayons. You didn’t fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?
7. Keep your day job.
I’m not just saying that for the usual reason i.e., because I think your idea will fail. I’m saying it because to suddenly quit one’s job in a big ol’ creative drama-queen moment is always, always, always in direct conflict with what I call “The Sex & Cash Theory.”
THE SEX & CASH THEORY: The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs. One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.
A good example is Phil, a NY photographer friend of mine. He does really wild stuff for the indie magazines—it pays nothing, but it allows him to build his portfolio. Then he’ll go off and shoot some catalogs for a while. Nothing too exciting, but it pays the bills.
Another example is somebody like Martin Amis. He writes “serious” novels, but he has to supplement his income by writing the occasional newspaper article for the London papers (novel royalties are bloody pathetic—even bestsellers like Amis aren’t immune).
Or actors. One year Travolta will be in an ultra-hip flick like Pulp Fiction (“Sex”), the next he’ll be in some dumb spy thriller (“Cash”).
Or painters. You spend one month painting blue pictures because that’s the color the celebrity collectors are buying this season (“Cash”), you spend the next month painting red pictures because secretly you despise the color blue and love the color red (“Sex”).
Or geeks. You spend you weekdays writing code for a faceless corporation (“Cash”), then you spend your evening and weekends writing anarchic, weird computer games with which to amuse your techie friends (“Sex”).
It’s balancing the need to make a good living while still maintaining one’s creative sovereignty.
My M.O. is gapingvoid (“Sex”), coupled with my day job (“Cash”).
I’m thinking about the young writer who has to wait tables to pay the bills, in spite of her writing appearing in all the cool and hip magazines … who dreams of one day of not having her life divided so harshly.
Well, over time the “harshly” bit might go away, but not the “divided.”
This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.
As soon as you accept this, I mean really accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster. I don’t know why this happens. It’s the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way — who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy day job and moving straight on over to best-selling author … well, they never make it.
Anyway, it’s called “The Sex & Cash Theory.” Keep it under your pillow.
The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs. One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills.
8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.
Since the modern, scientifically-conceived corporation was invented in the early half of the Twentieth Century, creativity has been sacrificed in favor of forwarding the interests of the “Team Player.”
Fair enough. There was more money in doing it that way; that’s why they did it.
There’s only one problem. Team Players are not very good at creating value on their own.
They are not autonomous; they need a team in order to exist.
So now corporations are awash with non-autonomous thinkers.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
And so on.
Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed. And that’s exactly what’s been happening.
So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western World, making love to their Powerpoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others. What happens to an ecology, when the parasite level reaches critical mass?
The ecology dies.
If you’re creative, if you can think independently, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did.
And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn’t the case.
So dust off your horn and start tooting it. Exactly.
However if you’re not particularly creative, then you’re in real trouble. And there’s no buzzword or “new paradigm” that can help you. They may not have mentioned this in business school, but … people like watching dinosaurs die.
Bottom line. We have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western World, making love to their Powerpoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.
9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.
This metaphorical Mount Everest doesn’t have to manifest itself as “Art.” For some people, yes, it might be a novel or a painting.
But Art is just one path up the mountain, one of many. With others, the path may be something more prosaic. Making a million dollars, raising a family, owning the most Burger King franchises in the Tri-State area, building some crazy over-sized model airplane, the list has no end.
Whatever.
Let’s talk about you now. Your mountain. Your private Mount Everest. Yes, that one.
Exactly.
Let’s say you never climb it. Do you have a problem with that? Can you just say to yourself, “Never mind, I never really wanted it anyway,” and take up stamp-collecting instead? Well, you could try. But I wouldn’t believe you. I think it’s not okay for you never to try to climb it. And I think you agree with me. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have read this far.
So it looks like you’re going to have to climb the frickin’ mountain. Deal with it.
My advice?
You don’t need my advice. You really don’t. The biggest piece of advice I could give anyone would be this:
“Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle.”
And you’ve already done that. You really have. Otherwise, again, you wouldn’t have read this far. Rock on.
10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me.
Abraham Lincoln wrote The Gettysburg Address on a piece of ordinary stationery that he had borrowed from the friend in whose house he was staying. James Joyce wrote with a simple pencil and notebook. Somebody else did the typing, but only much later.
Van Gogh rarely painted with more than six colors on his palette.
I draw on the back of wee biz cards.
Whatever.
There’s no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.
Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more successful, his number of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expending mental energy on stuff wastes time. He’s a man on a mission. He’s got a deadline. He’s got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks learning how to use a router drill if he doesn’t need to.
A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind.
Which is why there are so many second-rate art directors with state-of-the-art Macintosh computers.
Which is why there are so many hack writers with state-of-the-art laptops.
Which is why there are so many crappy photographers with state-of-the-art digital cameras. Which is why there are so many unremarkable painters with expensive studios in trendy neighborhoods.
Hiding behind pillars, all of them.
A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind. Pillars do not help; they hinder. The more mighty the pillar, the more you end up relying on it psychologically, the more it gets in your way.
And this applies to business, as well.
Which is why there are so many failing businesses with fancy offices.
Which is why there are so many failing businessmen spending a fortune on fancy suits and expensive yacht club memberships.
Again, hiding behind pillars. Successful people, artists and non-artists alike, are very good at spotting pillars. They’re very good at doing without them. Even more importantly, once they’ve spotted a pillar, they’re very good at quickly getting rid of it.
Good pillar management is one of the most valuable talents you can have on the planet. If you have it, I envy you. If you don’t, I pity you.
Sure, nobody’s perfect. We all have our pillars. We seem to need them. You are never going to live a pillar-free existence. Neither am I.
All we can do is keep asking the question, “Is this a pillar?” about every aspect of our business, our craft, our reason for being alive, etc., and go from there. The more we ask, the better we get at spotting pillars, the more quickly the pillars vanish.
Ask. Keep asking. And then ask again. Stop asking and you’re dead.
11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one. I’ve seen it so many times. Call him Ted. A young kid in the big city, just off the bus, wanting to be a famous something: artist, writer, musician, film director, whatever. He’s full of fire, full of passion, full of ideas. And you meet Ted again five or ten years later, and he’s still tending bar at the same restaurant. He’s not a kid anymore. But he’s still no closer to his dream.
His voice is still as defiant as ever, certainly, but there’s an emptiness to his words that wasn’t there before.
Yeah, well, Ted probably chose a very well-trodden path. Write novel, be discovered, publish bestseller, sell movie rights, retire rich in 5 years. Or whatever.
No worries that there are probably three million other novelists/actors/musicians/painters/etc with the same plan. But of course, Ted’s special. Of course his fortune will defy the odds eventually.
Of course. That’s what he keeps telling you, as he refills your glass.
Is your plan of a similar ilk? If it is, then I’d be concerned.
When I started the business card cartoons I was lucky; at the time I had a pretty well-paid corporate job in New York that I liked. The idea of quitting it in order to join the ranks of Bohemia didn’t even occur to me. What, leave Manhattan for Brooklyn? Ha. Not bloody likely.
I was just doing it to amuse myself in the evenings, to give me something to do at the bar while I waited for my date to show up or whatever. There was no commercial incentive or larger agenda governing my actions. If I wanted to draw on the back of a business card instead of a “proper” medium, I could. If I wanted to use a four-letter word, I could. If I wanted to ditch the standard figurative format and draw psychotic abstractions instead, I could. There was no flashy media or publishing executive to keep happy. And even better, there was no artist-lifestyle archetype to conform to.
It gave me a lot of freedom. That freedom paid off in spades, later.
Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it.
It’s your freedom that will get you to where you want to go. Blind faith in an over-subscribed, vainglorious myth will only hinder you.
Is your plan unique? Is there nobody else doing it? Then I’d be excited. A little scared, maybe, but excited.
12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it’s going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it’s worth it. Even if you don’t end up pulling it off, you’ll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It’s NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity—that hurts FAR more than any failure. Frankly, I think you’re better off doing something on the assumption that you will NOT be rewarded for it, that it will NOT receive the recognition it deserves, that it will NOT be worth the time and effort invested in it.
The obvious advantage to this angle is, of course, if anything good comes of it, then it’s an added bonus.
The second, more subtle and profound advantage is: that by scuppering all hope of worldly and social betterment from the creative act, you are finally left with only one question to answer:
Do you make this damn thing exist or not?
And once you can answer that truthfully to yourself, the rest is easy.
13. Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.
The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa. Even if your path never makes any money or furthers your career, that’s still worth a TON. When I was 16 or 17 in Edinburgh I vaguely knew this guy who owned a shop called “Cinders,” on St. Stephen’s Street. It specialized in restoring antique fireplaces. Cinders’ modus operandi was very simple. Buy original Georgian and Victorian chimneypieces from old, dilapidated houses for 10 cents on the dollar, give them a loving but expedient makeover in the workshop, sell them at vast profit to yuppies.
Back then I was insatiably curious about how people made a living (I still am). So one day, while sitting on his stoop I chatted with the fireplace guy about it. He told me about the finer points of his trade—the hunting through old houses, the craftsmanship, the customer relations, and of course the profit. The fellow seemed quite proud of his job. From how he described it he seemed to like his trade and be making a decent living. Scotland was going through a bit of a recession at the time; unemployment was high, money was tight; I guess for an aging hippie things could’ve been a lot worse.
Very few kids ever said, “Gosh, when I grow up I’m going to be a fireplace guy!” It’s not the most obvious trade in the world. I asked him about how he fell into it.
“I used to be an antiques dealer,” he said. “People who spend a lot of money on antiques also seem to spend a lot of money restoring their houses. So I sort of got the whiff of opportunity just by talking to people in my antiques shop. Also, there are too many antique dealers in Edinburgh crowding the market, so I was looking for an easier way to make a living.”
Like the best jobs in the world, it just kinda sorta happened.
“Well, some of the fireplaces are real beauties,” I said. “It must be hard parting with them.” “No it isn’t,” he said (and this is the part I remember most). “I mean, I like them, but because they take up so much room—they’re so big and bulky—I’m relieved to be rid of them once they’re sold. I just want them out of the shop ASAP and the cash in my pocket. Selling them is easy for me. Unlike antiques. I always loved antiques, so I was always falling in love with the inventory, I always wanted to hang on to my best stuff. I’d always subconsciously price them too high in order to keep them from leaving the shop.”
Being young and idealistic, I told him I thought that was quite sad. Why choose to sell a “mere product” (i.e., chimneypieces) when instead you could make your living selling something you really care about (i.e., antiques)? Surely the latter would be a preferable way to work.
“The first rule of business,” he said, chuckling at my naiveté, “is never sell something you love. Otherwise, you may as well be selling your children.”
Fifteen years later, I’m at a bar in New York. Some friend-of-a-friend is looking at my cartoons. He asks me if I publish. I tell him I don’t. Tell him it’s just a hobby. Tell him about my advertising job. “Man, why the hell are you in advertising?” he says, pointing to my portfolio. “You should be doing this. Galleries and shit.”
“Advertising’s just chimney pieces,” I say, speaking into my glass.
“What the fuck?”
“Never mind.”
14. Dying young is overrated.
I’ve seen so many young people take the “Gotta do the drugs & booze thing to make me a better artist” route over the years. A choice that wasn’t smart, original, effective, or healthy, nor ended happily. It’s a familiar story: a kid reads about Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix or Charles Bukowski and somehow decides that their poetic but flawed example somehow gives him permission and/or absolution to spend the next decade or two drowning in his own metaphorical vomit.
Of course, the older you get, the more casualties of this foolishness you meet. The more time has had to ravage their lives. The more pathetic they seem. And the less remarkable work they seem to have to show for it, for all their “amazing experiences” and “special insights.” The smarter and more talented the artist is, the less likely he will choose this route. Sure, he might screw around a wee bit while he’s young and stupid, but he will move on quicker than most.
But the kid thinks it’s all about talent: he thinks it’s all about “potential.” He underestimates how much time, discipline and stamina also play their part.
Sure, like Bukowski et al., there are exceptions. But that is why we like their stories when we’re young. Because they are exceptional stories. And every kid with a guitar or a pen or a paintbrush or an idea for a new business wants to be exceptional. Every kid underestimates his competition and overestimates his chances. Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there’s a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work.
The bars of West Hollywood and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren’t even young anymore; their B-plans having been washed away by vodka & tonics years ago.
Meanwhile their competition is at home, working their asses off.
15. The most important thing a creative person can learn, professionally, is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly. Recently, I heard Chris Ware, currently one of the top 2 or 3 most critically acclaimed cartoonists on the planet, describe his profession as “unrewarding.”
When the guy at the top of the ladder you’re climbing describes the view from the top as “unrewarding,” be concerned. Heh. I knew Chris back in college, at The University of Texas. Later, in the early 1990’s I knew him hanging around Wicker Park in Chicago, that famous arty neighborhood, while he was getting his Masters from The School of The Art Institute, and I was working as a junior copywriter at
Leo Burnett. We weren’t that close, but we had mutual friends. He’s a nice guy. Smart as hell.
So I’ve watched him over the years go from talented undergraduate to famous rockstar comic strip guy. Nice to see, certainly—it’s encouraging when people you know get deservedly famous. But also it was really helpful for me to see first-hand the realities of being a professional cartoonist, both good and bad. It’s nice to get a snapshot of reality.
His example really clarified a lot for me about 5-10 years ago when I got to the point where my cartoons got good enough to where I could actually consider doing it professionally. I looked at the market, saw the kind of life Chris and others like him had, saw the people in the business calling the shots, saw the kind of deluded planet most cartoon publishers were living on, and went, “Naaaah.”
Thinking about it some more, I think one of the main reasons I stayed in advertising is simply because hearing “change that ad” pisses me off a lot less than “change that cartoon.” Though the compromises one has to make writing ads can often be tremendous, there’s only so much you have to take personally. It’s their product, it’s their money, so it’s easier to maintain healthy boundaries. With cartooning, I invariably found this impossible.
The most important thing a creative person can learn, professionally, is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not. It is this red line that demarcates your sovereignty, that defines your own private creative domain. What shit you are willing to take, and what shit you’re not. What you are willing to relinquish control over, and what you aren’t. What price you are willing to pay, and what price you aren’t. Everybody is different; everybody has his or her own red line. Everybody has his or her own Sex and Cash Theory.
When I see somebody “suffering for their art,” it’s usually a case of them not knowing where that red line is, not knowing where the sovereignty lies. Somehow he thought that sleazy producer wouldn’t make him butcher his film with pointless rewrites, but alas! Somehow he thought that gallery owner would turn out to be a competent businessman, but alas! Somehow he thought that publisher would promote his new novel properly, but alas! Somehow he thought that Venture Capitalist would be less of an asshole about the start-up’s cash flow, but alas! Somehow he thought that CEO would support his new marketing initiative, but alas!
Knowing where to draw the red line is like knowing yourself, like knowing who your real friends are.
Some are better at it than others. Life is unfair.
16. The world is changing.
Some people are hip to it, others are not. If you want to be able to afford groceries in 5 years, I’d recommend listening closely to the former and avoiding the latter. Just my two cents.
Your job is probably worth 50% what it was in real terms 10 years ago. And who knows? It may very well not exist in 5-10 years.
We all saw the traditional biz model in my industry, advertising, start going down the tubes 10 years or so ago. Our first reaction was “work harder.”
It didn’t work. People got shafted in the thousands. It’s a cold world out there.
We thought being talented would save our asses. We thought working late and weekends would save our asses. Nope.
We thought the Internet and all that Next Big Thing, new media and new technology stuff would save our asses. We thought it would fill in the holes in the ever-more-intellectually bankrupt solutions we were offering our clients. Nope.
Whatever.
Regardless of how the world changes, regardless of what new technologies, business models and social architectures are coming down the pike, the one thing “The New Realities” cannot take away from you is trust.
The people you trust and vice versa, this is what will feed you and pay for your kids’ college.
Nothing else.
This is true if you’re an artist, writer, doctor, techie, lawyer, banker, or bartender. I.e., stop worrying about technology. Start worrying about people who trust you.
In order to navigate The New Realities you have to be creative—not just within your particular profession, but in EVERYTHING. Your way of looking at the world will need to become ever more fertile and original. And this isn’t just true for artists, writers, techies, Creative Directors and CEOs; this is true for EVERYBODY. Janitors, receptionists and bus drivers, too. The game has just been ratcheted up a notch. When I see somebody “suffering for their art,” it’s usually a case of them not knowing where that red line is, not knowing where the sovereignty lies.
The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur.
That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you’re already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. It doesn’t matter what industry we’re talking about—architecture, advertising, petrochemicals they’re around, they’re easy enough to find if you make the effort, if you’ve got something worthwhile to offer in return. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can’t help you anymore. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.
17. Merit can be bought. Passion can’t.
The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does. Human beings have this thing I call the “Pissed Off Gene.” It’s that bit of our psyche that makes us utterly dissatisfied with our lot, no matter how kindly fortune smiles upon us. It’s there for a reason. Back in our early caveman days being pissed off made us more likely to get off our butt, get out of the cave and into the tundra hunting woolly mammoth, so we’d have something to eat for supper. It’s a survival mechanism. Damn useful then, damn useful now. It’s this same Pissed Off Gene that makes us want to create anything in the first place—drawings, violin sonatas, meat packing companies, websites. This same gene drove us to discover how to make a fire, the wheel, the bow and arrow, indoor plumbing, the personal computer, the list is endless.
Part of understanding the creative urge is understanding that it’s primal. Wanting to change the world is not a noble calling; it’s a primal calling. We think we’re “providing a superior integrated logistic system” or “helping America to really taste freshness.” In fact we’re just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth. Your business either lets you go hunt the woolly mammoth or it doesn’t. Of course, like so many white-collar jobs these days, you might very well be offered a ton of money to sit in the corner-office cave and pretend that you’re hunting. That is sad. What’s even sadder is if you agree to take the money.
18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
They’re a well-meaning bunch, but they get in the way eventually.
Back when I worked for a large advertising agency as a young rookie, it used to just bother me how much the “Watercooler Gang” just kvetched all the time. The “Watercooler Gang” was my term for what was still allowed to exist in the industry back then.
Packs of second-rate creatives, many years passed their sell-by date, being squeezed by the Creative Directors for every last ounce of juice they had, till it came time to firing them on the cheap. Taking too many trips to the watercooler and coming back drunk from lunch far too
often. Working late nights and weekends on all the boring-but-profitable accounts. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
I remember some weeks where one could easily spend half an hour a day, listening to Ted complain.
Ted used to have a window office but now had a cube ever since that one disastrous meeting with Client X. He would come visit me in my cube at least once a day and start his thing.
Complain, complain, complain…about whatever… how Josh-The-Golden-Boy was a shit writer and a complete phony…or how they bought Little-Miss-Hot-Pants’s ad instead of his, “even though mine was the best in the room and every bastard there knew it.”
Like I said, whatever.
It was endless…Yak Yak Yak… Oi vey! Ted, I love ya, you’re a great guy, but shut the hell up….
In retrospect, it was Ted’s example that taught me a very poignant lesson—back then I was still too young and naïve to have learned it by that point—that your office could be awash with Clios and One Show awards, yet your career could still be down the sinkhole. Your office could be awash with Clios and One Show awards, yet your career could still be down the sinkhole.
Don’t get me wrong—my career there was a complete disaster. This is not a case of one of the Alphas mocking the Betas. This is a Gamma mocking the Betas.
I’m having lunch with my associate, John, who’s about the same age as me. Cheap and cheerful Thai food, just down the road from the agency.
“I gotta get out of this company,” I say.
“I thought you liked your job,” says John.
“I do,” I say. “But the only reason they like having me around is because I’m still young and cheap. The minute I am no longer either, I’m dead meat.”
“Like Ted,” says John.
“Yeah…him and the rest of The Watercooler Gang.”
“The Watercoolies,” laughs John.
So we had a good chuckle about our poor, hapless elders. We weren’t that sympathetic, frankly. Their lives might have been hell then, but they had already had their glory moments.
They had won their awards, flown off to The Bahamas to shoot toilet paper ads with famous movie stars and all that. Unlike us young’uns. John and I had only been out of college a couple of years and had still yet to make our mark on the industry we had entered with about as much passion and hope as anybody alive.
We had sold a few newspaper ads now and then, some magazine spreads, but the TV stuff was still well beyond reach. So far, the agency we had worked for had yet to allow us to shine. Was this our fault or theirs? Maybe a little bit of both, but back then it was all “their fault, dammit!” Of course, everything is “their fault, dammit!” when you’re 24.
I quit my job about a year later. John stayed on with the agency, for whatever reason, then about 5 years ago got married, with his first kid following soon after. Suddenly with a family to support he couldn’t afford to get fired. The Creative Director knew this and started to squeeze. “You don’t mind working this weekend, John, do you? Good. I knew you wouldn’t. We all know how much the team relies on you to deliver at crunch time—that’s why we value you so highly, John, wouldn’t you say?”
Last time I saw John he was working at this horrible little agency for a fraction of his former salary. Turns out the big agency had tossed him out about a week after his kid’s second birthday.
We’re sitting there at the Thai restaurant again, having lunch for old time’s sake. We’re having
a good time, talking about the usual artsy-fartsy stuff we always do. It’s a great conversation, marred only by the fact that I can’t get the word “watercooler” out of my goddamn head…
Back then it was all “their fault, dammit!” Of course, everything is “their fault, dammit!” when you’re 24.
19. Sing in your own voice.
Picasso was a terrible colorist. Turner couldn’t paint human beings worth a damn.
Saul Steinberg’s formal drafting skills were appalling. T.S. Eliot had a full-time day job. Henry Miller was a wildly uneven writer. Bob Dylan can’t sing or play guitar.
But that didn’t stop them, right?
So I guess the next question is, “Why not?”
I have no idea. Why should it?
20. The choice of media is irrelevant.
Every media’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Every form of media is a
set of fundamental compromises; one is not “higher” than the other.
A painting doesn’t do much; it just sits there on a wall. That’s the best and worst thing about it. Film combines sound, movement, photography, music, acting. That’s the best and worst thing about it.
Prose just uses words arranged in linear form to get its point across. That’s the best and worst thing about it, etc.
Back in college, I was an English Major. I had no aspirations for teaching, writing or academe; it was just a subject I could get consistently high grades in. Plus, I liked to read books and write papers, so it worked well enough for me. Most of my friends were Liberal Arts Majors, but there the similarity ended. We never really went to class together. I dunno, we’d meet up in the evenings and weekends, but I never really socialized with people in my classes that much.
So it was always surprising to me to meet the Art Majors: fine arts, film, drama, architecture, etc. They seemed to live in each other’s pockets. They all seemed to work, eat, and sleep together.
Lots of bonding going on. Lots of collaboration. Lots of incestuousness. Lots of speeches about the sanctity of their craft.
Well, a cartoon only needs one person to make it. Same with a piece of writing. No Big Group Hug required. So all this sex-fueled socialism was rather alien to me, even if parts of it seemed very appealing.
During my second year at college, I started getting my cartoons published, and not just the school paper. Suddenly I found meeting girls easy. I was very happy about that, I can assure you, but life carried on pretty much the same.
My M.O. was, and still is, to just have a normal life, be a regular schmo, with a terrific hobby on the side. I suppose my friends thought the cartooning gigs were neat or whatever, but it wasn’t really anything that affected our friendship. It was just something I did on the side, the way other people restored old cars or or kept a darkroom for their camera. My M.O. was, and still is, to just have a normal life, be a regular schmo, with a terrific hobby on the side. It’s not exactly rocket science.
This attitude seemed kinda alien to the Art Majors I met. Their chosen art form seemed more like a religion to them. It was serious. It was important. It was a big part of their identity, and it almost seemed to them that humanity’s very existence totally depended on them being able to pursue their dream as a handsomely rewarded profession etc. Don’t get me wrong, I knew some Art Majors who were absolutely brilliant. One or two of them are famous now. And I can see if you’ve got a special talent, how the need to seriously pursue it becomes important.
But looking back, I also see a lot of screwy kids who married themselves to their medium of choice for the wrong reasons. Not because they had anything particularly unique or visionary to say, but because it was cool. Because it was sexy. Because it was hip. Because it gave them something to talk about at parties. Because it was easier than thinking about getting a real job after graduation.
Looking back, I also see a lot of screwy kids who married themselves to their medium of choice for the wrong reasons. I’m in two minds about this. One part of me thinks it’s good for kids to mess around with insanely high ambitions, and maybe one or two of them will make it, maybe one or two will survive the cull. That’s what’s being young is all about, and I think it’s wonderful.
The other side of me wants to tell these kids to beware of choosing difficult art forms for the wrong reasons. You can wing it while you’re young, but it’s not till your youth is over that The Devil starts seeking out his due. And that’s never pretty. I’ve seen it happen more than once to some very dear, sweet people, and it’s really heartbreaking to watch.
21. Selling out is harder than it looks.
Diluting your product to make it more “commercial” will just make people like it less. Many years ago, barely out of college, I started schlepping around the ad agencies, looking for my first job. One fine day a Creative Director kindly agreed for me to come show him my portfolio. Hooray! So I came to his office and showed him my work. My work was bloody awful. All of it. Imagine the worst, cheesiest “I used to wash with Sudso but now I wash with Lemon-Fresh Rinso Extreme” vapid housewife crap. Only far worse than that.
The CD was a nice guy. You could tell he didn’t think much of my work, though he was far too polite to blurt it out. Finally he quietly confessed that it wasn’t doing much for him.
“Well, the target market are middle class housewives,” I rambled. “They’re quite conservative,
so I thought I’d better tone it down ..”
“You can tone it down once you’ve gotten the job and once the client comes after your ass with a red hot poker and tells you to tone it down,” he laughed. “Till then, show me the toned-up version.”
This story doesn’t just happen in advertising. It happens everywhere.
22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
Everybody is too busy with their own lives to give a damn about your book, painting, screenplay, etc., especially if you haven’t sold it yet. And the ones that aren’t, you don’t want in your life anyway. Making a big deal over your creative shtick is the kiss of death. That’s all I have to say on the subject.
23. Worrying about “Commercial vs. Artistic” is a complete waste of time.
You can argue about “the shameful state of American Letters” till the cows come home.
They were kvetching about it in 1950; they’ll be kvetching about it in 2050.
It’s a path well trodden, and not a place where one is going to come up with many new, earth-shattering insights. But a lot of people like to dwell on it because it keeps them from having to ever journey into unknown territory. It’s safe. It allows you to have strong emotions and opinions without any real risk to yourself. Without you having to do any of the actual hard work involved in the making and selling of something you believe in.
To me, it’s not about whether Tom Clancy sells truckloads of books, or a Nobel Prize Winner sells diddlysquat. Those are just ciphers, a distraction. To me, it’s about what YOU are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. Different criteria altogether.
Frankly, how a person nurtures and develops his or her own “creative sovereignty,” with or without the help of the world at large, is in my opinion a much more interesting subject.
24. Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.
Inspiration precedes the desire to create, not the other way around.
One of the reasons I got into drawing cartoons on the back of business cards was I
could carry them around with me. Living downtown, you spend a lot of time walking around the place. I wanted an art form that was perfect for that.
So if I was walking down the street and I suddenly got hit with the itch to draw something, I could just nip over to the nearest park bench or coffee shop, pull out a blank card from my bag and get busy doing my thing.
Seamless. Effortless. No fuss. I like it.
Before, when I was doing larger works, every time I got an idea while walking down the street
I’d have to quit what I was doing and schlep back to my studio while the inspiration was still buzzing around in my head. Nine times out of ten the inspired moment would have passed by the time I got back, rendering the whole exercise futile. Sure, I’d get drawing anyway, but it always seemed I was drawing a memory, not something happening at that very moment. If you’re arranging your life in such a way that you need to make a lot of fuss between feeling the itch and getting to work, you’re putting the cart before the horse. You’re probably creating a lot of counterproductive “Me, The Artist, I must create, I must leave something to posterity” melodrama. Not interesting for you or for anyone else. You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.
Conversely, neither should you fret too much about “writer’s block,” “artist’s block,” or whatever.
If you’re looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you SHOULD feel the need to say something.
Why?
If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts.
The noise will return soon enough. In the meantime, you’re better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures, and refilling your well. Trying to create when you don’t feel like it is like making conversation for the sake of making conversation. It’s not really connecting, it’s just droning on like an old, drunken barfly.
25. You have to find your own shtick.
A Picasso always looks like Picasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway. A Beethoven Symphony always sounds like a Beethoven’s Symphony. Part of being a Master is learning how to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own. Every artist is looking for their big, definitive “Ah-Ha!” moment, whether they’re a Master or not. That moment where they finally find their true voice, once and for all.
For me, it was when I discovered drawing on the back of business cards.
Other, more famous and notable examples would be Jackson Pollack discovering splatter paint. Or Robert Ryman discovering all-white canvases. Andy Warhol discovering silkscreen. Hunter S. Thompson discovering Gonzo Journalism. Duchamp discovering the Found Object. Jasper Johns discovering the American Flag. Hemingway discovering brevity. James Joyce discovering stream of-consciousness prose.
Was it luck? Perhaps a little bit.
But it wasn’t the format that made the art great. It was the fact that somehow while playing around with something new, suddenly they found themselves able to put their entire selves into it.
Only then did it become their .shtick,’ their true voice, etc. That’s what people responded to. The humanity, not the form. The voice, not the form. Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. It’s that simple.
Every artist is looking for their big, definitive “Ah-Ha!” moment, whether they’re a Master or not.
26. Write from the heart.
There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you. As a professional writer, I am interested in how conversation scales. How communication scales, x to the power of n etc etc. Ideally, if you’re in the communication business, you want to say the same thing, the same way to an audience of millions that you would to an audience of one. Imagine the power you’d have if you could pull it off.
But sadly, it doesn’t work that way.
You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.
And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you.
Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon. It’s not a big deal. Whether you’re writing to an audience of one, five, a thousand, a million, ten million, there’s really only one way to really connect.
One way that actually works: Write from the heart.
———————————
I will never get tired of reading this.
Every time I read it I want to not only write about something I think about something. In my world … and pea like brain … I couldn’t ask for anything more.
Oh.
Now that I shared his thoughts on creativity.
I have a very limited list of sites I link to on my site. I actually have been thoughtful about it. I imagine I shouldn’t invest that much energy and most likely should have more links <especially when I see the gobs of links listed on many of the sites I like to visit> … but … well … this is the way my pea like brain works.
In short why I love Hugh … irreverent brilliant short attention span thoughts.
Visit Hugh and his site www.gapingvoid.com .
There is always something there to ponder.
“The more compelling the path, the lonelier it is.” – Hugh
Hope you found something that resonated with you.
And remember who you are.
“WHY do you pander to them?”
This question kept being put to Marian Salzman, the boss of Havas PR, by her older workers in the days after the firm launched its latest recruitment advertisement. Featuring eager young things using snazzy mobile devices, the ad highlights the company’s lack of hierarchy, and how recruits can choose their own work and talk back to their bosses, as they begin their “personal development journey”.
Although huge numbers of young people today are starting their working lives in one of the least welcoming labour markets in modern history, those with the right skills have never had it so good.
Employers have become convinced that they are at the start of a period of famine, and that the best talent has to be won at almost all costs.”
–
Winning the generation Game article from the 9/28 Economist
=============
Well.
This article from The Economist really got me steaming.
It almost made my head spin counterclockwise.
This kind of thinking drives me frickin’ crazy.
To be clear. It is not the part about discussing the challenges of managing generations with significantly different expectations in the work place <because … despite all the rhetoric … has always been existent in the workplace in some degree>. That is always a good pragmatic organizational discussion.
But there is this whole idea of pandering and <in my terms> ‘winning new employees at all costs’ using … well … what I would call ‘features’ that is nuts. Absolutely frickin’ nuts.
Features?
In other words … selling to young people on why they should be working some place not based on what company does but rather what the company will do for them or give to them.
Holy shit.
Is that ass backwards or what?
We cannot be this stupid <business leadership wise>.
Approaching this topic this way is like suggesting you can build a loyal customer base off of coupons or promotions <… oh … you cannot>.
That kind of approach is simply encouraging an addictive relationship in which as soon as you stop the drug <the coupons or price-off promotions … or in an organizational case … the features in the work place> the people will seek the drug elsewhere.
By the way … if you are running a business … this is bad.
This whole issue seems absurd to me.
We have lost sight of what a business is supposed to be.
Attracting young talent … shit … any talent … isn’t about ‘features’ and free cell phones and working from home or even money <insert some exclamation points here> or even ‘personal development journey’ … it is about leadership and purpose and sense of belonging <with a business purpose in mind>.
And when I say purpose I don’t mean some altruistic vision <although it certainly is not a bad thing> but rather ‘doing something’ type stuff … stuff that is exciting, useful, adventuresome, different, powerful, etc.
It’s almost like everyone has forgotten in all this discussion about different generations’ and their likes & dislikes in the work place … is that people, yes, even employees <of all ages> like to be led.
Not always told what to do and how to do it … but led. Think ‘look at the compass and let’s go’ type leading.
Alrighty then.
So then let’s talk about leaders and leadership and character and managing the younger generation in business.
Just a reminder to get the logical part of my my rant started.
I wrote this in an old past called “elephants and leaders“:
– Inability to deal with younger employee dissatisfaction.
Whew. This one is a humdinger these days. This elephant isn’t even invisible and it gets ignored. In fact, many leaders just stare at the elephant and shake their head and go “oh well, there’s that damn elephant but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
It’s crazy. I have written about this before and, yes, I am going to generalize … but … this doesn’t have anything to do with “this generation’s work ethic” or “young kids just don’t have the same attitude as we did” (gosh, anyone reading that I would hope would feel old if they know they have said it themselves) … this is about leadership.
It’s not about being cool or wearing flip flops to work to show you ‘relate’ to the generation.
In fact, dear leader, they don’t want you to relate … they want you to lead.
A leader doesn’t have to be a ‘giant’ like I have written about before but they have to be a leader. Employees don’t have to like you (although it helps) they have to respect you. And that crosses any generation at any time with any age employee. Being a leader (and however that particular leader utilizes leadership-like charisma) will overcome 90+% generational issues (flip flops in the office should take care of the rest).
—————
Look.
This whole generations in the workplace topic is misguided because it is actually avoiding the key topic businesses should be talking about.
Who is leading the damn company?
In other words … what has happened to leadership?
Now.
Not everyone can lead.
And not everyone in a leader position is actually a good leader.
Great leadership is inspired by great ideas and great beliefs and a great vision and the ability to make mistakes with nerves of steel … and deal with those mistakes in a way that the organization doesn’t lose its overall ‘hope.’
What does that all really define <albeit you will not see it in any dictionary>?
Strength of character.
They may not be the smartest.
They may have charisma and they may not.
They may not be the best at any responsibility they have had up until that point <functionally>.
But they know how to lead.
And people follow … not blindly <just to be clear> … but because out of respect and trust for their long term hopes.
<note: because I had a fabulous discussion on the significant difference between ‘following and being led’ – of which I believe there is a massive difference between the two – I will offer a follow up post on this topic>
These leaders don’t give ‘features’ to entice employees and they don’t talk about flexible work hours … they give words and inspiration and direction and hope.
Good ole Napoleon who, for all his egotistical warts, knew something about leadership said … we are dealers in hope.
By the way.
Hope is not a feature <not even really sure it is a benefit>.
Anyway.
Because I have always wished I could be a great leader I am always watching out for leadership type thinking and words … and I have kept this speech in my files for decades.
———
– “A Company of Adventurers”
“There had to be something special about this enterprise to attract the talented and venturesome people who have come together to exercise their considerable talents and to derive from it the things that make for full and satisfying life.
When I talk of this company, I am not thinking just of a legal or business entity. I am using the word in the older sense, as in a company of scholars, as a company of adventurers, or a company of voyagers. I think our companionship partakes of all these things.
Our relationships are subtle and highly sensitive relationships ….
Our job must be to share authority without losing it …
The whole staff must have a proprietary feeling about the company’s work.
We are a permanently dissatisfied company and so far as I can see, we shall not run out of things to be dissatisfied about. I think our work, in most instances, is the best of its kind in the world – and yet not good enough. Not as good as it is going to be. There has not been and there should never be a year when it is not better than the year before.
Our audience is getting more demanding all the time – it is not a question of talking down to them. The problem, the opportunity, is to talk far enough up to them.
We must be dynamic for purposes bigger than ourselves. “
Author: Sam Meek, ex – CEO of J. Walter Thompson – delivered in 1965.
———–
Well.
That, my friends, is someone to follow.
I would trust my future and ‘personal development journey’ to this guy. I don’t know him and I imagine I may not even like him if I met him <he sounds like a ball buster who is never satisfied> but I don’t have to like him … I just need to follow his damn ass toward another frickin’ adventure.
C’mon.
‘Be dynamic for purposes bigger than ourselves’?
Sign me up.
I will even pay for my own cell phone and I will come into the office and not work remotely.
This is character driven leadership. Not ‘feature-driven’ leadership.
Now.
Please note.
This leader may not always be always popular <or well liked> mainly because they don’t fear telling people that they are wrong <because they are influencing the organization through a set belief/attitude structure>.
This type of leader influences throughout the organization like a pebble in the middle of a pond with their philosophy and beliefs and hope … as guidance for ideas and purpose.
A character driven leader tends to be respected <but … and noted earlier … not always liked>.
A character driven leader works towards what is “right” <not what will make people happy> and the benefit of the organization & people rather than acting in order to be recognized.
A character driven leader empowers responsibilities that enhance the people and the organization <and often will be almost invisible in the success … unless they also combine charisma with character>.
Bottom line.
The best leaders don’t just lead.
They have character.
They recognize that business is about dollars and cents <in that if you don’t generate enough dollars and cents you have no business> but they also recognize that dollars and cents isn’t why they themselves come into the office day in and day out … and that their organization doesn’t really want to come into the office day in and day out for that.
Frankly … these types of leaders know that ‘features’ and ‘money’ is a house of cards from which to build an organization.
By the way … that is a Business Truth regardless of an employee’s age, experience or generational attitude.
Now.
Hope is a tricky thing … particularly in an uneven seemingly semi-chaotic world.
Therefore part of a leader’s burden is giving hope in the face of fear.
And a substantial portion of the burden is while the vision and hope and desire he/she is offering is somewhere over the horizon … many of the organization are worried about ‘hope today.’ Fear is shoved splinter by splinter into the hand offering long term hope.
A great leader absorbs the daily pain, removes splinters and keeps everyone moving toward the horizon.
And maybe most difficult? Encouraging action when there is a temptation to freeze … and there is a temptation to doubt … and <sometime even worse> a temptation to second guess..
I could say this about everyone … but suffice it to say … young people want someone to ‘show the way’ or at least show ‘what could be.’
And be believable.
By the way <once again> … nowhere in all of that … even if I squint between the lines … do I see any pandering or features or free smartphone giveaways … all I see is some tough love and hope.
Oh.
And leadership.
I am not suggesting this is the easy way.
In fact … offering ‘choose your own work’ or ‘lack of hierarchy’ or any of those things – which possibly compromise a good efficient and effective organization – is actually much much <insert many more ‘muches’ here> easier.
But you know what?
The heights of leadership is rare air coupled with a burden of many aspects.
The greatest accept the burden.
And by the ‘greatest’ I not only mean the individual as a leader … but an organization … a business … as a leader.
So, please <said with dripping sarcasm>, stop with the ‘doing whatever it takes to get the young people into your organization’ tripe.
So, please <said with dripping sarcasm>, stop overstating the generational issues in the workplace and get on with leading.
Because, frankly, any leader bitching about ‘behavior in the workplace’ when referring to emailing or using smartphones in the office or any of those types of things needs to get their head out of their proverbial ass and just frickin’ lead.
In the end.
All my ranting aside.
People working toward a common business purpose – who are well led – are focused, passionate <when needed> and pragmatic <see ‘working hard’> when it is called for and they get good shit done.
Now there is a vision … ‘getting good shit done.’
I could start a company with that vision alone … keep my head in the game as a leader focused solely on that in guiding a business … and I gotta tell ya.
People would line up to join. Young, middle aged and old.
Why?
Well my friends.
That is called a “tangible display of hope.’
What do I mean?
– 1. I hope I can be dynamic beyond my own purpose.
– 2. How will I do that?
– 3. By getting good shit done.
Anyway.
“Choose their own work and talk back to bosses”????? … please … someone just frickin’ lead.
This will be a winding post including Rick Pitino, Margaret Thatcher, Ray Lewis, Annette Funicello and Rutgers.
But the past several days has made me think about legacies … and judgment. We judge every day … sometimes simply an event … or a moment … and sometimes reflectively. All I know for sure is that we seem to be quick to judge, relentlessly unforgiving in the moment and oddly selective in circumspect.
Anyway.
Rick Pitino.
Rick Pitino is a great basketball coach.
But he also shapes young men. The other night I was watching a group of 18- to 22-year-old young men teach us a lesson about life.
<side note: to all the boomer 50/60something managers out there who bitch & moan about managing younger generations maybe you should put a picture of Pitino up in your office because he is 60 now … and was 40something when he brought a group of 20somethings to another championship and he was in his 30’s when he brought another group to a Final Four … maybe it isn’t the younger generation … maybe it is you? … oops … I digress>.
It would be easy to focus on his recent success … but his path to where he is today <I was tempted to use ‘greatness’ but didn’t> was not a straight line. There were failures and transgressions. Simply put … today he is not the man he was in his 20’s. Do we judge him on his hall of fame career? Do we judge on basketball statistics? How his young men athletes do in Life? How he did in his own personal life? Or do we judge him in totality?
Margaret Thatcher.
Margaret Thatcher was neither the smartest <a British paper used the word ‘cleverest’> nor the most eloquent politician of her generation. But she was without question one of the most determined. Maggie’s <that is what I called her> unwavering belief in her convictions is most likely her most important characteristic. Whether you believed she was right or wrong … you knew she said what she meant and meant what she said. It was never about style it was always about substance. The content was almost irrelevant because the intent drove in to the minds of people. Maggie did not become a great prime minister by being nice. She was tough-minded, determined, and convicted. Do we judge her on popularity? The success, or lack of success, of things she implemented? Do we judge her as a mother? Or do we judge her simply as one who led and not any specifics?
Annette Funicello.
On the same day Maggie died … Annette Funicello died at the age of 70 from complications of multiple sclerosis <which she had had for more than 25 years>.
For anyone growing up in the 1950s, Annette Funicello was a huge celebrity, one of the original Mouseketeers on Walt Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club.” After it ended she had a couple of records and starred in Beach Blanket movies … then she left the business to raise her children. <trivia: Paul Anka wrote “Puppy Love” about her>.
Do we judge her on her insanely bad Beach Blanket Bingo movies? Do we judge her on being a Mouseketeer? Do we judge her on her moral compass? Do we judge her on the way she dealt with multiple sclerosis? Do we judge her in total?
Ray Lewis.
Ray Lewis is probably the polar opposite of Annette Funicello. Retired this year more as a motivational inspirational leader than the truly monsterly talented football player that he was. He was a beast on the field. So much of a beast that we may tend to forget that he didn’t become a beast simply by walking on the field … he dedicated himself off the field to not waste his talent. He was an imperfect man off the field … but focused on not wasting the one true talent he had – playing football. And you know what? His motivational ability was simply him sharing that conviction … make the most of what you have <and don’t let the other shit get in the way>.
Oh. Yeah. Ray may have shot someone. He may have just been with someone who shot someone. Ray was definitely a young punk in the 90’s. Brash, arrogant and wandering. Do we judge him as that? Or how he has matured? Do we judge him on an event or a series of events? Do we judge him simply for the fact he didn’t waste an incredible talent despite the fact at one point he could have chosen another path?
Ah.
The Rutgers basketball coach … and that path to choose I just mentioned with Ray.
If I were to judge this coach on a 30 minute video tape I would not judge him well. Please note that I believe this is not about any ‘generational style of coaching’ … his actions are, and were, unacceptable for someone who has the ability to shape and mold young men for life beyond sports.
But.
We never get to see the thousands of hours of coaching video that would make him look like a first round Hall of Fame coach.
Look. Someone could make a 30 minute video of me from my entire professional career that could make unhireable for the rest of my life. On the other hand someone could make a 30 minute video of me that could put me in the top boardrooms in the world.
Highlights, or lowlights, are just that … the peaks or the valleys. And it is silly to assume we are always at the peak of our best. You should notice that most of the great coaches being interviewed have been very careful about how they discuss the situation … why?
Geez. I bet even Pitino is sitting there thinking “whew … if someone went back to when I was a younger coach and created a 30 minute lowlight film I bet I wouldn’t look so good.”
We are being awful quick to judge this coach.
And being awful quick to judge how it was initially handled. Beyond the fact we are in a maniacally litigious world and the university is kind of trapped between ‘being in the right to fire’ and ‘providing the opportunity to improve’ … it would seem like the university <which is in the business of teaching people and improving them for future success> actually gave someone, who must obviously have some redeeming professional value, a good spanking, some good support … and then sent them back out to be a better person.
We are quick to judge the coach … and the university. And from the outside looking in sometimes objects look closer than they really are <sorry … that’s the side view mirror perspective on Life>.
Me?
What he did was unacceptable. What the university did was acceptable <in some ways>. Everyone should be careful how they judge … the event … as well as legacy of the event.
The point of all this?
We seem so quick to judge people these days. We judge with a strong dose of nearsightedness.
In addition we debate judging people on character, deeds or sometimes even lifetime consistency.
We forgive … but we don’t forgive.
Here is a Life truth.
If you sift through the rubble of anyone’s life you will find some cherished mementoes … and some rubbish.
Some people will hold the mementos high and declare sainthood.
Other people will flaunt the rubbish as proof of poor character.
It is all silly.
These people may not have been the smartest nor the most talented nor even the nicest. But they all had conviction.
Despite challenges and any transgressions they may have encountered they got their proverbial train back on the tracks and moved forward with conviction on what mattered to them.
Pitino has always been a great basketball coach. He is now a better man … and a shaper of young men.
Thatcher was never a great mind. She was a leader … not just listening to what people wanted to showing them what they needed.
Ray Lewis has always been a monsterly talented football player. He is now a monsterly talented football player who did not waste his talent.
Annette Funicello was never the most talented. But in the end she could certainly be judged well on moral compass and integrity and heart.
But what did they all have in common?
Conviction.
The Rutgers coach? He is at a crossroads. After the witch hunt has died down and we stop judging him as evil incarnate he can decide where he goes from here. And he has a lifetime to build events that will ultimately decide how he is judged. He will find this is a test of his conviction.
Ok.
I say all that to show judging a person is tough. They have professional success and sometimes Life success … and sometimes one or the other … and certainly some failures along the way.
And in the moment you are simply judging … well … a moment. Life is a series of events. Some good and some bad. Some gooder than others and some a lot badder than others.
But people have a lifetime of events to build a legacy for the rest of us to judge them on. And in the end they will be exactly as we expected them to be … flawed.
Me?
I imagine I would like to judge people not on their greatness or even individual events but rather how they dealt with the flaws in their life.
We can isolate specific events within a Life and find something good or something bad. That is easy. In fact … that is lazy judgment.
But judging how someone deals with the flaws … the mistakes.
Well, maybe, just maybe, that is judging their conviction.
And, well, conviction is a reflection of character … not brains nor genius nor talent nor skills.
“Unlocking these ideas is how we can help change a person, or help change the world.”
–
Jim Newton, founder of TechShop which gives creative people access to the tools for innovation
================
Ok.
This is awesome.
Awesome on several levels.
First.
This assumes you don’t have to be Yale/Oxford University freakishly smart to be a great innovator.
Second.
This assumes innovation can be small, medium, large ideas.
Third.
This assumes innovation can be very practical.
Fourth.
This assumes anyone can have an idea.
Fifth.
This assumes anyone can think.
Here is TechShop.
Innovation & Techshop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU9QrKYs0bs
Here is their mission <in the founder’s words>:
“I find that most people are very passionate about something specific they want to make, but they don’t know how to do it. Some of these ideas are small and personal, and others are world-altering ideas.
TechShop’s mission is to coax people to think about their ideas and help them bring those ideas to fruition.”
Creativity <which is really what innovation is all about> happens in everyone. In fact … creativity is everybody’s business … not just people identified under the misnomer of “creative.”
The connection between business and creativity, or creative thinking, is inextricably linked regardless of whether someone wants to call it creativity or something else which they perceive is more politically correct <or accurate in their own minds>.
We experience creativity in the business world every day. Any time someone’s comfort zone is challenged … the status quo is questioned … or a process is reevaluated … creativity is being activated. I can think of no industry or business that doesn’t embrace creativity … in a traditional definition sense or a nontraditional definition.
And you know what?
There is an additional benefit to embracing the idea creativity exists in everybody <even the common every day schmuck>.
Facilitating it in everyone can help change a person … for the better.
All ideas have value.
Some have value in itself.
Some have value in that it begets another bigger idea.
And all have value to a person’s self-esteem and self-worth.
I love his TechShop idea.
I struggle to find a better business idea for the everyday person out there.
And I struggle to think of one person who could not, or should not, participate.
Yup.
Because I struggle to believe that someone out there has not had one idea <with some potential> in their entire life.
I just wanted to share an awesome concept.
And.
Wanted to share the idea that creativity, and innovation, is everybody’s business.
“There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.”
Samuel Johnson
——-
So.
Business and life parallel themselves in different ways.
And they often have similar repercussions.
Desire for distinction is one of those things.
I believe the majority of people have a desire for some type of distinction.
As do businesses.
Ah.
But the difference.
100% of businesses have a desire for distinction <rather than most of the people>.
Ok.
Not just businesses but anything associated with making money. And it isn’t just a desire but rather it is a focus … and a blinding relentless pursuit of distinction which sometimes reaches absurd levels.
Think about this:
——
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. ”
C. S. Lewis
——-
I love the combination of these thoughts.
- We desire to be distinct.
- If we do not try to be distinct we may become so without even noticing it.
Distinction is one of those fabulous things that the more you try to be distinct the less likely you will actually be so <at least in a meaningful way>.
And if I could convince more companies to think about this with clear heads I am not sure i would make any more money but I am sure they would.
I know, I know … easy for me to say <not the money thing but rather the ‘they should do’ thing>.
But the pursuit of the elusive distinction can sometimes drive businesses to some fairly irrelevant, if not absurd, and absolutely meaningless places.
I know it sounds crazy but if they ignored the whole distinction goal I bet it would happen. Well. It would happen if they were smart about focusing on themselves … who they were and who they wanted to be.
So … let’s call it a crazy smart idea.
But tough to do <as most crazy smart ideas are>.
Tough because it doesn’t exactly match up with the standard “this is how you are supposed to do it” management guides.
Anyway.
Maybe that is the most important point.
There are a lot, a shitload, of crazy smart business people out there.
But there are not a lot of crazy smart business people willing to do something crazy like ignore the business books “plan to success” blueprints.
Here is where I put my money.
The few.
Those crazy enough to not plan for distinction but rather let distinction and originality simply evolve from who they are, what they think and their vision of what they think they should be.
Crazy?
Probably.
But in a world where the majority of businesses, and new ideas, fail … maybe this isn’t a crazy a thought as it sounds.
My thoughts on this topic were inspired by a trendwatching’s briefing called “The F-Factor.”
Their briefing (another excellent one by the way) discusses how the impact of influencers’ on purchasing has increased because of the web (and the dynamics associated with the web).
By the way. Trendwatching has another excellent briefing called Crowd Clout from about 2007 or so which makes essentially the same point.
I am going to try and put my spin on their insights by talking a little about the past (the evolution of this whole influencer explosion) and the future (how it is creating a new economic model).
Let me begin by saying despite the advent of “social media & social marketing” that consumer decision-making has always been personal and social.
The truth is that consumer decision-making has always been about seeking feedback, leaning on what friends say and seeking ‘influencers’ thoughts … all of which influence the ultimate purpose.
This was true even before the media (or people seeking to create some ‘buzz’) added the word “social” to the marketing world. Yes. Even the marketing dinosaurs knew decision making ultimately had a significant social aspect.
What do I mean?
People talked amongst themselves.
People talked to their neighbors about home services.
People talked to relatives or friends about more personal decisions.
People reached out to trusted advisers (doctors for medical, veterinarians for pet stuff, dermatologists for skin stuff … well … you get the picture).
People talked and discussed.
In fact The Economist just did a great article on how Martin Luther built the entire Protestant faith off of ‘buzz.’
(boy … that is social media working at levels they could typically only dream of these days)
The difficulty we face in the current “what is buzzworthy” world we live in today is that it wasn’t called social back then therefore we seem to struggle in finding ‘successful past case studies’ (or at least ones that someone will pay attention to). In the “old” days … people simply sought out ‘experts’ (I use the term loosely … let’s assume the definition here is “someone who probably knows more than I do and can inform my decision making process”) to make a better decision.
Before social media you could always count on the following two factoids with regard to who influenced a purchase the most.
“Who do you speak with about making a purchase?”
1. Family.
1a. Friends.
(you could flipflop or call it a tie pretty much all the time)
But something HAS changed.
The internet has changed our worldview on friends (and influencers).
“Our definition of friends has changed because of Facebook, and Twitter, where quantity as opposed to quality is now almost a mantra”.
Rick Murray, President, Digital Edelman Digitas
Well.
I don’t know that I totally agree with Rick from Digitas.
Oddly while social networks do increase quantity research has shown three key things (to indicate that quality is tagging along with the quantity characteristic):
1. A Pew Internet research study shows that internet has actually strengthened and expanded existing social roles of churches and fraternal organizations.
Therefore the quantity has simply strengthened existing quality.
2. the same research showed that more frequent communications via text actually ENCOURAGES the desire to spend more face-to face time
3. the research also shows that texting requires more careful crafting than a telephone or face-to-face communications and 3 out of 10 teens say “that they are more honest with friends when they talk online” therefore quality is the underlying foundation among all this “random quantity” discussion.
Next.
And while we often talk about how internet is influencing people we need to be careful with the ‘influencing’ word.
Research shows that the web can assist in education but ultimately the final influencer remains one and the same as the past.
The most tangible example I have at my fingertips of this notion is the most recent 2011 NPD Group Aftermarket Consumer Outlook Study:
Q: “Where would you go to learn how to do repairs on your vehicle?”
– Friend/Family 57%
=
– Vehicle Repair Manual 46%
=
– Mechanic 42%
=
– Internet 42%
=
– Store Personnel 16% (yikes)
Basically a Mechanic is AS influential as the Internet in this decision.
One word thought here. Wow.
So.
The main point here is that a consumer now has access and is aware of more people (true friends as well as web based friends) and can have more frequent communication due to the digital revolution. Yet. Social media is simply the fact that the traditional benefits of an acquaintance network (personal or professional) and friendships can be more expansively realized than before.
The other truth is that products today are at the mercy of crowds of friends.
Crowds providing unsolicited feedback and influencing hordes of consumers making decisions on a daily basis.
Yes.
This is the “F-Factor:”
It is the expanding scenario of consumers increasingly tapping into their networks of friends, fans, and followers to discover, discuss and purchase goods and services, in ever-more sophisticated ways. (source: trendwatching.com)
The F-Factor is a real part of people’s lives because it provides real value. Value in that it offers a purchase decision making opportunity that is more efficient, more relevant, and more interesting and provides more “depth/breadth” than before. In the past consumers either had to spend endless time and effort on trying to discover the best of the best, or had to rely on sources that were distant, unknown or untrusted, and therefore potentially unreliable or irrelevant.
Now the six degrees of separation (at least in the influencer world) has shrunk significantly to a “no degree of separation” influencer world (this entire phenomena is inherently changing the trust value equation).
So.
Trendwatching does a nice job of identifying five ways that the F-FACTOR can influence consumer-buying behavior:
1. F-DISCOVERY: How consumers discover new products and services by relying on their social networks (Friends).
2. F-RATED: How consumers will increasingly (and automatically) receive targeted ratings, recommendations and reviews from their social networks. (by the way … this is creating an entirely new industry of something called ‘curated consumption’ where non-experts become distributors of expert like information).
3. F-FEEDBACK: How consumers can ask their friends and followers to improve and validate their buying decisions.
4. F-TOGETHER: How shopping is becoming increasingly social, even when consumers and their peers are not physically together. (in other words, the web permits consumers to share real time information and feedback and opportunities … and this is like a pebble in a pond syndrome where relevance & interest creates ripples difficult to quantify when it works).
5. F-ME: How consumers’ social networks are literally turned into products and services (curated consumption at its best).
This is one of those situations where the internet has unequivocally changed the dimensions of existing attitudes & behaviors. Simplistically the web has put the old F-Factor on steroids. I say it that way to point out that the web has not created anything new (attitude wise) but rather has encouraged a desired behavior to new boundaries.
The internet has also expanded an interesting existing consumer aspect to this entire “influencer” situation.
It is expanding the entire trend of putting consumers to work (whether they recognize it or not).
Think about his for a second.
This trend existed before the web. The easiest early example of this was in the fast food industry. For example the consumer of the fast food restaurant is also to some degree an actual producer of the meal.
Among other things, diners are expected to serve as their own waiters carrying their meals to their tables or back to their cars, sandwich makers (by adding fixings like tomatoes, lettuce, and onions in some chains), salad makers (by creating their own salads at the salad bar), and bus persons (by disposing of their own debris after the meal is finished).
This trend has actually existed for quite some time.
Putting consumers to work gained momentum with companies/brands after the birth of the fast food restaurant and has expanded to other industries:
– Being a gas attendant by pumping your own gas
– Serving as a bank teller at the ATM machine
– Working as the checkout cashier at the supermarket by scanning one’s own food, bagging it, and paying for it by credit card
– Being a ticketing agent by using electronic kiosks to check in at the airport
– Serving as an entertainment guide by co-creating a variety of experiences such as moving oneself through Disney World and its attractions
– Performing traditional medical professional services by using do-it-yourself medical technologies (e.g., blood pressure monitors, blood glucose monitors, pregnancy tests) that allow patients to perform their own medical tasks
– Being a caller on a call-in radio show
– Being part of a Reality TV show
And now the web has enabled brands (or is it consumer empowerment like everyone suggests) to put consumers to work in a wide range of sometimes subtle and less material ways (this is where the F Factor truly comes into play).
Once again.
Think about that.
Much of what happens (and is created) online is generated by the user. Today’s web experience is often being defined by users producing content (individually as well as collaboratively). It wasn’t that way in the beginning when most of what existed on the original web was provider-generated but lately there has been an explosion of “consumers doing the work.”
Some examples of how the internet is putting consumers to work:
– Wikipedia – where users generate articles and continually edit, update, and comment on them
– Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking websites – where users create profiles composed of videos, photos, and text, interact with one another, and build communities
– Second Life – where users create the characters, communities, and the entire virtual environment
– Blogs – where the commentary is produced by the consumer
– eBay – where users are their own selling agent & shipper
– YouTube and Flickr – where mostly amateurs upload and download videos and photographs
– Craigslist – where consumers (mostly) create the market
– Amazon – where consumers do all the work involved in ordering products and write the reviews. (in addition users’ buying habits and site navigation are documented to recommend products)
– Yelp! – where users create an online city guide by ranking, reviewing and discussing various locations and activities in their area
– The GeoWeb, which consists of online maps where, increasingly, users are creating and augmenting content with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo tools. In fact. Google Maps users can fix errors; add the locations of businesses; upload photos; link Wikipedia articles to, and blog about their experiences with, or reviews of, places on the map.
And that’s not all.
Start thinking about the new “location awareness” tools, often used in conjunction with ‘smart’ cell phones with GPS technology, which allow users to track where they are at any given moment and upload this information to websites such as Facebook, Twitter or one’s blog (Google Latitude, Yahoo’s Fire Eagle and Loopt mobile phone application).
Sure.
This type of consumer involvement in consumption was certainly not invented by the internet, but given the massive involvement in popular online sites, it can be argued that it is currently both the most prevalent location of this new type of consumption (consumer) purchase model … and it is certainly the most important facilitator as a means of consumption.
It can be argued that the web is influencing an entirely new consumption model.
A new economic model (as I so succinctly suggested upfront).
This leads me to my big finish.
Friends, feedback and influencers is bigger than simply the web or how brands can compete in this transparent world (where putting consumers to work doesn’t mean they are an employee).
The F Factor is impacting America & capitalism (forget about the whole brand and branding discussion … this is much bigger than that).
Capitalism itself will be transformed, perhaps radically, in this F-Factor world we live in. Several thoughts lead me to this conclusion.
First.
The inability of companies (brands) to control consumers in the way, and to the extent, that they have been able to control consumers in the past. Due to increased transparency there is a greater resistance to the incursions of obvious capitalism (e.g. efforts to gain greater control and greater profits).
This does not bode well for the companies dabbling in Facebook & twitter & social marketing who are doing so with the intent to “influence or guide purchase behavior.”
Second.
It is difficult to think of today’s consumer, mentally & attitudinally, as being exploited in the same ways as before. The whole idea of exploitation is contradicted by, among other things, the fact that today’s consumers seem to enjoy, even love, their involvement and what they are doing and are willing to devote long hours to it … for no pay.
Third.
The emergence of a whole new economic model to conduct business because of the internet. Traditional capitalism is dependent on the notion of the exchange of money for goods and services and profits are made in those exchanges.
However, little or no money changes hands between the users and the owners of many websites (for instance, users do not pay Facebook or Twitter to use the services).
For one thing there is the unwillingness of corporations and other organizations to pay for work done by these new web based influencers. This is compounded by the fact the new consumer increasingly prefer, and are able, to pay little or nothing for that which they consume on the internet (news, blogs, social networking sites, and so on).
Think about this as part of a new economic model.
Friends … family … influencers … or extended employees?
Yikes.
That will raise some hackles.
Yeah. Think about it.
What I have outlined is contrary to what Humphreys & Grayson (2009) argued that when corporations are involved this type of consumerism is simply the creation of “temporary employees” and thus does not indicate a fundamental change in capitalism.
Obviously … I disagree … I contend that entire business models based around these new consumer types (the so called “temporary employees”) who are unpaid and given the product for free indicates the possibility of a new form of capitalism.
Now.
If you are a business and you are reading this, think about the implications.
All these “friends” providing feedback (unasked for or asked for) and influencing gazillions of attitudes (which generate some type of behavior) are your employees (paid or not).
They are your associates.
They are an extension of all those people who come in every morning, drink your own bad coffee and use the internet inappropriately during business hours in your office.
When you look at them that way would you choose to treat them differently?
Do things differently?
Think about your “social media” plans differently?
Even sit down with strategic planning and think about your business model differently?
I will help out here.
The answer to all of those questions should be “yes.”
The web is a powerful powerful facilitator of influence & business.
You may elect to call it “friends & feedback quantity” architecture but I suggest if you want to be successful you think about it as a “quality” mechanism which can impact a new economic model.
Intimidating? Possibly.
But if you don’t think of it that way you will probably influence no one and end up on the slippery slope of irrelevance (with no friends).
Ok.
Let’s talk a minute about Kodak.
And the fact that their demise had nothing to do with lack of foresight or inability to innovate (because they actually invented the digital camera). Kodak is about leadership, or the lack thereof, and people and decisions (or the lack thereof).
When an iconic company and brand like Kodak goes bankrupt everyone should think about hard choices and people who make them.
Oh. And people who don’t make them.
I am sure in 1976 when Kodak had 90% of film and 85% of camera sales in the US and was regularly rated one of the world’s five most valuable brands that it would seem inconceivable to company decision makers that the company could disappear. I do not have to imagine that we the people couldn’t conceive it.
In addition.
What’s not often recognized is that it was actually Kodak that invented the digital camera (in 1975). And, interestingly, four years after that a Kodak executive issued a report that predicted, in some detail, how different parts of the market would switch from film to digital with an inevitable digital mass market by 2010 (whew. Pretty close, huh?).
Look.
This is surely not the first time a company, and its leaders, has decided it is so self-important it can ride out what is happening in the market.
But I believe people are focusing on the wrong things.
Successful organizations are rarely successful because of foresight (or fortune telling or predicting the future). They are typically successful due to thoughtful reaction and response to change … and making the inevitably hard decisions when the change is truly disruptive to their core business.
Yes.
Decisions get significantly harder when a company is faced with truly market disruptive innovations/actions.
And, no, corporations don’t have to inevitably die. It depends entirely on their adaptability.
So. Let’s talk about the decisions to adapt.
What I mean by that is … why couldn’t Kodak and its leaders make the hard choices to avert this demise?
I disagree with the popular opinion that it was their lack of vision with regard to the role digital in the photo business that led to their demise.
Why?
Many organizations make big innovation or lack of vision mistakes and don’t go bankrupt. Why don’t they? They make the hard decisions to course correct.
Yup. Hard decisions are called hard because they are just that – hard.
Difficult.
Not soft.
Not soft?
“I want (and need) to make significant changes. But I want to retain the core.”
(Oops … that is decision with high potential for ‘soft characteristics’).
Why? That core, or what is deemed most important, always seems to grow and grow when being discussed internally. It is almost within the DNA of an organization to think in these terms. And, inevitably, those ‘significant changes’ become soft changes.
Hard means sacrifice. Not cutting back on the decision. Making a real sacrifice.
I wrote about it in a post called “how far would you go to solve a problem?” https://brucemctague.com/how-far-would-you-go-to-solve-a-problem
Hard decisions could have saved Kodak. I truly believe that.
But let’s maybe discuss why hard decisions are hard to make (even by people who are quite capable of making a good hard decision).
Here is something to ponder.
Hard choices harden the person who makes them.
You have to harden yourself. You have to harden yourself, insulate yourself a little, from the human aspects of the decision and focus on the bigger picture and the horizon. Please don’t mistake this for minimizing the ‘little people’ or the individual. This is the forest or trees type decisions leaders need to make. It may sound callous but it is just like firefighting a big fire … burn some trees to save the forest.
Oh. And sometimes burn a shitload of trees to save the forest.
Leaders make the same decisions. In this case it is people & buildings and not trees.
Regardless.
The big hard decisions, when they are made, harden you as a person. It’s just life. It’s not personal.
Here is what makes it even tougher.
I believe all of us who make hard decisions worry a little bit that it … well … becomes too easy.
That we become so hard that we lose sight of everything else.
Oddly Richard Gere in Pretty Woman reminded us of this – if you got past the fact he was hiring a hooker in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel – in that his character lost sight of ‘being human’ as he became quite good at making hard decision for business successes.
And it was a true depiction of what can happen. Hard decisions are difficult because there is not only a financial risk & toll … but a personal toll. Each one affects you.
As with everything in life (it seems) … it is a balancing act.
I say all of this to try and share that there is a human aspect of any hard decision. And leaders don’t overlook that (despite what everyone else may want you to think).
Every one understands the repercussions.
Every. One.
Now. Having said that.
Someone at Kodak couldn’t make the hard decision.
I truly believe that.
Were they soft with regard to people or whatever? Heck. I don’t know. I believe they just inevitably made soft decisions. Soft decisions that possibly gave a glimmer of hope but once you begin the slippery slope of business issues (particularly if you are a large company and gravity really takes over) the glimmer becomes dimmer and dimmer over time.
To stop the slide a really hard decision needed to be made.
A big hairy audacious decision.
Anyway. I often believe business leaders could learn a lot from the military on how to win a war.
Do I believe a general wants to lose a single soldier’s life? No. He does not.
Do I believe a general understands that he needs to lose soldiers’ lives? Yes. He does.
Do I believe those decisions weigh upon him (even if we elect to judge the decision on the final successful outcome)? Yes. I do.
But they make the hard decisions.
And no one at Kodak did make the hard decision.
It wasn’t lack of foresight.
It wasn’t a lack of understanding of what was happening in the market (trust me … they probably saw dozens of reports of what was happening in the marketplace).
It was a lack of ability to make the hard decision.
And … it’s a shame.
I called this “learning by lurking” but this is all about how the project global generation education initiative, because of its web based platform, creates learning through a unique aspect of web based collaboration.
This is thinking about the project global generation education initiative with a focus on collaboration for learning.
Oh.
And, of course, how the project GG initiative can assist in reducing the children out of school numbers, increase literacy and most likely reduce future conflict … all through the collaborative aspects of the initiative.
Let me get a thought out of the way.
I have written a variety of articles on how collaboration is misused in the business world. Misused in that I believe ideas are driven by individuals and collaboration often dulls the edges of individual ideas (under the guise of improvement).
On the other hand … the traditional education system is ignoring the benefits of collaboration for learning … or maybe better said “the gathering & sharing of knowledge” particularly with regard to the global youth.
What I mean is that there is an opportunity within this context where children, utilizing a web platform, could be driving the ideation (versus the current system where teachers facilitate learning and ideation).
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … sound like the inmates running the asylum? Not even close.
Anyway.
The focus of this write up is to sync up the idea of collaboration (due to the initiative’s web platform) and the original generational idea of “community individualism.” (global generation 1)
Web based children’s education collaboration represents an opportunity because:
1. The existing way we view the education system, based on brick & mortar, is archaic. For a variety of reasons … collaboration included.
2. The existing education system is archaic from a sociological perspective (creating a healthier collaborative mind).
But (ponder this):
“We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.”
–
unknown author from an education article
So.
It is possible archaic is a strong word … but maybe we should be using stronger words as we discuss education children (and improvements).
Yet.
What I know for sure is the current global education structure misses the opportunity to globalize socialization of knowledge/education. What I mean by that is the existing brick & mortar inherently diminishes some education opportunities because of the face-to-face “clique” challenges.
Ok.
I will come back to that last one because it is a humdinger of a thought.
– Collaboration and education
Collaboration when discussing the internet is obvious.
I am going to avoid the obvious and utilize a twist on the idea by taking advantage of global consumer trends. Two trends called Casual Collapse and Mass Mingling (source: trendwatching.com).
Casual Collapse and Education
Casual Collapse is the current seeming ongoing blurring of many beliefs, rituals, formal requirements and laws that have defined specific societies. And it continues to collapse because of the internet (to be specific – the cross-cultural sharing of information and knowledge empowered by the internet) and all this is happening without causing any particular apocalyptic aftermath. But it also appears In mature countries/cultures a ‘CASUAL COLLAPSE’ seems unstoppable (whether a government or an elderly culture wants it to happen or not).
People have grown up immersed in consumer culture – they ‘get’ it. But as everyone becomes more savvy about ‘what is happening and what people are thinking’ half way around the world they begin questioning the status quo conventional thinking. It is less tribal thinking but more global perspective.
Casual Collapse is not a negative trend but rather it is indicative of a variety of things (of which the web is a significant component).
But the web is a layer on a natural progression happening – the urbanization of emerging countries.
There’s an obvious link between the broad spread of more liberal attitudes and increasing urbanization globally (in Africa alone in 1980 28% lived in cities while today its 40% – 40 million people). As new arrivals find themselves distanced from traditional social and familial structures, and are exposed to a wider range of alternative goods, services, lifestyles, opinions and experiences, their tolerance to these alternatives grows, as does their interest.
The web simply accelerates what would have been happening naturally.
I am certainly not suggesting this will happen overnight. As trendwatching suggests … “compared to much trend thinking, CASUAL COLLAPSE moves at a glacial pace.”
And I am certainly not suggesting that everyone becomes overwhelmingly liberal as soon as they move to the city. but there is a clear trend for urban populations to have more socially liberal and tolerant views on a wide variety of issues.
And from Casual Collapse I shift to Mass Mingling.
Mass Mingling and Education
Within the construct of the Global Generation Children’s education initiative I am certainly not suggesting a Global mind. Nor is the intent to create a “global mind” (as one) or even a “Global society.” I am rather discussing the benefit of a global education initiative. And therefore I am discussing collaboration as an extension of Mass Mingling through educational platforms to build empowered (or enlightened) individualism with a respect for the global perspective.
This is a big difference then creating a global mind.
This is about fostering innate curiosity and sharing knowledge … where children are then empowered to create their own ‘mind.’
This initiative is built upon the power of an individual’s mind (and the fact of power of one to make a difference). So how the heck does that lead, or encourage, collaboration?
it maybe be easiest for me to discuss collaboration specifically within a construct of the “community individualism” generational characteristic I have proposed in terms of community, individual and the crossing of the two.
Nothing is more powerful within the individual child’s mind than curiosity.
A web based education initiative should encourage/enhance Collaboration that cultivates curiosity.
Most dictionaries define curiosity as something like “a state in which you want to learn more about something.”
(Bruce NOTE: they could possibly have made this a definition for children at the same time)
But it is also about being comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing, whilst at the same time being motivated to explore and discover more.
It is a human characteristic that as soon as you think you know something with certainty you no longer want to learn more about it, i.e., you are no longer curious.
But children are endless vectors of curiosity. With children there’s a sense of not knowing it all going in with an innocent, open mind and an intention to learn more.
We are tapping into an unfillable well at this age (as long as we nurture it).
“The important thing is not to stop questioning … never lose a holy curiosity.”
–
Einstein
Yes.
A bunch of people will say ‘it cannot be done through the internet.” Or. Even better … how can kids collaborate without guidance or a teacher.
Mass Mingling actually thrives on curiosity. Think about the characteristics of curiosity.
– Most of the time, when we make a mistake, or see someone else making a mistake, our automatic reaction is to start making judgment and blame – we tell ourselves off, beat ourselves up about it, and we might even give someone else a hard time if we see them make a mistake. An d this only has the effect of triggering our stress response, which causes our thinking to become more rigid in our thinking.
Mass Mingling permits millions of young children to browse socially through information, existing knowledge and mingle with other’s thoughts – making mistakes along the way as they mingle.
But this curiosity needs to be nurtured by teaching children that mistakes are just information and feedback from the real world, letting us know how things are in the real world, and telling us what’s working and what’s not working, what the blocks and obstacles to progress are, and even tipping you off on opportunities to solve problems and meet needs that other people might have.
Children will be exposed to the idea that their mistakes can be the very things that lead you in the new direction that turns out to be way better than you’d previously conceived.
And, frankly, today’s education system doesn’t foster curiosity.
I find it tragic to watch bright, energetic youth become lethargic about education. The real problem lies with adults who lack a comprehensive view of learning, adults who are guilty of classifying real learning as being a difficult and frustrating experience. The focus on tests is creating a generation of students who equate learning with test results.
But ideas & innovative enlightened thinking does not arise out of a vacuum. It must be supported by a culture that encourages people to experiment with ideas and products. Original thinking and novel ideas should be affirmed and honored and cultivated. Even if it is simply original/novel in the eyes of the young.
A web based initiative can encourage creativity by helping students learn to assess and take intellectual risks as they learn more. In my eyes the goal of education should be to prepare children to be competent and original in their thinking … at any age.
The value of Casual Collapse & Mass Mingling
This is where Community and Individualism become interconnected. And the foundation of the Global Generation takes root.
A collaborative group of kids who have learned together, made mistakes together, learned FROM each other and maybe even laughed at, if not with, each other creates stronger respectful individuals … within an interacting global community.
It is a fact that education at an early age (and hopefully continued) is indispensable in equipping citizens with the abilities and skills to engage critically, and act responsibly.
Anyway.
I found an interesting project being conducted along these lines (although I don’t believe they are thinking big enough).
A collaborative effort is under way on the issue of educational assessment and it offers insight into how it can happen and what motivates the companies involved.
Cisco is in a partnership with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Association of the Evaluation of Educational Achievement aimed at transforming global educational assessment and improving learning outcomes. Joining Cisco in this effort are Intel and Microsoft. Thomson says the three companies came together at the Learning and Technology World Forum in London “with the intention of changing the world.”
The three large, global technology companies have different business models – Cisco sells networks, Microsoft sells licenses and Intel sells devices – but they all compete for attention in the education market. All three are also committed to changing education in the United States and globally, and, according to Thomson, their leadership became convinced through the World Economic Forum that “education itself was still the best way to drive change in the world.”
The sheer number and variety of educational systems worldwide poses a significant challenge to any effort to effect change on a global scale. Thomson points out, however, there are three characteristics common to any system of education that guides the partnership’s work:
Here is the best thing I found …
“Education everywhere is a social construct. It is not an industry or a vocation. “People come together to provide skills competencies and abilities for their children to succeed.”
- Systems are comparable enough in their desire to measure progress. A kind of assessment unique to education is common across all systems.
2. There is still an economic component to education. In all countries its purpose includes fostering social development, citizenship and an ability to participate in the economy.
The spokesperson says that collaborating to tackle the issue of educational assessment worldwide requires Cisco and the others to step out of their “comfort zone.” They are accustomed to relationships through which they sell billions of dollars in technology to the education sector. Now they have to listen to those same customers and ask what they are using it for.
“And sometimes saying to customers you don’t really need to buy more technology from us.” Thomson remarks. “What we need to do is figure out a better way to use it.” Figuring these things out cannot be driven by revenue generation, he stresses. “It’s not about selling more. It’s about changing things.”
The kind of change that Cisco, Intel and Microsoft are striving for will not happen without involving academics, countries (the owners of the educational systems) and corporations in identifying and assessing 21st century skills.
Thomson says that the “Uncommon Table” the Boston College Center seeks to create for collaboration on education will need a “big tent.” That’s just the approach being taken by Cisco and the other companies. Their initiative on assessment draws from educators in Australia, Finland and Portugal, parts of Asia, and the United States, if the fragmentation of the U.S. educational system can be worked with. He says success will take willing partners open to foreign advice and academics prepared to collaborate and ready to adapt change into their own systems.
“If we can find that right way to keep that disparate group of people working together; if we can find that right ecosystem at a national level to actually implement, we’re going to make a tremendous difference,” the spokesperson predicts. “And that’s a difference that’s not there to drive revenue. It’s not there to create new product streams. It’s there simply to create a better world.”
(I would like to note that this can actually be found in my Global Generation how to make it happen & fund write up … and I said a similar thing).
I applaud Cisco, Intel & Microsoft … although I would point out to them that they could do it another way … the project global generation way.
What I DO like about what they are trying is that they are potentially solving a core issue – funding.
Ok. Moving on.
Socialization and a web based Education
Beyond collaboration ‘missed opportunities’ let me go back to how brick & mortar is archaic from a socialization perspective.
Existing education systems are a breeding ground for a caste system.
Kids are brutal in a face-to-face system.
Online can be just as brutal … but in a faceless way.
Who you are and how you dress and what you say (even the language you speak) becomes secondary to “what you say and what you think” in an online community.
All people are equal in body online. sociologically this means that ideas and thinking create the caste system.
And before someone begins slamming on “decreasing social skills because of the internet” take this factoid along for the ride …
PewInternetResearch:
“Our research shows face-to-face time between teenagers hasn’t changed over the past five years. Technology has simply added another layer on top. Yes, you can find studies that suggest online networking can be bad for you. But there are just as many that show the opposite.”
In my eyes the value of an educational web world is that it permits a child to regularly place themself in unfamiliar situations, or with unfamiliar people, and provides the opportunity to be exposed to ideas and views that they’ve not been exposed to before. And all of this provides an opportunity for real-life evidence/knowledge to challenge existing certainties – and open the way for curiosity.
We have the opportunity to integrate the newest forms of interactive technology with children’s natural curiosity (and a generation that has web abilities almost beyond our understanding) to create natural conditions in which collaboration can occur.
– The natural anonymity of online tools frees us from tacit biases or self-doubt and encourages individual leadership.
– Asynchronous tools allow global work teams release from the bonds of time zones to tackle projects with increasing effectiveness and productivity.
– Social networks now become visible through community tools allowing financial, time, human and other organizational assets to be redeployed toward developing innovative approaches to unique problems, rather than reinventing solutions to problems that have been previously solved.
So.
Lets move along from socialization socializing and discuss socializing learning.
I call it … Learning by Lurking
Twitter has certainly taught us you don’t have to be an active participant … you can be a ‘lurker’ … and participate (or build a viable network system and have people be involved). And in education’s case it isn’t creepy … it can actually benefit a dormant mind … or a personality that doesn’t feel comfortable stepping forward. In other words, all have the opportunity to benefit from the few great minds. And providing an opportunity for the few who don’t have a voice (but have the mind) to be able to finally step forward at some point.
THAT is the benefit of a global NON brick & mortar system.
Online permits some of the best minds, but possibly not the most socially acclimated, to rise and maximize their talent.
Such places could even be more than just schools but genuine hubs for related activities for the entire community. With a global connection to the net – maybe not the net but another layer (along the lines of facebook which is also another layer of net) an education/informational platform awaits to be activated by a mind. (note: as outlined in global generation 6 this is hardly pie-in-the-sky nor cost prohibitive in this day and age)
Another ‘lurker’ (or maybe better says ‘anonymity’) aspect of the web enabled platform is that it permits mistakes … maybe some spectacular mistakes … with little or no social repercussions.
Now.
Am I suggesting social skills aren’t important? Nope. They are.
But here and now I am talking about education and enlightenment.
Frankly the current education system is not about enlightenment.
Sorry folks.
That just is the truth.
The benefits of Lurking & Collaboration summary (or … The Big Close …)
At its most basic level we are teaching our children the way they need to act within a learning construct at such an early age that when they grow up they will not depart from such behavior because it is ingrained (positively).
Behaviorally the child’s mind experiences the right way of dealing with issues & thinking & ideation so that it becomes a natural instinctual act. It becomes habits that produce profitable outcomes in their adult years (hopefully in the form of ideas & accomplishments).
This idea is truly about teaching kids, beginning at the preschool age, relationship-building collaborative skills that creates a mental foundation on how to deal with others AND educate.
Even prior to a child entering a traditional classroom (should that opportunity exist) there are opportunities to teach them how to interact & ideate with other people in a positive way. And the project global generation children’s education idea is truly about learning collaboration skills at their most rudimentary level.
I also believe, in my heart of hearts, that this is the best way for humankind as a great way to preserve and instill languages and cultures to counter the homogenization of urbanism combined with globalism.
Yes.
That is fostering Community Individualism.
When collaboration takes place between people who realize the benefit of smooth working relationships then higher creative achievement and productivity is accomplished. Healthy cross-functional teams working in concert for the greater good eventually translates into efficient operations, regardless of whether in an academic, work, social or home environment. In the end, society benefits from groups performing productively with another. Of course, teaching the basics of all of this at the preschool age means a greater likelihood of kids continuing positive collaboration abilities as they progress in life.
And I do believe that the structure of web based schools/schooling with children as young as five or six in which they can express their opinions, share thinking & ideas and ultimately propose their own solutions creates a solid foundation for a ‘community individualism drive/intent’ Global Generation. It is this kind of attitudinal construct which offers unlimited opportunities for leadership and engagement. And it is this type of education structure which, by the time those five- and six-year-olds reach an appropriate graduation age, they will have a profound and enduring understanding of what it means to be in a collaborative society and have the ability to contribute within their own community … as well as a global level if given the opportunity.
This is an idea of molding a people from diverse origins, cultural practices, languages, into one collaborative group of thinkers, within a framework which has to be democratic in nature (because it crosses any and all geographic boundaries, yet it can be absorbed within any cultural construct.
And by doing so it mitigates conflicts and adversarial interests without oppression and injustice but rather through expanding brain power.
Whew.
Sound big and audacious? Yup.
Sound like it could better individuals? Yup.
Sound like it would therefore better any country construct (regardless of its unique government or religious direction)? Yup.
Sound possible? You bet. I call it the Global Generation children’s education initiative.
“… a bad idea is a bad idea and will never be a good idea no matter how well you dress it up.”
—
Bruce McTague
===
So.
Comcast, perhaps having just seen their 100th consecutive consumer research study showcasing their lack of customer service (Hey. All cable companies are in this boat. So it’s not just them) and massive customer dissatisfaction scores, had an inspiration (some may call it a brain cramp) and announced that it plans to change the name of its cable TV, Internet and phone services to XFinity.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Okay.
Comcast EVP, operations David Watson tells us the brilliance behind this re-branding maneuver:
“XFINITY represents the future of our company and it’s a promise to customers that we’ll keep innovating. When we launch XFINITY in a market, we’ll rebrand our products: XFINITY TV, XFINITY Voice and XFINITY Internet (our company, of course, remains Comcast). This transition is already well underway across the country. [On February 12], XFINITY will roll out in 11 markets including: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Hartford, Augusta, Chattanooga, parts of the Bay Area and San Francisco, with more markets to come later this year.”
I read a blog today that compared this spiel to the infamous Howard Dean speech. (I laughed out loud)
This is the kind of crap that makes everyday consumers crazy and drives those of us in the marketing world to drink heavily <Ok … more heavily then we may normally do>.
Dear David at Comcast,
I don’t want you to promise me you will keep innovating I would like you to promise me you will show up at 10 when you say you will fix my TV so I can watch Oprah.
Sincerely,
XCustomer.
I have the utmost respect for Jeff Goodby and Goodby Silverstein (Comcast’s ad agency) but this is kind of nuts. I guess I can take some solace in that a Comcast representative confirmed that this is actually a Goodby, Siegel+Gale, and other agencies brain trust endeavor.
(although I would tend to blame Siegel+Gale as having been paid a boatload of money and arriving at some unbelievably “insightful in presentation but unrealistic in practicality” conclusion)
Well.
I guess if they spend enough money it will work.
Spend enough and people will forget Comcast and only remember XFinity.
Here’s the deal. Every day they will still be delivering the same ole same ole (which ain’t so hot). Therefore, in the end they will have spent gobs of money on this new “brand” and achieve exactly the same results.
Some would tend to believe this is a definition of insanity. I just tend to believe this is a stupid idea.
Anyway.
And wouldn’t it have been cheaper if they had all sat in a conference room contemplating their navels?
Heck.
Same result.
Less expense.
And you get to see everyone’s belly button.