Good advice. Stay busy with what you can do. Don’t worry about what you can’t control or influence.
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“To build the relationship with your clients for the long term,” said Flavia Sparacino from SensingPlaces at a recent conference, “you may need to say ‘no’.”
"The best quality to look for in a friend is curiosity and a sense of humor." - Iris Apfel
A lot has been written about the importance of getting girl’s into math and science. I have spent a lot of time in the recent years writing about and advocating for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, especially for girls who are under-represented in these fields and careers.
I recently heard Hannah Fry’s TED talk on “The Mathematics of Love” which was funny and informative. Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer and physicist, said, “Mathemetics is the language in which God has written the universe.” Hannah was applying this language to the study of dating practices, which made for interesting insights.
But if math is a language, those of us who primarily think and speak in English, German, or Chinese have a second language to learn to understand the mysteries of the universe or the mysteries of our own social calendars.
What if we taught math as if it were a second language? We acknowledged that it required its own vocabulary and grammatic rules. We acknowledged that with practice anyone could learn it, not just the privileged few that were “good at math” (whatever that means).
I wonder if this reframing would help discouraged 4th graders to pursue math even if it was difficult at first and 7th grade girls who were good at math to feel proud that they were mastering the language of the universe, not labeled as “geeks” or “nerds” among their peers.
In his book, Art’s Principles, the founder of Gensler, Art Gensler recounts how important it is for employees to wash their own dirty dishes in the company cafeteria.
“It sends four key messages,” he wrote.
- “You respect each other as teammates.”
- “You check your ego at the door when you come to work.” No one is above doing the dishes.
- It reinforces the start-to-finish mindset required for great service (important in all enterprises, especially service businesses).
- “Every experience comes together to create what a potential or current clients thanks about your brand. Your office is one big brand environment.”
These same principles apply to other things you might do at work. If you volunteer for a committee to benefit employees (even though you aren’t in HR). If you help straighten up a conference room at the end of the meeting (even if you are not whomever might do this if you didn’t and if you don’t know, find out) If you take the time to write up some company success to share with employees so that they can learn about it and feel proud (even though you aren’t in marketing). Taking the time to get to know everyone in the office and being interested in their careers (even though you aren’t the manager). Introducing people you meet to your company and what makes you all great (even though you are not in sales).
If everyone does things that aren't their job for the good of the group, then the group is good.
"It's easier to accept others, than to change them. It's wiser to understand them, than to get angry. And most of the time, it's more fun to love 'em, than to leave 'em." -Susan Clark, founder of HeartSpark
Author and activist Valeria Kahn has spoken that her passionate advocacy being her sword and her law degree being her shield.
Others might consider their looks their sword and their sense of humor their shield. Others might list their customer relationships as their sword and their technical training as their shield.
What is your sword and shield?
According to Jeremy Duimstra from MJD Interactive, research shows that 77% of people like "Hi" better than "Hello."
"A person who won't read has not advantage over one who can't read." - Mark Twain
Stay curious, my friends.
"If you want to build a big business, solve a big problem." - Scott Cook, Intuit
Potential customers will lie. They don’t mean to, but they can’t help themselves. Find a way to test customer behavior, not customer opinion. Then you will uncover the truth.
To become great you need to compete against the best.
When I was in college, I combined majors in history and business, which necessitated a lot of writing. The professors began classes by asking that students write a minimum number of formatted pages for each assignment. After the first few, the professor then implemented a page limit. I tried not to take it personally, but I did notice a pattern. More was not always better.
Thus my love-hate relationship with editing began in earnest. And now, I think of editing as a more encompassing task and valuable talent, because I don’t see it limited to writing. Sure, we edit copy for an ad, content for a blog post, speeches or videos for length, or even these articles to match the attention span of the reader. But I am now very aware that editing is something you must do in your life overall.
Identifying which stories need to be told. Selecting the right things to focus on. Making each word and each moment of the day the highest impact possible. Taking out everything extraneous so that the important things can be achieved.
Just like editing, it is easier said than done. You’d think it would be easier to strike words from sentences or sentences from paragraphs than it was to write them in the first place, but anyone who has done it knows it is not true. Just like curation makes the museum collection, so does editing make the writer.
And in life, editing is hard. But worthwhile.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.
We think of Facebook as something personal, because it has a password and most of the content is personal in nature, but it is public. It is open space. We think the lock on the gate let’s us in, but in fact, the lock on the gate let’s us out.
We think of a public square as public space. But with headphones and heads-down mobile technology, it might be more of a private experience. Add to this augmented reality with personal interests represented and the public square might be very private.
As the lines between public and private space and information blur, what are the implications to privacy, to communication, and to the responsibility we have to our fellow users of these spaces and systems?
It used to be when someone asked for your address, they meant your street address. I know, it sounds funny now, because it is much more likely that we exchange email addresses today, or perhaps our social handles. And sometimes we are in the same place, without sharing addresses at all. I have “friends” (or are they “followers”?) on Pinterest because they were suggested based on our affinity for ridiculous shoes or fabric art (or at least that is what I assume about the algorithms that brought us together). We are now residents of the digital landscape and we might not know our own address.
This got me thinking of the implications of this to other elements of our work. If co-workers in far-flung parts of the globe use the same ERP system, website, salesforce automation tools, and data warehouse, is it like we are co-located in a single office? How does our citizenship in the digital landscape affect who we consider our “first team” (to use the language of Patrick Lencioni)? The people we might be interacting with the most (in terms of pushing and pulling information or internal customers of our work product) might be people we don’t know personally, but interact in a brokered matter through these systems.
So, both in our personal and work life it might become increasingly difficult to know our neighbors. It could be that software designers, using human design principles, might be responsible for how human and how humane, we are to each other in the future.
"It's the last two percent of a job that ensures your successful completion of the project." - Art Gensler
What if there was a real life “bull**** meter”? I’m imagining a browser plug-in that would rate the credibility of website claims by searching for the authority of the site and author, the propositions and data in the excerpt (comparing it to other credible sources online). There could also be a crowd-sourced element where individuals (with their own authority ratings) would comment on and rate the claim. It could give back a credibility rating score that people could look at. If all the reviews of a product were by employees, the credibility of the testimonial would be low. If a number of leading data scientists agree to the recidivism rate in Orange County, then it would have a high score. It would help people navigate the world of internet information overload and make sense of their world. It might also elevate the dialogue around critical issues beyond the sound byte by aggregating sound bytes (in big data fashion) to provide better and more predictive patterns.
Someone should do this. And tell me about it. You’re welcome.
"Be yourself, but always be your better self." -Karl G. Maeser
This month, I presented at the luncheon series for the Portland Chapter of the American Marketing Association (or AMA-PDX). The presentation that I delivered has been reconfigured into an eBook which is now available for free download.
This ebook outlines three approaches for finding inspiration for your business or products in the most unlikely places and shares some case studies. From Charming Charlie retail stores, to the National Basketball Association (NBA), to "So You Think You Can Dance?" on FOX, the stories illustrate how to find new approaches, broaden your perspective, and to make the most out of all of your experiences.
Feel free to share this post and the eBook with others that might be interested. You can tag me on Twitter @jenniferdavis.
"Everyone has a game plan until you are punched in the face." -Mike Tyson