Quotations

He wrapped himself in quotations-
as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
- Rudyard Kipling

Expert Opinion Strikes Again! Beware!

A recent Op-Ed piece in The Boston Globe prompted me to write a letter that was published in today's Globe.

I happen to believe that our planet may in fact be warming and it may be caused in part by human activity. But arguments along the line of "we are experts, trust us" tend to push me in the opposite direction. Experts have been wrong on so many issues for so long, that I've become quite skeptical in my old age. Before we ask people to make sacrifices, 'the experts' need to do a better job convincing us that they have the facts right.

Here's my letter to the Globe:

John P. Holdren's argument (August 4) for convincing people that global warming is real and caused by humans boils down to trusting the experts at the National Academy of Sciences, academic earth science departments, and some Nobel Prize winners.

But we skeptics have seen these types of people be wrong time and time again.
RememberY2K?
How about the big overpopulation fear? In 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote "In the 1970sand 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.

Here are a few other famous expert predictions:
"There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home." KenOlsen, Digital Equipment.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -Charles H. Duell, Director, U.S. Patent office, 1899

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." RobertMillikan, Nobel Prize winner in Physics, 1923

"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible." Lord Kelvin, Royal Society. 1895

The list is endless.
We need far more proof before we enact draconian policy changes based on weak science.
"Trust us" doesn't cut it.

Face to Face in an Online World

In this digital age, with better and better online tools, why is that people continue to meet face to face to solve problems, even though it often means time spent traveling and some time wasted in meetings? Why go to all the trouble and expense to sit around in big conference rooms and amphitheaters, if you can sit at you desk and get the same information? Wouldn’t it be easier to move it all online? I wrote on this topic in February, but it’s still on my mind. Several reasons for the continued existence of face to face brainstorming seem to be:

1. Nuances are explored better face to face. Recently one of my clients said "We sell food products. Food is an emotional purchase (nurturing, pleasurable, guilt, etc.). We need face to face interaction to fully explore the nuances of human emotion associated with food.”

A client in the cosmetics business said essentially the same thing. “Online might be good for cost saving ideas, or maybe scientific discussions, but it is less effective for building on subtle consumer insights.”

2. Random associations are catalyzed. Things happen in a meeting that you don’t anticipate. Side conversations, confidential asides that we wouldn’t say online, accidents, random meetings in the hall. Serendipity is enhanced.

3. We crave human interaction. We like to meet others who are grappling with the same issues we are. Who share our values (or don’t). Malcolm Gladwell wrote another fascinating article in the May 12, 2008 New Yorker. Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s former chief technologists, hosts “invention sessions” face to face with brilliant scientists and engineers who go to great bother to convene in one place. (Ironically, Microsoft advertises “Go to Meeting” heavily.)

4. There’s a teambuilding effect that occurs when we solve problems together.

5. It makes a lasting impression. Online interactions are fleeting. A meeting is an event that has lasting associations. Conferences and seminars are more popular than ever, especially for techies.

6. It can be pleasurable. As discussed in my previous post, the creative act can induce a kind of euphoria that you can’t get online.

7. We need to keep it in-house. Sometimes we need to keep things to ourselves. The open innovation trend is terrific for infusing new ideas into moribund companies, but for decisions and directions, we might need to play it close to the vest.

Full disclosure- I make my living facilitating brainstorming meetings. I think that there is a place for online idea generation, especially as a supplement to face to face get togethers.

Pandora Rave

Last post was on Panera. This one's on Pandora. You've probably already heard of it, but if not, and you like music, it's a really terrific website (www.pandora.com)

"Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on the individual song choices — approval or disapproval — which Pandora takes into account for future selections." - wikipedia

I used to listen to my stereo while I worked out. Now I just put on Pandora and hear all sorts of new tunes that I like.

Cause Marketing at Panera Bread

Recently put on a workshop for the marketing team at Panera Bread in St. Louis. Although I've stopped in Panera stores many times in my travels, I had no idea how involved they are with their communities. They do a terrific job and are very sincere in their desire to build relationships with worthwhile local charities.

Here's a brief summary of their activities from their website:
Operation Dough-Nation Programs
Since our founding, Panera Bread and its franchisees have been active in our communities. Operation Dough-Nation was founded in 1992 to formalize our commitment to community involvement. Since then, it has grown to include four major activities: Community Breadbox™ cash collection boxes, the Day-End Dough-Nation™ program, Panera/SCRIP Card fundraising and participation in community events.

Besides the obvious benefits to the community and the organizations, these programs help Panera by building their brand awareness, generating trial, and creating an emotional bond with their customers.

Beyond that, these are great programs for attracting, motivating, and retaining employees who exude the kind of spirit that Panera is trying to foster. Some franchisees involve their employees in the charitable events. One museum gave free passes to the employees and their families for a special day at the museum.

Maybe it's me, but I wish these kinds of events received more publicity. And I wish their were really good metrics for identifying good programs and their results. Maybe there are, but I didn't get that feeling in St. Louis.

New Product Concepts

Having worked "in the boiler room of innovation" for the past twenty years, I've seen cool new ideas die a premature death because either senior management or key customers don't grasp the potential of the idea. They are presented with a fairly dry concept statement - words on paper.

I recently facilitated a session at a very cool industrial design studio in San Francisco, Astro Studios. They are located in a funky old auto glass shop South of Market Street. The goal was to develop a product vision for the year 2011 for one of their clients.

What was cool about this work was format for the output. It was truly a vision for the future.

Here are a couple of older examples, one from Astro and a slightly older, but more polished one from Ideo. They created a vision and then posted it on YouTube, for others to see. Great way to sell the concepts and get developers on board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyQ_NWt_sjA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrzeiUvDZog

Extinction

Our cute little four year old grandson recently asked his Mommy "Who is Clark Kent?"
Mom replied: "He is a man who goes into a phone booth and then he changes into Superman!"
Four year old: "What's a phone booth?"

Makes me wonder: in the future what will four year olds be asking about? Cell Phones? Cigarettes? AIDS? Gas Stations? Pills you swallow? DVDs?

Our Strangely Unifying Passtime

Over 50 years ago, Robert E. Kelly wrote the following:
"Folks of all colors and creeds, from all walks of life, in all age groups, become God's people in the bleachers of a ball park on a Sunday afternoon. And the sense of community that fills the souls of fans who share a ball game does not entirely end at the exit gates. In bars, strangers talk about the sport and its heroes and chuckle together over the antics of a personality. Board meetings begin after the score of that day is announced. Kids copy the style of favorites, on playgrounds and on school diamonds.

Such people are the lovers of baseball who sense the beauty of the sport- its strangely unifying characteristics. They enjoy its true heroes, it's strategies, perhaps most of all, its peaceful and nonviolent solutions. They read aobut it, analyze it, worry about it."
-Baseball for the Hot Stove League- Robert E. Kelly, 1955.

Play ball! It's spring! Hope springs eternal!

Millennial Madness

Just finished up facilitating a management retreat for a regional PR/Advertising firm. All of the senior managers (ages 35 to 50) were complaining about the work ethic among their young employees. There are 80 million so-called "Millennials" in the U.S. who were born between 198o and 1995.

My client was struggling with how to deal with young employees who apparently don't know that they have to produce results to get ahead.

According to 60 Minutes (November 11, 2007):
They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in the belief you can, take your job and shove it. As correspondent Morley Safer reports, corporate America is so unnerved by all this that companies like Merrill Lynch, Ernst & Young, Disney and scores of others are hiring consultants to teach them how to deal with this generation that only takes "yes" for an answer.

The creative director told the story of a mother who called on behalf of her daughter to get some background information on the firm. "Have her call me," was his response. Bravo! Maybe a little backbone is the answer?

Is this really a big problem? My guess is that this might be a problem with some people born in that timeframe, but most young people are pretty much like people were in previous generations. Hard working, smart, nice people are out there.

Having said that, to the extent that such coddled folks are out there feeling entitled, maybe a good ol' fashioned recession wouldn't be ALL bad.

Brain Baloney

This may be all baloney, but....heh, that's what blogging for. To try on something new.


Our brains are full of constant chatter. If you think about what goes through your brain during your waking hours, it’s fairly amazing. It seems to me that most of the chatter in our noggin is driven by emotions. It also seems to me that a lot of this brain chatter are things we invent to make sense of our daily life.

For example, if we have another couple over to our house and they never reciprocate, I tell myself that either they do not entertain at their home. Or I find something about them that I do not like and tell myself that I really didn’t want to be their friend anyway. (Of course, if we do get an invitation, I readily accept.)

There’s an interesting column in the current National Geographic Adventure by Laurence Gonzalez that got me to thinking about all this and why it has far more important consequences than our insignificant social life on Cape Cod.

Apparently Steven Pinker, a noted psychologist, says that our brains contain a ‘baloney generator” that offers up explanations of our behavior that might have nothing to do with reality. These are stories that we tell ourselves to help us deal with the world around us. They help us decide how to act in the future.

It’s as if we live in a dream world of baloney that we have created about what is happening around us.

For example, my personal baloney generator told me that any money that I send to New Orleans to help Katrina victims will not reach the proper people because there is too much inefficiency, and maybe corruption, in the charitable organizations that had been set up. Is it true? I don’t know. But it’s a story I tell myself so that I don’t have to actually part with any cash. (I'm not proud of this, by the way).

Life is a jumble of these stories we tell ourselves to make sense of things. We use them for everything. When the stories reflect the real world, we do well. When they don’t, we find ourselves in trouble. But we rarely take the time to examine them to see if they fit with reality.

I once quit a job because I thought my boss didn't respect me. In my exit interview, I found out that none of that was true. Just brain baloney that I'd generated based on a grab bag of circumstantial evidence.

The tsunami that occurred in 2004 is a tragic example. As Gonzalez reports, “Officials were surprised to discover that all 250 of the isolated Jarawara tribe had survived. They had little contact with the outside world. But their folklore told them to head for high ground when the earth shakes and the sea retreats. They survived because they heeded that message.

Supposedly sophisticated people died because the story that they told themselves, that they were on vacation on a beautiful sunny beach and nothing bad could happen to them, was not true. Apparently there are videos of people laughing and playing as the water starts to gather around their ankles. As I said, tragic.

So, maybe some of the stories we tell ourselves do not serve us well. They might cause us to ignore potential threats.

But they might also be the cause of some of our unhappiness. We might have a mental model that we don’t fit in at work, or that our boss does not like us because when he passed us in the hall he didn’t smile, or that our co-workers are lazy because they don’t put in has many hours as me. They might cause us to moan and groan about the unfairness of things, when in fact, everything is just fine.

Not sure what to make of all this, but maybe from time to time we should examine the baloney that our brain is generating. Confront reality. Maybe even invent new mental models and try them for awhile. Create some new brain baloney. “My boss really likes and respects me.” “Those guys in creative really produce some great work.” It might make us happier people.

Difficult People

Just got off conference call with the leaders of an advertising/pr firm that is growing from a regional to national agency. Going to be doing a management and staff retreat with them this month. The theme of the retreat will be how to foster collaboration and respect within their organization as they grow and as they integrate their functions to better serve their clients.

One of the retreat modules will be Dealing with Difficult People. The irony, of course, is that the Chairman of the firm is, by his own admission "the personification of a 'difficult person" (if that makes any sense). He's difficult for his staff because he's demanding. He's demanding because he has high standards, is very intelligent, has a keen sense of the human condition, and wants his agency to create great work for its clients. He challenges people. He brings out the best in them, whether they like it or not. He is relentless in his pursuit of creativity and quality.

He's not alone. Time and again I've seen organizations run by people who are in some ways difficult. MacArthur and Patton are the obvious military examples. But corporate America has them too. Sergio Zyman at Coca-Cola might be the poster child. What is it about these leaders who are often called arrogant, but who lead their organizations to do great things?
Are they smarter? I don't think so. Work harder? Not necessarily. Jerks? Sometimes, but jerks don't last long.

The key ingredient that these leaders possess is courage. Courage to confront issues that others would rather avoid. Courage is often associated with physical situations, but real leadership calls for courage to create and communicate. It is rarely written or talked about.

In 1973, Rollo May wrote a book called "The Courage to Create". In it he says: A curious paradox characteristic of every kind of courage here confronts us. It is the seeming contradiction that we must be fully committed, but we must be fully aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. This dialectic ...is characteristic of the highest types of courage.

They may be "difficult people", but I like working with them.

brand brand brand brand ad brandeum

(Naming cont'd)- Just in case you happen to think "Brand Union" is actually a good name, you might want to consider that one essential step in the naming process is to look at competitive names.

If they had done so, Enterprise IG would have found Brand Design, Brand Doctor, Brand Evolve, Brand Evolution, Brand Forward, Brand Juice, Brand Ladder, Brand Link, Brand Mavericks, Brand Mechanics, Brand People, Brand Positioning, Brand Salt, Brand Scope, Brand Sequence, Brand Slinger, Brand Solutions (Ugh!), Brand Taxi, Brand Velocity, Brand Institute, BrandIron, BrandEquity, Brandopoly, Brand A, Brand Diva, Brandstorm, Brand Up, Brand Now, and probably many more. And those are just ones that start with "brand."

"One Hundred Monkeys," by contrast, got it right.

Cobbler's Shoes

Just a follow-up on earlier post "Naming Malpractice". Those wonderful folks at Enterprise IG (a truly terrible name in and of itself), who in turn begat such gems as Naviant, Telegy, Telescent, Azurex, and Meritel, have re-named themselves Grand Union. Sorry, I mean Brand Onion. Oops, I mean Brand Union.

Gee, a London-based company positions itself in the global marketplace with a distinctly British image! How clever! May the sun never set on any its empire of offices.

Naming Malpractice

Just read a piece in BusinessWeek's SmallBiz magazine, "Namestorming" (Dec 2007/Jan 2008) about how to come up with a compelling, memorable name.

The author quotes the wonderful folks who brought us such doozies as Agilent, Aquent, Livent, Levilent, Naviant, Telegent, Telegy, Meritel and other empty soulless names. Companies like Landor, Interbrand, and Enterprise IG charge corporate lemmings six figures to come up with crap like this! PT Barnum would be proud!

These so-called experts make it seem like a terribly challenging thing to come up with a compelling memorable name- something best left to experts like themselves. Here's a 1999 quote from someone at Landor "We still don't know how compelling a brand Yahoo! will be 10 years from now. I sense a real missed opportunity." Oh yeah! Agilent would have been a whole lot better!

And the unmitigated arrogance of these people! "We're not really interested in what a client wants," says one famous namer. Oh, yes, he's the one who came up with Aquent.

Well, gotta go brush my teeth and rinse with Aquent. (Oh! They are a Temp agency? Nevermind.)

Some Current Work

Working with a new computer chip company to develop a compelling brand name. The wireless industry is their target. Their new technology will enable them to make faster chips at lower costs.

Facilitating idea generation session to help a consumer products R&D group set priorities that align with the company's marketing plan.

Working with a unique startup company to develop a marketing plan. Their mission is to provide charitable organizations with a funding vehicle by creating unique customizable footwear.

Working with a marketing/advertising/PR firm to foster teamwork and innovation among staff members as it transitions from a regional to national audience.

Working with a market research firm on their online idea generation tool.

Putting on an Innovation Workshop for a food service company

Roof tops in the South End of Boston last weekend.

Hasty Pudding

Friday night we went with friends to the Hasty Pudding Theatrical show in Harvard Square. A welcome change from the serious, technology oriented, politically correct world we live in. The Pudding was formed in 1795 and has been producing shows with an all-male cast since 1844. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JP Morgan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jack Lemmon and many others have been members of Hasty Pudding. It's totally silly and corny and refreshing. How many institutions have endured through Civil War, World War, Depressions, and social change so successfully? My view- to endure, it helps to be silly. Long live Monty Python, Dumb and Dumber, and the Pudding!

Crash-B's

Pretty crazy event- indoor rowing competition on machines. I WAS going to row Sunday in the world famous C.R.A.S.H. - B's ("Charles River All Star Has Beens") at Boston University. Rowers come from all over the world to row on machines. It's nuts. I left without registering. Check out the video- it speaks for itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43EAICgt1Qc
I love to row my Alden single scull in Orleans on Cape Cod early in the morning as the sun is just rising over the town cove. Most days it is quiet and still. I love the feeling of the boat slipping quietly through the water making a small wake as I use my legs, back, and arms to propel it forward. It's a great workout. But rowing on a machine in a noisy gym with lots of people yelling and screaming? Not my thing. Seems there are two kinds of rowers. Those who like the team aspects and those who like to go it alone. I'm a social guy, but I row alone.

Online idea generation and Crowdsourcing

New online tools for idea generation have been launched in recent years. Some tools are for internal idea generation against a particular corporate challenge. Nominal rewards are offered to employees who offer an idea that gains acceptance.

"Crowdsourcing" is the new term for an open version of online idea generation. Innocentive and others have pioneered the idea of tapping into the knowledge and inventiveness of people outside the organization. Companies offer substantial rewards for solutions to problems that they have not been able to solve internally.

My question is: why do people participate? Is it for the reward or the social currency that comes from being thought of as smart and/or cool? If the reward is nominal, why would I waste my time unless I thought I would earn greater recognition from my peers and others? Would people participate without the reward?

My view is that the creative process is intrinsically fun and rewarding. People enjoy solving problems or creating new things. The reward comes from participating with others in that endeavor. For many of us, the face to face interaction is the most rewarding. When that is impractical, I can still get satisfaction if I know the other participants. If it's totally anonymous, some of the emotional benefit seems to leave the game, at least for yours truly.

IBM Ideation and Innovation Ads

IBM has run commercials making fun of ideation and innovation gurus. Both are easy targets. Ideation sessions are often facilitated by people who love the idea of novel exercises- "we really stretched their thinking." Occassionally that kind of thing is appropriate, but often it turns some of the group off. It gives ideation a bad name- making it easy to poke fun. And Innovation Gurus are easy targets as well. They come across as true believers- zealots who are focused on process, not the end result. As someone once said of Quality zealots: "They would create a life preserver made of concrete, so long as it met ISO standards."

So kudos to IBM for shaking up the Innovation Guru establishment. It definitely needs it. On the other hand, what do they offer themselves? My own experience with IBM services is limited to expensive, time consuming, wasteful data mining exercises. A total bust. But, heh, maybe they're doing something great? Now that you have our attention, Big Blue, give us some meat.