Posts Tagged theory
why i love trance music so much
image by scootie, flickr artist
i like trance music. a lot. in fact i’d say that i truly love it. the reasons why are many, but aside from being good music it’s the trance community surrounding it which makes it so special to me.
in a musical genre categorized by well defined characteristics, the level of innovation and collaboration is off the charts. to use such common musical elements and structures as other artists and rearrange them to form entirely new tracks takes a great deal of creativity. add to your original mix countless mashups and remixes from other artists and your EP is — the vast majority of the time — largely filled with someone else’s work.
what i love so much about trance is that these artists not only create their music but they actively invite people to take it and make it better — to put their own spin on it (sorry for the pun).
the business world could use a little trance influence.
you never see the giants of industry partnering together to create something special. when was the last time you saw facebook and google working hand-in-hand on anything? or microsoft and apple? or sony and samsung? for that matter, sometimes we even have trouble getting our own internal teams to collaborate together — like information security and the end users.
we were always taught that competition makes everyone better, and there may be some truth to that. business has no doubt followed in that tradition ever since history can remember. but what if we took the time to collaborate a little more? what if we partnered more between business and charity for instance? what kind of mashups and remixes could we make?
that would be some kind of beautiful music.
business as a video game
image from softsupplier.com
there has been a bit more attention paid to video games since it became a multi-billion dollar industry. and even though sales were down last year, those figures don’t include many of the emerging facets of the industry such as downloadable content (game add-ons and such) or mobile gaming (angry birds alone raked in $12m). with that much money flowing around, it’s hard to ignore it.
but what if we didn’t just analyze video games as a business and instead thought about how business can be more like a video game? jane mcgonigal gave a fantastic talk at TED in 2010 pointing out what gamers are good at, and why they spend so much time playing them. why not try shaping our businesses to engage and leverage these ‘virtuosos’ as jane calls them?
the revolution will not be tweeted? think again.
image source: treycopeland.com
i have to say this right up front: malcolm gladwell is my boy. i’ve read his books, i’ve watched his talks, and i’ve read his other pieces in the new yorker (his article on concussions in football is a must-read). so, with that being said, it pains me to say this but i think gladwell was wrong in his assumptions about the inability of twitter and facebook to rally people around an idea to promote social change.
in his recent article for the new yorker, gladwell states: “the revolution will not be tweeted”. i say, if the revolution will not be tweeted, ask gap how their new logo redesign efforts went.
now i know that malcolm gladwell is talking specifically about social activism more so than he is about anything else. he even mentions that social media can be used quite well for other situations that don’t really require people to risk much of themselves in order to do it. but if that alone isn’t a revolution, then i don’t know what is. because if there’s one thing that we’ve seen from gap dumping their logo redesign (and from facebook bending to the will of the user community and making changes to their privacy settings on multiple occasions), it’s that the authority is no longer the authority anymore.
organizations are responsible to more than their boardroom now. they’re responsible to their clients; they’re responsible to their people; they’re responsible to just about anyone that owns an internet-connected device. public opinion has always been important, but even more so in such a web-integrated world where one person’s tweet can turn into a meme that instantly spreads across the globe. it’s a lesson that organizations are going to have to learn, and learn quickly, if they’re going to be successful in this new world.
the revolution will not be tweeted? think again, gladwell.
it already has.
what would you do with 8 hours a week?
image by steve.grosbois, flickr artist
you work for 32 hours from monday through thursday. you wake up on friday morning with an extra spring in your step, looking forward to the upcoming weekend. but today isn’t your ‘normal’ friday; today is different.
instead of working on client deliverables, or manning the grill at a local restaurant, or waiting tables down at the pub, you get 8 hours to do whatever you’d like to do.
what would you do with it?
would you start work on that big idea you’ve always had? would you enroll in a culinary course in your area? would you learn how to brew your own beer? … or would you play farmville on facebook? or sleep in until noon? or drink some free cold ones that your friends bring you out back behind the bar?
if you’re an employer, why not give your employees 8 hours a week and see what they do with it? trust me, you’ll recognize the ones who are worthwhile and the ones who aren’t very quickly.
then, invest heavily in the ones that are because they’re going to take your organization places. they’re natural born world-shakers.
solution-based approach vs. problem-based approach
image by flickr artist, Dunechaser
there’s a distinct difference between a solution-based approach and a problem-based approach. let me give you an example of what i mean.
i was watching a show on pbs that was talking about battleground mobility — from the time of egyptian chariots through to today’s modern, technologically advanced tanks. i found the bit about the development of the tank to be quite interesting.
during the first world war, trench warfare had become the status quo. miles and miles of fronts in europe and russia covered in 6ft wide trenches. it made fighting a conventional land battle extremely deadly, and the allies were finding out just how difficult it would be to take down the german war machine. until a technologically curious winston churchill had an idea.
competition vs. collaboration — how far can you jump?
image by unclebumpy, flickr artist
i recently came across a post on wired.com’s science section about american bullfrogs and their leaping ability. in short: when in the wild, bullfrogs have a certain expectation of maximum leaping distance which scientists have previously measured at 4.3 meters. however, at a county fair in california’s calaveras county their bullfrogs have been known to leap over 7 meters when involved in their frog jumping competitions. that’s quite an improvement!
in business, it seems everyone is focused on collaboration; on finding synergies and maximizing productivity. but what if we increasingly looked not towards collaboration on our teams, but towards competition? how would the game change then?
ideas do not occur in a bubble
image by Reini68, flickr artist
when was the last time you had a good idea? one of those eureka moments?
i remember back in college my roommate and i were discussing which of the honey bunches of oats ‘flavors’ we enjoyed the most. after trying pretty much all of them, i told him with conviction that hbo with strawberries was my favorite. i said: ”the thing i love about it is how your milk turns strawberry-flavored afterwards.”
immediately i thought, ‘hey — they actually make that stuff!’ and i shouted out with such joy, “dude! what if i make strawberry milk, and then pour that into my hbo with strawberries? it’s double the strawberry! how awesome would that be?!”
the very next time we went to the grocery store i bought some strawberry nesquik mix and put my theory to the test. naturally it ended up being horrendous, but it was still a good idea at the time.
“the common man goes nowhere” — herb brooks
image courtesy of the herb brooks training center
“you can’t be common, the common man goes nowhere; you have to be uncommon.” — legendary hockey coach, herb brooks
of all of herb brooks’ quotes, i love this one the most. i don’t know that it’s something i do intentionally, or if it’s something in my natural programming, but i don’t do common work.
over the last week or so, i’ve heard some pretty high praises from my client. the program manager said of me in a management meeting, “john scardino, that dude is phenomenal.” and just about a week after that comment was made, another member of my client’s organization said, “not to put any pressure on you, but you’re going to save [this project].”
i only know how to do things one way: the best way that i know how to do it. so, to me, i’m not so sure that i’m really doing anything that’s truly special. i see coworkers all the time logging long hours and doing a lot of great things. the stuff my officemate, m. gregory white I, is doing makes me shake my head in astonishment. i say it no matter where i go: there are better people than me. but there’s something that seems to separate me from the rest.
i’m uncommon.
this old house
my parents just bought a new house, and by new i mean old. in philadelphia, every house is old — many of which have not been renovated since the 60s. so the weekend before thanksgiving, i went up to philly to take care of some errands and, while there, to check out the house and paint the upstairs bedrooms for my parents.
not bad, right? wrong.
the new house has popcorn ceilings with … sparkles? in it. and both the downstairs as well as the back room upstairs have floor to ceiling mirrors which one can only assume is to ‘make the room look larger’. to me, it all makes the room look ‘horrible’. but such was the style back in the day (…i suppose).
there’s a slight problem, however: namely the fact that it’s now the future and such designs are way outdated, look bad, and worse yet are hard to change. painting the ceilings was not fun. first, the popcorn soaks up all the paint so you end up using far more than you would have used on a normal, flat surface. second, it falls apart on you. i know this too well. my brother and myself both had paint covered pieces of the ceiling fall off and into our mouths. (yes, it would have made sense to have a mask on, but we didn’t exactly have an OSHA approved setup.) the mirrors? they’re still up there. it would have cost too much money to have them removed, and then you have to worry about what’s behind those mirrors once you do take them down. beyond the cost to remove them, you may incur even more costs in fixing whatever is behind the mirrors. it’s not an agile design for the interior of a house.
much like designing a house, you may want to be careful when you are making design choices for your organization. you will be tempted to put a lot of processes in place and begin to adopt “industry best practices” from competitors in your marketplace. i say to exercise caution because the more processes you have, by definition, the less agile your organization is. processes reduce your ability to make changes, and therefore your ability to innovate.
don’t get me wrong – some processes are important. you do still need a ceiling, and you certainly need walls. before you go making choices, however, think about the future. are you making the same choices based on what everyone else sees as the newest fad, or trend? are you making decisions that are restricting your organization’s ability to adapt to changes? are you going to be stuck with popcorn on the ceiling that’s hard to change and mirrors on the walls that are expensive to get rid of?
don’t let “this old house” turn into “this old organization.” always plan for the future.
always plan on success
image by csitscenter, flickr collection
i was in a meeting recently with a senior associate in my firm, and spent the vast amount of the 4 hours we had together furiously taking notes. unfortunately i couldn’t write as fast as he was talking, so i ended up not capturing all of the information that was there for the taking. for the most part, the vast majority of the time was spent discussing our earned value management capabilities at booz allen. we did talk some about business in general and building capabilities that can grow and expand, and it was from this discussion that my largest, boldest, “even used a highlighter on it” note came from. he said something to me that made a lot of sense:
always plan on success.
it’s a great quote. you may mistakingly take it as an inspirational message, but that’s not at all what he intended. it was actually meant to scare us, and remind us that we need to be prepared to succeed. to be successful in business, it’s not enough to have a good idea. even having passion and being a hard worker isn’t enough. when you’re trying to stand up or start up something brand new, you have to have certain things in place to handle the change in environment. nothing can kill a good idea quite like being unprepared to succeed. if you aren’t ready to expand with the business, you’ll undoubtedly experience growing pains – much like wearing a shoe that’s two sizes too small.
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