I have been obsessed lately with the idea of designing clothes. It is strange really, because I really lack the patience and meticulousness (is that even a word?) to be a seamstress or tailor. But still I dream of the designing. Of effortless creation (like you see when you watch Project Runway or the shows on HGTV).

Then I saw this post from Seth and was really stuck by this quote:

"Tweaking, making and building are human acts, ones that are very easy to forget about as we sign up to become cogs in the giant machinery of consumption and production."

How true! I get to build a bit at work, if you count PowerPoint presentations, but nothing really beats making and building something that is real. It is a very human desire and capability - and one that, in my impatience, I should make sure I don't lose.

A colleague of mine said this the other day (in the context of some technical issue he was dealing with) and I thought it good advice for other areas of life as well. Sometimes you have to pick your battles and some are just not worth fighting. Other ones, are worth overcoming the impossible for.

What's the worst thing that could happen? It probably isn't as bad as you think (or as likely).

Ryan Sims from Virb.com spoke at WebVisions. One of the things he talked about was a matter of taste and talent, in which he showed a graph inspired by Ira Glass, of NPR's The American Life fame.

Along the top is a line slightly angled up the represented the degree that one has taste. Even early in ones career, in Ryan's case graphic design and visual arts, he had good taste. It has certainly gotten better, but natural talent and inclination made him start out pretty high. The next line is more of a steep slope and represents talent. It starts low and over time, with what Ira calls an incredible "volume of work," improve to the point where it can approach the taste line. In other words, you have the ability to produce work you are truly proud of. Ryan said that he wished he had been taught that earlier in his career.

To hear Ira explain it himself, see this video below:


So many artists, writers, bloggers (ahem), fail to live up to their own standards. But rather than getting discouraged we must press on (or post on) and remember what Penelope Trunk said:

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

"I could never start or run a company. I don't have the killer instinct. I'd rather observe and criticize those who do."
- said jokingly by a friend (a business strategy professor) at a recent dinner party

Perhaps I am letting this entrepreneurial bug bloom into a full-blown infection, but I have a growing concern about business professionals. That as a group, we don't know much about business.

I think there are some great marketeers out there (I consider myself one of them) that fail to realize the importance of sales channels, innovation, and who have never talked to a customer to find out why they bought and what would make them recommend the product or service to a friend.

There are great product designers, who are still designing products. Widgets who do some function or the other (usually designed by using the rear-view mirror of pre-established categories which can be analyzed by third-party researchers and are supported by big name consultants), but not solutions that fundamentally change industries or have a real meaningful impact on the people who use the products.

There are fantastic accounts, quality managers, documentation control professionals, IT managers, and "do-ers" all over the company that define what "doing the right thing" is for their respective functions, but may miss the mark entirely in terms of understanding how their role fits in to the value chain that customers are willing to pay for.

However, having these guys read a book or attend a presentation where the executives try to define the business levers of the business doesn't quite solve the problem. What people need is real experiential learning. In order to know how to run a business (and most everyone in an organization does to some extent as they influence the outcome of the whole), people should run a business.

I think every academic environment should have an entrepreneurship class where people have to develop a real product and sell it to real customers by the end of the course. Not talk about it. Not read about others (although this can be useful), but really do it.

Google and 3M both have well publicized programs where they let their engineers spent some portion of their time on undirected research and development aimed at bringing new innovations to the company. I am wondering if the same thing couldn't exist in other functions. What if a company's marketing team had to spent 10% of their time marketing a non-profit to learn guerilla techniques and how to write more passionate copy? Perhaps everyone in roles which naturally add more structure and process to the company should spent time in sales roles trying to navigate through those layers of progress once they are entrenched, and likewise, someone in sales had to spend some time helping to design the new product introduction process to ensure quality products at the end of the line.

Entrepreneurism teaches a pragmatism, a sense of urgency (impatience), and prioritization that would be quite a culture shock to many professional business people. Is it "killer instinct," or is it just business?

Great post the other day from James Wood about Andrew Jackson. Think about the toughest person you know. The person who played injured. The person who overcame adversity. Then, go read this post. You may put President Jackson on the top of your list.

"Brick walls exist to prove how much you really want something. They are only barriers to those who don't want it bad enough. They are there for the OTHER people."

This is a paraphrase from a lecture from beloved professor with terminal cancer who provided his "Last Lecture" on achieving dreams which is now a website, book, and Diane Sawyer interview.

Highly recommend watching the video at the link above.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
- Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is messy. You have freedom of assembly and you get people protesting and disrupting a perfectly good Olympic Torch relay through London or Paris. You give your users control of their content and they’ll design ugly products, use your software in unexpected ways (breaking it, by the way), and may even enable some third-party tools or hacks that disrupt or undermine your business model. Build a community on your website and you may have people criticize the company or its management. Post a blog and people will comment and disagree with you.

Freedom in itself isn't disruptive though. The thing that creates the real chaos around freedom is popularity and passion. Only if people read your blog will they comment. Only if people are aware of your human rights practices will they protest you winning the bid to host the Olympic games. Only if they use your site and love portions of it, will they take the time to object to the parts they hate. They may criticize, but at least they care.

Freedom is messy indeed. It identifies those things that are relevant. In a world without freedom, you can’t easily tell what is really important to people.

And of course, feel free to post your violent disagreement in a comment.

Bert Decker has published his annual list of the best and worst communicators of 2007. The best, mostly because they have gained fame or recognition, almost exclusively because they could communicate better than others in the field, were Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee, Dr. Mehmet Oz (of You, the User Manual), and good ol' Al Gore (who now can claim to have invented the internet and global warming, but I digress). His top picks for worst communicator was Alberto Gonzales (former Attorney General whose credits include "several controversies" and "allegations of perjury"), Michael Vick (professional athlete, animal lover, and role model - ha!), and Robert Eckert (Mattel chairman caught in toy recall).

I catch a common theme here. I suspect all of the top communicators keep their body language in check, dress the part, and have pleasing tone and pace to their speech. They have credibility in their fields and avoid (at least publicly) reputation disparaging controversies and crimes. But most of all, they have something to say. Something they are passionate about (which is hard to fake in today's media-saturated, cynical world). The ones on the bottom list showed a total lack of empathy for their audience (their customers, fans, voters/taxpayers, employees, etc).

So, as you and I think about our communications for the coming year, perhaps it is better to focus on the things that are worth saying. Develop true convictions about the content of our speech and true empathy for the audiences and individuals to whom we speak, and let the rest take care of itself.

Maybe one of you will top the list next year!

I am back from my winter hibernation and ready to post! In some ways, blogging is an expression that is akin to singing. My voice is rested and I have some things to sing about.

I have enjoyed people's different posts and approaches to New Year's Resolutions for 2008.

• Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, wants you to set goals and enlist others (via his Facebook application, cleverly named "Goal Post") to keep you accountable.


• My friend, Lisa, is determined to focus on 9 or so concepts this year, short enough that she can capture each on a Post-It Note.


• Penelope Trunk, of Brazen Careerist fame, says pick just one goal (and really commit to it).


• Others, like the folks at Andy Wibbels' BlogWild, have suggested picking a theme, instead of a laundry list of resolutions (destined to be ignored come January 7th).


• Ali Edwards, a gifted visual artist and scrapbooker, suggested selecting a word for the year. Her's is "Vitality." Here is everyone else's who responded to her challenge. I, of course, love the custom product tie-in possibilities for a one word resolution!

For myself, I am following the general gist above and selecting fewer things to focus on, making sure they are specific and attainable, and asking for your help.

My resolutions this year are simple. The personal ones including celebrating my 15th wedding anniversary this Summer in some memorable way and some specific ones for my family. The business ones include the successful management of a huge project at work and launching a new offering from Creative Outlet Labs.

However, there are two goals that I'd like to accomplish this year with the help of this community.

1. I'd like to learn how to draw one-frame cartoons. As the cartoon above illustrates, I am a fan of Hugh MacLeod (warning: some of his cartoons are not family-friendly) and wish I had thought about drawing on the back of business cards first, as I think it is brilliant format. Not only that, but I can try out my new Christmas gift from my husband, a Wacom tablet. This year, I want to have some blog posts that are just cartoons that I have drawn.

You can help with this in a number of ways: encouraging my early attempts that I might post here with positive comments/trackbacks and sending me your cartoon ideas (I understand that is how Scott Adams has gotten most of his Dilbert material for years). I will never be a professional cartoonist, but I'd like to be able to find new ways to communicate insights on business, innovation, and life... and cartoon drawing is it.

2. I'd like to make 1 million people smile. I mean be personally responsible for enabling 1 million people to have a positive, encouraging moment in time. I have some specific ideas of how to accomplish this, so stay tuned for more specific requests in the coming weeks.

I hope you are already off to a pulse-racing, mind-blowing new year!

We have a friend who likes spaghetti and marinara sauce, but only in the right ratio. He has more than once commented that the key to a good meal is all about the sauce to noodle ratio (his favors the sauce).








By the way, you can buy a reprint of the vintage poster of "Pluck Makes Luck" at art.com.

I ran across this quote from Arnold Toynbee and thought I would pass it along:


"It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself, but at some more ambitious goal beyond it."



May all your dreams be BIG! Want it all and even if you fall short you have touched the skies!

Guy Kawasaki's Garage Ventures popularized the concept of The Art of the Start. Now you can see a cool presentation online to reach your own inspiration point.

It is important for companies and individuals to know what they are about. I have written before about the importance of being responsive to customers or clients and that is absolutely true, but it does have to balanced by a discipline of deciding to do some things well.

I had an illustration of this a few weeks ago. I had contacted the support group at 37Signals whose produce Basecamp I have used to manage a variety of projects for myself, my employer, and clients. I highly recommend this tool and I know they are always develping new offerings. I suggested to them that they develop a new interactive, collaborative scheduling service. The idea would be that it would allow a person to set up a calendar of events and allow people to RSVP. However, it would be more than an Evite (which is another tool I love and use all the time). The innovation that I was suggesting was that the tool would allow multiple events to be managed from one interface and that it would include an element of capacity planning. Let's say, a hair studio wanted to use a tool like this to accept online appointments. They could enter the number of stylists available throughout the day and the software would prevent people from overbooking, perhaps suggesting alternates that might work or managing a waiting list. I thought this would be cool for a variety of their small business customers and I knew that I could use it right away for a project I am working on for the Westside MOPS.

But, I digress. I sent the idea to them in some detail. I received a response back that surprised me. I thought that I would get a "thank you and we appreciate your ideas" email that would be that. Instead, I got a personal email back from Jason at 37Signals that read "We will not be building the software you suggested. We only build things we can use and we wouldn't use this."

Needless to say, I was a little taken back. I send them back an equally curt response saying how unfortunate it was that they would not be taking action on this and that I would have scheduled time to talk with them in more detail about the idea, but sadly they don't use scheduling software. But, the whole thing got me thinking.

Here is a company that is very well-respected and builds great tools. They got a suggestion for what would be a great product (in my humble opinion) and they said, "no." No, because it wasn't something they were passionate about. No, because, perhaps, it didn't fit into their vision of who uses their tools and why.

Although their response to me could have been a bit more respectful, I can see and appreciate their point. If they pour their resources into making Basecamp and other tools I use better, then I can't really complain.

So, my "collaborative scheduling" idea is out there. Somebody should develop this tool! If you know of any offerings like this on the market, I am very interested in learning about them. To learn of other product ideas or offerings that I have put on the curb to recycle, see Invention Recycling.