All in Leadership
When you’re cooking a dish, it makes sense to have the best individual ingredients possible. It’s fair to say that the better the ingredients, the better the end product.
If you don’t, you’re putting the entire meal at risk. Not just the taste of it, but the entire experience (during and after).
It was the late 1800's and James McNeill Whistler (the man behind the painting "Whistler's Mother"), was at a party with Oscar Wilde (considered to be one of the great wits of the nineteenth century). Apparently, Wilde also had the reputation of appropriating clever expressions spoken by others.
There's a whole new world out there where everything that we took for granted over the last 10, 20, 30 years is now being democratized. Access to money, technology, infrastructure, is a non-issue. You just need a good idea. And the balls to go do it.
For-Profit Organizations should, by definition, make money. But in order to make money consistently and for the long term, all such organizations should have a defining raison d'être. Not simply who we are and what we do, but what do we stand for?
On July 25th, 1965, Bob Dylan went onstage at the Newport Folk Festival, plugged in his electric guitar and played the chords to "Maggie's Farm". The audience, who had come to see an acoustic poet, the folk voice of the generation, were caught by surprise.
When we enter into a negotiation (in particular, a B2B deal), our usual (and natural) goal is to push for the very best deal possible. We analyze our situation, detail our requirements, assess the competition and evaluate alternative options that meet (or come close to meeting) our needs.
I was at a conference recently and one of the speakers was sharing the story of how he built his firm - an organization he grew over a number of years, one that he ultimately sold for over a Billion dollars.
We put a lot of work into achieving our goals and getting ourselves to where we want to be, whether in our relationships, our ventures or our careers.
There are a number of writers and thinkers I look to on a regular basis for ideas, inspiration and insight, and Seth Godin is one of them. For many years, now, he has upended my view of what is important, what we should value and what we should focus on. It was his writing that got me started with my own blog.
Isn't that the truth?
Lets not lose our minds in the race to maturity, responsibility and so-called growth.
In my old firm, we had a mentorship system whereby every individual was assigned a mentor at least one, if not two, levels up from their position. The role of the mentor was not just to provide day to day counsel but also to help guide the development of their mentees, and represent them during the performance appraisal process.
I've never bought the premise that we "shouldn't take it personally, it's just business".
What it suggests is that we are detached from what we do. That we conduct our work devoid of any emotion. That, on any given day, we engage in our work dispassionately.
If you love SciFi, the 80's, great stories or all of the above, then Stranger Things needs to be on your list of TV shows to watch. (You'll need a Netflix account.) It's been such a hit that a couple of of guys here in Chicago decided to launch a pop up bar in the Logan Square neighborhood. By many accounts, the bar has been a hit.
The New York Times published a really interesting article last week on the evolving depictions of women in stock photos. It showed the most popular (top selling in terms of downloads) images from 2007 through to 2016, and illustrated how the nature of the top images have changed...
When we refer to "marketing bullshit" within our own organizations, it's usually because there are one of two problems at play (sometimes both).
The first, as I discussed in my last post, is that our sales and marketing communications are off. We aren't being honest, we aren't being forthright. We aren't speaking with integrity.
We should argue.
Seriously.
We should argue.
So long as it's about the content. So long as our intent is positive. So long as we're...
If you went to Mick Jagger and asked him to conduct specific analyses using a spreadsheet, and he wasn't able to do what was needed, wouldn't you say he isn't very smart? Or let's say you knew Warren Buffett and required him to produce a logo for one of his portfolio companies, but he wasn't able to...
Several years ago, I watched an interview with a world famous classical violinist. The host of the prime time talk show asked the violinist (and I'm paraphrasing), "Why aren't there any famous composers like Mozart and Beethoven these days? Why aren't there any great new pieces that we hear about these days?"
Today is the final day of my week long series featuring the works of Takashi Murakami.
I hope you've enjoyed this week long series.
Today is Day 3 of my week long series featuring the works of Takashi Murakami.
As I've mentioned, through September 24th, 2017, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is holding an exhibition of the work of Takashi Murakami called "The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg".
