Creating passion in the workplace: A starter list

Cultivating a workplace where people thrive — not just get through the day — is the key to a highly successful company. Businesses, like people, can just “get by”; but jumping to the next level requires a commitment to taking chances on the counter-reductive. The rules of success have been reduced to a set of assumptions about working long hours, not questioning bosses — ideas that, in their essence, have merit but have been pushed to extremes.

So how to create a workplace where the work feels less like “work”? How to get the unexpected, as well as the expected, out of employees? To the ideas in this article, I would add at least one: Set a good example. Attitude and passion can and do trickle down. 

For the marketer, the freelancer and the entrepreneur, the challenge is to level set, to be comfortable with the undone, with the cycle of never-ending. We were trained to finish our homework, our peas and our chores. Today, we’re never finished, and that’s okay.

It’s a dance, not an endless grind.

—Seth Godin, from his blog entry “Dancing on the edge of finished”

~Krista Tippett, host

(via beingblog)

I need to read this every morning …

beingblog

Buddha gated … 15th Street

Buddha gated … 15th Street

At his Pingry appearance on Saturday, Jack Dorsey offered several observations that, while seemingly minor, have resonated with me strongly. Maybe they will for you, too … Twitter is a utility, like electricity — an elemental force, not a platform. Plug into it for almost any purpose. We should feel inspired every morning when we get out of bed and think about heading to work. If we’re not, something is wrong. Not having a single, unified purpose internally is more likely to kill a company or vision than any external competition. If you think too far into the future, you’ll get intimidated or lose your focus on the next step you need to take. Stay focused on the moment … (very Buddhist — this hit me hard) The US has always embraced the idea of learning from mistakes — that one can come back strong from setbacks. This is powerful and should not be underestimated. The US has always been a land immersed in and shaped by innovative technology — trains, cars, and so on. But we are behind on tech adoption — broadband is still not ubiquitous. We need to catch up to thrive again.

At his Pingry appearance on Saturday, Jack Dorsey offered several observations that, while seemingly minor, have resonated with me strongly. Maybe they will for you, too …

Twitter is a utility, like electricity — an elemental force, not a platform. Plug into it for almost any purpose.

We should feel inspired every morning when we get out of bed and think about heading to work. If we’re not, something is wrong.

Not having a single, unified purpose internally is more likely to kill a company or vision than any external competition.

If you think too far into the future, you’ll get intimidated or lose your focus on the next step you need to take. Stay focused on the moment … (very Buddhist — this hit me hard)

The US has always embraced the idea of learning from mistakes — that one can come back strong from setbacks. This is powerful and should not be underestimated.

The US has always been a land immersed in and shaped by innovative technology — trains, cars, and so on. But we are behind on tech adoption — broadband is still not ubiquitous. We need to catch up to thrive again.

Very rainy day on the High Line …

Very rainy day on the High Line …

I was lucky enough to be in the audience for a one-on-one with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack) at my high school alma mater, The Pingry School. Sometimes we can take for granted the platforms we use every day — not to mention the people behind them. Dorsey reminded me how simple and yet also revolutionary the ideas of a single, focused person can be. He also expressed, though, how fragile creativity is, and made clear that he simply doesn’t look in certain directions because he doesn’t want to be distracted or intimidated. Twitter was born in part from Dorsey’s Asperger-esque fascination with the police cars and ambulances of New York City; at 15, he developed a program that is still in use to coordinate emergency vehicle dispatches in Manhattan. He later created software that allowed him to simply “buzz” the pagers of multiple friends; his pleasure in the achievement was childlike, but its implications were profound. Now Dorsey is helping to run not just Twitter, but also Square, his groundbreaking technology for allowing almost any smartphone to scan a credit card and process a payment. In both cases, Dorsey is empowering the entrepreneur, the startup, the revolutionary — cutting out the middleman, and giving corporations and despots the shivers. Tomorrow I will share some of Dorsey’s powerful observations and guidance for people who want to activate their dreams — and companies that hope to support them.

I was lucky enough to be in the audience for a one-on-one with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack) at my high school alma mater, The Pingry School. Sometimes we can take for granted the platforms we use every day — not to mention the people behind them. Dorsey reminded me how simple and yet also revolutionary the ideas of a single, focused person can be. He also expressed, though, how fragile creativity is, and made clear that he simply doesn’t look in certain directions because he doesn’t want to be distracted or intimidated.

Twitter was born in part from Dorsey’s Asperger-esque fascination with the police cars and ambulances of New York City; at 15, he developed a program that is still in use to coordinate emergency vehicle dispatches in Manhattan. He later created software that allowed him to simply “buzz” the pagers of multiple friends; his pleasure in the achievement was childlike, but its implications were profound.

Now Dorsey is helping to run not just Twitter, but also Square, his groundbreaking technology for allowing almost any smartphone to scan a credit card and process a payment. In both cases, Dorsey is empowering the entrepreneur, the startup, the revolutionary — cutting out the middleman, and giving corporations and despots the shivers.

Tomorrow I will share some of Dorsey’s powerful observations and guidance for people who want to activate their dreams — and companies that hope to support them.

The texture and creativity here are so thick, I am inspired from a thousand miles away … polychroniadis: ‘Powers of Ten’ by Sarah Sze, 2001.

The texture and creativity here are so thick, I am inspired from a thousand miles away …

polychroniadis:

‘Powers of Ten’ by Sarah Sze, 2001.

polychroniadis

Data Visualization Landscape: Bitsy Bentley on the shape of insights to come

I was more than pleased to help bring Bitsy Bentley (a.k.a. Hansen) to our modest GfK blogsite, www.gfkinsights4u.com.  This article gives just a taste of her vision and enthusiasm for the future of data that melds with the user’s needs and purposes. Here’s hoping she will find time to write down those three or six new blogposts that are rattling around in her head as we speak …   

Happy weekend to all …

Happy weekend to all …

Google taking data viz mainstream

It may not be too stylish — but Google’s interactive graphing of worldwide mobile data and other data visualization offerings is bringing data visualization to businesses of every type. It is also suggestive of much, much more to come …