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Last month, a few other young professionals, namely Nicole Crimaldi, Matt Cheuvront, and (to some extent) Shane Mac suggested that the best education is self-education.
As one who loves a good debate, and as someone who’s always been sympathetic to the side of traditional education, I decided to interview Cali Harris (@caligater) who recently quit her job to pursue her Masters full-time. She’s the real deal. The video interview and a recap (with my 2 cents thrown in) are below:
image credit: Joe Loong
To be honest, this post has less to do with failure and more to do with personal innovation from within the corporate structure—the struggle to make change happen, to get your ideas implemented if you aren’t in a senior leadership position.
In 2007, Doug Hall suggested that businesses should Fail Fast, Fail Cheap when it comes to innovation. Specifically he showed the business sense of failing quickly and cheaply:
Image Credit: United Nations Development Programme (uploaded 01/14/2010)
In watching the horrid events unfold in Haiti (and yes, those boxes in the photo above are coffins), I wasn’t just upset, I felt helpless. Other than donate money, what could I do?
When I peeked into Gretchen Jameson’s office this morning (@gmjameson), the answer became glaringly obvious.
Gretchen expressed how upset she was that many social media and communication through leaders had not turned their attention to the crisis. She wondered how can we go on blubbering about this and that case study, paying little deference to the devastation in Haiti.
Original Image: Jill Clardy
Recently, Carlos Miceli argued that the future of collaboration is not in win-win transactions, but in a pay-it-forward type of interaction where one gives for the sake of giving and not for the sake of winning. Miceli states:
“The future of collaboration is ego-less….The real test comes when you have the opportunity to help someone with the previous knowledge that that person won’t be able to reciprocate. Paradoxically, the only way to do this consistently is to forget about the economic way of thinking.”
In economic terms, there are typically two types of exchange (Lapavistas, 2004):
photo credit: Ryan Holst
One of the smartest people I know, is of all things, a truck driver named Jim. He’s been driving for over 30 years, long enough that people jokingly say he bleeds diesel fuel. I’ve taken the time to listen to his advice from time to time, and here are some of most important things I’ve learned:
One of Jim’s oft-repeated precepts is “use the right tool for the job.” That means if you need a screwdriver, don’t try to use a knife.
Image Credit: Igor Kasalovic
With my wife’s grandmother’s death this past week, I was out of the office for a few days. As my luck runs, a relatively serious issue came up at work that required my professional attention. So in the midst of grieving with my family, I was furiously thumbing my iPhone for updates. As one co-worker put it, “It’s the paradox of being ‘always’ connected – makes it hard to feel like you can disconnect.” And she was exactly right.
Just another day at the office.
Today I may have worn a giant bee costume, and our CEO and my director may have seen me prancing around in it.
But it didn’t matter. It was casual day and everyone who saw it cracked up.
My friend Emily (@ebarlean21) picked it up last night, and I can’t thank her enough.
Sometimes in the midst of the stress of business it’s good to take the time to laugh at ourselves and with our coworkers.
I may have jumped on the MJ bandwagon, but here are 5 lessons I think we can take from Jackson’s Thriller video (if you haven’t seen it, please read the post first—the link is at the bottom):
Thriller is much longer than the standard 3.5-minute, band-playing-in-a-warehouse video. Part of the reason it’s memorable is that it doesn’t conform.
We claim to “think outside the box,” but how often do we end up buying ad space in the same places or sending the same email newsletter month after month? How often do we take the time to do something really different—maybe something that at first seems counter-intuitive (e.g. a computer company like Apple starting to sell MP3 players…)?
a blog by Andrew Swenson
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