The memories are still hyper-vivid: November 22, 1963, shortly before we were to be dismissed from school, my third grade teacher, Miss Otis, informed our class that the president of the United States was assassinated.

While we were stunned and saddened, my strongest Kennedy-related memories of that moment were actually formed later, through TV — especially of his son, John John, saluting the coffin as the horses pulled the caisson in front of him. Actually, the strongest memory of that day, a trigger for me, is…

Chlorine.

See, November 22, 1963 was a Friday. And on Fridays that year, I always got on a bus after school to go to swim practice in Long Beach, Long Island. So my memory of JFK is ALWAYS triggered by the smell of chlorine. ANY TIME I go to a public pool since 1963, I instantly flash back to Miss Otis tearing up in front of us, the long silent bus ride to Long Beach, and the rush of emotions related to JFK’s assassination.

Such a weird trigger, huh?

I have another: Cigars.

Any time I smell a cigar, I CANNOT just smell it… I instantly ALSO smell beer and peanuts!

Trigger: Very top row, Yankee Stadium, (nicknamed the nosebleed section) during a Giants football game. My father, who was a cop, took me to games with his cops and firemen buddies. They always smoked cigars and drank beer and, of course, I had to have peanuts.

So, now…still…EVERY TIME I smell a cigar, I also smell beer and peanuts.

Weird what our brain and senses do to us and for us!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Associate of Magazine Editors recently selected the Top 40 Magazine Covers of the past 40 years.

Number 7 was this classic for National Lampoon in 1973.

Nowadays, maybe not too shocking. But then…OMG, shooting a dog just to sell magazines? But the writers and creatives behind National Lampoon were happy to push boundaries to get their point across. A couple years later, some of them would be writers and creatives for a fledgling show that would push the boundaries of TV — Saturday Night Live.

How will you push the envelope for your career, your passions, your projects? What would you be willing to risk? How will your ideas stand out?

Maybe it’s time to take a lesson from the very funny people behind very serious risk-taking stunts like shooting a dog.

PS: I once worked with the Art Director behind this cover, Dave Kaestle. He showed me what almost no one ever sees: the dog should be dead already! Check the hammer of the gun. It’s in the already-been-shot position. Dave said they couldn’t get the dog to look to his left until he heard the CLICK of the hammer going down. So, Dave & Crew already (kinda) killed the dog to earn the #7 spot of great magazine covers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone knows who is on this magazine cover: “The Greatest”

Most would agree with that statement now. (Who can forget the chills-down-your-spine moment [5:30 into video] when Ali was the surprise athlete to light the Olympic flame in 1996?!)

But there was a time when Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali was vilified for his refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army because of his religious beliefs. (Ali, convicted violating the Selective Service Act, was barred from the ring and stripped of his title.)

I was reminded of this moment when the American Society of Magazine Editors named this Esquire cover, art directed by George Lois, as the Number 3 Best Magazine cover during the past 40 years. (Go here to see all 40!)

The cover shows the boxer martyred as St. Sebastian, a patron saint of athletes and one who was shot with arrows for his steadfast religious beliefs.

Rightly or wrongly, Ali took a stand for his beliefs…risking his entire career and future… And yet, in the long run, we still all know him as The Greatest.

What matters most to you? Short-term wins? Bonuses? Looking good?

Or long-term values that could possibly put those other things at risk?

You know the expression: Whenever we point a finger at someone else, the remainder point back at you.

There’s also “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and “Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean” and “Be the change you want to see.”

Humankind has figured out that personal responsibility is the foundation of all positive change. And yet why is it in business — (and government and sports and, and, and) — we blame everything on the leader? Why is it that most every problem is “their” fault or “his” fault or “her” responsibility? Why is there so much “they” and so little “me”?

I recently facilitated an offsite for 50 leaders/managers from a well-known global company. Minutes before the closing session, 30 of the attendees pulled me into their private breakout session and wanted help telling the leader what she was screwing up, and had better change. OMG: A Marie Antoinette moment! In hindsight: They had a few legitimate concerns — (which, as any great leader should, their leader asked them to share, and she addressed them fully) — but mostly they wanted to play victims. They wanted someone else to take care of their problems for them, including fixing the global economy and ensuring them that none of their jobs were going to go away. (Good luck on that one.)

I see this over and over…all around the world…at high-performing and best-place-to-work companies, as well as at places where no one should work.

Yes, great leaders and great managers are crucial to engagement, happiness, and great and fulfilling work. But they’re only 50% of that mix. You, me and everyone who works owns the other 50%.

What ever happened to personal accountability? Don’t ask leaders to sweep your porch if you’re not willing to. Don’t ask leaders to solve problems you should own.

Don’t whine: Start being the change you want to see!

(Now…if only “they” would fix my taxes, my dysfunctional family, my trips through airport security, my waistline and a few other things…Life would be perfect!)

Note: Author has academic degree in this change management stuff. So, until he woke up, he was selling this “resistance to change” snake oil.

As detailed in this New York Times set of infographics:
Al Qaeda spent roughly half a million dollars to kill thousands, destroy the Twin Towers, harm the Pentagon, and — most importantly — completely change what the world pays attention to and how everyone lives their lives.

Monetary cost to the US so far: $3.3 trillion. That forced one of the most powerful nations in the world to invest about $7 million for every dollar Al Qaeda invested in planning and executing the attacks. That’s one hell of an ROI.

Of course, we’re talking evil here. We should never forget what has been done to us and the toll it had on our nation, our lives and our souls.

But we can also flop the lessons learned. Turn evil power into good power.

In the world of today’s business: The small and nimble can force the powerful and mighty to completely change how they approach planning, executing, treating their workforce, satisfying their customers. The small, fast and nimble can win the noble war of doing more good for more customers and more employees than those businesses currently in power.

(Full Disclosure: Headline applies to all of us…Including us here at Hacking Work…So it’s always important to seek out diverse views on any subject, and then make up your own mind.)

Information Week recently claimed, “Millennials Aren’t The Little Devils IT Imagines: Research suggests 20-somethings think highly of IT organizations and don’t flout IT conventions as often as some of us might expect.”

They cite new research by GigaOM Pro and IT support vendor Bomgar — (Warning: Go back to our headline, then look at what Bomgar does) — that suggests the Millennials have more respect for the IT organization than most of us give them credit for.

They cited that while about 80% of IT managers think Millennials’ tech expectations are very different than what they provide (…We agree!…), and up to one-third disregard corporate policies (…We found it to between one-third to two-thirds, when including all workers of all ages, an including all types of workarounds…) — yet only 10 out of 400 Millennials described their actions this way.

Duh!!!!

Does a fish describe being in water as being “different” or swimming in his own way as “disregarding Neptune’s policies”????

The data collection and interpretation still assumes a Corporate’s Way/Good, Not Corporate’s Way/Bad way of thinking.

Corporate CIOs: Your Ass is Still Grass
How about asking Millennials something like “Since childhood, is it normal and acceptable and good for you, when using any tech device, to quickly work around it if the device/system didn’t give you what you wanted immediately?”

They’d respond: “Duh. Of course. Workarounds are not ‘different.’ That’s just what we do. Whatever Corporate supplies us with will always be just a starting point. Then we take it from there.”

Also: Doesn’t it defy both logic and common sense to find that 80% of a group of people have different expectations from you than what you’re supplying…And then conclude that all is A-OK…No problems? There’s a lot more benevolent hacking going on out there than is captured by any IT vendor’s surveys!

Think long and hard about which lens you use when interpreting Millennials views and behaviors. Which lens you use could be the difference between a very engaged workforce and a very disengaged workforce.

All of our technologies have Off buttons. Are you using that button enough?

Are you texting or gaming or talking on the phone while you’re walking on the beach? Do you take time to truly hear the rhythm of life in the fwap-fwap-fwap of the waves and hear the call of life in the seagull’s caw-caws?

Is your family dinner conversation an amazing moment filled with deep connections and meaning, or are you taking texts at the dinner table?

These are the kinds of questions MIT professor Sherry Turkle asks us to explore in her book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. (Also see here for podcast interview w/ Turkle.)

Each of us must stop and think where technology fits in our lives. It is neither good nor bad. It is our choices that make it one or the other.

Our job is to make choices. Ones that help the world and us grow. Are you making the best choices for you and others right now? Are you sure?

That’s from Steve Jobs, now ex-CEO of Apple. Amazing advice we should all follow.

Here’s the full quote: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Here’s more. Treasure it all. Crucial ideas from one of the key leaders of the 20th/21st century.

Your job sucks and for whatever reason you feel you can’t leave.

Hey you: Get some perspective!
Today is one day out of your entire life. Unless you’re going to die soon, it’s probably not going to be that big of a deal. Let go and move on.

This is an excerpt from Ten Ways to Survive Your Crappy Job, from one of our fave sources, Lifehacker.com

Check out the entire list. Worth it!

Our fave: Number 1: Just Quit.
Seriously. Yes, even in this economy.

So, I’m working w/ a group of people who I truly admire. They make change simpler for large companies all over the world. (So one would think this story is going to have a happy ending, right?) We’re partnering together. They’ve asked me to keynote a few workshops for them.

So far so good.

Then we go over the agenda. They’ve got me closing the day, with breakout sessions in the middle for the executives attending to work through how to use everything they’ve learned. “But what about the content that I’m providing?” I ask. “If it doesn’t come until afterwards, they can’t use it in their breakouts.”

Not very audience-centered. Not very simple. But…We worked through it and came up with a compromise. Fair enough… I’m pragmatic. I can adjust.

Then came the title of my session: They added onto what I had provided (so it mentioned their theme). It became a 16-word title. 16-WORD title! That’s not simple. Barely tweet-able.

The point is: This situation is not unique.

Most every call I receive from most every senior exec goes something like this: “Would you help us with making things simpler at our company?” But here’s what’s unspoken, and usually in between the lines: “BTW, I’m defining simplicity as making it easier for me to get my strategies implemented. Simplicity is really all about me and my success.” It is so rare that an executive would ever think, or say: “My goal is to truly make things simpler for the workforce, because I understand that that’s enlightened self-interest.”

It really shouldn’t be so hard to make things simpler for the people doing the work.

The term sounding board originally comes church design: A sounding board is a structure placed above or behind a pulpit or other presentation platform which helps to project the sound of the speaker. But most of us use this term to describe a person who listens intently to us in order to provide some kind of feedback and insights that might not have otherwise occurred to us.

I recently had a fantastic sounding board experience. Someone had referred me to Mark Levy, a great guy who other speakers have used to rethink how they are positioning themselves.

A magician, a marketer, a great storyteller, but what makes Mark so special is that he is a great questioner and listener. What I thought would be a brief lunch turned out to be about 3.5 hours of fantastic and insightful conversation. Things that I thought I had figured out long ago, suddenly needed to be reexamined, possibly rethought.

Hopefully, at some point, everyone will see the results of what I learned that day — in the form of enhanced positioning and clarity and value from me. But that’s for later.

Here, now, spend a moment pondering: Who is your sounding board? How often do you check in with him or her? Should you be doing so more often? Do you have different sounding boards for different kinds of challenges and situations?

The ultimate sounding board in business was probably Peter Drucker. While he was alive, business leaders would come to sit at his feet and have him as the most simple-yet-profound questions. Among them: “What business are you in?” Most would tell you that it is so easy to answer that question…it’s always the second slide in their standard PowerPoint presentation. Yet the truly smart ones would dig deep into it, with a sounding board, like Drucker, asking many follow up questions until they truly discovered The Truth.

Who is helping you discover Your Truth?

Josh and I have gotten some interesting feedback doing presentations about hacking work.

From “anarchists” to “rule breakers” to “heretics” — because everyone knows at least one story about Black Hat Hackers, baddies who are out to steal credit card numbers or worse, they see all hacking as a malicious act. Not so.

Hacking is merely the pursuit of knowledge, trying to understand how something works by taking it apart and putting it together in ways the original creator hadn’t thought of. In business, that’s called innovation and systems-thinking. In life, hacking is actually quite Zen.

Badhidharma is considered the first Patriarch of Zen, who left India for China around 460AD. He said “In order to see a fish you must watch the water.” That is what hackers do. They observe with what Zen Buddhists call a “beginner’s mind” — freeing oneself of preconceived ideas of how things are, how they must be, and exploring all possibilities.

They also have a great sense of humor! The following is excerpted from Richard Thieme’s Zen and The Art of Hacking. I urge you to read Theime’s entire post:

Hackers are men and women who go where they must go to learn what they must learn.

Often portrayed as rebellious heretics, hackers are in fact faithful followers of three gods:

• Odin, who hung cold and alone in a windswept tree for nine long days and nights, sleepless and single-hearted, in order to seize the knowledge of the Runes. The Runes were symbols of what the Greeks called logos, the creative power of the Word, the magic of consciousness acting on inanimate matter and making it plastic.

• The trickster Coyote, who some call Pan, his wry humor a grin in the shadows, his appetites and passions a firestorm of Dionysian ardor.

• Jesus the man, the earthy Jew, a real mensch rather than a dreamy-eyed Nordic nanny-of-the-planet, who refused to knuckle under to convention or the suffocating constraints of the lowest common denominator of the crowd.

This year, I had the honor of presenting at South By Southwest (SXSW), an amazing overload feast of intelligentsia, music and films. I was thrilled to learn from the other presentations that I was able to attend.

But that’s also the problem with SXSW: the only way you could see, hear and learn all there is would be to break the space/time continuum, being everywhere, all at once. Yet Ogilvy has helped out with that. They have produced Ogilvy Notes, sending graphic artist note-takers to record some of the sessions. (Alas, not mine…boo hoo.)

Here are 10 Kick-Ass Learnings that I’ve culled from those online records…

1. Agile Self Development must begin with your big vision, and is accomplished through a series of small, quick sprints to get you there. Track your progress dutifully. Keep daily logs or journals.
— Dinah Sanders, Marcy Swenson

2. Anatomy of a Design Decision must always be evaluated from the user’s perspective. What’s it like to be a user of this design?
— Jared Spool

3. How to Innovate at Big Companies: To overcome all the inevitable barriers, build prototypes of your ideas, and find like-minded people to help you prove the model…showing, demonstrating, using the prototypes.
— Gene Kim, William Hertling

4. Better Crowdsourcing: Scaling your idea means letting it go…Allowing other people to own it and do things with it that you could not have predicted.
— Daniel Honigman, Heidi Hackemer, John Winsor, Len Kendall

5. How to Sell Unsolicited Ideas: Nothing great ever happens without passion!… To change their thinking, you may have to change yours… The difference between knowing something and REALLY knowing it is being able to explain it simply, quickly… Avoid short-term compensation, aim for long-term rewards.
— Alessandra Lariu, Hashem Bajwa, John Wimsatt, Nick Parish, Ty Montague

6. Collaboration Over Competition is all about people, relationships and transparency. Collaborate with Frienemies who you can trust on a personal level, even if you have some goals that are different.
— Derek Neighbors, Jay Baer, Kristie Wells, Sally Strebel

7. Design Across Disciplines: Spend a day in the other discipline’s shoes (using and living their processes, procesdures, rules, tools, goals, etc.)
— Ben Yarrow, Elaine Wherry, Matthew Robbins, Stephen Atkinson

8. Creating Serendipitous Innovations Through Check-Ins: Keep asking “How could we make this easier?”
— Dennis Crowley, Pete Cashmore

9. Getting Past Your Fears in the Name of Creation: There is no creativity without risk. Give yourself permission to take the first step, a baby step. Try a quick fail to take away the power that fear has over you. Fear should be embraced as a motivator.
— Chris Guillebeau, Jonathan Fields

10. My Prototype Beat Up Your Business Plan: Investors don’t read business plans anymore… Get something out there! Now. Fast. Yes, it may be full of holes, but others will either make a product to fill the holes (making your product stronger, better) or they’ll help you fill the holes as you go along.
— Ade Olonoh, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Kendra Shimmell, Kristian Andersen

Want more? In addition to surfing page by page graphic notes online, you can also download the entire set:
• Download Day One
• Download Day Two
• Download Day Three

In a recent Fortune magazine article, consultant Pontish Yeramyan, discussed how leaders build connections between themselves, their vision and their workforce. One bit of advice was: Say things that are hard to say. That it may seem counterintuitive, that sometimes stating the tough truth — without placing blame or hurting — can instantly create bonds between people.

I recall one moment early in my firm’s history. Part of our brand promise was helping client’s with what they needed, not just what they wanted. (It is my experience that more often than not, what a client WANTS is very different from what they actually NEED; and that part of my job is to recognize and help them see that difference.)

A great friend, and at the time, a potential client, Gavin Kerr, once told me “This is what I want.” I carefully, politely and appropriately found a way to say, “I know that’s what you want, but I think this is what you need.”

Telling a client “No” can be one of those make-or-break bonding moments. In this case: Gav politely said “no thanks” and sent me packing. Six months later he called to said “You were right…Please come back in to see me.” A year after that, he was at a new company, PepsiCo, and invited my company to work on a project that would be a breakthrough moment for all of us.

All because I said “No” during that first meeting. Sometimes saying things that are hard to say creates the strongest bonds of all.

In a recent article in Fortune magazine, HR head for Pepsi, John Berisford, said: “I often ask one question, whether I’m interviewing a senior-level executive or a campus person: Tell me your story… It’s the best way to get to know the entire human being.”

I can personally attest to this simple fact. I’ve been researching how work works for over two decades. Mostly it doesn’t work. And I’ve got lots of data to back that up. In the books I’ve written and in the keynotes I given, when I get raves is almost always because I’ve told powerful stories that made that data come to life and be meaningful for people. And when I bomb is when I try to hammer the data into their heads, sans stories.

Storytelling matters. It’s hard-wired into our DNA. It’s how we make sense of the world and share our views, our experiences and what truly matters with others.

How would you respond to Berisford’s request: Tell me your story? Do you have different versions? A half-hour version? A five minute version? A 140-character version?

Tell me your story.

A few months ago, lead singer Damian Kulash of OK Go wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal about the changing state of the music business. Can you learn from his band’s strategies? Hell, yeah…

Their World is Just Like Your World: “For several decades, though, from about World War II until sometime in the last 10 years, the recording industry…” “Then came the Internet, and in less than a decade, that system fell.” Substitute your industry name for theirs and these sentences describe the sea-change you’re still experiencing.

Their Challenge/Opportunity is Your Challenge/Opportunity: Read the following, again changing industry names… “Music is getting harder to define again. It’s becoming more of an experience and less of an object. Without records as clearly delineated receptacles of value, last century’s rules—both industrial and creative—are out the window. For those who can find an audience or a paycheck outside the traditional system, this can mean blessed freedom from the music industry’s gatekeepers.” Sound familiar? It should. The massive changes you are experiencing also mean opportunities, if you’re ready to go for them.

Three Quick Tips:
1. You Are Your Brand: Everything you do creates or destroys your own brand image. See yourself as a brand. What do you stand for? How can you get that across in EVERYTHING you do?

2. Revenue Comes from Multiple Streams: If you are still dependent on just one paycheck, you’re dead career-wise. Every employee on the planet should have at least one, possibly several, entrepreneurial revenue streams.

3. Marketing Matters… Free is the New Path to Being Well-Paid: OK Go is most famous for its YouTube creations. But does that make money for them? “The quick answer is yes,” says Kulash. More important than record sales is the other revenue opportunities that their videos created for them. Same thing applies to you. For the rest of your career, you must be giving things away for free — research, presentations, advice, time, etc. — as a way of marketing for your NEXT job and additional opportunities for personal growth, compensation and more.

According to the most recent Maritz poll on the subject (2010), the picture is bleak when it comes to American workforce attitudes toward their employers.

Only 11% of employees strongly agree that their managers show consistency between their words and actions.

Only 7% of employees strongly agree that they trust senior leaders to look out for their best interest.

And about 20% disagree that their company’s leader is completely honest and ethical, and one-quarter of respondents disagree that they trust management to make the right decisions in times of uncertainty.

Of these findings, Rick Garlick, Ph.D., senior director of consulting and strategic implementation for Maritz, said: “You’ve got to maintain credibility with your workforce as a means of getting them to totally buy in to the mission and vision of your company. Anything less fosters a disengaged workforce that puts self-interest at the top of its list of priorities.”

Net/net: We’re not trusting our execs…nor do they deserver our trust. At least not currently.

November 4, 2010. A day just like any other day. Or was it? When we look back in hindsight — today, next year or ten years from now — will it be seen as the day that predicted our future?

All of the following stories appeared together on the same page in the Nov 4, 2010 edition of the Financial Times.

Tech Companies Need the Discipline of a Dividend.
Story: An uncomfortable truth for tech companies. The transition from being a growth stock to what the market considers a value play is a painful one, taking years to complete. Among first steps in process: Paying dividends. Which is why tech entrepreneurs balk at the idea: It’s like a) confessing to their own mortality, and b) finally coming to terms that they’ve been playing w/ other people’s money.
Biz Future: Whadda concept. We all have to grow up.

MGM Files for Bankruptcy
Biz Future: Whadda concept. After growing up, we’re subject to death. Toto too. And death is hastened if you can’t quickly change to meet the changing world.

Russian Co. Phosagro Attempts to Buy PotashCorp
Biz Future: Even in a bits-driven world, we’ll always need real, physical, stuff to make other real, physical stuff

Google Broke Data Law
Story: UK watchdog declares “significant breach of the Data Protection Act.” Google appoints new director of privacy, improves it’s internal training and made critical changes to its compliance procedures.
Biz Future: Even in a world where “privacy is dead,” these dead will keep hanging on. The slope between exploiting and leveraging data and safeguarding every individual’s, company’s and country’s rights to privacy will continue to be slippery.

And two pages later…

A New Route From Idea to Reality
Story: Apple and Google, while taking completely different approaches to developing mobile apps, are fundamentally reinventing the innovation process.
Biz Future: Reinvent fast, or die

Pepsi Takes Risks by Reinventing Packaging and Product Development
Biz Future: “Individuals who create world-class results for their organizations know calculated risk is necessary” and they know how to take risks.

Book Review: Darwin’s Conjecture
There is more to Darwin that survival of the fittest. Largely ignored by most were his intertwined and supportive ideas on Mutual Aid, Sympathy and Cooperation.

Key messages from Nov 4 2010:
Change is volatile. Change is everywhere. Adapt…Or die.
The nimble and smart don’t die (as quickly as others).

But we survive and thrive together.
No one wins alone.