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Where's my home? No idea but this world feels like a cool place to call home.
Unfocused postings on whatever catches my attention, makes me think or demands that I point and shoot.

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Stunning Displays in Milan

Just walking down Spiga last night and this caught my eye. Stunning furniture but without the right lighting and art direction, this would have been less impressive. Creating a positive experience whatever the interaction may be is one thing we can all learn from the Italians.

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Sufjan Walked

Sufjan Stevens provides a very different perspective in everything he composes.

His 60 minute EP has just come out and there's much hype about his forthcoming album.

Here's a link to a free download of 'I Walked', from the EP http://bit.ly/dxpsUp

There's something very 1980's synth with this sound and I get an image of long white gowns in my head.

All stuff that makes the immediate response one of rejection but somehow Sufjan gets under the skin and takes the experience deeper.


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Under Pressure

I'm on a plane to NY right now so finding this from The Oatmeal just touches the right nerve.

Check out the rest of the story http://bit.ly/ciEmmU

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Happy Bankers

When the motto of your company is “we take pleasure in serving happy customers," you give architects something to work with in designing a new bank branch for you.

This is a stunning building in Tokyo for a Credit Union there.

I know white and the use of bright colors feels dated to designers but this is perfect for a bank and one I would definitely feel happy going in to.

Check out more images here http://bit.ly/bfivs7

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Ahra-Stan

Ahra's is a very special friend of mine and she'll forgive me eventually for grabbing this picture of her but Ahra deserves some noise for her role in raising money for Skateistan.

I've written about this subject before, so will not cover old ground but Ahra went out and got 80 artists engaged in delivering their artistic expression on a board.

She then exhibited these boards last week in NY and opened bidding for the boards.

With just a few days left, you need to go to the link below and make bids.

This is not about bidding on a board you love; it's about making sure no boards are left without a bid.

I'm bidding for 3 right now.

This is for a really good cause that helps children in Afghanistan.


 

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Egg Press

I love these guys in Portland and their use of antique presses http://bit.ly/btMrV2.

For me it's not just the printing approach they use but the design approach that delivers cards that stand out in any card store.

I wonder how much the old style printing approach influences the creative process. I suspect it has something to do with it.


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Top3

Following on from my post about choice, my friend Nat sent me this link http://bit.ly/8XxzoG to a store in Australia that keeps the choice to three.

Their angle is that in the world of design, there tends to be a ranking of best designs and they are selling the top 3.

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Hiring the Best Product


Clay Shirky speaks to this great article on the job a product does and how thinking in this way can help you see things that typical research behavior does not allude to. Shirky unfortunately wrongly attributes the article to HBR. It's in fact that other great thought provoker - MIT.

The set up of the article makes it clear:

Most companies segment their markets by customer demographics or product characteristics and differentiate their offerings by adding features and functions. But the consumer has a different view of the marketplace. He simply has a job to be done and is seeking to “hire” the best product or service to do it. Marketers must adopt that perspective.  

So many marketers get caught in the trap of obsessing over existing product use or rejection as opposed to understanding what customers need. They either make changes to the product and use this as an excuse for a new communications campaign or they get obsessed with reasons for rejection and disappointment and offer revisions or guarantees to stop the loss. 

With so many clients, I have pleaded for them to get out of meeting rooms and get in to the street. The next step is to help them learn to see again - to observe, to listen, to converse outside of the context of their product.This article provides excellent advice on the skills needed. 

To view the document I'm referring to, search jobstobedone and look for a pdf download - posting it here causes copyright issues.

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Knowing You Knowing Me


Michael Maccoby's book 'The Productive Narcissist' was recommended to me by a great consultant in San Francisco - Lori Ogden Moore. 

Maccoby has been working with top CEOs around the world for many years and came to prominence with his award winning article in the HBR in 2000 http://bit.ly/bIhTiI called Narcissistic Leaders: Incredible Pros; the Inevitable Cons.

The book is out of print but I have scanned the questions that will help you assess what personality type you are.

The book appears simple in its offering but once you discover your own personality type - all the simplicity locks in to focus.

Maccoby's key point is that there was a gap of 4 year between Freud's initial damning explanation of a narcissist and his more considered analysis of narcissistic behavior. The more considered approach states that there's a first level of narcissism that we all need. If we don't feel good about ourselves at some level, then we are lost. It's this first level of narcissism that drives us and when you look at great leaders, this narcissism is critical to their achievements. However, there's a second level of narcissism that is the one we know best. This is the one where you lose all connection to self awareness and many leaders have fallen down by crossing this line.

However, Maccoby looks beyond the obvious of 2nd stage narcissism and tries to understand where failure occurs even for those who keep their ego in check. He uses three of Freud's personality types and adds a new one. Through his studies in combination with Freud's finding, he concludes the following - Narcissistic Obsessives make the best leaders when productive but if unproductive, they turn in to authoritarian bureaucrats, often paranoid and hoarders. Narcissistic Erotics is the creative, musician actor type when productive and when not, they are the seductive and exploitive type. The final combination is the Narcissistic Marketing personality type is a contradiction and often leads to someone who drives things forward without being aware of the method of bringing others along with them - understanding the different perspectives that you have to work with and persuade.

The four core personality types in summary:
The Erotic - They want to love and be loved.

The Narcissist - Impresses us as a personality, who disrupts the status quo and brings about change.

The Obsessive - They live up to high standards and ideals they set themselves, to show, at all times, that they fit the specs of "good child" to an internalized father figure.

The Marketer - They operate by radar, sensing what the market wants and needs, then conforming to it.

Invariably, personality type are driven by one of these four territories but combine with a close second driver. To give some balance behind the key driving personality, Freud added another criteria: Self Developing, Visionary, Caring and Systematic. 

You will find in the pdf, all the elements you need to assess yourself.

What's important and not captured here is that Maccoby believes one of the most critical aspects one can learn through this process is to be able to work out what drives your colleagues and how best to operate with them based on their personality types.

It's an interesting exercise and don't be scared to see the narcissistic side come up. It's okay.

Have fun.


(download)

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Participants


We've talked about changing the label consumer to people.

We've talked about the whole weirdness of labeling a desired connection as a target.

In a world where interaction is the cultural currency of today, I'm going to start replacing all these labels with the word Participant.

It challenges us to start thinking about how a brand encourages and enables interaction.

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