In Washington DC, at a metro station, on a cold January morning in 2007, a man with a violin played for 43 minutes whilst approximately 1,100 people passed through the station, most of them on their way to work. Continue reading
Month: August 2012
Simplicity is the love child of two of the most powerful forces in business : Brains and Common Sense.
For a concept that’s supposed to be obvious, Simplicity can be difficult to describe. It can be a choice, a feeling, or a guiding light. Continue reading
Former Apple ad man Ken Segall talks Steve Jobs, simplicity in Time interview
In an interview with Time on Tuesday, Ken Segall, a former creative director of Apple ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day who worked with the late Steve Jobs at Apple and NeXT, discussed a wide range of topics including his time collaborating on the Cupertino tech giant’s ad campaigns….
….Segall is in a unique position to offer insight into the inner workings of Apple’s advertising process after being involved in the company’s ad campaigns for 12 years. Among his team’s accomplishments are the naming of the “iMac” and the “Think Different” campaign, the latter kickstarting Apple’s initial rise following the return of cofounder Steve Jobs. Segall has done subsequent work for large tech companies Dell and IBM.
Structural flexibility (2) : You have to build adaptability into your company’s DNA.
A. Embrace a grand challenge. You can’t build an adaptable organization without adaptable people—and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to. In most companies, deep change is crisis-driven. People are pushed into the icy waters of change by circumstances outside of their control. But every day human beings all over the world rush out to embrace change—because they are seduced by an opportunity to do something big, exciting or noble. So if you want people to change ahead of the curve, you have to give them something worth changing for. Continue reading
Our everyday actions speak for themselves…
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
– SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI Continue reading
Say Something You’ve Been Meaning To Say
1. Tell someone how you really feel about them, instead of waiting because you’re scared.
2. Tell someone what you really want and need instead of building up resentment.
Structural flexibility (1) – Surrender your freedoms reluctantly; guard your liberties diligently.
A. Avoid irreversible commitments. Major capital investments. Multi-year labor contracts. Specialized facilities. High fixed costs. All these things are dangerous in a world where the future is unlikely to mirror the past. Historically, managers have often traded away future flexibility for short-term economic advantage (like temporary labor peace, better long-term lease rates, or larger scale production lines). Going forward, executives will need to ask themselves, “How might this decision reduce our degree of freedom in the years to come?” Continue reading
What a wonderful world
Strategic flexibility – Nimble and quick beats big and beefy.
A. Disaggregate the organization. Big things aren’t nimble. That’s why there aren’t any 200-pound gymnasts or jumbo-sized fighter jets. It’s also why Gore & Associates, the manufacturer of Gore-Tex and 1,000 other high-tech products, limits its operating units to no more than 200 individuals. In a company comprised of a few, large organizational units, there tends to be a lack of intellectual diversity—since people within the same unit tend to think alike. Continue reading
New meaning is gradually born….
I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going thorough a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble. Continue reading
ONE TUSK 