I have always been fascinated by Steve Jobs, the Founder & CEO of Apple. The way he got back to Apple, the the company he originally founded, many years after having been ousted, are a great example for me how major setbacks and failure in life may eventually turn out be a good thing. After returning, he kept on reinventing industry after industry by introducing new business models in music (iPod & iTunes), mobile phones (iPhone & Apps) and now yet again in the PC industry (iPad, Macbook Air & App Store).
In 2005 he did a graduation speech at Stanford that garnered a lot of attention at the time, and is still talked about today, having been downloaded millions of times. With Steve's words: "Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.“. The talk is deeply personal and all stories support his overall key message of "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
If you have never seen Jobs's Stanford speech (15 min.), check it out below and get inspired.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Too often, we blame bad service on the people who actually deliver the service. Sometimes (often) it’s not their fault. Sadly, the complaints rarely make it as far as the overpaid (or possibly overworked) executive who made the bad design decision in the first place. It’s the architecture of service that makes the phone ring and that makes customers leave.
How to fix this?
1. Require service designers to sign their work. Who decided to make it the way it is?
2. Run a customer service audit. Walk through the building or the software or the phone tree with all the designers in the room and call out what’s not right.
3. Make it easy for complaints (and compliments) about each decision to reach the designer (and her boss).
I would go further and claim that this is not only true for service design, but most other "business designs" as well. Think organisational structure, processes, functions, roles, business models, ...
If things don't work out - is it the architecture or the people carrying out the work? Who is responsible for its design and how can they be held accountable? How can you keep an eye on those designs and improve them over time?
Back in November, TEDx (a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience) made it finally to Vienna for the first time. As someone, who gets a lot of inspiration out of TED talks, but only follows the conference over the internet, I was eager to visit the event live at Studio 44 in Vienna. And I was not disappointed, I really enjoyed the show and must complement the organisers for the event and selection of speakers. This makes me hopeful, that further conferences will follow.
My favorite talk was by Johannes Grenzfurthner the founder of monochrom, an internationally acting art and theory group based in Austria. He refers to himself as a "context hacker", someone who selects and uses the best context for mass distribution of messages.
Quite a task in todays world of diminishing values and sensory overload. Isn' it?
In his talk he explains the shift we went through from a disciplinary society of the 50s/60s/70s (society tells you what you should not do) to a society of control today (individuals have only self-imposed control in their head on what they should not do). In todays world of Jackass the "actionism" of last centuries artists like Hermann Nitsch doesn't shock anymore and gets lost in noise.
Johannes's take is that today one needs to "subvert subversion" to make serious tent in the world and he goes on to tell an amazing story on how he and his team invented a fictitious artist a couple of years ago who would then go on to circumvent China's efforts to undermine Taiwan's independence.
Just watch this video yourself - 18 entertaining minutes worth spreading.
If not for the financial crisis of recent years, our world is facing many creative challenges in business and education in the new global economies of the 21st century. To overcome those, I firmly believe that we need to design more creative and holistic approaches in education, culture and business.
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson is one of those challenging the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. Among his many public talks, he gave a lecture on rethinking education which has recently been animated by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). Astoundingly good.
Bronnie Ware worked for many years in palliative care. Her patients were those who had gone home to die. Over time she questioned them about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently in their lives and 5 themes commonly surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five regrets:
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 2. I wish I didn't work so hard. 3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
She reports about her findings in a very inspirational article called REGRETS OF THE DYING. Very instructive — good to read now, before it’s too late!
All organizations and careers function on 3 levels. What you do, How you do it and Why you do it. The problem is, most don’t even know that Why exists.
Simon Sinek delivers a simple presentation at TED (with a flip chart and a pen for visuals) about the importance of starting from Why.
The leaders who inspire us all think, act and communicate the exact same way and it's the complete opposite to everyone else. Those who inspire are not driven with what they do, they are driven with WHY they do it. Leaders make people subscribe to a vision and a worldview. Leaders make people follow them. Simon, refers to the example of Martin Luther King, who didn't say "I have a plan ...", but said "I have a dream .."
6,000 stillframes, 3 months of planning, and 4 full days of shooting. To make it easier, they also projected onto the wall where the post-its were supposed to go, then covered the lens for the shots. The result: a masterpiece!
The video DEADLINE post-it stop motion shows that a little creativity and hard work can get you a long way ...
