people

Where do you think that attitude comes from? If attitude is defined as: a manner of thinking, feeling, or behaving that reflects a state of mind or disposition (according to The Free Dictionary), I suppose we need to change the thinking to be: hire for people skills and train for technical skills... or hire for soft skills and train for hard skills.

Most of us live busy lives. There is work, family, maybe a hobby or two and the need for some leisure time to refresh our batteries. So the amount of things we devote serious thought to is necessarily small and we get in the habit of not paying attention to much that goes on around us.

Word of mouth marketing (WOM) may be the most effective marketing out there today, given the wide availability and accessibility of people’s opinions coupled with the continuing public distrust of company sales pitches. But WOM doesn’t just happen – nor does conventional marketing wisdom apply. WOM marketing is unlike any other kind of marketing out there and poses unique requirements as well as capabilities.

Almost certainly, there are two words that have been drilled into you as important since the day you started talking.

Now, research shows these words have surprising power over how others perceive you.

This post continues and completes the conversation on what it takes to be a leader (and for leadership to show up) from an ontological perspective as put forward and taught by Werner Erhard et al. There are three foundational strands to this model: ‘integrity’, ‘authenticity’, and ‘being committed to something bigger than oneself’.  

I've long been a fan of Jeff Bezos's approach toward being stubborn on vision whilst flexible on details, and playing the long game. Amazon are one of the few companies that seem to really live and breathe that.

Leadership matters. Whilst there are many ways of grappling with leadership, I value the ontological lens and in particular the ontological model of leadership that has been developed and is being taught by Werner Erhard et al. In this post I continue the conversation on being a leader (and leadership) that I started in the last post.

I'm a big fan of Sir Ken Robinson (particularly the TED talk he did on how schools kill creativity which is the most watched of all time). His book The Element is a powerful evocation of how finding the point where your natural talent meets your personal passion can lead to high achievement and personal fulfillment in work and in life. It all feels perfectly tidy and logical.

Earlier this month, a guest contributor to the blog Racialicious accused Victoria’s Secret of “fetishizing” Asian women because it packaged a mesh teddy with a matching fan, hair chopsticks, and faux geisha obi belt (pictured on an Anglo model). The predictable social coverage swarm ensued, and now the product has disappeared from the company’s site.

I can’t decide if I’m inspired or depressed by the news.

You would probably have caught wind of Sir Jony Ive’s rare interview with the London Evening Standard by now. I was not planning to blog about this as I figured that this would just become a pointless re-post. Except something dawned on me as I read the post. My suspicions that Apple’s Design Process is nothing special was confirmed!