Back from the holidays and ready to move forward! Â And what am I fascinated with right now? Â People with vision. People with Vision see things differently. I have always been amazed by this painting because it is done in “pointillism”. Everything in the picture is made up of tiny dots. How do you envision the final product, with the shading and shadows and changes in color, working in tiny dots??? Or, how about this one. target=”_blank”>Snow Artist Simon Beck straps on his snow shoes and traps around in the snow creating murals on the sides of mountains. How does he know where to go or what the next step is? He’s seeing things in a much bigger way than the rest of us, clearly. But not everyone has Vision with a capital V. But at the same time, it is a good idea to think […] Continue reading
First Thing In the Morning
There are a bunch of articles right now about what to do first thing in the morning. Â Most tell you not to check email, not to take phone calls, etc. Â The problem is, that would STRESS ME OUT! I totally get the people who say you shouldn’t get caught up in things without some thought at the beginning of the day, but the system has to work for you. I recommend determining what causes you stress – what things have to be done to make you feel comfortable. Â When I worked for my Dad, I thought it was fun to find out he walked into the office, put his things down, got a cup of coffee and stood in his window drinking coffee, reading the Wall Street Journal and watching people out the window as he planned his day. Â It was his work ritual and […] Continue reading
Defining Both Success and Failure
When I start a project, I always define what success looks like. Often I do what success looks like and what the ultimate, totally amazing success would look like (just for fun). Knowing this in advance means you know how to evaluate the project or program and if you keeping within your plan. But the other thing I do is define failure. For some projects this really is anything other than success, but for others, failure is different and there’s a gap between the two. Why would I care? Here’s an example. Recently with a customer we tried a new publication for advertising. It was a good risk – the money wasn’t huge, the audience was right, etc. Success was defined as 25 people saying the came in from the ad. But since we only committed to once, we recognized we had no repetitive benefits. […] Continue reading