Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey and the telling of Black History

Just wrapping up what may have been the most fun project in ages. Dunno if this makes me a filmmaker but it was great to see these kids respond and grasp the power of story and history. Done in collaboration with the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, details and files are here.

What do the people involved really care about? Really.

Just got a nice compliment on our website - "...it's interesting, not like a business website". I've never posted actual stuff from there so I figure, why not?

What do the people involved really care about? Really.

People want to feel important. Consumers, Employees, Shareholders, Young, Old. Everybody. They ask, “What’s in it for me?” They value jobs, companies, products, services and other people that help them manage their lives and pull (or push) them toward their goal of Mattering. You know this.

Yet most organizations disregard these aspects of care. Strange. Because addressing these vital concerns begins to offer something very useful to communities of all stripes: Common benchmarks and a heightened understanding of what to expect of our efforts and from each other. In other words, connective power and leverage where before there was uncertainty, or dissent, poor focus or no commitment.

Good things result when we seek agreement, up front, about what matters. Bad things occur when we assume. While there's nothing earth-shattering in these statements, the means to useful answers eludes many of us. We have some suggestions to help fix this very basic obstacle to many very neccessary aspects of organizing and motivating people. To helping them help themselves in their quest to matter. It starts with simplicity.

linky-dink Alchemysite.com

"The goal is to kick ass" and to set the context for doing same.

Check out the "corporate philosophy" of Flickr's early-stage iteration, Ludicorp. "The goal is to kick ass" is a nice punchline to what comes before it, but the before is what makes it. Oh that more orgs would have such an evolved perspective on what the point of business really is. (hat-tip to kottke.)

Tempus Fugit, Veni vidi vici - TL;DR

Latin for hipsters? Classical Disaffection? Studied boredom? Isn't it cool how latin can dress up bone idleness and half-assed nihilism? Who cares, they're now t-shirts and mugs in Cafe Fouro.

Still trying to figure out how to get TL;DR (too long; didn't read) to substitute for SPQR.

Tuskegee Airmen & WASP Tees are Christmas winners

Well, with 6 days to go till Christmas it seems that the Tuskegee Airmen and Womens Airforce Service Pilots t-shirts and mugs have knocked off the year-round-popular Hells Angels / Flying Tigers shirt. If you'd like one as a gift for someone, they can ship in time for Christmas Eve for several more days. Check out Cafe Fouro's quality Vintage Warbirds Nose Art and Patches Tees.

Brand is who we are, Bond is why we are.

Brand is the public interpretation of personal ideals and shared ideals generate bonds.

The only sustainable, high margin manufacture is to pursue and maintain these bonds.

Your product or service is only the enabler, the excuse for connection.

Your ideals are the connective material--those that you and your community agree on and infuse into your organization and product.

Therefore Why you choose to be the organization you do is immensely powerful.

Because ideals and their bonds and the reassurance they provide are the only scarce commodity left in this world.

Plenty of TVs to choose from.

Toothpaste, insurance companies and breakfast cereals, too.

Big shortage of connections.

They are the metaphorical medicine that protects against the rough intrusions and separations that technological change and business progress has foisted on us.

Bonds are the basis for atomic structure, family stability and organizational growth.

They spring from proximity, community, circumstance and sometimes even by choice.

But mostly bonds are accidental, borne of intent, and reaffirmed often through word, deed and process.

And so the purpose of people and organizations and their brands is to place themselves in the way of good fortune and goodwill.

To create pathways for as many of those happy accidents as possible.

The Executive Lexicon for 2011

The 2011 Executive Lexicon

Aircrafty - vintage squadron art gift calendar for 2011

If you're shopping for a fussy gearhead, history buff or design freak, check out the 2011 Aircrafty calendar. It measures a cubicle-friendly 11x17" and includes 16 of World War Two's coolest squadron icons in large format. January-thru-November each offers a different 10x10" vectored illustration, color-matched to the original and includes details of the squadron it represented. December wraps up the year with 5-for-1, looking like this...

Writers Block + Design Dysfunction = Make Stuff Up

Last year I posted this sometimes-useful exercise I use to break the funk of writers block. Well, this past weekend I was hating anything I scrawled for a client project. It was time to break out of visual funkytown. Those band names like Zambezi Arcade and 40-Second Lloyd? Dammitall, they needed album covers, and titles with some hint of backstory...

Drill, baby, drill! Spill, baby, spill. Kill, baby, kill.

Funny how trite phrases snap back and punch a hole in, well, your 'energy expertise' and then leak all over, well, everything else. Good luck, Gulf Coast! Wearable versions here. As things shake out, we'll know better whom to send a donation from sales proceeds.

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Let's get technical: A "Shitty Deal" defined

Levin says "Shitty Deal" eleven times. A rare victory for authenticy and manna for a 100 million brains begging, jonesing, for a fog-lamp or a cattle prod. It's a tough call, but this one falls in the lower left quadrant.



But damn, it's hard not to think that the Goldman-esque mindset doesn't take some actual pleasure in just breaking people because, well, just because they can. And it's nothing new...

Welcome to R-Complexville (2004):

For instance, whose "values statement" says this:

Communication. Excellence. Respect. Integrity.

Why, it's these guys: [Enron]

Guy #1: "They're fucking taking all the money back from you guys?" "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"

Guy #2: "Yeah, grandma Millie, man"

Guy #1: "Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her asshole for fucking $250 a megawatt hour."

Gracious me. That's not how college educated, customer-centric, All-American businesspeople were supposed to speak in the brochures I got. People in positions of power and responsisbility, guardians of American propriety and restraint, know better. Yes, those fellows must have been an aberration, have to be...

Okay, Tea Partiers. You wanna be ticked off? Go picket the Business Roundtable or your local Chamber or Biz School and demand to know how something as vital and potentially noble as commerce has gotten it's head so far up its ass that YOUR guts are now wrenched up in knots.

Spycams in kids' bedrooms - Taking Things

"Taking things" defined: You convince yourself that your aims are pure, you're doing your best, just being responsible and diligent; you may even be trying to prevent bad acts. Meanwhile, you're taking people's agency and using information from others who have no idea of your access to or power over them. You have vacated consideration and humanity to achieve "specialness" or your "mission."

Could be a School District in Lower Merion PA, or a big investment bank called Goldman Sachs taking short positions on investment products they make and sell to investors as value-earning opportunities.

Caution: Alicorns Next ∞ Miles

When you have to take out the Chimera - a fantastical multi-headed, fully-muxed monster - you need serious air superiority.

Bellerophon earned his fame for killing the beast - what Homer described in the Iliad as "a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle." If that doesn't sound eerily like your average bureaucracy we don't know what does. The good news is that with his trusty Pegasii's help, Bellerophon, grandson of Sisyphus the rock-pusher, won. Yay! (The Alicorn is traced to early Spanish mythology also but don't know much about that.)

If you like, check the spiffy wearables heah: CafeFouro

Tea Party Visual Acuity Test

Well, since we now have several million newly minted militiamen and women, and not a few sudden experts in what the framers of the Constitution "intended," I had to go to the only place I could imagine: Teh Art, mated with half-baked ethnographic field study.

I made an iron on, slapped it on a left-over virgin blue Gildan and headed out to Ukrops (our local grocer) to do some, uh, shopping. From 30 feet, heading in from the parking lot I got a few approving looks and smiles, one guy managed a "yeah, brother!" As he sailed past the head was rotating and I think the smile had faded. Inside, well, it was more proximate and interactive. One old man next to the strawberries was not a fan. I explained that the Gadsden Flag was not a National Flag so you really can't "desecrate" it. I don't think he was convinced but he did appreciate a hand with his big bag of russets. One woman said "I love it" while her daughter's evaluation was "eww!", as she leaned in to fully assess the gross factor. The pattern repeated and it seems a great test for smoking out the Tea Partiers: Smile, then eyes widen, then furrowed brow or head shake. On the other extreme, there were enough affirmative smiles of "I want one!" that it's going into CafeFouro toute suite.

UPDATE: And, presto! Tea Party Visual Acuity Test shirt and Tea Mug

What does good corporate Culture look like?

Online friend and enthnographer extraordinaire Grant McCracken is about to publish his book, Chief Culture Officer: How to create a living, breathing corporation. He's asking for votes on three choices for his cover art so go over there and throw your 2 cents in.

The title of this post brings what seems, to me at least, a good and layered question: What does good corporate Culture look like?

I haven't read the book obviously, but I'm betting Grant addresses in some way the wrestling-smoke nature of such a necessary but hard to describe thing. The folks I most respect in the brand-building realm, of whom Grant is one, all seem to get the sum-is-greater-than-the-parts aspect of a sensibility woven of one-half feeling and one-half matter and bound up in a product or service. And, beginning in the 1980s even CEOs began to grasp the idea of fragile and often nebulous thing called "Goodwill", so much so that it now factors in valuation of many companies when merging or selling. I hope these ladies and gentlemen will respond to what Grant offers with the curiosity and respect it deserves and that they can perceive the power of the asymmetrical ideas (to balance sheet cowboys and -girls anyway) that he's likely going to present.

But still, what does Corporate Culture look like? And can you skin it and say: "Voila!"?

I think so. In my experience it's hard to fake culture in the sense that encountering it is very much like Don Norman's Threebie: We usually have a visceral response followed by a behavioural one and, upon reflection, these sum up to be spiffy and sensuous and satisfying, or not. Okay, there's more to it than that but this is a blog post - It's a metaphysical baton-passing between expectation and experience, chock full of nuance and "english." I even drew a chart once ot try and explain the je n est c'est quoi:



That's a magical gap that a lot of metrics and sliderules just aren't calibrated to recognize nor jump. So, what does Corporate Culture look like? While these aren't book covers, the need to communicate something immediately, the requirement to spark further interest, and the visual channel/medium are the same. Question is, what do they convey? You tell me.

7 minutes that tell us all that's wrong with US Business

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo makes a million-dollars a year to be this fanatically thick-headed. Roll tape:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Merit is dead.

Moonshot Day! The countdown to lift-off video, 40 years on

Stringlish - would you buy this game?

The above illustration is for a game concept I came up with last year right before the economy blew apart. I'd like your help in seeing if it's worth a damn. The concept is one that involves stringing different phrases, titles, words and cultural references together--sort of like Dennis Miller would do when he was still funny, except hopefully more fun for more people. I have used the concept when trying to warm-up or loosen-up teams for brainstorming sessions or just for breaking ice with new working groups--I welcome you to freely do the same if it seems of use. I could try and make it sound fashionably neuro-scientific but I have nothing but anecdotal proof that it works at what it's intended to do, and that people like it in it's limited use so far.

Oh, one more thing: The point? I'd love to be able to put this into some physical or cheaply downloadable format (examples, instructions, etc) via paypal and give the idea and the proceeds to my kids as a gift that, hopefully, might keep on giving as one enters middle school and the other rises to high school and they look forward to paying for college, or a start-up.

I've bored you enough already. Will you give me some feedback on what you think of the concept? Here's my original notes from an early morning, July 2008:

Okay, it was 12:30 AM Monday and I'm watching Spike's MXC waiting for Daily Show and Colbert. Did I mention MXC is a repurposed Japanese game show with dubbed English? Imagine Samurai standup mated with the old British show It's a Knockout. Yeah, some shows are funnier than others and it's likely an acquired insomniac taste for us Y-chromosome sufferers.

Anyway, one of the hosts, "Vic Romano," introduces a contestant as a "Shotgun Wedding Planner." Heh. A few minutes later, he drops another boolean job description: Trailer Park Ranger. They do that lots, in between the puns about poo, STDs and serial killer jokes.

Finally, it's 1:00 AM and time for The Daily Show.

But I can't stop the boolean job title thing running in my head and, yet, the job title thing seems so limiting. The best I can do still has the lurid themes of MXC:

Native tongue bather.
Nocturnal Emissions Checker
Maid of Honorable Discharge

Okay, I did kind of like that last one. But shouldn't it have more zing, more roll, more pointless associations? Sure..

The earlier lamo becomes the longer, lamer Nocturnal emissions check's in the mail bag o' donuts. (5 links - did u see them?)

Hmm. Skate Board of Directors Guild of America. Dining halls of Montezuma's revenge of the nerds?

Okay, by now, you're thinking two things. This fouro guy needs 1) a life and/or 2) psychiatric help. Bah, get lost in translation.

Somebody tell me there's a parlor game or meme already out there about this phonetic linking thing. And if there isn't, why the hell not? And if not, in the spirit of being aware of all internet traditions, I christen it Ringlish in honor of the fine culture that inspires MXC and the better-known mangled wordsong called Engrish.

There it is: Ringlish™, a string of known or recognizable phrases, terms or titles joined for as long as you can keep adding with the requirement that one links the next and that sustainable nonsense is the point of the thing. Extra points for efficient linking i.e.: least use of filler words between linked chains of words. For example:

Big bang a gong show me the money back guarantee (5 links, no filler!)

Employees must wash hands to work, hearts to God is in the Details Magazine stand and delivery room with a view. (8 links, one filler: Stand and Deliver is modified to Delivery to keep things moving s0 it counts as filler word!)

Am I obsessing on this? Sure. But so did Rob Angel and look how famous he is today. Ahh, mind your own businessweekend of the world as we know it.

Imagine the thematic options, extra points for staying on topic. Pencils ready? You have one minute:

MOVIES: Missile Command Decision at Dawn of the Dead Zone Troop (filler!) Beverly Hills Have Eyes of Laura Mars Needs Women in Love Story of O-klahoma. (14 unique links, but since it's topical, 2 points per, instead of 1 each.)

For those not playing at home:

Missile Command
Command Decision
Decision at Dawn
Dawn of the Dead
Dead Zone
Zone Troop[ers]
Troop Beverly Hills
[The] Hills Have Eyes
[The] Eyes of Laura Mars
Mars Needs Women
Women in Love
Love Story
[The] Story of O
Oklahoma

Here we have one filler: Zone Troop[ers] so .5 of a point deducted; one Fluffer™: Story of O is a porno (2 extra points). The is acceptably dropped from Titles, as in The Hills Have Eyes and The Eyes of Laura Mars, etc. Otherwise half the movies, songs and books written will kludge things up. Total Score: 30.5

Home of the Brave New World Order form follows function button fly fishing hole in my bucket list Maker's Mark.

13 links - did you count them all? 13 points.

Phew. Are your eyes glazed? If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Yes, I liked the name Stringlish better after sitting with it a few days. Good choice? Well, what do you think of the game?

The lost art of rhetoric: how to persuade, not assault

A great find: How to teach a child to argue. Why do something so crazy? Because conflict is basic to humans disagreeing over what matters and how to channel scarce resources and energies. And because simply relying on increasingly raised voices--cable TV "debates" between actual grown-ups for example--gets us further apart not closer to useful co-existence. Jay Heinrichs tells us about it here.

...And let’s face it: Our culture has lost the ability to usefully disagree. Most Americans seem to avoid argument. But this has produced passive aggression and groupthink in the office, red and blue states, and families unable to discuss things as simple as what to watch on television. Rhetoric doesn’t turn kids into back-sassers; it makes them think about other points of view.

I had long equated arguing with fighting, but in rhetoric they are very different things. An argument is good; a fight is not. Whereas the goal of a fight is to dominate your opponent, in an argument you succeed when you bring your audience over to your side. A dispute over territory in the backseat of a car qualifies as an argument, for example, in the unlikely event that one child attempts to persuade his audience rather than slug it...

I must admit, this hits home. I'm the product of an Oregon-born stoic, a retired US Air Force dad. But my mother was British though and through, a Merseyside/Lanacashire shop-girl who saw The Beatles when they were just a club band. I bring it up because Heinrich's makes me remember a related example of what he mentions about argument. The scene was Christmas dinner back in the mid-90s when my brother and his wife were in the states on a visit from Birmingham. Attending were Mom, Dad, my brother Malcolm, and our two wives. During the course of the meal, we lapsed into our old pattern: A vigourous discussion about some topic or other after an hour or so of dinner table conversation-lite. For us, debate was alwyas good sport and about the only non-contact way we'd found, as brothers, to have a go at each other. But it wasn't shouting, not a fight. We would argue like we were jousting, and facts and supporting details mattered.

The point of the story? It drove my dad crazy. For him, the pure-born American, watching the to-and-fro was uncomfortable--he saw the animation, heard the argument (rhetorical definition) and thought "fight!" Maybe it was his military background and a need for cohesion and measured communication. Maybe it was because we talking about something he wasn't familair with. Either way, the stoic started to get amped up.

"Dammit, will you guys quit it! This is a dinner table--I just want to enjoy a good family meal!" And here's where Mom, who's been quite happily watching her two boys of 35 and 45 bob and weave over some forgotten issue, says her piece, one that struck me as familiar to Heinrichs' point:

Jerry, I don't see my boys together very often and I like this. This is what families are supposed to do--they talk about things, argue even. Dinner comes with interesting converation. If you don't like it, go in the other room.

He did. And mum picked up her glass of wine and said, "as you were."

Read Heinrichs' piece. For me it says alot about what and why we don't say enough, or much at all very well, about what matters here in the land of "Free speech."