Yes, it could have been an episode of a program on the DIY  Network…if they had a show for redecorating an office, subtracted the hulky host and replaced them with me. Nevertheless, last Thursday afternoon, I sent most of our Chicago team for an afternoon game at Wrigley Field and let them know that they could work from home on Friday because I would be cleaning the carpets and touching up paint in the office. When they left for the game at noon on Thursday, the crash began!

Day One

First, I put our very own Vice President of Operations, Matt Crook, on carpet cleaning duty. Then I grabbed a brush and attempted to stay out of the real painters way. When we finished at 11 pm, on day one, we had clean carpets and freshly painted walls. Per the advice of our crash decorator, Darbie McCollian from Restore Decor, we added new color to our two offices and updated our signature orange wall.

Day Two

This one started early! After loading the 17′ Uhaul, I was on the road at 6:30 am to fight Chicago traffic and get the new furniture and accessories to the office. This time my brother-in-law, Brandon, was along for the ride. When we arrived, Darbie, Matt, Brandon and I began unloading the truck and getting it all to the 4th floor. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I invited our new Controller, Dan Alexander, to join in on the heavy lifting. “Welcome to the company Dan, now grab a box”. At the close of day two it was out with the old and in with the new!

Day Three and Four

Saturday and Sunday was Darbie’s time to shine. Our crew had been reduced to Michelle, myself, and Darbie because even during a crash, people should still get their weekends off. While Darbie was methodically bringing her design through to the home stretch, Michelle and I were modifying the individual workspaces and reorganizing the files to accompany the new arrangement. By Sunday afternoon, the crash team had put in 40 hours in four days and we were soooo close to being finished….

Day Five

I arrived at 6 am on Monday to hang two new original pieces of art and change out a file cabinet, which arrived to us with a dent. Mission complete as of 7:16 am on Monday. In four plus days we had cleaned carpets, freshened up the colors on the wall, updated our waiting area, added a company sign, created additional interviewing space, reorganized the individual work spaces to be more comfortable and efficient, created more storage in our mini kitchen area and found room for an additional work station!

Finally, it was time to unveil our surprise crash to a very deserving team…and they loved it!

Thank you to Darbie McCollian at Restore Decor, the crash team of Matt, Brandon, Tim the painter, Dan, Al Grossman at Signs Now in Geneva, and Michelle for coming up with the idea for the crash and most of all to the Chicago Smarties who’s hard work and dedication have ultimately allowed us this luxury.

The human resources department is known for being touchy-feely, but in the age of big data, it’s becoming a bit more cold and analytical. From figuring out what schools to recruit from to what employees should be offered flexible work arrangements, data analytics are helping HR professionals make more informed decisions.

The success of Oscar nominated film Moneyball isn’t hurting either, said James Raybould, director of insights at LinkedIn. The movie, based on the Michael Lewis book, tells the true story of Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane. Using statistical analysis, Beane was able to recruit undervalued baseball players and lead his underfunded baseball club to the playoffs.

Read the full article on blogs.wsj.com!

AMC has a new reality show coming out in April called, “The Pitch.” It’s billed as a real-life advertising agency pitch-scenario with real agencies and a real client (Subway). AMC will give us a sneak peek on April 8th after a, you guessed it, Mad Men episode (smart). But what’s interesting to me about this new show is that the big agencies, like BBDO, DDB, McCann, and several others, were approached by AMC to participate, but they turned it down.

The speculation as to why they turned it down, according to the New York Times, “Getting Ad Agencies Into Reality TV,” by Stuart Elliott, is that the big agencies didn’t want to expose their “secret sauces” for all, including competitive agencies, to see. They have proprietary strategic processes to protect. One-of-a-kind brand planning techniques to keep secret. Trademarked brainstorming methods that were invented here. Right?

Read the full article on www.forbes.com!

12 April 2012/ AIGA Chicago

Design Thinking – Morning Star

Design Thinking is a biannual lecture series devoted to those who are driving this constant process of change. It features design leaders, educators, curators, and authors who are actively reshaping the creative process, directing currents in contemporary culture, and redefining the meaning of design.

It’s happened to most of us at one point or another: you turn in your notice at a job, and the company scrambles to make a counteroffer designed to make you want to stay. It can be tempting, especially if the raise or benefits they’re offering are sweet enough compared to the job (we hope) you’re headed to, but in almost every case it’s a bad idea to take the counteroffer. Here’s why.

Putting aside the notion that even if you take the counteroffer, you’ll always be “that person who resigned but stayed for the money,” it’s worth remembering that counteroffers are usually made when a company—or a manager—is in panic mode and doesn’t want to suddenly lose a potentially valuable employee—at least not until they can be replaced easily. So while you may take the counteroffer, enjoy the fatter paycheck or bigger bonus, and think everything is okay, it’s very likely that your management is working on ways to work around you or replace you so they can eventually eliminate an “at risk” employee, one they assume will start looking for a new job eventually again anyway.

Read the full article on lifehacker.com!

Do you earn more or less than the world’s average wage? Type in your monthly salary and we’ll give you the answer.

The average wage, calculated by the International Labour Organization, is published here for the first time. It’s a rough figure based on data from 72 countries, omitting some of the world’s poorest nations. All figures are adjusted to reflect variations in the cost of living from one country to another, and as Ruth Alexander of BBC radio’s More or Less programme underlines, it’s all about wage earners, not the self-employed or people on benefits.

Check it out on www.bbc.co.uk!

Political campaigns used to be short, frenzied run-ups to an election — after which the winning candidate would turn to the stately task of governing. But over the past few decades, politics and policy began to mingle. Political advisors took White House roles, and polling began to drive decision-making — “The Permanent Campaign,” as journalist (and later Clinton staffer) Sidney Blumenthal presciently dubbed it in his 1980 book.

The advent of 24-hour cable news (and later, the Internet) opened a gaping maw, ravenous for content. Politicians knew they’d be dissected constantly, not just during campaign season, with querulous Crossfire hosts debating who has “The Big Mo” and who’s on the downswing. Most people — even former political operatives, like me — can agree this is bad for democracy. But candidates have accepted it as the new normal and, with savvy teams PR experts on call, they’re making do.

The real problem, though, isn’t the impact on politicians.

It’s the fact that everyone else — including regular professionals — is also now expected to perform round-the-clock personal brand maintenance, and most people don’t even realize it.

Read the full article on blogs.hbr.org!

If you lost your job today, after commiserating with pals tonight it might seem enticing to update your social networks with the news. Canfield warns that a blast to Facebook that you’re unemployed and in need of a job can seem desperate and off-putting to both personal friends and potential business contacts. Waldman, on the other hand, has more positive news. In an experiment conducted for his 2011 title Job Searching With Social Media For Dummies, he asked a friend to do exactly that. “He had been out of work for about three months and was getting nowhere,” Waldman recalls. “So he updated his status and made himself vulnerable; he told his entire LinkedIn network he was looking for help.”

Within the next seven days he received nearly 20 messages, and, surprisingly, the only negative comments were from friends who were concerned he might “look desperate.” The other half? Legitimate job leads. “If you’re willing to put yourself on the line,” he says, “It might be worth bucking the status quo and making yourself a little more vulnerable.” This just might be a mistake that pays off.

Read the full article on forbes.com!

Whenever I try to conjure up what innovation looks like, the same slideshow of images clicks across my mind: that photo of Einstein with his tongue sticking out, Edison with his light bulb, Steve Jobs onstage in his black turtleneck, introducing the latest iThing. Unoriginal and overdone, to be sure. And not all that accurate.

Because it’s not just about that romantic “ah ha!” moment in front of a chalkboard or a cocktail napkin, it’s about the nitty-gritty work that comes after the idea:  getting it accepted and implemented. Who are these faces? And, most importantly, as I’m sure you’re all asking yourselves: where do I fit in?

Read the full article on forbes.com!

Oftentimes when people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I work in advertising, they ask, “Don’t you wish you got to be an ad man in the golden era, like on Mad Men?” I usually smile and respond with “What makes you think the golden era was 40 years ago? We are living in the golden era right now–the most exciting and unpredictable time in marketing history.” We are witnessing a complete social transformation. The entire industry has been flipped on its head.

So what’s changed? In the ’60s, agencies controlled a brand’s message and how it was broadcast to an extremely broad target audience on a small number of platforms. Today, consumers are in control; scattered across a variety of social networks, niche online communities are very selective about what they want to consume and the mediums through which they want to consume it. It is a common industry consensus that bombarding or spamming consumers with intrusive advertising and brand messages simply no longer works, not to mention it’s incredibly expensive. So why do so many brands and agencies keep making the same mistakes?

Read the full article on fastcompany.com!

What makes people creative? What gives some of us the ability to create work that captivates the eyes, minds and hearts of others? Jonah Lehrer, a writer specializing in neuroscience, addresses that question in his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.

Lehrer defines creativity broadly, considering everything from the invention of masking tape to breakthroughs in mathematics; from memorable ad campaigns to Shakespearean tragedies. He finds that the conditions that favor creativity — our brains, our times, our buildings, our cities — are equally broad.

Lehrer joins NPR’s Robert Siegel to talk about the creative process — where great ideas come from, how to foster them, and what to do when you inevitably get stuck.

Read the full article on www.npr.org!

There are many reasons you can lack confidence at work. Maybe you’re in a job that requires skills you don’t have, or you’re less experienced than anyone around you. Or you’re new to the company and feel uneasy about your ability to succeed. Or you feel threatened by colleagues, fear losing your job, or are simply too hard on yourself. Public humiliation and errors in judgment can also do the trick.

There’s just one most common reason, though, says Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and author of Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: “Overall, the most common reason that employees lose confidence is very simply because of a bad relationship with their boss. That insecurity will last as long as the relationship is strained.”

Read the full article on www.forbes.com!

You looking for a lucky break? You aren’t alone.

Some 84% of 7,000 professionals surveyed by LinkedIn say they believe that luck plays a part in a booming career.

Lucky breaks seem random. It’s a tip on a new job; a chance meeting with a prospect that leads to a big sale; overhearing details of a business deal while at the coffee shop.

But oddly enough, the survey discovered that luck is less random than it seems. It’s almost like a job skill.

Five factors were named by a significant number of poll takers as contributions to luck, with women and men both saying the single most important factor to luck is hard work.

Read the full article on businessinsider.com!

Why is it that between 25 and 50 per cent of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?

It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time.

What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It’s like an itch we can’t resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.

Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you’re taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you’re driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn’t?

Read the full article on blogs.hbr.org!

Design isn’t just wire frames or visual style; it’s about the product as a whole, writes Sahil Lavingia.

“Designers, designers, designers” has become the new “developers, developers, developers.” Witness the ever-growing list of job postings for product designers, UI designers, user research designers, UX designers. They’re posted faster than I can read them. Someone needs a “senior design champion” (versus a normal design champion?), while another is looking for a “catalyst of creativity.” Designers are becoming the new hotness, just as front-end engineers blew up job boards when businesses started taking the web seriously. We need a designer. You need a designer. We all need designers.

I agree, we all need designers. But I’d argue that we already have them. They’re us: you and me. Design shouldn’t be designated a specific function or industry. The discipline is just as fundamental as technology and profit are to a business that it doesn’t need to be isolated to a single role. It should be considered part of every role.

Read the full article on fastcodesign.com!

Good afternoon to you! Take a look at this thought-provoking article on creativity! Via npr.org

With the economy still struggling to recover, key indicators of economic performance are largely focused on traditional employment — we are fixated on how many people have managed to find on-site, single-employer jobs. But is this an outdated perspective?

Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath would say so. In a recent blog post for Harvard Business Review, McGrath questions the pervasive assumption that “regular” employment is always the most stable and desirable. She writes, “Many of the assumptions about society that we take for granted are based on the notion that relatively stable employment relationships are the norm. When will our thinking catch up with the new reality?”

Read the full article on techcrunch.com!

The Bermuda Triangle and Sasquatch. Now those are real mysteries. As for how the modern recruiting and staffing world operates, that topic isn’t quite so enigmatic — although many job hunters continue to seem utterly baffled by it.

Over the years, I’ve had literally hundreds of clients throw up their hands in exasperation, wondering why their friends and co-workers keep getting called by recruiters and “placed” in various jobs, while they, themselves, go unnoticed. Essentially, it’s because there are basically three kinds of people in the world when it comes to how marketable (or not) any individual professional is going to be to the recruiter community.

Here’s the breakdown:

Read the full article on blog.nwjobs.com!

“My manager expects me to be at my desk from 9 to 5,” a highly successful salesperson lamented during a break at a session I was delivering at a progressive company in Silicon Valley. “I love my job,” she went on, “but I have an hour and fifteen minute commute each way, and it’s just wearing me down.”

“Could you do your work from home?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” she told me.

How crazy is that? Her boss shouldn’t just be allowing her to work from home, he ought to be encouraging it.

Most employers still tell their employees when to come to work, when to leave, and how they’re expected to work when they’re there. Why not measure employees by the value they create, rather than by the number of hours they sit at a desk?

Read the full article on hbr.org!