There is no language without deceit.
Italo Calvino (via 52books)
There is no language without deceit.
Italo Calvino (via 52books)
Month: December 2009
Three Keys to Effective Execution
Why can even the most brilliant strategies founder in the implementation phase? “When things haven’t gone as planned, it’s often because the process wasn’t well defined, we missed a step, or we didn’t follow a specific sequence,” says Gordon Woodfall, former president and general manager of Waltham, Mass.-based Thermo KeyTek (now Thermo Fisher Scientific). The execution phase forces you to translate your broad-brush conceptual understanding of your company’s strategy into an intimate familiarity with how it will all happen: who will take on which tasks in what sequence, how long those tasks will take, how much they’ll cost, and how they’ll affect subsequent activities.
Here are three recommendations to help you make this translation.
1. Communicate the key points
2. Develop tracking systems that facilitate problem solving
3. Set up formal reviews
More here http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hmu/2008/02/three-keys-to-effective-execut.php
Social Media Marketing Report
According to a social media study by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2009, 88% of marketers are now using social media in some form and 72% have begun within the last few months.
Key findings from the data conclude that:
- Small-business owners are more likely to use LinkedIn than employees working for a corporation.
- Men are significantly more likely to use YouTube or other video marketing than women (52.4% of all men compared with 31.7% of women).
- For those just getting under way with social media marketing, LinkedIn is ranked as their number-two choice, pushing blogging down one notch.
- Among those who have been using social media for a few months, Facebook is in second place. This group also has more Twitter use.
- Twitter is used by 94% of marketers who have been using social media for years, followed closely by blogs. This group also endorses online video significantly moreso than the other groups
SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Michael Bierut shares notebooks he has kept from 1982 until 2008.
“There always seems to be a lot of interest in designers’ sketchbooks, but I call these notebooks for a reason. I’ve seen other designer’s sketchbooks and I’m always impressed by how much creativity is on display. Not in mine. Page after page contain nothing but records of phone conversations, notes from meetings, price estimates, specifications. I keep the random doodles to a minimum. Someone looking at those pages would think the book might belong to a lawyer or, more likely, a party planner. Every once in a while, though, there are some drawings that would suggest that the owner was a designer.” – Michael Bierut
I’ve always envied other designers who keep really interesting notebooks with amazing sketches and beautifully handwritten notes, worthy of exhibition (Jose Cabaco, Mathias Paeres, Patrick Rockwell..). I’ve tried to analyse my notebooks at one time, and out of laziness I drew the conclusion that my role and relationship with my work has reached a point where I don’t feel the need to meticulously draft it all out. But a more accurate analysis would be that my process is just different from those designers whose notebooks I envy. And this is ok. Thanks Mr. Bierut. 🙂
Each new fad calls attention to one virtue or another—first it’s efficiency, then quality, next it’s customer satisfaction, then supplier satisfaction, then self-satisfaction, and finally, at some point, it’s efficiency all over again. If it’s reminiscent of the kind of toothless wisdom offered in self-help literature, that’s because management theory is mostly a subgenre of self-help. Which isn’t to say it’s completely useless. But just as most people are able to lead fulfilling lives without consulting Deepak Chopra, most managers can probably spare themselves an education in management theory.
“The Management Myth,” Matthew Stewart The Atlantic Online (via somethingchanged)
The heart of a virtuous person has settled down and he does not rush about at things. A person of little merit is not at peace but walks about making trouble and is in conflict with all.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659 – 1719) (via blogut) (via quote-book)
Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.
Ludwig van Beethoven (via blogut) (via quote-book)
know anyone like this? okay, okay, don’t start pointing fingers…
“many of us are so bad because we’re trying so hard to be good…. some of us are trying so hard to be good because and we’re trying to keep the bad people out… you’re the ones that are complaining about everything… you’re looking for this perfect utopia where everybody does everything just so and usually it is according to the morals you set up by picking and choosing form various churches and various moral agencies and you’re saying, ‘these are the things you have to have to line up to be right and we won’t be part of you until become one of us.’ ….you’re the folks that won’t join a church because they don’t do everything just so and you’re not willing to even dialogue about it and if it’s not this way it’s no-way…”
-kurt hannah
Your greatness is measured by your kindness; your education and intellect by your modesty; your ignorance is betrayed by your suspicions and prejudices, and your real caliber is measured by the consideration and tolerance you have for others.
William J. H. Boetcker (via justbesplendid) (via quote-book)
Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.
Aldous Huxley (via crookedtooth)
When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army.
Coffee is the common man’s gold, and like gold, it brings to every person the feeling of luxury and nobility.
legoexpress: roomthily: lego infographic from The Daily Mail (When Lego lost its head – and how this toy story got its’ happy ending)
Give a frontiersman coffee and tobacco, and he will endure any privation, suffer any hardship, but let him be without these two necessaries of the woods, and he becomes irresolute and murmuring.
U.S. Army Lt. William Whiting, 1849
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Sophocles (via johannal) (via quote-book)
For years have pushed art making away from me. Partly due to lack of space and consolidating my paintings into small sketchbooks. Then I replaced paint for pen and ink, and drew smaller images into Moleskines until my drawings disappeared into lines of characters trying to form poems…
Now, I want to start painting again…
(Image source via creativeinspiration: 472239364: artpixie: love letters and skypaints: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinycastles/3912498882/)
No longer does the aspiring teenage punk rocker, confined to a dreary and un-hip rural or suburban existence, have to feel isolated and alone. Sure, his classmates may think the Gaslight Anthem is a Frank Sinatra song, but he can easily find the band’s music, clothing and, more importantly, the peers he craves with the help of the Internet.
We Are United in Our Digital Isolation, PopMatters (via somethingchanged)
on the subject of caffeine
Today’s caffeine intake:
- 16 oz. coffee from Starbucks: 270 mg
- 12 oz. can Diet Sparkling Lemonade: 41 mg
- 16 oz. can of Lo-Carb Monster: 160 mg
- 2 cups of coffee: 200+ mg.
Total: 671+ mg. caffeineI’m lucky caffeine does nothing for me, I suppose. I just like pretty much everything that contains it? Idk. All of the above was delicious and I drink all of that stuff on a regular basis.
What if a print magazine used the same template for every article? It would be pretty boring, no?
The Death Of The Blog Post – Smashing Magazine (via fluffynotes)
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
T.S. Eliot
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.
Alex Levine
I orchestrate my mornings to the tune of coffee.
Harry Mahtar
Other people will edit you your whole life. They’ll take what you say and keep the bits they like and throw away the rest.
Don’t edit yourself. Let other people do it for you.
(via I wrote this for you) (via kari-shma) (via ireadintothings)
Coffeehouse Junkie 