Rothacker Reviews

BP: Rebranded

Leave it to the creative community to design a logo that will help BP launch a new brand.

Visit Greenpeace's Flickr page for more logos.

Change by Design

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO authored a book in 2009, titled Change by Design. Today it ranks number five at Amazon under the category Organizational Change. Tim writes:

This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a blueprint for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking - an approach for creative problem solving - into all facets of their organizations, products or services to discover new alternatives for business and society as a whole.

The high ranking at Amazon is not because a bunch of leaders who want to be creative rushed out to buy Tim's book - even though Tim clearly communicates the strategies and business reasons behind engaging design thinking, c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-e-s in CEO and leader language. Rather the high ranking is because those who work for these leaders are desperately in search of - as in crawling across the hot desert floor in search of a tall, cool glass of water - other leaders who get it, other companies that are doing it and other ways to operate a company better.

If you're a CEO / leader and the word change begins to constrict the little fellers in your groin's environment, relax. You don't have to embrace creative problem solving to change your entire company. Learn about it, become familiar with it and change one outdated personal business practice. Once you've gotten your arms and mind around design thinking and have effected a positive personal outcome, you will be encouraged and excited to use it once again. For design thinking to be effective in your company, it must become a mindset in which you truly believe in.

The cold reality of the situation is that if you're a CEO / leader now and are not already tuned into design thinking, you will never will. Your best bet is to step down from CEO and become a Wal-Mart greeter for your company. The only difference is you'll have the wealth and knowledge of your typical WM greeter, but you'll get to actually use it because you will remain on with your company in an advisory capacity. (Wal-Mart shuns the depth-less pool of knowledge and resources contained in their greeter's hearts and minds).

Could you possibly imagine the courage and incredible self-knowledge of a CEO who understands that he doesn't have the capacity to embrace design thinking, but cares enough about his company to turn the reigns over to someone who does and remain on to help?

The cold reality of the situation is that this person doesn't exist. And this leads back to my number one recommendation for reading Tim's work: Learn to identify CEO's and companies who embrace design thinking. Learn from them. Work for them.

Here's another reason for reading Change by Design: Use it as a compass to help navigate your own road. Read the book looking through the window of your own potential development. 

Business Lessons From Van Halen

Imagine if you could design, build and insert a mechanism - like the robot from Lost in Space, into your business. A Danger Will Robinson would alert you to problems ahead. Van Halen built such a mechanism into its operation and it was brilliant.

Dan Heath and Chip Heath explain Van Halen's canary in a coal mine in their latest Fast Company article.

Betcha didn't see that coming!

How simple, yet how effective.

Think about your life and work. Could you design, build and implement a Lost in Space robot into your routine?

Ironically, my ancestors designed one such system. It was hair loss. They timed mine to be implemented as our oldest was becoming a teenager...

Fortune: A Design Treasure

Strolling along the beach on a cold, gray February morning, I notice a sea shell beckoning for me to pick her up. Dusting off the sand I get a sense of nostalgia. Although her edges are well worn, her lines and color refuse to fade away. They remain as sentinels, looking for a future generation that will one time connect again. Could they have found me for this purpose? The sea shell will go into my collection. While I will no doubt get much pleasure from her lines, diagrams, illustration, photography, maps and covers, future Rothacker's I hope, will get that much more.

Thanks to Jason Kottke for his map to this sea shell.

Fortune: A Design Treasure

Davo, what do you mean future Rothacker's? I believe that Rothacker Reviews is a message in a time bottle to my future relatives. It is sort of like a memoir in progress. On occasion I will speak directly to my future tribe, but for the most part, it is my hope that they will run my words past their own filters and form their own opinions as to who this strange bird is (was). Of course really close tribesmen-n-women will have access to my journals, providing a clear and succinct glimpse into the inner machinery that cranked all this out (not).

Do you have a personal Web site? (I hate the word blog). Think about laying down some bread crumbs for your future relatives to discover.

A Place of Great Significance That Needs to be Seen

Kyle Cassidy is a photographer. One day he had the opportunity to step inside author Michael Swanick's home office. Kyle thought, "this is a place of great significance and it needs to be seen. It was like I'd cracked open his skull and seen the gears of genius." Kyle's glimpse into genius spurred on his project Where I Write: Fantasy & Science Fiction Authors in their Creative Spaces.

Kyle spends a lot of time thinking about people's environments. Where I Write is a project designed to explore whether or not there is a connection between where writers work and the work itself. Wow! If you're a writer and that last sentence doesn't cause a pause for introspection.

Is your writing a product of the environment where it is written? Is there a connection?

I am including a snapshot of my lair below. At first I thought, "OMG, I better clean it up before I invite ya'll in." Then I reconsidered. It is what it is. I'm going to have to think about that connection, but there is a gravitational pull towards what flies off my fingertips and a sense of place...

One other thing that struck me in regards to Kyle's "...a place of great significance...needs to be seen" is my own reaction to stuff I see and my need to write about it.

Btw, the books you see here are the ones that I refer back to most often, pretty much my babies. The rest are scattered on shelves throughout our house and garage.

Home Office Design

This is a most prolific list of ideas and resources to help organize your home office from Career Overview.

Image by OutinHome.com 

The Call of the Wild and Personal Branding

Do you know what made the Cluetrain Manifesto so darn intriguing? The authors burned the bridge after writing it. In the lads' own words:

SO WHADDYA THINK? WILL CLUETRAIN BE THE NEXT BIG THING? Not if we can help it. Deep-six the bumper stickers. Forget the catchy slogans and funny hats. Let's not write the bylaws and pretend we did. Let's not start another frickin' club. The only decent thing to do with the CLUETRAIN  is to bury the sucker now while there's time, before it begins to smell of management philosophy.

Do you know what is starting to smell of bumper stickers? Personal Branding. I love everything about personal branding. But there are a whole lotta people jumping on the PB bandwagon and I am afraid we're already awash in a mudslide of frickin' clubs. 

What can we do? Deep-six the gurus and let Buck guide us.

In the book The Call of the Wild, Buck, a dog, journeys from a soft life in California to a demanding yet fulfilling life in the Yukon Territory. He transforms from a domesticated dog back to his ancestral roots, his authentic, wild self. Buck's wild self was always there. It was just buried under layers of domestication. At first when Buck tuned in, the wild side called to him in a faint whisper. The more he immersed himself in the wild, the louder the call became.

Buck didn't need a bunch of merchants selling him shovels and supplies to help him find gold, find his true self. He just needed to listen to his inner voice and follow its direction.

We too are capable of tapping into our inner voice for directions on how to be authentic. We truly do not have to wear a bunch of funny hats and draft up a bunch of bylaws. After all, do we really need to follow a prescribed method to discover who we really are?

Listen to the voice. Be true to who you are at all times. The secret is to be. For when you be, that's all the personal branding you need. Matter of fact, the gurus can write a bunch of catchy slogans and forge a management philosophy from your example of just being...and they probably will, will repackage it and sell it to others who are looking for their own pot of gold.

Just be.

The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

The Call of the Wild is a book about Buck, a dog who through a series of circumstances and adventures, finds himself in the Yukon Territory of northwest Canada, answering a primordial calling. The book is set in the late 1800's around the Klondike Gold Rush. Jack London was twenty-seven years old when it was published in 1903.

For whatever reason, I missed reading The Call of the Wild and other books like Alice in Wonderland, when I was in school. So, in an attempt to keep my boring non-fiction business book mind off guard, I'll pick up one of these books from time to time and read it.

Two things caused me to not put this book down. One, Jack London's voice and storytelling. Jack, an  American, doesn't write like an olden time author. His cadence is fresh and doesn't require extra thought to figure out where he is going. Number two is the book's design. This is an EMC Masterpiece Series Access Edition. It's actually a fictional work held sentinel by a textbook. It is designed to teach students about plot, conflict, theme, motivation, characters, etc.

The book begins with a light biography of Jack London. It's followed by biographical and historical time lines. The introduction provides the book's setting in an historical overview. Then there is a list of characters followed by a map of the Yukon Territory.

Chapters - a thin line drawn down each page provides a separation for the margin. Within each margin is a question that helps the reader introspect deeper into the passage. At the bottom of every page is a dictionary-type description of selected words on that page.Techniques and exercises are found at chapter's end to help readers with recall, interpretation, synthesizing and connections to literary terms.

The book's end begins with a plot analysis followed by creative writing activities and projects. A glossary follows along with definition of literary terms.

My head was spinning from potential take-aways from this book - above and beyond the pleasure of reading a well written story. EMC's design and format flat out facilitates learning. If you have to present written instruction that contains unfamiliar terms, break down the meaning on that page - like the definitions found on the bottom of the pages here. Ask questions on that same page to provide a deeper understanding  of content. Provide a review that engages the reader.

If you are a writer of fiction and are in need of some light, remedial work, this book is the perfect elixir. It will take your hand and gently guide you through the parts of a plot. If you are a writer of non-fiction and bring your imagination along, the journey through the parts of a plot will unburden your suppression of facts and provide much needed word lubrication.

My next take-away is to be savored in its own post. I'll give you a hint though - it has to do with a journey through one's own mind and personal branding.

Presentation Zen: Think Like a Designer

Do you have the ability to design? If you have the desire to improve your diet, the organization of your bathroom or garage, a work process or the way your car runs, you have the ability to design. Just because you do not have the word designer attached to a title, doesn't mean you can't reap the benefits of design thinking - and even hang out your own design shingle even though it's just within your mind.

Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen has put together a most excellent ten tip list, plus one, to help everyone think like a designer.

Tip number 10 jumped off the page at me this morning...

(10) Sharpen your vision & curiosity and learn from the lessons around you. Good designers are skilled at noticing and observing. They are able to see both the big picture and the details of the world around them. Humans are natural pattern seekers; be mindful of this skill in yourself and in others. Design is a "whole brain" process. You are creative, practical, rational, analytic, empathetic, and passionate. Foster these aptitudes.

This reminds me of what Al Einstein said, "It is impossible to solve significant problems using the same level of knowledge that created them." 

I think if he could, Al would tell us to get off the hamster wheel and walk about in the world with our eyes wide open and engage our other senses as well.

Here is a little book with a big idea to get you started.

Clive Thompson: The Future of Reading

Clive Thompson writes an article in the June 2009, issue of Wired magazine titled, The Future of Reading.  It centers around publishing books online and letting readers take it from there.  I clipped Clive's article, marked it up a tad and provide a link to it and also to Wired's version below.

I cannot imagine that there is a greater book lover on the planet than me.  I love the feel, the smell, the ability to mark up and write in books.  I love the idea of placing books online to be read!  I believe it would enhance my ability to connect with relevant content.  That is, the commentary by others about what they believe to be relevant would greatly help me.

I am an Amazon.com boy.  I love this company!  But for all of the hundreds of books that I've bought from them (I've financed a six inch piece of teak in Jeff's boat), I don't think I've once bought a book based on a customer's review.  (I have been influenced by the "Customers who bought this item also bought...")  And, for one of the three reviews that I wrote, I got spanked by a commenter for preaching.  I have bought quite a few books based on reviews from my colleagues at JJL.  Why?  Because these are folks who I've come to know.  Authors of personal Web sites that I follow, would no doubt make notes on content extracted from online books.  This has the ability to provide a spark to dry Kindling and cause me to visit Amazon once again (you can use this copy Jeff, I'll just need to initial that next piece of teak...)

Good stuff Clive!

Clive clipped by Dave:  Download The_Future_of_Reading

Clive at Wired

Illustration: Michael Bierut/Pentagram; book: Istock Photo