Rothacker Reviews

So Whaddya Do?

Let's pretend that you didn't score that internship with Ryan Murphy's assistant's assistant and you didn't spend a whole season working with the cast of Glee. Let's pretend that you don't have your sights set on a career in musical comedies. Your parents want you to be an accountant. Your grandma thinks you should be a doctor. Your priest wants you to consider a career in the church. And your dog is telling you to follow your heart. You have a few interests but you're just not sure what you want to be when you grow up. So, whaddya do?

You go out and talk with people about what they do. You ask questions, you listen and you learn.

"Dave, I have no idea how to just go out and talk with people and ask questions. Matter of fact, now that you mention it, I have one question for you. So, whaddya do?"

Glad you asked. You go to Lissy Carr's Website So Whaddya Do? and learn all about informational interviewing. Lissy calls it an infoview. Lissy says, "... it helps you learn about a field or job that you might be interested in from someone who works in that field."

Author Richard Neson Bolles coined the term informational interview. I bought my first copy of Bolles' book What Color is Your Parachute? in 1981. Since then I've infoviewed somewhere around one hundred people and like to consider myself a student on the subject. Lissy Carr's tutorial on infoviews is one of the most clear, crisp and focused lessons that I've ever seen.

The So Whaddya Do? site is a Lamborghini and the infoview is its fuel. You see, the real mission is to help people find their dream career. So Lissy goes out and infoviews people in various fields to provide visitors with an in depth view into that particular profession. On the page where the videos of interviews are displayed, Lissy offers a column titled Job Jargon. There, one can find definitions to common terms in that industry, suggested reading and links to pursue additional research.

Aside from the fact that Lissy bases her site on infoviews,* what impresses me the most is a combination of razor focus and site design. This combination translates into a medium that makes her material easy to understand and easy to remember.

*In my opinion, the infoview is the most powerful way to not only land the job/career that you desire, but it will increase opportunities in the future that are difficult to comprehend in the present.

Tom Peters is not a BIG MOUTH & stuff you can learn from him

I used to think Tom Peters' writing was annoying. While I've always appreciated his message, his use of capitalization, bold fonts, radical paragraphs, wild exclamation marks and fonts, in more sizes than there are defintions of design, downright irritated me. It did that is, until one day I had a conversation with my doctor.

I asked my doc, who is also a teacher, "how many students in your class are passionate about what they're learning and are engaged in their professional development? "

Doc said in a class of twenty, maybe one or two. Those one or two make her fifteen hour days worth it. They give her reason to go on.

I think it has to do with how strongly my doctor believes in her craft and its power to heal. To the core of her being she knows it does. The precise moment when I realized this is when Tom and his exclamation marks took over my head. And as they did, Tom's writing style began to fade and his message leapt at me from the pages.

Tom believes so strongly in this message that he overpowers the fonts and punctuation marks and enlists them into his army of persuasion. I don't think Tom is willing to settle for the smaller percentage of believers as my doc, so he raises the volume on his discourse.

To be real, this isn't so much about Tom as it is about me getting my head on straight. Here's another example. My perception of Tom's audience / market was CEO's and managers who wanted to be like the rock star CEO's who Tom consulted with.

This view changed when I read The Little Big Things, Tom's latest book, for the second time. I read it through the window of this mindset: How can Tom's book help college students stand out from their peers and prepare for life after college? OMG! I think The Little Big Things is more relevant to college students than it is to some ole coot managers (or x-managers like me). Matter of fact, I could pattern my entire Standing out in a Sea of Sameness site after it.

The book's premise is that Excellence is the result of many small tasks, all of which can be practiced and mastered. Tom says, "hard is soft and soft is hard."

More on Tom's book here.

If you're an ole coot you need the book because it is relevant. If you're a college student catch Tom over at You Tube where he is presenting short videos of the book's content.

Design is How it Works

Design is How it Works by Jay Greene.

It's summer. It's Florida. And it's hot. I pick up Design is How it Works and begin to read. Three paragraphs in and I look around for my fireplace, my mug of hot, green tea and my stack of cherry and oak firewood. Why? Because when you settle down to read a good story, that's what you need. Although my fireplace is but a distant, N.E. Ohio memory, visions of its crackling flames and warm heat are instantly evoked. Any notion that my good story observation was premature was totally dispelled by book's end.

Here is what Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO says about Design is How it Works:

"Jay Greene gets to the heart of the matter. Design is not just about how things look, it is about how they work. Follow his fascinating journey through some of the world's most significant design-led companies, and learn how they have made design central to their endeavors. Design Is How It Works offers ideas and inspiration to anyone seeking to build a business that makes a difference."

If you like how Malcolm Gladwell spins a non-fiction tale you'll like how Jay presents eight separate case studies yet ties them together into a main theme. As you journey into the book you'll notice how he references earlier case studies and people and how this tightens up his overall discourse.

You know how some business books seem to talk directly to uninformed CEO's? You can almost feel the author's spittle hit your face as his or her's anger builds into a near physical thrashing of those CEO's who kowtow to monthly numbers, quarterly projections and stoic reluctance towards innovation and progress. I'll pause a moment while you wipe the spittle off your bus partner's face... Well, this book isn't like that. Jay's much more diplomatic.

As a matter of fact, backwoods, wayward CEO's didn't come directly to mind. My first thought was that this is an excellent book to help identify a quality company. One that's driven to satisfy customer's latent and obvious needs while sticking to its guns and following its own soul script.

"My Parents Didn't Have a Clue About That Stuff"

"I didn't have a calculated route I was going to take, my parents didn't have a clue about that stuff." Michael Jager.

You're walking down a dark road laden with land mines. It's 2010, your map is dated 1984. You've done okay, you're still alive, but you've got five miles to go. As the road narrows a stranger with long hair, a beard and John Lennon glasses approaches and says, "You look tired miss. Would you like to know where the land mines are?"

Consider it a bonus and privilege to have parents who offer advice for the road ahead. Consider the possibility that there are many people out there who will gladly tell you about the road ahead. Consider listening.

Don't wait until you bump into some along the road. Become curious. Become a seeker of stories.

Michael Jager packs a ton of enlightenment into this two minute and twenty-one second video.

Image by Ian Munroe

The d.school @ Stanford Bootcamp Bootleg

This is about finding direction. Not from a road-map, not from Google maps, not from the guy at the gas station. This is about traveling down the road and finding direction from eclectic sources. It's about being open-minded and becoming a seeker of life and wisdom.

The d.school, short for the Hasso Plattner Stanford Institute of Design, put together this guide to illustrate and explain design thinking. At first glance it's directed toward designers - folks who make things better and solve problems for others. And while it is of value to designers*, it has the potential to be of extreme value to others. Before going on, let's take a quick look at the d.school's manifesto:

Notice the points:

• Use design thinking to inspire multidisciplinary teams
• Foster radical collaboration between students, faculty and industry

The very fiber from which the school is put together, recognizes drawing upon eclectic sources and working with a cross section of people.

 For today, think of a problem. For instance, say you want to draw more out of your college experience than what you are getting from your classes. As you view this slideshow, think about seeking out people and asking for their success and failure stories.Check This Out ̶ It’s the d.school Bootcamp Bootleg.

*In reality, we are all designers.

Standing out in a Sea of Sameness

Standing out in a Sea of Sameness is about building a personal foundation while still in college. It will provide an advantage over others in scoring a job upon graduation and become a platform from which to build your career on. While I am not ready to elaborate at this time, the main components of the foundation are story listening, story telling, design thinking, brand you.

I planted the seeds of this foundation on the Facebook page. It is my intent for them to grow organically without too much lableling. I think the term personal branding has become too buzzwordy and the more it is discussed in social media, the more people will think it's all about the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Tom Peters gave it moderninity in his famous The Brand Called You article and others have attached the "personal" label and are carrying the torch forward. But in all reality, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill and others were teaching personal branding in the early 20th Century and Ben Franklin was doing it before them. (No doubt Someone was doing it in the Bible and no doubt someone was wearing a loincloth and living in a cave while doing it).

Is Standing out in a Sea of Sameness the same thing as striving for success in college?

Not exactly. There is wonderful support and help for students to achieve success in college. From the university to bloggers to newspapers to parents, help is out there. Topics include:

• Set goals and priorities
• Manage time
• Get sufficient sleep
• Participate in student organizations
• How to study and take tests
• How to write essays and prepare resumes
• Internships

Are college graduates being hired by the droves today? And those who are hired, do you suppose they were fairly successful students? So, if we know jobs are scarce and the price of admission is to at least follow these prescribed guidelines, how does one cop a seat in the front row, how does one stand out in a sea of sameness?

That my friends, is what Standing out in a Sea of Sameness is all about. Tune in today.

Popular Mechanics: How to Become an Inventor

Did you ever discover a treasure that you've had for well over twenty years?

This is about Popular Mechanics the magazine, its design, design and an article that brings them all together.

I've been subscribing to Popular Mechanics since the mid 80's. A couple of years ago I opened up the latest issue and noticed the magazine design. This was a couple years after becoming a design guy. I am a design guy because I have an insatiable amount of appreciation for the type of design that affects me. And what most affects me about PM is their format for presenting information. Main body text is artfully broken up by illustration, pictures and smaller inserts of text. Thin lines of distinction and direction orchestrate information flow between text and illustration. Here is an example:

Simply, PM's design facilitates understanding in a clear and concise method (for me). Those more knowledgeable on things like this than I, call it Information Design.

How to Become an Inventor is an article written by Jim Gorman. Jim breaks it down into five sections:

• Cultivate an idea
• Build a prototype
• File a patent
• Test the market
• Sell it or make it

The design of this article is totally lost in the online version. In the magazine, text, inserted text boxes, pictures and illustration join together to present a readable and understandable article. This is what pops for me - In the introductory section, Jim takes the sentence, "The drive to invent is more powerful than ever..." highlights it in yellow and draws a thin, arced line to a text insert box labeled Lesson A. He then ellaborates on why the drive to invent... This technique is similar to linking out from an online article. The additional information adds value while not breaking and bogging down the introductory section. Jim provides a total of three such lessons in his piece.

A few components of design that make my heart skip a beat are how it makes something look, how it makes things better and the process it takes. Although in How to Become an Inventor, Jim talks about taking an idea, patenting it and either making it or taking it to market, his method follows a design process. Start with an idea, build a prototype, test it, get feedback, test it some more and then do something with it.

Once you adopt a design awareness, you'll begin to notice and appreciate pieces and parts of your life that have been with you all along.

A Neuron Barrage

"Neurons receive signals that either excite or inhibit. If a neuron gets enough excitatory signals from other neurons, it fires off its own signal. If it receives many inhibitory signals – it is less likely to fire."  -  Dr. Ellen Weber

Ellen, along with her fellow MITA partner Robyn McMaster, are my two favorite brain ladies. There aren't too many Ph.D.'s in the world who know how to talk human. Ellen and Robyn do. 

Rosemary had worked on our computers over the weekend, wiping hard drives, updating and re-installing programs of use.

Would you mind if we took a minute and traveled down this brick road? I promise we'll come right back. I've read Leo's book and it offers its own delightful mix of new neural pathways (for me, maybe you). I am going to postulate here that wiping your computer's hard drive is a pleasurable, minimalist thing to do!

Rosemary left the task of re-installing Picasa on my computer up to me. Sort of reminds me when I let go of the bikes and our girls rode on their own without training wheels. Well, to the surprise of the entire Rothacker household, I succeeded. In the process, I thought about the hundreds of pictures that I had had in Picasa and on my hard drive before it was cleaned...

So I fired up Picasa and it asks me if I would like it to search my computer for pictures. I guess it was going to import them. This is an example of most excellent user interface design!! Because I am such a simpleton, I never would have thought this possible. And without the prompt I never would have given it a second thought.

Of course with a clean hard drive there was nothing to import right? But the prompt was something like, "all of your computers."

Flashback to first grade: "David, fold your hands together and sit up straight! Now little man, can you please tell me what is on that external hard drive sitting on your desk?"

The little man had backed up his computer on the little external hard drive.

So I answered yes to Picasa and BAM!, all of my pictures are back on the newly installed program.

My neurons go crazy! It was magical. Although the depth of my elation reveals the extent of my computer illiteracy, I feel great!

If you'd like to go in search of your own new neural pathways, consider stopping off at Ellen and Robyn's depot today.

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.