Category: work

books, career, creativity, discovery, happiness, innovation, Steve martin, work

Is that a cocoon you’re building?

Christa Avampato

One of the main tenants of Yogic and Buddhist texts is that the world provides the exact teaching we need at the exact moment that we need it. For Christmas, my boss gave me one of the best books I’ve read to date, and I’m only on page 57! Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace. It’s so incredible, that I’m planning on writing a series of posts related to the book. I strongly recommend anyone who works for a living, or who has ever worked for a living, to purchase this book.

I’ve been highlighting like mad, as I am known to do with my books because I think writing in them gives them my own personal touch. I have fought every single impulse to “nest” or “build a cocoon.” I’ve always wanted to feel at home everywhere I go, and wanted to have the freedom to come and go as I please. And then I moved back to New York six months ago, and have a hard time imagining I will ever leave. On page 45 of the book, I read 4 words that helped me realize I must find a way to love this city without needing it. “Cocoons can be paralyzing.” And this isn’t just true for a physical cocoon – an apartment or home – it’s a cocoon we build through relationships, friendships, our family, our job, and our hobbies. The conundrum becomes: “how can I feel safe and secure and confident without feeling stuck in a rut?”

I am not saying that anyone should run out and quit their job, dump their significant other, and move half way around the world to a country whose language they don’t speak. That’s anti-cocooning to the extreme and may land someone is quite a mess of unhappiness. There are ways to keep our outlook fresh while not turning our world upside down, though an occasional shake-up may be needed! Below are a few of my favorites:

1.) Take a vacation to some place new – and I don’t mean to some beach that looks like every other beach you’ve ever been to and lay around in the sun until you are a prime candidate for skin cancer while reading those horrible “beach reads”. I mean get out and meet new people on your vacation. Take a new class. Take a group tour. Learn a foreign language and try to order in a restaurant. Try a new sport. Bringing newness into your life in a foreign place will unlock parts of your personality you may have never known you had.

2.) Make it a point to get out into the world, alone. Some people feel fearful to go anywhere on their own. With kids and a spouse, this can be an especially challenging experience to create. It’s worth the effort. There is something to be said for taking a walk, going for a run, even going shopping, and allowing yourself time to be with yourself. Liking the company you keep in the empty moments is critical to break-through thinking.

3.) Try something you think you will love that is entirely useless. Feeling increasingly crunched for time, we place a premium on activities that are “useful.” I am the queen of utility. I don’t want to buy or receive a single product or experience that isn’t going to “pay off” in some way. This is a dangerous way to think and I know that. It is worthwhile to occasionally do something or buy something for the sheer joy of it. For example, a friend of mine learned Italian despite the fact that the language is not widely spoken outside of Italy. Spanish or French would have been more practical because so many more people in the world speak those languages. Still, he really wanted to learn Italian because he loved the sound of it more than any other language. At the time he saw no utility to learning the language – he did it for the fun of it. Now he’s getting his masters in ESL. Learning Italian gave him an appreciation for how difficult it must be for foreigners who come to the U.S.

4.) If pressed to name my favorite book of all time, I must say Alice in Wonderland. And if pressed for my favorite quote from the book it is “Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Imagine what the world could be like if we followed the Queen’s advice. The impossible can become possible.

5.) And my favorite remedy to staying in a cocoon for too long – question everything. Steve Martin recently wrote a memoir of his life, Born Standing Up. In it, he says the way he created his break- thru comedy act was to question every assumption he or anyone else for that matter made about comedy and performing. I don’t think we should all start playing our favorite childhood game of asking “why?” every time we speak. However, there is value is taking a long hard look at what’s confusing us, troubling us, frustrating us, and re-evaluating possible courses of action. Can we re-imagine our situation, and what it would look like if anything were possible?

While cocoons are sometimes necessary, decidedly remaining in them until the cows come home will not helps us to live originally, and living originally may be the most worthwhile task we can ever take on.
business, change, creativity, education, innovation, work

On innovation: flaws in the process

Christa Avampato

Bruce Nussbaum, who writes the design blog for Business Week, recently published a post on what he sees as the greatest innovation mistakes made by companies. He references a study that was done by three large consulting firms that uncovered how companies that are widely-considered as top innovators actually go about the innovation process. What they found is astounding: most innovation happens by accident and most of the people inside the company achieve innovations by being contrarians and working against the systems in place.

While all of the mistakes are critical to keep in mind when we are engaged in attempting to be innovative, the number one reason that Nussbaum points out is the most important when we are considering whether or not to join a company: CEO sloth. While people within a company that live at the bottom of the food chain can drive innovation up through the ranks, corporate gravity is against them. If a CEO is inherently an innovative person who values ideas and opinions from people on the fringes of the organization, then innovation and innovators have a greater shot at success. Corporate leaders must be committed to walking the innovation talk and opening their wallets in support of the process.

A lot of new graduates crave jobs in “strategy” and to be honest, the universities that educate them are not doing them justice in this department. Here’s what the universities aren’t telling them: Every job worth your time has a strategy and everyone at an organization must consider themselves to be creatives, to be innovators. No organization is going to welcome in a new graduate and think that their ideas are the most brilliant ones ever spouted, even if they are. New ideas are absorbed in bits and pieces and it takes patience, time, and commitment to have them heard by the highest levels of a company. A word to the wise: spend your job search time finding a boss who supports your efforts of creativity, and make sure that person has the ears of the people who control the purse strings. And understand that innovation is a long and winding road.

To read Bruce Nussbaum’s full article, visit http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/12/top_ten_innovat.html.

career, change, work

Before jumping off the train

Christa Avampato

Patience is the companion of wisdom. ~ St. Augustine

Without a doubt, frustration abounds in the retail world this holiday season. Sales are down for most companies, as is morale within these companies. I have a few friends who are working in turn-around situations, and the potentially rocky economy is causing them some angst. In an agitated state, it sometimes seems easier to jump ship than hang around waiting for the other shoe to inevitably drop.

I can confidently say that several times in my career I have lacked patience, mostly because I did not have the wisdom of experience on my side. Simply, I didn’t know what I didn’t know and as a result when the tough times got going, I did too. While I don’t regret my decisions because I am thrilled with the life I have today, there are times when I wonder how things would have turned out if I had waited out the unpleasant times a bit longer.

Patience is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to hang onto once we have it. We begin to look around anxiously for a new and “better” opportunity. We feel we’re spinning our wheels, wasting time. Life is passing us by on the express and we’re on the local. The tug of frustration beckons us to move on when the picture in front of us is less than rosy. Rather than dashing out the door, sometimes it is worthwhile to consider riding out the wave to see where it carries us.

experience, intelligence, work

Get down to wise up

Christa Avampato

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein

We spend most of our life dashing around, especially during the holiday season. Parties, meetings, errands, and the endless circuit of email to phone to internet to TV and back again. I’m not convinced that this dexterity at multi-tasking is a good thing. Of course, I say this as I eat my lunch, read a magazine, check my email, and write this blog post. There are numerous scientific reports being released now with the theory that multi-tasking is ruining our ability to think clearly.

We look to people like Einstein as a genius, and to be sure, he was. I do not in any way mean to take anything away from him. I am a great admirer of his works, and have read several biographies on him. When I was 18 I wanted to go to Princeton so I could somehow develop my own inner-Einstein in the very place where he did so much important work.

In all of his glory, he has these quotes like the one above that just bowl me over. Was Einstein brilliant because of his enhanced natural ability? He claimed no. He took the time to wrestle with problems and complications in the world around him, and then formulated ways to make sense of them. Literally, when he came across a problem, he sat down (or went on one of his famous walks) and thought. Toward the end of his life, he hired a scribe to follow him on his walks and jot down things he’d mutter to himself so that he could later sit with the notebook and piece together the thoughts.

I’m not suggesting we run out and hire scribes. One, it’s probably prohibitively expensive, and two, it just looks plain weird unless you are some recognized genius like Einstein. What we can do is sit down and breathe. In our rush to do everything quick quick quick, onto the next thing, hurry up, we gotta go, my to-do list is growing every millisecond, etc. we are losing perspective. We are losing our ability to reason and thinking through challenges and choices.
We all have an inner-Einstein. The question is whether or not we will take the time to listen to him.

The picture above can be found at http://www.brainboomer.com/.

business, career, dreams, happiness, work

Getting real to get "unstuck"

Christa Avampato

“With lies you may get ahead in the world — but you can never go back.” ~Russian proverb

It’s likely that the Russian who coined the phrase above was thinking about lies people tell one another to get ahead – in business, in relationships, in life in general. When I read it, I considered the lies we tell ourselves and how they distort our perception because if we lie long enough, we actually begin to believe the lies are true. And not only can you never go back; you also may have a very difficult time moving forward. Through lies, we get stuck.

Jim Collins has said that if we want to get great, first we have to get real. So how do we start on this path to real that will lead us to great? I try to start with a vision of where I want to be, regardless of where I am right now. And little by little I work my way back from the vision to my current situation, one very small step at a time. If I want to own my own business, I have to consider the actual tasks I’d be doing when owning the business, and then I’d have to envision what kind of people I want to work with, and then I’d have to think about what kind of service or product I’m supplying and how it’s being supplied, and on and on, until I get to my current work situation.

Getting real is much easier to handle when we break down reality into bite-sized pieces. And when we aggregate all of those small pieces together, we’re able to build a road that leads us exactly to where we want to be.

career, creativity, discovery, work

Rule breakers by nature

Christa Avampato

Every once in a while, I hear a broad, sweeping generalization that stops me in my tracks. Today, I was talking to someone about corporate recruiting at large companies and how much effort and funding they spend on recruiting and branding events at top universities. The trouble with recruiting the best and brightest to corporate America is that corporations don’t know how to keep them. Students from top universities don’t want to work for someone else. When placing bets, the students will bet on themselves. They’re bred to have a tremendous amount of self-confidence and they firmly believe that they know best. So, when confronted with a rigid corporation that can’t flex, they flee.

There are a few key qualifiers with this generalization. There are bright people at all schools, not just those with a high rank. I went to two fantastic universities, and I was very lucky to be a part of both. And while I met a slew of very smart people in both places, I also met a fair number of people who made me question the admissions standards. And to be certain, large corporations are not devoid of bright people. On the contrary, there are often many intelligent people rising through the ranks.

I don’t think it’s intellect that separates the different tiers of schools, nor the students who attend them. My belief is that it is all about attitude. From the time I was 18, I was held up to a ridiculously high standard in my academic life. Those without self-confidence didn’t make it through – the system beat them up and then beat them out. What top schools are left with are a student body who truly believes they can do ANYTHING so long as they work hard enough and want it bad enough.

And this circles back to the tough part for corporations: they don’t give the vast majority of team members the opportunity to do anything they want. Their rigid rules and love of processes stifle the very talent they worked so hard to get. A word to the wise: if large companies want talent that will drive growth and move the company forward, that talent must be given the latitude to do exactly what they were hired to do – think different and act accordingly.

The photo above can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/kathryn.davidson/Penn/photo#5103173644839047218

business, career, change, creativity, dreams, happiness, work

The Natural Order

Christa Avampato

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” ~ Epictetus,Greek philosopher

It’s easier to formulate actions than it is to really get at the core of the motivation and then develop actions that support that core. I’m not sure why. Maybe it can be likened to eating a hot bowl of pasta – easier to twirl around the edges and work in than to plunge right into the steamy center. And yet, the few times when I start out on the fringes and work my way in, I end up realizing that I spent too much energy on the edges when I should have dove right in. And when I have jumped in with both feet, even if I got burned, I learned a tremendous amount and had no regrets.

I considered this as I read about Paul Potts, a British cell phone salesman who at his heart was an opera singer. He finally got his chance to do what we loved on an episode of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Though, imagine what would have happened if not for reality TV. How many other Paul Pottses are out there who “die with the music still in them” as John Lennon would say. Was it that they didn’t know their core and spent their lives on the fringes of their potential or was it that they were actually afraid of their callings and spent their lives running from destiny?

This is good food for thought as I consider the hours of my day when I’m happiest and what I have to do to make those activities the predominant way I spend my time. I have also found that in crafting a business case for my own company, I also must start at the core. Yes, I will make mistakes and I will get a burn or two or ten. It’s worth the risk – I’d rather end up bumped and bruised than wishing I had sung the song I was meant to sing.

business, career, files, Gmail, Google, technology, work

Can a mega-company like Google rewire our brains?

Christa Avampato

A few years ago I switched over to Gmail from AOL and have never looked back. I love the friendly interface, the nearly-infinite storage, the ever-expanding address book, and on and on it goes. It took some getting used to after I had been with AOL for so long. In particular I had to adjust to the lack of buckets and folders in which I was used to grouping my emails.

I am a file fanatic. I like being able to pull a folder on a topic and seeing everything I have on the subject. Doesn’t happen with Google. Instead, it has a robust search function that will pull up every email I have that contains a keyword I type in. It’s forced me to be very deliberate in how I select email titles so that I can easily recall them later on. The trouble with this is I have had to become a synonym expert. For example, if I want to pull up all of my emails relating to “being green”, I may need to search “sustainability”, “eco-friendly”, “environment”, etc. If I had a folder entitled “green”, I could drop them all in there and pull them in one swoop!
Gmail’s search function has forced into a few work-arounds. I am considering starting a business, so I’ve created a new Gmail account of emails that just relate to the business idea. I’ve also become more addicted to blog posting so I’ve started emailing to a new account about everything I need to post on my blog. For the truly important topics like these, I’m still finding that my buckets are necessary.
While I love the idea of a way to simplify and reduce the amount of filing, bookmarking, and flagging I need to do, a certain amount of it may be so deeply entrenched in my behavior patterns that it will be tough to shake! More food for thought for the talented folks at Google to consider in their quest for continuous improvement.
happiness, relationships, work

What remains

Christa Avampato

“Oh, my friend, it’s not what they take away from you that counts. It’s what you do with what you have left.

— Hubert Humphrey”

This quote seems especially poignant this month as my student loans have now entered repayment. “My days of living the high life are over,” I thought as I plugged in my payment to my on-line bill pay system. And then my wonderful friend, Steve, said, “Ah, you just get used to it.” I thought he may be saying this to me just to make me feel better. Steve’s not like that. He wants me to feel better, yes. Though he’s a straight shooter. If I’m doing something that’s leading me down the wrong path, he’ll tell me. No holes barred.

I had dinner with my friends Elizabeth and Kerry tonight and we were discussing relationships. Elizabeth is going to a number of weddings this year, and so we got on the topic of marriage which naturally lead to the topic of divorce and how high the rate is in the U.S. I said that I wasn’t quite sure I’d ever be able to handle a divorce as ending dating relationships is hard enough for me. “You surprise yourself with what you can handle,” they both said. And in the past few years I have found that to be true. Even when I thought I was down and out, it always turned out that I was down temporarily and that being out was never in the picture.

This same quote also speaks to how much energy or time we have left in our lives after work and other commitments. It’s important to consider what we do in those free moments, with the energy that remains. And can we find activities that replace the energy we have lost while engaged in other tasks? It’s worth the time and effort to consider “when we are stripped of extra funds, time, energy, relationships, etc., what is it that sustains us?” And how will be make the most of it? Inevitably, at some point, it will be all we’ve got.

innovation, trend, work

Want to be a hunter of all things cool?

Christa Avampato

When I tell people that I work in the trend and innovation space, the follow-up question is always “what does that mean and how do you do that?” For a long-time, trend was seen as something that a few far-out people did by peering into a crystal ball. And these people were happy to have the public believe that. No more…

Trends, their tracking, watching, and even creating, are now accessible is everyone, much to the dismay of many fashionistas who prefer to see themselves as the most forward thinking people around. One of my favorite sites that I view regularly is The Cool Hunter – http://www.thecoolhunter.net/. They follow a number of product categories, interior design, as well as track event planning and design from all over the world. There is a weekly e-newsletter you can sign-up for. The visuals are stunning and I promise that no matter what business you are in, these photos will get your creative juices flowing.

Another site that I visit quite often is Faith Popcorn’s Brainreserve. http://www.faithpopcorn.com/. I had the great pleasure of meeting Faith at a business meeting a few months ago. She’s been in this business of trend for a longtime and she’s very honest about how she does her work. She pays attention to what’s happening out in the world. Trend is very much a matter of awareness and connecting the dots between seemingly disparate populations.

As with all trends, whether or not they take off in a business has as much to do with brilliant execution as they have to do with the quality of the products or services being offered. The name of the game is still differentiation, effective communication, and helping the guest get the joke through presentation.