Posted on 01 March 2011 in Journeys, Leadership, Lifehacks, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day, Random Thoughts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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It's not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human.
Art is not in the eye of the beholder. It's in the soul of the artist.
someone in your office could very well be an artist.
she may not know how to draw - but she can do magic with spreadsheets and make them easy to use.
he may not be able to carry a tune - but he may be able to deliver presentations that make people listen.
she may be from the finance and accounting department.
he may be working at the reception area.
it doesn't matter.
they are artists.
and perhaps, in all of us - when we do what we do and imbue it with our perspiration (and sometimes, tears) - there resides an artist.
and sometimes, it may not be beholden by others - and others may see it too different, too weird, too... human.
but what they say or do or how they react do not detract to the work we've done.
i am an artist.
you are an artist.
we are all artists.
Posted on 19 February 2011 in Business Trends, Leadership, Lifehacks, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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I am fairly sure that if one tries hard enough, one can describe a set of seemingly random data points using an equation or a set of equations.
What I am not sure of is if one can explain WHY such an equation or systems of equations hold or should be true.
Posted on 17 February 2011 in Analytics, Business Trends, Econometrics, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day, Ramblings, Random Thoughts, Research Thoughts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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a friend of mine who works in the finance field - he is one of those who comes up with those complicated equations and stuff so his company can sell them (I think it's called "securitization"?) - kept on telling me that "YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB! YOU ARE NOT YOUR SALARY! YOU ARE NOT YOUR HOUSE! YOU WILL NOT BE YOUR CAR!" (since I still don't have a car).
apparently, he's learned it the hard way when the market collapsed. he saw his colleagues lose their sense of self (selves?) as the financial crisis took hold of their industry.
i asked him, "how did you survive?" (with survive being used loosely as he lost his job during that really blackhole of a period).
he answered, "because i am not my job nor my career nor the letters after my last name nor my car".
immediately after he was laid off, he sold off his Peugeot and downgraded to a more manageable car. he willingly rediscovered the value of public transportation. and eating at really, really cheap places. he also took the time to stock up on books and read.
i am sure that not all of us can do what he did - specially that "taking-a-break-from-corporate-world". but there's merit i think in what he constantly said to me: "YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB, YOU ARE NOT YOUR CAREER."
this blog from HBR.Org could have captured his entire viewpoints. i really wouldn't know - i have yet to speak with him. he's currently in some remote island in some archipelago somewhere reading books he's never had the chance to read whilst working.
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1. Be honest about how much time you spend at work and why. Is it really necessary to work long, extra hours to accomplish your tasks and objectives, or are you regularly staying late for other reasons? To impress your boss and your peers, or simply because you are not managing your time well during the day?
2. Manage your energy, not your time. The excellent HBR article on this subject will help you identify how to monitor and use your energy well. Check your energy levels throughout the day and week. Leave work early one evening a week — say Wednesday — so you can maintain momentum. What is your energy right now and how can you maintain and boost it?
3. Identify and banish time-stealers. These can be in the form of demanding people, routine or unnecessary meetings or tasks, or even your own bad habits. Seek out the critical time-stealers, develop a plan to deal with them and consign them to the past. This should help you feel more in charge of your agenda. What are your time-stealers?
4. Find a buddy or mentor at work. Rather than burdening your partner with work-related issues, find a colleague for a regular downloading session. One friend of mine meets a colleague weekly and they are each allowed a half an hour to rant and rave about issues and seek advice. They find this acts as a great pressure valve for them. Who could be your buddy or partner?
5. Treat time outside work as sacrosanct and refresh yourself. Protect your time outside work as much as you can. You need to be able to switch off from work for your own health and sanity and that of your friends and family. Find a way to refresh and replenish yourself after a week's work. What do you do to support yourself each week? The gym, long walks, visits with friends, a favourite art gallery or restaurant? What is your weekly source of replenishment?
6. Remind yourself that you are much more than your job. However much you love your job, it is a mistake to define yourself too closely to your work. Take time to reflect on what you want to achieve in life and think about your definition of personal success. This should help you during those times when work gets difficult and the pressure becomes unbearable. What is your definition of life success?
via blogs.hbr.org
Posted on 07 February 2011 in Leadership, Lifehacks, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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a friend has this philosophy about the discount season: "sale seasons are designed such that you spend in order to save. hence, i don't wait for them. i buy regardless if it's the discount season or not - as long as i need it and i have the cash to get what i want."
the same is true with marketing: a lot of people are so concerned with ROI - and i mean the numeric ROI that comes after a thorough understanding of the factors that make up the formula (returns/costs). it doesn't matter whether the costs are high or low - so long as they get a "decent", acceptable ROI.
well.
ROI - when misused - is like spending lots in order to get more.
ROI planning is not bad. but it is only one facet of planning that needs to be taken into account. there are more.
(and as an aside, I should say, what really is ROI? my first bosses impressed on me that ROI is not savings, discounts, nor simple calculations. we went into discussions of NPVs, FVs, cashflows, future value of money, internal rate of return, and all that - things i never really mastered [i doubt if i understood them at all] in order to really calculate the ROI. and yes, this was in the marketing department.)
i guess, to each his/her own with regard to measuring ROI.
and i guess that is also where the problems lie.
a focus on ROI can lead to misuse - and disastrous, contradictory - and perhaps, unintended - results.
Posted on 18 January 2011 in Advertising, Agency Life, Analytics, Decision-making, Investments, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day, Measurements | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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I picked this one up from my other blog, which I got from this blog.
Presumably, this is from Schopenhauer, a German Philosopher, who is quite well-known for his clarity of thinking. Though I never read his works in the university, I have heard of him and his influence on Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and the psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung.
These stratagems to win any argument were lifted from one of his books, The Art of Controversy, which as you will find out is quite controversial indeed. In this book, he enumerated how one can win any argument.
Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that one ought to follow them - one needs to be aware of them in order to deflect any attempts of others in using them to win an argument.
Will I recommend someone using these? I am not sure. Going through the list, I think these do increase the chance of winning an argument - but they do not necessarily facilitate truth nor are they conducive to real, clear communication lines.
I will recommend reading through them in order to know and be aware.
1) Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it.
The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow your propositions remain, the easier they are defend.2) Use different meanings of your opponent's words to refute his or her argument.
3) Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to a particular thing.
Rather, understand it and state it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than that which was asserted.4) Hide your conclusion from your opponent till the end. Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order.
By this circuitious route you conceal your game until you have obtained all the admissions that are necessary to reach your goal.5) Use your opponent's beliefs against him.
If the opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage.6) Another plan is to confuse the issue by changing your opponent's words or what he or she seeks to prove.
7) State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions.
By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the opponent's admissions.8) Make your opponent angry.
An angry person is less capable of using judegment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.9) Use your opponet's answers to your question to reach different or even opposite conclusions.
10) If your opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises.
This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek them to concede.11) If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion.
Later, introduce your conclusion as a settled and admitted fact. Your opponent may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.12) If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable in your proposition.
13) To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him or her an opposite, counter-proposition as well.
If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical.14) Try to bluff your opponent.
If he or she has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shyr or stupid,and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily succeed.15) If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent's acceptance or rejection some true poposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it.
Should the opponent reject it because he or she suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject a true proposition.
Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your own for the moment. You can either try to prove your original proposition or maintain that your original proposition is proved by what the opponent accepted. For this, an extreme degree of impudence is required.
16) When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions, or lack of action.
17) If your opponent presses you with a counter proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction.
Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent's idea.
18) If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him or her to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.
19) Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his or her argument, and you have nothing much to say, try to make the argument less specific.
20) If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion.
Rather draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.
21) When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see its falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficiality.
But it is better to counter with an argument that is just as superficial.
Your concern is victory - NOT truth.
22) If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.
23) Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating their statements.
By contradicting your opponent, you may drive him or her into extending the statement beyond its natural limit.
When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the orginal statement your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than you intended, redefine your statement's limits.
24) Make a false syllogism.
Your opponent makes a proposition; force from the proposition other propositions that are unintended and are absurd through false inference and distortion.
25) If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary.
Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the oppoent's proposition.
26) A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent's arguments against him or herself.
27) Should your opponent surprise you be becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal.
Not only will this make the opponent angry, it may be presumed that you put your finger on the weak side of his or her case, and that the opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.
28) You make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience.
This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes the opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs.
If the opponent must make a long, complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen.
29) If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion - i.e., you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had bearing on the matter.
This may be done without presumption if the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.
30) Make an appeal to authority rather than reason.
If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case. If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance. Authorities that your opponet fails to understand are those which he or she generally admires thae most. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have invented entirely yourself.
31) If you know that you have no reply to an argument that your opponet advances, you may by a fine stroke of irony, declare yourself to be an incompetent judge.
32) A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious, detestable category.
33) Admit your opponent's premises but deny the conclusion.
34) When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter question, or tries to change the subject, it is a sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without you knowing it.
You must, therefore, pursue the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.
35) Instead of working on an opponent's intellect, work on his or her motive.
If you succeed in making your opponent's opinion, should it prove true, seem dinstinclty to his or her own interes, the opponenentwill drop it like a hot potato.
36) You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere pomposity or use of highfalutin words.
If the opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he or she has no idea what you are talking about, you can easily impose upon him or her some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.
37) Should your opponent be in the right but with a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position.
This is the way which bad advocates lose a good case.38) A last trick is to become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand.
In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular trick, because everyone is able to carry it into effect.
via experimentalist.posterous.com and http://melsantos.blogspot.com/2005/06/schopenhauers-38-stratagems-or-38-ways.html. For the complete list in German and in English, see http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/
Posted on 16 November 2010 in Agency Life, Decision-making, Leadership, Lifehacks, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day, Ramblings, Random Thoughts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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... I believe that LinkedIn is a totally different animal from Facebook and from other SNS.
I also believe that SNS in general are very different from other traditional digital and non-digital forms of advertising media.
I think for LinkedIn to be successfully used in a social media campaign, it needs to do more and be more.
One thing that it does NOT have to be: A Facebook for the pros.
It does not need to compete for ad dollars by proving that it delivers "more traffic, more awareness, more engagement" - more than Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, or any other SNS.
In and of itself, LinkedIn is a totally different medium - and social media strategists ought to take note of this significant difference of LinkedIn from the traditional SNS.
[Anyone who uses LinkedIn (or any SNS for that matter) to drive brand awareness and who measures its success trough "awareness changes" is misguided.]
Posted on 16 November 2010 in Business and Management, Communication Planning, Digital Communications Planning, Digital Experience, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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... and given the current business scenario that we are in, we cannot afford to allow that creativity be threatened.
Teresa Amabile writes about this in a blog at HBR.Org. Creativity is threatened whenever the elements that promote creativity are threatened. From the CFO's viewpoint, the curtailment of these elements may very well be financially sound or logical - but curtailing creativity for the sake of financial goals is certainly very myopic.
Cutting down on elements that induce, facilitate, and catalyze creativity could very well result to savings for the quarter and appease angry shareholders. But the consequences that will emerge beyond the quarter or the year far outweigh the short-term benefits.
What are the elements that companies should protect in order to ensure that creativity could and would save the day? Amabile identifies three:
1. Smart people who think differently - or people who somehow have a repository of untapped knowledge and untapped stories. Or people who see the crisis as a crisis and an opportunity to do better.
2. Passionate engagement - or letting people do what they love.
3. A creative atmosphere - or an atmosphere where people are encouraged to experiment, take considered and calculated risks, and where fear of failure is not the defining feeling.
I hope that CEOs and other C-level execs would heed Amabile's advice.
Posted on 16 November 2010 in Advertising, Agency Life, Business and Management, Business Trends, Decision-making, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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I have always been astounded, amazed, surprise, awed (ok... enough...) by how much people would push the envelope to get ahead in the corporate race.
Seth Godin writes about arrogance masking reality in the corporate world. And I couldn't agree more.
He writes:
Somewhere along the way, we confused the signals with the work. Now there are people who start with the bad behavior and the affectations, hoping that it will be seen as a sign of insight and talent. And they often get away with it. "Who's that?" we wonder... "I don't know, but they must be good at what they do, because why else would we put up with them?" It's a great plan when it works, but I don't think it's a strategy to be counted on.
Call it confirmation bias. Or some other form of cognitive bias.
Or simply attribute it to our humanity that seeks to find the good in people and forgo their shortcomings and ineptitude.
From my vantage point, however, it's all about smokes and mirrors, low signal-to-noise ratios, creation and maintenance of illusory skills and achievements even when faced by threats of being found wanting.
Godin writes further:
The key to getting a reputation for being brilliant is actually being brilliant, not just acting like you are.
If only it were that easy.
Sometimes, the reputation of being brilliant is not enough particularly in a corporate scenario where low signal-to-noise ratios and smokes-and-mirrors are upheld, rather than good, remarkable, and excellent work.
I think in spite of the changes that have occurred or occurring in the corporate world - and the demand for people to be linchpins and to be investors in "emotional work" rather than simply "showing up for time and the attendance sheet", there will always be companies - regardless of how much they extol the virtues of innovation and "challenge the status quo" - that are deeply mired in smokes-and-mirrors.
Posted on 15 November 2010 in Brand (Mis)Management, Business and Management, Leadership, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day, Random Thoughts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Below is what Seth Godin has to say about doing more versus doing better:
The easiest form of management is to encourage or demand that people do more. The other translation of this phrase is to go faster.
The most important and difficult form of management (verging on leadership) is to encourage people to do better.
... which made me think (as always, Mr. Godin has the knack of making me think...).
In a media buying pitch that I led a few years back, the brief called for savings and efficiencies in the clients' media investments. We were up against the biggest media companies in the market - we were perhaps 1/5th the size of the smaller of these two agencies - having had a rather erratic presence in the market.
So we followed a different approach altogether: Instead of just running after "savings", we also ran after what others may call "dollarized critical intangibles".
We made use of qualitative panels, emergent online research methods, and panel of expert-observers to identify emerging trends, how these emerging trends translate to viewing patterns.
We made use of analytics and statistics to better understand the motivations behind the viewing patterns of certain target audiences. Using advanced stats, we narrowed down our prediction errors on the TV ratings.
We made use of our network to gauge how certain programs worked in other countries that are similar to our market - and tried to understand what, in those markets, made these programs work - or not.
We also crafted a prioritization strategy based on marginal return investments per geographic area - focusing on promising profit-areas instead of going on a "shotgun" approach to media planning.
We certainly did more than the brief - and we also did better.
The media pitch brief called for X% worth of cold-hard-cash savings at the end of the year. We delivered that - and beyond.
At the same time, we planned to deliver insights that resulted to even more savings - with measurable contributions to the companies bottomline.
These days, companies are once again focusing on the question, "So how much savings are you going to generate for me using your dealmaking capabilities? And how much are you going to charge for that?"
I say, companies should ask their partners instead, "What tangible business value can you deliver to my business that goes beyond savings this year and that will lead to sustainable competitive advantage?"
And realize that more is not always better.
Posted on 08 November 2010 in Agency Life, Analytics, Brand (Mis)Management, Business and Management, Communication Planning, Marginally Subversive Thought of the Day, Return on Marketing Investments | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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