I could not wait for Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book Big Magic to arrive in bookstores. I may have even purchased my copy on the very day her book came out. I remember coming home from the bookstore with the kids and getting them set up with a project so I could sneak in a few pages. I was not disappointed.

There is something about Gilbert’s writing that makes her so relatable. It’s like speaking with a friend. And on the topic of inspiration and creativity – she gets it. She puts her finger directly on the pulse of that elusive spark that is the ‘magic’ where ideas form. She defines clearly what many of us feel and sense but find difficult to capture and hold onto as an idea.

There are times in the book where she does take a risk in getting a bit too mystical for some people’s taste. The notion that ideas come to us and if we – the host – are not ready to receive them then they will seek out another. She uses the a great personal story to convey this fantastical theory – and I’m a believer.

The best messages I took away from her book were these:

• There is buried treasure in all of us. We just need the courage to bring it forth out of us. (Wow. Powerful stuff).
• When inspiration hits, and you have an idea, take ownership of it. Grab that tiger by the tail and don’t let go.
• “You don’t need permission to live a creative life … Or, if you do worry that you need a permission slip – THERE, I just gave it to you. Consider yourself fully accredited. Now go make something”. Probably my favorite quote of the book right there.
• It’s never too late. You can start living a creative life whenever you decide you want to start.
• We create because we have to. We make sacrifices because our creativity matters enough to make time and find the energy to do it.
• Miracles can happen to those who are persistent and show up. Never surrender. Never take no as your final answer.
• Say ‘yes’ to every clue of curiosity you are given. You never know where your curiosity will lead. Your job is to trust it.
• If you create something and it didn’t work, give yourself permission to let it go and seek out your next project with an open heart.
• We are all beginners.
• The outcome cannot matter.
• “You made it; you get to put it out there. Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time you were given. You were invited, you showed up, and you simply cannot do more than that.”

This book is a wonderful cheerleader for bringing your creativity to life. It is a book I will leave on my shelf to re-read again and again, because we all need a pep-talk to keep our ideas going. It takes a lot of focus and energy to bring inspiration to life. I want to live my life dedicated to following my creativity, wherever it leads. I hope you will, too.

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The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

“No matter in what arena, in life or work or play, the difference between winning and losing, the gap that separates success and failure, is so slight, so subtle, that most never see it.” ~ Jeff Olson, page 87

This is the philosophy behind “The Slight Edge” written by Jeff Olson whose book begins with a very relatable and engaging personal story of how we all – at some point in our lives – find ourselves at life’s crossroads landing in a place where our previous choices and decisions delivered us. But is it the path you want to be on? He knew that in order to change, things had to change. He had to change. And that’s when he discovered the slight edge.

The Golden Egg: Where Are You Heading?

“As you walk your path, it is always, every moment of every day, curving either upward or downward.” ~ Jeff Olson, page 142

When Jeff, a beach bum at the time, had his moment, he also had a remarkable breakthrough. He realized that the secret between spending his life as a beach bum or a millionaire lay in the simple actions he made every day giving him the slight edge. When we are failing, he discovered, we will do whatever it takes to get ourselves moving upward again. However, once we are successful, there is a natural tendency in all of us to become complacent and start to fail. We go up and down on this wavy course never really allowing ourselves to push through to success. Why do we stop doing the things that made us successful in the first place? Jeff argues that all we need to do we already know – they are simple actions – we just need to keep doing them, not give up, and over time, we will succeed.

Gem #1: What is the Slight Edge? It’s Simple.

“You could call these ‘little virtues’ or ‘success habits’. I call them simple daily disciplines. Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nutshell, is the slight edge.” ~ Jeff Olson, page 10

Okay, really? Is that it? He believes it is – and has convinced me I can do this too. He has a very powerful, motivational expression he uses throughout the book: “Easy to do – but just as easy not to do.” Usually I find an author who keeps repeating a singular quote counterproductive – meaning, it becomes forgettable because I wish to ignore it. But in this case, Jeff’s repeating of this one powerful line worked. I will never forget it. It really stuck. So much so that now when I stretch to hit the snooze button on my morning alarm while ignoring my running shoes guiltily starring at me from the floor, I hear what I imagine Jeff’s voice to be in my head repeating “easy to do, just as easy not to do.” He is very persuasive. I have actually started getting up earlier than my husband {gasp!} and running in the mornings. I know. I can’t believe it either. But it’s better than arguing with Jeff, because he is right, of course. It is easy not to do and go back to bed. But it was just as easy to get up (okay, full disclosure, perhaps not easy the first time. However, it did get easier).

Jeff had already changed my life and I was only on Chapter 4. I couldn’t put this book down. Then I read this little gem and was blown away:

Gem #2: The Seven Daily Disciplines For Success

“Consistently repeated daily actions + time = unconquerable results.” ~ Jeff Olson, page 65

Wow. Think about that for a moment. Let that one sink in because it is something you need to think about everyday to make the slight edge work for you. All those little decisions – the small, quiet choices we make when no one is looking – ultimately decide our life’s direction.

They may seem insignificant (who is going to know if I hit snooze?), they may seem not to matter today (it’s just one day – who cares?). But they DO add up. They DO matter. If I had hit snooze once again, my path begins to curve downward. When I chose to get up and run, I made a positive choice toward my goal and my path begins to curve upward – and if I keep doing that consistently, I will see results. It is inevitable.

Even with my distaste for math, I can see that equation works.

Bottom line: Every day we are either moving towards the direction we desire or further away from it based on the decisions we make which determine where we end up. No one fails overnight – nor do you succeed overnight (Hollywood endings aside). The real life difference is in creating our own formula of daily disciplines in seven areas for success that we decide and then design for ourselves.

Here’s the best news. You can start anytime you choose. You can (and should) start right now, knowing that compounding interest math example I gave you earlier and Jeff’s voice now in your head too – “Easy to do – just as easy not to do.” (Your welcome).

Here are the seven disciplines Jeff identifies as the areas we need to work on daily: your health, happiness, relationships, personal development, finances, career and our impact on the world.

There is a helpful little worksheet in the last few pages of the book to write notes on your goals and how you plan to get there and putting a deadline to those goals. The real works after you make that goal list with dates. I’m already paying more attention to keeping my goals in front of me and making sure that every day I do something to move me a little closer to reaching them – to keep moving my curve upward. We don’t need to make huge quantum leaps – there are none. I was reminded of this Chinese proverb while reading how to start incorporating the slight edge everyday: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” This book was my first step – and an excellent one – on my path to reaching my goals.

Here is a little exercise for you that Jeff asked in the book – considering the seven disciplines – health, happiness, relationships, personal development, finances, career and your impact on the world – do you feel you are moving up or down in each of those categories currently? How would you change your path to move upwards in the areas that need adjusting? Ready to get started? It’s easy to do.

~Amy

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The author of Hidden In Plain Sight, Jan Chipchase, has a very enviable and unique job. His job, essentially, is that of a cultural anthropologist – he studies people. More specifically, he studies the little things we do and decodes them to help companies understand us better. Our habits, reactions, behaviors, needs, and desires all contain valuable insight and inspiration.

Why is this book important for a designer such as myself? Chipchase explains that “for companies looking to bring new products and services to market, understanding the push and pull of adoption – where personal motivations, context, and cultural norms collide – is critical to success.”

He also asks and answers what drives some people to adopt early to new technologies? Why are some late? Why do others reject technology altogether? And how can we use this understanding to develop, target and then market our product or services in a way that will give us the greatest chance of success?

Chipchase then goes on to explain the “Diffusion Process” – a set of five stages that we all go through on the path to adoption of a new idea, called the Adoption Curve, which describes each of the groups along the path to adoption – those being the Innovators, Early Adaptors and the Laggers – and why understanding these concepts are so critical to the design process.

Chipchase advises that “savvy designers and marketers do well to tailor their offerings as they traverse the Adaption Curve”, meaning, we should be judging our design and marketing efforts against all the groups along the Adaption Curve – Innovators, Early Adaptors, Laggers (which he further divides into Recusers and Rejectors – in order to target each at the point so it will resonate with them).

This was a very interesting book giving me a very different way to thinking about marketing approaches.

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The ability to tap into our creativity whenever we need it is paramount to being successful graphic designer. This is true for many other professions as well which is what prompted me to pick up and read this book, “Imagine – How Creativity Works”, because it promised to pinpoint our personal eternal spring of ideas. There were some very interesting case studies given (the inspiration for sticky notes and impetus for the Swifter mop, for example), along with some groundwork as to how to place ourselves in environments that will heighten our abilities to be creative. There were also some solid take-aways that are still stuck with me a month after completing this book. 

The book is divided into two sections – Alone and Together. The first section, Alone, involves how creativity works for us as individuals and is, at first, very dense and scientific. However, there is a payoff to understanding how we solve problems, and that is being able to put ourselves in that position to better recreate an environment allowing us to tap into that part of our brain. It’s complicated, but the author, Jonah Lehrer, has a writing style that takes the complicated and simplifies it beautifully. 

Here are some of my most important take aways from the book:

• Learn to be hyper-focused.
• Be unafraid. It is good to be thrown off guard. Letting yourself go and re-learning how to be unafraid to make mistakes are the keys to allowing our creativity to flow freely. 
• Travel often. Traveling seems to free the imagination, and why the young (who haven’t learned all sorts of rules) are often more innovative than their elders. Even better, Lehrer suggests the longer we are away from home, the stronger our insight becomes. 
• Make connections. Talk to people outside of you profession. Mingle. This is how our brain solve difficult problems and invent new ideas – by putting our knowledge together with other ideas to reach a solution. It’s called “outsider thinking”.  Lehrer writes, “We are not biologically destined to get less creative … creativity doesn’t have to slip away.” We just need to continue to have an outsiders perspective and keep finding new challenges – stay curious – and we can think like a young person forever. Piacasso understood this and famously said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” 
• “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” ~Anton Ego, in Pixar’s “Ratatouille” 
• Lehrer writes, “Sometimes a creative problem is so difficult that it requires people to connect their imaginations together, the answer arrives only if we collaborate.” 
• The impulse is for us to collaborate with the people we know and are comfortable with but that’s the exact wrong thing to do. If you really want to make be creative and invent something new, collaborate with some new people, too. Bring together a diversity of talent and allow them to interact freely.
• “There’s just one problem with brainstorming. It doesn’t work”, states Lehrer.  “We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.” A psychologist at UC- Berkeley summarizes her research results: “While the instructions ‘Do not criticize’ is often cited as the [most] important instruction in brainstorming, this appears to be a counterproductive strategy … when everybody is “right” – when all new ideas are equally useful, as in a brainstorming session – we stay within ourselves. There is no incentive to think about someone else’s thoughts or embrace unfamiliar possibilities. And so the problem remains impossible. The absence of criticism has kept us all in the same place.”
• Hire the best people. Then, get out of their way. 
• You never know when an idea will come so you need to pay attention and listen to everything. Let everything in.

Those were my favorite points in the book on creativity – but there are many more. It was definitely worth the read however, after reading this book, I learned of a scandal involving Jonah Lehrer including his misquoting and fabricating material resulting in copies of this book actually being pulled from the shelves.

While that tarnishes my opinion of Lehrer, I still found this book interesting and helpful – if taken in the context that all may not be as factual as I believed while reading it. It is extremely disappointing that the author lied and misrepresented himself – particularly on a book on being original, finding solutions, and being creative. 

~Amy

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 Growing up in my household, you learned how to be a good negotiator. My Dad responded to logic, not tears. Boy, could I have used this book when I was 17, for example, attempting to convince my Dad that I should attend art school, for example. I cried (wrong!), begged (wrong), and became completely entrenched in my position, and Dad stubbornly in his – I have learned is called Positional Bargaining. And clearly it is not what the authors of “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In” by Roger Fisher and William Ury recommend. 

The book begins with a great overview that states any negotiating should be judged by three criteria:

1. It should produce a wise agreement;

2. It should be efficient;

3. It should improve – or at least not damage – the relationship between parties. 

The focus is on “Principled Negotiation”, as opposed to what my Dad and I engaged in over colleges – “Positional Bargaining”. Positional Bargaining starts at an extreme opinion (“I want to go to art school”, “You are going to school for a business degree”) and then stubbornly clamping down on that point of view.

This book teaches us how to change the negotiating game by turning it on its head. Principled Negotiation is based on four basic points: people, interests, options and criteria. Without going into great lengths of each, here are a couple of my takeaways from the four principals: 

• We should view ourselves as working side by side attacking the same problem instead of one another.
• Consider what you hope to gain/win from the negotiation. What do you think the other side hopes to achieve?
• Decisions made under pressure are challenging and not optimal. Having a lot at stake narrows creative problem solving.
• Rather than pitting will against will, consider a whole range of options for settle based on a fair, universal set of standards such as market value, expert opinions, customs, laws, etc. 

There were some real gems of learning to change the game of negotiation. Here are couple of excerpts that stuck with me.

• “It is not enough to know that they see things differently. If you want to influence them, you also need to understand empathetically the power of their point of view and to feel the emotional force with which they believe in it.”
• “Even if blaming is justified, it is usually counterproductive. Under attack, the other side will become defensive and will resist what you have to say.”
• “Perhaps the best way to change someone’s perceptions is to send them a message different than what they expect.”
• “Understanding is not agreeing.” 
• “For a wise solution reconcile both parties interests, not their positions.” 
• “Invent options for mutual gain.” 
• “Never yield to pressure. Only principle.”
• “Develop your BATNA: Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.” This was a large part of the material and if you are not familiar with what a BATNA is, it is worth reading this book alone to understand this critical theory. The better your BATNA, the greater your power in a negotiation – no matter if they are more powerful than you. A solid BATNA wins vs. power every time.
• “If the other side pushes hard, you will tend to push back. If you do, you end up in the Positional Bargaining game. Do not push back!”
• “Some of the best negotiation you’ll ever do is when you are not talking.” (Think about that. It’s so true!).

At some point – in business and in life – we all need to negotiate. Most of us negotiate everyday – from tiny battles, like urging our children to wear their hats at the bus stop – to large, game-changing business contracts. I found this book’s material working into my daily negotiations – even before I finished reading it. Like anything else, building your negotiation arsenal takes practice – and reading this book in no way makes me an expert negotiator. But as you can see from the image below, I have taken plenty of notes and plan to refer to them often.

Now, if I could only hop into my time machine and re-negotiate my way to art school … but as my wise and dear Dad said to me a few years ago, “Well, you didn’t go to art school, but have your own successful graphic design and marketing agency. So you ended up exactly where you wanted to be as I knew you would.” How can you argue with that logic? I never could. 

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My May business read was “Growing Great Employees” by Erika Andersen.

Now you may remember my comments about a previous book I read back in December called “Good Boss, Bad Boss”, so you already know that I never planned to be a boss, but fell into this role when I decided to start my own business … so I wouldn’t have a boss. Well, now I am the boss. And the learning continues …

It is difficult to review a book as helpful or not until I’ve had the opportunity to put the items I’ve learned into practice. Further, to really really have a fair assessment of whether this book was helpful, we should probably need to ask my staff to comment back in a couple of months, since they are the only true judges here.

Until that entertaining day arrives, I can report that this book gave me much to think about, want to practice and study.

No pressure, but here is a direct quote that gave me night sweats right from the beginning chapter:

“Your employees are, like you and I, flawed and hopeful human beings whose success is at least partly dependent on your skill as a manager; human being who will thrive with skillful and consistent attention and wither without it.”

Yikes. If I was ever motivated to keep reading, that would be it.

The author continues:

“Kind of like plants. (Thus the gardening metaphor you’ll notice throughout the book, from which I intend to wring every last drop by the end of the final chapter.)

And she does. Ad nauseum. And I have a thing about overworked metaphors. She keeps running back and forth over this one, but I bravely read on … and on. {You have been warned}.

Just to get the things I didn’t like about this book out of the way, the only other issue I had was where she role-played with made-up boss-to-employee scenerios. They were so forced … and honestly, a little uncomfortable to read. It’s difficult to explain, but there are no conversations that are that linear or endings that perfectly wrapped-up.

Okay, enough of the critisicisms, here are the bits and pieces that I found really helpful, which far out weighed the negative.  These are in no particular order and taken directly from my own notes of things I’d like to go back and read, explore, study learn and test on my staff in the near future (heads up to my team!). You may read this book and take different notes — there’s a lot in here and I may be focusing on different areas where I need help/advice more than your own takeaways, but here it goes:

• Uncover where I can offer opportunities for my team to learn, advance, create professional connections and where I can mentor;
• Listening well (and sincerely) is the key to creating an environment that suports employee growth;
• Managing our “self-talk” (a way of making sure what we say to ourselves inside our head is always supportive and of the results we are trying to achieve – no more negative thinking). When we change our self-talk, we can have a significant impact on how we feel and in-turn, on how we behave;
• Create job descriptions that focus primarily on responsibilities and results;
• Learn how to ‘scenario-base interview’ (detailed in Chapter 3) to get better information from candidates of their skills, knowledge, and core competencies leading to better, more informed hiring decisions;
• Getting an employee started on the right path by answering critical questions such as the “who, how, and what” about my agency, for example: “Who do I need to know?”; “How do things get done around here?”; “What is expected of me?”;
• I believe this anyway, but a helpful reminder was this mantra (as the author referred to as the ‘coach’s mind-set’): “Believe in your employee’s potential and want to help them succeed”;
• Learn the “Social Style Model” (Chapter 6) which is a simple, practical tool for understanding the differences between my employees (from one another, but also from my style) so that I can work with their strengths to bring out their best potential and help them grow;
• Teach myself how to make clear agreements with each employee to ensure we continue to grow as a team;
• Learn how to better provide corrective feedback;
• Ask my employees ‘curiosity-based questions’ to check their levels of interest and motivation in certain areas;
• Stick with continuing my learning path towards being the best manager/employer I can be. To quote the author, “Mastery arises when you’re passionate about something, you have the capacity to excel in that area, and excelling in that area will give you some reward that’s deeply important to you.”

{image: flickr} 

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“A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” ~Mark Twain

That is so true. But why?

And it’s not only lies – but scandals, rumors, urban legends, ghost stories, dirty jokes …

Every wonder why some ideas stick while others die on the vine?

Brothers and co-authors Chip and Dan Heath have figured out how to make our ideas memorable. In my April read, “Made To Stick”, they clearly and succinctly break it down to – yes, another dreaded acronym – SUCCESs. This one, I may actually remember.

• Simple: hone in on the core of any idea and strip away anything unnecessary. “Simple ideas are core and compact” (direct quote from the book).
• Unexpected: surprise your audience to capture their attention and have a fresh, new perspective all your own.
• Concrete: convey your idea in such a way that it can be easily understood and recalled using real world examples
• Credible: it must be believable, vivid details help credibility
• Emotional: we know when you can touch someone’s emotions, it will stick with them and move them to act
• Stories: when you narrate an idea into a story, it is remembered. Think of Aesop’s fables or fairytales. Stories are powerful vehicles to captivate, learn, and pass information along.

This book is helpful for those of us who are in sales, marketing, public relations, managers, and communicators. The chapters are broken down by the acronym I shared above where they get into more specifics, provide entertaining examples, and left me with several usable, solid takeaways that will help me with my writing and presentations – and help me with my clients’ marketing.

Here were a few of the points in the book that (sorry!) stuck with me:

“Belief counts for a lot, but belief isn’t enough. For people to take action, they have to care.”

“Core messages help people avoid bad choices by reminding them of what’s important.”

“Avoid burying the lead. Don’t start with something interesting but irrelevant in hopes of entertaining the audience. Instead, work to make the core message itself more interesting.” {Confession: I did go back and read this posts lead. See, it’s working already! And I’ve added a nice quote from Mark Twain to make it interesting. I hope you like it}.

“The first problem of communication is getting people’s attention. The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern.”

“Curiosity … happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge. Our tendency is to tell people the facts. First, though, they must realize that they need these facts.”

The above were just a selected few of the many passages I highlighted to share with you. In addition, sprinkled throughout are some spot-on examples that illuminated their points perfectly and were quite entertaining.

I enjoyed reading this book and just now as I was looking back over my notes to write this post, I realized that I have already been incorporating much of the advice already without my having to go back to my notes or think too much about it. Clearly, some of their imparted wisdom stayed with me (I’m avoiding using a cliché word here. And, you’re welcome).

Have you read this book? Did you find it as helpful as I did? Or, have you not read it yet but think it might be interesting and useful to you? Let’s discuss!

~Amy

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I just finished reading “Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company” by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery.

This book had such a promising title, but sadly, fell short of its promise. For me, anyway, it just didn’t deliver. The first reason was because the example of how Apple, Brunner’s former employer, runs its company was way over used. It was used in every single chapter. I understand that Apple is an awesome company built on a philosophy of being a design-centric business. And to be fair, the authors did use some other examples such as OXO and Whole Foods, however, I grew tired of the Apple examples because no matter what other company was referenced, they always came back to Apple.

Next, I thought the book would be more about designers and the importance of our role in corporations and society on the whole. It – (sigh) wasn’t exactly focused on that. Instead the authors spoke mainly to CEO’s in companies who make products. Not service-based companies or to professional designers. Just companies who make products. Leaves out quite a few of us, don’t you think?

On the plus side, this book did give me several great examples of why design is so important in business that, okay, wasn’t exactly news to me – but was put in such a way and packaged with a solid example (usually about Apple and Apple products) that I wanted to jot some passages down and share them with my clients if only to make a point that I would otherwise struggle to convey.

And that was the best take-away I can offer from this book as the “CEO” of a service-focused company or as a graphic designer. If you are a marketing director, I hope you keep reading while I excerpt the best of the best – and save everyone a whole lot of time from reading this entire book (that’s again, mostly about Apple).

Here are my notes all excerpted directly from the book “Do You Matter?”:

1. “Become brillant at using design to provide an amazing customer experience.”
2. “The difference between a great product and a merely good product is that a great product embodies an idea that people can understand and learn about – an idea that grows in their minds, one they emotionally engage with.
3. “When it’s all said and done, your customer doesn’t care about your process. In the end, none of this matters if the design experience is wrong.”
4. “Great products are about ideas; they are not just objects.”
5. “Effective design establishes the emotional relationship you develop with a brand through the total experience, to which a service or product provides a portal.”
6. Here is the core idea of this book. I printed this excerpt out and pinned it to my wall: “Who are you? What do you do? Why does it matter? Would the world be a darker place without you? If someone took a poll today of your customers, constituents, followers, whatever, and asked if you matter to them, how do you think you would come out? If you ceased to exist tomorrow, do you think anyone would really care? In other words, has your product, service, or brand established an emotional connection with your customers to the extent that they are invested in the interest that you not only survive, but also prosper?”
7. “Developing an awareness of excellent design as the connective tissue that defines and ensures an excellent experience for your customers is a vital key to the future of your business.”
8. “Don’t just play the game, change the game.”
9. “Design is a living, ongoing process that has to learn from mistakes, refresh itself, and take new risks all the time.”
10. “The idea behind Whole Foods is more than being a market. It is an informative, rewarding experience.”
11. “Learn what you can change, because that’s how you achieve longevity.”
12. Oh, how I love this one: “If, on the other hand, you start by saying, ‘OK, we’re going to do this product – let’s ask people what they like,’ you wind up with the sort of mediocre outcome that comes of designing by committee. When people think as a group, they end up liking a bland type of product because that’s what makes most of them feel comfortable.” Raise your hand, designers, if you’ve ever been part of that scenario. I know, right? Design by committee = EPIC FAIL.
13. “Mediocrity is what you end up with if you try to make something everybody likes.” Yes, yes and YES.
14 “Most customers have a difficult time articulating their design preferences. You can do far better by watching, listening, and observing.”
15. “When your brand communicates well, you create a context of expectations. The product is emotionally prequalified before the purchase is made.”
16. “There is still a gap in business culture, at least American business culture, of really viewing design as a business partner.” True!
17. Another good one: “You need to believe that design matters, you need to believe that experience is important, and you need to look at the things that create great experience. We are talking about emotional reality here, and you can’t put emotions on a spreadsheet.”
18. “Look to design to uncover new territory.”
19. “The core aspects of a design-driven company … can be arranged to form the acronym FLAVOR. Here is what the letters stand for: Focus, Long-term, Authentic, Vigilant, Original, Repeatable.”
Focus: on the customer experience;
Long-term: “Becoming a design-driven company takes deliberate practice and time.”
Authentic: “If your slogan is ‘We Care,’ this had better be the case.”
Vigilance: “It is also ‘forward looking’ as well as keeping track of what is going on around you. In a way, it’s like continuous due diligence.”
Original: “We apply the 80/20 rule. You want 80 percent of the market to love it. But you’d also like 20 percent to be challenged by it.”
Risk: “You have to take chance to keep moving ahead. Try to balance risk with research. It doesn’t mean that you can’t cross a boundary when designing – it just means you have to know when you’ve crossed it so you can assess and discuss.”
20. “The creative process is really hard to compress; it really is very difficult. You just need time to experiment and try things. Because when you get compressed, what you do is revert to what you know.” So to all the owners,CEO’s and marketing directors reading this post – please think about this critical point the next time you ask your design agency to ‘rush’ a project. When you do, you risk compressing the creative process which will give you a sub-par result when we have to take shortcuts in our thinking to meet a hurried deadline. It is worth it? Sometimes, we understand, it is a necessity. But overall, it’s probably not worth what you lose. It is far better to give your creative team the time they need to think, observe, research, test and then create for you the best possible result.

That pretty much sums it up. I hope you found my notes and excerpts useful and enlightening – not to mention, time saving.

Onto my April book, “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath.

Meanwhile Readers, any feedback on my above book review would be greatly appreciated. Did you find it useful? Have you read this book and agree or disagree with my review? Did any of my 20 takeaways resonate with you and why? Thank you for sharing!

~Amy

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This weekend, the kids, husband and I headed north to Vermont for a little R&R. As I was packing for our trip, I grabbed “Rework” by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson off the bookshelf. This turned out to be a good idea. A very good idea.

The drive was approximately three hours and I was able to read the entire book in the three hour drive finishing in about an hour after the drive. While I was reading the book, I wrote two pages of notes which consist mostly of questions I want to dive more deeply into over the next several days. {I love books that give me ‘homework’.} So although the book was a quick read, I will be thinking about all of the points and working on answering the questions for much longer.

The book was written in conversational tone filled with common sense (meetings suck, stand for something, workaholism doesn’t work, and so forth), but still communicated in such straight-to-the-point way that this time, the good advice might actually stick.

What was different about this business book was how it challenges all other business books. Melissa Coleman, who works with us here as a designer part-time, said it best, “I appreciated the way it challenged typical business practices. I’m not business minded, but this book made perfect sense to me.” And another graphic designer, our good friend Gary Holmes of Gariphic, added this comment to our conversation, “One of my all-time fave business books. Many pages bookmarked.”

I’ve owned my own company Elements for over 14 years now, and when I read this book I felt re-energized. This is a motivational book that lights a fire under you to make you want to run, not walk, towards getting stuff done. There is an immediacy to it, a sense of urgency, running through every page urging you on to do the thing you were meant to do. Now. Today. Don’t wait! Even how it is written – to be digested quickly – I’m sure was intentional by its authors so that we may move onto the actual act of doing.

The overall message of Rework is to not get caught up in minute details or plans or policies or meetings that don’t move you forward today. There is a faster way to do things, and people need to see progress – repeated quick successes – to stay motivated and advancing. This is, after all, our life’s work. We don’t have forever to create our legacy.

I am looking forward to answering all the questions this book made me want to think about and taking the energy and urgency of its message to surge ahead. If you need a kick-in-the-pants to get that business idea going or re-invigorate your current work, this book will do just that.

And with that, let’s get started!

~Amy

{image: amy graver}

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