One Amazing Summer

Thank you, universe.

My New Career in Careerland!

So, after months of meeting and shadowing and creeping around in Scarborough, I signed on the dotted line. I’ve just finished my second day at Umbra. My current title is Management Trainee in the Product Development department, and for the next two months, I’ll be shadowing various senior people at the company in Design, Category Management, Key Accounts, Purchasing, Marketing and Forecasting. Right now I’m acting as long, scaly tail to Matt Carr, the new head of design. Matt’s been super laid back and so helpful already, for which I am incredibly grateful.

It’s astonishing how much there is to learn here. The foreign acronyms and terminology are flying thick and fast in meetings, and it seems I leave each one with only a better understanding of how little I know about this industry. It’s a serious brain-flex so far, and awesome.

In the fall, I’ll return to OCAD to finish my last degree requirements (I know, this is taking FOREVER) and once those are in the can, so to speak, we’ll figure out where I best fit in at Umbra going forward.

While I work at Umbra, I will not be posting in this space, for sheer lack of time. I will continue to update tumblr, however, as it aggregates my tweets and del.icio.us links as well as rando fun I encounter on the interblags. In addition to the Unlearnings tumblr, I’ll be keeping a parallel delicious + tumblr feed focused on work – design inspiration, industry resources, less-exciting white papers and other readings. If those are things that flambé your cherries, drop me a heyho and I’ll slip you the url for creeping.

It’s a brand new day, my friends. Here goes!

What's Worth It To You?

The Rabbit and the Wolf
(repost)

Along the forest path between the dojo and the temple, a heartbroken student told his sensei the sad tale of how he recently lost the woman he loved.

“At first I was very angry and upset,” the student explained, “but after much meditation I found peace. I suppose that our relationship simply wasn’t meant to be.”

The sensei suddenly stopped and turned his head toward the thick forest along the path. Barely a moment passed before a large hare burst out of the woods, with a snarling wolf chasing close behind. The sensei and student watched the frantic rabbit weave in and out of the bushes along the path until the animals disappeared back into the forest.

At this sight, the student threw up his hands in sorrow. “How can it be that all peace and beauty are destroyed in this uncaring world? I have loved deeply and this love was taken from me. And here, in this peaceful place, is another case of heartlessness.

“Must such tragedy be the truth of all of life?”

The sensei looked long into his student’s tearful eyes, and gestured down the path. “Do you believe that the rabbit is despondent and uncaring about his fate? That rabbit does not see the wolf and suddenly believe his imminent devouring is somehow ‘meant to be.’ He runs. He runs without a moment’s hesitation. This is not tragedy, but the animating force of life.” He paused. “And the rabbit will escape.”

His prediction confused the student. “But Sensei, how can you be sure?”

The sensei opened the door of the dojo. “What is meant to be or not meant to be does not determine what we love and what we fight for.

“I believe the rabbit will escape, because the wolf you saw is only running for his dinner. The rabbit is running for his life.”

A New Majority

I just realized that I'm approaching a strange benchmark I've never before considered: soon enough I will have lived a balanced number of years inside and outside my family home.

The breaching of that equilibrium is generally ignored (at least, I've never heard anyone speak of it) but it is a significant tipping of the balance, to have spent more years 'out of the nest' than in.

Probably an odd way to consider a life, and not transferable from one person's experience to another in any informative way, but thought-provoking nonetheless.

The Tag: How To Get Your Team To Share Credit

image from Yahoo! TV

Part of working well together is giving credit where credit is due. A symptom of bad culture is credit-hogging or appropriating ideas without proper acknowledgment.

The absolute worst is when a boss fails to give credit or takes an unfair share, because that behavior goes completely against their mission: to coordinate, support the efforts, and help emerge the talents of every individual team member. Thankfully, it's up to every person on a team to demonstrate the way they'd like to be led. The following four behaviors might help:

Giving With The Tag On

If you want to nurture credit-sharing behavior as a team member, then be an advocate yourself. Make sure good ideas get recognized with their maker's name attached. This is "giving with the tag on," you are passing along the gift of a good or useful idea, and endorsing the person it came from - in this case, a double gift.

If Your Tag Falls Off

On the other side of the coin, when releasing your ideas into the wild, don't stress out if your "tag" falls off. If you find your ideas appropriated or co-opted without credit, relax. Your mind at peace is a wellspring of creativity, and this will not be your only good idea. Remind yourself that (unless any laws are being egregiously broken) only unimaginative people chase after credit. Instead, if someone sitting beside you blatantly steals your idea, take it as an endorsement, and align yourself with them. You can say, "I've been thinking along the same lines," and offer your support.

A cheesy metaphor: Think of your contributions as drops of paint that will influence the eventual outcome - but everyone else's paint is necessary to achieve the final shade. Other people putting their grubby hands all over your shiny idea means it won't be as good as you imagined - instead, it will be better, in ways you can't anticipate on your own.

Pinning The Tag Back On

The second way to stimulate advocacy on your team: If you see that someone isn't getting their due, go ahead and raise your voice. Pin the tag back on, without judgment. If it works for you, even use the language:

"I think Andrea's tag fell off earlier when we were talking about x." (Because you address people in the room directly as much as possible, you then turn to that person and say,) "It was the article you brought in that really got the ball rolling in that direction, so thanks."

It's a small correction, but an important one.

Leaders: Look for the Tag

As a leader, your role is simple. Reinforce the behavior of advocacy as strongly as you reinforce the idea itself. First by demonstrating the behavior yourself, second by correcting, and third by making room for the behavior - which can be as simple as saying "Love it! Where'd that come from?"

We all respond to each other's behavioral cues, and a creative team absolutely cannot function in a competitive, zero-sum mentality. Advocacy is one essential behavior to get an upward spiral going.

Running Changes

Ancient Mississippi Riverbed Courses
by Harold N. Fisk
from Strange Maps

You don't need to have your course perfectly plotted before you begin. Have an idea of where you'd like to end up, a few principles you won't compromise, a little faith, and ...go.

There is a lot of hard work coming up. I am fighting my inner ostrich every step of the way - trying to balance the longview against the (relentless, unforgiving and mostly internal) pressures of the moment.

Colleagues in thesis ...holler if you hear me. Let's do it done son.

Fail

from faildogs

Boy, do I ever fail at blogging.

I keep coming up against the issue of what I want this space to be, and how I want it to work for me. A blog is an ether-stamp that is meant to represent something of myself, but it's tough to reconcile with the monologue-soapbox quality of this medium. It feels masturbatory and awkward. But either I manage my "online presence" or Google does, and so far neither of us are doing a good job at it.

It's important to me that I live undivided - that the distinction between "personal" and "professional" be vague and hazy, if the two are distinct at all. Now I'm at the stage where I have to start paying attention to cultivating a professional identity, and all kinds of questions come up around this, in my mind. Questions like, is it still okay to write blog posts about building forts and climbing trees? And here's the answer I have so far: If I feel like I have to hide or swallow that side of myself for the sake of work, then I'm probably doing the wrong work. I know my essential self, and she's a total weirdo. So be it.

This is a common issue. I know so many people with blogs:
Slava, David Crow, Ryan Coleman, Rannie, The Kuz, Riggs, Michele, Jevon, Joey, Bryce, Thom, Will, Frank, Rachel, Tom Williams, Nate and Nick and Chris and Aidas (to name a few) and every one of them has a different tone, approach and purpose...but no posts about building forts. Maybe we can all learn from each other.