Doug Kreitzberg

On the Hinge

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During last week, I took the family to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  While the Museum has a lot of interesting work on display, I was particularly interested in one piece which I had read about in a book by Lewis Hyde, entitled Trickster Makes This World.  It is a work by Marcel Duchamp entitled “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors”, or “The Large Glass”.  It is indeed, a large work between sheets of glass, supported by a metal border and a piece of metal which almost looks like the hinge of a window pane running through the bottom third of the piece.  In the upper panel suspends the bride, the lower contains the bachelors.

According to Hyde, Duchamp wrote that “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors” was a “delay in glass”.  The Bride still retains an infinite number of possiblities for her life, standing on the hinge between desire and fulfillment.  Fulfillment has its advantages, to be sure, but it also has it’s drawbacks; fulfillment weds us to a choice, and choices both define and place limitations on the future.  Duchamp is not necessarily stating, “never chose”; as Hyde states, “a ‘delay’ both suspends but not suspends activity.”  The action will continue, the choice will be made.  However, Duchamp shares this moment with the viewer as if to say, “we are all brides sitting on the hinge of possibility.”  Regardless of choices we have made, or how we view ourselves — or how others view us — right now, at this moment, we still have infinite possibilities in front of us.

I find that those times I feel at my lowest is when I feel I have no choice, or that something is totally out of my control.  And yet, even during those times, if I take a moment, I do see that I have choices and there are possibilities (even if most of those possibilities simply involve changing how I feel about the situation).  When I sit, like that bride, on the hinge of possibility, eyes not filled with dreamy stars but clear and bright, my fear subsides and I make a decision with calm and confidence.

Every New Year is a time for both reflection and resolution.  Whether you are making resolutions for yourself or for your business, recognize that possibilities before you are perhaps greater than you might initially realize.  Be that bride on a hinge, stay suspended there for a moment and take wonder in the possibilities that are actually available to you.

Give the Ability to Receive this Year

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This is the gift-giving season.  And, as we know, it is better to give than to receive.  If you’re like me, you’ve bought and exchanged gifts (and perhaps had some of those gifts exchanged at the store afterwards) and, maybe, even now Aunt Minnie is wearing one of the sweaters you bought her and nephew Andy is playing the new Wii game you gave.

It feels good to give.  And yet, for me, there’s that nagging sensation of “how long will it last”?  When does the sweater get placed neatly in Aunt Minnie’s dresser rarely to be seen again and when does the “new” Wii game get shuffled to the back of the deck of Wii games?

One thing I’m also trying to give during this season as well as strive to do more of next year is to give the ability to receive; give those I care about — whether my family, friends or business relationships — the time to connect with them, to really hear what they have to say, to engage with them at their level, to set aside the multi-tasking jumble that my brain usually becomes and receive their ideas, passions or idle thoughts.  Even if it’s nothing more than a few minutes a day, it’s at least something.

Because, just perhaps, in these days where we are frantically trying to “stay connected” via e-mail, twitter, facebook, and voice mail, the greatest gift we can give is to push all that aside, empty our minds, reach out to someone and let them become connected to us.

Stay Hungry

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Thanksgiving Sunday is hardly the day to talk about keeping hungry.  If you’re like me, you’ve had three days of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and pies, plus all the weird side dishes that your mother served and that you hated growing up but now can’t do without.  You’re probably sitting in front of a TV, watching the umpteenth football game of the weekend, in a near comatose state with your hand idly swimming in an empty potato chip big.  Hungry? You’re convinced you don’t need to eat until Christmas…..wait, are those chocolate covered pretzels in that tin over there?

But, as we approach the end of this year and the beginning of another, it pays us to be hungry.  Being hungry forces you to be alert, to be dissatisfied with the way things are and to search for ways to reach your goals.  Hunger feeds desire and its energy fuels innovation.

If we remain stuffed and satisfied with ourselves and the way things are, we run the risk of losing to a faster, more agile and hungrier competition, who will be chewing our legs out from under us before we have a chance to get off the sofa.

So, pat yourself on the back for your accomplishments and be grateful for all that has been given to you.  Then, step back from the table, pause,  and think about your goals that you have yet to achieve.  Let the hunger for those goals begin to gnaw at you and you will have a new sense of awareness of how to achieve them and the commitment to actually get things done.

Sharing

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We learn to share in day one of kindergarten (if not long before). Of course, what we learn to “share” are things, like toys.  Then we learn to share friends.  We learn to share time.  When we fall in love we learn to share our dreams and desires.  Sharing is a basic social contruct — in fact, societies could never survive without it.

In business, there are (at least) three types of sharing that are important: information, skills, and recognition.  Sharing information is critical to help us make better decisions. Sharing our skills allows us to both diversify and specialize because we utilize the indvidual and unique skills that each of us can bring to a problem. Recognition in all of its forms is important because it demonstrates that we are part of a team and that the team is grateful for our participation.

Look at your team, your department, your office.  How would you rate it in terms of its ability to share.  Is information free-flowing or does it get bottled up somewhere?  Do people pitch in to help with their unique skills or do they hang back with a “it’s not my job” attitude (or, conversely, do people not ask others to help because they think it would make them look weak)? Do you receive feedback from the work you do?

Share your thoughts and concerns with others and certainly your boss.  Sharing is crucial to your success.  Fortunately, it’s easy to do, if you put your mind to it.  After all, it’s only child’s play.

Surface Area

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I’m on a green tea kick and this weekend I was researching tea pots, specifically one called a Yixing tea pot.  The Yixing is a clay pot and, according to the description, because it is clay, it is porous, which means that the surface area is many times larger than a traditional teapot.  This provides, among other things, a faster heat time and the ability for the pot to retain water, or to be seasoned.
 
Of course, this got me thinking about business.  If a business is to be successful, it must be continually searching for ways to increase its surface area, to increase it’s touch points with its clients, its competitors, its vendors and its community. Businesses which focus too much within may have great processes and procedures and even a great “culture”, but are so dense that they let nothing in — whether innovation, dissention or new customers.  These type of businesses have a contracted surface area and are less adaptable to change or growth.
 
This is a danger I think every organization faces as it grows — that more time is spent on internal issues than external, and that the time spent on external issues is not adequately communicated to the rest of the organization to help overall growth.
 
The way I’ve tried to address this is by focusing on growth areas on a weekly basis; not so much as to follow up on what was to be accomplished, but to brainstorm ideas to promote growth and to communicate what’s working and not working as quickly as possible to the rest of the organization.
 
But if these discussions don’t reach out into the frontline, then you won’t take full advantage of the resources you have.  Managers need to be focused on: 1) engaging with customers and clients and frontline staff; 2) improving methods for the overall organization to engage with customers, clients and frontline staff; and 3) sharing, learning and communicating what works and doesn’t work with their peers.
 
Increasing the surface area of your organization doesn’t make you weaker.  As you know, clay has a tremendous capacity to withstand extreme heat.  It makes you stronger.
 

Pepsis not Pepsi

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There is a great TED talk given by Malcolm Gladwell (link here) in which Gladwell talks about the findings of Howard Moskowitz, a psychophysicist who has made a career out of consumer preferences.

In the early 1970’s, Pepsi asked Dr. Moskowitz to determine which percentage of Aspartame it should put into Diet Pepsi to give it the right sweetness.  Dr. Moskowitz conducted a survey of consumers drinking Pepsi with anywhere from 8% to 12% Aspartame.  When the results came back inconclusive, Dr. Moskowitz was stunned: he had expected a traditional bell curve with preferences hovering around 10% or at very least a cluster of preferences hovering around a single percentage.  Instead, there was no single cluster; the data appeared random.

Dr. Moskowitz did not believe the data was random.  After considerable thought.  He hit on it.  The answer was that people did not prefer Pepsi.  They preferred Pepsis.

Moskowitz demonstrated this when he worked with Prego in the mid to late 70’s. At the time, Ragu held the dominant market share and Prego asked Moskowitz to come up with the right type of sauce to unseat its rival.  Moskowitz asked Prego’s kitchens to come up with a multitude of varieties of sauces and then conducted tests; what he found was that people did not prefer one specific sauce, but that they tended to cluster around 3 different sauce types:  plain, spicy and extra chunky.  Ragu and Prego both had plain and spicy.  Neither had extra chunky.  Moskowitz recommended Prego introduce extra chunky and all of a sudden its market share sky rocketed.  Walk down any grocery aisle of spaghetti sauces and you will most like see 30 to 40 varieties, within the same brand.

As Gladwell states, we owe Moskowitz three key ideas: 1) the importance of horizontal segmentation (we should not segment products by least complex or expensive to most complex or expensive, rather we should segment according to the variety of attributes it may possess); 2) the fact that he democratized taste, which was based on the fact that; 3) variability is key in gaining marketshare as opposed to coming up with the “perfect” product.

In one real sense, Moskowitz proved that individuals cannot be categorized into one platonic product category; rather they have different tastes, needs and desires.  As such, companies who want to gain marketshare need to consider variety and choice in their product offering.  They cannot just offer Pepsi.  They have to offer Pepsis.

This has important implications for any business.  Instead of just focusing the the “perfect”  or “cheapest”, Moskowitz/Gladewell tells us to focus on providing an array of different product flavors based upon consumer or business preferences.  If you want to maintain or grow share, you need to offer choice which gives the product selection back to the customer where it belongs.

What are you waiting for?  Pop your favorite beverage and get to it!

Hisses and Pops

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Two years ago, for reasons I won’t go into here, I bought a turntable.  It was quite accidental,  but now I find myself scouring e-bay and other sources for records.  My wife thinks I’m crazy (or it’s another reason for her to think I’m crazy) but I now am totally into vinyl.  Some say the musical quality is better, but what I really like about it is that playing records actually causes you to pay attention to the music.  You can only listen to one at a time, you have to be ready to flip the record when a side is complete, and you need to be in one place to listen to the music (you can’t throw the turntable in the car or your briefcase or on your back as you’re jogging).  Record handling requires attention which also creates, at least to me,  a sense of increased attention to the music being played.  The used records are especially cool — the rich musty smell of the cardboard cover and the hissing and pops bring you a sense of history and, as you listen to the music, you wonder about who else listened to this same album: were they happy or sad, dancing or contemplative, in love or in angst, sitting in a nice surburban home or partying in a rowhouse.

I know I live in an IPod (or should I now say ‘IPhone’) world. We have so many ways that make it easy to be connected anywhere at anytime.  But I also wonder if the ease of connection sacrifices the quality of that connection.  How often have we dashed off a rash e-mail only to wish seconds later that we could reach into the computer to take it back?  Or have we had a flare-up during a phone call when someone happened to push one of our buttons? Or how often do we decline to say something to someone, because we don’t have the time to really explain what we’re feeling or to really listen to what they’re saying because we have a hundred other things to get to that day?

Now, we can’t go back to the “turntable times” of business and type memos on typewriters or fumble through “While you were out” messages.  But we can focus more on the quality of our interactions.  It’s extremely hard, but it can be done.  If we treat each interaction we have like we’re listening to a record, really listening to what’s being said, really making sure that we are understood, we can be effective and successful.

Imagine that every meeting you’re in, every e-mail you’re reading, every phone call you make, is being done in the living room of your own home.  It is twilight and there’s a soft breeze coming in off the porch. You’ve just turned on a lamp and the light flows into the shadows.  The person (or persons) with whom you are speaking is like an old jazz album which you’ve just placed on the stereo.  Listen to what’s being said, listen to how you’re feeling as the conversation grows, listen to the hisses and pops of that other person’s history and experience and also the hisses and pops of your own history and experience. Pay attention to nothing else.

The average track is 2 minutes and 57 seconds and in that time, the best music can stir our souls, create love, cure heartbreak or change our lives.  Just think what you can do in business if you treat each interaction you have in the same way.

A Stick of Gum

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I was on a flight yesterday from San Antonio to Charlotte.  A woman sat next to me and ahead of us were, it seemed, her parents. As we were taking off, the woman pulled out a pack of gum, offered a stick to each of her parents and turned and offered me one.

It was, as the cliche goes, a random act of kindness, without strings. And it made me think, that’s what a stick of gum is for.  To share.  When people pull out a pack of gum, it triggers some primitive urge to reach out to someone.  The gum doesn’t cost much and the act of sharing doesn’t come saddled with commitments. Yet the small gesture makes both parties grateful, a small ritual of acceptance and recognition that we are human and somehow connected. And it’s all wrapped in minty freshness.

What if we consciously turned every interaction we made into that ritual?  If every time we met someone, or spoke to them on the phone, or sent something in the mail or posted something on the web for them to see, we made them feel like we had offered them a stick of gum, that we said, “I know you”, “I’m just like you” and “You are special.”

I barely spoke to the woman on the plane.  I will never see her again.  Yet, for that one small moment, we shared something and it made me feel good and I won’t long forget it.

I think I’ll carry a pack of gum with me, from now on.

Life on the Fly

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Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about how people visit museums.  The author juxtaposed the pre-technological age habit of “deep-diving” into literature and art versus today’s “smash-n-grab” approach (walk in to a museum, grab a headset, walk through, drop headset, have a latte).

I think that we all feel like we are skimming the surface of our lives, that we’d love to dip below the surface, but that there’s so much to see and so much to do.  Instead, we’re content to find the “top 10” this and the “favorite” that and make choices as if all of life were in a zagat guide.

If we ever gave ourselves pause to think, we might realize that life’s richness requires us to get engaged, and that engagement requires time, focus and attention.  Ironically, time, focus and attention are becoming scare in the internet-dominated world where we can communicate with anyone and be anywhere we want.

On your way to work, think about what you are really passionate about.  Determine to be an expert in that subject. Find people who are equally engaged in what you love.  Try to do it all off the grid.

Grab a pencil, grab a sketchbook.  The rest is up to you.

Time to face your Nightmare

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What keeps you up at night?

What keeps you up at night?

OK, so you’ve ridden out the worst of the this economic storm.  You’re still alive, but your car’s sputtering and running out of gas.  And it’s dark and you’re not sure where exactly you are or going.  It there was a soundtrack to your life, now would be the time when the music raises the hair on the back of your neck.

You wish you had more choices, but you don’t.  To make it through the night, you have to get out, face your worst nightmare and defeat it.

Unfortunately, our own nightmares aren’t as simple to identify as needle-boy above.  Our own nightmares are facing up to things we need to do, but that we hate doing.  Not only do we hate doing them, but we’ll swamp ourselves with busy work just to keep from thinking about doing them.  When times are good, or we feel we can get by on inertia, that may be fine.  But neither is true today.

So, how do you identify your nightmares?  One way is reflect on what are those things that you do that just seem to sap the life energy out of you.  Or that give you a knot in your stomach just thinking about.  For each one of those activities, think about whether they actually help you grow.  Also, think about how you’ll feel once you actually do them.  If the answer to the first is “yes” and the answer to the second, “Great” or at least, “Relieved”, then it’s time to Cowboy Up!

What may be some of these nightmares?

Getting a referral.

Making a cold call.

Giving a presentation.

Launching a new product or marketing campaign that might fail.

Doing anything that everyone, except your gut, tells you won’t work.

Having a tough conversation with a vendor or employee. Or your boss.

Shutting down the product line that got you started, but isn’t selling any more.

Like Dreams, Nightmares are best dealt with in bite-size chunks.  Think about what you need to do today to help you get through this.  Don’t try to get it all done at once.  Just one, small thing.  Setting an appointment, for example.  Getting a phone list.  Asking for a P&L.

Now, that wasn’t hard, was it?

The other thing you need to do is to tell people what you want to do and ask them to support you.  Sometimes, support is in the way of assistance, but in this case, support may feel more like a kick in the pants.  In any event, don’t keep your nightmares (and what you intend to do about them) to yourself.  Share them, tell people why you are facing up to them, tell them how you’ll feel once you actually get through them.  That way, when they do come to kick you in the butt (as they invariably will), they’ll be able to remind you why you’re doing this in the first place.

And remember, facing up to your nightmares does not mean turning away from your dreams.  Most often, you must face the nightmare in order to grasp the dream.