If you run a company with an office of >10 people and aren’t spending time thinking about how your office space helps or hinders productivity then you’re missing a huge opportunity to impact performance. A 2008 survey suggested that less than five percent of US corporations “tie the workplace to corporate strategy or see it as a tool for improving organizational performance.” For shame!

Smart people have said that the consumer shouldn’t see your org structure in your product. Well, i don’t think they should see your business development team in it either. I’m amazed that Sprint has made it nearly impossible for the average consumer to uninstall the large amounts of crapware that come pre-loaded on their Evo device. Want to rid yourself of Sprint Nascar, Sprint Football, etc? If so, you need to edit at the root level! Seriously WTF? Also, in the Android App Store, there’s an additional tab labeled Sprint that just promotes apps they “like” (aka paid?). This replaces the helpful “downloads” tab which allows you to see and update the apps you’ve installed (it’s now hidden behind a menu).

NYTimes reports that wealthy people don’t give as much to charity as lower classes because they’ve lost ability to relate to others’ needs as a result of prioritizing their own. 


However there’s hope and it comes in the form of a hack:


“if higher-income people were instructed to imagine themselves as lower class, they became more charitable. If they were primed by, say, watching a sympathy-eliciting video, they became more helpful to others — so much so, in fact, that the difference between their behavior and that of the low-income subjects disappeared. And fascinatingly, the inverse was true as well: when lower-income people were led to think of themselves as upper class, they actually became less altruistic.”


How can this be used to close the empathy gap? It sounds like simply asking someone to project and imagine what it might feel like to be a situation different that their own produces immediate results. So make sure your campaign outreach to donors doesn’t just tell a story but instead asks the target to feel what it would be like.


Overall pretty consistent with the research in Cialdini’s Influence (the book you should buy and read monthly) re: self-identity and behavior.

Are you scared of your job? If not, perhaps it’s time for a change. Noticed that within the last month, three close friends all found themselves in new roles that are – in all cases – the biggest job they’ve had to date. All of them admitted to, at various points, being scared by the idea.

Are they stressed? No, more excited than ever. Are they failing? No, all three are doing the best work of their lives.

So maybe it’s time for you to ask yourself – are you scared of your job? If not, perhaps it’s time for a change.

(oh, and we’ve got plenty of jobs at YouTube that should scare you 🙂 )

News broke this week about The Giving Pledge’s initial commitment from 40 billionaire’s to donate at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy. An incredibly exciting endeavor to make “giving it away” part of the standard expectation for the most fortunate few (Fortune first featured the effort back in June).

So how to make this stick and spread? Well, what if we all promoted philanthropic commitments to a first order piece of information when reporting on the world’s wealthiest and most successful individuals?

Could the media agree to add an asterisk (or other symbolic attribution) to the name of every Giving Pledge donor when it appears in print? Margin or footer could note that “[named] committed to The Giving Pledge.” Each time we hear about a person it would be reinforced that they are substantially involved in improving the world. The absence of said attribution for the world’s richest people would speak volumes and provide social pressure.

Can we start this with just a few small steps – would Forbes add this to their list of The Richest People in America and The World’s Billionaires? Would Fortune note this on their CEO list?

What are other ways to honor and celebrate this movement on a daily basis?

[i don’t know how we’d handle those who wish to join anonymously since they would be perceived to be “non-joiners”]

My wife started a kickass new job today (more on that later). This weekend we discussed new employees and the energy they bring to a workplace.

• New employees are psyched about the opportunity – they see the glass half-full, brimming with potential. 
• New employees don’t yet know “that’s the way it’s always been done here” – they see processes and limitations with fresh eyes. 
• New employees aren’t aware that “it’s been tried before and failed” so they are able to surface the things you should be doing but struggled to execute.
• New employees introduce themselves to everyone, because, well, they’re new and there’s no social stigma to it at all.

Was hanging out at a friend son’s 1 year birthday party the other day. A friend had his kid in one of those front-mounted Bjorn baby holders. It looked cute but the kid was pretty useless because, well, two month old infants don’t really do much.

But it had such sense of possibility because what if there was, like, a six year old in the harness. Or a midget. Then you’d have totally another set of arms that could do stuff for you. Doc Oc! Like you could be dealing a hand of poker and your six year old could be opening the next beer for you. Or in the kitchen the midget could chop onions while you dice carrots on a second cutting board. Imagine the efficiency!

Unfortunately the official Bjorns are only recommended for up to 25 lbs. So i’m totally going to need to black market this thing. I wonder if someone on Etsy can make me one that can support up to 75 lbs.

Even if you’ve never bought hotel room porn, champagne room lapdances or other prurient transactions, most people are familiar with the billing practices associated with said purchases. “Discreetly billed to your credit card as XYZ Industries” or some other innocuous sounding corporate entity to prevent spouses, bosses and other prying eyes from knowing the truth behind your $300 charge. 

I know alcoholism is not funny, but the absurd visual conjured by this passage stuck with me given that i was a WWF wrestling fan as a kid. From Wikipedia’s entry about wrestler Jake “The Snake” Roberts:

Also in 1999, at an independent PPV show entitled Heroes of Wrestling, Roberts cut a rambling, incoherent promo^[6] in which he heavily slurred his words. Minutes later, he staggered toward the ring, apparently drunk, for an awkward match with Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart. Before the match, Roberts pulled his snake out of the bag, put it between his legs, and simulated masturbation. Because it was obvious that Roberts was unable to participate in a singles match, the match was changed to a tag team match involving Yokozuna and King Kong Bundy. The pay-per-view ended abruptly, cutting to black with the commentators in mid-sentence just as Roberts was motioning that he was about to remove his pants.

Each day i make dozens of small social gestures via technology. Some are explicit — i endorse someone on LinkedIn or confirm a friend on Facebook — but the smaller ones are really where my attention has been these days. The “like” of a friend’s FB post, the RT of someone on Twitter. Each of these is an exchange of social currency where I’m giving some significance to your previous action.