Every week I save interesting articles I come across on the internet. (Why and how is a different post.) Here’s the list I saved this week.
Backseat Software – Mike Swanson’s Blog
Find me the telemarketer who likes being called during their own dinner. The job exists because it works enough in aggregate, not because anyone enjoys being on either end of it.
So why does it keep happening? Because inside companies, the incentives are clear and the measurements are easy. You can measure clicks and track whether they led to a “completion.” You can measure whether a nudge led to the next step in the funnel.
You cannot easily measure the resentment. Or the rage clicks when they smash a button to dismiss another “did you know” pop-up.
Kid Whisperer – Matthew Walther
The premise of Well-Ordered Family (the book) and Well-Ordered Family™ (the “management system”) is simple. Per the advertising copy: “There is a reason business runs smoothly and family runs chaotically.” I would think there is more than one reason. Reams of them, probably, depending upon our working definitions of “smoothly” and “chaotically.” But let’s back up. What kind of business are we talking about here? A publicly traded corporation? That one is easy: If my family were on the Dow, our stock would just fall until some other company came along and decided to strip-mine our handful of valuable assets (our youngest makes excellent cat noises). If we were privately held, we would file for bankruptcy and start over; maybe some of us would go to grad school; others would become diner waitresses or circus performers or unicorns.
Akin to believing light beer is a solution to alcoholism- My time at Patagonia – A Restless Transplant
Prior to my recent gig as an aspiring surf bum living in my van, traversing the west coast burning through a book advance, I lived in Manhattan and worked at Ralph Lauren. During my time on the men’s design team, I got to spend a fair amount of time around Ralph Lauren, the man, during my team’s biweekly meetings presenting creative direction ideas to him and working on collections. Ralph, as everyone called him, was an incredibly kind, thoughtful, and passionate guy. He was always enthusiastic to talk about clothes, things he’d seen recently, how the stores were looking and ideas for collections. In the two years I spent in the halls of 650 Madison Ave, I only once heard Ralph get upset in a meeting when he clashed horns with the head of merchandising about how he felt a collection was too commercial and diverged from the original idea he loved so much. His largest concern, always, was maintaining the spirit of the brand.
The Abolition of Work, Bob Black
No one should ever work.