Accordion, St. Francis Madera School for the Blind

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This photograph was taken in Madera, Soroti, Uganda at an extraordinary school run by and housing extraordinary people.
The visually impaired in East Africa don’t have a lot of choices and often face abandonment or worse. St. Francis is a boarding school by necessity. One of the ways the kids (ranging from 3 to late teens) expand their creativity, learn teamwork, blow off steam, and generally have fun is through the school band.
If you’d like to know more about the school and what it needs, send me a note.

“I’m sorry, that’s all I can do.”

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When you say “That’s all I can do”, do you really mean “That’s all I’m required to do”? Don’t aspire to the minimum necessary.

Not aspiring to the minimum necessary is how great businesses like Zappos build unbeatable reputations for customer service. But it’s pretty applicable in everyday life as well.

It’s not about what you “can” do, or what you “must” do – the answer is going to be in what you actually do.

Photo by Sudiono Muji.

Respond and care

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Two underrated actions/abilities that will take you very far in business, just as in life: responsiveness and caring.
Did you let someone know you heard them?
And does it matter to you that there’s a problem to be solved?
Say yes to both.

Walking the wire
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You have to make a reaction. You have to surprise. You have to astonish yourself. Be always on a wire, a thread. – Jean-Louis Dumas of Hermès

You can’t create if you’re focused on survival

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One of the principles of microfinance is that, by extending credit, microlenders allow people to get out of a bare-survival relationship with moneylenders: a situation where subsistence is all that’s achievable. This blocks entrepreneurship. Extending credit allows the “breathing room” for a human being to actually start a business and grow it. This is why organizations like Kiva are so powerful in effecting change.

Too often people in business box themselves into a survival situation. In a highly political and challenged corporate environment, many times the only way to survive is not to stick your head above the waves. Do what’s expected; please the right people; and when the next round of cuts comes you will be ‘safe”. (This, by the way, being one of the worst definitions of “safe” I have ever heard.)

In a survival situation there is no room for creation. Career survivalists don’t make great things. Disruption could get them in trouble. They huddle in the bunker waiting for the loud noises to stop.

Don’t be a survivalist when you have the precious privilege and freedom to create change.

Be an artist, not a marketer

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When you create art, it rings with truth and authenticity. When you create “marketing”, it often rings hollow.

If we lose sight of art in the rush of business, we suffer for it as marketers, even if our business seems an “ordinary” one.

Is it more important to trust or to be trusted?

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Yesterday I was puzzling out a tough problem and I called two close friends to help me work it through – which they did.

It was a really nice feeling to know I could call on these resources and that I could trust in what I would receive, and feeling that emotion yet again when the problem was lessened reinforced my trust.

Later that night, one of my friends called me for help on a knotty professional problem of her own. Being able to help, and being trusted in my ability to contribute, meant so much more to me than any help I had gotten earlier.

This applies to brands, products, and services as well as to people and resources. We place a lot of value in having systems around us that we can trust. But we must place an even great value on being trustworthy, and valuable, in the minds and hearts of others.

Why are you afraid to be creative?

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Why are you afraid to be creative?

I hear from friends and colleagues all the time that they don’t feel supported in the world or in business as creative individuals.

Look around you. Creativity is exploding.

Tumblr is past SIXTEEN BILLION pageviews per month and growing. Tumblr is about nothing but creativity.

Instagram has eighty million users and over four billion photos shared.

DeviantArt has two and a half billion pageviews per month and is in or nearly in (depending on whom you go to for stats) the top 100 websites in the US. DeviantArt is definitively about sharing and accessing creative work.

Kickstarter is everywhere and is full of people supporting the highly creative passion projects of complete strangers.

Trust it. There’s something going on.

Open it up

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Ideas are an inexhaustible resource. Some people prefer to keep their ideas close to the vest, in fear that they will be stolen. Most ideas benefit from the sunlight of sharing. An idea that passes through the hands of a few smart, creative thinkers is bound to be made all the better for it.

All progress depends on the unreasonable goal

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When you start something, the goal you’ve set in your mind will inevitably define and color what you create. Building something from the inception with the goal to sell it is distinctly different from building something you see as beneficial to the world, or something that follows a personal passion.

This amazing piece by Vinod Khosla in the NYT says it far better than I can. “You want missionaries, not mercenaries.”

“The creativity, productivity and pace of innovation in Silicon Valley relies on brilliant and foolish entrepreneurs being unreasonable enough to believe they can be the exception to the ‘rule.’ As George Bernard Shaw said, ‘all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’ If everyone played it safe, we wouldn’t get anywhere.”