Posted in Care Taking, tagged anxiety, child proofing, communication, experience design on April 24, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I was in Detroit and Chicago last week, which means I spent a lot of time in airports and a little bit of time in hotels. My hotel in Chicago, which was on the campus of McDonald’s (!) was pretty nice. But the bathroom kind of freaked me out.
Take a look:
Do you notice that [...]
Posted in Direct Communication, tagged apologies, endorsements, setting examples on April 24, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Unfortunately, even if you’re sharing a great idea, you can’t just walk into a boardroom and tell people what to do and know that they’ll do it. There’s this little thing called credibility that you need to ensure that people listen to your idea, and that they give it weight.
Some common techniques that people in the [...]
Posted in Direct Communication, tagged emotion, ideas, Parenting Wisdom, social research on April 22, 2008 | No Comments »
I’ve written before about the power of emotion, and about the importance of leaders not hiding their emotions but using them to motivate and inspire others. The Heaths say that good ideas and good messages, too require emotion. 9 out of 10 dentist agree that a healthy dose of emotion helps get your message across [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged working moms, household help, guilt, Judaism on April 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I’ve written about feeling guilty for being a working mom - both about what I can’t do at work and about not always being around for my husband and my kids. This week, though, I found a couple of things that as a working mom, I get to not feel guilty about. So, let’s stick [...]
Posted in Direct Communication, tagged ABCs, ideas, learning, metaphors, personality tests on April 14, 2008 | No Comments »
This is one of my favorite of the Heath’s suggestions because it is so true. I tend to be an abstract thinker, and often, no one has a clue what I’m talking about. Until I take the time to get specific and concrete. And then, of course, everyone sees how brilliant I really am.
I’ve actually [...]
Posted in Direct Communication, tagged customer service, ideas, Parenting Wisdom, preschool on April 13, 2008 | No Comments »
It might surprise you that the second principle of stickiness is unexpectedness.
According to the Heaths, the element of surprise is a way to keep people engaged with an idea long after the first telling. Unexpectedness can drive repetition, turning an idea from something you heard once to a legend that continues to be told over [...]
Posted in Direct Communication, tagged books, presentations, work/life on April 9, 2008 | No Comments »
I’ve been reading Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. The book is about how to make your ideas sticky, so that people immediately get them, remember them, and act on them. The Heaths describe 6 ways make your ideas more sticky: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion, and stories.
I [...]
Posted in Career Satisfaction, tagged ideas, work/life on April 8, 2008 | 1 Comment »
My company is in the business of helping our clients generate insights and ideas. Finding out what really matters to people in the world, recognizing what it is and how it can impact the creation of new products, services, new businesses or new directions for a brand, and identifying what those new ideas and directions [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on April 7, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past few weeks working on my presentation for the In Store Marketing Summit on April 17. Good thing, too because they’re hyping it.
Imagine my surprise when a friend in Chicago emailed me this picture. For those of you who don’t know that’s me there on the [...]
Posted in Direct Communication, tagged books, client management, expectation setting, Parenting Wisdom on April 7, 2008 | No Comments »
I like to think of myself as open minded. But sometimes I realize that, well, my mind isn’t as open as I’d like.
Over the course of several weeks, I read several mentions of the same book, Momma Zen. I’ve been writing about parenting and yoga and how one informs the other in my life, and the book seemed [...]
