Tag Archive for 'indie-rock'

Business and Design Lessons From Malcolm Gladwell

If you wish to carve out a corporate existence for yourself, you will probably avoid showing others a new way of seeing something. Doing that is risky, unproven in profitability, and more conflict-prone than the old tried-and-true methods approved by the  powerful and the influential. Corporate fellows avoid the above-mentioned adjectives in the same way that unrepentant alcoholics avoid AA.  (This applies even to the indie-rock scene kids who slavishly follow the fashion dictates of their hipster overlords in the name of assimilated nonconformity.) Malcolm Gladwell is not one of those fellows.

Les Saltimbanques at the Races - Picasso

Les Saltimbanques at the Races - Picasso

In his book Outliers, he challenges the idea that someone’s success is determined almost exclusively by his or her own efforts.  Mr. Gladwell still argues that individual effort matters: he insists that successful people need about 10,000 hours of practice to become masters  of their craft. Still, the book spends more time discussing the role society plays in encouraging and nurturing the success of outliers, the superstars in their fields who are exponentially mre skilled than their colleagues.  That kind of non-conventional thinking makes the book worth reading, but I want to focus on a specific quote from the book that hasn’t been as widely discussed.

Here’s the quote: “Autonomy, complexity,  and a connection between effort and reward are the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.” If there is a better way to describe an uncorporate job, then I haven’t heard it.  As it happens, it’s also a helpful framework for discussing great design.

Few things deaden my enthusiasm for a job more than an employer who tells me exactly how to do my work.  Yes, every business and design assignment has its standards and protocols.  Nothing wrong with that, but why insist on making me or my coworkers read from a script or do things exactly like you do?  Machines need to be micromanaged, competent people don’t.  Instead, why not tell us what results you want, give us some flexibility in pursuing those results, and reward those of us who best achieve those results?

One of my worst experiences on a design job involved a client who wanted to tell me exactly what elements I should use for a poster and where they should go.  I don’t mind that kind of thing if a client has design instincts that are as good, if not better, than my own, but that was not the case with him. He relished the clip-art aesthetic.  I’ve had enough of those experiences that I now reserve the right to refuse to do work that I find ineffective in conception.  The customer is not always right, and life is too short to do ugly design.

Designers, artists, and employees in general have their own unique perspectives and abilities that they desperately want to share with you. Why not seek to discover and use those abilities to your advantage, so that you can accomplish whatever specific tasks need to be done?  You’ll get more interesting and more valuable results while keeping your employees more engaged.  I understand there this a place for procedure.  Deviating from it can involve some experimentation, and not all experiments succeed.  Still, the potential for discovering a friendlier, more appealing, more efficient, more profitable way of doing things, seems to be worth the risk, don’t you think?   Not convinced? Well, which would you rather have in your house: a Picasso painting or a generic photograph with a caption about corporate excellence?

Maxalot - Joshua Davis

Maxalot - Joshua Davis

Take a look at the above design by Joshua Davis.  This kind of visual complexity is something in which he specializes.  Maybe you’ve seen some of the ads he’s done for companies like Motorola? (If you like his style, you can see more of his work at joshuadavis.com.) In any case, is there not something compelling about this kind of complexity?  We are inclined to look for patterns in the complex, to discover a sense of order and harmony that transcends the chaos in our world and gives it meaning.  Too much complexity is an overwhelming, frustrating experience, but without enough of the stuff, we lose interest and don’t stay fully engaged.  No wonder Mr. Gladwell sees it as an essential ingredient in fulfilling work.

You could also say the same thing about a good design, which is after all, a pleasing arrangement of complex elements that serve functional or aesthetic purposes. Too simple a design conveys half-hearted apathy.  On the other hand, if you add too much complexity, then you produce something that interferes with its own functionality.  To pull off this balancing act with elegance and style is the real trick of the thing.

And now we get to the connection between effort and reward.  Notice that Malcolm Gladwell did not say the connection between effort and the amount of money earned.  It’s a pernicious corporate assumption that everyone does things simply for more money. Some people just want to see that their efforts earn them respect or affection from others.  Whatever the payoff may be, people want to see it come eventually, or they’ll stop working as hard or stop working altogether.  From a designer perspective, that means users may give up on a product, protest a policy, or ignore a poster that demands too much effort or attention without giving back enough rewarding functionality.

The volunteer who helps out at her church probably doesn’t want money for her efforts.  And yet, if she continues to give her time to serve others but gets no appreciation or sense of making a difference in return, she will probably stop helping at some point.

The local actors I know don’t care so much about getting paid big bucks or becoming famous (at least not all of them), but they do care very much about giving performances that are well regarded in meaningful productions.  They also care about connecting with other actors and earning their respect.  Taking away those things and you could jeopardize their future dramatic endeavors.  I’ve done a little bit of acting myself (I’m not a great actor, but I enjoy learning and going through the process), so I know how hard it is to face rejection after rejection without hearing, on occasion, about how someone was affected by your performance, big or small.

Conversely, if you want the world to be a less corporate place, be sure to pay people for the efforts that bring you satisfaction. One of the owners of the Boot, an Italian restaurant in Norfolk, Virginia known for a vast beer selection, hearty meals, and great music, told me about his visits to a nearby, upscale comic-book shop called Local Heroes.  He aims to buy something from the store every few weeks, because he believes the area deserves a place like that.  I feel the same way about the Boot.   I want to reward them for their efforts, so that they will continue to find satisfaction from staying in business.

Support the things you cherish with money if you can, but an honest, heartfelt thank-you is cheaper and sometimes more appreciated. Comments on this blog have helped me see that others value my efforts, and so I  continue writing, instead of merely looking for more ways to make money.  On some difficult days a few kind, thoughtful, or grateful words have made all the difference to me.  Knowing this, I look for every opportunity to offer a sincere and unique expression of gratitude to others whose efforts I appreciate.

Find ways to include autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward in the work you do, the work you ask others to do, and in the things you create, and you’ll be doing your part to make the world a less corporate place.  (By the way, thanks for reading this.  I really appreciate it.)

Why the World Needs Corporate Thinking

Here’s a choice for you to consider: The first option involves doing something because it is the right thing to do. It will benefit you and the people around you somehow, and you’ll be able to delight in the truth that for at least once in your life you did the right thing.

Then, there’s the second option. Choose this, and I’ll pay you five million dollars to do something and to do it well. Now this thing I’ll ask of you may or may not be a decent thing to do, but who cares; I’ll be paying you a lot of money to get it done.  Obviously, you’ll have to sign a contract, and if you don’t do it exactly as I tell you, I’ll take you to court.  If I still don’t get the results I want, I’ll ask the militia I control to resolve the matter with force.

3050950934_ee4448a192

image from flickr.com/thomashawk

You can make this decision in private.  No one else will know.  So, which one would you choose?

Let me state the obvious: I’m a writer, at least on occasion, so of course I don’t have five million dollars … yet.  But also, most people would, I believe, admire the idealism of the first choice but acquiesce to the seductive second one, in spite of the potentially corporate or ugly consequences.

I’m not even sure how I would respond to such an offer.  I’d like to think that I’d go with the first option, but then doing the right thing can involve uncertainty and risk.  There’s no guarantee that the journey will be easy, and doing the right thing is hard to quantify.

I mean, how could I use my attempts at doing the right thing to establish status and superiority over others?  Besides, doing the right thing involves trusting others for support. Good luck trying to  stand up against injustice for a prolonged time period without the financial, moral, or physical help of others.

Now that I think about it, I don’t like having to depend on other people because almost everyone has let me down at some point, and five million dollars could sure buy a lot of compliance.  With that kind of money, I could compel others to do my bidding with bribes or coercion.   Wait a minute … I don’t want to be that person, but I could see myself, in a moment of weakness, making the choices that lead me there.

Perhaps though, money doesn’t sway you.  You’re too bohemian to care about that stuff, right?  Well then, what if it came down to doing the right thing or building up indie-rock street cred? For example, you could help a struggling friend start a business, something no respectable indie-rocker would celebrate, or you could jam out for weeks at a time, get awesome reviews from all the right publications, and sip indie-friendly Sunny Delight cocktails while ignoring your friend’s calls.

What if it was a choice between the right thing and respectability? That poor black fellow does look lonely sitting in the church pew all by himself, but really what would the other church ladies think if you sat next to him?  Or, what about a choice between doing the right thing and being surrounded by friends?  For someone like me that could be the hardest choice, since meaningful friendships sometimes feels like the scarcest of resources in my world, and the things most scarce to a person often morph into the roots of temptation. The Devil offered food and power to Christ when he was famished and weary not by accident.

Our society has learned the hard way that people can’t always be trusted to do the right thing, and so we write banal laws and vapid corporate policies, put fences around things, and gravitate toward impersonal interactions throughout the day. A wife nags her husband because she doubts that he’ll do what needs to be done on his own or when asked in a reasonable way.  Some teachers prefer to read their lessons word-by-word from a book so that they can avoid real interaction with kids who might respond with thoughtlessness or cruelty.  Companies stuff their quality control departments with bureaucratic and sometimes nonsensical procedures, because  they’ve learned that employees won’t always do what they’re supposed to do if they aren’t monitored carefully.

All of these examples develop from our reasonable doubts that others will do the right thing or from our own apprehensions about doing right.  But then, we often associate the right thing with the boring thing, at least I do.  And yet … it isn’t, not when it’s done properly in harmony with the present moment.  Think about a favorite movie of yours.  Do you cheer with everything you have in yourself when villainy or goodness prevails?

If your heart’s in the right place and you listen to the moment, or more precisely to God’s whispers in that moment, then you’ll know what you should do without having to depend on a list of rules. I get that kind of thing right less than half of the time, but I know from experience that it’s the well from which true playfulness, joy, and love will sprout.

Heaven is, I suspect, the one place where everyone does the right thing without obligation or pressure.  Until then, we have our vices and our struggles and our corporate ways of doing things, but what’s wrong with trying to bring a little bit of heaven here on earth?

If you reward others with respect, sincerity, excellence, gratitude, and affection instead of offering all the corporate trimmings, then maybe you’ll persuade a few more people to do the right thing rather than the corporate thing. Often enough, that kind of thing even translates into financial benefits from the opportunities that cherished and respected individuals offer you, so maybe you can have your turkey and eat it too.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and God bless.