Category Business

Consumer Credit and Sustainability

[While I wrote this article nearly two years ago, I’ve decided to repost it here given its focus on creativity and innovation. – A.D.]

The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) publishes a quarterly magazine entitled “Innovation”.  In the Spring 2008 issue, Craig Badke and Stuart Walker contributed an article entitled “Designers Anonymous” which compares Western society’s consumerism with that of an addiction.  In reading this article, I was able to uncover additional insights which I think are worth sharing.

By making a comparison with the twelve-step program found at the core of Alcoholics Anonymous (which addresses the cause of the problem, not its symptoms), the authors present a similarly structured program for both designers and consumers that encourage sustainable design and purchasing behaviors.

As it is with every addiction, people will need more of what they are getting, or something new to satisfy their desire.  With fewer resources at our disposal and an ever-increasing focus on the environment and our planet, I believe that we’ll eventually reach a tipping point where consumers will come to realize that their purchasing behaviors ultimately impact the environment, and are temporarily satisfying a need that could be fulfilled through other (positive) means.

Because the vast majority of consumerism is driven by credit, credit card companies and other lenders can start moving towards a business foundation in which sustainability is an underlying goal.  Today, these companies are focused primarily on providing the customer access to credit based upon their needs.  This may not be enough for the long-term.

In the future, I believe it’s the lenders responsibility to provide the customer with a “model of sustainability” that can perhaps alter their spending habits for the benefit of the planet.

A similar “model” exists today in the fast-food industry.  Think about how traditional fast-food establishments are making incremental changes for the health benefits of its consumers.  By providing customers with clear nutritional information about each of their products, they are providing a “model of health” that was unheard of five years ago.

Due to the pervasiveness of fast-food in today’s society, companies such as McDonald’s were “required” to make necessary changes in order to adapt to growing demand for healthy eating choices.  Consumer credit is just as pervasive, which is why I believe that lenders will eventually have to promote positive change.

However, this is not to suggest that consumers do not have a responsibility to fulfill.

While following a twelve-step program is a bit extreme and perhaps “prescriptive” (to use the authors’ words), I believe that eventually all consumers will need to pay close attention to what they are buying and decide whether their purchases are truly adding value to their lives at the expense of the environment.

I believe a fair number of consumers are more aware of the impact they have on the planet and are taking steps to make appropriate corrections.  Replacing traditional light bulbs with CFCs, and increasing recycling efforts are good practices in themselves, but omit many other aspects of true sustainability – including the core social impact.

Today, most companies are unable to (either due to lack of knowledge, or desire) provide consumers with a true impact assessment of what it took to produce their product and deliver it to the consumer.  Likewise, most consumers do not have the knowledge yet to think about these factors, nor are they necessarily ready to alter their lifestyle even if this information was presented to them.

Given this information, I believe there are numerous opportunities in the sustainability arena.  Here are a select few which I think may be of interest:

  1. Think more about the “twelve-step” program concept and employ its use in other areas – i.e. use it to focus on the cause of a given problem and less about the actual symptoms.
  2. Employ the use of “models” that truly add value to the customer’s life in the long-term, and encourage companies to build strategies around this mindset.
  3. When working with lending companies, encourage them to re-invent themselves for the long-term benefit of the planet by promoting better purchasing decisions through a “model of sustainability”.
  4. Take sustainability to the next level by utilizing and implementing sustainability frameworks (e.g. Environmental Footprint, Cradle to Cradle, and LCA (Life-cycle Assessment)) in companies who may be unfamiliar with these frameworks and require expertise to integrate them into a long-term sustainability strategy.
  5. Think about sustainability as a never-ending goal and remind companies that implementing small changes over time can make a significant impact over the long-term.  Short-term (incremental) solutions do not have to be perfect.
  6. Encourage greater transparency with customers – especially in this area.  By being transparent, customers are more likely to be accepting (at least temporarily) of a company’s current flaws and are likely to remain customers over the long-term (assuming steps to correct these problems are made).  From a sustainability perspective, providing information about how products are manufactured, and clearly displaying their “sustainability” label are two good examples.  Treat customers as business partners.

Media Temple.

After several months of debate, I decided to move both BigGenerator.com and AdrianDaniels.com (and related microsites – including this one) to a new hosting provider called Media Temple.  I came across their site at WordPress.org and was sold immediately after taking a closer look.

I made this change this past weekend as I’m planning to drive additional traffic to the sites – particularly Big Generator via a new Google AdWords campaign.

I have already seen a considerable difference in terms of site response.  I’ll likely post a review of my initial experiences with Media Temple over the next several weeks.

In the meantime, let me know if you can tell a difference!

Recalibration III.

In my past post, I started to explore the concept of motivation and called attention to why being motivated isn’t always a good thing.

In thinking about my personal and professional lives over the past decade – particularly as it relates to the concept of motivation – I’ve learned the concept of motivation cannot, and perhaps should not, be discussed without a keen focus on the “goal” or objective.  In my opinion, you cannot be motivated to do something if you aren’t sure what you’re motivated for, and goals don’t become real unless someone is actively doing something to make sure they are realized.

Of course, this sounds obvious, right?  In my opinion, it becomes less obvious when there is misalignment between the two.  The purpose of this post is to further explain this connection, highlight the risks when there is misalignment, and illustrate what it means to have “ideal” alignment.

I think achievement of a goal or objective comes down to five things:

1. Understanding what it is that you want and why.
2. Understanding the pathways to bring you towards that goal.
3. Introducing appropriate motivators to push you towards your goal.
4. Periodically ensuring the motivators are working appropriately or need to be replaced.
5. Advance towards a place where supplemental motivators are not required.

Let’s use an example to walk through this process.

Let’s say that you are trying to lose weight.  In order to keep you moving in the right direction, you share your goal with your family and friends.  After all, you may need them to help you stay on track.  And of course, there are many other “motivators” including rewards that you give yourself for reaching milestones in your weight loss journey.  Collectively, this is what I call a motivation framework or motivation support system.  In most cases, having a support system is a good idea.

If your goal is aligned with your values and mission, you’ll find that your motivation level and your ability to reach your goal feeds upon its own successes.  Because your mind is not bound within a self-justification cycle (“I want to lose weight because …”) the energy pathways between mind and body are in alignment and you can ultimately achieve a state of “flow”.  By achieving this state of being, your need for supplemental motivators decreases rapidly and you become further empowered to take on greater challenges (i.e. “I lost ten pounds, but I feel good enough to lose another ten!”).

If however, your wish to lose weight is indirectly connected to your values and purpose, a number of things can start to happen.  First, your support structure may start to “overrun” your initial desire – i.e. your motivation support group may end up being more motivated than you are!  When and if this occurs, you may find that your own motivation starts to plummet and you end up doing less than before.  This downward spiral can proceed even further when your support system begins to run out of energy (i.e. they are no longer providing any motivational support) and/or begins to show its disappointment that you are not reaching your goal (showing evidence that perhaps your support structure wasn’t the right choice to begin with).

As you can start to imagine, this single disconnect between goal identification and values/mission has the potential to negatively influence other aspects of your life – i.e. “If I can’t lose ten pounds with support, how can I do anything?”

In order to have true alignment between goal and motivation, I think one needs to pay close attention to the following:

  • Understand what it is that you want. Keep in mind that this can be a moving target – that’s okay.  If your desires change, ensure that your motivation and motivation support structure changes as well.  If your goals are changing frequently, it might be appropriate to revisit your values and mission.
  • Make sure that your motivation does not require constant support. If it does, it’s possible that don’t want to achieve the goal in the first place.  Along similar lines, if you are tackling the right goal and have the right motivation framework in place, you’ll find that your pursuit of the goal will be natural and the need for motivational support will be much less.
  • You are human. Waning feelings of motivation are normal and may not require significant changes to your goal or support structure.  Instead, you may need to look elsewhere to understand these feelings.

In my opinion, the ideal state is having a goal that is directly linked to your core being and ultimately drives you. It’s the catalyst and energy source for all action.  Without this source, your source for motivation will always need “supplemental power sources” (at least to some extent).  I think that achievement of the farthest end of this motivation maturity scale is the identification and pursuit of a goal that is ultimately self-powered.

In my next post within this series, I’ll spend more time focusing on the human aspect of motivation and goal attainment – this is ultimately where I’ll introduce the next area of “recalibration” which is persistence.

Recalibration II.

Motivation: … the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior.” (Source unknown)

In my last post, I highlighted three main areas where I would like to improve – self-motivation, perseverance and connection.  In this post I’ll continue my exploration of motivation.

All too often, the word “motivation” has a positive connotation.  After all, how often do you hear public speakers or other leadership types exclaim “Be Motivated!”  Because of this, how can one not assume that being motivated is always the right thing to do?

In contrast to public opinion, I believe that being motivated to do something isn’t always the right decision.  Why?  Because you could be motivated to do the wrong thing – i.e. something that is misaligned with your core values and/or for the wrong reasons.  In the above definition, it’s easy to assume that the goal or “reason for the action” is clearly known, but in many cases it may not be.

In thinking about this concept, my belief is that truly understanding what motivates one to do something can ultimately help one achieve a particular goal faster than if that level of awareness is left unchecked. Along a similar path, gaining this understanding early on can also highlight whether the goal should be abandoned entirely – i.e. is being motivated truly the right path in a given situation?  In short, I think one needs to have a clear understanding of the goal (and the reasons why achievement of that goal is worth the pursuit) before being motivated to act.

Let me share a personal example to illustrate this concept in more depth.

I grew up in a family where education and success went together.  Over time, I started to believe that my success (the goal) was primarily dependent upon my education.  Not withstanding my desire to learn, even after my master’s degree I continued to take classes in the hope that I would eventually acquire enough knowledge to be “successful”.

My business coach challenged this long-standing belief late last year when I started formulating the basis for Big Generator.  Up until that time, I never thought that I was truly ready to move forward.  Did I know enough?  Did I have enough experience? The answer is that I’ll never know enough.  Thus, I consciously decided to accept this fact and the rest would need to come with more experience.

This example is relevant because being motivated to continue with my education vs. moving forward with my business could have been the wrong decision over the long-term.  Thus, being motivated to carry out the wrong goal for the wrong reasons doesn’t make the activity right.  Instead, being motivated to advance the business while continuing to gain knowledge is the right decision for me at this time in my life.

Formal education, while deemed worthy in nearly all contexts, is actually the direct opposite in this example.  In essence, formal education was employed as a “motivator” to help me meet a goal that I call “success”.  However, “success” takes more than being well-educated.  Thus, taking inventory of what I wanted to do and identifying the right motivators allowed me to break out of this cycle and make alternative decisions.

This isn’t to say that there will not be times when the mantra of “get motivated” doesn’t have value – particularly in situations where you aren’t excited about the path you’re on, but there really isn’t any choice but to use an alternative (positive) perspective and go ahead with the task at hand.  However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s important to understand what it is that you want and build a motivation framework to help you achieve that which you are seeking.

In my next post in this series, I’ll go into more depth about this framework and show some guidelines to make sure that you are motivated for the right reasons.

BG | Proposal Snapshot

In thinking more about the overall strategy behind Big Generator, particularly as it relates to the human element, it occurred to me that I need to re-think how I am submitting bids for work advertised online, via channels such as ELance.

The method I have used thus far involves a one-page attachment (PDF) that is essentially a letter conveying who I am, context relating directly to what the client is requesting, and a brief explanation of how the project will run.  While this information is useful, it does not immediately address the client’s fundamental needs:

  1. Can you do the job? (ability)
  2. Are you expensive? (cost)
  3. When can you have it done? (timeline)

The project proposal should be able to convey these three points in about ten-seconds.  Right now, my “cover letter” concept is flawed for several reasons:

  1. While the letter is not lengthy, it can still be considered too long – is the client even reading it?
  2. The letter is customized for each project proposal, but only on a surface-level.
  3. There is no connection between the cost of the proposal and services rendered – is the bid high or low?
  4. It assumes the reader is interested in a “one-size-fits-all” project proposal – what if they need more detail?
  5. There is little traceability between the portfolio, cost, services and timeline – what are you offering again?

At the end of the day, the bid price could still be beyond the client’s budget and your portfolio may not be aligned with what she/he is looking for.  However, if you can address the immediate needs of the client (ability, cost and timeline) before you are offered the job, you are that much closer to gaining their trust and a subsequent acceptance of your original bid.

In a future post, I will share what my new approach looks like – I call it the “proposal snapshot”.

[Note: Posts that begin with the letters “BG” focus on business-development concepts that tie directly to my design firm,  Big Generator.]

BG | Creating the Strategic Vision – Part I

In my last post, I focused on the importance of having a personal vision for the future.  In the business world, defining what the future entails is typically found within a strategic vision statement.  In this post, I’ll share a five concepts that are helping me define a strategic vision for my design firm.

Concept #1: Strengths

The first step is to start with your strengths.  In the workplace:

… people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general. – Tom Rath, Strengths Finder 2.0

As most people spend a considerable part of their life working, doing what you can to align opportunities with your strengths can significantly increase your quality of life.

As an example, here are my top five strengths as identified in the text Strengths Finder 2.0:

1. Strategic – “.. enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route.”
2. Learner – “.. you will always be drawn to the process of learning.”
3. Individualization – “.. leads you to be intrigued by the unique qualities of each person.”
4. Relator – “.. a relationship has value only if it is genuine.”
5. Input – “.. the world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity.”

If I want my business to succeed over the long-term, I need to make sure these strengths represents at key part of its foundation.

Concept #2: Personality

Another major part that plays a key role in a successful business is one’s personality type.  Understanding key facets of one’s personality allows for continuous refinement and increased understanding of one’s behavior and motivators.  The key is to take full advantage of those personality traits that will give direct benefit to the business, and place less emphasis on those that may not.

The core of my personality type (INFP) is sometimes called “The Idealist”.  Thus, coming up with scenarios of possibilities and detailed descriptions of “what could be” comes naturally.  As we’ll see, this aspect of my personality will play a key role in my company’s strategic vision statement.

Concept #3: Interests

Your interests represent another piece of the puzzle.  While it may be obvious what interests you, there are methods that you can use to explore your interests in a more formal way.  One such method is via a deck of “talent” cards made by a company known as Mastery Works.

The core interest areas that I discovered through this method include both “Ideas” and “People”.  More specifically, I was able to narrow down my detailed interests down to ten: (in no particular order, and from a total of 52)

  1. problem solving
  2. questioning
  3. writing
  4. explaining
  5. innovating
  6. developing
  7. strategizing
  8. collaborating
  9. leading
  10. teaching

If you are doing what you are interested in, your skills in these areas will continuously improve, and this will further expand your ability to help your clients and their customers.

Concept #4: Personal Vision Statement

Being able to describe one’s personal vision for the future is a recommended exercise prior to describing a business equal.  Given the time investment required, you want to ensure that there is alignment between the two.  You can read more about this concept in my earlier post.

Concept #5: The 10-Second Summary

The “10-second summary” is perhaps the seed from which the company begins; it’s the first statement you’ll make when introducing yourself to future clients.  After all, what good is a strategic vision if you are not interacting with potential clients?

Based upon the guidance conveyed in Get Clients Now!, the statement should be short and simple enough that a 12-year old can understand.

Here is an example:

My name is Adrian Daniels.  I help business owners and organizations get noticed.  I am a designer focusing in creative strategy and graphic design.  My company name is Big Generator.

This particular statement can be altered to reflect the audience with whom I am speaking.  However, it’s always best to start with the basics and then elaborate.  Your initial goal is to gain understanding and peak interest.

These five concepts represent the key starting points to develop a strategic vision statement.  In my next post I’ll begin exploring several ways of visualizing strategy with the intent of formulating a strategic vision statement that can be used to guide my business development path.

[Note: Posts that begin with the letters “BG” focus on business-development concepts that tie directly to my design firm,  Big Generator.]

The Crystal Ball.

“Begin with the end in mind” is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things. – Stephen Covey

One of the many things I’ve learned in project management is that “starting with the end in mind” is one of the best methods to ensuring a successful outcome.  When your team has a clear sense of what need to do from the beginning, task definition and assignment activities come naturally and the team is able to spend more time focusing on the “day-to-day” issues vs. continuously wrestling with an ever-changing scope definition.

A similar approach can work extremely well when envisioning your future.

An article in the Futurist magazine entitled “Envisioning your Future: Imagining Ideal Scenarios” suggests that:

… having a vision is to be an idealist.  This idealism should not be confused with unrealistic ideas; it should be used synonymously with having “a standard of excellence”.  A person that is by nature a visionary looks into the future as though it is filled with possibilities, not probabilities.

If I look at my future based from who I really am, and document a clear description of what that future looks like, my life starts to become what I’ve created for myself.

After much thought, I came up with the following personal vision:

“My vision for the future is comprised of positive experiences that intertwine my ‘personal’ and ‘professional’ lives into a single life structure.  Because of this, the long-held notion of “work-life” balance is lessened, and at its extreme, no longer required.  By thinking strategically, I am able to spend my energy on activities that pay dividends over both the short and long-term.  A continuous and purposeful stream of explicit and implicit challenges allows my mind to expand at an accelerated rate.  With this expansion comes possibilities, and possibilities spark further action towards an ideal state called “Ultima”.  My relationships are continuously expanding, but only at a rate where the relationships themselves are developing at a natural and lasting pace.  My ability to see the unique qualities of each person and strive towards relationships that are, at their core, genuine, helps build strong partnerships that ultimately become central figures in a life structure built around growth, energy, complexity, awareness and intensity.”

Fortunately, I think this is fairly representative of what I want my future to look like.  The next step is to take this concept and apply it to my design firm.

What does my business vision look like?  I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Reference Library.

Reference Library While I am an avid reader, there are several books that aren’t necessarily geared for start-to-finish reading, but are used more often as reference material. To help organize this library and increase transparency, I created a new page aptly labeled “reference library”. The current library consists of the following texts:

1. Layout Essentials by Beth Tondreau

2. Typography Essentials by Ina Saltz

3. The Designer’s Graphic Stew by Timothy Samara

4. Type Style Finder by Timothy Samara

5. The Information Design Handbook by Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady

While these texts give a wealth of educational information, they are also excellent sources of creative ideas. I’ll make changes to this page as I discover new reference material.

Evolution.

As I mentioned in my last post, this blog will start to focus more attention to the evolution of my new design firm, Big Generator.

As this blog has significantly helped me with my personal challenges, I think it will offer a similar benefit towards helping me keep up the level of motivation, persistence and energy that a new business venture requires.  I also think that the sheer transparency of what I am thinking about and how I am going about improving my business and design abilities can ultimately serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy of its own.  If I think positively, the majority of the work that I do, both from core design and business perspectives, is also more likely to result in positive outcomes.

While increasing the level of transparency is important, it’s unlikely that I’ll mention specific clients within these posts at least until the project has concluded.  If the client maintains all rights to the work, then I won’t, of course, be allowed to publish any related information about the engagement.  Independent of the situation, the process of approaching a new design challenge and coming to a final solution is worth documenting.  In many circumstances, the process of documenting your experiences can refine your level of understanding and push you to think about the situation in new ways.

At this point, the business “foundation” is nearly built – this foundation includes the core brand, web site, portfolio, letterhead, many project proposal letters, and a supplemental graphic visual suite.  The next step in the process is to develop a comprehensive client building strategy – to do this I am reading a book called Get Clients Now by C.J.Hayden.

After reading the first fifty pages, I’ve learned the key to a successful client building strategy is persistence.  To achieve persistence, the development of a formal plan is required.  To summarize here, there are five such steps that need to be followed every month:

  1. Marketing Strategies – selecting two to four client-building strategies
  2. Marketing Stage – identifying the stage of the marketing cycle where you are having difficulty
  3. Program Goal – identifying what you want to accomplish during that time period
  4. Success Ingredients – identifying the missing ingredients that you need to be successful
  5. Daily Actions – documenting the specific steps that you are going to do

In addition, there are six marketing strategies discussed in the text (from most effective to least effective):

  1. Direct Contact and Follow-up
  2. Networking and referral building
  3. Public Speaking
  4. Writing and Publicity
  5. Promotional Events
  6. Advertising

At this stage, my next step is to finish reading this text and start developing a monthly plan of my own.  In my a future post, I will share additional details about what my client building strategy looks like and how well it’s working.  As indicated earlier, sharing the strategy in this manner will help increase accountability and will provide a history from which I can learn.