The Business of Design

Category: management

  • Who’s in Control?

    When your gut feels uncomfortable, it probably means you don’t have everything you need to be in control of a situation. Should you be in control of it?

  • Remote Work – It’s Okay to Not Be in the Cloud! (…fully)

    The recent spate of remote workplace articles might make you feel that the cloud is everything! Using the right tools at the right time is what’s actually cool.

  • Remote Working – SMILE!

    Don’t forget that remote work requires understanding effective communication, including social cues.

  • Feeling Relevant is Important

    A part of the human condition is a desire to feel needed. The reality is that in most of our interactions, we won’t be needed… but we can be relevant. And our relevancy doesn’t need to me immediate, there is a similar benefit to thinking we can be relevant in the future. When I interact…

  • “Thank You” as a Part of Your Brand

    Feeling Good About Ourselves When was the last time that you received a hand-written note or card, where the sentiment was crafted by someone other than Hallmark? When was the last time that someone stopped to offer genuine thanks for something you did? We often don’t remember the power of taking a few minutes of time to…

  • What Value Will You Leave Behind?

    The true test of how good an employee was is what value they created in your company, and successfully left behind for the company to use.

  • The Line Cook Crux

    In your business, which staff role is the closest to the successful delivery of your product or service? Who’s your line cook?

  • State Your Assumptions

    Positive change. How do organizations achieve it? Part 1 – A mechanism for coordination “Top-down” and “bottom-up” are familiar concepts for discussing where change originates within an organization. They’re based within some level of organizational hierarchy, with a simplified view being that there are two levels of power: workers and managers. The power they each…

  • Tools… Not Tales.

    A reminder that vision and philosophy are great, but we also need to provide each other with the tools to be able to achieve our vision. It’s not enough to just drink the kool-aid and spout inspirational quotes at one another.

  • Freedom of Time

    Life requires balance, and much of balance can be viewed as how we value our time and how we spend it. How we choose to expend effort in our lives (i.e. work) has a spectrum between expended effort that is love with no cash, and effort that is cash with no love. The goal is…