The web is awash in Steve Jobs tributes today, so this feels a bit like piling on. Still, it’s a perfect opportunity to post the video of his famous, often quoted (and even internationally plagiarized) Stanford commencement address from 2005. The full transcript is here.
As Jobs told the Stanford grads, “You’ve got to find what you love.” I think it’s safe to say, he did.
Although not widely known in the US, British graffiti artist Banksy has achieved cult status across the pond, provoking reactions of both admiration and outrage, apparently in equal measures.
His satirical works have appeared (always anonymously, adding to his mystique) on streets, buildings and bridges in cities throughout the world—primarily in and around London, but also in post-Katrina New Orleans, the West Bank, Disneyland, the Louvre and many other exotic, far flung places.
They are public expressions of political and social commentary, with themes ranging from whimsical and irreverent (as shown here) to subversive and dark. Some of his indoor pieces have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds, and his celebrity collectors include Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera.
He’s also the subject-turned-director of Exit Through the Gift Shop, an indie documentary of the underground street art scene. When Banksy realizes that amateur filmmaker Thierry Guetta is, well, an amateur, he takes over the project and fashions it into a thoroughly entertaining story.
As with all graffiti—even graffiti as witty and astute as Banksy’s—it raises the question: Is it art or vandalism?
It’s a slippery one to consider, and you find yourself falling into “eye of the beholder” and “I know it when I see it” non-answers.
But then again, maybe it’s a lot simpler than all that. Does it make my community more interesting? Does it make me smile? Does it make me think? If a Banksy piece surreptitiously appeared in my town, would I be pleased it’s there?
Yes. Unequivocally yes.
That, to me, makes it art.
Some of the best books I’ve read scored, on average, three stars on Amazon. Likewise some of my favorite movies on Netflix.
It’s not that they got a lot of three-star reviews. Hardly any, in fact. Rather, they got a lot of fives and fours—and also a lot of twos and ones. They were willing to turn off some people in order to thrill others.
Three-star reviews are a product of trying to be acceptable to all, offensive to none. The world is full of three-star books and movies. And restaurants and cars. And businesses and jobs and careers. (There are not, however, a lot of three-star whitewater rafting expeditions. One way to transcend mediocrity is to choose a category that, by definition, can’t plausibly coexist with mediocre.)
One final thought…I don’t believe there are any three-star people. We’re far more unique and nuanced than that. But we do make a lot of three-star choices in the way we apply and express ourselves.
Photo credit: Carst van der Molen
George Casey, one of the sharpest and most knowledgeable minds in real estate, observes an interesting—and, I think, encouraging—trend among builders emerging from the housing meltdown.
Eschewing the long-established tradition of naming companies after their founders, we’re beginning to see builders instead defining themselves by the product they create. (And when your product is as emotionally resonant as home and community, I would argue that’s a wise move…especially if your name happens to be Petkoski. See below.)
George writes, “[These] new businesses have a unique and one-time opportunity to name themselves whatever they choose. In doing so, the founders have the chance to impact what people think about that company (and what that company’s future employees think about the company and themselves) for a long time to come, even before they create or sell their first product.”
So you have Larry Webb starting The New Home Company, and Tom and Caroline Hoyt considering renaming McStain as The Sustainable Neighborhood Company or something similar. But my favorite is Bill Petkoski, who’s in the process of forming The Cottage Home Company, an infinitely more graceful name than Petkoski Homes, had he chosen that option. (No offense, Bill, but it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.)
Now granted, these examples are anecdotal evidence, not proof of an industry sea change. Skeptics might point out (rightly so) that a name is nothing but a thin veneer of paint if the company’s underlying values and behavior aren’t aligned.
But don’t underestimate the psychology of a name. I think George nails it in the opening sentence of his blog:
“Names are important. What we call ourselves and what others call us helps to define who we are and what others perceive us to be. They can also influence what we become in the future.”
If that’s true, then I consider it a good start that these builders are stamping their values, not their egos, on their companies.
[ NB: There's an interesting parallel in the social, political and cultural factors involved in the naming of public housing projects. David Lancaster points us to an article here, another example that names do matter in more than cosmetic ways. ]
Here’s an interesting pair of perspectives on rational and irrational behavior…and the merits of each.
First, Anaiis Flox shares a vulnerable, heartfelt account of mismatched expectations — the inherent conflict between (her ex-boyfriend’s) rational, ordered, cultural norms vs. (her own) irrational, messy, spontaneous desire. What begins as a relationship story is ultimately a profound commentary on what it means to pursue a life of meaning and purpose.
In her words, when you challenge the conventional order of things, when you make “irrational” choices with your career or your life:
“They’ll say you’re crazy. They’ll say, ‘I wish I could be as impulsive as you are,’ and that you should grow up. Life isn’t like that – there are norms, you know. There are ways to do things. You don’t talk to people at the security line at the airport. You get through it as fast as possible, go to your gate, wait for them to board you, sit down and be quiet. You go to your job, bust your ass, go home, change, go to some social thing, entertain the same questions, go home, watch bad television and do it all over again. Polite, proper, efficient. That’s life, right? Then you get old and maybe play some golf, then you die.
Fuck no.
The only way to remember who you are is to refuse to let anyone or anything dictate what you want. I write to share my triumphs and defeats and to remind you that wanting something other than herd-like, soul-crushing monotony is not only natural, but necessary.”
Still, we can’t all skip off to Provence to paint and sketch and journal. Someone needs to keep the trains running on time. To that end, Seth Godin makes a compelling case for being rational about when—and when not—to be rational.
He points out, “If you’re running Adwords on Google, I hope you’re making rational decisions based on clickthrough and conversion. On the other hand, were you rational when you fell in love? Did you do the math? Medical analysis?”
“There’s room for both rational and irrational decision making,” he concludes, ”and I think we do best when we choose our path in advance instead of pretending to do one when we’re actually doing the other.”
In some ways I’m an unlikely advocate for the irrational life. I live in the suburbs. I work for The Man. I have two young children and I instinctively, unwittingly feed into the “stranger danger” mentality.
But if barreling as quickly and mindlessly as possible from point A to point B is considered rational rather than robotic…and getting sidetracked by conversation and connection with (gasp!) strangers is considered irrational rather than human…
Then give me irrational every time.
Here’s an insightful and amusing perspective on behavioral norms from Jessica Hagy.
Funny how conformity takes on different meaning in different contexts. When did A become B without our even noticing it?
(Yes, I realize there’s a distinction. Teenage drinking = bad. Adult social constructs = for the most part, good. But let’s at least acknowledge that we’re assigning separate names to the same phenomenon. And that “being a team player” is not automatically a good thing.)
As the French playwright Albert Guinon once said, “When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong — or absolutely right.”
I love this story from Rockwood Music Hall in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
At a popular venue that features fantastically talented musicians performing hourly, the night’s most memorable act — for some, although certainly not all — was an acoustic guitarist who did three things.
He engaged. He told stories. And he polarized.
The writer describes the experience:
“He doesn’t go near the stage, doesn’t touch a mic. Just stands in the middle of the bar and starts playing his acoustic guitar and singing and people shut up and listen. He’s a thin guy, white t-shirt, jeans, beard, bill-bent ballcap and a wild look in his eyes. He’s making eye contact with everyone, like one by one, maintaining it. This makes some people pretty uncomfortable and some of them take off. But the group that’s left, we’re all transfixed.”
And here’s the kicker. This is where it falls apart for most of us. Because while we grasp the futility of trying to be all things to all people, we lack the courage to polarize:
“He was fine with people leaving the bar. Didn’t bug him at all. And this is the most important thing. He was polarizing. But it was so much better to have a smaller group of people who were really into the act than a large group of half-interested folks. He just put himself out there. This is me. This is what I do. Jump on or jump out of the way.”
He was fine with people leaving the bar.
Are you?
Ann Oliveri has previously blogged about get2human.com, a web service that provides shortcuts for reaching a live person at hundreds of different customer support call centers. (Sometimes it’s dialing 0, sometimes it’s saying “support,” sometimes it’s saying nothing at all.)
If I may tag on, what I love most about this story is that the shortcuts are provided from within. The organizers of get2human don’t spend all their time hacking phone systems trying to find the magic code at each one. Instead, call center employees—whistleblowers, if you will—voluntarily offer it up. If the company switches its system (“please listen closely, as our menu options have changed”), the new shortcut will be posted within a day or two.
A business builds a fortress to keep people out; its citizenry lowers the drawbridge to let them in.
There’s an interesting parallel to community development. It has nothing to do with your phone system, and everything to do with the places you make.
Your communities are full of whistleblowers. When you create (or better yet, co-create) delightful places that make it easier for people to “get human,” they will tell others about it. Conversely, if you build this, someone will take a picture, post it online and condemn it. And they’re doing you a favor (hear me out).
Why do call center employees post their shortcuts on the web? Well, I’m sure there’s some satisfaction in undercutting convoluted corporate systems. But the larger motivation, I believe, is the same as people who rave about (or rail against) their community—we enjoy helping one another. We want to share with others the pleasurable things of this world, and steer them clear of the painful.
The mission of get2human is not to stick it to The Man. They simply—and genuinely—want to help businesses provide better service. And so it is with your constituency, fans and detractors alike. They want to make your communities better (read: more human). In the process, they’re helping you become better (read: more human).
[Disclaimer: I realize there will always be unreasonable hotheads, serial complainers who cannot be placated. They are miserable curs. I'm not talking about them.]
Yes, empowered consumers and citizen journalists can be a pain. Business was much easier when we made stuff and they purchased it.
But this is a different time. A (hopefully) more human one.
Gregory Berns has written a fantastic piece in today’s NYT about the neuroscience of fear and its paralyzing effects on our judgment, decision-making, risk assessment, and willingness to explore new opportunities. In other words, its tendency to promote a bunker mentality and stifle the very traits needed to overcome a crisis.
He writes:
We are caught in a spiral in which we are so scared of losing our jobs, or our savings, that fear overtakes our brains. And while fear is a deep-seated and adaptive evolutionary drive for self-preservation, it makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but saving our skin by getting out of the box intact.
Ultimately, no good can come from this type of decision-making. Fear prompts retreat. It is the antipode to progress. Just when we need new ideas most, everyone is seized up in fear, trying to prevent losing what we have left.
Furthermore, there is a dangerous snowball effect to fear-based behavior. “[W]hen our brains sense pain, or anticipate loss, we tend to hold onto what we have,” he observes. “When everyone does this at once, the result is a downward economic spiral.”
Clearly this is not a time to throw caution to the wind. But it is a time to be exploring and preparing for the opportunities that will emerge from this mess. Because two things are certain: 1) they will emerge, and 2) they will not look the same as they did before.
The only way this is going to happen is by distancing ourselves from irrational fear. That means tuning out fearmongering media. It means disabling the stock market widget on your desktop. It means prioritizing and promoting a culture of exploration within your organization, where new idea-sharing is safe and encouraged—and idea-hoarding is taboo.
And it means, above all else, maintaining a rational, long-term view of risk and opportunity…even when our brain’s wiring tempts us to do the opposite.
NB: Berns, a pioneer in the emerging field of neuroeconomics, has also written a fascinating book on this topic.
This banner, on an unsold custom home in a well-to-do suburb, somehow manages to send a message that is at once desperate and arrogant.
This is (or was, pre-meltdown) a million-dollar home with the equivalent of a “going out of business sale” sign slapped on it. But if I’m an interested a buyer, it goes without saying you’ll show it to me on weekends. Monday through Friday too.
If there isn’t a market for McMansions on barren hillsides…if conspicuous consumption is no longer fashionable (to say nothing of affordable)…Maybe, just maybe, something different is needed.
—In Oakland, Forest City’s Uptown development offers residents free annual membership to Zipcar, free public transit passes, and access to bikes.
—At SOMA Grand in San Francisco, TMG Partners provides Smart cars for residents to use through the local car sharing service, City CarShare.
—In Sacramento, where foreclosure rates are among the highest in the nation, sales at Whitney Ranch dried up until Standard Pacific Homes put solar systems on a group of new models. When those sold out, the builder then installed panels on all of its homes in the development.
—At Trilogy Central Coast, about an hour north of Santa Barbara, Shea Homes has earned national media attention (see here and here) for building a community that revolves around wine and food, catering to 50-plus buyers’ interest in the social aspect of cooking.
—In Palmdale, an hour north of Los Angeles, KB Home has overcome a market reeling with foreclosures by dropping larger floorplans and focusing on smaller, more affordable homes, bringing monthly payments down to levels that are competitive with rental rates in the area.
To be fair, it’s not just McMansions like the one above that aren’t selling. Vinester Mollie Carmichael comments that even the most desirable communities “likely aren’t making money; they’re just bleeding less.” This is today’s reality.
But in the drive to innovate our way out of the current mess, which approach are you betting on?
Will we restore equilibrium by inventing smarter, better, more thoughtful forms of housing, holistically integrated into healthy, vibrant communities?
Or will we be “Open Weekends”?
