The Vine

“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money.

But if you hire people who believe what you believe,

they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”

[ Simon Sinek, Start With Why ]

I wrote the article below for Berkeleyside, reflecting on the (mis)adventures of my youth in that wonderful, wacky city.

It’s a story of juvenile mischief and escapism, but also of memory and identity that’s deeply rooted in a place, and so it seemed fitting to post here as well.

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Nostalgia, like politics and real estate, is local.

Which helps explain how a 40-something man returns to the California School for the Deaf and Blind (Clark Kerr Campus, as it’s known today) and becomes the 11-year-old boy of his childhood.

I spent the better part of two years at that school, daydreaming in its classrooms, kicking a football across its playing fields, climbing its rooftops when adventure or mischief (or both) swelled up in me, but mostly just wandering its hallways in idle search of who knows what.

I confess: I broke some things. Windows. Drywall. Light fixtures. Toilet paper dispensers.

No teachers ever told me to stop. How could they?

The place was abandoned.

We moved to Berkeley in the summer of 1980. My mom was an art student at Cal, and she and I lived in family housing adjacent to the Deaf and Blind school, which by then had relocated to its new campus in Fremont.

Legal and political battles ensued over what should become of the site, a contentious land-use tug of war among the city, the university and the community. But for the purposes of this story, all that really matters is that the 50-acre campus—all of its buildings and facilities—sat vacant for the next two years. And it was mine to explore.

My mom’s parenting was lax even by the latchkey standards of that time, and I was free to roam unsupervised until sunset—eventually drawn home not by her edict, but by darkness and hunger. For hours on end I would venture into this mysterious, irresistible ghost town, sometimes with a pack of friends, but more often in solitude. It was quieter on your own, eerier, more surreal. And, for an introvert like me, more gratifying.

The buildings, illuminated only by diffuse sunlight, were dim labyrinths to navigate and plunder. Windowless rooms—or even, if you had the balls for it, basements—were tests of resolve, daring you to enter, flushing your body with adrenaline, excitement and fear. I never thought to bring a flashlight with me—or to consider what kinds of sketchy people I might encounter there.

1981 delivered two of my generation’s cult films, “The Road Warrior” and “Escape From New York,” and I channeled them to imagine my own post-apocalyptic world of struggle and survival, of hunting and being hunted. Was it juvenile escapism? Of course. But with each step farther removed from my “real” life—a life of divorced parents, emotionally absent mom, physically absent dad; of preadolescent hormones and awkwardness and insecurity—I felt more and more like the young man I would become.

That place is a part of me, even well into adulthood, and I suspect it always will be. I smoked my first cigarette there—Kool menthol, hawked from my mom’s purse—enjoying the nicotine buzz before vomiting into the bushes. In a literal sense, too, I still bear its scars. On my thumb, gashed while climbing through a broken window. On my hip, from a nasty skateboarding abrasion. On my ankle, when I stepped through a glass skylight (and nearly fell ten feet onto the desks and chairs below).

It wasn’t a wholesome, Boy Scout, nature-and-woodworking sort of upbringing, and I cringe at the thought of my own children being (quite) so reckless and brazen. But it was formative, and it was—I only now realize—what I desperately needed: a real-life Dangerous Book for Boys experience that built my courage, curiosity and imagination in ways I never would have gotten at home.

I moved away in 1983, the same year that UC Berkeley began converting the campus into student housing. I started high school and became consumed by sports and the pursuit of girls. Then college. A job that grew into a career. Marriage. Mortgage. Kids.

Now, almost three decades later, I return to visit the old Deaf and Blind school (it will never be anything else to me). It’s winter break for Cal students, and, other than a few maintenance workers, the place is empty.

Squint your eyes a little, filter out the repairs and fresh paint, and nothing’s changed. I’m a child again, retracing familiar corridors, of the campus, of my memory.

I don’t break anything this time around, or even smoke a cigarette.

But it’s oddly tempting.

Photo credits: Jason Holmberg

Christoph Niemann calls them ‘useless’ stereotypes, and I realize he’s underscoring the tongue-in-cheek-ness of this cartoon, but I can’t entirely agree. I’m not saying stereotypes are useful, mind you. But the reality is we all have a particular frame of reference for seeing the world, and getting that out in the open—even when it tells us more about the label-er than the label-ee—is a step toward understanding.

Plus the cartoon made me laugh. (So says the latte-drinking nerd.)

There was a time when my purchases were influenced, even triggered, by reviews on Amazon—wisdom of crowds, and all that—until I realized just how easy it is for PR machines to game the ratings (positively and negatively, and I’ve seen plenty of examples of both). If twenty “people” give a book five stars and write fawning reviews, but haven’t rated any other item, something’s hinky.

When you create a set of rules—or, in the case of Amazon, a fixed system—people will find and exploit the loopholes. And, like it or not, they’re perfectly within their rights to do so. The system is in charge, and users are simply playing by the letter (if not the spirit) of it. And so you find yourself layering rules on top of rules, eventually arriving at the kind of circular absurdity depicted here.

But when you create a set of guiding principles, you put the community in charge. When you can effectively communicate, “Here’s what it means to be a member of this tribe,” the terms of participation become, paradoxically, vaguer and yet easier to enforce. The community collectively polices acceptable vs. unacceptable behavior. (For a great example of this, see Flickr’s community guidelines. My favorite: “Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don’t be that guy.”)

This holds true in any social construct, online or offline—families, businesses, churches, knitting clubs, MMOs. I’m thinking in particular of neighborhoods, of course, where we create homeowner associations to govern acceptable conduct. But what if, rather than nitpicking the colors people might choose to paint their garage doors, we instead gave them a thoughtful, inspiring, human set of guidelines for how to behave more neighborly? (Yes, it requires us to define, and defend, what constitutes neighborliness. Yes, it will polarize some people.)

Stand for something aspirational, not against something negative.

Norwegian author Jo Nesbø shares a poignant, bittersweet account of his—and his daughter’s, and his country’s—response to the recent bombing and shootings.

“Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before,” he writes. “To the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.”

Any American old enough to remember 9/11 (or Columbine, or Oklahoma City, or…) will relate to Norway’s tug-of-war of emotions. Shock, disbelief, sorrow, outrage, anger, vulnerability, fear. But then, eventually, blessedly—courage, resolve, unity, restoration of trust, and an unwillingness to allow an act of evil to corrode a way of life, a way of living, a way of being, that defines you.

One of Norway’s most famous sons is Edvard Munch, an expressionist painter who became famous for The Scream, which is said to represent the anxiety of modern man. But in the aftermath of the attacks, what we see from Nesbø and his countrymen is decidedly not the helpless, head-in-hands, wailing image from Munch’s painting. It is, instead, the coming together of a proud, dignified people to reclaim civility.

“[I]f there is no road back to how things used to be, to the naïve fearlessness of what was untouched, there is a road forward,” Nesbø concludes. “To be brave. To keep on as before. To turn the other cheek as we ask: ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ To refuse to let fear change the way we build our society.”

Photo credit: Federico Soffici

This sign is actually trying to say, clumsily, keep track of your possessions (belongings/things).

But it works better as a piece of Zen philosophy about relationships.

It’s not just a touchy-feely sentiment. People connected to a robust, face-to-face social network—friends, family, co-workers and neighbors—are demonstrably happier and healthier.

We all have a belonging thing.

And we all need to take care of it.

Photo credit: nowyou33

I recently finished—and was thoroughly moved by—Paul Murray’s much acclaimed novel, Skippy Dies.

Many book reviews have already been written, so I won’t duplicate the effort here, other than to comment it’s been a long time since I was so vividly reminded what fourteen felt like—the sheer intensity of being, so easily exhilarated and yet so easily crushed—and how much of that experience we unwittingly carry with us into adulthood.

There’s one passage in particular that seems worth sharing, as it’s resonant with many of the themes we’ve explored throughout past Vine gatherings.

Murray reflects:

“Maybe instead of strings it’s stories things are made of, an infinite number of tiny vibrating stories; once upon a time they all were part of one big giant superstory, except it got broken up into a jillion different pieces, that’s why no story on its own makes any sense, and so what you have to do in a life is try and weave it back together, my story into your story, our stories into all the other people’s we know, until you’ve got something that to God or whoever might look like a letter or even a whole word.”

Somewhere Margaret Wheatley is nodding her head.

If Catcher in the Rye had a three-way with Lord of the Flies and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, their love child would look a lot like Skippy Dies.

Don’t read it if what you want is feel-good (it’s an Irish tale).

Do read it if what you want is to feel.

Under the category of ‘not exactly the smoothest PR move,’ a Pulte Homes division president was caught removing neighbors’ lawn signs displaying an anti-Pulte message.

It’s a case of childish behavior on both sides, actually, beginning with a neighborhood tizzy over Pulte’s purchase of lots in what was originally planned to be a village of entirely custom-built homes. But custom sales stalled, the developer sold some of the lots to Pulte, and protest signs began appearing in front yards.

(You can certainly see why. I mean—horrors!—those luxury production homes attract all manner of riff-raff. Before you know it, your tony little enclave is a suburban ghetto.)

In an ironic twist to the story, the Pulte prez lives in the very same community—in a custom home, no less.

Think the next HOA meeting will be a little dicey?

This idea has been advanced by many others, much more eloquently than I will here, but it still bears repeating.

People don’t buy square footage. Or floorplans or elevations or parks or schools or real estate values. (And they certainly don’t think of homes as “units.” Can we strike that from our vocabulary?) Those things are the rational factors we cite to justify an emotional decision we’ve already made.

We buy a home because of what it helps us become. A safer neighborhood (perceived or real) helps a mom or dad feel like a better parent. A LEED-certified building near transit helps the environmentally conscious feel redeemed for reducing their carbon footprint. A community designed around urban farming helps a foodie feel affirmed about her localvore lifestyle, and gives her another means of telling that story to others.

As our friends at Strada are fond of saying, “This is not a toaster.” I don’t want to hear how much extra storage space I’ll get. I want to be part of something that I can believe in. (And that goes beyond the product, by the way. YOU have to embody that something too.)

The auto industry is really good at creating badges of identity—and their raw materials are steel and rubber.

Why can’t we, working with wood and glass and stone and landscaping, do even better?

NB: A framed print of Hugh’s cartoon above hangs in my home office. You can get one here if you’re so inclined.

One of the defining characteristics of a community is that it establishes and enforces a set of social norms…as I recently experienced.

I was in San Francisco for a lunch meeting at Slanted Door, the über popular restaurant that anchors the Ferry Building, a marketplace for local farmers and artisan producers. When ordering food, we deferred to the connoisseur among us, a regular who seemed to know the menu by heart. When ordering drinks, we went solo, and I asked for a Diet Coke.

Oops. I might as well have ordered the baby seal appetizer.

After a pregnant pause, our waitress coolly informed me, “We don’t serve soda here.” And the italics are hers, not mine. She spat the word out, as though it left a vile taste in her mouth.

(In my defense, a guy at the next table had a plastic bottle of Diet Coke sitting out in plain view—smuggled-in contraband, I now realize. No matter. His heresy did nothing to mitigate my own.)

Awkward as that moment was, I love that they have a deeply held set of beliefs and values—and that they’re not shy about telling you when you’ve stepped on them. The waitress was saying, in effect, “Go get your fucking Diet Coke at McDonald’s. We stand for something here.”

I didn’t do an exhaustive search, but I’m guessing you can’t buy a Diet Coke anywhere in the Ferry Building. To do so would be an affront to their community of independently owned producers, suppliers and retailers, and to the like-minded customers who flock there.

I had the iced tea. It was exceptional.

Photo credit: mulmatsherm

Speaking of New Yorker covers, this week’s is particularly apt.

Enlarge the image and you’ll see that each person is plugged into his or her own private world of headsets—except the for the ones who are trying to get their attention: the musician, the protester, the soapbox guy, the (Barney-costumed) leaflet distributor, and the baby.

Calls to mind the great quote from Herbert Prochnow: “A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.”

It’s not an indictment of cities.

It’s a commentary on us.

As a parting thought…if I may attempt to wrap the themes of “city” and “community” into a shameless plug for PCBC…I’m hoping to catch up with many of you in San Francisco next week, where our own little community will most assuredly not be lonesome together. See you soon.

Inspired by Saul Steinberg’s famous 1976 New Yorker cover, Hugh MacLeod offers this astute commentary and cartoon (click to enlarge) on parochialism.

“It’s often tempting to mistake the tiny little world you currently live in, with the big ol’ world you actually live in. We all do it to some extent, our brains are simply not big enough to take in everything this planet has to offer. I’ve lived in many worlds that are just as myopic as any in Silicon Valley. The New York advertising world. The UK wine trade. The blogosphere. You probably have, too.

My pet name for this human phenomenon is ‘Microcosmosis’. Confusing one’s own little patch of ground with reality etc.”

The Vine held its second salon at IDEO earlier this week. In a previous post I described the collaborative process that our workshop was built upon. This time I’ll keep it topical, and I want to highlight one theme in particular that I found most resonant:

The notion of culture as community.

IDEO’s general manager Tom Kelley spoke about the significance of an organization’s verbal language vs. body language. (And it holds just as true for communities.) Your verbal language is what’s on your website, how you describe your company, and what you say you value. Your body language is how you behave, and it shows up in the way you treat customers, employees, partners and the community around you. When your verbal and body language are incongruous, people will notice—and the body language is what they’ll interpret as the “real” you.

John Foster, head of talent and organization for IDEO, paraphrased Marshall McLuhan in reminding us, “You are the message.” All of us, as individuals and as organizations, can be incubators (or inhibitors) of community through behavior. If you are the message, what message are you sending?

Systems designer Patrice Martin then observed that great organizations (or brands, or causes) attract personality with personality. This starts with being distinct and genuine, to be sure, but it goes beyond that. It also requires the willingness to polarize and the guts to declare, “We’re not scared to lose you.”

The common thread running through these messages would appear to be authenticity…and that’s certainly at the heart of it. But underlying authenticity, I believe, is alignment. It’s being clear in the what, and grounded in the why, of all that you’re trying to accomplish. Everything else flows from that.

Thank you, IDEO, for two stimulating and mind-expanding salons. Thank you James Hardie and Target for sponsoring them. And thank you to everyone who participated and brought them to life.

A new series of salons is in the works. More to come.

Vine alum Walker Smith and colleagues at The Futures Company have released a new report on consumer values and behavior in the post-abundance economy.

Prevailing media reports suggest that we’ve entered a new era of frugality — that consumer behavior is now, and forevermore will be, defined by penny-pinching and learning to live without. To win customers, be prepared for discounts and early-bird specials and a death spiral to the bottom of the price ladder.

On the other end of the spectrum is the view that this is just a temporary blip. Human nature being what it is, we’ll resume our indulgent ways as soon as the economy turns around.

This divide between extremes — fear vs. greed, or asceticism vs. hedonism — is missing the point, Walker says. Human behavior is never that simplistic and black-and-white, and you can’t extrapolate future events by simply observing present (spend nothing) or past (spend everything!) activity.

Instead the authors advise a more intelligent and nuanced approach, a value proposition grounded in neither fear nor greed, but something just as timeless: Aspiration.

They write:

“[A] smaller economy does not mean that the consumer imagination will be bereft of ambition or wholly appropriated by a resignation to do without. Even with smaller household budgets, the capacity for dreaming will be as big as ever. Consumers are not going to give up on their aspirations to a better life; they will just re-channel these ambitions to fit the context of the recovery consumer marketplace.”

The report, “A Darwinian Gale,” can be downloaded here.

Hugh MacLeod is a brilliant, unorthodox, provocative thinker on brands and relevance and creating meaningful interactions with customers.

Hugh nails it yet again with this recent post. He writes:

“Too many brand managers ask the question, ‘What message do I have to craft in order to get people to buy my product?’ It’s a dead end. A far more useful and profitable question would be, ‘What can I do to make my customers’ lives more interesting and meaningful?’

And ‘Meaningful’ always has a social dynamic. We find meaning via our relationships with our fellow creatures. ‘People matter. Objects don’t.’

A bottle of barbecue sauce isn’t going to instantly change anyone’s life for the better. But that 4-hour-long conversation with an old friend, sharing a plate of ribs and brisket, with some Shiner Bock… Well, that might. So you want your product to be there when it happens; you want your product to be around during your customers’ significant moments.”

If you’re a builder or developer, good news, your product already is around during your customers’ significant moments. But walls and windows (and patios and parks and plazas) are just objects. It’s not until human beings animate them that they become places of significance.

Okay, duh, that’s stating the obvious. Then why is real estate so often marketed on the basis of objects, and so rarely as a story of people and relationships? As Lisa Kalmbach recently commented to me, “no homebuyer thinks in terms of price per square foot.”

One last thought. A lot of marketers now get this, and all kinds of brands are rushing into the “significance” space. It’s the sophisticated ones, however, that understand how and when (and when not) to insert themselves into the picture.