Seeking Coastal Utopia

Whose eyes are you seeing the problem through? Whose perspective are you taking when you propose a solution? Are you sure that you are doing the right thing for the end-user, the customer, the person you are trying to understand? “Will this help magnify their worldview?” Photo by Ronan on  Unsplash Understanding and accomplishing an empathetic viewpoint is imperative for success. Being able to see the problem from their eyes, within their world, is necessary for building strong relationships , adoption, and overall change management. How many times has something changed within your business? The way you used to access something, or the software or hardware that you came to depend upon worked well. The system you were comfortable with? And. It. Has. Changed. Here comes the Information Technology team within your organization, almost out of the blue. They are here to solve a problem that you did not realize even existed. To provide you with a solution without unde...

We should all aim to think like Voltaire . Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. (In his writings, a wise Italian says that the best is the enemy of the good) not flawless by Joshua Fuller on  Unsplash The more modern interpretation of that quotation is “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” Do you know when it is time to stop trying to perfect the work that you’re doing? We all have varying levels of what we interpret is quality or, more specifically, perfect quality.  Flawless. Is that realistic? Does it add value ? In my particular instance, there are certain things that I try to have as perfect as I possibly can. However when someone that has a more trained eye, is a subject matter expert of that specific topic, my perfect may be garbage to their eyes. The one thing that we recognize in this pursuit of perfection, it may be best just to produce something , deliver something, now. Let it run in the wild, a...

How many times have you been in a meeting or a conversation, and someone is looking at their phone or computer while you are talking or presenting? And you are getting this… Mmmhmmm, yep. Yeah. I know. Mmmhmm. Wait — What? Can you repeat that? Change your worldview . You are the person on the phone or on your computer when someone is talking to you. You are hearing them. But are you really listening ? “boy singing on microphone with pop filter” by Jason Rosewell on  Unsplash We are all guilty of that. We allow distractions to take us away from the moment. Stop wasting everyone’s time. Stop being disrespectful. Put your phone down. Close your computer. Stop talking. Hear and listen . Engage in the conversation, at that moment. Hear the person speaking and listen to their words. Process the information. Provide the proper respect and pay attention to the person speaking to you. You cannot multitask. You can not look at your phone or computer (or TV or the races, or,...

Have you seen the NSFW music video from Childish Gambino ?  Or this NSFW one by Joyner Lucas ?  One shows a stimulating and violent visual worldview; the other is an audible and mental worldview (yet still visual but a stark contrast) - both provide a dichotomous perspective on today’s U.S. society.  You have to watch and listen to both songs multiple times to capture items that you missed the first time you watched. Because of those songs and videos, your worldview has changed.  Did you feel the shift?  Do you now look at people differently? What is your worldview?  Everyone has their lenses and filters that they see the world in. I recently had a debate with my nine-year-old daughter about color.  She asked if I saw a particular object as blue, but she said, "What if I said it was red, who would be right?”  How did I learn it was blue ?  How did she learn it was red?  This debate with my nine-year-old daughter about something we ...

Have you ever sent a flaming email? Have you ever received one of those flame emails? How did you feel when you wrote that evil email? Did you feel powerful?  Did you feel that you were in a better position after sending it, letting the world (your recipient) feel your fury?  Did it make your arguments stronger? How about when you receive one of those emails? How does that make you feel about being on the receiving end of a flaming email or of an angry letter? What sort of flooded feeling did the email give you?  Did you feel the anger boiling inside? The dropped feeling like your guts were liquefied?  Think about the end result, was the objective reached? Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln were some of the many notable figures in history to learn the art of writing this poison pen letter.  Yet most often those letters were never sent.  Each of these men and others understood the purpose and reason of writing these letters.  They also understood the ...