3 Ways to Design Your Career

John Besmer confirms our meeting with “Word,” and signs off with, “Yup!” like he’s in the middle of a Jay-Z video. At the corner of corporate and hipster, I arrive to his office to discover him in a plaid button-down shirt, designer-rimmed glasses and a whole lot of Midwestern charm.

I first saw Besmer in a similar uniform on stage. Ten designers shared twenty inspiration slides for twenty seconds each, but Besmer’s stood out; he was the only person to play electric guitar, read from a book and live-tweet during his – he later told me – “horribly lashed-together” presentation.

Besmer, Principal and Creative Director of Planet Propaganda, is one of the creatives that has been paving the way for design to take a front-seat in how we approach everything, from education to careers to business. His client list includes long-standing relationships with big-timers like Jimmy John’s sandwiches and MTV to the young and hip Trek bikes and Red Wing shoes.

“Design is becoming more relevant because things are becoming more complicated” Besmer tells me. And with that, a relative army of people are now claiming the term designer of one sort or another.

Should you need a speedy determination as to whether you’re business or creative-minded, take my test. Ask yourself, what time do I rise and fall?  Scoring: Businessmen get up early. Creatives stay up late.

What links designers today “is their belief that everything today is ripe for reinvention and ‘smart recombination’” Warren Berger reports in Glimmer. And such foundational values are the backbone of innovation and business. Here’s how to take advantage:

1. Reframe your job, your tasks, your day-to-day. The concept of job titles are horribly outdated. Accept whatever title you’re given, but expand and burst the borders into far-away corners. Do as designers do and switch up “a familiar problem or challenge [like your job] in an unconventional way…. often the way a problem is framed will determine the solution,” Berger suggests.

Most successful people do this automatically. I know a young lawyer that was just recruited as partner at a prestigious law firm – this, at a time when lawyers are hurting badly – and it’s because he never saw himself as just a lawyer. He was always a leader first, the contracts and depositions came second.

So reframe your career in a new way. Ask stupid questions: Where should I really be living? Could I work from home? If I ate tuna for lunch every day, would that increase my productivity? What makes me happy?

2. Problem-solve to success. “I’m here to help my clients sell stuff,” Besmer tells me, but later admits that problem-solving is what really drives him. When you solve a problem, you get more responsibility, more challenge, new problems to solve. And that is what’s so exciting about successful careers. You solve lots of problems one after the other. It’s the difference between working hard and working smart, between an empty job and a fulfilling one.

Designers are extra good at this since it’s their explicit job description, but problem-solving is really the function of every job, of un-sticking yourself, of true creativity, regardless of the field you’re in – administrative to professional to creative.

3. Gain momentum by doing more and more. Berger reports this is the “’upward spiral’ of solving problems, wherein the more you do it, the more you can do it.” Solving problems, after all, is actually quite daunting and it can be paralyzing to jump in to such high pressure and stress. But once you’re guaranteed the win, it’s just as assuredly guaranteed that you’ll want another one.

“Through constant acts of creative [problem-solving], you also re-create yourself,” Berger continues. “You help propel your own growth spiral, feeding off the energy of creation. That’s not just a feeling, it’s a fact: Being in that state of “design flow’ raises the levels of neurotransmitters in you brain, such as endorphins and dopamine and that keeps you focused and energized.”

My friend Besmer is a testament to such endorphins and energy, and as we wrap up our conversation, he tells me the story of how he moved to a new house a few years ago. He relates that on each moving box, he would write what that box contained.  “I’d write ‘old photos, clothes,’ and whatever was actually in the box… then I’d add ‘glass eyes’ just to keep it interesting for the movers. I thought, why not make it interesting for those guys?”

Why not, indeed.

So, how do you make it interesting? Do you work only within the confines of your job title? Are you creative or business-minded?

Training yourself to be more inspired

Turn Here is a guest column on Wednesdays by Caitlin McCabe who blogs over at Smile Like You Mean It and is into architecture, social media, and irreverence.

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent van Gogh

“You ever notice that they don’t make TV shows about people that watch TV shows?”  – My friend T

One of the absolute worst things that can happen to a creative person (and aren’t we all?) is the dreaded times when we feel uninspired.  We want to write, create, and play, but it’s no use.  Nothing is happening.  It’s doubly hard when it’s part of our jobs to be creative…. then you get stressed out about not being creative and get even less creative.  If you’ve ever had to write ad copy for a really boring kitchen appliance you know what I mean.

I used to think inspiration was like a little fairy gift that came when it wanted to and had to be coaxed out, appreciated, and thanked.  Sometimes, when you get an unforeseen burst of inspiration, this is true but fortunately you can also train yourself to be better at it.

Becoming more creative can be like yoga or an exercise routine at first, in that you’ll have to make some time and you may feel awkward or annoyed with it.

For example, the part where I tell you that you have to carry a notebook and that you have to use it can be awkward when you are looking crazy scribbling things down in the checkout aisle of the grocery store.  You’ll think “I’ll just write it down later.  I’ll remember,” but you won’t remember; you’ve got to write ideas down as they come.

The purpose of the notebook portion of the inspiration boot camp is not to write down all of the things you think of because they are all nuggets of genius.  You will be writing down ideas so that you start noticing when you have ideas.  You have ideas all the time every day but if you are not taking a moment to recognize them and bring them to the front of your brain you won’t remember the majority of them.

The next step in the inspiration boot camp is to watch less TV and listen to more music.  Instead of one show a week, turn on Pandora.com and listen to something that is instrumental (I recommend Juan Serrano which is Spanish Guitar) for the duration of a TV show.  Doctors and creative genius’s like Shakespeare and Plato state the powers of music in healing and creating.   No one, to my knowledge, has made such claims about TV.

Play more.  At work, it’s important to be more efficient.  During the rest of life, it’s not.  Arranging things, moving things around, and playing with things  can help train your brain to seek other uses for things before you immediately think of a way to deal with it and move on.  I’ve been playing with bouncy balls in checkout aisles and arranging food on my plate to look interesting for years.  It’s also kind of fun to look for faces when you walk down a street or sit on a subway.  You spend a lot of time at work telling your brain to streamline, streamline, streamline and these are good ways to break away from that process.

Another way to start training yourself to be inspired is to start collections.  If you give yourself a reason to slow down and notice what you’re doing you will notice a lot more.  I’ve been collecting marbles and rocks and while I was looking found earrings, beads, phones, and even an engagement ring while I was walking around!

One of the worst things to do is stress out when you can’t be creative (again, pretty tough if you’re paid to do it) but simply walking away and doing something else can be a huge help.  I once sat in a room for 8 hours trying to come up with an idea for a client and came up with nothing.  8 hours.  Instead of waiting for the inspiration fairy to come I should have started doing some simple inspiration techniques like pull out your idea notebook and read through it to bring your mind back to a moment when you were feeling inspired.  The point is, the more you are familiar with that feeling the easier it is to recall it when you need it.

Good luck!

Your passion is lost on others

13-year old Tavi posted this excerpt from a Washington Post piece on her blog:

It’s always a bit discombobulating when people raise their voices in anger because they’ve gotten wind that designers are making and selling $25,000 dresses. After all, it’s not as if the existence of a dress that costs as much as a car negates the availability of cute $25 frocks at Target. And it isn’t as though edicts have been issued that all women must now dress like one of the superheroes on Balenciaga’s runway.

For personal and sometimes tortured reasons — I can’t have it so no one else can! — observers declare that they just don’t understand the attraction of these strange and expensive clothes. That would be a fair argument if those same complainers lashed out at people who spend thousands of dollars on Redskins season tickets, vintage wines, first-edition books or midlife-crisis cars. But those industries don’t stir nearly as much ire from people who are uninterested in them.

Everyone has a passion that is lost on others.

From The Washington Post via Style Rookie.

A plan to change the world

I have a dream book. Not the kind where you put your sleepy, bleary-eyed memories of the night before under shut-eye, but the kind where you sprint to write down all the excitement in your chest before it escapes you forever. The kind where you write down how, exactly, you plan to change the world.

I’ve had this dream book since Christmas of 1998, a gift from my mother. I read it over the other day, and smiled at this entry -

“I want my generation, the time that I live, to be great and remarkable and groundbreaking. I want my generation to be the one with the first black and woman presidents.”

This was before Obama and Hillary declared their intention to run for President of course, and before I knew how close my dream would soon be a reality.  And as I read those words, I got goosebumps that something that I desired so badly had come true.

Most of the dreams laid forth in the book aren’t as grand though. They’re more to do with me, less to do with the world. And yet, for eleven years, the same themes keep popping up. Keep returning and haunting the page. For eleven years, I’ve wanted to change the world in the same ways, and for eleven years, I haven’t.

Now, to be fair, I’ve done quite a bit. And an outsider would probably say that my involvement in changing the world, while not extraordinary by any means, is passable for the average human. I’ve made a difference. And that’s good.

But in my dream book, the one where it’s quite visible that my mind is racing faster than my pen can keep up, I don’t want to be average. I want to inspire and empower and make change. Like in education. And equality in design. And the environment. And public art. Things that connect people and community and show our common humanity.

And at the end of my life, I hope it’s goosebump city from so many of my dreams coming true. Today though, I’m going to stop writing in my dream book, because there are enough words. Now it’s time for action.

This was originally posted on Akhila Kolisetty’s Be the Change series. Go ahead, take a peek, and share your comments over there. 

Niceness is the new career trend

In what is arguably one of the worst times in American history since the Great Depression, the people of America have their chins decidedly up.

The sanguine mood is characterized by “an outbreak of niceness across the cultural landscape — an attitude bubbling up in commercials, movies and even, to a degree, the normally not-nice blogosphere,” the New York Times reports.

Harvard MBA students are making a promise to be ethical in an age of immorality, young talent is shifting towards do-gooder jobs, and more people are holding the elevator door open for me daily.

Enron and Madoff are no match for the almost hermetic happiness that now protects the Nation. It’s not sugar-coated like the self-help decade of the nineties. Nor does it resemble the maudlin contentment of the shut-eyed fifties. Instead, it’s a cheerfulness that smiles next to adversity.

It’s nourished by President Obama himself, who has cottoned such unprecedented praise and agreement that the press can’t help but gush. That goodness has spread virally – as happiness has been proven to do – and companies and individuals are following suit.

“Companies that have the highest retention have the nicest atmospheres,” the New York Times reports. “And in a situation where people are losing their jobs and you have an option of whom to hire, you’re going to hire the person who is complimenting your tie. Nice becomes a competitive edge.”

Alice.com is a good example of this. It’s not just that we have a ping pong table and encouraged nap time, but that our co-founders consistently encourage and compliment employees, partners, customers, potential vendors, and others. I didn’t even know this was a viable way to do business. That is, our work is not predicated on fear, failure, politics, or manipulation.  

Such plushy and persistently optimistic companies give power back to the employee, back to the customer, and back to the idea of social community where the greater good is served over the individualistic ambitions of wealth or influence.

Mean is out. Earnestness and altruism are in fashion. Humility is an aphrodisiac. The roof has caved in, and people are responding accordingly. Not by panicking, but pulling up their bootstraps and making lemonade. And giving their neighbor some. And the prostitute down the street. And the dog too.

Even hard-core adherents to darker fantasies like Eminem are “just coming clean and exhaling.” The rapper’s newest album ripostes on his drug addictions, and his subsequent challenges and triumphs more than women stuffed into trunks.

Because when you’ve hit bottom – and we all have now, whether rich and poor – a great opportunity exists to find commonality in the grace of our ascension.

And while our children will most certainly rebel against us, perhaps under the objectivism of Ayn Rand or the cynicism of Gen X, our optimism, vanilla, mediocre and conservative as it may be, is prevailing.

What is happening now is that glee is rising from collectively pushing forward at all costs, not knowing if it will work and accepting that there’s a good chance it won’t, and working towards something greater. All together. With differences of opinion, but with respect as well. With civility and common courtesy. And with confidence in humanity’s decency.

Good Works.

My non-advice for the New Year

I’ve been writing a lot of crap lately. No, really, I have. You don’t know because I have been gracious enough not to post it, but it’s been crap. Complete and utter sh*t.

I think it’s because I feel obligated to write an inspiring New Years post, but regurgitating what the rest of the world is saying makes me nauseous. And also, I haven’t been too inspired lately, and this blog is supposed to be happy, angry, inspirational, controversial, exciting – anything but depressing – but depressing is the only way to describe my writing as of late.

I was going to show you my calendar of the nineteen meetings I have this week, which is typical. Perhaps too typical as I’ve discovered it’s fairly easy to become fairly crazy fairly quickly.

And speaking of that, has anyone else noticed that it only took a short two years out of college for you to completely lose the ability to go to sleep at 5:00 am one night and wake up absolutely fine, refreshed and ready to face the day the next morning? Because I tried it recently and I can’t do it any longer. I’ve lost this valuable skill at the ripe old age of twenty-four.

But anyway, I was going to explain the masterpiece of scheduling that my calendar is, and describe my system of scheduling meetings according to existing meetings, all packaged nicely and neatly in a pretty list, but it was really boring. Really.

Moreover, it seemed a little misleading to sell you my tricks of the scheduling trade, when I’m so utterly exhausted. And if nothing else, I’m honest.

Honesty has gotten me in trouble lately though. I’m starting to say “no” more often, and stand up for myself, and people don’t really like that. And I’m still figuring out how to deal with that, because I’m saying “no” and I’m standing up for a reason, good reasons, but I’m not sure the other parties feel the same way. And the transition from sugary-sweet observer to strong active leader is blaringly still en route.

Then I thought I would tell you about the resolution I made one Monday afternoon and subsequently broke this past Saturday night. And there’s no point now, which is cool, you know, because it’s cliche fun to break your resolution a week after you’ve made it. Er, whatever.

I also thought about writing how I feel like I can’t trust many people lately, which is bad, because trust is really important to getting things done. Mostly I feel this way because someone I look up to let me down. But to be honest, I had him on a pedestal, so it was only a matter of time before I found out that he didn’t like where I had told him to sit.

Other posts included how listening to old-school music makes me happy, and that exercising is good, but better when the cute personal trainer guy talks to you, or how your number one resolution should be to start a blog in the New Year. And at one point, I even thought about just copying and pasting the lyrics to all the music I was listening to, because it just seemed to say everything that I could not.

But time after time, the posts didn’t make the cut, because there is so much advice out there on how to start your New Year off right, and the sky is still blue (or gray in Madison’s case), and you are still who you are. So don’t worry so much.

This is, after all, the year of the Rat. That means it’s “a lucky year, a good time to start a new venture. The rewards will not come without hard work, but with careful planning they will arrive.”

Great things are going to happen this year. And you’re going to make them happen.

That’s all you need to know.

Get to it.

13 steps to a must-have talent

I have two talents in the wintertime. One is my ability to walk in high heels on the ice and snow. The other is to make three-dimensional snowflakes. Which has everything to do with Generation Y and leadership. Trust me.

Okay, maybe not. But look for a post on how social media affects Generation Y leadership on Friday. In the meantime, enjoy the snowfall!

While at my mother’s house for the holidays, I demonstrated how to make these snowflakes in thirteen easy steps:

1. Gather the materials (2 pieces of white paper, a pair of scissors, and scotch tape).

2. Cut six equal-sized squares from the paper.

3. Fold each square on the diagonal to create a large triangle (shown), and then again to create a small triangle.

4. Cut four equal-spaced slits towards the fold, being careful not to cut through the fold.

5. Don’t say no to outside help.

6. After cutting six pieces, open each square completely.

7. Bring the middle of one square together, and tape the ends together. Turn the piece over, and bring the next inner set together and tape the ends together (shown).

8. Repeat until an entire diamond segment is complete.

9. Repeat on the other pieces until all six diamonds are complete.

10. Tape three diamonds together, taping first on the sides, and then bringing the three pieces together in the middle.

11. Repeat for the remaining three diamonds, and bring each half of the snowflake together.

12. Tape the two halves together, first in the middle (shown), then on each of the sides.

13. Hang your completed snowflake with cheer, and enjoy!

Happy Winter!

What passion looks like

When I got sick, one of the first things I had to do to get better was learn to give myself shots in the stomach. The very first time I had to do it, I sat on a hospital bed with Johannes across from me and the nurse beside me, and I cried. And when I say cried, I mean I bawled harder than I have ever bawled in my adult existence. My whole body heaved with the impossibility of the task.

Johannes sat cringing next to me. He had just spent four years studying to be a doctor, and for him, this was like opening your eyes in the morning. For me, it was like the nightmares I have where I’m falling and don’t know where I’ll land. It was pure terror.

I couldn’t do it. The nurse left the room, and Johannes looked at me with disgust.

And then.

And then, something inside me flipped. I stopped crying. The nurse came back in. She handed me the needle, and I did it. As simple as pushing a button into the button hole, I pushed the needle into my stomach. And when I got home, I had to lie on my couch and do it every night all alone, and I did it then too.

After this, there were several more visits to the ER, an eventual surgery, and when it was all done, when it was finally all finished, I felt euphoric. Euphoria enveloped me for all that I had been through; for all that I had fought against and won.

You have to work hard, and sometimes you have to gloriously muck something up to be really successful later. Why we’re always so afraid of conflict, diversity, adversity has never made sense to me. I have no patience for people who are sanctimoniously happy all the time. It means they haven’t taken enough risks.

Success is directly related to how hard you push yourself.

I write about how difficult the process of becoming a leader is, the problems I’ve had transitioning, how life is just plain hard sometimes, to illustrate that once you find your passion it’s not all about birds chirping and bunny rabbits frolicking.

Of course, that’s part of it; right now, for instance, I am really excited. I just had a great meeting with those in my organization. We’re getting closer and closer to rocking out. You know, like, the lip-singing-dancing-around-the-living-room-jumping-for-joy kind of rocking out. But in a Board Room.

And that makes me happy. Especially because I worked hard to prepare for that meeting. Really hard. Our database hates me with a vengeance hard. Sixteen or seventeen meetings a week hard. Like, my apartment is messy an hour after I clean it hard.

I generally spend every waking moment thinking and acting on how we’re going to rock it. So when things go well, that feeling of euphoria – of happiness to the point of enlightenment – is because I’ve pushed myself farther than I’ve ever gone before. Just like when I was sick.

So, it’s hard. And it’s work. And sometimes it’s pure terror. But that’s passion in a nutshell. You wake up and you can’t imagine doing anything else. You do it because there is no other way to be.

Be working to be rocking.

How to think bold and dream big, and a realization

‘Tis the season for annual dinners and last night was another one. When the keynote speaker took the stage and began his litany of jokes, I turned to my friend and asked, “Is he drunk?” My friend’s eyes got wide as he raised his eyebrows and cocked his head.

Better drunk then boring, we shrugged.

But as the speaker went on, his short stature quickly filling up the two big screens on his left and right, and then the entire room, I realized that he was certainly not drunk. He was Texan. A Texan State Senator and former Mayor of Austin to be exact – Mr. Kirk Watson.

With a southern charm, certain bravado and blatant honesty that made us Midwesterners simultaneously laugh and blush, Watson spoke on how to think bold and dream big:

First of all, don’t be afraid to think bold and dream big, Watson drawled in his thick accent. Failure is good, as long as you learn from it. As long as you don’t go cry in a corner, he said. As long as you take action from what went wrong.

And don’t wait for something better either. “My wife tried that and she still got stuck with me!” Watson warned. Take action with the opportunities that are in front of you.

Find both the chicken and the egg. Go after them both. And then find things that are neither the chicken nor the egg:

“Do you want to know what the number one bumper sticker is in Austin?” Watson asked. “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s not ‘Kirk Watson for Senate’ as it should be. No, it’s not. It’s ‘Keep Austin Weird.’ That’s it. That’s what it is. ‘Keep Austin Weird.’ That means keeping Austin ‘Austin.’ Keeping it open. Out of weird you get bold ideas and vision.”

With bold ideas and big vision, you are not going to meet everyone’s concept of perfection, so don’t even try, Watson said. Don’t even try. If you try to please everyone, you will come up with a plan that is unworkable or someone will just say no and that will be the end.

He goes on, “Let me tell you about my 84% rule. If 84% of the people say, ‘Huh, yeah, I kind of like that idea’ and it sounds like progress, take it and run.” How did he come up with the 84% rule? That’s the percentage he was elected mayor with.

Avoid the nitpickers, naysayers and know-it-alls. The people who think they are just so much smarter than you, he said. The people who think you’re dumb. They’re in the 16%. Their negative energy will bring you down. Really, it doesn’t matter how pretty you are. You’re not going to make everyone happy.

Instead, focus on your assets. You got ‘em, Watson said. Utilize what you have.

And be willing to admit your weaknesses, Watson advised. He then told us simply that he was a cancer surivior. A testicular cancer survivor. He has had three surgeries and has gone through chemotherapy. After all that, they found another tumor in his abdomen.

But that was in 1995. He’s cured now. He assures his wife that if anything happened to her, or between the two of them, he wouldn’t want a young woman. He wouldn’t want to start a new family. He loves his family. And she tells him, “You know dear, with all they cut off of you, you won’t have many young women coming after you.”

“And that’s true!” Watson stated triumphantly. The point from the story is that he admits his weaknesses. “And another is that I’m a survivor,” he said. “Hope matters.”

Afterwards, I approached Kirk and introduced myself. He was just as excited to meet me as he was on stage, and we talked about blogging (yes, he has a blog too), and the ability to say in his speech, or write in his blog, whatever he wants. We discussed the ability to execute the “what you see is what you get” attitude, which inevitably lead to a discussion on credibility.

And I don’t know if it was the charming accent or what, but more than ever, I got why people were so concerned with credibility. I mean, Kirk has built a bridge for goodness sakes. And while someday I might build a bridge too, I haven’t accomplished such feats yet. I have more work to do. That makes me excited, because being a little like Kirk Watson is definitely something to look forward to.

Texan moxie.

What gives you the right to be a young leader

My friend Nick asked me first. Then Marci said the same thing. And then today, one of my favorite creatives posed a similar question. They all wanted to know, what gives you the right to be a young leader? What gives you credibility?

Wait, what? What do you mean what gives me the right? I must admit that I didn’t have a good answer, even the third time around. To me, it’s like asking what gives women the right to work?

It seems to me that if I want to do something, then I should do it. This notion that young people have something to prove, that we must pay our dues, is outdated. But it’s obviously on the minds of my peers.

My gut reaction was to reply, “because I work really frickin’ hard. How about that?” But somehow that didn’t seem like the leader thing to do.

There’s a new trend where we’re checking under the rug to see what has been swept underneath. It’s a matter of ethics, a matter of accountability, credibility, and simply realizing that if we’re following, we should pay closer attention to who is leading.

We’ve always wanted our leaders to be transparent. But as it becomes easier to create yourself on the internet and tell whatever story you wish, being transparent is increasingly difficult. You as a blogger and who you are in real life may or may not always match up.

Indeed, our generation is moving up so quickly, that discrepancies aren’t just showing up in the online world; who you are in one job could be drastically different from who you are in the next.

And if we’re changing so drastically and consistently, do we have the expertise to move to the front of the line?

Questioning the validity of a person’s leadership skills is why more leaders aren’t stepping up to the plate in the first place. It’s why we have a leadership crisis in areas like the environmental and nonprofit sectors. And it’s why a slew of Generation Y doesn’t want to be engaged at all.

There’s nothing special to being a leader. You have to deal with a lot once you jump in, sure. It’s a challenge and it’s hard work and it’s rewarding and it’s fantastic. But leaders aren’t all that different from the rest of us.

My organization just finished a series on how local leaders in politics went from interest to action. We had a senator, state representatives, our mayor, our county executive, aldermen, lobbyists, and more. Across the board, every single political leader expressed that their story wasn’t unique. They saw an opportunity and went for it. Funny how remarkably easy it is to make a difference.

I don’t have a special skill set to be a leader. I’ve never taken leadership classes, and while I’ve been in positions of leadership since high school, I don’t think this makes me more qualified to be one now. It’s just, I can’t imagine doing anything else. Like, when I visited Madison to decide on where I would attend school, I felt in my bones that this was the place to be.

What gives you the right to be a young leader is the fact that you have stepped out from the rest of crowd. That you have put yourself out there, taken a chance, and have simply tried.

You will mess up along the way. You will make mistakes. You’ll take things personally. You won’t want to be a leader sometimes, and sometimes you might not be.

You won’t have all the skills, and perhaps it’s easier to think about it as if you’re a leader in training. But if you make that commitment, you’re already miles ahead of everyone else. And the others will follow. Because you believe in yourself. And that’s half the battle to believing in others.

Rightfully young.

In searching for links for this post, I found that Rosetta Thurman does a great job discussing this subject as well. Go check it out.