Month: July 2010

Today’s Harvard Business Review Tip of the Day:
Create Great Strategy with Stories, Not Plans
Give up being right and sensible. Instead, tell a story about the future. Make it aspirational and envision your organization in a happy and successful place. Then start the real work of strategy creation: ask yourselves, for these stories to come true, what would have to happen?

Here’s my story:
A rabbit is running along in the forest. The rabbit runs quickly, as rabbits are prone to do. This is very different from the pace of other animals that can be slower. For example, opossums are slower than rabbits.
You’re probably wondering why the rabbit is running so quickly. I will tell you: it’s because the rabbit is motivated. The rabbit runs with purpose and direction. What direction you ask? North. That’s right. Always upward and onward. Enough questions; back to the story.

The rabbit runs along, and sees a venture capitalist. The venture capitalist says, “Hello there rabbit, I can see you are motivated, have purpose and direction. Not like the opossum, a creature that I despise with a fiery passion. Do you see how slowly opossums move?” What disdain the venture capitalist has towards opossums! The rabbit shrugs; she has nothing against opossums.

Then the venture capitalist gives the rabbit a thoughtful sum so that the rabbit’s organization can afford marketing and equipment to assist the rabbit’s awesome product in catching stride. The rabbit responsibly uses this money to end up in a happy and successful place.

Hm.

This song is really heartwarming and fiercely romantic. It’s a love song about sticking with someone, even if they go to jail for presumably millions of dollars in theft. My understanding of the lyrics is that these millions also subsidize the woman’s designer bag purchases.

Today I went to the Hair Cuttery for a haircut. There is this woman who had cut my hair a couple times three years ago, but I had stopped going to her because I thought it was time to pay for sophisticated hair cuts.

When I arrived, she saw me, and she came over and gave me a big hug and asked, “How ARE you!?” I was a little surprised, because I did not think she would remember me. I was also surprised because she must have known I was cheating on her: I haven’t been to her in three years.
“Gooood,” I responded uncomfortably, whilst returning her hug awkwardly.
“I have another client, but give me 15 minutes.” She said.
“Take your time!” I said to her and to her client, so that she didn’t feel rushed. If I were her client, I wouldn’t want my hair cutter to only spend 15 minutes on my hair!

I sat there, waiting patiently, when another customer walked in, looking for my hair cutter. She came over to him, and said, “I’m so sorry, I forgot you had your appointment. It will just be 10 minutes to cut hers,” she said, motioning to me.

At first I thought I should walk out, because I have long hair. Also, I’ve become accustomed to hair cuts where the stylist needs 10 minutes to simply discuss my hair strategy whilst casually berating my use of two-in-one shampoos and hair pins. After shampooing my hair, combing it, and sighing heavily, the snipping begins. After that, there has to be another 20 minutes to show me the benefits of mousse and make my new hair cut look good. It has never been clear to me how long the actual cutting takes, but obviously you have to be a wizard to do all of the above in 10 minutes.

Sure enough, my hair cutter did it. Well, not all of it. She multi-tasked with the snipping, cutting my and inquiring about who else had butchered my hair. And as for the styling, she turned on a blow dryer and waved it at my head for three seconds, but then turned it off as if to say, “Who are we kidding. I’m not going to style your hair.” I was fine with that though.

And that’s the story of my most recent haircut. It’s quite underwhelming.

Yesterday, David and I were discussing schizophrenia. We talked about how if one of us had it, there would have been signs by now. After running through a list of symptoms, we decided we were in the clear. In case you are wondering, yes, this is what we do in our free time. We pick devastating problems and then self-assess*.

This morning at around 4:45am, I was sitting at my computer, typing away, when all of the sudden, I felt a vibration through the home. It was a very bizarre feeling. My first thought was that extra-terrestrial powers had casually passed through. This first thought is not as outlandish as it may seem: earlier that evening, Fox News had covered reports of an unidentified flying object that the government was aware of, but did not want to comment on. If you’re wondering why I was watching Fox News in the first place, I’ll tell you: The Daily Show was on repeat, and I figured I would just cut out the middle man for my laughs.

Anyway, I quickly decided that I would not share my theory about the extra-terrestrials passing through because it would undermine all the progress we had made just a few hours earlier determining that neither of us had schizophrenia**. I decided to pretend nothing had happened and the house was just shifting, as houses are wont to do.

Long post short, I breathed a sigh of relief at 11am when Connor emailed asking if we had felt the earthquake. An earthquake!

*This is not what we do in our free time.
**Or make me sound like a crazy person.