Awe-Inspiring Revelations from Chicago Architecture

I begin with a confession: I’m no expert on architecture.  I have studied it only briefly while taking an advanced art-history class in high school. I was so inspired by the architecture I saw when visiting Chicago on a recent road trip with my sister, though, that I felt compelled to write about it.

In case you’re wondering, I did take a couple of pictures while in the city.  (Actually I took more than a 150 shots in the city, so maybe that goes beyond what most people mean when they say “a couple.”) Even with all those pictures, I still don’t believe I did justice to the city’s architecture. Much of the charm of good architecture comes from a building’s pleasing relationships to its surrounding space, relationships that are best discovered by moving around and through that space.  This kind of thing is hard to capture in a two-dimensional image.

Still, I’ll include some of my shots throughout this post to give you some context, and I hope, a faint impression of my admiration for the city.  To see more of the pictures from my road trip, you can check out my road-trip flickr set.

I haven’t visited a city that has so much architectural variation, elegance, and inventiveness from one block to another. There are great buildings in almost every major city in the world, certainly.  In Chicago, though, all you have to do is walk a few feet in one direction to discover more magnificent buildings derived from entirely different architectural styles.  It’s astonishing.

Being astonished, I was curious to learn more about the men and women who commissioned the buildings I admired.  After all, it seemed like a reasonable exchange for the visual splendor I was provided.  How peculiar that those people, and the companies they represent, earned my interest without a single we-are-awesome billboard or a generic, corporate poster (the kind that is intended to inspire but destined to deflate).

By constructing buildings whose aesthetic appeal is hard to measure in terms of profitability, these architectural patrons subtly persuade me that they have good taste and care about more than just easy-to-measure metrics that affect profitability.  In response, my admiration grows.

Do you think, oh diligent bean-counter, that this growth of admiration might increase the chances that I’ll do business with the company in question? I think so.  That kind of influence is hard to measure, I will grant you that, but that doesn’t make it less valuable than the factors that are easier to track.

I’m not getting paid to write this post by the city of Chicago.  Nor am I trying to gain favor with any architect friends or even with the world-famous Rod Blagojevich. I am writing out of admiration and a desire to share that admiration with you.  That’s what happens when you do extraordinary things, when you aren’t being corporate: Others will speak fondly of you and the things you offer even without having strong incentives for doing so.  But if everything you do is about only expanding the bottom line, then don’t expect others to talk about you unless you somehow affect their own bottom line.

For various reasons, people in Chicago chose to produce awe-inspiring buildings and civic spaces.  Out of appreciation for their efforts, but without being prompted to do so, I wrote this post.  If my words make you curious about Chicago, then maybe you’ll plan a visit in the near future.  Maybe you’ll become more curious about the city, but you won’t go for another 10 years.

Perhaps you won’t ever visit, but you’ll mention the city in a positive way to someone else who will visit, in part because of your comments.  There are lots of positive possibilities that could stem from an initial decision to build a magnificent building, many of them involve cold hard cash, but good luck measuring that stuff.

Now let’s get back to the architecture.  Essentially, you can reduce even the most complex of buildings to an arrangement of simple shapes that are repeated or varied across an enclosed space, but this simplification fails to capture the magic of those special buildings that make us marvel.

In my mind, great architecture is a reminder from God of the potential greatness in each of us. Great buildings grab us by the lapels and dare us to believe that we too are like them, not cheap and disposable things as the sometimes petty and demoralizing moments in our lives might suggest.  Rather, we are individuals with a potential to do substantial and resonating things.

Could you work at a building like the Wrigley Building and do less than your best, without feeling that you have somehow shamed the building you inhabit?  I could not.  For some reason, cookie-cut-out cubicle farms do not have that same effect on me.

Here’s another thing I admire about great architecture: The success of a building depends in part on how well it serves the needs of the people who use it. A building that prevents the workers it encloses from doing their jobs properly is not a building whose design is worth celebrating.  The same is true about a house whose design is so chaotic and impractical that it incubates frustration in its inhabitants.

More so than other art forms, the architecture that seeks acclaim must balance the poetic ideals of its creator with the needs of the people for whom it was created.  Architects who ignore these considerations will see their buildings scorned and eventually demolished.  If you are a narcissist who cares only about your own magnificence, no matter how distasteful or harmful it may be to others, you will have a better chance of having your work canonized by producing vulgar paintings or pretentious films.

Chicago’s architecture helped to solidify my belief that the value of any art, whether architecture, painting, performance, sculpture, music or film is determined by how it affects other people.  An artist can have the grandest ideas in the world about his art, but if his work doesn’t broadcast his ideas or his heart to others in some way, then his art is significant only in his mind.

Producing great architecture is expensive, I know.  Not everyone can afford to produce buildings that go beyond functional concerns.  Still, you don’t have to use architecture or lots of money to do what I’m describing. Just create something special for others that doesn’t exist merely to generate more money or status for you. (It doesn’t cost anything to take down ugly posters of bar-graphs and factory-assembled quotes!)At the Art Institute of Chicago I saw an art piece that I would have easily dismissed in the past.  It featured a pattern projected onto a wall that would change as you move in front of the projector.  Two youthful guests of the museum were dancing around together at this exhibit to see what kinds of bizarre patterns they could create.  A few others had gathered around to watch, and the couple’s playfulness was contagious enough to make some spectators smile. 

That’s when I realized that the value of the exhibit was not in it’s technical accomplishment but in its ability to encourage playfulness and bring people together. Kind of neat.  Here’s another example of that kind of thing: In the evenings at the beginning every hour, the water in the Buckingham Fountain, located in the heart of Chicago’s Millennium Park, becomes a colorful spectacle accompanied by music from the nearby speakers.  (Chicago doesn’t charge you a dime to see this or its beautifully illuminated cityscape.)

I mentioned bean-counters in the beginning of this post, and now I’m going to use a bean to end this thing.  (It’s my attempt to go organic. I care about the earth. I do.)  Actually I’m talking about the Cloud Gate sculpture, also in Millennium Park, that bears a striking resemblance to a gigantic silver bean.

When I first heard that this was one of the most popular landmarks in the city, I concluded with dismay that this was another example of a modern trinket triumphing over a timeless masterpiece.  Still, I was curious enough to pay “The Bean” a visit.

Then I understood: it was a gigantic bean-like sculpture that also happened to be highly reflective. That means all those who approach it will see curvy and sometimes distorted reflections of themselves.  It’s sort of like taking those crazy mirrors in fun houses, making them a hundred times bigger, and turning the exhibit into a communal experience.

My former scorn now abolished, I could not resist the urge to set aside temporarily my sense of (pseudo) sophistication to join my fellow Bean enthusiasts in taking a picture of my reflection.  And so, I was a little happier that day.  Without worrying about how it will benefit you, dare to create something that has a similar effect on others, and you too can make the world less corporate.

Peculiarly Uncommon Thoughts on Twitter and Celebrities

I once assured myself that I would never write about Twitter.  Everyone these days has already written about the subject, especially all the social-media marketers out there, and I’m not a jump-on-the-bandwagon kind of guy.  Still, I spend a bit of time thinking about authenticity, transparency, and celebrity so this post was bound to happen.  

Before commenting on how celebrities use Twitter, I want to explain how I use it, and why I have a love-hate relationship with celebrities.  (It relates, I promise.)  For one thing, Twitter offers a chance to share my thoughts and feelings with the world and to meet interesting people from different backgrounds, and by different backgrounds I mean more than just different types of social-media marketers.  Those folks are useful in some cases, but I follow enough of them already.  I’m more interested in meeting honest and talented people who do unique things and have captivating ways of seeing the world.  I don’t care so much about people trying to sell me things, but I do care about people, when I’m not fighting off my own inner demons, and I am curious to learn how my fellow humans navigate through this strange, but miraculous, journey of life.  

At its best, I also see Twitter as a way of counter-acting a profit-worshipping, depersonalized culture of buracracy and venality.  The casual nature of this simple-to-use online service encourages honest disclosure.  Go ahead and criticize Twitter for encouraging an ethos of oversharing, but at least people on Twitter are less likely to proclaim that everything about themselves and their world is great.  In real world conversations, people are tragically far less honest.  Don’t believe me?  Go ask a few random strangers on the street or even acquaintences how they’re doing.  Did any of them, perchance, mention that they were doing fine or doing great?  What a surprise that is, right? 

(I despise the kind of self-congralatory marketing that some individuals and companies use in a delusional attempt to persuade the world that everything really is great all the time.  It goes something like this, "I’m unconditionally awesome right now just like I’ve always been, and I’m going to continue to be more and more awesome each year."  Not to rain on your parade, but your ability to produce profits that just go up and up into infinity is somewhat impeded by the reality of your eventual death.  Sorry.)  

To continue with our experiment, go find a few random people on Twitter and pay attention to how they answer the previously mentioned, now implied, question.  I would be willing to bet good money that there are more compelling, more transparent responses from the Twitter crowd. There’s something special, almost magical, about being part of a community that is fueled by honest discourse.  To benefit from that transparency while withholding it from the group is a form of resistance, a selfish action that makes it a little harder for the community’s ideals to prevail.  

I embrace that sense of transparency that comes with Twitter while recognizing the risk it brings.  If I am too honest, I might convince some people that I’m an idiot or a jerk.  Maybe they won’t hire me or maybe they’ll use my words against me as a result.  But, I’m willing to face those risks because being transparent forces me to live a life worth sharing.  I acknowledge dark spots in my life on Twitter to be honest about who I am and to bring those dark spots into the light.  You see, I care more about becoming whole than about gaining market share, although there is nothing wrong with gaining market share if done in an honest and excellent way.  If you think that’s a foolish outlook, then by all means avoid doing business with me.  I don’t sell to everyone, and we’ll both be happier if you take your business elsewhere.

I’ve said my share of dumb things on Twitter, but I’ve made a point of not deleting those tweets.  (I have deleted one or two of the more impulsive and grammatically incorrect ones, but I haven’t done that for a few weeks.) I’d rather let you get a glimpse of what I’m really like than to make you think that I’m more noble than I am.  Again, at stake is the correcting influence of transparency, and if I’m going to embrace that idea then I should walk the walk.

Onward we go to discuss celebrities. I know, I buried the lead.  It was on purpose: honesty not fame is the foundation from which I hope to build the ideas that follow.  

Like almost everyone else, I admire people who are excellent at what they do.  I’m astonished by George Lucas’s cinematic wizardry, Tiger Wood’s concentration, Nicole Kidman’s elegance, Michael Phelp’s dedication, Oprah’s graciousness, Steve Job’s vision, Tom Wolfe’s depth, Tim Burton’s style, Brittany Snow’s sincerity and so on.  Even the celebrities who are famous for being famous tend to have some enigmatic quality tat captivates our collective attention, and yet the selfishness and baseness of some celebrities does much to screw up the world.  

(The next paragraph that follows may seem abrasive, but please trust me through it.  I need to make an important point, and I don’t know how else to do it.)  Have you ever reduced, in your mind, a celebrity to the status of a stupid skank who exists only to corrupt and to earn more money for powerful, amoral mult-national corporations?  I have … but, when I remember that we are created in the image of God, I can’t continue to maintain that thought.  Even the celebrities I am tempted to despise are loved b God, even they have something special to contribute.  

Now that I think about it, I’ve done my sare of thoughtless and skank-like things, and usually it was because I was hurting and I didn’t know how to better resolve the pain.  Maybe then I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, right? Same goes for you too.

From that perspective, it’s harder to see even the seemingly shallow celebrities as completely useless human beings.  They may be tragic examples of spoiled potential, but they are still children of God, and so they still matter by definition.  

I suspect that the angels and demons fight harder for the souls of celebrities since they are blessed with their awe-inspiring gifts.  

I suspect that the angels and demons fight harder for celebrities since they are blessed with the awe-inspiring gifts that they have. 

  

 

I once assured myself that I would never write about Twitter.  Everyone these days has already written about the subject, especially all the social-media marketers out there, and I’m not a jump-on-the-bandwagon kind of guy.  Still, I spend a bit of time thinking about authenticity, transparency, and celebrity so this post was bound to happen.  

"Illusion" from flickr.com/demisone

 

Before commenting on how celebrities use Twitter, I want to explain how I use it, and why I have a love-hate relationship with celebrities.  (It relates, I promise.)  

On Twitter, I’m interested in meeting honest and talented people who do unique things and have captivating ways of seeing the world.   When I’m not fighting off my own inner demons, I do care more about people than about selling stuff, and I am curious to learn how my fellow humans navigate through this strange, but miraculous, journey of life.  

At its best, I also see Twitter as a way of counteracting a depersonalized culture of profit-worshipping and dishonesty.  The casual nature of Twitter’s simple-to-use online service encourages honest disclosure.  Go ahead and criticize Twitter for encouraging an ethos of oversharing, but at least people on Twitter are less likely to proclaim that everything about themselves and their world is great.  

In real world conversations, people are tragically less honest.  Don’t believe me?  Go ask a few random strangers on the street or even a few acquaintances how they’re doing.  Did any of them, perchance, mention that they were doing fine or doing great?  What a surprise that is, right? 

In case you didn’t realize it by now, I despise the kind of self-congratulatory marketing that others use to persuade the world that everything really is great all the time.  It goes something like this, “I’m unconditionally awesome right now just like I’ve always been, and I’m going to continue to be more and more awesome each year.”  Not to rain on your parade, but your ability to produce profit that goes to infinity and beyond is somewhat impeded by the reality of your eventual death.  Sorry.

"nopants spectrum" from flickr.com/kenyee

 

To continue with our experiment, go find a few random people on Twitter and pay attention to how they answer the previously mentioned, now implied, question.  I would be willing to bet good money that there are more compelling, more transparent responses from the Twitter crowd.

There’s something almost magical about being part of a community that is fueled by honest discourse.   That’s why I’m compelling to protest against the people who use Twitter only to sell things.  To benefit from that transparency while withholding it from the group is a form of resistance, a selfish action that makes it a little harder for the community’s ideals to prevail.  

I embrace that sense of transparency that comes with Twitter while recognizing the risk it brings.  If I am too honest, I might convince some people that I’m an idiot or a jerk.  Maybe they won’t hire me or maybe they’ll use my words against me as a result.  But, I’m willing to face those risks because being transparent forces me to live a life worth sharing.  

I acknowledge dark spots in my life on Twitter to be honest about who I am and to bring those dark spots into the light.  In addition to that, I’ve made a choice not to delete tweets just because I regret writing them.  That way it is easier for you to see what I’m really like. 

You see, I care more about becoming whole than about gaining market share, although there is nothing wrong with gaining market share if done in an honest and excellent way.  If you think that’s a foolish outlook, then by all means avoid doing business with me.  I don’t sell to everyone, and we’ll both be happier if you take your money elsewhere.

Onward we go to discuss celebrities. I know, I buried the lead.  It was on purpose: honesty, not fame, is the foundation from which I hope to build the ideas that follow.  

Like almost everyone else, I admire people who are excellent at what they do. I’m astonished by George Lucas’s cinematic wizardry, Tiger Wood’s concentration, Nicole Kidman’s elegance, Michael Phelp’s dedication, Oprah’s graciousness, Steve Job’s vision, Tom Wolfe’s depth, Tim Burton’s style, Brittany Snow’s sincerity and so on.  Even the celebrities who are famous for being famous tend to have some enigmatic quality that captivates our collective attention, and yet the selfishness and dishonesty of some celebrities does much to screw up the world.  

"Tiki Alien" from flickr.com/pete4ducks

 

(This paragraph may seem abrasive, but please trust me through it.  I need to make an important point, and I don’t know how else to do it.)  Have you ever reduced, in your mind, a celebrity to the status of a stupid skank who exists only to corrupt and to earn more money for powerful, amoral multi-national corporations?  I have … but, when I remember that we are all created in the image of God, I can’t continue to maintain that thought.  Even the celebrities I am tempted to despise are loved by God, even they have something special to contribute.  

Now that I think about it, I’ve done my share of thoughtless and skank-like things, and usually that was when I was hurting and didn’t know how to better resolve the pain.  Maybe then I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, right? Same goes for you too. 

From that perspective, it’s harder to see even the seemingly shallow celebrities as completely useless human beings.  They may be tragic examples of spoiled potential, but they are still children of God, and so they still matter by definition.  Besides, I suspect that the angels and demons fight harder for celebrities since they are blessed with the awe-inspiring gifts that they have.  

Let me give an example to explain what I mean: I know that I’m ultimately responsible for the decisions I make, but films with strong moral centers have influenced me to do good after I saw them.  On the other hand, I’ve done reprehensible things while under the influence of values-deficient films.  I know I’m not the only one who has even been influenced by what he’s seen, heard or read, because if that were true, companies wouldn’t spend millions of dollars on advertising.  

The shiny, illustrious people we call celebrities have a similar influence, for good or evil, since they are similarly larger than life and also have access to our collective attention.   They can use that attention for good–to inspire us, address problems and point us toward the light–or they can demoralize us and lead us towards decadence and decay.  I talk about this more in my post entitled, How to Avoid Being a Corporate Artist.

I know it’s hard to believe, but celebrities are people too, and being a celebrity is not as easy as it looks.  They have to deal with thousands of people who want their limited attention, time, and money.  Some folks out there want to exploit or humiliate them while others try to seduce them with drugs or sex.  This is why I pray for celebrities on occasion.  (To be fair though, I’ve also thrown curses at some of them.  I do let my anger get the best of me sometimes, but I’m trying to get that right.) 

In any case, our collective future depends in part on the choices that celebrities make.  Their choices matter as much, if not more, than the choices that ordinary folks make, so it’s not a bad idea to care about the celebrities we admire and maybe even for those we don’t.  

With that said, it would be nice if celebrities would also care about their fans, and Twitter is a good way to do that.  Some already do, at least to some extent.  

Hugh McCloud, a cartoonist with wry and insightful observations who writes gapingvoid, follows me on Twitter.  He’s got a new book about creativity coming out in June.  It’s called Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity and it’s already selling well through pre-orders on Amazon.  

Jeff Heusser also follows me on Twitter.  He’s one of the founders of fxphd, one of the preeminent online training programs for visual effects in the world.  

Paul Coelho is the internationally renowned writer who wrote the best seller, The Alchemist.   He’s another guy who is following me on Twitter.  He’s currently promoting his new book about the excesses of celebrity called The Winner Stands Alone, a digression from his more fable-like tales, but a book that I’d still like to read.

I mentioned the products above because they seem interesting and because they are from people who matter to me.  Whose stuff didn’t I promote?  The stuff from people who aren’t following me back on Twitter.  The Gospel of John reminds us that we love God because he first loved us.  In Twitterland that translates into this: I care about you because you first followed me. 

"Man in the mask"ot; from flickr.com/68137880@N00

 

I don’t expect every celebrity to follow me back.  They often have more important things to do, and if they follow everyone they will get flooded by tweets they don’t value.  Fair enough, a celebrity who doesn’t follow me back had better add value with interesting, thoughtful, or amusing commentary.  If the celebrity in question or his staff writers tweets dozens of times a day, my patience for self-indulgent commentary greatly diminishes.  (I tolerate more self-promotion and self-indulgence from those who follow me back, because they can’t be so bad if they are smart, sophisticated, and decent enough to be following me.)  

Speaking of staff writers, it is dishonest to have someone else write tweets on a celebrity’s behalf without disclosing as much. It’s 140 characters or less, people.  How hard is it to write your own 140 characters for your fans?  Why not care enough about the people who help you enjoy the lifestyle that you do by  sharing things to delight them and show your appreciation.  

If you must use assistants to write your posts, then why not disclose as much?  Much as it pains me to admit this, Britney Spears sets a good example in this arena.  On her Twitter page, her tweets are distinguished from those of her managers by attribution lines.  It’s a sad state of affairs when Britney Spears takes the moral high ground that you avoid.  

Since there are a growing number of fake accounts, it is hard to tell the difference between what is a real account and what isn’t.  Sometimes these fake accounts are created by over-zealous fans who should have better things to do.  Other times, I suspect the devils who try to control celebrities perpetuate lies so that their celebrities can be everything to everyone.  For example, you could have one celebrity account geared to the Goths and one to the soccer moms.  By keeping the accounts ambiguous in nature, you can encourage others to believe that the fake niche account they found is really the celebrity in question.  And market share goes up and up!

"Budwing Feeds" from flickr.com/destinysagent/

 

 

Yet the more market share you gain in this dishonest way, the greater the risk that you turn yourself into a soulless product.  Sounds great, except people don’t care about products; people care about people.  Consumers will devour a product until it is licked dry.  Fans, on the other hand, will go out of their way to help the people they cherish.  Wouldn’t you rather have long-term fans than short-term consumers? Then my dear celebrities, offer honesty and affection to the people who support what you do.  

Fans and celebrities both have a responsibility to treat each other as people, not as products to consume or as numbers to hoard for ego-purposes.  (Yes, Aston Kutcher I’m talking to you.)  To do otherwise is to perpetuate foul one-sided relationships that lead only in death.  There are bigger things in this world than just your ego, your lust, or your profit-margins, so don’t be the jackass who ruins them with your selfishness.  

"String of hearts" from flickr.com/aussiegall

 

 

I close with a hypothetical.  What if certain people really are meant for each other, meant to collaborate, support or love each other, and together they could go on to do greater things than they could apart?  Wouldn’t that make life a little more magical?  But what if corporate, build-up-the-numbers thinking distorted the truth and prevented these destined pairs from harmonizing?  Wouldn’t that be a lamentable if these people never go on to fulfill their grander purposes together?  It could come in the form of celebrities who never inspire and get inspired by their fans, friends who never meet, or star-crossed lovers whose love never takes root.  

Whatever the case may be, it’s a tragedy, but it is a tragedy we can avoid if we aim for excellence with the honesty and love that heaven puts in our hearts.  That’s not a bad way to make the world less corporate, don’t you think?

Walt Disney, the Illusion of Life, & Being Less Corporate

Walt Disney films are largely responsible for my interest in making movies. I’m not afraid to admit that.  I couldn’t say that in college.  I was too preoccupied with what  my classmates and professors thought of me.  Back then I was more likely to talk about Citizen Kane and Stanley Kubrick films.  Those are masterfully crafted movies, sure, but they had practically zero influence on my aspirations. Not so with Walt Disney’s creations, but in my effort to matter to the world I had forgotten that.

It’s taken me a while, but I have slowly returned to the things that I loved for their own sake and not based on what other people said.  Reading The Illusion of Life, a marvellous book about the story of Disney animation lovingly told by two early Disney animators, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, helped me to restore my unashamed enthusiasm for many of the Disney animated films I grew up with as a kid.

The first film I remember seeing in the theater was Snow White.  Pinocchio was the first film that compelled me to stay up late and ponder its mysteries, in this case I was trying to figure out what it would feel like to get transformed into a jackass.  (A few years later, I would understand the jackass thing all too well, unfortunately. I’m working on getting things right these days, but it’s a process.)

During the holidays, going to a Walt Disney film became a tradition for my family.  It was a time when we’d stop fighting with each other and informally agree to be temporarily harmonious.  It was a nice time.  But moving on, my  interest in computer animation too was colored by my exposure to the Pixar films that Disney distributed.

Not everyone in my world had a similar admiration of Walt Disney. My college professors carefully avoided any reference to Disney’s influence on cinema history, although the man pioneered new techniques for working with sound and color and had won twenty-six Oscars before he died.  (For all you film kids doing the math at home, that’s a few more than the nine Oscars that Stanley Kubrick’s films won.)  It is also worth pointing out that while Hollywood was still years away from conceiving of the effects film, Walt Disney gave the world Snow White, the first movie in which every single frame featured a created effect.

One of the books I had to read in college was Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard.  He wrote several long and loveless paragraphs about how Disneyland was the ultimate example of our false and simulated existence.

Baudrillard’s book was a joyless thing, perfumed with important-sounding philosophical concepts. I don’t remember much from the book beyond an impression that Baudrillard wanted to convince me that he was smart and very well read, and that his work  anticipated the Matrix films (films that I enjoy much more than Baudrillard’s book).

For comparison, let’s look at how  The Illusion of Life discusses Disney’s accomplishments. In the book, Walt is quoted as saying “I am interested in entertaining people, in bringing pleasure, particularly laughter, to others, rather than being concerned with expressing myself with obscure creative impressions.” Did you notice the emphasis on serving others rather in that quote?

That’s a lesson that the book’s writers, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, absorbed well.  Consider their advice to aspiring entertainers: “The ancient counsel ‘Know thyself’ is full of wisdom, but, for the entertainer, it is possibly just as wise to suggest, ‘Know your audience.’

photo from flickr.com/expressmonorail

What a contrast with Baudrillard’s style that is.   Disney’s work has brought a sense of joy and wonder to millions of people around the world.  Jean Baudrillard has filled the minds of philosophy students with intellectual contempt and a sense of superiority over the uninformed.

I know that the Walt Disney Company is a very powerful multi-national corporation, and I don’t celebrate everything that the company does, but I’m talking about the man who started it all, the man who lived up to his well-known quote: “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”  I tend to root for the philosophers, but in this case Baudrillard comes off as the more banal and  corporate one.

To delight in a thing for the sake of the thing itself and not for the potential profit it brings is an essential aspect of being less corporate. If you can’t tell that the writers of The Illusion of Life created the book out of a deep, delighted love  for animation and for Walt Disney, then you probably can’t recognize love when you see it.  There’s the cover that transitions gracefully from black and white to color, the textured yellow paper that greets you when you open the book, the full-page color stills that appear in the first few pages, and the playful, yet thorough, prose.

All of these things are clues that this is a book that cares very much about getting the details right.  The book has 489 colored prints, thousands of black-and-white drawings, and it was printed in Italy; that’s definitely not the way to produce a book if you care only about maximizing your profits and keeping costs low.

On top of that, there are several flip-book sequences on the top-right corners of the pages that beg for your attention.  I would have still bought the book without that feature, a feature that must have taken a bit of time to sync up, but how magnificent to discover one more extra that Frank and Ollie threw in for us.

photo from flickr.com/expressmonorail

The animator-writers of the book speak fondly of Walt most of the time, and they dedicated the book to him, so obviously they liked the guy.  But, they don’t give him the idealized  hero treatment that I’ve seen the Walt Disney Company do on occasion.  Instead, the writers give us examples of when Walt was abrasive, difficult to please, and even wounding.

Look at how they critique a bonus system that Walt tried at one point: “The bonus system did not produce better pictures or even good ones.  Few regulations do.  Efficiency is better built through dedication rather than speed for its sake.”  How refreshing that they were not afraid to discuss the strengths and the weaknesses of their boss and the man they admired.

Since Frank and Ollie are honest about Disney’s flaws, we are more likely to believe them when they sing Disney’s praises, and sing they do.  They talk about Walt’s incessant curiosity and his high standards.

Walt Disney didn’t fall into the corporate trap of  resisting change merely to do things like they’ve always been done, and his drive to innovate wasn’t limited to technology.  For example, he didn’t hesitate to hire women for his ink and paint department, even though it was accepted knowledge  at the time that only men could do the job effectively.

Nor was Disney afraid of failure. Apparently, he wanted to be a live-action director when he first came to California, but that didn’t work out so well.  Instead of giving up, Disney returned to animation and worked hard to produce Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons.

But, thanks to strong-arm negotiation tactics by Charles Mintz, a producer working for Universal, Disney was soon locked out of the very cartoon he helped to create.  On top of that, most of his workforce was signed away from him.  Disney had every reason to get bitter, but instead he stayed focused and created a character known as Mickey Mouse.

photo from flickr.com/expressmonorail

Frank and Ollie also talk about the spirit of cooperation that Disney encouraged. Everyone was expected to share knowledge and to help those who were struggling on a concept.  They quote Disney as saying, “Everyone has to contribute or they become laborers,” and they give a few examples of Walt’s determination to find the right job that best suited the strengths of his people.  The assumptions that everyone matters and that everyone has distinct skills are seemingly obvious, but they are still ignored in more corporate environments.

Since Disney animators helped to define the craft of animation, Frank and Ollie could have thrown around corporate phrases like “proprietary information” and “intellectual property” when discussing their animation processes.  Instead, out of a desire to see their beloved field of animation advance, they broke down their technique into twelve distinct principles that are thoroughly illustrated with one example after another.  Those twelve principles are now the cornerstones of all the animation training programs that I’ve seen.

By giving information away and trying to be helpful, Frank and Ollie earned for Disney the loyalty of thousands of animation students who succeeded by studying their work.  Too bad more companies aren’t as generous with their resources these days, since their businesses could benefit greatly if they did. It’s the curse of the all too-powerful legal departments and of the frivolous lawsuits that make such departments necessary, I suspect.

While discussing the craft of animation Frank and Ollie write, “The animator should be as surprised as anyone at the way it comes out.”  Exactly right, but that should be true for any work that isn’t corporate in nature.

You can do all the planning in the world, but you’ll never know all the conditions and the particulars that might come up until you dive into the thing.  When you react to changes in the moment, your work has vitality.  Otherwise it is a representation of a preconceived idea that grown distant from reality.

Think of the last corporate event you attended.  Were you surprised at all when the wacky speaker made lame, self-aggrandizing jokes and then talked about how the numbers  for that quarter were great news for the company, regardless of what the numbers actually looked like? That kind of speech is bad because it stays the same regardless of what happens in the world or with the audience.

Anything with vitality, whether a service, product, or person, has to be surprising at least in some sense, by definition. Otherwise, let us call the thing in question dead or corporate.

photo from flickr.com/expressmonorail

I will end with two more  quotes from the book.  ”Our true personalities are best revealed by our reactions to change we did not expect.”  Not bad insight from men who make cartoons, don’t you think?

Toward the end of the book, Frank and Ollie throw in a quote from William Faulkner.  Faulker explains that it is a writer’s “privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.” At that point, Frank and Ollie add that “even the cartoon can try for such ideals.”

If animators aim for such lofty ideals, maybe it’s not asking too much for you to reconsider the merit of animation in general and Walt Disney in particular.  Or, you could go back to reading Pretentious Quarterly and producing and endorsing things that bring more despair and decadence into the world, but don’t expect me to applaud you for that.  I’ll be too busy celebrating the things that make me smile and keep me hopeful.

On the Wondrous Madness and Merits of Confronting Failure

The possibility of writing about some subjects is exciting enough to keep me motivated until the end of thing.  Failure is not one of those subjects.  I did not want to write this post, but the universe, or perhaps its God, would not let me forget about it. 

From past experience, I’ve learned that it is best not to fight these things.  In Vegas, the odds favor the dealer; in the cosmos the odds favor the guiding will of Providence, whether you like it or not.  I don’t always like it, but it is presumptuous of me, is it not, to assume that the universe should unfold exactly as I expect.

Yes, there is more metaphysical talk ahead.  Consider yourself warned.  In case you haven’t figured this out by now, I don’t write for everyone, and perhaps you would be better served by watching Entertainment Tonight or by reading Seven Secret Steps Toward Infinite Profitability or something along those lines.  You could always just read another article on the amazing marketing potential of Twitter, if you prefer.  

For those of you still around, thank you for staying. Now onward to more metaphysics.  I am not one of those people who proclaims that success or failure is entirely up to fate.  Our future is in many ways what we make it, and yet the turtle can work as hard he wishes, he can watch all the inspirational videos in the world, and read all the textbooks, but he will never fly with the same gracefulness of an eagle.  Like our friend the turtle, we cannot necessarily become anything we want to be, but we can live up to or fall short of the potential we’ve been given. In other words, fate and free will both have a hand in our successes and failures.  

"Faded glory" from flickr.com/jamesjordan

 Let me elaborate.  Sometimes repeated failure can be a good clue that tells us to put our energies elsewhere.  In other cases, it’s just a sign that we aren’t trying hard enough.  Fail enough times at something and you’ll discover that it can be tricky to distinguish between these two categories.   When you get to that point, maybe it’ll help if you take note of the circumstances that have or have not worked out in your favor.  

Have you ever gotten assistance in your endeavors, where something worked out unexpectedly at just the right moment?  That could be God whispering in your ear to persevere.  On the other hand if the doors you keep fighting to open swing shut with uncanny consistency, perhaps you should rethink your endeavors.  Or maybe not.  You have to make that call for yourself.  

The idea for this post first came when I saw this commercial from Honda about failing.  I was intrigued that a car company took such a strong position on the subject. The Honda employees being interviewed not only mentioned specific failures that Honda experienced, but they also gave fairly recent examples, as late as 1994.  It’s a bold move; someone could say to themselves, well if Honda made engines that had problems at one point, then I don’t want to buy from them ever again.  But, that person would be a fool. 

Everyone who does anything worth doing makes mistakes at some point, so wouldn’t you rather buy from a company that publicly acknowledges those mistakes and then works to correct them?  I would.  But all too often our success-worshipping world strives to sanitize failure out of our awareness. That’s one reason why it’s politically more appealing to shield others from the consequences of their failures.  Unfortunately, that kind of thing just keeps the AIG fat cats of the world healthy enough to be rapacious.  

In our haste to protect others from tragedy we sometimes forget that allowing others to confront their own failures can be the most considerate course of action. Enough unsheltered failure can cause others to re-evaluate their pursuits and to redirect their energies toward areas where they can better succeed.

Not sold on failure yet? Well here’s something else to consider: A free society is one in which its citizens can openly discuss the perceived failures of themselves and their leaders.  It is by no means historically inevitable that a person can choose the kind of work that he or she does. With the freedom to choose your work comes the freedom to evaluate whether your occupation provides the best rewards for your abilities and whether you’ve fully developed those abilities.  Slaves do not have the luxury of considering such things.  

"oasis" from flickr.com/photos/jonnelson

Do you think that former President Bush was an unconditional failure? (I don’t.) Because we are still a free people in the United States, you can, if you wish, declare that he was the world’s biggest failure and a Nazi,  and you could do so in the most juvenile way imaginable without fearing for your life.   How odd that the citizens of Nazi Germany did not have such freedoms. But since we’re speaking of dictators, when was the last time you heard Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chávez talk about the failures of their countries?  It’s been a while, I think.  In comparison, both President Bush and President Obama have, in the past few months, acknowledged that their country and even their respective administrations could have made better decisions about some things. 

All of these points that I’ve made about failure are not the reasons I was dreading this subject.  Here’s the thing, the topic of failure actually hits a little too close to home.  As I write, a short video project I’ve been developing for a few weeks now stands a good chance of crumbling into nothingness, due to factors outside of my control.  If that happens then the project will become one more resident in the expanding graveyard of my unsuccessful endeavors.  

I recall those failed creative projects and think, “I had such high hopes for that little guy, and I saw so much of myself in you, and you, you had so much potential that I’d smile when thinking of you.”  I imagine that’s not too different from what parents feel when they lose a child prematurely.  And yet, I am determined to persevere through another failure if a failure it becomes.  I must.  It’s already hard enough to keep my self-destructive tendencies in check, and giving up on my creative aspirations would only fuel the flames.  

My work is not the only aspect of my life where failure resonates.  Too many of my relationships have whithered away in a similar manner.  You see, I’m not easy person to get to know. I long for deep, meaningful relationships and a sense of community, and yet I do everything I can to keep people at a comfortable distance.  Shallow jokes are good for that sort of thing.  So too are metaphysical rhetoric and political commentary.

For those of you keeping score, I used all those tricks in this post.  It was the only way I could persuade myself to write this.  I take comfort in knowing that most readers will not get this far.  But the possibility that even a few of you will read this is a little unnerving. How can I possibly keep a safe distance now that I’ve revealed so many of my secrets?    

 

"A gift of golden light" from flickr.com/photosan0

There is the beauty of it, though.  As transparency grows, it becomes harder to avoid the difficult subjects, the very things that stand in the way of real progress.  For me, less wiggle room might mean that I eventually learn to form more sincere, more radiant relationships as I move closer to wholeness.  But to play the devil’s advocate for a moment, because even the devil should have his day in court, there is also the possibility that such openness could leave me vulnerable to more heartache, the very thing that could drive me to despair and toward a purposeless, dissolute life governed by booze and whores.  I do not favor such an outcome, but I don’t think it is an entirely impossible scenario.  

That kind of life would be the ultimate failure, and I want to do what I can to defend myself against it.  It helps when I can find God’s presence in the quiet beauty of the moment.  In those all too rare moments, I discover a sense of harmony and purpose that has been otherwise absent from my life.  It is a kind of self-correcting presence; In those moments, I do what I should just because of that presence reaching out through time with love.  And yet, most of the time that presence is hard for me to see. My perception is distorted by the ugly stains of lust, anger, and anguish in me and by the stupid, banal and vicious aspects of our material world.  

My dad helped to shape one of the more contorted stains.  We got mad at each other for some inconsequential reason that I can’t even remember, and in a moment of anger he called me a failure. He did not mean that had I failed at a recent endeavor but that failure was a defining quality of who I was. The words did not sting as much as the raw honesty they conveyed.  We were celebrating my birthday that day, and he told me that right before we were going to bring out the cake.  Nice timing Dad.  My response was to tell him that he was going to die soon, and that I wouldn’t cry at his funeral. 

He didn’t live to see my next birthday. He died two years ago from this week.   I did cry, but at the funeral, I was more restrained.  Still I did cry even then, in spite of what I told him.  We had talked a few more times after that big argument, but he never convinced me that he didn’t mean what he said, even though he apologized, as did I.  

His words haunted me for a while.  Last year, around this time, I did something I’m now ashamed of doing, partly out of anger at him, at the world, and at God, mostly at God.  At that point in my life, though, I was willing to do anything to prove to myself and to him that I wasn’t a failure, even if that meant doing something self-destructive.  That’s what a sense of failure can do if you don’t confront it.  

"Marsden" from flickr.com/sovietuk

I have (mostly) forgiven my Dad for what he said.  I’ve said my share of hurtful things too, and he was a well-intentioned, but not an entirely good man, who dedicated his life to helping others battle cancer.  That’s admirable enough.  As is often the case with me, he did not intend the harm that he caused, and he said what he did  in part because he couldn’t quite come to terms with his own personal frustrations.  

I could never have written this last year, but God is good (at least that’s what I believe most of the time). He’s brought me little moments that helped to get me to this point.  Here’s an example:on Monday afternoon, when I first started writing this post, I discovered that the May 2009 edition of Reader’s Digest had arrived in the mailbox.   It featured a story about several people who bouncing back from failure in an inspiring way.  One of the people profiled was a lady in Norfolk, Virginia who failed to save someone’s life in the past, but that experience helped her save someone’s life a few years later.  

The naval base in Norfolk, Virginia was the reason my family first came to Virginia, so the story about the Norfolk lady had a special significance to me.  I’ll be honest, I thought about deleting this post a few times, but the Reader’s Digest story was one of the reasons that I didn’t.  It made me think that maybe one day something good could also come from my devastating failures and heartaches.  Wishful thinking perhaps, but it made an impact at the time.  

It’s an interesting coincidence that the magazine would come on the day that I was preparing to write this and that it would have a moving story from a lady in Norfolk and that  I unintentionally ended up writing this post on the week of my Dad’s death.  As it turns out, tomorrow is also the first day of Passover, and again that wasn’t something I planned.  Maybe there is some deeper significance to those coincidences, maybe not.  

In any case, it’s encouraging that I am now at a point where I can write about something that was once so hard for me to acknowledge even to myself, namely that I sometimes assume that my value as a person is defined entirely by my professional accomplishments or the lack thereof.   With that kind of thinking, it is tough not to conclude that I don’t matter when my world is overflowing with failure.  But anyone who is loved does matter, and I do believe we are all at least loved by God.  

My faith takes for granted that everyone will fail at some point and that those failures can’t truly be set right without God’s involvement.  That involvement is not always what I expect or want, but it is there, as best as I can tell.

 

"Singapore White" from flickr.com/dinesh_valke

 

I’d like to end this messy, meandering post with a quote that caught my attention from the Reader’s Digest story that I’ve been referencing: “You might never fail on the scale I did.  But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”  The author of the quote: J.K. Rawling.  Here’s to facing failure and to living life with a little less caution.

Happy Passover and Happy Easter everyone!

What Canon ITS Teaches Us about Being Less Corporate

Whether you like it or not, your day job, the things you do to pay the bills, is a big part of who we are. This is not to say that our work defines us.  Quite the contrary in most cases.  We aren’t all fortunate enough to get paid doing what best represents our interests and passions.  And yet, work lets us show the world what we’re like when faced with challenges and with things that we wouldn’t normally do.

Retrophone - from flickr.com/l-ines

During the day, I work for Canon ITS providing phone support to our customers who own digital SLR equipment.  Sometimes I also provide email support for customers who have our camcorders and compact digital cameras.

This is not something I was quick to admit when I first started working for Canon.  You see, I studied to become a creative type in college, and tech support is not the kind of work I had in mind.   But my thoughts on the subject have changed over time.  Even though I don’t want to work at Canon for the rest of my life, I now believe that I’ve been fortunate and blessed to have the job I do.

I’ve learned a lot at Canon, not just about technology but about the value of being focused on serving others.  My interest in design and in improving other people’s user experiences have grown from the service mentality that was instilled in me with Canon.

Writing this post has been in the back of my mind for a while now, but I’ve resisted it.  (That’s one reason why it’s been a while since my last post.)   I was worried that I’d write Styrofoam-like cheerleader prose where I celebrate everything my employer does for the sake of preserving and advancing my career.  And yet, I write about how to make the world less corporate, and there many things that Canon ITS does that aren’t corporate and worth celebrating.  The question was whether I could write about those things in a way that would be both helpful and honest.  I guess we’ll find out.

So what’s not corporate about Canon’s tech support?  For one thing, I don’t get pressured to end my calls within a certain number of minutes. I can spend as much time as necessary to resolve an issue without worrying about getting reprimanded by my supervisors.  Of course, I try to get things resolved as fast as possible, but I don’t have an incentive to end the call prematurely.

Solving problems for others or helping them choose a lens that’s appropriate for their needs is generally an enjoyable thing.  There are always going to be a few jerks who aren’t as rewarding to assist, but they are in the minority.  If no one is waiting in the queue, I will take time to explain more details about our equipment that I think the caller might appreciate.  Not only does this allow me to be potentially more helpful, but it also makes my job far more enjoyable.

Here’s another remarkable thing: Canon works very hard to ensure that most calls coming in are answered in less than a minute.  Sometimes the wait time is longer, especially if you call the day after Christmas with a 14-part question, you lovable Canon enthusiasts you! But, the point is that complicated scheduling and staffing matters are handled by Canon behind the scenes, so that you can have a better, less stressful support experience.  Camera support is free for the life of the camera at Canon, so someone in management could have easily decided to provide bare-bones service to our customers, making short-term profit statistics look better.  But we chose to offer not merely functional but excellent service, a desirable quality from a business perspective but harder to measure in terms of profitability.

It’s been over three years, and I’m still with Canon.  Initially, I was only planning to stay for a year.  The people at Canon are a big part of the reason why I haven’t left. Canon has allowed and encouraged the EOS camera department to develop into a cohesive group.  We know each other well enough to joke around when we aren’t too busy.  That helps the job from getting too stressful, but it also helps us learn what areas of expertise each person has.

This is so much less corporate than a hierarchical approach that requires you to go to your superiors for every bit of unknown information.  Just because someone is higher ranked than you doesn’t mean he or she will know more about the particulars of Wi-Fi networking, or video editing, or lighting, or anything really.

My supervisors have also been exceptional.  They’ve been personable and ready to manage me as an individual with unique strengths and weaknesses.  I was never handled like just another faceless number.  When I made my first mistake in the early months when I was hired, I was expecting to get yelled at.  Instead my supervisor calmly told me that I had to call back the customer and explain the situation.  Not only was I allowed to make a mistake, but I was given the chance to learn from it and then correct it. If my supervisor hadn’t allowed me to fail with dignity, I would have been too hesitant to try things that have led to my current level position.

Brian, one of the senior support managers at Canon ITS has taken time out of his busy schedule to hear my concerns on more than one occasion, and he went out of his way to provide invaluable assistance with a side-project I was developing.  That one thoughtful gesture had more of an impact on me than the thousands of dollars that Canon spends on employee benefits.

When my father died, Canon sent flowers for the funeral.  The Contact Center Director at Canon ITS, Doris,  even stopped by my desk to share some sincere, comforting words.  She offered to do anything she could to help.  (Most of my indie-rocker friends who are contemptuous of businesses in general never even called to see how I was doing.  Does this explain my tendency to mock hipsterista indie-rockers whenever possible? Perhaps.) If Canon had a mentality of only doing things that directly impact profitability, then I wouldn’t have these stories to tell.

"Listen up - in red" from flickr.com/davidtrindade

Some days, it is true, I find that I am overwhelmed by my job, so much so that it is hard for me to be myself.  This is more of a reflection of who I am than what my job is like.  A whole and harmonious person can find a state of grace no matter what he is doing, while radiating himself in a good and elegant way.  I am not that person, not yet.  Sometimes the banal, bewildering moments of the day trick me into believing  that I don’t matter, that the divine spark God put in all of us isn’t there.

You see, every now and then, my job involves dealing with an angry customer who gets abrasive, and even insulting, because his equipment isn’t working the way he wants.  To some extent, I can understand those strong sentiments; many of the photographers we serve have trusted Canon with their entire livelihoods.  That’s a big responsibility. But if I don’t make an extra effort or if I don’t already have a healthy level of respect for myself that goes beyond my work, then I can let their frustrations get to me.

When I define my job as one that involves listening to others complain about their problems, it becomes very difficult for me to be engaged by my work.  But, at some point, I realized that I didn’t have to think about it that way.  I could instead see my work as a chance to help others appreciate photography in the way that I do, to help them take better pictures, and to make their days a little better with friendly, useful information that solves problems.    Just a simple change in how I thought about something, in this case my job, made the world seem far less corporate.

I’m not saying that everything Canon ITS does is perfect or uncorporate.  By my cubicle, a big poster of a bar graph (we’re talking larger than life) with some meaningless abbreviations reminds me of this.  I have wondered about this poster and its intended function for many, many days.  It hasn’t helped me remember any new information, even though it has been up for several months, and it doesn’t inspire me to work harder.  It certainly does not add aesthetic appeal to my environment.

I suspect that the people who commissioned it are people who look at numbers every day.  When the numbers go up, they get a sense of euphoria at  a job well done.  To them, perhaps, a bar graph that goes up and up has wonderfully positive associations, and they wanted to share that feeling with others.  An admirable sentiment, is it not?  Even so, my supervisors would never convince me to work harder by calling my attention to the remarkably large bar graph on the wall.

Let us suppose, though, that the poster represented something I did care about that was also relevant to my job.  For example, what if it was a poster of some Canon photographers that I admired like Thomas Hawk or Vincent Laforet, and my supervisor asked me to work overtime to help provide better service to guys like them. That could very well convince me to give more effort or time than I originally planned.

If you look at Canon’s advertising, it becomes very clear that our marketing department understands the value of tailoring a message to the interests of a particular audience. In National Geographic we run beautifully photographed ads that feature exotic animals with text about their unique qualities and our efforts to preserve them.  In business magazines like Forbes we run advertisements that discuss Canon’s innovative capacities as a global business leader.  In Entertainment Weekly and on popular television shows we run fun, light-hearted ads with the lovely tennis star, Anna Kournikova.  Wouldn’t it make sense to also tailor internal company marketing efforts based on what would be of interest to the  employees? Our polished, informative, and well-produced internal company magazine, Imagine, is an encouraging step in the right direction, but we could do more.

I spend enough time in this blog talking about my own struggles and about the things I need to do better:  being transparent is a good way to motivate change, and the world has too many people who are ready to tell you how unconditionally awesome they are at any given hour.  So, I don’t think it’s inappropriate for me to comment in a respectful manner about how others, even my employer, can improve what they do.  I would not have written this if I did not have an overall admiration for Canon, but I also would not have written this if I felt compelled to write only positive things.   I know there are risks that come with that kind of mentality, but writing honestly is more important to me than job security.

from flickr.com/tomooka

It is only recently that I’ve gotten to the place where I can acknowledge that working at Canon plays a big part in who I’m becoming, more so than the creative freelance projects I do on the side.  My work at Canon doesn’t define me, but what I learn from the experience and how I react to the work, toward both the friendly and frustrating moments that come, will shape the person I someday become.  A bad employer can leave someone more broken when his employment ends, but when I leave Canon I think there’s at least a good chance that I’ll be a stronger, more vibrant individual than when I started working there.  For that, I am sincerely grateful: Thank you Canon for helping to make the world less corporate.

A Commercial that Inspires

I saw this Mastercard commercial when I was watching the Oscars a few days ago.  I haven’t found a better commercial to convey what this blog is about, so I going to adopt it as the unofficial commercial for the nsavides blog.  I hope Mastercard won’t mind.  With that said, take a look:

I love how the commercial associates the little guy’s pursuit of his vision with heavenly imagery.  (Yes, that’s a shining city on a hill where that small business rests.)  Exactly right.  The moment people stop following the herd and start following the inner passions and curiousities of their hearts, they take one step closer to heaven, whether they realize it or not.  

Another great thing about this commercial is that it comes from Mastercard, not exactly a quiet small-business kind of company.  You see, everyone can appreciate a more personal, less corporate world even a big corporation like Mastercard.  As far as I’m concerned, the size of an organization doesn’t determine whether it is a corporate one.  The way it treats  its customers and its employees does.  

Treat people right, and they’ll remember you.  This commercial makes me smile, and that helps me remember the Mastercard in my wallet when I’m contemplating a purchase.  Even so, to claim that a commercial only exists to sell stuff is corporate thinking.  A good commercial has intrinisic value in the way it inspires, amuses, or provokes its viewers.

Mastercard didn’t have to go the extra mile with beautifully rendered, playful animation.  For much less time and money, they could have hired an obnoxious announcer to tell you to use your Mastercard and use it now.  But they didn’t.  They cared enough to give you something special, something you might enjoy.  

You are free to reward them for their thoughtness by using your Mastercard more often, but you aren’t obligated to do so.  You could enjoy the commercial and then go back to using your Visa card, since there is no prequisite needed to watch it.

When people, businesses, and organizations do thoughtful and excellent things for their community that come with no obligations,  other people take notice.  That might mean putting on a free workshop, reaching out to those who can’t pay their own way, or just putting together a fun, well-made commercial that your audience will appreciate. 

If you think only in terms of doing things that can be measured immediately, then you won’t do any of that stuff.  But the world would be a sadder, more corporate, place if everyone thought like that.  Here’s the thing, if you improve the lives of those around you without asking for anything in return, eventually it’ll pay off.  At the very least, you’ll be doing your part to make the world less corporate.

Six TED-Talk-powered Tips for Making the World Less Corporate

Photo from ramon_perez_terrassa on Flickr

 

“Too many rules prevent accomplished jazz musicians from improvising, and as a result they lose their gifts, or worse, they stop playing altogether.”  That’s a quote from Barry Schwartz’s fantastic speech on our society’s loss of wisdom.   (It was a speech given at this year’s TED conference, and I highly recommend watching it.)

It’s sad isn’t it, when our jazz musicians, athletes, unique thinkers, visionary entrepreneurs, volunteers, and all the others who strive to bring more meaning into the world  experience something that causes them to forever stop doing what they do.   Too often the villain responsible is a corporate one, a thing that could have been avoided with a thinking mind and a working heart.

The death blow doesn’t always come from the heavy artillery.  Sometimes all it takes is a phone call.  Please allow me a personal story: it’s why I had to write this post.  With just one five-minute phone call, a producer that I’ve been in contact with for over seven months almost shattered my inclination to ever create again.   He did this not by denying the merit of my project, something that I’ve been working on for the past few years of my life, but by telling me that after 7 months he hadn’t gotten to read it yet because his time was very valuable.  

 

Old Poorhouse Woman with a Glass Bottle - Paula Modersohn-Becker

 

I sent him 11 pages to consider, and yes folks, that’s 11 pages and not 110.  Before I did that I saw his shows and read his book to better understand him and to determine whether my project could possibly be relevant to him.  I thought it could be, but I assured him that I would not call or email him again if he gave me a definitive no.   A “no” he would not give me, but a declaration about the value of his time, he freely shared.

I shut down as a person for almost a week because of that.  I got little done, and I wasn’t the easiest to be around.   Because of him, I thought seriously about just settling for a life of doing corporate work and spending money to buy more comforts and pleasures.  Thank God, I no longer feel that way.

I’m not writing this to lash out at him in public.  That’s not my style.  I prefer to settle my disputes with someone person to person, and as God is my witness, he will know what I think of his actions, and I will get a definitive yes or no from him, or I will die trying.

My point is that sometimes even seemingly small, thoughtless moments can perpetuate a more corporate world.  The producer in question is not altogether bad man.  He is in many ways, I’m sure, more decent than I am, but he almost convinced me to give up entirely on pursuing any kind of creative expression, the very stuff that gives my life the strongest sense of purpose, harmony, and hope.  Put differently it’s part of the least corporate elements in my life.  

I recognize the very real possibility that I have done or  could do to someone else what he almost did to me.  This list, inspired by Barry Schwartz’ lecture, is my way of fighting that possibility:

 

1. Take strong positions.

If you’re not interested in a project, why tie up someone’s time by being ambiguous?  By saying an honest no, you make it easier for someone to turn his attention to more rewarding possibilities.  Certainly, it can be uncomfortable to say no and face the disappointment or frustration of another person, and besides, staying undecided for as long as possible is convenient.  Unfortunately, with your ambiguities and your delays on a decision, you add your own home-made resistance to someone else’’s dreams, and dreams are hard enough to bring to life without your half-hearted opposition.  

Barry Schwartz isn’t vague about what he accepts and what he doesn’t.  That’s one reason why he’s compelling.  Corporate speakers, though, are too concerned about saying the wrong things, so they hedge.  To prevent you from realizing this, they distract with mesmerizingly awful PowerPoint  animations.  No one enjoys hearing those people speak, but everyone claps out of habit.  

Speaking of PowerPoint presentations, you’ll notice that the slides Mr. Schwartz uses have an elegant,  minimalistic design.  The ideas are strong enough on their own so that cutesy, animated gifs aren’t needed to hold the audience’s interest.   (To read more about the thinking behind the slides for the presentation, check out this helpful lessons-from-TED post from slide:ology.)  If your presentation isn’t compelling enough, maybe you should spend more time tweaking your ideas and not your clip art.  

 

2. Avoid meaningless clutter.

I am amazed by how many companies choose to use hold recordings that go something like this, “Thanks for calling.  Your call is very important to us.  It will be answered in the order in which it was received.”  This is something any company can say.  Is your company just like any other company or does it have something special to share with the world?  Your advertising says that you are special, so why let your phone messages or your internal training videos, or your memos argue otherwise?

As if the above phone message isn’t bland enough, too many companies opt to have the message repeat every 45 seconds or so.  Right when I am getting comfortable enough to start daydreaming about new possibilities, I get interrupted with generic words from a generic voice.  That’s sort of like throwing balls of Styrofoam at patrons right when they’re bringing a spoon of hot, savory soup to their mouth.  That kind of thing robs me of my appreciation for the moment, a moment that could have begotten good and useful things.  

Why waste words to apologize for the inconvenience when it really isn’t an inconvenience?   Asking me to use a different grocery-store isle because the one in front of me is closed is not an inconvenience.  It is a reasonable situation that common sense illuminates.  Using plastic phrases on me rarely makes me feel better, and clunky legalistic prose doesn’t encourage me to spend more money.  When I discover it in stuff I’ve already purchased, I  have fewer reasons to smile about the product in question.  

As Mr. Schwartz suggests, there’s no reason for teachers to read the lesson from a script.  That insults the competent teachers and bores the kids.  If the teachers aren’t able to come up with their own coherent lesson plans that address relevant topics, then they should be doing different work.  Making things easy for incompetent people to be mediocre has the unfortunate consequence of making the world more corporate at an exponential rate.  

 

3.  Incubate possibilities.

Both babies and new ventures cannot survive on their own without support from others.  The call that you don’t return could be the one that seduces someone to give up on something that would have changed the world.    One of my goals is to return a call or email that asks for a response within 2 days.  I’m pretty good at doing that most of the time.  If I can do it, why can’t you?    Why risk the chance of demoralizing someone when returning a personable call usually takes just five minutes or less?

Barry Schartz warns us that if people have to swim against the current for too long, they’ll give up.  Some ideas don’t have enough merit to justify their survival, but others do.  It’s tragic when the good ones get strangled by the organizational resistance that attack with bureaucracy and mindless adherence to policy.  

 

4. Avoid unnecessary rules.  

To quote Mr. Schwartz again, ”Moral skill is chipped away by an over-reliance on rules that deprives us of the opportunity to improvise and learn from our improvisations, and moral will is undermined by an incessant appeal to incentives that destroy our desire to do the right thing.”  The more rules you make the more you encourage the rise of corparate drones who merely follow policy and don’t think or interact with the particulars at hand.  Those kinds of workers can be crafted into docile automatons, but they won’t be very good at generating innovation and adapting to change.

 

5. Don’t be cynical.

Everyone has their shortcomings, but we sell people short when we search for base motives behind every deed.  Treating others with weary suspicion even when they do good makes it harder for that person to continue doing good.  I’m as guilty of this as anyone, maybe even guiltier than most; I face an on-going battle against encroaching cynicism, and I don’t always win.  

When you’ve been hurt, it is a challenge not to project those past experiences of cruelty and selfishness onto other people in the present.  But, if you keep treating an organization or a  contact with enough cynicism, eventually they’ll ignore you or live up to your expectations.  Neither party benefits from that, so that’s reason enough to keep a vigilant guard against corrosive cynicism.  

Follow Mr. Schwartz’s advice: “celebrate moral exemplars.”  Dare to praise others not just for their technical capacities but for the nobility of their actions.  You may risk looking unsophisticated, naive, and unhip, but do it anyway.  Virtue matters enough to justify the risk.

 

6.  Be honest. 

Well-intentioned buisness people are, on ocassion, hesitant to speak the truth out of fear for the market’s reaction or their jobs.  On a personal level, people are hesitant to tell the truth out a fear of rejection or of the consequences that come with the truth.  These are not petty matters to be easily dismissed.  

Sometimes being honest will cost you in the short term, but it comes with long-term freedom, freedom to be yourself and to make decisions based on what can help you or your organization grow.  In the end, honesty always prevails, but you won’t believe that unless you accept a metaphysical reality greater than the perceivable material, and often very corporate, world around you.  

If your worldview does not allow for a God or a universe that ultimately rewards character over profitability, then there is a very real danger that you will end up as another corporate denizen who will do anything to stay on top,  perhaps you’ll even apologize for the inconvenience as you uppercut me with your meaningless clutter.  Anything to stay ahead, right?

Photo from flickr.com/rickz

Here’s me being honest: I had decided against writing this post, until I came across Barry Schwartz’s speach.  The beauty of his ideas helped snap me out of my own private hell, long enough to write this.   Whether this post will be helpful to anyone, I don’t know, but writing it was helpful to me.  Before watching Mr. Schwartz’s speach, my plan for the weekend was to spend much of it drinking one beer after another at a local bar.  By being less corporate, Mr. Schwartz helped me to do the same.  

You can do likewise, if you’re so inclined.  Somewhere in the world a jazz musician will thank you.

 

If this article has been valuable to you, consider adding a comment or sharing this with a friend.  

How the War of Art Can Help Us be Less Corporate

This written conversation pertains to a book I finished a few days ago called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Like other good books I’ve read, it is filled with ideas that have stayed with me and taken on a life of their own as I’ve wrestled them into my view of the world. I want to share with you how those ideas can help us become less corporate, but first let me  reiterate in a new way about what being less corporate means and why it is a good thing.  

To do that, please allow me a confession: I face an ongoing battle in my mind about the merits of advocating a less corporate existence. For one thing, I work for Canon and I hope to work for and with other companies in the future, and there is a real possibility that my thoughts may come off as anti-business. They are not.  

I am very enthusiastic about businesses, big and small, that help people to improve the quality of their lives, learn, and make positive contributions to society. As I’ve explained before, I don’t fight against businesses but against the banal, thoughtless, and evil things that businesses, organizations, and people do to interfere with our chances of becoming the radiant individuals we were meant to be. 

I place a significant value on honesty in my life, but even more so in my writing. There are a lot of rough edges and murky spots in my life, and these stains on my soul are things that I’d rather not face moment-to-moment. I try, but I don’t always have the courage to do so with dignity and fortitude all the time.

My hope is that if I write with an honest and open heart, I will get better at living with an honest and open heart on a daily basis. Here’s another way to phrase that: I’m trying to be less corporate, but there’s this fear that haunts my mind.  It suggests that I accomplish nothing more with my writing than convincing the world that I am crazy or not worth hiring. 

 

Ancient of Days - William Blake

 

 

Also, my inner accountant likes to remind me that this kind of writing takes longer to do and it depletes time that could be used to do or find more paying gigs or to at least schmooze for the sake of recognition and career advancement.  As a somewhat related side note, if you want to see me at my most corporate, bring me to a networking event and trick me into thinking that my potential for success depends not on being myself while striving for excellence but in finding the right people who can advance my career if I win their favor. The devil’s minions have used that trick on me more than one occasion, and unfortunately it can still work all too well for them.

I think Mr. Pressfield would describe these doubts I have as the resistance I face in my own personal war for art. (See, it wasn’t a pointless digression after all.) For me, writing about this stuff is something I have to do.  It helps me get closer to what I’m supposed to do with my life.  

I can’t explain why. It is just something I know to be true, at least I know as much when I’m writing. When I’m not writing, I doubt and find reasons not to do more writing or more of the creative projects that sing to me from the depths of my heart, begging for attention even as I try to muffle them.

By now some of you might think I’m a little insane , but some of you, I believe, know exactly what I’m talking about. You can relate; so can Mr. Pressfield. The art he advocates doesn’t pertain to a few cliched talking-points about the value of the humanities in our lives. No, his is the art that pleads with us to pursue our own unique calling, our reason for being put on this earth that only we can discover.

Presenting his case, he writes this: “Unless I’m crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone.” Did you hear that voice whispering as you read that? I did.

So what is less corporate about the book and it’s ideas? First of all, Mr. Pressfield writes from experience. He has written books like The Legend of Bagger Vance and Gates of Fire, both of which are well-regarded best sellers. In other words, he’s not writing just for a paycheck.

He’s also not afraid to define the enemy in bold terms. He calls it resistance, a force inside and outside of us that gets in the way of our God-given purpose. Corporate thinkers do not like this. They care more about conforming, about being agreeable, about avoiding conflict.  How can you live up to other people’s expectations and be like everyone else while also seeing a menace both inside and outside of your tribe or yourself? You can’t.

That’s why corporate people don’t talk about such things. They prefer to tell you that you can be anything you want to be and that the customer is always right. The customer isn’t always right, and as Mr. Pressfield explains “ We can’t be anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny.”

About that idea of having a special purpose, a destiny: it’s a strange one isn’t it? And yet it still resonates with us in a way that corporate pie charts and bar graphs do not. I’m fairly certain that our lives have more significance than the amount of profit we generate for Sony, but it’s hard to see that sometimes with all of the distractions and desires that consume us.

Accepting the idea that my life may have a greater meaning than just the sensations of the moment is one thing, but it is another thing to believe that even the irritating guy at the office, and the high-school kid who makes life miserable for others, and the dropout who posts stupid videos on YouTube all have a special purpose in this world that they may or may not achieve. Did He who made the lamb make thee?  Indeed Mr. Blake, indeed.  

When I think about people like that long enough, it becomes harder to reduce them to simple character types, to talking, breathing adjectives who are there only to serve my ends. It makes me wonder what things would be like if everyone was as complex as I am.  (Here’s a secret: I think they are.)

 

Jacob's Ladder - William Blake

 

 

To discuss pre-programmed purpose for our lives in any meaningful way without acknowledging God somehow is virtually impossible. Sure enough, Mr. Pressfield admits that he believes both in God and in a metaphysical reality that transcends the truth of our daily existence. Does he care that metaphysical thinking is out of favor with today’s prominent intellectuals?  Of course not.  Only corporate thinkers care about such things. 

You are free to conclude that only measurable results matter. Forming your own opinion  is a respectable thing, something I celebrate even when the perspectives in question conflict with mine.  Today’s technological world of quarterly reviews, productivity stats, and page clicks certainly fuels and validates that kind of thinking.  

And yet, history’s great thinkers and creators, people like Socrates, Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Kant, Goethe, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Frank Capra, Dr. Martin Luther King, George Lucas, and J.K. Rowling, among others, would reject the idea that a merely materialistic view of things is good enough or all there is.  It is possible that you are wiser than those men and women, but it is just as possible that you are not.  With that in mind, perhaps you should not be so quick to discredit the things you cannot understand, especially when those things have survived the test of time.  I too will do likewise.  

To his credit, Mr. Pressfield builds his case without statistics.  Statistics and citations have their place, but sometimes they become a handicap that corporate types use to avoid appealing to a person’s own inner sense of things.  Do you really need a survey to know what’s right to do in the moment or to conclude that the iPhone is a well designed product?  Only if you’ve forgotten how to trust your own instincts.

The only point of contention I have with Mr. Pressfield’s excellent and inspiring book is his claim that “Creation has its home in heaven.”  I would be more comfortable saying that Creation often but not always comes from heaven.  

Call me judgmental if you like, but I don’t consider Hitler’s Mein Kampf or the Saw movie franchise to be divinely inspired creations.  As I’ve explained before, artists can produce corporate and evil stuff just like anyone else, but this is a small dispute with an otherwise inspiring and life-affirming book full of resonating truths.  

If you want to make the world less corporate by focusing in on your own special purpose for being on this earth, I cannot recommend this book enough.  

(Somewhat) Unnecessary Creating

This time, it’ll be short.  I’m generally a long-form kind of guy.  Not because I think I am worthy of more of your time.  No.  I just don’t know how to convey my ideas in short, but effective, bursts.  I admire those who can.  It is an art.

Anyway, I have projects to finish, so I have to keep it brief.  Writing a long piece is satisfying in some ways but exhausting in others, for me and also for you, I think.  None of that today.

Rain, Steam and Speed by J.M.W. Turner, 1844

I’m going to donate the extra time that comes with writing a shorter post to some unnecessary creating, design stuff probably.  Todd Henry talks about the importance of unnecessary creating at the Accidental Creative.

He explains it better than I do, but here’s my take: it’s about creating stuff for the celebration of the thing itself, whether or not doing so has any long-term benefits.  Now that I think about it, that’s what gets me excited about writing and sketching and playing with videos and graphics, when I’m not worried about finding work or gaining respectability or finding validation.

It’s my small way of being a little less corporate today.  I’m going to play with stuff that I don’t have to do in a strictly business sense, but on the other hand, it’s something I absolutely need to do.  Do you know what I mean?

Business and Design Lessons From Malcolm Gladwell

If you wish to carve out a corporate existence for yourself, you will probably avoid showing others a new way of seeing something. Doing that is risky, unproven in profitability, and more conflict-prone than the old tried-and-true methods approved by the  powerful and the influential. Corporate fellows avoid the above-mentioned adjectives in the same way that unrepentant alcoholics avoid AA.  (This applies even to the indie-rock scene kids who slavishly follow the fashion dictates of their hipster overlords in the name of assimilated nonconformity.) Malcolm Gladwell is not one of those fellows.

Les Saltimbanques at the Races - Picasso

In his book Outliers, he challenges the idea that someone’s success is determined almost exclusively by his or her own efforts.  Mr. Gladwell still argues that individual effort matters: he insists that successful people need about 10,000 hours of practice to become masters  of their craft. Still, the book spends more time discussing the role society plays in encouraging and nurturing the success of outliers, the superstars in their fields who are exponentially mre skilled than their colleagues.  That kind of non-conventional thinking makes the book worth reading, but I want to focus on a specific quote from the book that hasn’t been as widely discussed.

Here’s the quote: “Autonomy, complexity,  and a connection between effort and reward are the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.” If there is a better way to describe an uncorporate job, then I haven’t heard it.  As it happens, it’s also a helpful framework for discussing great design.

Few things deaden my enthusiasm for a job more than an employer who tells me exactly how to do my work.  Yes, every business and design assignment has its standards and protocols.  Nothing wrong with that, but why insist on making me or my coworkers read from a script or do things exactly like you do?  Machines need to be micromanaged, competent people don’t.  Instead, why not tell us what results you want, give us some flexibility in pursuing those results, and reward those of us who best achieve those results?

One of my worst experiences on a design job involved a client who wanted to tell me exactly what elements I should use for a poster and where they should go.  I don’t mind that kind of thing if a client has design instincts that are as good, if not better, than my own, but that was not the case with him. He relished the clip-art aesthetic.  I’ve had enough of those experiences that I now reserve the right to refuse to do work that I find ineffective in conception.  The customer is not always right, and life is too short to do ugly design.

Designers, artists, and employees in general have their own unique perspectives and abilities that they desperately want to share with you. Why not seek to discover and use those abilities to your advantage, so that you can accomplish whatever specific tasks need to be done?  You’ll get more interesting and more valuable results while keeping your employees more engaged.  I understand there this a place for procedure.  Deviating from it can involve some experimentation, and not all experiments succeed.  Still, the potential for discovering a friendlier, more appealing, more efficient, more profitable way of doing things, seems to be worth the risk, don’t you think?   Not convinced? Well, which would you rather have in your house: a Picasso painting or a generic photograph with a caption about corporate excellence?

Maxalot - Joshua Davis

Take a look at the above design by Joshua Davis.  This kind of visual complexity is something in which he specializes.  Maybe you’ve seen some of the ads he’s done for companies like Motorola? (If you like his style, you can see more of his work at joshuadavis.com.) In any case, is there not something compelling about this kind of complexity?  We are inclined to look for patterns in the complex, to discover a sense of order and harmony that transcends the chaos in our world and gives it meaning.  Too much complexity is an overwhelming, frustrating experience, but without enough of the stuff, we lose interest and don’t stay fully engaged.  No wonder Mr. Gladwell sees it as an essential ingredient in fulfilling work.

You could also say the same thing about a good design, which is after all, a pleasing arrangement of complex elements that serve functional or aesthetic purposes. Too simple a design conveys half-hearted apathy.  On the other hand, if you add too much complexity, then you produce something that interferes with its own functionality.  To pull off this balancing act with elegance and style is the real trick of the thing.

And now we get to the connection between effort and reward.  Notice that Malcolm Gladwell did not say the connection between effort and the amount of money earned.  It’s a pernicious corporate assumption that everyone does things simply for more money. Some people just want to see that their efforts earn them respect or affection from others.  Whatever the payoff may be, people want to see it come eventually, or they’ll stop working as hard or stop working altogether.  From a designer perspective, that means users may give up on a product, protest a policy, or ignore a poster that demands too much effort or attention without giving back enough rewarding functionality.

The volunteer who helps out at her church probably doesn’t want money for her efforts.  And yet, if she continues to give her time to serve others but gets no appreciation or sense of making a difference in return, she will probably stop helping at some point.

The local actors I know don’t care so much about getting paid big bucks or becoming famous (at least not all of them), but they do care very much about giving performances that are well regarded in meaningful productions.  They also care about connecting with other actors and earning their respect.  Taking away those things and you could jeopardize their future dramatic endeavors.  I’ve done a little bit of acting myself (I’m not a great actor, but I enjoy learning and going through the process), so I know how hard it is to face rejection after rejection without hearing, on occasion, about how someone was affected by your performance, big or small.

Conversely, if you want the world to be a less corporate place, be sure to pay people for the efforts that bring you satisfaction. One of the owners of the Boot, an Italian restaurant in Norfolk, Virginia known for a vast beer selection, hearty meals, and great music, told me about his visits to a nearby, upscale comic-book shop called Local Heroes.  He aims to buy something from the store every few weeks, because he believes the area deserves a place like that.  I feel the same way about the Boot.   I want to reward them for their efforts, so that they will continue to find satisfaction from staying in business.

Support the things you cherish with money if you can, but an honest, heartfelt thank-you is cheaper and sometimes more appreciated. Comments on this blog have helped me see that others value my efforts, and so I  continue writing, instead of merely looking for more ways to make money.  On some difficult days a few kind, thoughtful, or grateful words have made all the difference to me.  Knowing this, I look for every opportunity to offer a sincere and unique expression of gratitude to others whose efforts I appreciate.

Find ways to include autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward in the work you do, the work you ask others to do, and in the things you create, and you’ll be doing your part to make the world a less corporate place.  (By the way, thanks for reading this.  I really appreciate it.)