VOICES is about listening. It is easy to hear but difficult to acknowledge the voices around us. We can experience the sounds but not always the meanings. This blog hopes to adjust our collective filters, stimulating questions and promoting conversation about ideas both professional and personal.
Train of Thought
Except for the engine and the caboose, the arrangement of every freight train is unique. A train is prepared, assembled and scheduled in order to deliver the contents of each railroad car to a particular location on a predetermined date at a prescribed time. To do anything else could threaten the solvency of an industry and jeopardize every enterprise that depends on a “just-in-time” delivery.
Over several tall beers in a Frankfort biergarten, the American poet G. E. Murray explained to his dense friend what poetry is.
Poetry is more about the relationship of one word to another than the individual words themselves. While the choice of words is important, the alignment of each word to another could add multiple layers of understanding or distort the poet’s meaning entirely.
G.E. (Jerry to his friends) further explained that like a freight train, the space between the words when spoken — the caesura — can also provide insight, adding importance to even the expected by creating anticipation.
The time invested in considering how and when an idea is delivered may be as important as the idea itself. Have we said what we meant to say? Did the idea lose meaning because it was delivered off schedule or to the wrong place, to an audience unprepared to hear it?
Are there instances when what was said may have needed more time, a different audience or another presenter? Can “the goods” be delivered in ways that add more value? Did we use an express when a local would have carried more meaning? Joseph
Missives
Perception is the ability to develop ideas on command is impossible if not downright ridiculous. Can ideas be hatched like so many eggs in a nest? Creativity and imagination are not always just the product of talent or inspiration. Big ideas are grown, nurtured, protected, funded and fully explored before they are born. Creativity is not just a province of artists. We have helped our clients develop and engage their own creativity to work in collaboration with us and others with positive results.
Noted & Notable
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
By Daniel Pink
Daniel Pink, the working man’s Malcolm Gladwell, has written a new book called DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Like his first book A Whole New Mind, Pink points out connections between the obscure and the obvious. His book pits the latest scientific discoveries about the mind against the outmoded wisdom that claims people can only be motivated by the hope of gain and the fear of loss. Pink packages ideas into applications providing employers and employees with the methods and the means to get more of what they want, the way they want it. Don’t let the cover design scare you off. This is career-changing stuff.
Have a New Kid by Friday: How to Change Your Child’s Attitude, Behavior & Character in 5 Days
By Dr. Kevin Leman
In Dr. Kevin Leman’s book Have a New Kid by Friday: How to Change Your Child’s Attitude, Behavior & Character in 5 Days, he insists that the only way to correct bad behavior in children is to change your reactions to their behavior. Anyone who has dealt with a strong-willed child knows that it is no easy task to turn bad behavior around. Bestselling author and psychologist Dr. Kevin Leman can help to make a difference. With his signature wit and encouragement, Dr. Leman offers hope and real, practical, doable strategies for regaining control and becoming the parents our children need. Not to say that badly behaved adults are like children but the application of Dr. Leman’s ideas to adult relationships with similar issues is a bonus.
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy
By Jane Leavy
You don’t need to be a fan of professional baseball to appreciate to a true professional. Jane Leavy’s book Sandy Koufax, A Lefty’s Legacy has more to do with the man and his choices that any game. Professional sports are all about the numbers. In his last four seasons Sandy Koufax’s numbers were the best ever. With a career half as long as the average pitcher, Koufax set a standard for performance that was twice as successful as any pitcher of his era. However, Koufax the person transcends the player by keeping the game he loved in perspective with who he was.
One example: In 1965, Sandy Koufax refused to pitch in Game One of the World Series because it was Yom Kippur, a Jewish holy day. Koufax’s decision and his pitching brilliance remain a source of pride among devout American Jews, even those who aren’t baseball fans. Unable to sustain that same level of performance for health reasons, Sandy retired one year later at the peak of his career. He became the youngest player ever to be inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. Sandy Koufax defined success on his own terms, using is own standards.
Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won
By Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim
Much of what goes on in sports can be explained by incentives, fears and a desire for approval. You just have to know where to look. Scorecasting is the sports equivalent of Freakonomics. Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim have written the most important and fascinating sports book in years. Athletes and coaches are encouraged to challenge conventional strategies with calculated risks, producing unconventional results. Just like in life, a little risk is usually a very worthwhile thing.
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
By Jeffrey Toobin
Jeffrey Toobin’s book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, explains for the novice and explores for the devotee the mysteries behind the black robes. It articulates the rise of the conservative movement through the legal world and its acceleration in 2005 with the death of Justice Rehnquist and resignation of Justice O’Connor within a few months of each other. This is a fascinating story about complex and brilliant jurists who are equally spoiled and elevated by the human condition.
All Facts Considered: The Essential Library of Inessential Knowledge
By Kee Malesky
What is plastic soup? How long is a New York minute? What building did Elvis leave last? Who were the Olmecs, and the Eight Immortals? Get the answers to these and many other vexing questions in NPR librarian Kee Malesky’s compendium of fascinating facts on subjects ranging from history to science to the arts. It’s the ideal gift for every inquiring mind that wants to know.
The Art of the Idea: And How it Can Change Your Life.
By John Hunt
John Hunt’s unassuming book is all about how to see, the art of observation and what we gain by taking the time to experience the everyday in new and unexpected ways. This is not a “feel good” book, something left over from the 60s, but a beautifully written and illustrated owner’s manual for our own senses. Instructive? Yes. Inventive and imaginative? For sure. Chapters like Lemmings Have Plans Too and Expediency is Not an Idea are but a few subjects worthy of your time.
A Fine Line: How design strategies are shaping the future of business
By Hartmut Esslinger / founder of Frog Design
After getting past Hartmut Esslinger's (Frog Design) sometimes condescending-sounding manner, he has a great deal to say worth hearing. Filled with process-driven strategies that are almost clairvoyant, reading the book is like hanging on to a bucking bronco. Sony, Apple and Lufthansa did and gained financially and culturally.
Outliers
By Malcolm Gladwell
The latest book from Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink is the best of the three. Outliers focuses on identifying success and failure in all of their forms and conditions. His book is smart, fun and disturbing. Readers will discover that the distance between winners and losers is about 10,000 hours of work plus the luck of circumstances and your birthday. There are several Aha! moments that if applied might change your life.
A Whole New Mind
by Daniel H Pink
Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future is worth your time. Left-brain skills (logical, analytical, sequential), while still necessary, are becoming a commodity, Pink argues, while right-brain talents (artistic, empathic, more about context than content) will be at a premium in the future. Pink writes with charm and humor about subjects that heretofore were rarely, if ever, charming or funny.
1. Charles R. July 16, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Thank you, Joseph…for taking the time to compose these “VOICES” so perfectly.
And for the thoughtful and though provoking content which they express.
Charles Rubner
2. Ariel July 16, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Team Liaisons,
I am sharing an email that a friend and colleague uses in their marketing efforts, that I think is quite applicable to your upcoming presentations. If you think it worthy, you can distribute it to your fellow team members.
Regards, Ariel
3. jdo June 11, 2009 at 8:03 am
And the world is a poorer place for the lack of a caboose — trains SHOULD have one!
How and when you communicate is often as important as the substance of your communication. How many times have you seen an email with an inartful choice of words vitiate the intent of the communicator? We are all swayed by the tone of voice, the arch of an eyebrow, the smile that takes the sting out. The temptation is great to lob the ball back into the other guy’s court by some electronic means that avoids the risk that you might actually have to listen to him respond. Let’s all talk to each other. JDO
4. Kirk June 9, 2009 at 5:00 pm
If you ever wonder whether Jerry was doing more than blowing smoke, listen to a recording of E.E. Cummings read some of his poems as he meant them to be read.
Word, unword (space), punctuation, spelling, syntax, timing, cadence, tone, inflection and timbre all were enormously important to Cumming’s Modernist (Cubist?) mind.
I was really surprised by his reading of “Buffalo Bill’s,” which sounded completely different in his voice than the one in my head.
How’s that for synchronicity? G.E. Murray and Buffalo Bill? I think he would have loved it!
5. Francois ROBERT June 9, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Freight train do NOT have caboose anymore.
Best.
Francois