Improvisational comedy, like all team sports is about effective, high-energy, spontaneous collaboration. One of the seven major tenets of Improv is building off each person’s comment and suggestion with “Yes, and…” rather than dismissing it with a “but…”. “Yes, and…” extends, explores, and enhances the previous suggestion – building trust among all the team members, …
Author Archives: Garrick van Buren
The Smoke in Need of a Fire-Breathing Dragon
“This sounds like part of an idea. It’s the smoke, and we still need a fire-breathing dragon.” This statement was exclaimed by one of the students I’m working with in my involvement with MCAD‘s Visualization program. I was leading the team through a ideation evaluation exercise – culling down their large number of brainstormed concepts …
Continue reading “The Smoke in Need of a Fire-Breathing Dragon”
Get Your Email Read with Specific, Compelling Subject Lines
One of my biggest pet peeves is vague email subject lines. This is for two reasons; Sometimes I only have time to read the subject lines – anything urgent needs to jump out. If I need to file and revisit the email, a clear specific subject line is easiest to re-find. My experience analyzing open …
Continue reading “Get Your Email Read with Specific, Compelling Subject Lines”
Stop Doing Dumb Stuff
When I need a quick kick in the pants, I reach for Tom Peters’ Brand You 50. Each one of his 50 tips are tow trucks pulling me out of what ever rut I find myself in. This is why I’m so excited about his new manifesto from Seth Godin’s ChangeThis project. This I Believe! …
When Brand is the Bottleneck
Recently, a collegue and I went to lunch at Pancheros, a 14-year old burrito chain started in Iowa City, IA. I’ve spoken about the power of lunch before as well as the lunch experience. Always enlightening. This time was no exception. I’m a big fan of Chipotle, they’ve taken the Subway model and transferred it …
5 Organizational Tips from Academia
This semester I’m one of the coaches in the excellent Visualization program at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. As part of that involvement, I attended their recent new faculty orientation. I’ve culled 5 organizational tips from that meeting. Have a Warning Sign for Poor Customer Relationships: Each faculty member is asked to contact …
Wal-Mart.com Tests Ship-To-Store
Big box retailers are continuing their search for the Holy Grail of Retail – increasing merchandise selection without increasing real estate costs. For years,
How Not To Do Customer Research
We do quite a bit of customer and employee research here at Working Pathways. From in-depth 1-on-1, deep dive, interviews to quick email surveys to observational studies – our expertise runs the gamut. Whatever the study, each participant involved is 1. screened and qualified and 2. receives some level of compensation for their time and …
Want Better Collaboration – Improvise
The earlier collaboration techniques post (Stop Asking Questions) was based a key to successful improvisation. This post digs further into the relationship between improv and collaboration. Good improvisational comedy teams believe a group of individuals working together can start with nothing and quickly create something engaging, desireable, useful, and valuable. From this perspective, the keys …
Talking is Marketing
Any time someone in your organization has any contact with your clients or prospects, they are performing a marketing function. Thanks to John Jantsch for this timeless thought.