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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Moving Day.

I’m moving workingpathways.com to a new host this weekend. So, there maybe some flakey-ness over the next couple days. Apologies for any interruptions in advance. The move is complete and successful – if the site feels faster now, this is why. Thanks for your patience.