We are a Mac based workplace here at Totem. I could bore you with why we made that decision, ease of use, low support costs, etc, but you probably don’t care. We like them and we like the customer focus that Apple has.
It was for that reason that we were very sad to hear of the the death of Steve Jobs. Aside from the human tragedy of someone dying so young, the world has lost a maverick, a visionary and an incredible business man. He probably wasn’t easy to work with but people wanted to work with him. He stood on the shoulder of giants, in the form of his team of engineers and designers, but he assembled that team in the first place. He gave them their goal and ensured they stayed focused. He defined one clear model of leadership in the tech industry.
Fuller obituaries are elsewhere, everywhere really, a measure of the impact he and his team had. If we can have 1/100 of the impact on the world that they have, we’ll be a pretty happy team.
Hidden in one of Apple’s core products is something that I think sums him, and Apple, up well.
Amanda Visell has created four wonderful posters, nominally for girls but we think the messages apply to everyone, male, female, young and old.
“Explore, Get Dirty, Dream Big, Be You” pretty much sums up our attitude at Totem, and that of many of our clients as well. Make today your day to jump in puddles, hatch some plans, set sail for distant shores (with or without a fish) and wave your flag.
In a moving video, composer Eric Whitacre led a virtual choir of singers from around the world. He talks through the creative challenges of making music powered by YouTube, and unveils the first 2 minutes of his new work, “Sleep,” with a video choir of 2,052.
We frequently make use of music on our courses, to inspire, to calm, to motivate, to represent, to tell stories. It’s one of the tools for what the NLP community call state change.
Music can also change our perceptions of what we are looking at. Here is a great example of that, YouTube user Mscharosch has edited some BBC Life footage to Lux Æterna from Requiem For a Dream and the result is, well…..epic. It is worth putting on full screen and turning your sound up.
As usual, Greenpeace have excelled in producing an amusing campaign to make people more aware of whats going on. It is worth taking 5 minutes to make yourself aware of this issue, and if you drive a VW, or feel strongly enough, sign up to let VW know that you’d like them to change their ways.
We rarely use trust falls, they come with significant risk and, while they can be fun, the benefits aren’t really clear, except maybe as a metaphor for trust within a team. As usual Scott Adams has his own particular take on on them…
Most courses evolve. They start as either a client brief, or from an idea by our staff and then move through various conversations and revisions, being changed even as they are being delivered. Looking through my file from a leadership course back in March, I found this piece of paper. It was the outcome of 30 minutes discussion between two of us and it became a very successful “Looking at Leadership” course that finished with the participants rowing the length of Windermere.
The fact that you can read it means the handwriting isn’t mine but I love the fact that, for one course at least, it is possible to pinpoint when all the ideas came together. [Click for a larger version]
We use review and reflection a lot at Totem. Experiential learning, which underpins everything we do is not just learning from doing, it’s learning from thinking about doing.
Have you got 5 minutes each day to help improve your life, across the board? This article suggests that it might be a good idea to find the time.
We don’t often get involved with political issues here at Totem, preferring to solve the worlds issues by dealing with people one to one.
