Online Shopping is Broken

I want to run a brief thought experiment if you’ll indulge me. I want you to think about buying clothing online and try to relate this to shopping in-store. Let’s say you need a new shirt. You navigate to your favorite outfitter much in the same way (but simpler) that you would walk to the nearest outlet. You browse the site by clicking through links and looking for things you like, similar to how you would walk through a store, scanning for something that catches your eye. So far, the online experience sounds very similar to in-store, if not better.

However, here is where the experience goes to shit.

In a store, once you find something you like, you pick it up off the rack, feel the material, hold it up to yourself as a quick size check, grab an adjacent size to be safe, nip into a fitting room to try it on and, if satisfied, head to the checkout. Imagine if we forced this process to match the current online model: all of the clothing would be on a wall behind the checkout and before touching anything, holding it up for sizing or taking things into a fitting room, the store would require full payment.

This is not how people want to shop.

Granted not every online experience follows this model and not all shopping experiences demand the same level of interaction and involvement as clothing. Music, film, books, electronics and other products that do not rely so heavily on look, feel and specific usage have done very well in online retail and in some cases, digital sales have surpassed brick and mortar. However, there are still a number of industries – clothing, food, personal care, furniture, musical instruments to name a few – that for any number of reasons, have yet to become hot tickets for online sale.

At the core, certain purchases need to be experienced first. We need to know how something looks, feels or sounds in-person before we buy it. Some companies have found ways around this, however, many still struggle.  Here are a few suggestions for the online retailers of the world.

Virtual Avatars

In the absence of being able to try clothing on, a digital avatar could be used to show how articles would look on a virtual version of you.  Tesco launched a pilot of such a service earlier in 2012 for women to try their F&F clothing range.  A German company,UPcload, is also working on the same technology and has already started to build a network of retailers across Europe and North America. The technology is getting there, however, the question still remains as to whether people will use this service and more importantly, if it will encourage them to buy.

Product Profiling

A great deal of apprehension around purchasing something online (or in-store for that matter) is knowing whether it will work for you. Finding products that match our personality, style and needs can be a challenging endeavor. If more websites were able to recommend products based on alignment with our individual personalities, people may be more willing to buy things. Recommendation engines have been very successful for products like music, books and movies, so why can other online retailers not take a more personalized approach to their customer and help them navigate the sea of online options? Some sites like Jewelmint and Shoedazzle have attempted this approach, however, it seems that no one has been able to implement this on a larger scale and across a broader set of products.

Free Returns

Perhaps the biggest step forward (though possibly the most difficult to financially justify) would be to allow free, no-hassle returns on items. Better yet, individuals should be able to order whatever they want and after reviewing, only be charged for what they keep. Financial reality has a thing or two to say about this feature, however, for my money, this would definitely encourage my online shopping behaviors.

These are just a few ideas to encourage online shopping. While they may not be overly groundbreaking, they are a far cry more than what the bulk of online retailers are currently doing to encourage customers to buy digitally. E-commerce sites need to step up their game and work to remove some of the frictions of online retail. Do a good enough job at this, and I promise I’ll never buy brick and mortar again.

Design for Nerds

Modern chain hotels have become design beacons for the latest in hip, chic and stylish flare. Their lobbies are adorned with progressive art installations. Their restaurants feature the latest trends and crazes in high-end food experience. Their bars are some of the swankest nightclubs in the city. However, is all this panache missing the point and even alienating some patrons?

We are currently experiencing the rise in a new segment of power players on a global business scene: the nerd. Lost are the days of wedgies and name-calling; the nerd has now taken a prominent place near the top of the social ladder. Champions of software in a digital age, fan-boy gurus in an era of comic culture, entrepreneurial rebels in a time where big business is giving way to the little guy – we are part way through a shift where the nerd is becoming the cool kid.

Yet while many industries have embraced this new four-eyed segment, the travel and tourism industry still feels to be largely clinging to a past of letterman jackets and wet-towel whips. Where are the ping-pong tables and bean-bag chairs? Where is the gaming room and fully-integrated, hotel room Xbox system? Where is the hotel social networking site to help me find a dinner guest? Where are the interactive bar tables? And perhaps most importantly, where is my robot butler?

A handful of hotels have cropped up in recent years that are capitalizing on this opportunity. Hotel Tomo in San Francisco features anime-inspired décor and deluxe gaming suites with 6ft screens. The Pod Hotel in New York has been nicknamed the “Facebook Hotel” for creating an environment of sharing and connecting with other guests. The Capsule Inn in Tokyo is designed around fully-integrated sleeping modules that leave every needed device – TV, radio, clock, etc – accessible from the supine position in bed.

However, the Marriotts, Hiltons and Sheratons of the world continue to churn out clones of themselves designed around appealing to their vision of the typical traveller – a segment which is shrinking over time and may never have existed as they were perceived in the first place. Typical is becoming atypical, people’s tastes are evolving and hotel patrons are hungry for unique experiences. Who has the guts to step up and try cooking something new?

Robots Control Your Mind

It’s a classic theme used in fiction: sci-fi writers and filmmakers create a dystopian future where robots use twisted logic around Asimov’s seminal 3 laws to decide that humanity can’t protect itself and therefore, must be imprisoned and controlled (I’ll admit, a bit of a stretch). Humanity, in its ever-present struggle for laziness and infinite-sigma efficiency, will go to lengths so extreme as to create an artificial consciousness that will one day overthrow us all. Sure, it seems like the stuff of…well, sci-fi…however, an even greater stretch is my argument that even without achieving the nirvana of robotic artificial intelligence, robots may already control the way we eat, sleep, work and generally, live.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me first preface these crooked words. As an undergraduate engineer, I lucked upon the opportunity of a lifetime. During my degree I worked part time and summers at McGill University’s Ambulatory Robotics lab: one of the world’s leading labs in the robotics movement of the early 2000s. While I went into the role thinking I would spend my days playing with strange, futuristic toys (I did), the lab and the people around me made me realize that robotics was about so much more. Robots had already become pervasive in our society to the point that individuals barely acknowledged them as robots. A microwave, a thermostat, ATMs, RC toys, pacemakers, coffeemakers – all are examples of robots: machines capable of carrying out multi-stage actions autonomously.

And while a far cry from padded-room imprisonment, in many ways, robotic technology has already drastically altered the way we live our lives. Some of these alterations have been improvements in efficiency, increases in public safety or departures from menial, pointless tasks. However, in losing many of these traditional touch points, so have we evolved as a species and lost pieces of ourselves. We have allowed robots in all shapes and sizes to define some very integral elements of our lives and in doing so, removed much of our own ability to take care of ourselves.

Whereas once, we were a society of people who slept and woke by the sun, accurate telling of time and perhaps the most vile of technology’s satanic spawn – the alarm clock – changed our sleep patterns, and more importantly, set the tone for a culture driven by hyper efficiency and to-the-second timing. First thing each morning, we allow a small machine to scream at us until we begin our day and in doing so, lock ourselves into an unnatural state of existence; living by the artificial construct of the 24hr clock instead of the age-old guide, the sun. We wake ourselves when we’re still tired and we sleep in when we don’t need to knowing that we have a “few more minutes.” This practice was found so unnatural that it even facilitated another key invention in the digital time-keeping era: the snooze button.

Within the workforce, robots have been changing our social structures, economic behaviors and primary tasks for nearly 100 years. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution and assembly line manufacturing, business has strived to algorithmise operations, remove inefficiency and where possible, take human interaction completely out of the equation. The impact of robotics in the business world is impossible to ignore and has caused a rapid acceleration in the evolution of job functions, particularly in western nations. Our great-grandparents were primarily tradesmen, our grandparents began to explore greater entrepreneurialism, our parents became office managers and our generation has become an army of digital workers. Robots are slowly but surely heralding the death of the blue collar.

But should we be concerned by any of this? As I described before, the process is an evolution – one where “fittest” is defined not by survival but instead by task automation. We are changing as a society and while elements of this change are undeniably unnatural, human beings have adapted to worse and will continue to adapt. We will continue to distance ourselves further from skilled labor, connection to the earth and the humility of working with our hands. However, only time will tell the true impact that this will have of the human body, mind and soul.

Just remember, Will Smith won’t always be around to save us.

Traveling Without Moving

At the tender age of 30 (the new 20?), I’ve had the opportunity to travel more than generations prior could have ever dreamed (I’m two continents short of the full set). My parent’s generation, while definitively embracing the ability to travel, still lacked the speed, ease and affordability of travel options that exist today. Increasing globalization has opened up borders and options for travel that have never existed before.

However, could my generation be the peak of global travel?

As communication technologies become more ubiquitous and lifelike, we are starting to see a decreased need for individuals to travel the world. Even in the face of reduced travel costs and relaxed political regulation, it is often difficult to justify a trip when so many global interactions can be experienced from the comfort of your own desk. Unquestionably, there will always be a demand to see the sunset past the Eiffel tower with your own eyes, to smell the air at the Cape of Good Hope or to hear the echo off the inside of the Taj Mahal. People will always have a desire to explore, adventure and to see the world.

But what of more mundane travel? What of long business flights? What of lonely hotel rooms? What of expensive travel per diems?

I recently had the opportunity to attend a meeting in a Cisco Tele-presence room. While the experience wasn’t quite up to the promise of fooling me into standing to shake the client’s hand at the end, the technology was impressive and left very little lacking in the way of non-verbal communication (which, as you know, I went on a bit of a rant about recently). Was this experience as good as a face-to-face meeting? No. However, it provided a close enough approximation at a fraction of the cost. More importantly, the cost is steadily decreasing and the technology is rapidly improving (hell, we’ve almost caught up to Star Trek).

Yet what of the leisure traveler? Will there always be a demand for people who want to experience culture first hand? In a word (or four), yes, but decreasingly so.

Globalization, while bringing the world’s population closer together than ever before, has had a reverse effect on our need to explore the planet. Whereas previous generations had to travel to Japan (or the most exclusive, expensive restaurants) to sample sushi, our generation buys $8.99 lunch special bento boxes two doors down. Culture, food, music, art, sport, design… even people… have spread so rapidly and ubiquitously around the world that we no longer need to travel in order to experience other societies; we simply walk 10 blocks. If this trend continues, then soon we will live in an era where the planet is one big societal melting pot that speaks English and Mandarin (flies in renegade spaceships, lives as outlaws and runs from oppressive governments and crazed space-monster humans).

Google is not without blame for our increasingly sedentary lives either. The Web has afforded us near instantaneous access to a vast bank of knowledge and a platform for global communication. It used to be that to find out what the Blarney Stone tasted like, you’d have to get over to Cork and kiss it yourself. Now, one can read hundreds of in-depth reviews describing the texture, look, sounds, smells, tastes of the stone and likely even a recipe or two for someone’s Blarney Stone soup. If you think I’m exaggerating both the level of fidelity and the coverage of information that Google provides, why not take a brief trip to the Antarctic?

Me, I’m a bit of a puritan. I believe that to truly appreciate a culture, one must immerse themselves in it and experience it first-hand. However, not everyone is like me. Some people are happy with pictures of the Pyramids. Many argue that the best curry in the world exists around the corner from their place. Certain individuals may even prefer to program their treadmill to simulate the Great Wall instead of visiting it themselves.

However, to everyone else, I implore you:

Go out and see the world before it comes to you.

Not Who I Say I Am

Do you think that your social profile is an accurate representation of who you are? Sure, we can learn a thing or two about individuals by reading their profiles, however, to what degree are these content feeds an accurate representation of self and to what degree are they calculated, overly filtered bullshit?

We’ve all done it – detagged hideous Facebook photos, retweeted articles we didn’t even fully read or perfectly crafted the words on our LinkedIn profile to make the ideal corporate elevator pitch. At the core, social media platforms are like diet versions of ourselves; you get the rough flavour, but don’t have to worry about any of the unhealthy sugars or fats. However, is there a digital aspartame that exists as a result of our social preening; one which, much like the chemical equivalent, raises large questions about a potential cancer growing within our society?

This is by no means a new phenomenon. Humans have been misrepresenting themselves in society since the dawn of man. The first cavemen likely exaggerated about the size of the mammoth they caught each time they told the story. There was a Pope who historians believe was a woman. Tchaikovsky supposedly had a thing for young boys. Einstein was a philanderer. Churchill was a big racist. Clinton inhaled. Clemens juiced. And each and every one of them went to grandiose efforts to cover up their social malfeasance.

However, we Millennials have been afforded a very unique situation through the advent of social media. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Youtube have enabled us to exchange more “rich” information than ever before, however, this information lacks important social context that people have typically used to develop an understanding of one another. Our misrepresentation exists under three very different conditions than that of previous generations.

First, social media depersonalizes communication and human interaction, making it incredibly difficult to gauge the authenticity. Simple things such as body language, vocal tone, eye movement and poise are pieces of information that we subconsciously process when speaking to another individual in order to frame the conversation. Through text, this information which I previously touted as being “rich” has suddenly lost all social context, leaving us with no way to gauge the intangible elements of in-person communication.

Second, social media has changed the very way we communicate. Whereas historical communication was typically an interaction between a small group of individuals (often two), social media has turned communication into a process of broadcasting and lurking. When posting on Facebook, we are broadcasting to hundreds or thousands of individuals and therefore, don’t frame our message for a tangible individual or group, but instead for a vague interpretation of what we call our network. Equally, when receiving information, we passively consume content: we lurk on Facebook photos, we scan through vast RSS feeds or tweets and we read up on a known or unknown individual’s social profile.

Lastly, electronic communication (social media, text, email) allows us to revise and edit our words to perfection before releasing them upon the world. Sure, this ability is fantastic when sending something off to a boss or client, however, it erodes one of the most important aspects of human life: failure. Blurting out the first thing that comes to mind in conversation can lead to awkwardness, confusion and embarrassment. Yet it is these very moments that break down our emotional walls and allow us to grow together. No one wants to live in a perfect, padded world where spontaneity is absent and things run like clockwork.

At least we still have auto-correct.

At the core, this change in communication manifests itself in one very simple but important takeaway: your social media profiles are not authentic representations of you. They are ideal aspirations of yourself that you consciously or subconsciously tailor for the whole world to consume and think better of you for it.

For organizations attempting to play in the social media sphere, this outlines an important learning about the value and quality of social graph data. For individuals trying to get to know one another and have genuine, honest relationships, this raises a frightening red flag about the way we interact and what this type of disingenuous communication may be doing to our society as a whole.

…Then again, I might be saying all of this just to appear smart.

Failure is Always an Option

"I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work."

-Thomas Edison

It takes a lot of internal strength to fail, or as Edison has shown above, perhaps a distorted view on the very definition of failure.  My point is that failure is not always easy to come to terms with. However, if history as shown us anything, it is that the world’s greatest failures are often also the world’s greatest successes.

I started a new job two weeks ago.  In my first week, I was given a task that I felt was completely misaligned with my skillset and frankly, a rather foolish thing to have me doing. I’m not sure if I was given the task because my supervisor lacked information on my capabilities, if they had a pressing need for the task’s completion or if they simply wanted to test me out of my depth.  Either way… I failed at the task, however, I didn’t fail in the right way.

Yes, there are most definitely different ways to fail.

If in approaching a task, you are able to keep an open mind and accept the distinct possibility of failure, you will mentally document each step and pay closer attention to your actions so that upon your blunder’s post-mortem, you can see where you went wrong.  If however you act as I did and charge into the problem like a western gun-slinger with a penchant for brushes with death, you will not maintain the state of mind necessary to monitor your shortcomings.

This isn’t to say that we should enter new territory with the expectation of failure, however, I believe that we should always approach the unknown accepting the possibility of failure. By doing so, we remove so much of the apprehension and fear associated with failing.  We actually think through what it would mean to fail and are able to mitigate the risks of failure or even realize that the consequences of failing may not be that great.

It’s a challenging concept to accept but failure is not always bad.  As Edison’s quick turn of words in response to a nosey New York Times reporter reminds us, failure is an essential element of success.  Accepting failure allows for risk. Risk allows for progression, innovation and the unexpected… all things that ultimately lead to breakthrough success.

You may be wondering what happened to my first week at work.  As I mentioned, I failed the wrong way by the end of my first week as I didn’t accept the possibility of failure and didn’t learn anything.  Ok, I’m lying a little.  I did learn one important thing that I carried into my second week of the task which has drastically improved my work approach, and outcome:

Failure is always an option.

Forget Your Passion, Find Your Challenge!

“Be passionate about your job and you’ll never work another day in your life.”

I call bullshit. Sure, this quote gives us that Hallmark warm and fuzzy feeling way down in the sub-cockles of our heart (which by the way, the word “cockles” is nothing more than an incorrect latin translation of the word chocleae, which referred to ventricles… go warm your ventricles, people), however, there is a very harsh reality that this quote ignores.  If everyone in the world followed this quote to the letter, we would have a ridiculous number of rock stars, hoards of mediocre professional athletes, and such a high demand for accountants that they would be the highest paid individuals in the world.  My point it is that sometimes, it isn’t possible to follow your heart.

When I was 18, I was an optimistic farm boy, preparing myself to leave the small town and enter the city for University.  I had gotten into a number of schools and was torn between two very different paths: engineering or music. I still recall a conversation with my Aunt, the conclusion of which told me that music would always be there for me no matter what, but engineering wasn’t really something that people did as a hobby.  “Besides,” my Aunt concluded, “if you pursue music as a career, it becomes work, and you can never really love work.”

While I may disagree with my Aunt on that last point, that conversation was quite possibly one of the most important defining moments of my young life. The difficulty was, had I followed my passion and pursued a career in music, I would probably end up among the huge statistic of struggling artists who barely make ends meet working shift jobs at cafes and pubs, trying to chase a dream that has less than a prayer’s chance of coming to fruition. The issue here was a problem of demand; there simply wasn’t enough of it to justify another guy like me trying to play music for a living.

This isn’t to say that one shouldn’t be passionate about their work, however, don’t feel as though you have to be so narrow-sighted in the pursuit of your goals so as to ignore the opportunities around you and find a way to achieve both passion and success.  I, for example, have made a damned good life for myself as an engineer turned businessman. This has afforded me the luxury of playing in a band during my free time to satisfy my need for music. Win-win, right?

You may still be wondering if this means that work must therefore be a monotonous drudgery until the day we retire with our only respite being the hobbies we pursue in our leisure time.  Foolish earthling, give your head a shake. Research into human motivation has shown that there are a number of factors that drive our work habits (particularly things like mastery, autonomy and purpose). I would argue that in order to enjoy your work on an ongoing basis, you need to find a job that challenges you.  We humans seem to be addicted to the positive feelings of accomplishment and few things give that junkie’s fix like overcoming a big challenge.  There is a certain element of pride and strength in the knowledge of overcoming a meaningful problem though independently learning and applying new knowledge and skills.  For me, this problem solving high is only slightly less enjoyable than the feeling I get from being on stage with a guitar and a captive (albeit slightly alcohol-fueled and inhibition-lowered) audience.

All that said, if you wake up every morning knowing - absolutely KNOWING - that you will one day be the greatest ballerina that ever lived… by all means, follow your passion.  However, for the rest of us who have our doubts, a good challenge can be a great substitute for passion and something that I for one, can get passionate about.

Why Can't We Be Happy?

In the past two months, I have done a disturbing amount of introspection. I’ve gotten to know myself better than I ever wanted to. Through this process, I was attempting to find the core of what made me tick with the hope that I could answer a very simple yet extremely important question:

Why can’t I be happy at work?

To be fair, I’ve always enjoyed work to a degree. I like the challenges I encounter each day and I enjoy the satisfaction that comes with solving problems and impacting the lives of others. However, this time around, I didn’t just want simple pleasures here and there, I wanted a workplace that I had to be physically removed from the office at the end of each day. I wanted to find a job that I could enjoy doing more than my hobbies.  I wanted to love my job.

This led me to think about some of the typical responses to happiness at work. Was it fame? Given the wake of countless athletes who have taken their own lives and when considering celebrities such as, Ms. Houston, who drowned in spirals of depression, it is difficult to highlight fame as a big selling point. What about fortune? Getting a bit less anecdotal and a bit more statistical, if one looks at the extreme ends of the global suicide rates, the positive effect of money is quickly brought into question:

• Haiti – 0.001% ($673 GDP/cap)
• Pakistan – 0.002% ($1,197 GDP/cap)
• Philippines – 0.0021% ($2,255 GDP/cap)
• Finland – 0.0193% ($44, 488 GDP/cap)
• Japan – 0.0238% ($45,774 GDP/cap)
• South Korea – 0.0312% ($23,749 GDP/cap)

From this quick exercise, one could almost conclude that the people in some of the richer nations are actually less happy… or at least, are certainly killing themselves more.

*I’m using suicide as an indicator for unhappiness here, which may be a poor choice, however, certainly gets the point across about the effect of some variables

The concept of ‘fit’ gets thrown around a lot. While this term is a bit ambiguous, it tends to refer to the way that an individual meshes into an organization’s culture. I, for example, should never in my life choose to work for an accounting firm or say… the military. Fit is definitely an important factor, but is it the be-all-end-all?

I would argue that all of these things – fame, fortune, fit – are prerequisites for happiness to some degree, however, they are just that: prerequisites. You need to be paid enough not to have to worry about salary. You need to get enough recognition to satiate your ego. Your organizational surroundings need to align with your beliefs, not perfectly, but enough that you can find common ground. However, beyond this, I believe that the onus is on the individual.

Our minds are disturbingly powerful tools, yet we so often neglect that power. How is it that a rice paddy farmer in mainland China can be exponentially happier than an iBanker working on Wall Street? The answer is simple: perspective. Recent work by Shawn Achor in the field of positive psychology talks about a misconception in many of the developed nations. We believe that success will bring us happiness, when in fact all of Achor’s work points to the exact opposite: happiness brings success. In short, simply by taking a positive approach to your life and work, you will be more likely to succeed and said positivity and happiness will simply perpetuate upon its self.

Perhaps even more interesting is that our happiness and positivity does not necessarily have to be sourced from the outside world or “natural.” Work by Dan Gilbert has shown that we can simulate happiness and that it provides the same physiological impact on our well-being. Happiness does not need to be found – through success, love, fame or fortune – we have the ability in our own minds to synthesise happiness. All we need to do is approach our lives and our work with the right state of mind.

So to answer my original question, why can’t I be happy at work? Maybe because I’m just not thinking about it the right way.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

I’ve often been accused in life of being one of those do-as-I-say-no- as-I-do people, likely because I am.  For the longest time, I preached to others about the importance of introspection, self-evaluation and taking time to think about your own life and the things that have happened to you.

That said, I don’t think I started genuinely and constructively reflecting on my life until around a year ago.  While I’m sure you’re greatly enjoying looking down your digital nose right now with a smug sense of satisfaction (wipe that stupid grin off your face :-), can you honestly say that you take scheduled, structured time to reflect on your life and experiences on a regular interval?  Sure, we all say that we look back and evaluate the things that happen to us, but there is a HUGE difference between spending 5 minutes on the subway thinking about your shitty day and sitting down with a pen and paper to regularly answer some very important yet simple questions about what you’ve been doing.

I have always led a ridiculously packed life and I would argue that during the fall of 2010, my life was at its craziest.  On top of an intense academic schedule while completing a condensed, 1 year MBA, I was an executive member of two different student governments, prepping for multiple case competitions, attending every and any conference or business event I could get my hands on, training for the Toronto marathon, active in a rock band that practiced twice a week a gigged once a month AND I still maintained a healthy beer regimen.  I was a complete mess of a human being who became almost entirely task based with next to no critical thinking about how I approached my life. My friends tolerated me for the favours I was able to do for them and my roommates found me unbearable.

However, after attending a fantastic conference with a group of like-minded MBAs, someone put me onto the idea of setting aside a small amount of time each week to reflect.  While I was worried about adding the proverbial straw that might break the camel’s back (read: nervous breakdown), I figured that an extra 15 minutes a week wouldn’t kill me.  Based on a recommendation, I would answer 3 questions each week:

What did I accomplish this week?

This first question for me became more of a pat on the back than anything.  Sometimes, when individuals become so mired in the drudgery of all that they do, they neglect to sit in awe of their own accomplishments for a moment.  In addition to making yourself feel better, this question is also useful to identify where you are sinking the bulk of your time.

What did I intend to accomplish but was unable to?

Next, things start to get more critical.  Here you have to consider your goals from the week and flat out admit to your shortcomings.  The purpose of this question isn’t to beat you down and make you feel like crap, but instead to set you up for the next, and most crucial question in this process.

What prevented me from accomplishing my goals?

This is the most important question you can ask each week.  After looking at the good and the bad, you need to step back and look at the root problems. Sometimes the problems are internal – in which case, learn to give yourself a good smack – and sometimes, the issues arise from external sources – so get ready to punish someone in your life. When I first started reflecting, a number of my initial time sinks came from doing menial tasks that I shouldn’t have even been doing in the first place.  Identifying this issue over and over forced me to change my ways and learn to become a better delegator and a more hands-off leader.

These 3 simple questions became a routine every Sunday night that helped me identify some of my greatest accomplishments and the hurdles standing in my way.  Instead of blinding fighting through a seemingly endless task list, this process transformed me into a more dynamic individual who made adjustments each week in terms of how to approach life.  It wasn’t easy getting started – for the first few weeks, you will have to force yourself to sit down – however, the results were undeniable.

So the next time you have a shitty week, don’t simply drown your sorrows on a Friday night, curse about how you hate your job or take the life of a vagrant somewhere in a back alley.  Sit down for 15 minutes with a pen and paper and answer 3 simple questions.  You’ll be amazed at the things you learn about yourself.

Why Bother?

Why do we get out of bed in the morning?  Other than the obvious typical answers – to pay rent, to stock up on vitamin D, to allow bedsores to subside – I, and many others like me, seldom take the time to really think this question through.  If I’m being completely honest, I don’t think I had a very good answer to this question until this week and even now, I’d say I’m in early stages of evolution on my true motivations.

It all started with a meeting on Wednesday.  I sat for coffee with a fascinating individual who was perpetually asking the question, “why?”  We talked about career opportunities and when I spoke of the jobs I was interested, he repeated his question, “why?” After tripping over my words a few times, I eventually settled on the fact that I like to solve problems.  Once again, his persistence remained with the simple question, “why?” At that point, amid early morning frustration and confusion, I contemplated Godwin-esque rebuttals to shut the man up: I was genetically wired that way, my sisters dressed me up as a girl when young, video games had raised a child demanding simple yet immediate satisfaction… ok, I didn’t really know.

So what makes you tick?  Why do you do the things you do?  Why do you enjoy your hobbies? Why do you go to work each day? Do you even have a good answer to these questions?

I didn’t.  However, this meeting pointed me to someone who could help.  It was the work of SimonSinek that would ask the right questions and get me thinking about what I was really doing (everyone loves a good TED talk).  His work can be summarized quite simply as identifying 3 layers of our daily lives.  ‘What’ is the actual actions and things that we do.  My ‘what’ tends to involve things like using technology, writing, creating music and communicating.  ‘How’ looks a level higher in terms of how we accomplish our goals.  I use my ‘Whats’ to be a problem solver.  However, the ‘Why’ is the question that few people (including myself) get to.  In fact, as Sinek points out, ‘Why’ is where we should begin.

It took me a while, but after thinking through all of the things I’ve done over the years and major decisions I’ve made that have led me to where I am, I realized that I like making people happy.  My ‘Why’ is the enrichment of other’s lives.  While I have typical ways of accomplishing this goal, it really doesn’t matter ‘How’ or ‘What’ I do to get there.

Think about the things you do.  Think about what makes you happy.  Think about your job.  Think about your hobbies.  Think about the relationships you maintain.  Behind each and every one of these things, there is a motivation.  What’s your why?

A Rose By Any Other Name

Today, we’re going to play a little game. Every time I use a term that feels dirty (in that business way), you take a drink. It’s like the Reservoir Dogs game; every time someone swears, smokes or says a colour, knock one back.

I used to shutter at the utterance of three simple letters: M-B-A (drink). Now I have one. My transformation from a small-town farm boy into a suit, chasing top tier jobs in the consulting industry was not an easy one. However, I think the hardest pill to swallow was business terminology (and some would argue that I still haven’t caved on that point).

I can die a happy man if I never once say the word ‘synergy’ (drink) without a painful tone of irony and bile.

I’m well aware of the proper definition of this term, I simply prefer to talk about savings obtained through working together. The issue with terms like this is that they have negative momentum that I find easier to avoid than to overcome. The classic saying titling this post is often countered by pointing out the fact that very few people would be touched by receiving a dozen shitweeds. I’m diverging, but my point is simple: many business terms have taken on a similar connotation; one that often denotes disingenuous feelings. Perhaps the greatest sufferer of this condition is the concept of networking (drink).

When I started my degree, I realized that this was a term I would encounter frequently, however, I was so put off by it that I simply developed my own definition. To me, networking (drink) became the process of doing favours for others without asking anything in return. However, only recently have I realized my error. Since I seldom called any favours in, networking (drinking) had become a one-sided concept. Yet, in the new year, as I began to ‘leverage my network’ (take a couple) I realized I had only half of the equation.

Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to help facilitate a leadership conference for a group of business undergrads. At one point, a student approached me and asked me how to network (drink). This question caught me off guard for two reasons: first, I hadn’t really thought of it before and second, once I did think about it, I realized that networking (drink) isn’t anything special.

My new definition of networking (drink) is simply making friends. I realize that in order to sell books on the topic and to publish an article of top 25 networking tips (drink 25), we have to use a special word, otherwise these writings would sound like self-help manuals for the socially inept. However, I believe our society needs a greater culture of critical thinking. Do not let simple buzz words frighten or impress you. Instead, think to the core of what is trying to be said. Business buzzwords may be used to help individuals sound more creative, however, they simultaneously confuse and deteriorate communication.

I guess my point is, the next time someone uses words like synergy, networking, competencies, downsizing or sustainability (I am so sorry to those still keeping score at home), stop and use your brain for half a second to realize that they are simply talking about savings, friends, skills, firing people or trying to be a decent human being.

If you’re not thoroughly faced by the end of this article you have either not been reading very closely, disobeying my orders, or found none of these terms inappropriate and possibly have no soul.

Why is Everyone Afraid of Dating?

Here’s a crazy thought.  Imagine you met someone through an online dating site.  You read their profile and liked what you saw; they had all the makings of a good partner on paper, they seemed interesting, attractive and to have a lot in common with you.  So, what the hell… you decide you’re going to go on a date.  You set a date and time, put on your best clothes to leave a good impression and spend a couple of hours together.  Maybe you go on a date or two after this.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, well before fully getting to know this individual, trying things out in the sack, or getting to know their friends and family, you hop a plane to Vegas, find a chapel with an Elvis impersonator licenced in the state of Nevada and tie the knot. 'Till death or thousands of dollars in legal fees do us part.

Sounds absolutely crazy, right? This has to be either destined true love or complete insanity. Who in their right mind would get married after only a handful of dates, without meeting another person close to this individual to vouch for them and without ever experiencing some of the things that make relationships work: fighting, sex, compassion, challenge.   Well, as crazy as this sounds, I just effectively described what the hiring process looks like for many of us (minus the Elvis thing).

Think about it. Based on a resume or job application, a company finds you attractive. You go through a handful of interviews, perhaps meeting a couple of HR professionals along the way who hardly represent the image and culture of the whole organization. The company is never able to see how you actually work and you never get to experience the lifestyle of a typical day in the office. Finally, after a few meetings, a contract is tossed in front of your eyes and each party signs away a commitment to each other.

The divorce rate is currently hovering around 50% for all marriages, but I’d love to hear what the latest statistics are on corporate attrition.  Long gone are the days of people receiving gold watches for their 20 years of service; now you’re lucky to get 5 out of an employee. However, even if we discount the fact that people make many career changes in their lives, how many employees jump ship within less than 2 years of being hired simply because they didn’t like the job?

More importantly, what is so awful about dating? Particularly with new grads who are still trying to find their way in the world, why should organizations commit to an individual who has a decent likelihood of being awful at their job and wanting out? On the flipside, why should I be expected to take a full time position with a company I know next to nothing about?  Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t mind being hired on for a 3-6 month contract.  It would give me the opportunity to get to know the company, the clients and the type of work that would be expected of me.  At the end of this contract, both sides would have the opportunity to review the past, consider their options and either make a more firm commitment or move onto greener pastures. I know individuals hate the idea of such ambiguity and are usually more risk averse than this, but for a new grad in their 20s, is their really that much to lose?

If contract work frightens you, there are new services popping up from groups like Toronto’s Challenge Factory.  CF is a career services organization that offers a unique service to individuals: the opportunity to spend a day in the life of your targeted career. Instead of simply dreaming about what it would be like, Challenge Factory will place you in an office to volunteer for the role of your choice for a day (I always wondered if I would be a good cop). However, there is no guarantee that your day will be representative of the job, coworkers or organization you could be walking into.

I’m still a hopeless romantic who believes in love at first sight, Santa Clause, finding the perfect job, and one day having a wife, big house and 2.2 kids (pray for mercy for my third child). However, my warning goes out to women and companies alike: if you want to put a ring on this finger, you’re going to get to know me and really impress me before I’ll sign anything.

Do I Have to Go to Work Today?

The frightening thing is that increasingly, the answer is becoming ‘no.’ With more and more people working from home each year, taking flex hours and even basing out of a home office… there may very soon be a day when the answer to this question is no.

I recently read an article through CNN that talked about the office of tomorrow. It was a very visual piece that showed 3D renderings of an office in 2022.  Common place where items such as hologram tables, 3-D printers and even office windows which doubled as computer screens (though this one may be a lot closer than 10 years away). The article showed what kind of technologies are coming up the pipelines and set to be in place in the business world in 10 years. However, even this article acknowledges that there is a massive assumption precluding the entire piece: that you will even be working in an office in 10 years.

In my recent job hunt, I have already stumbled across full-time positions that list their location as “virtual.” These are not simply jobs where flex time or working from home is permitted, or even jobs based in a city where positions such as sales and support are mostly on the road. Increasingly, coders, consultants, writers, graphic designers and anyone else who doesn’t really need a place to call ‘work’ are being hired from locations across the globe. Particularly in cases where the majority of an employee’s work is done on the computer, meetings are held over Skype and documents are shared through the cloud, does it really make a difference if your co-worker is down the hall or across the globe?

Instead, what I would really wish to have seen out of the CNN article is forecast technologies to support the increasing trend of home workers. The snowballing power of mobile technology is encouraging (and I always loved the quote about Nasa and Angry Birds), however where will this technology lead us in 10 years? Will desks be obsolete? Will we see living spaces better designed to handle work flow?  Will we see home innovations that are able to replicate more of the functions of the office such as white boarding, co-worker socializing, getting fired (though George Clooney may have already proved that one a bad idea) and even frowned up on business activities such as cheating on your partner with your secretary.

Are we moving towards an era where those massive, brilliant buildings that scatter and inspire our cityscapes become obsolete?

It seems there will always be an argument for some form of in-person collaboration. A few years ago, I read the book Blind Faith by Ben Elton.  While the book was nothing more than a futuristic, sexual-tech-theology adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 (yes, I’m equally confused by my own description), it did raise a few interesting points. The book was set in an oppressive future where digital sharing of information had become all-encompassing and individuals could no longer have independent secrets or personal lives. With the pervasiveness of the online life, everyone with an office job worked from home. However, due to growing social dysfunction, fizzy coffs (visits to physical offices) were made mandatory to encourage people to get out of the house and interact in a face-to-face manner.

So perhaps the question shouldn’t be, ‘do I have to go to work today?’  Instead, we should be asking what is the right balance of office work, work from home and travel. Also, if I do end up working entirely from home, how can I be expected to riddle my coworkers with nerf darts?

…Never mind.

Why Can't Jobs Find Me?

Job hunting is an area very near and dear to my heart since, after an unfortunate economic climate and a revoked job offer upon my return from Thailand, I find myself back on the market. I, like so many others, find the job seeking process to be one that is painfully outdated and if I’m being brutally honest, massively ineffective.

I’m going to seemingly contradict myself here, but bear with me for a minute.

I feel that I have a fantastic resume; I also despise my resume. Let me explain.

By comparison to the resumes of my peers and those who I would be competing against in the job market, my resume is probably pretty damned impressive. That said, those simple 2 pages say almost nothing about how useful I could be and how much potential I have to grow within an organization. Part of the issue is that when you condense a human being’s life down to 2 pages, just about anyone is going to sound impressive when they list only their greatest accomplishments (particularly if HR professionals are spending an average of 15 seconds per resume, or wherever that statistic is at these days). However, companies don’t just want to know how you are going to be at your best. They should also be curious as to how you will perform on a day-to-day basis and, even more importantly, at your worst.

The other issue is that your resume states almost nothing about your future and who you could be. What are your goals (real goals, not that cheesy opening sentence you have at the start)? What kind of potential and ambition do you have for growth? Why are you even interested in this position? What are things you may not even know about yourself that someone else may see?

At the heart of the matter is this: companies are still engaging with talent in the same way that they have been for over 50 years. Sure, the process has become much more streamlined and automated with the use of keyword software and filtering surveys, however, all this has really done is reduced the number of man-hours required by HR. Resumes are static documents trying to represent the complexity of a dynamic individual hoping to score a job in a (hopefully) dynamic organization. I understand that no company could ever spend the required time looking at each of their applicants, but given the number of jobs that are filled outside of the traditional method (through networking, referrals, internships, etc.) one has to question the effectiveness of traditional recruiting.

I’m sure any HR professional reading this is cracking their fingers, eagerly anticipating the literary assault they are about to unleash on my comment section about the effectiveness of resumes and the things they like to see.  Regardless, I maintain that each individual is different and as such, each hiring manager is looking for different things. With most recruiters hiding behind the anonymous veil of an online posting, applicants can only hazard a guess as to how to tweak their resume and write their cover letter to give them the best shot at an interview.

Well you know what? Not me.  I’m done with job postings. In the first two weeks of January alone, I have scheduled 9 different meetings with people at companies I am genuinely interested in. These meetings give me the opportunity to engage with another person who represents the culture of their organization. From there, I can tell them the things they are actually interested in, instead of a line about being the high school council president. I can also ask them questions about both their organization and the job position. You know what? I have no idea what the hell a Competitive Intelligence Outside Consultant does and the two paragraph description just doesn’t cut it.

It dawns on me that I shouldn't end this rant completely doom and gloom. Technology is changing and organizations are hearing the cries of the hopelessly unemployed such as me. LinkedIn has started recommending jobs to me based on my profile, though I wish I could tell it to stop sending me entry-level engineering jobs now that I have my MBA. The Ladders has suggested thousands of jobs to me as well… I just think it has me confused with Patrick Bateman. Regardless, both still ultimately funnel your application down to the traditional resume & cover letter.

Perhaps the most promising technology is in a company I have had an opportunity to pilot: WhoPlusYou. The premise is simple: you build a very extensive profile that distills you down to your most basic and important skills, traits and interests. Jobs find you based on a matching of those same basic elements. When a match is made, the organization and the individual are connected, allowing the individual to choose to share a variety of support documents such as presentations, videos, PDFs, images and of course, traditional resumes. While the company is in early days, I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen so far. 

Yet while I am optimistic, I am cautiously so. I still question whether 2 pieces of paper, a software program or a handful of survey questions can ever gauge a person in the same way that a 2 minute conversation with another human being can.

Is Business Sick?

This question is, I suppose, the premise to this entire blog. Why would one need a counselor if there was nothing wrong? If business is sick, should we even be concerned? Is there anything we can do to help or, like the common cold, should we just get some rest, eat chicken soup and mope around the house for a day or two? If we believe we can help we must determine what business is suffering from and what we can prescribe to cure its ails.

While the recent 'occupy' protests would argue that the sickness is systemic and terminal, this is a rather daunting premise to admit that our entire way of life is flawed. However, given the impetus of these protests and the past 4 years of economic turmoil, anyone who says that the body of business is a picture of health may need some therapy themselves. Instead, I would argue that we observe business illnesses in the same way we regard those of people (we do, after all, give businesses many of the same rights as people). Each business, as each person, must be evaluated and approached on an individual basis. In certain cases, we can collectively group together illnesses among common groups or industries.

Take the example of the US auto industry. While healers much wiser and more experienced than I are currently trying a cocktail of different treatments to fix the industry, one has to wonder how the situation became so dire. With the benefit of hindsight, nearly anyone can see that the auto industry was suffering from some archaic ailment which should have been identified and cured long ago; a kind of corporate smallpox where everyone is shocked that this would happen in our modern age. By the time symptoms began to show, it was almost too late: dealerships were closed, plants shutdown, GM became government property, Chrysler was bought by Fiat and the United Auto Union. These companies had been operating on 50 year old business models, producing cars that people didn't really want and manufacturing parts at ridiculous costs under iron-tight union contracts. Meanwhile, foreign automakers had been eating away massive market shares from the Big Three.

I read an article in the fall (which for the life of me I cannot find) that made a drastic proposal for the auto industry. The article suggested that auto manufacturers should focus on their core competencies - designing, marketing and selling cars - and shed the distractions they are engaged in, such as manufacturing parts. What? A car company that doesn't manufacture anything? How would that be possible? That idea is almost as crazy as a computer company that doesn't create any electronics.

Say what you will about big blue, but IBM is one company who truly believes the old adage 'adapt or die.' In the early 80s if you wanted to buy a personal computer, your decision was pretty much down to Mac or IBM (note, not PC, but IBM). However, IBM had the foresight to see that hardware was going to eventually be a commodity and that they would have difficulty competing with foreign electronics suppliers who benefited from labour savings (sound familiar?). Enter the PC clone. IBM didn't stop making computers (not just yet at least), but for the most part, they became an assembler. Beyond this, they standardized PC design and parts and not just allowed, but collaborated with companies such as HP and Compaq who created PC clones. IBM still got their cut by licensing versions of MS-DOS which was arguably their true core competency at the time.

Imagine a world where Ford did nothing but design and sell cars. They could set the standard for parts which would be integrated into Ford cars and allow the market to take care of making parts at the lowest possible cost. So long as those basic criteria were met, companies around the world could optimize part design and create standard parts that could fit across not just one, but a wide range of vehicles. Cars would be modular, and brought together in an infinite number of configurations. Much like building a custom desktop from Dell, people could design and customize their own new car which would be exactly as they want it. Exhausts and mirrors and frames could even be specified from different suppliers much like choosing Kingston RAM over generic or a Seagate hard drive.

But I digress. This is simply one of many ailments facing the corporate world today. Each Friday I will attempt to (and likely fail to) tackle an issue which plagues modern businesses, be they individual organizations, industries, or business as a whole. Your feedback, comments and questions are always welcome: I love a good chat.