The Vision Thing

How do you inspire a shared vision? Well, easier said than done, but check out how Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino learned the “art of mobilizing others to struggle for shared aspirations.”

I gave Terry Gilliam a special thank you in this movie. I met him at the Sundance workshop. I asked him a question and he said something which should be obvious but him saying it made it achievable. I said, “Mr. Gilliam, you have a vision that carries over in every single movie that you do. How do you achieve that special vision in each one of your different movies?” And he said, “I have the vision in my head and all I have to do is hire a good cinematographer, good production designer, good costume designers and my job is to articulate that vision to them. After I’ve articulated it, they take it and go to the moon with it.”

Think of your particular business and answer these questions: Who is your good cinematographer? Good production designer? Good costume designer? Once you know, go and articulate, articulate, articulate!

Leadership by Committee

In reference to Ground Zero, the Wall Street Journal‘s drama critic Terry Teachout describes perfectly the kind of unwowified projects that result from committees:

The Freedom Center is one of those self-evidently silly ideas that only an underemployed committee could have conceived, a portentous-sounding Museum of Nothing in Particular destined to present blandly institutional, scrupulously noncontroversial exhibitions. No doubt the center will draw plenty of squirming grade-school kids sentenced to compulsory field trips, but I’d bet next month’s rent that tourists will steer clear.

Ruthless Competition

The article about Nokia in the recent Economist magazine reminds me that our most unforgiving competitor isn’t another company, but innovation itself.

Re-imagining NASA


Tom writes that: “It is the foremost task—and responsibility—of our generation to re-imagine our enterprises and institutions.” Check out this cool story at CNN and Space.com detailing how NASA may re-imagine itself by turning to “privatization” and “small, entrepreneurial firms.” If it means going to Mars, we say go for it!

Plenty of Room at the Bottom

Our friend Dave Dorff emailed us this fascinating speech by Physicist Richard P. Feynman with the following comment, “Here’s a piece of history—may take some concentration to read (at least it did for me)—but considering it was written in 1959, it’s enormously insightful for today’s science and technology.”

A Passion for Passion

See Tom’s newest special slides presentation, Passion, the Motivational Speech.

A Hotel’s Reagan Tribute

Second item on the Wall Street Journal‘s blog has this little item about a visit to Washington, D.C., yesterday.

What touched us most, though, was that our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, had gone out of its way to honor Reagan. At the front desk were three monochromatic bowls of jellybeans—one each red, white, and blue. When we got to our room, the bed had been turned down, and in place of the standard chocolate were a small package of jellybeans and a card with the famous quote: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Not only a fitting tribute, but the kind of customer service we, well, mostly read about.

Geoff Thatcher posted this on June 11, 2004, in News.
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Branding Q&A

Now that my business is growing bigger, should I concern myself with branding when even my logo is homemade on my computer?

When one of their readers asked about branding, Dr. Ned Roberto and Ardy Roberto answered with a little Tom.

Debating Globalization

Is ‘localization’ the inevitable result of globalization? As global becomes local, opposing sides of the argument are voiced by interesting folks such as Julian Birkinshaw and Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Aesthetics Management

Ashraf Oozeerally defines aesthetics management (and quotes a little Tom) in lexpress:

Ideally speaking, aesthetics management should begin with a thorough status quo, an AS-IS analysis of every aspect of a company’s or brand’s visual and sensory identity to project necessary aesthetic outputs (corporate expressions) while identifying how customers perceive the organization’s current inputs (corporate impressions).