Your workplace is a melting pot. In an office setting, complete strangers come together for a common goal. To work effectively, you need to be comfortable at some base level. Since you’re working together, you need to get along. And in Winter, these needs come together in (at least) one place: the thermostat.

At our last company meeting, I gave everyone an update on where we are on getting certified with the Illinois Green Business Association (IGBA). As part of that update, I announced that we would start following the IGBA energy conservation requirement that includes a maximum temperature setting of 68 degrees during the day for running the furnace.

I would have had more smiles if I had started singing all of the songs from Barney. And I had actually given this some thought. There was another requirement I could have chosen to follow that would have limited use of personal heaters to areas that were not otherwise heated. This would have meant that if you want to run a heater, the furnace would be turned off. At least this way, staff could keep their heaters and a (nominally) comfortable temperature. Unfortunately, some of the work areas in this building were not designed as office space, and the building as a whole isn’t particularly well insulated. Will this save Taylor Studios money? It’s hard to tell. Personal heater use may go up.

The only other alternative would be to ban personal heaters and turn up the furnace. On the face of it, this could work, but then you run into the fact that people run at a wide range of temperatures. 72 degrees sounds warm to me, but not to Jackie at the next desk over. Do you turn up the furnace so that the coldest person is comfortable, and warm people like me are working in T-shirts in January? John across the room would love to keep it at 63 degrees. Then you can look at how efficiently your HVAC setup works. Does the temperature seem to plunge a minute after the furnace shuts off? Here at our offices, personal heaters and a moderate thermostat seem to offer the most comfort for the most people. Despite all this, I know the next time I stand up at a company meeting, I will be greeted warily, like I am the Greek government about to present new austerity measures to the Greek citizens.

Does this sound familiar to you? How has your company sided in the temperature tug-of-war?

There are circumstances when copywriters and graphic designers must decide whether to break a grammar rule for the sake of visual cohesion and quick comprehension. Take the following text on a theoretical graphic panel:

Get to Know Skunk Cabbage
• Attracts pollinating insects with a strong odor.
• Favorite food of black bears.
• Generates heat during the winter to pop through snow.

Putting other interpretive qualities of the theoretical graphic aside to concentrate on the point at hand, notice how the three bullet-pointed phrases start with a capital letter and end with a period. Each bullet pointed phrase read easier when treated as a complete sentence. Grammar was sidestepped for the sake of brevity, readability, and visual cohesion.

When determining whether to break a grammar rule, the copywriters and graphic designers first ask themselves:
1) How egregious is the transgression?
2) Will evidence of the transgression take away from its benefits.
3) Has every other option been considered prior to breaking the rule?
4) Who is the target audience and who is the client? (Breaking rules in an exhibit about the English language aimed at a grade school audience is likely a no-no!)

I was digging through one of my many notebooks today and came across notes from a Recourses webinar I attended more than a year ago. We often talk about how to prioritize our work. There is always more to do than there is time to do it. It’s important to get the most important things done first. What do you do that contributes the most value to your organization? What can you stop doing? How do you structure your day to contribute the most value?

As the CEO I often ask myself is my time better spent on Finance, coaching my staff, with clients, marketing, strategic planning, etc. There are endless things that could be done. These are the priorities the webinar mentioned for CEO level work:

• 1. The Financial Picture
  An owner must keep their finger on the pulse of the company’s financials. I use many visuals, KPI’s, flash reports, metrics, etc. I spend a lot of time on finance and accounting.
• 2. Hiring/Molding Key Staff
  It is harder to find great employees than finding great clients. You can’t hide from a bad employee experience. I spend quite a bit of time walking around talking to staff and coaching my direct reports. I have delegated the majority of our recruiting and hiring.
• 3. Positioning/Closing New Business
  I spend about 40% of my time on marketing and sales. I enjoy meeting and working with new clients and doing marketing. This year I am going to attempt to increase the amount of time I spend doing this.
• 4. Strategy Work for Clients
  An owner can build a bond during the prospecting stage. And then help the client with the big picture level work. Let your staff do the day-to-day work.
• 5. Implementation for Clients
  Staff should do the majority of this work.

Principals of high performing teams focus mainly on the first three. We also set quarterly goals and focus our time working on those.

How does your organization help you prioritize your work?

Due to technology available today, we have become so accustomed to instant gratification that we have forgotten how to plan. In the last few months we have received several RFP’s that have unrealistic schedules. For example, ABC Nature Center is seeking a design/build firm for their new 1,200 sq. ft. facility with a budget of $130,000. They have a general idea of what type of exhibits they want but need assistance in developing their central theme. Below is their schedule:

RFP Released: January 3, 2012

Pre-Bid Meeting: January 11, 2012

Proposal Due: January 20, 2012

Contract Award: January 31, 2012

Notice to Proceed: February 3, 2012

Project Completion: August 15, 2012

The first issue with this schedule is that contract negotiations always take longer than three days. Contracts go through several revisions by staff, board members, and legal counsel meaning it will take at least a month for all parties to fully execute a contract.

Next, there is more to starting a project than some first time clients realize. It takes time to develop a central theme, subthemes, and storylines. Our experienced Certified Interpretive Planners will lead a full day (or two) workshop to identify what the nature center wants to achieve, who their visitors are, and what they want visitors to take away from their experience. They work closely with our designers to develop the desired exhibit.

Another issue is the client review period. We allow clients an ample amount of time to review and approve drawings throughout the design process. It is not as easy as it seems and clients often state that it was more work than they realized. The design process can take anywhere from six to twelve months before it goes to the fabrication shop. Depending on the type of exhibits, fabrication and installation can be an additional six to twelve months. Whether it is a small project or a large one, they all go through the same process.

Bottom line: Exhibits take time and planning early pays off. Please do yourself a favor if you think such a project is in your future. Take a deep breath and call. You will appreciate the end product even more if you enjoyed the process it took to get there. We will appreciate it to.

We should all incorporate more storytelling into our relationships. Daniel Pink advocates this in his book A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Stories have a deeper impact than simply reciting facts, figures, and bullet points. Stories take us to a place of high impact and high touch. But how do you become a good storyteller? Practice. And I’ve found a fun place to practice storytelling, StubStory.com.

Do you have an old ticket stub that you’ve saved for years?… a concert, sporting event, Broadway show, etc.? These tiny shreds of paper are powerful reminders of experiences we’ve had. StubStory embraces the idea that we hang on to ticket stubs to help us relive these experiences. These experiences can make for great stories. Roaring amplifiers, race cars fumes, crowded theaters…all wonderful ingredients for stories!

How it works? Simply scan or take a photo of a ticket stub, craft a short story about your experience, then visit the website and follow the instructions to upload it. It’s entertaining to read others’ experiences and a fun opportunity to sharpen your storytelling skills.

What is Authentic?

Authentic is the latest and greatest buzzword. I first thought of authenticity when the book by the same name by James Gilmore and Joseph Pine was published in 2007 The Authenticity Imperative. They describe some businesses as offering fake, contrived, phony products or experiences. Given this and all our digital friends it seems people are craving something real. Clients want to buy from companies that are authentic. Seth Godin describes it as doing what you promise. In a philosophical sense it would be seen as being true to yourself. You could say it is as old as Socrates with the admonition that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” In the philosophy of art is the work faithful to the artist’s self or does it conform to external values? In psychology it refers to living one’s life according to the needs of one’s inner being, rather than the demands of society.

Hearing the word over and over again on the news shows this weekend made me think that it is bantered around unjustly. What does it mean for someone to be authentic or for a business to have authenticity? I think these words describe it:

• Honest
• Genuine
• Sincere
• Being what you say you are
• Being true to oneself
• Natural
• Original
• Caring
• Real
• Doing what you say you will do
• Having a calling and purpose

With these adjectives in mind, I don’t think they describe our political figures too accurately. That’s a bummer.

When we hire we look for people that match our core values. When teaming up with outside partners we look for a match in our philosophy. This would mean a lack of pretentiousness, a lack of arrogance (which can run prolific in the art and academic world), friendly, honest at all costs and dedicated to offering value to our clients. I think we are looking for authenticity.

How would you describe authenticity? Where do you see it?

It has so many names – ghost load, phantom load, vampire draw, standby power. What they all refer to is that many electronic appliances and equipment use power even when they are off. Your amazing stereo setup? Your home theater extravaganza? They’re spinning your meter while you’re hard at work, trying to pay your power bill. Any device that has an “instant-on” feature is pulling power when turned off, like your TV or Blu-Ray / DVD player. Anything that has a transformer block / brick is drawing power when the component is turned off. The warmer that transformer gets, the more power it drains. Newer electronics are having to meet stricter standards for how much standby power they can draw, but it doesn’t make sense to replace electronics just because they’re energy hogs. So what can you do?

The answer is simple. A lot of these components are already plugged into a surge protector, or they should be, if you want to protect what you’ve sunk serious money into. Just shift that surge protector so that it’s easy to reach. When you’re not watching TV or rocking the suburbs, switch off the surge protector. Ghost load busted. A couple of switches to flip and you’ll be saving $5-$10 off your power bill each month.

Have problems bending over? Well, the smart folks at Belkin have developed a power strip (the Conserve Smart AV F7C007q) that has “slaved” five outlets to a “master” outlet. If you plug your TV into the Master outlet and your DVD player, Xbox, etc. into the Slave outlets, once you turn off your TV, the strip turns off the other items as well. Not just turns them off, but also blocks standby power. We like these strips so much, we’ve started using them with all our audio-visual interactives.

Have you started busting your ghost loads? What sneaky appliances have you caught sucking power?

This week in the shop we’re working on exhibits for the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center in North Dakota!

Being connected and well networked can improve results in many aspects of life. The depth of the relationships we have are one of the cornerstones to true happiness. Having relationships can lead to improved business results too. I set a goal three years ago to improve my networking. I’m happy with the results. Here are some tips you can use to improve your networking.

1. Join the conversation on social networks.
   I use LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, Flckr and YouTube.
2. Show up.
   When I really don’t want to go to another lunch, dinner, event, … I go anyway. It’s almost always fun.
3. Reach out more to friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, ….
   One unique way to do this is hand written letters, notes and postcards. They stand out in this era of digital communication.
4. Be vulnerable.
   I share my fears, concerns, desires, ideas, passions and such with the people I meet.
5. Listen and ask lots of questions.
   Be very interested in a lot of things. Really enjoy learning what people do, how they do it, what they love, etc. Be interested.
6. Follow up.
   After you grab those business cards from the folks you meet, make sure you follow up with some sort of communication. Sometimes you have to pick quality over quantity. I try to send an email with something of value to the recipient, like a book they might be interested in based on the conversation we had.
7. Break bread.
   Having a meal and chit chatting is one of the best ways to relax and build relationships.
8. Be interesting.

I recently received exhibit label revisions/edits from a client. The revisions arrived in a beat up manila envelope compliments of the USPS. Exhibit label revisions are client reactions and responses to a draft of exhibit text that I have written and sent along for review. Revisions can be submitted to us digitally, through a “track changes” format, or submitted in more of a 20th-century fashion: mailing a copy of the text document (enclosed in a manila envelope) with comments written directly on the document.

The manila envelope submittal is far-and-away the more intimidating of the two client options. Opening a manila envelope is similar to opening a ransom note or opening a legal document notifying you that your degree has been revoked because it was recently discovered you fell a credit short 20 years ago.

So, why fear the manila?

Revisions and edits in the “track changes” format are organized, systematic, and color-coded. Client edits and suggestions are conveyed in a seemingly measured, civil tone. Depth of client disapproval is negligible, mitigated by the uniformity of the type written word, gently enclosed in a pleasant neon thought bubble or digital sticky note. In comparison, client edits and suggestions of the manila envelope variety may appear haphazard, written in a variety of pens, markers, and Sharpies, sometimes illegible, often scratched out, occasionally all caps. And, I believe (unscientifically) that I can determine depth of disapproval by how deeply a comment has been embedded or “engraved” into the document.

Upon opening this most recent manila package, I glanced nervously over the first page. In big red sharpie, scrawled in the margin, accompanied by big red arrows, I see the words “What were you thinking?”

Now this statement could mean two things. It could mean “Oh, what an interesting and provocative insight, how did you think this up?” Or, it could mean, “What in God’s name possessed you to think this?” A little follow-up with the client revealed it was, indeed, the first meaning.

Copywriting is often a chaotic, time-consuming process. Passions tend to run high. However, when it is done properly, it is extremely satisfying work. Engaging label text can lift a mediocre exhibit into an excellent exhibit. I keep this in mind each time I receive a manila envelope in the mail.