Gavin Baker

Do you ever have those times in life that seem to have themes?  My theme would be watching videos online, I watched two videos that made me think recently.

1.

I watched a video of Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University talking about some points of focus from Pixar.  One of the things they teach is improv and understanding that a key to successful improv is making your partner look good.  Wow! that blew my mind, I can count on one hand the times that I have done it for my coworkers, but with that core value of making your partner look good, everyone wins.  It was a great talk and the best quote from the clip was:

the core skill of innovators is failure recovery not failure avoidance

For me is was key because I want to try new things all the time, I want to promote change, but when I get on the edge of that metaphorical cliff I want to back down, I want to avoid the failure that could happen. That’s not to say I don’t jump anyway, but not often enough.  Instead I should consider some ways I can recover if it does fail and go with that in mind.

2.

I watched Penelope Trunk give a great honest talk about networking to students at Cornell.  And can I be honest? I’ve always had a personal love/hate relationship with her.  I appreciate her honesty, but at times I think she’s way too sarcastic and way too “this is about me”, but here’s the thing about watching her speak, I grew to like her and I declared it to the public with this tweet.  She appeared genuinely interested in helping the students at Cornell become better networkers.  From basic advice like, put your name tag on the right side of your shirt to if you reach out to her and you don’t hear back, just try harder.  As I watched I tweeted during watching it and I came out the other side appreciating her a whole lot more.

What have you watched recently that made you think?

Anyone remember that LL Cool J commercial from a few years ago for the Gap where the key phrase was “fall into the gap”?

Well I ran across an post on Penelope Trunk’s blog, the Brazen Careerist recently that talked about the rising generation gap between baby boomer, X and Y at work.  I’m part of generation Y, and I’d agree that in my experience there are times where I clash with the older generations at work on many things.   I’d attribute some of these clashes to a difference in how I’m used to getting work done.  By nature I am a collaborative person, I believe differing perspectives bring depth to a problem, project, etc.  Thus, my workflow regarding a problem, site update, page redesign and so on often falls to asking those around me what they think of the issue.  It’s my way of attempting to address the problem as a team, not asking for advice on what to do, but what they view the problem as.  But as Penelope notes,

Being part of a team is the best way for today’s new workers to get interesting high-level work for themselves. However even though reams of research shows the effectiveness of teams in the workplace, Baby Boomer management has had a tough time with implementation.

More often then not in these times I’m asking for perspective, I get answers.  What I mean is that I get definite “do it this way” answers as opposed to a collaborative/team process looking at various perspectives.   In a world used to hierarchy, people who are used to making decision see “team”, and they only see the “me.”

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that by nature I ask a lot of questions, and often attempt to get a full understanding in lieu of making a decision, when I should just make a decision and learn from the result.  But there is a shift that is happening in workplace culture, where a generation of teamwork-oriented employee’s, combined with the job-hopping culture trend will push companies large and small to make changes to accommodate them.  Those companies that don’t accept these changes will not attract younger workers and the world changing ideas they bring.

What are you doing to appeal to these workers?

Have a good day everyone.