Thinking Visually

Success and Leadership Twitter Style, by Tom Peters

/ Susan Hendrich / 2 Comments

Leadership and Success in 140 characters or less…

You may have seen Tom Peters views on Leadership and Success in 140 characters posted on Twitter:

Success in 140 characters: “Attack EVERY project you do with Reckless ENTHUSIASM and a Passionate Commitment to EXCELLENCE!”

Can’t you just hear the passion in his voice behind this simple credo?

Leadership in 140 characters: Energy. Enthusiasm. Passion. “People first” in her bone marrow. Curiosity. Integrity. “Ready. Fire. Aim.” Sense of humor. A good accountant.

Now it’s your turn. How would you tweet the secrets to leadership and success in 140 characters or less?

For more from Tom Peters check out his great site, www.tompeters.com

Mis-heard lyrics: The magic of mondegreens

/ Susan Hendrich / 2 Comments

‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy: The Magic of Mondegreens…

 

Ever sing a song aloud, certain you’re belting out the right lyrics, only to find out that you are signing the wrong words altogether?  You know what I’m talking about…

  • Imitating Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” you belt out…”‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy” (instead of the correct, “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky“)
  • At the end of each verse of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song, “Bad Moon Rising,” You find yourself singing, “There’s a bathroom on the right” (instead of the correct, “There’s a bad moon on the rise“)
  • Trying to sing  Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s version of “Blinded By The Light,” you don’t quite sing the intended lyrics, “Revved up like a deuce,” but instead you sing…er…well, you get the point by now

Did you know there’s a word for this comical mis-hearing of intended words? Yes, it’s mondegreen.

Mondegreen (MAHN-duh-green): A mishearing of song lyrics or popular phrases.

My first mondegreen

It was 1981, and my friend Tara Levy and I were listening to the radio at her house, when our favorite Philadelphia radio station announced the release of a new Rolling Stones song. We excitedly listened in and heard Mick Jagger belt out,

“Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia an ever star.” 

Tara and I looked at each other, puzzled. What we didn’t realize was that he was actually signing “If you start me up. If you start me up I’ll never stop.”   Weeks later, when Tara and I learned the real words to the song, we laughed hard at our misinterpretation, and I realized a potential reason why we’d missed the real words. My father had just returned from Sarajevo (a city in the then-named country of Yugoslavia).  We had unknowingly primed ourselves to hear the word Yugoslavia in the song!

Origin of mondegreens

When author Siliva Wright was a child, she heard an old Scottish ballad called “The Bonnie Earl of Murray,” which includes the line,

“They hae slain the Earl o’ Murray / And laid him on the green.”

Alas, Wright misunderstood that line as

“They hae slain the Earl o’ Murray/And Lady Mondegreen.”

As a result, she spent years pitying poor Lady Mondegreen before she finally saw the lyrics in print. Writing about this in a 1954 Harper’s magazine article, Wright coined the term mondegreen to denote such words misheard.

Your turn

Now, see if you know the correct words for these two mondegreens:

  • ‘The girl with colitis goes by’ from the Beatles’ song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”
  • “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” from a famous Elton John’ song

Do you have a mondegreen story?  Please share it! 

Just think, You kid help billed whirled peas…

For small change, Vide Poche

/ Susan Hendrich / 1 Comment

Making room for small change can lead to big benefits…

Consider a Vide Poche.

One of my favorite interior design websites, apartmenttherapy.com, gave me the idea:

French for empty pockets, the vide poche is simply a small bowl or container kept in a convenient location to empty your pockets into when you walk through the door. Having somewhere to put your keys, loose change and wallet when you take off your coat helps minimize clutter and reduces the chance that you will be scrambling around looking for your keys next time you are late running out the door.

Here are four easy ways you can use a vide poche for increased effectiveness:

  1. Add vide poche to your leadership approach: Leave room for silence in your coaching sessions. Empty spaces in the conversation allow powerful introspection to take place. Resist the urge to fill in spaces with witty advice or riveting questions.
  2. Add vide poche to your instructional design approach: Create activities that encourage learners to reflect, not just produce the correct answer.
  3. Add vide poche to your graphic design approach: Remember the power of white space. It gives content room to breathe and have more impact. Enough said!
  4. Add vide poche to your home routine: Place an empty shoebox-sized container near your garbage can. When you bring in the stack of mail from your mailbox, place junk mail directly in the garbage and place bills or other actionable pieces into the shoebox for later addressing.

How can you use a vide poche to make space for increased success and life satisfaction?

Information is not the answer

/ Susan Hendrich / 3 Comments

Design experiences, not information…

Every learning leader has faced the dilemma of being asked to cram too much information into a training course because of a customer’s belief that “more information is better learning.”  You know the drill, and it usually starts something like this, “Hey Jim, thanks for designing that course for us. I was thinking, we should also add…[insert 438 data points, factoids, and might-use administrivia here] to our course.” 

It’s the data dump. The fact frenzy. The overview overkill.  It’s just difficult sometimes for folks to believe that less information could lead to more (and better) learning. 

Well, today we’re going to make the case for shifting the focus away from information altogether. Here, designing guru Cathy Moore makes a powerfully simple case for shifting from designing information to designing experiences.

Can’t access YouTube? Here’s a Flash version.

Maven, ninja, or guru. Which one are you?

/ Susan Hendrich / 7 Comments

Attention-grabbing Job Seekers…

You know the job market has become increasingly competitive. A standard resume or CV won’t really cut it these days. To stand out, there are ever-more random lengths people will go to in order to secure a job or even get noticed by potential employers. Take a look at some of the best job applications around.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/remarkable-hiring-stories.html