BIRDMAN … life, hope and don’t box me in

28 Feb

birdman

Have you seen Birdman? You probably have. Some people loved it. Some people didn’t. For me it was amazing from the first scene of levitation to the last which I won’t mention.

Why was it amazing to me?

Because it was all of life. Triumph, sadness, struggle, confusion > the journey from limitless dreams to the fight to stay relevant.

What an inspired piece of casting. Michael Keaton. Is it his story? Could be. His journey shows in his performance – he’s grown up and from glib and smart arse he has depth and gravitas like the lines on his face and his receding hairline.

Then the story within the story > putting on a Broadway play around a Raymond Carver story … the things we talk about when we talk about love.

“A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don’t matter a damn anymore.”

Raymond Carver, the genius short story writer. The greatest along with Arthur Miller ‘Death of a Salesman’ and Ernest Hemingway until he got corny. Fighting to stay relevant.

But in that fight is life. The struggle is noble even when it doesn’t work. There’s something beautiful about it.

Old doesn’t mean old anymore. Somethings changed.

What am I talking about?

Everything’s changed. If Willy Loman were around today …

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Always merry and bright

24 Jan

Henry Miller

Henry Miller is a hero of mine ever since I read a biography of him ‘Always Merry and Bright.’

An original voice and a trail blazer, he was known for breaking with existing literary forms. An author of over 60 books including The Tropic of Cancer, his writing remains powerful and brave. He left New York to go to Paris in 1930 to follow his dream of becoming a writer and to mix with other artists. What he found was struggle and poverty. To overcome this he asked all his friends to send him $1 a day. An early crowd funder.

What I love about Henry was that he was delighted with life including all the troubles and travails. He kept on at his art even when he was criticised and his books were banned.

Being always merry and bright is a mindset. It’s a way of looking at things from a distance.

Seeing as work takes up a large percentage of our lives, this is more than important – it’s a necessity.

Managers should never stop people being happy at work. Happy is a key to productivity and makes way for open thinking and creativity … something business always seems to strive for.

A tough micro managed environment leads to a loss of motivation.

There’s no happiness.

You can sense a creative environment and you don’t need special spaces with pool tables and signs on the wall.

You just need the right leaders. They create the environment.

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The 80 20 rule

9 Jan

80 20

The Pareto Principle or 80 – 20 rule still rings true. Roughly put, this rule is about how many businesses sell 80% of their products or services to just 20% of their customers.

It’s about marketing to the de-activated customer base.

Great businesses never let go. They look for new opportunities within their databases instead of pitching to the un converted one off buyers.

It’s often undeveloped and lapsed to customers who already know how good you are.

Talk to your customers. All of them.

It’s less expensive and less risky and

it spreads the love!

Communication sandwich

6 Jan

Crowds

I’m on a break and spending time with the people I care about. This means that I don’t have to get up when the alarm goes (who called it an alarm?) This means that I have some extra time to attend to things. Some of the things I attend to are digitalised. Well, to do with the internet and technology which is moving a lot faster than I can type or breathe probably.

I’m involved in communications which is a broad field if you really think about it.

Communications can be encyclopaedic or minuscule like gestures.

In business it’s about branding, positioning and ultimately selling.

I’m taking some time now to check out the digital world and it’s BIG. Bigger than ever before.

Everyone’s in there having a go.

Check out Linkedin > the business connections portal. Everyone’s up there posting and commenting and liking. This’ll be there.

Then there’s Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, instagram, youtube, vimeo ….

It’s hard to get a solo as my mum used to say.

I’m wondering if I should get a sandwich board and stand in the city somewhere.

The giant chicken suit might work too.

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The Business of Kindness

5 Jan

business of kindness

I was driving back to Sydney from ‘up the coast’ as we say here and i had the radio on.

It’s long = 30 minutes so not great for the OMG brigade.

This is about business, sickness, small is beautiful, writers, wellness and tea

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pgh6t

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A safe and happy Christmas

20 Dec

merry christmas 2014

Last week wasn’t a great one for Sydney. Anyone who watches the news would understand. Just one block away a siege took place that ended up in senseless tragedy. For most of the day we couldn’t leave the building and it was just plain eerie.

But what happened in the aftermath was amazing.

Martin Place was filled with flowers and people.

It was an incredible show of strength and love and still is.

Hurrying to the office and passing by this memorial couldn’t help but  move me.

It was such a beautiful thing and a testament to all the good in mankind.

I’ve had an amazing year working with amazing creative people on creative projects and I thank them for that.

Here’s hoping that you have a wonderful christmas holiday season.

Working hard and not getting noticed

20 Dec

Untitled-1

When I was a kid you could buy a brand of bubble gum that had these silly signs on a cardboard plaques called ‘wacky placks.’ One of them I found quite amusing. It said Work fascinates me … I can sit and watch it for hours.

As I’ve weaved my way through so many workplaces I have worked alongside many amazing people who don’t get recognised for a whole lot of reasons. These people may not be the greatest communicators and they may not have ever had the skill to position themselves to get recognised but they still keep producing.

In their hearts they bow to anonymity.

They practice humility on a daily basis.

They fix things and get teams working.

But they’re hardly ever up at the rostrum or at the board room table.

Leaders … real leaders understand humility and no ego. They know what’s going on in their business. And more importantly they see who’s doing what.

Not everyone is a big talker who knows how to be noticed.

Take care of these people and surprise them with some thank you’s and pats on the back.

They are the engines that run your business.

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small is beautiful in Kings bloody Cross.

9 Nov

bang tang

This is a story of a tale of two cities. Make that two suburbs if you can call Kings Cross (Sydney) a suburb. Not so long ago it was the sleaze centre. The red light district with all the recognisable accoutrements such as sex, drugs, crime and desperation. For a while there when a few rogue cops were in charge, the place was so out of control, dealers, druggies and working girls plied their trade right out in the open and the back streets were a no go zone littered with used drug paraphernalia. One of those backstreets was Llankelly Place – a byway from Darlinghurst Road to Hughes Street (home of the Wayside Chapel.)

But things have changed quite dramatically.

Like some barren parts of NYC, Kings Cross has been gentrified.

Llankelly Place is a foodie strip now with clever little places that offer sometimes amazingly clever food. These are far from the fine dining palazzos but are often run by escapees from their kitchens.

The other night I discovered a tiny place that had so much character it was palpable.

Bang Tang offers (at the moment) two choices > salads and rolls. Not bread rolls. Vietnamese style rice paper rolls.

We tried it last night sitting down out the front among the mismatched second hand furniture. The salad was amazingly fresh featuring poached chicken or prawns with fruit, flowers, nuts and the usual salad stuff (tomatoes, leaves, cucumber …) with really spicy dressings.

It wasn’t just the food that was ultra fresh > so was the service.

Shown here in a photo with my son Max, these guys were trained in some of the best fine dining joints in town and it showed.

Enthusiastic, friendly, delicious and fun … places like this are forging a new revolution in urban living.

Oh and I forgot to mention that the food is reasonable priced too (or should I say realistically priced) in a city that’s fast becoming one of the most expensive in the world.

Yes. Small is beautiful in Kings bloody Cross.

NOTE: Kings bloody Cross comes from the Australian novel (and subsequent movie) They’re a Weird Mob written by John O’Grady under the pseudonym “Nino Culotta” about an Italian immigrant to Sydney in the early 1960’s. He gets off the boat and hops into a taxi handing the driver an address. “OK mate. Kings Bloody Cross it is.”

Or words to that effect …

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Find out what they want and give it to them

6 Oct

stephen fry

There is no doubt that Stephen Fry is brilliant. You only have to listen to the man to know that. He has a broad and in depth knowledge of many things. In the past he might have been known as a bon viveur. One of those people you want to have at your next dinner party.

This is beginning to sound very un-hip. Dinner parties? Bon viveurs. What’s next? Boulevardier? OK that’s enough.

I read one of his autobiographies and one thing absolutely stood out for me. When he was at Cambridge University he did well, not only in the area of performance and entertainment but also scholastically. He wrote of having a brilliant friend there who didn’t do as well even though he had the intellect. Why did Stephen Fry do so well? Simple he said:

Find out what they want and give it to them.

Tom Mix and Old Blue

21 Sep

tom and old blue 1918

This is a rare photo of the original cowboy star Tom Mix and his horse Old Blue taken in 1918.

They were a legendary team. Tom famously did all his own stunts and trick riding back when kids and adults thronged to the flickers to catch every thrilling serial.

There’s two reasons for this post.

One is about teamwork and the other about online learning.

Teamwork we understand. Online learning is different.

It’s not difficult to see that online learning is like the early days of Hollywood pre sound. It’s still in its technological infancy.

Like when the talkies were introduced, where many big stars couldn’t make it in the new medium. A few big stars had squeeky voices and it was the end of their careers.

Others transcended the medium and understood how to use their voice to maximum effect.

Online learning works when we understand how lonely it can be for the learner and how they interact with content.

Interact is not just a bunch of documents.

What we save in traditional face to face resources should be used to develop interactivity.

and take time to personally interact with your learners.

Give them some love not just pdf’s and a slick site

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