The hunger to make a difference
Was browsing latest tweets and came across this gem from Hugh at Gapinvoid, simply can’t wait for his next book. Chapter 2 is a stroke of genius in that it puts words around this feeling that drives me, and I’m sure not only me, but creatives the world over – and makes us vacillate between utter highs and deep lows, when we feel things are coming together and life at last has a purpose, only to be thrown into the doldrums the next moment when all the hard work seems in vain.
The Hunger to do something creative.
The Hunger to do something amazing.
The Hunger to change the world.
The Hunger to make a difference.
The Hunger to enjoy one’s work.
The Hunger to be able to look back and say, Yeah, cool, I did that.
The Hunger to make the most of this utterly brief blip of time Creation has given us.
The Hunger to dream the good dreams.
The Hunger to have amazing people in our lives.
The Hunger to have the synapses continually fired up on overdrive.
The Hunger to experience beauty.
The Hunger to tell the truth.
The Hunger to be part of something bigger than yourself.
The Hunger to have good stories to tell.
The Hunger to stay the course, despite of the odds.
The Hunger to feel passion.
The Hunger to know and express Love.
The Hunger to know and express Joy.
The Hunger to channel The Divine.
The Hunger to actually feel alive.
The Hunger will give you everything. And it will take from you, everything. It will cost you your life, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
But knowing this, of course, is what ultimately sets you free.
I apologize in advance to Hugh for quoting this in its entirety – it’s simply so well written, like a poem – that cutting it off in the middle would be a travesty to the meaning and significance it conveys.
It also made me think of the conflict I have felt part of myself since more or less forever, the two worlds that are at times hard to reconcile and when opportunities arise to do it, the pleasure is veritable. At the heart of is the curious combination of an artist and sculptor whose driving passion is to change the world, remind us of the meaning and beauty (my dad) and the ballet dancer – turned entrepreneur, who built up the business around my dad’s jewellery design (my mum). A curious combination of extremes in one sense and the pursuit of beauty, purpose and meaning on the other and the background to my own relentless pursuit of growth through play, learning, creativity and innovation. All driven by the Hunger that arises from the conflict between those two worlds.
Add comment January 31, 2010
Women, success and charisma – worlds that seldom meet?
On the plane back from Billund on Wednesday night I was browsing the Harvard Business Review and came across an excellent article by Alex Pentland, from the MIT Media Lab, who has figured out how to measure the power of charisma. The finding is that apparently it is not what you say, it is how you say it. According to Pentland it is possible to predict which executives will win a business competition solely on the basis of the social signals they send.
Apparently more successful people are more energetic. They talk more, but they also listen more. They spend more face-to-face time with others and pick up cues from them, draw people out, and get them to be more outgoing. According to Pentland, it is not just what they project that makes them charismatic; it’s what they elicit. The more of these energetic, positive people you put on a team, the better the team’s performance. More details in his book Honest Signals (MIT Press 2008).
Anoher piece of interesting writing I came across just now. A debate is going on over at Clay Shirky’s blog about the fact that women are rubbish at promoting themselves like men normally do. We hate making self-aggrandising comments, or telling people we are brilliant – instead we hope others will recommend our work rather than promoting it ourselves. This apparently, is one reason why we women are less successful in business.
Reading the blog post, I cannot help but agree. Bragging about myself makes me cringe, it sounds wrong and somehow as I’m pretty energetic as it is, makes me feel entirely fake and horrible. Coming from my native Finland the idea of this kind of bull**** just makes me cringe. Surely Pentland’s research proves that in actual fact we can be successful and not have to be egos on sticks?
Add comment January 16, 2010
The sound of an idea
Is there a sound to the moment when you get the best ideas? Is it the proverbial ‘PING’, which to me sounds like a microwave oven just finished it’s defrosting cycle..so maybe something else?? Perhaps it is the sound of two bricks clicking together? This just made me smile so have to share it with you
Add comment January 12, 2010
Can’t wait for LEGO Universe to launch!
Oh.. it’s so exciting, but the wait is painstaking! Seeing the game grow before my very eyes through all the great hard work by fans and folks at LEGO alike – it’s time to start counting down the days until this baby launches to the world! In the meantime – have a look at this brand new trailer of the game – should be something to wet your appetite!
Add comment January 8, 2010
2009 in Social Media
Tired of endless lists of the biggest trends in this and that? Me too – then I saw this, which is not a list, but a great animation of the biggest things that happened with social media last year and it made me laugh - so here it is: enjoy!
Add comment January 8, 2010
Digital digressions merged into this blog
After many attempts at rationalising my life and thus my blogging exploits- I have finally managed to merge the blog posts from my other blog Digitaldigressions.net into this one.
Hopefully simplicity will reign and convergence provide the necessary kick for me to post more often. Am experimenting with an Iphone app just now that may make even the computer redundant in my online blogging life.
Add comment January 3, 2010
Twitter is the minimalist’s blog
Wonderful things are afoot, exciting developments at work – these days I’m heading up a new area where consumer insight and experience design are joined together, so not only can we identify and co-create new LEGO experiences in partnership with LEGO fans around the world, but better still – make sure we follow up on all those experiences via the Net Promoter Score and other research and dialogue to ensure we deliver the promise consistently and continuously to the standard our fans expect. So a fantastic team and very exciting remit we have, and which means that I’m traveling even more than usual.
Blogging has fallen a little to the wayside as a result and in a way it is a shame. I used to feel very bad about it actually, until I wrapped my head around Twitter. I love the fact that you can tweet while on the move – solves all sorts of issues for me as I’m forever running out of battery power on the laptop, or struggling to get a reliable wireless signal that I don’t have to enter my credit card details to use. Twitter is the ultimate compromise – on the one hand it is extremely flexible in that you can tweet from anywhere, at the same time it is extremely constrained in that you only have 140 or so characters. And with tools like tinyurl etc you can still post links if you don’t whittle on about it.
So I guess best way to keep track of me these days is through twitter – and yes, I will make an effort to post a blog entry every once in a while, but granted – it could be more often, so bear with me.
Add comment October 6, 2009
The big idea
Some weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the Grid09 conference organised by Bonnier, the Swedish media empire. This event brought together authors, journalists, publishers, tv-people – you name it, from near and far to think about the big ideas for the future. A superbly inspiring bunch of speakers, of whom I was privileged to be one of and tons of interesting topics – my only regret was that I wish I could have stayed for longer. Fortunately the expert producers of the event, well versed with technology – have managed to capture the presentations and make them available online for all to see!
Go to www.bonnier.com/gridmeeting to see the presentations – I particularly recommend the one from Steven Berlin Johnson on the ecosystems of news, which is a nice preamble to my own talk about eco-systems involving users – and to not forget what is really important in life: meet Abraham Verghese and his stories of life and death. A truly memorable event – well done to Stefan Mehr and co for putting it all together!
Add comment September 29, 2009
Definition of a successful life
Couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to nip back to my native Finland for a good proper ‘Släkt Fest’ – Family Party, as my uncle, now the oldest of all my relatives – turned an impressive 80 years old. In his time he has fought cancer twice, most recently only this year, yet still managed to dust himself off and get an all clear, defying doctors and history to become the first Weckström male to reach such an impressive age. It was a wonderful celebration of his life and all our time together, young and old and my cousin Sonja Weckström read a most wonderful poem I cannot help, but quote:
Definition of a successful life
To laugh often and much,
to win respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.
By Harry Emerson Fosdick
and with many thanks to Sonja and all my folks for such a wonderful day together!
Add comment August 18, 2009
Growth in an uncertain future
A great article from the Wharton school highlights the importance of working with scenarios, instead of a concept of a fixed point in the future. Incidentally this article describes in almost perfect detail the process we use at LEGO too, to elicit leaders to approach the future using creativity and innovation, as opposed to purely being reactionary – which too much planning with a fixed point in mind can lead to.
I’ve found that working with the future in the way described in the article, is a great way to encourage strategic conversations all across the company, create robust strategies for succeeding no matter what the world looks like and generally creating a versatile, adaptive organisation capable of sensing changes in the world and reacting to those changes much faster. Surprisingly though, this practice seems to be fairly uncommon in companies, which I find scary – the current economic climate alone should serve as a reminder of what can happen if we fail to prepare adequately for all eventualities. The best way to predict the future is to invent it as Alan Kay so well put it.
Add comment July 29, 2009
