You Can't Lose!

Small Teams & Identity + The Sports Illustrated RFP Story Come for the sales conversation, stay for Richard's deep thoughts on identity, the power of small teams, and work culture. We go deep fast. Then in the wake of Sports Illustrated's seeming demise Joe dusts off the SI RFP story. It's 2013 and SI wants a complete Mobile First redesign in time for NFL training camp 4 months away. There's RFP response tips and advice, swoop and poop stakeholders, spec work, a big NY pitch, MULTIPLE law suits, and all the friends & innovations we made along the way.

Look at James White or @signalnoise to his friends. The man is a vibe standing out in a crowded marketplace. A complete idea of who he is and what he does snaps into place once you've made the connection to him and his personal brand. As salespeople, as colleagues, as members of social networks it pays dividends when your personal brand/vibe/identity snaps into focus clearly and completely too. In this episode we investigate. ALSO!!! Richard got a new job at Knapsack and it sounds amazing. Let's pull up close for that new-job-smell and find out what the first day of school was like. Remember, if you don't know who the smelly kid is on the first day of school then you're the smelly kid. ;)

The InVision Design Maturity Assessment surfaced the unmeasured value of collaboration, EQ, cross discipline relationships, and open communication. In this episode Richard reveals more about the origin and value of the DMA, what it surfaced, and how the same ideas can apply in a host of areas. Meanwhile somehow in the same podcast Joe explains the aggregate suit remedy for "professionalism," in fresco dining as the backdrop to corporate culture, and a handful of botched pitch and client stories.

For the first half of the podcast Joe and Richard revisit familiar ground re: wellness and relationships. Joe overshares about working out as only he can. Thankfully his wife does not listen to the pod. At the 30 min mark we dig into the latest news about the end of InVision. Richard shares his thoughts and reflections as someone who experienced peak InVision in many ways and it turns out like most great experiences it's the people who matter more than anything else. Lots of insights into what Richard experiences in his tenure, insight into the powerful Design Leadership Forum, and lessons to be learned from both. There's a lot of episode in this episode!

We're back from holiday break and digging into mistaking happiness as an achievement, what's misunderstood about hard work, following the way the buttons on your shirt pull you towards where you need to be, producing over consuming, some truly harrowing wisdom from Charles De Gaulle who to be fair, was around for some harrowing things, and embracing the clean sheet of paper a new year provides without getting sucked up into self improvement porn, we dive right the hell back in.

Recipes are for baking. Businesses run on equations, variables, and probabilities. In this episode we discuss the illusion of sales and leadership recipes and how they fail to adapt and reflect context. Instead let us make the case that formulas full of people, variables, and uncertainty are the responsible way to manage teams, lead organizations, sell services, and generally exist in a universe with other people. It's a whole of hooting and hollering.

Richard and I both attempted to connect our networks. One of us was successful, the other was me. In this ep we get into the wonky details of how to collect & connect your tribes. I'll post what worked separately. The theme we keep coming back to are the invisible forces and triggers that generate valuable outcomes. How focusing on what's measurable in sales incentivizes the wrong fabricated behavior. How you need to increase your surface area for opportunity and luck. How unexpected connections result in our most powerful business outcomes. And most importantly how to not be haunted by your inability to manufacture those outcomes programmatically and instead work on the things that increase the likelihood of serendipity and luck. Work on your story and narrative. Good work is the best business development. Connect with people who excite you, not just those that fit a buying persona, ugh. Create space, pour handpicked people into it, add some value when you can, unclench. All this and why "Bad news is for Mondays" you monsters!

Human connections and networks and brands and group events are all better when powered by authentic chemistry and vibes. In a work travel fueled rant Joe tries to invent SXSW and other events that already exist in the hopes of kindling valuable network interactions while Richard channels post-vacation vibes to adjust the volume and surface insights about quality of connections over quantity, "Circles of Competence," and vibes/culture/brands.

Growing teams is hard. This we know. Communicating with growing teams, managing operations and process among growing teams, hiring and evolving sales within growing teams, and maintaining an identity within a growing team are all topics on the table in this episode. Learn the origin of #turdstorm! and the magical, universal time when all services agencies hire their first dedicated biz dev person (Spoiler: the answer is always 6-12 months too late).

Acronyms and jargon can become the building blocks of corporate culture and build unintended barriers. This week we dive into how to engage with strange new company cultures. How good leaders destroy obstacles while recognizing their limitations. And how context permeates and informs everything. Then it needs to change.