Off Topic: The acceptance of perfect things

Simple question for a Friday - can something, (or someone, or some abstraction like a process or project), be perfect?

I'm not thinking necessarily about some universal or arbitrary definition of perfection, but more situational and personal. Can something be perfect for you?

Take a look at this piece from Gizmodo - 'This Bowl Will Always Be Exactly the Size You Need it to Be', about a novel kind of bowl called the Stretchy Bowl, (image below) designed to be flexible and adaptable to the level and number of items placed in the bowl.

From the Gizmodo piece: 

The Stretchy Bowl is the easy-to-store fruit basin that never wants to disappoint. Composed of a white metal base (which requires minimal assembly) and a matching metal hoop wrapped in a layer of breathable, elastic fabric, this bowl is always the right size to accomodate your haul of produce.

As you add more fruit to stretchy fabric disk, the bowl deepens. 

That's pretty cool, right? A bowl that's not just flexible and adaptable, but always exactly the size you need to be.

Seems kind of impossible though, I mean, always exactly the right size?

Could the bowl hold ten oranges, twenty, two hundred? And still be exactly the size you need?

Of course the commenters on the Gizmodo piece are doing the usual - taking apart the idea as not really as described and advertised, bringing up the standard arguments about mass, size, and the pesky laws of physics that make the Stretchy Bowl not really always exactly the size you need it to be.

And while that is the expected and rational reaction - no container can physically be that adaptable, it also kind of disappointing.

Why can't most of us accept that the bowl could be always the right size?

Why do we have to find the flaw, the failing, the imperfection that makes the claims null and void?

Why can't we (usually) accept that there might be perfect things?

Have a Great Weekend!

The secret of not wishing to be anywhere else

Whether it's during a long meeting at work, standing on the sidelines of a U-7 soccer match in the cold rain when you know you have about 4,120 other things to do, or making small talk in a big room at an event or trade show, most of us at least once in a while, battle with the sometimes intense desire to be somewhere else, or to be doing something else.

Part of this, I think, stems from a kind of achievement at all costs, stay one step ahead of the next guy, keep Tweeting and Tumbr'ing and Instgramming, while simultaneously talking, texting, and making sure your SEO and SEM and mobile optimization strategies are all in place and whirring. There's always something else to do, something else that could be done, something that the next guy is doing that maybe threatens or angers or makes you envious. Whatever. Work, building a business, angling for some better opportunities, trying to raise your profile to get on an internet list or get comped to an event - it can be a pretty exhausting grind.ATL

Of course there is lots to do, maybe more to do than ever before. Certainly the explosion in platforms and applications that require care and feeding are one reason, and I suppose the degradation (for many folks), in the employee-employer contract or said more plainly, the notion that the next day at any job might be your last, as the spectre of one bad quarter or a decision from a large company to jump in to your market conspiring to make any job in any company seem more temporary and fragile than in recent memory.

So the natural, and I think for the most part correct, response to all this uncertainty, (and also, paradoxically, opportunity), is for professionals to be much more on the hustle, even those with so-called 'real jobs'. There is a lot of chasing going on no doubt, and while the rewards can be really nice for the ones that do it well, and work at the the hardest, certainly all this chasing and hustling and posturing and angling comes with some downside.

First, the nagging feeling that no matter how much one works, there is someone else out there doing just a little bit more. And that's annoying. Second, it is really, really, easy to forget to say 'No' sometimes, and to remember that less is usually more, (and more interesting). And last, it is easy to fall into the trap of feeling no matter where you are and what you're doing, that you've made the wrong, or at least not the best, most bang for your time, SEO-optimized decision and that somewhere else, something fantastic is going on and you're missing it.

The truth is there probably is something better going on. And you are missing it. And there, wherever there is, is one of your peers/friends/competitors thinking the exact same thing. 

Have a Great Weekend!

Off Topic: Generic Equivalents

You've probably seen or heard of the phrase, 'It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough', or if you read a lot of popular business or productivity books or follow the tech start-up space, you'll be familiar with the common mantra to 'just ship', shorthand for 'Don't endlessly obsess on every last detail in a pursuit of a kind of elusive and ultimately unreachable perfection that will only result in you never actually producing anything and giving up in frustration, i.e. it's better to 'ship' or release too soon than too late.'I have never had this. Probably.

I generally tend to agree with those sentiments, even if sometimes I think the 'just ship' people start to drift dangerously close to the 'Just be fantastic if you want to be fantastic' types. Like the kinds of tautological statements found in many self-help books, inspirational tweets, and inside fortune cookies. Oh really, if I want to be incredibly successful, I just have to start doing things that will make me incredibly successful? Wow, thanks for the tip.

But in our professional lives these kinds of decisions have to be made all the time, whether to chase the bigger and better solution, to invest time and money in the latest technology to support a particular organizational process, or whether we need to extend our normal salary ranges and budgets in order to land that person or two that might be formerly out of our reach and likely to get snapped up by our better known and better funded competitor. Even in our personal lives we come up against this all the time. How many folks reading this have already had a mental conversation with yourselves about ditching the iPhone 4s you just got for the upcoming iPhone 5 will be the right move?

So here is my question for you on a Friday - how do you know when 'good enough' is really 'good enough' and perfect isn't needed? What criteria do you use? Do you ever get comfortable accepting less when better or faster or more capable is still out there, just a little bit out of reach?

When might you decide, for example, that generic beer will do the trick?

I'm curious.

Have a Great Weekend!

Timesheets, Incentives, and Five O'Clock Beers

Timesheets. Despite incredible advances in biometrics, smart time clocks, and increasing availability of mobile and tablet solutions to make easier employee time tracking and time reporting, many organizations still have to deal with a weekly or bi-weekly struggle of collecting, verifying, or processing employee time sheets. Filling out timesheets stink, and chances are you might have been on both sides of the timesheet pendulum in your career, as someone who was horrible at turning in a timesheet by the deadline, or as someone that had to deal with chasing down slackers that can never seem to get it together by the deadline.

One organization has come up with what might be the most clever solution yet for incenting staff to get their timesheets filled out and turned in on time - the digital 'Drink Time Sheet'.  The idea? Set up in the office a refrigerator full of free beer, but have it electronically locked, and linked to the office's timesheet system. Once all the week's timesheets are submitted, a siren sounds, the refrigerator unlocks, and the staff can celebrate the end of the week with a few Friday beers.

Check the video below, (email and RSS subscribers need to click through), to see the Drink Time Sheet in action.

What do you think? Could this kind of idea work in your organization? Maybe if not for time sheets but for some other kind of administrative, boring, and entirely necessary process that always seems like a struggle to complete?

Have a great weekend!

Spring Break #4 - The Art of Video Games

This is the final Spring Break 2012 dispatch and I wanted to share what I thought was one of the coolest things I saw this week in Washington, DC, the Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

As the exhibit's website describes -

Video games are a prevalent and increasingly expressive medium within modern society. In the forty years since the introduction of the first home video game, the field has attracted exceptional artistic talent. An amalgam of traditional art forms—painting, writing, sculpture, music, storytelling, cinematography—video games offer artists a previously unprecedented method of communicating with and engaging audiences.

The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. It features some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. The exhibition focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for twenty gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3.

And thinking beyond the artistic and technological breakthroughs in video game design and development, it probably is also worth considering the medium's impact on a generation (or two), of gamers. We have already seen several elements of video gaming work their way into more corporate or mainstream practices - interactive candidate assessments, sophisticated video game-like training programs that are commonly used in military or other technical arenas, and of course the entire 'gamification' industry that if you believe the hype, might turn almost every workplace action into some kind of contest with badges, leaderboards, or prizes.

Some reports claim that worldwide as many as half a billion people a day spend time playing video games, and that 99% of boys under 18 and 94% of girls under 18 report playing video games regularly. Whether or not those statistics are precise doesn't really matter, the larger point worth considering for those of us interested in creating great workplaces and attracting great talent is that chances are quite high that the talent you will be recruiting and working with today and in the future has grown up in the video game culture.

Does that matter at all? Do you care as a HR or Talent pro? Should you?

I guess it is hard to say, I'd love for you to offer your take if you have thought about some of these larger trends in your work in HR and Talent Management.

Regardless, the Art of Video Games exhibit was quite cool and I do recommend stopping in the next time you find yourself in Washington.

Have a great weekend!