The older I get, the more I am accepting of the way my brain seems to prefer to work. I try to look at the shiny tools and appreciate them as nice design artifacts, not magic fixes.
The trick is in creating the interface between myself and other people I work with (who quite reasonably need certain structures and documents). Getting help where I need it, adopting other working styles in some projects, listening carefully.
But I have given up on trying to be a different person.
I would not want the job of CEO (rest easy Nick Francis). So much pressure to hit the numbers and “move the needle” in the short term. Even when you know in your heart and your mind that …
I need to say sorry.
Sorry to the people I hired when they didn’t have the right skills to thrive in the role.
And the people who had the skills but with a mindset that didn’t mesh with …
Artifical intelligence is not actually intelligent, and OpenAI is not particularly open about how they operate.
The first known library in the world was Ashurbanipal’s. It was in Nineveh (near modern day Mosul, in Iraq) in the 7th century BC. Ashurbanipal was a King of Assyria, and he collected thousands …
Some days, you wake up feeling great and genuinely wanting to help people. Other days, in customer service you have to go full Eleanor Rigby, wearing a face you keep in a jar by the door.
If you’re lucky, you work somewhere that lets you show your real face to your colleagues. It’s where we all belong.
A typical customer service interaction, as written by song titles.
Is this how your CEO treats customer service? If so, it’s going to be hard to really deliver a great customer experience
Content Marketing: Creating and sharing helpful information through various forms of media.
Discontent Marketing: Convincing people they have a problem that you’ve created and, in an incredible coincidence, sell a solution for.
I chatted with a fellow Australian, James Nathan, for his podcast recently. Talking points: online service, what people ask for vs what they really need, and why I gave up being a web designer.
You can listen to the episode or read the transcript on his website.