Creative Tension and Commitment to the Truth

"Personal vision, by itself, is not the key to releasing the energy of the creative process. The key is "creative tension," the tension between vision and reality. The most effective people are those who can "hold" their vision while remaining committed to seeing current reality clearly."

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 209

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- Kahlil Gibran

Creating a Trusting Environment

"People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care."

- John C. Maxwell

Tools for the Tech-Savvy Shopper

JK
As the general population becomes more comfortable with high-tech gadgets, retailers are looking for ways to incorporate them into the shopping experience. An assortment of devices are now available to help customers buy smarter and faster, reducing the need for customer service while boosting satisfaction.

"Smart" shopping carts have been around for a while, but until recently, they haven't managed to gain much traction.

Now, some momentum is building, according to proponents of the computer-rigged market baskets that -- with a swipe of a card -- can flash an alert that a customer's favorite brand of ice cream is on sale, display nutritional values of products, and even point out the aisles where items are located.

Wireless touchscreens also can compile shopping lists based on a customer's own history or provide insight into an individual's caloric intake, based on purchases over periods of weeks or even months.

Quincy, Mass.-based Modiv Media markets gadgetry that some might think would be more at home in an electronics store than in a supermarket.

Through partnerships with such technology giants as Fujitsu and Motorola (NYSE: MOT), the company is bringing mobile data systems to grocery aisles.

In January, Modiv Media and Motorola's enterprise mobility business introduced the Modiv Shopper, a handheld data device powered by a Motorola MC17 computer, into 100 Stop & Shop Supermarkets in the Northeast.

The device, known as "easySHOP," lets customers opt for "scan-and-bag" service, speedy self-checkout, instant price checks and running totals.

Customers also get information on promotions tailored to their individual shopping history, coupon-redemption history and other personalized criteria.

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/64300.html
JK

Are U.S. Consumers Global Customers?

JK
A typical day in the life of an American: "He drove his German car made of Swedish steel and interior of Argentine leather to a gasoline station, where he filled up with Arab oil shipped in a Liberian tanker and bought two French tires, composed of rubber from Sri Lanka. At home, he dropped his Moroccan briefcase, hung up his Scottish tweed coat, removed his Italian shoes and Egyptian cotton shirt, then donned a Hong Kong robe and matching slippers from Taiwan. More comfortable now, he poured a cup of hot Brazilian coffee into an English coffee mug, set a Mexican placemat on an Irish linen tablecloth atop of Danish table varnished with linseed oil from India. Then he filled his Austrian pipe with Turkish tobacco, lit it, and picked up a Japanese ballpoint pen with which he wrote a letter to his congressman demanding to know why the United States has an unfavorable balance of trade."
JK

How To Get a Life and Do Your Job

Does this sound familar? 350 e-mails a day in my inbox. BlackBerry, cell phone, and laptop constantly in tow. Check my Outlook calendar and see that I'm double- or triple booked in meetings very hour, plus a 7 a.m. global conference call. Being told by management that we cannot hire additional head count because of a hiring freeze, despite the hefty increase in responsibilities for my team. That was me a year ago. The red tape, politics, ridiculous expectations, and meager resources made it nearly impossible to do my job as an advertising and brand manager for a large tech company. On top of it, I had just returned from maternity leave after having my first child. And my father was very sick with leukemia, but I could not take the out-of-state trip to visit him due to a company that burned vacation and sick time as part of maternity leave. So I quit. So did my husband, who worked in a top advertising agency. In fact we both quit on the same day: Sept. 11, 2007. We decided that life was too short and we had had enough. What was our worst-case scenario if we quit? Having to sell our home and look for jobs elsewhere? Better than losing our marriage and our sanity. Our friends and colleagues could not understand it. Rumors were flying that we had come into some family money. Nope. Just several years of saving for a rainy day. And boy, was it pouring. My husband started consulting immediately. I wanted to spend some time with my ill father. The marketing consulting business my husband started took off, and because of our similar backgrounds and experience, it was a natural fit for us to work together. Ten months after quitting, we have more business than we can handle. My husband named the business reeboot strategy because in explaning our rationale for quitting our big corporate jobs he would say: 'We needed to hit Control + Alt + Delete on our lives and start over.' When my father died on Dec. 2, 2007, I was there by his side.

- Karyn Couvillon, Business Week, August 25 | September 1, 2008
JK

The Big Picture

"From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole. When we then try to "see the big picture," we try to reassemble the fragments in our minds, to list and organize all the pieces. But, as physicist David Bohm says, the task is futile - similar to trying to reassemble the fragments of a broken mirror to see a true reflecion. Thus, after a while we give up trying to see the whole altogether."

- Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline