Orbiting the big giant hairball.

This is a great little book - a series of thoughts, observations and learning from a life at Hallmark Cards - a company that needs creativity to live and where 5% of the employees are in the "creative" department. Here is a summary of the lessions:

Orbiting the big giant hairball.

Goal to be a person orbiting the organisation as hairball – in the effort to be different, but close enough to be attracted by the gravity of the organisation but not absorbed into it. Concepts of Normal, original and Create.

The Pink Buddha

The leaders without leading. The visionary, the administrator of chaos

A chickens fate

Chickens memorized by the chalk line on the ground – We can all become memorized by the line (the line is policies, procedures, politics). This is simply the way we are.

Thou shalt not have it easy

Cultures and assumptions. If a person makes a job look easy then perhaps that is because they have mastered it.

Heroically overloaded – make your job difficult, stretch yourself then, stress yourself out and eventually you too may be honoured with executive approval. If you desire the blessing of the almihgly fathers then work longer (that is sensible), take on more responsibility (than is sensible) and make your job harder ( that is sensible). Do this and your sacrificies will be celebrated and your worth confirmed.

Pool wizard makes pool look easy and crushes you.

What your don’t see is what you get

Creativity is mostly invisible - Cow is working on producing / creating the milk. To many people have concluded that if you cannot measure it or see it then it is not real.

No Access

Climbing down the cliff – getting stuck – finding it difficult to say I am stuck. Courage to admit idiocy.

1st there’s grope. Then there's rote

Course on creativity – goal to have the team going “what the hell was that all about – 1st time no agenda. 2nd copied the 1st and did not work – Rote – the hairball is real and alive.

Entropy – the degradation of matter and energy to the ultimate state of inert uniformity – (bureaucracy)?

Containers contain

Roles and responsibilities are container – we all need containers from the dawn of time. What about dancing – less rules but we still don’t bump into each other and can live together and work with boxes

Cage Dwellers – Did not really get this one

About Teasing

Big stop sign – Stop risking, Stop Growing, Stop sharing, Stop Living so that you are no longer a threat to me.

Is teasing how you show affection? – if so FIND A BETTER WAY

High Tech Peaches

Peaches are not like they once where. Not juicy and tasty. Like the business world – monomania for tough minded, cold blooded competitive correctness.

Milk cans are not allowed

People view different as bad and don’t look at the facts (office space was cheaper but different – all kinds of resistance). People did not like the milk can gabbage containers or the wall colour etc etc.