Picked
I can’t believe it’s been almost six months since I started my job at ZS Associates outside of Chicago. Where has the time gone?! At least a half a dozen times I have started a post about what work is like and how different it is than what I was doing before. But in reality, our move from the Philadelphia area to Chicagoland has had such a huge impact on our lives that it’s been hard to step back and reflect. With the exception of Christmas, today is only my second vacation day since I started at ZS. I spent yesterday at Legoland with my oldest, and today...
Read MoreLeaving SAP
In May this year I celebrated my thirteen year anniversary with SAP. It’s a wonderful company and it has been a great ride, but the time has finally come for me to take on some new challenges. I have been blessed to work with a group of extremely talented and motivated people over the years. Saying goodbye to my amazing team and the many great people I’ve worked with at SAP will undoubtably be the hardest part of leaving SAP. I’m leaving to work for a small management consultancy called ZS Associates, which is based in Evanston (just North of Chicago on Lake Michigan,...
Read MoreThe Brand Called You
In several of my recent posts, I referenced a Tom Peters’ article in Fast Company entitled The Brand Called You. Tom Peters has been described as the best-selling business author in history, but he is perhaps most well known for his book In Search of Excellence, which he has said he wrote in response to the cookie-cutter MBA training that was the norm in the 1960s and 1970s. I read Peters’ article during the writing of my dissertation, which reflected on the ways that market discourse was being used internal to a corporation. The primary objectives of that discourse were to...
Read MoreThe Daily Grommet
This year I became a member of the Creative Good UX Councils. Creative Good is a small consultancy, and (independent of their consulting work) they also offer a knowledge exchange and networking service that they call The Councils. There are about 450 people involved in total, in about 20 councils with 20-25 people each. The service includes Special Interest Groups (SIGs), a Request for Help infrastructure (RFH), and two in-person events a year tailored to the interests of each Council. They also offer a very compelling value proposition – 5x ROI on the investment, and...
Read MoreLinchpin
In early April 5th, I had the chance to participate in a free webinar with Linchpin author Seth Godin, thanks to Polar Unlimited’s service readitfor.me. Although I haven’t read the book, the webinar gave me a good feel for the book and the author. Here is what was discussed: What is a Linchpin, and why do we need them? Godin believes that in organizations worth doing business with or worth working for, each has at least one person who shows up to make a difference. In a car, the linchpin is a tiny piece of hardware that holds the wheel onto the axle of a vehicle. He has...
Read MorePerformance of commitment
I am really starting to read in earnest again, as much as my schedule permits with the two kids and a crazy busy work life. Over the weekend I configured an RSS reader and refreshed the list of blogs I’m following. For a long time, most of the compelling blogs I was reading were related to technology trends, but I’m amazed at the proliferation of blogs by anthropologists in the past few years. It is so great to be able to skim for fresh, compelling content and not have to wait for stale irrelevant journals to appear via snail mail on my doorstep! One of the thought-provoking...
Read MoreMy journey & yours
I started my PhD envisioning that I would teach at the college level, but in the intervening years I came to really enjoy my work in the software industry, as well as the quality of life that work afforded. I was also comfortably settled in Philadelphia, and unwilling to move for my job at that point. So when I finished my PhD in 2004 I was a little lost about what I wanted, what my priorities were, and what I should do next. Late in the year I was at a low point in my career. I had a crummy performance review in which I was basically told that my management saw lots of potential but I...
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