Daniel H. Pink's Blog, page 25
May 4, 2010
The 44-cent solution
Tom Peters calls it "the pursuit of wow." Seth Godin calls it being "remarkable." None of us do it enough — which is why it's so spectacular when we see it in action.
Case in point: Sunday night at the J.W. Marriott in Phoenix. I've got a letter to mail, but no stamps. So I go to the front desk and the following conversation ensues:
***
ME: Is there a place in the hotel where I can buy a stamp?
MARRIOTT PERSON (pointing to my letter): I'll take it for you.
ME (handing her the letter and taking...
April 27, 2010
April 26, 2010
Hall passes and dunce caps for adults
On Saturday, the first issue of the newly redesigned Bloomberg Businessweek hit the mailbox here at Pink, Inc, world headquarters. The magazine looks great — smart, simple, and forward-looking.
Alas, according to today's Times, the design of some of the magazine's work practices are almost the mirror opposite — rigid, retrograde, and bizarrely controlling. Here's one example:
"Employees swipe ID cards to enter and leave the building, and when an employee sends an internal e-mail message...
Factoid of the day: Print loses even more ground
"For the first time, marketers spent more in 2009 on Internet advertising than in magazines, according to a report from ZenithOptimedia, which said online ad spending would rapidly close ground on newspapers."
(Source: NY Times, 4/26/10)
April 21, 2010
April 20, 2010
April 19, 2010
Stairway to motivational heaven
My pal Scott Underwood directed me to a fascinating study that stands at the intersection of two of my obsessions: motivation and signs.
Say you need to go from the ground floor of a building to the fourth floor. Climbing stairs is obviously better for your health than standing in an elevator. But how can we encourage more people to choose the healthier option? One way, as Scott also showed us, is through fun. But a group of researchers tested whether it was possible to motivate behavior...
April 16, 2010
April 11, 2010
Factoid of the day: Mobile mania
The New York Times, in an excellent piece about why "the next big thing is small, cheap and not American," offers this stunner about the ubiquity of cell phones across the globe:
"The number of mobile subscriptions in the world is expected to pass five billion this year, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a trade group. That would mean more human beings today have access to a cellphone than the United Nations says have access to a clean toilet."
April 7, 2010
My 6 favorite books about work
Those of you who participated in our New Year's Day Teleseminar learned that one of my favorite magazines — the kind I read, not just subscribe to — is The Week. And one of my favorite sections is a middle-of-the-magazine feature in which they ask a writer to list his or her six favorite books, often about a particular topic.
A few weeks ago, the magazine asked me to participate — to tell readers my six favorite books about work, a subject about which I'm slightly obsessed. Here's my list:
