This week has seen a number of Hodes employees engaged in the unenviable task of judging SIFE projects. For those of you who are unaware, SIFE is an international non-profit organization that works with leaders in business (such as Hodes) and higher education to mobilize university students to make a difference in their communities while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders. Participating students form teams on their university campuses and apply business concepts to develop outreach projects that improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need. Throughout the year, students have to devise projects that meet the SIFE aims and then at the end of the year, present their argument as to why they think that they deserve to be National Champion.
It is a useful opportunity to assess not only what activities students are engaged in but more importantly, how they do them. And one of the things that has been interesting to note is their ability to multi-task, which got me to thinking about how living with constant change means that whilst process is a good thing, simply doing things the way they were done before can often be the same as losing ground to the competition.
I’ve heard more than a few people this week talk about “not having enough time” to do something. Whilst I am sympathetic to the sentiment, complaining about it doesn’t really help and invariably just gets you down. Statistics continually show that on average people who work in Britain tend to work significantly more hours on a weekly basis than other European countries. On top of this, both Hodes and our clients are faced with the unenviable task of trying to remain competitive with (significantly) less resource , in a post-recessionary environment. So things are unlikely to improve in the near term.
One way to help yourself is to take your complaint from an issue into an action. You can start this process by turning the initial complaint into a question. So, “I don’t have enough time” becomes “why don’t I have enough time?”. Changing the tenet of the question from negative to positive also helps. In this case, “why don’t I have enough time” becomes “how can I free up time to do other things?”. Suddenly, you are on the front step and can look at the way you do things as a series of processes or tasks that can be managed or improved.
In our Friday mails, we have looked at a number of sites and tools that help improve the way you work: there have been tools to help you research more quickly or manage tasks in better ways, sites to help you present information in better ways, sites to help improve your creativity, tools to help us manage and track campaigns. In fact the number of freely available tools out there (and many of them are pretty good) is quite staggering. But I can’t tell you which ones to use; that choice has to be yours and yours alone.
Why am I telling you this? Siiiimples. Watching the students has been a useful reminder that what may be new and difficult for us (i.e. managing more work, with less support) is de rigueur for those just starting up. And so while at Hodes we have been changing the way we work and the tools we work with, we need to keep the momentum up.
As a tribute to the changes we have gone through since I have been a Hodes employee, there are three sites to look at: one is a modern look at dated technology, the next is an example of some recent work we have done with GSK, which just reminds me how far we have come in terms of Flash coding and the third is the latest effort from Nike, called the Nike Grid. Why Nike? Well, to me, Nike is a great example of a company that isn’t sitting still – despite producing some of the best digital work of recent years, they continue to innovate and move forward, to define new areas and rethink about how they do things.
Enjoy!
A nostalgic look on video games
A tribute to our ever-improving Flash skills
This week has seen a number of Hodes employees engaged in the unenviable task of judging SIFE projects. For those of you who are unaware, SIFE is an international non-profit organization that works with leaders in business (such as Hodes) and higher education to mobilize university students to make a difference in their communities while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders. Participating students form teams on their university campuses and apply business concepts to develop outreach projects that improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need. Throughout the year, students have to devise projects that meet the SIFE aims and then at the end of the year, present their argument as to why they think that they deserve to be National Champion.
It is a useful opportunity to assess not only what activities students are engaged in but more importantly, how they do them. And one of the things that has been interesting to note is their ability to multi-task, which got me to thinking about how living with constant change means that whilst process is a good thing, simply doing things the way they were done before can often be the same as losing ground to the competition.
I’ve heard more than a few people this week talk about “not having enough time” to do something. Whilst I am sympathetic to the sentiment, complaining about it doesn’t really help and invariably just gets you down. Statistics continually show that on average people who work in Britain tend to work significantly more hours on a weekly basis than other European countries. On top of this, both Hodes and our clients are faced with the unenviable task of trying to remain competitive with (significantly) less resource , in a post-recessionary environment. So things are unlikely to improve in the near term.
One way to help yourself is to take your complaint from an issue into an action. You can start this process by turning the initial complaint into a question. So, “I don’t have enough time” becomes “why don’t I have enough time?”. Changing the tenet of the question from negative to positive also helps. In this case, “why don’t I have enough time” becomes “how can I free up time to do other things?”. Suddenly, you are on the front step and can look at the way you do things as a series of processes or tasks that can be managed or improved.
In our Friday mails, we have looked at a number of sites and tools that help improve the way you work: there have been tools to help you research more quickly or manage tasks in better ways, sites to help you present information in better ways, sites to help improve your creativity, tools to help us manage and track campaigns. In fact the number of freely available tools out there (and many of them are pretty good) is quite staggering. But I can’t tell you which ones to use; that choice has to be yours and yours alone.
Why am I telling you this? Siiiimples. Watching the students has been a useful reminder that what may be new and difficult for us (i.e. managing more work, with less support) is de rigueur for those just starting up. And so while at Hodes we have been changing the way we work and the tools we work with, we need to keep the momentum up.
As a tribute to the changes we have gone through since I have been a Hodes employee, there are three sites to look at: one is a modern look at dated technology, the next is an example of some recent work we have done with GSK, which just reminds me how far we have come in terms of Flash coding and the third is the latest effort from Nike, called the Nike Grid. Why Nike? Well, to me, Nike is a great example of a company that isn’t sitting still – despite producing some of the best digital work of recent years, they continue to innovate and move forward, to define new areas and rethink about how they do things.
Enjoy!
A nostalgic look on video games
http://twitchfilm.net/news/2010/04/watch-retro-video-games-attack-new-york-in-short-film-pixels.php
A tribute to our ever-improving Flash skills
http://www.gsk.com/careers/uk-self-select-tool.htm
Nike Grid