Jobs Don’t Give Us Purpose and Meaning, Helping Does
Face it, few of us can say that our work has a high degree of purpose and meaning in the greater scheme of things. True purpose and meaning implies a degree of selflessness that few of us can afford when considered against rent, mortgages, college funds, or car payments. It’s one of the unstated frustrations in all the recent surveys that show how unhappy most employees are in their jobs. That’s why it’s important for companies to provide an extra boost on the purpose and meaning … Read More
Jobs Don’t Give Us Purpose and Meaning, Helping Does
Face it, few of us can say that our work has a high degree of purpose and meaning in the greater scheme of things. True purpose and meaning implies a degree of selflessness that few of us can afford when considered against rent, mortgages, college funds, or car payments. It’s one of the unstated frustrations in all the recent surveys that show how unhappy most employees are in their jobs. That’s why it’s important for companies to provide an extra boost on the purpose and meaning … Read More
The Worst Source of Work Conflict
I have two attributes that set me up for conflict with my current colleagues at SAP. First, I worked in small companies for my entire career leading up to 2012, when I joined SAP, which is a huge company, and like any huge company, has its share of bureaucracy that was absent from my previous workplaces. Second, I spent most of my career as a journalist, which trained me to be vigilant about whether what people say is what they really mean – especially when it comes to marketing, which is the … Read More
Should we stop marketing to the CIO?
Technology marketers have spent the last 25 years trying to get and keep the attention of the people with their hands on the technology tiller inside multi-billion dollar organizations, CIOs. And for nearly that long, pundits have been predicting that the CIO role would become extinct, and that the strategic decisions about technology would be subsumed into the business. Those pundits have always been wrong. But this time, they may finally be right—at least about certain types of CIOs. For … Read More
Where is the utility in mobile apps for B2B?
Mitch Joel has a nice post on HBR this week about bringing utility to marketing and social media. As is often the case, his advice pertains more to B2C than B2B, as I point out in a comment: "Utility" is a clear, succinct way of putting it. I am concerned about the B2B side of things, though, for complex technology solutions in particular. For customers in this realm, I think utility has long meant access to their peers and to expert advice during the purchasing and post-sales processes. The … Read More
What Pisses off the Man Who is the Face of 3D Printing
MakerBot, a manufacturer of desktop 3D printers priced at the level of a decent laptop, is the best known of companies producing a product that has already been raised to PC-level stature in terms of its potential impact on business and society. Bre Pettis, the CEO of MakerBot, has become the face of this long-simmering but suddenly hot business (3D printers – the really expensive kind, anyway – have been around for decades) in part because he had lots of practice being a public face long … Read More
Idea Marketing
Jobs Don’t Give Us Purpose and Meaning, Helping Does
Face it, few of us can say that our work has a high degree of purpose and meaning in the greater scheme of things. True purpose and meaning implies a degree of selflessness that few of us can afford when considered against rent, mortgages, college funds, or car payments. It’s one of the unstated frustrations […]
6 Freaky, Funny, and Scary Abilities of Computer Organisms
I intended to write this blog about some of the amazing, helpful, and scary things that robots can do today, but even a quick look at the information out there demonstrates that robot is already an archaic term, like calling a car a horseless carriage. There’s simply no way that everything we’ve come to expect […]
The Robot I’d Have a Beer with – After He Takes My Job
The robots are taking over. I know, sounds like a teaser for a 1950s sci-fi movie. But it’s happening. It’s really happening. Actually, it’s starting with just two robots. One is named Baxter. If you haven’t heard of Baxter, he is to our traditional perception of robots as a salt lick is to a gourmet […]
Social Media
The Worst Source of Work Conflict
I have two attributes that set me up for conflict with my current colleagues at SAP. First, I worked in small companies for my entire career leading up to 2012, when I joined SAP, which is a huge company, and like any huge company, has its share of bureaucracy that was absent from my previous […]
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