You may have heard me rant against fake Christmas trees on CNN last year so I won’t revisit that except to note this…

…you know how you have a friend with somewhat ugly, odd-look baby* and you feel obligated to say how adorable it is? It’s the same with your artificial tree. You post a picture of this obviously fake towering monstrosity on Facebook and you get all these likes. But please be aware that people are just being polite while privately bemoaning your soulless sellout as you insult mother nature and one of her greatest yuletide traditions.

If only fake trees were the only way we put the crass into Christmas…

Random displays are for parades…

Ever notice the trend in outdoor lighting? When I grew up in the seventies, holiday displays used to have Christmassy themes. You know, Santa reindeer, snowmen, maybe a nativity menagerie. Now? Anything goes. My neighbor’s display includes a processional of papier-mâché alligators and Star Wars characters for no apparent reason. Another neighbor has a 50-foot tall inflatable Snoopy balloon bobbing menacing in the breeze. When did Christmas become the Macy’s Day parade?

What are we doing?

Every time I see a balloon set up for Christmas all I wish that I got for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB Gun (and no, I won’t shoot my eye out**)…

Another thing…Christmas Music. Keep it to the traditional carols, please. We don’t really need awful new Christmas songs by Drake and One Direction, or Flo-Rida’s version of The Little Drummer Boy.

The sad trend in gift giving also puts the crass in Christmas. Once upon a time it was important to put some thought into gift giving. Homemade gifts were common…and welcomed. The present you gave said a lot about you. Now it’s a game of poker. We are just dealing gift cards, baby! Can we be any more mercenary or half-assed? I mean how

Crassmas at its finest…

ridiculous is “you give me a $100 gift card; I give you a $100 gift card” scenario? Why not cut out the middle man and just exchange cash?

I remember my favorite gift as a kid: a battery-operated Tonka tank. I would build a small pyramid with encyclopedias and watch as my tank treads pressed into Battle Hill. I wonder whatever happened to the Tonka tank? Yet I digress…

Let’s get back to what’s real and make it Christmas again and not Crassmas. Buy a real tree, don’t give gift cars, sing a tradition carol, and surprise some kid with a Tonka tank.

The post Crassmas appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

Well if it were just ten years ago, I would be waiting in line to buy my Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens movie ticket that comes out three months from now. The Internet made it so I could skip

Hollywood lines for the 1977 opening of the original Star Wars.

the lines and buy my tickets at a Los Angeles ArcLight Cinemas theater, in my car, on the traffic-snarled 101 freeway. Even then it wasn’t easy as I searched fifteen different shows trying to find an assigned seat not in the first two rows. Mission was accomplished during my 52 minute commute.

Ticket sales were so brisk that it literally broke the internet (or parts of it). The Star Wars trailer is to the Internet what the Death Star is to Alderaan, crashing Fandango and Movietickets.com shortly after tickets were released. A couple of days ago, Imax reported $6.5 million in U.S. and Canadian advance ticket sales. This absolutely crushes box office numbers set by other highly anticipated hit films. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Avengers all raked in about $1 million each in similar sales.

Call me a nerd or a dork or whatever. Opening day for the seventh installment of Star Wars is an epic event (barely surpassing my South Korean movie opening [ha!]).

I’ll be there opening day. And why wouldn’t I? I mean listen to Han Solo (around the 1:11 mark) and the chills start in your ankles and climb up to your neck:

“It’s true.

All of it.

The dark side.

The Jedi.

They’re real.”

All this Star Wars talk and Internet breakage got me wondering about innovation. Innovation for the your life. Innovation for the workplace. Innovation from your staff. Getting your people to contribute more to your organization while simultaneously establishing stronger talent retention must cost a pretty penny, right? Not really, says corporate coach Maxine Attong.

Want to know more? Buy the book!

“You don’t necessarily need to add expensive new ingredients to the stew, you just have to know how to use your ingredients better,” she says. “A talented chef – or in this case, corporate or organizational leader – knows how to let an ingredient speak for itself, perhaps with just a touch of seasoning, or guidance.”

What is the guidance – competition or incentives such as bonuses? Not exactly.

“Most employees want to have more input,” says Attong, a certified facilitator and author of Lead Your Team to Win: Achieve Optimal Performance By Providing A Safe Space For Employees. “However, personal issues, fear of being laughed at or anxiety of not getting credit can stymie contributions from a leader’s staff.”

If a leader can engender a real sense of trust, the organization will benefit both from the individual and the team’s ingenuity. A reliable way of establishing a trusting climate is to make team members feel safe, says Attong, who offers five steps for doing so.

• Share responsibility; practice “I” statements: With openness, encourage interaction by having team members and leaders enforce the rules and monitor the use of common space. When members break the rules, the team discusses the problems and decides on the sanctions and steps necessary to assist the member in following the rules next time. Speakers are discouraged from using the word “you.” Instead, they use “I.” This simple yet effective practice encourages personal culpability and discourages blame.
• Consistency: Teams need to consistently follow the agreed-upon rules as they set the boundaries and the tone for relationships. Following the rules makes the behavior in the space predictable, which limits uncertainty and increases feelings of safety. Consistent application of the rules helps the team to increase trust as behavior becomes prescriptive and members know more or less what will happen in the room and how they will be treated.
• Judgment: The members must feel that they are not being judged. If someone says that an idea is bad, the speaker will shut down and feel embarrassed. In the future that speaker will hesitate to give ideas, since he feels his ideas may not be good enough for the team. Less confident team members may refrain from presenting ideas if they are uncertain of the quality of the ideas. However, many ideas that may seem strange or unorthodox at first can wind up being some of the best.
• Good intentions: Not all team members are effective communicators so it may be difficult for some people to frame and cogently express their thoughts.

“I assume all team members have good intentions and want a positive outcome,” Attong says. “Even though what I am hearing may be contrary to that assumption, I hold on to the thought so that I am able to fully understand what the member is saying before I react.”

When listening this way, the leader delays having a reaction and has time to assess the situation before responding. When the leader has emotionally detached from the situation, he can then ask questions to clarify the situation.

• Norming: By this point, team members seem to embrace each other and there is a spirit of togetherness. Do not be fooled by this. This doesn’t mean that your team has normed—that each team member makes decisions that advance the goals of the team. It means that the safe space concept has allowed them to see each other in a more neutral light and accept each other’s strengths and weaknesses. While the space may act as an accelerator or catalyst for the team to norm, it is not magic. It does not mean that whatever problems existed within the team before have miraculously disappeared. The leader still needs to pay attention and check the team temperature. Regular team meetings and team building sessions should still be conducted.

Want your own Star Wars? Buy the book!


Other things I discovered this week…

The death and life of the great British pub


Across the country, pubs are being shuttered at an alarming rate – scooped up by developers and ransacked for profit – changing the face of neighborhoods and turning our beloved locals into estate agents, betting shops, and luxury flats. This is the story of how one pub fought back.

What It’s Like to Vacation in North Korea? Look no further:

THE MANAGERS HAVE BEEN ZAPPED


The New Republic goes inside a radical experiment at Zappos, in Las Vegas, to end the office workplace as we know it.


AD OF THE WEEK/MONTH/WHATEVER


Do You Know What Your Marketing Is Doing? | Adobe Marketing Cloud

What better way to celebrate the success of The Martian than an with the ultimate brand fail set around a space launch commercial?

The brand represented in the “Do You Know What Your Marketing Is Doing?” spot by Adobe Marketing Cloud and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners is AstroBoost, an energy drink you’ve never heard of. The spot brilliantly showcases that advertising doesn’t have to be rocket science. Take a peak:

The post Innovation on the 101 Freeway appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

Seems to me, I am in a galaxy far, far away…

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” an iconic series was born that would shape the course of film for decades to come. Just the opening quote — a phrase we all know — is so ingrained in popular culture that even people who haven’t seen a single Star Wars movie have heard the line.

As we gear up for the release of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, the first film in the series to be helmed by someone other than George Lucas, we decided to look back at the impact that this franchise has had, not only the science fiction landscape, but on pop culture as a whole.

Using photos, vectors, and illustrations from the Shutterstock collection, they worked with the talented team at Pop Chart Lab to explore Star Wars’ influence on the entertainment industry. Take a look at the full chart below (click to expand), then keep scrolling to go in-depth and see all the images used to create this infographic.

Star Wars created beloved characters and gave us vast, over-arching storylines that would support an entire franchise. Movies are rarely released these days without a nod or a wink to the fact that there will be more films in the series.

Although it wasn’t the first big film trilogy (lest we forget The Godfather), Star Wars made the trilogy format so successful that it’s helped change how films are now written, produced, and released.

The Star Wars universe is one of the most alive and lived-in places to ever come on screen. The houses feel occupied, the ships appear used, and the worlds seem like they’ve been there for millions of years.

The imperfect, unpolished universe never feels like a set — it’s a realistic world that makes you think you really are visiting a galaxy far, far away.

The characters of Star Wars had just as much impact as the franchise’s style — leading the way for many film and TV personas to come.

Turning the “damsel in distress” trope on its head, badass female lead Leia had her own agenda and plans, actively pursuing her goals throughout the series and breaking ground for iconic heroines like Sarah Connor, Buffy Summers, and Katniss Everdeen.

One of the best parts of Star Wars was the way a robot like C-3PO could develop such a distinctive personality that you would forget he’s supposed to be just a protocol droid.

Add in R2-D2, who was able to make audiences fall in love with only beeps and clicks, and it’s no wonder Pixar felt confident enough to have no actual dialogue in the first half of Wall-E.

And then there’s Chewbacca, one of the most beloved characters in the entire Star Wars universe. His inaudible grunts and growls have been instantly recognizable for more than 30 years — long before “I AM GROOT” was ever uttered.

Star Wars’ impact expanded beyond even the film’s aesthetics and characters, with George Lucas’ early adoption of tech and innovation paving the way for some of the most breakthrough technologies used in film.

So… was anything missed?

The post The Incredible Reach of Star Wars appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.