Photo via harpy via sfgirlbybay.com

I love to keep things simple. I live in a house that contains a small collection of practical and necessary things without much color. Just pattern and texture. The other day I send this to a few friends and made the statement:

Maybe my next home will have color.

Cordell wrote me back:

Oh no. Don’t get crazy. People and nature and art are the only color the world needs. Clothes and walls should be nothing more than blank canvases to flaunt the beauty of our humanity and individuality.

Hmmm.

Think about that for just a minute. Communities are a company or organization’s blank canvas to flaunt the beauty of their customer’s and employee’s humanity and individuality.

My friend Chris Sandoval said something I keep rolling around in my head. (Weird, I seem to quote him a lot lately.) Can’t remember his exact words — going from memory, but he said that he has come to understand that technology should be invisible.

It’s the people that we need to celebrate and remember.

Amen, Brother.

On a recent blog post,Chris Brogan quoted Trey Pennington who said this:

We facilitate experiences.

Another simple, beautiful concept.

Hmmm… What do you think about that? Maybe it’s all just that simple. Cause it’s not about the fancy colorful tools and tactics. Is it now?

Photo via flickr via peachknee.

Geno has this little book of doodles. Love it. And occasionally I will ask him… “What’s new in your world?” This morning’s doodle is the title of my post.

Interesting set of words, huh?

Like a lot of companies we work with and know, we get our share of praise and love. Sometimes in the form of love letters, well crafted and sweetly emailed. Sometimes praise comes in the form of tweets and retweets while we are out speaking. Sometimes even face to face.

I heard this quote about praise once. “Getting carried away by praise is like climbing a pole of grease.”

Hmmmm…

If your company starts drinking your own Kool-aid, you run the risk of becoming complacent. You stop challenging yourself. Or in the eyes of Cordell, you lose your “sense of wonder with the world”.

Geno has another way of reminding himself and others to focus on what matters:

Concentrate on being interested, not interesting.

We do the Net Promoter Survey every year and in 2006, the first year we did it I poured over the comments to see if we could set our sights as a group on a couple of areas to focus on and therefore improve our score.

One thing that struck me on our first survey was a couple of quotes that went sort of like this: Great work/people/company, but kinda arrogant.

Well, I was stunned. Us? Really. Nah.

So we talked about it as company and we realized that we needed to work at being more approachable and interested. Some good ideas were tossed out. Like when we go to conferences spread out and meet others. Don’t stick together. Welcome everyone who walks in our door. Everyone took on a personal challenge to listen better.

And you know what — with effort it worked. The next year, there were remarks about us being…well, approachable and very genuine. Not an arrogant message in the whole lot.

That self awareness thing is pretty powerful stuff.

Ramsey said this to me over a beer the other night. “We should lose the term “rock star” from our vocabulary.” Yup he’s so very right, if you create rock stars, you create an ego driven company (look at us, look at us), instead of a one that is driven by heart and soul. A company that promotes rock stars runs the risk of getting focused on themselves instead of their customers.

So there’s what I think about that little doodle of Geno’s.

Your turn…

Photo via Megan via Sam’s Facebook

The other day I asked Sam — our super cool intern — if she’d help me out and write a post for Friday. Well… she did. And here it is. Enjoy. We heart Sam. She has a big shiny future in front of her. We just get lucky that way.

Internships…we’ve all been there and done that. You remember the photocopying and the post office trips. Many of you may have learned the exclusive art of being able to carry 6 vanilla lattes at one time.

Well at any other place this might be the case, but as the Brains on Fire intern for 2010, I have learned what it is like to walk with other team members down to the closest coffee shop and talk about the day, or life, or whatever.

And yes, many of you may role your eyes at the thought of having to answer the company phone, but what if you could answer it in just about any way you want. “Brains on Fire World Domination Headquarters”…yeah, try to have a bad day if that is the first thing you hear when you call a company. And for that matter, try to have a bad day when that is how you get to answer the phone.

I have only been here since the beginning of January, but there are some major things that have stood out about this place, making it different than anywhere else. Brains on Fire is about support and encouragement. It is so rewarding to be a part of a team of people who go out of their way to make sure that every single person gets recognized for their efforts.

I have never felt so welcomed and trusted by a place right from the beginning. This is truly a special place and I am lucky to have stumbled upon this opportunity.

When Robbin suggested that I write today’s blog, I figured that I would write about something that has impacted my life in a very special way. This internship has already given me new insight into the kind of work and working environment I want to be in. As corny as it sounds…I thank every single member of the Brains on Fire team for sharing all of these new experiences and helping me learn.

So, moral of the story (because there always has to be a moral of the story), I have grown to realize that it is not only important to be passionate about work that you do, but to love the people that you do it all with.

Eric Dodds getting real with a tequila shot…

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy up the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL.”

Real takes courage.

I love that set of words. Being real as company or a person flat out takes courage. I met someone the other day and much to my surprise, I realized the online version of this person (on facebook and twitter and blogs) was much, much different than the reality. I walked away saying – to myself of course — “Oh, you must be one those people that just plays a character on Twitter.” There’s a lot of personal branding going on these day. And like corporate branding sometimes there is a dis-connect between image and reality. Bugs me a bit. But enough of that. That is not my main point.

We have this saying, be famous for the people who love you.

The people who love you know what’s absolutely real. They can spot a dis-connect in a second. This is true for companies and for people. The word branding has always bugged us. We use “identity” for a reason. We look for the soul of a company or the community they support.

We are looking for what’s real.

I read somewhere lately that it takes a lot of energy to be someone you are not. And that is really true. One of the things I love about this age of word of mouth marketing and social media, is this: Companies and organizations are understanding that their brand is walking around on two feet. That’s what is real. Several companies we are currently working with and talking to are looking to create an internal movement to help everyone in the organization present one voice, one reality.

I am lucky, I get to talk to people within organizations all day long who are looking for our help. It’s fun. I spoke with someone at an large Fortune 500 company the other night. And as we chatted one of the things I realized about that organization is this. The people there, all the way to the top are real. They are approachable and honest and direct. From the frontline customer service reps to the corporate team, they understand on some level that they are part of something bigger. Something important. Got to love that.

So one more parting quote… don’t know who said this but I love it:

“Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

Yesterday morning I walked in and gave a great big hug to our newest hire. Alexis Bass. And I said (sort of half joking), “So glad you are here. Want to blog today?”

Well about twenty minutes later. This was in my email. Read it and you’ll see why we said, “same tribe” the first time we met her…

Hi world, today is my first day at Brains on Fire. In newbie fashion, I have already sent an email to the wrong Eric (Whitlock rather than Dodds) and been locked out of the upstairs entrance. But, I can’t stop smiling and honestly, I think I am downright giddy. I am so excited to be a fellow brain at Brains on Fire and work with amazingly talented people who create meaningful movements.

So, why Brains on Fire?
To me, Brains on Fire embodies the philosophy of being Ubuntu. A philosophy I keep close to my heart as a way to work, live and play.

Ubuntu is a shorter way of saying that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. At least not effectively. It speaks about our interconnectedness. It speaks about the fact that because we are connected, what we do affects the whole world.

Brains on Fire has this interconnected approach to create movements that are relevant to people, relevant to society and relevant to establishing change that affects the entire world. They understand that at the core of being human, we must be connected to survive and that this is also true for brands. In short, I see my restlessness for wanting to cause, direct and establish change reflected in this company.

So, I guess my giddiness is justified. Because who wouldn’t want to a part of that?