A Suspension of Disbeliefs: What Do You Want From Them

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

"Why are Manhole Covers Round?" - WDYWFT?

Answer that question and you're on your way to winning a $50 Visa gift card, or a couple of other cool prizes courtesy of WhatDoYouWantFromThem.com. @WDYWFT is a website and social network for people who work in virtually any form of management. In contrast to sites like LinkedIn and Xing that focus soley on networking and recruiting, WDYWFT strives to provide information, guidance, mentoring and career growth strategies for managers at all levels - and it does that all, for free. The question, "What do you want from them?" comes from something that was told to Anna Smith, the site's founder, in relation to addressing people she worked with. That way one is always looking at how to resolve issues as opposed to putting people in an uncomfortable position. A very good management lesson indeed. One so good that it inspired Anna to inspire other managers, and become a mentor herself. Check out WDYWFT's website and Management Contest - and be sure to join the group. It's a working management forum that could use your knowledge, and perhaps, impart some.

I met Anna over a year ago when I was living in Munich - but met might be a stretch in that Anna and I have never personally met - rather, she had found my website, The Wild Wild East Dailies, courtesy of a friend in Germany who had come across our podcast and knew Anna would love the music on WWED Radio. So Anna contacted me in Germany from the US to see if she could feature our music on her site, and a friendship was born. I said, "Yes", of course. Anyone who likes the music I like is a friend of mine. The other interesting parallel here is that Anna is originally from Germany and I from the US - but we had changed places. Funny that way. Unfortunately, the WWED podcast went the way of Napster in that what I was broadcasting was applying a more than liberal shellac to the concept of 'fair use' and the copyright gods shut down my podcast provider. Too bad. But Anna and WDYWFT continue to survive and thrive and I'm more than happy to lend a hand if I can. Now, can you tell us for real, why manhole covers are round? Most creative answer wins!

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

"Wow. I am so impressed. It’s genius." - client

"Wow. I am so impressed. It’s genius. I feel like I am taking advantage of you since your writing is clearly worth more than we are paying. But you probably did that in your sleep…" - the client

Funny how things work out. I had spent the past two months trying to sell the exact same type of work to a local magazine and all I got from them was rubbish. Where that client wanted to jack around, had no business plan, no editorial plan, no marketing plan and in the end, no money - another client was receptive, had a solid plan for growth, gave me a solid brief with specific tasks spelled out and paid immediately upon receipt, the same rate incidentally as the disorganized and unfocussed client had proposed - all for a whole lot less crap. So the lesson here was a pretty old one. As my prior boss, Ron Fisher, once said, "If you can't make the judges like your work, maybe you need to find better judges". Comments like the above are relatively rare in any business but always better received and always better as motivation all around - no matter what the rate of pay.