So here are the lessons I take from these movies and apply in my daily work life:

• End commands with “people”, as in “Let’s work this, people!”. The word “everyone” is far too wimpy. And the “let’s” shows that you are actually contributing, not just telling them what to do. This is Tommy Lee Jones’ favorite.
  
• If you want to get your team’s attention for an inspirational speech, start it with “Listen up!”. This is even better combined with “people”, as in “Listen up, people!”. Pamela Landy in The Bourne Supremecy  abbreviates this to start off a great motivational talk: “Listen, people - do you have any idea who you’re dealing with? This is Jason Bourne. You are nine hours behind the toughest target you have ever tracked. Now I want everyone to sit down, strap in, and turn on all you’ve got. That would mean now.” Hoo-wee!
  
• Stalk the room and bark orders while your team cowers at their stations. Hover over them, so that they work more quickly and efficiently. Everyone knows that typing speed goes up exponentially with proximity of an observer.
• Divide tasks up and assign them to individuals so that they can’t collaborate. Furthermore, make them individually responsible and give them impossibly large tasks, but discourage them from collaborating. Pamela Landy again demonstrates this in The Bourne Supremacy where she instructs her team to “box” the problem out, dividing it up into chunks to be worked on separately.
  
• If you want something done quickly, add the word “stat” at the end of the request. As in, “Get me those files, stat!” No-one knows what it means, except it’s vaguely medical and is just a fancy word for “now”. But it gets respect and action, without any eye-rolling.
  
• Never praise your team, individually or collectively. And in fact it’s much more effective to take credit for their work
• Berate and swear at team-members in front of their co-workers if they do something wrong (or even if they don’t). It’s a proven motivational technique.
• If your team screws up, throw them under the bus to management
• Stereotypically nerdy workers with bad hair, taped-together wireframe glasses, and untucked shirts can be driven to work long hours while they write obscure software that only they understand. The fact that only they understand it should mean they are highly valuable to you and would have lots of latitude for negotiation, but in all cases they fear for their jobs, possibly because they will be deported back to the foreign country they often seem to come from, where their work is unappreciated. (A great example is Russian programmer Boris Grishenko in Goldeneye, in one of Alan Cumming’s more nuanced roles.)
  
• If all else fails and your team can’t work the problem, computers and networks of remote cameras, databases (encrypted with 4-letter easily-guessed passwords) can be relied on to miraculously deliver a solution. (It happens on CSI every week, and in all 18 of the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies.)
  

Anyone else have any good leadership advice they’ve found from movies and TV?

Sorry for the lack of postings recently, things have been pretty hectic lately and I just haven’t had the time or brainspace to put together any posts that seemed worthwhile. In the meantime, for your amusement here is a hilarious video — a Lego animation accompanying a comedy sketch by Eddie Izzard. I just became aware of it, though I guess it’s been around a while, and the same animator has done a number of other funny pieces (follow the links on YouTube to see the rest). This one is the best though, IMHO.

Normal programming should resume soon. 

I was in New York last week for a couple of days, and during a walk back and forth to Mooncake for lunch (in Tribeca), I took a few photos. It was a frigid, crisp sunny day with that great east coast light that you just don’t find here in California. You can see all the images at my Zenfolio gallery. All taken with Pentax istDS SLR, with Pentax FA35mm f2 lens.

In May, fellow frog Sara Louise Todd and myself will be running a two-day workshop for Design Management Institute on sustainable design. It will be taking place in San Francisco and will cover the foundations of sustainable or “green” design, mostly as it relates to products. It should be an interesting and fairly intensive workshop that we are looking forward to. There is space for about 25 or 30 participants, so if you’re interested head on over to the DMI site and register.

Description from DMI site

The topic of sustainable or “green” design is of increasing urgency to companies involved in product development. In the last year we have seen a tipping point of public interest and concern over global climate change, fueled by massive media interest. Companies which are not addressing sustainable design risk both legislative as well as brand and sales impacts. Recent surveys have shown that key customer segments are willing to pay more in order to buy greener products.

This seminar will address the fundamental issues of sustainable design and introduce a broad range of frameworks and concepts for tackling the often fundamental changes that are required in how a company approaches design and manufacturing. Drawing from a wide range of sources and case studies as well as frog’s own experience, we will discuss the key issues framing sustainable design, how it can be evangelized and initiated in an organization, and how it impacts on choices of product planning, production partners, brand and marketing. The seminar will combine presentations with hands-on activities and breakout groups, wherever possible using the participants’ own products, organizations, and experiences as sources of challenges and opportunities.

Adam Richardson and Sara Todd are two leaders of frog design’s sustainable design initiative, which involves making frog itself a greener company, as well as assisting frog’s diverse range of clients develop their products in more sustainable ways.

What you will learn:

• How conventional materials and processes impact on the environment and human health, and which ones are the most important to reduce
• The fundamental principles of good sustainable design practice
• The forces pushing (e.g. legislation) and pulling (e.g. consumer demand) on companies to become more sustainable in product design and manufacturing
• Which companies (both start-ups and large corporations) have successfully shifted to a more sustainable approach, and how they did it
• How you conduct a Life Cycle Analysis of a product to examine its environmental and human health impact
• The brand impacts of sustainable design, and how you avoid consumer and media backlash for perceived faults in sustainable implementation
  

Who should attend:

This seminar is ideal for anyone seeking to get a fundamental grounding in the issues of sustainable design, and who is looking to initiate more sustainable practices within their own organization. The topics are relevant to both corporate and consultant managers.

How you will benefit:

You will receive an intensive introduction to the broad topic of sustainable design, and the lively format will be both inspiring and pragmatic in nature. You will learn core concepts illustrated through case studies, and bring these concepts back home to your own situation through hands-on exercises that draw on your own organization’s products and circumstances.

Dates and locations:

May 15-16, 2008, San Francisco, USA

The seminar will be from 9:00 until 5:00 on Thursday, and from 9:00 until noon on Friday. The venue for this seminar has not been announced. We strongly encourage registering at least two weeks prior to the actual seminar date.

Neatorama has put together a nice little collection of progression of famous tech company logos.

You’ve seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?

The history lessons are nice, though one I’m a bit skeptical of the veracity:

Jobs thought that the overly complex [Newton] logo had something to do with the slow sales of the Apple I, so he commissioned Rob Janoff of the Regis McKenna Agency to design a new one. Janoff came up with the iconic rainbow-striped Apple logo used from 1976 to 1999.

Anyone have verification of whether Jobs actually thought this? While it would be amazing if a logo did have the actual power to slow down sales, I’m rather skeptical of that too.