Daniel H. Pink is the author of four provocative bestselling books about the changing world of work. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and their three children.
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Those emotionally intelligent signs keep pouring in to the Pink Blog. Below are four from the last few weeks that our elves especially liked.
Clare Conroy offers a nice example from a JB Hi-Fi store in Canberra, Australia, of how to use signage to empathize with guests and change the experience of being in a space:
Federico Sfrégola of Buenos Aires sends our first spray-painted sign, which he saw in Rosario, Argentina. It’s not exactly empathetic, but it is emotional and, no doubt, effective. Translation: No parking please. Beware! I have more paint.
Driving the streets of Morristown, New Jersey, Michele Russo found this one, which instructs drivers how to pass a Stanley Foam truck:
And Jay Kim, a systems engineer at NASA, shares how one teacher tried to limit student texting in her classroom:
I’m terrible at picking gifts for people. So when I find presents that work, I never let go. Here are five terrific items — all costing no more than $25 and all available online.
1. ARTIFICIAL TURF COASTERS
For the baseball fan in your life, get these four drink coasters fashioned from artificial turf. Trust me. Every guest to our house wants to know where we found these things. ($12.95 from Bergino Baseball Clubhouse.)
2. FIELD NOTES These are my favorite pocket notebooks — by far. I can’t live without them. Lots of groovy designs. And for the nerd in your life, you can even choose graph paper pages. ($9.95 for a three-pack from Field Notes.)
3. A KIVA CARD Transform your friend or relative from an ordinary schmoe into an international microlender with a gift card from Kiva. The recipient can lend the money you give to a small entrepreneur in the developing world. ($25 from Kiva.)
4. ONE STORY A literary magazine with a twist. Every three weeks or so, One Story sends you — wait for it — one short story published in an elegant, pocket-sized format. Great reading for airport security lines. ($21 for a year’s subscription from One Story.)
5. TABLE TOPICS This is one of those products I wish I’d thought of. It’s a cube containing 135 cards, each with a question meant to spark a conversation. I’m partial to the family set — a fixture at the Pink dinner table — but other varieties are also cool. ($25 from many retailers.)
Back in November I posted my list of five email newsletters worth reading, and asked PinkBlog readers to nominate theirs. I received loads of suggestions. Here are some of the best:
Marcus Mann wrote to tell us about MIT Technology Review: “Concise headlines, and great articles when you want them!”
Lars Leafblad is the curator of Pollen; directions for joining his tribe of “civic-minded connectors” can be found at this link.
Artist Kirk deFord calls Robert Genn’s twice-weekly letter “a short, readable, and timely newsletter that many of your readers, artist or not, might find informative and inspiring to read.”
Using off-the-shelf items such as beer glasses and soy sauce bottles, Arquer has built traps designed “only to catch mice, not to kill them. It’s up to the catcher to decide the future of the mouse.”
One of his coolest designs he calls Mouse in a Light Bulb. He cuts a large light bulb, lays it on its side, and then inserts a small weight and, natch, a chunk of cheese. When the critter enters, the weight “is released and the light bulb tilts straight up, catching the mouse inside.”
You can see the magic in the three photographs below.
The College for Creative Studies, the excellent art and design school in Detroit, has launched one of the smartest ad campaigns I’ve seen this year. The objective: Get students (and parents) to consider a BFA or MFA. The technique: The posters you see below.
For the last maybe 20 years, I’ve been complaining about pennies. At first I was impressed by the spontaneous order in solutions like the “Have one, leave one. Need one, take one” dish. Then I realized that such accommodations only propped up an evil regime — and I griped to anyone who would listen that we should just get rid of the penny altogether.
Most people either nodded politely at my suggestion or edged away as one might from a mangy dog. But now at last, I’ve found the best (and best-presented) argument for abolishing the penny that I’ve ever seen.
Watch this video from C.G.P. Grey and tell me you don’t disagree.
In an apparent (if perhaps momentary) triumph of emotionally intelligent signage, New York City is trying to tap hidden reservoirs of empathy among pedestrians and drivers alike by using — get this — haiku.
“Colorful 8-inch square signs featuring safety messages in haiku are being installed at high-crash locations near cultural institutions and schools, including the Bronx’s Grand Concourse, MoMA, downtown Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden . . .
“Half of the signs will be hung in pairs, with the image and haiku text appearing. Others will be equipped with technology to allow New Yorkers to access the safety message via smartphone.”
You can find all the designs on this PDF — and glimpse a few examples below.
If emotionally intelligent signage can make it here, it can make it anywhere.
Any time a marketing guy sends an email about how awesome his boss is, I react with an emotion that registers somewhere between deep suspicion and utter disregard.
Jensen’s story rang true. So, on this day before a U.S. holiday devoted to gratitude, I’m sharing it with you:
Don always says that Thanksgiving is his favorite day of the year. Unlike most of us, he spends it at the office. In fact, he comes in early and starts calling each employee and telling them how much they mean to him and to Modern Survey and he cites specific examples of their exemplary work. I have to admit, on my first Thanksgiving after I joined Modern Survey, when I saw a call coming from the office, I got a little nervous. Something had to be wrong, right? Nope. Just Don calling to fill me up with kind words.
After he gets through calling all of Modern Survey’s employees, he moves on to clients, thanking them for their support and loyalty, and finally friends and family members with personal touches about how they’ve helped him become the person that he is today.
I’ve never had a boss like that. Nor have I ever done anything like that myself. How about you?
Take a look at this chart of the 50 highest paid NBA players. These guys make a lot of money – practically CEO money! — and they mostly deserve it. (Well, not you, Gilbert Arenas).
Shouldn’t that kind of inequality — Brand makes 19 times what Meeks does — breed resentment and hurt team performance?
Back in 1999, economist Craig Depken looked at wage disparity within major league baseball and found that, “high total salary levels improve team performance and great wage disparity reduces team performance.” Teams that paid more equally performed better. Would the same be true of basketball?
Nir Halevy of Stanford and Adam Galinsky, Keith Murnighan, and Eileen Chou of Northwestern reasoned that hoops was different from baseball. Because basketball requires greater and more constant in-game coordination and cooperation, they suspected that team success in this sport depended on a more hierarchical system — one or two Kobes or Lebrons and a cast of supporting players.
To test their theory, they crunched pay and playing time data from 11 recent NBA seasons. It turned out that teams with “stars” – players who received mega-paychecks and were consistently in the starting line-up – performed better and showed more indicators of cooperation and coordination (e.g., assists) than more egalitarian teams.
In a press release, Galinsky explained why he thinks the star system works: “In a team environment where players are dependent on each other, they may see hierarchy as both legitimate and fair, which is likely to make the hierarchy function effectively.”
There may be another factor at play here. Unlike salaries in most organizations, NBA salaries are highly publicized and publicly available. The transparency of the system means the star is as accountable to his teammates as they are to him and proportionally more responsible for the team’s success.
All of which raises some questions. Are large companies more like the Miami Heat or the Miami Marlins? That is, do they work better as star-dominated hierarchies or clusters of independent performers? And depending on your answer, does that inevitably mean that either (a) executive pay should be more transparent or (b) corporate pay disparities should be less outrageous?
One reason I like writing email newsletters is that I also like reading them. Last month, a few folks asked me which e-newsletters I regularly read — not the ones I subscribe to, but those I actually read.
Here, in alphabetical order, are my top five:
1.ArtsJournal– A fascinating roundup of stories on media, publishing, visual art, music, and the world of ideas. Daily and weekly.
2. NBER Digest – Brief but comprehensive summaries of the most interesting and important new economics papers. Monthly.
3. SmartBrief on Workforce – For HR nerds only, this e-zine has lots of great links about talent, organizational behavior, and management. Daily.
4. Springwise – An amazing roundup of new business ideas and surprising business models from around the world. Daily and weekly.
5. Very Short List – A book, a film, a DVD, a TV show, an album that you probably haven’t heard of and probably should. Daily.
Got e-newsletters that you enjoy? Let me know about them and I’ll publish a list of reader picks.
