Noisy Decent Graphics

Leadership is like juggling

Being in a leadership position, particularly one where you hold ultimate responsibility like CEO or MD, is like juggling lots of balls. Some of those balls are made of rubber and some are made of glass. The rubber ones you can drop, as they will bounce, but the glass ones you can't drop as they will shatter. The skill is to work out which ones are rubber and which ones are glass.

I use this metaphor a lot and I think there are three things you can learn from it. I'll list them in order of how easy they are to master as a leadership skill.

Firstly, prioritisation. Find a way to work out which things are important, which projects and initiatives will break if they fail and then prioritise the ones that need your attention to succeed. Not all will. As new issues emerge, as more balls are thrown at you to juggle, constantly recalibrate. Maybe some of the glass ones are now rubber.

Secondly, learn to actively compartmentalise. You can't watch all of the balls at once and you can't get upset when the rubber balls drop. It’s exhausting to attach the same mental response to the glass balls as the rubber ones. Don't let the failure of one project cloud your thoughts on another project. Good leaders know they can't do everything and they can't succeed at everything. This skill is not only good for your company, or your team, but also for your own mental wellbeing.

The third skill is much harder to master but one I have seen used by very experienced CEOs to great effect: learn to allow some things to fail. Sometimes you can see long before anyone else that a project will fail, and that's OK. That ball is made of rubber and it will happily bounce. Maybe that team is better off learning the lessons from that project failing than they are if it succeeds.

For many different reasons, sometimes you may want a project to fail. This isn't spoken about in leadership books, but I have seen initiatives being quietly and calmly allowed to fail as the cost to the organisation is less than if they were stopped at inception. There can be many reasons for this, often political, and it's a very hard tactic to deploy safely, but it can be devastatingly effective.

I've talked about this for years, but I can't remember who first told me the original story. It seems to originate from a famous speech called "Five Balls of Life" given by Brian Dyson who was CEO of Coca-Cola at the end of the 1980s.

Dyson's speech uses the metaphor of juggling five balls — work, family, health, friends and spirit — to describe juggling a busy work-life balance.

He says, "Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit — and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls, family, health, friends and spirit, are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life."

In this tweet from January 2020, the author Jennifer Lynn Barnes describes a conversation with the author Nora Roberts where she uses the same metaphor but she's not talking about five balls: "She was talking about juggling FIFTY-FIVE balls. The balls don't represent 'family' or 'work'. There are separate balls for everything that goes into each of those categories. 'Deadline on Project Y' or 'crazy sock day at school'."

This is much closer to my interpretation. 

 

Made a tin foil FA Cup - life goal achieved

I made a tin foil FA Cup for a friend's birthday. The friend supports a team who play in red and white and are now in the semi final.  

I'm going to make another. Next goal, get on Match of the Day holding a tin foil FA Cup.

The Face Magazine: Culture Shift at the National Portrait Gallery

Went to this the other day. Didn't take any pictures sadly. If you're reading this you'll probably love it. After all if you were interested in graphic design between 1980 to 2004 you read it avidly. Looked at it avidly, I mean.

The first half of the exhibition is magazine and graphics and the second half is massive celeb photos. I liked it all, but I'd rather there had been more magazine and graphics. (Noted it's the National Portrait Gallery not the National Graphic Design Gallery).

You'll like it, you should go. I'll go with you. Happily see it twice.

There's a good interview on MagCulture with Brody and Logan.

Keith

Beautiful carved typography

Seen the other night in New York.

Posters at UAL Chelsea

Statistically correct football chants

Frivolously, I love this. 'No one likes us, 46.58% of us care.'

Would make a great sketch to do this with other famous football chants:

'27% of the time you'll walk alone'

‘48% of you are not singing anymore’

Sacked in the morning, you’ve got a 70% chance of being sacked in the morning’.

No, just me?

"The good thing about everything being so messed up is that no matter where you look there’s good work to be done."

Quote from Derrick Jensen told to me by Russell, over an 80s breakfast.

 

Half as good

I like this poster, particularly the way they've shown half of the word "half."

Nice and big, in the middle. They've even chosen a photo that's half road, half park. Nice. (It's a bit more than half, obviously, otherwise you wouldn't read the word properly. )

Reminds me of the Gails posters I blogged about a few years ago.

Rock, Paper and Scissors espresso mugs from 4AM Studios

I recently finished 10 years as a trustee (governor) at University of the Arts, London. As a leaving present they gave me these wonderful espresso mugs by ex Camberwell students 4AM studio, Haoran Bie, Shuyu Bai, Ying Qian and Jingnyu Wang.

You can buy the mugs here. 

Black Friday Week

LOL. Login to your My Account etc. (This is Amazon, obvs.)

Incredible opportunity to lead the world's leading undergrad arts and design university

University of the Arts London are looking for a new Vice Chancellor, full details here. Please share so this goes far and wide and we attract the best and most diverse applications possible.

If you're interested Saxton Bampfylde are handling the appointment but I'm on the Search Committee so do get in touch and I can answer any questions and tell you what an incredible place UAL is.

Away Days

"only invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them, because sooner or later, one will"

A Warren Buffett 'aphorism' from the FT. 

 

Triple loading

New people in charge, same old logos. Good.

I wrote about the radical simplicity of GOV.UK’s logo and the commitment to doing the hard work to make it simple. Over on the work blog.

Different strokes, different folks

I always love this – every Olympics.

 

UK media report the medal table like this.

USA media report the medals like this.

 

Fair enough, you might do the same. What about the French?

 

And the official Olympics site?

 

A logo for a dentist

Early morning, sat having a cortado, I noticed this logo on the dentist surgery over the road.

At first I noticed the rounded bits of the ends of the letters, the stems. The way they were all the same shape. That's pleasing, I thought.

Then I spotted it.

The teeth. Nice touch.

The implementation of the whole brand could be sweeter and this won't win any awards, no pencils, no rosé on the beach, but we criticise logos all the time so it's nice to give one a little bit of praise.

I can't find who did it, if you know please let me know and I'll update the post.

Majestic pigeons

Desire paths and pace layers (part 2)

Imagine this was a Dan Hill blog post. It would be loads better. Much longer, but better. But I'm not a Dan so here I am rocking up with my street photography and all my reckons, shorter and worse than a Hill. 

Spotted this outside Brixton tube last week.

Just outside the entrance to the tube there's a reasonably sized piece of paving that had become a parking space for Lime bikes. It's a good place to have some multimodal transport. Jump off the tube and straight on to a Lime bike to finish your journey. A better location fidelity. Efficient, if probably a bit expensive.

IMHO the bikes weren't blocking the pavement, I've certainly seen worse elsewhere, but maybe someone decided they were in the way, or didn't have the right permissions. So they've moved the bikes over the road and down an alley. A better place to put them but harder to spot. By which I mean, Not Obviously Right In Front Of The Entrance To The Tube. Which could also be called In The Way I guess.

To help the sheeple find this new spot they've done this.

There they are, over the road, top right.

It looks like this was an official Lime bike sign rather than a local intervention. Seems to work, although I'm not sure how sustainable it is. How long does it take for the new location to become local knowledge?

I wrote about this 7 years ago with this Uber parking sign outside Man Utd. Desire paths and pace layers.

See also the recent tweets from a journalist who worked as a Deliveroo driver for 24 hours and the collection trolleys outsite big City firms. 

Pace layering in action.

 

If you've got a minute (or 10-15 according to ChatGPT) spend the time reading this Small vehicles of Tokyo by the aforementioned Dan Hill and imagine how good this blog post could have been.

Anyway.