Music, Madchester, and a Movable Feast (or why teamwork really does make the dream work)

Watch the video above. Seriously. It is worth a minute and a half of your time.

Just as “iron sharpens iron,” ideas sharpen ideas. Want better ideas? Want more creativity?

Then…

Article content
Who knew he was a creative genius?

Scenious > Genious

We see this scenious idea quite a bit in music.

Think of the New York City music scene in the 1970s and CBGB. Patti Smith. The Talking Heads. Television. Blondi. The Ramones. What became East Coast Punk.

Or the NYC DJ scene that created rap and hip hop.

Think of the Manchester, England, music scene and the Sex Pistol’s 1976 show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. From that legendary – and mythical – concert, we got Joy Division (and then New Order), the Smiths, the Buzzcocks, The Fall, Factory Records, the Hacienda, and eventually the whole Madchester music scene.

Think of Athen, GA, in the 1980s, and how a small college town music scene gave us REM and the B-52s and helped create what would become College Radio and Alternative Rock.

Speaking of alternatives, consider the Seattle music scene in the 1990s and the dominance of Grunge.

None of these bands did it alone. Geniuses or not, it is the scene that made them.

A Moveable Feast

While there are many examples of this throughout history, the best example, in my rarely humble opinion, is in Paris in the 1920s.

Sure, they weren’t musicians, and it wasn’t a music scene, but it was an art scene made up of many, many, many artists.

Stein nurtured this group and held regular Saturday evening salons in her apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, hosting artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and poets and writers, including Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, James Joyce, Archibald MacLeish, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway. Scott [F. Scott Fitzgerald] became close friends with Ernest and encouraged and promoted Ernest’s burgeoning literary career, often with more dedication than to his own.

(https://www.scottandzelda.com/the-lost-generation/)

Picasso. Matisse. Joyce. Pound. Fitzgerald. Hemingway. That was an incredible scene!

Yes, they were ALL talented in their own way, in their own art. Their gifts were their gifts, for sure. But what these geniuses became was largely the result of their “scenious” and not solely their genius.

#TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork

The idea of the scenious is wider than artists and musicians. When “purposed” and planned, it can also apply in the office.

#TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork may be a corporate cliche, but it can also be a corporate superpower.

Some of my favorite meetings here at Samsung are what we’ve historically called “hack-a-thons.”

In addition to my Instructional Design team and our video team, we invite Field Sales Managers, District Leaders, and Regional Directors to participate.

Why?

Because we are building a “scene” of different people in different positions with different perspectives.

We want input informed by diversity and framed by expertise and experiences different from ours.

We want ideas to play off of different perspectives, focuses, passions, and desires.

But here’s the rub. As with all superpowers, it has its own Kryptonite: comfort.

Let’s go back to the saying “iron sharpens iron.” Inherent in this saying is discomfort. The process of sharpening a knife is a bit brutal. You are literally removing parts of the knife to make it sharper. This is good for the knife but not so good for the shards left behind.

This is true for similar ideas.

Labor pains. Growings pains. Pain is inherent in both birth and growth. Neither happens without discomfort. Yet both are beautiful and desirable.

Consider the idea of pruning. Pruning is rooted in discomfort in that you literally cut off – prune – parts of the rose bush so that the remaining roses are even more beautiful than before.

Creativity > Comfort

Creativity is greater than comfort. Even if you purpose to build a “scene’ at work, a creative community built on diversity, you must be willing to allow for some discomfort!

(Not so much discomfort that HR needs to get involved… just saying…)

Figure out the right balance of professional AND personal. The right balance of push and pull and give and take.

If you can create a corporate “scene” that fosters true collaboration, your team’s creativity will explode.

And show why #TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork can be more than a trite corporate cliche.

We learn by doing…

I will keep this one short and sweet.

🎸 How do you learn to play the guitar?

While you may watch a video or read a book to learn where to put your fingers to create chords, knowing how to make a C chord does not mean you know how to play the guitar. You have to do it—play the guitar—to truly learn.

🛹 How do you learn to ride a bike or perform an ollie on your new skateboard?

Again, you will probably watch a video or two to see how to pull off an ollie (the most foundational skateboard trick!). But watching someone perform an ollie does not mean you have learned to do one. You have to practice. You have to do it to learn how to do it.

❤️ How do you learn to become a better lover?

Sure, you can review the Kama Sutra, but you have to… well… you get it.

Article content

How are YOU incorporating “hands-on” experience in your Instructional Design projects, especially when it comes to eLearning, Rise courses, or videos?

My go-to approach—when it makes sense for process and software-related training—is to use scenarios and walk-throughs in quizzes to reinforce the desired actions.

The ID Department Knows Instructional Design

At The ID Department, we bring you 60+ years of combined instructional design, curriculum development, and facilitation experience. We specialize in eLearning built for real learning outcomes—not just flashy content.

Where is what we offer:

✅ Unlimited Articulate Rise courses & microlearnings

✅ Unlimited reviews, reviewers, and revisions

✅ Unlimited stock photography

✅ 48-hour first drafts—because speed matters

💡 Click here to see how we can support your ID team.

#InstructionalDesign #ID #eLearning #LearningAndDevelopment #mLearning #Articulate360 #ArticulateRise #TheIDDepartment

No Sacred Cows?

Prior to a large and long trip to India for the opening of a new vendor call center, our “boss’s boss’s boss” executive type person sent out a Mandatory Memo. After opening vendor call centers in the US, Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines, he was bound and determined to make this launch the best ever!

Honestly, pictures cannot do the Taj Mahal justice.

That Mandatory Memo – which was bullet marked business cliches pulled right out of a Dilbert comic which we were to share with our Indian counterparts –  was going to tell us how. The point of that memo?

There are no sacred cows…

So, that’s awkward…

I don’t know what you know about India. But I would guess that you know about the Taj Mahal, the Kama Sutra, and sacred cows.

India – where we were going – is literally full of sacred cows.

When called out, this executive held firm. “No, there are no sacred cows!”

Sigh…

He did go on to explain what he meant; that we don’t have to do things the way we’ve always done them. That whole, “What’s the last six words of a dying company? We’ve always done it this way.”

Fair enough.

While his point was valid, his communication of that point was flawed.

His communication hindered – not helped – the point he was wanting to make.

Yes, we (people and organizations and businesses) should always be growing, learning, improving, maturing, developing.

But to use the cliche of “no sacred cows” for an audience that literally believes cows are sacred is foolish and lazy, at best.

As I have said before, all communication is cross-cultural communication.

This man seemed to have no idea who his audience actually was. It seems to me his audience was a “call center” (of which we had many) and not Indians.

I know it’s simple, and encroaching on cliche, but please, for the love of training, know your audience.

This man did not, and prevented him from communicating clearly.

This is why the ADDIE Model starts with analyzing, right? Part of analyzing is finding out who our audience is, identifying what they may or may not already know, understanding how their behavior should change, etc.

Until next time,

Simon L Smith

Shadowing for Cross-Cultural Communication

Last time we stated that all communication is cross-cultural communication.

So? What does that matter to us?

Well, a very practical way to apply “cross-cultural” communication to the corporate culture is to shadow a coworker, especially if that coworker’s job is different from yours.

Yes, simply shadow a coworker.

“Have you ever wondered what exactly it is your coworkers do all day? Work4, a social recruiting company, discovered the key to making employees more productive and improving communication between departments was to answer this question.”

A recent article over at Fast Company, How Shadowing Coworkers Can Make You Better At Your Job, stated that when employees spent a day in the life of someone from a different department they not only changed the way they approached their job, but they were also better able to communicate with personnel from other departments.

Simply put, the more they learned about another culture (a different depart with its own culture) the better they were able to communicate with that culture.

But cross-cultural communications goes beyond just communicating.

As the article states, “Spending a day in the life of someone in a different department can change the way you approach every aspect of your job.”

Being able to communicate cross-culturally will make us better at our job. This idea has played out in Verizon nicely and was the idea behind our dispatch ride-along project. By letting non-dispatch employees ride along with dispatch technicians they were better able to understand the entire process; Customer contact to scheduling a dispatch to the dispatched technician showing up.

In addition to helping teams internal to Verizon, it has also helped Verizon and Partner relationships.

Years ago we sent a handful of Technicians to our HSI Partner center in Tijuana. They came back as ambassadors.

Experiencing and learning about the PARTNER culture helped these Technicians better understand their working relationship with that Partner centers. By seeing firsthand what the Partner can and cannot do helped the Technicians better understand why processes were written the way they were written.

This is also why our New Hire training spent so much time y-jacking. Y-jacking allows a student to sit with an agent, i.e. shadow a real agent, to see how they talk to our customers, how they interact with other departments and how they use our tools.

By allowing them to shadow an experienced agent we allow them to learn about that tech support culture in a way that classroom training simply will not allow.

Until next time,

Simon L Smith

All Communication is Cross-Cultural Communication

As I often do I told the Chipotle “Burrista” that I wanted the onions and peppers on my salad. He replied back, “do you mean the fajitas?” I asked if that is what he called the onions and peppers and he said yes.

“Yes, I would like the onions and peppers. Thank you.”

I am from Texas and fajitas are a pretty big deal. Fajitas are far more than just the grilled veggies. Fajitas are the grilled steak or chicken, grilled veggies, salsa, jalapenos, sour cream, and guacamole all folded into a soft and warm goodness of a tortilla.

To this Chipotle worker my “onions and peppers” were really “fajitas,” and he wanted to make sure that I knew it.

But here’s the thing, I don’t work at Chipotle.

I don’t know Chipotle’s corporate culture.

I don’t speak Chipotle.

Specifically, I don’t know how Chipotle refers to specific burrito items.

I just saw some yummy onions and peppers that I wanted on my salad.

This is why when I was at Verizon our training instructed our customer-facing employees to avoid the use of industry or corporate jargon. Our corporate culture – and the language that goes with it – is not their culture.

Most customers probably don’t know the jargon, and most don’t care to.

Remember, if you communicate with customers then you do communicate cross-culturally.

If you write for your company (copy, training, process documents, etc.) then you also engage in cross-cultural communication.

Why? Because in our context all communication is cross-cultural communication.

Until next time,

Simon L Smith