In Which Industry Is the Diversity Thriving

Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards were just announced. The nation's highest honors, now in its 19th year, are often called the Oscars of design, where entries are nominated and juried by peers. 

As a former jury member I wondered the message this year's awards would collectively send. After all, it is a jury's unwritten rule to use the winning entries to articulate what constitutes our highest values around a topic at a given time. 

The National Design Awards' rigorous process of recognizing the best also takes the pulse on what matters in design in America today. 

Looking at the winners with that perspective two messages emerge:

1. Design is a "diverse field."

Traditionally male-dominated, design at the highest levels of excellence is multi-gender, multi-race and multi-culture. In this design is ahead of Hollywood, another bastion of creativity. The diversity of the awards sends an important and timely message to all designers: you too can be here, regardless of where you come from.

2. Design is a "healthy field".

These great people are doing good--ethical, progressive work that improves our lives, our cities, our perception of our world--while also doing well--succeeding commercially and making their clients succeed.

I first heard of the term, "healthy field," in Jonathan Haidt's book, The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt explains that "when doing good (doing high-quality work that produces something of use to others) matches up with doing well (achieving wealth and professional advancement), a field is healthy." 

And this second message is very important to companies. Design at its best makes companies successful by making them do good and well. Design is a healthy field. Use it.

"All ten of this year's winners present a powerful design perspective and body of work that is at once inclusive and deeply personal, accompanied by great achievement, humanity and social impact." Caroline Baumann, director of Cooper Hewitt.

Here are the winners:

Gail Anderson, Lifetime Achievement. Anderson is designer, writer, and educator. Steven Heller, a Cooper Hewitt Design Mind, says, "a lifelong New Yorker, Anderson embodies three virtues: inspiring art director, inspired designer and inspirational teacher." You've been surrounded by her work--from Rolling Stone Magazine (where she was a Senior Art Director) to her posters for Broadway and off-Broadway plays to her books covers. 

Anne Whiston Spirn, Design Mind. Author of the seminal book, the Granite Garden. Spirn has dedicated herself to building sustainable relationships between the built and the natural environment. 

"Human survival depends upon adapting ourselves and our landscapes - cities, buildings, roadways, rivers, fields, forests - in new, life-sustaining ways, shaping places that are functional, sustainable, meaningful, and artful, places that help us feel and understand the relationship of the natural and the built." Anne Whiston Spirn, from her website for the Granite Garden

Design for America (DFA), Corporate & Institutional Achievement. DFA was founded by Liz Gerber and three of her students at Northwestern University to use design innovation for social good. Everything from how to reduce hospital inquired infections to campus waste, or create access to potable water. 

WEISS/MANFREDI, Architecture Design. Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, the co-founders of the firm see their work at the intersection of an existing site overlaid with a new project. They unearth what is possible (hidden potential, use, innovation) when the old and new come together. Seattle Art Museum: Olympic Sculpture Park is a living example of what they bring to built environments. 

Civilization, Communication Design. Civilization, tackles tough, often divisive social problems with humanity and grace. Its co-founded by Michael Ellsworth, Corey Gutch and Gabriel Stromberg. Their projects include #ShoutYourAbortion and Death Over Dinner, and Design Lecture Series, a destination for the Seattle design scene. 

"Design is a collective human act." Civilization

Christina Kim, Fashion Design. Kim who is known for her company Dosa is a designer, entrepreneur and social activist. She embodies the term "conscientious designer", designing beautiful, sustainable, ethical products in consideration with its impact in people's lives--people who make them as well as use them. 

"Similar to eating organic food, people need to know where goods come from and how they are made, this will help keep the artisan traditions alive.." Christina Kim, from her writings, Life of Jamdan

Neri Oxman, Interaction Design. Oxman is the founder and director the Mediated Matter research group at the MIT Media Lab. But you can think of her as Elon Musk of design (and that is a compliment to Musk). She brings together biology, material sciences, computational design, 3D printing and computational design, to everything from wearables, called Astrobiological Exploration, to architecture.

Oppenheim Architecture + Design, Interior Design. The firm, with work in 25 countries, defines its work as "designs with sensitivity toward man and nature - harmonizing with the surroundings of each context."

Mikyoung Kim Design, Landscape Architecture. Boston-based Mikyoung Kim and her team give soul and humanity to public spaces. Case in point is the ChonGae Canal Restoration, which unearthed the canal that runs through Seoul, transforming the city and breathing it life, not unlike what the High Line has done in New York City. 

Blu Dot, Product Design. Founded by Maurice Blanks and John Christakos, who started the company because they couldn't afford the designs they liked and what they could afford they didn't like. That became the raison d'etre for Bludot as a business--to make a stand for good design that is affordable.

This article first appeared on Inc.com on May 16, 2018

What Habits Woman Need To Break To Become Better Leaders

"We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay--and rise!" -- Maya Angelou

Are you a perfectionist? Are you good at multitasking? Are you humble?

If you're a woman leader, these very qualities that make you good at what you do may be holding you back from being great. That was my wake-up call when I recently read How Women Rise.

Written by Sally Helgesen, an expert on women's leadership, and Marshall Goldsmith, bestselling author of What Got You Here Won't Get You There, How Women Rise explains 12 habits that hold women back. 

Most of these habits are behaviors that help women early in their careers but become roadblocks as they move up. Below are four of the habits that resonated with me the most. They're examples of strengths that become liabilities for women as they rise in corporations. 

Habit 1: Reluctance To Claim Your Achievements.

I got a taste of this a few years back when I was talking to Goldsmith, who asked me if I wanted my book, Design the Life You Love, to become a bestseller. Not wanting to look too ambitious, I mumbled something ambivalent. I will never forget what Goldsmith said: Why bother writing it if you don't want it to be a huge success and everyone to read it? 

Now reading How Women Rise, I realize I was exhibiting Habit 1. As Helgesen explains, I was ambivalent about the value of my own work and "if you don't value it, why should anyone else?" I have since learned my lesson and am a great promoter of my book, which is in its 3rd print.

Lesson: Take credit by believing in your work.

Habit 4: Building rather than leveraging relationships.

In Give and Take, one of my favorite books by psychologist and Wharton Professor Adam Grant, he explains how, "Givers are more likely to see interdependence as a source of strength, a way to harness the skills of multiple people for a greater good." 

Helgesen and Goldsmith advocate similarly for developing relationships of "mutual exchange of benefits." Women tend to worry about being self-serving or using others, but reframing business relationships as a mutual give and take is both freeing and constructive. In innovation, leveraging relationships among talented people is necessary to success. It is so in leadership as well.

Lesson: Leverage your relationships. Give and take with good people. 

Habit 7: Perfection Trap.

In design we talk about evolution or revolution. Evolution is perfecting what you have; revolution is discovering new territory. Helgesen explains that women are prone to fall into the perfection trap and that this approach is stressful and hyper detail oriented. You look for negatives rather than celebrating positives, and it sets you and your team up for disappointment.  I like the idea of easing up on being perfect to be more creative and visionary, and to explore new territory and test new ideas. 

Lesson: Rather than being perfect, be fearless. 

Habit 12: Letting Your Radar Distract You.

Women see the big picture, picking up cues from the environment like a radar, which is a strength. Men focus on a specific point in the knowledge environment, undistracted by what is not necessary. The sweet spot is to do both. Use your radar, your natural strength to think holistically, as you hone your laser focus, your acquired strength, as a leadership skill. 

Lesson: Use your natural radar and hone your focus. To get what matters done, you will need both.

Here is my visual map of all 12 habits and lessons learned. It's my daily reminder. If you'd like, print it as your cheat-sheet.

This article first appeared on Inc.com on May 11, 2018

How To Think Like Elon Musk

A few weeks ago I wrote about a warm-up exercise to prep your right brain for thinking creatively. Let's say you're warmed up and ready for the next step. Where do you go from there and start thinking creatively?

Here is a simple tool that anyone can use to start their creative process. In fact this is how Elon Musk thinks. It is called First Principles Thinking. I call it Deconstruction. It is about breaking what you know into its components until you understand its fundamental parts and pieces.

First Principles is as old as Aristotle and used as diversely by Nobel winning scientist Richard Feynman, the military strategist John Boyd, Nobel winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, and his partner Amos Tversky. Michael Lewis's New York Times bestseller The Undoing Project is also dedicated to this process as you can tell from the title. 

We are all full of assumptions and preconceptions. Breaking something apart breaks helps us to break them. It opens up the possibility of a powerful thought processes--to go deep and radically change the way we think about one or more of the parts. 

Musk broke down space rockets and challenged each assumption that emerged--rockets cost a lot of money, you cannot make them lighter, you cannot have boosters that come back, and more--and made parts that were cheaper, a body that was lighter, boosters that were reusable.

He combined the new parts to make something never imagined before, the remarkable Falcon Heavy launched on February 6 of this year.  

Here is how you can apply First Principles Thinking.

1. Deconstruct an idea to examine its parts.

A rocket is made up of metal. That is obviously simple, but Musk pushed SpaceX to develop a new way of welding called friction stir welding that is much stronger than traditional welds. It allowed SpaceX to dramatically decrease the weight of Falcon rockets by welding large thin sheets of metal together, something never done before. 

What is a toilet seat? The coming together of a toilet and a seat. And a seat is meant be comfortable and ergonomic. This Deconstruction helped TOTO, my client, and me to develop a new toilet seat that was unofficially coined as the most comfortable toilet seat in the world. The idea was simple--make a toilet seat that is like a chair, except with a hole in it. 

Look at the building blocks of something you're working on and question all the assumptions you have about the parts. Challenge assumptions that hold you back to see how they can be done differently. 

2. Deconstruct it to see what it can be combined with.

Boyd, who served in three wars, called deconstruction "destruction" (no pun intended). His example, below, shows how you can destroy something and recreate a new thing by combining it with something else.    

Boyd used 3 objects to show what they're made up of: 

• A motorboat for water skiing: motor, body of the boat, pair of skis
• A military tank: metal treads, steel armored body, a gun
• A bicycle: handlebars, tires, gears, and a seat

The parts can be combined together in many different ways, most of them not useful, but one of the combinations will in fact add to a whole that we now take for granted: handlebars from the bike, body and motor of the boat, skis of the skier, and thread from the tank = snowmobile.

Break something into its parts and mash it up with other products from different contexts to generate new ideas. Or in other words, deconstruct and cross fertilize from other products and industries.

To summarize, break something down to its fundamentals, question age-old assumptions to solve the fundamentals differently, either by inventing from scratch or by cross fertilizing from another product or industry.

This article first appeared on Inc.com on May 4, 2018

How To Improve Your Business In Tremendous Ways

Can you improve on something as simple as a thank you? It turns out you can. I learned three lessons on how to thank people from Chester Elton--who said "I love you in life is thank you at work," at the MG100 Coaches talk I recently attended--which have already made me better at expressing gratitude. 

Elton is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Carrot Principle, about inspiring people with a carrot, not a stick. In fact, carrots have become a symbol for Elton who always wears something orange and throws stuffed carrots to his audiences when he gives one of his high impact talks. 

Elton's lessons on how to improve something as simple as saying thank you are profound and, according to him, will help you "lower employee turnover, higher customer satisfaction, and higher worker engagement levels" based on 850,000 people he surveyed for his books.

Here are three lessons that will improve your giving thanks:

1. Specificity is key.

This one really helped me. I used to say thank you but didn't always say why I was thanking someone. Elton's first lesson is to be specific. It is important to say exactly what someone did that you are grateful for when you thank them. 

2. Don't delay it.

Elton says, "Gratitude doesn't age well." Next time you're grateful to someone, say it out loud. Email them a thank you note. Do it now. And don't forget to say why (lesson 1).

3. Say thank you often.

Elton has a formula. It is 5:1. Five compliments to one criticism. Compliment and say thank you much more than you criticize people.

Now that you know how to give thanks, who to thank? Here are four groups you can start with:

Thank people who are good to you.

Marshall Goldsmith, executive leadership coach and founder of MG100 Coaches, tells the story of how when faced with mortal danger (his airplane's landing gear didn't open up) the one thing he regretted was not thanking people enough for being good to him. He survived, and after thanking the pilot and the crew, the first thing he did that night was to write 50 thank you notes. 

Thank your heroes.

Your heroes are the people who inspire you, who have qualities you want to emulate. They represent your values. Think for a moment about your heroes--high school teacher who made you love writing, your aunt who was interested in everyone she met and showed you there's something valuable in each person, your mentor who offered help when you didn't know how to ask for it. Write them a note and say thank you, you're my hero. And, once again, don't forget to say why.

Thank people behind-the-scenes.

The waiter who made your client dinner a great experience. The intern who arrived at 7a.m. to set up the workshop space. The model-maker who made the prototype just so. There are hidden people behind-the-scenes who make you and your experiences successful. Thank them. 

Thank your family.

As I was writing this post, I thought, do I thank my family enough? Not enough. I tell them I love them all the time, but I don't thank them and say why often enough. Today I will start with my family. 

Thank you dear reader for reading my post.

This article first appeared on Inc.com on May 1, 2018