steelcase blog

An Apple a Day…

… it’s the beginning of an old saying I’m sure you’ve heard many times, likely from your mother, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”  It ranks right up there with other meal time parental phrases like “eat your spinach, it will make you strong” and “don’t talk with your mouth full.”  I didn’t really hear them all that well back then, and when I hear others use them today they go by mostly unnoticed.  But I recently received an article my boss sent around titled The Apple of Your Eyes (and Heart and Brain), from the Sept/Oct issue of Psychology Today,… and since it was only one page, I decided to read it.  I was amazed to learn all the medical reasons that old saying was actually more accurate than not.  It seems an apple can reduce the risk factors associated with metabolisonc syndrome, which affects an estimated 36 million Americans, by up to 27 percent.

Why is this important…?  Metabolic syndrome can cause blood-fat disorders like hypercholesterolemia and triglyceridemia (two long words I don’t want to get), as well as high blood pressure, glucose intolerance, or even a heart attack or stroke.  That’s right; one medium-size apple is all it takes.  And here I thought that the apples most significant impact was helping good ol’ Isaac Newton discover gravity.  In case you forgot - every object in the Universe attracts every other object with a force directed along the line of centers for the two objects that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the separation between the two objects.  The apple also played a short supporting role in saving William Tell and his son Walter from a death sentence,… as William was commanded to split the apple perched on his son’s head with a single bolt from his crossbow (1837).  But according to the scientists quoted in this article, the apple has an almost ‘magical’ effect on one’s general health.

For starters, apples are rich in soluble fiber pectin.  Pectin doesn’t just lower cholesterol; it prevents the body from absorbing it in the first place,… in both the blood and the liver.  The antioxidants in apples not only keep blood lipids from hardening, they have also been shown to slow the spread of cancer cells.  Among fruits, apples come in second in terms of their being packed full of phenolics (a class of phytochemical), which help bolster one’s immunity system.  Dr. Rui Hai Liu of Cornell University says that the greatest health benefits come “from eating the whole fruit.”  The peel has the greatest concentration of antioxidants,… the flesh is where the pectin is,… and their synergistic combination contributes even further benefits.  So be sure to eat the entire apple except maybe the stem and the seeds.  And as we all hopefully eat more apples (I had one while writing this blog),…it seems we owe John Chapman, or Johnny Appleseed as he was best known, our gratitude,… for introducing apples to large portions of the Midwest.  And let’s thank our moms for reminding us how important apples are (even if they didn’t know why).  .  Red Delicious anyone…?

PLEASE pay attention…

… I can still hear those words ringing in my ear from my grade school teacher.  While I was yet to realize it, she knew that if I didn’t pay attention I wasn’t going to learn the material.  And it’s true,… our ability to recall is based on how carefully and how clearly our senses have recorded the information and its context.  It was true as a child, and is true today as well.  And if my ability to remember names (which I’m terrible at) is any indication, my attentiveness still needs to improve.  It’s bad enough when I’m not paying attention,… but when others do it to me, it drives me crazy.  There I’ll be sharing a proposal I worked long and hard on, and some in the room are looking off in space or worse yet doing their email or texting someone on their phone.  I feel like screaming out like my teacher, telling everyone to pay attention.

Why is it that everyone seems to have lost or at least disregarded the need to pay attention…?  I know my excuse is that I have other things on my mind, lots of other things it seems,… and for some reason I feel if I shut all these other channels down, I’m going to miss more than I’m missing by allocating a ‘light’ level of attention to the immediate situation.  I’ve talked before about the fallacy of multi-tasking … there are those (many gen Y’s) that can do multiple tasks at the same time but in reality they are sub-optimizing their performance across all tasks when they do.  Is this a trend; is it what we should expect going forward; is it going to get worse…?  There is a new book I just picked up and have not read yet, that seems to predict it is and will get worse.  It’s title is Distracted, by Maggie Jackson.  On the book inside cover she writes, “Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment.”  Ms. Jackson goes so far as to suggest, “our hyper-mobile, cyber-centric, interrupt-driven lives erode our capacity for deep focus and awareness”, and “the long-term implications for a healthy society are stark.”
If true, and my hunch says it is (I’ll let you know once I read the book),… that’s a pretty bleak prediction.  We certainly have to accept most of the blame, since we are ultimately in control over our level of attention.  Heck, I’m trying to focus on writing this blog post on one of my side-by-side monitors, while my email pops up on the other,… allowing me to instantly jump over and respond.  How sad is that…?!  But some of the blame, at least for office related work, has to be shared by the furniture and situated technologies that make up the physical settings in which we are expected to maintain focus and attention.

How easy is it to concentrate with the level of noise and number of interruptions in the typical office…?  No wonder so many workers are leaving work to get work done.  And tools are just now coming on the market to help with remote workers who need to connect and collaborate on shared content.  Even the scale and positioning of information displays in team settings is beginning to address the need for everyone to clearly see the information being presented.  Gesture-driven and voice-driven interfaces will make these even better.  With these innovations in space design, I’m confident that attention and focus will improve,… as people become active participants, engaged in the discussion.  But we need to take seriously our role in this change,… and avoid the dark scenario implied by Maggie Jackson’s book.  At a minimum it should cause us all to reflect on what value we place on awareness, focus and attention.  And then take action to rekindle these skills.  It not only could, and should, improve our performance,… but at the same time makes us more human, developing a deeper appreciation for those around us and the world in which we live.  Is anyone listening…?

Making a Connection…

… it has always been the key to getting things done.  Whether it is getting a wireless signal, bridging between ideas, plugging into power, meeting someone new, or sprinting to your next flight,… connecting is a good thing, and if successful usually ends in a positive result.  And it seems to be growing in importance as people become more mobile,… there are just a lot more connections that have to be made in a networked world.  For example, I’m never more than a few feet away from my trusty BlackBerry, its how I stay in the flow of the many activities at work.  I’m sure that my staying continually connected to work via email, just prompts my receiving more email (I get like 400+ per day),… and in the end contributes to a vicious cycle, as we battle to see who can send the last email of the evening (and the winner generally is an associate of mine on the other side of the globe).  But without it, I would feel totally un-connected, out of touch, left behind, and clueless as to what was going on.  I’m not sure if it is true or not, but I ‘do’ feel more productive,… and I think its because it keeps me connected to other people (virtually), as well as keeping the process moving through timely reaction and response to pending decisions.

But as I have said in earlier blog posts,… this is no replacement for connecting face-to-face with others.  If you can arrange it,… shoulder to shoulder collaboration is much more powerful than email, a phone call, videoconferencing, or meeting on Second Life.  It allows for the fullest expression of ones’ ideas, and allows your full attention to be given to the ideas of others.  In-person collaboration provides a level of connection that generally yields a higher result,… as captured in the title of Keith Sawyer’s recent book - Group Genius.  In addition to other people we also need to connect to the many information sources available on the web.  While it still comes back with way too many ‘hits’, and the advertising is getting a little much, the benefits of search engines cannot be denied.  One can connect to content that in the past was not available or only available through a tremendous amount of effort; now its instant information.

In addition to people and information, we also need physical connections, one device to another.  My BlackBerry still needs its daily dose of electricity,… it seems I’m constantly moving files onto a USB stick to transport them to another device,… and we all have experienced the need to connect a VGA cable to the back of our tablet/laptop computer to move our content to a larger group display.  Some of these connections are fairly painless, others are a mild hassle at best (how many of you have crawled under a table or desk to retrieve a cable or find a power plug…?).  When in a physical setting, like an office,… one should expect the furniture to be tool-like in its response to your performance needs as well.  Does the surface adjust to allow me to work in a seated or standing (better for you) position…?  Does the chair encourage me to sit the way I’m most comfortable, and still provide my spine the healthy support it needs…?  Does the arrangement of furniture allow for quick interactions with others in my work group or on my team…?  Each of these will enhance our ability to connect and stay connected as we go through the day.

The last connection I wanted to speak to was the connection to the company’s culture or brand.  Many times we are so caught up in the work we have to do, that we forget about the company we do that work for and what they stand for,… their focus and commitment to their customers.  You may be a free agent and not work for a company, but the need to be sensitive to your personal brand is equally critical.  Your actions, your activities, your outputs, should connect to your brand in a meaningful way, creating a positive experience for your customers.  People, information, tools and brand,… all critical points of connection in a networked world.  Are you connected …?

Oodles of Doodles…

   … I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a bit of a doodler.  Many of my doodles are rather meaningless, and are really just a way to pass the time when listening to a presentation/discussion that has gone on well beyond the point of sustained interest.  The drawings I create generally do not require huge amounts of cognitive capacity,… and in fact are often nothing more than a pattern I repeat over and again.  For example, I might start from a single point and draw straight lines of varying lengths in all directions.  Or to change it up, I’ll create a loopy spring-like pattern,… and repeat it many times over by starting a new loop off the previous loop drawn.  I’m sure there is someone out there that could tell me the deep meaning behind such images, but for me it passes time and allows my brain to take a bit of a break.

But the drawing doesn’t stop there.  I tend to also draw ideas or concepts,… certainly at the early stages of ideation.  Maybe it’s because it is so forgiving.  I can change this or that by merely making certain lines bolder, or if need be just start over.  The investment is really minimal,… and at least for me, I find the return on imagination is quite high.  As such I’m not shy about going to a white board, and putting down my thoughts in picture form.  I especially like to do this when I feel the group is really onto something, but just can’t seem to bring it together.  Most group discussions seem to belabor the differences, often minor, between alternative solutions,… when in reality they often agree on much more than they disagree with.  This is when I like to go the board, and capture the collective common in a simple diagram.  What tends to happen is that everyone sees in the simplicity the threads of their thinking,… and alignment often occurs.

This is why I was so delighted to run across a new book titled The Back of The Napkin by Dan Roam.  He talks, through example, of the power in “a simple drawing on a humble napkin”,… how when done well, can communicate far better than the mind-numbing PowerPoint slides and Excel spreadsheets used so often today.  Of particular interest were the three reasons Dan gives for why pen/pencil on paper is better than a computer mouse.  First, he claims people prefer hand drawings to polished graphics.  If done well, a well-designed computer image can communicate very well.  But I would agree that a hand drawing does more to invite one into the process,… and as such may be more memorable.  Dan’s second reason is that hand drawings are easier to change in the moment, as fluid as your thinking changes.  And finally, computers tend to put your thoughts into a standard format, and what you have to communicate may not be best represented by one of these formats,… so your limited.

I was reminded just this week of the power in pictures.  I had the opportunity to meet and talk to one of the authors of Innovate Like Edison, Sarah Miller Caldicott.  And guess what Sarah shared as one of the key behaviors of Edision’s brilliance,… to record everything in a notebook.  Whether the idea was good (and he had over 1,000 patents) or bad he put it down in sketch form on paper.  He was no artist,… his drawings make mine look like masterpieces.  He had good company over the years,… as Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein all used hand drawings to capture their thoughts.  So why not give it a try.  That next million dollar idea is just waiting for you to put it down on paper, or a napkin.  Stick figure anyone…?

The Human Potential…

… I was reminded again this last week of the amazing potential of the human spirit to overcome whatever life happens to deal them.  I attended a wonderful conference sponsored by the MIT Media Lab called h2.0; new minds, new bodies, new identities.  It was an information rich, inspirational experience.  The host was American journalist John Hockenberry.  I’m sure he was selected, not only for his endearing live interview style, and wit,… but as a paraplegic he represented the very soul of this day-long event.  The way John puts it, he has enjoyed life to its fullest the 19 years before his accident, as well as the 30-plus years since.  It’s just different he says, but it has never held him back, evidenced by his four Emmy’s and three Peabody Awards.  And while one might be prompted to say he was exceptional, it wasn’t until the day at Kresge Auditorium wrapped up that I began to see John as just one example of the potential within all humans to embrace personal, physical challenges,… and in so doing, rally motivation for others.

The day was filled with a mixture of researchers, scientists, and other professionals,… around a common theme of ‘new’ innovations which augment/enhance the capabilities of an individual, and the success stories they have created.  For example, Tod Machover, professor of music and media at the MIT Media Lab, talked about how music can enable expression.  He introduced an animated young gentleman named Dan Ellsey with cerebral palsy, who was able to play a musical piece he had created using Machover’s composition software and a specially adapted light that he wore on a head band.  Talk about having people on the edge of their seats, the place was in awe as he twisted and bobbed his head to create chords, tempo and emphasis just like an orchestra conductor.  And the biggest treat of all was to see the huge smile fill his face at the end, in response to our standing ovation.  Here was potential, tremendous potential, lying untapped until inventors like Machover discover appropriate tools/technologies to release it.

Another fella that blew me away was Doug Smith, a Neurosurgery professor and Director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania.  He showed us how his lab has been successfully growing nerve fibers in culture,… you heard me, nerve fibers.  And if that wasn’t enough, they have taken these nerve constructs and used them to repair large lesions associated with spinal cord injuries in laboratory animals…!  Is this a cure for spinal chord injuries…? Not yet but it shows great promise.  In the afternoon session a panel of three people, all with various physical challenges, took the stage.  Each was delightful in the positive perspective they had on their limitations (they really don’t even see them as such),… but one is worth mentioning, Aimee Mullins.  One reason she stood out is that she walked on stage in 6-inch stilettos and stood above the other two by quite a bit.  A double amputee from age 3, Aimee has found success as a photo model, an actress, a world-record-setting athlete and currently the president of the Woman’s Sports Foundation.  Aimee talked about how nice it is to have different legs for different purposes, she has ten sets in all,… joking that she felt sorry for the rest of us that have to get by with just one set of legs.  She spoke convincingly of possibility and potential, especially in light of the inventions that preceded her on the agenda.

It was truly an amazing day.  I am encouraged and proud to see science put to such noble use,… to harvest the potential of a person to be all that they can be.  There isn’t one way to see, or hear, or walk, talk or whatever,… there are many ways to experience the world around us, and the people at this conference are working towards that end.  It may involve attaching something (as in a prosthetic), inserting something (like a cochlear implant), or adding something (a wheel chair).  Each unleashes a new wave of potential,… and the human spirit responds.  Feel the pride…?