The Friday Thing #757

So much to write about this week. So much rattling around in my head….?

The Friday Thing #757 is a reminder to me that one of the reasons I write this missive each week is to get thoughts out of my head and in to my digital, offboard, brain. Many times, over the years I have referred myself and others back to things I have posted here. In fact, earlier today during an internal session I hosted on career journeys at Microsoft I pointed people here to the LinkedIn version as a useful reference on storytelling. More on that internal session in a moment.

My week started with a relatively significant announcement that landed on Monday and I spent late last weekend and some of the weekend preparing for this. The news landed well, and it was a great opportunity to flex some PR muscles that I hadn’t flexed in a while and learn from others who I had not worked with before. They offered wise advice on media responses, where to engage, where to decline and more. It was a good day of fast paced work, a little drama here and there and overall, good results. I went home smiling and woke early on Tuesday to head to Nike HQ in Beaverton, Oregon. It was a real and welcome change of pace and the travel time itself was good for digesting the previous day and turning my mind to planning for the year ahead as our fiscal year comes to an end. I spent the day touring the Nike campus – the Serena Williams Building (stunning); the Michael Jordan building with six gold sneakers among a collection of each edition of the iconic brand; the magnificent LeBron James innovation building. One other building really caught my eye though and I asked my friend and host, Chuck, what the building was. The parking garage came his answer. Wow….if Nike puts that much effort into a parking garage, imagine how much effort they put into other things, I thought. Chuck and I had a laugh about that and talked about what attention to detail signals to employees and customers. I have talked here in the past about how attention to detail is not top of my lists of skills, but it’s something I try to get better at. Where I feel it most is when I am creating a report for executives or a PowerPoint slide deck that I will present – two things I have done this week. As I prepare both of these things, I try remove mental distractions and really focus on the details that I think count. This week that was adding the Twitter bug to a report I sent to executives. An incredibly minor detail – but one I think made the report easier to read. Especially on mobile. That latter part is important too – understanding who is receiving the content and where they’re likely to receive it. A ton of reports I get are in 10pt font (or less) which look great on a hi resolution screen, but try to read them on mobile? #fail. Details matter because they send a subconscious signal that if the creator cared about the detail, imagine how much time they spent on the bigger things. In PowerPoint, my bête noire is a cacophony of fonts – styles, sizes, and weights. Less is more on this front. Fewer fonts (ideally one typeface), fewer sizes and prudence with weights. And don’t get me started on italics. I digress….this is me, taking a shot at the Nike parking garage. My game is off, so I may need to pay a bit more attention to my jump shot this weekend.?

After finally sinking a jump shot, I continued to chat with Chuck about company culture and how it evolves, and how we need to nurture it. We talked about why we’ve both remained at same company for ~25 years respectively. Ultimately, it came down to storytelling and our mutual passion for telling the story of places we care about. I admire how Nike does this on their campus, through their buildings and visual storytelling and came away with some great lessons. I thought about this again today when during the internal presentation I gave, I was asked how we should use storytelling when introducing ourselves to customers. I’d never been asked this question before, so I thought about it for a moment. My answer was to encourage people share with the audience why you work at a company, not what your job is.

For many of us in the corporate world, I think we’ve been trained to introduce ourselves by explaining where we sit in the hierarchy and what our roles and responsibilities are. I like the idea of starting with why. Why do you work here? For me, I work at Microsoft because I believe in our mission, in how we go about it, and what we can contribute to the planet. I know that may sound trite, but it’s true and I think people got a sense of that with my presentation today. Twenty five years ago, I would have answered that question quite differently but today, I think it’s why I am here and so I’m going to commit to myself to start with the why vs. the what from now on.

Thanks for allowing me to get a few of the rattling thoughts out of my brain today.

Happy Friday everyone. Have a great weekend and a great Father’s Day to the Dad’s reading this.

Cheers,

Steve