We all have times in our careers when we are driven by excitement and passion, and we all have times when work becomes a little more mundane. What is it that makes the difference?

All of us can admit to feeling the ebb and flow of this spectrum. When we took our first steps out of college campuses and into our first gigs, our new careers were (somewhat frightening) combinations of lack of experience and fearless desire to change the world. A few years into it though, and maybe the world isn’t much better yet for all the experience we’ve put in. Or maybe the day-in and day-out is getting under our skin a bit. Certain projects bring back the twinge of excitement we felt at first. Others may not. This is fine so long as they balance each other out.

However, if the “other” types of projects are winning the battle and leaving you feeling a little burnt out, I have a question for you. This question has helped me during these times.

Do you believe in what you do?

This isn’t the type of question you ask yourself when you have 30 seconds or so to think about it. It’s a gloves-off type of question between you and your heart. Between you and your college self who dreamed the dreams that resulted in where you are today.

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Unfortunately, in our current political culture, the notion that two opposing parties could come together for a singular purpose seems rather absurd. Rather, the norm is to stubbornly take sides. Dig our heels in. I’m right. They are wrong. Actually, this is nothing new. This was the case from our country’s very beginning. In 1787, the states’ delegates were so divided on whether on congressional representation should be equal amongst states (irregardless of their population) that it threatened the very basis (and existence) of the Constitution.

Fortunately, our forefathers learned how to be talk it out, how to see value from the other side. This situation (in 1787) eventually became known as “The Great Compromise” - a proposal that, while at the time seemed quite radical, was the beginning of our current representational structure (a proportional House of Representatives AND a Senate with equal representation).

In the business world, working with the competition is an even greater anomaly. Other than negotiating usage rights and/or buyout agreements, working with the other side is almost unheard of. That’s why the story of NUMMI is so intriguing.

NUMMI was a joint venture by GM and Toyota in the early 80s. Toyota was looking to enter the North American production space. GM was looking to learn the “secrets” of Toyota’s efficient production system. The results (and lessons) from the experience(s) is quite remarkable - in both what was accomplished and what was not. In fact, the lessons go well beyond GM and Toyota, but are incredibly insightful for our relationships today (business or not). But hearing the story from me would not do it justice. Instead, I invite you to take your next commute or car drive and listen to some of the best storytellers of our day, the team at NPR’s This American Life. Here is their story of NUMMI (personally, one of my favorite TAL episodes of all time.) Enjoy.

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Download story here.
or stream via the This American Life app here.

You already know this, but it’s worth taking a step back and mentioning again. When it comes down to it, your business is based on one very important thing: relationship. The relationships that you maintain both between your employees (or coworkers) and your clients are crucial to the success of your company. Without one or the other, your business would crumble.

One thing that’s essential to maintaining those relationships is taking time away from work to kick back and just get to know one another better. Time spent intentionally developing that relationship will create rapport on a personal level that will multiply productivity in the workplace.

With that in mind, we’re suggesting five work-free outings that are intended to strengthen or build those relationships.

Outings with Employees:

- Serve together. Try a local food pantry, shelter, hospital, or school. Giving of your time together will give your team something in common other than work projects.

- Play together. Take a vote for a fun non-skilled sporting or competitive activity that won’t single non-athletic team members out, such as bowling, laser tag, paintball, etc.

- Celebrate together. Don’t let a birthday or other milestone go buy without celebrating the unique aspects of your team member.

- Relax together. Go see a movie, a concert, a sporting event, go to a gallery, or try a new restaurant together.

- Dream together. Spend an afternoon talking about company goals and finding out what it is your employees dream about in their careers. How can you work together to make it happen?

Note: if possible, shut down your office for an afternoon and do your team-building activity during work hours. This will show your employees that you value their time and offer them a reserved space within work hours.

Outings with Clients:

- Serve together: Especially if your client is closely involved with a non-profit, give it a try and show them you support the same cause they do.

- Play together: Go to a sporting event together or get your entire teams together and do any of the above. If your client is a foodie, try a cooking competition – Iron Chef style.

- Celebrate together. If your client has had a big milestone that’s worth celebrating, show them you care by taking notice. Treat them to their favorite restaurant.

Note: find out what your clients love, and even if it’s something your team isn’t wild about it, give it a shot. It will show your client that you’re willing to learn something new and maybe your team will end up being inspired by something new.

Another note: Remember, this is really about getting to know your client. Take the time to find out something new about them in the process.

What do you think? What are your favorite non-work activities with clients or employees? Let us know in the comments.

Have you ever noticed that it’s difficult to work quickly without having some sort of fall out?

Sideways remarks, annoyed gazes or full out arguments seem to happen most often when the stakes are high. Whether it be personal or professional, tight deadlines and high pressure seem to be a breeding ground for resentment, frustration, miscommunications, ultimately resulting in unnecessary mistakes. We have all lived through the stress filled days and hurried nights to know the toll it takes on a company. But we are all aware that tight deadlines are inevitable and will happen every now and again. Rather than being surprised by the havoc they leave in their wake, why not plan for the storm before it gets here?

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Remember in college when everything was new? You were just starting to dig in to the industry you hoped would one day offer you a job. You were doing everything you could to absorb all the information that you could fit into your 3 ring binders. Learning was top priority.

For quite a few of us that was a long time ago…10 years? 20?

Are you still learning?

Really?

In the beginning I’m sure you took risks, pushed yourself hard. Getting your business started was difficult and took a lot of time and energy. And, like hard work often does, it payed off. Now it may not seem as necessary to run quite so fast or push so hard.

Unfortunately sometimes success can make us a little lazy. We know we should continue to learn and keep up to date on programs and trends, but somehow these things get pushed to the back burners. Until something changes. Like the market or our clients. As we all know, things do change, and quickly. So having resources you can tap into on a regular basis (even when things are going well) for information is increasingly important.

We have found that keeping up to date on technology and trends keeps your ideas flowing, helps you work more efficiently and allows you to offer clients more.

It’s true that you can’t possibly know everything, but you can figure out what you are interested in and what is important to your area of expertise and follow it like a stalker. If you use a certain program on a daily or weekly basis, get to know what it can do. Chances are you will find out something that will make your work faster and easier.

It is so easy to fall behind on program capabilities or trends due to the fact that they both change so rapidly. To make sure you are on top of the things you need to know it becomes increasingly necessary to keep a few resources in your tool box that you can check in on regularly. Try building at least a half a day each month to update yourself. You’d be surprised at what it could do!

Here’s our list. We’d love to hear from you! What resources do you have, or what keeps you from falling behind?

INSPIRATION/TRENDS:

• HOW magazine
• Communication Arts
• Print
• Computer Arts
• AIGA Inspiration resources
• AIGA Design Archives

HOW-TOs:

• Adobe TV (training for Adobe programs)
• Online Video Training, both paid and free: Lynda.com
• Computer Arts Projects Magazine – in-depth tutorials each issue + downloadable resources
• Make working in Microsoft Office less painful here

Almost ten years ago now, I had one of those moments that impacted the way I have seen the world ever since. It wasn’t a big event. It was a simple conversation. A conversation with a few colleagues about a particular event we were involved in. I asked them how they felt it went.

One responded pretty quickly, “It was good. I thought it went well.”

The other paused for a few moments as he stared the other down. “No it wasn’t. It wasn’t good at all. It sucked. How could you possibly think that was a good meeting? Nobody was engaged. Nobody cares. Everyone simply wanted to walk out the door.”

If you’ve been following Designer Sobriety at all, you’ll understand that we frequently return to a couple of basic concepts. One, is our ability to define reality in a particular situation. The other is our willingness to see different.

Personally, one of my greatest fears in life is eventually becoming like the colleague referenced above - oblivious and/or complacent to reality. It is all too common that at some point in life, we move into a robotic-like mode and say whatever we need to say to not rock the boat.

But often the boat simply needs to be rocked.

As in the situation referenced above, we should welcome the haters. We need the perspective of the other side.

One of the best examples of this in the current marketplace is none other than Miracle Whip. With their new campaign “Are you Miracle Whip?”, they take the plunge in defining reality and a willingness to see different. To do this, they have pushed an online campaign to welcome not on the Miracle Whip lovers, but the haters as well.

It would feel hypocritical at this point if we did not practice what we preach. So, as we invite you to define reality and/or welcome the haters, we want to do the same. Tell us what you love. But more importantly, tell us what you hate.

“The internet is [now] showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.”

In the video above, Eli Pariser brings up a great question: is getting what we want, how we want it, all the time actually good for us in the long run?  We all understand this concept in every day choices such as fueling our bodies with healthy food. But what about when it comes to searching the internet? When we type in a search term on Google, we already know what types of results we want to pop up on the next page. And the scary part is, so does Google. And without telling us, it only feeds us the answers we are looking for in the name of faster, smarter search. And Google is not the only one. Amazon.com, and of course other retail-based sites, are notorious for this. When was the last time you went to Amazon without being inundated with “recommendations for you” that are eerily close to what you are looking for?

Granted, this is great for companies marketing products to specific audiences. But looking at the big picture through the video above, maybe a tailor-made internet that constantly feeds us what we want to see isn’t good for us after all.

What do you think — does smarter internet actually do us a disservice?

First off, I have to say, there is something about hating that is fun.

Whether it’s disliking someone who has wronged you or trash talking the competition, the rush of adrenaline you get from a little hating can have a sinfully addictive effect. It usually doesn’t take too long before these smoldering embers can find some real fuel in the company of others who agree with our assessments. We see this happen all the time in our culture and through the media. We love watching people fail and then talking at nausea about how we would have done it better.

And what is the harm really? Especially since the likelihood of actually having to face the person we “can’t stand” and own up to our disparaging words is highly unlikely. So we go about out days spewing our criticisms and brash opinions with no real consequences. Right?

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So, one of our interns (let’s call him Steve) has an ongoing list he carries around on his iPhone called the “million dollar ideas list”. It contains a variety of outside-the-box, mostly funny, ideas that are just reasonable enough to cause you to pause and think… “yeah, that just might work.” Ideas like the ravioli with the sauce INSIDE, the stretch-to-fit band-aids, and the (heated) bean bag toilet have all prompted lively discussions in our office. (By the way, by reading this you are virtually signing our NDA.)

In many ways, the simple thought that something “just might work” has been the angst that has kept progress afloat. It was the catalyst for the Wright Brother’s first flight. It was the precursor to Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb. And it was the basis for some of the most innovative means of productivity – everything from Ford’s assembly line to Wikipedia’s (volunteer) community of publishers.

But, here’s the problem.

Few of us consistently give space for ideas. We tend to go about the monotony of our daily routine and write-off any such “thought” as an ineffective use of our time. Even if we get to the “just might work” moment, it is often derailed by our realization that we simply do not have the time to research, to experiment, to wonder.

We would be wise to pause here and take a few cues from who very well might be the worldwide leader of idea development these days… Google. Sure, they currently have the resources to hold such a position; however, this was not always the case. In fact, a significant portion of Google’s growth in the early days was directly correlated to Google’s “laboratory” mentality. As most are now aware, Google has what has been deemed their “20% Time” program, where employees devote 20% of their time to something that is company related, but also is of personal interest or intrigue. In other words, if you have the thought that something “just might work”, they want you to try it (on company time and with company resources). Popular products such as Gmail, Adsense, Orkut, Google Talk, Google Earth, and Google News all emerged out of various engineer’s “20% Time.”

Throughout our week, we meet with numerous business owners and entrepreneurs that are looking for ways to improve (or begin) their business. It does not take much to notice the difference between those that will likely succeed and those that will likely fail. Sure, there are countless factors that go into the success of company, but all of those factors revolve around one thing: the idea. Is it good? Is it unique? Is it the focus? And can it be implemented?

Again, the problem is not necessarily whether something can happen or not, the problem is that we don’t give weight and attention to idea development in the first place.

Try something different this week. Schedule an hour for ideas. What are the primary problems in your industry that need addressing? What are the possible solutions? What do you care about? What matters to you? Before you (hopefully) embark upon many ventures in idea development, I leave you with a fair warning. If you’re committed, if you’re consistent, it’s very possibility that you’ll land upon something that… well, “just might work.”

We don’t lack information. But we often lack the ability to interpret it and use it.

That’s where designers come in.

I recently attended a talk by GOOD about the history and purpose of their company. It was enlightening and piggy-backed off of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. We have access to this plethora of information and scores of data, yet there are not many people who are making it usable and understandable to all of us everyday people. Sounds like a design problem, right?

Enter the infographic. Casey Caplowe, cofounder and creative director at GOOD, explains why infographics are “elevated and celebrated” at GOOD. The basic process goes something like this. Someone presents a complicated topic. They ask, “Can someone explain this to me?” If no one can explain it in a short, understandable manner, it’s time for an infographic.

Design is all about effectively communicating information. It’s not primarily about making things attractive or noticeable. And I think at times when going back and forth on revisions with clients or working on projects that seem to never end, that I lose sight of this fundamental purpose and I forget the impact that good, clear design can have.

Making complex information straightforward is not only smart, but it can inform, educate, and even save lives.

So, in order to celebrate information, data, and a beautiful infographic, check out the following links. Do you love a good infographic? Have any resources to share? Let us know in the comments!

GOOD Infographics

Hans Rosling TED Talk

GapMinder Visual Data

Information is Beautiful