What it should be: Hitting measures -> Accomplishing goals
What it is in a lot of the corporate world: Goal is to -> hit measures
This is one of my biggest pet peeves of the corporate world. We get these scorecards we have to hit, and we do whatever it takes to hit the scorecard measures… not the goal of the project.
I really enjoy investing in the stock market. It really isn’t as mysterious as it seems to be, or that people make it out to be. It helps to know the basics, but any more than that isn’t necessary. Most of news and info out there is like listening to football experts talk about who will win the Superbowl this year: a little bit of data, a lot of talk.
My post about how a print ad out-ROIed Google Adwords made it to a design studio blog, 420 Creative.
See the post here.
How neat!
Continuing my Top 2011 Events…
#5. The Breeze Smoker
The last year or so at P&G I had the pleasure of having a mentor who was as creative and outside the box thinking as I was (you know who you are Nathan). Who would’ve thought he had worked on an expensive hobby for the past 10 years: designing and inventing a better BBQ smoker. So as I prepared to leave the comforts of P&G for the uncharted territory of consulting and entrepreneurship, he offered me a chance to help him market his invention. In 2011, I put up a website, got a gold medal rating on a BBQ website, learned about the BBQ industry, and put in an ad in the Kansas City BBQ Society newsletter (the Bullsheet!). Our website had over 3,000 hits in 2011, and we’ve made our first “organic” sale (i.e. not a friend or family member). I’ve learned a ton working on this, finding my inner marketing person, and learning how to be a salesperson.
Happy New Year all! 2011 was a year of exciting and major change for me: I pushed the reset button in my life. Many of the top items on the list relate to this. The rest of the list fall into two categories: my signature road trips and an amazing year for Wisconsin sports.
Without further adieu… Here are the first 4 of my Top 107 2011 Events! I’m going in regular order (instead of reverse numerical order) this time since it makes it flow better…