The Blue School

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The Blue School | TIME

I learned about The Blue School in May’s Inc. Magazine:

  • “Original blue men Chris Wink, Matt Goldman, and Phil Stanton, together with their wives, Jen Wink, Renee Rolleri, and Jennifer Stanton, conceived the school as an alternative to the New York school scene. “There’s this incredible pressure in Manhattan private schools to get young children into Harvard. Like, at 2,” says Rolleri, whose background is in art therapy and child development. The Blue School, Goldman says, was a response to what was “not happening” in education. “Schools are educating creativity and innovation out of children,” he says, “and sucking the joy out of that experience.”
  • Pre-k and Elementary
  • Only 20 kids admitted per grade
  • School that teaches kids to be kids
  • Studies show if kids choose the curriculum they learn more
  • $27k annual tuition

Failure: The Secret to Success

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Failure: The Secret to Success - A Honda Documentary

What I learned:

  • Everybody makes mistakes
  • So much of racing is failure
  • Failure is a byproduct of pushing the envelope
  • When you fail it isn’t necessarily looked at as a bad thing as long as you learn from it and make something positive out of it
  • Engineers for better or worse want to change things and advance
  • All the demands from Soichiro Honda were to take risks and fail. The idea is that you can fail 100 times as long as you succeed once. “Trial and Error” sums up Soichiro Honda’s ideas.
  • We can only make fantastic advances in technology through many failures
  • If you have a boss that is telling you to take a chance and if you make a mistake or fail, just try not to do it again and try to learn from that.  That is a good thing.
  • Edison trying to do the light-bulb, he said I didn’t fail, it just didn’t work 10,000 times, it worked the 10,001st time so if you look at those 10,000 times were those failures?

Nascar Virtual Racing at the MOA

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Went Nascar virtual racing last night at the Mall of America with 8 people.  I came in 4th the first race and 8th the second so evidently my video game skills didn’t serve me well.

Jeremy All Gussied Up for CMMA Dinner Tonight

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Had a really fun time at the CMMA President’s Dinner tonight.  It was a really great conference!  Check out the CMMA site if you want to apply for membership or learn more about the organization.

Target Corporate Headquarters Tour

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jeremy-at-target

Stromberg Consulting Presentation

  • Target and Best Buy are using Stromberg Consulting to help with their branding strategy
  • Brand + Reputation + Perception = Today’s Reality
  • Employees, customers, and stakeholders are all seeking much more transparency in the relationships that they have with companies.
  • Branding
    • Good brand = promise
    • Great brand = promise kept
  • From the moment we are born we are all in networks.    Some of us even find love through our networks.   Stories travel the world in minutes through our networks.    People play different roles in networks.    Using networks to change our professional lives.
  • Referred to Tipping Point book
  • Find out who the hubs of information are in an organization…who are people going to in order to get answers?
  • Asked employees what channels they find most effective to receive communications which ended up being email, managers, and employee toolkit (portal).
    • They then did a cost analysis of each communication channel
  • Drivers of Engagement
    • Team connections
    • Senior Leadership
    • Quality of work
    • Growth and Opportunity
    • External reputation
    • Assesses “a day in the life” of someone and understands hour by hour what spends a day getting fully immersed with the employees.

    Leadership Visibility

    • Has your CEO directly addressed how you’re tackling the economic environment?
    • Have you increased leader visibility in the face of uncertain times?
    • Have you considered a “back to the floor” program?
    • Is there a mechanism for two-way dialog with senior leaders?
    • Have you considered setting a leader’s specific communication targets?
    • Employees are more apt to form/join a union if the relationship with their manager is failing.
    • Measuring seat time vs. productivity (social media)

    Mike Brown – Director, Marketing Planning at Target

    • Target is a “destination for trendsetters”
    • Values mounted on the wall in the highest traffic area of the headquarters
    • To be the best company ever for our guests, team members, and shareholders
    • Want their team members to know the vision, then act on it
    • Want their employees to be fast, fun, & friendly
    • Want to find a leader in everyone
    • Speed is life (we want to know what our guests want before they do)
    • Advance our reputation
    • Recognition
      • Great team cards (peer to peer cards)
      • Use real estate (artwork and digital signage) to remind them of the brand throughout the campus
      • Bullseye boutique (employee store)
      • Doing a dog (Bullseye) dress-up contest for employees for their plush dogs
    • Able to attract most affluent and highest educated customers
    • Target has planograms for Store Manager’s offices so if a Store Manager leaves the next Store Manager can jump in and find things
    • They call their employees “team members”
    • They call their customers “guests”
    • Word of Mouth Marketing Organization (educates employees about social media guidelines)