Doug Shaw

Three Cheers

I used to work regularly over the Christmas break. Not this time. Back in the saddle after a lovely extended rest and I’m wondering what to write about. Recent posts from others all seem to be about resolutions v no resolutions, the economy is screwed v the economy is recovering, and a few angry rants to kick the new year off. This stuff isn’t sitting too well with me, I’m feeling all cheerful after a great break. Thankfully I’m not all alone. In no particular order, here are three things I’ve caught up on today which I think are interesting and motivating. Hope you like them:

1 – Happy New Moment by Alison Ashford. With all the planning and preparing to fail going on, don’t forget to live right now. Alison puts it much better than me and when you visit her site you’ll see she has a lovely smile too.

2 – Death to the CV by Sukh Pabial. With LinkedIn, Twitter and all that jazz who needs a CV any more? Truth be told I was asked for mine last week and duly obliged. But is there a better way?

3 – Just Coach by Trish McFarlane. A lovely short piece on the importance of coaching and feedback.

So that’s it then, job done eh? Well….kind of. I had another Three experience today which is related to the above only in so far as it made me feel good. So what happened? Over the festive period I bought an iphone 4 and a new sim only contract, both with mobile operator Three. The sim only contract is going in my personal phone and the flashy new thing is for work. I haven’t made many phone calls yet but I’m totally addicted to Angry Birds. Anyway, I was in town today walking along and whining to the long suffering Carole about how I was going to have to enter all the numbers from the old phone to the new one manually (on account of me having broken the data lead and generally not being very good at that kind of thing). Carole suggested we pop into the Three shop nearby to see what advice they might offer. My heart sank. A phone shop offering advice when there isn’t even the remotest danger of a sale…you gotta be kidding in.

In we went, me all geared up for disappointment. How disappointing – I didn’t get any. Disappointment that is. The woman in the shop was great. Friendly and helpful even when it became obvious that an earlier attempt of mine to copy the numbers from sim to phone clearly hadn’t worked (see earlier excuse). Everything was checked, and double checked to make sure we were happy. We were delighted and left the shop feeling very positive about the great service we’d just been on the receiving end of. My only embarrassment is that in all the euphoria I forgot to ask the woman’s name so I can’t give her the recognition she deserves. I’ll have to go back and find out.

I’ve read some great blogs today, and had a great customer experience, and there are loads of interesting opportunities arising all around me (of which more later). I feel refreshed after some quality time away, raring to go with plenty to be done.

How are you finding these first few days of the new year?

manflu

This week has been unseasonably quiet at What Goes Around Central. Manflu descended upon us and being wimps and all that, the good doctor sent us to bed. Normal service will be resumed after the Christmas Break.

We are up and about again now, and looking forward to a very Merry Christmas and an exciting New Year, and we hope you are too. Best wishes and thanks for your visits and kind support over the last fantastic year.

photo c/o aussiegall

Experimenting

Home Made Christmas Cards

As many of you know, we have been experimenting with cards a lot lately. For me this experiment started way back in the mid 1990s, when I was employed by BT. Back then some of us were encouraged to have our business cards made to double up as prepaid payphone calling cards. The stock images we could choose to go on the card were typically corporate and boring. So I decided to design my own. I took a photo of a cloudy sky and retouched the photo with BT blue and red. The card manufacturer happily took my design and made a run of 200 cards from it. I received a mild rebuke from my boss for going it alone, an early sign of “Proceed Until Apprehended”, and the card became quite collectable due to its limited nature.

Doug Shaw’s BT Business Card

Fast forward to 2010 and Vandy Massey helped to reignite the experiment fantastically with her beautiful hand painted water colours. We encouraged folk to design their own cards for a workshop and the response was excellent.

Last week I designed a few more cards with a distinctly festive theme. I gave them to friends, they chose their favourite colour then I added a little note to the card. And as you can see from the picture at the top of this post someone has since taken the design and made their own interpretation of it. Well done to Alison Chisnell’s daughter, the experiment grows.

This morning I heard from Vandy Massey again. One of Vandy’s friends has been inspired by this hand made experiment and she too has designed her own Christmas card. Fantastic!

I was recently asked “how do you find the time to do this – when do you do any work?” Truth is I’m lucky enough to see this experiment as part of my work. I fit it in – sometimes even making cards when I can’t sleep.

I don’t know where this experiment will go in 2011. It’s already been contributed to by more people than I expected and I hope it will adapt and emerge in more places next year too. I’m looking forward to it. Thanks to everyone who has taken part so far.

How do you like to make your mark? I’d be very interested to hear from you if you want to participate in this experiment or if you are already doing something a little different then please share it with us.