This post from Kathy really hit home. Are you passionate about your company? Your job? I’ve thought about jobs where I’ve been the most happy and they were the times when I was challenged. I never had to be told I need to work late or come in over a weekend. Those were the times when I was so excited, so engaged in a project that I didn’t mind working longer hours.

I recall a time, at a company I used to work for when someone from sales asked if I’d talk to a guy on my team about working longer hours in order to complete a project. But the project wasn’t exciting and this person from sales tended to hover over project making them even less exciting. I never did ask this guy to work longer hours. It wouldn’t have done any good.

Hey, and while you’re at Kathy’s site checkout this post on one difference between Gates and Bezos.

Klein is the attorney who lead the anti-trust march against Microsoft who is now the chancellor of the NY public school system. Fortune conducted an interview with Klein. I liked it all but especially this part:

If you want to lead an organization, think: What are the two or three things that I can do that are really going to have an impact? That’s the role of leadership. I try to ask myself what the really big ideas are. And how can I get them right?

–Link to full interview

Dell introduced a very Digg-like site called Dell Ideastorm that allows anyone to submit product suggestions/enhancements which users vote on. I think this is a fabulous idea that could help companies design better products.

Each morning I walk from King Street Station through Pioneer Square to our new offices located just off 1st and Columbia in downtown Seattle. The walk through Pioneer Square is usually quite interesting. There are several shelters and churches that help the homeless and the lines start to form for these services by the time I’m walking through just after 8 am. It’s not uncommon to see people jogging through the area along with a number of people out for a morning stroll.

This morning as I was just a few blocks from our office, I noticed an elderly couple coming towards me. The man was using one arm to balance himself with a cane while his other arm was clinging to his partner. They were moving very slowly down the street. As I was getting closer I noticed they would stop every few steps and pickup paper. As I neared I saw the lady was holding a clear plastic bag full of cans and paper. They appeared to be going around the block picking up trash on the sidewalks.

I thought of the kids who seem to do much of the littering and wondered if they would change their behavior if they could see this older couple picking up after them. Kudos to this couple for making a difference. I’m going to make an effort to pickup trash when I see it next time instead of walk by and assume it’s someone else’s job.

Here’s Dr. Ashen’s review of the Gamespower 50. This guy cracks me up.

I don’t recall pre-ordering a book from Amazon but I did it today for the book, It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News. YES!!!

You can read Chapter 1 here.

I’ve run across a few items lately that are difficult to determine the actual cost. When I’m at Fred Meyer loading my plastic bag full of off season grapefruit at $2.49 pound I’m always shocked when my bag of five costs nearly 10 bucks. But I’m not shocked enough to change my tactics. I don’t remember the last time I used the scales so I really can’t complain much. Does anyone still use the scales? And spending 10 bucks on some fruit isn’t that big of deal really.

But when the item in question is chocolates and the price per pound is $15 to $27 that same method can get pricey. I recently went into a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory to pick out some sugar free chocolates for Kim. Well, for me too but that’s beside the point. Everything looked really good so I started asking for “4 of those, 6 of those, how about 8 of those” as I pointed to the case full of goodies. This is what it must have felt like to find a golden ticket!

How am I supposed to know how many chocolates are in a pound? When I figured I’d asked for about pound I stopped while the kind young women weighed my choices. Total damages? $32! Obviously, I have no sense for how much chocolates weigh as I had picked out just over 2 lbs worth. I wasn’t going to ask her to put them back so I just handed over my Amex and decided to call it Kim’s Valentines day gift.

Every few months I walk through an area of Nordstrom that feels like another world to most guys. Yes, I’m hooked on several products from Clinique which is located on a tranquil island where women wear white lab coats and smile a lot.

See, I don’t mind spending 25 bucks on facial soap when I’m treated as well as I am here. Even though I am clearly out of my element when approaching one of these foreign islands, I’m never treated like an illegal alien and asked to leave because I can’t recite the benefits of a mud mask.

I’ve been using the same kind of soap and scrub for years, but I can never remember the exact name among the dozens that sound pretty much the same. The products may have similar names. They might look the same to the layman. They probably even smell the same. But that doesn’t mean jack squat because it’s critical to match the right product to my type of skin. At least that’s what I learned by watching America’s Next Top Model.

I’m getting off topic here. My point is that the women (there may be men but I’ve never seen any) who work for Clinique understand how to make me feel welcome instead of feeling stupid because I can’t remember if my soap is “Normal Oily”, “Moderate Oily” or “Heavy Oily” formula. They play 20 questions with me until they’re able to deduce what I have at home.

The one other thing they do is leave me with something extra. Whether I spend $15 or $100, they always toss in a few sample products. This always leaves me feeling like I’m special and got more than I paid for. They take this habit to the extreme at Kiehls where it’s possible to leave the the store with twice the volume in sample products as the product you made the trip for.

Say you work for a jewelery store. It’s 8:50 pm and your store closes at 9:00 pm. A women comes into the store to have her watch battery replaced. Do you:

A. Change the battery and stay open an extra 5 minutes or so to accommodate a customer

B. Find a solution such as have the women leave the watch, change the battery next day. Call customer to pickup or send via overnight delivery.

C. Tell her the store closes soon and there’s not enough time to change the battery

Two of the choices probably work equally well and would make a person want to shop at this store next time they were looking for a watch or jewelry.

But the answer Kim received last night will ensure we never do business with this particular jeweler.

Do your employees have the authority to find solution that best serve their customers, even when it may fall outside of normal working hours?

In one of his best posts in a while, Seth Godin discusses “Sheepwalking” which he defines as “the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain dead job and enough fear to keep them in line”.

Have you ever sheepwalked through your job? I can think of a few example where I have:

1. At one job I had to use the correct color of paper when I filled out a request for raise for someone I managed. There were two types of raises and both had their own color! If the paper arrived on the wrong color of paper, it was sent back to me do over. When I asked why the color of the paper mattered I was told the person who opened the mail wanted the raises to stand out from the normal mail.

2. My first job out of college was managing a retail store. I had the authority to set the schedule of 10 to 15 employees I managed but I wasn’t able to set my own work schedule. I was told the exact days and hours I would work every week. The part-time seasonal help I hired had a more flexible work schedule than I did.

3. Another company I worked for banned instant messenger programs on the basis that employees would chat too much with friends and spread viruses. This same company would send out random emails to the entire company asking if anyone had seen the missing typewriter or filing cabinet.

4. A company I worked for years ago hired a guy to work on increasing the traffic to our website by building community. But one of his first jobs was to determine how much money our company was spending by providing free soda.

5. I was in charge of increasing sales of computer training on our website. When I mentioned we rework the site to make the purchasing path more consumer friendly I was told to increase the font size of the phone number on the website so that more people would call us. Our sales department closed at 6 pm on weekdays and was closed weekends. If you happened to call in an order during the times we were closed you were sent to voice mail. When I asked who pulled the voice mails (and potential orders!!!) I was told that nobody could remember the password to access it.