The Agency Post

n 2006, a friend explained to me that nearly every song in recorded music history — everything I’d ever heard on the radio — had been stolen from somewhere else.

How many ways do you attempt to communicate? There are infinite tools for communication at our disposal, but the best ideas often come from simple, face-to-face conversation.

Get focused with your message. Figure out what you want people to know and what they need to know, and put those things front and center.

So many times, at the start of a project, we search for the perfect place — the “right” place — to begin. We often waste a lot of time at the start.

There’s this idea going around these days that people who run a startup or a company have to put in 180-hour work weeks. If you’re not, you’re doing something wrong.

Entrepreneur Dan Oshinsky draws revelations from a documentary about blood diamond trafficking to our daily professional roles. The question: Who’s in charge?

The way he tells it, Google didn’t spend much money on branding at first. They didn’t even want to brand. When Edwards told the executive team that they need to use branding to set themselves apart from sites like Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, Page said, “If we can’t win on quality [of search results], we shouldn’t win at all.”

Most companies work like that airplane. They build a structure. Employees work within the structure. And for the most part, companies work alright within this framework. It’s comfortable for most, and it’s rigid, and it works. Except that outliers don’t fit. You can’t be seven feet tall and stand up on an airplane. The structure won’t let you.

Some things I like asking for. I like asking for help. I like asking for favors. I hate asking for permission. This presents a sort of problem for me, as far as working in a bureaucratic environment is concerned.

When you’re put into a situation where you really have to listen, you need to break that routine. Good listeners are active. If you’re listening and no questions are popping up in your head, you’re probably not listening well enough.