Friday Donuts

Friends, A recent CDW collaboration commercial depicts a lonely employee in a desolated office, conducting activities that require colleagues to be there. Sharing donuts, playing ping-pong, sitting in a meeting room. For some inexplicable reason folks see a resemblance with yours truly. Admittedly, there’s the donuts… and the preference to work at the office… and the disappointment when others don’t show. Other than that, I don’t see it. Of course, with this being labor day weekend’s eve, I expect the small contingent at the north Denver office will be working from home, so, I will be eating my donuts and playing ping pong at home, by myself today 😉 . I hope your plans for Labor day include a healthy heaping of no labor and we’ll see you at the south Denver office on Tuesday! Happy Friday! P.S. Thank you Greg Griffiths for pointing me to the video 😊 !

Friends, As I stare at the "gray screen of #&@%!" and listen to the looped high volume 5 second music followed by the whispering instructions IT has set-up, the temptation to go negative is strong -human nature and all that. Then I am reminded of a recent Ted talk exploring the question of whether the world is geting worse or better. The answer is better! My favorite stat is about extreme poverty. Despite population growth, over the past 50 years people living in extreme poverty have gone from 2.2 billion to 800 million (round numbers). That means that over the past 50 years, the daily headline in the newspapers could have been 80K more people came out of extreme poverty today! Of course the world is more complex and nuanced (and news gravitate towards the negative). Still, we need to be reminded of the overwhelming positive from time to time. Perhaps mull it over with a donut and hot coffee in hand.  Happy Friday!

Friends, Life can seem like a fractal. A pattern, infinitely repeating itself at different scales. Seconds become minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia end eons. One project is replaced by another and smaller deadlines become bigger deadlines. Human history seems replete with wars that would be the last and the news cycle reminds me of groundhog day. That is why it seemed kind of fun to break the pattern. You got it! Donuts on a Wednesday –and not just regular sized donuts either. In celebration of the south office potluck, I thought I’d create a donut fractal. So if you’re in the south Denver today, feel free to drop by and disrupt the pattern –as you can tell from the picture, I’ve already taken a bite. Happy Fri... um, Wednesday!

Friends, Photo sharing is a key part of the vacation experience. The rite helps bring you closure and proves to friends and acquaintances you were actually somewhere (hopefully somewhere nice). As I try to dust off some neurons and get re-acquainted with my job, I thought I’d spare you the curated greatest snaps parade. Instead, I’ve curated a different kind of album. For your enjoyment and edification, here are some road trip lessons in marketing. Know your sweet spot . Sure, “whale hunting” is alluring but, if like these mosquitos you try to go after a target you are not ideally suited to succeed, you may be crushed. You may win outside your target . Notice anything odd about this picture? Other than the fact it’s a storm drain grill? If you look closely, this Mt. Rushmore auditorium fixture reads “Urban Accessories”. Incongruence is fun. And that’s OK. Messaging can be powerful . This mountain is not tall enough to make the list for the top 100 peaks in the U.S.

Friends, It’s road trip time! Load-up the mini-van, yell at the kids and, two hours later than planned, go chase the horizon. Windows open wide, your mind wanders as wide eyes gaze at open fields. Wind streaming through my hair, I press pause on Windstream to dream of ice-cold streams. Home a distant memory, the black hills dash towards our windshield and, like that unfortunate bug, I am struck by the notion there are two kinds of roadtrippers: the voyagers and the destinationers. The former relish the road and the latter can’t help but wonder: are we there yet? While I consider myself a voyager, the butterfly stowaway seen here trying to force my gas foot to the floor is clearly a destinationer. Whether you’re a voyager, a destinationer, or even an avoider, one thing is for sure: if you gotta have a donut today, you’re gonna have to get your own. Happy Friday!

Friends, Our lives are an exercise in trust, from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. We trust Kellogg’s not to poison our cereal, our fellow drivers to stop on red and colleagues to arrive on time to meetings. We trust no one will break into our home to rob from us and smother us while we sleep. We trust our employer will deposit our wages in the bank, the bank will give us our money on request and that money’s value will remain relatively stable. Our trust in rules allows us to focus, be productive and enjoy life. I suppose trust comes more naturally to the trustworthy, after all, it’s natural to expect others to behave as we do. I think that’s why news of stolen elections in Zimbabwe, Russian meddling in ours and politicians who have contempt for the rule of law, the press and truth are so unsettling. These events chip away at our trust in the foundations on which society is built -and can be a big distraction. They are reminders that without trust, our way of li