Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
- Survival of the Richest
This “out of sight, out of mind” externalization of poverty and poison doesn’t go away just because we’ve covered our eyes with VR goggles and immersed ourselves in an alternate reality. If anything, the longer we ignore the social, economic, and environmental repercussions, the more of a problem they become. This, in turn, motivates even more withdrawal, more isolationism and apocalyptic fantasy — and more desperately concocted technologies and business plans. The cycle feeds itself.
The more committed we are to this view of the world, the more we come to see human beings as the problem and technology as the solution. The very essence of what it means to be human is treated less as a feature than bug. No matter their embedded biases, technologies are declared neutral. Any bad behaviors they induce in us are just a reflection of our own corrupted core. It’s as if some innate human savagery is to blame for our troubles. Just as the inefficiency of a local taxi market can be “solved” with an app that bankrupts human drivers, the vexing inconsistencies of the human psyche can be corrected with a digital or genetic upgrade.
https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1
- What detoxifies a negative work environment?
- How Sears Lost the American Shopper
Alan Lacy: If there’s a significant strategic failure on the part of Sears over quite a long period of time, it was the inability to get off mall with a viable, important retail format.
In my era, we tried the Sears Grand format, basically a big-box store that was right across the highway from Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s. Those first few stores that we did, they were doing $45 million and our mall-based stores were doing $25 million in annual sales.
We couldn’t build enough stores to really catch up to what was happening at that point with 1,000 new competitive outlets being opened every year by Home Depot, Lowe’s, et cetera.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-sears-lost-the-american-shopper-11552647601?mod=e2tw
- The Secret to Writing Emails with Military Precision
A CTA, or call-to-action, is the last bit of an email where you encourage your reader to do something: shop now, learn more, sign up, etc. Sometimes, the CTA is a button, but it doesn’t have to be. It does have to be concise, attention-grabbing and easy to understand. For marketers, CTAs are non-negotiable because they help businesses get more customers.
In our everyday emails, this device can be just as useful for accomplishing the purpose of our message. Be it organizing a meeting, requesting feedback or assigning a project, a concise, final reminder of what we’re after can improve the utility of any email. In fact, it’s so important that I tend to start my emails with CTAs and work backwards.
To make your CTAs pop, separate them from the body of the text and play around with bold text and colors. If you have several action items, separate them with bullet points, and try to limit your action items to two per email. Another helpful practice: If you’re addressing multiple recipients, use “@” to assign action items to different people, e.g. “@Pam: review slides and send feedback by Tuesday EOD.” That way, there’s no ambiguity about what’s expected from whom.