Why I Oughta...

I've done a few of these [view from my office] posts since we were all sent home at the beginning of COVID that were from my front porch and (even) an airplane .  But, it has been since mid-March when I was last in an office for work.  In that airplane post , I mentioned that we're moving offices - out of the Aon Center - and into a 'west of the river' mid-rise.  Over the past few weeks, I've visited a few times and am busy getting situated in the new setting.  The view?  Quite a downgrade.  The commute? Quite an upgrade.  From a 20-25 minute walk across the Loop to a four minute walk from where I emerged from under Union Station.   Having been in the office a few days, I'll say:  I'm surprised by how much I've enjoyed being here.  I really still do NOT know what I'm using office days for in terms of work (we're a hybrid team now, so have a mix of WFH and office days), but I'm glad I've come downtown to give it a shot.   ...

There I was...sitting at my desk one early morning when I started to see some suds falling from the skies.  I knew what was coming next.  And I was excited.  The window washing rig was about to roll by my spot.  And, for some strange reason, I like seeing this.  It both fascinates and terrifies me.  I've posted about this experience every few years here on the blog.  Here's my 2016 interaction at the Aon Center .  This one was when I was in an office facing due south. Here's my 2012 interaction at 20 W. Kinzie when I was at Google .  This one was facing due south, too.  The photo in this post is facing west and what is most interesting (to me at least) is that the rig that they're on is built specifically for the Aon Center.  It hugs the contours of the building and allows the guys to get close to the windows. 

As recently as July of this year, I posted about some #client work for the Mitsubishi Regional Jet my team has been doing at Edelman in our B2B Marketing practice.  Back in February, I shared some other client work here on the blog .  Those two examples give you a sense for the types of things we're doing at Edelman, but one thing that always struck me was:  we weren't eating our own dog food . I mean...we build really great communications marketing campaigns for our clients, but we don't market our own practice in any way.  So, with the combined effort of a bunch of folks at Edelman, we decided to change that by launching our own content hub. It is *just* getting started, but that's the key part:  starting.  There is so much inertia against moving on something like this that it has taken the better part of six months to get to this point.  We're using a marketing automation tool that we often-times use for our client projects. Our team is gr...

Via "Discover Choice" and the MRJ In our work in the B2B Practice at Edelman , my team and I get the pleasure of working with clients who are doing amazing things around the globe.  One of them is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, who is bring to market the Mitsubishi Regional Jet.  We're fortunate to be able to partner with them to continue to introduce the jet to the pubic, including at this year's Farnborough Air Show . Ahead of the show, the MRJ crew in New York, Seattle and Chicago  published a new post on their "Progress" content hub chronicling all the pieces of the puzzle that are coming together in the United States with partners, stakeholders and supply chain members .    The map above shows some of the locations, but if you click here , you can go into a region-by-region breakdown.    And you can download the full infographic (as a .pdf) here .  Nice looking stuff from Edelman's Creative Team. Also recently released is this grea...

One early morning recently, I was the first one into the office in New York and stopped to admire the view looking west over the Hudson to New Jersey.  The city was barely stirring and the heat had yet to really hit the day.  I'm calling this a [ View from my Office ] despite the 'just visiting' nature of said view.  Add this to the view looking south from the same floor almost a year ago  and you can start to get a composite.  Now, I need east and north and we'll be able to stitch together a sort-of 360.

Well, look what we have here:  a dusting of snow covering Chicago's lakefront when I arrived at the Aon Center this morning.  This is the view - looking south - from the 64th floor.  I have been planning on planting perennials and digging beds in the backyard.  But instead, we have snow and ice.  Add this to the pile of weather complaints that everyone seems to have these days. 

26 days in and haven't looked back.  At least in terms of the vehicle upon which the caffeine is delivered.  And I've actually started to borderline *like* the whole thing.  This is the machine that I've been using at the office and there's a nice little ice machine right next to it, so I don't have to deal with scalding hot brews.  Kids temp for this guy.  How very cosmopolitan, right? 

As the kids say:  #nofilter.  With the time change, I am seeing dusk more often from the office these days.  This is, quite the view, right?

Just like my recent trip to the Bay Area , I spent all of about 24 hours in New York recently.  The entirety of it between Newark Airport and offices and a hotel in SoHo.  That photo above, is the view I had for an afternoon, which was pretty nice.  Back when I was working at Google and would occasionally travel to NYC, I never got below 15th Street, so this is a whole new territory for me being Downtown and all.  How cosmopolitan, eh?!?!

I was visiting an Edelman office recently and sat down at someone's desk who happened to be traveling that day.  There wasn't much 'cubicle decor' as it were, but there was this mug.  And it is awfully sweet, isn't it?  The positivity of the message stuck with me all day:  Be the Leslie Knope of whatever you do. Don't mind if I do.

Back in August of 2016 (14 months ago), I posted a photo of my office succulent .  You should go look at that photo here to get a sense for the growth.  Above, you see a photo of what it looks like today.  It has gone, literally, berzerk.  This started from some cuttings of a co-worker's succulent and now has clearly outgrown it's pot.  Not to mention the soil has likely outlived its useful life, right?  I'm going to bring in a few little pots and some succulent soil and see if I can again replicate the success I had with cuttings on this original version to grow a few more.  If you look closely, you'll see that there are quite a few little buds on the main stems that I can cleave off and use to start entirely new plants, I think. 

Another *super quick* trip to San Francisco.  And...another blog post and photo about it.   Back in February of 2015, I posted an almost identical photo from the Edelman office that you see above. Doesn't appear that much has changed at that intersection over the past few years.   Did I take in the sights?  Nope.  Not really.  Mostly just worked and went to meetings.  Then headed to the airport to hustle home.  The Chamber of Commerce did, however, turn the fog machine on for me...which was an awfully nice tough.  

There's a new view from my spot in the Aon Center on Randolph Street.   For the past few years, I had a south-facing view .  Now?  I'm looking due west.  The view isn't the only thing that changed, but I think I've pretty much adjusted to the new spot.  While this new view has some interest, there's nothing quite like looking south from Aon to see the lake and the museum campus.  I miss it every morning.

Chicago's 'front yard' is a winter wonderland this morning as a bit of snow dropped on the parks.  The last time I posted a snow picture of my view from Edelman was last year in February . We've been fortunate with very little snow this winter and normally I'm all for bad, snowy winters.  But this year, since we've been building the house during the bulk of the winter, we've been hoping and (so far.... *knock on wood*) have had a super mild winter. Now that our house is all button'd up with a roof and windows , snow like this doesn't affect us one bit.  And that's kinda nice.

My office door not only includes a 'Flat Ronnie' ( see the post from the archives about #FlatRonnie here ), but now a "Hit 'em With The Hein!".  I'm still awaiting the day when a secret Superfan at Edelman walks by and strikes up a conversation. I love how quickly this whole "Hit 'em with the Hein!" thing has taken off including Jason Sudeikis shouting one out on Son of Zorn this week .

These are a few of the posters that have gone up recently around the office that are urging all of us at Edelman to make sure we get out and vote on Election Day .  They've even incentivized us by having the office 'open' at 11:30 am central that day and by bribing us with donuts.  The puns just write themselves, it seems. And Edelman isn't alone.  There's a trend happening on Election Day.   From this Digiday story : A variety of agencies, from Edelman and Day One to AKQA and Walton Isaacson, are doing everything from letting employees work remotely to delaying opening their offices until later in the day in a bid to encourage them to vote. For Edelman, flexibility just didn’t cut it. When the agency polled its employees about the biggest barriers stopping them from getting to the polls, time fared top of the list. Agency executives realized that even with flexible time off to vote, it was still difficult for staffers to juggle work, polls, childcare and...

I was sitting in these internal meetings for Edelman in Toronto a few weeks back and my past hit me square between the eyes.  One of the speakers was Joshua Gans , a professor at the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto who speaks widely on the concept of disruption.  It was an appropriate topic for us at Edelman because our agency is undergoing a transformation of sorts as we head away from pure Public Relations to becoming a Communications Marketing organization.    He runs a blog called Digitopoly and covers disruption and economics. Welp, during his talk, he cited a few examples of organizations that made moves based on the marketplace and talked about their being three factors in disruption: 1.  First...can you guys see the disruption coming? 2.  Can you identify and organize a response?  And... 3.  Can you execute on the response and adopt it to your organization. He also talked about the three type of respons...

Last week, I was, once again, at the Chicago Athletic Association building for an event called the Carrier Summit from one of my #clients at Edelman called Businessolver.  The folks at Businessolver are doing some incredible things for benefits administration and I'm honored to be able to partner with them to build their business and deliver solutions for HR pros.  Again...making sure I put this here:  #client.   But, while there was some good stuff during the sessions, one of the stars of the show, was again the building at the CAA.  I've posted about the building and my visits before on the blog ( here's the full set of posts ) and I have a super soft spot in my heart for the place.  My oldest sister was married at the CAA back in the early 1990's and I spent more than a few afternoons eating sandwiches with the great Tom Roeser back in the aughts where we talked about his blog and he told some pretty incredible stories.   And the buildin...

This slide was presented at the meetings that I referenced yesterday up in Toronto and really struck a chord with me during the week.  It is the typically bawdy, brash talk that happens at these type of internal rah-rah's, but in thinking about it:  if I was a #client, I'd want my partners to embrace this philosophy.  To me, it means bring scrutiny to every engagement and making sure that we're doing the BEST every time - even it if means a tougher road to go in terms of team structure, time needed, outputs, etc. Our job isn't to give clients exactly what they want.  It's to give them exactly what they need.

I am back this week from a week long visit to Canada at some internal meetings.  And, although this was the first time I'd flown into Canada, I came away liking everything about the experience.  I have been a couple of times including a few road trips to Windsor in my college days (with some Fraternity brothers) and right after (with the Pawlak brothers) and my parents took us to see the Niagara Falls back when I was a kid.  But, this time was different:  it was for work and I was on my own.   We stayed in the Yorkville neighborhood and had a bunch of great meals and walked everywhere during the full week.  I did, even, eat poutine and drank a Labatt's Blue, in addition to a few other Canadian treats.  I'll post about the poutine and candy and such later this week once I dig through my email inbox and have some time!