Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Why Strategy?

Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO says: Strategy should bring clarity to an organization; it should be a signpost for showing people where you, as their leader, are taking them — and what they need to do to get there. People need to have a visceral understanding — an image in their minds — of why you’ve chosen a certain strategy and what you’re attempting to create with it. Because it’s pictorial, design describes the world in a way that’s not open to many interpretations. As more and more of us brand/digital strategists become involved in the creation of experiences, clarity of understanding is the difference between coherence... Read more →

Do Few Things Well

Constraints stimulate creativity. This is the top take away from the Google Firestarters event a few weeks ago on creativity. Read more →

The Cult of Done

Bre Pettis is an engaging creator. I had the opportunity to see him in conversation #SMWNYC 2015. The full copy of the Cult of Done Manifesto# he authored with Kio Stark had 13 points: There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. There is no editing stage. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it. Banish procrastination. If you wait more... Read more →

Going Further in the Creative Process

It is becoming more frequent in my conversations with people of all kinds and walks of life. You probably hear it often as well -- a version of either “I want to do more” or “I want to be better at what I do.” Ironically, the expectations that we have of ourselves as we constantly compare our insides with the outsides of the rest of the world proudly displayed in social networks (and everywhere else it seems) often keep us stuck. Because this is one of the major themes that underscores my work in helping businesses and brands via the... Read more →

Seeing with New Lenses, Doing Small Experiments, and Inspiring Talks

Making Sense: Understanding the difference between delivering against the same outcome every time and different ones and dealing with modular components are at the core of modern brand management. It maps back to classic models of how we communicate “Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect?” What happens when Apple is the brand? The impact goes beyond the form -- to the function. Solving the Impossible: Systematizing Brand Management – Part 2. Percolate: Every system needs an operating framework, and here I believe P&G was pretty aligned with our pyramid. Their ultimate goal was to build... Read more →

Culture for Performance

Working at a startup taught me a great deal about fast pace and being okay with uncertainty. Plus I got to work with and learn from a group of highly skilled pros that is still unequaled to this day. I did not know it at the time that I would eventually join the agency world, yet startup life prepared me to be in constant do mode -- tinkering and experimenting with purpose. But it was in an older corporate business that I had the good fortune of experiencing the value of culture to achieve results. I was reminded of those... Read more →

Define Your Personal Brand or the Market Will

The topic of creating and maintaining a personal brand has had its share of animated discussions over the years. It was still early days in social networks when my interview was published in Personal Branding Magazine in May 2009 [Browsable document at Scribd, downloadable PDF version available.] As an introverted extrovert I used to bristle over hearing my own recorded voice or seeing myself on video. Yet a few years into the rocky new world of work I had already experienced before Tom Peters' article on Brand You I had a hunch that defining what you stand for and publishing... Read more →

FriendFeed did Connection Best

For those of you unfamiliar with FriendFeed, it was a social network cum real time stream and content aggregator where many of us had powerful conversation threads and group discussions. Its strong search function meant you could find anything on the platform instantly. The global community and ability to stumble onto multi-lingual content easily was a major plus for me. FriendFeed was about the friends of friends. What it did really well (slightly edited from that post): (1.) It provided a 360 view of someone's online activity. Because it was designed to aggregate feeds from different tools -- e.g., Twitter,... Read more →

Sharing the Benefits of Your Journey

“If you follow the Hero’s Journey, as outlined by Joseph Campbell, the last part of the journey is to return home and share the benefits of your journey and your knowledge with your fellow (hu)man. This is the part of the journey that we seem to have forgotten nowadays; building up those who have yet to take their journey.” [Eric Barnhart] A few days ago I mentioned my involvement with @venture4america and when I spoke of growth I meant everyone, not just the young entrepreneurs. We learn much about ourselves and what we know when we're called to teach it... Read more →

Why we Act Irrationally and the Cult of the Algorithm

Making Sense: When unchecked, the complex webs we weave ourselves end up masking what is going on -- and preventing us from asking better questions based on faithware. Why We Act Irrationally: Harvard Psychologist Ellen Langer Reveals the One Word That Drives Our Senseless Habits. James Clear: The reasons that we use to guide our behavior are just stories that we tell ourselves. Sometimes, those stories are true and accurate. We all have reasons for why now isn’t the right time for that bold move, why we slip up on habits that we say are important to us, and, yes,... Read more →