R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Some people don't like to talk about "love" when they mention work.

Frito is different. I hear people say, over and over, how much they "love" something. Be it a brand, a packaging graphic, a process (okay, that's not too often), a team, a taskforce, a secluded little spot to sit at headquarters; love is all around.

I don't hear too often (in any working environment) about treating one's co-workers with love. I think that is because of the common usage of the word and how it feels slightly icky to use on the guy you see every week in team meetings or something.

So we use "respect". Which I think is just fine. Call it what you will; love, honor, respect, kindness, grace, cherished. All slightly different but all coming from a place that is good.

I think that we all possess it, and I strive every day to treat my co-workers with it. I have a few reminders at my desk to do so, and every time I look at them I smile.

Here is my latest. I admit that I adore the movie Love Actually. It's just delightful and I know a few guys who feel the same way.

So, this note on the wall of my cube is for you, Lucas. I always appreciated how you weren't ashamed to love this movie!

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion love actually is all around."

-The Prime Minister, played by Hugh Grant

I slept through some Art History lectures

I was not an Art History major.
I feel the need to say that. I tell people I have an Art Degree and they assume I know a lot about the history of art. Which I do; don’t get me wrong. Growing up in a house surrounded by nothing but books and art and incredibly brilliant art teacher parents will show a girl a thing or two about what came before her.
But I was not an Art History major. I was a Studio Art major. I made stuff. I drew stuff. I painted stuff. I printed stuff. I welded stuff. I shaped clay with my hands. For some reason it seems very far away from a lot of peple who know me as a driven MBA-type. But I used to do that. I used to stay up until 4 a.m. with creativity coming out of my fingertips. I told myself that I had tapped into what felt like to be alive. I also decided that to be a great artist I needed to be in an altered state a lot of the time. It’s a natural pairing: getting fucked up and creating art. Everybody I ever read about had an addiction to something or other or a serious division in their brain that drove them to get the crazy out through a paintbrush.
So I tried that for a few years. I never did any psychedelic mushroom paintings or anything; mom and dad had taught me too well to do that. I did refined stuff. Things you could find in small galleries. Expressions of me but also the world around. It was good.
Then I left a lot of that behind and went on to be pedestrian. My creativity was quarantined to the occasional bout of creating something lovely out of discarded objects. I benefitted but always felt that I was crammed into a little corner. I blamed a lot of it on not having enough space to let the crazy fly. Too small of a house in which to really set up shop.
Excuses.
I finally have 2100 square feet in which to create. I have a huge room full of sunlight and warm carpet and three desks. I don’t have to be monogamous in my choice of surfaces on which to create. I can sew on one table, cut out a million pieces of paper on another, or sit down at the last with a fine point pen and tell the world (okay, just myself) how I feel through writing.
It is good.
I pledge to make use of it.
This past month or two of exercising again has awoken a current inside me as only endorphins can. I forgot how much power I had when I used the gift I was given. I have amazing athletic prowess, just like most people; to honor and respect it is much harder than it sounds. It’s time to carve out a little bit of time each day to celebrate. I fooled myself into thinking that I was exercising again to run the Hospital Hill Half marathon with Megan in June. Okay. I was. That was partly true. But the rest of it is that my body missed its companions of pain and suffering and lithe movement. That’s the real reason.
Through these past two months I’ve gotten perspective on what it means to work in corporate America, and I’m not sure this blog is the right place to share my day-to-day. Instead, I’ll take you along on a journey as I rediscover the powerful athlete within, find the art that was lost, and ruminate here and there about what it means to be a part of a machine.
Don’t get me wrong; ‘machine’ is not pejorative. It just is. And I’m in it. Running.

Good weekend in San Diego

...which is a no-brainer, since I spent it with some of my favorite people in the world.

Sarah and Ryan are awesome, which is even more amazing because I've seen plenty o'fools slide down the path to lameness after an offspring shows up.

My little nephew Blake is pretty cute.

Here we are, getting "tummy time" to strengthen his wee little neck

And laying on the quilt that Gramme made (with Gramme's designs!)

Tres adorable.

Pictures that I do not have, unfortunately, are of my dearest Alexander and Miriam. Peeps from B-Skool who I miss mucho. It was great to spend time with them and be entertained by their dynamic, which often consists of Miriam challenging Alexander's bullheaded statements and netting out to not much more than a witty comment by Alexander that closes the discussion. Man, I adore them!

And now for the wedding attended by nothing but beautiful people. Put a bunch of Olympians in one place and what you get is a booze-fueled bunch of rowdy (and attractive) behavior. No pics of that.

Here's one of Stacy & Ian as they made their entrance. Both looked incredible. Stacy's arms would make Mrs. Obama jealous.
The setting was so perfect. Nothing went wrong. There were flowers in the pool, even. It's like a unicorn flew over and pooped in it.

And can I please be rich enough to afford not 1, not 2, but 6 huge HD TVs for my patio (because that is what was there)?

I mean, I want to be rich enough to afford but uninterested in buying. Maybe I'll purchase unicorns instead and let them graze on my lawn.

Thankful

for my wonderful friends that i met in business school

and for the cutest two gatos in the world

The latest load of BS

I’ve talked to many Darden students this fall about my experiences at Frito Lay and their own career aspirations.
One stereotype that I’ve heard that I wanted to clear up: “CPG company X creates great brand marketers; not great general managers”.
Where does this come from?
I can speculate: Often, companies that produce products that don’t resonate with consumers (ie are not consumer-facing) are often categorized as great “general management” companies…and for some reason companies with strong brands are thought of as creating strong marketers alone. The folks creating the stereotypes focus only on one of the P’s (Promotion) and categorize brand managers as great advertisers/promoters. No freakin way. I encourage those making blanket statements like this to take a step back.
Brand and Genearl Management are not mutually exclusive in the slightest! A company’s marketers can be both strong Brand and strong at General Managers! I’ve seen it with my own eyes. In many powerful CPGs, the Brand manager is the HUB of the wheel…not a spoke. They are not just a link in the chain; they hold the whole dang thing together. The dive in, seek the value, and bring it to their customers and consumers! That's quite different from sitting in an ivory tower (what's up, Bear Sterns?) crafting models that "create value" out of fancy math (but we need those guys, too...sometimes).
Check out Wikipedia’s definition and tell me how CPG marketers DON’T do general management: “A General Manager has broad, overall responsibility for a business or organization. Whereas a manager may be responsible for one functional area, the General Manager is responsible for all areas. Most commonly, the term general manager refers to any executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement. This is often referred to as Profit & Loss (P&L) responsibility. This means that a general manager usually oversees most or all of the firm's marketing and sales functions as well as the day-to-day operations of the business. Frequently, the general manager is also responsible for leading or coordinating the strategic planning functions of the company.
In many cases, the general manager of a business is given a different formal title or titles. Most corporate managers holding the titles of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or President, for example, are the general managers of their respective businesses. More rarely, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) will act as the general manager of the business. Depending on the company, individuals with the title Managing Director, Regional Vice President, Country Manager, Product Manager, Branch Manager or Segment Manager may also have general management responsibilities.
In consumer products companies, general managers are often given the title Brand Manager or Category Manager. In professional services firms, the general manager may hold titles such as Managing Partner, Senior Partner, or Managing Director.”
This may not be true for every CPG, I give you that. I’ve seen a few pharma companies whose marketers are mainly responsible for the Promotion, and less about the P&L. Part of that may be due to industry-specific regulations on pharmaceuticals and the way that they are marketed.

Kids in America’s business schools: don’t accept the old paradigm of brand and general management being mutually exclusive. Dig into the details. Ask smart questions. You’ll be surprsied what you find!

Confusing...so confusing

Right after Al Gore invented the internet, journalism began its agonizing swan dive into the typography's toilet. Couple that with the morons at Yahoo! News with stories titled "8 ways to think like Warren Buffet", "Bored of chicken for dinner?", and "6 popular tattoo designs".

I want to poke myself in the eye with a pencil. I know there are pencils around because it appears "journalists" don't think before they write. Or even do more than one draft.

The lack of dignity in the profession is awe-inspiring as of late. I believe that the barrier to entry is having DSL.

This article, though, really took the cake. I may be exhausted from my self-imposed looooong workdays, but I couldn't make heads or tails of this story to save my life. It seems like everybody is married to everybody and that a "messy home" is a clear indicator of child neglect and a childhood disappearance case is re-opening after 20 years and...OMIGOD WILL YOU PEOPLE STOP (and maybe not have as many kiddlins?)!!!!

Beige suits you, babe.

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Speaking of messy houses: mine is definitely there. But I promise the only abuse our child Brutus suffers is too much love & affection.

House Healthcare bill to cost $1.2 Trillion

...and that's just the tab for the printer paper alone.

Holy crap, guys. Where are the hippies when we need them to police our policymakers for wasting so much paper?
Couldn't it be on a Kindle? You might even get Gates' endorsement because he and Bezos have GOT to be golfing buddies (or ideation-scribble-on-your-dry-erase-board-in-the-basement buddies).
In other news, had a great time at Cat & Kitten Cross. Great band (The Spectacles) who in true fashion of ironic hipsters; started their name with "the". Love it.
Got my boots a bit muddy but Mom's wedding dress remained intact. El Gato didn't race as well as he wanted but did do some theatrics for those of us at the Money Pit who waved dollar bills at riders struggling over the barriers. We mainly taunted the men; women scrambling for dollars was a bit too...well...you know.