Entries by Mark

Connecting the Dots

I came across two posts while reading Contact Furnishings News that seemed to be connected; although, no parallels were drawn by the publication. The first was called, “A New Breed of Project Manager Emerges“. Its premise was this: Today’s workplace often contains five generations working together, including Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Z—all of whom have different […]

Be Careful What You Wish For

You probably already know about corporations like Google, Microsoft, Bain & Company, American Express, and Facebook that have ostensibly amazing employee perks. There are myriad others, too. Two things are true of all of them: They’re obscuring the fact that most of us prefer substance to frills. They’re selling a wave that crested quite some […]

Playing Nice in the Sandbox

This fascinating article largely speaks for itself: “An Intellectual History of the Sandbox.” While I’ve long been aware of the creative potential of sandboxes and the adoption of the term for individual and collaborative workspaces (what we now have to call incubators), I’m not sure I’d have given much credence to their intellectual traditions or […]

The Purposeful Plan

We read a post in Contract Furnishing News (CFN) — “The hype surrounding wellbeing concepts can blind us to their true value” — that made us think about two things: the need for planning and the need for flexibility. The premise of the post is the way in the media (all of us, in fairness) latch […]

Anne O’Brien Launches The ArtFitters

SOUTH WINDSOR, Conn., June 19, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Anne O’Brien, a veteran of commercial property development and facilities management, as well as residential interior design and staging, has launched a new company: The ArtFitters. The company re-imagines ordinary spaces to create the extraordinary — beautiful, organized, functional, and comfortable — by applying the arts […]

A More Practical Vocabulary

Since we have more important work to do than to worry about terminology, we tend to keep our heads down (in our work) and keep our opinions to ourselves (unless we’re asked). So, we’d have been willing to let one particular term, resimercial, slide in deference to more constructive pursuits. But we happened to be […]

Waste Not, Want Not

Toward the end of last year (on Christmas Day, in fact), the National Association of Realtors published a post called, “The Forecast: 2018 Trends in Staging“. It was unsurprising, except for this quote from one of the people interviewed for the post: Staging and preparation can include as little as some fresh paint, but in […]

Sharing Your Vision

Last month, Harvard Business Review published an essay entitled, “The Best Leaders See Things That Others Don’t. Art Can Help“. It made this important point about the ability of art to help business leaders perceive things they might otherwise miss or discount: Without ever intending it, experienced leaders often allow what they know to limit what […]