Ugly Christmas Sweaters and Communications Trend #5 – SCN Encourager
Lots of people are now cashing in on the “ugly” Christmas sweater craze.
I was about 45 years too late.
It figures.
That’s just my luck.
My three brothers and I had to grow up with a mom who loved to knit and crochet.
Think about how you move about here and there with your smartphone always in tow; well, that was the way my mom hauled around her knitting bag.
She’d knit while sitting in the bleachers at athletic games or while waiting in the car to drive us home after a team practice.
It would’ve been nice if Pinterest had been around to keep her occupied.
She would’ve knitted less.
Mom’s undiagnosed and untreated knitting addiction meant that every Christmas morning (no lie… I mean EVERY Christmas morning), each one of us boys of us boys would gingerly unwrap mom’s latest creation while sitting near our tree and silently pray while holding our respective sweaters up for all to see that this year’s montrosity would turn out to be the wrong size.
“Oh, mom… you shouldn’t have!”
I remember that this was the only faint hope we could cling to on Christmas… that the sweater we received would be too big or too small from the get-go, and we could then all sigh and laugh about how much “we boys have grown.”
But this good fortune didn’t happen very often, though, and the look on dad’s face during these early morning moments always made it clear that we boys would be wise to outwardly express our collective sincere appreciation for mom’s labor.
And my brothers and I willingly went along with dad’s unspoken nudges because we didn’t want him to step in and really give us “something to fuss about.”
So, it’s from this longtime holiday tradition of personal shame and humiliation, that I present to you Communications Trend #5.
Communications Trend #5 will challenge each one of us in 2015 to build in more risk-taking and flexibility into our district projects and initiatives.
That’s right.
Persistence is important, but new skills will be in demand.
According to the experts, successful leaders in the future will be comfortable with planning an execution processes filled with speedy-kwik pivots, iterations, re-directs, and “never-minds.”
I’m not sure our public education institutions have ever been described as “models of nimbleness” through the years – so you can see how challenging Communications Trend #5 will be.
If you want to see this trend in real-world action, read through this recent INC Magazine article.
It describes how one company made $10 million making ugly Christmas sweaters and several relevant marketing perspectives are included along the way.
I’m also checking out the company’s website to see if they stole any of my mom’s old designs and styles.
Who knows?
Maybe they infringed on some kind of trademark – and I still may be able to cash in!
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