Learning Philosophy

We are all learners. In this world – especially in this time in history – we must recognize the vast changes that affect the most intimate details of our lives. Changes in technology, communication, economics, attitudes and values. The world of business is one that both creates and follows trends, seeking to create value whenever and wherever possible. The purpose of organization is to create value.

This is a journey of the intellect, but also a journey of the heart, for the essence of the transaction is love. People coming together not just to survive, not just to blaze a trail or find nirvana, but to bring back the boon and offer others the sense of wonder and excitement and joy that the best of us have found within ourselves. This is value. This is something for which we will trade our time and energy and knowledge. Economists call this “gains from trade.” But trade is not sanitary, sterile copulation. It creates children. It spawns relationships that last a lifetime. It feeds ideas that were left in the dark corners to starve. It breathes life into our lives.

"It’s just business." What a cop out. Say Sport, I don’t mean it personally but I’m going to ruin your livelihood. And yet we choose to play the game. We can equally choose to raise hedgehogs in Montana in isolation. When we choose business, we choose to love others. Make no mistake about it. When we make money, we are reaping the rewards of the value we create. Yet money remains a symbol of nothingness. Of death. Of the certainty that all we do here is without meaning. The root of “mortgage” from the French is morte. Death. No one wins in the end when we focus on the symbol of value, not value itself.

Yet death in many languages connotes transformation and enlightenment. To learn we must let go of the old ideas. Neuroscience tells us that brain plasticity need not founder as we age if we continue to rattle those neurons with new challenges.

Life, love and death. And in between we learn something about how the universe works, how to treat each other, and how to learn to be happy. As we grapple with the chaos of information, new knowledge, opinion and news, we must remember to return to love and ask ourselves simple questions: What did I do today to create value? Whom did I love? What did they learn from me? What did I learn from them?

And finally, the question that all sentient beings who have learned the value of organization, collaboration and learning ask when living with presence:

What do we do next?

On Hiring Commitments

I once had a conversation with a supervisor at hiring with a government agency. I had stated that I’d made a commitment to another organization and would not be able to work for his organization. He asked simply to whom I’d made that commitment. I named the organization.

His reply: "Michael, you don’t make commitments to organizations. You make commitments to people." I said, "When do I start?"

The Virtual Trading Post

With the economy in the tank, I ran across this article in which the author was "shocked" and "floored" that an individual had offered to trade services for merchandise. This is how you ruin your business reputation, she claims, and offers advice. While her three tips are interesting from the perspective of crafting perception for a target audience, the point that bugged me until I had to stop swinging cats and say something was this: yes, perception is reality, but the nature of innovation is to create new realities. Virtual realities. Like a virtual trading post. Like eBay without PayPal.

Academic hat is ON: The idea of a barter economy is not new. We can imagine a two-by-twosy of two categories, tangibles and intangibles, wherein one corner we are trading tangibles for tangibles, to the catercorner where we are trading intangibles for intangibles. (Like it? Don't be a SICI (Swipes It but doesn't Cite It.) And hat OFF.

Regardless of its tangibility, what is in trade is value. If a consultant's services are seen as high value, I'd gladly give him or her a nice table lamp if I don't have the cash handy. Why not? Before there was money there was the old trading post. Or travel outside of the developed world sometime and see how every transaction is a negotiation of value as well as a valuable experience in itself. "You make me laugh? Okay, I take off 5 dinars!" I'm not sure how the economists will react, but business is about adapting to a changing economy and finding that fledgling opportunity in a crisis flock.

One of the underlying cultural prejudices reflected by the author - one that we may all find ourselves guilty of from time to time as is the nature of categorization strategies to reduce complexity in the world - is that a failure of marketing is a failure of the value a customer or client may ultimately receive. While the perception of value remains perceptual and can certainly affect the utility of experienced value, it does not necessarily follow that the utility of value is undermined by it's branding or marketing. I know personally some terrific consultants who do not and will likely never get their professional brand to a "socially acceptable" level, and a few are no fun to work with either. But they know their thing and they do it well. So we're human. Let's be more accepting of each other's differences, even in business. Especially in business.

So not to pass judgment on either the author, the consultant's email that triggered the article, or the rest of the posting. Just let us bring down our shock level to, say, around floor level. Meet me there for a drink. Cheers.

Good leaders inspire. Great leaders empower.

What are you waiting for?

The Trail of Knowledge

Tell the truth: you are secretly trying to dominate the world through some internet app thingy that you haven't quite figured out yet. As am I.

Amateurs. Bloggers are amateurs. Politicians are amateurs. Students in my class writing gibberish are amateurs. The latest new hires: amateurs. But we were all amateur at one point, right? So no big deal. Same story, different decade. You learn the rules, you adapt, you fit in, and everything moves along as smoothly as before. The older generation helping the younger generation develop their skills, attitudes, goals and dreams.

Except for a couple problems. First of all, the new guys coming in aren't really all that interested in what the old guys did. Sure, there's some value there, but it's the 21st Century, dude.

Second, that old guy isn't actually training the young guy in the way it is supposed to be done! Dang it! They've gone off and started their own company. Traitors.

I've observed this phenomenon among many if not all (to overgeneralize, and academics LOVE to overgeneralise!) professions as people move from the metaphorical cradle-to-grave within their community of practice.

It's the bell curve.

I suppose I could find a hyperlink, but I believe most people know what a bell curve looks like, so let's skip ahead.

In the beginning, there was the Novice. He made mistakes, not knowing what he was supposed to do. Think: left tail of bell curve. Then he became an Apprentice. The Apprentice knows the lay of the land, but still hasn't got it right. He's still learning from the masters.

The Journeyman represents the major area of the bell curve; this is where competence is defined and practiced. But futher ahead is a guy who is taking the tried-and-true and experimenting a bit with different approaches. He's the Wayfarer.

At the end of this Trail of Knowledge we find the Expert. He's sort of disinterested and fiddling with some new gadget. Maybe smokes or wears bad ties. But he knows this landscape. He's been over and under and around and through every pathway he can imagine. Other experts imagine different pathways, and they argue about that, but the level of confidence of the expert is so high it is sometimes hard to see past the size of that ego. But they're usually right, so that's worth something.

There's something else though of interest. The experts fall on that right-tail of the bell curve. What we might infer from that is the following:

To the untrained eye, what a Novice does and what an Expert does is the same. Huh?

Let's take the concept of "degrees of freedom" to illustrate what we're trying to learn here. A Novice shows up and is swinging his tools every which way but loose: many degress of freedom. Why does he do it? Because he doesn't know any better.

An expert shows up and is also swinging his tools, but with the kind of wizardry reserved for video games. And like the magician, sometimes he screws up. In fact, he screws up proportionally to the number of Novice screw ups. What's the difference?

You already know the answer: The mistakes the expert made were on purpose.

But why would someone make mistakes on purpose, you ask? Well then obviously you're not an expert. But to lift the curtain the point is this: experts need to push boundaries, question established ways of doing things, test and retest things again (but this time with different glasses), and then argue over what they witnessed. This is the essence of innovation. And the freedom of the trail, pardner.


Note on etymology--

Amatuer: a person who engages in work for the love of the work, not for the reward. May we all become amateurs. (Shh. Don't tell Payroll!)

iLove IT

I confess. I only started texting this year. About three months ago, in fact. Racked up a $200 bill the month I started and blew through those data limits. Now: no limits.

Went out, bought the new iPhone 3Gs, and maxed it out. Then started to play with the apps.

"Geepers," said I, after downloading "Stanza" and discovering that my $.99 extravaganza now obviates the need to look into getting a Kindle, which was the next new thing I needed. I could read a book on my iPhone. And I did. "Alice in Wonderland." I've used Carroll's mythical tale to describe information technology too. It's a vibrant theme. We pitter-pat our touchpads in amazement at what is happening in such a short time period.

Then my sturdy Nokia cell phone of 3+ years is sick. Then my Garman navigator craps out on me. All in the same day. Curiouser and curiouser.

To the point: the iPhone apps are market substitutes for many products; Kindle being one example. After the initial purchase, I have found that I will be saving money in the future while enjoying greater capabilities.

Anyone have some good iPhone app stories to share?

President Obama's "Waterloo?" PLEASE!

In recent news, notable conservatives backed Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) statement that the health care crisis and President Obama’s anticipated policy challenges will be his “Waterloo.”

Conservatives should not be afraid of change, just conservative about it. We need to try something new. If it doesn't work, we can always ditch the effort and try something else. Our flexibility as a nation is the essence of innovation and what has helped our society and economy adapt and thrive in the past.

As always in these political tug-of-wars one side will select hyperbole and inappropriate metaphors to scare the populace. This one, like many the Republicans have resorted to in recent years, is embarrassing to any reasonable conservative. Such language applied tongue-in-cheek can raise a chuckle, but with the shrill vitriol of the Republican death rattle such rhetoric causes a rolling of the eyes and creates even more contempt for the Right. It is a shame, since the principles of honest and constructive debate have done more good overall in histroy even though political castration of one side over the other remains a long and ignoble American tradition.

Instead of Obama's Waterloo, how about Obama's Carthage? He loses this battle and the political soil that results may be so plowed with salt as to render it infertile for years to come, even, to extend the analogy, with people dying in the streets. This view would suggest that he does not have much chance of winning against a hostile Roman army intent on killing every living thing in sight.

Let's get back to healthy polarities - those that help us think about the pros and cons of policy initiatives and raise our awareness of the issues surrounding change and its reversal should things not work out as we would prefer.