sift everything

Seth Godin posted his criteria for blog success. He says blogs work when they’re based on:

Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness and
Controversy

Right now, that tastes bad. Mostly because this blog is nearly none of those. But I also think Seth’s treating blogs a bit narrowly. It’s sortof like saying aluminum cans only deliver pop - when they really deliver anything you can stuff inside them.

Aren’t blogs vehicles for information? Aren’t the ingredients for successful delivery of information: usefulness, clarity, relevance, value, exclusiveness, etc.?

If Seth’s right, blogs don’t have a business app. So a question - Seth, why are you writing a blog then?

In the Cluetrain Manifesto, David Weinberger writes:

Our understanding of the nature of knowledge, education and expertise is bound up with things that contain knowledge, not things that point you out of themselves to find value elsewhere. … With today’s huge increase in the amount of information, you can be an expert only in something sliced so thin that often it’s trivial. Increasingly, a useful expert is not someone with (containing) all the answers but someone who knows where to find answers. The new experts have value not by centralizing information and content but by being great “pointers” to other people and to useful, current information.

Welcome to sift, is there something I can help you find?

I got home from Paris last night. One result of the time difference is that this morning, I am up at 4:30. I did nearly the same thing when I got to Paris. So I have this neat comparison to make: Paris vs. Ottawa at 4:30 a.m.

Immediately noticeable: no throbbing sound of humanity. No honking horns. No scuttling scooters. No clipping high heels. At 4:30 in Ottawa, we are silent.

In Ottawa, when I look out the window I see black sky, scattered stars, low amber lights. In Paris – Another wall, a slice of orange clothed clouds.

In Paris, even at this time, there is a sense of shoulder-to-shoulder, cheek-to-jowl crowdedness. In Ottawa – space.

We’re trying to ramp up Canada’s image abroad. Pristine environment, democratic expression, libertarian social values … In my books, “We’re quiet and there’s room” would be enough to rake in the multitudes.

I wrote earlier about Maslow’s challenge for a new kind of human. In “A Holistic Approach to Creativity” he describes our progress toward that goal:

It has been interesting for me to compare the present-day situation in the field of creativeness with the situation about twenty or twenty-five years ago (1945-1950). First of all I want to say that the amount of data that has been accumulated – the sheer amount of research work – is far beyond what anybody could reasonably have expected then.

My second impression is that, in comparison with the great accumulation of methods, of ingenious testing techniques, and of sheer quantity of information, theory in this realm has not advanced very much.

Reading further, Maslow calls for revolution in the ways we edify our children. He seeks alternatives to redeem the many ways in which creativity is daily pounded from us. And of all he suggests, I can see none that we’ve adopted.

That means one of two things. Maslow was wrong. Or, the inertia of education systems and business process was impervious to his advice. Because I don’t know of any solutions, I believe we chose door number two. Shame on us.

What are you learning that puts your business in a position to take advantage of all that underused research? Nothing? Shame on you.

In 1963 Maslow wrote in “The Creative Attitude”:

It seems to me that we are at a point in history unlike anything that has ever been before. Life moves far more rapidly now than it ever did before. Think, for instance, of the huge acceleration in the rate of growth of facts, of knowledge, of techniques, of inventions, of advances in technology. It seems very obvious to me that this requires a change in our attitude toward the human being, and toward his relationships to the world. To put it bluntly, we need a different kind of human being. We need a different kind of human being to be able to live in a world which changes perpetually, which doesn’t stand still. [We need to] create a new kind of human being who is comfortable with change, who enjoys change, who is able to improvise, who is able to face with confidence, strength, and courage a situation of which he has absolutely no forewarning … The society which can turn out such people will survive; the societies that cannot turn out such people will die.

Mr. Maslow hadn’t seen the internet. He didn’t know about the X-Prize. And he never drove a Honda Sprocket. If Maslow wasn’t right in 1963 he was prescient of today.

How has your business answered this challenge? If it hasn’t you might already be dead. Need some help? Use sift, get some.

In “The Further Reaches of Human Nature” Maslow starts the trend of naming, knighting, trademarking words. He toys with new names for metacounseling: helping people reach their full human potential. For size he tries “ontogogy” which means trying to help people grow to their fullest height. Or “phsychogogy” which means the education of the psyche.

In this tradition, I’d like to describe the sift process: Ontogogy for entrepreneurs through metalinking.

I recently grabbed a book by A.H. Maslow, a series of essays ranging across creativity, education, and society. I don’t know enough about Maslow to decide if I should be embarrassed or excited, but I really enjoy some of what he wrote.

In an essay called, “Self-Actualizing and Beyond”, he discusses eight prerequisites for self-actualization. Self-actualization is Maslow’s characterization of a person able to experience life fully, vividly and with complete selflessness. Yeah, loaded words but getting past them, Maslow captures a cool thought:

We must teach people to listen to their own tastes. Most people don’t do it. When standing in a gallery before a puzzling painting, one rarely hears, ‘That is a puzzling painting’ … Making an honest statement involves daring to be different, unpopular, nonconformist.

Maslow wrote this in 1967. It was republished under a new title and with new authors and in a much longer version in 2001. It’s now called “Cluetrain Manifesto”.

I’m not trying to play down Cluetrain, or play up Maslow. I’m just highlighting two interesting points. One, a single powerful statement can contain sufficient principles to revolutionise business. Two, a principle from psychotherapy has potent implications for modern business.

A single principle can be the foundation for significant change. One Maslowian principle might be: True value comes from honesty. Consider the implications:

• The whole Cluetrain story is built on the idea that companies need to be honest, people long for an honest voice, and authenticity unlocks priceless communication between companies and clients.
• Arguably, every revolution in art is the product of exploring honest expression.
• The entire success of AAA meetings is based on the freedom and responsibility conferred by brazen honesty.

The idea behind sift works because principles are trans-discipline in their implications. An economic principle has implications for scientists. A psychotherapeutic principle has implications for economics. And all these principles have implications for entrepreneurs and business. Conclusion: teaming the meta-skill of cognitive linking with a wide range of learning gives businesses a competitive edge – the sift hypothesis.

I’ve always been intrigued by efficiency, especially in my personal life. I regularly stroll sites kept up by efficiency fanatics (43 folders) and thoroughly enjoy the idea of “life hacks”.

Over and over again, I see tactics on how to choose between urgent, important, and negligible. Renamed in funky way, but generally the same. But, absent from the field is a discussion of the never urgent, rarely important but energy sucking worries of everyday life. Like: need to get that damn door to stop squeaking, need to call about renewing car insurance – in six months, should really invest that $10k in our chequing account. Sure, these issues eventually become urgent or important but until then, they really eat up my subconscious bandwidth.

I’m thinking about how this applies to business. I understand the organisation doesn’t have the same worry function, but it does have loads of people wandering around thinking about all the low-level, eventually important chores of work. It would be interesting to measure the efficiency gains from developing a mechanism to handle these issues.

When I was in university I used to love swinging by this guy’s site: Analog Cereal. He was on this quest to “party like a rock star”. I’ve never wanted to be a rock star - but the party part sounded fun.

Why want to be a rockstar? There’s the obvious stuff. Rich. Venerated. Ladies/men all hot. But that can’t be all. There’s lots of rich, venerated jerks out there that I don’t want to be like. I think it’s the party.

NewYorkMetro.com has an effervescent article about Donny Deutsch, CEO of Deutsch. Certified by AdAge.com as the rock star of advertising. If you read the article, beneath all the veneer of a rich and decadent lifestyle, Donny seems like an average kind of guy. Likes fights, swearing and scratching. So where’s his edge, what’s the lesson? Again, I think it’s the party.

So, what’s the party? I think right deep at the core the party is a celebration of being. It’s the intentional freeing of ourselves. Throw off the restraining belts, toss away the unnatural brands we’ve built for ourselves, and rock.

Sounds simplistic and it’s not clearly a business principle right? Gimme a sec.

We’re sidling toward change. Check out what Steve Heyer, Chief Operating Officer, Coca-Cola Company, said in his Keynote Speech at Advertising Age:

Coca-Cola is headed to ideas … intellectual property … use a diverse array of entertainment assets to break into people’s hearts and minds … moving to ideas that elicit emotion and create connections … no longer just intellectual property, [we're moving toward] emotional capital.

In a networked economy, ideas, concepts, and images are the items of real value.

But Heyer is never clear on how to grab that emotional capital. He doesn’t suggest the path to something that really resonates. For that we should look to Hugh McLeod at gapingvoid.com. He’s suddenly caught an edge. He’s written a long and philosophical look at creativity. And the blog community has gone wild for it. In it he writes that people respond to “the humanity, not the form. The voice, not the form. Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. It’s that simple.” Rock out.

An interesting note, look at Analog Cereal’s new site. I won’t be back.

Am still reading Jared Diamond’s, “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Am still intrigued by the idea of tribal business.

Diamond runs through an ambitious description of social evolution. He works up from roving bands of nomads all the way to sophisticated democratic social structures. This is where Diamond’s work fits into my thinking on tribal business. The more interesting note is that his argument is built on the role of guns, germs and steel in driving this evolution. He points out the by cooperating societies got to guns faster. By bunching up into high populations, societies bred and became immune to potentially potent diseases (inadvertently shared with enemies, with devastating effects). And so, I began thinking about what that means for organisation size. What are the guns, germs and steel of modern economies?

Well the guns have got to be technology. But we see the tinies outrunning the biggies in this area – everyday. So much for a single desk. Germs? Those are memos, paperwork, and emails. But, while devastating, these aren’t shared anymore, they just kill their hosts. And steel – there is none. Not, at least, in the higher stages of corporate evolution. Consider Enron and Hollinger Inc. But there’s tonnes of steel in the all-night, seven-days-a-week startups.

So what does this say for tribal business? Evolution has switched flows. We now value movement, dexterity, and niches – the forte of hunters. If you can’t hunt with speed and precision, you are being hunted.

Got any plans? I do. Use sift, get some.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the tension between firm size and firm mobility. As the story narrowed in to the conclusion, I mentioned my concern that the sift experiment might become a bit busy. sift might turn into a chore instead of a joy. But I left the solution until now.

In the article I mentioned Tim Manner’s Reveries and his note on little global companies. His story was one of the small guy playing in the big boy’s leagues but he inadvertently mentioned what I think is the answer I was seeking. Read to the end to find the trigger.

Reveries

Another such opportunity — in the rapid-prototyping business — has been developed by S. Scott Crump, co-founder (with his wife, Lisa) of an outfit called Stratasys, www.stratasys.com. Although the Eden Prairie, Minn., company has just 200 employees and drives only $50 million in revenues, Stratasys is the global leader in its category … and is publicly traded.

Hidden in the rah-rah big league story is a small company, with (relatively) small revenues, reaching a small market. What’s the story? Keep it small. On purpose.

A few days ago I was looking to buy a diamond ring for my wife. I popped into a boutique that looked interesting and chatted up the owner. “Any other stores?” I asked. “No way, I don’t want that lifestyle. Keep it small, I say.”

There’s more and more of this. It looks like some companies are recognizing the value of keeping it small. That’s what I plan to do with sift too. But I wonder … we gave up tribes for chiefdoms, chiefdoms for kingdoms, kingdoms for agrarian societies … Will tribal business work?

I’m in a strange pinch. I’ve got two opposing writing opportunities.

On one hand a regular newspaper article in the National Post that is supposed to be “punchy, witty and 100 words”.

One the other hand, an offer to write a manifesto for Change This. When describing their format, Change This write, “Television demands a sound bite. A one hundred word letter to the editor is a long one … The short form that works so well attracts more readers than the long form … The bet? We’re betting that a significant portion of the population wants to hear thoughtful, rational, communicative arguments about important issues.”

The National Post has all the right incentives to answer the question, “What do people want to read?” I would expect them to have answered this long ago. For Change This to win the bet, the National Post’s editor must be receiving short notes asking for long articles. But I bet they’re not.

Lost in the Change This description of sound bites, brief letters, and short forms is the link to thoughtful, rational, and communicative arguments. They left it sounding like long is best. George Bernard Shaw wrote, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Hidden in the short and long comparison is the key – time!

We’ve got arguments for quality, thoughtfulness, Love Marks and Mark Loves. What about a Time Bank? Instead of making time savers, be time investors. Why not? In a world of insanely busy schedules and ludicrous salaries, a minute is arguably more precious that many, many dollars.

Percent who feel rushed everyday.

We hire people to handle our cash investments. There should be a market for handling time.

For an estimate of the magnitude of the market size, consider the amount spent annually on leisure. Koreans alone spent a total of $91 million on leisure activities in 2001, accounting for 15 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Viewed from the Time Bank perspective, it’s also a measure of value for time spent enjoyably.

What about setting time limits instead of word limits? This is a 20-minute piece, I was in a hurry and grabbed some easy stats. You should see the nine-hour piece! Incidentally, both are around 350 words long.