sift everything

When I was in graduate school I read an article describing the innovation methods of a successful entrepreneur. He keeps a hate list. It’s a list of everything he and his friends hate with all the violence of a bang-your-knuckles-when-your-wrench-slips cursing spree.

Every Saturday he sits down and solves at least one of the problems. His entire fortune is built on Saturday solutions.

I was reminded of this today when I had lunch with the CEO of one of Canada’s most successful biotechnology companies. We talked innovation and I asked how he got the ideas for his research projects.

Leaning back in his chair, arms casually placed behind his head, he says, “I start by asking people their problems. Then I follow up with something that solves the problem.” Irish accent trawling, “Then I give it to the guy with the problem.” Big grin, leans forward, eyes on me. “That’s working right nice for us.”

He goes on to tell me that his competitors use the “find it, find a market” model.

Most biotech companies do mass genetic research, struggle to find potentially useful genes, then spin the research into ventures that struggle.

There’s a ready market for things we hate (or at least problems we vigourously dislike) So there’s a giant difference in the marketability of solutions and things we’d like to have. That’s an important difference for entrepreneurs and for me.

The sift experiment is often an answer in search of a problem. And worse, its often an answer in search of a question. That’s just not sustainable.

I’ll keep doing it anyway because it’s nearly costless and its good fun. But I’ve begun leveraging this work to answer problems instead of desribing them.

Todays conversation nailed home the conviction that it’s time to get moving.

Two days ago I sat down for lunch with a new friend. He recently gave up a secure job for a chance to do something new and more challenging.

He’s has a lot more experience than me in almost every area of life but both of us have similar life situations: young families, employed, aching for something exceptional to invest in.

His new job is also a new position in his company and both he and his boss are still sorting out its potential. So in the meantime, he’s left thinking about the potential he sees but can’t grasp and the security he had but left.

So being boisterous, aggressive, and probably naïve I said he should look down the road, decide where the finishline is, and start a million little steps that get him there.

Now he’s going to say I misinterpreted this next part, and if I did - fine. It’s a pervasive way of seeing the road ahead so, if it doesn’t apply to him, it applies to lots of other people. He said:

“That might be fine for you, but I don’t have time to wait, I need to take big steps now.”

But he doesn’t. And entrepreneurs don’t either.

Three proofs that little steps are big:

Proof one: On a recent episode of the CBC’s Venture series six successful Canadian entrepreneurs were interviewed. Brian Scudamore (1-800 Got Junk?) and Jimmy Pattison (Pattison Group) were two of them. All six said one of the common denominator of their success was the decision to take risks. But here’s the important part: many small, calculated risks.

Proof two: The reason we haven’t cured cancer yet isn’t that we aren’t taking big enough steps. Science (and most other things) doesn’t work that way. The scientific method involves experimentation (tiny steps) because it’s the best way known to humanity for solving big problems. This is the power of the “B-side experiment“. Even though you have one job, you can fracture it into many facets and thereby increase your security (and likelihood of success). While each facet is vulnerable to failure, failure doesn’t need to threaten everything.

Proof three: Singing Like You Don’t Need the Money frees you from pressure to perform by finding opportunities in many places. And moving forward sideways lets you use talents and intuition that a single, dominant path might overwhelm by approaching end goals obliquely.

In high-school I got two things: good grades and a growth spurt.

So when I made the basketball team in my Freshman year, I was stuck in the power-forward position. Which was fine - for two years.

By the time I landed in my junior year all my friends were as tall or taller than me. Suddenly I was getting pushed out of the key but lacked the skills to play well out there.

One of my good friends was a monster 6′6 guy. I helped him in school and he helped me clear the area under the hoop. When lumberjacks on the other team pushed me around, he gave them a hard time.

So he and I are riding in the bus one day and I’m moaning about being small and not good. He’s all mellow and listening to me whine. Finally he rolls his eyes and says, “Look Jeremy, I’m big, right? So that’s what I’m using. You’re smart - use that.”
_______

In my last post I encouraged entrepreneurs to leverage their irrational exuberance more heavily. I also wrote about the amazing, rare skill set that makes entrepreneurs exceptional.

Po Peabody offers similar advice here and in his book (from which the article is taken).

Not included in the article, but included in the book, is Po’s surprising statement that entrepreneur’s are B-grade students and managers are A-grade students. Entrepreneurs lack the attention span to climb that last 15% of the mountain.

As a strategy (note it’s not a solution), Po advises entrepreneurs to hire managers that compliment their strengths. And to do this early.

Two points are important:

First, be amazing and make up for it. A giant strength is usually accompanied by a giant weakness. This isn’t a problem though - it’s a reality.

Second, acknowledge your gaps and move to round out the skill set you need by hiring good people early. Waiting too long means using brute force where finesse would suffice.

Found on Bnoopy: a discussion of the Scotsdale Paradox.

Scotsdale was a high ranking US officer captured and imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

He said the first to die in the prison were the optimists. They died of a broken heart. They put all their energy into hoping for a future that never materialised in time.

He says:

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Of this Bnoopy says:

“Entrepreneurs are wired for optimism. But, in Stockdale’s story, it was the optimists who died. Don’t forget to balance optimism with fact and belief with reality.”

I think Bnoopy’s wrong. A rational entrepreneur is already a long way to failure. Irrational exuberance is the single greatest advantage of the entrepreneur.

Yet irrational exuberance is the single greatest threat to the start-up that just hit puberty.

So how is this reconciled?

Changing yourself isn’t the answer. You aren’t a failure. You are a success that needs help being more successful. That’s different and merits pride.

Stay irrational; but get some strategic help. Bring in a rationalist to help you transition, but keep them out of your dreams. We need you just as you are.

At Seb’s Open Research, Sébastien writes a beautiful, aching post about intellectual entrepreneurship.

I commented that intellectual entrepreneurship was a cool way to approach the challenge of sharing innovation and insight with people. But I agreed that few would be ready to listen.

One thing I’ve learned here is that people like the idea of innovation but they’re not too keen on its disciplines. And even less enthusiastic about its action.

The key is hiding hiding intellectual entrepreneurship inside practical entrepreneurship. Instead of telling entrepreneurs about the philosophy or brilliance of a proposition, just talk about what it’s going to get them in the end.

The intrinsic value of innovation shines through.

I asked Sébastien, and I’ll leave the same question here: What have you learned about articulating innovation? What angles are working? What aspects are significant to the people you talk with?

In the comments Evelyn Rodriguez writes of her decision “to write more stories and read more stories and put most biz books on the back-burner.” She’s been writing about this theme often lately, see here, here, and here.

She reminded me of a decision I made about two years ago to only read children’s books. I’d just got a job that required lots of writing. In particular I was translating economic analysis into its simple, clear implications. I thought children’s books would help.

For one and a half years I read only the classics of children literature, here’s what I learned:

Mystery and failure keep your attention better than endless wins. Characters with handicaps are more endearing than flawless heros.

While plots tend to be generic, the details make the difference.

Write the plot for children and nuance for adults.

Poor writing is traditionally the plague of academia. So glory is due Gal Zauberman (University of North Carolina) and John Lynch Jr. (Duke University) for a great problem statement: When “Yes” is eventually followed by “Damn!”

Zauberman and Lynch are experimental psychologists who examined why we imagine that the future will be less hectic than today. They also asked if the same delusion applied to investments of money.

Old and recent research suggests that multiple goals competing for limited resources are a problem not soon to disappear. Zauberman and Lynch proposed that in these situations people prefer greater future investments to smaller immediate ones.

Note: Us economists figured this out a long time ago. We put these ideas together and called it the time value of money. But as a group we’re pleased that others are getting the message.

Zauberman and Lynch suggest immediate gains win over future gains under the following two conditions: (a) Immediate investment blocks other, proximate activated goals that require the same resource, and (b) in the future, more slack is anticipated and thus less is sacrificed. Surprising, at least to some, is the conclusion that while the principle applies to both time and money, time is discounted more heavily than cash.

So, why do people doggedly adhere to the illusion that they will have more time in the future than today? And why is the perception of money immune to this mirage?

The answer seems to pivot on fungibility. Time is less fungible than money.

If you’re short on cash (and you have a good credit rating) you can borrow. There’s no such thing as borrowed time. You can save money; you can’t bank time.

But it is possible to rearrange time in the future. One can work in advance or use holiday time so “it is so easy to persuade us to give talks at other schools, write tenure letters, serve on committees, comment on each others’ papers, and so forth when requests are made far in advance. But in the immediate future, time is much less fungible”.

In part the reluctance to endure immediate pain is due to reluctance to give up on active goals (and the fulfilling satisfaction of their completion) in the near term. It’s a strategic choice in the short-term that has dire consequences in the future. While saying yes to a long-term commitment may have a momentary reward, it is often the case that those tasks have no long-term payoff.

Update: If it’s true that you’re busy today because you’re successful, tomorrow will be worse. Your success today will bring new opportunities tomorrow. Therefore, the best time to do something important is right now.

Found via businesspundit.

Cluetrain Manifesto, David Weinburger:

“We don’t need more information. We don’t need better information. We don’t need automatically filtered and summarized information. We need understanding. We desperately want to understand what’s going on in our business, in our markets. And understanding is not more or higher information.

If you want understanding, you have to reenter the human world of stories. If you don’t have a story, you don’t have understanding.”

Update: Rich Karlgaard of Forbes writes:

“Personally, I won’t read a business book. I spent too many years reading such piffle, underlining and highlighting “salient” points, taking notes and promptly forgetting everything I’d read within a week. Lessons from business books never stick.

Much better learning tools are novels, history books and biographies. For me, at least, these can really teach. Why? I suppose it’s because when your imagination is engaged, when you dig the lessons out yourself and connect them to your own life, the learning goes much deeper.”

Understanding and imagination go together. But I’m not sure that you need to dig the lessons out yourself. In the novels, history books and biographies Rich reads the authors did the digging. They’re making money by doing the sharing.

Found via Evelyn.

I watched this video clip a few minutes ago and immediately decided it is important. It just isn’t clear why.

Here’s where I’m at so far:

This guy, James Jones, has made a triple play on valuable of information.

Nailing it at first he lays out why the information he holds is valuable. Catching me rounding second he repackages someone else’s information and puts it in my hands. Stomping onto third he closes the door and makes the transition from zero knowledge to niche exploitation.

The why of information, the form of information, and the use of information – three keys to successful information play.

So, why’s this important?

Well, many entrepreneurs hold valuable information (including me). And all of us struggle to clearly nail why someone else ought to car.

Even when we have good buy-in on the information we hold, we fail to leverage the information around us. Repackaging knowledge we use and giving it to our clients is good for everybody.

Finally, telling the newly endowed knowledge holder what to do with the information they now holder is where almost every entrepreneur (including me) falls flat.

Any other ideas or lessons I missed?

Great find by Johnnie Moore, John Kay’s article on Obliquity is excellent. Kay writes that goals are often best achieved when pursued indirectly - this is the idea of obliquity.

Like Johnnie it reminds me of a sports metaphor.

Late last year CBC ran a show “Making the Cut.” The show followed a heap of people, mostly guys, through a torturous trial to see which six would get to try out for NHL teams.

People came from all over Canada to give it a shot. Cops, firefighters, labour guys, students, ex-pre-pro players, and even one guy that played pro.

This last guy got my attention. He was fat and cocky and I loved hearing him rave about his skills.

During one of the first scrimmages the producers had the camera follow him around and they interviewed him after while watching the footage. His perspective has stuck with me (despite his self-proclaimed magnificence):

The camera is angled wide, he’s coasting around mid-ice and he says, “Right here I’m really uptight and anxious to show these guys the difference between me as a pro and these other guys. I’m feeling like I’m out of shape and can’t keep up. I feel like I need to make a great play.”

He fumbles a pass. Gets smoked on the boards.

Suddenly it’s clear something changed. His face moves from strain to intensity. His clumsy gait evolves into a sure, smooth action. His next pass is crisp. He dodges a vicious younger player.

“Right there I remembered why I love hockey. I just love to play. I just decided to have fun with these guys and enjoy myself.”

He stopped striving; he started playing.

Entrepreneurs are often brilliant in a few key areas. This brilliance carries them through the first stages of their company. But it’s not long before their gaps begin to glare.

The natural reaction is to plow forward. Head down, determination burning they try to make it through with brute force. An early consequence though is they push themselves off their game.

Their brilliance starts to fade.

Like Johnnie says in his post, profit might look like the purpose of this bull-headed rush, but it rarely is. Most entrepreneurs start things because they love the idea and start new stuff. They start off to have fun.

When then fun stops it’s time to find an oblique alternative.

Mistakes teach more than success.

Counterintuitive? Experimentation means being willing to make mistakes. When I am willing to be wrong, I am free to explore unlikely alternatives. Alternatives are key to solving difficult problems.

Imagine a scientist afraid to make mistakes. The beakers stay on the shelf (don’t want to break one). Equations are typed up, taped to walls and left unchanged. Articles remain blank pages because every nuance has yet to be considered.

Imagine a pro hockey player (this is hard, we haven’t seen one in so long). Winning requires risk. Safe passes make for crap play. Fearing sneaky, unexpected attacks means never attacking. Never missing the net means never taking shots.

Psychologists know that insight is a product of trial and error. When given a problem to solve, those that find solutions do so at the expense of repeated failure.

Psychologists found that highly intelligent seekers of insight remain unsure of the solution until the few moments before the problem is solved. They asked test participants to give “warmth ratings” periodically while solving problems and the successful few followed this pattern: cold, cold, cold, cold, WHITE HOT!!!!

Insight is not a gradual, safe process. It is a high stakes game with a steady stream of failure and restarts until a sudden solution is discovered.

Mistakes lead you to insight.

Andrew Phelps has a great idea. B-Side games. The idea is to package experimental games in the same boxes as the already popular. It’s an effort to drive innovation and fringe seeking. While I like that idea, I’m really interested in the application in other areas and services.

Particularly excited because now I have a hip, new descriptor for sift.

“What? Oh, sift is a b-side experiment.”

sift is packaged beside my real job. It’s my attempt to package something innovative and experimental within something unthreatened by failure. As I go along I realize how powerful it is to assure people that I just love the gig. I don’t mind if my idea or experiment stinks. That’s the point - the not minding (not the stinking).

Being experimental frees me up - I’ll try anything. It gives me the space to play my game. When all the boundaries come down, everything is an option and any idea is worth a peek. Suddenly I’m able to make connections where none existed. I don’t have to be right, so I use intuition, and then I’m right more often.

What’s the application for business? First, have a flagship and don’t threaten it with any craziness on the side. Second, differentiate your products (this one’s hot, this one’s nuts). Third, seek the fringe when it doesn’t count. If you don’t then your business won’t count for long.

A man of science doesn’t discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.
- Alfred North Whitehead

I spend a large part of each day getting information for other people. The requests come in a panic induced, chaotic deluge. And my response has become so regularised its often delivered in monotone:

What do you want to know? Where did you hear about it? How do you know you want this information? What do you want to do with it?

Most people know what the want to know. But it’s astounding to realise how few know what they want to do with it.

The Gestalt conception of thinking includes productive thinking and reproductive thinking.

Reproductive thinking involves the application of some previously acquired knowledge to a problem. These are copy-cats.

Productive thinking is the ability to go beyond past experience and produce something new in response to a problem.

Most people think they’re being productive when they’re being reproductive.

Here’s the clincher: What you want to do with information determines whether you’re being reproductive or productive. If you want to be reproductive - the answer to my line of questions is: I read this before, I want it again. I want to use it as a template for what I’m doing now.

When you’re being productive, the answer is: I have this idea, I was told this information might help me see it more clearly. It has nothing to do with what I have to deliver but it might help me do this new thing.

Neither mode of thinking is better than the other. But if you want to know in order to discover and you’re only being reproductive, you’re on the wrong track.

So, this sells.

It sells not just because TED is cool but getting to see that guy and see TED and see the people raving is way more persuasive than reading about it. How expensive could it be to do this as a small company? I’d love to know the cost.

Call me nerdy but it reminded me of the R2D2 holographic image of Princess Leia. You know, the part where she begs Obi-Wan to come save her planet.

Imagine how compelling Leia would have been if Obi-Wan had read that in an email. Even IM might not have lit his saber. If she rattled her plea into his Bell Mobile Messaging Service - she’d have been stardust. Rescuing a planet is hard work; you don’t do that for just anybody.

Her message sold because he could see her angst and hear her pleading voice. Plus she had those crazy buns in her hair and they obviously merit a heroic gesture.

Text leaves room for spinning so I’m always tempted to discount the rhetoric - I can’t easily sense its sincerity. But when you’re standing there in front of me doing your schpiel, I can make the call right quick.

Young companies: leverage this opportunity. I know a few entrepreneur’s that are amazing in person but fall flat on their text. Use this format to grab the edge that’s made you successful everywhere else.

It might take a chomp out of my revenues too, but hey, I’m my own best predator.

I’ve worked with several entrepreneurs. It surprised me to realize how few of them write well.

Writing well would come in handy on a blog – of course. But writing emails, presentations, proposals, and business plans each require a steady hand.

Four tips for good writing:

□ Write simply. Never use a long word where a short one will do. Cut words when you can. Use the active instead of the passive.

□ Organize your thoughts. Put your main point early – in your sentence, paragraph, and document.

□ Design it to be read. Add white space. Keep sentences to 14 words or less. Use bullets where you can. Add bold headings.

□ Be the reader first. This is supposed to be read – remember that. Understand your audience. Connect your ideas. Tell a story.

In the end you will save your reader time, help them understand what you intend to convey, and your company will look better for the effort.

I followed the crowd of slavering Hugh fans to Creating Passionate Users cause, you know, I want to be cool too.

Blind enthusiasm is being replaced by a healthy criticism of Hugh’s, and now Kathy’s, arguments. Headlines like “The Ignorance Premium is Dead!” and “The Future is Not Learning!” now draw heavy-lidded scrutiny instead of bubbling glee.

Kathy’s right: What rocked yesterday can land with a dull thud today. But is the real lesson: We need to unlearn?

She talks about a Go player, Bert. Bert’s sold on the concept that to progress, his tactics and strategies need to evolve. But is Bert unlearning or is he reapplying successful principles in a more sophisticated environment?

As in Go, entrepreneurs do best if they base their actions on principles of human nature.

What you do with a principle will change; the principles remain constant.

Kathy’s Parelli horsemanship program is based on the nature of horses. Use a saddle or ride bareback, sit or stand on their backs, eating grass or attacking the Huns – horses are horses. Understand a horse; ride better. Understand people; be a better entrepreneur.

We don’t need to unlearn anything. We need to drive from principles instead of actions we’ve learned by rote.

We need to be instead of do.

There are at least two ways to effect change.

One is to complain liberally and bitterly until the rest of us can’t stand it and the move is made. Many bloggers live here.

Another is to criticize by creating (Michelangelo).

Wrapped up within the entrepreneurial tool kit is an explosive creativity. Leverage this. Healthy expressions of critical creativity are more productive than a sharp eye (and sharper tongue) for things that suck.

The next play – the razor that separates the changer from the yapper – is movement. The greatest destroyer of mediocrity is execution. Do what you know needs to be done.

Get off the bandwagon; get on the workhorse: Creative execution.

Excellent post by Dave Pollard answering parts of my question to Hugh.

Dave writes that business will embrace blogs when they 1) get buy-in from the top and 2) have no choice. Buy-in will happen when a) blogs are advocated by someone in authority that’s passionate about blogging or b) blogs hurdle some of the impediments to work effectiveness. Business will have no choice when blogs trump all other sources of current, specialised information. But, until these thresholds are crossed blogs will remain nice-to-have.

The key to Dave’s arguement is his play on Stephen Covey’s four-quadrant matrix. Right now business blogs are not urgent/important.

Blogs aren’t yet a survival bid; blogs are a longevity/growth bid.

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. One of this year’s winners:

Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

An apt addition: … and in many blogs at once.

An interesting comment by Jon about architecture. He was writing about how to use blogs in a corporation and after explaining how he’d introduce them he said, “I’d then consider using blogs in an intelligently architected way …”

Intelligently architected. Reminds me of Christopher Alexander; not that I’ve read any of his books. But Robert Paterson has and he says that Alexander points out 15 keys for architecting things to have life:

1. Levels of scale, 2. Strong centers, 3. Boundaries, 4. Alternating repetition, 5. Positive space, 6. Good shape, 7. Local symmetries, 8. Deep interlock and ambiguity, 9. Contrast, 10. Gradients, 11. Roughness, 12. Echoes, 13. The void, 14. Simplicity and calm, 15. Non-seperateness.

Alexander says that these are critical for design and living structure. These are the patterns of living things.

Patterns are included in Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn’s definition of culture. Their analysis of world cultures concluded that culture is “a product; is historical; includes ideas, patterns and values; is selective; is learned; is based upon symbols; and is an abstraction from behaviour and the products of behaviour.”

Living structures. We want more of this in our buildings, our businesses: our culture. It seems then that if one wants a living corporate blog, incorporated in an intelligently architected way – then it must be created within the ideas, patterns, values and abstractions of behaviour within that corporation. That’s a tall, tall order and it certainly won’t help if all future progress is left to the ravages of natural selection.

… now what’s my point? Not sure yet. Just that these ideas are connected. Guess I’ll wheelbarrow it.

Hugh has a good post on the “ignorance premium.” He’s arguing that the fat bank of ignorance marketing is shrinking as other economies come online. I’d say he’s bang-on. This ticket is losing value – but I doubt it will be worthless.

Here’s what I wrote:

First, you assume that the market (and jobs) won’t adjust to a smarter market. They will. They do. But not without pain – look at Argentina.

Second, you assume that the majority of market participants want to be smarter. They don’t.

The US Department of Education says there’s been hardly any change since 1972 in the number of people taking a post-secondary education. Now, a college degree doesn’t make you brighter but it is a general expression of a desire to be smarter.

The point is: There isn’t evidence of a growing hunger for smart information. Just growing access.

Ignorance is bliss and you know it.

Finally, you assume that those that want to be smarter have the capacity to handle the vast quantity of micro-information that is emerging. For that we need curated consumption or possibly something less trendy and more honest.

Regardless, the pool of information is vast, and many people don’t mind paying to be ignorant – even when they know that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Is the ignorance premium dying or being offset? It’s important to be sharp on the distinction. Smarter conversations depend on it.

The bright entrepreneur will see these trends and spot the niche. There are several. Anyone that sifts information well will have a good ride. Someone that leverages ignorance to drive targeted information will enjoy this trend. The company that nails cultural evolution in emerging economies will be happy happy.

I agree that the dynamics are shifting. But they always are.

Christopher Alexander just finished publishing a galloping 2,000 plus page treatise on design and living structures. There’s a small interview with him here.

Take away message: Uniqueness balances repetition.

Alexander talks about a tree full of leaves that is inspiring. And a building full of windows that is dispiriting. What’s the difference? Uniqueness of position.

The leaves are dynamic, driven by environment, and perfectly positioned. The windows are static, driven mechanically, and set without consideration of their position or their many functions.

You know who gets this in business: Starbucks. Their new (relatively new) menu delivers most of what Alexander described. It free the customer to choose amongst various options to create a drink tailored for that moment’s purpose.

This is part of making things easy to love. Easy to love – today’s principle.

Today’s National Post reports that half of Canada’s 2.5 million entrepreneurs are hoping to retire in the next 15 years. A whopping 500,000 plan to retire in the next five years.

That’s nearly half of Canada’s small business owners and $1.2-trillion in assets is about to change hands.

This suggests three opportunities:

1) There’s room for new players.

2) There’s a staggering opportunity to leverage exiting knowledge.

3) Transition, acquisition, merger, and takeover at the small business level will be hot.

Small business is usually forgotten in a world of roiling corporate paramountcy. But the niche of the gods is the playground of the mortals.

$1.2 trillion is quite the niche.

Several months ago I met David Ulrich (I wrote about it in December).

He talked a lot about disciplines and a bit about healthy living.

While marvelling at the blinding popularity of fad diets he summarised the three disciplines that guarantee every success offered by these plans: eat right, eat less, and exercise more.

It illustrates for me three lessons:

1) For blinding success, repackage core principles.

2) To engage in change, employ core principles.

3) People buy the package, not the principles.

Proof? Peek out the window – how many fat people do you see? Yet many people are dieting most of the time.