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Retro post #89

There are at least two ways to effect change.

One is to complain liberally and bitterly until noone can stand it
and the move is made. Many bloggers live here.

Another is to criticize by creating (Michelangelo).

Wrapped up within each of us 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.

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p.s. - the graphic on the right is a scanned copy of an exam paper.

Answer both of these questions based on intuition alone. Who’s going to win the NFL playoffs this year? What is the future of your company? Bet you’re ready to answer both but only willing to put one answer on the boardroom table. Why?

Intuition is a way of knowing that’s both revered and abhorred - particularly in business. There seems to be an inverse relationship between sophistication and attitude toward intuition.

No one’s really confident that they understand intuition. Who, exactly, trains in intuition? Who’s got some and knows how to use it? One of the reasons we like an MBA so much is we can tell who’s got them. With an MBA there are at least some grades to look back on and the pedigree of the school, but what have I got to show for intuition? Nothing. Which is why its difficult to respect. Continue Reading »

“I don’t know why people feel unhappy when the curve
of a graph fails to keep going up, but they do. Even
when we find something we’d like to reduce, such as
highway fatailites, it doesn’t always sound as though
we had our heart in it.”

E.B. White, A Report in January, 1958

I get a big bang off the ideas of Christopher Alexander, George Santayana, and Edward O. Wilson. Their ideas are so complex but somehow they seem to have a common substance. I enjoy the structure of their thinking and think they must have broad implications for innovation, creativity, and design. And more deeply for thought, insight, and wisdom.

But I struggle to sort out the rhythm of their thoughts. Every time I pick up one of their books, I hear a quiet song from my subconscious that therein lies the key to many of our most sophisticated opportunities.

In The Sense of Beauty (1896), Santayana linked eccentricity to awakening:

“… if a circle is presented, the eye will fall upon its centre, as to the centre of gravity, as it were, of the balanced attractions of all the points; and there will be, in that position, an indifference and sameness of sensation …

It is a form, which, although beautiful in its purity and simplicity, and wonderful in its continuity, lacks any stimulating quality …

The straight line offers a curious object for analysis. It is not for the eye a very easy form to grasp. We bend it or leave it …

The straight line, when made the direct object of attention is, of course, followed by the eye and not seen in one eccentric position.

In the curves we call flowing and graceful, we have, on the contrary, a more natural and rhythmical set of movements … certain points make rhymes and assonance … we find ourselves at every turn reawakening …”

Continue Reading »

Retro post #91

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.

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Loner, elitist, selfish, arrogant … self-centred. That’s me in a nut shell - so they say.

Man have I fought that perception; one I so naturally reflect. I’ve tried so hard to be more social, more interested, more cultured, more engaged. But I’ve never been able to get around the corner. It’s always felt contrived. And left me exhausted.

I’ve never been confident in my introversion. Gradually more confident, but never convinced. But my short career leads me to believe that it isn’t as horrific a personality as I’ve been lead to believe. And I’ve begun to suspect it’s actually a very important, valuable, and helpful way of being.

For every great brilliance there is an equal and opposite darkness. Continue Reading »

Got it - 945, the smallest odd abundant number.

Sweet. Thanks Sala.

There’s an unobservable line between ambition and growth. Where movement can be too early, just right, or too late. When does growth stop and stagnation take over? When is a switch premature?

I don’t think the answer is outside us. No one has the answer … besides ourselves.

I’ve never really loved my work .. well maybe that job just after my MSc. That little stint consulting was as close to brilliant as I’ve come in my career. Yet, there are lots of jobs I hated that I needed to keep; they were good for me. They made me grow. Movement too early would mean I’d miss that growth.

Growth and movement are sometimes complimentary but often paradoxical. To grow, one has to stay yet to continue to grow, one has to move. While thinking about this, I suddenly and surprisingly thought about water. Continue Reading »

David Thoreau Journal - July 13, 1857:

“The price of friendship is the total surrender of yourself; no lesser kindness, no ordinary attentions and offerings will buy it. There is forever that purchase to be made with that wealth which you possess, yet only once in a long while are you advertised of such a commodity. I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities, a new life and revelation to me, which perhaps I had not experienced for many months. Such transient thoughts have been my nearest approach to realization of it, thoughts I know of no one to communicate to. I suddenly erect myself in my thoughts, or find myself erected, infinite degrees above the possibility of ordinary endeavors, and see for what grand stakes the game of life may be played. Continue Reading »

Spent the weekend with a good friend.
Both of us love words. Somewhere on
one of our hikes we started rolling
through favourite quotes. He pops
out with this: “True artists never
look like artists.” It’s something his
Dad said and he’s never forgotten.

Does the truly brilliant actually
appear brilliant? Why is profound
often so simple? Isn’t real art
purposeful expression?

Does this explain why we always
pick the middle: it just looks better?
Is this why is popular so loud?
Maybe this explains why the most
obvious is the most celebrated.

Maybe another more important
question is this: Should are true artist
look like one? Maybe they’d be more
successful.

At a recent meeting I watched five of six major players in a major decision take tiny, incremental steps toward an outcome they had completely opposed when entering the room. The experience got me talking about the importance of flipping. I thought I’d come up with an important principle … one worth writing about …

Continue Reading »

This talk by Sir Ken Robinson is gorgeous. I’ve listened to it four times and watched the video twice. I’d love to meet him some day.

Even before I had my son I was passionately interested in education. Since he was born I’ve thought of it constantly. It is, I think, one of the most significant choices I must make for him.

About this time last year I was reading an article on Erik Demaine, a scientist who’s peers said he was “promiscuous” Continue Reading »

From the Guardian, “The former Enron chairman whose name became a byword for boardroom deceit and corruption, Ken Lay, died in an exclusive ski resort yesterday while awaiting sentence for his involvement in America’s biggest ever corporate fraud.”

What a sentence. What an epitaph.

That man was once someone’s little boy. He was a little boy. And sometime, way back in time, chairmanship of a world-class corporation was a miraculous dream. An incredible, unfathomable hope. It was clean and pure and right. It was the pinnacle of achievement.

It is so easy to place an exclusive resort, a massive company, and a life of wealth at the top … at the front. And to leave integrity, honor, and honesty as servants to that goal.

“These are not servants …”

I remind myself of that daily … and I forget that almost instantly.

On the floor, crumpled in a heap, sawing frantically for life, Ken Lay had nothing. Nothing. Nothing!

For all that work, for all he gave away, for every second of every day, for every thing: nothing.

I will not be that man.