“sift” isn’t new. The company started about the same time as this website (circa 2006). That’s the old news.
New news: We’re now at this full-time. Have been since November 2007. And we are so grateful to say that business has been absolutely incredible.
We hit our annual revenue target about three months in and are working with some terrific companies. We’re focused in three areas 1) sift (due diligence, market intelligence, and foresight), 2) invoke (brilliance-based innovation), and not-well-named-invest (micro-finance and vc).
Relevant posts:
Doula for startups
Experiencing insight
Collective intelligence
Beyond serendipity
Synchronizing greatness
Contact us:
780.669.3607
jeremy(at)siftstar.com
Ralph Waldo Emerson, History:
“Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.”
What is your revolution? When will you give it to the one who is going to change the world? What do you need before you can give it away?
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From Henry David Thoreau’s journal:
“Find out as soon as possible what are the best things in your composition and then shape the rest to fit them. The former will be the midrib and veins of the leaf.
There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds - the memorable thoughts, the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours. The thought came to us because we were in a fit mood. Also, we were unconscious and did not know that we had said or done a good thing.
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success. What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice and at length it falls from us without our notice as a leaf from a tree.”
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Here’s another question for Chris, Siona, and Dave: What is a facilitator compared to a host? And compared to a coach? And finally, compared to an artist?
I ask because people keep suggesting I’m a facilitator. But being a bit of an elitist, the two seem juxtaposed.
But I’ve started to wonder if elitism has been given an unfortunate and unjustified coloring. I also wonder if facilitation has been characterized too much as group hugging when there’s really a lot more on the table.
I picked the comparisons above because they each seem to have some element of facilitation and each also maintains a primary sense of elitism. For example, I think a host can be picky about her company. A coach makes cuts when creating his team. And the artists we all seem to love the most all seem to have a bit of that elitist flair.
It seems to me we’ve all run pell-mell into the arms of the crowd … the broader and more base the group, the better. And I’m wondering what your experience has been across the gradient of elitism. How does the value of the outcome change across each step up the ladder of exclusivity? What is given away and what is kept?
So, I’m hoping you each might weigh in without getting too hung up on the caustic connotation of the words I’ve chosen - that you see beyond them to the sense of my inquiry. What do you think?
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Henry David Thoreau:
It would be worth while,
once for all,
fairly and cleanly
to tell how we are to be used,
as vendors of Lucifer matches
send directions in the envelope,
both how light may be
readily procured
and no accident happen
to the user.
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How do we get started on a path to doing things that express our genius? How do you only do those things only you can do? One of the areas I’ve started to look at: What do I get invited to do?
What do people invite you to do? I don’t mean parties or jumping off cliffs; I mean those slightly bizarre requests that bleed between professional things and personal things.
I get invited to help people understand themselves. Often the requests sound different but the root is the same. “How do I explain what I’m good at and want to do?” “How do I choose between all these options and make sure things align with where I want to go?” “How do I figure out where I want to go?” Continue Reading »
It was hot. Having Chernobyl just a few hours away didn’t help.
I was lying on my back, slung between two seats in the bottom of the row boat. My self-appointed advisor sat sweating in the bow. His fat white stomach glistened in the heat of the Ukrainian afternoon.
While we drifted along the river, the missionary earnestly jabbered about his work in the country. It was getting uncomfortable.
Eventually, for lack of distraction, I started making internal wagers betting on which two beads of sweat would first jump together on the man’s expansive, sweaty chest. His words droned along, joining the monotonic voice of the city. Continue Reading »
I battle an internal suspicion that I’m too naive for business. Maybe I think too big, measure obstacles as too small, and expect too much? But maybe we live too small, ask too few important questions, focus on the middle instead of the edges of possibility, and because we don’t expect achievement of any significant magnitude we never get to see it. Obviously, I usually settle on the second side, naivety be damned.
One particularly naive thing I expect is that if something is worthwhile, you should first do it for free. If it really sings, then sing. Do it on your own when no one is looking and no one is paying.
Of course it’s plain silly to do everything for kicks. So, the other naive expectation I harbor is that I should be paid exorbitantly well for things I’m willing to do for free. As a friend said, “I don’t expect much, just $350,000 per year to work three days a week at something I’d do for free. Oh, and a yacht. A big one - really, really big.” Continue Reading »
Within my small circle of aquaintences, Blue Ocean Strategy is popular again. Reading it through for the third time (the last time was more than a year ago), the book is so smooth and so rich compared to the business books I’ve read lately.
Most books are limited to pure analysis that is easy to back up with numbers. Afraid of being soft, most set aside our capacities for insight and intuition. Blue Ocean embracing those abilities and provides a system for their use. It’s immensely refreshing.
The book is also an arterial injection of confidence for companies facing an uncertain future. In such circumstance, many turn to consultants. With a consultant in the room it’s easy to convince ourselves that they hold all the marbles. A flashy, heavily educated, showman is mesmerizing - especially if they’ve written “strategist” somewhere on their business card. Books like Blue Ocean Strategy show that a process and some discipline can push a company further than any outside expert.
For those interested, here are comments made previously on this site:
Blue Ocean Strategy
The best sort of blue
When blue oceans turn purple
When sharks visit your blue ocean
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Before moving on to a review of John Ruskin’s book, On Art and Life, there’s one more bit to synthesize from the first two (here and here). Trouble is, I’m not sure how to say this best. I even dreamt about this last night. But it’s still a bit muddled.
If these authors are right, we need to diligently set up the information that drives decisions. Concept packages are critical and usually ignored.
Poul’s comment about the sinister consequences of capitalism made me realize that markets drive off insufficient information too. The information used to inform capitalistic decisions is both too narrow and too broad. It is too narrow in its focus on efficiency, cost effectiveness, and rate of return. It is too broad in its focus on “society” rather than individuals. Continue Reading »
After finishing New World, New Mind I was convinced of two things. First, more attention is needed around staging our thinking processes. Second, the authors didn’t had no idea how to do it.
So, while Cuban waves tickled the beach, I grabbed Edward De Bono’s book, Po: Beyond Yes and No. I discovered that this book is everything New World, New Mind should have been.
To be fair, De Bono’s work is light. The book doesn’t dig deeply into the supporting facts. He takes his authority as granted and plunges into the concepts. The Ornstein and Ehrlich book set up all the points that De Bono makes in his.
De Bono’s book is about the process of informing the process of thinking. Continue Reading »
My wife and I just got back from a week’s vacation in Cuba. Long days on the beach, hiding in the shade of a thatched roof hut gave plenty of opportunity for reading. I rolled through three books and intend to write reviews of each.
The first book was New World, New Mind: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution by Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich, 1989.
Next was Edward De Bono’s book Po: Beyond Yes and No, 1972.
Finally, On Art and Life by John Ruskin, 1853.
What follows is a review of New World, New Mind. The other reviews will come out in the next few posts.
Continue Reading »
The whole idea we’re talking about here is based on a group of eclectic and divergent innovators tackling focused opportunities together to create experimental companies … really, really quickly.
A few days ago, another friend wrote in to suggest that insight is too much a function of experience to expect anything remarkable from this kind of crowd. Ultimately their experience is too shallow to drive out anything tight enough to commercialize.
From his note: “Sometimes I wonder if being insightful is not more a function of experience at this stage. Oh, I always hope there are moments of brilliance of course, but how does one distinguish between what questions should be parroted as each opportunity presents itself versus ‘thought gems’? Even race horses know that all that needs to be done is to run around the tack one more time … though the prep consists of all sorts of training/experience.”
In the reply back I suggest that the ability to generate insight is independent of experience. Some are insightful right from the start.
Continue Reading »
In an offline note a good friend challenges the concept of new, tailor-made companies. Instead he asks, “What about companies that need tailors … companies that need a new dress, ugly companies, those ones that need new shoes … couldn’t this group help them?”
Absolutely. And, as he suggests, perhaps it is a better place to start.
The riddle behind this idea is how to find cash flow early. Dropping into and refining an existing company is a good way to take care of that problem.
He also debates the suggestion that this is possible without a champion … it may need a benevolent totalitarian. It might. But I haven’t met the person to do it yet.
This is small enough (just four right now) that an alpha dog isn’t even an idea worth entertaining. But will we ever need such a change?
Why do we need leadership of this kind? Does defaulting to the “single great leader” system do anything to position us for the ways of the future? If we could somehow cast off the preconceptions we’ve built or mindlessly accepted, is such a thing even an option?
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I think it’s possible to tailor-make successful companies.
What I’d like to try isn’t new. I bet someone else is doing it. And I bet tons of people have tried and it tanked.
I think predecessors have tried and failed because they thought money mattered - it doesn’t. I think previous attempts hit the ditch because they thought ideas were the key - patents, trade secrets and the like - they’re wrong. People matter. That’s it.
Take $2M, a great concept, and a group of three people who are technically, socially, and financially savvy - the trick will still be finding those three people.
But, funny thing, I keep running into people who are absolutely amazing. Each one is stuck in some job that uses just a tiny part of the stuff they’re great at. And they feel lousy because most of the time they work on stuff they readily admit they have never been good at doing. Continue Reading »
Henry David Thoreau’s taste for life is, for me, unmatched in its perception, power, and vitality. From earnest to silly, most of it sings. His journal … it’s like watching Michelangelo whittle. The rippling strength of a master at play.
January 14, 1854
“I just had a coat come home from the tailor’s. Ah me! Who am I that should wear this coat? It was fitted upon one of the devil’s angels about my size. Of what use that measuring of me if he did not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang it on. Continue Reading »
Here’s an unsolved riddle: How do we get the minds of widely dispersed, brilliant people to focus on critical problems/opportunities? How do we synchronize greatness?
Dave Pollard brought this up a few days ago. He writes:
“… we don’t need more leaders, more gurus, more one-size-fits-all prescriptions. Continue Reading »
Inspiring brilliance
A large part of brilliance is inspiration triggered by a convergence of information, creativity, and insight. But here’s the hitch: innovative brilliance is still fortuitous, it’s basically an accident. The challenge is moving innovation beyond serendipity and into an intentional process.
Part of enabling a consistent process of innovation is creating many rich sources of inspiration. Continue Reading »
If I gave you everything you need to completely and absolutely celebrate your brilliance, would you come to the table?
If there was a way to see your genius come to life within a handful of small companies of which you might see a small share in each - would you come to play?
Here’s an invitation:
Let’s create a hand-picked group of individuals. Choose inventors, entrepreneurs, and VC’s who are insightful, wise, and influential among their peers. Let this group meet regularly, at their own cost, and give them just one thing: a tangible opportunity to be brilliant.
Continue Reading »
When do we get to play? I mean play for real - like NHL-hockey-player playing. Where it’s for real money in a real game against real opposition.
Where we’re invited - or better yet, commanded - to completely unload. To grab our brimming grail of rich potential, look for the whitest, untouched canvas we can find, and with absolute abandon splash its red brilliance on everything in our lives. When does that happen?
There’s this scene in the last X-Men movie where Juggernaut, this massive brute who’s mutant power is giant strength, is chasing Kitty Pryde (another mutant) through a building. Instead of racing through hallways and doors, Juggernaut just puts his head down and smashes through the brick walls. Bursting through one impossibly thick wall after another, he’s unstoppable. Meanwhile, Kitty, who’s power is phase shifting, zips along in front of him, flashing in phases through the matter in front of her.
The intoxicating thing about all the super-hero stuff we’ve seen is that deep down we believe a tiny, microscopic fraction of it is actually true. Some have a seemingly inhuman or unfathomable strength that isn’t a direct result of experience, or schooling, or career path. That, without even trying, a few can touch things that most people take a lifetime to achieve.
Continue Reading »
From the Thoreau blog:
“Some men make their due impression upon their generation, because a petty occasion is enough to call forth all their energies; but are there not others who would rise to much higher levels, whom the world has never provoked to make the effort? I believe there are men now living who have never opened their mouths in a public assembly, in whom nevertheless there is such a well of eloquence that the appetite of any age could never exhaust it; who pine for an occasion worthy of them, and will pine till they are dead … The age may well go pine itself that it cannot put to use this gift of the gods. He lives on, still unconcerned, not needing to be used. The greatest occasion will be the slowest to come.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations:
“When an object presents itself to your perception, make a mental definition or at least an outline of it, so as to discern its essential character, to pierce beyond its separate attributes to a distinct view of the naked whole, and to identify for yourself both the object itself and the elements of which it is composed, and into which it will again be resolved. Nothing so enlarges the mind as this ability to examine methodically and accurately every one of life’s experiences, with an eye to determining its classification, the ends it serves, its worth to the universe, and its worth to men … What is it? Whereof is it composed? How long is it designed to last? What moral response does it ask of me; gentleness, fortitude, candor, good faith, sincerity, self-reliance, or some other quality?”
A distinct view of the naked whole … love that. Continue Reading »
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Roman Emperor from 161-180:
“… the passing minute is every man’s equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours. Our loss, therefore, is limited to that one fleeting instant, since no one can lose what is already past, nor yet what is still to come - for how can he be deprived of what he does not possess? [T]he sole thing of which any man can be deprived is the present; since this is all he owns, and nobody can lose what is not his.”
How does this change the way you see your moments? If you carried this as a filter for an entire day, what would be different? Do we have the tools we need to make choices in this way?
I’ve been working, since the canoe trip this summer, to refine a few of the most important pieces I’ve written about on this site. These ideas are important to me as I seek to understand both my way forward and the way I see the people I advise. Most of these ideas came out of my work with small companies and entrepreneurs but the ideas have more relevance in my life that I would have guessed.
None of these ideas are new. All of them have been written about and held to by others. I’ve only glued them together in the way that they’ve built on each other in my life.
Peerless
“A gracefully executed work has no peer.” Si-Ma of the Song Dynasty (1019-1086). If we would touch peerless, how can we find grace?
Continue Reading »
Life bulges with banality. Quantifiers like unanimous, majority, and average somehow dominate decisions. If it’s at least above middle, then it’s worth doing.
Even vices like poker and tatoos can finally trumpet their triumph at conquering the middle-class. Yet, would these vices have become popular if they were vices first? Does exclusivity breed intrique?
Are Ughs hot because they are ugly and expensive? Is scotch interesting because there’s only a few distilleries, it’s limited to Scotland, and the good stuff costs more than your groceries? Is first class sweetest because we’ve never been there?
Isn’t there something marvelous about a consultant charging $1,650 an hour? Doesn’t the absurdity actually attract you?
Why then do we choose average when we’d rather nibble on insane? Why fight for unanimous when just one (and barely one) is where we’d rather be?
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This summer’s canoe trip was, for the most part, a fairly placid experience. Smooth water, subdued weather, genial wildlife.
But there is a stretch of river where things get pretty inspired. Rounding a corner the river suddenly picks up its pace. The shoreline dramatically changes from stately cedar to uprooted trees - root systems pawing vainly at the sky. Just below the water’s surface, ghost-like trees lie naked and white, violently strewn about the river bed.
Everything sped forward into time, like the gears of my watch had suddenly let loose. As we shot forward a waterfall began calling for us, its menacing roar growing and growing until it and several destroyed canoes, wrapped with terrifying finality around half-submerged tree trucks, sent us careening for the shore.
Those moments on the river stand in sharp contrast to the photos Geoff Manaugh posted of the Los Angeles River. It too was once a wild river. Now, 3.5 million barrels of cement later, the river has been literally paved over.
Continue Reading »
Are we not always living
the life that we imagine
we are?
- Henry David Thoreau
From wikipedia on the Slovay Conference:
“Perhaps the most famous conference was the October 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons, where the world’s most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory. The leading figures were Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Einstein, disenchanted with Heisenberg’s ‘Uncertainty Principle,’ remarked ‘God does not play dice.’ Bohr replied, ‘Einstein, stop telling God what to do.’
Seventeen of the twenty-nine attendees were or became Nobel Prize winners.”
This is related to an interest in collective intelligence. Can anyone point to other gatherings of people on the brink of brilliance?
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A fox came to visit yesterday. The first I’d ever seen outside a zoo.
A cascade of red, white, and nearly blue color - she poured down the hill. Her hair glistened, rolling with her tiny muscles.
She trotted along the fence line toward the front yard only to come back a few seconds later. Skirting the edge of the house, she walked right under my feet where I stood in the bay window overlooking the back. Her little ears twittering around, collecting sounds like children collect marbles.
This morning I see a new set of tracks. She’s been back. A new trail down the fence, a detour to the mountain ash, and back through the gap in the spruce.
Find a fox in a city and something thrilling takes bloom. It’s not just the relief of knowing we haven’t utterly gutted this place of life, it’s almost magical.
The city is so dark, faithless, and menacing. It gets easy to hide out in front of the TV worrying that evil wanders the streets. Not so, it turns out that foxes do. So do pixies, gnomes, and giant jolly slugs.
Thoreau’s prose turned to poetry:
it is only when we forget
all our learning
that we begin to know.
to conceive
with total apprehension
approach it as something
totally
strange.
if you would make acquaintance
with the ferns
forget your botany.
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When you dream of an ideal space to do what you do best, what does it look like, sound like, and feel like? What is done there? Who is with you? Does it look like this?
A white-blue sky. Clouds rise, billowing into the heights. Far off, a single bird wheels above clear, green water. On either side are tall cedars and spruce. They stand at the water’s edge, brooding over the forgotten years and bending to glance thoughtfully at the waves. The waves slip up to kiss their feet and spill tiny energy into the earth.
Continue Reading »
As written yesterday - Thoreau was tuned to nuances in life that most of us pass without noticing. More than that, he recorded the observations and, by the account of many others, he regularly revisited and rewrote those tiny tales. Below is a gentle nod to the curiousity of young men:
“I had gone but little way on the old Carlisle road when I saw Brooks Clark, who is now about eighty and bent like a bow, hastening along the road, barefooted, as usual, with an axe in his hand; was in haste perhaps on account of the cold wind on his bare feet.
When he got up to me, I saw that besides the axe in one hand, he had his shoes in the other, filled with knurly apples and a dead robin. He stopped and talked with me a few moments; said that we had had a noble autumn and might now expect some cold weather.
I asked if he had found the robin dead. No, he said, he found it with its wing broken and killed it. He also added that he had found some apples in the woods, and as he had n’t anything to carry them in, he put ‘em in his shoes. They were queer-looking trays to carry fruit in. How many he got in along toward the toes, I don’t know. I noticed, too, that his pockets were stuffed with them. His old tattered frock coat was hanging in strips about the skirts, as were his pantaloons about his naked feet. He appeared to have been out on a scout this gusty afternoon, to see what he could find, as the youngest boy might. Continue Reading »
Today my son is 568 days old. He runs like a champ, throws a mean pitch, and can jump clear off the floor. Just barely approaching two-years he already opens doors (and slams them), can tell you everything that’s hot in the house, has favorite foods which he demands by name and he knows trucks, planes, and heavy machinery by sound which he exuberantly mimics. He can climb stairs standing, recognize his reflection, spot a plane at 300 feet, call dogs, put simple puzzles together, empty a box of raisins in seconds, and understand almost every simple verbal phrase.
We haven’t intentionally taught him any of this. He just figured it out. And almost every single one of these achievements is a consequence of observation.
While I trot blithely through life, he is paying attention.
Continue Reading »
It’s been surprising how much people have resonated with the canoe trip stories. Not just the “week away” part … actually, not that part at all.
Interest has been in the expression of that trip. The emerging strength of the experience. They want raw.
I only noticed because my wife would like to go somewhere warm next month. Somewhere with beaches, nice rooms, and inclusive drinks. Mexico, Bahamas, etc.
Continue Reading »
From the Thoreau blog:
“Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter. I realized how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I thought with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I had spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. I have given myself up to nature; I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty! I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I could have enjoyed it, if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger now that they will. If I go abroad lecturing, how shall I ever recover the lost winter?”
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From the Thoreau blog:
“The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.
I omit the usual—the hurricanes and earthquakes—and describe the common. This has the greatest charm and is the true theme of poetry. You may have the extraordinary for your province, if you will let me have the ordinary. Give me the obscure life, the cottage of the poor and humble, the workdays of the world, the barren fields, the smallest share of all things but poetic perception. Give me but the eyes to see the things which you possess.”
I don’t want to make a big show out of that canoe trip. It really was just six days paddling around a lake. But it was also a window to a part of me that lay nearly forgotten.
There are many mornings when I sit in the library and watch the sun come up. On those mornings there is always a moment when I ask my self what the day will be for. It’s a casual question, easy to ignore, and it usually is ignored.
The question comes from some small place in me. As though it came from a corner of the dawn lit room. And when I actually think about it, it surprises me that the question comes at all.
It’s not “me” asking. I don’t wander through my day paying attention to what it is. Instead I long for what it some day will be. All my attention is focused on the future and so it surprises me that I can still even hear that question. Continue Reading »
In a sudden veer from all things philosophical into the more tactile topics of entrepreneurism, a few thoughts:
As investors, particularly in natural resource ventures, we want to see opportunities that target a market niche. It’s easier to navigate a start-up when competition’s minimal. Plus, in exclusive markets there’s less pressure on price - margins are wider. And that’s as far as the thinking usually goes.
But maybe there’s an even better reason. Listen to these TED presentations: the first by Dan Gilbert (a psychology professor at Harvard talking about happiness) and the second by Barry Schwartz (a sociology professor at Swarthmore College talking about choice).
Continue Reading »
From Les invasions barbares (2003):
“Intelligence isn’t an individual trait. It’s collective, national, and intermittent.
Athens, BC - Euripides premieres his Electra. Two rivals attend, Sophocles and Aristophanes. And two friends, Socrates and Plato.
Intelligence was there.
Firenze, Palazzo Vecchio, on facing walls, two painters: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. An apprentice: Rafaello. A manager: Niccolo Machiavelli.
Philadelphia, USA - Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton and Madison. No other country has been so blessed.”
In spare moments I’m dabbling around the edges of genius. Unresolved are the questions: Can genius be created? Is genius collaborative or individual?
Following the idea presented in the movie above, where are the flashes in time where collective intelligence emerged?
Any comments?
Just finished reading the Apology of Socrates. Three things stood out:
1. Socrates was at home. He knew everyone. It’s a record of conversations with people he knew all his life.
2. Socrates believed that the wisdom expressed by poets, artists, carpenters, and philosophers wasn’t known by those expressing it. The wisdom came through them and they were innocent of its meaning.
3. Socrates was delighted to confess the width and depth of the things he knew he did not know.
Why do I expect everything great to be somewhere else? What wisdom comes through me and what comes from within me? Why am I so reluctant to betray my ignorance?
From the Thoreau blog:
“As I go through the fields, endeavoring to recover my tone and sanity and to perceive things truly and simply again, after having been perambulating the bounds of the town all week, and dealing with the most commonplace and worldly-minded men, and emphatically trivial things, I feel as I had committed suicide in a sense. I am again forcibly struck with the truth of the fable of Apollo serving King Admetus, its universal applicability. A fatal coarseness is the result of mixing in the trivial affairs of men. Though I have been associating even with the select men of this and the surrounding towns, I feel inexpressibly begrimed. My Pegasus has lost his wings; he has turned a reptile and gone on his belly. Such things are compatible only with a cheap and superficial life.”
Is it elitist? Thoughts? Continue Reading »
Two nights ago my wife and I were watching “Flip This House”. On the show two guys in design
From the Thoreau blog: