Tag: Innovation

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S2 E107 — Leaving Us Adrift in a Sea of Change

When things get tough — during a merger — you should do what, go sailing?  You might ask, “Why sailing and why Catalina Island?  Was that like some sort of outdoor adventure boondoggle?  How did you get away with it?”

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Consider making a vision board. The surface verisimilitude of an image makes you feel as though you are within touching distance of your desire. Your brain gets used to this, bridges a gap, shortens the leap to reality.” Scorpio

Hi and welcome to Thursday’s Episode 107 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 3rd day of September in the fall of 2020.  

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Season One and Two are a two-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic and then in this unfolding pandemic year.

Previously in Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E106 — How We Brainwashed Curmudgeons; S2 E105 — When Cosmic Leads to Decline, Pair Extremes Intentionally; S2 E104 — Worst Monday Ever. Very, Very Grim …

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E107 — How Do You Rate Your Sense of Curiosity?; S1 E106 — Attempts to Upset 9 of My Life Stages Apple Cart; S1 E105 — Will Fortune Smile on Us Later in the Evening?; S1 E104 — How Yesterday’s Success Triggers Tomorrow’s Failure

Context

This is a continuation of “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit” a work-in-progress.

In previous episodes we described Start Up, Emerging Growth, Rapid Growth, Sustained Growth, Maturity, Decline and now Reinvention stages.  

Reinvention without Decline

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

We described a mini-case of a major decline,  Part One, Part Two and Part Three. And, before that we profiled two mini case studies about what it was like working behind the scenes at a mature company in a financial, in a consumer industry and two more in another century-old university system — Part One and Two. 

Now we turn add to Part One with the wildcard Part Two behind-the-scenes Reinvention mini-case.

Reinvention Part Two

23.  Organizational Development – Technology —

For a mainframe computer it took almost 24 months to offer the new line when I first joined.  We knocked it down to 18 months, but with enterprise customers their long buying cycles meant our sales people worked and worked and worked to get them to sign on the dotted line.

But then out of the blue word came down that we had entered a quiet period during a merger of two equal sized computer players with some overlapping markets and technologies.

And, it was further delayed due to alleged bribery for government contracts at the other company and the ensuing uncertainty about who would be doing what and what our new identity would be.

Almost immediately all our division employees panicked on the news.  And almost immediately the management team disappeared behind closed doors. 

The vacuum triggered worst case scenarios. And lot’s of questions:

    • How would the merger impact sales? 
    • Will we be handicapped right out of the start gate?
    • What would happen if our hardware, software and manufacturing projects were eliminated?
    • Wasn’t the merger about doubling the size of our marketshare?
    • What would happen to our own, local reinvention efforts?
    • If word leaked out from manufacturing that the next mainframe was as small as your desktop PC, somebody in the customer’s approval process could halt the sale.

In the face of fear and uncertainty and doubt no-one had answers.

Meanwhile, I represented our division interests on the new corporate task force that launched a corporate-wide employee survey and recommended ways of addressing the fear, uncertainty and doubt. 

We tackled the rebranding and communications campaign.

Two formal technology rivals, each with their own operating systems, serving different customers and industries grew from two very different roots. 

From those roots grew two very different cultures which reinforced themselves, until months after the merger.  

Our corporate task force acknowledged those differences, but we began digging until we found the two core foundational stories and creatively began communicating fewer differences and more similarities in an effort to build a new shared value set. 

The company was renamed and branded as the Power of Two (squared).   But, even Steve Jobs couldn’t resist the choice when he quipped, “Little did they know at the time that ‘2’ would be their stock price.”

We all fell victim to FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt.  When two companies come together to form one you have winners and losers.  At first, since we acquired them, we all figured we’d be the victors.  But, that wasn’t how it turned out entirely.

Locally in our division, we collectively decided to only focus on what we could control.

Shaping a Cultural Climate for Innovation

For another initiative, our Climate for Innovation — the theme my team got three local leaders of manufacturing, software engineering and firmware engineering to sponsor in the California division.

Here’s what the engineering and software teams faced. 

    • They needed to dramatically shorten the time from idea into customer hands.
    • At the same time — they didn’t know when — a competitor would introduce a dramatic improvement which forced the product team to match or beat it.
    • They had to account for technology wild cards. 
    • They themselves didn’t know if they would survive the internal cost cutting elimination process or if their merging counterparts would lose.

We weren’t engineers or software developers.

So, How Could We Contribute?

They were on the hook to finish products on their roadmaps, but to figure out ways to shrink development time before their competitors did. 

So, we scheduled a series of communications programs that interviewed each leader and gave them an opportunity to describe what was important to their group and how each of the other groups fit together.  

It wasn’t technology or talent as much as it was product team formation, storming, norming and performing that sped progress on the relentless time to market. 

My communications co-conspirator described it as a “license to steal,” but in a good way.  As long as we helped move the needle towards a “Climate for Innovation” we practiced tail-wagging as an example for the newly emerging company.

We reinforced a fast-paced, innovative culture that attracted the best of the best. Our motto was simply, “It’s better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission.”

When things get tough — during a merger — you should do what, go sailing?

You might ask, “Why sailing and why Catalina Island?  Was that like some outdoor adventure boondoggle?  How did you get away with it?”

By sailing to Catalina, holing up in a local hotel and hashing product roadmaps teams were literally able to think out of the box away from the mainland and return to their work with a fresh perspective.

Convene the Brain Trust

Crazy creative Dave pitched a high risk, high value proposition based on a sailing experience.

Robin, one of our local engineering managers and eventually our co-conspirators had taken Dave out to Catalina for fun.  He volunteered as a leader of Sea Scouts based in Dana Harbor, so he had the access to the sailboats and Dave is crazy creative.  

And, crazy creative Dave introduced me to Jim whom he met at a Corporate Communications boondoggle out in the desert of Arizona at a Wickenburg dude ranch. What Dave immediately liked about Jim was his combination strategic thinking and team building tools.

One of Jim’s real estate client brought him to Southern California for executive coaching.  Crazy creative Dave conspired with Robin — the boat, Jim the tools, and me looking for FUD-busting stories to tell.  

We set out on a get-to-know-each-other sea cruise in the Pacific Ocean at dusk from Dana Point named for Richard Henry Dana who wrote, “Two Years Before the Mast” about his adventures on the Pilgrim up and down the coast.  

Fur trappers would throw down their hides from the cliff overhead to the tall ships anchored in the harbor as part of trade conducted in Mission San Juan Capistrano — founded, I believe, in 1775.

Change-Worthy Resilience

Funny how that history kind of provided a little something in our conversations and being on a sailboat, you’re tightly constrained physically so everybody participates. 

And there’s something wonderful about the ocean. The up-and-down motion. The side-to-side motion. The vagaries of the wind and the tacking back and forth. To make any kind of progress, you have to focus on the matter at hand, and balance in three dimensions. 

The sea works its own magic on conversation. It didn’t take long before we found a common passion — the challenge of building change-worthy organizations and individuals.

And, suddenly the wind stopped. The ocean calmed around us momentarily — the surface turned smooth as glass. Simultaneously, we reached some sort of synchronicity state. 

That moment when every thing happens in slow motion. We finished each other’s sentences. Ideas burst out of us like popcorn. We collectively saw a future — at least a trajectory based on the technology we were building, and a way to achieve what we all wanted individually, but in a way that would benefit all of us working together.

So, how did that play out? It sounds so, what … corporate hippy bullshit.

That’s why I couldn’t ask for permission from my 116 Institutional Traditionalist boss. 

Our task was to create an accelerated team building and innovation process — the sailing to Catalina — facilitate brainstorming sessions, and capture their output — decisions, plans, action items, further investigations.

Did it Work

Still sounds like a typical corporate boondoggle, right?

If you’ve been to a workshop or a class, what happens?  

In about 20 minutes after it’s over — by the time you leave the parking lot — you forget 50% of it.  When you come back to work, all the emails and requests that piled up while you were away command your time and attention.  

You lose another 30%.  

By the end of the first week, the Catalina experience is just a fond memory.

Did They Forget Best Laid Plans

No, we recorded all of their work in video and photos.  During the first week “back at the ranch” we delivered daily reminders of commitments they made by documenting them doing so in pictures.  Intermittently, we’d send another reminder and request for a status update.

It was like they could fall back into their highly engaged experience — in a kind of a re-immersion. 

It worked, really well.  Dave and I treated each safari as a proof of concept and built on what we learned running prior ones.  

We experimented with a variety of outdoor venues, if you will, and learned how to program sessions with music and turn the whole adventure into — well, we called them “Strategic Safaris” to accelerate team development, conduct product planning sessions and drive new initiatives immediately.

Next up: Part Three when intrapreneurially sourced innovations take shape.

Evidence

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Consider making a vision board. The surface verisimilitude of an image makes you feel as though you are within touching distance of your desire. Your brain gets used to this, bridges a gap, shortens the leap to reality.” Scorpio

Thanks for the fond memories.  On the island with the engineering teams we’d have them draw out what they felt were their team futures.  They broke down steps to achieve what they had drawn together and we filmed them committing to what they achieved on Catalina together.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“ 4”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “There have been times when it was hard for you to imagine being free, self-reliant and in control of your own financial and emotional destiny. Today’s developments are a dream come true.”  Aries

Can I get an “Amen!”  My decade-long advisory role in the university system helped turn that line of anxiety off forever.

“4”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “Not all feelings are messages from the depths. Some are just momentary choices based on comfort zones. A feeling can also be a distraction from another, less-appealing, more uncertain feeling.”  Taurus

Got me.  I tend to favor my muse by asking Leo da V what I should concentrate on, expecting a deep exploration.  But, often curiosity masks distractions.

“4”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “You’re likely to pour over every detail. The perfectionism that has you moving incredibly slowly now will also be the reason that you’re so excellent at the task.” Virgo

Yes and no.  Too much detail numbs my brain.  Not enough detail fails to satisfy my Systematic-Professional leanings.  Is it a stalemate?

“5”  Steve Kerr, 54: “You are very aware of what you don’t know and only get more aware of it as you go. This is proof that you are amassing a great body of learning indeed, as every new idea opens up 10 more questions.” Libra

Just 10 more questions?  It’s as true for me today as it was finding resilience in uncertain times during our 360 degree model for adventure learning.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines organically grew from 4906 to 4990.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • Saw the movie, didn’t realize that one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly — his detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch book series and Amazon Prime series — also wrote, “The Lincoln Lawyer” which I just finished. Gotta tell you I can’t not see his lead character (Mickey Haller, Bosch’s half brother) as anyone else but Matthew McConaughey. 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

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S2 E101 — The Story of Strange Bedfellows Saving the Day

If the slow moving, status quo loving cruise ship falls into desperate straits the captain needs new strategic steering and a new sense of urgency to keep from running aground. 

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “Human perception (and indeed, survival) depends on filtering out more than what we let into our awareness. You may be noticing a lot more than the others. Try not to hold it against them.” Cancer

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 101 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 2nd day of August in the summer of 2020.  

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Season One and Two are a two-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic and then in this unfolding pandemic year.

Previously in Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E100 — Live, Love, Work, Play, Invest and Leave a Legacy; S2 E99 — Why Pay Over $100,000 When You Don’t Have To? ; S2 E98 — Why Your Company Simply Won’t Make It Out of Puberty

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E101 — From Saint to Soul Mate and Trusted Friend; S1 E100 — Running out of Determination and Grit by the 100th Day ; S1 E99 — What’s in a Name? Baby Boy Names?; S1 E98 — Why Can’t I Leave 26 Orphans for a Well Deserved Vacation?

Context

This is a continuation of “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit” a work-in-progress.

In previous episodes we described Start Up, Emerging Growth, Rapid Growth, Sustained Growth and Maturity stages.  But, each with the emphasis on how a specific stage provides another better fit opportunity for one or more of 16 Talent Profiles

Consequences of Not Mastering Growth Crises

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

 We described two mini case studies of what it was like working behind the scenes at a mature companies in a financial, in a consumer industries and in another century-old university system — Part One and Two.

Decline

Strange bedfellow feel attracted to declining organizations. One drawn to the crisis from the “Blue Box” of Systematic-Professionals and the other from the “Red Box” of Paradoxy-Morons. You’ll see an interesting partnership formed by 113 Idea Packagers (Blue) and 102 Thought Leaders (Red).

16 Talent Profiles by Organization Type

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Why?

A company or any organization that has been successfully operating for over 40 years, and especially those that have been around for a century or longer, like our last three examples, over extend their prevailing business model and the systems required to operate in the status quo.

You could say, and you wouldn’t be wrong, they fall victim to maturity “group think” that collectively filters out information from the margins — where emerging competition fester. 

Set in their ways, mature organizations will do almost anything to repeat the success factors derived from building on what has worked for years and maybe generations. 

They recruit, develop and retain, all most unconsciously like-minded people with similar backgrounds and education.

They build layer upon layer of complex organizational structures and operating systems which divorce them from director customer contact, which start ups and growth companies build strong relationships with.  

Their expertise becomes highly specialized, but their research and development functions don’t really benefit from direct market feedback and shifting customer requirements.

A mature culture resists any threat to their status quo until it is too late and they become victim to their own Red-Tape Crisis.

In short, reversing the risk adverse, red tape-poisoned culture requires outside intervention with a newer perspective while the company restructures, downsizes and outsources costly internal operations.

The outside partnership blends combinations high degrees of independence with medium degrees of disruptive innovation, speed, embedded knowledge, improvement and mastery.

The 113 Idea Packagers work well in settings that require outside-the-system perspective when information filtering contributes to decline. They provide the conceptual framework by which manuals, organizational procedures, and even work assignments are translated and put into action. 

They also tend to be impatient with the bureaucracy, rigid hierarchies, and politics prevalent in many professions, preferring to work informally with others as equals. But, 113 Idea Packagers use cleverness and independent thinking to problem-solve and reinvent, and in an easygoing, unassuming manner prod organizational change and improvement towards restructuring, downsizing, outsourcing and other relevant solutions to the red tape crisis.

Why a partnership with talent from a Paradoxy-Moron culture? While 102 Thought Leaders share a high degree of independence with 113 Idea Packagers they’re attracted to medium degrees of speed and disruptive innovation.  If the slow moving, status quo loving cruise ship falls into desperate straights the captain needs new strategic steering and a new sense of urgency to keep from running aground. 

Evidence

“4”  Steve Zahn, 51: “The remedy to get past fear and discomfort is to do the very thing you would most want to avoid. You don’t have to do it a lot though because once or twice will get you over things quite nicely today.”Scorpio

Almost every effort to change a mature organization is met with overwhelming resistance, fear and discomfort.  Also FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt.  That’s why the new direction provided in collaboration with thought leader requires an idea packager to cement a tangible future the remaining employees can believe in.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday:  

Your projects do not have to be lucrative for you to consider them a success, and yet you’ll have the pleasure of many different beneficial outcomes flowing from your work, including financial gain. Young and inexperienced people will follow your lead and be better for it. New relationships start the year off with style.

How awesome is that?  Too bad this ain’t my birthday so I can claim it.  If it’s yours, please be my guest!

“3”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You already know what you like, so do something else. Better to find out that you have a great range of likes than to narrow your scope and be stuck trying to satisfy niche preferences.”  Aries 

One of the lessons I learned over a 5 year employment in a declining company is you need to quickly volunteer for projects to add value in the downsizing, and then during the rightsizing and then back to innovation in the reinvention upsizing.

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “Human perception (and indeed, survival) depends on filtering out more than what we let into our awareness. You may be noticing a lot more than the others. Try not to hold it against them.” Cancer

As in groupthink in a declining organization that may not realize it yet?

“4” Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “It’s going well. It doesn’t mean that all the lights are green or that the journey is comfortable, cool and frustration-free. It just means that you are actually getting somewhere.” Leo

I once was told that Start Ups don’t realize they are out of business until 6 months afterwards.  He never told me how long it took for Mature companies to realize they peaked and were on the downside of their incredible run.  I’m sure a thought leader could reveal how much time was left.

“3” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “When you know where you want to go but not how to get there, don’t worry. You’ll figure it out. If you don’t know where to go, then wait until you get an idea. Better to sit and conserve your energy than to aimlessly wander.” Virgo

In mature organizations on the decline require thought leaders to help provide the “where” and idea packagers to help select which wave of change to embrace and how to surf it to shore.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines organically grew from 4733 to 4807.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • Saw the movie, didn’t realize that one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly — his detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch book series and Amazon Prime series — also wrote, “The Lincoln Lawyer” which I just finished. Gotta tell you I can’t not see his lead character (Mickey Haller, Bosch’s half brother) as anyone else but Matthew McConaughey. 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

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S2 E97 — Frame Blindness and Decision Traps

These are the experts who love their profession instead of a specific organization like Sustaining-Associates do. They’re attracted to the challenges that come with large, complicated systems found in most organizations at the Mature stage of growth. 

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Stay away from the ‘I did it, and so can you’ type of messaging today because it’s overly simplistic and does not account for the myriad of ways that people are so different from one another.”  Aries

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 97 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 15th day of August in the summer of 2020.  

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Season One and Two are a two-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic and then in this unfolding pandemic year.

Previously in Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E96 — Two Kindred Spirits Drawn to Mature Complications; S2 E95 — The Founder’s Curse Unleashed by the Edifice Complex; S2 E94 — Sustained Growth: Slicing Turnover and Grooming Experts

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E97 — My Top 19 Reasons for Failing; S1 E96 — Old Rabbits Die Hard; S1 E95 — No Back to Work Days or Hump Days Allowed; S1 E94 — Wasn’t There a Movie about the Tau of Steve?

Context

This is a continuation of “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit” a work-in-progress.

In previous episodes we described Start Up, Emerging Growth, Rapid Growth, Sustained Growth and Maturity stages.  But, each with the emphasis on how a specific stage provides another better fit opportunity for one or more of 16 Talent Profiles.

9. Consultant Life and Mutual Fund Company

It was founded in the late 1800s by a former governor in the state capitol of California. Roughly a century later the executives decided to move to Newport Beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean so families could enjoy a higher standard of living.

It was the kind of mature organization that employed maintenance workers just to polish its brick entry way.  It was the kind of mature organization that hired and groomed knowledge workers before the term was coined. 

116 Institutional Traditionalists

They included 116 Institutional Traditionalists, Systematic-Professionals delivering products and services in heavily regulated markets the company served, such as annuities, and mutual funds, a variety of investment products and services to individuals, businesses, and pension plans.

Four Talent Profiles Attracted to Systematic-Professional Organizations

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Why?  Because 116 Institutional Traditionalists are adept at managing fact-based complex systems with traditional analytical methods and tools. They’re dedicated to maintaining the institution’s smooth running. 

They defend the status quo by believing in preserving the rules and procedures.  They are practical, realistic and matter-of-fact.  In short 116 Institutional Traditionalists make good administrators because of their talent for organization.

Like other large hospitals, banking and financial institutions it was probable that a supervisor or a manager or even an executive hadn’t encountered a major transition from one growth stage to another over their careers.

Two Systematic-Professionals Attracted to Maturity Growth Stage

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

The buzzword my client described when he engaged me was this project was a major cultural change.  

But, it would unfold over many years, so urgency wasn’t felt, as much as it was anticipated.  

I had worked in several large, mature companies and had come face-to-face with immune systems that rejected any type of change.  

Maintaining the status quo across product lines and departments and divisions had become a way of life. 

My client told me our challenge was — how can you inject innovation into a century’s old mature company? 

It was a complex, complicated maneuver requiring tons of new knowledge and new idea packaging.  

It reflected the company’s structural change from a mutual ownership to a mutual holding company business model. 

114 Brand-as-Experts  

They become known for their impartial analysis and an affinity for agreed upon standards.  They excel in fact-based work situations in which you advance through continuing education, peer reviews and achieving licenses.  

The co-founder served as a model.  He  grew from being an investment analyst into a fund manager and co-founded their global fixed income investment business with  hundreds of billions managed in a Total Return Fund.

He was known as “the nation’s most prominent bond investor”. As a 114 Brand-as-Expert  he advised the Treasury during financial crises and was described as a fund manager who made people filthy-wealthy.  

In a way, he became the epitome of what my client had in mind for educating supervisors, managers and executives.

The goal as to bottle his ability to identify market inefficiencies and exploit them by adjusting the company’s strategies.  He embraced new technologies and exotic derivative products while harassing the power of the internet.

There was a requirement for a special blend of talents and skills across high-yield businesses building better traders and analysts and salespeople.

Rrom a management and executive development strategy it was to cultivate the ability to distill complex ideas into something simple enough to take action.

My client wanted build a hybrid curriculum drawing upon university experts with internal consultants to offer the early stages of a corporate education division.

“Advanced Curriculum for Officers” focused more on  managing divisions and new units in anticipation of favoring newer industry niches and technologies, but leading in a strong tradition based on an industry resistant to change.  

My first role was to manage external experts, define the curriculum based on executive assessments and development plans, and to provide referrals to seminars and recommended development activities.

Plans were based upon individual assessments. They defined gaps to be closed to qualify for the next advancement step, and admission into the high potential development talent pool.

The curriculum was the first for officers and included new courses I researched and designed, updated management courses they had (Management by Objectives was obsolete) and a curriculum I had developed and Fluor and Unisys.  

The plan included an “intrapreneurially shared services approach” I had described as a business model I’d experienced and managed before. 

During and after “de-mutalization” breakups, my client’s corporate group would have to sell and customize courses for the new business groups while competing with outside vendors and universities.

Top priorities for my client were how to bring about change, how to prevent frame blindness and avoid decision bias from a long list of decision-making traps plus scenario building tools.

I was all too happy to oblige!  

Evidence

“3”  Steve Zahn, 51: “You’ve known things to be more work than anticipated, but today’s thing is ridiculous. Devote yourself when it’s adding up to something that will matter. This isn’t. Get out of it.” Scorpio

Wait, what?  

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Stay away from the ‘I did it, and so can you’ type of messaging today because it’s overly simplistic and does not account for the myriad of ways that people are so different from one another.”  Aries

So, this is really hard to do.  Except what I intend to accomplish is not so much copy me, but to choose which talent cultures work for you as a best fit.  Ask yourself how many degrees from high to medium do you need: independence, affiliation, speed, mastery, disruptive innovation, improvement, new knowledge creation or embodied knowledge.

“3”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “The reality of a situation is much better than you’re thinking it is. You just have to ask different questions of it. A person coming from a different place in life will help you frame things another way.” Taurus 

How in the world is this unending pandemic much better than I think?

“3”  Steve Smith, 30: “Any mistakes in the work will actually be mistakes of planning. The more time you spend thinking ahead and setting yourself up for a win, the better your day will go.” Gemini

Unless, of course, I fall victim to the curse plaguing almost every introvert I know — OBE, overtaken by events!

“3”  Steve Howey, 42: “Your natural responses cannot be correct or incorrect. They just are. The behavior you choose after you feel a certain way can be very much wrong or right. You’ll choose carefully tonight.” Cancer

I guess we’ll have to wait for 8 hours or more to find out.

“5”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “It turns out that the period of time when you felt like you were meandering was actually a long and deliberate planning stage for what’s going on with you today.” Virgo

Busted.  How long?  Almost a year of surviving until I could break the code of jargon my new career spoke in.  And then that career transition was repeated and repeated in several industries, types of companies, and at various growth stages.

“3”  Steve Kerr, 54: “When you are in an observant, receptive and artistic mood, ‘always,’ ‘never’ and other extremes of language fall away. You revel in life’s many colors and shades beyond black and white.” Libra

As much as I want to own this one, I only picked it for the first part of the first sentence up until the second comma.  What was I thinking?

“4”  Steve Harvey, 62: “There was a time when you stretched yourself to fit a role. And then, slowly, steadily, you grew to fit the title. You’re about to repeat this process with a new challenge.” Capricorn 

Was there ever!  I totally talked myself into my first job in a new career in a mature company about to fall into a decline.  I learned so much in it and didn’t know it at the time but it fueled this original research I taught at UCI’s Executive MBA program.  So, bring on the new challenge!  And, now I’m struggling to describe in this “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit” work-in-progress

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines organically grew from 4636 to 4733.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • Saw the movie, didn’t realize that one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly — his detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch book series and Amazon Prime series — also wrote, “The Lincoln Lawyer” which I just finished. Gotta tell you I can’t not see his lead character (Mickey Haller, Bosch’s half brother) as anyone else but Matthew McConaughey. 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

Posted on

S2 E90 — How Many Road Warriors Does It Take to Fuel Our Growth?

Early employees wore a lot of hats and loved it.  They also expected to be first in line when it came to heading up new functions. But, they were pissed off when outsiders from bigger companies stepped all over them when they were hired instead.

“5”  Steve Aoki, 41: “Today’s problem isn’t so tough. Ask a few people, do a thorough internet search, read an article or two and you’ll know enough to make an informed decision.” Sagittarius

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 90 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 2nd day of August in the summer of 2020.  

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Season One and Two are a two-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic and then in this unfolding pandemic year.

Previously in Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E89 — Garage Bonking and Chasm Jumping; S2 E88 — Convincing Family, Friends, Fools and Angels; S2 E87 — Start Ups Aren’t For Everyone. Are They a Better or Worse Fit for You?

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E90 — Day 90 of My 1-Year Natural Experiment; S1 E89 — Because If You Don’t Someone Else Will. It’s Worth It!; S1 E88 — Who’s Marc Maron and What’s da Vinci got to do with him?; S1 E87 — Pipe Bombs Destroy Vacation Bliss

Context

This is a continuation of “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit” a work-in-progress.

In a previous episode I summarized everything you need to know about four basic organizations to stack the odds in your favor when shopping around for your next job opportunity.  

Oh, what disaster to avoid (unlike me) in your next career move. 

Now we’re building on each of the 16 talent profiles.

16 Talent Profiles by Organization Type

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

For the next few episodes, we’ll show how they (you and I) can take advantage of opportunities in stages of organizational growth from Start Up to Maturity and from Decline to Reinvention.

Consequences of not Mastering Growth Crises

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Key points to keep in mind:

    1. Every organization, including our 4 fundamental aspires to grow.
    2. The growth stages follow one after another from Start Up to 3 Growth phases to Maturity and Decline unless a Reinvention transformation kicks off before it is too late.
    3. Each new stage of growth requires a different talent culture than the previous one. One or two “talent tribes” dominate at each stage.
    4. There’s no guarantee a specific company and organization will master the gap between stage its current and potential next stage.
    5. That fact represents a second set of better or worse fits.

Bridging Leadership Gap Between Start Up to Emerging Growth

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

In our last episode we identified two more Emerging-Entrepreneur talent profiles, 108 Core Business Group and 107 Resilient Product Teams who join 105 Marketing Athletes in the Start Up phase to tighten operations and bridge the leadership gap into Emerging Growth. 

In a Start Up the founder sells a compelling vision of their future.  Just like our clients’ at Think!City did.  Or what happened to Proxima’s early employees who wore a lot of hats and loved it. 

They also expected to be first in line when it came to heading up functions.  That transition from organic free flowing ways of creating a company turned out to be the opposite of what helped them in the second stage.  And pissed off a lot of them when outsiders from bigger companies stepped all over them when they were hired.

Emerging Growth

26. Emerging Desktop Projector Company — 

A smaller more manageable sized company of 200 employees generating revenues of roughly 200 million dollars required a full-time director of organizational development and training. Hot damn, that’s me.

Growth Stage from Emerging to Rapid

In the next stage the directive management style required to bridge the gap between start-up and early growth actually plants the seeds for a new crisis at the end of that Emerging Growth Stage.

WTF?

In general it goes like this: 

Too much DIRECTION causes a crisis of AUTONOMY which forces DELEGATION in the next phase.

I learned after I took the job that growth danced between loosening and tightening and between innovation and efficiency.

    • So the early growth phase which Proxima had experienced was about tightening and efficiency in the evolutionary part of the lifecycle.
    • More than anything Proxima’s leaders craved accelerating growth. It competed in the emerging multi-media projector business.
    • Nobody really understood how the market niche would grow rapidly.
    • They were in the midst of extending, improving, and modifying the proprietary formula they had discovered by trial-and-error. 

In other words they set up methods to improve those things that worked but struggled to discard those things that didn’t.

Customers

Proxima’s market mostly consisted of “road warriors” — all those making presentations in sales and marketing meetings.  

And those addressing audiences and students in conference rooms and classrooms. 

What I liked was the hype about their growth and how immediately I saw the advantages of their projectors over the old school overhead classroom projector with the film slides you dropped or mishandled or …

They created presentations in their computers.  

Proxima sold a projector for each of those settings that connected to your computer for the first time.

You created a powerpoint in your computer and projected it on to a screen in front of a group of people.

Founder

Proxima didn’t start out in the multimedia projector business.  

Proxima had been an electrical and electronics supplier at its inception.  Eventually they evolved into selling all the accessories you’d need for PCs — you know the cords, connectors, power packs and eventually projectors — all before my time. 

Early employees loved their flip-flop, cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirt wearing founder.  

2nd CEO

Their CEO focused on policies and procedures more than taking care of business as the “outside” voice to the marketplace.

But, they continued with the new leader who wanted to provide more structure and loved writing policies.

Long Time Employees Loosing Out

Most of the employees from day one believed they would always be in line for promotions. They wore so many hats in the beginning, surely they figured, when they hung up most of those caps in the closet they’d be entitled to freely move up the organizational chart and place their remaining hat on their office’s rack while claiming a position yet to be formulated.  

Instead, those positions at the top level went to people like me who had larger company experience, than they did. Nothing wrong with them,  but they had yet to experience by trial and error what would be required when the pace accelerated and risks grew exponentially.

Summary

To answer your question, yes you can find happiness in one of the Organization Types and  in a growth stage — even if it’s not your type! 

How can that be true?  

Hint, it has something to do with unique challenges at each stage of growth and decline which challenge the key success factors that, well, bred success. 

And, therefore a different set of talents and abilities are required to navigate the transformation from the old to the new.

    • We’ve known for some time now that there’s this kind of yin-yang cycle working itself through organizational developmental stages. 
    • In the first stage the yin expresses itself as a loosening, organic, seeing what will work as the start up iterates its way into existence.  
    • Then too much of a good thing ushers in a tightening to regain control over what is working and what hasn’t worked and needs not to be repeated.  
    • And then having tightened up operations  to restrict control over resources far too much demands the cycle reverses  itself into a newer loosening phase.  

And, so on and so on through maturity, decline and reinvention. But remember, these transformations — think of them as a metamorphosis in the natural world when a caterpillar spins a cocoon, develops, and then emerges as a butterfly — a completely different insect.  

The point is loosening in the start up phase and loosening in the rapid growth stages require similar activities, the two stages are not the same animal or insect as they used to be or will become.

Stages of Growth

Start Up: Loosen — Crisis — Tighten

Emerging Growth: Tighten — Crisis — Loosen

In many cases a strong manager is needed who has the necessary knowledge and skill to introduce new business techniques to help them bridge the widening gulf between start-up and early growth stage.

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Often it’s up to 107 Resilient Product Teams to develop “the formula” by reducing the amount of random experimentation while accelerating new business by learning from early customers.  They streamline the rapid product development process and convert emerging knowledge into repeatable processes.

Emerging-Entrepreneurs in a 108 Core Business Group expand the number of products and variations available often preceding the need to break the organization into functional specialties.  They manage through the variable demand, but focus on building the capacity for higher growth with efficient ramp-ups for initial products.

Where to Find Best Fit Cultures

Talent Profile Growth Stage Organization Type
101 Breakpoint Inventors Start Up Paradoxy-Morons
103 Commercial Innovators Start Up Paradoxy-Morons
105 Marketing Athletes Start Up Emerging-Entrepreneurs
107 Resilient Product Teams Emerging Growth Emerging-Entrepreneurs
108 Core Business Group Emerging Growth Emerging-Entrepreneurs

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Founders hate to step aside during this turning point, even though they don’t have the temperament to be managers.

If they don’t, they prolong the inevitable. But, as we see in the next stage the directive management style plants the seeds for a new crisis at the end of the early growth stage.

Part Two: Evolution from Emerging Growth to Rapid Growth

Evidence

“4”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Social status is one of those things you don’t really feel like you care too much about until you’re in a position to gain or lose it and become surprised by your behavior. You are, after all, only human.”  Scorpio

Aren’t we all?

Random ones that make me want change my sign. 

“4”  Steve Howey, 42: “Even if you feel you have no news to share, make an effort to connect with friends and family. You’ll be surprised what fortuitous information comes up when there’s no particular agenda to the conversation.”  Cancer

I guess when all around you feel trapped by this pandemic, news and information bubbles up naturally in conversations, eh?

“3”  Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “What you desire will not come about through direct means. There is no pushing, buying or persuasion involved, only attraction. The most attractive mode is modesty and moderation.” Leo

In my own natural experiment gathering intelligence about what might work for me in this manner won over enough people in my 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon method who volunteered to refer me to other like-minded people and introduce me to enough decision-makers that opportunities appeared beyond my wildest dreams.

“3”  Steve Kerr, 54: “The wise choices are easier to make when you know what you care about. When you don’t know yet, don’t worry about being wise. Anything you choose will teach you more about what you care about.” Libra

Not so much as evidence for today, but more for the years I’ve put into the theory and the field testing in my own life and with clients and students I’ve advised, I find this relevant.

“5”  Steve Aoki, 41: “Today’s problem isn’t so tough. Ask a few people, do a thorough internet search, read an article or two and you’ll know enough to make an informed decision.” Sagittarius

An informed decision about what positions you best in your career with a type of organization or a gnarly problem to solve in the next stage of organization growth, decline or reinvention is that this original research has always been about.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “It will be important to check off all of the daily habits you hold so dear today because it is only after these rituals are complete that you feel you have the space to share freely.” Pisces

As I work my way through this manuscript, Volume Two — Workfit, I fess up that if it weren’t for my daily habits which became rituals it would be awfully hard not to work 24/7 plowing through this content that I know it’s time to shut my office door and walk into my life.

Holiday Forecast for the Week Ahead: 

Some believe that love is an entity that is either present or not, that it must be found, not created, that shows up with its own characteristics and cannot be changed or manipulated. 

Then there’s the school of thought that depicts love as an emotion no different from other psychological states such as fear or satisfaction. In this model, with the right elements, the feeling can be conjured up, led around, intensified and molded …. the role of the subconscious in relationships. 

Below the thinking of which we are aware, there is a vast neural network buzzing with the activity of keeping us alive. This hardworking mind takes in all the sensory and cognitive information of living and processes it at lightning speed, organizing those cues so that only the most relevant information comes into consciousness. 

As for our attractions, by the time we realize them, they have already been vetted by the subconscious against hundreds of criteria, some superficial, some ancient and animal. An awful lot of psychological gauges are involved, too, having to do with our family of origin and how much the other person feels familiar and has similar strengths and weaknesses to that of our parents.

I’m afraid the TauBits of Wisdom offered by the Steves today pale in comparison with what lies ahead for us.  I love this on so many levels, don’t you?

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines organically grew from 4516 to 4636.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • Saw the movie, didn’t realize that one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly — his detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch book series and Amazon Prime series — also wrote, “The Lincoln Lawyer” which I just finished. Gotta tell you I can’t not see his lead character (Mickey Haller, Bosch’s half brother) as anyone else but Matthew McConaughey. 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

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S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab

Each of us is born from a mother whose being remains etched on our very essence. For those who have a special language with their mother, that identifying banter will be in full force, as will shared aesthetics, recipes and other matters of style and much more.

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “While some cannot seem to recognize the magnificence of a thing until it’s gone, you add foresight to the matter, imagining the thing gone in order to better appreciate the impact of its presence while you have it.” Scorpio

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 43 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 9th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles; S3 E41 — What’s Up with Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay?; S3 E40 — How Stealing Your Sign Led Me to a Nobel Prize

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E43 — See What You’ve Been Missing …; S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt; S2 E41 — A Pandemic End to Real Estate and Consulting?; S2 E40 — The Profound Impact of the Pandemic on Nouns

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E43 — Desperation on Such a Summer’s Day; S1 E42 — Love on the Run; S1 E41 — The Dream Was Over, Long Live the Dream; S1 E40 — Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving On

Context

Today’s intro and forecast for next week by Holiday Mathis will probably be seen as a copyright violation and lead to the denial of my parole because my petty larceny history of stealing your horoscopes.

I’m not proud of it, but I’m guessing after three years of this crime spree, they’ll just add on more time to my tab. Thank you again Holiday:

Each of us is born from a mother whose being remains etched on our very essence. For those who have a special language with their mother, that identifying banter will be in full force, as will shared aesthetics, recipes and other matters of style and much more.

Holiday Forecast for the Week Ahead: 

Some years, the mighty oak drops 10,000 acorns — a feast for the animals, the animals that eat the animals and all down the line. 

Of these thousands of seeds, only one needs to remain to further the oak family… urges you to align with the oak’s style on themes of contribution and abundance. 

Keep giving without stressing as to where the returns will come from — such things are as difficult to predict as which of the 10,000 acorns will bear a new tree. Just trust that returns will come from somewhere. … is an excellent time to start a business, make a deal, invest, begin a job and the like … put a perspective shift in motion. 

A theme here is how things aren’t the same out of context. A sentence means something different when you yank it from the paragraph. 

Outside of the factory, the uniform makes no sense, the tools even less so. And the people you know in one place seem strange to you in the light of a different setting.

Contextually confusing scenarios can actually be so startling they cause us to see our relationships, environments and roles afresh. Once seen, there is no unseeing; once progressed, there’s no going back.

Evidence

Well, your Holiday Tau hits home for those of us who no longer have mothers to share this day. Treasure them while you can whether with foresight or imagination or by staying in the moment in their presence. 

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “While some cannot seem to recognize the magnificence of a thing until it’s gone, you add foresight to the matter, imagining the thing gone in order to better appreciate the impact of its presence while you have it.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Just put these three on my misdemeanor tab, will y’a?

Haha, Howey your Holiday Tau explains the core value pitch knowledge workers advance for getting paid for their smarts not just for the hours the log. 

“4”  Steve Howey, 42: “So much that the world asks you to do will be neither productive nor necessary. What if you just did the bare minimum? There’s nothing to gain from filling all of your time.” Cancer

Wow, Steve your TauBit of Wisdom explains feelings and grief I want to remember for another day. 

“3”  Steve Kerr, 54: “Feelings, like weather, move over the scene, some lasting longer than others. Though eventually, everything passes through, over, on… This is bittersweet in the case of passionate intensity but a deep relief in the case of grief.” Libra

Your Holiday Tau reminds me of advice I took to heart over the years to find the sweet spot between analysis paralysis and buyers remorse. Kinda like no tears or regrets. 

“5”  Steve Aoki, 41: “It took awhile for you to make a decision, and now that you’ve made it, you have no intention of changing your mind. Your commitment is admirable. Note that it is possible to stay at once committed and open.” Sagittarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8138 to 8193 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles

Virginia Heffernan evokes the “Gen-X Generation” in her column about how the current baby bust — couples not doing their duty to their ancestors — and probably exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic isolation, will produce another overlooked generation in the grand scheme of things.

“5”  Steve Nash, 45: “Knowing that someone will only remember two or three things you talk about, you pick the most important topics and find an artful and memorable way to put those ideas across.”  Aquarius

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 42 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 8th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E41 — What’s Up with Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay?; S3 E40 — How Stealing Your Sign Led Me to a Nobel Prize; S3 E39 — Ready for Your Big Leap Forward?

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt; S2 E41 — A Pandemic End to Real Estate and Consulting?; S2 E40 — The Profound Impact of the Pandemic on Nouns; S2 E39 — The Best Tau for the Pandemic Year, Don’t You Agree?

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E42 — Love on the Run; S1 E41 — The Dream Was Over, Long Live the Dream; S1 E40 — Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving On; S1 E39 — What’s Up with Facebook?

Context

First, the public service announcement — while it may be too late for flowers, don’t forget to call your mother tomorrow.  

Is there a theme for today?  

Virginia Heffernan evokes the “Gen-X Generation” in her column about how the current baby bust — couples not doing their duty to their ancestors — and probably exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic isolation, will produce another overlooked generation in the grand scheme of things.  

But, who can blame them?  

Unless you believe card carrying Baby Boomer Bill Gates has planted chips in COVID-19 arms and single-handedly smeared the fossil fuels industry you might empathize with the teenagers — older than the unborn (in the even grander, Karma kind of scheme) — and agree with their Gen-Z spokesperson, Greta from Finland in her streaming series, ”Greta Thunberg – A Year To Change The World.” 

In a rare moment after visiting with coal miners who actually applaud her message — yes, that’s right — you see a candid Greta when she shares how deflated she feels, like a powerless little girl, compared to Trump’s grade-school bullying before and after they co-headlined a conference of international leaders.

Yet she’s the one acting like the only adult in the room.

Her generation, she reminds us, will still be here when the Baby Boomers are extinct, having done nothing in this critical moment,  leaving them on the wrong side of planetary history, and judged harshly in the future for their inaction.

And finally, Juliette Paskowitz the “beatnik matriarch” of San Onofre surf camp clan dies in a care facility at age 89 in nearby San Clemente, California. From her obituary by Steve Marble in the LA Times:

Juliette Paskowitz and her husband embraced a Jack Kerouac lifestyle: boundless, free-spirited, going where the road took them — most often in the direction of the beach. It was the life any kid could only dream of, bounding across the country in an overstuffed camper — from San Clemente to Pensacola to the shoreline of Venezuela, always searching for the perfect wave. 

With Dorian Paskowitz at the wheel, nine kids jammed in the back and Juliette riding shotgun, the family finally parked the rig on the sand in San Onofre, opened a surf camp and spent their days riding the glassy curls, playing in the whitewash and chasing one another from lifeguard tower to lifeguard tower. 

“If ‘Nomadland’ was a 2, we were at a 10 as far as sheer adventure, uncertainty, homelessness and never knowing what the next day might bring,” said Israel “Izzy” Paskowitz, the fourth-oldest child in the clan. 

“It was wonderful.” Juliette Paskowitz, the matriarch who held “the first family of surfing” all together, often singing arias while listening to opera on a small transistor radio in the camper…. 

Dorian preached the rewards of surfing so relentlessly that it caught the attention of sportswear designer Tommy Hilfiger, who applied the family name to his line. 

A record label, perhaps thinking they’d found the sun-bleached version of “The Partridge Family,” invited the family to cut a record. A filmmaker made a 2008 documentary on the family titled “Surfwise.”

A theme?

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Huh? Liberation.  Getting your habits to march along like ducklings following their mother, all in a row? Interesting.  But, it ain’t my birthday.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

There’s a liberation taking place. A year from now, you’ll look back and celebrate this moment when you cease to needlessly judge yourself. You’ll opt for new ways of pulling your habits into line. You’ll enjoy what you create because you dared to go in a new direction. Work leads to new interests; new interests pay you.

Knowing when to examine and when to let it go, is that right, Stevie?

“3”  Steve Smith, 30, Stevie Nicks, 72: “A few people will make an initial decision and many others will uncritically accept it. You, however, will push pause and do your own evaluation. You can’t personally examine everything, but this is within your realm.” Gemini

Haha, you two comedians break me up.  And you, Woz seriously your Holiday Tau feels like how you persisted along with that other Steve to build it before knowing they would come, eh?

“4”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Your wisdom shines through your choice of what to get involved with and when. Trust those initial prescient instincts, even when (especially when!) you can’t reason them out.” Leo

How is it that your Holiday Tau feels a cut above the TauBits offered by the other Steves today?  I’m thanking you for you more practical take.

“5”  Steve Nash, 45: “Knowing that someone will only remember two or three things you talk about, you pick the most important topics and find an artful and memorable way to put those ideas across.”  Aquarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8003 to 8088 organically grown followers

Foresight

 Quality-of-Life   

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S3 E41 — What’s Up with Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay?

I’ve lost my way.  It’s nothing to become alarmed about.  It happens everyday around this time.  Unlike an early onset of dementia I usually can find my bearings around 5:45 am with my Apple News ritual.

“5”  Steve Kerr, 54: “Projects have a beginning, middle and an end, though that is not the best order of approach. Begin with the end in mind. If you don’t have an end in mind yet, assist someone who does and you’ll learn a lot.” Libra

Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 41 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 7th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E40 — How Stealing Your Sign Led Me to a Nobel Prize; S3 E39 — Ready for Your Big Leap Forward?; S3 E38 — Sliding on a Super Slippery Slope to 2nd or 3rd Cousins

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E41 — A Pandemic End to Real Estate and Consulting?; S2 E40 — The Profound Impact of the Pandemic on Nouns; S2 E39 — The Best Tau for the Pandemic Year, Don’t You Agree?; S2 E38 — What Should You Do If You Stumble Across Loaded Information?

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E41 — The Dream Was Over, Long Live the Dream; S1 E40 — Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving On; S1 E39 — What’s Up with Facebook?; S1 E38 — Day 38 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

I’ve been feeling the pull of returning later in the day to Apple News for a destination-specific summary of headlines that sometimes go back a couple of years. 

Especially for those that have very little news like Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay. 

For instance “Stay at Keystone Resort in Colorado for only $109 per night” in “Travel and Leisure” 3 yrs ago. Every time I open “Keystone Resort” this is the lead story at the top of other scrollable photos and headlines and almost always prompts me to return later. 

But, it’s a ritual, which I wrote about as a section in my natural experiment report’s “Conclusion.”

When I finish those eight iPhone screenfuls I’m still effortlessly following my bliss remaining in Daniel Kahneman’s, System 1 as described “Thinking Fast and Slow”.  Click on a place like Keystone, quickly scan photos, headlines and dates until I recognize the last one I captured and move on in under 5 seconds, tops.

There’s more.

From the same source, Travel and Leisure, “Save 40% on Stays at the Santa Ynez Inn in Santa Barbara” — 3 years ago.  

But my favorite from NBC News is, “Bear freed from SUV in Tahoe, California, as family looks on” — 1 year ago.  The video screen shot shows the bear like he’s a member of the family looking in through the rear window as if he forgot to grab his backpack.

And, there’s the second story, but from 2 years ago written by the SFGate that churns my stomach before breakfast,  “4th of July revelers pile Tahoe beaches with thousands of pounds of trash.” 

My report write up currently in the Conclusions chapter is where I feel adrift.  So last night I began to re-read it and edit it from the beginning forward until 8:35 pm.  I left off in the section, “Two Fortune Cookies and Dove Dark Chocolate.”

My renewed interest actually started with two fortune cookies from our local Panda Express at the end of mall across the street from the high school, shared with Emma the Baroness, the Scorpio love of my life, and after dinner by the chance discovery that our favorite dark chocolate wrappers hid B-side quotes of encouragement.

I wanted inspiration and motivation and found a little hiding under the red wrappers:

“Life happens between an inhale and an exhale!” Brianna Z., Nevada

“Be the sculptor of your dreams.” – Joanne C., California

“Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.” – Jetta L. Massachusetts

“Don’t stop until you’re proud.” Lauren N., Colorado

But, my next ritual on mornings like this, Friday, in addition to selecting the Holiday Tau for the day which confirms my biases, is reading the comics, or as my day called them, the funny pages.

From today’s “Pearls Before Swine” by Stephan Pastis — who should request a time out from the sidelines for a ruling about his first name — is he or isn’t he a Steve? 

In the first panel with yellow background Rat and Pig stand barely shoulder height behind a brown table with two plates on it. 

Pig says, “Hey look we got fortune cookies.”  

Rat says, “Mine says next year brings you great success.” 

Pig says, “How nice.” 

But, Rat can’t help himself and complains, “Yeah, but they’re all too general and bland like that.  I’d prefer some specificity.”

Read yours.”You will get run over by a 1989 Accord. 

To which Pig says, “Specificity is overrated.”

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

And, so are birthdays.  If Kahneman verifies that bliss equates to “System 1” I’d specifically consider changing my birthday to today’s.  But, too much effort and paperwork would be involved — clearly “System 2” stuff which goes against the sentiment, right?  

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

In a way, following your bliss is the most responsible thing you can do. For one thing, it pays. Lucky financial moves will be the result of a stellar perspective, which comes from delving deeply into your delights. You’ll work with your emotions to create circumstances that ultimately benefit many, a skill that rubs off on others.

Our Patron Saint’s Carbon Beach house made the real estate news yesterday in Malibu, California.  Of course, the celebrity pedigree headline wasn’t really needed in this super heated, pre-bubble-licious market.  But his Holiday Tau reminds me of my approach for sizing up one of my coaching clients to zero in on how I could best help.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “When you’re talking to someone you’re trying to understand where they are coming from. You can picture their life outside the interaction with greater accuracy because of the excellent questions you ask.” Aries

Wait, what?  Was I reading your mind?  Or at least pre-reading your Holiday Tau last night after 8 pm?  Or am I reverse engineering your TauBit of Wisdom?  Who cares, I make the rules and I’m stealing it.

“5”  Steve Kerr, 54: “Projects have a beginning, middle and an end, though that is not the best order of approach. Begin with the end in mind. If you don’t have an end in mind yet, assist someone who does and you’ll learn a lot.” Libra

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of digital magazines jumps from 8003 to 8088 organically grown followers

Foresight

 Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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S2 E88 — Convincing Family, Friends, Fools and Angels

We flew into Manhattan, digitally videoed almost all of their software engineers, surfaced their “core foundational story” and crafted a marketing and advertising campaign for the CEO, and the internal story to keep and retain the brains in the fold.

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “The brilliant solution will be simple, but it’s not always so easy to think like that. What would an outsider see? A child? Ask the naive questions that your sophisticated mind often skips.” Cancer

Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 88 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 31st day of July in the summer of 2020.  

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Season One and Two are a two-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic and then in this unfolding pandemic year.

Previously in Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E87 — Start Ups Aren’t For Everyone. Are They a Better or Worse Fit for You?; S2 E86 — How To Avoid a Disastrous Career Like Mine; S2 E85 — How to Up the Odds in Your Favor

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E88 — Who’s Marc Maron and What’s da Vinci got to do with him?; S1 E87 — Pipe Bombs Destroy Vacation Bliss; S1 E86 — Day 86 of My 1-Year Natural Experiment; S1 E85 — What happens when the fear subsides?

Context

This is a continuation of “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit” a work-in-progress.

In a previous episode I summarized everything you need to know about four basic organizations to stack the odds in your favor when shopping around for your next job opportunity.  

Oh, what disaster to avoid (unlike me) in your next career move. 

Now we’re building on each of the 16 talent profiles and how they can take advantage of opportunities in stages of organizational growth from Start Up to Maturity and from Decline to Reinvention.

Five Major Stages of Growth for Organizations

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Start Ups

Their founders are often described as a maniac on a mission. In the very beginning they grow organically through loose collaborations. Innovation leads to an IPO or acquisition by a larger company like Google or Amazon or other more mature players in the space. 

What they develop, independently, usually dramatically speeds up a standard process, or eliminates major steps, or in some radical way revolutionizes business-as-usual.

30. Venture Guidance —

As a Systematic-Professional advisor I prepped potential startup entrepreneurs seeking investments from a group of entrepreneurs and former executives who agreed to pledge $50,000 each as seed or A-series funding.  Presenting with a deck of 10 slides, after being coached individually, they stood and delivered to a group of us role playing the sharks and throwing them curve balls challenging their assumptions.

Wannabe Entrepreneurs Seeking Angels 

I’d meet each person with a great idea, hear them out, conduct a preliminary in take against the criteria for receiving our free services provided by a budget from The Small Business Association.  

Instead of qualifying for a business loan at a vetted SBA bank affiliate that they’d have to pay back, we were there to vet their idea against evolving criteria provided to us by Tech Coast Angels — a group of entrepreneurs and former executives who agree to pledge $50,000 each as seed or A-series funding.  

In my own career I had failed so many times at start-ups that I could pick apart most of their plans and presentations almost instantaneously.  But, that didn’t mean I wasn’t a sucker for ideas I felt would be sure hits.  Even after I left the SBA program I continued to meet and mentor some of “my” entrepreneurs.

Individual Tech Coast Angels investors rarely got their money back on my clients.  

Our game plan was to divide the amount you needed by $50,000 increments and then you knew how many of those investors you needed to convince. Two for $100,000 or 20 for $1 million.

If our wannabes “graduated” from our “harassment” they submitted an application for an invitation to the next Tech Coast Angel meeting of all investors.  If they passed their initial screening, then they were invited to present to the large group. And, if lucky, to other Angel investors in the region until they collected enough $50,000 commitments.

Before Shark Tank

One of the mentors I invited to participate in The Executive to Executive MBA mentoring program provided a service just like Shark Tank, but way before. His proposition was for a founder to present to his group , get evaluated on strengths and weaknesses, work on the weaknesses with advisors within the network and pitch again.

Part of his value proposition, besides providing billable hours for advisors in their network, was introductions to investors who favored their model of vetting startup ideas.  

The Angels usually recouped their investments when the venture capitalists invested with hundreds of millions or they made their money when a startup was acquired by a larger company or registered for an initial public offering (IPO) on one of the stock exchanges.

But to be honest, the statistics rang true.  Most start ups fail within the first 5 years, but that’s after tapping into friends, family and fools and maxing out all of their credit cards and taking out second mortgages.  If one of my clients didn’t secure Angel Funding, then the game was over.  They never jumped the chasm to land on emerging growth. 

27. Knowledge Management — Brand Company

At Think!City and again as Systematic-Professional consultants, we crashed our models together — learning and development, knowledge creation, media production, internet communities, strategy, advertising and marketing. 

We worked together in a highly creative environment within a corrugated metal building designed by a local architecture firm in Laguna Beach, on a curve in Laguna Canyon Road.

Start Up Talent Culture

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

From our studio we continued internal and external branding with clients ranging from startups to Fortune 100.  I fell headlong into sharing new knowledge that springs out of new innovations.

We pioneered a way of capturing the essence of a brand on digital video, searched through audio tracks for the touch points and reused portions of the interviews for orienting new coders hired at accelerated rates. 

Start Up #1

One of our clients, Interworld, was so new their CEO, a 101 Breakpoint Inventor,  just didn’t know how to talk about what they did.  So, we flew into Manhattan, digitally videoed almost all of their software engineers, surface their “core foundational story” and crafted a marketing and advertising campaign for the CEO, and the internal story inside to keep and retain the brains in the fold.

The CEO was able to coherently sell Interworld’s story to potential investors and customer within an advertising campaign framed by their brand.

Before engaging the 103 Commercial Innovators and 105 Marketing Athletes in our process Interworld’s turnover rate hit 90%. But, because they had told us what their core foundational story was, they fervently believed in that mission they defined and the vision we fedback to them.  And, they voluntarily stopped taking the two or three daily recruiter calls from Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Interworld loved our work. 

Start Up #2

A technology opportunity emerged quickly which focused primarily on retail investors throwing money at an e-commerce platform that addressed Amazon’s bookselling initial business.  They saw the writing on the wall. The business model customized each “brick and mortar” business and took them online with the same look and feel of the store. 

As each new company signed on, the company with the platform, Online Retail Partners, learned new stuff, and developed newer bells and whistles they then shared with their “investment partners”.

The retailers knew their business, but didn’t understand technology.  So they invested in a company that did.  And as Online Retail Partners grew out, the new and legacy retail investors would share in the rewards. 

Warren of Incubating Start Ups

So, up on the 11th floor of a dingy gray building with only one operating elevator and noise chugging steam heaters sat a warren of start-up companies squirreled off into sections of large and small rooms — basically large enough to fit in tables with chairs facing each other and a lot of digital screens and yards and yards of cables.  

Online Retail Partners was one of them. We arrived to surface their business model like we did at Interworld.  The CEO laid out several problems for our help.  He said they worked on Internet-time — ever accelerating time-to-market like we faced at Proxima creating 2-way “meeting room tools”; they couldn’t afford any stinking time away from their pace to go to no stinking training; they “popped” retail businesses online in 75 to 90 days in a slow quarter; they needed to hire and assimilate 100 new employees and …

When we met them they had a core team of 5 or 6 geniuses — 103 Commercial Innovators and 105 Marketing Athletes — who learned how to finish each other’s sentences.  Everything worked like butter.  Nothing bad happened, until they began to break up the foundational team as they took on new partners and spread them out among them.  

Chaos But In a Good Way

New hires told us they would see people walking around between the shared couches and conversation areas in the incubator, back to one or two other tabled rooms, but had no idea which one of them was the team lead on a project they were hired into.

To us it just seemed like a ferris wheel spinning faster and faster until somebody launches out into space.

Crazy creative Dave and I interviewed those first geniuses and recording those on digital video with B-roll footage to capture the early warehouse environment with exposed pipes — kinda like where we worked in the corrugated metal building in the bend of Laguna Canyon Road.  

No Time For This

First of all they couldn’t agree on how many product development steps it took from new idea to finished product — in their case a password and access to their customers online environment.  We interviewed them separately, then held a group session where in an old school way had them draw their product development process on butcher paper taped to a wall

A new hire came up to me and said that was the single best thing that happened to him in the first 30 days — watching them convince each other what their process should be — as he was sitting off in the conversation pit looking on.  

He told me as we were breaking down the lights, that when we identified who we interviewed, asked for their phone and email he found out who his boss was and finally knew what he should be working on in “Phase 1”.

Team Follows the Leader to the Next Company

The CEO, who came from Staples of all places, body-snatched the original team almost intact from one of Amazon’s competitors and gave them complete freedom in founding the company.  And the technology team’s leader —  a 101 Breakpoint Inventor —   absolutely walked on water all the others said, so his personality, reputation and competence provided enough “stickiness” in the beginning.  But the second and third wave of new hires didn’t know him or about him.

So, as they grew, turnover accelerated.

Stickiness and Accelerated Time-to-Mastery

Our challenge was to accelerate each new team member’s time-to-mastery, without drawing too much away from everyone’s concentration on shortening product cycles, and without sending them to orientation off-sites for a week like we did in the old days.

Crazy Dave and I knew from our experiences with “Strategic Safari Tools” and technology innovation challenges circulating the new knowledge innovation teams “throw off” as emerging best practices was critical to their survival as they tried to scale and grow.

We focused on those emerging best practices.  We drew out the product development phases, using our digital video we briefly explained what happened in of them from my interview with each expert, using just the first frame of their picture we captioned them with their email and phone number.

It became embarrassingly easy to find each other quickly and efficiently. And solved the eternal problem with best practices for as long as I can remember.

In the old world, when you finished a project the leader was to see to it a best practice was written up — what the situation and context demanded, something about surprises, what worked well and what didn’t, and maybe a question about “if you had it to do again, what would you have done differently?”

Product geniuses didn’t have the time to write something up.  They raced around attending to first-time problems and gnarly solutions.

Knowledge Leakage

We used to call it knowledge leakage.  It just evaporated. But the issue was composing something in writing. 

If you wanted me to write up a best practice about what we’ve covered here it would be a chore.  

It’s so much easier for you to interview me,  to pull it out of an expert and capture it.  As you interview them, they’re given the opportunity to unspool.

They’re replaying it for the first time from beginning to end and re-discovering what they learned, but hadn’t thought of before.  It could be the real lesson.

We Slowed Them Down Until …

I found a software tool that scanned down through the audio tracks of video and logged in time codes and content automatically.  They provided an editor tool and a search function so we could very quickly zero in on all the instances that “Phase Five” appears in that hour of tape.

We didn’t all have to be in the studio at the same time.

That was the real pinch point in our behind the scenes magic.  With ORP or Interworld, or 18Global, or even Zany Brainy we couldn’t slow them down and the way we did business originally did just that

Our Systematic-Professional practice offered digital asset management — that just-in-time, just enough capability delivered to any creative team member’s desktop.

We Practiced What We Preached

Our Verage searchable knowledge base allowed us to view the entire 1-hour digital video, a smaller section of the video or little snippets within a clip.   If someone rolled onto our production team without having traveled to Ireland, Australia or Dallas they could view everything to get up to speed with the client.

Summary

Why are these talent profiles magnetized to Start Ups?  Usually the “Maniac on a Mission” aka 101 Breakpoint Inventor thrives on the highest degrees of Independence, Speed and Disruptive Innovation. 

As founders they bet it all on the line — “Go Big of Go Home!”  Usually they’ve cultivated a loose team of co-conspirators who may not entirely grasp the expansiveness of vision, 

16 Talent Profiles by Organization Type

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

but as one 103 Commercial Innovator told us, “Whenever Ian calls, we know to drop everything and join him.”  They know the new venture, base on past adventures, promises to be one-of-a-kind that they will regret if they don’t hop on board the train leaving the station — destination unknown.  Wherever founders take them the market, industry or themselves will never be the same.

Start Up Culture Attracting Three Talent Profiles

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

The early team can’t all share founders need for disruption and speed at the same highest degree.  To bring the vision to life and launch it into the marketplace some team players need medium degrees independence, disruptive innovation and speed to function aka 103 Commercial Innovators without unnecessarily challenging what the founders see that they can’t yet. Part of what they’re able to bring to the table is a translation function.  Figuring out how to define and deliver a proof of concept, a rapid prototype — something that is more tangible even for the rest of the team.  They’re always on the lookout for commercializing early applications of the vision, figuring out strategies for licensing their intellectual property and setting up joint R&D projects to fill in missing pieces and technologies. 

The first two usually hang out in Paradoxy-Moron organizations and can stay and grow as that organization matures through growth stages and reaches maturity. But finding a home in another start up, as serial entrepreneurs often do, they’re joined by folks, 105 Marketing Athletes who value speed (high) and affiliation (medium), but interject a focus on new knowledge creation.  They plug the holes in knowledge leakage that cutting edge processes produce by capturing it and sharing it and protecting it as proprietary processes almost as much as intellectual property.

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

 Life always gets more interesting when you follow that whisper of curiosity. Your interests and skills evolve. You’ll take risks and gather up the freedoms available to you on the other side. You’ll be applauded in a familiar group and accepted into an elite one. You’ll win with someone you feel driven to impress.

The whisper of curiosity — I love that turn of phrase.  This ain’t my legitimate Holiday Birthday, but it certainly applies to how I’ve led my career and original research which I’m trying to stuff into this here “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit” my work-in-progress.

“3”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “The point will be just to show up and see what you discover. If you can lower your expectation or, better yet, go in totally without one, you’ll be primed for a stellar day.” Aries 

Go in?  With this pandemic I hardly go out.  I pine for a stellar day, but I’m not seeing the signs of one yet, but it’s still early.

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “The brilliant solution will be simple, but it’s not always so easy to think like that. What would an outsider see? A child? Ask the naive questions that your sophisticated mind often skips.” Cancer

So often I had to ask myself that question and asked my clients similar sets of questions to move over, under, or around seemingly insurmountable barriers.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines organically grew from 4427 to 4516.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • Saw the movie, didn’t realize that one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly — his detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch book series and Amazon Prime series — also wrote, “The Lincoln Lawyer” which I just finished. Gotta tell you I can’t not see his lead character (Mickey Haller, Bosch’s half brother) as anyone else but Matthew McConaughey. 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

Posted on

S2 E85 — How to Up the Odds in Your Favor

Up until this point, the discussion about better and worse fit jobs and clients focused on me for illustrative purposes.  But you may have, hopefully, noticed an affinity for one or more of the four organizations.  And you may have felt an attraction to one or more of the 16 talent profiles which define an employer’s culture.  

“5”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “It would be cool if you had a manual for this project, but all the information out there is either too plentiful or too scanty to be of use to you. Reach out to a mentor for information that’s the right size.” Virgo

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 85 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 25th day of July in the summer of 2020.  

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Season One and Two are a two-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic and then in this unfolding pandemic year.

Previously in Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E84 — Maybe Robin Hood Got It Right After All, Eh?; S2 E83 — Why Shouldn’t You Always Lean On Things That Worked Before?; S2 E82 — How Do You Inject Innovation into a Century’s Old Company?

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E85 — What happens when the fear subsides?; S1 E84 — Crisis averted?  Energy depleted?  What are we going to do?; S1 E83 —The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book; S1 E82 — Why Writers Aren’t the Only Endangered Species. Sigh.

Context

This is a continuation of “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit” a work-in-progress.

In recent episodes (S2 E78, S2 E80, S2 E82 and S2 E84) I shared my Worse and Better fit experiences to illustrate a little more in depth description of what it is like working in and for clients in Paradoxy-Morons, Emerging-Entrepreneurs, Sustaining-Associates and Systematic-Professionals.

In this episode, let me summarize the key points you may to know to avoid your next career disaster.

Four Talent Profiles Attracted to Paradoxy-Moron Organizations

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Summary

What makes Paradoxy-Morons tick?

Disruptive Innovation, Independence and Speed

They notice how limited the traditional, status quo solves the really complex problems and challenges

Disrupting. 

A fast-paced, innovative culture that attracts and retains the best of the best. 

Motto?

“It’s better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission.”

What are their unique challenges? 

        • They champion paradigms based on new science discoveries.
        • Once is not enough. From one world beater to several again an again
        • Finding commercial applications of disruptive innovation in the form of new product categories — which haven’t been proven until flawed prototypes and buggy technology work themselves out

What are the takeaways?  

Innovations have to come faster.  Concurrent overlapping talent demands.

In the start up stage they are capable of anticipating something new and act decisively to establish a new market, industry, technology or a new scientific discipline.

Which Talent Profiles find a better fit with Paradoxy-Morons?

        • 101 PMBI Breakpoint Inventors
        • 102 PMTL Thought Leaders
        • 103 PMCI Commercial Innovators 
        • 104 R&D Experimenters

In which organization will they find a worse fit?

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Sustaining-Associates with their emphasis on:

          • Higher degrees of Sustained Improvement, Affiliation and Mastery
          • Building predictably upon past history and loyal customer retention.

Four Talent Profiles Attracted to Emerging-Entrepreneur Organizations

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Summary

What makes Emerging-Entrepreneurs tick?

They rapidly introduce new products into new rapidly moving niches while capturing emerging knowledge no-one else has and based on that experience introduce tweets to early business formulas.

Bias for Action. 

New Knowledge, Affiliation and Speed

Knowledge creation — teams introduce new products by applying emerging new knowledge for a competitive advantage.

Motto?

“There’s no time like the present”

What are their unique challenges? 

        • The 20% accomplish 80% of the results.
        • They learn rapidly by doing.
        • Figuring out what has to happen to boost performance with fewer and fewer trials and errors.

What are the takeaways?  

Imagine a relay race with individual record holders.  But, it takes flawless baton passing as a team to achieve world-class status.

Affiliation bonding is to the team.  It’s up to the team to learn the fastest way to take a new idea and introduce it into the marketplace.

They need to guard their organization’s core capabilities and emerging proprietary processes while quickly managing increasing degrees of complexity as they grow.

Which Talent Profiles find a better fit with Emerging-Entrepreneurs?

          • 105 EEMA Marketing Athletes
          • 106 EEOA Operational Accelerants
          • 107 EERPT Resilient Product Teams 
          • 108 EECBG Core Business Groups

In which organization will they find a worse fit?

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020 

Systematic-Professionals with their emphasis on: 

          • Higher degrees of Embedded Knowledge, Independence and Mastery
          • Classified, categorized, tested and benchmarked knowledge.

Four Talent Profiles Attracted to Sustaining-Associate Organizations

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Summary

What makes Sustaining-Associates tick?

112 SALS Loyal Survivalists anchor the Sustaining-Associates culture. They manage people, technologies, processes, and organizational structures to sustain the innovation they’ve already mastered. Employees identify with the organization and have high affiliation needs that favor slower paced industries and cultures.

Brand Loyalty. 

Sustained Improvement, Affiliation and Mastery

Building predictably upon past history and loyal customer retention.

Motto?

“If it win’t broke don’t fix it.”

What are their unique challenges? 

        • Missing competitive threats and responding too late.
        • Resting on their traditional successes.
        • Preparing the next generation of leaders for a different competitive environment.

What are the takeaways?  

To mature and survive their brand needs to be accepted by the majority of the total available market.

A loyal affiliated talent culture needs constant retention so associates maintain the organization’s reputation.

Through their behaviors they develop a trust mark that keeps bringing long-term customers back again and again

Which Talent Profiles find a better fit with Sustaining-Associates?

      • 109 SAICA Internal Change Agents
      • 110 SAAS Analytical Specialists
      • 111 SAAT Agile Tiger Teams 
      • 112 SALS  Loyal Survivalists

In which organization will they find a worse fit?

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Paradoxy-Morons with their emphasis on: 

          • Higher degrees of Disruptive Innovation, Independence and Speed
          • How limited the traditional, status quo solves the really complex problems and challenges

Four Talent Profiles Attracted to Systematic-Professional Organizations

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Summary

What makes Systematic-Professionals tick?

These are the experts who love their profession instead of a specific organization like Sustaining-Associates do. They’re the Idea Packagers, Professional Practitioners, Traditional Institutionalists in standards-setting associations led by well-known Branded Experts in the field.

Advanced Degrees and Certifications. 

Embedded Knowledge, Independence and Mastery

Emerging knowledge is classified, categorized, tested and benchmarked.

Motto?

“Robin Hood had it right”

What are their unique challenges? 

        • Research into complex problems and complicated large systems
        • Working in knowledge organizations and consulting partnerships.
        • Application of proprietary best practices and knowledge gleaned from their benchmark databases.

What are the takeaways?  

Methods and Metrics.  They prefer to distance themselves to remain objective and follow a well-articulated and tested methodology.

Their majority of clients are large-cap companies, government partners and the medical industry systems.

Studying these organizations provides a giant learning laboratory.

Acknowledged expertise attracts potential clients.

Rainmakers play an outsized role developing new and repeat business. 

Which Talent Profiles find a better fit with Systematic-Professionals?

          • 113 SPIC Idea Packagers
          • 114 SPBE Brand-as-Experts
          • 115 SPPP Professional Practitioners 
          • 116 SPIT Institutional Traditionalists

In which organization will they find a worse fit?

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Emerging-Entrepreneurs with their emphasis on: 

          • Higher degrees of New Knowledge, Affiliation and Speed
          • Knowledge creation — teams introduce new products by applying emerging new knowledge for a competitive advantage.

Up until this point.

The discussion about better and worse fit focused on me, for illustrative purposes.  Hopefully, you may have noticed an affinity for one or more of the organizations.  And you may have felt a tendency for one or more of the 16 talent profiles.  

Next up,

We’ll build on better and worse fit options as we review stages of organizational growth from Start Up to Maturity and from Decline to Reinvention.  

But, first what do the Steves offer as TauBits of Wisdom?

Evidence

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Things may not change immediately or even slowly, but the important thing is that they will change eventually. Never give in to cynicism. Your mind is made for beautiful thinking.” Scorpio

Got it, you are preaching to the choir with the first sentence.  It’s the second one that is extremely hard for me in this pandemic world today.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “If you worry about what you are going to say, then it will prevent you from listening to what is being said. Whatever you can do to put yourself at ease will give you an advantage.” Aries  

Gotta tell you I followed this TauBit of Wisdom after learning it the hard way.  I was so intimidated by advising former Vice Presidents and CEOs when I never was one, until I asked a simple question, “What have you been doing about …?” and listened.

“3”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “Are you holding on to false hope? No. Hope, in and of itself, is an act of truth and light. Believe the best and hold on, white-knuckled, to that version.” Taurus 

Or does hope lead to false expectations? And do false expectations lead to confirmation bias.  And does confirmation bias lead on a slippery slope to conspiracy theories?  Seem like it, eh?

“4”  Steve Smith, 30: “Your head and your heart have not had a meeting in a while, and they will go in two different directions until you bring them into alignment through something peaceful, like meditation, dance or creative play.” Gemini

I choose the first and last alignment choices.

“4”  Steve Howey, 42: “Make space. Get rid of things before you have a replacement. Emptiness is not nothingness. Space is a “something” even if you don’t know what it is. Potential counts.” Cancer

Yeah, I see how being cooped up for so long drives you a little crazy without space.

“4”  Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Assume that people are doing their very best. If they don’t act like this is the case, they may be consumed with fighting a battle you do not know about. Give the benefit of the doubt wherever possible.” Leo

I’ll have to repeat this over and over today for when I venture out to my local Ralph’s grocery store and encounter the number of unmasked COVID-19 spreaders.

“5”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “It would be cool if you had a manual for this project, but all the information out there is either too plentiful or too scanty to be of use to you. Reach out to a mentor for information that’s the right size.” Virgo

OK, it would have been cool years ago when I conducted my original research for this work-in-progress, my WorkFit manuscript. Maybe you can use it as a manual for you.

“5”  Steve Harvey, 62: “You won’t get that push from the world today, so you’ll have to give it to yourself. Do so in the form of an intention. Setting an intention leads to actions you wouldn’t have taken otherwise.” Capricorn

Totally see how this TauBit applies — in a lockdown pandemic world intention comes a little easier for us introverts.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “You’ll thank the roadblock, as it helps you find your own path. You’ll thank the mistakes, as they are your best teachers. You’ll thank the enemy that keeps you so strong.” Pisces

So, two out of three is still pretty good, right?

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines organically grew from 4397 to 4427.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • Saw the movie, didn’t realize that one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly — his detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch book series and Amazon Prime series — also wrote, “The Lincoln Lawyer” which I just finished. Gotta tell you I can’t not see his lead character (Mickey Haller, Bosch’s half brother) as anyone else but Matthew McConaughey. 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

Posted on

S3 E39 — Ready for Your Big Leap Forward? 

This morning my knee weather is tight, with a chance of pain, but dull achy in my left hip bone, feeling like a COVID vaccine site, with a slight chance of improving if I wear a sleeve.

“5”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “It appears that someone took a big leap forward, when, in fact, this was just a series of small but consistent steps over time — doable for anyone with the tenacity. You are most certainly in the category.”  Taurus

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 39 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 2nd day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E38 — Sliding on a Super Slippery Slope to 2nd or 3rd Cousins; S3 E37 — Tell Me More Lies I Can Believe In; S3 E36 — Placebo, Meaningful Coincidence or Just Feeling Lucky

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E39 — The Best Tau for the Pandemic Year, Don’t You Agree?; S2 E38 — What Should You Do If You Stumble Across Loaded Information?; S2 E37 — How Deep is the Chasm? What Do We Do?; S2 E36 — Turning Lemons into Margaritas

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E39 — What’s Up with Facebook?; S1 E38 — Day 38 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E37 — Day 37 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E36 — Day 36 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

You know when you sprain your ankle sometimes you can walk it off?  And then later when you sit down for any extended period of time the pain sets in with the swelling and stiffness?  

Really?  

Thank your lucky stars, then.  Well, Saturday was that day.  Only I tripped over  a 6 inch sprinkler next to a fading green telephone utility cylinder which brought me unexpectedly to my knees. 

They hyperextended buckling under me until in the same motion I rolled on the cement edge of our driveway.  Luckily releasing the mower handle’s squeeze bar automatically shut it off so I didn’t have to use my feet to push against the mower rolling towards me.  

Ouch. I struggled to stand.  Once I assured myself with Emma the Baroness’ help that I could walk some of it off I hobbled over to our garage and sat in a tan plastic molded chair, rested, drank an energy drink and calculated I’d better walk it off like a sprain.  

I did. 

I finished mowing the lawn. Like an ankle sprain, the swelling ache with occasional sharp pain here and there took over for the rest of the afternoon and into my dreams last night. 

This morning my knee weather is tight, with a chance of pain, but dull achy in my left hip bone, feeling like a COVID vaccine site, with a slight chance of improving if I wear a sleeve.

P.S. The grass looks fabulous. 

Evidence

Will rest and pain pills and positive thinking take me through the upcoming week?  What’s the forecast?

Holiday Forecast for the Week Ahead: 

People cannot talk themselves into happiness, and people who demand smiles from others are unlikely to get real ones. Why? Because feelings speak their own language, a tongue as complex and nuanced as it is raw and verbless. 

Even those who exist inside a feeling state are often at a loss as to the particulars of its communication, let alone how to recreate it. Even though emotions seem to defy spoken command, they are not impossible to conjure. ‘I have’ and an accompanying misconception that possessions are the key to emotional satisfaction. 

The theory has remarkable resilience. No matter how many times it’s disproved, the desire to acquire never seems to abate. But at least our quest to own things tunes us in to our senses and gives us an appreciation for the material world that often ends up aiding our journey to a feeling. While owning things, claiming people or chasing the material cannot create an emotion, the quest makes us aware of how we join the moment. Appreciation, wonder, criticism, frustration, joy and other feelings are conjured not by life but by our choice of response to life.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Yeah, right.  Funny you mention “lend a leg up,” right?  But not to worry.  As you know, this ain’t really my birthday.  I hope it is yours and you find relief from self-regulation.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

Your love-hate relationship with self-regulation is about to change into all love. You’ll get into the swing of treating yourself so sweetly and nudging, nay, seducing yourself into the habits that give you the life and look you want. You’ll leverage social vibes skillfully; relationships lend a leg up in the professional world and vice versa.

Boy, for two singers and a comedian your Holiday Tau is especially mean.  I’ve been working with my physical therapist on my left knee to straighten it out, rebuild my muscles around it and master my balance.  So don’t give me “someone took a big leap forward.”  That was probably your idea, right Colbert?

“5”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “It appears that someone took a big leap forward, when, in fact, this was just a series of small but consistent steps over time — doable for anyone with the tenacity. You are most certainly in the category.”  Taurus

What is it about today?  Oh, right two more comedians.  I don’t appreciate your Holiday Tau emphasizing “a break and a distraction” as a benefit.  Luckily it wasn’t a break, more like a hyperextension in both knees.  As far as a distraction, “Emma the Baroness, will you bring me another pain pill, please darling?”

“4”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Once your heart sets a quest in motion, it’s pretty difficult to stop the search. However, since things often show up when you’re not looking for them, you’ll benefit from a break and a distraction.” Leo

At least your Holiday Tau feels a little more reality-based, except for your first part, G&G.  We’d been working on my balance issues, my physical therapist and me (or I?), and you can’t not take chances even though they involve stomach-churning risk, right?  

“3”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “You’re open to the magical, wonderful happenings, but you’re also aware of the stomach-churning risks involved. One won’t happen without the other, and most likely, the risk comes first.” Virgo

Oh, okay.  First I didn’t expect today’s Holiday Tau to come from someone like you.  And second, being laid up on the couch made me appreciate Emma the Baroness’ interior design talent.  But, pain trumps all else in my internal environment.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Your internal environment is worth addressing since it’s the temperature and lighting scheme you live in all day. Give intentional thought to what would make you feel more comfortable.” Pisces

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of digital magazines jumps from 8003 to 8088 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • I enjoy any of the Harry Bosch detective books in the series authored by Michael Connelly.  “A Darkness More Than Night,” described “A strange constricting feeling filled his gut. He didn’t believe in coincidences… (It) was a coincidence that even a believer in coincidence would have a difficult time accepting.”So much for detectives, tying up loose ends, relying on their hunches and reordering data, information and witness first hand accounts. 
    • Or, in “Black Box,” Connelly’s latest Harry Bosch adventure he writes, “But Bosch stayed positive.  He’d gotten lucky with Pistol Pete and the serial number.  There was no reason to think it wouldn’t hold.”  Of course, Harry had a run in with his newer Lieutenant a page or two later … “So much for his luck holding… he felt that more than his luck suddenly ebbing away.  His momentum and positive attitude were eroding. It suddenly felt like it was getting dark out.” 
    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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