COVID-19 – Knowledge ATMs

March 21, 2023

S2 E99 — Why Pay Over $100,000 When You Don’t Have To?

It was planned as a magnet for attracting the talent base to support growing financial, real estate and technology companies setting up shop on the former Irvine Ranch envisioned in the Irvine Company’s master plan.

“5” Steve Howey, 42: “You thought a thing ran its course. You thought you were done and wouldn’t return to it, but this business is, apparently, unfinished. Otherwise, it wouldn’t keep calling you back.” Cancer

Hi and welcome to Thursday’s Episode 99 in Season 2 of “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 20th 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 E98 — Why Your Company Simply Won’t Make It Out of Puberty; S2 E97 — Frame Blindness and Decision Traps; S2 E96 — Two Kindred Spirits Drawn to Mature Complications

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E99 — What’s in a Name? Baby Boy Names?; S1 E98 — Why Can’t I Leave 26 Orphans for a Well Deserved Vacation? ; S1 E97 — My Top 19 Reasons for Failing; S1 E96 — Old Rabbits Die Hard

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.

We described two mini case studies of what it was like working behind the scenes at a mature companies in a financial and in a consumer industries.

33. Advisor — Executive and Healthcare MBA Program

Part One.

The University of California opened its doors in 1869 with just 10 faculty members and 40 students. Today, the UC system has more than 280,000 students and 227,000 faculty and staff, with 2.0 million alumni living and working around the world.

One of 10 campuses in the UC System

UC’s academic health centers provide broad access to top-ranked specialized care, support clinical teaching programs and develop new therapies. For news about UC breakthroughs and health initiatives.

Nine years before I moved to Orange County, UCI became the youngest campus in the system. It was planned as a magnet for attracting the talent base to support growing financial, real estate and technology companies setting up shop on the former Irvine Ranch envisioned in the Irvine Company’s master plan..

When I worked at Fairview State Hospital, one of the psychologists, a 115 Professional Practitioner, hailed from the School of Social Ecology. Co-workers felt he had been skating from his responsibilities at the hospital while he built up his private practice and taught at the university.

No-one I knew understood what Social Ecology meant. In a way, as a half-time intern working in the morning in the residence hall and then in the afternoon at the Behavior Modification Institute in Newport Center, I might have been half-skating.

Later I befriended the University’s Veterans Advisor seeking his assistance as I transitioned from one career into another. I ended up helping him as he came to the end of his employment while a student in the School of Social Ecology.

Four Talent Profiles Attracted to Systematic-Professional Organizations

The campus and its library and its influence economically as Orange County’s second-largest employer (contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide) made it a hub for researching potential careers and jobs.

In fact, I interviewed professors, 114 Brand-as-Experts and 116 Institutional Traditionalists, who’s research matched my interests. It what became the business school years later, I interviewed the dean who specialized in Organizational and Management Development to assess my chances at transitioning into that career.

The more important side benefit came in the form of a list of business graduates identified by their Orange Count employers to conduct further interviews.

One in particular led to an offer a few months later to join an internal consulting, management development and training team in a mature, large engineering and construction company located in a cluster of mirror-glass buildings and a corporate tower.

Two Systematic-Professionals Attracted to Maturity Growth Stage

Too academic, we echoed the conclusion of the client from the century-old consumer goods who hired my former boss and me. But we leveled it at an interdisciplinary team of professors we engaged to survey the implication of brand new technology at the engineering and construction company.

S2 E98 — Why Your Company Simply Won’t Make It Out of Puberty

If you consider the lifespan of an organization that has any sort of history — say over two generations or 40 years — you can see which tribes come in and out of favor. You’ll witness it as it evolves and leaps forward in predictable stages from infancy start-up through growth to maturity and decline and from simple to complex over time.

“5’’ Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “You will remember things differently than the other people around you. Write down your impressions to preserve the details because, later, you’ll be glad for these notes.” Leo

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 98 in Season 2 of “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 16th 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 E97 — Frame Blindness and Decision Traps; S2 E96 — Two Kindred Spirits Drawn to Mature Complications; S2 E95 — The Founder’s Curse Unleashed by the Edifice Complex

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E98 — Why Can’t I Leave 26 Orphans for a Well Deserved Vacation? ; 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

Context

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

In our last episode I described a mini case study of what it was like behind the scenes working at a mature company that was a century old. Now, a second, but in a different industry.

Multinational Food and Consumer Goods Corporation

A Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate founded in mid-1800s, headquartered Switzerland, grew to the largest publicly held food company in the world.

My former boss and now client, a 110 Analytical Specialist, brought me in to create a curriculum for his client a 109 Internal Change Agent (more on that in upcoming episodes) who headed up their internal University at their USA Headquarters Glendale division. Broadly, he wanted us to help him inject strategic learning capabilities into their leadership talent pool.

He wanted to expand their executive management’s perspective to include what could happen over their company’s lifespan moving forward. In organization learning circles research had’t really focused on companies which had been in business for over a century.

In fact, the lifespan of huge, solid companies is only 40 years.

Not all organizations even make it that far. The infant mortality rate is a decade. Arie De Geus says 40% of all newly created companies don’t last that long . Regardless of size, the average in Japan and Europe is 12.5 years.

So, our client became immediately attracted to us —my former boss and I had direct experience with the challenges unique to 100+ year old mature companies.

For instance, by functioning in the same mature stage for years and decades, current leaders (112 Loyal Survivalists) hadn’t experienced any other way of operating.

To combat that in his company, he wanted us to research and develop a curriculum during a two-year engagement based upon the latest models and best practices for:

- Inspiring a Shared Vision,
- Thinking Strategically,
- Leading Change,
- Building Alignment,
- Pursuing Excellence and
- Sharing Best Practices.

Mature organizations require four kinds of talented people – 112 Loyal Survivalists, 111 Agile Tiger Teams, 109 Internal Change Agents and 110 Analytical Specialists — who thrive in high affiliation and slower paced cultures.

Four Talent Profiles Attracted to Sustaining-Associates Organizations

You’ll find some filling roles in Human Resources as a Chief People Officer, Business Partners and Corporate Trainers. Others in Financial Analysis. Still others in Brand Management or in Inventory Control, Supply Chain and Procurement.

They manage the system of people, technologies, processes, and organizational structures to sustain the innovation they’ve already mastered years ago.

But, two “tribes” usually manage the political agenda to the exclusion of others. They are the talent clusters whose members represent the 20% who produce 80% of the results. And we know the mix of the two tribes changes at each growth transition. In any growth period there is a certain amount of resistance to new ways from the status-quo advocates.

In mature companies more Systematic-Professional talent profiles produce 80% of the results — 114 Brand-as-Experts and 116 Institutional Traditionalists. And, you’ll find fewer Paradoxy-Morons or Emerging-Entrepreneurs still employed.

Two Systematic-Professionals Attracted to Maturity Growth Stage

Ironically, our engagement formed out of a chance encounter in Monterey, California at a conference promoting 114 Brand-as-Experts, the sort you’d find in major universities or think tanks.

My former boss had been engaged in a business divorce from one of those experts in which his role was to convert purely just-in-case education into more targeted and practical training workshops.

Over drinks in the bar between conference seminars, our new client for our 2-year engagement bemoaned how presenters seemed just too academic for his needs, although they seemed to be in high demand.

Years later, in January 2017, after our 2-year engagement, the multinational corporation announced that it was relocating its US headquarters from Glendale, California to Virginia.

Summary

The resulting divisional structure eventually outlasts its usefulness when it triggers the “Control Crisis” that Systematic-Professionals help bridge by tightening and centralizing operations in a complicated matrix structure featuring data-driven methods and systems.

180 – Degree Shift in Success by Stage

Growth Stage	Key Success Factor	Leading to a Crisis	New Success Key
Start Up	Loosen	Leadership	Tighten
Emerging	Tighten	Functional	Loosen
Rapid	Loosen	Autonomy	Tighten
Sustained	Tighten	Repetition	Loosen
Maturity	Loosen	Control	Tighten

As more functional departments proliferate the Paradoxy-Morons disappear, not fitting into cultures built to reward affiliation and mastery.

And, the days of the maverick, do-what-ever-it-takes team loyalty — highly rewarded for fire-fighting heroics become numbered.

Where to Find the Best Fit

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
111 Agile Tiger Teams	Rapid Growth	Sustaining-Associates
112 Loyal Survivalists	Rapid Growth	Sustaining-Associates
110 Analytical Specialists	Sustained Growth	Sustaining-Associates
114 Brand-as-Experts	Maturity	Systematic-Professionals
116 Institutional Traditionalists	Maturity	Systematic-Professionals

At this stage of development most of the focus by the organization is on inside operations and not enough on customers – their care and feeding. It’s as if the customers – frequently in large numbers – are taken for granted. And that sets up yet another opportunity to bonk.

Mature organizations have vested interests in the way things were. While not overtly describing themselves as status quo advocates, many long-time Sustaining-Associates and Systematic-Professionals resist disruptive changes required to “jump paths” out of a declining trajectory.

If the organization continues to extend what they’ve always done, they fall victim to what Joel Barker calls paradigm blindness. An over-extended strength becomes a fatal flaw. The organization can’t see what is necessary to pull out of its decline. And the longer it takes for leaders of the organization to recognize that they are on the path to disaster, the more disruptive the solution becomes.

It’s a classic pattern.

Evidence

“3” Steve Zahn, 51: “Good fortune follows socially astute moves, such as including everyone, making introductions and lobbing the conversational ball in excellent, interesting and positive directions.” Scorpio

Before the pandemic I was all over this advice. Now, not so much. Will this pandemic end? Will we return to normal?

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday:

Your superpower is your incredible imagination. Direct it to create relationships you want, pursue far-flung interests and pull together scenes that others wouldn’t have thought possible. Team this amazing sense of vision with great faith and it will be as though you have harnessed the winds of fortune to do your bidding.

Some of you know I’ve progressed from letters, to steno notebooks and 3X5 cards to Hypercard to do just that. The problem I found was two-fold. The first taking the time to write everything down and second, later finding the kernel of wisdom I could use.

“4” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “The key to success is three-pronged: know what you want; make a plan; stick with it. This sounds simple, but if it really were, everyone would be doing it all of the time.” Virgo

Why am I following the Tau of Steves as interpreted from the Holiday Tau if I wasn’t searching for a magical shortcut?

“3” Steve Nash, 45: “It’s not every day that you come across an endeavor that can capture and hold your full attention. Once you give yourself over to it, there is no going back.” Aquarius

Boy, in some ways I wish the reverse is true. For in the beginning of every endeavor that speaks to you, you’re filled with passion. But, in the middle the drudgeries stack up. Can you tell that’s exactly where I am with “Volume Two Manuscript — WorkFit”?

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

March 14, 2023March 14, 2023

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.

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

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

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.

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

February 28, 2023

S2 E95 — The Founder’s Curse Unleashed by the Edifice Complex

We used to call it “edifice complex” — you build a monument (new building) to yourself because you made it as an entrepreneur. But, in doing so you take your eye off the market and bad things happen. The disk drive industry was a roller coaster of cut throat cost competition .

“5” Steve Smith, 30: “There are many levels to getting to know a subject. It can be argued that one doesn’t come to a full understanding until having taught the thing a few times. You’ll go deep today.” Gemini

Hi and welcome to Thursday’s Episode 95 in Season 2 of “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 13th 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 E94 — Sustained Growth: Slicing Turnover and Grooming Experts; S2 E93 — Who It Takes to Keep Growth at It’s Peak; S2 E92 — Herding Cats Towards a Tornado

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E95 — No Back to Work Days or Hump Days Allowed; S1 E94 — Wasn’t There a Movie about the Tau of Steve?; S1 E93 — Why is it easier to Hate than to Love the other Half?; S1 E92 — Shh … Secrets Husbands Keep to Ourselves

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 and Sustained Growth stages. But, each with the emphasis on how a specific stage provides another better fit opportunity for one or more of 16 Talent Profiles.

We’ve been exploring what it’s like behind the scenes working in a Sustained Growth company. We broke it down into two parts. Part One described the trials and tribulations working in an electronic distribution company.

Part Two tells a technology story struggling with sustaining all the gains it enjoyed after emerging from Rapid Growth.

Part Two

25. Director Continuous Improvement —

Turbulent Industry

The company competed in a roller coaster, cutthroat industry dependent upon their customer technology product demands. It was a new corporate initiative for customizing quality and process improvement programs to meet their unique needs — how to learn from your success and from your mistakes in some sort of organized way

Corporate Education

It was up to Corporate Education to forecast not too far in the future and determine how supervision and management development training and courses were required for sustaining their business while anticipating what had to be in place for becoming a mature, stable business. In the beginning they relied heavily on consultants to provide the content and teach the courses. I was one of them.

Senior management tasks Corporate Education to spearhead the introduction of continuous improvement . They sourced content from a variety of programs, books, consultants and nearly free content from associations.

But they needed a director to manage facilitators from all functions.

Adding Analytical Specialists to Sustain Growth

Continuous Process Improvement

When engineering companies place a premium on time-to-market for handing out bonuses to their product managers, those manager want to pick their own exceptional players they can trust, and shield them from unnecessary activities like attending an endless seeming stream of meeting.

My take on it for that disk drive technology company was, yes you have to shrink your product development time-to-market, but you have to be able to improve upon what you learn in the process, over and over again.

Manufacturing from Southeast Asia

Since this was a corporate initiative I remember getting the days of the week wrong when we attempted to schedule our first video conference call with our Singapore CPI facilitators. And how difficult it was to present agenda items while moving the camera around to whoever began discussing a specific problem for inviting input from the community of change agents.

Time-to-Money

A senior executive from the San Diego division of Unisys had been recruited to convince and persuade executive management to process run business. He had me assume the meeting facilitation role as we conspired to build a consensus and commitment from the top of the organization.

Edifice Complex

Their headquarters building consolidated California departments into one place having grown from a startup before “making it.” The CEO built a brand new high rise headquarters visible for everyone to see traveling from John Wayne Airport south on the 405 Freeway towards San Diego.

The disk drive industry was a roller coaster of cut throat cost competition. Ups and downs. The reason for continuous improvement was to smooth out the swings — to “rationalize” operations.

Some refer to it as the founder’s curse. You hit a milestone and you build a headquarters to house your sprawling groups of employees dispersed and distributed in local commercial offices.

And, almost a year to the day from when you celebrate with the ribbon cutting dignitaries your market shifts away from you and you free fall into a decline.

During which they either sell or lease their building to other companies on the rise and distribute their workforce to smaller footprint buildings.

Consequences of Not Mastering Growth Crises

Cowboy Product Managers

Product managers from the startup days bristled at all the new processes overlayed on their work. They were “cowboys” and almost all of them were boys, and we took time away from their rapid, get it done at all cost, results the industry demanded from them.

I remember one guy who resisted the implementation saying to the CEO, “Look Roger, let me get this straight. You want me to add more time in my product by insisting I hold these bullshit meetings. You and I both know you don’t bonus me that way.”

What’s more important — driving revenue or scheduling yet another series of non-productive meetings?

And what’s wrong with flying by the seat of our pants and doing whatever it took to meet new time-to-market product introductions?

Nothing.

A Dressing Down and Out

My facilitator and I exchange stunned looks.

I got nailed along with one of my facilitators by the executive vice president, my boss, at the beginning of a Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) team meeting.

The executive “went non-linear,” as one of the other executives fondly explains, and a trait, up until then, hidden from me.

With a phone message scribbled in her hand from the director of human resources saying, “dismissed” she appears abruptly out of nowhere, smoke bellowing out of her nostrils. “I want to see you and you.”

“We don’t dismiss, we want CPI to be a positive experience! Get it!? I don’t care what you two personally think, you two don’t dismiss anyone!”

With that she stormed off.

Finally, I think … since I’m speechless at this point, I get the treatment she is famous for. I flash back to an earlier boss who told me that if I didn’t get into trouble, I wasn’t doing my job. The motto was ” It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask for permission.”

Immune System Rejection

Its corporate immune system and talent culture reflected their preferred seat of the pants high pace flavor of time-to-market product introduction.

An investment with little to show for it because it took more than 18 months to two years before positive results competed with shorter and shorter and faster operating standards.

Cowboys don’t shine when the business grows to a more mature size and run and gun tactics cause more delays. A brand new building signaled it was time to act like grown ups, use data to guide product development and cut down on waste. The cowboys were corralled and they didn’t like it one bit.

Our sponsor, one of the early founders of the company during a downturn sided with to cowboys and jettisoned our implementation.

The company had followed the roller coaster ride of start-up, emerging growth and then reset and then sustainable growth and then reset, so I knew going in it would be a high risk opportunity.

Its corporate immune system and talent culture reflected their preferred seat of the pants high pace flavor of time-to-market product introduction.

Product managers wanted to know which was more important, driving revenue or scheduling yet another series of non-productive meetings requiring them to manage their operations by data?

They won, I Lost

On Tuesday, my first official day back from vacation, the morning phone message from executive secretary to meet with my boss at 1:30 p.m. fit the pattern.

My facilitator had explained that after these flare-ups, the exec always patches things up with an apology. That’s my expectation.

So I show up, kind of rehearsing how I will make it easy for her to make up and she says,

“This won’t be your best meeting.”

Intuitively, it was clear that the ship had hit an iceberg and there were only a few lifeboats available.

Unfortunately, I’d be walking the plank without even so much as a wetsuit for the cold choppy waters.

“You’re in the layoffs, part of our division’s fair share. I didn’t agree with it,” she said, “You’re a super facilitator, especially with my staff … who aren’t the easiest in the world to get to agree on anything!”

The irony of this whole situation lies in the fact that I have been an outplacement consultant on and off over the past 13 years.

Now I was on the receiving end of the services. She kept her meeting brief to only a few minutes, something I had always advised whenever I had been at a client’s “taking out” or “picking up” a new participant for our services.

I noticed a checklist of 5 points to remember tacked to her bulletin board … and I mentally gave her an “A” for her handling of me.

Summary

Don’t be like them or you’ll fall backwards to a previous stage and never grow beyond it to the maturity stage.

Advancing from Sustained Growth to Maturity

You’ll be boxed in until you incorporated processes and base your business decisions on data and improvements.

Five Major Stages of Growth for Organizations

But, remember the core strengths that helped you succeed at the previous stage, when overextended lead to a crisis that must be resolved as the ticket of entry to the next.

Growth Stage	Key Success Factor	Leading to a Crisis	New Success Key
Start Up	Loosen	Leadership	Tighten
Emerging	Tighten	Functional	Loosen
Rapid	Loosen	Autonomy	Tighten
Sustained	Tighten	Repetition	Loosen

And more often that not the third Sustaining-Associate profile helps you meet the challenge and master to move from Sustained Growth to Maturity.

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
111 Agile Tiger Teams	Rapid Growth	Sustaining-Associates
112 Loyal Survivalists	Rapid Growth	Sustaining-Associates
110 Analytical Specialists	Sustained Growth	Sustaining-Associates

Evidence

“3” Steve Zahn, 51: “Each relationship is its own continent in which the tectonic plates merge and part. Earthquakes are an inevitability. Don’t be alarmed. Think of them as a shift in boundaries.” Scorpio

Wow, I didn’t see that ending well. And, I’m not sure it does, do you?

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4” Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You’re being asked for your input because what you say has been known to change how people look at things, or because you’ve been right and/or helpful in the past. Share freely.” Aries

I’m not above a humble brag, because this has been the feedback I’ve received from hundreds of my clients and students. There I said it!

Hence, having taught and experienced and taught this theory as an idea packager this series in Season Two is when I’m finally writing it out in the form of a manuscript.

“4” Steve Howey, 42: “Even though most of you was formed through means beyond your control, you are still, at least partially, your own creator. Feel free to take artistic license with your own persona.” Cancer

Now this is very enlightening. I’m taking it to mean that I can spend more time with and in my experiencing self and then take artistic license as I switch to my narrating, editing self for creative purposes.

“4” Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “The time limitations you face are the best thing that could happen to your project. You’ll get things done quickly and efficiently and produce twice as much as you would have if given double the time.” Leo

What, are you guys looking over my shoulder? Except in a few high stakes situations throughout my career, I’m missing this strategy for publishing all of my manuscripts so far, except on Patreon.

“3” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “You’ll have a choice between expensive leisure and investing in something that doesn’t seem nearly as fun but will likely last for years to come, perhaps even become your legacy.” Virgo

As much as I’d like to believe this one, we’re in a pandemic damn it. I’m just not seeing this so-called l leisure of which you speak.

“4” Steve Aoki, 41: “Indifference is boring. Indifference is not invested in what happens. You don’t care what people think about you, but you very much care what happens next and are deeply invested in getting to a certain outcome.” Sagittarius

Sure, as a general rule, I agree. But, is this really that relevant today?

“3” Steve Nash, 45: “You question not only your actions but also your interpretation of those actions, and it is in your honest response to this deeper level of inquiry honesty that you will find freedom.” Aquarius

So true. I learned what I had done to contribute to my dismissal from the disk-drive company and years later realized which stage of growth the organization tried to navigate and why it failed.

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

- AI-powered tool aims to help reduce bias and racially charged language on websites
- The past, present, and future of electric vehicles

Quality-of-Life

- Southwest Colorado Road Trip Offers Mountain Adventures
- Will We Have a 2020-’21 Ski Season? Copper Mountain’s Summer Park Offers Insight

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

February 22, 2023

S2 E94 — Sustained Growth: Slicing Turnover and Grooming Experts

We cut the time in half, identified the regional gurus who made sense out of clunky technology, turned them into trainers and mentors, and switched face-to-face time from classroom to practice session.

“5” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King,72: “Study past successes and failures for the keys to victory. To skip the research phase of a project is to waste time, as there is no use in repeating what didn’t work before.” Virgo

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 94 in Season 2 of “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 9th 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 E93 — Who It Takes to Keep Growth at It’s Peak; S2 E92 — Herding Cats Towards a Tornado; S2 E91 — How to Master Rapid Growth Without Gifting Your Competitors

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E94 — Wasn’t There a Movie about the Tau of Steve?; S1 E93 — Why is it easier to Hate than to Love the other Half?; S1 E92 — Shh … Secrets Husbands Keep to Ourselves; S1 E91 — If that, then this … ? The daily double?

Context

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

110 Analytical Specialists in the Sustained Growth Stage

Let’s explore what it’s like behind the scenes working in a Sustained Growth company. We’ll break it down into two parts.

Part One describes the trials and tribulations working in an electronic distribution company. Our next episode focuses on the growing pains and challenges of a disk-drive technology company in Part Two. Both in their own unique ways recruited Analytical Specialists to join their talent cultures.

Third Growth Stage for 110 Analytical Specialists

Part One

12. Director Electronics Distribution Company

Professionalize to Stabilize

They were described as a Wild West sales organization in their early days — as in anything goes as long as you get the sale.

They grew from a local to a regional player during their emerging and rapid growth stages across the Western United States with ambitions to grow nationally and then internationally.

International Aspirations

They ran into complications with the technology required to translate currencies for product ordering. Instead the acquirer from Europe already had systems in place.

I seriously misjudged the “technology” component, because I discovered after the first 90-days it was less about innovating and more about sales.

Maturing Business Model

Sure they valued affiliation and speed, but they really weren’t creating new knowledge in the sense I craved.

Their business model placed them in the middle of technology manufacturers which needed to extend their sales volume and technology companies which sourced components from manufacturers that would work, could be trusted, and then could be bought in volume to match expected market explosions.

As a middle player, they needed to “lock up” exclusive franchise agreements with the best known manufacturers while at the same time add to their capabilities with ties to second tier manufacturers which specialized in emerging new technologies.

Keeping a Pulse on Emerging Markets

It took resourceful 105 EEMA Marketing Athletes in technical sales capacities to meet with their customer technology companies (often Paradoxy-Morons) and offer technology support, feasibility assessments and establish sales distribution channels.

They provided the missing marketing infrastructure working directly with their (potential) customer’s 103 PMCI Commercial Innovators with limited resources.

It was their job to intimately understand new disruptive innovations of their customers and propose how to take them to market in a way that leapfrogs established industry leaders. Or, they establish new markets.

Pinch Points

The pinch points showed up between inside and outside sales efforts. In isolated sales offices throughout the region inside sales people fielded calls from customers, from their own technical sales people and from clients wanting to know prices, terms, discounts, availability for parts and components.

The answers remained buried in manufacturers manuals. And, of course SKUs didn’t match and the technology conversion hadn’t made things better and easier. In fact inside sales people turned over at an alarming pace.

Consequences of Not Mastering Growth Crises

From High Turnover to Time to Mastery

My initial success happened when my team streamlined what had been a two week training conference for all new hires.

Wyle planned to grow in a cutthroat industry.

When you’re on the hook to orient new internal sales and external sales people, you need to reference how great the opportunity is now and will be or else you experience high turnover rates.

Which is what they already had. If you fly in new hires from the field offices, pay for their hotel and food, while they endure the blah blah blah of their new company’s history over the course of two weeks, the costs keep climbing when those new hires figure enough out to say adios.

But, that wasn’t the half of it.

Experts in the Field, But Not at Each Office

We cut down the two week orientation process in half, we put a lot of nice-to-know stuff online, and focused on practice — sales calls, how to use the computer system, where to find tips and tricks, and we identified the best people in the field offices who knew how to get things done. They taught and they became ongoing mentors.

It was so successful that we created a problem when people, who had been hired a year ago, said they didn’t know the stuff the rookies had just learned. And the mentors loved the recognition.

Professionalizing Human Resources with Specialists

The Vice President of Human Resources, my boss, and I held several meetings once I signed on. He introduced the other HR people in compensation, recruiting and general administration. He told me about where the regional offices were located. How the distribution company operated.

Kind of the typical onboarding stuff you’d expect.

But not the one key bit of information — the strategy going forward. I always determine how much leeway I have when I’m brought in to start up another training and organizational development department.

Neither the CEO nor the Chief Operating Officer told him. They said he didn’t need to know. Which meant, the whole Human Resources function he headed up was only transactional.

Closely Held Plans

Wyle planned to not only expand from the western region to become a national player, they figured if they represent the Motorolas and the Intels and all the tech manufacturers who need to grow their sale efforts, why not represent them in Europe?

But two things operating in the background accounted for their top secret strategy.

The first turned out to be sad. Our CEO suffered from a moderate form of multiple sclerosis and his symptoms started to show.

The second resulted in attempts to acquire a European distribution company who also exclusively represented the Motorolas and Intels and all the tech manufacturers on their continent.

Instead we were acquired by Rabb Karcher — the European distributor. It boiled down to technology. Rabb Karcher solved the language problems and the currency problems and operated at a much higher, what I would call organizational intelligence level.

They mastered all the challenges Wyle hadn’t as they tried to grow nationally. Rabb Karcher already had and they operated cross-borders. So they were able to describe a more compelling case to the manufactures that both companies represented.

After the CEO Stepped Down

Karcher did have a much smaller distribution company with limited “manufacturing franchises” in the US. It was located in San Diego.

The president moved into our Irvine headquarters. To tell you the truth I thought he was better than the old regime — younger, and he had survived Raab Karcher’s management pressures in the US.

Oh, and the inside sales and outside sales representatives loved the fact that he came up through the sales organization.

Sales Suffered from Delayed Marketing Communications

Wyle’s marketing function didn’t inform sales of their discounted offerings. If they did, it was an afterthought.

Let’s say one of your current or potential customers — an engineering company — operated at an accelerated pace and needed parts like yesterday.

Their purchasing rep gives you a call. And, they tell you the specifications they need. Normally, you’d compare potential manufacturers you represent to give them the best deal, then you give them the quote.

And they tell you that couldn’t be accurate, because they heard you were running a special price that you didn’t know about.

Corporate Communications

Even before the acquisition in the rapid growth period people in the field felt under trained and out of the loop.

The COO did the “Joe Show” on video and sent it to the regional offices. I brought in crazy creative Dave, from my Unisys days, who had been consulting in corporate communications.

We expanded the content to include people we asked the offices to identify for the next edition and we highlighted some of the mentors. So both things reinforced each other.

Recruiting Overlooked Sales Engineers

The joke told internally was “How do you tell who’s an engineer at a party? They’re the ones looking at their shoes. How do you tell who’s the sales engineer? They’re looking at your shoes.”

Let me set the scene — we, mostly they, interviewed successful sales engineers and discovered they weren’t the best and brightest of their classes in engineering schools.

So they were overlooked when all the other recruiters came on campus.

Actually the campaign focused on socially-adept engineering students. If they were in a fraternity or sorority, that was good. If they happened to be the rush chair person that was better. We simply invited them for pizza and beer when the recruiting team hit campus. The team passed out a comic-graphic filled story about Wyle and why they could shine as a sales engineer.

We learned they just had to know enough technical jargon to nod and turn the closing back to the sales people.

The graphic comic didn’t sit well with Wyle’s top dogs, and by then I could see the merger writing on the wall. In fact, I always wished I recorded the announcement from the CEO circulated over group voicemail.

He announced the Rabb Karcher acquisition and his plans to step down, but also insisted it was all in Wyle’s best interests and nobody would be laid off.

Yeah, right.

Next up, Part Two when I describe how the heavy resistance to transitioning to continuous improvement with its emphasis on statistics was a lot tougher sale than I imagined.

Summary

Growth Stage	Key Success Factor	Leading to a Crisis	New Success Key
Start Up	Loosen	Leadership	Tighten
Emerging	Tighten	Functional	Loosen
Rapid	Loosen	Autonomy	Tighten
Sustained	Tighten	Repetition	Loosen

Evidence

“4” Steve Zahn, 51:“When you are doing it your way, unselfconsciously and unapologetically yourself, you have no competition. No one can be you better than you can be you.” Scorpio

I’m pretty sure this is the definition of being in the flow — peak performing as an athlete or musician or in any creative endeavor.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4” Steve Howey, 42: “You’ll find yourself mentally weaving an alternate version of things. Not all fantasy is escape. Sometimes it’s a creative way of understanding reality.” Cancer

My mind houses a flaw which causes me to search for the pun in what I read and a humorous alternative of what just came out in conversation.

“3” Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “The guitarist can’t play with silk gloves on. Friction is what vibrates those strings. Don’t be afraid to dig into life with your nails. This day is waiting for you to give it a rhythm and sound.” Leo

Sure. Friction and vibration. Rhythm and sound, hmm … let me incubate for awhile on this TauBit of Wisdom.

Here’s my twist — do the 180 degree opposite as you pass through organizational growth transitions.

“4” Steve Kerr, 54: “You were not born with a serene air of confidence, rather the aura is well-earned through the extensive planning and preparation you do long before the moment of truth is upon you.” Libra

Thanks for noticing. Every time I scheduled a workshop to teach Executive MBA students, I finalized my materials days ahead of time, and practiced and practiced and practiced at least 5 times. What I noticed was how easy it became to add nuance and humor throughout my delivery.

“3” Steve Harvey, 62: “People become associated with that of which they speak. You are drawn to intriguing facts, stories of warmth and kindness and descriptions of beauty. No wonder people feel elevated around you.” Capricorn

Sure, that’s me alright. But during this pandemic can I really stake this claim for today?

“4” Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “You’ll absorb some enthusiasm as you find yourself with bright, curious and passionate people. What you may not realize is how much you are rubbing off on them, too, in a very positive way.” Pisces

Maybe not today, but I’m reminded of positions and consulting assignments during which I had to pinch myself, because how wonderful it was to “play” with others.

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

February 21, 2023February 21, 2023

S2 E93 — Who It Takes to Keep Growth at It’s Peak

They’re early adopters of “academic” methods, certifications, standards and proven practices for solving complex problems. So, they open the door to more fact-based approaches critical for Sustained Growth.

“5” Steve Kerr, 54: “Most of the people around you now are making assessments within a narrow scope of understanding. Do not fear their disapproval and neither should you thrill to their approval.” Libra

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 93 in Season 2 of “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 8th 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 E92 — Herding Cats Towards a Tornado; S2 E91 — How to Master Rapid Growth Without Gifting Your Competitors; S2 E90 — How Many Road Warriors Does It Take to Fuel Our Growth?

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E93 — Why is it easier to Hate than to Love the other Half?; S1 E92 — Shh … Secrets Husbands Keep to Ourselves; S1 E91 — If that, then this … ? The daily double?; S1 E90 — Day 90 of My 1-Year Natural Experiment;

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.

Organization Type

16 Talent Profiles by Organization Type

As a Sustaining-Associates Organization Type, my military experience (in the “3. US Army — Worse Fit”) thrived with 111 SAAT Agile Tiger Teams and 112 SALS Loyal Survivalists primarily with 110 SAAS Analytical Specialists in administrative and headquarters functions.

The first two private companies (6. Vocational Rehabilitation Services — Worse Fit) that hired me as a specialist had spun out of insurance companies — filled with 112 SALS Loyal Survivalists and 110 SAAS Analytical Specialists.

Four Talent Profiles Attracted to Sustaining-Associate Organizations

Growth Stage

Neither organizations could primarily be described as being in their Sustained Growth phase. If they were, then they’d entice 110 Analytical Specialists to join 111 SAAT Agile Tiger Teams and 112 SALS Loyal Survivalists from the Rapid Growth Stage which would insure all that hard work from Start Up to Emerging Growth to Rapid Growth continues.

110 Analytical Specialists in the Sustained Growth Stage

You may recall, while their degree of orientation to affiliation is medium, they favor high in degrees of improvement (of past innovations) and of mastery. They bring with them a professional background — usually with certifications, association standards, or specialized degrees.

You may also remember that a worse fit for them is in Paradoxy-Moron organizations with talent cultures that thrive on disruptive innovation, speed and independence.

Third Growth Stage for 110 Analytical Specialists

The 110 Analytical Specialists are more loyal to the organization as a whole rather than to a leader or team. They’re eager to take on promotions that require them to specialize.and inject professional traditions into the organization.

They’re early adopters of “academic” methods, certifications, standards and proven practices for solving complex problems. So, they open the door to more fact-based approaches.

But there’s a dark side in some cultures, because 110 Analytical Specialists are often seen as internal enemies by 111 Agile Tiger Teams.

Why?

Rightly or wrongly they’re seen as wanting to take away the people element and the need to address special situations out of the equation for success.

Which we’ll discuss in our next episode.

Evidence

“3” Steve Zahn, 51: “There is nothing wrong with pleasure or pain but living according to what feels good or bad is a precarious way to go. To live by an ideal is to do what it takes to uphold that ideal regardless of how it feels.” Scorpio

Wow, I feel my limited understanding prevents me from grasping the meaning.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“3” Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “If you’re still making excuses, then it’s time to ask for real: Do you want it, or do you just want to feel like you want it? Happiness will follow your honest answer to this question.” Taurus

Am I still making excuses? I can’t think of any today. But, if I’m later reminded — seems like this is good advice to follow.

“4” Steve Smith, 30: “People are often kept on a righteous road by the threat of unhappy consequences associated with straying from the path. It’s fine, but not as ideal as choosing a path because it’s where you want to be.” Gemini

I first read this as “… threat of unhappy consequences associated with straying from the past.” Of course now after reading it three times it makes better sense. “Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; If you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions.” Carlos Canstenda

“4” Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “You are like a candle that can light dozens, or even hundreds, more candles, giving them the gift of fire and light without diminishing anything that is yours.” Leo

I receive this with all humility, especially since today this ain’t no TauBit for me and I swiped it before they had a chance to bask in its glory.

Look if my MBTI holds any weight, then I’m an introvert on most days — an innie. And being a 113 Idea Packager aka INTP equates into about the 5% range of commonality. In other words 95% of introverts don’t share the same orientation to life and work. Doesn’t represent a narrow scope of understanding of me?

“4” Steve Aoki, 41: “Things will go undiscussed and maybe this is for the best. Words will have a way of reducing an experience. Besides, it is too soon to define and name all that’s going on.” Sagittarius

Now this one is a little eery. Does this mean stop talking to myself and just experience directly? Feel don’t categorize? Pure artistic expression?!

Wow, I really didn’t see the ending twist … you will find freedom. I gotta tell you it feels like a case of analysis-paralysis in the set up, Just not as relevant for me today.

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

February 20, 2023

S2 E92 — Herding Cats Towards a Tornado

It took several types of engineers to work together on a team. When you had multiple teams going simultaneously you’d run out of certain kinds of engineers, usually at critical stages which caused delays.

“5” Steve Zahn, 51: “You’ll amuse yourself like it was your job, and though it’s not, your professional life will benefit anyhow, as it spurs the relaxed frame of mind you need to come up with brilliant ideas that can be widely applied.” Scorpio

Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 92 in Season 2 of “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 7th 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 E91 — How to Master Rapid Growth Without Gifting Your Competitors; S2 E90 — How Many Road Warriors Does It Take to Fuel Our Growth?; S2 E89 — Garage Bonking and Chasm Jumping

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E92 — Shh … Secrets Husbands Keep to Ourselves; S1 E91 — If that, then this … ? The daily double?; S1 E90 — Day 90 of My 1-Year Natural Experiment; S1 E89 — Because If You Don’t Someone Else Will. It’s Worth It!;

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.

Emerging to Rapid Growth

26. Emerging Desktop Projector Company —

Part One described Proxima’s early navigation from a Start Up to an Emerging Growth stage.

Today’s Part Two focuses on its path to Rapid Growth.

Growth Stage from Emerging to Rapid

“The purpose of the bowling pin model is to approach niche market expansion in as leveraged a way as possible, to bowl toward the tornado. Each niche, you will recall, requires its own whole product to be fully complete before it can adopt the new paradigm. At the same time, it finds it much easier to buy in if vendors can supply references from an ‘adjacent niche,’ one within which it already has established word-of-mouth relationships.” — Geoffrey Moore, “Inside the Tornado”

Three Market Niches Inching Towards the Tornado

- I represented an obvious market niche — the classroom trainer. It was a tough sale because underfunded human resources and department budgets would dictate the dollars for replacing what they already had with Proxima projectors.
- Maybe a tougher sale was to road warriors who had to be convinced to refrain from stuffing their laptops in the overhead bin for what would eventually become an iPhone years later in your pocket and stuff a smaller foot print projector above your Delta seat.
- The toughest sale would be to consultants like me who facilitated product development teams of engineers coupled with an intranet represented a third niche.

Talent Culture

We worked in a technology cluster of buildings in a parking lot shared with a super-computer company. Down a hallway, my office was on the right-hand side just past my boss’, the Vice President of Human Resources. Frank, who was shorter than me with dark receding hair line and a mustache loved inspirational mottos.

He retired from the Navy having largely been influenced by a chain-of-command demanding allegiance to his boss and orders given him. He didn’t have the fast-paced technology experience, although to be fair he was fair and empathetic and believed in all those people development processes and procedures.

Looking back, he probably figured more structure, procedures would only help this technology company while building out his traditional HR department.

I wanted little to do with recruiting — thankfully Ian originally from Great Britain, who disliked my promotion of the principle of “collaboration” preceded my hiring. It meant betraying your country to the enemy, as in England with Germany in WWII, he teased.

An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse

Why his executive recruiter liked my background which led to my offer.

- 10 years experience working for Unisys and Fluor in the Mature Growth Stage
- Including cross-silo adventures in Engineering, Software and Manufacturing, Shipping
- Traditional Training and Development with an emphasis on applications at work
- Organizational Development addressing resistance to change
- TQM, Just-in-time, Continuous Improvement, Reengineering required to master current and future challenges

What attracted me was my vision of where innovation and technology was headed with that adrenalin rush.

- It appealed to my build-it-from-scratch department bias
- An experiment or knowledge laboratory for discovering things on the cutting edge.
- I tried to avoid classic supervisory classroom training-only. Proxima didn’t have many supervisors anyway.
- I wanted to consult and facilitate teams, being more fascinated with the software and hardware engineering and research and development opportunities.
- Each functional area was led by someone in over their heads, but with VP titles
- Someone could parachute in from a larger company take a quick look around and tell everyone what to do in a 10th of the time an insider could do.
- Major immune-system reactions — high change, transition management

3rd CEO

The newly recruited CEO didn’t have public company experience. But, he had written book about how to combine US-style with Japanese-style leadership that Frank read and liked. However, some of us realized later that he didn’t really follow those practices.

We looked to him for leadership for building capacity to rapidly grow.

His Japanese contacts in the projector business helped us cheat as we sourced a lot of the components in our projectors when we met our audacious goal of launching 6 new products into market niches in 6 months.

My boss described him as someone who always “looked through a 40 foot straw.”

Stuff that should have been on his CEO radar was missed.

Product Road Map

Internally, I promoted “just-in-time” training bites, instead or “ just in case education” because trainees forgot 50% as they left the classroom, and more of a focus on knowledge in circulation.

My timing couldn’t have been better. A small startup named Tegrity showed how you could capture what was projected on a whiteboard during a presentation and bring edited markups back into your presentation.

Accelerating the Work of Engineering Teams

We’d place the projector connected to a PC on a conference table and present one of their engineered “drawings” on a whiteboard as a slide.

An engineer would say, “Look at that the metal case footprint — it is too small to include a fan.” She’d stand up, walk to the whiteboard, draw a circle around the area, make other notations and I’d click the Tegrity button to add it as an updated slide in the “deck.”

We used to say working with engineers was like herding cats.

- In meetings they’d wander all over the tangents landscape.
- With Tegrity and a projector and a whiteboard you could focus their attention.
- With fewer arguments, misunderstandings, or differing frames of references you could progress must faster — which was the mantra — make it faster, lighter, smaller and brighter.

And It Solved a Major Time-to-Market Problem

It took several types of engineers to work together on a team.

- When you had several teams going simultaneously you’d run out of certain kinds of engineers, usually at critical stages which caused delays.
- Small companies couldn’t hire and afford to keep all the technical talent it needed.
- Like the engineers who were in charge of cooling down the projector while increasing the power required to work in a smaller “box.”
- They were in short supply.

Ian would go to tech parking lots in Silicon Valley and intercept potentials before and after work for meetings dazzling them with San Diego.

One product manager came from Apple and most of us thought he walked on water.

So, if they were on Team A, they weren’t available to Teams B and C. And, if they finally finished one team, they’d kind of roll from Team A to B.

That’s when the shit would hit the fan.

Sorry, but that’s when the team that was 75% of the way to their launch realized they messed up, would have to do some serious work around and miss their deadline.

Using Tegrity and an internal Internet we could capture that team’s oversight and correction and share the schematics almost in real time.

Rapid Knowledge Circulation

And, as other team members dispersed to join another team, they took the knowledge of that solution with them, showed it to the next team and in a way they cross trained each other.

So they would know when to check out the cooling and venting requirements earlier in their design

When I first experimented with it in a team meeting I got to the third slide the product manager and I made and an engineer called for a time out.

I thought, oh no, here we go off on a cat-tangent.

But, instead, she waved her hand between the bottom of the projector and the top of the conference room table and said the heat from this unit will warp the wood finish if we don’t do something about it.

Summary

Adding Two Sustaining-Associate Profiles

They develop the tools and manage the process of multiple new product introductions. They have to optimize the availability of internal and external team members — rolling people on and off projects — as the critical path for each product dictates.

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.

Consequences of Not Mastering Growth Crises

Start Up: Loosen — Leadership Crisis — Tighten

Emerging Growth: Tighten — Functional Crisis — Loosen

Rapid Growth: Loosen — Autonomy Crisis — Tighten

We’re building on each of the 16 talent profiles so they may find a better fit at, not only in a particular Organization Type, but at a stage of growth as well.

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
111 Agile Tiger Teams	Rapid Growth	Sustaining-Associates
112 Loyal Survivalists	Rapid Growth	Sustaining-Associates

Evidence

Who knows if this turns out to be a “5” day after all, but I’d love it if amusing myself was my job. Oh, wait it was.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4” 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

Maybe not so much for today, but I invested a significant part of my life doing this and I have to say I encountered more stellar days than I ever expected. I felt I embarked on an adventure of my life.

“4” Steve Smith, 30: “When you really think about it, you have some beliefs that the people around you might be surprised by. It’s those rarified ideas that will open new thought processes to you and move you in a fulfilling direction.” Gemini

This could be relevant in two ways. The first is political in the face of not heeding the science when many voters from across the aisle are dying from this pandemic in overcrowded hospitals. The second could apply to this original research I’m writing up having grown tired of jigsaw puzzles.

“4” Steve Howey, 42: “Those who think they know are at a disadvantage, as their assumptions put up a barrier between themselves and the truth. It’s the ones who understand their own ignorance who will learn the most.” Cancer

True. But, but not number one for me today. Although the day is still early, eh?

“3” Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Those who have had happy hearts feel capable of achieving that state again and will take every opportunity to recreate the status. Those who don’t know what’s possible will take longer to come around if they ever do.” Pisces

I have to admit, this I’d be really stretching this TauBit of Wisdom to what happens if you just don’t know what you’re missing in your career.

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

February 8, 2023

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

January 31, 2023

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?

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.

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

January 30, 2023

S2 E89 — Garage Bonking and Chasm Jumping

It’s a culture that encourages individual imagination and achievement, as well as, stellar out-of-the-box thinking. It caters to the special kind of mindset that is driven by a desire to create the future — the most original, best and brightest among gadflies, concept champions, mavericks, the unconventional and eccentric.

“5” Steve Harvey, 62: “While many pay lip service to a principle, you’re all about the proof, the hard evidence that the idea will work. You want to live the improvement, and so you’ll roll up your sleeves and get to work.” Capricorn

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 89 in Season 2 of “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 1st 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 E88 — Convincing Family, Friends, Fools and Angels; 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

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

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; S1 E86 — Day 86 of My 1-Year Natural Experiment

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

The longer it takes to convert visionary influence into early pragmatist orders tests the start-up’s capacity for survival.

It has to generate enough cash initially, and then stabilize its business by eliminating cash flow problems.

And that my friend is the crux of the problem.

Oh, and the vast majority of “garage” Start Ups “bonk” against the garage door and never make it out of the first stage.

But if they do, they may not make it out of the growth stage or prevent themselves from becoming a mere shell of their former mature selves or worse yet decline and go out of business.

Consequences of not Mastering Growth Crises

If your organization continues unchanged, the reversing success factors will trigger failure during the transitions from Start Up to Growth, to Maturity, into Decline and Reinvention.

Many of the Executive MBA students I advised hadn’t considered that the key success factors they operated under currently could derail their employer’s success in the near, medium or distant future.

It’s sorta like what brought you to the party has to be reversed to make it to the next stage. So, first they had to realize which stage they were in and which was next. And then, they had to identify the new and opposite set of key success factors — 180 degrees different.

Results of Mastering 180 Degree Opposite Set of Key Success Factors

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.

Case of “Arrested Development”

It ain’t pretty. But, it’s so predictable. My Executive MBA students had to figure out how to close the “gaping chasm” and with their course work and the help of mentors I matched them with, how to navigate the “transformation” required for a bumpy landing into the next growth stage. Not every employer makes it, at least not at first.

Now we’re going to walk through each stage’s crisis challenge — crossing the chasm between each growth stage — and identifying the 180 degree solution required.

Solving Each Stage’s Unique Challenge

Stage of Growth	Crisis Challenge	180 Degree Solution
Start Up	Leadership	Tighten Operations
Emerging Growth	Functional	Loosen Operations
Rapid Growth	Autonomy	Tighten Operations
Sustained Growth	Repetition	Loosen Operations
Maturity	Control	Tighten Operations
Decline	Red Tape	Loosen Operations
Reinvention	Culture Blindness	Tighten then Loosen Operations

Bridging the Gap Between Start Up and Emerging Growth

During the final leg of the product development process the looming deadlines and commitments tense the work that increases velocity and accelerated activity.

Teams work at hyper-speed. So it takes a certain kind of person to put up with last minute shifts in direction and make or break pressures.

What kind?

The most original, best and brightest among gadflies, concept champions, mavericks, the unconventional and eccentric. It’s a culture that encourages individual imagination and achievement, as well as, stellar out-of-the-box thinking. It caters to the special kind of mindset that is driven by a desire to create the future.

What about the leadership crisis?

Bridging Leadership Gap Between Start Up to Emerging Growth

What about the leadership crisis?

Once the start-up survives and begins to grow, new knowledge about efficiencies and quality is required.

More employees coming into the organization can’t be managed exclusively through informal communication, as before.

And, coming in after the fact, most new employees aren’t motivated by that same intense dedication to the product and its vision.

New capital needed to fund expansion. And new accounting procedures for financial control. So, the founders find themselves burdened with the unwanted management responsibilities. They long for the good old days and still act as they did in the past.

They don’t realize that’s the kiss of death.

Not until the crisis arises out of the conflicts.

So when the key talent begins to ask, “Who will lead the company out of this confusion and solve the management problems we are facing?”

It becomes painfully clear that the answer is not the founder.

Two Talent Profiles Attracted to Emerging Growth

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.

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.

Evidence

“3” Steve Zahn, 51: “It’s not expensive to amp up your powers of attraction, nor does it require special talent or particular features. The more present you are to the moment, the more attractive you are.” Scorpio

How can I disagree? Who would want to. I’m flattered that this is a legitimate Holiday Tau for me, but I’m not feeling its relevance today — so far.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday:

“Your imaginative powers are strong and your sense of purpose even stronger. Mentors help you pull together a plan. The new season will be marked with a sense of belonging and group pride. You’ll rebuild with your team. There’s a stroke of financial luck in November and shiny new tools will make more possible.”

Wait, how wouldn’t this be a perfect birthday present for either 107 Resilient Product Teams or 108 Core Business Group talent profiles?

“3” Steve Howey, 42: “Selflessness leads to satisfaction. It’s the moves you make to see other people smile or to alleviate their worry or their suffering that will ultimately bring you the most joy.” Cancer

I have to agree in general, and even though it’s Saturday, I’m not experiencing this one yet.

“4” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King,72: “Though work may go faster when done by others and fun may be more affordable when someone else is paying, this doesn’t change your plan. You’re determined to do it yourself.” Virgo

I have to experience what I teach and learn from my mistakes before I can turn the work over to somebody else.

“4” Steve Aoki, 41: “You’ve been at the task for a while now and are ready for the new challenges that can be thrown in your mix. What some would consider to be increasing stress from every direction, you consider fun.” Sagittarius

Just as long as I’m not a German Short-Haired Pointer and the new challenges aren’t squirrels scampering from limb to tree limb laughing at me.

Not only for my self as I have been field testing this work, but for matching mentors to students to help them apply what the professors taught in their Executive MBA course work over a decade.

“4” Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Check your sources. There’s plenty of bad information out there today, which would be a regrettable share. You can avoid mistakes. Pause, question, and then make your move.” Pisces

Wow. Doesn’t sum up this whole Season Two so far — our collective Pandemic Year?

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

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