Tag: Curiosity

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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.

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.

110 Analytical Specialists in the Sustained Growth Stage

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

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

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

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

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

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.

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.

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

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

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.

“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

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

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

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S2 E88 — Convincing Family, Friends, Fools and Angels

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents

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

Previously in Season Two, the Pandemic Year

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

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

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

Context

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

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

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

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

Five Major Stages of Growth for Organizations

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

Start Ups

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

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

30. Venture Guidance —

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

Wannabe Entrepreneurs Seeking Angels 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before Shark Tank

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

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

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

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

27. Knowledge Management — Brand Company

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

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

Start Up Talent Culture

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

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

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

Start Up #1

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

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

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

Interworld loved our work. 

Start Up #2

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

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

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

Warren of Incubating Start Ups

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

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

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

Chaos But In a Good Way

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

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

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

No Time For This

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

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

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

Team Follows the Leader to the Next Company

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

So, as they grew, turnover accelerated.

Stickiness and Accelerated Time-to-Mastery

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knowledge Leakage

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

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

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

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

We Slowed Them Down Until …

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

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

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

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

We Practiced What We Preached

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

Summary

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

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

16 Talent Profiles by Organization Type

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

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

Start Up Culture Attracting Three Talent Profiles

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard  Copyright 2020

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

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

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

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

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

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

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

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

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S4 E24 — Another Spooky Role to Play on the Outside

Who are these people? Milley summarized and scribbled. Big Threat: domestic terrorism. Steve Bannon’s vision coming to life. Bring it all down, blow it up, burn it, and emerge with power.

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

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “You don’t set out on an adventure; you just set out. The harrowing fun starts when expectations are not met, tools fail and plans disintegrate. This is the kind of gift that money can’t buy.” Scorpio

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s 24th Episode in Season 4 of  “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 10th day of April in the spring of 2022.

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

Table of Contents

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year. 

Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

S4 E23 — When In Doubt, Follow the Money; S4 E22 — Now, Who Could Argue With That? S4 E21 — Not Since the War of 1812

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E24 — Reunion on the Edge of the Pacific Ocean near Legoland? Hell Yeah!; S3 E23 — Free from the Pile of Rubble in Your Brain; S3 E22 — What’s the Experiment Got To Do with the Exodus from Barb’s Bunny Ranch?; S3 E21 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and My Curiosity Whisperer Walking a Yip-Yippy Dog

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E24 — Working Remote from KnowWhere Atoll; S2 E23 — Gaping Loss No Amount of Mourning Will Heal; S2 E22 —Paranoid Rose Review and Traffic-Copped Check Out Lines; S2 E21 — Cycles of History Rhyming with Endlessly Disruptive Rhythms?

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E24 — Day 24 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E23 — Day 23 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E22 — Day 22 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E21 — Day 21 of My 1-Year Experiment;

Context

Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported in their book “Peril,” that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, jotted some thoughts, “Who are these people?”

He jotted rapidly: 

    • “6MWE”
    • “Extreme Tea Party” 
    • “QAnon,” he added, taking note of the fully discredited conspiracy theory. 
    • “Patriot Movement,” a far-right militia. 
    • “We the People Movement” 
    • “Nazis” 
    • “Proud Boys” 
    • “The Oath Keepers” 
    • “Newsmax,” the conservative news website, which had been friendly toward Trump for a long time. 
    • “Epoch,” referring to the The Epoch Times, a far-right publication that was critical of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Milley summarized and scribbled. “Big Threat: domestic terrorism. Steve Bannon’s vision coming to life.” 

Bring it all down, blow it up, burn it, and emerge with power.

From the Devil’s Bargain

2016 Bannon’s Vision playing out as a Nationalism Movement

Bannon saw evidence of Western collapse in the influx of Muslim refugees and migrants across Europe and the United States—what he pungently termed “civilizational jihad personified by this migrant crisis.”

Bannon’s response to the rise of modernity was to set populist, right-wing nationalism against it.

He aligned himself with:           

    • Archconservative Catholics such as Raymond Leo Burke,
    • Nigel Farage and UKIP, 
    • Marine Le Pen’s National Front, 
    • Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom, and 
    • Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

For all his paranoid alarm, Bannon believes that the rise of nationalist movements across the world, from Europe to Japan to the United States, heralds a return to tradition.

“You have to control three things,” he explained, “Borders, currency, and military and national identity.

The clearest example of Traditionalist political influence today is in Russia.

Vladimir Putin’s chief ideologist, Alexander Dugin—whom Bannon has cited—translated (Julius) Evola’s work into Russian and later developed a Russian-nationalist variant of Traditionalism known as Eurasianism.

By installing Bannon, Conway, and later David Bossie to run his 2016 election campaign, Trump was handing the reins of a half-billion-dollar political enterprise to a seasoned team of professional anti-Clinton operatives.

These three figures from the Republican fringe, and the menagerie of characters they brought with them, were suddenly in charge of running major-party presidential campaign—against an opponent, Hillary Clinton, whom they’d been plotting to tear apart for the better part of twenty-five years.

Campaign to winning the 2016 election transition

Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig wrote that Bannon had previously run the conservative website Breitbart conduit to his indispensable base,

“The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic ‘you name it.’”

Given what transpired since the early days of the Trump administration, it’s bizarre to consider who was being considered for key positions.

Initially, Kushner, Bannon, and others in Trump’s inner circle favored Rudy Giuliani for attorney general.

Trump allowed Bannon, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka to operate as independent forces.  

During one version of musical chairs, General John Kelly left his position at Homeland Security to reign in the cats and establish an adult in the administration based on his years of service in the Marines.

As White House Chief of Staff, “I’m here to defend the Constitution and to defend the rule of law,” General John Kelly told the other officials in attendance. “The oath doesn’t say anything in there about being loyal to the president. It doesn’t say anything in there about the GOP being more important than your integrity.”

Don McGahn, Chief Council and Bannon both asked for lawyer Ty Cobb’s help in removing Kushner and Ivanka. Cobb’s view was also partly shaped by a careful reading of the palace intrigue. Bannon might be the next to go instead.

Trump dismissed Bannon, embody the White House’s dysfunction and self-destructive tendencies. The discarding of Bannon underscored the fact that the president wanted all the glory for himself.

Yet, before the final curtain fell, over 140 people were granted clemency with a stroke of Trump’s pen near midnight on January 19, including: 

    • Rapper Lil Wayne, 
    • former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and 
    • countless other allies in politics and business, and
    • Bannon

It wasn’t the case of gone, but not forgotten, but more like Bannon had another role to play on the outside.

Evidence

Today’s Holiday Theme: 

In short, do not underestimate the danger of disrespectful words. They are like dryer lint — seemingly harmless garbage that is, in fact, highly flammable.

“5”  Steve Zahn, 51: “You don’t set out on an adventure; you just set out. The harrowing fun starts when expectations are not met, tools fail and plans disintegrate. This is the kind of gift that money can’t buy.” Scorpio

So this is the 4th Season of my adventure — what was intended to last one year living like an artist in a natural experiment.  Then came the pandemic.  And followed by a four-year administration seemingly immune to accountability, and then a different new normal post-pandemic and now one within a global crisis a potential WWIII.  Where is the fun?  Which tools haven’t we used? 

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Whether you choose to hang back and observe or jump in and participate, do it because you want to, not because someone is pressuring you. If you need support in standing up for yourself, here it is.” Aries

Savvy advice for any introvert like me.  Like Raskin, I never envisioned an insurrection.  I naively hoped removal by a fair and square election would put the Putin-like propaganda from the Oval Office out to sea.  Alas …

“4”  Steve Smith, 30, Stevie Nicks, 72: “Emotions warp the space-time continuum. Fear, waiting and discomfort make the seconds go by agonizingly slow. Joy, fascination and fun speed things up.” Gemini

What a brilliant opening line — warping space-time continuum with emotions.  But, the observation that wallowing in FUD stretches the sense to passing time is golden.  As is all those joyful moments that slip by in an instant.

“4”  Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “As playwrights know, people have a very short attention span for exposition. You’ll quickly get to the heart of the story and have the complete attention of your audience.” Sagittarius

What is it that parents always say?  Do as I say, not as I do.  My only hope today is to have the format for today’s episode help me help you get to the heart of the story.  Does it work?

Steve Harvey, 62; Stephan Patis, 53;  Stephen Hawking (1943 – 2018): “New people juice your curiosity. You’ll learn more through friendly playfulness and observation than you could possibly find out by asking direct questions.” Capricorn

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12559 this week to 12654 organically grown followers.
    • Orange County Beach Towns 172 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.” 
    • David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small  and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
    • “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy at almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected new President. 
    • “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.  
    • “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides anecdotes, stories and inside reporting documenting the controversial last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as the presidential transition and early presidency of Joe Biden. 
    • “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising,” by Joshua Green tracks the money behind the scenes leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the growing influence of Steve Bannon’s network of extreme nationalists.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

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

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S2 E60 — She Began to Weep…

Curiosity drives discoveries in science and innovation.  It pushes knowledge forward.  But, predictability and certainty favor the status quo and our homeostasis because without them our mind grinds to a halt. So what can you do?

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “When the solution eludes you, tackle it backward, inside out or upside down — any other way than the usual. What’s needed is a fresh approach.” Cancer

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 60 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Natural Experiment” on this 7th day of June 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 E59 — See What You’ve Been Missing; S2 E58 — Check Back in 18 Months; S2 E57 — Science and Medicine or Politically-Motivated Misinformation? 

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E60 — Overlapping Cycles of Life; S1 E59 — Where Did All the Dillon Millennials Go? Eureka!; S1 E58 — Judging a Stroll from the Hotel Santa Barbara to the Lobero Theater; S1 E57 — More or Less in the Know

Context

So, if you’re an introvert like me, then you understand how the forced solitude brought on by this Pandemic gives me the wonderful opportunity to work on my neglected manuscript I’ve been calling “Volume Three — a Legacy.”

Here’s an excerpt from the first draft or Chapter One .

AJ noticed him heading her way. “How’d you sleep?” she asked sitting in the kitchen as the sun rose in the East chasing the last moments of gray away.  Except for the gray she felt in her chest.

“OK, I guess, well no not really.  It’s just so weird sleeping in my old room.” Shaggy replied as he walked on the still shiny dark brown laminated wooden floor from the living room and past the long teak table in the dining room where all the family gatherings took place — Thanksgiving, especially Christmas Eve and Christmas Day — into the glaring California illuminated morning light.

“Coffee’s ready,” she said.

“Oh, OK, great.” Shaggy mumbled. He rubbed his tired eyes and turned left into the white u-shaped kitchen with white cabinets surrounding stainless steel dishwasher, stove, microwave and refrigerator.

Following his nose sniffing out the early morning fragrance just past the refrigerator on his right he mumbled something that AJ couldn’t hear as she sat in “his seat” with her back to the ever brightening morning streaming in through the sliding glass door.

“You wanna sit here?”

He opened the only unattached white cabinet on the opposite wall which hung above the light gray backsplash next to the white bay window behind the sink and next to the kitchen table.  He grabbed a dark blue mug, spun and headed back to the coffee maker.

“No, thanks.  I’m gonna just sit on the couch for a minute or two and sip this Folgers.”

Timing was off.

AJ landed at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California from her home with Darin in Winter Park, Florida in Orange County where it is normally three hours later on any day of the week, especially on this one.  

The one she hadn’t been looking forward to.

Which is why she was up first.  Why she had tossed and turned in the other guest bedroom at the top of the stairs. Why she laid awake with a deeply sad feeling beginning three hours earlier at 3:30 am PST.

Shaggy walked past the blonde oblong wooden kitchen table to AJ’s left to the first of two matching couches that separated the kitchen from the family room in one big room.  

He could see himself in the mirror display on the opposite wall as he padded the few steps deeper into the room and stopped turned left and found his spot on the first couch facing the second butted up to the light gray painted wall and the mirror displays.

The smaller mirrors distorted his image.  

And being 6’ 4” and under these circumstances this morning the distorted reflection mirrored his internal morning fog.

AJ rose from the kitchen table deciding to join him instead of talking to his back.  She slid down the small space between Shaggy’s couch and the fireplace next to the patio door walked 6 or 7 steps on gray tile hearth into the family room and maneuvered herself carefully around the round dark wood coffee table that now separated her and Shaggy.

Her view back into the kitchen would be the money shot if she and Shaggy decided to put the place on the market.  To her left the original white cabinet doors along the floor hid blankets for winter viewing of the big black screen TV from each couch when the California temperature dropped into the 50s.  Brrr. Except for anybody else not living in Florida or California.

They hid board games from childhood and all kinds of things that would eventually require sorting and boxing, not something she was prepared to entertain at this moment.

And the original bookshelves displayed pictures of the two blond brothers, Shaggy and Jazzy, AJ’s photoshoot near high school graduation.  And, books and plates and CDs, and a wine rack and more pictures and photo albums and ….

“Remember when Jazzy was a baby and you could hold him in the crook of your arm between you hand and elbow?” she asked out of the blue.

“No, not really. I was only four when he was born at Hoag Hospital, but I do remember you visiting every summer,” Shaggy said. 

To AJ’s right on the end table next to the wicker basket on the floor for collecting “The Los Angeles Times” newspaper Jazzy loved to use for starting a fire was a photo showing AJ in a white wedding gown smiling and a slice of a backdrop from the Outer Banks hotel where she and Darin tied the knot and Shaggy celebrated with a canoe filled with beer followed by his gigantic migraine dwarfing hangover the next morning — actually afternoon.

“I remember the back yard before they changed it.  It didn’t have the tan slope stone walls, but I think the black wrought iron railing stretched across the back from side to side.  And there used to be giant ficus trees in corners and a small round cement patio surrounded in grass,” she told Shaggy.

“Yeah,” he said.

That’s where they tossed a whiffle ball and played catch until probably Shaggy began hitting the ball with the big red plastic bat over the fence and down into the slope on purpose.  

“Somewhere there’s a picture of all of us in front of the tree on the grass around here I bet,” she said. “And probably that one where we four kids posed in front of the then white front door on the red brick entrance.”

“I remember when our parents threw that karaoke party when Jazzy graduated high school and I graduated college and you and Darin flew out for the Mexican foot catering affair.”

“That’s the one where Darin tipped over the container of margarita salt on the grass which killed it in no short order, right?  Dad never let him forget.  He once wrote on a birthday card that to commemorate the occasion they had a brass metal plate made up engraved with the date and his name and …” she began to weep.

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday:  

You’ll be called on to do something you haven’t done before. You’ll be both inspired and inspirational. A group will form around your leadership as you apply past experience to figure things out. Results beyond your expectations will come at the start of the new year. Your family grows in March 2021.

OK, let’s check back in 9 months!

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “It only takes one connection to make your personal life go from being a stale routine to an inspired journey. You’ll make that connection today and a transformation will occur in the weeks to come.” Aries  

So you’re saying this connection is an antidote for pandemic cabin fever?  That transformation … will it come from a person kind of connection or from a answer that has eluded my pursuit?

“4”  Steve Smith, 30: “You’ll be gifted with an emotion that is one click beyond passion and desire: rage. Rage doesn’t have to be angry or negative, but it’s always powerful, and best focused on what’s important to you.” Gemini

OK, this TauBit of Wisdom scares me and intrigues me.  How do you focus it without doing irreparable damage?

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “When the solution eludes you, tackle it backward, inside out or upside down — any other way than the usual. What’s needed is a fresh approach.” Cancer

Thanks for breaking the log jam.  I just couldn’t figure out how to start this manuscript.

“4”  Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Whomever you align yourself with, you grow to be more like. It isn’t necessary for you to have a personal relationship with your role models. You get to choose them from the whole wide world.” Leo

There’s such a long list, but one of the most influential is Toffler (see immediately below) and more recently Kurt Andersen who wrote “Fantasyland” which is both an update and a framework in which to view Future Shock.

“4”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “Your famous adaptability will kick in. From the outside, your behavior may look illogical, but there’s definitely a method to your madness. When an unusual situation crops up, an unusual reaction is warranted.” Virgo

Should this be true about me, I feel the need to honor Alvin Toffler who alerted me to disruption and how to adapt or accommodate changes on the horizon.

“4”  Steve Aoki, 41: “Passions build slowly. At first, you don’t even realize what you want. When leanings turn to yearnings and become undeniable in their message, it’s a blessing that doesn’t feel like one.” Sagittarius

Who can resist such a phrase, “learnings turn to yearnings”?  But the point of the message mystifies me, why doesn’t the blessing feel like one?  It’s still early in the day, so maybe it will be revealed in the evening or late afternoon.

“5”  Steve Nash, 45: “Emotional skill and intelligence can be earned through both negative and positive experiences. Today will bring scenarios you will use as examples of what to do and what not to do.”  Aquarius

Well, of course I’d rate this TauBit of Wisdom a “5” given what it looks like we’re being trapped in for the foreseeable future. So take some time to review the Deloitte and Salesforce sponsored scenarios. 

“3”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “The possessions that you get the most value out of are the ones you use every week and maybe every day. As for the others, the more you can let go of, the lighter you’ll feel.” Pisces

So that would be describing the 500 pieces jigsaw puzzle sitting for days now on our dining room table?

Holiday Forecast for the Week Ahead:  

Curiosity is a slightly uncomfortable state of mind, as it relies on the tension between knowing and not knowing. The tension is resolved with an answer. So tenacious is our need for answers that our brains will just fill in the blanks with anything that enables us to push forward. 

The human brain craves certainty. 

Without it, we are paralyzed. Certainty facilitates action, commitment and movement. Where there is no certainty (and reality offers very little of it) humans do the next best thing; we make a good guess and come up with a theory that will allow us to go onward. If to assume is human, then not to assume is superhuman. Anyone can say, “I’m right,” and live to defend that. But it takes humility, higher thinking and a willingness to be uncomfortable inside the tension of curiosity to go to the next cognitive level — to question, wonder, revel in mystery and leave the loop open to possibility.

Whether or not today’s forecast gains currency over the next 7 days, I believe the insights ring true for me — curiosity drives discoveries in science and innovation.  It pushes knowledge forward.  But, predictability and certainty favor the status quo and our homeostasis because without them our mind grinds to a halt.  Without answers we jump to guesses and theories and conspiracy theories, unless you are the rare person who focuses the unresolved tension onto the next higher cognitive level.  

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 3634 to 3806.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

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

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

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

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S3 E31 —Treat It Like a Pawn Ticket to Sketchier Things

Yesterday was all about me — what and why my Holiday Tau fit me the most.  Today is filled with a disappointing gaggle of Holiday Taus for Steves.  

“2”  Steve Zahn, 51: “It’s happened before that you got what you wanted and then were somehow vaguely unsatisfied. This time, you’ll question your wants and get to the bottom of why you want it, which helps your chances of a fortifying outcome.” Scorpio

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 30 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 18th day of April 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 E30 — Steal These TauBits, Please. It’s Only Fair!; S3 E29 — Why 83.3% of the Time I Swiped Your Tau; S3 E28 — Why I Stole Your Daily Horoscope for a Year

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E31 — Getting Charged from Box Automattic-aly; S2 E30 — It’s Crazy. Why does Amazon Prime Work, but Netflix Doesn’t?; S2 E29 — Three Months That Changed the World; S2 E28 — Hosting Norwegian Zooms While Trump Eliminated the Virus in April

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E31 — Day 31 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E30 — Day 30 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E29 — Day 29 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E28 — Day 28 of My 1-Year Experiment 

Context

I’d been working on the Findings Section of the report describing how for a year I lived life like an art form in a natural experiment.

The “Conclusions Section” grabbed my attention because the Holiday Tau for Zahnny, the Fonze, Emma the Baroness and me illustrates what critics level against astrology, palm reading, fortune telling and taking horoscopes too seriously. 

How could you not follow Nancy’s lead?  Not “Do It,” or, “Just Say No.” 

But first, here’s a quick and dirty 30-day summary, “Why I Stole Your Sign and the Mysteries of Your Life”.  Treat it like a pawn ticket to sketchy things I’ve learned from stealing your sign without doing the time. I feel so guilty about it that I’m willing to sell it back to you.  

When Ronald Regan sat in the oval office, his First Lady consulted with an astrologer for scheduling his important meetings.  Was this time optimum for the President?  Or was tomorrow better?  

“Mrs. Reagan’s spokesperson said of the astrologer,  ‘Air Force One didn’t take off without permission. [Nancy] set the time for summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev, presidential debates with Carter and Mondale…the timing of all the President’s trips abroad, of his press conferences, his State of the Union addresses.’”

I can only assume it included leading up to his speech, “Mr. Gorbachev, take down that wall.” 

After all, they were both in the acting business as celebrities before he became California’s governor and later President.

Let’s not forget what a fellow Californian and Los Angeles Lakers legend wrote:

“Intelligent imagination is vital to this sort of deduction! However improbable a hypothesis, it cannot be discarded”

— “Mycroft and Sherlock” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

However comma in the Conclusions Section is the time to confirm or deny your hypothesis.  Can I get an “Amen”?  

The reason why astrology may seem like it works is because our brains are wired to look for patterns, even when none exists.  For me as a writer I found it easy to conduct “discussions” with Steves about their horoscope.  

And, that made it easy for me to bring small parts of what I’m actually thinking about, working through, or experiencing in the world like they are. 

I embarked on this experiment, and I make no apologies for it, hoping I’d find a significant inspiration or insight to solve a vexing problem, master a complicated first time challenge or just make how my day flowed a little easier.

But you can’t ignore the role of bias conspiring against reliable results: selection bias on the front end and confirmation bias on the back end. 

Self-selection bias boils down to the very human tendency to look for interpretations or confirmations for what we already hope to be true. 

To mitigate undue bias effects, I summarized what was happening behind the scenes first and then “scored” the Holiday Tau curated for that day.

Since the brain is not looking for exact matches, it can pick up some characteristics of a match and assume it fits. Astrology is no more than a test of chance and it is not a reliable way to predict personality, scientists and critics say.

Another phenomenon I noticed over the year is one astrologer’s prediction for a horoscope is typically and completely unrelated to the prediction of another astrologer for the identical horoscope. 

Oops.  

So for purposes of this natural experiment I chose consistency and stuck with Holiday Mathis throughout the year.  Your mileage may vary.

But, I had to ask and am left with, how similar is my long-term attraction to trends and predictions I research to better decide a significant course of action with the appeal of the shorter-term astrological forecasts? 

I’m attracted for entertainment purposes, yes, but, as for guidance, not much at all.  To which you can rightly point out you’ve continued this obsession into your third year! 

Guilty as charged. On top of stealing your birthday more often than not.

And, that takes us to an example of what a Wikipedia “expert” had to say about how some people become truer believers than others:

“However, many people still believe their horoscope perfectly aligns with the events in their lives. There are some possible explanations for this. Horoscopes have vague wording and are based on typical everyday activities.”

Evidence

Cases in point.

“2”  Steve Zahn, 51: “It’s happened before that you got what you wanted and then were somehow vaguely unsatisfied. This time, you’ll question your wants and get to the bottom of why you want it, which helps your chances of a fortifying outcome.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

And for some reason the rest of the Holiday Tau doesn’t get much better!

“3”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “When they come to you with questions you can answer, it feels good to be able to help. When they come to you with questions you can’t answer, it gives you ideas about what to learn next.” Virgo

“3”  Steve Kerr, 54: “You’re just following your curiosity and doing your job, but you end up growing your expertise in the process, and your influence naturally expands. With increasing power comes increasing responsibility.” Libra

“4”  Steve Aoki, 41: “Intentionally focus on what there is to be happy about. To appreciate and enjoy where you’re at is more than just a good practice; it’s a tool that keeps you connected to the best parts of your humanity.” Sagittarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of digital magazines jumps from 7981 to 8003 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge” by E.O. Wilson, an entomologist who studied colonies of ants for their insights.  But didn’t stop there, according to The Wall Street Journal, “A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them.” 
    • “True Believers,” the novel by Kurt Andersen (which seems to precede Fantasyland)? I like how he goes back and forth from now to the ‘60s in which the main character is writing a memoir, but needs “Okays” from her friends who had been hiding a secret for 40+ years that could ruin their careers?  Like, what’s my equivalent
    • “Disappearing Through the Skylight” by O.B. Hardison, Jr. which proceeded “Consilience” by a decade.  Hardison’s been described as a polymathic renaissance man who wrote, “… Nature has slipped, perhaps finally beyond our field of vision.”  What does it mean for “… science, history, art and architecture, music, language, ultimately, for humanity”? This one provides missing chunks of understanding where we came from and where we’re going.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

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

Posted on

Season Three: The Paradoxically Normal Year

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

Table of Contents

Season Three: The Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E1 — Preview Day One in Season Three of the New Abnormality

S3 E2 — Preview of the New Post Pandemic Season

S3 E3 — A Pivot, a Miracle or Something Paradoxically Normal? 

S3 E4 — What a Fool Believes She Sees 

S3 E5 — Another Year Another Baby, Could Have Been Stevie like Stevie Nicks, but Noooooo! 

S3 E6 — What’s the Half Life of Wisdom? 

S3 E7 — Who Can Resist Ricky Gervais Calls in this Paradoxically Normal Year? 

S3 E8 — Wait, You’re Saying I Should Read It Again? 

S3 E9 —Melancholy and Undercover Brooklyn Moms Know Best 

S3 E10 —Feeding the Beast for Sheila in Fantasyland 

S3 E11 — Looking for a New Predictive Belief System? 

S3 E12 — You Can’t Cure Stupid, but There’s a Cure for Ignorance 

S3 E13 — Why? 

S3 E14 — How! 

S3 E15 — Wait, Did I Say That Out Loud? 

S3 E16 — Quid Pro Quo the Awesome Kind 

S3 E17 — Guess What? You’re on a Treadmill Just Now Picking Up Speed 

S3 E18 — My Teacher is Sending You to Detention! 

S3 E19 — Thought Flickers, Cosmic Swirling and Exacted Costs 

S3 E20 — Celebrate the Anniversary of When Things Seemed So Normal 

S3 E21 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and My Curiosity Whisperer Walking a Yip-Yippy Dog

S3 E22 — What’s the Experiment Got To Do with the Exodus from Barb’s Bunny Ranch? 

S3 E23— Free from the Pile of Rubble in Your Brain 

S3 E24—Reunion on the Edge of the Pacific Ocean near Legoland? Hell Yeah! 

S3 E25 — Art Lives Upon Discussion, Upon Experiment, Upon Curiosity … 

S3 E26 — Following Alice Down the Rabbit Hole 

S3 E27 — What the World Needs Now Before It’s Too Late 

S3 E28 — Why I Stole Your Daily Horoscope for a Year

S3 E29 — Why 83.3% of the Time I Swiped Your Tau

S3 E30 — Steal These TauBits, Please. It’s Only Fair!

S3 E31— Treat It Like a Pawn Ticket to Sketchier Things

S3 E32 — But, Why Should You Care?

S3 E33 — Do Meaningful Coincidences Really Exist?

S3 E34 — Why You’re Susceptible to Subliminal Suggestions Like … 

S3 E35 — This Ain’t No Zemblanity

S3 E36 — Placebo, Meaningful Coincidence or Just Feeling Lucky

S3 E37 — Tell Me More Lies I Can Believe In

S3 E38 — Sliding on a Super Slippery Slope to 2nd or 3rd Cousins

S3 E39 — Ready for Your Big Leap Forward?

S3 E40 — How Stealing Your Sign Led Me to a Nobel Prize

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

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

S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab 

S3 E44 — Make It Rhyme To Work Each Time 

 

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S4 E20 — Living Resiliently Through Domestic and Global Chaos

Polls and polling to him are demonstrations of loyalty, not scientific measures of the country’s mood. When faced with tough challenges, he becomes unglued and bombastic.

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

“5” Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Don’t leave a situation before the agreed upon ending. It takes patience to hang in for the last bits because your mind will be racing ahead to the next thing, but just hang in there.” Pisces

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s 20th Episode in Season 4 of  “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 3rd day of April in the spring of 2022.

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year. 

Season 4 continues now within domestic and global chaos.

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

S4 E19 — The Reason Character and Honesty Don’t Count Anymore; S4 E18 — Hopelessly Naive or Too Numb to Know Any Better?; S4 E17 — We Regret to Inform You …;

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E20 —Celebrate the Anniversary of When Things Seemed So Normal; S3 E19 — Thought Flickers, Cosmic Swirling and Exacted Costs; S3 E18 — My Teacher is Sending You to Detention!; S3 E17 — Guess What? You’re on a Treadmill Just Now Picking Up Speed;

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E20 — Panic, Fertilizer and Least Expected Meaningful Moments; S2 E19 — What’s Percolating in Our Collective Unconscious?; S2 E18 — What is the Truth and How Can You Tell?; S2 E17 — Shutting Mountain Resorts Down, Closing Boutiques, Kicking Tourists Out;

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E20 — Day 20 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E19 — Day 19 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E18 — Day 18 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E17 — Day 17 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

Miles Taylor, author of “A Warning” by (Anonymous ) witnessed the devolution in the Trump administration.  Mostly driven from the top by the Trumpster. 

He says he doesn’t need to read to make informed decisions because he acts “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already have]”.

Taylor found himself astonished at the president’s sheer level of intellectual laziness. 

And he wasn’t alone. 

Intelligence is one of those qualities that, if you insist you have it, you probably don’t — which is a polite way of putting it. 

Behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an “idiot” and a “moron” with the understanding of a “fifth or sixth grader.” People normally tack a string of expletives onto the front and back ends of their assessments.

Taylor’s title — A Warning — adds fuel to the fire raging in us, citizens feeling our constitutional democracy will come to an end if Trump is re-elected in 2024, or maybe worse, if he isn’t, given his behavior so well documented.

One core question we voters have to take seriously is he willing and able to change? Consider Taylor’s observations:

      • He has a juvenile view of complex subjects
      • Normal people who spend any time with him feel uncomfortable
      • He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information … with regularity and
      • He can’t remember what he’s said or been told.

In short Trump flunks Cicero’s “fake news” test — “it is dishonorable to stumble ignorantly when it comes to the facts and to be deceived.”

But the beat goes on starting before he was elected.  

He was a regular booster of Alex Jones.  Trump was also one of the most visible adherents of “birtherism,”

Was there a conspiracy theory he didn’t spread? Trump said:

      • Senator Ted Cruz’s dad was involved in the Kennedy assassination,
      • Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered, and
      • Vaccines cause autism.

The point is, Trump “doesn’t care if the person spewing them is a fraud, as long as their words serve whatever purpose Trump has.”

Taylor says he goes to bed with Lou Dobbs. a once-respected Fox host, whose late-night show is now riddled with conspiracy theories.

He falls asleep with Dobbs’ ideas floating in his head and regularly brings them to the Oval Office demanding they be implemented the way Lou said they should be.

He’s comfortable being a huckster of half-truths. He spends a lot of time talking to staff about perceived injustices. He will send White House aides on an endless quest to “fix it.”

Begrudgingly you may have to acknowledge his genius — an evil genius — for giving nicknames to his targets as a tactic allowing the president to turn attacks into instant memes. “He road tests the insulting monikers with friends.”

There are no two ways about it. Trump is a bully, explains Taylor.

Trump’s past is rife with allegations of stiffed contractors, unpaid employees, broken agreements, involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the span of three decades, included claims by individuals who said he and his companies failed to pay them.

Hardly a day goes by without revealing evidence that Trump is “… a vindictive and self-promoting person, one who spends inordinate time attacking others to advance his interests.”

The president’s modus operandi emphasizes combat over peacemaking, bullying over negotiating, malice over clemency, and recognition over true generosity. His philanthropic history is full of empty words and questionable practices.

Take the Trump Foundation which fits into the shady side of evil genius.

Rather than fund it himself, he solicited outside donors. Why?  It allowed him to write checks with his name on them without diminishing his own wealth.

But, the state investigation in New York accused it of “a shocking pattern of illegality,” little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.

Exhibit A? 

He used $10,000 in money from his charity to buy a six-foot oil portrait of himself. So much for the spirit of giving.

What happens when you compare Trump to Cicero’s standards? 

A courageous person includes resistance to the mob mentality, avoidance of obsession with money and pleasure, and stability through crises.

Our tweeter in chief survives on a diet of “likes” and “retweets” craving  high approval ratings which Taylor points out is ironic, because he does so little to deserve them.

Polls and polling to him are demonstrations of loyalty, not scientific measures of the country’s mood. When faced with tough challenges, he becomes unglued and bombastic.

Trump is not brave, nor unswayed by the crowd, nor uncommanded by money and pleasure, nor stable through crises. 

“Trump fuels rather than avoids mob behavior,” and that should give everyone pause.

Evidence

“4”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Taste is simply a matter of knowing what you genuinely like and why. Forget about what’s popular, what will sell or any other social concern and get deeply in touch with your own preferences.” Scorpio

I see how this goes.  A constant reminder for that one side of me that ignores which stories I curate because some fictional audience member might not like it, to keep it up.  And there’s that rationalization for not gaining follower and viewer analytics that my Myers Briggs Temperament Indicator profile, INTP, accounts for less than 5% of all types which extrapolates to disappointing 95% of people who stumble upon my work. 

Or, holding up as my hero Leonardo da Vinci for finishing far fewer of his promised projects to his patrons, because he caved in to his infinite curiosity as documented in his sketches and notes.  

Or, Aldwyth as my heroine, who personifies living life as an artist and actually works and lives in her studio.  I want to capture some of the commentary about her for a companion to Joseph Chilton Pearce’s explanation with her concrete examples.  Art for art sake and her finished, and multi-year projects yet unfinished work that totally engages her.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “You’ll get the chance to show what you’ve been up to and get some constructive feedback. If others seem surprised by your work, it’s just because you’ve been doing it so quietly. They had no idea what to expect from you.” Virgo

Really?  When?  How should I position what I’ve been up to?  The fourth season of a natural experiment?

“4”  Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “One way you can tell a true friend: If it’s important to you, it’s important to your friend. If you feel free to share on subjects in which your friend has no other interest except that it matters to you, you’ve found a keeper.” Sagittarius

Don’t you think that this harder or becoming more difficult, because people who used to feel the same way as you and who would just rift with you in a jazz kind of way may have suddenly lost their senses when it came to polarizing politics?

“3”  Steve Harvey, 62; Stephan Patis, 53;  Stephen Hawking (1943 – 2018): “It doesn’t matter how fast you go as long as it’s the right direction, which is to say, forward. Sometimes forward looks like falling down. It always involves getting up again. Things don’t have to be smooth to be right.” Capricorn 

Sure, forward moving is how you want to fall instead of springing back.

“4”  Steve Nash, 45: “You’ve a unique perspective but you don’t realize what it is yet. You can’t find out by asking others. Go inside yourself and direct your questions to your own heart.” Aquarius 

Are you certain?  Haven’t I spent way too much time going inside of myself?  

“5” Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Don’t leave a situation before the agreed upon ending. It takes patience to hang in for the last bits because your mind will be racing ahead to the next thing, but just hang in there.” Pisces

One of the hallmarks of INTPs and most introverts is patience — or maybe better stated as processing time.  Our brains aren’t wired like extroverts.  We need quiet time to recharge our batteries.  But, yes just like Leo da V I feel my mind racing ahead before I keep the agreement with myself.

Today’s Holiday Theme: 

Many cosmologists believe that over 13 billion years ago, the entire universe was condensed into a space smaller than a dust speck. How we’ve grown … an emotion, an appetite and a point of ignition … Something as small as an idea will set off an expansive chain of events.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12458 this week to 12559 organically grown followers.
    • Orange County Beach Towns 212 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.” 
    • David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small  and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
    • “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy at almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected new President. 
    • “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.  

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

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S2 E52 — What’s So Wrong with Conventional Wisdom Unless …

… We’re in for a period of applying intelligence, indulging curiosity, playing around with different perspectives and taking part in extraordinary discussions that could only happen at this historic moment.

Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Creativity can only be accessed in the present. To obsess about the future or ruminate about the past isn’t creative. Those behaviors can be useful, but a very small dose goes a long way.”  Leo

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 52 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Experiment” on this 24th day of May in the spring 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 E51 — Let’s Agree to Make Things Worse, Shall We?; S2 E50 — 5 Fundamental Uncertainties; S2 E49 — Navigating Waves of Disruption When You’ve Lost Your Bearings

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E52 — Missing Chapters and Paths Not Taken; S1 E51 — Brief, Broad, Fast, Wow and Delight; S1 E50 —The Bias Brothers or Just Plain Losers?; S1 E49 — Magnetize the Version You Imagine

Context

Can you predict the future?  Hell, no!  Does that stop anyone from trying, well not everyone, right?  In very uncertain times like these what we need I believe is scenario thinking instead. With it we can creatively prepare for and clarify potential risks when we choose a path forward.

And, that my friends is why I’m continuing my series drawing upon the report from Deloitte and Salesforce’s “The world remade by COVID-19 Scenarios for resilient leaders | 3-5 years.”

Why am I a big fan of scenarios — other than they are just so much fun to flesh out? 

“Scenarios are stories about what the future may be like, created through a structured process  to stretch thinking, challenge conventional wisdom, and drive better decisions today. They are not predictions about what will happen. They are hypotheses about what could happen, designed to open our eyes to new opportunities or hidden risks.” 

Here’s what they and we are after — trying to get our heads around what kinds of changes can we expect as we invest our livelihoods and embrace our social isolation sacrifices through a novel global uncertainty.

The good folks at Deloitte and Salesforce encourage us to challenge our assumptions.  

… imagine how the things you were sure would happen could now be on a different course. Avoid the temptation to conclude that the crisis will accelerate the changes you already expected or believed were inevitable. 

Here’s an 8-step process of strategic exploration I normally follow. We’re now on step 4.

    1. State the specific decision to be made —to answer the question we’ve all been asking ourselves, what will have changed as a result of what’s happening to us right now.
    2. Identify the major environmental forces impacting the decision —the team identified 19 uncertainties and 5 critical uncertainties with two dimensions along which 2 critical uncertainties will drive the overall impact.
    3. Develop four plausible and qualitatively different possibilities for each force — 1.  The Passing Storm, 2. Good Company, 3. Sunrise in the East and 4. Lone Wolves.
    4. Assemble the alternatives for each force into internally consistent stories

Here’s how Deloitte and Salesforce summarized 5 critical forces playing out in each of 4 scenarios to assemble those forces into internally consistent stories. 

    1. Social cohesion rises with a heightened appreciation for interpersonal and familial relationships (Passing Storm); is maintained as society shifts to become more “purpose-driven” (Good Company); shifts to an increased emphasis on the “good of the whole” (Sunrise in the East); and falls, as xenophobia and suspicion of others become the norm (Lone Wolves).
    2. Technology advances stay on course as previous holdouts move online (Passing Storm); take center stage with large companies driving solutions in areas such as health tech and biotech (Good Company); are accelerated as more data-sharing allows for advances in AI and other advanced tech capabilities (Sunrise in the East); and are divergent among different markets, with a focus on advances in surveillance and control measures (Lone Wolves)
    3. Worldwide economies enter an extended recession with increased income inequality (Passing Storm); are disrupted with a growing concentration of power among large companies (Good Company); shrink due to the prolonged nature of the virus (Sunrise in the East); and are left in turmoil as global supply chains are disrupted (Lone Wolves)
    4. Focus on climate change is renewed as global collaboration provides hope for progress (Passing Storm); is mixed with some sustainability-minded companies investing in renewable energy (Good Company); is deemphasized as economic recovery is prioritized (Sunrise in the East); and declines as countries shift toward energy independence (Lone Wolves)
    5. Governments around the world gain trust and international organizations such as WHO grow in relevance (Passing Storm); partner with large corporations, who step up as part of the solution (Good Company); look to the east for guidance, as Asian countries effectively manage the virus (Sunrise in the East); and adopt isolationism as they attempt to contain the virus within (Lone Wolves)

Evidence

“4”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Because you have big plans, you can’t afford to wait for inspiration. You’ll simply show up and work whether you feel motivated or not. Inspiration will kick in eventually.” Scorpio

So I feel this almost every day.  Waiting for inspiration only means staring at a blank screen for far too long.  Two activities usually work for me.  The first I start the morning with, even before the first cup — scrolling through all the Apple News feeds I search to curate the days stories @Knowlabs. 

Something triggers an inspiration or a loose (at 5:30 am) connection for one of my passion projects.  The other is this habit on Thursdays through Fridays of curating TauBits of Wisdom because it stretches me to twist it somehow into what I want to say.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday:  

“A lucrative wave of business occurs as your interests meld with the common interest and you provide a valuable service. Years of experience suddenly add up to well-deserved mastery. Smooth will be the road of relationships and smoother still will be your approach to getting into and out of them as the case may be.”

I can only wish for two reasons.  I’m not seeing it and because this ain’t my birthday.  If it’s your’s Happy Birthday and enjoy your well-deserved mastery and smooth relationships.

“5”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Creativity can only be accessed in the present. To obsess about the future or ruminate about the past isn’t creative. Those behaviors can be useful, but a very small dose goes a long way.”  Leo

Amen brother Steves.  Rumination and obsession lead to a road of ruin — or at least blocked creativity.  Switch gears and close your favorite screen. 

“3”  Steve Kerr, 54: “No one is entirely to blame for the situation they are in, but everyone is entirely responsible for their own situation. You’ll get the help you need and give the help that is needed in the name of improvement.” Libra

I almost passed on selecting Steve’s, until I realized we individually didn’t start the fire of COVID-19 burning out of control, but we can get vaccinated when it’s an option and we can wear our masks.

“4”  Steve Harvey, 62: “You’ll have an excellent sense of where to focus, and it only gets better as the day progresses. At the end of the day, you’ll feel like you spent your energy on all the right things.”  Capricorn

I know it’s really tough to know where to focus right now.  I only hope presenting this Deloitte and Salesforce report will make things a little easier and that makes me feel I’ve spent today’s energy on the right things, then.

“5” Steve Nash, 45: “You will become aware of something you have been, until now, only unconsciously aware of. This is big. “Ah-ha” moments don’t come with fireworks. Nonetheless, they change everything.”  Aquarius

When I’m not, my other trick is to ask, “What would Leo da V do?” to give me permission to procrastinate like a Renaissance Master and free associate like a dog on a walk who abruptly takes off with the first sniff of squirrel no matter what the destination was supposed to be.

The Holiday Forecast for the Week Ahead:  

“… suggests we (shouldn’t) be quick to land on conclusions, definitions or labels. It’s not the moment to listen to uneducated opinions or even educated ones. Messes could very well become successes and vice versa, and it’s too soon to tell how the chips will fall. Time will tell, and anyone who tries to preempt time’s decree will later have to content with their own bad taste while eating their words. … we’re in for a period of applying intelligence, indulging curiosity, playing around with different perspectives and taking part in extraordinary discussions that could only happen at this historic moment. Set out to have fun, or better yet to be the fun. Above all, don’t take yourself too seriously, as that would only ruin the magic. The lighter a heart is, the higher it can fly.”

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines grew from 2663 to 2839.

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

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S3 E27 — What the World Needs Now Before It’s Too Late

And, it’s part one of our segment we call “Listen Up Expectant Mothers” when we ask: What do expectant mothers wish for their about-to-be newborns?  

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

“5”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “Maybe it is not your purpose to incite curiosity and show people less obvious truths, but that is the natural result of your devotion to a meaningful interest that, in some way, pertains to us all.” Virgo

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 27 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 11th day of April 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.

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E26 — Following Alice Down the Rabbit Hole; S3 E25 — Art Lives Upon Discussion, Upon Experiment, Upon Curiosity …;  S3 E24— Reunion on the Edge of the Pacific Ocean near Legoland? Hell Yeah!

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E27 — Why I Have to Keep Leo da V on a Leash and So Should You; S2 E26 — Rethinking the N-Word; S2 E25— Are You an Innie or Outie Thinker?; S2 E24— Working Remote from KnowWhere Atoll

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E27 — Day 27 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E26 — Day 26  of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E25— Day 25 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E24 — Day 24 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

And, it’s part one of our segment we call “Listen Up Expectant Mothers” when we ask: What do expectant mothers wish for their about-to-be newborns?  

Short answer is to listen to Rascal Flat’s “My Wish” and Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” and read on.

Like Tau, we have the Greeks to thank for our name, Steve. 

As you recall, Tau in ancient times was used as a symbol for life or resurrection, whereas the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, theta, was considered the symbol of death.

Here’s the pitch for bringing more Steves into the world!

Stephen comes from Greeks, according to Wikipedia: 

From the Latin Stephanus, which is from the Greek Stephanos, a name derived from stephanos (a crown, a garland). 

The name is borne in the Bible by St Stephen, one of the seven chosen to assist the apostles, and the first Christian martyr. 

Var: Stefan, Stefen, Stefon, Stephan, Stephon, Stevan, Steven, Stevon. Short: Steve.

Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; 

he is widely regarded as the first martyr (or “protomartyr“) of the Christian Church. 

The name “Stephen” (and its common variant “Steven”) is derived from Greek Στέφανος (Stéphanos), a first name from the Greek word στέφανος (stéphanos), meaning “wreath, crown” and by extension “reward, honor, renown, fame”, from the verb στέφειν (stéphein), “to encircle, to wreathe”.

In Ancient Greece, crowning wreaths (such as laurel wreaths) were given to the winners of contests. 

Originally, as the verb suggests, the noun had a more general meaning of any “circle”—including a circle of people, a circling wall around a city, and, in its earliest recorded use, the circle of a fight, which is found in the Iliad of Homer.

Now comes the gut wrenching news:  

In the United Kingdom, it peaked during the 1950s and 1960s as one of the top ten male first names (ranking third in 1954) but had fallen to twentieth by 1984 and had fallen out of the top one hundred by 2002. 

The name was ranked 201 in the United States in 2009, according to the Social Security Administration. 

The name reached its peak popularity in 1951 but remained very common through the mid-1990s, when popularity started to decrease in the United States.

Not quite as bad as what togetherness means for us during the Pandemic year(s), but still sad.  

Evidence

You could say unless our luck and fortune change we’ll remain on the endangered list on a path “going places” to extinction.  

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Honestly, Today’s Birthday sucked.  You’ll just have to take my word on it.

From Saturday, but setting up today’s fresh start:

Navigating is a lot easier when you know where you are. Without that information, the map may as well be just a random pretty picture. Getting places is simple: Know where you are, determine where you want to be, and then solve for the difference. 

All together now, but wanting to escape — no not from you Emma the Baroness — let’s turn our fortune to the week ahead, and shop — Emma the Baroness — for more bargains heading our way humming and skipping with beginner’s luck.

Holiday Forecast for the Week Ahead: 

“It’s a welcome placement for many, signifying the following turns of fortune: Coveted things become accessible. Unaffordable things become affordable either because the price goes down or the spending money goes up.”

So, if I’m getting this right, Steve, your Holiday Tau says I’m good at navigating, maybe through this whitewater rafting thing we call life because I have GPS and can solve for the difference?  It’s the process, not the glory.

“4”  Steve Howey, 42: “You’ll make a proactive and deliberate attempt to achieve an aim that is not achieved by most people. It’s nice when this gets noticed today, but honestly, you’re doing it for the challenge, not the glory.”  Cancer

Haha.  What if it is my purpose, G&G to curious-up for some truth revealing?  Is your Holiday Tau just as meaningful?

“5”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “Maybe it is not your purpose to incite curiosity and show people less obvious truths, but that is the natural result of your devotion to a meaningful interest that, in some way, pertains to us all.” Virgo

Hi Steve.  Does your TauBit of Wisdom have anything to do with Tau — which is 2pi?  Making it easier and more elegant for solving geometric problems? Nope? Didn’t think so.

“4”  Steve Harvey, 62: “The people you’ll deal with aren’t entirely rational. You understand them anyway because neither are you. Also, there’s a good chance that the seemingly illogical equation figures out perfectly on deeper levels.” Capricorn

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of digital magazines jumps from 7816 to 7930 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge” by E.O. Wilson, an entomologist who studied colonies of ants for their insights.  But didn’t stop there, according to The Wall Street Journal, “A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them.” 
    • “True Believers,” the novel by Kurt Andersen (which seems to precede Fantasyland)? I like how he goes back and forth from now to the ‘60s in which the main character is writing a memoir, but needs “Okays” from her friends who had been hiding a secret for 40+ years that could ruin their careers?  Like, what’s my equivalent? “Disappearing Through the Skylight” by O.B. Hardison, Jr. which proceeded “Consilience” by a decade.  Hardison’s been described as a polymathic renaissance man who wrote, “… Nature has slipped, perhaps finally beyond our field of vision.”  What does it mean for “… science, history, art and architecture, music, language, ultimately, for humanity”? This one provides missing chunks of understanding where we came from and where we’re going.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

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S2 E40 — The Profound Impact of the Pandemic on Nouns

What do you mean when you say you curate nouns? That’s just plain weird.  What’s the point? It’s how they are interdependent that interests me.  How one, two or three react together in a positive or negative spiral.

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

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “Change is necessary, and you feel driven to break up the monotony but only to a certain degree. Too much novelty is destabilizing, so you’ll seek just the right amount of excitement.” Cancer

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 40 in Season 2 of  “My Pandemic Year Experiment” on this 3rd day of May in the spring of 2020. 

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

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E40 — Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving On; S1 E39 — What’s Up with Facebook?; S1 E38 — 38 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E37 — Day 37 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

Today, in response to the unfolding pandemic and the consequences we face I’m revisiting content I want to cover.

Introduction

“Yeah, I should say nouns come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but I’m only interested in tying people, places, things, ideas, information and trends together in new and original ways.”

It’s how they are interdependent that interests me.  How one, two or three react together in a positive or negative spiral.  

People.  

What do people do?  They live. They love. They work. They play. They invest. They leave a legacy. They navigate  their own lifecycle:  birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage, career, retirement, death.

Places. 

They evolve slowly.  They come in urban and rural geographies and densities.  

Organizations. 

Navigating stages: Start up, Emerging Growth, Rapid Growth, Sustained Growth, Maturity, Decline and Reinvention. 

Things. 

They come in too many variations. And, at an ever accelerating pace.

Ideas. 

They are received and shared through bubbles, bias and rampant gullibility.

Information. 

Noise and Data. Wisdom and Transformations. Ecosystem of conspiracies filled with misinformation, disinformation and useless information.

Trends. 

Fads explode and then fade. Generations latch on to some. Technology drives others.  Influencers sneeze and infect fads and fashions. Paradigms usher in sets of trends at unconscious levels.

Evidence

Holiday Forecast for the Week Ahead:  

Social influence happens every moment of every day whether you’re with people or not. 

Even if you’re alone and not consuming mainstream media or social media, the social influence is still present — in language, the design of a living space, the items around you that were made by others, the way you get your food. 

It’s inescapable. On a day-to-day basis, we operate largely unaware of the extent of our wider social bonds and roles.

This is what makes it absolutely essential to notice our participation in the hive mind and wake up to our individual thought processes to whatever extent we can.

“4”  Steve Zahn: “You’ll be in the grip of conflicting tensions, and though this is a little uncomfortable, there’s something terribly interesting, creative and romantic about it, too.” Scorpio

Yeah, I have so much content.  Too much.  Just wrangling it into something digestible for readers and followers requires time and energy and concentration to pull off.  And then it becomes OBE — overtaken by events.  This damn coronavirus.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“3”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Success won’t come from doing anything too grand. It just comes from doing what you say you’re going to do. Promise small and deliver on it, and you’ll win the day.” Aries

Boy was this a hard lesson to learn.  I always tended to underestimate how long tasks would take on a project plan while working with organization clients.  I ended up eating a lot of my fees, because I over promised and barely made deadlines.  

“4”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69: “You’ll get specific about what you want and need, because the typical answers are so ubiquitous that they no longer mean anything to you. What would be good for you is different from what would be good for someone else.”  Taurus

Oh, and I’m easily distractible flying off into seductive curiosities like a dog picking up the scent of a squirrel and ripping the leash out of a dog walker’s hand to give chase.  As an INTP (Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator) I realize there only about 3 to 5% of us — so yes, we are different and crave unique nuts to squirrel away. 

“3”  Steve Smith, 30: “Imperfection and flaws are part of the deal. The better you are at living with things you don’t like without giving them too much of your attention, the more time you’ll have to do something great.”Gemini

Isn’t that the Zen principle of detachment?  Let those imperfections and flaws flow through your consciousness to let go of them.  You don’t want to become a victim of how we described some engineers 

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “Change is necessary, and you feel driven to break up the monotony but only to a certain degree. Too much novelty is destabilizing, so you’ll seek just the right amount of excitement.” Cancer

The key is to define “certain degree” and most often the you know it when you feel it.  We only have so much energy we can expend towards disruptive change thrown at us. But, like exercise, controlling the novelty you seek helps create the stamina and resilience required to thrive.

“4”  Steve Carrell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “The significance of committing to one thing is that you are also giving up your option of doing the other things. What comes without sacrifice quickly becomes worthless.” Leo

But what about all those other squirrel projects?  Isn’t that called concurrent program management or at least multi-tasking?  

“4”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “Committing to your own growth will mean doing things that don’t necessarily come easily to you, but that doesn’t mean they have to be very hard, either. Small changes will add up.” Virgo

That’s what I’m talking about.  The compound interest strengthens our resilience — the capacity to adapt or adopt new changes in our habits.

“4”  Steve Aoki, 41: “Your ability to compartmentalize will allow you to do incredible things. There are times when you take your ability to focus on the task at hand for as long as it takes to accomplish it as a given.” Sagittarius

And, I’d say that time is just about up.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @knowlabs followers of one or more of my 35 digital magazines grew from 1760 to 2,170.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • Just picked up “Bob Dylan In America” by Sean Wilentz.  Maybe because of the subliminal messaging like the times are a changing and the answer is blowing in the wind, but I kinda like Sean’s fanboy becomes music critic becomes historian surrounding Dylan’s life and times.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

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

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