Why I hate Conan O'Brien

You want to know why I don't watch Conan O'Brien and think he's an idiot?  He's invited to make the Dartmouth Commencement address and he offers this bit of brilliance:

"Today, you have achieved something special, something only 92 percent of Americans your age will ever know: a college diploma. That’s right, with your college diploma you now have a crushing advantage over 8 percent of the workforce. I'm talking about dropout losers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg."  

Actually, Conan, no.  Only about 19% of Americans get college degrees. But, I understand, you were trying to make a joke.  However, it wasn't funny.  Sort of like you weren't funny on the Tonight Show, which is why you got cancelled (after getting $30mm and crying endlessly).  Just like your show now isn't funny.

How do some people manage to have so many unproductive lives?

On Becoming a Leader

Image from: 1.00 FTE

One of my favorite bloggers, Art Petty, has a post about the Nine Key Professional Capabilities Required by Our Times.   While I agree that all of his capabilities are important, they miss what has to come first.  Developing a hard skill.  In this brave new world, managers need to develop (or better yet, have developed before they become managers) a hard skill.

Let me define what I mean.  A hard skill is the ability to do something that takes time to learn (I'll go with Gladwell's 10,000 hours), some measure of talent and some exposure to something that prevents you from being exposed to other things.

For example, coding.  It probably takes about 10,000 hours to become a competent developer.  Also, you need some mental ability and intelligence.  And finally, cultivating your coding skills prevents you from doing other things. [Editor: For you, that would be dating.]

Carpentry, plumbing, wiring a network, becoming a CPA, learning the sales process etc. are all examples of skills.  The days of being a manager (or leader) who has an MBA and can do some analysis in Excel are gone.  The days of middle management are gone.

If you want to be a manager or a leader in this brave new world, you have to be able to deliver something which requires cultivated skills in addition to being an authentic, empathetic manager/leader.

Facts are facts.  Between China, India, the Philippines, Brazil and the rest of the developing world, there are about 3 billion more people that you have to compete with to be a manager/leader.  Americans and Europeans have a much higher standard of living, however, people from the developing world are willing to work much harder and will happily adjust you out on your keister.

If you want to become a leader, first develop a skill.

Progress and Prudence

To move forward, an organization must set goals and and execute projects with confidence.  However, this must be balanced with prudence, the possibility that you could be wrong.  This prudence cannot present itself as waffling or the inability to make a decision.  Nor can it manifest itself in an endless run of started, but abandoned projects.  Instead, it must balance the requirements to drive progress with prudence.  That's why I like Richard Rorty's quote so much:

"To accept our own fallibility is to embrace ‘the permanent possibility of someone having a better idea.’"

— Richard Rorty

Move forward with the best current idea, but be permanently open to the possibility of someone having a better idea.

Writing Knowledge

Bas de Bar has a great post about context.  Context has so much to do with meaning and the knowledge a reader gains.

Is the measure of quality writing the measure of transfering context?

If you think about the hierarchy of knowledge:

1. Data
2. Information
3. Knowledge
4. Wisdom

Data and information are supplied by the writer, but the reader has to do the interpretation.

As a creator, you create/write the information.  The better the writer, the easier it is for the reader to clearly interpret and gain knowledge.  You can't write context, but a good writer supplies it.

For example, Ernest Hemingway won a bet in the 20's about who could write the shortest story.  His complete story was six words:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn"

Everything you need to know is conveyed in those six words, even though all he supplied was information.  He did it in such a way that the reader supplies everything else, yet everyone understands what happened.

Maybe the better one becomes as a writer, the better one can pass context along with the information.  And the better one can pass context, the better chance the reader has of gaining knowledge.

Difference between Building Something and Managing Something

The ever enlightening Art Petty has a post over at Tanveer Naseer's blog that got me thinking.  What is the difference between building something and managing something?

To me, when you're building something that hasn't existed previously, there are a series of steps what you're building goes through:

1. Ok - what ever you're building is "Ok", meaning it solves the problem for which you're building a solution.
2. Better - The thing you've built solved the problem and now you've improved it.
3. Well - You thing does the job well.  For all practical purposes, that means you show it to people without apologizing.
4. Good - People are impressed enough with what you've built that they show it to other people and say it's good.

There are levels above good, but they are refinements that are distinct without necessarily being different.

Now, if you are managing something, it already exists.  Hopefully it's "Good", more likely it's "Ok" and could be made "better".  The import point is that it's purpose for existing has already been identified.

In this case, managing something is about refinement and continuity.  Maybe there are parts that are replaced, tuned or refined, but continuity is the defining characteristic.

Maybe it can be better thought of like this:  Building is about creation, managing is about continuing.  

Things That are Near Though Distant

Sei Shonagon wrote "The Pillow Book" between 989 and somewhere a little after 1,000 AD.  She offers a picture of what life was like in the Japanese Royal Court and what life was like for an ambitious woman a thousand years ago.  You also get a clear picture of what she was like.  She was good looking, and knew it.  She was intelligent and not shy about competing with men or women to prove it.  She enjoyed her lovers, rarely passed up entertaining experiences and could be a little bitchy when the spirit moved her.  My kind of woman! [Editor: Get to the point.  Let's be honest, you have no more chance with a woman who died a thousand year ago than you do with one alive today...]

What's interesting is what has changed and what hasn't.  I offer two of her entries as examples:

109. Tthings That are Distant Though Near
 - Festivals celebrated near the palace. *
 - Relations between brothers, sisters and other members of a family who do not love each other.
 - The zigzag path leading up to the temple at Kurama.
 - The last day of the Twelfth Month and the first of the First. **

110. Things That are Near Though Distant
 - Paradise
 - The course of a sail boat.
 - Relations between a man and a woman.

I would add one more to the list of "Near Though Distant" - Project completion.

It's What They Do Know that Just Ain't So

Maison Fleury  had a fantastic post about how people misunderstand mortgage laws in America and are making bad decisions because of it.  He reminded me of the American humorist, Will Rogers statement: "It's not what people don't know that hurts them. It's what they do know that just ain't so."

In our brave new world, how is that idea going to effect individuals making financial decisions, supra-national organizations like the European Union making financial-political-structural decisions, countries working out the economics of fiat money or central bankers dealing with currency manipulation?

In all each of these situations, people grew up with a particular paradigm for interacting the world. And surely they were successful because they made good decisions working within that paradigm. However, what if the world has changed and the old paradigms are no longer helpful?

To be successful today, will we not only have to escape the old paradigms, but also understand new ones before we can move ahead. 

Those who see the world more clearly have an advantage over those who don't. Which individuals, countries or organizations will adjust more rapidly and appropriately?

"It's not what people don't know that hurts them. It's what they do know that just ain't so."