Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist or The Spirit Of The Times, or temporary craziness, occurs in business, too. Over the past few years watching disintermediation of industry after industry has not only terminated scores of businesses, but also dramatically changed the business processes of the survivors. 

There are still top down organizations trying to hold off new customer-driven competitors, while increasing pressure strains remaining resources. But fewer of them. 

Remember reengineering? That worked pretty well...for a while. 

The management pyramid? Was that in Egypt? 

Took a while to figure out that best value just means lowest price. And figure out, figure out, figure out. 

Y2K? Dodged that bullet. Whew! 

Participative management? Fewer places to participate these days. 

Doing-more-with-less seems to keep morphing, popping up like a champagne cork on the tide. Maybe because it’s not a prescription but a description. 

In How To Create A Mind, Ray Kurzweil says that being early is just as bad as being late. He’s been successful in the inventing business for almost 50 years, and has been early, on time, and late.

Taking advantage of the now

How do you sift the media-anointed from the real? 

Alan Kay recommended, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”  For many of us, we’re moving the ball smartly, trying to find the end zone.  

Which means throwing out many of the analytical tools that will tell you when you’ve committed too much, adopting the tools that encourage carrying on until game’s over.  

I liked Bonnie Raitt’s observation, “Wow! Twenty years to become an overnight success.”

The future shows up regardless.

Springtime. We need a rainmaker! 

Wall of Shame

A site owner told me he was taking down his “Wall of Shame” or leaderboard, showing the top contributors to his site. It was an administrative headache as users changed their posting patterns. He was most upset about power users who had been thrown off the site, but their cumulative contribution continued to show.

Dave Eggers’ unsettling book, The Circle, recommended by JBat, provides some insights about personal and marketing addiction to leaderboards and potential uses and consequences.

Although I had not joined the site for the leaderboard, didn’t discover it until I got the notice I was on it from the site owners, the leaderboard subsequently did drive my contribution, and when it came down, my participation diminished. The site became less of a priority.

I’m just reporting my behavior change. There was no encouragement/discouragement, just a page that got more compelling over time. I’m pretty driven when I’m browsing, and I spent a lot of time glancing at that page.

Nothing cynical or damaging. An insight into what works.

On another site, they ended their Wall of Shame thinking it might be an increasing discouragement to the other 99%.  The members who were contributing to the site changed dramatically. Contributions are down and posted by a different group. Not overnight, but over weeks and months.

I noticed that the editorial contributions of the independent writers is tighter, closer to the site owner’s desires, and less interesting.  That could be maturation of the community, a change of the participant’s focus or something else. I think it’s too big to be a conspiracy.

The Wall of Shame is a powerful tool.

See how Cost Goes Both Ways

Ego

Marc’s boss said, “With all your accomplishments, I don’t see your ego.”

Marc said, “I win.”

Feel the heat, Dune Leadership Lessons

Owners, Performers, and Optimizers

One of my really talented performers called today. He had met with a new consultant and was a little rattled, considering mutually assured destruction, rape, and pillage. He called wanting to know if I had any more satisfying revenge scenarios.

His boss, the company’s owner, had brought in the new guy because he was frustrated with their rate of growth. The consultant figured where better to start than with their top performer?

So the “consultant,” who is really an unemployed administrator, thought it would be helpful if the producer would take the time to recommend a dozen people with similar talents, right after documenting why he is successful.

The performer had an ugly year last year, and he did a lot better than the owner, best in the company, in fact. The consultant had been asked to clean out his desk at wherever he was hiding last year.

I’m real sure why the performer is successful. He works hard. He and I have spent a good deal of time honing what he does as he learns about what his market wants.

After figuring out something new, he disappears into the market and comes back with a new trophy. In the last 20 or so years, I’ve seen him do it at six companies, and what he does changes as the buyers’ needs change.

Sooner or later, he attracts the attention of an organizer who wants to optimize the effectiveness of the performer’s work. Not do any work, mind you, just trick somebody into supplying the magic slideshow that creates the tsunami.

Our internal explanation for these guys is, “When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.”

At one company, we built an explanation of the market that bewildered a dozen optimizers, while the performer built a six billion dollar business.

Finally, one optimizer understood that the real problem was the performer and managed to rightsize him. The organization exited an unusually profitable multi-billion dollar niche fifteen months later.

And we understand the owner’s frustration. As we were figuring out a tactical plan, we realized that the performer is the main hope for the owner, and that being nasty wasn’t going to help.

We are dealing with a government controlled economic slowdown, so correct behavior to continue to  support the owner, without necessarily giving intellectual property to a consultant who can’t understand it. The owner is getting most of his useful support from the performer.

The best defense is not being offensive, it is using the current position as a vehicle until the road ahead clears.

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Uggy Blob, Meringue, and Solar Energy

What happens when you soak a raw egg in vinegar?

Which kind of bowl will let you make meringue 'peak' faster?

What angle on a solar panel will yield the greatest current from a stationary light source?

These are examples of the varied questions the young scientists of Saint Charles School 5^th – 8^th grades explored for their annual science fair. Will some of these students become renowned scientists, like Benoit Mandelbrot, who developed the fractal – the study of roughness of surfaces?

The Junior Academy of the Washington Academy of Science, provides scientists and other professionals to judge science fair projects at Saint Charles School and other schools in the DMV area.

I was fortunate to be one of the judges for this event and found the students to be eager to present their finding, quite knowledgeable about their experiments and findings, and how their experiment fits into a bigger context of science. In fact, many of the student scientists, after being judged, would seek out additional judges to view their project display so they could present their findings yet again – and they did so with zeal and enthusiasm.

To an individual, the students had fun doing the projects and offered thoughts about how they could improve it next time to learn more. Presenters for projects about behavioral science showed a model of the brain and explained (in rather technical terms) which area of the brain was involved in the experiment and what functions it controls in the person.

As always, I learned much from the students – about the area of inquiry, as well as how they approached the experiments. In addition, the poise and energy of these young scientists is impressive (and much different from what I recall of myself and my classmates at these ages).

Answers to the opening questions:

What happens to an egg soaked in vinegar – over about 4-7 days, vinegar will dissolve the hard egg shell – which is made of calcium carbonate - to an uggy blob (not a scientific term), leaving the inner membrane to contain the egg white and yoke unharmed. Even without the shell, the remaining 9 other components of the egg are intact and keep the yoke safe and protected.

What kind of bowl is fastest to make meringue 'peak' – a chilled copper bowl is about four times faster than a chilled plastic bowl (temperature is a key element to successful meringue, binding the ingredients as they are agitated, and the copper holds the chill better than other materials).

What angle of the solar panel yields the greatest current from a fixed light source: The greatest current output was when the panel was at 90 degrees to the fixed light bulb. The student explained that the light source struck the panel sensors with the greatest intensity when it was bathed from directly above instead of washing the panel on an angle where the intensity diminishes as it spread out on the horizontal axis.

The kids had fun and learned from the judges; the judges enjoyed hearing from the kids what they had found and learned from them as well – perhaps a new scientist or two may evolve from talking with experienced scientists.

Check out the Junior Academy for additional stories of young scientist accomplishment.