Sacrifice

Last Thursday was my last 'working' day in the Air Force. I look back and I cannot believe it has been nine years since I set foot on the Air Force Academy campus. Since I knew my departure was coming for quite some time I didn't have a very dramatic emotional experience on my last day, however I did welcome a feeling that everyone experiences throughout the course of their lives. I felt the familiar feeling you get when you know you have reached a crossroads. Last Thursday was the ending of an era for me and although I am extremely excited for the next chapter I will definitely miss many aspects of my Air Force life.

While reflecting on my time both as a cadet and as a member of the active duty Air Force I could not help but to think about sacrifice. The sacrifices I made, the ones my wife made, and how they have impacted our lives. I started thinking about the greater sacrifices that many members of the armed forces make. My reflection led me to another realization, one that I revealed during my departure speech in my unit.

While I was giving my departure speech to friends and coworkers I stated that "my military service gave me far more that I ever gave back. I imagine that statement will become even more true as time goes on and as I embark on new endeavors in the civilian world."

I truly believe that statement. That is not to say that I was bum who took all he could from the military and left, because I didn't, and I am very proud of what I contributed during my service. I was merely expressing my awe at how far I have come since the day I stepped into the dorms of the Air Force Academy.

So were those "sacrifices" really sacrifices if ultimately they benefited me and contributed to my growth and happiness? Maybe I am being naive or romanticizing in hindsight but actions that ultimately benefit you greatly don't really seem to embody what sacrifice stands for. It almost seems more like delayed gratification. Or better yet, an investment in the future. Was the bypassing of a traditional college experience for a regimented character building leadership laboratory really a sacrifice for me? Was the lack of control over where I lived and when a sacrifice, or did it merely expose me to new parts of the world that I never would have otherwise been privileged to? Did the nearly seven months I spent in Iraq away from my family and friends set me back forever or set me apart forever?

Without delving into the Back To The Future-esque arguments that compare what your life would have been like had an event not occurred, I think the point of my riff is that sacrifice is not as straight forward a concept as we may think. I can confidently say that the sacrifices my wife and I have made over the years had shaped us, improved us, and have given us a hell of a ride that we never would have experienced had we not had the foresight, and/or ignorance, to embrace.

Book Review: Poke The Box

Poke The Box by Seth Godin was pretty much exactly what I expected.....it was awesome. Seth has an uncanny ability to write short, hard hitting, meaningful statements that transcend profession or background and provide the reader with real life, actionable knowledge. Poke The Box is a self proclaimed manifesto about initiative. In short, the book is all about the importance of starting and failing, and how both contribute to doing something meaningful.

We send our kids to school and obsess about their test scores, their behavior and their ability to fit in. We post a help wanted ad and look for experience, famous colleges and a history of avoiding failure. We invest in companies based on how they did last quarter, not on what they’re going to do tomorrow. So why are we surprised when it all falls apart? Our economy is not static, but we act as if it is. Your position in the world is defined by what you instigate, how you provoke, and what you learn from the events you cause. In a world filled with change, that’s what matters — your ability to create and learn from change. Poke the Box is a manifesto about producing something that’s scarce, and thus valuable. It demands that you stop waiting for a road map and start drawing one instead. You know how to do this, you’ve done it before, but along the way, someone talked you out of it. We need your insight and your dreams and your contributions. Hurry.

The book is definitely a great read that I would recommend to a wide range of readers, however I think it resonates best with business and entrepreneurial minded people. Not only does the book help to shape your outlook towards initiating and failure, but it also inspires you to go out and start something.

I will keep my review relatively short since I have already partially reviewed the book on a previous post, and since I took notes that equate to about half the book! Typically I take notes on my books to singe particular lessons and important concepts into my mind. I only write when I feel it is an important passage or concept. As you can see my notes speak for themselves on the quality of Seth's latest work. Although the book is a fairly short read it took me forever to get through it because I spent the entire time taking notes! I guess that shows the quality and importance Seth places on each individual riff and rant. Below are my notes.

Poke The Box:
- The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.

The Initiator:
- Annie story page 41
- para pg 44-48
- This is a manifesto about starting

The Seventh Imperative:
- The world is changing too fast. Without the spark of initiative, you have no choice but to simply react to the world.
- 6 imperatives page 63
- The seventh imperative is to have the guts and the heart and the passion to ship

The difference of Go:
- Passage pg 78

The buzzer box:
- Uncle is an MIT PHD built a buzzer box for kid with lights and buzzers. To a child it is exciting to poke this and see what happens. Life is a buzzer box. Poke it.

The Elements of Production:
- Elements pg 100
- “All these elements are cheaper and easier to find than ever. Which makes the motive force so critical”

Walking in Circles:
- Study shows that lost people walk in circles. Don’t trust your senses because they’re not good enough. People need a map.
- If you’re brave enough to draw one, people will follow

Who Says Yes?:
- What do you do here?
- Almost no one says I start stuff
- Where is the VP of Starting? How many no’s have to be summated before you get to yes? Who is in charge of yes?

Poke the Box:
- How do programmers learn?
- The great ones all learn the same way. They code and see what happens, change it and see what happens, repeat until they figure out how it works.
- The box may be a computer, a market, a customer. It’s a puzzle that can be solved in one way – by poking!

What Can You Start?:
- You don’t have to be a famous entrepreneur to be an initiator
- People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they’re not willing to start something separate, world changing, and risky they have no business starting anything.
- Somehow we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, a stock symbol to matter

When Can You Start?:
- Soon is not as good as now

Kinds of Capital:
- What can you invest? What can your company invest?: 1. Financial capital 2. Network capital 3. Intellectual capital 4. Physical capital 5. Prestige capital 6. INSTIGATION CAPITAL

Double Double:
- In the old world innovation was sufficient to double profits
- In the Google world the competition is essentially infinite and innovation alone isn’t sufficient
- The only way to thrive is to double and then double again. Innovate on the way to innovating.

Is flux the same as risk?:
- Risk involves winning and losing
- Risk to some is bad because risk brings the possibility of failure
- People confuse flux and risk
- 2 mistakes: Risk is a bad thing and movement is bad as well
- These people are stuck
- Now the whole world is in flux
- If your project doesn’t have movement then compared to the rest of the world you are actually moving backward.
- Like a rock in a river, you might be still but given the movement around you collisions are inevitable. There is less turbulence around the log floating down the same river.
- The economy demands flux. Flux isn’t risky.

The trail of failure:
- List of people who have made a career out of starting on page 209

The epidemic:
- We are hardwired with fear in our lizard brain

The first rule of doing work that matters:
- Making a difference is hard
- Make your schedule before you start or your lizard brain will find ways to escape
- Show up

Naps.Google.Com:
- What separates Google from just about every other startup?
- Google ignored Wall St and continued to invest in the new. Most initiatives fail. That’s fine. At least Google isn’t napping.

Your ego and your project:
- Somewhere ego became a dirty word. It’s not otherwise all great work would be anonymous and it’s not. Let it motivate you to initiate.

Redefining quality:
- Quality used to be “good enough”. Then “zero defect”. Now we expect it.
- Now we are beyond quality to remarkable which demands initiative.

Brainwashed by the pit boss:
- You can trust judgment of employees to improve or settle on the certainty of compliance. Most choose compliance.
- This causes organizations to be unable to innovate and promotes the bare minimum.

Why is this mediocre:
- We love to point out broken systems but rarely look at mediocre products and wonder why they aren’t great
- There is never a problem of getting a posse together to fix the broken. The upside and the challenge for you is to find the will and the energy to challenge the mediocre.

When in doubt:
- Quote page 285

Where did curious go?:
- Initiative is a little like creativity in that both require curiosity
- Not a search for the “right” answer but an understanding of how something works and how it can work better

Pick me! Pick me!:
- There is brainwashing that creative people or people with something to say must wait to be chosen
- Pick me mentality acknowledges the power of the system and passes the responsibility to someone else to initiate
- Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself!

The promoter and the organizer:
- Every organizer gets picked and the promoter does the picking. Why not be the promoter?

Entrepreneurship is merely a special case:
- Even entrepreneurs understand that a thriving organization needs more than one person creating change.

The seasons pass:
- Ski resorts sell a year long pass for the cost of a week.
- People who buy it realize it’s easier and cheaper to decide once than it is to decide over and over
- Initiation is like that
- Why not sell your boss and colleagues on being the initiator. It’s your job. You start things. Ask once. Do many.

No free lunch:
- Of course the challenge is you’ll be wrong. You will pick the wrong thing. You will waste time. You will be blamed.
- This is why being an initiator is valuable.
- Most people shy away from the challenge
- Initiative is scarce…..hence valuable.
- The fact is doesn’t work every time should give you confidence because it means you’re doing something that frightens others

Check In Chicken:
- 2 things you’re afraid of at every meeting: Things that might fail and things that might work

The lizard misunderstands the economics of poking:
- When the cost of poking the box is less than the cost of doing nothing you should poke the box
- You don’t shut down a steel mill to use untested technology
- Most of us don’t run steel mills. The cost of being boring is high.
- Our lizard brain exaggerates the cost of being wrong.

Polish this:
- Polishing loses benefit quickly and turns to stalling
- What if your reminder wasn’t to polish but to create

The Semmelweis Imperative:
- Poking also requires tact. You want change not anger/fear
- Semmelweis devoted his life to showing that lack of Drs hand washing was the cause of much of the death and disease
- He died alone and a failure
- He never explained why!
- He was a jerk and never tried to persuade

Welcome to project world:
- Most companies have been around for a decade or more and are based on scalability (Ford model T)
- The system is the system. Don’t mess with it.
- The new companies making an impact are shipping projects. Apple, Google, etc..
- After a project is shipped there is no useful work unless someone starts a new project!

The Ford system is dead. Long live the Ford system:
- You can’t cut prices forever
- The new Ford system is a stable and productive business platform that develops projects

What happened to excellence:
- Tom Peters changed the world with In Search of Excellence
- Excellence is about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing
- Quote page 420

Business Development:
- Some orgs have business development teams. Most are horrible at it.
- This initiation capability is what every org needs but most are too scared

What’s next?:
- What differentiates humans from every other creature is our willingness to go places and explore. The factory has programmed the adventurous out of us.
- What's next is now the driving force for individuals and organizations. Ever onward. Ever faster.

If you see something say something:
- Examples where society will actually dampen our instinct to speak up on page 450

Allowed (not allowed):
- Most employees can give you a long list of things you aren’t allowed to do
- Allowed lists are harder to remember and write down
- Were afraid of how much freedom we actually have and how much we are expected to do with it

The death of idealism:
- Sooner or later many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same as being realistic

Don’t tell Woodie:
- Seth’s dog was trained with a shock collar in their yard. It broke a year ago but the dog can only leave the yard when he takes the collar off. The boundary is in his head not the system

I wonder what would happen:
- None of this works without curiosity
- Success minded people can follow instructions
- We’d all be happy to follow a map if it came with a guarantee
- There is no guarantee there are no maps
- The opportunity lies in pursuing curiosity instead

3000 TED Talks:
- TED conference morphed into TEDx with independent conferences and speakers
- 3000 talks later and it’s pretty clear that big ideas and unsettling concepts were not just the work of people who get paid to think that way
- That’s your opportunity. To approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing

The joy of wrong:
- Original Starbucks founder Jerry Baldwin just sold beans not coffee. Howard Schultz turned Starbucks into Starbucks.
- But what if the “wrong” Starbucks was never built?
- One led to the other but the usual route which is never a straight line
- The hardest part is the first one, the wrong one
- Poking doesn’t mean right. It means action.

The world is a lot more complicated than it appears:
- Google finds your answer, blogger tells you what to do, a book gives you steps to achieve, the company has a policy manual
- It’s enough to persuade you that all the answers are here and all we need from you is compliance
- Two forces driving this: Industrial age where we must make immediate decisions or the system is waiting or digital age where computers like only on or off not a maybe
- Initiative and starting are neither of these. They are about let’s see and try.
- Something new is often the right path when the world is complicated

Rote:
- Quote page 524

“This might not work”:
- It’s ok to say those four words
- Change is powerful but always comes with failure as its partner

Attempt:
- The circus says the performers will attempt not perform. Attempt is something new, something risky, something interesting.
- Yoda was wrong when he said “Do or do not. There is no try.” There is a try and it’s the opposite of hiding

Take a lid off it:
- You already have good ideas, something to say, a vivid internal dialogue about what you could do and how you might make things better.
- There’s an engine running on better but often lies low

Starting implies (demands) finishing:
- What's the distinction between carrying around a great idea, being a brainstormer, and tinkering, and starting something?
- Starting means you are going to finish!
- At some point your work has to intersect the market. Otherwise it is merely a hobby.

Notions belong in the sewing store not in your work:
- We all have notions, inklings, hunches. This isn’t the same as poking the box.
- If you don’t finish it doesn’t really count as starting. And if you don’t start you aren’t poking.

Shipping and fear:
- As you get better at shipping your ability to instigate starts to fade as the fear that others will actually see it makes you scrutinize yourself more.

The initiator as outsider:
- Society isn’t nice to those who don’t fit in
- Great organizations have figured out how to turn the standard or status quo on its head
- The best way to become an insider, leader, someone who matters is to initiate

Winning the Halloween contest (now vs. later)
- Easiest way to win is to tell your kid what to do
- Easiest way to lose is to let him sit there
- The easy way may be the best in the short run
- In the long run though all you’ve done is taught conformity and punished initiation
- Quote page 590

The kid who made a ruckus:
- Kids initiate. They create situations. They start ruckuses. All of them. The essence of being human is to initiate.
- But we aren’t left to our own devices and cease troublesome behavior. Most of us.
- Those who don’t are still busy starting things big and small.
- We can unbrainwash ourselves while there’s still time

The best thing I ever done:
- Don opened up a pizza joint in NYC
- What would his life have been like had he spent more time thinking about and evaluating whether his handcrafted life’s work was a good idea?

How did you end up with this job?:
- Typically a few unlikely breaks and unadorned initiative
- People get good gigs because they stand up
- Annie Duke the poker player set out to fail often enough to get good

The person who fails the most usually wins:
- Once and big is not the most
- Never and you’re lucky or you’ve never shipped anything
- Fail, succeed, fail, fail, succeed, - you get the idea

Juggling is about throwing not catching:
- That’s why juggling is so difficult. Were conditioned to make the catch. To not drop the ball.
- If you get better at throwing the catches take care of themselves
- The only way to get better at throwing is to throw again and again

A paradox of success:
- People with credibility and resources are so busy trying to hold on to them they fail to bring ideas to market.
- The greatest challenge is finding the guts to risk that success in order to accomplish something great

How to walk to Cleveland:
- Shipping is an event. Life before you ship. The moment you ship. Then life after.
- Starting isn’t like that. It is a series of events.
- You start walking to Cleveland. The next day you have to start again.
- Keep starting until you finish.

The go of science:
- One company invented the laser printer, mouse, onscreen windows, and a frame buffer for special effects in movies in 24 months.
- The team had the expectation of initiation and you couldn’t be a star unless you started something audacious
- Al great science works that way. An individual does something audacious, counters the status quo, pursuing a dream that seems ridiculous at first.

The fear of wrong:
- It’s not surprising we hesitate. Starting maximizes the chances of ending up wrong.
- The boss hassles, disciplines, humiliates, fires people who are wrong
- If you’re not wrong that’s not going to happen
- On the other hand, the boss finds someone who never starts, criticizes and plays devil’s advocate and hassles, disciplines, humiliates, fires them
- Wait that never happens in a factory centric organization
- In the new network focused economy the innovation focused organization has no choice but to obsess on those who don’t start
- Today not starting is far far worse than ending up wrong.

10000 hours of hard work and an overnight success:
- Hollerado band used to show up to shows far away from home and say their show down the street got cancelled then they would ask to play and it worked. They would sell burned cds at the local hot topic.
- Released their first cd free online
- Booked a residency tour playing the same bar on the same night during each week 7 nights a week
- Started a label and released a cd in a bag
- 4 years of doing something new, seeing what works, and doing it again

The market is obsessed with novelty:
- So go make some. Were tired of your old stuff.

Organizing for joy:
- Orgs and corporations are organized for efficiency and consistency not for joy
- Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new
- McDonalds, Hertz, Dell, and others crank it out by lowering costs and measuring output
- The problem is that when you approach the asymptote of maximum efficiency there’s not a lot of room for improvement. Making your nuggets for .0000001 cents less doesn’t boost profit much
- Worse the nature of the work is unremarkable
- The alternative is to organize for joy
- The relentless act of invention, innovation, and initiative is the best marketing asset

To be really clear:
- Quote page 723

How to do vs. what to do:
- Often we turn to authors and experts for what to do
- There’s no shortage of to do knowledge
- There’s a shortage of people willing to do it

There is no just in just do it:
- The problem with the Nike slogan is the implication that all you have to do to take the initiative is to take initiative, that it’s a matter of will
- You’re not a starter because you haven’t been sold on the idea, haven’t been trained, or rewarded consistently enough to get into habit
- Now you know what's at stake the rest is up to you

The adventures of Andre and Wally B:
- Movie for son with digital animation. It freaked him out and wasn’t made into a feature film
- Was starting a mistake? How bad did he fail?
- John has won 6 academy awards and key in the evolution of Pixar, the most successful film company of all time. No one else comes close.
- John starts things

The space between the frames:
- The secret to comics is the space between the frames
- This between the frames actions is what makes poking the box so powerful. Action is easy once you have a plan. Formatting a plan is a rare and powerful skill

Why growth happens early:
- Almost all real job growth occurs in the first days
- Once they hit stability they replace workers not invent new jobs
- In the early days no one is sure what needs to be done. It’s not a job it’s a passion, mission, experiment
- Companies that grow after 5 years embrace the discipline of poking

The right thing to do:
- There’s a moral obligation to start. If you’ve got the ability to make a difference you must
- You owe it to others to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen. To do less is to steal from them.

A lunch meeting:
- Boss at Yahoo told Seth to sit in cube and await instructions
- His advice if this sounds familiar: 1. Ignore this book (for now) 2. Start looking for a new gig ASAP
- Or ignore your boss if you’re really bold and allow everything to work out in the end.

When it falls apart:
- XFL was a total failure
- “So?” It wasn’t so bad. Everyone came out alright and probably better compared to those who didn’t have the guts to start.
- It’s impossible to have a success only policy. That policy itself guarantees no successes.

Not what I expected to find:
- Part of initiating is being willing to discover that what you end up with is different than what you set out to do.
- Starting doesn’t mean controlling. It means initiating. Managing means controlling but that’s an entirely different skill

What could you build?:
- So many doors are open, so much leverage available. If you could build anything (you can) what would it be?
- If you are afraid to start maybe you haven’t fully understood the cost of not starting

Poking Twitter:
- Watch people new to Facebook or Twitter. They post something and people respond
- That’s not the starting I am talking about. It’s not a real poke, real shipping, real change.
- If you can’t fail it doesn’t count!

Initiating is an intentional act:
- No one answers the phone, goes to a meeting, or reads an email by mistake. Most of what we do is intentional with preparation
- Starting is like that
- We can schedule for it, train for it, plan for it, announce it, and even hire for it.
- Why not invest in starting?

When public school forbids the act of starting:
- It’s not in the curriculum is it?
- How much time do we spend challenging our kids to initiate?
- Is it any wonder why we don’t teach this mindset? Factories and managers don’t want spunk or even innovation they generally seek compliance.
- We rely on the disobedient few for innovation but today innovation is our only option

The expensive act of planning on late:
- When you’re late there’s not a lot of choice, decision, initiative
- Run down the path you’ve taken before
- Late gives us cover. It permits us to trample forward without creativity or panache
Late might be useful but it’s expensive to avoid choice.

Dandelion Mind:
- Humans protect our offspring for to lose one would be a great tragedy
- Dandelions spout out thousands of seeds into the air and many end up on a sidewalk somewhere
- The important thing is every spring every crack in every sidewalk is filled with dandelions
- That is how you should treat your ideas, innovations, and creativity
- When was the last time you were promiscuous with your failures?

Riding a bike and being an adult:
- Helping a kid ride a bike and he had a ton of reasons he didn’t want to learn. Turns out the main reason was that he was afraid
- Were extremely adept at hiding our fear
- The point of this manifesto is not to magically extinguish your fear. It’s to call its bluff. Identifying the fear is the first step to making it go away

What to do with good ideas:
- Are you one of those people? Too busy inventing to actually instigate
- 2 things fix this: 1. Start 2. Ship

Fear on the left fear on the right:
- Many fear the start but some do the opposite. Start and then drop it
- The center is where we resonate with the market

It doesn’t hurt to ask:
- Actually it does if you don’t ask in the right way
- Instead of propositioning everyone invest some time in building relationships

Buzzer management:
- The best way to lose at Jeopardy has nothing to do with preparation or smarts. It’s not being good at using the buzzer
- Like most things that matter starting is not a black and white process. If you aren’t making an impact think about how you use the buzzer

Fear of hubris:
- Lesson of Icarus is burned into all of us
- Were trained to fit in not to stand out
- We spend most of our days waiting for permission to start
- It’s not hubris its essential

Starting as a way of life:
- It gets easier. The simple act of initiating is actually profoundly transformative
- Forward motion is a defensible business asset

Safe:
- Halloween is not safe, flying is not safe, selling is not safe
- Innovation is not safe. You’ll fail. Perhaps badly.
- What are you going to do about it? Hide? Work as hard as you can to fit in? That’s not safe either.
- Might as well do something that matters instead

GO! GO! GO!:
- para 974
- "There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting." - Siddhartha Gautama

Paid To Drop Out Of School

Would you drop out of college for $100,000? That is exactly what entrepreneur Peter Thiel is proposing to 20 lucky winners of his foundation's "20 Under 20" contest. The winners will receive a two year stipend valued at $100,000 and mentorship from a network of entrepreneurs en route to creating their own startup company. The only stipulation is that the winners drop out of college or high school to focus full time on building their business.

I found the Thiel Foundation's article on The Economist website. You can read the full post on Thiel's quest to incentivize drop outs here. So why would a college graduate who made millions co-founding Paypal and investing in Facebook want kids to drop out of college?

"We're excited to be working with them, and we hope they will help young people everywhere realise that you don't need credentials to launch a company that disrupts the status quo," said Thiel.

Thiel contends that most kids go to college to avoid thinking about the future and that, by incurring so much debt, many students are actually more at risk by being stovepiped into a career in order to pay back that debt. His foundation is targeting young entrepreneurs who have a plan to create wealth but may otherwise be tempted into attending college versus carrying out their dream. Of course his foundation is drawing plenty of criticism but Thiel responds by saying that people can always go back to college.

I have a few thoughts on this interesting endeavor.

1. We live in a society that loves credentials - Earning a college degree is a great thing. I enjoyed my college educational experience and wouldn't trade it for anything. However, is a college degree really an indicator of success? I would argue it is what you did to reach that point that contributes to your likelihood of success. Yet we as a society love someone who is stamped with a certification, a degree, or a license. Perhaps it the most consistent, quickest, and easiest way to justify your betting on an individual's future prospects but it is by no means a sure thing. I have definitely noticed this throughout my military career, as the military culture places a premium on having a masters degree and no merit in what that degree is in, the quality of the institution, or how the individual has leveraged the skills that were supposedly enhanced by that degree. My sense is that Thiel is frustrated with credentialism within our education system and that is part of the reason he started his foundation.

2. Education leading to action, action leading to education - My educational experience definitely helped me launch my own entrepreneurial venture. To say otherwise would be a lie. That being said, I have often wondered whether it was necessary for the success of my charity. Would I have been able to work alongside my friends to create our charity with a lesser education, or no college at all? I am not sure, but my guess is that based on my values, personality, and skill set that I could have created something special given the same amazing team to work with. Maybe not to the same extent, but I don't think the creation was dependent on my education. What I find interesting is that most people think that you have to learn before you begin, whereas I find I learn the most by beginning. My education definitely supplemented my ability to launch my charity but I think launching my charity really solidified all that instruction into actionable knowledge and experience.

3. If you are passionate and have a plan don't fear rejecting the status quo - I didn't start Checking For Charity until after I graduated college. However, I have experienced the social pressures and comments of a society who feels that it is a necessity to go straight to college after high school. My senior year of high school I was drafted in the United States Hockey League. It had been a goal of mine to earn a Division I Hockey Scholarship since I was a young teen, and in order to achieve that goal I knew I had to play junior hockey. Even prior to getting drafted, I did not apply to a single college. People thought I was crazy. Even people in the hockey community thought it was risky. But I knew that it was my passion and that I would achieve the goal no matter what. I had a plan of how to achieve my goal, and I had the passion to get me there. It's funny because looking back I really didn't have any fear. I knew I would make it happen. Since I have gotten older and taken on more life responsibilities that same confidence can be a bit harder to come by, but I truly believe that the lesson still holds true. If you love what you do and have a plan to accomplish your goals don't listen to the naysayers....make it happen. Thiel discusses a similar theme in his video interview below.

You can view the full video of his interesting interview below.

Life Changing Cheese - Business Lessons From Everyday Life

People naturally seek to learn about things they are interested in. In my case I am definitely interested in business. I have read numerous books off the Personal MBA reading list, I read business blogs, I listen to business audio books, and I did my undergrad in business management. Although all those sources of information are extremely valuable in developing my own business acumen, I am amazed at how some of the most valuable business lessons are encountered when you least expect them during your daily life.

This past weekend a few friends, my wife, and I went up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the day. Portsmouth is definitely a cool little artsy town with plenty of shops, restaurants, and bars. Our couple friends had been there before and were showing us around. We stopped into a quirky shop with tons of kitchen accessories, wine, and other knick knacks (definitely the least manly thing I have ever written). Our friends had mentioned that the place always had wine tastings and that they had this amazing cheese that we "just had to try."

As I approached the tasting area I saw a man behind the table pouring wine and setting up a platter. It was then that the man said something that caught my attention.

“Life changing cheese.”

Wow. What a great line! I am a very passionate person. When I am into something I am really into it. Whether it is hockey, music, my work, business, or playing guitar I am the kind of person who takes things that I am interested in or enjoy and I turn them into passions. For that reason, I am naturally drawn to people who are passionate about what they do. This wasn’t some person who was there to serve a few drinks and cubes of cheese to collect a paycheck. This guy was passionate about what he did and he was good at it.

The man went on to explain how the cheese was made in a cave in England and that the unique conditions gave it the "life changing" taste characteristics. He spoke of how many cases of cheese they sold a week and how they couldn't keep up with the demand. As he spoke I couldn't help but imagine little leprechaun looking dudes working away in a candlelit cave somewhere in the countryside of England. I must admit the cheese was amazing. The man wasn't just selling cheese, he was creating an experience!

As we walked through the streets of Portsmouth I wondered how influenced my friends were by marketing of the man selling the cheese. I wondered whether the cheese was really amazing or if it was just good cheese that was made great by the experience. I wondered how many other people went around telling their friends about "life changing cheese." I wondered how much cheese the passionate cheese peddler sold compared to the emotionless sample distributors at supermarkets. The fact that the "life changing cheese" experience stuck with me and that I put so much thought into a subject like cheese tells me that it was an example effective marketing at its core.

Not only was it a great day amongst friends, it was also a real life lesson in marketing that I will be able to reference moving ahead. How can I create "life changing cheese" in my own endeavors?

Checking For Charity Concept Video Version 2.0!

A while back I posted a Checking For Charity concept video I created on my MacBook. Although I had good intentions my graphic execution left a little to be desired. Thankfully, very talented people have been inspired by our organization's goal to change the world through competitive hockey events. The latest Checking For Charity concept video was created by one of our volunteers Alicia Kraus. She does awesome work and has a real knack for carrying out a vision while making it better than you could have possibly imagined. Please visit her website at http://www.aliciakraus.com/. Let me know what you think of the new and much improved video and better yet visit our website and join our team!

What Is Failure?

What is your greatest failure?

Most people find this question incredibly difficult for a myriad of different reasons. The answer to this question typically provides more insight into how the respondent views failure itself than the actual shortcomings demonstrated of the respondent.

An article was published in The Economist this week called “Fail Often, Fail Well,” that goes into depth on the benefits of learning how to fail effectively.

“Business writers have always worshipped at the altar of success. Tom Peters turned himself into a superstar with “In Search of Excellence”. Stephen Covey has sold more than 15m copies of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. Malcolm Gladwell cleverly subtitled his third book, “Outliers”, “The Story of Success”. This success-fetish makes the latest management fashion all the more remarkable. The April issue of the Harvard Business Review is devoted to failure, featuring among other contributors A.G. Lafley, a successful ex-boss of Procter & Gamble (P&G), proclaiming that “we learn much more from failure than we do from success.” The current British edition of Wired magazine has “Fail! Fast. Then succeed. What European business needs to learn from Silicon Valley” on its cover. IDEO, a consultancy, has coined the slogan “Fail often in order to succeed sooner”.

There are good reasons for the failure fashion. Success and failure are not polar opposites: you often need to endure the second to enjoy the first. Failure can indeed be a better teacher than success. It can also be a sign of creativity. The best way to avoid short-term failure is to keep churning out the same old products, though in the long term this may spell your doom. Businesses cannot invent the future—their own future—without taking risks.”

The piece goes on to give examples of how embracing and managing failures can benefit businesses and is a great read. But how can you apply the lesson to you as an individual as opposed to just looking from an organizational standpoint?

I grew up, like many people in our society, fearing failure. Whether it was working through school assignments or playing kickball at the park I had been conditioned to have a fear of not doing well. Although I think that feeling is very natural for most people I think it is very dangerous as well. By avoiding situations where you may fail you inevitably begin avoid situations where you have the opportunity to succeed.

As I have gotten older and experienced various successes in my personal and professional life I am more and more appreciative of the adversity that led to those successes. I may have not enjoyed the adversity at the time but it was a critical component in my overall success.

Two attitudinal adjustments have helped me immensely in managing my fear of failure and have thereby become a foundation for successes that I have: Although, like anyone else, battling self doubt is always a work in progress for me.

1. Maintain A Commitment To Learning From Adversity: By entering into every endeavor with a desire to learn from the experience it is difficult to categorize any outcome as a failure. So many of my past struggles have served me well in my future endeavors. Of course it is easier to recognize the value in a challenge after the bad taste has faded over time, but that is why it is so important to maintain the commitment to learning from your experiences on the way in.

2. Failure Is An End State And The Only Certain End State In Life Is Death: Failure is a bit of a dirty word for me in the sense that I don’t view most experiences as "failures." The only experience I view as a true failure is quitting. If you don’t quit something entirely you are merely experiencing a setback, and all setbacks can be overcome over time. If you are citing certain experiences as failures you likely gave up. By maintaining that the only certainty in your life is that it will eventually come to an end, a natural shift will occur in your attitude towards setbacks. Things may not always work out just as you would have liked but if you keep moving forward and learn from your setbacks you will avoid settling into a failure mentality.

Successful people and organizations push through and learn from "failures," with the most successful embracing and even seeking out "failure" learning opportunities. Embracing that mentality is not a natural feeling but one that will undoubtedly benefit organizations and individuals alike.

Might As Well Jump....

Jump.

When friends and family learn about my involvement in Checking For Charity one of the first things they ask is, “how did you go about starting a nonprofit?” Jump is the answer that most naturally comes to mind. I don’t say it to be smart or short or because I think 1984 era Van Halen rules. I say jump because it encapsulates one of the most important lessons that I learned during my innovation journey.

I am part way through Seth Godin’s new book entitled “Poke The Box,” which is dedicated entirely to the importance of starting. Seth argues that while there are many traditionally recognized components to bringing a new venture to fruition the most important factor is largely ignored. That factor is the person with initiative; the person with the guts to say “go.” Below is a clip of Seth describing the concept behind Poke The Box.



I think that Seth has innate ability to simplify complex topics into digestible little knowledge nuggets that truly inspire you. What really sets Seth apart is his ability to choose topics and examples that transcend any one industry or situation. Poke The Box is no exception and based on what I have read so far I definitely recommend reading it.

So when I turn to my friends and family to say that I started my charity through my willingness to jump, I am really telling them that I could have never envisioned what Checking For Charity has ultimately become. By rallying the right people around an inspiring idea and by actually getting the ball rolling on the idea we were able to see where the 'magic of the start' could take us. Here are a few other lessons learned further validating the importance of the start.

1. Planning Is Overrated – Planning is very important, but that is not to say that it isn’t overrated. Planning to implement a new venture or project is great to work through your thoughts and to thoroughly explore the challenges you may face. The problem with planning is that you are focusing on a snapshot in time while life is a moving target. By the time you have thought of “everything” the reality in which you are operating has already changed. Planning also has a way of becoming the focus. Instead of focusing on the objective people often become consumed with putting together a perfect plan to reach the objective. If planning is not getting you a step closer to your goal it is putting you a step back. You cannot plan for everything and all the planning in the world doesn’t guarantee that you will carry that plan out; execution is the real challenge.

2. Improvement Is Iterative By Nature - Rarely do we as humans get anything 100% right on the first try. So the majority of how we improve is done by implementing and correcting over time. If it is guaranteed that you aren’t going to be perfect from the start then you know that you will inevitably be course correcting. By delaying your start you are delaying the value adding component of the process. George S. Patton put it perfectly when he said,"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." By beginning the process now you enable yourself to keep pace with reality versus having your plan become more and more outdated prior to implementation. As things change you will be able to moderately update your strategy and business model versus completely recreating the wheel prior to implementation.

3. There Is No Substitute For Experience – I had read numerous books on innovation and entrepreneurship before I started my charity journey. I had been involved in the great game of hockey for more than 15 years before I started my charity journey. My education throughout college was focused on fundamental management principles and character based leadership. All of these things undoubtedly prepared me to navigate the startup process. However, in hindsight the most impactful single action that I did throughout the entire process was to jump. I didn’t know what I didn’t know about starting a nonprofit until I started. Looking back I don’t even think it was possible to for me to learn the majority of those lessons in advance. The same holds true for any endeavor. Preparation is great and should never be discounted but experience is our primary educator. What jumping did for our organization was force us to confront and conquer our challenges now versus deferring the confrontation of our problems until we had the 'perfect plan.'

I am not saying to go out with guns blazing with complete disregard for the world around you. I am not naive enough to think that every venture you undertake will be successful. My point, much like the premise of the Seth’s book, is merely that improving your ability to “jump” is one of the most important and rewarding skills you can develop as a leader and a teammate.

Warriors In Transition: A Feature On The White Rhino Report

I have been featured on The White Rhino Report in a post called Warriors In Transition. The White Rhino Report is the blog of Dr. Al Chase, a friend and the founder of White Rhino Partners. White Rhino Partners is an executive recruiting company out of Boston, MA that as Dr. Chase so eloquently puts it"specializes in placing senior executives who are "Renaissance Men and Women," and who are entrepreneurial leaders - many of whom have had a distinguished military career and/or are Service Academy graduates and hold MBA's from top-tier business schools."

I am honored to be featured in the blog and to be working with Dr. Chase. I look forward to working alongside him to find my way into an organization where I can add value through my unique experiences and professional skill set. Below is the piece that was featured, but do yourself a favor and check out The White Rhino Report for a wide range of interesting topics as Al not only places Renaissance men and women, he is a Renaissance man himself.

Periodically in The White Rhino Report, we tell the story of a warrior who has served our nation in the military and is transitioning to a new career in the private sector. Today I am pleased to introduce the readers of the WRP to my good friend, USAF Captain Matt Bader. Matt is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, where he excelled as a member of the hockey team. He has recently returned from a deployment to Iraq. In the following paragraphs he shares some of experiences he had while serving with Tiger team in central Iraq.

Tiger Team in Iraq:

When I was deployed to Iraq I led a team of people responsible for providing contracting support to bases throughout central Iraq. There was seemingly more work to be done than could ever be accomplished, but you worked 14 hour days and did your best to prioritize the work to ensure the success of the mission. After I had been there a month or so I began to settle in and feel more comfortable in my role. Then I was assigned an additional duty as the lead of the DFAS Tiger Team. DFAS stands for Defense Finance and Accounting Service and they are the agency responsible for disbursing payments to all contractors doing business with DOD. I was charged with reducing the outstanding payments that the government owed contractors for goods, services, and construction that had been completed.

It was an additional duty that nobody wanted. The problems were multifaceted and complex in nature and each week the General in charge of all contracting for Iraq and Afghanistan got reports on the progress so it was very high stakes as well.

My team members were made up of DFAS liaisons, contracting personnel, and me. Most of them were less than thrilled to be given additional duties on top of the seemingly endless workload they already had. Our starting point was more than $2 million in outstanding invoices across Iraq many of which were accruing interest payments and costing the government thousands of dollars. We had conflicting interests amongst the key players and we were facing systemic wartime problems to include government bureaucracy, the fog of war, and the language/cultural barrier of our contractors. The DFAS Tiger Team on the prior rotation had made little to no progress in reducing the outstanding invoices and the lack of progress was becoming a sore spot for leadership. It was definitely an uphill battle.

I must admit that when I first took over I was feeling a little overwhelmed but I did the only thing you can really do in that environment which is put your head down, work hard, and give it your best shot. I knew that fostering a real team environment and creating buy in was the first thing I needed to do to get anywhere. I recognized that the DFAS liaisons were undermanned and often took the majority of the “blame” with regard to the outstanding invoices so I sought to earn their respect by immediately showing them that I cared about making a difference with the DFAS Tiger Team. I empathized with their situation and asked a ton of questions about the process. I think my humility and genuine desire to improve our current state won them over which was huge because they were the primary knowledge holders for the payment process and the inner workings of DFAS. I then sought to establish a common vision that was aligned with the overarching mission in Iraq. I described that it was building the Iraqi economy that was going to get us out of the war. Enhancing opportunities for the Iraqi people is the goal of counterinsurgency and there is no better way to do that then to put the Iraqi citizens to work. With that being said, huge damage can be done to our relations when the work has been performed and we do not hold up our end of the bargain with proper and prompt payment. I made sure that everyone on the team was aware that our team could have a direct impact on preventing extremism and that letting the current state continue could actually be fostering terrorism. It was clear that tying our additional duty to the mission of the war effort was a big turning point for the buy in and camaraderie of the team.

After I got my feet wet and had fostered a unified team environment I got my 8 member team together for a brainstorming session. I facilitated a mini continuous process improvement event for the team. We came up with the challenges we were facing and eventually came up with a set of action items we thought could improve the state of the payment process in Iraq. It was clear that we needed help from outside organizations such as DFAS Rome back in the states who processed all the payments, the Senior Contracting Official for Iraq, and the Brigadier General of CENTCOM Contracting Command. I knew that simply telling higher ranking people and outside organizations we needed help was a recipe for disaster. So we presented our findings in a very strategic manner. We showcased how we brought different stakeholders together and came up with a consensus of the “big rocks” or issues with payment process in Iraq. We then presented what “we,” Regional Contracting Center Central, were already doing to improve the current state. This included new standard work, re-engineered business processes, and visuals to be used as payment processing templates for contractors and customers. It was after our efforts had been showcased that we had a section detailing the help we needed from outside organizations. We tried to portray our findings as “here is what we are doing to help ourselves, but we could really use your help in these areas to take our successes to the next level.”

I presented our findings to my leadership and they in turn passed them onto the SCO-I, and the General. On a visit stateside the General met with the head of DFAS Rome in New York and began forging a new memorandum of agreement between the Command and DFAS.

Within two months the changes our 8 person DFAS Tiger Team had implemented had reduced the outstanding payments by more than 50%. This was without the help of the outside agencies. As I prepared to depart Iraq, The SCO-I emailed me directly for feedback on the memorandum they were drafting to be implemented in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was an incredibly rewarding experience to take over a program that nobody wanted to be a part of and to build a highly performing team that achieved amazing results. We went from the Regional Contracting Center with the largest outstanding payment issues to the model for entire theatre in less than six months.

Matt will be leaving the Air force in the next few weeks. He and his wife are committed to returning to the Portland, Oregon area. If you know of an employer in that area who could use a leader with the kind of skills that Matt outlines above, his work ethic, leadership abilities and unimpeachable integrity, have them contact me to get in touch with Matt.

Dr. Al Chase, White Rhino Partners
1 Broadway, 14th floor Kendall Sq.,
Cambridge, MA 02142
achase@whiterhinopartners.com
office: (617) 401-2113

Groupon: The Fastest Growing Company Ever…But Will It Be The Fastest Declining Ever?

I have had some interesting discussions with a few friends recently on whether Groupon is “for real” or not. One friend is building an online startup on the side and has connections to the Palo Alto world. The other works in finance and is more well versed in looking into companies’ financial reports. Both are smart but disagree completely on whether the success of Groupon is sustainable. Listening to both sides of the argument, I would say that I fall somewhere in the middle. I think that the fate of Groupon rests within the hands of the leadership of the company.

There is a very well written article in Businessweek that details the rise of Groupon and where it is going. The article, found here, sheds some interesting insight into the company and may have you formulating your own take on the fate of the growing online deal-of-the-day startup.

Mason is the 30-year-old chief executive officer of the digital couponing comet known as Groupon, the Google-spurning, Super Bowl-flopping startup that sends deal-of-the-day e-mails to more than 70 million subscribers around the world. He's wearing a heavy winter coat, a lime-green track jacket embroidered with the Groupon logo, sneakers, and garish red Christmas socks. ("Only clean socks I could find," he says.) Holding his iPhone before him like a tricorder, he logs into the new service, called Groupon Now, and shows off two simple buttons that have the potential not only to transform humankind's lunchtime habits but also to alter the topography of the multibillion-dollar market for local commerce.

The two buttons: "I'm Hungry" and "I'm Bored."

It's only 11 a.m. Mason clicks the "hungry" button, and his phone transmits its location to Groupon's servers and then displays a list of deals from nearby restaurants. Across a bridge spanning the Chicago River, the Asian fusion restaurant Thalia Spice is testing Groupon Now by offering $20 worth of food for $12. A block to the north, an eatery named @ Spot Café is dangling a $10 coupon for $6. Each restaurant has specified that its discount is good only during select hours on that particular day, when a few of their tables would otherwise be empty.

The simple expose detailed above is what CEO Andrew Mason is banking on as the future of Groupon. The vote is out on whether retailers will be on board with a more ‘permanent deal’. In fact the verdict is still unclear on whether retailers are completely satisfied with Groupon’s daily deal approach. Groupon repeatedly advertises a significant return rate for vendors but the media loves to highlight disgruntled users who claim to have lost significant amounts of money through the Groupon imposed deep discounts. What is clear is that there are still plenty of local businesses willing to give Groupon a whirl which should fuel company growth into the future whether it be through traditional daily deals or the new Groupon Now deals.

As I read the article a few things jumped out at me:

1. Easily Replicated Business Model – This is the primary point of contention in the polarized argument between my friends. Anyone can create a daily deal business model and many have. With the flood of players coming into the market, how long will Groupon be able to maintain their incredible growth? More specifically, what if an online player with significant influence (i.e. Facebook, Google) unleashes a similar service? I think that Groupon’s ability to maintain their position as the dominant player in the market segment will hinge on their ability to stay ahead of the competition with regard to where the segment is headed. Is Groupon Now the first step in warding off the competition? Only time will tell.

There were a few things that were discussed in article that I did like about how the company views itself and its challenges ahead. "We had this realization probably a year into launching Groupon that this was highly copy-able," says Lefkofsky. Adds Mason: "We have always been thinking about how to solve these fundamental problems of our model. We have known since very early on that some form of real-time deal optimization is where this had to go." First and foremost, I like that they are aware of the reality facing their business model. Obviously it is much easier to combat your weaknesses and seek new opportunities when you are actually aware of the challenges you face. Mason also made some interesting comments regarding his company idols. "The company I admire most is Netflix," he says, referring to the movie-streaming company that purposefully disrupted its original DVD-by-mail business. "They have figured out a way to be successful and cannibalize their core business. Nothing is more romantic to me." Not only does Mason not mind revolutionizing their business model, he seems to see it as a sign that a company is truly successful. This tells me that they at least have the right mindset for success. Execution is another thing entirely, but one has to look no further than Netflix or Google to see how a business can grow, shift, and change to capitalize on new markets that in many cases have yet to be created. I see the success of Groupon hinging on their ability to do the same.

2. A Battle Against Creative Destruction – The term creative destruction, which was popularized by economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1950’s, is defined as a “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one." As companies grow they become more bureaucratic, less flexible, and typically less innovative. These growing rigid organizations are destroyed by smaller, more innovative companies who either revolutionize the marketplace they are in or simply create a new one rendering the old way of doing business obsolete. Every company faces these growing challenges. However one would assume that as the ‘fastest growing company in the world,’ Groupon should expect to face these challenges sooner than an organization with a more traditional growth pattern.

There are a few examples within the article that indicate that Groupon, despite its extremely rapid growth, seems to be operating in a similar manner to its early startup days.

Groupon occupies parts of six floors in the former headquarters of Montgomery Ward, the erstwhile catalog retailer and department-store chain that along with another Chicago merchandiser, Sears Roebuck, defined retail during much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Aaron Montgomery Ward might not recognize much of the building he put up in 1908. Groupon employees are jammed in practically elbow to elbow. Doodles and cartoons festoon walls and whiteboards. Shelves are strewn with cartons of bagels and coffee. Adding to the flavor, blue yoga balls, which the company gave to every employee at an all-hands meeting in December, clutter the office and sometimes substitute for desk chairs. A conference room on the sixth floor, the "war room," is the launch pad for Groupon Now. A whiteboard is covered with giant maps of the initial target cities, with tallies of the number of merchants who have signed up in each Zip Code. The company plans to go wide with the service in early April.

Detailing corporate strategy on the walls. Doodles throughout the office. A war room with maps targeting launch cities. People packed together. So what you ask? I think those simple descriptions speak volumes on how the company is currently operating. When you are outlining corporate strategy in brainstorming sessions versus creating bureaucratic point papers and fancy presentations you are doing something right. The idea is what is valuable, not the process to present it. For a company that has grown that much and has had that much capital infusion (i.e. additional vested interests), I think it is pretty cool that they have still managed to operate in that fashion. Perhaps they are taking a page from the Facebook playbook, a company where CEO Mark Zuckerberg is said to sit office-less amongst fellow employees and where conference rooms are nothing but glass rooms without shades.

3. Purposeful And Incremental Strategy Improvement – It is quite clear that from the beginnings of Groupon the leadership has been looking ahead to the next step. When you hear company leadership say things like “We have known since very early on that some form of real-time deal optimization is where this had to go,” you see that they are not just riding the daily deal train mindlessly hoping to cash in. Turning down Google’s estimated $6B buyout dispelled cash in motives as well. In the tech sector I think it is all the more important to continually balance knowing where you want to go and capitalizing on changes that may not even be visible yet.

Mason referenced Netflix in the article and it got me thinking about what they have done. I have known about Netflix forever. They were a consistent case study in disruptive markets throughout college. Their DVD mailing model changed the industry. I haven’t joined Netflix yet but I have been thinking about doing it lately. When I went to the website the other day I was amazed that their DVD mailing model is hardly even traceable on the site. Everything is about streaming media now. Their model has changed entirely. With changes in technology and social trends Netflix has incrementally changed direction over the years, evidently without me fully realizing it. If they had offered the strategy shift in one massive roll out it probably wouldn’t have worked out so well. Yet by having a rough strategy in mind and by reacting to world changes over time they have been able to emerge as the market leader in monetizing streaming online media. Mason undoubtedly sees the parallels to his industry and it looks as though they are trying to do the same.

I would love to see the argument on whether Groupon is the next big thing or next big bust continue in the comments section.

Creative Contradiction & Chaos Theory

Is Michael Jackson an introvert or an extrovert? Well there are countless records of his extreme shyness that would indicate he is an introvert. Yet his on stage performances showcase a completely different and opposite side of his personality. This contradiction of personality is not limited to the late King of Pop. I came across an interesting article on the Huffington Post entitled “After the Show: The Many Faces of the Performer,” which takes an in depth look at the paradoxes entrenched in the personalities of creative people.

One passage particularly caught my attention:

“In the CNN.com article The confusing legacy of Michael Jackson, Todd Leopold discusses the perplexing combination of seemingly contradictory traits displayed by Michael Jackson. In explaining his many sides, Jackson biographer J. Randy Taraborelli essentially throws his hands up in the air in exasperation as he tries to make sense of the apparent contradictions:

‘I think that when you're talking about Michael Jackson and you try to analyze him, it's like analyzing electricity, you know? It exists, but you don't have a clue as to how it works.’

Creativity researchers aren't so confused. They have long-ago accepted the fact that creative people are complex. Almost by definition, creativity is complex. Creative thinking is influenced by many traits, behaviors, and sociocultural factors that come together in one person. It would be surprising if all of these factors didn't sometimes, or even most of the time, appear to contradict one another.

As creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi notes in his 1996 article for Psychology Today entitled The Creative Personality, creative people ‘show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual," each of them is a "multitude.”’

To me, some of the most fascinating contrasts are those found in creative performers -- those who are constantly on stage and in the public eye.

Although I completely agree with the prognosis of the creative personalities described above, I would argue that the great majority of people exhibit these same contradictions. Certainly creativity is complex. However, I think it is more appropriate to say that people in general are complex! Maybe we are more attuned to these contradictions in creative types because the contradictions are presented on a grand stage for all to see. Are you going to notice personality paradoxes more in the guy Mark from ‘Accounting’ at work or Michael Jackson? Or perhaps the opposite ends of the personality spectrum in creative people are just a bit more exaggerated or pronounced. I am not sure. What is certain is that people are complex whether labeled “creative” or not.

The article got me thinking about how the creative contradiction relates to effective team situations. How do you effectively lead a group of people in a creative environment given the various personality idiosyncrasies of each team member that are constantly changing based on the dynamic environment?

That question took me back to college. When I was attending the Air Force Academy as Business Management major I took a Management 303 class which had the reputation of being the weird, touchy feely class. It was described as pretty abstract and ethereal with notoriously low test scores that were salvaged only by the grading curve. Although I too struggled to grasp many of the concepts we learned about, I did hang onto the concepts from our talks regarding chaos theory in management.

Chaos theory seeks to describe the unpredictability of systems. A dynamic system like any organization or team environment is innately complex, erratic, and unpredictable. Chaos theory, however, shows that even the most complex and chaotic systems fall into some natural order. The chaotic inputs are connected and create some form of order through “strange attractors.” Strange attractors essentially create natural boundaries for chaotic, dynamic systems.

Since taking that class, I have always tried to analyze any leadership or team situation with chaos theory in mind. I definitely think chaos theory is an effective way to look as systems. All the external changes that occur coupled with the complexities of human behavior make predictability of even the most simple tasks utterly impossible. Which brings us back to the question discussed above. From my experience here are a few things that may help to answer the question above.

1. Stay Flexible – I have had the opportunity to lead in some very dynamic, ambiguous, and challenging environments. Whether it has been serving as the captain of a division I hockey team, the president of a nonprofit, or as a contracting officer team lead during Operation Iraqi Freedom I have learned to expect the unexpected. You simply cannot, for reasons detailed above, predict what is going to happen in a team environment while seeking to attain a goal. The more comfortable you can become operating amidst ambiguity the more effective you will be at achieving your goals, even if the path is different than you might have hoped.

2. Create Your Own Strange Attractors – Although easier said than done, I think as a leader it is your responsibility to create strange attractors versus allowing them to develop by chance. Although you may not be able to predict how things will unfold for your team, you can help to shape how your team will respond to the ever unfolding chaos. An example could be as simple as establishing shared values amongst team members. You cannot control how each person will respond to a given situation but you may help to ensure that their response does not violate the team’s shared values.

3. Acknowledge Your Powerlessness – Embracing the chaos is acknowledging your powerlessness in a sense. Not to say that your role as a leader is not important and that you do not have influence. As a leader you want people to want to do the "right" thing. In essence you want to create an environment, or a system, where it is most desirable for all parties involved to do the right thing. Not only are you acknowledging reality by operating in this mindset of limited control, but you are also empowering team members to attain your organizations goals in the most innovative and creative manner possible.

I am by no means a guru on the subject of chaos theory in management or the personality contradictions of people. These are just a few observations I have picked up in my leadership experiences thus far. To be honest, half the time my posts serve more as reminders to myself than holier than thou advice columns. I would love to hear your viewpoint on the topics above and thanks for reading.