Rishad Tobaccowala's Blog, page 12

Three Years Later…

This is the 156th issue of this thought letter.

It has been published each and every Sunday morning (Central US Time) for three years.

The thought letter was conceived to be both a gift to the reader in that it would be totally free, 100 percent opt-in, easy to opt out, would carry no advertising, nor use the mailing list in any way besides to email the weekly post.

If done right it also be a way to build goodwill for the author.

Three years and a quarter of a million words later ( 5 full length books! ) the thought letter has nearly 22,000 subscribers each of whom have chosen to enter their email address into the subscription box, enjoys high engagement (weekly open rate of 48%), a very low opt out rate ( about .1% or 25 readers of 22,000 a week or a 5% annual churn) and adds about 150 new readers a week.

Subscribers include hundreds of CEO’s, thousands of C-Level executives with a concentration in the fields of marketing, technology, strategy, innovation, HR and education.

The readership far exceeds the 22,000 subscribers with a much larger group of readers engaging with the content in other ways including LinkedIn ( last week’s post on A Company of One was seen by 30,000), or in other publications where it is re-published including Media Village and The Continuum among others in the US and around the world, and most importantly it is forwarded weekly across organizations and to friends and often to the readers children!

Readership spans 135 countries with most of the readers living in eight markets ( United States and Canada in North America, India and Singapore in Asia, the United Kingdom, France and Spain in Europe and Australia).

The five most popular posts have been:

Re-Thinking Presentations which suggests that if one cannot make a case in 9 slides or less one does not have a case to make.

12 Career Lessons which takes ten minutes to read is far more useful than most career books for any stage of one’s career.

The Future of Marketing is People reminds us that most marketing speak including consumer fixation is possibly wrong and most firms are severely marketing challenged particularly in the Board Room.

De-Bossification! is a real thing and if you are or want to be a “boss” watch out! It is one of the reasons companies are struggling with hybrid-remote work.

Ruptures in the Mediascape written two years ago anticipated all the big shifts that have happened since.

Also strongly recommend these five:

The Four Shifts which explain the four shifts that are driving the future which every individual and company needs to align with.

The Six Keys To Change explains why change is difficult and having a strategy, M&A plan and a re-org alone almost never work.

Six Ways to Be and Feel Better will likely leave you changed as a person and is the one most shared by parents with their grown kids.

Architecting Joy begins by defining success as the ability to spend time in the ways that give you joy and then builds from that…

Time Passages reminds us that time is all we have and looks at it through different prisms.

Now 3 years of writing distilled and organized on one page!

The 156 pieces written over the past three years span 12 different subject areas including The Future, Managing Change, Becoming More Effective, Leading with Soul, Creating Great Cultures, The Future of Work, Managing Careers, Personal Growth and even Wisdom but have kept away from news and politics and therefore have remained evergreen.

You can access the best of these pieces organized, curated and kept up to date here: https://rishadtobaccowala.com/100

This one page is accessible on any device anywhere in the world totally free and all the materials can be used with or without attribution.

Many professionals book mark it and use it as a thought starter (like a GPT-4 but written by a human) when they are grappling with a topic like managing teams and creating cultures, learning to learn or on remaining relevant in an AI age. Some share articles as part of their monthly or weekly all hands. Others use the many frameworks shared to help brainstorm ideas.

Do click here and take a look at it. It could save a lot of time and help one become more productive.

Thank you for being a reader and please share this post with others who may benefit from this writing by forwarding it or clicking below:

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A Company of One.

It is projected that in 2027, 86.5 million people will be freelancing in the United States making 50.1 percent of the population.

A combination of five forces is driving this re-configuring of the workforce:

Aging: In the United States 10,000 people turn 65 every day and many of this group continue to work because they need to so as to make ends meet, or want to for reasons of identity, community, purpose and/or growth but cannot or do not want to work full time for a company. Many firms which are finding it difficult to access certain skills and experience are now becoming far more flexible in their approaches to retaining their seasoned workforce on a part-time basis.

New Mindsets: 76 percent of Gen-Z want to work for themselves and 66% of Gen-Z who hold a full-time job also have a side-gig or side-hustle. In addition, Covid-19 have many people re-framing the question of how life could fit into work ? with how does work fit into a life?

Remote/Hybrid Work: Remote-Hybrid work provides the flexibility to work anywhere for anybody which can enhance opportunities to get work while moving to locations that cost less which allows for more career options.

The Technology powered Gig-Economy: New marketplaces from Fiverr and UpWork to find talent and work, AWS and Open-AI to access technology, Etsy and Shopify to sell and connect to marketplaces, Tik-Tok and Meta to connect and brand, combined with companies need to remain agile is driving more talent and firms to a plug and play workplace.

AI and Web 3: While AI may not lead to fewer jobs it is going to change the nature of most if not all jobs and the half-life of skills are going to decay considerably faster. Web-3 while out of favor will eventually enable more ownership and equity for individuals. Most importantly many of these technologies are now providing super-computing power to everybody who cares to learn, allowing individuals to get all the benefits of scaled companies. Otter.ai allows you to have an AI assistant to take notes and write meeting summaries. Side-Kick and Magic from Shopify provides entrepreneurs with an army of digital helpers which allow for scaling without adding staff.

Whether it is finding work post-retirement, working a side-hustle or passion project to make ends meet or build an expertise or create an off-ramp, or filling the gaps between full-time employment at firms which are often trigger-happy in adding and removing talent from their payrolls, the smart professional prepares to be a company of one.

But even if you do not fit any of these categories be aware that companies are creating internal marketplaces where opportunities can be identified and applied for and teams of experts can form and dissolve around projects.

As a result, for an individual to thrive in a company they will need to learn how to operate as a company of one. The combined power of the Avengers is because each of the Avengers is powerful on their own and not just because they learn to work as one.

Think of yourself as a better paid Uber driver with benefits if you work for a company.

If your expertise is needed at that time or in a particular market and location, and your collaboration and ability to work in teams is highly rated you will be in demand.

If not, as companies manage and monitor costs and increasingly find ways to plug into resources all the time everywhere you will find yourself parked permanently.

Or consider the Hollywood model where expertise come together on tv or movie projects and then the people disband and move on. Very few people work at a studio. Most people work in teams where they bring their skill whether it be casting, directing, catering or make up etc. The future of business will be similar as companies begin re-aggregating expertise around projects versus having hordes of generalists or people hanging around for a project. McKinsey and Bain have done this for years.

I am not suggesting that everyone will be a freelancer going from gig to gig but if you build your career with the mindset of continually honing expertise, working well with other people in teams and being flexible you will succeed in your company of tens of thousands versus thinking of yourself as a cog in big machine waiting for someone to care for or build your career.

In fact, I strongly encourage people to stay if they can at their firms as long as they are growing or can find opportunities to grow. Make no mistake there are huge advantages to work amidst people you can learn from, with infrastructure that these firms have, their reputations that create a glow and aura around each talented individual, and growing because access to amazing Clients, big challenges and amazing leaders and mentors.

But to succeed over the long run in a firm you need to maximize your options. If you have options, it means you are market competitive, and it allows you to tolerate a lot of drama and day to day nonsense at your current firm because you care about the firm and you know you have options. Because you have options you have skills that are valuable to your firm. People stay a long time in firms where they are growing and building skills and they never feel trapped.

You stay because you can go.

To thrive in a company today regardless of the size one must be responsible for one’s own career and ensure one is remaining relevant and not living on the fumes of past successes or believe that change will come slowly.

Becoming a Company of One.

1. Read A Company of One by Paul Jarvis. He asks us to consider if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career, is to be able to work for oneself, determine one’s own hours, and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? It is critical like never before to identify opportunities that combine your skills and the market. To thrive means to “flourish by doing what one is best at for which there is a market.” Do not wait to find this later when you are out of work or under pressure but do so now. Finding what you flourish at allows you to further your career at your existing company. Again, operating with a company of one mindset does not mean you need to work in a company of one but it is a mindset that ensures you are honing skills and have options which allow you to stay in your firm.

2. Architect, hone and sculpt your key superpowers: The true power of any organization is a combination of th power of the talent to work as one but also that each person has superpowers and is very talented in some niche, expertise or craft. The Avengers are successful not just because they work together but because each one of them whether it be Wonder Woman or Iron Man have their own unique powers. They have powers of “one”.

Career Turbocharging is a piece that helps you identify your superpowers:

Career Turbocharging!

RISHAD TOBACCOWALA | DECEMBER 19, 2021

Read full story

3. Build out your online and digital presence. Your resume is not what is on your hard drive or LinkedIn. It is increasingly your digital presence, particularly the first page that people see on Google when they search for you or the answer to a prompt “who is X” on GPT-4, Bing, Bard or Claude.

Go search for yourself but do not look just at the search results. Click the news tab, the image tab, and the video tab and recognize that this is the first impression that will be made and also this is what the AI engines will ingest. Ask a chat bot about yourself. This is “you” as the future becomes more distributed and digital. Try searching for your colleagues and competitors on search and chat-bots and you will be surprised at how your perceptions of a person can change.

To help create a better presence think of being active on two or three platforms like Twitter (X), Threads, Instagram, Tik-Tok and LinkedIn, develop a website (using Square Space or some other service), consider writing a blog on some passion or hobby or even start a newsletter.

4. Invest deeply in relationships including the firm you work at: In a connected age it is critical that you have as many allies and people who will vouch for you and serve both as leads and references.

Try to stay as long as you can at a firm working to fix issues with jobs and people there vs giving up or leaving. Do not believe the grass is greener on the other side because you will find that it is often because it is fertilized with bullshit.

If you do leave do not burn bridges because everyone will check with the places you worked at or the people who worked there especially if you decide to become a company of one. Elegant exits are as critical as energetic entrances.

Think long term. Help as many people as you can as often as you cannot just because it may help you but you will feel great doing so. Even if you spend your entire life working at a large company as most people do keep thinking of yourself as just yourself without your title, the budgets and the armies of supplicants or staff. Many people confuse their title with themselves and are shocked to find the hard way that it was the title and not them that people were genuflecting too.

5. Invest in learning: The day a human being and a professional stops learning is the day they stop growing and career decay sets in. Anybody who does not spend a few hours a week learning is falling behind today.

Here is everything I have learned about learning.

Learning to Learn.

RISHAD TOBACCOWALA | FEBRUARY 13, 2022

Read full story

We are entering a brave new world and the future is hard to tell. Maximizing optionality in a changing world requires each of us to think with a company of one mindset even if we wish to spend decades at our current place of work.

Admiration: Yuval Noah Harari

A great piece of advice has been “find something or someone to admire”.

When we spend time with people or things or places, we admire we learn and grow.

We usually are inspired, our goals enhanced, our benchmarks raised though we may also feel envy and diminished in comparison.

In a life of limited time, we can spend our hours being exposed to and learning from those we admire, or the things we admire whether they be a book or painting or a place or we can spend time enraged, complaining, while surrounding ourselves with those less accomplished so we feel better in comparison.

Most of us do both but when we feel ourselves in a downward spiral maybe we should say to ourselves “let us spend time with something or somebody we admire!”

Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, author and philosopher who is an extra-ordinary thinking and feeling filled human being who tells stories while warning us about stories, who explains technology while being suspicious about technology and a person who will change the way you perceive and understand things.

He is one of many people and things I admire, and this is the first of a series of posts that will focus on these individuals or things.

Here is Yuval’s website which is teeming with goodies: https://www.ynharari.com/

Yuval’s three books’ Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st century are each absolutely incredible and are worth reading and re-reading.

Long before data was cool Yuval pointed out that there was a new religious order called “dataism” which he described eight years ago in the Financial Times like this:

”For thousands of years humans believed that authority came from the gods. Then, during the modern era, humanism gradually shifted authority from deities to people.

Humanist thinkers such as Rousseau convinced us that our own feelings and desires were the ultimate source of meaning, and that our free will was, therefore, the highest authority of all. Now, a fresh shift is taking place. Just as divine authority was legitimized by religious mythologies, and human authority was legitimized by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimizes the authority of algorithms and Big Data.

This novel creed may be called “Dataism”. In its extreme form, proponents of the Dataist worldview perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms and believe that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data-processing system — and then merge into it.”

Yuval has been studying AI for 8 years and has some very interesting perspectives including that AI is the first human tool created that can make decisions and is capable of creating ideas!

The Atomic Bomb could not decide to launch itself or a piano to will itself to create a Beethoven sonata but AI can.

To illustrate his thinking have listed below 10 perspectives shared by Yuval in a recent conversation with Lex Fridman that is nearly three hours long and is worth every minute of your time. You can listen to it as a podcast or watch it on You Tube. Both embedded below:

The Twilight of Homo-Sapiens: In less than one hundred years Homo-Sapiens may not exist for a couple of different reasons. One possible path is that we destroy ourselves due to nuclear war or climate change or some other calamity. The second is we harness AI and Biotech in ways that give us so much power that we re-program our minds and bodies and create a new generation of us as different from homo-sapiens as homo-sapiens are from Neanderthals.

Intelligence and Consciousness are very different: Machines can be intelligent but they are not yet conscious and cannot feel. Life is basically feeling and reacting to sensory experiences and at its core is suffering.

Stories Rule: From religion to economics, humans have thrived due to our ability to create, believe in and distribute stories. Look under most power structures and you will see a scaffolding of stories. We fight over stories. There are human stories like the US Constitution that can be changed and there are God Stories like those in religion which are infallible and cannot be modified.

AI will feel very human and create intimate feelings because it focusses on us, listens to us and knows what stories will resonate with each of us: Algorithms already have hijacked our attentions and modern AI is learning our culture by imbibing all our stories and art. Today in a world where so many people are lonely Chat GPT resonates because it listens to us, answers us, and feels more empathetic than another person. Increasingly the machine understands us better than we understand ourselves.

Without conversations and learning and checks and balances democracy will not exist: Once upon a time politicians in Congress would debate each other and be open to change their minds. This is no longer true. In Israel, the Prime-Minister is trying to remove the checks and balances of their Supreme Court, and this has divided the nation. The world is constantly changing and requires lots of people and perspectives. Truth is complex. Growth does not happen by telling simple stories, closed minds and hating all those who oppose a point of view. Insularity and Messiah complexes lead to disasters such as Putin living in his own mind building a reality free unhinged story about Ukraine.

How Liberals Differ from other “isms”: Liberals answer “yes” to the following three questions of whether a) individuals should choose their government, b) select their work and c) find their mates. Conservatives are liberal regardless of their economic and market beliefs. Fascists and nationalists and communists are different in that they believe a leader or national interest, or a certain class matters more than individuals. Aspects of life such as human rights, or beauty or truth matter little.

Why other “isms’ are popular: Fascists and nationalists endure because they blame other people for a world which many feel is spinning out of control and where we feel left behind. These simple stories never find any fault with those who follow the ideology but blame a cabal of “they” and “them”. They do not traffic in truth because truth is complicated and painful and very few people want to deal with reality.

The idea of powerful cabals who operate in secret is nonsense but believed all the time for the issues facing people: Yes, there are small groups who might have massive power like President Xi of China and his Standing committee, but they are not secret. You cannot be all powerful if nobody knows about you. As importantly you can be very powerful, but the world behaves in ways nobody can control. Everything that the US tried to do in Iraq ended up doing the exact opposite. It gave birth to Isis. Strengthened Iran. Massively hurt the US in lives lost, treasure expanded, and soft power diminished. There is no “they” who are so powerful and secret, but we are all susceptible to stories that pin our and society’s troubles on others.

Feminism is probably the most successful revolution in history: Across eons regardless of geography or time with rare exceptions patriarchy ruled and women were second class citizens with few rights. Without firing a shot or breaking an egg a revolution, which is still underway around the world called Feminism is spreading and it is the one that has inspired everything from Gay rights to more.

Reinvention is the only strategy: Nobody can predict the future and it is changing fast. Computer coding may be done by AI soon and many programming jobs which were seen as jobs of the future may disappear. Translation in real time by your phone and other technologies is already replacing the need for translators and learning languages. Industries will rise and fall, and change will accelerate. The only way forward is to be flexible, upgrade one’s mind and skills and continuously reinvent. It is easy to become deluded and make up stories that insulate us from changing but life is change. Adaptation requires courage, an optimistic mindset, help from others and a sense of compassion.

5 Keys to Ensure Professional Relevance.

Photography by David Nissen

Professionals across the world, across industries and across all levels (but particularly middle to senior executive levels) are grappling with the issue of relevance.

1)    Are our businesses and business models relevant?

2)    Are our organizational designs, incentive plans, and talent relevant?

3)    Are our partners, suppliers, and the way we tap into external resources relevant?

4)    Are our positions and roles relevant?

5)    Are WE still relevant?

While we may give voice to the first three there is no doubt we are also concerned about our own roles and our own capabilities.

This hold true whether we work in a company of a hundred thousand or are self-employed.

Photography by David Nissen

Business Models

The past decade has made clear to every business and individual that the biggest threats and opportunities to any business comes from outside our category or competitive set.

The moment one benchmarks only against current competitors or historical performance and cost data one has begun a slide into irrelevance.

Dollar Shave club came for Gillette.

Google came for the newspapers and classified advertising.

Tesla and Uber came for the auto industry.

Netflix and Spotify and Substack came for the content industry.

Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs is coming for Anthem, United Health and other PBMs.

None of these were spotted or taken seriously till they did significant damage to the leaders.

Completely new ways of marketing in a world of empowered purpose driven people, innovative experience and data driven storytelling is challenging every marketer and agency and media company.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls and what the  era of  the Third Connected Age  of  AI, Block Chain, AR/VR and 5G ( read here about what real 5G is already changing experiences and expectations when it is deployed in private networks) are coming for.

They are coming for all of us, but they are also coming to help us re-invent and turbo-charge ourselves, our companies, our growth, and our future.

We are in Re-Inventing Times!

To Re-invent we should consider the blank sheet of paper exercise:

a)     Identify a challenge or opportunity.

b)    Assume we have every asset we currently have.

c)     Do not constrain our solution except that we need to keep within the law, what is technologically possible today and some goal to break-even or show results in x months.

Every team that does this exercise will come up with amazing ideas to address challenges or opportunities and will realize that most constraints are self-imposed. If we do not do what we have imagined we can to address our challenges and seize our opportunities to re-invent someone else will and they will clean our clocks

Photography by David Nissen

Organizational Structure

The future does not fit in the containers of the past.

Most companies’ organizations and incentive systems have been optimized for their past or existing business rather than the world we are moving into.

If we want people to work together but we measure how our individual units do, we will not gain collaboration.

If we want people to think multi-platform and multi-media but we promote and incentivize magazine page sales, or radio or tv inventory we will fail to transform.

If we try to manage tomorrow and today with the same teams, we will have a diluted today and a non-competitive entry into tomorrow.

If we delude ourselves in thinking scale, marketing spending, brand and access to resources create a moat we will find that what we have done is build walls and laid the seeds of self-defeat in a world where data, eco-systems, ideas, talent, and access to modern marketplaces are the new scaling drivers.

In addition today we  also have to design organizations that incorporate in-person and remote teams and grapple with how to combine and integrate and set expectations.

And if we blame Wall Street, “Management” or some other factor no customer or client will really care.

It is just fear and bad leadership.

Companies and management that thrive bend  structures and processes to adapt to change.

Change and marketplaces do not bend to fit our yesterday’s shapes and business models.

At minimum consider a model of “schizophrenia”. Develop a team to optimize for tomorrow with its own specific goals and incentives while focusing the rest of the organization to maximize today with their own goals and incentives. Both teams report to the same management and are aware of each other’s goals and can swap talent and resources as necessary but need to focus on their goals.

Photography by David Nissen

Partnering Ecosystem

No individual is an island and no company in a connected world can prosper without great connections to other individuals or companies whether they be suppliers, partners, sources of talent, technology, and other platforms.

In a world of Amazon Web Services, Azure, Shopify, Open Ai, Upwork which are bring new sources of solutions, talent, and scale while at the same time every service provider is upgrading themselves to remain competitive, all of us need to ensure that we have the best people, the best processes, and the best value as we partner with the marketplace.

All smart managers are asking if we are investing enough in upgrading and resourcing talent. (If we work for ourselves are we investing enough in ourselves? ) Are we ensuring tight co-ordination with our partners and suppliers? Are our external resources constantly iterating and improving to help give ourselves and our companies an edge?

Photography by David Nissen

Management Relevance

Today managers are buffeted from every direction.

There is a “de-layering” mania underway as companies try to find cost savings and increase agility to cope with transformational times.

This is most acute in technology companies where between twenty and twenty five percent of employees have been let go with a particular emphasis on mid-level management and anyone who is not a revenue contributor or a maker, builder, and creator.

At the same time there is a deepening generational mindset divide with many Gen-Z youth holding senior management in low regard wondering what they do and contribute besides allocating, monitoring, and delegating while senior management looks askance at middle and lower management who are refusing to work “hard-core”  painting them as crybabies and softies who need a kick in the pants and a dose of reality.

The market meanwhile wonders whether many legendary CEO’s have lost the plot or are just not fit for the times. Bob Iger of Disney in his return seems overwhelmed and tonally off, David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery seems to be experimenting and destroying brand value at CNN and minimizing the best brand in content HBO by Maxing it and managing a multibillion-dollar firm by trial and error the way a start-up CEO might.  Howard Schultz in his final months as CEO seemed to come off as a curmudgeon talking about the good old days who appeared to be anti-labor and off putting to a new generation with new issues who are living in current times.

These three legends as well as other senior management are far more aware of reality and have shape shifted before and continue to shape shift. Howard Schultz course corrected and then made an inspirational choice for a successor. Bob Iger faced the facts including the possibility that the cradle he forged his career in which was ABC may no longer be fit for purpose.

Every individual and manager can continue to be successful in a transforming world. The issue is how to see, think and feel differently and then execute, iterate, and improve to remain relevant.

Provide personalized guidance and nuances versus mandates. Be a coach versus a boss. Communicate clearly and be transparent versus thinking that information and data is power. And be open to receiving and giving feedback including recognizing the turd on the table.

Photography by David Nissen

Personal Relevance

The scale and rate of technological, demographic, mindset and global change (The Four Shifts) means the half-life of knowledge and skills are growing shorter and shorter.

This places a premium on having to learn new skills while simultaneously unlearning skills.

Take any senior or middle manager for drinks and sooner or later you will discover we are all struggling with how we can add value to a world which seems to be so different and alien.

The competitors are different, the category dynamics are changing, the talent landscape and the workspace seem to be shape shifting in ways we do not recognize.

At the same time the workload is increasing, the expectations rising and change which sucks is coming so fast that we a) cannot hope to wait it out till we retire, b) have the time to manage our today while preparing for our tomorrow c) fake it with buzz word bingo (AI! Data Lake! Personalization! Platform Strategy! Disruption!) or playing for time by launching task forces or hiring consultants to do landscape overviews, competitive benchmarking, and scenario planning which everyone else can see and we know ourselves is nothing but doing the 3D dance of delaying, dawdling and dithering.

Companies do not grow or remain relevant unless managers grow and remain relevant. Every individual is a manager in that they manage themselves.

We will all spend the rest of our lives in the future which begins as early as tomorrow, so we must find our time today to prepare for tomorrow or there will not be a tomorrow.

The future is bright for all of us in what may be the most exciting times.

All we must do is upgrade ourselves to continue to remain relevant.

Ai-Volution of Culture

Clearly remaining relevant will include staying on top of Ai.

One of the Boards I serve on is a company called Quilt. Ai and they are holding an incredible event at The Times Center, New York on September 6, 2023, where they will bring together marketers, storytellers, builders, and technologists to understand the fundamentals of AI, discuss the integration of it into their business, and how to use it for good.

Quilt have provided me with access to a limited number of FREE tickets for people who might want to attend. Speakers will include the Chairman of the Editorial Board of The Financial Times, an Oscar nominated director, the head of a major museum, Fashion leaders, pioneering CMO’s and technologists. Everybody will get lots of free books, content, and software subscriptions. You can read about the event and sign up by clicking here and get in for free with my code: rishadxquilt ( limited number of free passes so do sign up if you can be there).

It will also be streamed globally.

Event Link: https://www.quilt.ai/september-event

My code: rishadxquilt

Every Second Counts.

What is your purpose?

Is it too late to re-invent yourself?

What happens when you come to a fork in the road?

How do you motivate a team?

What does it mean to care and to have high personal standards?

A perspective on all these topics is shared in 30 minutes of some of the finest television you will ever see. It is the 7th episode of the Second Season of The Bear. (Link to see it free in North America or with a VPN at the end of the post.)

What is amazing about these 30 minutes is that you can watch it without knowing anything about any of the previous episodes or even the premise of the show except that the character Ritchie who is featured in this episode is at loose ends, estranged from his wife, trying to find his purpose at work and worried he has run out of time. His cousin who is starting a new restaurant sends him to train at three star restaurant.

I believe every CEO or team leader should screen this episode for their teams because it is about all the things that are key to successful companies and teams but delivered in a way that is amazingly impactful.

And it is also about life, the passing of time, second chances and the realization that what makes moments special is that many things every day will never happen again and there is the extra-ordinary in the ordinary day.

The episode reminds us that for great work and great teams and a great life one needs:

1. High Standards

The importance of craft, caring and operating at the highest level every day.

How sweating the details and repeated practice is key to great craftsmanship.

Why the best teams perform every day as if they are in the Super Bowl.

2. Respect

The importance of respecting others and having self respect.

“I just need you to respect me. I need you to respect the staff. I need you to respect the diners. And I need you to respect yourself.”

3. Leadership and Communication

The great Duke basketball Coach K’s talk on leadership and teams is integrated into the story where he says:

“Be on a team. Surround yourself with great people. Learn how to Listen. Converse. Don’t make excuses. Figure out a solution. You do not have to figure it out yourself. You are part of a team.”

But one sees teamwork and communication as every person plays off each other in a restaurant from front of the house to back of the house.

You can see it below ( Click on the link to see it on YouTube since it cannot be embedded here)

4. The importance of customer focus, customer delight, and customer intelligence.

We often read about why one should know each customer and customize solutions for them.

There is a five minute segment in this show that illustrates and teaches more about these topics than dozens of powerpoint decks.

There is even an example where someone outsources from a competitor to keep a Client delighted. ( Deep Dish pizza is part of this story that is all I will say).

5. Why time is all we have and we need to believe in others and our selves and never give up .

There is a five minute scene which is probably some of the most moving television ever created as the Chef of the restaurant speaks about her challenges and journals she discovered from her father… it is a cameo from the Oscar Winner Olivia Colman…

She discussed her setbacks and how she resurrected herself.

She talks about discovering her fathers journals and letters after he where he wrote down everything he saw or noticed.

She notes he seemed to be saying..

Do not forget this moment.

Do not forget this interesting strange detail.

She ends by

And he’d sign of each letter the same way….(and then she gets called away and Richie figures out how her father signed off…)

You can watch a bit of it here or the twitter link below and it will leave you different…

https://twitter.com/i/status/1673153448680869889

And here is one piece among many of how amazing these five minutes are: Five minutes of greatness: https://decider.com/2023/06/29/the-bear-olivia-colman-cameo-season-2-episode-7-forks-guest-stars/

6. Integration of flow and craftsmanship.

In the two minutes below one sees the level of craftsmanship from writing to photography to music ( yes Taylor Swift also is incorporated into the story), a sense of place ( the show is a love story to my hometown Chicago) and much more. This episode of The Bear is not just about purpose, time, teamwork, craftsmanship and flow but it is a product of these inputs.

And if you want to know how they made everything look so real…well they shot it in a Michelin starred restaurant of course: The Real Restaurant: Ever…https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/7/5/23783009/the-bear-season-2-episode-7-forks-richie-stages-ever-restaurant

Hope you take the 30 minutes to watch the entire episode.

It might be the best uses of your time.

Here is where you can watch The Bear for free (all episodes are terrific but this post is about Episode 7 of Season 2 which is called “Forks” and is probably among the best). Outside the US please use a VPN. Hulu has some of the most amazing television from “The Old Man” to “Atlanta” and you may want to stick around after the free trial ( more great stuff here than majority owner Disney’s property Disney+ which is basically a Star Wars and Avengers franchise with a sprinkle of Pixar and a dash of Simpsons. Which is why Bob Iger has come around to the fact he needs it not just because Comcast can force him to buy the rest from them)

Remaining Relevant in an AI Age.

Photography by Xuan-Hui Ng

The history of AI is over 80 years old.

You can learn and view its developments here at the online Computer History Museum site.

After many ups and downs, false dawns and surviving many winters AI or what Ted Chiang, the author calls “Applied Statistics” has arrived due to a combination of access to swaths of training data available on the Internet, massive increases in computing power and several breakthroughs in neural network design.

Today a combination of daily breakthroughs and exponential improvements combined with tens of billions of dollars of capital means that every company, every job and every one of us will be impacted by AI.

How do individuals and firms adapt and thrive in what clearly will be a new landscape?

3 steps.

1) Embrace. 2) Adapt. 3) Complement.

Photography by Xuan-Hui Ng

Embrace

It’s 1977 and a new movie titled Star Wars: A New Hope is released and in it a General Dodonna ends a briefing to his fighters (which includes Luke Skywalker) with the words “May the Force Be With You” (watch this scene from what is now nearly five decades ago not just for the line but how far film making technology has advanced and hear the line first time it was said…it was not Obi-Won Kenobi or Yoda.)

It's 1599 and somewhere in England a play by William Shakespeare is staged during which the following lines are spoken (listen to them voiced by John Gieguld to understand why Shakespeare is best heard and not just read):

"We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

Both Shakespeare over 500 years ago and George Lucas 50 years ago shared the first rules of thriving in changing times.

Align with the force.

Go with the flow.

Every individual and organization should and must spend time learning and understanding this new tsunami.

It is real. It is powerful and it is moving extremely fast.

Yes, there are lots of issues from copyright to impact on employment to a terminator like bot getting all of humanity, but the genie is out of the bottle, there is no going back or time for individuals or organizations to dither.

As an individual it is essential to begin to understand Re-Generative AI including prompt to text (e.g., GPT-4), prompt to image (e.g., Mid Journey), prompt to audio (e.g., Voice lab) and prompt to video (e.g.  Runway ML). One way to keep up daily is to subscribe and read this free daily note called Ben’s Bites.

Another good place to start experiment with prompt to text is here at Pi (Inflection AI a one-year-old company which powers Pi this week raised 1.3 billion dollars from Microsoft and Nvidia among others.)

Photography by Xuan-Hui Ng

Adapt

Organizations need to re-think and re-visit every aspect of their products and services to see where productivity can be enhanced, product and services augmented, and completely new innovations launched.

And it is not as simple as automating and speeding up things as we have learned from a lawyer using AI to help in a legal case only to find that the AI had made things up (and increasingly this will be a huge issue) but a far deeper re-architecting of the business versus just a re-skinning or a re-structuring to cut costs.

The three big questions are:

a) What can be AI enhanced and what should not?

b) How will the AI product be built/trained and what quality control will ensure that the result is safe and legal among other things?

c)  How will the organizational design and talent allocation change to incorporate these new capabilities?

For most companies there is good chance that AI technology itself will become a commodity like ingredient.

In fact, smaller companies (outside of the mega cap tech companies that are funding and driving AI investments) are likely to benefit more from AI since it will now make amazing capabilities affordable to everybody.

Size maybe less of a competitive advantage.

Well thought out processes for yesterday may become anchors to change.

And even senior management who cannot adapt fast (AI is scaling so quickly it is wishful thinking for senior folks to believe one can delay things till retirement) will become a competitive disadvantage.

But a key to adaptation will be how to attract and retain talent to work in new ways to complement the AI.

Because the future will not be just an AI age but an HI age

HI= Human Inspired.

Photography by Xuan-Hui Ng

Complement

Successful individuals and companies will complement the power of computing machines and software.

They will do this by enhancing, training, and bending what the technology can enable with creativity, storytelling, empathy, provenance, humanity, insight and imagination.

There will be a premium on building and attracting talent who are strong in the 6 C’s.

Three of these have to do with individual competence (Cognition, Creativity, Curiosity) and three how we connect with each other and the world outside our minds (Collaborate, Communicate, Convince).

Cognition is simply learning to think and keeping our mental operating system constantly upgraded. This requires deliberate practice and sustained work. Improved cognition is achievable and essential in a world where the computing operating systems are constantly improving.

Creativity is connecting dots in new ways, looking beyond the obvious and this skill will be key as AI powered computers, data crunch and co-relate faster than we ever will.

To be human is to be creative.

Creativity is at its heart the way we deal with a world of change by adapting, evolving, and re-inventing.

We need to learn and feed this inside us. The future will be about data driven storytelling and not just data or storytelling and the ability to leverage modern machines and algorithms to unleash connection and meaning will depend on creativity.

Curiosity is simply being alive to possibilities, questioning the status quo and asking what if? Today the key competitor or opportunity in any category comes from outside it.

Being cognitively gifted, creative, and curious will not be enough since we are living in a connected world where eco-systems, teams and linkages is how ideas are born, value created, and long-term careers forged. For these we need to hone and build and train for three other skills which are key since a great part of Human Inspired work is not just how to work alongside the machine but work alongside other humans.

Collaborate: Collaboration is key to work in a world where API’s (Application Protocol Interfaces) are not just about handshakes between software/hardware but between individuals with different skills, teams in different countries, partners, suppliers and much more.

Communicate: Learn to write. Learn to speak. Learn to present. It may be so old school but watch the people who succeed, and they are good at communication. And all of these can be taught and learned. One can use GPT to write the first draft and have Mid-Journey come up with great visuals for presentations and use other AI tools to provide amazing starter ideas and be a great co-pilot but Human Inspired means taking these outputs to the next level and requires communication skills.

But communication is not a one-way street and as important as it to write, speak and present it is as critical to be able to listen, to hear and to understand what others are saying with an open mind and a sense of empathy since this will also be a differentiating advantage in an AI age.

Convince: Every one of us is a salesperson regardless of what we believe our title is. This is true even if we do not sell anything at work. We must convince colleagues of our points of view.

We all must learn to convince and learn to sell often finding ways to sell something different than what the machines may recommend.

Time has proven that technology while bringing with it risks and downsides over time is a massive positive force for humanity.

The future is bright and all we must do is open our eyes, heart and minds and seize the benefits of this amazing era.

How to Think.

Harry Callahan

The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski is a fantastic overview of photography which is based on an exhibition curated by him for MOMA in 1964.

The book selects photographs from the entire history of photography up to 1964 both by famous photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston but also work by amateurs to illustrate challenges and opportunities faced by photographers.

Szarkowski identifies five keys to see like a photographer: 1) The Thing Itself, 2) The Detail, 3) The Frame, 4) Time and 5) Vantage Point.

Each one of these five are also great tools to use to improve thinking for personal and business decisions.

Photographer Unknown

Photographer Unknown

The Thing Itself

“The first thing that the photographer learned was that photography dealt with the actual; he had not only to accept this fact, but to treasure it; unless he did, photography would defeat him. He learned that the world itself is an artist of incomparable inventiveness, and that to recognize its best works and moments, to anticipate them, to clarify them and make them permanent, requires intelligence both acute and supple.”

One of the keys to proper thinking is to see the situation for what it is.

To face reality. To collect the facts. To not have FOFO ( the fear of finding out).

If we traffic in magical thinking, look away from the problem and assume away what is real it is hard to think straight.

Garry Winogrand

The Detail

“The photographer was tied to the facts of things, and it was his problem to force the facts to tell the truth. He could not, outside the studio, pose the truth, he could only record it as he found it, and it was found in nature in a fragmented and unexplained form—not as a story, but as scattered and suggestive clues.”

Every challenge and opportunity lies in the details. One or two key variables that the enterprise turns on. Forgetting that interest rates could go up and that you can not lend in the long term while borrowing in the short term led to Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion.

Similarly in the sea of data lies the pattern which reveals the meaning.

In hindsight the key details and critical data are obvious. But to reveal what drives the machine and makes the clock tick we need to analyze and scenario plan.

The shifting of parameters often reveals the key variables we take for granted or need to be aware of.

Ask what key details or critical data that drive assumptions. And then think about when they change what new new risks or opportunities are created?

Andre Kertesz

The Frame

“Since the photographer's picture was not conceived but selected, his subject was never truly discrete, never wholly self-contained. The edges of his film demarcated what he thought most important, but the subject he had shot was something else; it had extended in four directions. If the photographer's frame surrounded two figures, isolating them from the crowd in which they stood, it created a relationship between those two figures that had not existed before.

The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge—the line that separates in from out—and on the shapes that are created by it.”

Framing a problem is a key to solving it.

If one does not start with the right question the solution might never have a chance of being correct.

Similarly framing a situation or an offer is key to how someone looks at it.

Everything is in context with everything else and this ability to frame is an essential tool to the best problem solvers and sales people.

Photographer Unknown

Time

“All photographs are time exposures of shorter or longer duration, and each describes a discrete parcel of time. This time is always the present. Uniquely in the history of pictures, a photograph describes only that period of time in which it was made. Photography alludes to the past and the future only in so far as they exist in the present, the past through its surviving relics, the future through prophecy visible in the present.”

Placing things in perspective from a past, present and future lens allow one to stress test one’s thoughts.

Scavenging the past reveals treasures for the future but stay frozen in the past and there will be not future to treasure. So it is critical to both move forward from yesterday to today as well as backward from tomorrow to today.

In addition, it reminds us that timing is key to understand when to launch a product or service.

Too soon or too late is a problem as is too slow or too fast.

A decision that can be reversed should be made fast versus one that cannot should be marinated in time.

Photographer Unknown

Photographer Unknown

Vantage Point

“Much has been said about the clarity of photography, but little has been said about its obscurity. And yet it is photography that has taught us to see from the unexpected vantage point, and has shown us pictures that give the sense of the scene, while withholding its narrative meaning. Photographers from necessity choose from the options available to them, and often this means pictures from the other side of the proscenium showing the actors' backs, pictures from the bird's view, or the worm's, or pictures in which the subject is distorted by extreme foreshortening, or by none, or by an unfamiliar pattern of light, or by a seeming ambiguity of action or gesture.”

In a famous Japanese movie Rashomon truth depends on where one stands. The same crime when viewed from four vantage points lead to different conclusions as to what actually happened..

Being able to think from the perspective of a buyer if one is a seller, from a disrupter if one is a legacy company or having the empathy to understand other peoples perspective are key to clear thinking.

So next time when making a decision or evaluating a situation 1) look hard at the situation or thing itself to make sure the facts are understood, 2) parse the detail and the data, 3) frame the question or the solution, 4) interrogate it with time scenarios and 5) view it from different vantage points.

Kindness.

Large Girl with No Eyes, Julian Schnabel

One of the keys to a good life and possibly success at work is kindness.

This includes not just being kind to other people but kind to oneself.

Often we spend our time regretting, self-flagellating, doubting our decisions and wondering if we can ever measure up especially in a world filled with standards and measures that are unattainable.

In today’s competitive marketplace of rapidly transforming landscapes and constant benchmarking we often forget that we are dealing not just with buyers, sellers, users, members, competitors, analysts, scientists, management and employees but with analog, carbon based, feeling filled people.

Humans.

Messy and Moody. Dream filled and desire driven.. Anxiously ambitious. Undulating with uncertainty.

Kindness is a way to connect in a world where connections are key.

But it not easy to model in an Excel spreadsheet, display in a PowerPoint , or be described with any depth by GPT.

The machine will rapidly compute an answer, garland it with perspective, refine and correlate what has been fed into its innards, and then emit an output in a dazzling display of verbosity.

Answers that may awe us.

But rarely move us.

Below are three takes on kindness. From GPT-4, author George Saunders, and poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

Take 1: GPT-4 on Kindness

Prompt: What is kindness?

Kindness is a type of behavior marked by acts of generosity, consideration, or concern for others, without expecting praise or reward. It is often considered a virtue and is recognized in many cultures and religions as an important value. Kindness can manifest in many ways, including but not limited to:

Helping others: This could involve assisting someone with their work, offering to carry heavy items, or helping someone cross the street. The act doesn't have to be grand to be kind.

Complimenting or praising someone: Words of affirmation can have a huge impact on someone's day. Complimenting someone genuinely can be a simple yet effective act of kindness.

Empathy and understanding: Kindness often involves understanding other people's perspectives and feelings. This could mean listening to someone when they're having a hard time, or refraining from judgment when someone makes a mistake.

Patience: Patience, especially when dealing with difficult people or situations, can be a significant act of kindness. It involves tempering your reaction, even when you're frustrated or angry.

Charitable giving: This is another classic example of kindness. Donating to a cause you believe in, volunteering your time, or even just offering someone a meal can all be acts of kindness.

Showing respect: Treating everyone with respect, regardless of their background or beliefs, is an act of kindness. This could involve simple things like saying "please" and "thank you," or more complex acts like promoting inclusivity and fairness.

In essence, kindness involves treating others the way you'd like to be treated. It's a simple concept but can have a profound impact on the world.

Take 2: Author George Saunders on kindness

The author George Saunders gave a short and remarkable speech on the importance of kindness which everyone should listen to.

A key theme is “to err in the direction of kindness”

Some key passages of his talk to students

“When young, we’re anxious — understandably — to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you — in particular you, of this generation — may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can . . .

And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously — as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.

Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.”

Later George was interviewed on this talk which went viral after it was posted in the New York Times on why kindness was important and here is what he said:

“Ninety-nine percent of the time if you just do your best to be kind, you’re better off. It’s the basic things, like trying to have good manners, keeping your assumptions about the other person a little open, being willing to revise your opinion.

Perhaps it’s all a self-fulfilled prophecy. We live in an unkind world because we believe it’s an unkind world.

The thing I’ve noticed is that if you go out into the world ready for confrontation, then confrontations find you. But if you go out with a sort of diffusing energy, the world reads that and feels more friendly toward you. So I think there’s a circular effect.

In the media and in our political rhetoric, we’re told don’t be a sucker, be firm, be strong, push back, they’re trying to get you. If you buy into that—even on a molecular level—the world smells it on you. Whereas—and here’s where it sounds corny—the world responds to you differently if you go out thinking, alright, I’m going to pretend that everybody out there is my brother or my sister, and if they are temporarily behaving like they’re not, I’m going to pretend that they’re just confused. I’m going to insist, through my mannerisms and my tone of voice, that I see them at their highest.”

Take 3: The poet Naomi Shihab Nye on kindness

Kindness.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Exponential Organizations!

Earlier this week (June 6, 2023), a new book called Exponential Organizations 2.0 by Salim Ismail, Peter Diamandis and Michael Malone was made available.

Every subscriber of this thought letter regardless of whether one is employed by a firm, self-employed, unemployed or even retired is likely to benefit by reading this book.

It will stretch your mind and make you re-think a lot of things about firms and work and the future. There will be parts that may surprise you and parts that may anger you. You may nod along and occasionally fly into rage wondering if the authors have tripped into the light fantastic.

The book is filled with examples, charts, data, and graphs and step by step exercises and recommendations that you will  be able to leverage as you manage your career, your team, and your firm.

You can own it and read it now on any device that supports the Kindle app for only 99 cents here

The Changing Nature of a Firm.

Ronald Coase an economist from the University of Chicago won the Nobel Prize in part for his rationale that firms exist because internal transaction costs are lower than external transaction costs.

In short, despite internal bureaucracy and red tape and processes, large firms endured because no matter how bad the internal friction it was often less than the friction of negotiating and setting up each transaction necessary to get a job done with outside parties.

But then…

In the US in the three years beginning in February 2020, small establishments—locations with fewer than 250 employees—have hired 3.67 million more people than have been laid off or who quit. Larger establishments—those with 250 employees or more—have cut a net 800,000 job (and this was before the huge layoffs at the large tech companies). That is according to data from the government’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

A combination of enabling technologies including mobile computing, new marketplaces (Amazon Web Services, Shopify, Upwork) that allow for easy access to scaled resources through an API, a changing work force (free-lancers will outnumber full time employees next year in the US) and new mindsets (76% of Gen-Z want to be their own boss) have made Coase’s law less relevant than it was before.

Now combine the changes we have lived through in the past two decades with the disruptions of Covid-19  and the huge emerging technology platform shifts driven by AI, AR/VR, Blockchain and 5G-- all of which massively empower individuals and small agile teams-- and the nature of firms will change.

Large firms will continue to endure because in many cases scale, capital and other resources are better allocated and utilized with such structures, but these firms will increasingly work in radical new ways which include becoming flatter, faster, enabling fewer and fewer full time  employees than ever before.

In 2020, the Amsterdam based banking and financial company the ING Group with over a trillion dollars of assets decided the future was going to require much more autonomous ways of working and decided to develop a transformative new model. The asked each employee to re-apply for to the company if they were interested in the new ways of working which reduced the number of mangers, removed the ability to delegate tasks that you should do to others and required constant shapeshifting. Nearly one third of the employees quit and the following year ING delivered the same results with the remaining two thirds of employees.

Many firms have begun to realize that the future does not fit in the containers of the past and most organizations may have been built for yesterday rather than the very different challenges of today and the amazing opportunities of tomorrow.

The new firm will be an Exponential Organization 2.0 which the authors define as

A purpose-driven, agile, and scalable organization that uses accelerating technologies to digitize, dematerialize, democratize, and demonetize its products and services, resulting in a 10x performance increase over its non-ExO peers.

The Key Drivers of An Exponential Organization

The chart above is a map of the terrain that forms the Exponential Organization 2.0.

It all begins with a Massive Transformational Purpose which is defined as “the core reason for the firm’s existence. It is the foundation upon which all the company actions take place. It establishes a long-term goal for the company that is so sweeping and profound that it is always within reach yet always unreachable. It sets a moral foundation for all company interactions between stakeholders. It keeps the company disciplined and on target. It inspires employees and customers. And it galvanizes employee morale and retention.”

Here are some examples of MTP’s:

Google: Organize the world’s information.

Uber: Go anywhere. Get anything.

Danone: Bring health through food.

Spanx: Elevating Women.

It is key to determine a massive transformational purpose ( MTP) for an ongoing firm and should be something every new business should figure out at launch.

The other two factors that drive new organizational design are external facing ones (SCALE) which is how the firm connects with the outside world and internal facing ones which are the key factors that the firm should run the business internally (IDEAS).

Connecting Externally: SCALE

Staff On Demand: Projects should be staffed, and work done by putting together teams of pre-qualified workers hired on a as-need basis. These individuals could be self-employed, free-lance, procured from third parties such as Upwork and other contracting , or even full-time employees who are re-aggregated around the jobs that need to be done and then dissolve post the job. Think how talent comes together in Hollywood around a tv show or project or consultants move from assignment to assignment at a Bain or McKinsey depending on their skills and the assignment.

Community and Crowd:  Communities are built around users, customers, alumni as well as vendors, suppliers and fans who are aligned with the massive transformational purpose who are granted special favors, given insider insights and forward look on future offerings and rewarded with gifts and trust. While they are not employees, they are pseudo employees, citizens of the firm’s larger community. Companies like Peloton and Apple of leveraged community from key developers to super and early fans. Community is often sourced from crowds. With most of the worlds 8 billion people connected online one can leverage crowds to grow a company and find community as TikTok did in entertainment and Kiva in finance and GoFundMe in fund raising.

Algorithms and AI: Both technologies allow for massive research, fast pattern matching, massive experimentation and more and will turbo-charge talent and company design.

Leveraged Assets: Increasingly companies will be asset light using APIs to access what they need when they need it whether it be compute power, manufacturing, or distribution. Cloud based computing is a common form of a leveraged asset.

Leveraged significantly reduce the need for capital, cost of carrying inventory and risk of obsolete technology.

Engagement: Engagement is the use of techniques like gamification, incentive prizes, and recently crypto economics like NFT’ s to keep stakeholders interested, involved and increasingly committed to a shared purpose. Examples include how Reddit uses its members to vote up or down on submitted content. It’s the classic example of reciprocity Engagement: if you share content you can access content which drives engagement of community and crowd.

Connecting Internally: IDEAS

Interfaces: Interfaces are the matching and filtering processes that allow a firm to translate the abundance of data into precise and meaningful information that can be acted on. For instance Shopify has created a number of interfaces that allow its customers to access all of its SCALE attributes which is it’s community, it’s AI, it’s external and internal talent and its assets so that an individual can find an eco-system of third party functions to help them sell as well as buyers for their products and services.

Dashboards: Dashboards are the internal and external presentation of  real time objectives and key results (OKR’s) a company needs to operate.  These include everything from leader boards and other data for users to internal metrics to drive the firm such as monthly recurring revenue (MRR), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Life-Time Value (LTV), Margin, Churn, Net Promoter Score etc. These dashboards constantly allow a company to re-allocate resources, change marketing plans, re-price products and navigate the firm.

Experimentation:  In a fast-changing world experimentation and iteration is the only way. Experimentation is a key to make data driven decisions even about innovation and creativity. By trying different approaches and A/B testing, measuring quickly, failing fast and honing and building on success a company can speed and scale rapidly.

Autonomy:  Some of the biggest drawbacks of large organizations are bureaucracy where there are scores of people empowered to say no and very few who can say yes, decision makers far from the customer or the marketing battlefield and an entire ethos of giving “good meetings” and “butt covering” versus making shit happen. Autonomy challenges this via an approach characterized by self-organized, multi-disciplinary teams that operate with de-centralized authority all focusses on hitting the company OKR’s, Massive Transformational Purpose and Moonshots.

Social: Social technologies accelerate conversations and therefore learning cycles. These include communication tools like Slack, Zoom and Google Docs, collaboration tools like Asana and Jira and workflow management tools like Dropbox. There are ranges of tools from Canva a collaborative graphics tool to Miro board that allow virtual white boarding.

The Imperative of Transformation

We have entered the dawn of a new era whether one is a CEO, or an intern, a gig worker or an investor will need to twist themselves and their organization into new shapes to continue to thrive in the future.

The ability to exponentially grow is now possible for every person and firm where most external barriers, excuses and obstacles are being dissolved away and our ability to change will make us grow while staying the course will likely see us going the way of Blackberry, Kodak.

No great talent or company is defeated.

They defeat themselves.

By failing to change and adapt and re-invent.

Lamentations of the Modern Manager.

Worked so hard for this corner office with a view.

This wonderfully awe-inspiring room.

But instead of enjoying my due.

Have the same square footage as everyone else on Zoom.

As a manager we would monitor and check-in.

Now with everyone working anywhere that is in the dust bin.

Worked my way up the ladder as I grew grayer.

But now everybody wants to “de-layer”!

All these young folks are now so entitled.

They refuse to bend their knee to our high title.

Even worse than being in awe of us they boo!

Asking what value, we add and exactly do?

They would rather be their own boss.

And look at the decades we put in as a loss.

A deaf ear to our beliefs that expertise, craft and skill are like fine wine.

Which get honed and grow working with people over time.

Things were clear cut and everything in its place.

Now everything is fluid, as if we are drifting in space.

Everything is leaking into everything and exploding everywhere.

Commerce and media, offline and online, and only attention is rare.

Just when one came to grips with all this digital stuff.

Our knowledge of Web3 and AI we need to shine and buff.

All the information and data on pay and other secrets only we knew.

Now on Fishbowl, Glassdoor and LinkedIn are freely shared in full view.

We need to balance a world of hybrid and remote.

Cannot be a boss but a coach and on talent dote.

Align with DEI and ESG while being sensitive to taking a political side.

Should we fail to deliver the market will have our hide.

Managing used to be quite a sweet gig.

Delegated work as paychecks grew big.

But now to remain relevant we must constantly learn.

And many old tricks and processes we need to burn.

Boards announce big audacious goals.

Press releases sparkle with promises and roar.

But it is us who need to be great at our roles.

Otherwise, the stock will droop, and we will be out the door.

Now the challenges come from far and near.

One wrong move and there goes all the sales of beer.

How does one navigate and steer?

When there is so much that we must fear?

We must improvise and be agile.

Constantly adjust to a world that is volatile.

Yet our deliverables increase and thicken.

While deadlines and timetables we are given grow short and quicken.

We are the glue that connects the firm.

So why is everyone making us squirm?

They take us for granted and rare is the pay hike.

Maybe we should go on strike?

But if we do, will they go all Elon Musk?

Mow down everything leaving just husk?

Or will they transfer funds to Open AI?

Use GPT and Dall-e and wish us goodbye?

These questions linger and add to our stress.

Even though it is us who they need to clean their mess.

We need to stay stoic, brave and maintain a stiff upper lip.

And to continue to bravely captain the ship!