Jeremie Averous's Blog, page 85

How Machiavelli Saw Change Management

Niccolo’ Machiavelli, the famous early 16th century politician and writer wrote “We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state.”

He continues: “For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders. This indifference arises in part from fear of their adversaries who were favoured by the existing laws, and partly from the incredulity of men who have no faith in anything new that is not the result of well-established experience. Hence it is that, whenever the opponents of the new order of things have the opportunity to attack it, they will do it with the zeal of partisans, whilst the others defend it but feebly, so that it is dangerous to rely upon the latter.”

He was very much into Change Management before the name was invented. His approach to the balance of strength in change initiatives is quite useful. It is also to be seen in corrupt systems where corrupted officials will defend their situation and change will be difficult.

Supporting the zeal of those favorable to change is absolutely essential, as is the need to move the opinion of those that are more or less neutral. That’s the only way to win over change.

6 Tips for Business Owners

I love, and fully concur with Tim Berry’s ‘My 5 Top Tips for Business Owners‘.

They are:

Profits are not Equal to Cash
Don’t Mistake Business for Life
Never Compromise on Ethics and Integrity
It’s Planning [that is important], not just [a business] Plan
Compete on Quality, Not Price

I would add one of my own

You’re responsible to deliver for your clients, but you are primarily accountable to your employees and the company.

What do you think?

How Entrepreneurship Requires Real Sacrifice

I have discussed with a few would-be entrepreneurs lately, and have been involved in trying to recover a small company emptied by its founder’s greedy way of life – charged entirely to the company. Often the same mistake appears: the simple fact of creating a company appears as an open check book for a jetset-type lifestyle.

Real entrepreneurship involves effort, tears, long evenings, and actual sacrifices. Sacrifices in the field of time and family life. Financial sacrifices when it comes to achieve payroll and not paying oneself for the sake of cash flow and continuing business, because a client is late paying its dues.

Some people believe they are successful the day they create their company. It is not so: it is just the start of an uphill battle. Life before (e.g. as employee) was easy. You did not have to care about getting the salary check at the end of the month. Rewards were maybe minimal, but predictable.

To all of those with this erroneous of entrepreneurship: entrepreneurship is a great experience and a provider of growth, but it also comes with a lot of sacrifices and not an easy life. Be aware of it, and above all, make sure you maintain your overheads limited and a simple way of life to ensure sustainability of the business!

How Dis-Ease is Created

Disease is dis-ease, a negative force that brings out of being at ease.

According to Ayurveda there would be main 3 causes of dis-ease:

making negligent choices
disrespecting your senses
living out of rhythm

This creates a negative feedback loop that would lead into disease.

How do you fare on these 3 dimensions?

From Cate Stillman ‘Body Thrive: Uplevel Your Body and Your Life with 10 Habits from Ayurveda and Yoga‘

How We Can Overcome Being Judged Only By Our Track Record

I like this quote “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we already have done“. – Longfellow.

I find it so true both on a professional and a personal level. Because we are often judged by others on our past track record, it is extremely difficult to explain that we have decided to change, and that we intend to change. And even more to explain what we feel capable of doing in the future if it looks vastly different from what we have done in the past.

As a personal note, the most salient occasion where I have observed this was when I was an expatriate. The home office was still judging me on the basis of what I was doing before departing a few years earlier, while of course by experience grew tremendously from the exposure (hence, a divorce to be expected with my employer).

When we face this issue, explanation is one way, but action is probably the most effective way to demonstrate commitment and that we take a new orientation seriously, based on what we believe we can achieve. It may involve some significant initiative-taking. But that’s worth it!

How the Development of Legal Tech Will Change our Lives – and the Lives of Lawyers

As many other professions, the legal profession is not immune to being transformed by the Fourth Revolution. There have been many examples lately where simple legal processes have been performed by programs or simple versions of Artificial Intelligence.

For example, a website promises to waive a large percentage of parking ticket fines using the strict application of the law (160,000 tickets would have been successfully fought in New York and London). Or, robots also get involved in divorce proceedings too.

The general article from ParisTech review ‘Legal Tech and other smart contracts: what future for legal automation?‘ provides a more general overview. According to a 2015 study, “47% of lawyers interviewed considered that it would be possible within 10 to 15 years to replace their “paralegal” employees (the administration that works as subordinates to a lawyer, in the United States) by solutions of artificial intelligence. 35% think that junior lawyer positions could be fully eliminated over the same period“. The paper continues by explaining what the most important changes will be.

While experienced lawyers will remain required for complicated cases, the legal profession should brace for a structural change in the years to come.

Why Big Data Prediction Capability will Remain Limited

Big Data is trendy, and the graal of Big Data is to be able to predict behaviors and ultimately influence them. But the world is complex and whatever power we put behind Big Data, there will be a close limit to what can be inferred.

The most well known complex system is weather. In spite of the tremendous increase in computing power in the last decades, our prediction capacity remains limited to a week or so. That is because it is inherent to a complex system that prediction capability is limited by the system, our understanding of the initial conditions, and not by its equations or by the computing power we put behind.

So the graal of Big Data is in fact elusive – it will never possible to predict behaviors beyond a certain limit which is still to be determined practically.

Big Data will never allow the long term prediction we hope for. It will be a disappointment for many. It is also another sign of our freedom.

How Software Default Values Impact Real Life

When you write software, to avoid bugs you assign to each variable some default value, that is afterwards supposed to be updated by the program.

The farm at the default location for IP addresses in the US

What happens when the default value does not get updated? Something like the nightmare of happening to be located at the default value of a mapping application, like what happened to a quiet farm in Kansas. The story told in this Fusion article ‘How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell‘ is really though-provoking. Just because it happens to be at the center of the country, it is mapped as the location by default of IP addresses. The article contains many other similar stories of misplaced geographical locations of IP addresses.

It happens all the time also on our favorite online maps when they show the center of a long avenue when searching for an address – this center could be far remote from the actual location we are looking for!

I am not speaking of people driving in entirely wrong locations by their GPS because they did not check that they had selected the adequate town or checked there was actually a road!

Even in this century of overwhelming information some checks are required before believing what the machine says. Stay vigilant!

How to Overcome our Taste to Become Really Creative

Creative work is tough and it takes a lot of time to reach the point of true creativity. Most of all we need to overcome our taste.

I like very much this quote from Ira Glass. It is very deep about our taste and the work required to overcome it:  “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have.

We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Yes it will take lots of time and work to really become creative, and so many people drop it before. What about you?

How to Scale Organizations Dealing with Complexity

Following up on General McChrystal‘s book ‘Team of Teams‘, the unique feature of the book is how it describes practically how to scale organizations that deal with complexity.

In large complex projects I am used to see co-located teams of 150 to 200 people maximum that can manage huge projects. General McChrystal describes how he scaled a similar organization to deal with thousands of contributors and dozens of departments/agencies in a context of high complexity – war in Iraq.

The recipe is quite simple however it requires a lot of leadership consistency. The co-located team is limited to 100-150 people which is the maximum practically feasible. It mixes all departments and there is no secrecy within the team – all information is shared. Graphical displays show the situation as it unfolds. Exchanges between departments are organized to help people understand others’ approaches and points of view.

The result of setting up and running such an organization can be astounding in reactivity and nimbleness. There is not reason why it could not be adapted to civilian organizations. My guess is that the organization of the future will probably be some evolution of this model.