See all mY generation posts here.

Technology quotes were really fun; I found a lot more than I can use today, so you can expect more on the subject on some Sunday in the future.

Let’s start with an overview from Arthur C. Clarke, who said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Ain’t that the truth.

Al Boliska brings up a good point, too, “Do you realize if it weren’t for Edison we’d be watching TV by candlelight?” But I think his tongue is firmly in his cheek.

Business loves to claim that progress is always positive, but John F. Kennedy had a different idea, “I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.”

Our scientists are working on it as Alfred North Whitehead reminds us, “Ideas won’t keep; something must be done about them.” However, even when something is done they may still stink like rotten fish.

More than 50 years before the Internet Gertrude Stein said, “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” That certainly explains a lot of actions since, doesn’t it?

Finally, I offer you the (possible) wisdom of Georges Pompidou, “There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.” Now that’s something to share with your development or IT department.

Flickr image credit: Veribatim

No theme today, just six features that will add to your education and are good for dinner table chat.

According to Anne Hardy, a vice president of technology strategy at SAP Labs, companies “are building on masculine norms.” Why should we care? What would it take to change and what would happen if we did?

Are you or your boss as good as you think you are? While “87 percent of managers rate their overall leadership skills as “excellent” or “good,” and 74 percent think they have a good understanding of their strengths and development areas” actual studies show a different story.

What do you think of the thesis that people prefer and companies prosper when they act like museum curators, e.g. Groupon, which provides “a very limited amount of choices at a time, along with a brief, engaging description of each offering,” as opposed to an abundance of choice? This is new research from Harvard’s Assistant Professor Ray Weaver.

What do you think of the idea of legalizing an illegal act as a way to root out corruption? That seems to be what is on the mind of Infosys co-founder and outgoing chairman Narayana Murthy. He contends, “If bribe giving, and not bribe taking, is made legal then the bribe giver shall indeed cooperate with the authorities to expose the bribe taker.”

What would you do if someone not only used his offer from your organization as a springboard for publicity for his own startup, but also showed himself as an alumnus of your organization before even starting? That seems to be what Mike Moradian is doing to the Harvard Business School.

Want to take a course in AI (artificial intelligence) from Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, two of the world’s best-known artificial intelligence experts for free? You can thanks to Stanford’s computer science department that wants “to extend technology knowledge and skills beyond this elite campus to the entire world…”

That’s it for today. Enjoy your reading and enjoy your weekend!

Flickr image credit: pedroCarvalho

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Influence isn’t about your online ranking or the strength of your brand, although they contribute.

Influence is about effect.

The effect your words or actions have on those exposed to them.

Yesterday I linked to an article in which Penelope Trunk said that it’s a bad idea for founders to be of different genders and because of her influence dozens of founders are probably rethinking their startup plans.

There is a common arrogance among influencers to generalize their opinion and present it as a fact applicable to all and the more successful the influencer the greater the arrogance.

But from day one every founder has influence, before success and beyond the expected, so even a casual word can cause trouble.

A founder CEO I know, whose original education years before was engineering, had a habit of occasionally strolling through engineering to see what was going on. One day he commented that he wouldn’t do a design the way the team was doing it. It was a casual, throw-away comment, one he had forgotten five minutes later, but it devastated the design team. The CEO had no clue to the havoc he wrought and it took the vp of engineering, who was co-founder, hours to settle them down. He then told the CEO not to talk to the team and banned him from the department.

What those on the receiving end of influencers need to realize is that no matter how brilliant or experienced someone is they are still voicing an opinion. And as valuable as the opinion may be, it should never be swallowed whole, because opinions are subjective.

They are the product of that individual’s MAP, which itself is a product of upbringing and experience. Even someone else having exactly the same background and experience would not have identical MAP because each person processes differently and has different inherent characteristics.

Influence comes with responsibilities—how well do you handle yours?

Option Sanity™ reflects your influence.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Image credit: kevinspencer

I have to admit that a post by Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist, about “why you shouldn’t do a startup with women (if you’re a man)” greatly annoyed me, but not for the reasons you might think.

I have no quibble with what Trunk wrote about her own experience, but I do object strenuously to the idea that it is universally applicable.

Wondering if it was only me, I sent the link to KG Charles-Harris, founder/CEO of EMANIO and founder of the M3 Foundation, whose co-founder at EMANIO is female, and he emailed back,

“Interesting.  I hadn’t thought of this until now.  This is my first startup and my experience is that having Julie as co-founder has made us survive.”

I also sent it to Matt Weeks, Chief Marketing & Revenue Officer, Actio.tv and who occasionally writes for the Friday entrepreneur feature If the Shoe Fits,

“Some of the best women I’ve worked with were direct, authentic, professional, and had very similar styles as the men.  The open question is– were they adapting and modeling the men in the workplace to fit-in (having observed that crying and throwing tantrums was not likely to lead to advancement)….? or were they hard-wired to have the same style and temperament as men,and that was a key to their success…?   Most female workers are not about drama or making chaos or making their female-ness a centerpiece of the workplace dynamic or culture.  In fact having diversity in a fast-moving team with a variety of perspectives has led to better insight, better strategy and better product creation in my direct experience.  Great teams are better for the diversity of perspective, not hopelessly paralyzed and unable to focus. It depends how experienced they are in managing divergent views and coalescing around a single course of action.  That said, some men with whom I have worked indulged their male-ness,and narcissism, creating their own flavor of drama and chaos. This doesn’t even begin to figure-in the gender and sexual orientation component, which could flip the equation again.  And then flip it again.”

I also looked in the mirror and had to admit that I have been know to inject drama and chaos in my interactions, but those occasions had nothing to do with my gender.

They happened at that moment because I ran out of rope and they were over almost immediately because I reached deep or out and found more rope.

Personally, I have a hard time understanding monthly mood swings since I never experienced them, nor am I particularly comfortable with prolonged exposure to highly emotional people no matter their gender or orientation.

When I was young there seemed to be fewer choices, women got upset, got emotional and cried, whereas men got upset, got drunk and hit the wall or whatever was handy—I have done both—I wonder what that makes me?

The take-away is that your MAP will dictate the amount of drama and chaos acceptable in any culture you establish or that you are willing to personally endure.

Please join me tomorrow for a look at the power and pitfalls of influence.

Flickr image credit: scriptingnews

One light plane + Alaskan wilderness + fishing bait + one bear = necessity.

Two new tires + three cases of duct tape + sheet plastic = innovation—

and a ride home!

Flickr image credit: Handforged

Where does culture originate? How does it spread?

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked these questions or read an article about them I could retire on a private island. Seriously.

Because I’m still being asked I thought I would offer a KISS (keep it simple, stupid) style answer, one that is easy to understand, easy to remember and (relatively) easy to influence.

• Culture originates with the boss and affects everyone below that level.
  It’s your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), i.e., what’s in your head, your values, beliefs and how you implement them, that defines the culture of your organization, whether an entire company or a small team.
• Culture spreads through communication.
  Another MAP function; the way you communicate is a mindset, grounded in your attitude towards others, which, in turn, is based on your personal philosophy.

Make no mistake, culture always flows down—even when radical ideas take root that rise up from the workers.

Call it a “percolation culture” and it only happens when the culture already in place enables ideas to rise and doesn’t kill the messenger if they don’t fly.

In short, if you want to know your culture look deeply into a mirror and listen to all your communications, whether word or action.

And if you feel the need to change your culture use RampUp’s tagline as your mantra: to change what they do change how you think.

Flickr image credit: ZedBee | Zoë Power

We glorify top managers, print their pictures in newspapers and magazines, praise their decisiveness and vision, give them awards and treat them like superstars. All they’re guilty of – the poor bastards – is believing the BS we write about them.” –Freek Vermeulen, Associate Professor of Strategy  and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School and author of “Business Exposed: The naked truth about what really goes on in the world of business”

Good press starts at a tender age, even before walking or talking, and continues, getting louder all the time.

Eventually, for some, it drowns out any bad press or critical comments, so they hear only the positive glowing phrases used to describe them—and they believe.

As the good press gets louder and belief becomes stronger anything resembling balance is jettisoned and what emerges is a tyrannical ego seated on a throne of hubris.

You often find that throne at the desk of a positional leader and the ego occupying it wreaking havoc in the name of leadership—and the higher the position the more extensive the havoc.

We are all living the cost of the hubris that occupies so many corner offices in the world’s financial community, not to mention the halls of politics, but hubris has been wreaking havoc for centuries.

Long before hubris destroyed our economy and forever changed our world, its results were obvious in the failed acquisitions so prevalent over the last few decades.

Yesterday, I quoted Gordon Segal, founder of Crate and Barrel, whose comment is perfectly applicable to any age or position, “No matter how successful you are, stay humble, stay nervous, and don’t believe your own press.”

Our world would be better if more leaders, from parents to teens to CEOs to politicians, stopped believing their own press.

Flickr image credit: Mike Cattell

See all mY generation posts here.

The wonderful thing about being young is you have the whole world in which to explore and learn.

The terrible thing about being young is you have the whole world in which to explore and learn.

Albert Einstein said, “The only source of knowledge is experience,” but kids know everything (just ask them) without experiencing anything.

The problem with that attitude is best expressed by Bob Packwood when he said, “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.”

And common wisdom adds a corollary that drives the point home, “Trouble brings experience, and experience brings wisdom.”

No matter how smart, even if as successful as Mark Zukerberg, kids would do well to remember the words of Gordon Segal, founder of Crate and Barrel, “No matter how successful you are, stay humble, stay nervous, and don’t believe your own press.”

Or, as Robert Burns put it more than 200 years ago, “O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.”

Finally, Lily Tomlin provides a mantra for kids and adults to live by, “The road to success is always under construction”

Have a wonderful day!

Image credit: Reinout van Rees