Home Leadership Turn Archives Me RampUp Solutions  
 

  • Categories

  • Archives
 
Archive for May, 2014

If the Shoe Fits: Cheating for an Edge

Friday, May 16th, 2014

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

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mCheating is rife across the board, so seeing more of it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

I think what does surprise is not how overt it is these days, but the assumption that everyone will participate.

Especially when money is involved.

Recently the CEO of soon-to-go-public Arista Networks offered Fortune Sr. Editor at Large Adam Lashinsky, who had written about the company previously, ““friends and family” shares in Arista’s upcoming initial public offering. The offer was explicit….” (He declined.)

Lashinsky saw similar acts before the last tech bubble burst and sees this as a sign that there is indeed a tech bubble that will soon blow up.

When times are so good that executives are willing to disregard the difference between ethical and unctuous behavior, it’s just one sign that the end, relatively speaking, is near.

I’m not sure unctuous applies as an alternative to unethical, but there is no question about the ethics of trying to bribe anyone in a position to affect an IPO.

It’s cheating, plain and simple and the SEC tends to frown on it. 

Sadly, many don’t see it as an ethical lapse, let alone cheating.

They see it as reasonable business practice.

How do you see it?

Image credit: HikingArtist

Entrepreneurs: Dean Kamen (Role Model)

Thursday, May 15th, 2014

https://www.flickr.com/photos/plural/5412657784

I remember when the Segway was introduced. It was supposed to revolutionize commuting by getting people out of their cars.

Segways are used in a variety of settings, but not in what you would call general use, which isn’t surprising considering new ones cost anywhere from $6,000 to as high as $13,000.

But Dean Kamen, Segway’s inventor, is about a lot more than pricey personal transport.

His latest idea, that just got FDA approval, is another gold star on his “good for humanity” list.

The DEKA limb can provide “near natural upper-arm extremity control” to amputees and the device is modular so that it can be fitted to people who’ve suffered any degree of limb loss, from an entire arm to a hand, Sanchez said. Six “grip patterns” allow wearers to drink a cup of water, hold a cordless drill or pick up a credit card or a grape, among other functions.

The prosthetic looks amazing and could be an enormous boon to soldiers who lost limbs in the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan and thousands of other amputees.

DEKA is looking for a manufacturer.

Kamen is an impressive guy, more inventor than entrepreneur.

“Most people, once they get good at something, they make iterations and make a career out of that. (Think Bezos, Ellison, Gates, Jobs) We’re good at trying to try some crazy idea that probably won’t work.”

But look at the ones that do.

  • the first portable drug delivery device for providing drugs that previously required round-the-clock hospital care.
  • a portable dialysis machine
  • an insulin pump for diabetics
  • a vascular stent
  • the iBOT — a motorized wheelchair that climbs stairs
  • a prosthetic arm for maimed soldiers
  • and a portable energy and water purification device, called Slingshot (amazing story) for the developing world.

It’s unlikely that Kamen will ever join the billionaires club, but he will die richer than any of them.

And guess who will be remembered the longest?

He is proof that one (stubborn) person can truly make a difference and change millions of lives.

Flickr image credit: jason gessner

 

 

 

 

Ducks in a Row: Robert Sutton—Scale Means People

Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

https://www.flickr.com/photos/kittischoen/5767902764

Stanford management professor Robert Sutton has a new book out called Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More without Settling for Less.

In it Sutton says, “Scale means the spreading of excellence from the few to the many”.

As usual, Sutton is right on and TechCrunch columnist Andrew Keen is way off.

So is Bob Sutton right? Is everything in Silicon Valley really about people? And are the most successful companies those that are best able to scale their organization?

I say that because anywhere, not just in Silicon Valley, but in every town, city and country, it’s about people.
It’s about people because there is no such entity as a company.

What is a company other than a piece of paper showing that the government recognizes its existence and that it owes taxes?

Is it the office buildings that house it? The manuals that explain it? The stock that represents its value?

No.

A company isn’t an entity at all. It’s a group of people all moving in the same direction, united in a shared vision and their efforts to reach a common goal.

And that group attitude is best summed up as culture, which is a living/growing/changing depiction of those people and their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

Google, 3M and P&G are examples of a number of people who are all eager, or at least willing, to move in the same direction.

Whereas at Yahoo people move in multiple directions or refuse to move at all. In part that reflects the differences of people hired over the years through multiple cultures that were not all that synergistic.

Yes, it’s the people. It has always been the people all the way back to our hunter ancestors.

And it will always be the people.

Flickr image credit: Kitty Schweizer

Lies, Cheating and the Slippery Slope

Monday, May 12th, 2014

https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/5382067751

Lying and cheating are common occurrences and recent research shows that, contrary to popular wisdom (wishful thinking?), they do not make people feel badly.

In an interview, Dan Ariely, a leading behavioral economist at Duke and author of The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves, made two comments that especially caught my eye for both their perception and accuracy.

“I have had lots of discussions with big cheaters — insider trading, accounting fraud, people who have sold games in the NBA, doping in sports. With one exception, all of them were stories of slippery slopes.”

“When you are in the midst of it, you are in a very, very different mindset…. You are not a psychopath, and you are not cheating. You are doing what everybody else is doing.”

There’s a lot I could say about this, but I prefer to share a quote that KG sent me after reading the article.

I believe it is the key to the solution and states it succinctly.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live. –Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924)

The only problem with this solution is that it requires self-awareness, personal effort, determination and grit.

All of which are in short supply these days.

Flickr image credit: Sean MacEntee

Mother’s Day Special

Friday, May 9th, 2014

MAPping Company Success doesn’t publish on weekends, so I’m taking the liberty of sharing this unique commentary on motherhood.

Share it with every mom you know and I doubt you’ll find even one who doesn’t agree that the bear facts beat our human experience hands (paws) down.

mothers day

Image credit: Unknown

Entrepreneurs: Investing in Good Looks

Thursday, May 8th, 2014

https://www.flickr.com/photos/11304375@N07/2328844552

Bosses often miss good hires for very dumb reasons and one of the dumbest is looks.

The bias holds true for investors, too.

A series of three studies reveals that investors prefer pitches from male entrepreneurs over those from female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitches is identical. Attractive men are the most persuasive pitchers of all, the studies show.

According to Gordon Patzer, author of The Power and Paradox of Physical Attractiveness,

“We are just hard wired to respond more favorably to attractive people. This is something anthropologically that has existed for as long as history exists.”

Anthropologically, not biologically.

Every living creature “responds more favorably” to attractiveness as defined by its species, but that isn’t the same as biological hardwiring.

Awareness of a prejudice allows you to put it in perspective and see past it.

But you have to want to.

I’ve always said that charm is the number one reason for bad hires, what I forget is that looks are the number one reason for missing good hires.

Now it seems that applies to funding as well.

Flickr image credit: Image Editor

Mindfulness Means “Look Up”

Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

It’s likely you’ve seen this video already, but I’m posting it anyway because it says what I’ve been saying forever.

Its focus is living mindfully, although none of the commenters I scanned through seemed aware of the concept.

Some agreed, while some thought it was “self-righteous” bullsh*t,” but if that’s true then the teachings of Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Buddha, Jesus and all the saints, prophets and rabbis also qualify as self-righteous BS. (I found it amusing how many of the nay-sayers fell back on four-letter words to express themselves—probably the extent of their vocabularies.)

Mindfulness is a conscious way to live life and applies extremely well when building company culture.

YouTube credit: Gary Turk

Ducks in a Row: Ageism in Tech (a Video)

Tuesday, May 6th, 2014

A couple of weeks ago KG wrote about ageism and attitude and I followed up by considering an often ignored basic fact about age and change.

However, what I realized is that we had never shared the primary article detailing the situation.

But that’s OK, because it’s been turned into visualization for those of you who would rather watch than read.

 Credit: Jonathan Ezer

KG on AI and Its Implications

Monday, May 5th, 2014

kg_charles-harrisA few months ago I read the book, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barrat.  It was a tremendously interesting book and confirmed many of the concerns I’ve been having about my own industry for some time.  Subsequently there have been a slate of articles wondering about AI and how the industry is progressing.

One of the book’s premises was that we need to take a step back and think about the moral and ethical basis of what we’re doing and how and what we’re imparting to these machines. 

I believe that it will be difficult, or impossible, for the AI industry to change direction mid-streams and start being concerned about morality and ethics.  Most of the funding for AI comes from DARPA and other such institutions that are part of the military and affiliated organizations.  Finance is second largest funding source.

Most of the people who are concerned about AI (including James Barrat) worry about when machines gain human level intelligence.  I am much more concerned about what happens before that.  Today it is said that the most sophisticated AI has the intelligence of a cockroach.  This is no small feat, but it also brings with it some clear implications – cockroaches have important drives and instincts that guide their behavior.  Survival, resource acquisition, reproduction, etc. are all things that cockroaches do.  How far away are we from when our AI exhibit these characteristics?  What about when we get to rat-level intelligence?  

At that point machines will be very powerful and control many of the essential functions of society.  Imagine a frightened rat (or 6 month old toddler) with infinite power – what actions would they take to protect themselves or get what they perceive they want or need?  How would they react if we stood in their way?  How concerned would they be with the consequences of their actions?  Most adults don’t do this today.

Before we achieve human level intelligence in machines, we’ll have to deal with less intelligent and probably more dangerous and powerful entities.  More dangerous because they will not have the knowledge or processing power to think of consequences, and also because they will be controlling our cars, airplanes, electricity grids, public transportation and many other systems.  

Most AI optimists ignore the dangerous “lower mammal, toddler and childhood” stages of AI development and only see the potential benefits at the end.  But we need to think about the path there and what we can do to prepare as individuals and as a society.

Not to speak about the fact that once we reach human level intelligence in AI, we’ll be dealing with an intelligence that is so alien to anything we know (after all, we have lots of experience with cockroaches, rats and toddlers), and no way of knowing what its motives are.  But that will be left for another discussion.

If the Shoe Fits: Who Do You Learn From?

Friday, May 2nd, 2014

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

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mHave you defined your market?

Do you know what it takes to reach your market?

Who do you talk to when your market doesn’t respond?

That’s the problem that edX, a consortium started by MIT and Harvard University to develop free online courses, faced and here is what they found.

Though edX aimed to reach the world, its initial courses were designed for the people professors at MIT and Ivy-caliber partners know best—the ultraqualified students they’re accustomed to teaching in their hallowed halls.

edX needed to learn why they weren’t reaching their target market, since it there was no question of the need.

And learn they did, but not from the brainpower already involved in the project.

They learned from a 15 year-old user from Mongolia who aced the course in spite of the way the experts designed it (it’s been changed).

The edX team and contributors show the error in looking to ‘stars’ and assuming what they say/do is the best approach.

While Battushig Myanganbayar is a genius, one of the best skills I offer clients is my ignorance of their project, but they will literally fight to forcibly educate me about it.

But it is ignorance that allows me to ask the question-sans-assumptions that light up inconsistencies, missing pieces, and other customer turnoffs.

The Lean approach pushes founders to talk to their market early and often, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the main market.

Often you can learn more talking to outliers, both inside and outside the company, than you can from the majority and the experts.

Image credit: HikingArtist

RSS2 Subscribe to
MAPping Company Success

Enter your Email
Powered by FeedBlitz
About Miki View Miki Saxon's profile on LinkedIn

Clarify your exec summary, website, etc.

Have a quick question or just want to chat? Feel free to write or call me at 360.335.8054

The 12 Ingredients of a Fillable Req

CheatSheet for InterviewERS

CheatSheet for InterviewEEs

Give your mind a rest. Here are 4 quick ways to get rid of kinks, break a logjam or juice your creativity!

Creative mousing

Bubblewrap!

Animal innovation

Brain teaser

The latest disaster is here at home; donate to the East Coast recovery efforts now!

Text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation or call 00.733.2767. $10 really really does make a difference and you'll never miss it.

And always donate what you can whenever you can

The following accept cash and in-kind donations: Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, Red Cross, World Food Program, Save the Children

*/ ?>

About Miki

About KG

Clarify your exec summary, website, marketing collateral, etc.

Have a question or just want to chat @ no cost? Feel free to write 

Download useful assistance now.

Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.

Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
while $10 a month has exponential power.
Always donate what you can whenever you can.

The following accept cash and in-kind donations:

Web site development: NTR Lab
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.