I was going through some very old cuttings and this one jumped out at me.

I want all of my rights immediately, but have no urgent need of my obligations.

It was originally written about teenagers.

These days it seems to fit a lot of folks in the tech world and beyond — way beyond.

From sea to shining sea and on to Wall Street, then south to DC and the halls of Congress and the White House.

Image credit: studio tdes

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Sheesh. It seems as if most of the articles I link to and the resulting posts are all focused on fixing or avoiding negative stuff. So this week I wanted to focus on positives, whether quotes, like the ones below, or other positive news. Enjoy and, hopefully, smile.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Together, these five disparate thoughts pack enough wisdom to live from youth to old age and never go wrong.

“Friendship is an undervalued resource. The consistent message of these studies is that friends make your life better.” –Karen A. Roberto, director of the center for gerontology at Virginia Tech (I wonder if all those friends at Facebook and Twitter count?)

“Never let your ego get so close to your positions that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.” –Admiral H. G. Rickover (I call it ego merge and it’s a definite no-no.)

“That’s what keeps life moving forward, focusing on what we can do, rather than getting caught up in what we can’t.” –Trisha Meili, The Central Park Jogger (Words of wisdom from a woman who knows.)

“Small Minds Talk About Others, Mediocre Minds Talk About Themselves, Great Minds Talk About Ideas.” –Eleanor Roosevelt (Which do you have?)

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” –John Milton, Paradise Lost (True when Milton wrote it and just as true now.)

Image credit: Joe Shlabotnik

I’ve used stuff from Frits Ahlefeldt many times over the years; he does amazing cartoons, illustrations and art.

Better than anything I could say are Frits’ own words.

Drawing and wondering about how the need for personal online branding on places like Facebook and Twitter more and more influence the experiences and challenges people choose, because  they are all part of a personal media / branding strategy.

This guy took it all the way:

Image credit: HikingArtist

Mega rounds of funding are creating a frenzy in the startup world.

Start-ups raising $100 million or more from investors — known as a mega-round in Silicon Valley — used to be a rarity. But now, they are practically routine, producing a frenzy around tech companies with enough scale and momentum to absorb a large check.

But are they smart?

It may be great for ego and bragging rights, but does it make you richer?

Probably not.

Consider Zappos and Wayfair.

EACH ONE of Wayfair’s two co-founders made as much money as ALL of Zappos’ shareholders combined. (…)  Put another way, Wayfair co-founders made at nearly 10X as much as Hsieh.

Mega rounds hurt employees by substantially diluting their stock and forces you to grow, often at an unreasonable rate.

In these days of frenzied money, some founders, such as Gusto’s founder/CEO Joshua Reeves choose to say no to excessive funding.

Gusto, a payroll and benefits software company, raised $140 million in July, but could have done five times that, according to Joshua Reeves, its chief executive and founder.

Startups seem to have forgotten that the purpose of a company is to make money, not raise it.

Mr. Reeves, of software start-up Gusto, acknowledged that founders who obtain outsize sums of capital can get caught up in a “growth at any cost” mentality. That is why he chose not to maximize his funding round despite the intense interest. “It’s up to the founder to realize that’s a distraction,” he said. “Success is not having more money or a bigger team, but having more customers or revenue.”

Think about it.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

A comment left on this post said the Navy’s version is “Ship, Shipmate, Self” and I’m sure the sentiment can be found embedded in the cultures of many organizations.

Unfortunately, embedding doesn’t mean complying, especially in these days of overly robust egos

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Ever noticed how some things stay with you? Many years ago, while working as a recruiter, a client VP said,

“Great managers make their decisions first for the sake of their company, second for the sake of their group and third for the sake of themselves.”

That comment comes back every time I read about another business leader whose decisions and choices were made in the opposite order, but presented as being for the good of the company.

Many of them are in jail, but many more either got off or weren’t caught in the first place; they just moved on to another role and are likely still making their decisions the same way.

Most interesting is that many managers who in reality reversed the decision order (3-2-1) see themselves as making them 1-2-3. This ties back to previously cited research showing that most of us aren’t the best evaluators of our own actions.

Basically, the question is how you evaluate your decisions before you make them. What kind of internal yardstick can you create that will assure the most 1-2-3 decisions?

Based on feedback from dozens of 1-2-3 decision-makers the common thread seems to be strong EQ and empathy, combined a high degree of objectivity and self-awareness. So how do you become self-aware and objective?

Let’s start by defining awareness. The modern definition of awareness is “having knowledge,” but the archaic definition of “vigilant” and “watchful” is more applicable.

Raising your awareness is probably most difficult because it requires you to become more objective about yourself and your actions, i.e., learning to see yourself in the third person instead of the first (seeing yourself as others see you).

Most people have some objectivity, e.g., they are able to look at a thing—clothes, jewelry, painting, furniture, house, etc.—and appreciate its beauty without wanting to own it or even actually like it.

Self-awareness is the result of cultivating that kind of third person objectivity and then focusing it on your thoughts, feelings and decisions.

A good way to build your awareness is to start with things. The next time someone asks you if you like their new whatever, stop and think about what you’re really thinking.

Most people subconsciously think about whether they like, are ambivalent or hate it. But the person asking doesn’t want to know if you want to own/wear it, they’re asking about it in terms of themself, so think about it in terms of that person, instead of in terms of yourself—in other words, think about it objectively.

Consciously listen to yourself, hear what you say from the outside, instead absorbing the content from your thoughts. Hear what others say in the context of themselves, rather than your own context.

Be sure to develop your objective side without losing the subjective one and, most importantly, be aware of which is which.

The ability to listen objectively to your own thinking is awareness and it acts as an unconscious warning system, only kicking into action when needed, not editing every comment, every move, all the time.

Image credit: Preston Rhea

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

It’s almost impossible to find a company, let alone a startup, that doesn’t swear by agile product development.

But what about applying agile for to other areas, especially other human areas? Specifically, bosses.

We’ve all heard bosses at all levels blather on about creating an agile organization and being an agile leader, but seen little proof they are accomplishing it.

Ever wonder why?

To embrace agile bosses themselves often need to change.

So, while the answer is simple, implementation is not.

As Steve Denning said in 2016, Agile Is A Mindset, Not A Methodology; a few months later he did an excellent job explaining agile beyond its roots.

Consider the basic tenets of agile

• Openness. Be receptive to feedback on your own behavior and activities.
• Trust. Feel comfortable that not everything will be planned; let trial and error show the right direction.
• Collaboration. Go for the greater good of the company, which is not necessarily good for a particular unit.
• No Ego. Have everyone speak with one voice—as an organization.
• Transparency. Call out those unwilling to change or to reflect the “new world.”
• Accountability. Hold one another accountable.

Bosses whose preferred management style runs to command and control, ignore it and hide, benign neglect, or combinations thereof dictated by events are not only uncomfortable with agile, but downright resistant to it.

No one is saying that agile is perfect, but refuting the standard objections is pretty easy.

All of this is just more proof of the accuracy of my company’s tagline: To change what they do change how you think.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I rarely disagree with what Ryan’s writes, but I feel so strongly about yesterday’s post that I need to say something.

Constant rushing as part of the human condition is a very recent thing, but it fits perfectly with the recent attitude that being busy proves/raises your value.

Think about it, can you really see Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Lau Tzu, Sun Tzu, Voltaire, or, more recently, Churchill, Gates or Obama rushing around and not taking time to think?

I don’t believe that being in constant motion, rushing here and there, never taking time to read a book, play with your kids, revel in love and affection, or, yes, even smell the roses, is embedded in our DNA.

I think rushing goes hand-in-hand with being wired 24/7, FOMO, the constant demands of notifications, and the driving force of social media and smartphones.

And, as I’ve said before (and am likely to say again), no matter how long I live I doubt I’ll ever understand the fragility of egos that need to prove their value so badly they are willing to give up their lives to do it.

Image credit: deargdoom57

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

A few years ago I wrote that good bosses need to be part shrink in order to deal with imposter syndrome and real programmer syndrome (for lack of a better term).

Now, there’s a third mental quirk to add to that list; call it high performer expectations syndrome.

Founders have notoriously high expectations of themselves and everyone they hire.

Those expectations are great motivators as long as things are going well.

However, those same high expectations, both external and internal, can have a negative effect on the best people — including the founder.

What we found essentially is this: When the going gets tough, favorites are more likely to quit. […]  When people walk in with high expectations and they begin to falter and experience setbacks, they have two options. They could persist and try to grind it out, or they could take the easier route that might preserve their self-esteem, be less embarrassing, and exit.

Founders and other high-performance team members aren’t likely to quit, although massively hyped stars are another matter.

Most high performance people know they are fallible, so the hit to their self-esteem is more internal and they are less likely to personalize public embarrassment — both attitudes that usually respond positively to “we’re all in this together” team support and coaching.

Stars, however, typically have a strong belief in their infallibility and a high sensitivity to public embarrassment — not a combination that lends itself to team support or coaching.

Good bosses take care of their people and themselves.

They also meld high expectations with a strong culture; one that makes glitches and even failing a learning experience that leads to both company and personal growth.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

I had a $15 K lesson in founder ego when I lived in San Francisco. That’s how much I lost when I invested in a startup run by a guy with a bad case of it.

The only thing to do when that happens is to move forward and forget it. Money is replaceable — your sanity isn’t.

I haven’t thought about it in years, but reading the abstract from Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Testosterone and Hedge Funds reminded me of “Craig,” in spite of its focus on hedge funds. (The full paper is available at the link.)

Using facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) as a proxy for pubertal testosterone, we show that high-testosterone hedge fund managers significantly underperform low-testosterone hedge fund managers after adjusting for risk. Moreover, high-testosterone managers are more likely to terminate their funds, disclose violations on their Form ADVs, and display greater operational risk. We trace the underperformance to high-testosterone managers’ greater preference for lottery-like stocks and reluctance to sell loser stocks. Our results are robust to adjustments for sample selection, marital status, sensation seeking, and manager age, and suggest that investors should eschew masculine hedge fund managers.

This makes one wonder if the lack of testosterone is an underlying factor in the outstanding success of women-led companies outperforming those led by men.

Hedge fund managers have a number of traits in common.

They are white, attended ‘good’ schools, graduated from elite colleges and are connected through a web of similarly privileged friends.

Sound familiar?

That description fits much of Silicon Valley, both founders and investors.

As does the abstract.

As do the egos.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I’ve written about deep thinking before; the kind of thinking that few have time for these days.

Even fewer have considered deep time, so I thought I’d share a wonderful article about someone who took the time to learn about something almost beyond human comprehension.

The Oldest Living Things project was motivated not by a narrow interest or a traditional scientific question, but by the idea of something called deep time. Deep time is not a precise demarcation in the way that geologic eras and cosmological epochs are. Rather, it’s a framework in which to consider timescales too long for our shallow, physical experience, and too big for our brains to process meaningfully. And why should they be able to? The earliest modern humans had a life expectancy of around 32 years. What evolutionary need would they have had to comprehend what 10,000 years felt like? What I wanted to do was to find or forge something relatable, something to help process and internalize deep time in a meaningful way: to feel expanses of time that we were not designed to feel.

How easily can you grasp the fact that this tree is just shy of 10,000 years old?

You may be wondering what’s the point? Why worry about something so far beyond the reach of the human mind?

Partly because the tech world is hyper-focused on finding a route to immortality.

But mainly, especially in light of that effort, because it’s a way to rein in the astounding egocentricity of our species.

Deep time is like deep water: We are constantly brought back to the surface, pulled by the wants and needs of the moment. But like exercising any sort of muscle, the more we access deep time, the more easily accessible it becomes, and the more likely we are to engage in long-term thinking. The more we embrace long-term thinking, the more ethical our decision-making becomes.

After all, meaning is not made of lone facts, lone people, or lone disciplines, nor is it found in the valuing of the objective over the subjective. Rather, meaning comes by way of knitting together a bigger picture, filled with color and texture, and meant to be felt and understood. We most fully understand what we can internalize—that which becomes part of us. The importance of specializing can’t be discarded, but working only within one discipline and strictly adhering to its rules is likely only to generate one kind of work, one kind of result.

We very well might end up missing the forest for the trees.

Read the article.

Think about it.

Image credit: Bored Panda