Business

  • AI Isn’t A Substitute For Lack Of The Real Thing

    When I first got out of Law School in the 1980s, "professionals" didn't type … that was your assistant's job.

    Then again, most people couldn't have imagined what computers and software are capable of now.

    Looking back,  my career has been a series of cycles where I was able to imagine what advanced tech would enable (and how business would have to change to best leverage those new capabilities).

    Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes 10,000 hours of focus and effort for someone to become an expert at something. 

    But the game is changing.

    Today, we can do research that took humans 10,000 hours in the time it took you to read this sentence. Moreover, technology doesn't forget what it's learned because a computer's memory is much better than yours or mine. 

    Still,  technology isn't a cure-all. Many people miss out on the benefits of A.I. and technology for the same reasons they didn't master the hobbies they picked up as an adolescent. 

    I shot a video discussing how to use technology to create a sustainable creative advantage. Check it out. 

     

     

    Most people realize this technology is cool – and they want to use AI – but they forget what mastery takes. 

    When using AI and high-performance computing, you need to ask the same questions you ask yourself about your life's purpose. 

    • What's my goal?
    • What do I (or my systems) need to learn to accomplish my goal?
    • What are the best ways to achieve that goal (or something better)?

    Too many companies are focused on AI as if that is the goal. AI is simply a tool. As I mentioned in the video, you have to define the problem the right way in order to find a solution for it. 

    Artificial Intelligence is a game-changer – so you have to approach it as such. 

    Know your mission and your strategy, recognize what you're committing to, set it as a compass heading and make deliberate movement in that direction. 

    I end the video by saying, "Wisdom comes from making finer distinctions. So, it is an iterative and recursive process… but it is also evolutionary.  And frankly, that is extraordinarily exciting!"

    I hope you agree.

    Onwards!

  • Mindset Matters

    I have a picture in my conference room that says energy might be the most important thing to measure.

     

    Energy Might Be The Most Important Thing To Measure_GapingVoid

    via GapingVoid

    It means exactly what it sounds like – but also a lot more. 

    We use A.I. to trade.  So, measuring performance is important.  But, so are all sorts of production, efficiency, and effectiveness measures. 

    While there are hundreds of important metrics we track day-to-day, energy affects everything. 

    Energy affects how you feel, what you do, and what you make it mean.  That means it is a great way to measure your values too.

    Consequently, even if you don't recognize it, energy has a lot to do with who you hire and fire. It affects where you spend our time. Ultimately, it even affects the long-term vision of our company.

    If something brings profit and energy, it is probably worth pursuing. 

    In contrast, one of the quickest ways to burn out is by fighting your energy.  Figuring out who and what to say "no" to is an important way to make sure you stay on path and reach your goals.

    At a recent Genius Network event, I shared a mindset scorecard I created during one of their exercises.  I hope it helps!

    Normally, Genius Network is private, and these recordings are for internal use only; but I asked permission to share my impromptu session with you. 

    Check it out. In the first 5 minutes, I will introduce the scorecard. For the next 10 minutes, you'll get an extra look at the resulting group discussion. 

     

    I use this tool to diagnose where we are during meetings, while ranking opportunities, and even for HR and partnership decisions.

    Think of each comparison as a spectrum. They're not necessarily "one-or-the-other", but they can help identify where you are on the scale of "what to avoid" versus "what you want".

     

    • Blaming <—–> Encouraging
    • Insistent <—–> Inspirational
    • Fearful <—–> Abundant
    • Steadfast <—–> Curious
    • Clogging <—–> Cleansing
    • Resentful <—–> Grateful
    • Zero-Sum <—–> Relational
    • Small-Minded <—–> Visionary

     

    These words mean something to me, but they may need tooling to work in your company. Changing the names, the order of the comparisons, the number of comparisons, etc. can have a profound effect on the usefulness of this scorecard to you. 

    I encourage you to think about how you could use this scorecard, and how you can bring attention to those people and actions that best embody the traits that are vital to your business. 

  • BBQ Fest – A New Tradition

    Once a year, I go to the World BBQ Championship at Memphis in May. 

    It's three days of friends, food, fun, and bad puns (like #AporkalypseNow and  #MeatDrinkAndBeMerry).

    You've heard the phrase  "Put your money where your mouth is …"  This year we sponsored a tent and brought some of the Capitalogix team to enjoy the festivities. 

     

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    Here's a look at what was cooking in our tent.  It had Brazilian "churrasco" flair. 

    IMG_3677

    Our Grill Master was Blake Carson, who took a traditional Brazilian Steakhouse cooking style – and innovated upon it – creating the Carson Rodizio kit (which started as a Kickstarter project).  It is a multi-rotisserie rack that converts your favorite backyard grill into an open and spinning Brazilian style Steakhouse.  It's clever, functional, and cool… and it's been used to win multiple barbecue championships.

    I love to experience an entrepreneur's mind at work.  

    It's not always about what you add.  Sometimes, it is about what you take away.  Less is often more. 

    Here is a one-minute interview I shot with Blake.

     


     

    Innovation, like opportunity, is all around you.

    It's not there for you if you don't see the opportunity, and seize it.

  • How Warren Buffet Got His Start

    Warren Buffett is a legend for many reasons. Foremost among them might be that he's one of the few investors who clearly has an edge … and has for a long time. From 1976 to 2017 his Sharpe ratio (excess return relative to risk) was approximately double the overall market. Berkshire Hathaway now has over $700 billion in assets – and is still performing well. 

    While many people consider Buffett to be an investor,  I also consider him to be an entrepreneur.

    At the age of six, he started selling gum door to door. Obviously, selling gum wasn't the key to his path to riches.  So, how did he make his first million?  Here's a video that explains it.

     

    via Coolnimation

    For context, he made his first million at age 30, which was in 1960. For context, a million dollars in 1960 would be worth about $8.5 million today.

    Buffet has always been honest about his bread-and-butter "trick" …  he buys quality companies at a discount and holds on to them.

    It is fascinating to recognize how much the world has changed – and yet how much it stayed the same.

    For extra viewing: Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Bill Gates recently did a full 2-hour interview with CNBC. You can watch it here.

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – April 12th, 2019

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

    Lighter Links:

    Trading Links:

  • Microsoft: Are They Where They Thought They’d Be in 2019?

     In 2009, Microsoft released a video anticipating the world in 2019. That was only 10 years ago. 

    I recently showed you how much Social Media has changed in 10 years – so how close was Microsoft's guess?

    Watch this video to find out: 

     

     

    The answer is …. not as close as I would have thought.  Nonetheless, they just hit a Trillion Dollar market cap.  So, they must have gotten something right! 

    It's interesting to think about which factors or missing innovations caused the difference between their imagined vision and reality.

    They really bought into scaleable, HD, transparent, touch screen displays being not only available, but located in everything by now … which suffice to say, isn't the case. 

    The reality is …

    • A lot of these innovations actually have little use – Not every situation needs a transparent monitor – they're worse than standard monitors in almost every way. You end up using absurdly expensive screens to display a digital version of a post it note or handwriting. The desk/monitor hybrid would be covered in sheets of paper, office supplies, and your coffee. A boarding pass being a screen is highly inefficient for so many reasons – and so is a digital newspaper. We have those – they're called phones.  
    • They assumed batteries would be way farther along – The thinner your monitor, the more transparent, the harder it is to create a high-performance high-fidelity battery to maintain it. Unfortunately, batteries haven't had nearly the boom like the rest of our tech (though they are getting better). 
    • IoT Adoption/Security – One of the biggest problems with IoT is that the more these pieces communicate the harder it is to prevent hacks. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link – and a smart coffee maker isn't nearly secure as your computer. 
    • Fingerprints (Glass) – I get this isn't a "real" concern – but every piece of technology they showed was transparent/glass. On top of being very breakable (see Samsungs new foldable phones) Could you imagine how smudged/dirty everywhere would appear? Imagine a New York subway with this technology.
    • Expense v. Convenience – A lot of technologies are feasible – but aren't cost-effective. Look at the slow adoption of Solar cells as their efficiency per cost went up.

    Making everything a device/screen means more opportunity for companies to serve you ads and retarget you ad infinitum. 

    Ultimately, I find this perceived "modern digital office environment" very inefficient. A lot of these "innovations" are less dynamic and easy to use than their analog counterparts. Mechanical keyboards serve a purpose. 

    In reality, a lot of the trends we've adopted to increase collaboration and sharing have been counterproductive. Not every office needs an open floor plan – not every team needs 15 subteams with 4 bosses – and using 20 different productivity tools actually decreases productivity. 

    That being said, we've come a long way in 10 years. Think about the quality of your phone in 2009 or your desktop computer – whirring loudly as it tried to access the disk, or the internet, or anything really. 

    What we have now isn't perfect – but it's leaps and bounds ahead of where we were. A lot of technology seems like science fiction – like the Babel fish from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – May 5th, 2019

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

    Lighter Links:

    Trading Links:

     
     

  • Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast: A Letter From Our COO

    Culture is the character and personality of your organization. It's what makes your business unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviors, and attitudes.  - ERC website

    Recently, one of the initial investors in Capitalogix became our chief operating officer. He's a man I respect a lot – and who has been a good friend since 2003. His name is Drew Blanchard. He spent 30 years at Accenture and rose into their lofty leadership ranks. 

    As you might guess, he learned a few things.  Here are some of his thoughts about culture.

    RE: Transforming Culture

    There are thousands of articles on culture. Most of the themes are similar and I believe many of them can be and are very effective. Linked below are a few articles that I find valuable and their common themes:

    Links:

    Themes:

    • Culture always wins.
    • Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
    • Culture is a set of demonstrated beliefs and behaviors manifesting as attitudes and actions that determine customer satisfaction, and ultimately profitability. 
    • Culture takes time to develop and must be reinforced to become the very fabric of a company.
    • The best organizations in the world are fueled by their culture. It is who they are, not what they do.
    • The most profitable companies put their employees and customers first, resulting in superior profits. HIGHLY ENGAGED EMPLOYEE + HIGHLY SATISFIED CUSTOMER = HIGH REWARD SHAREHOLDERS

    There are entire teams within some of the largest consulting houses in the world specifically created to help organizations transform their cultures with the intent of increasing company performance at all levels and result in a sustainable competitive advantage.

    I believe mastering the following steps will give you the biggest bang for your buck and the fastest return on investing in a winning culture.

     

    1. Have a compelling mission, vision and strategy that capture the employees' mind, heart and soul that they can make personal and inclusive is at the very core of what makes a great culture – “I matter and what I do is both important and appreciated by both my company and my customers/clients.” Make sure they understand where they fit into the greater plan
    2. Define the core values that make the strategy real and set the minimum standards for what is acceptable at the company as THE MUST HAVE WAY OF BEING.
    3. Combine the previous two steps with daily action so culture becomes a part of their everyday realities.

     

    Culture is the result of who you are as a company, fueled by the vision and mission of the company as it relates to the employees, the customers, and then the shareholders.

    So, why listen to a guy like me? What experience do I have that might be relevant? How could I help, and would it matter? All this really depends on you and your management team’s level of desire to create a high-performance culture at the core of your company with the passion and accountability to accept nothing less!  

     

    My Past

     

    I spent 30 years working for a company that posted double-digit growth annually, from $10M to $35B in that timeframe. There were two halves of the business model – short term, higher margin work of about 90 days on average and long-term annuity work of 24 months or more with lower, more predictable margins.

    Here’s an Accenture Timeline for context.

    In the early part of the company’s development, our Mission was, “Helping our client change to be more successful!” Early on, our core values focused on the behaviors of the employees. The expected turnover was high due to perform or leave. The core values were: Integrity, Stewardship, Think Straight, Talk Straight, and Exceed Client Expectations. When we reached $10B we asked ourselves, what would have to happen to double in size and capture market share while maintaining what is already working? The answer was to upgrade the mission and values, focus on results over capabilities, and change the dynamic of performance standards from an individual deliverable to a team deliverable … the new Mission statement? “High Performance. Delivered.”

    “High Performance. Delivered.”

    Note the simplicity and the standard in three words. The first is High Performance with a period making it a complete standard. The second is linked to the results in that they are Delivered with a period as an expectation and no exceptions.

    The values were upgraded to: Best People, Best Clients, Stewardship, Integrity, Teamwork and Innovation. Note that the shareholders are not even mentioned.

    We invested in management training as we took on a new workforce – the middle market, not the gifted and driven as in the prior model. It was now up or out. In this Grow or Go model we wanted our best talent to expand and run our long-term business in a role that may last a decade. Our intent was to never leave a client or have a client want to leave us.

    This was made possible by two absolute requirements – the first was leadership; putting people first over leaders’ bonuses, and at times taking lower pay to serve clients and grow the business. The second was living the values through how we worked, lived and served clients. No exceptions. If you gave lip service to the mission and/or values as a leader you were asked to leave and as an employee, if you violated our mission and/or values, you were terminated.

    Each Managing Director was required to have a leadership presentation on their personal form of living the mission and values. They also had to share it with developing leaders. 

     

    My Present and Future

     

    Howard has done an exceptional job of placing culture at the center of Capitalogix as an engine for innovation and sustainable growth. Our mission statement? “Create Wealth That Matters”

    It is again, impressive in its simplicity.  It implies that we’re not selfish in our endeavor for our own wealth. It means we want to do good by our employees, our shareholders, investors, and our community. It means we want to be a good corporate citizen and a lasting company.

    Capitalogix values are also paramount in our day to business, and even play a role in the hiring process.  It does not matter how gifted a person is, if they do not embody our beliefs, the organization will eventually suffer. We live our values day in and day out. We hire by them, we fire by them, and they’re a part of our employees’ identity as Capitalogix family members. 

    Core Values

    Find A Way: There is always a best next step; it’s our mission to find it. An answer is not the answer.

    Create Breakthroughs: “10x better” is often easier to achieve than “10% better.” It’s about seeing things differently, then making it a reality.

    See The Bigger Picture: Scale matters and edges compound, so we always focus on how today’s work fits into tomorrow’s vision.

    Raise The Standard: How you do one thing is how you do everything. We strive to continuously improve ourselves professionally and personally. We’re comfortable being uncomfortable.

    Learn And Grow: Standing still is moving backward. We pride ourselves on self-evaluation and self-education so that we are better than we were yesterday.

    Our business may be unique, but the success equation remains the same: 


    HIGHLY ENGAGED EMPLOYEE + HIGHLY SATISFIED CUSTOMER = HIGH REWARD FOR SHAREHOLDERS

     

    Here’s what I want you to think about:

    • Does your mission espouse a calling greater than your own day-to-day activities?
    • Do your core values create the standard of performance that every employee would be proud of and hold others to deliver on with them?
    • Do you actively find ways to connect your employees to each other, and to a shared vision?
    • Is the company’s leadership visibly passionate about continuously transforming the company, and are they good examples of your mission/vision/values that they would be inspired to follow?

    A company’s mission, vision and core values when focused on the employee in a way that gives them purpose, pride and inspiration are unstoppable when it becomes the very fabric of the company the way leadership lives the brand promise.

    Always my best,

    Drew

  • Gartner’s 2018 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

    With all the "fake news" and manufactured social buzz, it's hard to identify what technologies are reaching maturity and which ones are fads. Gartner's Hype Cycle attempts to solve that problem. 

    What's a "Hype Cycle"?

    As technology advances, it is human nature to get excited about the possibilities and to get disappointed when those expectations aren't met. 

    At its core, the Hype Cycle tells us where in the product's timeline we are, and how long it will take the technology to hit maturity. It tells us which will survive the hype have the potential to become a part of our daily life. 

    Gartner's Hype Cycle Report is a considered analysis of market excitement, maturity, and the benefit of various technologies.  It aggregates data and distills more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct, contextually understandable, snapshot of where various emerging technologies sit on the hype cycle.

    Here are the five regions of Gartner's Hype Cycle framework:

    1. Innovation Trigger (potential technology breakthrough kicks off),
    2. Peak of Inflated Expectations (Success stories through early publicity),
    3. Trough of Disillusionment (waning interest),
    4. Slope of Enlightenment (2nd & 3rd generation products appear), and
    5. Plateau of Productivity (Mainstream adoption starts). 

     

    Understanding this hype cycle framework enables you to ask important questions like "How will these technologies impact my business?" and  "Which technologies can I trust to stay relevant in 5 years?"

    What's exciting this year? 

    Currently, people are probably "too" excited about IoT platforms, Deep Learning, and Virtual Assistants. The idea isn't they won't stand the test of the time, but there's an artificial influx of people inflating the adoption numbers. Once the chaff is separated from the wheat – you can expect these to succeed. Autonomous driving, connected homes, and mixed reality have matured past the hype phase. 

    For comparison, here's my article from last year, and here's my article from 2015. Click the chart below to see a larger version of this year's Hype Cycle.

    PR_490866_5_Trends_in_the_Emerging_Tech_Hype_Cycle_2018_Hype_Cycle via Gartner

    This year, Gartner organized the 17 highlighted technologies into 5 encompassing trends:

     

    • Democratized AI (autonomous driving, conversational AI, deep neural nets, etc.) is one of the most disruptive classes of technology. It's becoming more readily available due to open source and cloud computing. There's a burgeoning field of "makers" inspired to push the boundaries of what's possible.  
    • Digitalized Ecosystems ( blockchain, IoT) support emerging technologies by being the foundations for dynamic systems. There's a shift from discrete infrastructure systems to comprehensive ecosystems. Think of blockchains potential impact on tracking and communication.  
    • Do-It-Yourself Biohacking (biotech, biochips, exoskeletons, AR) is something I've talked about before. Dave Asprey is a public face of this movement and we shot a video together last year. The future is bringing implants to extend humans past their perceived limits and increase our understanding of our bodies; biochips with the potential to detect diseases, synthetic muscles, and neural implants. 
    • Transparently Immersive Experiences (connected home, smart dust, volumetric displays) represent the blending of where human stops, work starts, and things exist. Imagine a theoretical smart workspace where electronic whiteboards capture all your notes and disseminate them, sensors let you know where people are and what they're working on, and everything in your office interacts directly with your IT platform. This creates much more contextual and personalized experiences.  
    • Ubiquitous Infrastructure (5G, carbon nanotubes, quantum computing) means that infrastructure is becoming a less competitive advantage. As infrastructure becomes cheaper, more ubiquitous, and faster, it becomes background noise.  

     

    Looking at the overarching trends of this year, it's also fun to look at what technologies are just starting their hype cycle. 

    • Artificial Tissue (Biotech) could be used to repair or replace portions of, or whole, tissues (cartilage, skin, muscle, etc.)
    • Flying Autonomous Vehicles can be used as taxis, but also as transports for other things such as medical supplies, food delivery, etc. Amazon and Uber are likely excited about this development – and expect it in the next couple of years. 
    • Smart Dust opens up the possibility of monitoring essentially everything by creating a vast network of minuscule sensors that can detect various inputs. 
    • Artificial General Intelligence
    • 4D Printing would theoretically allow us to print objects that reshape or self-assemble over time. 

     

    Which technologies do you think will survive the hype?

  • Social Media Is Changing Everything: A Reprisal

    I came across a post from 2009 about social media. 10 years later, with the knowledge of how much data we use today, it's quite a read.

    Here it is in its full glory. 

    Social Media Is Changing Everything: October 18th, 2009

    My son won't use e-mail the way I did. So how will people communicate and collaborate in the next wave of communications?

    Here is a peek into the difference that is taking hold.  I was looking at recent phone use.  The numbers you are about to see are from the first 20 days of our current billing cycle.

      • My wife, Jennifer, has used 21 text messages and 38 MB of data.
      • I have used 120 text messages and 29 MB of data.
      • My son, at college, used 420 text messages, and is on a WiFi campus so doesn't use 3G data.
      • My son, in high school, used 5,798 text messages and 472 MB of data.

    How can that be?  That level of emotional sluttiness makes porn seem downright wholesome. 

    But, of course, that isn't how he sees it.  He is holding many conversations at once.  Some are social; some are about the logistics of who, what, when, where and why … some are even about homework.  Yet, most don't use full sentences, let alone paragraphs.  There is near instant gratification.  And, the next generation of business people will consider this normal.

    Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

    Welcome to the World of Socialnomics.  This video has a bunch of interesting statistics … and is fun to watch. 

     

     

    Other Resources:

    Social Media Is Changing Everything: April 20th, 2019 

    Looking at the stats from 2009 is pretty funny

    • My son was using 472 MB of data a month
    • Hulu had grown from to 373 million total streams in April 2009
    • Only 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phone

    For some context, I looked up the comparative numbers for 2018. 

    • I picked a random month in 2018 … in August my son used 10.85 GB of data. He doesn't text as often – but has sent/received 282,000 snapchats since downloading it 5 years ago.
    • Hulu has over 20 million subscribers who streamed more than 26 million hours a day in 2018 
    • People spend over five hours a day on their smartphones on average. 70% of web traffic happens on a mobile device, and more than 50% of videos are watched on mobile (93% of twitter videos). 

    Here's what happens every minute of every day on the internet

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    via Lori Lewis and Chadd Callahan

     

    A little different than 2009 …