Capitalogix

Happy Mother's Day

 To those of you with young children, here's a peek into your future.

After years of hard work and your best efforts (OK, mostly your best efforts) ...
I predict that your adorable bundles of joy will someday wish they could send you this card.

So, take a moment to think about your Mom ... and remember that she was very young when she did those things to you ...

... and what you make them mean is up to you.

Here's a funny clip from SNL in honor of Mother's Day.

 

 

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

 

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

Lighter Links:

• These are Amazon's 38 Rules for Success. (FastCompany)
• Amazon Used an AI to Automatically Fire Low-Productivity Workers. (Futurism)
• Cornell Scientists Create Living' Machines that Eat, Grow, and Evolve. (TheNextWeb)
• Drinking Tequila Could Help You Lose Weight. (Elle)
• Is It True that It's More Painful to Come Second Rather Than Third? New Insights from the 2016 Olympics. (Digest)

 

Trading Links:

• Making Sense of the Market in the Age of Algorithmic Trading. (Barrons)
• The next Gig Economy Will Be On-demand Knowledge.(WEForum)
• Central Banks Extraordinary Policies: What Could Go Wrong.(SeeItMarket)
• Super Rich Ditching Jet Ownership for a Portfolio of Aviation Options. (Bloomberg)
• If You Invested $1,000 in Microsoft in 2009, Here's How Much You'd Have Now. (CNBC)

 

 

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:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review: 7 Articles to Improve Your Workplace Culture

• Deloitte Insights: From employee experience to human experience: Putting meaning back into work

• Grin.com: Importance of Vision, Mission, and Values in Strategic Direction

• Barret Values Centre: Why Values Are Important

• Barret Values Centre: Transforming Culture in Larger Organisations: Key learnings, exercises and case studies

• Stanford Social Innovation Review: When Organizational Change Fails

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

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:

• • Here is a link to a short-version of this video.
  • This reminds me of the "Shift Happens!" video.
  • Worth Looking At ... Here are the Stats.

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

via Lori Lewis and Chadd Callahan

 

A little different than 2009 ...

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - April 21st, 2019

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

Lighter Links:

• What are the Most Promising Uses for Blockchain We Haven't Seen Yet? (Forbes)
• Sperm and Sensibility: The Modern World of Designer Children. (TLS)
• Thousands of Amazon Workers are Listening in on Echo Audio, Report Says. (AppleInsider)
• Strength Training for the Lungs: Why Heavy Breathing Could Be a Shortcut to Improving Your Health. (Telegraph)
• Forecasting the Future: Can the Hive Mind Let Us Predict the Future? (Futurism)

 

Trading Links:

• NVIDIA AI Research Points to an Evolution of the Chip Business. (ZDNet)
• Philip Morris International is Sticking with E-Cigs, Not Marijuana. (Fool)
• This Simple Map Shows the Biggest Employers in Each State. (Good)
• Lyft's I.P.O. is Making the Same Circle of Men Rich, Again. (New York Times)
• The Future of Electric Cars is Happening Now in China. (Quartz)

 

 

Let My People Go!

It's a special weekend. 

For Jews, it's Passover - the holiday honoring our exodus from Egypt. 

For Christians, it's Easter - the holiday honoring Jesus's resurrection. 

The overlap can be seen in DaVinci's Last Supper, a Passover Seder, and Jesus's last meal before his crucifixion.  

For both, it's a holy and family-centric time. A reminder to appreciate what we have, and how we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. 

One of the memorable phrases from Exodus is when Moses says "Let my people go!"  For generations, people assumed he was talking to the Pharoh about his people's freedom. After a week of eating clogging matzoh, matzoh balls, and even fried matzoh ... for many Jews "Let my people go" takes on a different meaning.

Hope you celebrated with family, food, and a reverence for all the blessings around you. 

Don't Miss The Forest For The Trees: Change Blindness

There are few certainties in life ... according to Benjamin Franklin:

"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

According to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: 

"Change is the only constant in life" 

He's also quoted as saying "everything changes and nothing stands still."

Maybe he didn't pay his taxes. 

Change is a constant, yet, it's often hard to see the forest for the trees. 

It seems like just yesterday that my son, Zach, was making sand castles on the beach – or wearing silly t-shirts. Now, he's 26, the soft spot on his head has filled in enough to consider him an adult – and he is generally unrecognizable from that kid on the beach at the Jersey Shore. 

 

On a day-by-day basis, I rarely noticed the change. However, looking at old pictures makes it obvious that there was massive growth and progress. 

So, what did I notice?  Sometimes it was what a great kid, or how loving, he had been.  Other times, it was almost the opposite.  Or, perhaps, I noticed that he didn't eat vegetables, or that he drove with a heavy foot.  In any case, what I focused on is what my life seemed filled with, to me. And it was mostly about the moment.  The bigger picture was lost (or hidden) behind the small things that make up the fabric of our life (or at least our perception of our life).

It is human nature.  Survival of the fittest rewarded a focus on avoiding predators or other dangers ... as well as recognizing the opportunity to eat. 

Thousands of years later, fear and greed still drive more than we like to admit.  It is also a big part of the engine that drives our markets. 

It is all about perspective, isn't it? 

We are where we are. It doesn't really matter how or why we got there. We are here. And little-by-little we won't be here anymore.

If you are looking at the country or the economy, realize that it took years to get here. Simply changing a regime won't flip a switch.  Some changes happen in slow-motion. 

Or, perhaps from our perspective, some changes appear to happen in slow-motion ... but what others see as change, you see as symptoms of the root cause. 

From different vantage points, the rate of change can seem different.

 

The same can be said for changes in a person or changes in a business. It's easy to see the gap between where you are and where you'd like to be. Regardless, you will probably get there faster by building momentum and confidence by focusing on the improvements and progress you're making. If you change your perspective - you may realize you've made more progress than you thought. 

Tough times are great opportunities to discover character.  I'm often amazed at the innovation and insight that occurs at times like these!

Don't pay so much attention to what you think you have to do that you forget the reason you're doing it in the first place. 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - April 7th, 2019

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

Lighter Links:

• Scientists Plead to Stop Creation of Killer Robots: We're at 'The Brink of a New Arms Race'. (FoxNews)
• Moratorium on Human Genome Editing: Time to Get It Right. (HastingsCenter)
• 'Those Who Obeyed the Rules Were Favored by Evolution'.(Spiegel)
• Meet the World's Oldest Confirmed Person, 116-Year-Old Kane Tanaka. (TwistedSifter)
• Why Democrats Want to Abolish the Electoral College and Republicans Want to Keep It. (Fortune)

Trading Links:

• Why Companies that Wait to Adopt AI May Never Catch Up.(HBR)
• Iranian Hackers Have Hit Hundreds of Companies in past Two Years. (Wall Street Journal)
• What is an Inverted Yield Curve and What Does It Really Mean? (TheStreet)
• S&P 500 Posts Best First Quarter in 21 Years. (FoxBusiness)
• Bill Gates is Back in the $100 Billion Club, and Not All Thanks to Microsoft. (CNW)

 

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 24th, 2019

via KDNuggets

 

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

Lighter Links:

• Jeff Bezos Predictions from 20 Years Ago that Were Right on the Money. (BusinessInsider)
• Imagining the Smart Cities of 2050. (SingularityHub)
• Secrets of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. (CNN)
• How Designers Engineer Luck into Video Games. (Nautilus)
• CRISPR Gene Editing: Why We Need Slow Science. (The Conversation)

 

Trading Links:

• Why Companies like Lyft and Uber are Going Public without Having Profits. (Re/code)
• Are Animal Spirits Making a Comeback? (Bloomberg)
• This is What the Average American Spends in a Day. (Fool)
• The AI-Art Gold Rush is Here. (The Atlantic)
• Who Wants to See a Movie about High-Frequency Trading? High-Frequency Traders. (Wall Street Journal)

 

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 17th, 2019

The US grounded the Boeing 737 Max after similarities between two crashes. It's good they did, safety first, but it definitely caused some headaches coming back from Saskatchewan.  There's an interesting thought experiment here to understand the complexities that the airlines had to solve.

Imagine a 737 holds 200 people and does 4 or 5 flights a day. American has 24 737s in its fleet. That means each day ~24,000 people are displaced on American Airlines alone. They're replacing those planes with smaller regional jets – meaning more flights, more small airports, and more delays. The logistical/supply chain dynamics are a nightmare. 

 

 

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

Lighter Links:

• DARPA's New AI, Machine Learning 'Breakthrough'. (Realcleardefense)
• Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life inside Tesla's Production Hell. (Wired)
• The Psychology behind Costco's Free Samples. (The Atlantic)
• The Fall of Rome and the Lessons for America. (Time)
• How Timeboxing Works and Why It Will Make You More Productive. (HBR)

 

 

Trading Links:

• Despite Store Closings, There's Still One Blockbuster Store Left in the World. (USAToday)
• Oracle's Larry Ellison Has a $1 Billion Stake in Tesla. (TheStreet)
• Mansa Musa: the Richest Man Who Ever Lived. (BBC)
• Amazon Go Cashierless Stores are Coming to Airports. (VentureBeat)
• Millions of Japanese Homes are Abandoned, and Owners are Giving Them Away for Free. (BusinessInsider)