All in Strategy
This month's podcasts delve into the seeds of entrepreneurship, where these crazy ideas come from and what they mean for us, as entrepreneurs.
In today's episode, I reflect on article I read about Lauryn Hill and the importance of creating art for yourself and not for anyone else. This is true of all truly great creators - not simply in the Arts but in business as well.
"We're a technology company that happens to be in Home Loans."
I heard a CEO say this on TV recently and I have to say, it irked me. Is that what his company did? They delivered ‘technology’? What the hell does that mean? Isn’t tech a means to an end, and not the end in and of itself? Does his company exist to knit together bits and bytes and provide hardware or software?
This month's podcasts delve into the seeds of entrepreneurship, where these crazy ideas come from and what they mean for us, as entrepreneurs.
In today's episode, I talk about ideas and how the great ones are - and should be - polarizing. They should engage or enrage, but nothing in between.
Is it that we don’t believe we deserve to be ambitious? Or is it the fear that we are likely might fail?
Which one explains why we don’t wholeheartedly commit? Which one explains why we become “dabblers” - just dipping our toes in the water but not really getting wet?
Something stops us from committing ourselves, which seems a worse fate, to me, than even trying in the first place. We pretend to engage, to get involved and take on the goal, but really we’re not.
If you’re going to be in business, then you can only be in business to solve problems.
What I mean by that is that you aren’t doing what you do to simply ‘do work’, or to run a business (for all of the budding entrepreneurs out there).
You’re doing what you do because it helps your customer tackle a specific issue, something that they’re willing to pay good money (or some other form of consideration) to have tackled.
We tend to think of massive entities - ‘working’ entities from big companies to big countries - as having a life of their own. Once they’re set on their way, they progress forward, taking out everything in their path. They have the power of momentum behind them, fueled by past success, money, resources, what-have-you. Forget stopping them in their tracks, just altering their path or slowing them down is difficult to do. Massive entities are very, very difficult to stop.
When one side is dominant, we tend to think they’ll always be dominant.
Especially when their dominance is all encompassing - more market share, more money, more resources, more access, more everything. They develop an aura of invincibility. Their people sense it, they exude it, they act it.
It seems to me that being smart isn’t enough.
Not when you’re trying to get something personal, something important, done.
You can intellectually understand what you need to do. You can comprehend why you need to do it. You can even detail how you need to get it done.
But there’s still no guarantee that you’re going to do it.
When we’ve done things a specific way, acted in a particular manner or simply held a specific point of view for any period of time, we tend to get comfortable. We decide that this is how things work for us, and develop our world view (and accompanying behaviors) around these models.
They might be models we’ve been taught or ones we’ve developed for ourselves, based on our own experiences. But they become ours, whether we think they’re good for us or not (and even when we know they’re not).
We tend to have this view that science is a ‘fixed’ subject, in the sense that we think of it as defined and permanent in nature. That once scientists have done their thing, that once the facts surrounding a specific topic have been gathered and a perspective has been reached, then that’s it. We’re done.
Of course, that’s not actually the case. Science evolves, it changes and is subject to refinement. That’s actually the value of the scientific process - that as more data is captured, as we see the interplay of different variables over time, we learn more.
I’ve talked before about how technology has democratized access to the tools that help us create. This is as true in fields traditionally considered to be creative as it is in those that are more commercial. We have options in terms of how we do our work, how sophisticated we want its production to be, and where and when we distribute it.
The more complex the transaction, the more difficult it is for everyone to emerge with everything on their wish list. That’s just the nature of the beast.
Political negotiations illustrate this perfectly and very publicly. You have dueling parties, fueled by competing ideologies, each proposing what they believe to be in the best interests of their constituents. (Yes, I know that politicians are driven more by what they think their voters will want to hear versus what they need to hear, but humor me for a bit.)
This month's podcasts draw lessons from the world around us, specifically the sports and entertainment arenas. I focus on specific games or movies or entertainers and the lessons we can draw from what they've done or experienced or said.
Today's podcast discusses that day in 1965 when Bob Dylan went electric and changed the course of his career. But he also gave us a lesson in how we need to do what we believe in and be who we want to be, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says.
In 1969, Led Zeppelin released their sophomore album titled Led Zeppelin 2, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest rock albums of all time. A year later, they followed up that album with Led Zeppelin 3, which diverged from the path that their first two albums took. Where as the first two albums were driving rock albums, this one, while it didn’t lack for driving rock songs, dove pretty heavily into the acoustic realm. The album was panned at first but is now regarded among their best.
This month's podcasts draw lessons from the world around us, specifically the sports and entertainment arenas. I focus on specific games or movies or entertainers and the lessons we can draw from what they've done or experienced or said.
In today's podcast, I dive into a quote from the movie, Ghost In The Shell, which speaks to the importance of letting go of the past - whether we feel as if we've failed in our past endeavors but even if we've succeeded…
There's a trend line that we all live through in any endeavor we’re a part of. That trend line can be positive or negative but it’s a constant - there’s no question that there is no such thing as a ‘permanent’ status quo, that things will inevitably progress in some direction to a redefined (temporary) equilibrium.
Most of the time that trend line is drawn out over some material period of time. If we are on the ascent, that ascent can continue for years, driven by a mix of factors both internally driven and externally influenced.
We tend to give more thought to the competition than we really should - and I say that with the full (and practical) understanding that our competitors can influence a lot of what goes on in the markets we play in and the customers we serve.
We worry about their pricing and their product features. We worry about their sales activities and their breadth of client access. We worry about their last move, and their next move.
This month's podcast draw lessons from the world around us, specifically the sports and entertainment arenas. I focus on specific games or movies or entertainers and the lessons we can draw from what they've done or experienced or said.
In today's podcast, I recount a story from the movie, The Matrix and how it speaks to our need to be ourselves, to not get taken in by someone else's agenda, to create our own reality. It's just a movie, but the messages in it are very much a reflection of ourselves and our reality.
It’s the one question that everyone wants answered.
When are we getting back to normal? When will Business As Usual return? Or, if you're really trying to be thoughtful: When do we get to the New Normal?
Aside from the fact that no one has the answers to those questions, there are two realities that are more relevant, at least to me:
This month's podcast draw lessons from the world around us, specifically the sports and entertainment arenas. I focus on specific games or movies or entertainers and the lessons we can draw from what they've done or experienced or said.
In today's podcast, I go back to Super Bowl 51 and the amazing comeback that the New England Patriots made in that game, and what it can teach us all about perseverance and achievement in the face of the worst possible odds.
