Moving Into The Conceptual Age

I’ve been working on a blog posting relating to one of my recent reads, “Teacher As Servant: A Parable“, penned by Robert Greenleaf, the same Robert Greenleaf of the Greenleaf Center For Servant-Leadership.  I’ve written it and rewritten it a few times now trying to get it just right.  I can’t, so I’m going to just freely type as the thoughts come right now following the principle of KISS: keep it simple stupid.

Why have I tried to write this posting numerous times you might ask?  Well, as a Christian the concept of servant leadership is important to me.  Christians looks to Jesus Christ as the ultimate example of leadership in action but as most of us know, he is a very different type of leader from the typical CEO or prime minister/president we see in this day and time.  He was before anything else a servant.  Now I won’t go on all day from a Christian point of view; I just wanted to show where my interest stems from. 

To try and derive all of the meaning found in the book and summarize it in a short blog posting is impossible, for me anyways, so I’m just going to write and trust that my true feelings and intended message will make its way onto the computer screen.

“Teacher As Servant” though a fictional work is based on true events.  Our protaganist, Martin Hedeggar, tells of his experiences at Jefferson House (also known as Hammarskjold House), his home during his post-secondary years and its effects on him in his business career in the years following.  Jefferson House is the embodiment of a set of ideas, namely servant leadership, that should be taught on every university and college campus.  In my opinion, anyone entering the business field should have required courses in servant leadership.  In fact there are some programs in servant leadership at select universities.  At Viterbo University in Wisconsin, you can now earn your Master of Arts in Servant Leadership.  As far as I know this is the only master’s program available at the moment.

Anyways, beware of the tangent.  Jefferson House was, to put it simply, a group of people living together on a university campus, headed by a housemaster named Mr. Billings, that aimed to learn how to be of service to society.  Or how to succeed at a leadership role while maintaining servant qualities, mainly those regarding empowerment and empathy.  Now my aim is not to write a book review here although I do recommend reading this one.  The insights and meaning packed into this piece of fiction will most likely require you to read the book a couple of times or at the very least take notes.  I just want to talk about an idea put forth in the book that is new to me but very relevant to my own life at the moment.

In discussing growth, one of the books characters introduces the concept of “entheos”.  Entheos, which come from the same background as the word enthusiasm, is defined as “the power actuating one who is inspired” or the “essence that makes a constructive life possible”.  The character tries to build a concept of growth around this word by giving some indicators that entheos is either growing or not.  He begins with some indicators that are not reliable as evidence of the growth of entheos.  It is important to keep in mind that entheos “does not come in response to external incentives” and we can not “will it”.  The only thing that we can will is the search for it.  So what are the six unreliable indicators?

• status or marital success-our reaching for success often destroys what is truly important
• social success-we often move toward those who we are comfortable around and don’t challenge us
• doing all that is expected of one self-only you know what should be expected of you
• family success-”family may be taking more out of the wider community than contributing”
• relative peace and quiet-you’ve closed yourself off to the possibilities
• busyness-apparently “beneath the surface of much action there is the drive to avoid the implications of growth”.

These are the unreliable indicators.  Notice that these would be the indicators we as human beings, in the developed world at least, would tend to look at as evidence of growth, happiness and success.  Now what about the valid indicators?

• a concurrent satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the status quo-you are not so unhappy with your current situation that it has a negative bearing on your life, but there is ample incentive to continue to grow
• a concurrent feeling of broadening responsibility and centering down-simply put, expanding your horizons while at the same time having a growing awareness of “that one thing” you will do with your life
• a growing sense of purpose in whatever one does-”What am I trying to do?” becomes the persistent question as you move from activity to activity, and from day to day.  Personally, I try to think of Victor Frankl’s finding purpose for his life while incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp as I move from day to day.  This seems to make those activities I just can’t seem to find a purpose in seem like a piece of cake.
• changing patterns and depths of one’s interests-newer, deeper interests begin to replace those of old
• moving toward a minimum of difference between the outside and inside images of the self-we all wear masks to some extent, but gradually we become more transparent and authentic no matter where we happen to be
• conscious of the good use of time and unhappy with the waste of time-distractions are everywhere in our society.  I often wonder about the economic effects of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.  Think of all of the good you could be doing in the world when you sit down in the evening and watch your 3+ hours of CSI, Without A Trace, and American/Canadian Idol.
• a growing sense of achieving one’s basic personal goals through one’s work-that popular saying, “the grass is green on the other side” is apparently not true.  Remember Victor Frankl and your should be able to find purpose and achievement in whatever you do, even as an industrial butcher
• a growing sense of unity in all aspects of life-job, family, church, recreation, etc., tend to meld together.  Activities that impinge on what you deem important tend to be discarded.  Recently, before I read the book, I had a conversation with a person who would be a worthy role model for most young people these days.  I iterated that I really felt I needed to work toward finding this unity in my life and the person told me it couldn’t be done.  I disagreed with him, but it was nice to see a like-minded point of view put into writing.
• a developing view of people-all people are to be trusted, valued, and most importantly, loved.
• an intuitive feeling of oneness, of wholeness, of rightness-this doesn’t mean you get comfortable and become complacent, it just means you feel your are moving in the right direction.

As a Christian I can find alot of the fundamental tenets of my faith in this list of growth indicators.  Interestingly, this list does not come from a Christian and the person who gave this book to me to read is not a Christian, yet they actually depict these qualities better than most Christians I know, including myself.  Servant leadership is not something that is Christian, it is completely and totally human.  Once you find these indicators start to ring true in your life, you are on the right path no matter what your belief system.

I wrote this posting because this book really touched me in a deeply personal way.  It contained so many ideas relevant to me personally and those ideas would be of great benefit to any human being on the face of this planet.  If the whole population of planet Earth each lived to serve others this world would be a much better place.  I encourage any readers to read up on the concept of servant leadership and apply it wherever you are in life.  Family, business, and church are all places where it can be effective.

Since this is a business blog, I would encourage anyone with a leadership position in business today or in the future learn everything they can about servant leadership and apply it.  I feel it will be something that will catch on in the management field in the next little while.  Not as a bubble, fad, or trend, but a style of management that will be necessary to succeed in the Conceptual Age.

So far, on my little journey into the blogosphere here, I’ve enjoyed highlighting businesses, business models, people, etc. that have an innovative bent.  I’ve also discussed in the past my hopes of completing my business program with a narrative, interactive, multimedia-based (I’m going to have to work on narrowing those descriptives down to something more malleable) business plan. 

The New York Times reported today that Sean Combs, aka Diddy, P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, is looking to recruit a new personal assistant.  He is rumored to be a rather demanding boss judging by the NY Times article.  If you like the idea of being yelled at and holding his umbrella, it may be your type of job.  The interesting slant to this that makes it worthy of the Conceptual Age is the fact that Diddy is not accepting resumes.  Not paper ones anyways.

Diddy has uploaded a video on YouTube alerting cyberspace he is looking for a new assistant.  He is not accepting resumes, but rather maximum 3 minute video clips describing what makes you the right person for the job, to be uploaded onto YouTube.  Viewers will pick the finalists, and Combs will pick the winner.

It would be of interest to those considering applying for the job that Diddy’s last personal assistant, Fonzworth Bentley, used his position to land a recording deal, endorsements, and launch his own line of umbrellas!

I’m starting to see more and more evidence that my idea of a multimedia narrative business plan will be something that we may see more of in the future and likely we will see more employers asking for videoclips to be attached to resumes to give them a more personal quality.

Check out Combs’ video below:

So I’ve been suffering from a little “infomania” lately.  You know, compulsively checking your inbox and your RSS reader, trying to process all of the information you go through daily combing the web for interesting tidbits to blog about.  Even worse, compulsively starting projects until you reach a point that you have so many things to tend to, your head begins to spin and you don’t actually get anything done.  This is my current predicament.  The thing is though, I shouldn’t be in this predicament at all.  I haven’t come up with all 100 goals I’d like to achieve yet, but I have plenty to keep me busy until I do.  So I’ve decided to buckle down this morning and come up with a list of things I’d like to accomplish by the end of 2007.  These are the objectives I will focus on until then and nothing else, unless I happen to complete all the objective before my December 31 deadline.  This is what will occupy my time for the rest of 2007:

• complete research and first draft of business plan (currently I have several ideas that I’m testing the viability of; one idea so far has been taken off of the viable list for the time being)
• blog a minimum of 4 postings/week (I really am finding using this blog to explore the business environment is a very useful learning tool, not to mention an effective personal branding and networking application)
• run 3-4 times/week (I enjoy running first off; secondly, it’s a great way to reduce stress and just feel healthier)
• keep my daily “life lessons” journal (inspired by Mr. Billings advice in Teacher As Servant, I’ve began to keep a journal with the aim of deriving one lesson out of each day I live.  I hope to pass these journals on to my children once they reach adulthood)
• finish up my stats course (currently I’m just finishing up the one course as I have some other financial committments that are forcing me to take a break for a bit.  Perfect timing though, as my current employer is going through a major restructuring process and whether or not my job position will survive is unclear; hence I need to time to work on my business plan)
• organize stock-picking competition on Moving Into The Conceptual Age (I think this will be neat, so stay tuned for further updates on this one)
• look for some freelance writing gigs to make a little extra money (I enjoy writing alot

This is basically it for the rest of the year.  There are some other projects I’ve mentioned on this blog in the last month or so that will be on hold.  For instance, I began to work on developing a wiki for discussion and collaboration regarding finding viable ways to develop economies in developing countries.  This is something that interests me deeply and will eventually integrate itself into any business plans I have.

Okay, so I’ve set a basic framework for the rest of 2007, but what steps should I take to be absolutely sure they are accomplished.  Here’s a few:

• develop a project timeline for business plan development
• check email and rss reader twice daily
• schedule times to write blog postings and exercise
• journal at the same time everyday
• every evening write 3-5 items to accomplish the next day, that once completed are rewritten on the back of the index card (an anti-to do list; taken from the blog of Marc Andreesen)

So there we have it, an extremely simple plan for the rest of 2007 ”set in stone”, so to speak.  It’s written down now and I can refer back to it whenever I need.

In these days of congested marketplaces and commoditized products, success in the business world requires a person to be a “designer”, or at least be able to think like one.  At DesignBoom, low-cost industrial design courses are offered.  They are unaccredited and I’m unsure of the actual content, but I thought it looked interesting enough to highlight given my heavy interest in “design thinking”.

I will continue to refer back to the economic situation in Africa in my postings.  I feel called to serve in that are and whether or not I can do it at the moment, I will continue to chronicle the situation there.  I found this interesting link via NYTimes.com.  A New York Times and Pew Global Attitudes Survey conducted in the spring of 2007 found that of the 11 Sub-Saharan African nations, 10 of the 11 found the state of their economy to be SOMEWHAT GOOD!  I should mention that the survey replies were a)very good, b)somewhat good, c)very bad, d)somewhat bad.  10 countries had a majority of “somewhat good” replies, with only Nigeria having a majority of “somewhat bad”.  Not surprising given the government corruption and poor leadership rampant in the country.

All 11 countries had more respondents believing that their families were better off financially than they were 5 years ago than options a)worse off and b)about the same.

9 out of 11 countries surveyed had more respondents believing their children would be better off than themselves.  The exceptions were Uganda and Tanzania.

Finally, while the ability to pay for food is becoming more and more viable, all 11 countries could use a huge amount of assistance in paying for basic medical care.  This would go a huge way in allowing these countries respective economies to develop.

Near the end of 2006, TechCrunch profiled Grockit.com, a startup that aimed to provide low-cost online preparation for the GMAT examination.  So all of you MBA candidates pay attention. 

At the time, Grockit, started by Farvood Nivi was unfunded but apparently lower cost and higher margin than other GMAT prep programs.  Using WebEx-platformed online classes, Grockit could actually save MBA hopefuls anywhere from the $600-900 extra they would pay if they were to chose popular programs such as Kaplan and Princeton Review instead.  To market the startup Nivi and partners signed up as “expert consultants” on Bitwine and planned to rely on the word-of-mouth marketing generated from the huge monetary savings of users.

Fast forward to July 2007.  Grockit has now raised $2.7 million in Series A financing and their promising-looking business model is very different.  Instead of using WebEx to provide teacher-to-many-student classes, Grockit aims to take advantage of data showing that students learn better from other students.  Nivi and technical co-founder Michael Buffington are aiming to design a platform from scratch called MMOL, or Massive Multiplayer Online Learning.  They believe the student2student teaching platform will be more successful than the original teacher2student WebEx platform originally utilized.  According to TechCrunch, Grockit has refused to release any other details at this time.

Stay tuned for updates however.  I believe this will be an interesting startup to watch.

I was reading throught the China Cleantech Venture Capital Investment Report this evening, after it was highlighted by Earth2Tech earlier.  I believe that the Earth2Tech posting didn’t quite do the market potential of cleantech in China justice.  The posting definitely pointed out the quantitative projections of growth over the next few years, especially in the energy sector (mainly solar), but failed to highlight some of the more qualitative issues that show huge potential in the cleantech market in the next five or so years.  Here are some of the qualitative reasons we should expect a cleantech boom in China within five years:

1. Effective Chinese environment policies and increased global pressures related to sustainable development in light of global warming
2. A huge amount of funding is being poored into the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics at the moment.  Post-Olympics, look for astronomical growth in 2009-2010
3. Venture capital has only caught on in the past 3 years in China due to the slow transitioning from a centrally-planned to market economy
4. The other side of China’s booming economy=”environmental deterioration, energy scarcity and resource restrictions”
5. Climate change will equal water scarcity for parts of China.  Hence the prediction the the water & wastewater sector will be the next booming cleantech market

    

There is an interesting posting on the blog of Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek  from a few days back in which he highlights the 3 best ways to get on TV.  The first two points he makes surely work, but not really the best method of achieving television publicity.  The third point he makes, however, is interesting:

“Create and pitch a trend + segment instead of you and your product”

The majority of people when pitching a story to the big networks tend to pitch the person and the story, buy Ferriss makes a good point in saying “a single person, unless already a celebrity, doesn’t fill 30 minutes on the most popular shows”.  It’s very true.

So what does he propose?

“The solution is to develop an entire segment based on a new trend or phenomenon.“

Here would be Ferriss’s list of steps to successfully pulling this off:

1. Compile statistics that indicate a new trend
2. Connect yourself and your personal brand into that trend
3. Add experts, case studies, PhDs, and other guests to help fill 30 entertaining and
   credible minutes about the trend
4. Give the pitch a sticky headline and head to the big producers

Ferriss seems to have derived this insight from the business know-how of Richard Branson and recommends Branson’s book, Losing My Virginity, as a must-read for learning how to “pitch media and create buzz”.  Another influential book was named as being Author 101 Bestselling Book Publicity by Rick Frishman, Robyn Freedman Spizman, Mark Steisel.  I’ll have to add those two to the must-read list.

A few days back I plugged in a new blog that’s been high in the WordPress rankings since day 1: Earth2Tech, a blog launched by the GigaOm Network devoted to the discussion of emerging clean technologies and startups.  Editor Katie Fehrenbacher, also a writer for the popular tech blog GigaOm was kind enough to do a short email interview for me despite her hectic schedule.  Here it is:

Q.  Tell us a little about yourself. Your CV if you will.

A.  I’ve been a journalist based in the Bay Area for the past 5 years. I’ve been writing for GigaOM.com (which covers broadband technology) for about a year, and a reporter at Red Herring for 2 years covering silicon valley and tech. Before that I was an editor at Engadget.com writing about gadget technology. And before that I was a reporter for a big Japanese newspaper in their Silicon valley bureau called the Yomiuri Shimbun.

Q.  Why should we read Earth2Tech?  How is it different from other cleantech blogs?

A.  We are focusing on the business of clean tech and highlighting the new startups. We are also writing for a group of readers across our network that has a history in IT, and the Internet, so we can connect that knowledge to the clean tech space. Our style is to combine blogging and traditional reporting, so we’ll cover the fast news in blog posts, but also write longer features and trend stories.

Q.  Where is the market headed?

A.   Booming - See Cleantech Venture $$$, Small But Growing.  But also pretty disjointed - some sectors are getting a lot of financing, while others are neglected (water). 

Also investment is in later stage high capital companies so we’ll see how this fairs for returns for investors.

Q.  What are your views on introducing cleantech into developing economies?

A.  Countries like China need cleantech technology innovation to make dealing with their environmental issues economically feasible. China will be a major market for cleantech as well as a major manufacturer of low cost clean technologies. China will also have its share of innovative startups. It is also understandable that there will be many international diplomatic issues when emerging markets are growing rapidly and don’t want to cut back on growth due to changes to fight climate change.

Q.  Bubble?

A.  In certain sectors — solar, biofuels.

Q.  Give us a quick critique of Live Earth?

A.  On the surface it is easy to find irony in Live Earth — preaching one thing that can actually deliver less than eco-friendly consequences. But to totally dismiss Live Earth  basically leads to two arguments: 1) that we shouldn’t do things like put on large concerts or events and 2). attempts at making something more ecofriendly are useless if they fall a bit short. I disagree with both of those arguments. 

Q.  Advice for any aspiring cleantech entrepreneurs?

A.  Clean tech business competitions are some of the best ways to launch a company, find funders and get your name out in the media - don’t underestimate them.

Thanks Katie!  We’ll be keeping an eye on your blog.

I’m an avid reader.  I’ve been a lifelong fan of learning as much as I can everyday.  In fact, recently I’ve started a journal in which I aim to derive one life lesson or item of meaning from each day I live with the hope that once my unborn children reach adulthood I can hand them over as a compendium of approximately 8000 life lessons they may not have to learn if they accept the advice (assuming my wife and I have our first child in about 4 years, and I hand over the journals at age 18; more lessons for the younger children).  More about that little project later.  I mentioned my penchant for books as a preface to the my thoughts on this article published in the New York Times yesterday, CEO Libraries Reveal Keys To Success.

Journalist Harriet Rubin took an interesting slant on the libraries of the powerful by focusing on the fact that the libraries of the likes of bigwigs such as Michael Moritz and Phil Knight are stocked with books about “how to think, not how to compete“.

Nike founder Phil Knight apparently has a library full of tomes on Asian history, art, and poetry; Apple’s Steve Jobs at one time had an “inexhaustible interest” in the works of William Blake.  Chief executive of the American Medical Association’s accreditation division, David Blake has stocked an entire cabin with the collected works of Aristotle!  He also gives us this insightful advice:

“Don’t follow your mentors, follow your mentors’ mentors”.

It may take a minute to process that, but when looking at the contents of these exec’s libraries, it begins to make sense.

Rarely do you find business books in the libraries of those at the top of the business world.  Instead you find a whole blend of literature, fiction and non-fiction alike, that tend to give new perspective and engender symphonic or systems thinking.  In many instances they also tend to be quite antiquated, hence the “mentors’ mentors” phrase in the quotation above.

Even the climate change literature which tends to be popular amongst corporate leaders these days (I would say that’s a positive sign) are not “Al Gore’s tomes but books from the 15th century about the weather, Egyptian droughts, even replicas of Sumerian tablets recording extraordinary changes in climate”. 

Apparently poetry speaks to some CEO’s.  Sidney Harman of Harman Industries used to tell his HR people to find him poets for managers.  Why?  “Poets are our original systems thinkers…they look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand”.

Shelly Lazarus of Ogilvie & Mather “read(s) for pleasure and to find other perspectives on how to think or solve a problem“.

So how would we summarize the characteristics of CEOs, their personal libraries, and literary interests according to the NY Times article?

1. Each book acquired has a permanent place in the CEOs life; they accumulate over time and many have huge personal collections.  This may be related to income however as bookseller Ken Lopez states in the article that it is almost impossible to put together a serious library on any one subject for less than a couple hundred grand!
2. Many keep their personal libraries private.
3. Interest in antiquated works of great thinkers and philosophers as opposed to business-related literature.
4. Read widely, as much fiction as non-fiction.
5. Controlled chaos in library organization. (This could make for an interesting article.)
6. Books are used to find other perspectives when trying to solve problems; learn symphonic thinking skills.