Business Ownership and Management

Good Article on Being an Entrepreneur

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Nearly every morning, I start the day out by reviewing news on business, technology, and finance / markets. Occasionally there is a general interest article that I stumble across. Today it was a short article about Curt Culver, Co-Founder of Culver’s Restaurants.

Several great points seem like common sense in hindsight but are often well out of focus during the “heat of the battle” as you build your business. Mr. Culver touches several of them:

  1. The Importance of having the proper Work / Life Balance
    • For me personally, this was one of the toughest aspects of growing my business. I worked 100+ hours a week, traveled at least 50% of the time, and was often “not there,” even when spending time with my family.
      • My habits also set the expectations for others on the team, and I later realized that this also created some strife at home for them.
    • The turning point for me was when my youngest daughter, then 4 years old, told her twin brother and older sister, “Daddy really does love us; he just works all the time so that we can live here and have all of this stuff.” It was painful enough to hear that, but it was a wake-up call about what is really important in life – people (especially family and friends), not “stuff.”
  2. The Need to Develop others on your Team
    • From past experiences, I understood the need to hire the best people you could afford – people with complementary skills (not just clones of yourself) and who were better than you in at least one aspect. That diversity added value, while the similarities made it easier to “get on the same page” quickly. From there, it was important to understand their goals and work together on career planning early – something that adds value to both parties.
    • One of my goals in developing my team was to have everyone understand the big picture and empower them to make good decisions for the business. 
      • While most of this occurred, my goal was to have each and every person think and act like owners of the business. That level of engagement and accountability only happened with my most senior person, who was also my first hire and owned a small part of the company.
    • The moment when I recognized success was during a mission-critical ERP system upgrade for our largest customer – a multi-billion dollar semiconductor reseller. I sat in on project and team meetings, reviewed reports, and asked a few questions, but that was it. It was a very proud and empowering moment for me.
      • The weekend of the pre-migration test, I received a call telling me that everything had been successful and that the migration was going forward the next weekend.
      • The following weekend I received a nightly summary email, and on Sunday afternoon received a call telling me that the new system was operational and supporting production with ease.
  3. Culture
    • Mr. Culver states, “Culture is all about people.” From my perspective, that is mostly true, but there are other important dimensions of culture based on my experiences.
    • To me, the Cultural Identity of your company starts out as something aspirational and later grows into the glue that bonds every member of your team. It helps bring out the best in everyone, including the camaraderie and support from working with people you like and trust.
      • There were two unexpected consequences of actively focusing on culture, which were:
        1. We quickly transformed into a High-Performance Organization. Everyone pushed to continuously “raise the bar.” There was healthy competition between people, but each team member was a “safety net” for others. Having the team win was far more important than winning as an individual.
        2. New Hires that were not a good fit recognized that very quickly and usually quit within the first 2-3 weeks. I only had to terminate one person who wasn’t a good fit during the probationary period.
  4. Having a Support System
    • Mr. Culver addresses failure and the importance of family to help support you in times of need.
    • One of the biggest lessons I learned was that nothing that I did or accomplished with my company would have been possible without the support of my wife, children, parents, and in-laws (the latter two providing financial support during the early years in times of need).
      • With understanding comes humility.

These are lessons learned that can be applied to any size organization and in my opinion, are a great investment in the future growth, value, and longevity of your company.

Here is the link to the article referenced

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Non-Linear Thought Process and a Message for my Children

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I have recently been investigating and visiting universities with my eldest daughter, a Senior in High School. Last week we visited Stanford University (an amazing experience) and spent a week in Northern California on vacation. After being home for a day and a half, I am in Texas for a week of team meetings and training.

On the first night of a trip, I seldom sleep, so I listened to the song “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” by Annie Lennox, a cover of a Neil Young song. That led to a YouTube search for the original Neil Young version, which led to me listening to “Old Man” – a favorite song of mine for over 30 years. That led to some reflection which ultimately led to this post.

I mention this because it is an example of the nonlinear or divergent thought process (generally viewed as a negative trait) that occurs naturally for me. It helps me “connect the dots” faster and more naturally. It is a manner of thinking associated with ADHD (again, something generally viewed as negative). The interesting thing is that to fit in and succeed with ADHD, you tend to develop logical systems for focus and consistency. That has many positive benefits for me – such as systemic thinking, creating repeatable processes, and automation.

Photo by Cu00e9sar Gaviria on Pexels.com

The combination of linear and non-linear thinking can really fuel creativity. The downside is that it can take quite a while for others to see the potential of your ideas, which can be extremely frustrating. But, you learn to communicate better and deal with the fact that ideas can be difficult to grasp. The upside is that you tend to create relationships with other innovators because they think like you, making you relatable and interesting to them. The world is a strange place.

It is funny how there are several points in your life when you have an epiphany, and things suddenly make complete sense. That causes you to realize how much time and effort could have been saved if you had only been able to figure something out sooner. As a parent, I always try to identify and create learning shortcuts for my children so they reach those points much sooner than I did.

I started this post thinking that I would document as many of those lessons as possible to serve as a future reminder and possibly help others. Instead, I decided to post a few things I view as foundational truisms in life that could help foster that personal growth process. So, here goes…

  1. Always work hard to be the best, but never let yourself believe you are the best. Even if you truly are, it will be short-lived, as there are always people doing everything they can to be the best. Ultimately, that is a good thing. You need to have enough of an ego to test the limits and capabilities of things, but not one that is so big that it alienates or marginalizes those around you.
  2. Learn from everything you do – good and bad. Continuous improvement is so important. By focusing on this, you constantly challenge yourself to try new things and find better (i.e., more effective, more efficient, and more consistent) ways to do things.
  3. Realize that the difference between a brilliant and a stupid idea is often perspective. Years ago, I taught technical courses, and occasionally someone would describe something they did that seemed strange or wrong. But, if you asked questions and tried to understand why they did what they did, you would often identify the brilliance in that approach. It is something that is both exciting and humbling.
  4. Incorporating new approaches or the best practices of others into your own proven methods and processes is part of continuous improvement, but it only works if you can set aside your ego and keep an open mind.
  5. Believe in yourself, even when others don’t share that belief. Remain open to feedback and constructive criticism as a way to learn and improve, but never give up on yourself. There is a huge but sometimes subtle difference between confidence and arrogance, and that line is often drawn at the point where you can accept that you might be wrong or that there might be a better way to do something. Become the person people like working with and not the person they avoid or want to see fail.
  6. Surround yourself with the best people that you can find. Look for people with diverse backgrounds and complementary skills. The best teams I have ever been involved with consisted of high achievers who constantly raised the bar for each other while simultaneously creating a safety net for their teammates. Those teams grew and did amazing things because everyone was very competitive and supportive of each other.
  7. Keep notes or a journal because good ideas are often fleeting and hard to recall. Remember, good ideas can come from anywhere, so keep track of the suggestions of others and make sure that you attribute those ideas to the proper source.
  8. Try to make a difference in the world. Try to leave everything you “touch” (job, relationship, project, whatever) in a better state than before you were there. Helping others improve and leading by example are two simple ways of making a difference.
  9. Accept that failure is a natural obstacle on your path to success. You are not trying hard enough if you never fail. But you are also not trying hard enough if you fail too often. That is very subjective, and honest introspection is your best gauge. Be accountable, accept responsibility, document the lessons learned, and move on.
  10. Dream big, and use that as motivation to learn new things. While I funded medical research, I learned about genetics, genomics, and biology. That expanded to interests in nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and interfaces such as natural language and non-verbal / emotional. Someday I hope to tie these together to help cure a disease (Arthritis) and improve the quality of life for millions of people. Will that ever happen? I don’t know, but I do know that if I don’t try, it will never happen because of anything I did.
  11. Focus on the positive, not the negative. Creativity is stifled in environments where fear and blame rule.
  12. Never hesitate to apologize when you are wrong. This is a sign of strength, not weakness.
  13. And above all else, honesty and integrity should be the foundation for everything you do and are.

Hopefully, this will help my children become the best people possible, ideally early on in their lives. I was 30 years old before I had a clue about many of these things. Until that point, I was somewhat selfish and focused on winning. Winning and success are good things, but are better when accomplished the right way.

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Ideas are sometimes Slippery and Hard to Grasp

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I started this blog with the goal of becoming an “idea exchange,” as well as a way to pass along lessons learned to help others. Typical guidance for a blog is to focus on one thing and do it well to develop a following. That is especially important if you want to monetize the blog, but that is not and has not been my goal.

One of the things that has surprised me is how different the comments and likes are for each post. Feedback from the last post was even more diverse and surprising than usual. It ranged from comments about “Siri vs Google” to feedback about Sci-Fi books and movies to Artificial Intelligence.

I asked a few friends for feedback and received something very insightful (Thanks Jim). He stated that he found the blog interesting but wasn’t sure of the objective. He went on to identify several possible goals for the last post. Strangely enough (or maybe not), his comments mirrored the type of feedback that I received. That pointed out an area for improvement, and I appreciated that as well as the wisdom of focusing on one thing. Who knows, maybe in the future…

This also reminded me of a white paper written 12-13 years ago by someone I used to work with. It was about how Bluetooth would be the “next big thing.” He had read an IEEE paper or something and saw potential for this new technology. His paper provided the example of your toaster and coffee maker communicating so that your breakfast would be ready when you walk into the kitchen in the morning.

At that time, I had a couple of thoughts. Who cared about something that only had a 20-30-foot range when WiFi had become popular and had a much greater range? In addition, a couple of years earlier, I had a tour of the Microsoft “House of the Future,” in which everything was automated and key components communicated. But everything in the house was all hardwired or used WiFi – not Bluetooth. It was easy to dismiss his assertion because it seemed to lack pragmatism. The value of the idea was difficult to quantify, given the use case provided.

Idea 2

Looking back now, I view that white paper as having insight. If it was visionary, he would have come out with the first Bluetooth speakers, car interface, or even phone earpiece and gotten rich, but it failed to present practical use cases that were easy enough to understand yet different enough from what was available at the time to demonstrate the real value of the idea. His expression of idea was not tangible enough and, therefore, too slippery to be easily grasped and valued.

I believe that good ideas sometimes originate where you least expect them. Those ideas are often incremental – seemingly simple and sometimes borderline obvious, often building on another idea or concept. An idea does not need to be unique to be important or valuable, but it needs to be presented in a way that makes it easy to understand the benefits, differentiation, and value. That is just good communication.

One of the things I miss most from when my consulting company was active was the interaction between a couple of key people (Jason and Peter) and myself. Those guys were very good at taking an idea and helping build it out. This worked well because we had some overlapping expertise and experiences as well as skills and perspectives that were more complementary. That diversity increased the depth and breadth of our efforts to develop and extend those ideas by asking the tough questions early and ensuring we could convince each other of the value.

Our discussions were creative, highly collaborative, and a lot of fun. We improved from them, and the outcome was usually viable from a commercial perspective. As a growing and profitable small business, you must constantly innovate to differentiate yourself. Our discussions were driven as much by necessity as intellectual curiosity, and I believe this was part of the magic.

So, back to the last post. I view various technologies as building blocks. Some are foundational, and others are complementary. To me, the key is not viewing those various technologies as competing with each other. Instead, I look for potential value created by integrating them with each other. That may not always be possible and does not always lead to something better, but occasionally it does, so to me, it is a worthwhile exercise. With regard to voice technology, I believe we will see more, better, and smarter applications of it – especially as real-time and AI systems become more complex due to the use of an increasing number of specialized chips, component systems, geospatial technology, and sensors.

While today’s smartphone interfaces would not pass the Turing Test or proposed alternatives, they are an improvement over more simplistic voice translation tools available just a few years ago. Advancement requires the tools to understand context in order to make inferences. This brings you closer to machine learning, and big data (when done right) significantly increases that potential.

Ultimately, this all leads back to Artificial Intelligence (at least in my mind). It’s a big leap from a simple voice translation tool to AI, but it is not such a stretch when viewed as building blocks.

Now think about creating an interface (API) that allows one smart device to communicate with another, like the collaborative efforts described above with my old team. It’s not simply having a front-end device exchanging keywords or queries with a back-end device. Instead, it is two or more devices and/or systems having a “discussion” about what is being requested, looking at what each component “knows,” making inferences based on location and speed, asking clarifying questions and making suggestions, and then finally taking that multi-dimensional understanding of the problem to determine what is really needed.

So, possibly not true AI (yet), but a giant leap forward from what we have today. That would help turn the science fiction of the past into science fact in the near future. The better the understanding and inferences by the smart system, the better the results.

I also believe that the unintended consequence of these new smart systems is that they will likely make errors or have biases like a human as they become more human-like in their approach. Hopefully, those smart systems will be able to automatically back-test recommendations to validate and minimize errors. If they are intelligent enough to monitor results and suggest corrective actions when they determine that the recommendation does not have the optimal desired results, they would become even “smarter.” There won’t be an ego creating a distortion filter about the approach or the results. Or maybe there will…

Many of the building blocks required to create these new systems are available today. But it takes vision and insight to see that potential, translate ideas from slippery and abstract to tangible and purposeful, and then start building something cool and useful. As that happens, we will see a paradigm shift in how we interact with computers and how they interact with us. It will become more interactive and intuitive. That will lead us to the systematic integration that I wrote about in a big data / nanotechnology post.

So, what is the real objective of my blog? To get people thinking about things differently, to foster collaboration and partnerships between businesses and educational institutions to push the limits of technology, and to foster discussion about what others believe the future of computing and smart devices will look like. I’m confident that I will see these types of systems in my lifetime, and I believe in the possibility of this occurring within the next decade.

What are your thoughts?

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Why do you want to teach?

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In the past, I wrote about how I like to read, experiment, and learn as much as possible about as many things as possible. My goal isn’t to be the Jack of all trades and Master of none. Rather, I view knowledge and experience as pieces that can be used to build a mosaic of something interesting and/or worthwhile.

Years ago, when I first started programming, my manager had me work with the top performers in the group. Being inquisitive and always wanting to improve led me to ask many questions to understand why things were done the way they were. One Analyst I worked with was extremely sensitive, and after fielding a few questions, he told me, “Programming is like art. Two people will interpret things differently, but you will have two similar pictures in the end, and both do the job. So, quit messing with my picture.”

At first, I was somewhat offended, but then I realized that much of what he stated was true. That led me to incorporate better methods and approaches into what I did, making them my own to continually improve. From that perspective, learning really is somewhat of an art form.

What makes teaching worthwhile to me is helping people improve in ways that are their own rather than teaching them how to do things in one specific “right” way. One analogy is that you teach people to navigate rather than provide them with the route. Also, in order to be a good teacher, you need to have a solid grasp on the topic, be willing and able to relate to students, and want to help them learn. It’s rewarding on a couple of different levels.

Your ability to teach well starts with understanding the topic, but that is the foundation. Applying seemingly abstract concepts to concrete problems is a very helpful skill. In medicine, they have the concept of “See one, Do one, Teach one.” It is a great way to codify knowledge and develop desired skills.

Being open to other approaches that might seem strange at first, but then you see the brilliance in the solution is also helpful. Often a student would mention how they handled a problem, which sounded bizarre at first, but digging deeper into their approach resulted in understanding something pretty amazing.

Amazing teachers are out there, and I’ve met several of them. Those people are worth their weight in gold – especially when teaching children. They have their own kind of “magic” that can inspire people and provide the confidence and desire to do and learn more than they ever dreamed was possible.

Teaching is about helping others and not trying to be the smartest person in the room. And remember, not everyone wants to learn and/or improve, so don’t take that personally. Just do your best to help the people who want to grow and improve. Mentoring is another good way to do this. You will be surprised at the positive impact one person can have by doing this.

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