Day 29 - Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Y'all!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

Day 28 - Value

I had the opportunity to inspect a 200 year old barn today with a timber frame expert.  For 98% of the world, the barn was a tear down - meaning no one in their right mind would try to save it.  Most of the siding was gone and one of the corner posts and supporting structures had been ripped away.  There were holes in the floor and decaying wood everywhere.  My expert guide fell in love with the structure.  He pointed out that most of the important parts of the building were in great shape and declared it a building worthy of salvage.

All of the beams were hand hewn out of white oak, a highly rot resistant and strong North American hardwood.  As we walked through and around the building, he noted that many of the beams would have taken 30 to 40 man hours to prepare.  With probably 50 to 75 beams in the barn, it became quickly obvious how much human effort went into felling trees and preparing the wood for structure that would ultimately become a barn. 

Somewhere along the way, the barn ceased to be valuable to the landowners and was left to fall into disrepair.  It is slated for demolition in the next few weeks unless an organization that I am affiliated with takes steps to save it.

Time marches on and despite the incredible investment of human capital in this barn, unless we come up with another suitable use for the structure, it will become part of a landfill.  Reminds me of many businesses today and even more to come tomorrow as the information age gains speeds and makes many businesses and professions, which relied on scarcity of information to make them valuable, obsolete in the face of the frictionless flow of information.

Day 27 - Find Your Tribe

I spent three days with Seth Godin and a bunch of really smart folks last week.  Seth talked a lot about his vision for the future and what we will all need to do in order to continue to be successful.  Central to his thinking is finding something at which to best "the best in the world" and then building a tribe who values this contribution.

I spent a few hours this afternoon with the father of one of my son's friends.  The father runs a small retail business in a highly competitive industry.  That being said, he is extraordinarily knowledgeable about his industry and products and has a lot to offer a certain discerning group of people.  Since he opened the store, he has been torn between catering to the masses, and fighting the battle of price and selection, and focusing on a more select clientele.  He understands that he can't compete with the local superstores but is scared to use his expertise as the "headline" for why people should shop at his store.

The only thing remarkable about his store is him and his knowledge.  I think he got that point tonight and wanted to follow up after the holidays to figure out how to better build his tribe. 

Day 26 - Pattern Recognition

Patterns can tell us a great deal about how to do things.  In some cases, the patterns are obvious and in others it takes a great deal of work to ferret them out.  The obvious ones are easy and unfortunately all too infrequent.  With more obscure patterns, both the challenge and reward become much greater.

The key is to lay out the data.  Whether you are looking at sales patterns, a successful formula for cold calling or trying to pick the best user interface, going to the charts will usually give you an answer.  The trick is knowing what to chart.  Sometimes the data doesn’t tell you anything because you haven’t organized it in way where it become information as opposed to just a bunch of points on a graph.

If the picture doesn’t tell a thousand words, you may not have drawn it correctly.

Day 25 - When to Quit

I spent an hour on the phone yesterday with a couple of entrepreneurs.  They have worked for two years trying to create a "tribe" in a relatively competitive internet sector.  On the plus side, they own a premium URL and have developed a decent looking website for not too much money.  On the minus side, they haven't gotten any real traction. 

They are tired and are hoping to get a quick cash hit by selling the business.

The URL is the most valuable asset of the business, but won't fetch too much money in today's market.  They really don't have a business so I am pretty confident that no one is going to swoop in and offer them any real value for their hard work.  What to do?

The catch-22 of their situation is that the business isn't valuable unless it has a tribe and it won't have a tribe until it is valuable.  My entrepreneurs have not figured out their market nor how to satisfy it.  Until they do, I think they will be either forced to take crumbs for the URL or face the prospect of shutting the business down.  I sent them back to look at their market and start testing to figure out what is drawing traffic.

Day 24 - Paying a Price for Integrity

I found out last Friday that I lost an important piece of business.  We competed with one other firm and went into the selection process reasonably well-positioned.  I made the decision to disclose to my potential client that we might be making some changes in the composition of the firm over the period of the contract.  I was very confident that no changes would affect our ability to perform the desired services.

When the CEO called last week, he told me that my disclosure had swayed them in favor of the other service provider.  Over a couple of back channel conversations that followed, everyone acknowledged the irony that I had acted in a way that they all appreciated and would hope that a service provider in that position would behave.  They punished my firm anyway.

The stronger message is that we did not distinguish ourselves sufficiently to overcome a relatively mild potential obstacle.  We are looking a lot more like a commodity than I would like and that is something I need to fix immediately if we are going to continue to provide these services.

Day 23 - Limitations

Argue for your limitations and they're yours!

from Illusions by Richard Bach

I have always loved this quote.  It has made me think twice before saying "I can't do" anything.

No one wants to lose any more than most people want to acknowledge what it actually takes to win.  It is scarier to completely commit and fail than to go through sufficient motions to demonstrate socially acceptable valiant effort.  Although widely misquoted, we know that Edison committed to making a working light bulb and viewed each unsuccessful attempt as a step in the right direction.

Sometimes the cost of success gets too high, but that looks a lot more like a choice than a valiant failed effort.

Day 22 - Jack of All Trades

I read an interesting post yesterday from Seth Godin (here) about the value of being sharp rather than "well rounded."  Today's conventional wisdom teaches our kids that they need to excel at academics, athletics, some form of art and socially to gain acceptance into a top college and have success in life.  Seth's point is that no one cares if a heart surgeon is well rounded, the patient simply wants him to be the best heart surgeon in the world.

I understand the point and offer two considerations.  First, being the best in the world at anything requires a world view that only comes from foray's into other fields.  A heart surgeon vying for the title of "greatest"  needs technical skills and know-how and a deep reservoir of understanding of what it means to be a human being.  The latter isn't taught in medical school and I would personally love it if my heart surgeon was an accomplished watchmaker in his spare time.  A watch is a fine place to practice.

Second, excellence in activities tends to cross-pollinate.  Creative writing has little in common with being a lawyer, but precision in language is imperative in both.  Sailing and flying are thoroughly intertwined even though they occur in completely different media.  Each activity becomes a story of pattern recognition as similarities and differences emerge.

Jack of all trades can mean master of none or might lead to a level of mastery of many and nuance that can not be developed over 10,000 hours in a practice room.
 

Day 21 - Its a Wrap

The Medicine Ball Sessions wrapped today.

I feel privileged to have been a participant.

We will return to our regularly scheduled program tomorrow.

Day 20 - Day 2 of The Medicine Ball

One great quote from the day:

"Are you a wandering generality or a meaningful specific?"  paraphrase from Zig Ziglar.

Day 19 - Day One of The Medicine Ball Sessions

I am off to Seth Godin's Medicine Ball Sessions for the next three days.  The link for the sessions is here.  From the participant list, it looks like an amazingly talented group of people.  Depending on how you look at it, it is either the best or the worst crowd in which to practice authenticity.  These guys look like they will smell b.s. from a mile away.

Someone once told me it is easier to tell the truth than a lie 'cause you only have to remember one story ;-)

P.S.  I am betting on the best!

Day 18 - Polishing

"A gem can not be polished without friction, nor a man without trials" - Chinese proverb

I used to fly competitive aerobatics in a Pitts Special, a tiny biplane with a big motor.  After every flight, I would grab a rag and a bottle of spray polish and clean the airplane.  One of the airport mechanics would consistently tease me "you are going to polish the paint off the machine."  I would poke back with a comment about being "vain."  My airplane was always clean and most of the time spotlessly so.

Pitts Specials generally have beautiful finishes.  Until recently, they were painted with a product known as butyrate dope, relatively ancient technology that with lots of preparation and effort, will produce a deep, glossy finish.  It takes twenty or thirty coats of paint, with careful sanding in between each coat, to obtain the desired effect.  The result is spectacular.

I love the look of a well-polished Pitts.  A part of my motivation for polishing was aesthetic.  My main motivation, though, was that a careful polish required that I touch every part of the airplane.  I would start methodically from the right side of the engine and proceed around the entire machine.  By the time I was finished, I would have found and replaced a few missing screws.  Sometimes, I noticed and fixed other problems as well.  When I then placed the airplane back in its hangar, I knew that every part on the exterior of the machine, from paint to tires, was as it is should be.  My next flight would be a little safer as a result of these efforts and the airplane looked beautiful to boot!

I still prefer flying a polished Pitts.

Day 17 - The Doldrums

The "doldrums" or "stuck in the doldrums" is an old sailing term or expression that refers to sailing where there is little to no wind.  With no wind to whip up waves, seas in the doldrums are calm to glass smooth and sailing ships stop dead in the water.  In parts of the Pacific, the doldrums can last for days or even weeks.  In the days before ships had engines, the doldrums were a dreaded condition.

Most of us still dread the doldrums, although we aren't plying the seas in sail only powered vessels.  The modern doldrums are periods in our lives where there is no forward motion.  I imagine the frustration of a ship captain and his men, as supplies began to dwindle and day after day brought clear skies and no winds.  It must have been a helpless feeling.  Modern day doldrums can inspire similar feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.  Like the sailors of old, we must remember that the winds will pick up again.  In the meantime, there are ropes to braid and sails to mend.

Day 16 - Flexibility

Yesterday, I awoke as usual, around 5:15 am.  Usually, I am free at that hour to feed the dog, eat breakfast and write.  Yesterday, though, my wife got up early with me because she is the chairman of an annual event at our children's school and needed to be at school by 6:30 to ensure that the program ran as planned.  We enjoyed breakfast and a lovely conversation together and by the time she left at 6:10, my daughter had come downstairs as well.  So much for writing.

The day had been planned and was to be a crazy one.  My daughter attends music school on the weekends in NYC and being 11, needs a ride and a chaperone every Saturday.  My wife and I tend to alternate weekends.  At first, we thought the trip would be a chore, but it has turned into a coveted Saturday activity because our daughter is great company for the two plus hour roundtrip and the adult gets a six hour block of unconnected time to read, write or contemplate one's navel, a rare period of stillness in an otherwise hectic life.

With my wife busy with the kids' school event, I was the designated chaperone yesterday.  Problem was, I am also on the Board of Directors (and Treasurer) of a not-for-profit and we had our annual meeting yesterday as well.  My wife and I exhausted our list of babysitters and friends and finally decided that I would drop my daughter off in Manhattan early, return to my Board meeting and then return to Manhattan to pick her up by 4.  The timing was tight, there was lots of driving and the potential for horrible holiday traffic, but this was the best of the available options.

We had discussed the plan briefly with my daughter the night before and she was apprehensive about being left in NYC by herself, even within the safe confines of her school.  When she awoke yesterday morning, she was upset by the prospect and asking to skip school.  What to do?  I had responsibilities to my family and to an organization that relies on me for guidance.  Given my daughter's age and distress, it became quickly apparent what needed to be done. 

My daughter and I got ready for school, dropped my slightly later sleeping son off with my wife around 8 am and headed to Manhattan.  Our Board president was fantastic and I was able to participate in the meeting via phone.  My daughter and I had a great visit into NYC and I was able to help her review music theory for a midterm.  Technology worked and I was able to participate and contribute well to the Board meeting.  I supported my wife, via texts, as she pulled off a very successful fundraising event for the school.  My son had a great day too with just a scrape on his chin as evidence of a slightly unsupervised, appropriately rambunctious day with his best buddies.

My family went to bed last night exhausted but happy.  Each of us had a very productive day with only a modicum of stress.  At 6:45 am, it was hard to conceive of such a wonderful outcome.  I am always amazed that when I choose to do the right thing in the face of chaos, I usually find a paved path.

Day 15 - Cloud Busting

In light airplanes, a pilot loses most of his visual perspective a few hundred feet after takeoff.  As the ground recedes, so does the primary reference point to judge relative motion.  Because light airplanes do not typically travel very fast, the world begins to slow down, and other than radio chatter and the noise of the engine, forward progress and motion happen at a very relaxed pace.

Clouds are highly respected in aviation. Thunderstorms or "thunder boomers" pack tremendous force and can literally break even the strongest of airplanes.  All pilots give thunderstorms wide berth and light airplane pilots in particular, because dangerous conditions, including turbulence and hail, can be found many miles away from the actual cloud.  Twenty miles is often mentioned as the rule of thumb for safe separation and it can be more with severe weather systems.

There are also clouds that appear on clear, sunny days, often as wispy translucent cotton balls.  Sometimes, they congregate in an organized or unorganized pack across the sky and speak to anyone who cares to listen about upcoming changes in the weather.  Other days, just a handful of shy clouds make their appearance and disappear almost as fast as they come.  Unlike their big brother cumulonimbus (thunderstorm) clouds, these cumulus clouds contain no malice and solely mark a bit of moisture in an otherwise dry sky.

Through training and FAA mandates, pilots generally keep away from all clouds, even the thin, wispy ones. Sometimes, though, on a clear day, with a few translucent clouds, that little mischievous voice that resides in all of us pops up with the suggestion to "bust" a little cloud.  With limited perception of speed and motion and a small cloud, it is surprisingly easy to miss.  After identifying a target and aiming the aircraft,  nothing seems to happen for what can be a very long time depending on how far away the pilot starts the process.  There is no noticeable growth or any other indication that the distance between cloud and airplane is shrinking.  Altitude is equally hard to judge.  So the pilot tools along, making minor corrections to try to center the cloud in front of the airplane, and waits.

You make your money in the last four of five seconds of the game.  The transition from none to complete perception happens with astonishing rapidity.  One second, the pilot senses no motion and observes a small puffy cloud in his windscreen.  In the next instant, the pilot perceives that he is hurtling through the air at 150 mph and about to crash into the stationary object that is rapidly dominating his view.  Body and brain tense, knowledge fighting perception.  A quick flash of white, maybe a small bump and then there is no motion again, only the drone of an engine and a clear blue sky.

Day 14 - Steam Bending

I like to make wooden furniture, continuous windsor arm chairs in particular.  One of the skills that a novice chairmaker has to master is steam bending wood.  On a continuous arm windsor, the distinctive arm bow is typically fashioned of white oak, a very strong species of North American hardwood, bent around a form and dried.

To bend white oak, a chairmaker forms an arm bow out of a green, undried piece of wood.  The green arm bow is then placed in a steam box.  Steam boxes are not available commercially to my knowledge, so part of the process of becoming a chairmaker involves designing and building your own steambox.  Mine is an ugly plywood box powered by a wallpaper steamer.  It looks bad but works great.

After cooking the arm bow in a steambox for about 40 minutes, the chairmaker removes the arm bow and places it in a form for bending.  This is the most critical part of the creation process.  The task is to smoothly apply sufficient force to the arm bow, I am guessing 15 to 20 lbs, to pull the bow into an arc without breaking it.  A key to success is supporting the point of bend throughout the pulling process. Pull too fast or without sufficient support and the arm bow will crack and turn its highest use into firewood.

Such is the process of life transitions as well.  Heat, a little sweat, force and hopefully lots of support.  We don't want to go breaking any arm bows.