his week’s Breaking Into Startups episode features Rodney Urqhart who talks about how he acquired the skills to become a Senior Engineer at Slack after he dropped out of high school at 16 years old to work at Burger King, Sears, Best Buy, Comcast, Thoughtworks, and Microsoft (Yammer). Read MoreA simple dialog can turn opinions into plans (or perhaps, into less tightly held opinions).
We ask, "and then what happens?"
Flesh it out. Tell us step by step. The more detail the better.
No miracles allowed. And it helps if each step is a step that's worked before, somewhere and sometime else. The other question that helps with this is, "has that step ever worked before?"
We don't have a shortage of loud and strongly held points of view about business, culture, or technology. But it may be that finding the time to draw a map helps us get to where we want to go (or to realize that we need a new map).
I don't usually blog about food, but here you go:
The next chance you have to visit an Indian grocery, buy yourself a packet of papad (sometimes called papadum, or the phonologic, 'poppers'). They cost about $2 for 10. (my favorite brand)
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees and then put them in, one or two at a time, right on the oven rack. They cook in about one minute.
Done. (photo)
High in protein, healthy, low impact in their production, crunchy... They even keep for a few days in a plastic bag.
This might be the perfect food for the planet. Have fun.
Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch announced this morning that it will now sell games directly on its platform – a not entirely surprising expansion for the service where developers are already taking advantage of the site’s social community to get the word out about their games, and engage fans. Games will go on sale this spring, says Twitch, but did not give an… Read More
It lets us off the hook in many ways. It creates systems and momentum and eliminates many decisions for its members.
"I'm just doing my job."
"That's the way the system works."
Most of all, it gives us a structure to lean against, a way of being in the world without always understanding the big picture or the side effects or the implications of our actions. Bureaucracy, the organizational imperative, the system of meetings and people and leverage—it keeps us sane.
The one thing it can't do, though, is let you off the hook.
When you write your history, and when others judge you, they will not accept that you had no choice. What you did when it felt like it was too difficult to say 'no' is precisely who you are.
We remember the people who said 'no' when they thought they had no good options. And we remember the people who went along as well.
We get the benefits of bureaucracy, but we also have to accept the costs. And the biggest one is that we're required to own our actions, to speak up, stand up and act up when we're asked to do the wrong thing.
The alternative is to lose our agency and to accept that we're no longer human.
So this isn’t the Oscar moment that everyone’s talking about, but it’s also kind of big deal: Manchester by the Sea and The Salesman, both distributed by Amazon Studios, won a collective three Academy Awards tonight. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos even got a shoutout in Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue. Manchester by the Sea won for Best Actor (Casey Affleck, who won… Read More
From ‘Hey Alexa’ to Hello Moto, Motorola has announced a partnership with ecommerce giant Amazon that will see the latter’s voice assistant tech embedded natively into most of Motorola’s devices in future. “Later this year will see deep integration of Alexa on Motorola smartphones with Alexa wake-up words. There won’t be any keys to press, no screen to… Read More
You know you should be focusing on the long-term journey, on building out the facility, signing up new customers or finishing your dissertation.
But instead, there's a queue of urgent things, all justifiable, all requiring you and you alone to handle them. And so you do, pushing off the important in favor of the urgent.
Of course, everyone has this challenge, but some people manage to get past it. Even you, the last time you made a major move forward. Think about it--those urgencies from a few years ago: who's handling them now?
The reason we go for urgent is that it makes us feel competent. We're good at it. We didn't used to be, but we are now.
Important, on the other hand, is fraught with fear, with uncertainty and with the risk of failure.
Now that you know why, you can dance with it.
They still have one at the Helsinki airport.
No one in the lounge seems particularly happy to be there. Perhaps they enjoyed smoking when they first started, but now, it sure looks like they realize that it's expensive, unhealthy and a bit of a hassle. Something they feel compelled to do.
The thing is, there are a few people near the lounge busy checking their phones, and they seem just as unhappy about what they're doing.
I wonder when we're going to start building social media lounges?
Everyone on your team should have one.
When we hit the button, it instantly alerts the CEO or someone who willingly takes responsibility for what happens next.
And then the question: What are the circumstances where an employee should (must) hit the red button? Consider:
If you don't have a button, why not?
The red button makes it clear to your team that they should either solve important problems on the spot or let you do so, and that not treating a problem seriously is not an option.
And if you don't treat your project seriously enough to have a button, if there isn't a culture where you want people to either fix these sorts of problems or get them looked at immediately, why not?
We can compromise our way into just about anything. At least do it on purpose.
Late last year, it was revealed that Amazon’s Echo had become a key piece of evidence in an on-going murder investigation in Arkansas dating back to 2015, as police sought access to voice recordings from the smart home assistant. Now the tech giant is firing back, arguing that both user commands and Alexa’s responses constitute protected speech. In a lengthy filing issued late… Read More
You connect with someone.
But you exert power over someone.
You can dance and communicate and engage with a partner. It's a two way street, a partnership.
On the other hand, you either exert control over someone, or you are under their control. If you want to be an Olympic wrestler, you need to be comfortable (not necessarily in favor of, but willing to live with) the idea that you will spend time under.
For thousands of years, we've built our culture to teach people to not only tolerate a powerful overlord, but in a vacuum, to seek one out. We build school around the idea of powerful teachers, coaches and authority figures telling us what to do. We go to the placement office to seek a job, instead of starting our own thing, because we've been taught that this is the way it works, it's reliable, it's safer.
And so we're pushed to begin with under, not with.
The connection economy begins to undermine this dynamic. But it's frightening. It's frightening to have your own media channel, your own platform, your own ability to craft a community and 1,000 true fans. So instead, we seek out someone to tell us what to do, to trade this for that.
I think it's becoming clear that power doesn't scale like it used to. Too many unders and not enough withs.
But, each of us can change our perspective, as soon as we're ready.
Find your with.
