Be Yourselves: Balancing Your Business Style

I’ve never been much of a salesman. Raised on a farm, my father instilled me with fairly humble values and a penchant for letting my work speak for itself. But my father never raised a boy intent on operating in an office environment and whether I’m pitching to a prospective client or trying to persuade a coworker to see things my way, salesmanship has to be a part of what I do. I’ve had to adapt my style at work to find a new balance somewhere between the humble farmer and the used car salesman. And perhaps more importantly, I’ve had to learn to be dynamic with my style and find the appropriate times to either stretch my overall straps or slick back my hair.

It may not be the most innovative topic in the world, however, beyond the quality of your work, your personal business style is perhaps one of the most integral elements of who you are in the office. Many would argue that how you act is even more important than what you do. Therefore, the question emerges, how should I act at work?

First, let’s get something out of the way. Anyone who answers this question with the sappy, age-old adage, “just be yourself” is wrong. Don’t be yourself. You’re an asshole. You’re shy. You talk too much. You’re too academic. You’re a control freak. You make people uncomfortable. You’re a doormat. And for god’s sake will you please stop forwarding joke emails and petitions; you’re not my Aunt.

I don’t care if you work on Wall Street or in a daycare; the business environment is a shark tank of political influence and jockeying for position (even if that position is avoiding the evening shift since there’s always one parent who is an hour late to pick up their kid and you don’t get paid overtime). If you remain naïve to the realities of your work environment, expect to get steamrolled and left behind.

This isn’t to say that you need to be a two-faced, back-stabbing, grinning sociopath; you simply need to be aware of the different ways that you interact with different individuals and how you should temper your style accordingly. Without getting too deep into social determinism – a theory that I have no business discussing or even uttering the very words – our personality, and by extension our style at work, cannot be considered in a vacuum. Social interactions are by definition a dialogue and who you are is defined differently for each individual dialogue you engage. You’re polite and pleasing to your customers. You’re submissive and attentive around your boss. You’re confident and alert with your peers. You’re formal and authoritative when speaking to subordinates.

I write all of this to help you realize that you’re already a two-faced sociopath or, as we better know the term: a person. You already adjust and tweak your style based on the people you speak with and the situations you encounter, partially because of a wonderful little thing we call empathy. This type of behavior isn’t fickle or false, it is simply part of being a social human being. As a matter of fact, if you didn’t adjust your personality and couldn’t be empathetic, then we would have true cause for concern and proper use of the word sociopath.

So back to the question of how you should act at work; you should act in whatever way is appropriate to the situation. Your business style should be a floating spectrum, not a fixed point. You should be the person that you need to be by crafting a context-sensitive balance of the most suitable pieces of yourself. Your subconscious is likely already doing this for you, so why not be aware of it and take a more active hand in how you present yourself at work? This doesn’t have to be disingenuous or inauthentic; it is still you in the conversation.

Give yourself some credit; your personality is a rich tapestry woven of countless experiences, emotions, and influences. Each interaction has the potential to surface different parts of ourselves to engage and connect with other individuals in a meaningful way. A CEO can be a humble follower. An apprentice can be a leader. An accountant can be an unpredictable maniac. A rock star can be tame recluse.

And yes, even a farm boy can be a salesman.

Technology's Shadow

How exactly does one “balance” technology? What is there to balance? More importantly, what would one even balance against? As a man of rigor, I performed an exhaustive, five minute scouring of the internet and as far as I can tell, there is no antonym for the word “technology”…and that’s just weird. If we trust the ol’ Oxford English (which, of course we do) technology is defined as “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.”

I know…this feels like the start of a terrible high school humanities essay, but bear with me.

In the absence of a proper yin to technology’s yang, it can be helpful to break things down and study from the ground up. At a glance, this definition seems quite innocuous – we conjure images of early man bashing a wheel onto a cart or using fire to cook meat. Technology is our friend. Technology has made our lives easier. Technology has saved us all.

However, if we read the above definition closely, cross our eyes, hop on one foot, rub our bellies, pat our heads and let the gravity of these words sink in, we begin to visualize the grossly intimidating breadth of this word. From the tiniest microchip to the largest building, the fastest rocket to the slowest-motion camera, technology is no longer our harmless, quaint little friend; it has evolved into an intricate beast the likes of which no single human can comprehend in its entirety. Hundreds of years ago, technological innovators were diverse individuals who were able to span a number of different disciplines and create new discoveries from the comfort of their bathtubs. These days, the bleeding edge of most technological pursuits exists in state-of-the-art laboratories and the minds of only the top scholars in the world. Breakthroughs have dropped from the realm of popular noteworthiness because the common person can no longer comprehend the development of modern technology let alone play a role in it.

Dare I be so bold as to say that in this day and age, it is impossible to divorce the word technology from the word complexity?

Not so say that complexity is entirely a bad thing, however, it muddles the value of our scientific progress and makes advancements increasingly difficult for businesses to grasp and apply to their products. Yes, businesses can hire these top scholars to push the envelope of technological progress, however, until we also have applied design minds to understand the core value of scientific advancement, we stand to lose much of that value in translation to a consumer product.

While historically, technology has led to massive breakthroughs and steps forward in our societal and economic progress, recent years have felt a lot more like we’ve just been spinning our wheels. Granted this is a massive oversimplification of a complex ecosystem of gadgets, organizations and people, however, countless businesses seem to waste inordinate amounts of time and effort forcing cutting-edge technology into their products without first properly considering their end goal.

The hypocrisy of an individual such as myself - a former robotics engineer, gadget junkie and proud owner of more pieces of computational doohickery than I care to even count let alone admit to – writing this article is not lost on me. You may question the origins of this luddite-esque heresy. In fact, this rant is brought to you by one of the most important adages for all designers and engineers such as myself: K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid). A true designer knows the value of minimizing complication for the end-user and in a world where technology is increasingly becoming defined by complexity, the antonym to technology may just be simplicity.

This article is far from a cry to put a halt to the exploration and advancement of academic institutions and research labs around the world – those crazy technocrats may continue to lick batteries to their hearts content and concoct a world of increasingly superior mouse traps. However, to the designers and product developers of the world: get your heads out of your asses. The value of your work is defined not by your ability to incorporate the greatest amount of next-gen tech into your designs but instead by your ability to keep things simple enough for people to actually understand how to use it.

Building a Better Man

I recently completed a series of articles analyzing how we structure and operate businesses. In these four articles, I analyzed corporations at various stages of life – infancy, youth, adulthood and old age - by taking the corporate personhood metaphor far more literal than it should ever be taken. In doing so, I wanted to find extreme examples where the corporation as a person made no sense, extract a few chuckles and, if I was lucky, stop someone from laughing for just long enough to realize that the point being made may not be so ridiculous after all. My goal was to entertain, but also to fool the reader into catching small moments of conscience or confusion that found truth in words so outlandish that one couldn’t help but question our way of running businesses.

My core thesis with these articles was that corporations are an extreme form of person – all profit and no empathy – that benefit from many of the same rights as people, but are not held to the same standards. It’s not just that this creates unethical businesses or amoral organizations; my largest issue with the corporation as it has manifested is that we have created exceptionally dumb organizations. By maximizing profit, we’ve minimized thinking. We can’t really be mad when corporations cut corners, cheat the system and generally screw people over to make money – we designed them that way. That old saying about the type of person who would crawl over their own mother’s dead body for a buck – we actually made a type of person that deems that sort of behaviour as perfectly logical.

I don’t want to see the end of the corporation, and I hope that didn’t come across in this series. What I want to see is a better kind of corporation. I don’t simply want more ethical corporations, I want smarter ones. I want corporations that are not as near-sighted; those who have the freedom and ability to break the shackles of the quarterly earnings statement in order to focus on a more holistic, long-term strategy.

I want corporations to have two considerations to maximize: profit and social good. Will these two considerations be at odds at times? Yes. Will this new corporation be an easy entity to design? No. Will the resultant design be a much more complex, confusing, ambiguous and at times frustrating environment to work within? Yes; that’s the point. I want to design healthy tension into the way we work. I don’t want to have an obvious answer – will it make money? - to every question.

Simplistic corporations allow for - nay, encourage - simplistic thinking. This should disgust us. The human brain is an intricately complex vessel that allows us to hold exceptionally involved thoughts and ideas. Our minds are playgrounds for creative thinking; however, they’re also lazy. If we design an easy way out, they’ll take it. As such, if we want better thinking, we must structure environments that encourage better thinking.

This is my job in a nutshell. As an Innovation Strategist what I do is create environments that encourage better thinking to ultimately lead to innovative ideas. Design thinking guides me on how to solve wicked problems by looking at them differently, asking stupid questions, and placing a diverse team in environments with healthy tensions that force us to question traditional thinking and each other. We design our approach intentionally to be critical of ourselves so that there are no easy answers. However, for the most part, I only get to play on a smaller scale around products and services. 

To me, the corporation is the most wicked of all design problems. Countless cases highlight the flaws of current corporate design, leaving the business world and the rest of the world crying out for a better way forward. Do I have a solution to this problem? No, not yet. However, I do know the first stupid question we need to start asking: 

Why did we make a person so drastically different from ourselves?

Death to the Corporation

This is the fourth in a series (see the first, second and third) of articles analysing corporate personhood and the standards to which we hold corporations. Since Dartmouth v. Woodward in 1819, private corporations have been viewed as having many of the same rights as you or I, prompting one to look at the state of business around them and ask simply, what kind of person are you?

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; the conclusion to any life, much like the conclusion to this series of articles must be a natural end. Death is a part of life that we often don’t like to think or talk about; however, it is still a part of life. As we’ve explored in this series of articles, corporations are very unique types of persons that differ in many ways. Whether as unhealthy yet frighteningly powerful infants; socially awkward, irresponsible teens; or sociopathic and near-untouchable adults; we have seen how corporate persons differ from flesh and blood. But in no stage of life do we see more of a stark contrast between the two then in old age.

If corporations are persons, then why won’t they die?
Let’s get this out of the way first: yes companies can die. But all the ways in which they die I would consider accidental or preventable death. Lehman Brothers contracted a rather nasty condition by playing around with too much toxic debt. Nortel owed way too much money to the people you don’t want to owe money to and suffered the consequences. Enron fell in with some shady characters and made some rather poor life decisions that led them down a path of ill refute. These companies all died, but they are the exception, not the rule.

What I’m concerned about is dying of natural causes, a feat that seems impossible for any corporate person. They can be seemingly lying on their deathbed, but then find new life in a re-envisioned strategy, bold leader or champion product. While they may go through a number of iterations and changes over the years, many corporations (as much as we may want them to at times) just won’t die. Take for example Hudson’s Bay Company (1670), Beretta Firearms (1526) or Hoegaarden Breweries (1445). What kind of person do you know that can live forever?

If corporations are persons, then our airlines are zombies.
There is of course a caveat to corporate death: it doesn’t have to be permanent. If bankruptcy is the equivalent of flat-lining, then for a society that does terribly with corporate infant death, we’ve got the greatest geriatric intensive care doctors money can buy. The only problem is that, as a man deathly fearful of (and very excited by) the potential for zombie apocalypse, I question what kind of a company we create every time we bring them back from the dead instead of just letting them die.

Take for example the aviation industry. Countless airlines have gone under at some point in their history: Continental, Delta, Eastern, Northwest, Pan Am, Trans World and US Air. These corporations have come back from the grave so many times that one almost has to question whether bankruptcy is a convenient strategy for shedding debt to begin anew. I won’t dig too deep on this point, but I will say that I for one don’t trust these companies coming back from the dead and feasting on the brains of healthy, functioning businesses that are trying to make it without cheating death.


If corporations are persons, then why aren’t they more like us?
To sum this up, the overarching question remains: what kind of person are these corporations? If we’ve given them so many of the rights to be like us, then why do we not expect them to be more like us? What would a corporation look like if it was compassionate, curious, quirky or fun? Why do we expect so much of the people in our lives and yet so little out of the corporations in our lives? I for one would like to see more out of the corporations around us to ensure that the rights we give them match up with the responsibilities that every person should have to face.

If you want your customers to start respecting you like a person, then start acting like one.

Married, With Children

This is the third in a series of articles (see the first and second) analysing corporate personhood and the standards to which we hold corporations. Since Dartmouth v. Woodward in 1819, private corporations have been viewed as having many of the same rights as you or I, prompting one to look at the state of business around them and ask simply, what kind of person are you?

We all grow up and corporations, just like people, become adults and eventually get the urge to settle down, buy a nice place in the suburbs, have kids, grow old and complacent, and then die.  At the peak of their game, adult human beings rule the world around them with a seamless balance of knowledge, experience, power, influence and confidence. So too do adult corporations; the long established goliaths of the business world determine the sway of our global economy and while typically, the young upstart corporations are the more innovative ones, it is the well established that hold most of the power. However, if we agree that corporations are persons, then at their adult phase, businesses become some of the most disturbed yet frighteningly untouchable individuals in the world.

If corporations are persons, then publicly traded companies are whores.
Every time I hear about another company going IPO, I giggle a little to myself (Twitter, you filthy minx). How many people do you know that allow themselves to be bought and sold without a care in the world as to who’s involved in the transaction or what they intend to do? Even prostitutes with the lowest of self-esteem still have some limits (granted, I’m making an assumption here… thank god). Yet every day, professional traders, bankers, investors and common folk like you and I jump between the roles of john and pimp as we buy and sell stocks freely on the market.

From the highest-end escorts money can buy in companies like Berkshire Hathaway to the most depraved, under-bridge crack addicts trying to make a quick buck (at one point, I was really pulling for you, Blackberry), corporate whores, much like human ones, come in all shapes and sizes for all different types. Whether conservative, high risk (ewww) or somewhere in between, if you have the cash, then you can take part in the fun and own a bit of one of these strange persons for a while before discarding them as fast as you found them. I’ll only recommend that you exercise caution around those paying dividends.

If corporations are persons, then hostile takeovers are rape.
However, just like regular people, not all corporations are immoral, baseless heathens. From time to time, wedding bells chime and two corporations promise to have and to hold, through insolvency and solvency, until bankruptcy do them part. Yes, mergers and acquisitions can be a wonderful thing (I always cry at M&As) where we celebrate the union of two beautiful companies into a synergistic partnership for optimized business operations. We always wish them the best and hope that we may soon hear the pitter-patter of little spinoff companies rushing to take on the world and prove mom & dad wrong.

Yet partners in these mergers are not always willing. A hostile takeover, or as I like to call it, corporate rape, can be a traumatizing thing, regardless of the outcome of the takeover attempt. The individual targeted will never be the same and unless we stop the aggressor, odds are, they will do it again. Much like the sex offender registry, we really need a database of corporations that have tried to violently overtake those around them. Unfortunately, this list would likely be exhaustive in the corporate world and therefore not serve much of a purpose.

If corporations are persons, then why can’t they go to jail?
Perhaps what is most concerning about the situation is that even through such terrible acts as outlined above, corporate persons cannot go to jail. Since corporations exist almost solely to create profit, by merely slapping them with a fee whenever they break the law, we assume that we are doing enough. However, the issue is that these companies don’t learn anything; there is no process of rehabilitation.

What if instead of a fee, corporations could go to a sort of jail? Imagine if any time they broke the law businesses had to cease regular in-market operations for a duration appropriate to the crime they have committed. Much like humans go through counselling and reintegration, so should corporate persons undergo business therapy and guidance back into the market. Did one of your faulty products kill someone? Let’s ensure that you feel enough remorse so that your goods never suffer shoddy design again. Did you steal ideas or technology from your competitors? Let’s give you the idle time to think about what you’ve done so that you understand that theft will not be tolerated.

If human beings are inherently moral and we still feel the need to put them in jail, then what are we doing allowing these sociopathic financial behemoths the freedom to run amok with nothing more than a financial slap on the wrist each time they commit a crime? If we want better behavior, we may have to impose better punishment.


If you want your customers to start respecting you like a person, then start acting like one.

The Awkward Years

This is the second in a series (see the first) of articles analysing corporate personhood and the standards to which we hold corporations. Since Dartmouth v. Woodward in 1819, private corporations have been viewed as having many of the same rights as you or I, prompting one to look at the state of business around them and ask simply, what kind of person are you?

Companies grow just as people grow and somewhere between being a cute and adorable infant and a fully functional adult, both people and corporate persons go through a phase of being annoying, confused, misguided and kinda funny looking. Along with the rights corporations inherit by being persons, come some of the same challenges and difficulties that regular people face when suffering through the awkward teen years.

Last week , we looked at the similarities between infants and startups and this week, we’re going to think through some comparisons of that in-between phase; you’re big enough to think you can take care of yourself, but you really have no idea what you’re doing just yet and will go through a lot more changes before coming into your own. However, unlike your average pimple-faced teen, medium sized corporations seem to be bigger outcasts than that kid you knew growing up who collected toenail clippings.

If corporations are persons, then why do they have so few friends?
It is odd that so little genuine interaction happens between companies. Sure, manufacturers sell things to distributors and retailers and of course, service providers lend a hand in times of need (for the right price). However, would you really call any of this friendship? To me, these are transactional relationships. Friendship is defined by a certain connection and collaboration – what the business world likes to call a partnership.

We see a handful of these in the world: Nike & Apple on early generations of the Fuel system, Google doling out various iterations of the Nexus to a rotating cast of hardware partners, Microsoft integrating Sync into the new line of Ford vehicles. However, thinking of those 3 examples was the bottleneck to me writing this whole article. On the whole, companies tend to stick to themselves and minimize interaction with other persons or keep them so basic, cold and calculated that one has to question whether some even have the ability to make friends.

If corporations are persons, then most of them are sociopaths.
When we think about it this way, it feels a lot like corporations don’t play very well with others; so much so that you could even call this behaviour somewhat sociopathic. Couple the lack of friends with a patent disregard for the rights and needs of others and, while I’m no psychiatrist, I would be curious to see how one would analyse this basic profile:

Has very few friends and tends to exploit or manipulate those closest to them. Obsessively focused on money and the creation of profit above anything else. Shows a pattern of deceitfulness and a disregard for authority. Fails to adhere to social norms show basic empathy when interacting with others. Engages in impulsive behavior due to a reactionary personality and an inability to effectively plan for the long term.

Any one of the above statements could be a marker for antisocial personality disorder and by my count, the bulk of companies probably tick off most of them. I would step forth and recommend that these corporate persons seek help, however, the reality is that many of them already do.

If corporations are persons, then consulting firms are therapists.
You could see this one coming from a mile away. While I haven’t had a client lay on a leather couch in years, the typical consulting process goes like this:

• They tell us what’s wrong and what things have been troubling them
• We work with them to dig deeper on the issues and get to the root cause
• We collaborate to think of solutions to their problem that best fit their context
• We conclude by recommending a plan of what to do next, but usually walk away and leave them to do it themselves

This is consulting in a nutshell and while I’ve never sought professional psychiatric help (I know, I’m shocked too) my understanding of that experience (admittedly, a Hollywood understanding) isn’t far off this one. Yet with so many corporate counsellors running around in immaculate suits, why does it feel like corporations haven’t improved much?

Either the bulk of us are terrible at our jobs (not pointing any fingers) or corporations are the biggest head-cases you’ve ever seen. Regardless, what matters is that we've identified a segment of persons in this world who seem to have deep-seeded psychiatric issues and as of yet, no effective way to treat them.

If you want your customers to start respecting you like a person, then start acting like one.

A New Light Enters the World

This is the first in a series of articles analysing corporate personhood and the standards to which we hold corporations. Since Dartmouth v. Woodward in 1819, private corporations have been viewed as having many of the same rights as you or I, prompting one to look at the state of business around them and ask simply, what kind of person are you?

Before we even embark on this journey, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. Let’s dispel any concerns that this article is going to be nothing more than a rant against western capitalism – I’m far too invested in the system to call for something that brash. I’m an MBA and a management consultant, so at this point, one can assume that my education and current business practices have sufficiently brainwashed me. However, my mind as of late has been having a lot of fun playing around with this metaphor and, hopefully like you, I’m curious to see where some of these questions will lead as we hold businesses up to the same scrutiny and judgement that we do normal people.

What Kind of Person Are you?

Like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds after a long storm, a child is born. However, this child is unlike those that immediately come to mind. 10 fingers and 10 toes are no longer our top concern. Instead, we investigate the management team, revenue forecasts, go-to-market strategy and operating policies. This child is a corporation, and while they may not be flesh and blood, in many ways, the moment that a business is registered and on the books, they already have more rights than any normal new-born.

Just as thousands of babies are born each day, so too are thousands of start-up businesses. Some are brought into the world in rather deplorable conditions – garages, basements, and pubs - but nearly all with a common goal: to grow and thrive. In many ways, early start-up businesses are a lot like infants; they’re a little awkward and clumsy, don’t fully understand the world around them, tend to be a serious liability for their parents and initially, don’t do much other than whine and crap themselves. However, when we play around with the corporate person metaphor, some stark differences arise between the early days of a business and the early days of a child. Some of these differences are laughable and clever, but others are downright concerning.

If corporations are persons, then we should be alarmed by the infant mortality rate (IMR).

Pending on which statistic you choose to pull from your ass, startup failure rates are quoted as anywhere from 25% in the first year, to around 50% within 5 years, or even up to 90% in the case of tech companies (hang your heads in shame, you deplorable nerds). The exact number doesn’t matter, but what does is the fact that even the countries with the highest IMRs in the world (Afghanistan: 12.2%, Mali: 10.9%, Somalia: 10.4%) still come nowhere near the morbidity rates of our little corporate people.

Looking to literature on IMR, we see a number of consistent issues involving endogenous factors (mainly biological in nature, affecting the foetus), however, also a number of exogenous considerations (the surrounding environment). Crowding & congestion correlates with a higher IMR do to the lowered sanitary conditions and higher competition for basic resources. Nutrition is important, both in quantity of nourishment and in the quality that the child receives. Access to basic medicines can be crucial in times when an infant falls ill and requires life-saving technology. Lastly, illegitimacy of birth can cause social burdens on the mother and community, leading to neglect and poor health.

Again, if we take the corporate metaphor to the extreme, we can assume the following conclusions:

·         The small business space is more congested than the highest density cities of India

·         We are funding our start-ups with the equivalent nourishment of a minimal amount of the worst infant formula money can buy, mixed with tainted pond water

·         Our professional aides, start-up guides and business-helping technologies are on par with medical advances from the Victorian era

·         Entrepreneurs are fickle, deadbeat moms and dads that are nearly always starting new ventures in the equivalent of broken homes

Should we be holding our entrepreneurs to higher standards when it comes to the management and development of small businesses? Alternatively (or additionally), should our governments be working to improve the surrounding environment for start-ups by providing greater access to funding, support and guidance then is currently available? If corporations are persons, then we’re neglecting our youth.

If corporations are persons, then why do we trust infants with such large responsibility?

Let’s assume for a moment that your small business does not become a statistic. You survive the cull and manage to grow your infant into a baby. How many babies do you know that own land? When was the last time you saw a three year old sue one of its colleagues?

At the core of these questions lies a harsh reality: we give young corporations far too much power with far too little oversight. Once a business flourishes and grows into an adult behemoth, we can trust them to understand and play by the rules (… right?), however, in early days, why would we expect a young organization to know everything about law, management or accounting? Many of these businesses are still in developmental stages.

Therefore, much like we pamper, train and restrain our young, why not put corporate persons through the same rigorous education and slowly growing responsibility regime? While I’ve typically been one who’s all for learning how to swim in the deep end, looking back to our first question regarding how frequently start-ups fail, there might be something to the concept of forced entrepreneurial education and limited power in early business phases.

Why are parents held accountable for the actions of their biological children, but not their corporate children?

Call me crazy but the concept of limited liability seems completely bonkers. I know that this entire series of articles is about how corporations are persons, however, these organizations don’t actually have sentience themselves. Therefore, when someone screws up, we can’t just blame the company; odds are there was some significant human decision making involved that deserves a good finger pointing or two.

If a young child were to pick up a weapon and injure another person, we wound find the parents guilty of negligence and improper oversight. So why is it that when corporations pillage their way through society, we don’t point the finger at their parents? Of course, in cases of extreme corporate malfeasance, we have seen a number of white-collar criminals be brought down. However, in the absence of massive personal wrong doing or illegal behaviour, we still have to ask who takes the fall when a corporation screws up. Somebody designed that part, somebody signed that contract, somebody authorized that product launch and somebody screwed up.

At bare minimum, if we’re not going to blame the parents, can we at least do a better job of punishing the child? Where is our equivalent of corporate juvenile detention and what would it look like to lock up a company for a few years?

If you want your customers to start respecting you like a person, then start acting like one.

The Anti-Muse

 “Could you just leave me alone for ten minutes, I need to think about something. No, I don’t need help. What? How dare you call me an introvert! Don’t affix your labels to me. And don’t even think for a second that this means I’m an extrovert either. I can be inspired by whatever I damned well please.”

What do you picture when you think of inspiration? For many, images of collaboration come to mind – an artist and their muse, a brainstorming session between business colleagues, a band writing together, open-collaboration projects… the list goes on. Particularly in this day and age, we see creativity and inspiration as a group activity that leverages the old saying, “Two heads are better than one” to encourage us to solve problems by tapping on our neighbor’s shoulder.

However, what if we’re wrong?

History has shown a plethora of examples where isolation has been the key to an individual’s breakthrough. Douglas Adams reportedly used to lock himself in a hotel room with enough alcohol to wet a platoon when writing. Beethoven was a notorious recluse, often refusing to speak to or see even the closest to him when writing. Steve Wozniak admits that the key to his creation of the Apple I was spending inordinate amounts of time sitting alone in a cubicle at HP. Picasso is quoted as saying, “without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”

It would appear as though history may have a thing or two to say about collaboration. Yet in our time, we have become addicted to social sharing, collaborative thinking, and creative groups and in doing so, we have eroded our ability to connect with one of our most powerful creative tools: our minds. We’ve produced an army of creativity-zombies by idolizing the New Groupthink (a term coined by Susan Cain); all of us shuffling along in the same direction, yearning for the one thing we refuse to stop and use. We build institutions – schools, offices and social settings – that are designed to discourage isolation and reward the loudest among us. We look down upon those who desire a bit of breathing room for their minds – calling them hermits, recluses, odd-balls and outcasts.

Yet at times, we all need to step away from the rush and madness of our day-to-day to allow the space to tune out the clutter and focus on the task at hand. Eventually we can connect with colleagues to unveil and expand upon an idea, however, we must first ensure that we have an initial idea to discuss. Otherwise, 9 times out of 10, a group of clever people in a room with no briefing, thought time or outside inspiration, will attain little more than a lot of rambling and wasted time.

In a sense, I could just be stoking the flames of the old introvert vs. extrovert argument. Some people are powered up by the spotlight of the outside world and prefer to create in groups while others like to derive their energy from solitude and create their genius free from distraction. However, the reality is that even terms like introvert and extrovert are limiting. We should know better than to think that the complexities of our own mind can be drawn so black and white. Everyone falls at different points on the personality spectrum and for all we know, it may not even be a spectrum. The timid newt in the room could draw all their inspiration by observing others and the brazen loudmouth could just be buying time to go home and think.

Everyone has their own way of thinking. This article is not a call for you to lock yourself in a room of complete isolation the next time you need ground-breaking innovation. That would be as ridiculous as locking yourself in a room full of loud, alpha-personalities attempting to reinvent an industry (which no responsible corporation would ever do… right?) This is a call to realize that different people work in different ways and that as leaders, managers, educators, collaborators and friends, it is our responsibility to encourage all types and foster innovation from any source of inspiration.

Ironically, if you held a gun to my head and asked me my personality type, I would probably have to call myself an extrovert. However, I write this article, sitting alone in my apartment after four failed attempts to write it at my office. I love a good brainstorming session as much as the next person, however, sometimes the world just needs to shut up.

Death and Rebirth of the Music Industry

The old-crown of the music industry are currently on their knees and may I be one of many to say, it’s about bloody well time. These relics of a bygone era have held back the industry for decades from both a creative standpoint and in terms of technological innovation. Struggling to cling onto outdated business models and pop-star formulas, the only thing surprising to most people about the downfall of the industry is that some major labels have managed to stay afloat this long. Still, it’ll only take a few more dead rockstars (looking in your direction Mr. Jagger) or pop-star breakdowns (I actually have a betting pool going on when Justin Bieber will be found playing with Tonka trucks in mountains of coke) to really hit the P&L of the remaining labels and ultimately have their parent companies cut the umbilical cord.

However, what is rising from the ashes of the old industry is an open, exciting and creative new world. Traditional genres have been blended and segmented to the point that they are barely even recognizable and while I’ll admit that the new fragmented music scene has produced a lot of crap, this type of experimentation has also stumbled upon musical genius. It’s a game of numbers now and if you’re patient enough to spend the time to dig through a lot of independent music, you’ll eventually turn up some amazing artists.

Incredibly, I would argue that this shift was brought about by 2 key technologies: mp3s and digital recorders. The first was used as a tool to tear down the foundations of a long-standing oligopoly on musical creativity. The second opened the doors to a creation of new music the likes of which has never been seen, in volume or diversity.

Sometimes you’ve got to destroy…

It’s the late 90s and the music industry is riding high. Labels are making unheard of profits and shipping roughly a billion albums per year. Who could blame them for wanting to cling onto their beautiful little nest egg? However, we all know that one of the few constants in life is change.

Suddenly new software allows individuals to rip CDs and create what many would herald to be the beginning of the end: mp3s. The Napster generation emerges and over a 10 year timespan from 1999 to 2009, revenue from music sales would be cut roughly in half. While I’m all for open sharing of music and creativity, I’m not one of those people who is naïve enough to think that piracy didn’t contribute to this shift in a big way, however, digital sharing of music was only half the tale of the downfall of the music industry.

The other half of this downfall came through an enabling of the way people actually wanted to consume their music. When Apple launched the iTunes store in 2003, soon followed the ability to download singles instead of albums. Low and behold, over the subsequent 5 years, single sales would skyrocket. This wasn’t a consumer base that didn’t want to buy music; they simply didn’t want to buy crap music. Long gone were the days of bands and listeners who believed in the album and at last, a technology existed – the mp3 – to shift the perception of recordings away from albums and towards singles. Listeners no longer had to shell out $20 for an album to hear 1 or 2 tracks they liked. This was yet another nail in the coffin for the big labels.

…in order to rebuild.

So, suddenly we find ourselves in a professional musical environment that is dying; rock stars don’t rock hard enough anymore and pop stars just don’t pop. Label after label begins to fail. The big six have been whittled down to the big three and I’m taking bets on who will go next. Was this the end of music as we know it? Were Don McLean’s lyrics even more prophetic than I already think them and did “American Pie” actually have nothing to do with a crashing plane and everything to do with a crashing industry?

No, that would be complete nonsense. Until a totalitarian regime is in place to moderate and control every aspect of our lives and deny us the very right to be ourselves, there will be music. It is simply too engrained within our society as a medium of expression, storytelling and enabling our most important evolutionary purpose: sex (thank you Isaac Hayes).

In fact, the music industry is more alive now than ever before; it just isn’t very profitable for 80 year old relic companies. The second technology I mentioned – digital recorders – have made sure of this. Digital recording has reduced the cost of capturing and creating music to such a point where nearly anyone with a few bucks and the desire to do so can write, record and release a song (note that talent was not a requirement mentioned in that previous list). Coupled with our good friends the mp3 and the internet and you suddenly have a distribution channel for your music, at a fraction of the costs needed to create music before the digital revolution.

The result, for better or for worse, has been a democratization of the music industry. It is rebuilding as a space where we are no longer told by a handful of labels what to listen to, but instead may cast our nets wide and find the most unique forms of music that appeal to our individual tastes. Pirate metal, nintendocore, chap hop, lowercase (it’s silence…just silence), crunkcore, speed reggae; if you can think of it, there is now both a porn and a musical genre for it.

I, for one, love the new music industry. As a passionate fanatic, I love nothing more than stumbling across obscure new music that I dig. However, I realize that not everyone is willing to spend hours scouring the web for their next musical. The next major hurdle the industry has is how to filter and recommend music to match consumer tastes, however, that’s another story for another technology and another time.

What matters now is that you - as a listener, musician or industry player - recognize the current state of the music industry and adapt appropriately. It has been destroyed and we are in the process of rebuilding it. You can either sit back and complain about this fact, or get involved in shaping where the future of music is headed.

Whatever you do, don’t blame the mp3 for destroying the music industry; it also may be the thing that saved it.

Warm Embrace of Uncertainty

It’s a classic quote, however, in my opinion, we’ve been saying it wrong for years. In fact, 3 things in life are certain: death, taxes and change. What I’m about to tell you is nothing new, so unless you have 10 minutes to kill, go ahead and skip this article; you’ve heard it all before.

And yet you continue to do so little about it.

I feel as though my colleagues and I keep saying the same things over and over again to businesses around the world and yet continue to see the same results. I’m reminded of a classic quote about this practice and am having growing concern for my mental health.

Let’s put our cards on the table; what changes in the business landscape? Technology changes in the blink of an eye. Competitors are constantly emerging with new products. Suppliers seem to always have the latest and greatest solution to our problems. Consumers are constantly looking out for the latest fad or trend. Even governments evolve their regulations and laws (granted often at a snail’s pace).

It feels like everything changes, no? Have things always been this way? Yes and no. In reality, the business world has always been this way; things simply change a lot faster now. Fifty years ago, companies could get away with this kind of laggard stoicism, however, times have changed, the world has accelerated and the old ways don’t cut it anymore. We can’t expect to be operating businesses sustainably using post-WW2 era business strategies.

Here’s a metaphor I’ve been thinking about recently to help reconcile all of this thinking. Imagine, if you will, the business landscape as an ocean (Mauborgne followers are going to love this one). However, instead of trying to find bluer oceans, greener pastures or darker corners to hide within, simply realize that you are sitting in the same big ocean as everyone else. Perhaps years ago, the ocean was calm, however, these days it is a tempestuous body of thrashing waves, strong currents, shifting winds and all kinds of terrors emerging to nip at our feet. The ocean swirls and shifts and swells and sways with all of its might and every coming moment simply brings greater uncertainty and faster change.

Does this sound like the kind of environment you would attempt to erect a building within? A building you say? Of course not! Trying to build such a structure with an ever-shifting foundation would be madness. And yet, each time we as business organizations lay down a strategy for the future, implement a new organizational policy, sign a 5-year rigid contract or build another document template, we are doing just that; starting to pour concrete on a foundation that will inevitably be destroyed before our tower is complete, expecting that this time, things will be different.

Who’s the insane one now?

Instead, this article is a plea for accepting flux; a cry to embrace chaos. You wouldn’t create a building on the water, you would build a boat. You would build a vessel strong enough to withstand the rough waves and howling winds but still nimble enough to move with the current and adapt to the changing ocean. Organizations can be designed as rowboats – quick to change and move with the environment around them – or as aircraft carriers – massive beasts that can overcome some waves and shift with the broader shifting sea. However, what is important is that these designs are always capable of embracing change.

Of course, this can be a daunting, frightening reality to face, particularly for a generation of business women and men who appear to be prone to sea-sickness. If the business landscape is an ocean and our organizations must be boats, then what can we anchor ourselves to? If you truly buy-in to my metaphor, then ideally: nothing. The best organizations in the world are those who approach the world around them like a whitewater kayak – eager to hit the next wave and constantly paddling to guide a safe line through a current that is going to take them forward, regardless of what they do.

Realizing that some companies would love to have something to hang their hats on, there is always an opportunity for mooring up. Decades ago, technology was a decent anchor as it evolved and changed roughly at the same pace as organizational change and product cycles. In this day and age, perhaps the most static touch point in business is human need. While the way in which we consume products and services is changing, the basic necessities we fulfill are still evolving quite slowly.

However, what is essential is that we never drop anchor in any one place for too long, lest we risk becoming a giant heap of rusting steel, waiting for the day when the hull begins to breach and the ocean swallows us up like so many before.

Too Far Ahead of the Curve

One would need an ungodly number of fingers and toes to count the times that a ground-breaking new technology has been brought to life as an inferior product and rightly, has catastrophically failed in-market. It never ceases to amaze me how many brilliant technologies are so terribly fumbled by organizations, only to be picked up by a rival and turned into a game-changing product. In the face of countless successful products that rise from the ashes of their failed predecessor, we must ask what causes so many initial launches to flop and why their later manifestations succeed?

Engineers, scientists, programmers, technologists and other analytically minded types continue to produce novel, unique and awe-inspiring inventions. Yet somewhere in the development process, it seems a change occurs in the roles of the inventor and the technology. Instead of the inventor soberly pushing development forward, guided by a grounded product definition, the technology takes on a life of its own and begins to dictate its own evolution. Developers fall in love with their products and become blinded to the true objectives and consumer needs they set out to solve. Think of the MS Tablet PC, Apple Newton, GM’s EV1 – all products that were innovative, yet became too trapped within their own mythology to create a meaningful product.

I’m as guilty as anyone; in my past life as an engineer, I often spent days working on designs that would later be scrapped when I returned to the initial problem I was trying to solve. Like death by a thousand cuts, I understand all too well how easy and addictive it can be to let a design creep away from its initial intent, feature by feature.

However, like a zombie rising from the grave to feast on the brains of the masses, many of these technologies are given a second chance when picked up by another company, often years later. In these instances, I’m reminded of the quote, “the early bird gets the worm, but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese” – it takes an initial failure so that a product innovation may learn from prior mistakes and succeed.

Or does it?

With the benefit of hindsight, we can look to classic technology failures and their subsequent comebacks to see where they went wrong. The MS tablet tried to emulate a traditional PC and forced the user into specific scenarios by trying to replicate Windows in a touch environment. Apple was able to succeed because the iPad software was designed specifically for touch and was a drastically different environment from their MacOS. Apple’s Newton on the other hand, tried to replace too many features of a traditional computer instead of augment them and instead was an oversized PDA that did too many things poorly. Palm came back years later with the Pilot: a smaller, thinner, cheaper, more advanced PDA that synced well with PCs, instead of trying to replace them. Lastly, General Motor’s EV1 was an electric car from the mid-90s that had usage-limiting daily and annual mileage restrictions, long recharge times, cost far more than combustion models and could only be leased, not bought. Recent years have seen a host of electric cars – Tesla, Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, Focus Electric – that while still not massive commercial successes, are doing better due to increased range, fast recharge and decreased costs.

While some of the issues above may seem like technology limitations, at the core, all 3 examples were failures in meeting people’s needs. Apple realized that a different interface required a different operating environment. Palm understood their PDA as an extension of the computer, not a replacement. Modern electric cars don’t force a drastic behavioral change in the automobile experience. The difference in all of these examples? The companies started with, and maintained throughout, a view to what people wanted and needed.

And as simple as it sounds, this human-centric approach continues to be elusive to organizations around the world. The Segways, Google Waves, Zunes and TiVos of the world continue to hit the market. And while I’m all for the pursuit of pure science and creating technology for technology’s sake, if you are a corporation trying to sell innovative products, do not expect that the breakthrough inventions of your R&D team will be commercial hits without first aligning them with human needs rooted in behavioral insights. Instead, why not start by asking, “what can we do for people?” not simply, “what can we do?”

Printing Life

Article co-written with Maryam Nabavi.

While Maker culture continues to emerge as a dominant force in manufacturing and consumer interests, far bigger implications of the movement are on the horizon. What happens when we begin to apply the same DIY, hacker mentality to a field as sensitive as health? How much can we accomplish? Can 3D printing play a role in the health space? Can we play with God with machines?

In short… yes. And that’s both really cool and really scary.

Far from being a thing of science fiction 20 years out, many scientists, engineers, medical professionals, artists, inventors and innovators are riding the bleeding edge of this movement at the convergence of health and 3D printing. While many efforts are in their infancy, interesting results are already arising and many more are being theorized. Below are four examples of areas that have begun to explore the potential for printing life.

Printing Designer Drugs

Before diving into printing an eyeball or two, we first need to learn how to print the very basic building blocks of matter. Taking the principles of 3D printing, we can craft and combine appropriate doses of different reagents to initiate various chemical reactions and produce controlled masses of complex molecules. Imagine a finely-tuned, computer-controlled chemistry set that, with the right components at our disposal, could create just about any chemical compound to produce the drug of our choosing.

One can almost hear the meth cookers salivating.

However, the drug trade isn’t the only community excited by this prospect. Professor Lee Cronin at Glasgow University has been using an early prototype, hacked version of an open-source 3D printer to create sequenced reactions and build up increasingly complex molecules in any shape or size. The beauty, Cronin points out, is that since most drugs are only formed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, a very small number of reagents can enable a near infinite number of drug possibilities.

In the near-term, Cronin’s team is attempting to print relatively simple drugs such as ibuprofen. However, in the longer term, this technology could completely abolish the pharmacist model of drug acquisition, democratize essential medicine availability around the world and create an entirely new form of piracy that should scare the shit out of big pharma.

Inkjet Prosthetics

Perhaps one of the most obvious applications of 3D printing technology is in the printing of artificial body parts. Traditional prosthetics, while functional and exceptionally useful, have often lacked a crucial element of personalization and design – factors all too important when you consider just how personal an item it is. By leveraging 3D printing technology, new artificial limbs can be customized to nearly any shape, size, pattern and material to align the limb with the needs of the user.

Led by Scott Summit, Bespoke Innovations in San Francisco is a company that uses 3D technology to print custom fairings – the coverings that surround an existing prosthetic leg – that can be made to match an individual’s body shape and personalized to give a flare of their own personality. Whether covered in chrome for the Harley rider, strong patterned mesh for the athlete or intricate floral and tattoo etchings for a night on the town, Summit’s work has done incredible things for amputees by both raising their comfort and confidence as well as changing perceptions of how society views their prosthetic.

In the near future, Summit envisions going beyond simple coverings and using 3D printing technology to fabricate entire limbs that no longer mask the rough designs of traditional prosthetics, but instead integrate them completely into a personalized, aesthetically gorgeous piece of art. However, true innovation may come when we stop printing limbs in plastic and metal. 

Bioprinting

The fact that we are living longer lives means that we will need to generate not only prosthetics, but also regenerate tissue and solid organs as we grow old. In the past 10 years the number ofpatients requiring organs has doubled and yet the number of transplants has barely gone up. Regenerative Medicine may be the solution to this crisis.

Previous processes to regenerate biological tissues involved borrowing a small piece of patient tissue and using scaffolding (in some cases a failed organ) to grow the organ outside of the patient’s body. The patient’s cells would then be used to code the scaffolding’s structure one layer at the time. The organ is then placed inside an oven with human-like temperature conditions to be completed.

A new tissue printing technology proposes scanning a patient’s wound while they lay in their bed and printing cells overtop to heal the wound. If this process were automated, it could potentially solve the issue of tele-operation in remote areas. However, the real challenge lies in reproducing complex organs such as kidneys. 3D printing technology has begun to show promise in this realm. In this process, a patient’s organ is scanned using advanced sensing technologies before information is sent to a printer to construct a patient-specific, solid organ, layer by layer.

With time, bioprinters will become more accurate and affordable. High-resolution printers will enable us to print at a cellular level and enable more complex and customized organs. In addition, this technology will create a contentious new issue around body hacking. If we can successfully print a kidney, why can’t we use the exterior of our body to host and grow new membranes and organs?

In short, if you’ve ever wished for an extra hand or eyes in the back of your head, be careful what you wish for.

Composite Ingredients

To date, printing candies or having a photo printed in edible ink on a cake is about as far as 3D printing has advanced in the food industry. However, the future of this spaces opens to a world of interesting edibles beyond simply decorative presentations.

Researchers at the Cornell Creative Machine Labhave developed an open-source 3D food printer, Fab@home, which they hope will one day be as common as the microwave or blender. So far, the team has produced a space shuttle-shaped scallop nugget and cakes that reveal a hidden message when sliced open.

“With most 3D food printing concepts today, the inks are the foods themselves in fluid form – think molten chocolate, cheese or cookie dough. Foods that can’t be readily extruded from a syringe such as meats and vegetables are ground and mixed with other liquids to create novel food-inks.” Says Jeffrey Ian Lipton, the head of the project at CCML.

But the CCML folks are thinking beyond these achievements. The group has also developed a process to allow the printer to change the texture of a food being printed. Controlling the texture of the food at a fine level means being able to alter the surface and consistency of food at different parts to “get things to more evenly steam or deep fry, or hold more juices inside.”

However, the future of printed edibles holds even greater opportunities according to the executive chef at the Moto Restaurant in Chicago. “Foods that aren’t considered ‘food’ will become food in the future.” Perhaps printing at the molecular level will allow us to develop new flavors and forms of food by varying their chemical structures. While the idea of eating HP Ramen or a paper-thin printed pizza sounds like a fancy and futuristic meal, this new technology has the potential to transform our relationship with food and improve our wellbeing by making healthier, tastier, more interesting food. I, for one, would eat space shuttle nuggets all day even if they were made of celery puree.

Designed to Evolve

Everyone loves a good come back, right? Well not me. I was the guy who rooted for the overlord, not the underdog. Drago should have beat Rockie. Apple should have been crushed by Microsoft in the 90s. Michael Vick should have stayed incarcerated. Zombies should just stay dead.

See, I’m not that impressed by comebacks because, by necessity, they require that first, there was fairly spectacular failure leading to a situation even requiring a comeback. I’m all for being open to failure – I think it’s the best way to learn – however, a comeback indicates that you hit rock bottom, which requires a lot more than just simple failure. Why should I be impressed by someone or something that loses everything?

I’m impressed by things that can stand the test of time. Granted nothing is perfect, but the longer something is able to stay relevant and intact, the more we should celebrate its creators. It used to be that to build a long-standing product, you simply had to make high quality goods that fit a consumer need and didn’t fall apart after 10 uses (the phrase, “they don’t build ‘em like they used to” comes to mind). However, in our hyperactive, ADHD infused, grass-is-always-greener culture, our expectations have become so unrealistically high that static products have little to no chance of standing the test of time.

So how can designers adapt to this warp-speed world of unattainable expectations? How can one create a product in a world where it will be near-obsolete the day it is released? The trick is, modern products can’t be static. Modern products need to evolve and much like Darwinian theory, it is the strongest and those best able to adapt that will survive.

Our generation by no means has a patent on the concept of evolving products. Concepts like versioning, service platforms and modularity have been around for decades and have guided the hands of product designers.

Versioning
The oldest trick in the software book, versioning is the assignment of unique version numbers to evolving states of code. However, this concept indicates a much larger mental state for both developer and consumer: the product is never finished. Yes, there are milestones for major releases (1.0, 2.0 and so on), however, no matter how you feel about the software at the time, there is a chance that the subsequent iteration could be a drastic improvement, change certain troubling features or make the program more useful to your day-to-day. Couple this with the past decade of connectivity and even major releases can be riddled with bugs only to be patched soon after by an x.1 version. Many developers have begun a trend of releasing living beta versions of software to indicate that it is an ongoing, evolving experiment.

Software has the benefit of minimal cost to update and adapt, making it the perfect medium for versioning. However, other forms are beginning to pick up on this evolutionary trend: the iPhone 5, Tron 2.0, the Trek 1.5 road bike, food 2.0… the list goes on. While this current misuse of product versioning may be little more than catchy marketing, the emergence of maker culture and decreasing cost of home manufacturing is making it possible for hardware developers to release product “patches” – new designs for flawed components, alternate hacks to product parts and mods to electronics to improve their operation. Try to imagine what the 2.0 version of your car looks like.

Product as a Service
Once again most notably used in the software world, this approach dates back to the early 1960s, well before the dawn of the personal computer. In a time when only a handful of mainframes existed in the world, most companies could not afford to have their own and instead used terminals to access centrally hosted business applications through time-sharing of data centers. 40 years later, this trend would re-emerge under the term Software as a Service (SaaS), as a way to save on capital costs of servers hosting large ERP systems (think Salesforce or Google Docs).

The concept works outside of the software world as well. My earliest memory of this format was signing up to Columbia House music and receiving some terrible CD-of-the-month after forgetting to return their order card. However, subscription mail-order services are still alive and well (e.g.: Birtchbox, $1 Shave Club, Frank & Oak). In addition, shared asset services like Zipcar (Autoshare, Car2Go, etc.) or citibike (bixibike, hubway, etc.) are growing in popularity as people enjoy the freedom of not having to deal with the maintenance of the things they use.

Modularity
Championed by Henry Ford at the dawn of the 20th century, the concepts of interchangeable parts, assembly line manufacturing and mass production began a new era of product design and development. Now, broken components didn’t spell the end of a product entirely, but simply a quick fix for an interchangeable piece. What’s more, the standardization of part specifications such as what IBM did with the PC in the mid-80s, allowed for the democratization of component design, leading to an infinite number of computer combinations and a constantly upgradeable product format.

Software has traditionally played in the modularity space as well, however, few digital platforms have benefited from the concept as much as the smartphone. The emergence of app stores has changed the mobile phone from a static communication device into a constantly evolving digital platform for innovation. No longer are phone adoption cycles dictated by new hardware features, but instead by their inability to run the latest and greatest apps.

Modern hardware design is giving way to modularity as well. As consumers hack and craft their own projects together, kit-based platforms such as littleBits, Arduino, Sifeo and (the grandfather of them all) lego have become the gadgetry of choice. For these products to stay relevant, one must simply buy an expansion set and a whole new world of possibilities is unveiled. Throw in a dose of online community interaction and these product evolutions no longer follow a linear path but instead diverge into an infinite number of directions for any taste and preference

Leading the Leaderless

Traditional business structures are shifting (albeit at a snail’s pace… but I digress, that’s another article entirely). Organizations are becoming increasingly flat, chains of command blurred, and reporting, collaboration and operational structures more dynamic and ad-hoc. As organizations strive to develop more open and creative working environments, the traditional shackles of hierarchical management are being loosened and are changing the way that we work.

This is a great thing, right? Creativity is up, problem-solving is being done with new perspectives, employees are happier and you don’t have to pay as many pointless middle-managers ridiculous sums of money to play corporate babysitter. However, in some scenarios, the absence of leadership can be exceptionally trying and erect sizeable walls to productivity.

There are countless situations in which we find ourselves in groups without formal leadership: cross-functional work teams, volunteering, non-profits, academic groups and even friendship circles. While creativity and collaboration may improve without a formal leader present, sometimes you simply need to get shit done. Leadership isn’t a bad thing – when done with empathy, fairness and a view to greater objectives, it can help improve productivity while still keeping everyone happy. We’ve all been in a two-hour long meeting with peers that has resulted in no good ideas and no action items; sometimes you just need someone to step up and take charge.

So in the increasing absence of formal leadership, how can you take control of a group without the authority to do so? Leading peers is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do (even moreso than leading up, since we all know how easy it is to manipulate your boss) because it requires for individuals to swallow their pride and accept the authority of another individual. The most important thing you can do in any group situation when jockeying for power is to read the people around you. Ultimately, it will be the personalities (and egos) of those in the group that determine how best to take leadership of a group.

That said, here are eight tactics to try and some words of caution when you do so.

Lead by Example: A classic tale of “put up or shut up,” this tactic is more passive and employed simply by setting the tone of what needs to get done. People will inherently flock to your hard work, dedication and energy. Think of yourself as the crazy sergeant who leads the charge over the hill into a hail of gunfire.

Caution: You may end up doing all the work.

The Visionary: People want to be inspired and if you can create a vision behind which a group can rally, you can take control as their guiding foreseer. You must be bold, charismatic, inspired and unwavering in your belief of the path you set forth. Rising above mere leadership, your group must believe that you have patent on an ability to create and execute on the perfect plan.

Caution: There is a chance that you will inspire and start a cult. (If this is your thing,check out this article)

Claim It: A bold and risky maneuver, you can identify the challenges of the current state of ambiguous leadership and offer to step up for the betterment of the group. Much like claiming “dibs” this leadership tactic is flimsily held together merely by the fact that you identified the issue and got there first.

Caution: By formalizing the position you have become the future scapegoat.

Resident Expert: By claiming knowledge of a situation, technology, process or anything else relevant to the group’s task at hand, you immediately position yourself as a voice of expertise in the group whose knowledge is not to be challenged. Somehow, that small bit of knowledge has turned you into an authority on everything and anything pertaining to the subject and whether you like it or not, you’re in charge.

Caution: You’d better know what you’re talking about.

Default: The two greatest words in the English language. If you ever find yourself among a group of exceptionally passive peers, you won’t need to rally leadership support so much as simply be the first one to open their mouth.

Caution: Be prepared for hours of micro-managing hopeless drones.

Manipulate: If you are dead-set on leading a group, then don’t let morality get in your way; lie, cheat, blackmail and force your way into a position of sullied power. Hold whatever personal power you can over individuals and use intimidation and mob tactics to keep the others under thumb. For inspiration, catch up on your viewing of Game of Thrones.

Caution: Your soul could be damned to hell for all eternity.

‘First Mate’: A tactic that could be tied to any of those above, this is an approach for keeping would-be leaders in check. Those who grow jealous of your authority and power can be kept close by giving them false co/sub leadership titles. These positions, pulled out of thin air, may be all the responsibility and distraction needed to keep your challengers at bay.

Caution: Mutiny. That is all.

Follow: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Sometimes it is crucial to realize when there is a bigger dog in the room who simply wants it more. For the benefit of the group and your sanity, the best thing you can do is step back and let someone else take the reins.

Caution: That other guy could be a real moron.

Paging Doctor R2

Co-Authored by Paul Hartley

It is undeniable that technology-enabled devices have had a great impact upon our ability to diagnose, treat and care for the sick and infirm. However, we must be cautious to not get caught up in the flashing lights, bells, whistles and web-integrated gadgetry of it all. Many people have a dangerous penchant for placing unwavering faith in technology and, in the case of medical devices, this kind of blind trust can lead to great harm. At times, it is crucial to ground our confidence in technology to remind us – particularly in a field so vital to us as health – what these devices are and are not capable of.

What can technology do?

Fundamentally, any piece of technology is created to accomplish a particular task that, given unlimited time and resources, a human could accomplish. The most important thing we gain from assigning work to a device is speed—a machine can simply do many things faster that we can. However, beyond speed, we also gain a way to reliably do a task over and over again. Repeatability, or the successful execution of the same task, is the other major benefit of technology integration.

However, there is an important differentiation between what technology can do and how we use it. What something does is defined by the target goal inherent to the task it has been created to accomplish – in the case of most health technologies: increase speed and repeatability. What we use the technology for is a broader matter pertaining to how the technology integrates and plays a role in a much larger diagnostic process. In the case of health and medicine, technology use can be seen as falling into a number of high-level categories:

• Expand The Senses: An augmentation or enhancement of basic human senses to allow for more detailed, thorough or less harmful inspection of the human body.
• Communicate Information: Methods for transferring information quickly and seamlessly between points to allow for remote patient diagnosis, collaborative analysis and multi-device clustering.
• Redistribute Responsibility: Shifting medical actions between doctor, patient and device to increase control of the process by the patient and free up valuable time of medical professionals.
• Accurate, Consistent Data Collection: The tracking of reliable data at regular intervals to improve the quantity and quality of information used in the input of diagnosis, ensuring a better picture of an individual’s health.
• Data Analysis & Prediction: Processing large amounts of aggregate health data across multiple users to spot trends and patterns within large populations and improve the accuracy of personalized diagnoses.
• Active Intervention & Treatment: Integrated with data collection and analysis, these technologies play an active hand in treating and influencing the human body through continuous feedback loops.

What can’t technology do…yet?

Yet as powerful as the technologies that live in the above list are, it is essential to understand the limitations of our current technology for two key reasons.

First, we must understand the limits of the trust we should currently place in medical devices. Just because we are capable of creating technology that can perform a task does not always mean that we should. Creating technology for technology’s sake may be well and good in the realm of gadgets and games, however, with a subject as critical as medicine, we must ensure that our technology solution is truly superior to old ways and does not create more problems than it solves.

Second, it is essential to understand the limitations of our technology so that we know where to go next. Without knowing what stands in our way, we will never know how to get around it. As it stands, here are what we see as three of the greatest challenges we must overcome to push the envelope of medical technology:

Adaptation to Unique Scenarios: Current technology is effective because it is usually designed to do one or two things: search for patterns and give basic responses. This is a very binary approach to technology that works for our current state of technological infancy. To progress to a state where our devices can adapt to unique scenarios and deal with outliers in addition to the mainstream, we need two key things: smarter AI and more data. As software intelligence grows in complexity, it will learn to decipher more difficult problems, but in order to learn, this AI will need vast amounts of data to build an understanding of the different scenarios it could encounter in order to interpolate and extrapolate upon existing knowledge and deal with each unique case.

Holistic, Integrated Bodily Monitoring: Part of treating each unique case will come down to recognizing that the human body can not be treated in isolation. It is a vast, interconnected system and for devices to improve diagnosis and treatment, they must understand a holistic view of who we are. In addition to preventing catastrophes due to unwanted side-effects of certain treatments, collecting more data points on our bodies on a consistent basis will provide insights into the body that have never been seen in the medical community. To reach this state, we need a simultaneous improvement in our sensing, communication and multi-variable analysis capabilities.

Emotions and the Mind: Perhaps the holy grail of holistic monitoring would be to access the knowledge and mysteries stored in the human mind. Generations of medical professionals, philosophers and leaders have alluded to the interconnectedness of body and mind. As such, if we aspire to create a robotic doctor, we first need to have the technological capability to analyze and understand the human body as well as the mind. Interestingly, this is less a technology problem and more concern of psychology and biology. Our current understanding of the human brain is juvenile in the grand scheme of its complexity and many of our current remedies for ailments of the mind are based theories, intuitions and an intangible human connection. Before we can hand such great responsibility to a machine, we must be certain in our comprehension of the mind and leave nothing to guesswork. While we have no doubt that artificial intelligence will one day achieve sentience, we question whether a robot will ever be able to develop a gut; hunches and intuitions simply don’t mesh well with circuits.