Crossing Generation Gaps
As the first generation of Internet-savvy, gaming-trained young people come of age in America and across the world over the next 20 years, what kind of decisions about warfare, human dignity, and freedom will they be forced to make?
P.W. Singer offers some salient insights on robotics developments at this TED talk from April 2009, which is as relevant today as ever.
Watch the 16 min talk at TED here or you can download here.
It is Thanksgiving Day and I am very grateful to introduce Handoff Partners, the new advisory and analytics solution firm I am launching. You can learn more there, but that’s a static site for now, and I’ll be doing my blogging here.
In short, Handoff Partners delivers management advisory services and analytical products focused on the area of communication change and data analysis for clients making various investment decisions (whether of time, money, or reputation).
I have written very little of late here, but I have been very busy preparing and getting focused so that this blog is more than just about me and my writing interests. What started as a personal writing project growing out of my 1998-2004 master’s thesis work at Barry University in Miami with an ambitious publishing goal has become a new business venture.
This is good, because I’m pretty sure I’m a better entrepreneur than writer. I love to write and respect writing, but doing deals, supporting clients, and developing innovative offerings is what I’ve been working on daily for over ten years now.
This brings me to a funny story that is as responsible for the origin of this business as my post at Hugh Hewitt’s blog, my unexpected success at this writing contest, or my research efforts before and since.
Before I could launch this firm and, in effect, speak up for my ability to build a business, I first had to learn to shut up.
So rewind 6 years to 2005 when I was co-founder of a firm called the VentureGov Group, which helped venture-backed technology companies sell into the US Federal market. We were fortunate to have clients from tier 1 VC firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, but the government sales cycle was too slow for us to make this more than a lifestyle business for the team.
But because I started in the private equity world out of grad school, rather than starting in an operational role in a portfolio company first, the VentureGov experience exposed my many professional weaknesses. Unlike my other co-founders, I did not bring 15-20 years experience in the trenches growing companies from the inside. My experience was 5 years of trying to grow them externally as part of the portfolio of Milestone Equity Partners (MEP).
I learned so much at MEP about entrepreneurship and private equity that I could not learn elsewhere, but I never carried a quota or managed a budget or owned a territory. So one day one of the VentureGov guys pulled me aside after a conference call with a prospect and told me in no uncertain terms that if I was serious about starting a company, I needed to get into the trenches for myself and stay there for at least 5 years until I had the right battle scars and experience to add value on prospect calls like that.
So I did. And for the past 5 years I’ve worked in enterprise software, first for Agent Logic, then for Informatica Corporation (which bought Agent Logic in September 2009). I would not trade the experience for anything. I learned a lot about the difference between investor-induced growth strategies from the boardroom down versus company-driven tactical execution from the bottom up.
But that experience also affirmed that MEP and VentureGov ruined me, and when I caught the entrepreneurial spirit there would be no going back. I could not be satisfied without at least one attempt at the helm of my own firm. And so now I am very grateful to look back at those two major chapters of my career — 6 years in private equity and 6 years in the enterprise — and see how they are converging to allow me to bring the best of both together, along with my own graduate research and subsequent field work, which itself covers a 13 year span mainly in parallel to all this.
So with that, Handoff Partners is born. I am thankful to have a first client, a strategy for 2012 that I am confident can be executed, a world-class network of willing partners, and an addressable market that desperately needs more answers, not more disconnected data.
Had I not shut up and listened to my older and wiser friend in 2005, I can’t see how I’d be here today. And I’m especially sobered by the fact that I resisted and mistrusted this man’s counsel when it stung my pride and exposed my inexperience. He had the answer I needed, and the data supports that.
A fitting end to one chapter in my life and work–and the launch of another. I pray it meets with the kind of abundance we celebrate across this country today.
It has been quite some time since I have been blogging for real. I’ve posted a few things here and there, but I’ve not had much to say of any substance on this blog.
And I’m glad. Because life is short, and increasing blog readership is not really worthy of the time and effort–unless, of course, making a living is tied to your audience size, or if you feel an internal sense of compulsion to serve as many people as possible with the good news.
But I digress…
As you can see, I have repositioned it from A Deo Lumen to The Handoff, to represent a change in focus. The purpose of A Deo Lumen was to shift my focus (and that of any readers wishing to join me) away from my own thinking or the conventional wisdom–whether Christian or non-Christian in origin–and onto a posture of seeking to learn from God, not presuming to speak for God, on the issues of the day.
Now I believe my purpose is much more focused, and The Handoff reflects that. Whereas I had once wanted to write with a hope that I could change others views on things by showing the unique value of the Christian worldview, I realize that I just don’t have the ability to change others, as well as I might think I can write.
No wonder my blogging frequency was always spotty, lacking long-term focus, and often meandering as I wrote on various topics. I won’t say it was a waste of time–I needed to go through the process of change myself!–but it just may not have been well worth the time of others.
I hope my focus on The Handoff will change this for you. I think it is much more valuable to my readers to zero in on this topic, which I will expound further as we proceed.
But for now I wanted to thank my new friend Chris Brogan for encouraging me to take a few steps back. He did a review of my A Deo Lumen site, and from that it became clear to me that my blogging need no longer be about me and my thoughts, but about serving my readers with something of value. If I achieve that and you feel like my perspectives and lessons learned have been of value to you, thank Chris. Of course, if I don’t achieve that, blame me. It just means I have not hit the high bar he was right to raise for me.
Finally, I’d like to leave you with the full length of this incredibly timely and also timeless post from Chris on the reality of time and how it slips away from us. This is especially relevant with the sad passing of Steve Jobs. I am a tech/media entrepreneur, and both Brogan and Jobs are on the short list of those I want to emulate most, especially for their focus on quality of product/service and effectiveness of communication.
I pray these thoughts help you find ways to take more time away from technology–or to use technology to save you more time–so that you can spend more on your family, your life purpose, and your service of others each day.
Time waits for no man, and if we are waiting for others to change, it may prove to be a waste of time. But there are things we can change, starting with ourselves and our effectiveness.
The Time We’re Losing
On my flight tonight, I had time to read and time to think. I didn’t watch the seatback televisions, though I’m grateful for JetBlue for providing them, should I want them. Instead, I used my time to think and consider and practice and plan.
In my hotel room, on the eve of another speech, I didn’t go back into Twitter and Google+ to see what was being said about the passing of Steve Jobs, though I feel that same melancholy that may be tugging at you (I’ve been an Apple customer since 1983, when Guy Kawasaki first told me about the Macintosh at the Boston Computer Society). I didn’t turn on the television. I ordered a fruit plate and some water, and thought some more.
I could ask anyone, anywhere, with most any role, if they had enough time to do the things they wanted to do. They would all answer no. I ask people how their businesses are going, and most everyone says “busy,” even the liars. We are all in a hurry. We all have somewhere to go. And oddly, I think it’s because we are accidentally losing time all over the place. It falls out of our watches like folded up money slipping out of your jeans pocket at the end of a long night, lost like leaves rattling down the street.
We’re Losing Time
We lose time when we check our phone every time it beeps and bings, especially if someone we love is sitting beside or across from us. We lose time every time we turn on the glowing box instead of pursue our future visions and goals. We throw away time every time we agree to an hour meeting when 20 minutes will do. We lose time chasing that extra six cents a gallon we heard they were getting for gas across town, not stopping to think that we’re only getting back $1.30 for that effort.
Every time we don’t say sorry first and end the stalemate, we are losing time. Every time we focus on our regrets, we lose time. Whenever you look in the mirror and judge yourself a failure, you are losing time. Strangely, this made me think of golf balls.
There is not one golf ball in the world that judges itself a failure. Sometimes they land in the hole. Other times, they get lost in the woods. But they are still primarily the same object. The same is true for you. Failure is something about a moment. Failure is a great thief of time. Learn. Embrace your learning. Move. Time only goes in one direction, and that’s away from you.
Make that call. Pick up that course of study. Practice that new idea. Experiment with that plan. Accept that you are who you are, and that change isn’t the goal: awareness and adaptation are the goals.
Set your phone to silent. Check it as infrequently as you can stand. Before we all had cell phones, our children all lived. The boss wants you to be responsive. Fine. Be responsive, but not a slave.
Time, friends, is the most difficult of the currencies to leverage, and we all spend it like it’s free.
This doesn’t mean “hurry.” This means “live.” Live in the way that suggests you know what time it is, with or without a watch. Because it’s your time. And that’s what matters while you still breathe.
And for the bonus round? Think about how you can use your time to extend value to people after you have stopped breathing. That’s why the world is thinking so much about Steve Jobs today. For every flaw you want to mention, for every truth about his temper or his choices, he built a legacy, more than once, with the time he had.
Be brave with your time.
I’ve been learning alot over the past few months about how to leverage the web by Chris Brogan. His work is well worth the investment of time to read and reflect upon.
For folks earning a living on the web, particularly as a marketer, his blog and various offerings are a top value as a guide in the space. I get a lot from Chris that way. But as a student of media ecology, I am continually seeking to understand the deep structures of information delivery that shape the communication environments in which we operate. Chris also adds unique value here.
FYI, before I lose you to thinking this is academic, trust me when I tell you I apply my study of media ecology very practically in my work when selling internally or externally, in my faith when I study Scripture and my own inner workings, in my citizenship when I monitor all the political positioning and propaganda aimed at influencing me and others, etc etc etc. I wrote this winning essay several years ago for Evangelical Outpost on the impact of our new media ecology on the Christian gospel, and I think you’ll see what it is such a fascinating and practical realm of thought.
In fact, Chris’s work shows us another layer of media ecology’s relevance and power to bring insights. Traditional media ecology looks at how our tools of communication profoundly shape us as distinct media with certain unique structural properties. This is McLuhan’s Laws of Media. But our tools of communication, especially the web, have an underlying business dimension. The profit motive makes things like Twitter, Facebook, and now Google+ take the shape they do because enterprising innovators are the first to shape them. Thus external market realities, not only inner structural realities, play a major role in media ecology.
Chris has been posting on the new Google+ here, here, and here. There is a reason he was invited into Google’s sandbox early. He is a great articulator of how, why, and where web tools work practically for folks.
Do you want to know the future impact of any medium? Ask McLuhan’s Tetrad questions. But if you want to know the future of the web and its many offspring media, you should also ask what Chris Brogan is saying and doing. That will tell you alot.
Secretary Gates nailed it in his address in Brussels about the uneven military relationship between the US and Europe.
“The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress, and in the American body politic writ large, to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources … to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”
Dwindling is right.
Europe should think about taking a note from Brian Cardinal and become a better teammate. They can still be a contributing role player in the world and enjoy our protection.
And they can keep sending Dirks over to compete at the highest level. We’ll send them back champions.
Check out Informatica 9.1 for Big Data.
This platform released by my company, Informatica, is a significant step in enterprise IT organizations’ ability to adapt to the growth in data volumes, machine data, and, of course, social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
This is also a significant step in media ecology, an area of personal and academic interest of mine. The ability to shape the communication environments in which we live and operate is tied to the ability of diverse organizations to manage the information they can influence but don’t directly own. Think of financial firms, retailers, government agencies, and others being able to identify and influence you through visibility into your spend patterns and social interactions.
For privacy and security reasons, as well as for marketing spend effectiveness, it is a big shift in every industry to see organizations gaining authoritative, trustworthy information from all the data at their disposal–inside and outside their organization.
As with any tool–which this platform is–it is more than just about how people use it. It is how the internal components of the tool are projected out onto the world to disrupt existing social structures, be they competitive relationships in the world or the hierarchies of consciousness in our mind.
More on that last part later. But check out Marshall McLuhan’s Understand Media and Friedrick Hayek’s The Sensory Order to go deeper.
Treasury to tap pensions to help fund government http://ow.ly/4XdgH
