Inspiration in a box is my goal for this blog. Honestly, it’s for me but I got out of the habit of using a private journal when I got into college. So, this is my new journal where I store my thoughts and journey to find meaning, to make sense of it all – or at least most of it. About a month ago, there was an entertaining discussion on Hacker News, where the participants linked to a job search site (I forget which one). The point of the discussion was that memes like rockstar, ninja and guru were on the decline. Or maybe everything was down except for ninja. I’ve never had rockstar training, nor guru training but I did take a class in ninjitsu once upon a time. I also owned a ninja costume which i used for halloween and ran around in when I was about eleven years old.

Why mercenary is a far more appropriate metaphor for an expert in today’s job market

When I was in school, the theory of having the, “career,” for life in a given profession at a given company was still very strong. However, among people I know personally, the average tenure in a given role is only a few years. Talent acquisition is a huge deal and in the valley, it’s gotten increasingly competitive to get the right people. Selling your skills to the highest bidder, for so long as they are able to reward you justly, well, that’s a very mercenary outlook. It’s blaise to use the term, “It’s just business,” sometimes. But in the context of hiring, growing and building up talent it is just business.

The other side of the issue is intriguing, as well. Growing up, a read a series of books called, “The Wheel of Time,” and it mentioned, more than once, a mercenary force gets paid extra if they ever go into battle. So not only do you have to pay to acquire talent, but if you use the talent, if you leverage those skills, it’s going to cost extra. A fitting parallel to RSU’s, options and bonuses based on performance, don’t you think?

Sometime later this week, I need to update my LinkedIn. Full time ninja, part time mercenary.

Most of my friends know that I’m studying more interaction styles, communication and learning how to build better relationships. Without some rapport and trust, there is no relationship, which means we can’t grow as a team. In listening to the many excellent presenters at the Summit, talking to conference attendees and even chatting with my team, I’ve noticed a few stylistic things that could make me an even better communicator. Especially in teaching, which is the most important part of communication and leadership.

How would you tackle this particular problem?

Curiously, if you flip it around and say, “This is the solution for what we need,” you’ll end up with a massive struggle. Why? Because the implication of giving the answer is that the person you’re sharing with can’t get there on their own. What a great teacher does, instead, is pose the problem. Then solicits feedback, which encourages the listener to be engaged, to think through various scenarios and ultimately arrive at a conclusion. It could be the right or wrong one, but by engaging their mind to think through the problem, pros and cons of strategies, you’re helping them build up the neural muscle of critical thinking.

It takes practice and I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I’ve seen the difference in engagement, in responsiveness and in delight through conversation between the two styles. A classic phrase I’ve heard is, “If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.” This line of thinking matches what the economics professionals call the most efficient leadership model, the, “Dictator model.” The massive shortfall of this approach is that while you gain in efficiency, you ultimately lose in the development of the team.

Even if you are an expert, try asking questions rather than making assertions. The results might surprise you. After all, leadership is a shared responsibility, right?

Flashback to my 1999 college graduation, where somebody gave a commencement speech and talked about how we’d all forget the presenter, the topic and all the relevant details after a very short period. He was right. However, the one detail that stuck was the theme of privacy. If you’re into technology, the privacy related news headlines have undoubtedly caught your attention. Yesterday at the Summit here in Utah, the Adobe team shared a few hockey stick lines which represented the number of times privacy was mentioned in the media. Interesting to me is that there is a parallel between privacy and the growing economic divide in the United States.

From where I’m sitting, the government seems to enjoy sitting and spinning. Each party blames the other, the uber rich are growing their wealth at near record speeds and unemployment remains at historic highs. The housing market is being artificially propped up through low interest rates and other tactics, all of which cause a sense of general mistrust. Seriously, do you honestly trust the government?

When society at large lacks trust, if you build it across multiple teams, you’ll win

If you trust me to help, I can. If I trust you to do what we agree, I can put my energy into something else. If, however, I don’t trust you, or the reverse, then neither of us can move on to things which we should be doing. Trust is key. Without trust, you have no foundation. Building a house on a bed of quicksand is the same as leading being on a team with the trust missing.

Build rapport. Build trust. With those keys in place, the only limit to your success is your imagination.

Perhaps it’s the liberal arts education I had in college which biases my perspective. Or it could be my love of literature, of good stories, of parables that stand the test of time. Several thousand years later, I repeat in myriad contexts the parable of the cave from Socrates / Plato. Such a simple metaphor, so profound yet so illuminating of the human condition. Yep, if you’re familiar, that was a pun

In the well worn tradition of leveraging the Greco-Roman pantheon for ideas, I’m referencing Prometheus in the title. Ayn Rand also used the metaphor of Prometheus, in the form of Atlas, in her books which have sold multiple millions of copies, inspired a generation and netted a major motion picture in Hollywood. Prometheus, for all his sins of giving humans the gift of fire, was doomed to push a rock uphill and then lose, with the rock slipping. Beginning again, day after day, for all eternity, for he was immortal. In the story, Prometheus (Atlas) never attempts a sideways journey, an alternative path. For all that he only attempts the task he was given, the way it was given as punishment, he cannot escape that one error.

What’s with the lesson in Greco-Roman mythology?

As the title surmises, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat the mistakes of those who came before. Atlas is a great example (Prometheus) and similarly, the parable of the cave provides a great insight into the human condition. There are people aplenty who would stick their heads in the sand, wishing it would just, “go away,” when in reality the only constant is change.

Ironically, being around so many technology savvy marketers and about to embark on another day of learning, I’m rehashing some very old insights. In learning today, I’m going to leverage my foundation, historical context and attempt to put things into a certain perspective.

Of course, I’m going to give away a billion business cards, make new strategic deals and learn some advanced marketing tactics. If you want to follow my team, hash tag #teamIntuit. If you want to follow the Summit, #AdobeSummit.

A few weeks ago, I read this quote attributed to Abe Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the USA. Apparently, he said, “If you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Interestingly enough, many people I know spend entirely too much time in execution mode. Go, go, go and no stops, no breaks taken to lift their heads up to see the bigger picture. If all you do is execute, the world will change, especially in technology. The sea change might net out that the execution you’re so used to doing no longer applies.

There are a few ways to tackle any given opportunity. One is to do it the fastest way possible; I’m sometimes guilty of this, because I want speed to outcome. Another way is to do it the cheapest, not necessarily the fastest. This is good because it conserves resources in the short run but ultimately, the norm is not to take into account long term impact with this kind of model. Yet another way to tackle opportunity is to take into account real world feedback, macro and micro economic constraints and then move from there. The most amazing marketer I’ve met in a while today was from a company I’d never heard of, and in sessions with the Adobe Client Advisory Board, he blew my socks off. Rather than viewing things as a platform limitation, or a function of potentially less than ideal tools, he viewed the outcome and the macro condition set. Within those guardrails, he was innovating and some of the ideas he shared were novel, interesting and executable with the right prioritization today.

Why am I at the Adobe Summit and contemplating Abe Lincoln’s axe sharpening allegory?

Lifting up my head from the day to day, chatting with other professionals who face similar opportunities, sharing the amazing work my team is doing (and yes, zero companies are doing what my team does – we freaking rock) – it’s helping me sharpen the axe. I have a stack of business cards, I’ve given away dozens and it’s only day one.

Unfortunately, I can’t share the confidential material from the CAB today. But I can share this: Adobe has a vision. They’re executing. I’m impressed. Similarly, when I share with people what my team is doing, what our roadmap looks like and our data, analytics and scale…it’s unlike anything the other firms are doing. That leaves an impression. It makes a mark.

At the end of the day, my team is making an impact. I am proud to be a part of the team I’m on and can’t wait to see what other innovations are in store over the next few days.

Yesterday, a colleague and great friend arrived with me in Utah. At the Adobe Summit, it was nearly lunch time and I was hungry. However, I had skipped my usual Saturday workout (I know, I know) so when he suggested gym first, lunch second, I agreed. On the positive side, the gym here is nice and I got to use some heavier weights. On the downside, by the time I sat down to eat about two hours later than usual, I felt as if I had a gigantic hole in my mid-section. Being hungry sucks, and I know it’s a massive problem the world over…however, I wanted to tie this back to a lesson in business.

When you’re hungry in the business sense, you’re likely to push harder

Ambition drives the model, as you might say. Growth is a priority for most businesses and anytime you rest on your laurels, you’re likely to see your market-share erode while somebody else eats your lunch. While I write this, I’m starving, it’s about time for my normal breakfast, I already did a fifteen minute swim and I desperately need food. In hotel room coffee sucks compared to what I have at home, btw. Anybody who waxes wistful about traveling for work is confused, it’s a lot like being self employed. Today, I can look forward to being, “On,” all day long, all evening too. Hopefully there’s game aplenty, because I’m literally and figuratively in need of some serious breakfast.

I’ll write more later about the brand name connections I already made. Bonus, if you’re still reading. The engineering guys I met said they don’t use Hyperdex or Redis, but they have an internal version of Map Reduce (Hadoop). Doesn’t everybody

Unfortunately today, I hit snooze and wound up in bed a full thirty minutes after I usually do. By the time I got it together and headed for my usual Friday session on the only elliptical machine in the tiny gym here, well, there was another guy on it. Drat. So I used the treadmill. However, during my more brief workout, I couldn’t help but give myself a mental kick. There’s only one machine. Sure, most days I only see a single person in the gym for a few minutes, and they always show up after me. Not today.

I don’t need to tell you about first mover’s advantage, but picture this

Resources are always scarce. Sometimes there are clear substitutes, other times, what seems like a substitute is really not the same. A treadmill impacts my body a lot more than the elliptical machine. After a friend shared that you could get stress fractures from those, well, I take care to only use it once a week. Apple understood resource scarcity when they bought up all the aluminum contracts years ago. Both ensuring low prices and a steady supply, the competition decided to copy them a while later. Guess what? The only available aluminum was so expensive, most everybody had to ditch their plans or erode their margins to a point where it was an untenable option.

Sometimes, it’s not about being first, though that can help. The macro message of first mover’s advantage is to understand the resourcing picture and address the short term to ensure business stability. Then, competitively, push the boundaries outside the norm, so that anybody who wants to compete, will have to do so in a strange or impractical way. Like me, running on the treadmill instead of the elliptical.

The more advantages you create for your business, your team and your life, the better off you are. These little things add up to a huge win. Dig the details, because without them, there is no big picture.