Inspiring Trust

An acquaintance of mine shared an experience of how many of his sons came to him of their own free will to ask for help to overcome their struggles pornography. Those boys really must have trusted their father. What do I have to do to inspire that kind of trust in my children? I discussed this question with my wife and she described to me how she was surrounded with many immoral choices growing up, but whenever she was faced with enticing situations she never participated in the unwholesome activities that the crowd was doing.  She says she always remembered the gentleness and unconditional love of her father, and she simply didn’t want to let him down.  Essentially, my father in law motivated his daughter with love and not with threatening punishments. My position is that if we want to inspire trust in others we should do it by love and not by fear. That’s the kind of father that I want to be – a father who inspires trust by teaching his children to love him.  

WORK!

I was inspired by Elliot Jacobsen’s example of chasing his dreams to become a successful entrepreneur.  I, like Elliot, have dreams of becoming an entrepreneur.  Over the past months I have sought every opportunity possible to talk to successful businessmen and women in my circles of friends to ask them about their keys to success.   Their recommendations stressed various aspects of business, but there was once piece of advice that I heard almost everyone I asked give: “Work!” If you want to make things happen in your business you must be willing to “Work work work!”  You need to take your fate into your own hands without blaming anyone else for the circumstances and do everything in your power to make your dreams come true.  As I have pondered this, I have become increasingly aware of things in my life that I have simply “left to fate” rather than perusing and achieving.  It’s true that fate is sometimes unalterable, but by leaving everything to fate we essentially forfeit our agency and our ability to impact the world and our circumstances. If I want to become an entrepreneur I must take fate into my own hands by following this business adage: “WORK!”

It’s Okay to Ask For Help

Elliot Jacobsen set a goal to get into HBS.  He strived so hard to get connected with the HBS network that all three of his letters of recommendation from came from HBS alumni.  As you might think, he got in.  Elliot’s MBA application strategy demonstrates how to effectively get noticed by your dream school or how to get your foot in the door with your company of choice.  From Elliot’s language it was clear that he was very audacious about contacting alumni from his dream school.  In the past I have felt reluctant to be as forward as Elliot in reaching out to people that could help me achieve my goals because I don’t want to get “too political.”  I don’t want these individuals to think that I’m contacting them just because I want to get something out of them.  However, Elliot responded to such concerns in his presentation by saying “Just be humble and have the courage to ask people for help.  It’s okay to ask for help” 

More Thoughtful About My Thoughts

Elliot Jacobsen, an HBS alumni and successful tech entrepreneur described how in his free time his mind goes on to envision new business plans.  This thoughtfulness is characteristic of true innovators. Elliot went on to say how In every spare moment he could find, he wrote down his creative ideas which now fill numerous binders.  Innovators like Elliot may see the time we spent idly waiting in line to checkout at the grocery store, or time spent walking to and from class, as an opportunity to ponder how an idea can be improved upon. Yesterday I was driving home and I found myself daydreaming about what it would be like to work for a certain company. I caught myself and realized that my thinking was completely unproductive. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with such thoughts, it was a waste, because such daydreaming is unlikely to help me achieve my personal goals of becoming a individual, family and global innovator. As I observed Elliot Jacobsen’s example, I have become much more thoughtful about my thoughts.

As Always - Be Suspicious

Here Comes Everybody details disruptions that the internet era caused in the news industry. Before the rise of amateur bloggers and social media gurus, the news was first filtered by big agencies and then published.  Now it’s the reverse. The news goes out via the diverse channels of the World Wide Web and then the filtering happens second. Should this fundamental shift in the publishing process change the way we approach the news? As we discussed this question in class, the following thoughts came to mind. Over the past several hundred years the world has had good reason to be suspicious of what it reads and hears from the press because it was likely heavily filtered. With the filtering plug lifted in our internet era, we still have need for suspicion, but for a very different reason. We must be suspicious of what we hear, precisely because it may be unfiltered.  

Don’t Gawk – Look Inside Yourself

We often see big leaders in business make morally wrong decisions and make front page news.  Sometimes we think to ourselves: “What a bad person! I would never do that!”  But the truth is that good people with good intentions have the potential to make bad decisions.  I am one of those people...
“You just have to snap out of it!” Carla Heesch said, “You men, have your buddies, and you just want to be tight with them and not let them down.  But when ethical decisions are at hand, you just have to snap out of it, and do what’s right.” I see myself as a good person, with good intentions, but as I reflected on Carla’s words, I could see within myself the potential to make a very poor ethical decisions if I didn’t manage to “snap out of it” as she directed.  Rather than gawking with disgust when we hear stories of unethical decisions made in business, we should practice humility; we should look inside ourselves and honestly evaluate how we can avoid making similar bad choices. 

Making Edifying Career Choices

Chatting with David Claire, the director of CIS for the LDS Church, after class, I asked him why he said,  “after working for the Church for a year or so, I’ll kick you out.” He responded, “I want you to develop and learn everything you can.  I want you to go out and work for the Googles and develop as an individual. Then come back and share your knowledge with the Church.” As I thought about his words, I was reminded that job security and salary should not be our only consideration for choosing a career. I have a wife, a daughter and a responsibility to provide our family, but this demand should be balanced with a faithful desire to seek career opportunities that edify me intellectually and even spiritually. Circumstances may at times force us to take jobs just so that we have food on the table the next day,  but if you’ve got a choice, don’t you want to say that you’ve done something that made you a better person, even if that choice didn’t always pay the most?     

Finding Trust by Becoming Trustworthy

A venture capitalist once told me, “It’s better to invest in a company with a ‘C’ level idea and an ‘A’ team than a company with an ‘A’ idea and a ‘C’ team.”  After watching Nerds 2.0 and seeing how Robert Metcalfe was backstabbed by Microsoft in the 3Com deal, I began to think, “It’s better to team up with a ‘C’ team that you can trust than an ‘A’ that you can’t.” How can we find individuals that we can trust in our professional lives?  As I ponder this question, a bit of sage dating advice from my single years comes to mind: “finding a marriage partner isn’t about merely finding the right person, it’s about becoming the right person.” A similar approach can be applied to developing trust.  It’s not about merely finding the people you can trust; it’s about becoming a trustworthy individual yourself.  

Stop and Think!

Clifford Stoll’s autobiographical account describes tracking down a hacker in one of the first cyber-attacks in history. From reading Stoll’s book one asks how nobody foresaw danger in the gaping security holes in the government systems that existed in the early years of computers. The hacker was able to gain access to various top secret US military and government systems by simply guessing common passwords and sometimes even logging in as “guest” with no password requirement.  It seems to me that mankind rarely takes preventative measure unless we, or someone we know personally, experiences the danger first hand. Perhaps that is why those that are most zealous about not using a phone while driving are those with friends or family who have been harmed in a cellphone related auto accident, and maybe that’s why lots of us don’t start preparing for disaster until hurricane Katrina hits. 

                How can we overcome this danger-prevention-lethargy that is in our human nature?   My answer to this question is to merely think! Far too often we simply accept things at face value without stopping to ponder their deeper implications. George Bernard Shaw--a world famous writer and a founder of the London School of Economics—noted, "Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week." Let us all take time to stop, think and ponder our life’s surroundings.  

Compliance Vs Self Expression

Vladimir Putin recently announced that if Facebook and Twitter want to remain online in Russia, then they must comply with local censorship and storage laws.  While many criticize Putin for this action, it is my opinion that these two social media websites shouldn’t be given special exemption from local laws. Before I am accused of supporting tyranny, let me first explain.

Just as Clay Shirky conveyed in the video we watched in class about self-expression and the internet revolution, I fully believe in the goodness and power of freedom of expression.  I find that Russia would enjoy greater liberty, self-respect and stability if it discontinued the restrictive censorship that currently exists.  However, if all other media organizations within Russia have to comply with laws of the land, than why should Facebook and Twitter be exceptions simply because they are based in the cloud?  

https://gigaom.com/2014/09/26/russia-orders-google-facebook-and-twitter-to-comply-with-local-storage-and-censorship-laws/

Who Owns the Idea

When Bill Gates launched Windows 95, the interactive GUI (graphical user interface) was praised as one of its top innovations. However, Triumph of the Nerds (Part three) shows not only how Bill Gates got the GUI idea from Steve Jobs but also how Steve Jobs was introduced to the GUI by a team of Xerox researchers in Menlo Park, CA. So, who really deserves the credit for the development of the GUI? I think that neither Bill Gates, nor Steve Jobs or even the Xerox researchers can fully claim credit for inventing the GUI. The truth is that someone somewhere introduced that group of Xerox researchers to computing ideas that helped them think of the GUI, and if we follow this chain of ideas back in history far enough we’ll find that neither Archimedes nor Plato deserve full credit for their inventions and philosophies. It seems to me that a true inventor is not someone who makes creative ideas materialize out of thin air, but rather someone who can “connect the dots,” combining existing ideas in a useful way that has not yet been considered.

Invading Our Lives, Minds, and Bodies

 

According to the recent Harris Poll, only one in thirteen Americans is happy. As the US happiness index has been declining for the last decade [1]  social media use rises every year.[2] While I agree with Professor Dougal that these new technologies have practical uses,  I think that the obsessive use of social media may be a partial cause of the happiness decline in the US. Think of the bombardment of tweets, pop-ups, distractions and seemingly endless opportunities to compare yourself to the glamorized photos of “friends” every time you log onto facebook or Twitter. Comparing yourself to others and being distracted take away from happiness. A Neuroscientist from Stanford University, Sylvia Morelli, expressed that, “Being distracted reduces our empathy for others and blunts responses in the brain… being distracted may also reduce our happiness.” I personally have a facebook, twitter and LinkedIn account, but I invite all readers of my blog to be judicial using these resources so that they do not become a happiness-reducing distraction and resource for envious comparison.   

[1] "Are You Happy?." Harris Interactive. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2014. <http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/1200/Default.aspx>.

[2] "Social Networking Fact Sheet." Pew Research Centers Internet American Life Project RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2014. <http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/>.

[3] Rameson, Lian T., Sylvia A. Morelli, and Matthew D. Lieberman. "The neural correlates of empathy: experience, automaticity, and prosocial behavior." Journal of cognitive neuroscience 24, no. 1 (2012): 235-245.

The New World of Artificial Intelligence

As driverless cars become more independent, they will eventually face unpredictable situations where ethical decisions of life-or-death need to be made. Imagine a child chasing a basketball onto a road with an incoming driverless vehicle. An automated sharp swerve to avoid the child will endanger the passengers, but hitting the child is also wrong.  Who will be responsible for a mistake made? The programmer? The engineering team? The manufacturer? We can’t imprison or fine a car no matter how smart it is! I believe that artificial intelligence is highly beneficial, but it requires us to change our world. Having self-driving cars on the road must be accompanied by new branches in law, policymaking, and ethics. Just like Postman said in 1998, “Technological change is not additive, it is ecological.”[1] We don’t just have the world and artificial intelligence. We have a new world.

1.     Postman, Neil. "Five things we need to know about technological change." Retrieved December 1 (1998): 2003.

2.     http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/22/6828161/california-permits-self-driving-cars-google-audi-mercedes-benz

Envy Impedes Good Ideas

Triumph of the Nerds shows how Steve Wozniak in the weekly “home-brew computer” meetings eagerly shared computer design ideas with classmates and friends.  However, people aren't always as eager as Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, to share ideas. In a world of legal patents and jealous business competition, we have all observed people covetously guard their ideas fearing that someone might steal it. People who are driven by such fears may have some success, but it is my opinion that those who share their ideas liberally, like Steve Wozniak, are those who achieve the greatest of all success.

Turning a Trickle into a Flood

https://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/unto-all-the-world/to-sweep-the-earth-as-with-a-flood?lang=eng

Imagine leadership. How will you change the world?

Let your voice be heard in every corner of the earth – let your light shine for all the nations to see. 

"Technology is evil," we’ve once been told. 

"One voice can’t make a difference," a good friend said.

For a moment, I thought, “Why walk on a chocolate-covered razor of social media temptations? Will trying to raise my voice bring more harm than good?” 

But we don’t put the candle under the bushel in fear that the candle will cause a fire. We let our candles shine. And I will let my candle shine. And I will raise my voice. I will speak with conviction  – strong and powerful, yet sincere and heartfelt.

I will be heard. You will be heard. And together, our voices will change the world. 

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/matt/5?lang=eng 

It Doesn't Matter How Hard You Can Hit—It Matters How Hard You Can Get Hit and Keep Moving Forward

In high school, they said I was not cut out for football. I was 5'8" and 135 lbs. But I focused on my technique, speed, and precision. One day, after I had stripped the ball from a 265 lbs player; he tackled me… and broke my ribs. I didn’t tell anyone for 2 weeks until after the state championship, where as a defensive end, I sacked the opposing quarter back, contributing to our win. To me, it didn’t matter how hard I could hit; what mattered was how hard I could get hit and keep moving forward.