People

You know how we keep bringing up communication?

Marcel Schwantes‘ article in Inc. Magazine really drives that point home.

The article cites examples from Elon Musk and Hubert Joly – and the benefit they wanted, and saw, from introducing autonomy to hierarchical organizations, highlighting how detrimental hierarchies can be to the modern organization. Our CEO & Founder made a similar point when he was interviewed by Kelly Wilson at Edge.

In the modern company, especially for knowledge & information workers, hierarchies are a barrier to – well a lot more than not. We’ve seen first hand how hierarchies impede innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit, uncovering risk and impede the execution of complex tasks that are the fiber of every modern company. They are an anchor.

The antidote? Autonomy! It does require real, intentional work to execute & we absolutely understand how hard & challenging that can be. Culture has to change, leadership and contributors need to learn new skills, the organization has to become accustomed to a new way of operating. But the benefits far outweigh the cost of such an exercise.

Autonomy is a force multiplier to any organization. It accelerates that critical time to value. Even more importantly it fosters the creation of tight horizontal bonds that are elastic & resilient. When the next inevitable crisis hits, the fires don’t stand a chance as people will organically come together and self organize to make sure of it.

If you’re going to change one thing this year – do this first. Contact us – we’ll help you start!

Artificial Intelligence is neither.

Let me explain. There’s been growing interest and commentary in the last several years on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and as a wannabe writer, relapsed polyglot, software engineer in remission and AI enthusiast, I would like to share some insights, stop budding AI luddites in their tracks and start a movement to reduce popular use of terms such as AI and Machine Learning (ML) – because, well, they’re neither. For the sake of clarity I will continue to use those terms in this article.

Will we create true Artificial Intelligence (or Sentient) systems? The answer to that question, as to any other is, yes, with time, energy and resources. If we can imagine it, we can make it happen. But we’re definitely not there and don’t have the hardware or software for it. It’s zeroes and ones, and even if it’s fuzzy logic or quantum compute, it’s still simulated via zeroes and ones. Intelligence isn’t bound to binary.

Today’s AI systems are typically (but not always) statistical model number crunchers taking advantage of utility compute power and freely available oceans of data to find patterns and trends that meet some desired outcome, in the hopes of being able to predict those desired outcomes. One great example of this is ThyssenKrupp’s MAX Predictive Elevator Maintenance Program. It’s a bunch of some wicked statical math and some really cool modelling. There are, of course, other types of AI systems – as mentioned below.

In fact, nearly every example you can think of today isn’t intelligence – it’s really not. Even when it looks like it. For example, autocomplete – isn’t intelligent or smart (but it is cool!). Something like autocomplete is number crunching through immense amount of data (thanks Cloud Compute and everyone who accepted EULA’s without reading them) to generate likely outcomes.

But it learned what you really mean to type when it autocompletes duck!

Not really.

What it did was notice that you kept changing duck to puck when texting with your hockey buddies. Then duck & puck to cluck with your 4H alumni. Then duck & cluck to puck back again. So now, sure, it seems like it’s learning and sure it seems smart because now it knows to send puck to Wayne and cluck to Jimmy instead of the ever confusing duck to exactly no one ever. But was that a process of learning? Pedantically, yes, but it’s not really learning when you’re applying it to a narrow problem in a single domain. What you’re doing is (math & models!) changing desired outcomes based on who you’re interacting with. There is a discrete, bound box it operates in. There is no knowledge or skills acquisition.

Are there companies that have\are creating AI platforms that you can use? Absolutely! After you train them (lots of data!) and specify (bias) towards your ideal outcomes, they’re a cost effective on-ramp to leveraging the power of these tools. They’re still not AI, and it’s a stretch to call them ML. Look behind the curtain and you’ll find … Oscar Diggs! Same thing. But what a fantastic business model. Now, if I can take one of those systems trained for predictive maintenance for Sunbelt’s construction equipment (made that up) and drop it into Pinch-a-Penny’s pool proactive summer maintenance program (made that up too) and it remembers both … ? Well it’s not going to – and really, nor should it because these are tools and platforms we use to solve problems in a specific domain. And because these systems cannot inherently gather knowledge and skills, it’s not quite right to call them AI or ML systems. Those platforms are great for democratizing those tools, but they’re still neither AI nor ML.

But they’ve created Art! Music! Faces! Again, let’s think about this. They had to have a massive set of data to ingest, real world approximations and a model (there’s that word again) to work within to create something that sounds or looks better than what a room full of monkeys smashing away at keyboards, easels and instruments will create.

Which, if you really think about it, is sort of like the real creative process only with less discordance and poo flinging. I’m pretty sure that’s not how Da Vinci, Prince or Austen created.

So what should we call them? Well, Enormous Cloud Compute Assets Statiscally Calculating and Modelling Things is a bit of a mouthful. And there’s a collection of nicely descriptive names for simulacra “AI” systems such as Expert Systems, Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms, Blackboards, etc. But they’re still, generally, the same thing at the end of the day. Massive gobs of data, statistical or simulated modeling or meta/heuristics to achieve some desired (and therefore previously known) optimal solution.

I propose we just abbreviate it all down to Simulated Modeling (SM).

Because, Artificial Intelligence, is neither.

(… with apologies to our future sentient machine overlords, please don’t skynet us)

(This is in response to the excellent Wall Street Journal The Pain of the Never-Ending Work Check-In by Rachel Feintzig. It was a featured post for that article at LinkedIN too!)

I mean where do I even start with this … an apt subtitle for this would be how to do everything the way we’ve always done it and be surprised that it doesn’t work.

With yet another wave resurging globally (and vaccinated people exhibiting less severe symptoms and vastly reduced need for hospitalizations), for society to function, businesses need to function, for business to function, they have to learn new modes of behaviors and interactions. At least until we get to a point where energy is widely available & free and matter converters are ubiquitous (Star Trek reference), these are the facts we are presented with.

The video’s we’ve posted and will continue to post over on 1Focus address exactly this, so let’s do a top 3 do’s & don’t’s really quick.

DON’T keep transacting business the way you always have.
DO expect, accept & embrace the need to change, and make adjustments, so you’re transacting business in an intentional, impactful way.

DON’T let business happen to you – that’s so incredibly risky & dangerous – especially since these factor are all known knowns.
DO come together – stop, drop and roll, create a plan, stick to it, tweak it as you go (I’m looking at you perpetual meetings).

For Leaders:
DON’T constantly inspect your people, if you’re micromanaging and people care is in the rear view, you’re not doing 50% of your job! Ok, the hell with it – here’s a shocker – 80% of your job as a leaders is seeing to the well-being of your people, removing impediments and collaborating on progress. It is NOT to monitor or micromanage them!
DO provide and project that sense of calm and, you know, authentically caring about your people. People can tell.

For Contributors:
As with real life, you have to set limits, we ALL have to set limits. Here’s a shocker – after just ONE 50 hour week your efficiency is reduced, after TWO you’re burning out and you’ll have to work ever more to get the same results.
MORE importantly, you’re not the best you for yourself, your family, your friends, or your job at that point – and the viscous cycle will start.

Look, this is why we talk quite a bit in our books about coming together. We’re not pushing some kumbaya new-again hippie fad. The only way any of this succeeds, the only way we break old toxic patterns and create new healthy ones is by coming together and making a change together.

And we’re sitting here on a MOUNTAIN of experience. This is what we do. It’s the HARDEST part of what we do – not the tech, not the process, but gradually, incrementally, consistently bending work spaces, leaders, individuals and cultures into a better place. More happiness & resiliency leads to more productivity & retention & less crisis.

It’s your choice. You can do what you’ve always done, or you can decide to take this opportunity to make a lasting, permanent change that’s healthier for everyone, now, and in the future.

“Wait… aren’t you a technology company?”

Why yes we are! We also do process work.

“So why are you talking about communications and zoom calls and well everything except for the technical work you do!?”

Because NONE of it is successful unless we dig down to the root cause – and the root cause almost always comes down to communication, resiliency and culture!

We don’t want you to be dependent on us. We want to impart the momentum necessary to get you past this hurdle. And nothing we do ever sticks unless we address the fires we’re hired to put out by also working at the people level.

Story time. One of our clients based out of Asia, fairly large, and had been around for 100 years in one form or another. They went through an acquisition spree and tripled in size. They went from one time zone to eight.

While we worked up a plan to address technology platform harmonization we also started asking questions about culture. Needless to say we got some puzzle looks. Here was a tech company asking about culture and other business related matters…

Academic studies and experience show the vast majority of mergers fail due to cultural cohesion issues. Nothing we attempted would work or stick unless we also addressed culture and mindset and communication class part of any work we did or will do!

This is why we’ve been speaking to those topics for the last couple weeks. All the technical and process brilliance in the world won’t help, unless you have the people on board to carry on the work that you do. And you’re able to imbue them with a resilient mindset.

This is what we do at 1Focus. Yes we’re a technology company. Yes we’re a process company. We’re also a people company.

We make sure our solutions stick by addressing people, mindset, culture and communication as part of every technical or process solution that we put in place.

We teach, we show and we do with you at every step of the way.

We’re 1Focus.

Yesterday we talked about how one of the ways you can make virtual meetings more effective is by looking into the camera when you are talking in a group session. Today we’re going to talk about does it have to be a meeting?

80% of you if not more – way more – have too many meetings and not enough time to just do. Imagine if you had your day structured such that you had a time for meetings and time for doing. And doing, by the way, is not responding to emails, It’s time to spend actually doing work.

How would that feel? I know it feels amazing to us, as hard as it was for us to get here and commit to structuring our work day.

So ask yourself this question. Do I have a slide deck that am I going to be reading off of? If the answer is yes, then that’s something you can handle asynchronously. Pick a tool, any Pokemon! You’ve got Slack, Teams Google Meet and several others. Pick a tool that allows you to collaborate asynchronously on a work product, connects to a repository you can store work product in, and has some sort of search ability for both work products and conversations. And actually use that tool!

You’re going to want to have a meeting whenever you need an interactive conversation and include a diversity of perspectives to complete a work product or move past an impediment. Sure it’s fine to jot down some notes to reference, but if you find yourself creating and reading off of a deck take it asynchronous. We love using OneNote for meetings! Form follows function and in this case you’ll find making those habit changes easier and more tactile.

But otherwise, it’s work time! It’ll take real effort and coordination to get yourself and your team there but you can do it! We’ve helped our clients get there, we’ve gone there ourselves – and as hard as it was, it was a real game changer!

You won’t be dreading yet another day of meetings. You’ll be looking forward to your work time and yes even your meeting time. You’ll find yourself working more effectively, not to mention the job satisfaction you get from actually getting things done instead of being in back-to-back meetings.

Try it. Structure your day. Ping us if we can help, but above all let us know how this works out for you.

You can do it!