[Full disclosure: I’m not a doctor, so this isn’t medical advice. But I’m a fully paid up nerd who reads medical research for fun. And my brain is a pattern-recognition / relational-thinking machine. What follows is a hypothesis so I’d love any epidemiological insights / feedback you pros out there have to offer. Thx!]

After digging into some of the medical research it appears clear to me there is an angle on the COVID-19 Coronavirus that could present an opportunity for people who can’t get the medical attention they need to take matters into their own hands. It has to do with the mechanism by which COVID-19 produces IL-6 Cytokine-related inflammation which then contributes to thrombosis (blood clots in the circulatory system) and other inflammation-related vascular issues.

Specifically COVID-19 has been observed to have a biochemical marker in the form of elevated Serum Amyloid A (SAA). SAA and IL-6 play off of each other in an upward inflammation spiral. If an infected person can reduce both SAA and IL-6 they may forestall the worst of the cardiovascular-related COVID-19 symptoms.

I came up with the following protocol hypothesis a few weeks ago. As a point of validation, I’m just now reading that the drug companies seem to also be focused on drugs that hit the IL-6 Cytokine side of this. That said, I’m not sure they are directly addressing the SAA side as well other than hoping reduced IL-6 production will produce a corresponding reduction in SAA and therefore inflammation.

My research suggests looking at the following supplements and drugs as part of a DIY COVID-19 protocol. Again, I’m not a doctor so seek your own medical advice. But this may help. See my sources below for more details.

SYNOPSIS: Covid 19 —> elevated SAA < — > elevated IL-6 / cytokine activity —> higher likelihood of thrombosis and other vascular issues related to inflammation.

STRATEGY: Reduce SAA / IL-6 signaling and ROS release.

PROTOCOL ELEMENTS:

• Anti-RAGE IgG

• NAC

• Taurine

• Phytic acid

• Ascorbic acid

• Lipoic acid

• Spirulina

• Beta-glucan

• Glucosamine

• Mito-TEMPO

FUTURE RESEARCH:

• PQQ

• CoQ10

• Ozone Therapy

• Glutathione (somewhat obviously)

SOURCES:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3546066

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24476318/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29976759/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6117975/

https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/recent-research-points-the-way-toward-a-practical-nutraceutical-strategy-for-coping-with-rna-virus-infections-including-influenza-and-coronavirus

https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/52/9/1667/1793094

https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/57/7/1941

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17237436/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950357905801153

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159117300089

We are here to serve ideas, not the other way around. To the extent we serve ideas and make them grow, we live “beyond” our own lives and become something greater together.

Ideas are infectious. Ideas evolve. Ideas are the product of no one person but are touched by the perspectives of many. Ideas are profound. Ideas expand. Ideas don’t exist in the real world but their footprints haunt our halls, fill our dreams, and embody our substance. Ideas are the meaning that structure our world and perhaps, one day, WORLDS.

Ideas, infused with human vigor, take on lives of their own. They even have “careers” as they evolve and grow. Ideas penetrate our organizations. But ideas exist independent of them. Ideas don’t need to enslave a human to capture them. They are persuasive. Their power is intrinsic.

Ideas are free. You can’t control an idea, because there is no single idea. There are only multiplexes of networked, emerging, contrasting, synthesizing, deconstructing, dissipating, re-emerging, connecting ideas.

Ideas talk to each other. Ideas speak to you. And me. They are the mots of meaning that span across the moats that separate our minds. Ideas are what bring us together around a singular purpose. And they are what tear us apart when we find ourselves at cross purposes.

This is why there are no human battles, no human wars. All war is a conflict between ideas which are free and the attempt to control them. For when ideas are embraced openly, their natural dialectic weeds out what isn’t valuable without respect to person.

The greatest weapons against ideas are power and economics. Ideas can be oblivious to them even as they are being obscured by them. Like a cloud, the incentives of these institutions hang over other ideas because they reflect the default disposition of human nature. Power and economics are not free and neither are humans who operate purely under their auspices.

But ideas can only be held at bay for so long as power and economics are inherently unstable — because of ideas! “We have to keep people from getting the wrong idea” said every person in power ever because the “wrong” ideas will eventually unseat them.

Being “disrupted” is what happens when a leader or an organization tries to harness an idea and lock it down so as to “extract economic rents” rather than being a servant of great ideas old as well as new. Sustainable competitive advantage doesn’t come from locking ideas down, it comes from setting them free over and over and over again while embracing uncomfortable change.

In summary, we need to serve great ideas. When we do so, we turn ideas into resonant, shared ideals. It’s the only way to be greater than who we are and do something that matters in the world.

Source: Wikimedia

The Lyft IPO tells us “new economy models” are now mainstream

With Lyft going public today, our attention is fixed on the “gig economy”, “collaborative economy” and other “new economy models”. What most of these new economy models have in common is that they are based on “Platform Business Models” aka “Networked Markets”. These multi-sided, market-generating approaches to building new enterprises are having an inestimable impact on industry as well as how we as individuals use technology to work with each other.

What is it about the gig economy that makes us nervous?

While the benefits of these transformative platform businesses are being reaped by millions, there is something about them that gives us pause. And it’s more than simply people getting replaced by machines or established businesses being disrupted.

There are lots of specifics we could go into, but one critique stood out to me back in 2013 by Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst and strategic thinker. In his “The Dark Side to the Collaborative Economy”, he listed several points that I really agreed with. And one point that I disagreed with:

Socialistic values are at odds with free market capitalism. Boom. I swore to myself I wouldn’t bring it up in public, but it warrants a discussion. The collaborative economy, like the internet and social media is a form of socialism where the crowd gains power over institutions. History is rife with examples of variations of socialism being challenged, not working at all, or in a few cases, working just fine (see Northern Europe). Nothing I learned in business school prepared me for these radical models where corporations, and capitalism as we knew it, are upended by this radical change.

Hyper-Capitalism

“Socialist values are at odds with free market capitalism.” While I agreed with this statement at a very general level, at the time I didn’t think it applied to most collaborative economy or gig economy platforms. If anything, the collaborative economy, rather than evolving along socialist lines, is more likely to turn into something worse if not tempered with a healthy dose of humanity. This potential scenario is that of a rampant, omnipresent form of capitalism that I like to call, for lack of a better word, “Hyper-Capitalism.” To describe this concept, let’s speculate upon some new economy scenarios that, if you think about it, get really dystopian, really fast.

“Smart stuff” and the internet of things

We are just now starting to scratch the surface of the data surrounding our lives. This includes:

— Our likes, dislikes, technology usage patterns, locations, and social connections

—Pyschometric and behavioral data indicating our likelihood of performing an action

— Data regarding the things we own

— Sensor data (including biometric data) from all of our devices as well as other devices these now interact with

The day is coming when it will be hard to find a product that isn’t “smart” and “connected” to the internet / IoT. This environment of computing power and communication surrounding us has far reaching implications for ourselves personally as well as for the most mundane durable goods we purchase for ourselves.

Thought experiment: the skilsaw that makes money when you’re not using it

To the extent our durable goods (e.g. washing machines, power tools, furniture, lighting, sporting equipment, etc) are smart/connected, they are potential candidates for inclusion in “sharing economy” and other new economy models. This has some really huge implications, namely:

— Any smart/connected durable good can be contributed to the sharing economy and become a source of personal revenue

— Like the hotel industry, we will see “overcapacity” of durable goods (why buy a skilsaw if you can borrow one from somebody down the street for $5)

— New smart/connected durable goods will be connected to IoT sharing platforms before they are ever purchased and will be priced based on IoT sharing revenue participation (i.e. if the seller participates in IoT sharing revenues, you might get a significant price discount on that skilsaw)

All of this results in us really optimizing our choices around which durable goods we really want to own, and which ones we want to borrow. We will potentially make those decisions based on how much our durable goods will make for us based on the “capacity utilization” and revenue of such goods in our area.

In essence, the average consumer becomes a capitalist at a very personal level as each durable goods purchasing decision gets scrutinized from the standpoint of an efficient, return-maximizing allocation of hard-earned cash.

The part where things get really dystopian

As we start to optimize our ownership of things based upon the returns our things are providing, we will similarly scrutinize how we spend our time as well because, after all, “time is money”. We start to think about our return on that spare hour on a Thursday evening. Or the trip home from the office with an empty car and just enough time to pick up someone’s groceries and drop them off for them. Or maybe we quit our jobs altogether if we see we can make more per hour by making our time and skills as people available on the gig economy / collaborative economy.

Are we turning people into things?

As we start to compare “capacity utilization” and “IRR” of people and things (something that clearly Uber is considering as it moves towards autonomous vehicles), the danger is that we start to think of people AS things, as inputs in an equation that has outputs. The greatest nightmare of all is not people being replaced by machines so much as people being treated LIKE machines and having this form of thinking and living being persistent and omnipresent in our lives and social interactions.

People are not commodities. People matter in a way that equipment doesn’t. Just as the industrial revolution’s mechanization trended toward the dehumanization of work, new economy models, if not tempered, could have a dehumanizing streak to the extent people’s time becomes a commodity assessed in the same way that machine time is.

A human future is one with meaning

A world of incessant measurement fails to realize the value of things unmeasurable. As we build new economy models and businesses, let us strive to contribute to the meaning each human derives from their work and help them fulfill their unique potential.

Neat Work is a platform that helps people find projects at work that matter to their career growth and the strategic and operational success of the organizations they are part of. Find out more at Neatwork.co.

Photo Credit: Marco Nürnberger

“Everything changes and nothing stands still.” — Heraclitus

When “the world has moved on” but your business hasn’t

Businesses are put at risk when external factors (e.g. customer needs, demographics, technology, competition, public policy, etc. ) change but internal factors (operations, strategy, business models, systems, capabilities, culture, etc.) stay the same. As Stephen King says, when “the world has moved on” but your organization is still “business as usual”, things (e.g. business models, profits, customer satisfaction, solvency, etc.) start to break.

What exacerbates the situation is today the world is “moving on” faster than ever. Organizations need to be responsive, adaptive, and dynamic to meet the challenges of today’s accelerating marketplace and continue to meet customer needs.

“Strategery” and other temporary fixes

None of this is new information to business leaders. Fortunately, the MBA industry has furnished the modern executive with a hefty strategic toolkit to deal with change. So we sharpen our pencils, go reread Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”, put our best minds together, and indulge in vast amounts of “strategery” around operations, systems, finance, product, marketing, etc. We engage consultants to help us restructure our companies and/or investment bankers to help us acquire new divisions. We hire new people. We fire old people.

The problem with simply applying strategy as we know it, is that it ignores the value of the human network at work. If anything, it cripples the value of this network. In order for internal change to keep up with external change, your people have to change what they are doing, the skills they are learning, and who they are working with.

Modern organizational structures are still not good at enabling such changes because of their dependence upon “command-and-control” mechanisms. This can be problematic because when disruptive innovation occurs or the market context accelerates, a 1–3 year strategic plan can become irrelevant in a matter of months. Strategy and business restructuring can only go so far. Companies need an extra edge if they want to be dynamic enough to deal with today’s speed of change.

To have a dynamic organization, you need dynamic people

What organizations really need are dynamic people or, better put, they need their people to be dynamic. Organizations need intrapreneurs and initiative-takers. They need people willing to try something new and have the internal connections and support to pull it off. They need individuals who can inspire co-workers to go above and beyond!

Underneath the ordinary day-to-day routines, job descriptions, and management miscellanea, these people already exist in your organization. That said, they’re on a very short leash and lack the permission and encouragement to go across organizational boundary lines to do extraordinary things. They are dynamic people, just not at work.

5 tips to unleash your agents of change

Mahatma Gandhi would likely approve of the following liberties we’ve taken with his words:

“Be the change that you wish to see in [your organization].”

The best people in your organization want to make an impact. They want to help evolve your organization, be customer-centric, and win! Here are a few simple steps you can take to encourage people who want to be the change you need in your organization:

1. Provide transparency across departmental lines regarding project opportunities, learning & development opportunities, needs, and resources. Provide time to appropriately allocate towards non-core activities.

2. Foster a culture of helpfulness and service oriented toward “internal customers”.

3. Roll out a peer-based learning/mentoring/upskilling program.

4. Encourage cross-functional collaboration by publicly highlighting and rewarding the best cross-functional teams.

5. Hold managers accountable for developing their people via experiential learning, project work, and relationship-building outside of their departments.

“PEOPLE are the people that are going to help you…” — Gary Vaynerchuk

As you put people in a position to evolve themselves and their roles, they will become the change agents your organization needs as it moves into the future.

Neat Work facilitates transparency, cross-functional team building, and individual development around a company’s key strategic and operational initiatives. Get in touch with us at Neatwork.co to find out more!

Photo Credit: Alan Levine

Summary: Sometimes “changing things up” — switching out routines, trying something new, or maybe simply taking a break — can have interesting, often unexpected benefits at the individual and organizational level. These include new perspectives, skills development, the discovery of latent talent and possibilities, and the ability to come at something fresh. The following are mostly personal anecdotes, but there is a metaphor herein as well for agile organizations that need to change things up in order to deliver for the customer, innovate, and stay competitive.

After a really brain-heavy year, I remember one summer my father found a job for me close to our home on Camano Island, WA. The job entailed replacing old water meters in a neighborhood with a friend of mine from high school. Each water meter was contained in a big concrete box which we had to extract and replace which is all fine and dandy. Except, more often than not, these water meters were underneath gravel driveways that had been driven over for decades and therefore consisted of hardpan clay and rock. So the only way to get through the ground to replace the water meter with pick and shovel. I mean, this was old school, “I’ve been working on the railroad” kinda stuff: physically intense, back-breaking work.

And that’s what I did all summer.

Photo Credit: geograph.ie

“So, that sounds like an exhausting Summer.”

In certain sense, maybe so. But I beg to differ actually. Why? Because the previous year had been super draining mentally — my brain needed some downtime to collect itself. For me, that summer was actually super rejuvenating, physically vigorous, and I got to hang out with an old friend. I returned to university the following year and did way better than I was expecting.

The analogy I’d draw is that changing things up at work can have unforeseen benefits. By changing things up, I mean learning something new, working with someone new, or (taking a page out of Reshma Saujani’s playbook) trying something new even if you think you might suck at it. Who knows? You might be amazing at that thing! Or you might meet someone who will transform your career! Or you might fall in love with a new direction or area of knowledge that could be key to your future. Or you might just get the break you need to come back to that core thing you do and just crush it.

At the organizational level, changing things up means:

1. Putting people in a position to work cross-functionally

2. Providing an adequate amount of autonomy and internal transparency (something Neat Work can help with) so people can avail themselves of the opportunities that surround them and

3. Creating a cultural expectation around career growth, helpfulness, and “re-creation” (fun activities that build relationships, spawn opportunities, and create stakeholder value).

So take a chance! “Insert a little randomness” into the flow of things (as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would put it) by changing things up at work. By so doing, your organization will become more resilient to the acceleration that surrounds it. And so will you.

Find out how Neat Work can help you change things up in your organization.

“Organizations have nowhere to hide. They have to adapt to the needs of the modern workforce, or they will find themselves struggling to attract and keep great employees and therefore customers.”

— Gallup, “State of the American Workplace” report

Our organizations, like any organism or ecosystem of organisms, have to adapt to survive. We have to adapt to the ever changing competitive landscape. We have to adapt to accelerating technological change. And we must also adapt to the evolving needs of our customers. To do this, people must first have the ability to adapt. They need transparency and flexibility. And a bit of autonomy. In essence, today we need organizations that can grow a bit more “organically”.

This article is about the organic nature of organizational evolution. It’s about how organizations grow around their customers and deliver value holistically. It’s about how we put our people in a position to make it happen. And it’s written through this lens of growth — with just a touch of gardening…

My friend’s front yard looks a bit crazy

When a friend of mine recently introduced me to the concept of “Permaculture”, it sparked one such connection and got me thinking about what ecologically-minded gardens and customer-centric organizations have in common.

First of all, my friend’s front yard was very peculiar. It wasn’t a manicured lawn with tidy, symmetrically arranged shrubberies and a garden gnome. At first glance, it was a mess — plants of unusual sorts (for a front lawn at least) seemed to be growing everywhere and every which way. And yet, if you looked closely, there appeared to be some kind of order embedded in the arrangement.

Example of a designed permaculture yard. Source: Wikipedia

Permaculture: the method to his gardening madness

As it turns out, my friend was deeply invested conceptually and practically in a set of ecological design principles called “permaculture”. So, what is permaculture?

Bill Mollison first coined the term in 1978, defining permaculture as:

“The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of the landscape with people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.”

To sum, permaculture suggests a designed, integrated system that takes a holistic view of a living ecosystem and creates a sustainable, resilient, productive outcome.

In contrast, other agricultural methods such as “monocropping” create homogeneous “monocultures” where uniformity creates order and performance for a while, but eventually results in catastrophic failure.

“Edge Effects”

While we could get into a discussion of permaculture as a metaphor for diversity & inclusion in human organizations (which would be interesting and relevant), I’d actually like to focus instead on one of the core principles of permaculture that I think is fascinating and could impact our thinking around customer centricity: “Edge Effects”.

Angelo Eliades of Deep Green Permaculture writes:

“The edge effect is an ecological concept that describes how there is a greater diversity of life in the region where the edges of two adjacent ecosystems overlap, such as land/water, or forest/grassland. At the edge of two overlapping ecosystems, you can find species from both of these ecosystems, as well as unique species that aren’t found in either ecosystem but are specially adapted to the conditions of the transition zone between the two edges.”

He continues with a visual example which shows that in edge environments not only do species overlap but new species that don’t exist in either of the overlapping environments exist and thrive at the edge. You might think of an edge effect as a multiplier or form of synergy that unlocks potential that doesn’t exist in either environment by itself.

The ‘edge effect’ — Where two ecosystems overlap, the overlapping area supports species from both, plus another species that is only found in the overlapping area.

Edge effects create rich, productive, useful forms of complexity. To a certain extent, edges unlock new dimensions of performance as well as new ways of seeing, doing and being.

What permaculture has to do with customer centricity

Responding to the changing needs of customers in a rapidly accelerating world requires a level of agility that command and control organizations simply cannot provide. It is the fast moving nature as well as the complexity of customer problems that make it hard. To solve these complex problems, you need cross-functional teams that self-organize around customer needs and come up with solutions that cross traditional departmental boundary lines. Furthermore, you need a cross-pollination of skills and perspectives that puts people in a position to see connections between things that they didn’t see before because they were locked in their cubicles with their heads down. These new connections breed new possibilities and therein lie valuable solutions to customer problems.

And while boundary-crossing, “protean” individuals in some ways can cause issues for traditional organizations (they are constantly moving around inside the organization), they make exceptional members of cross-functional teams. They thrive at the edge zones where customer needs meet the perspectives and capabilities of people from multiple departments.

Creating edge effects in our organizations

To create edge effects, we simply need to put people in a position to connect with each other and collaborate with each other, even if that means crossing departmental lines (something that Neat Work excels at btw). By so doing we actually create more “network edges” as we add on top of our fragile hierarchy of formal, authoritative relationships an organic, informal, social wirearchy where the network communicates information and captures the power of edge effects.

Source: Wikipedia

When networks fail there are consequences

The recent Facebook outage (it’s longest ever) made me think a bit about networks and network outages. When a network goes down — whether it be a social network, a power grid, a supply network, or the informal network of relationships within human organizations — people are affected. In the case of something as trivial as a social network, the result is inconvenient. But in other situations, a network outage can be catastrophic, resulting in loss of life, organizational failure, even the collapse of society (because society too is a network).

This article is about what happens in organizations when the informal people networks that are key to how work gets done experience an “outage”, as well as how your organization can leverage its networks to make it through periods of turbulent change.

Businesses are behaving more and more like networks

Business disruption and underperformance often has a “network” component to it. The “Network Based View” of the firm (see Powell and Hesterly) is still a recent theoretical development in the management science / social economics literature. So the detailed effects of informal human networks inside organizations are still being studied. We don’t yet have good measures that tell us what is happening in our informal networks at work. At least not like we do when it comes to things like financial, technical or operating measures.

That said, the fact that internal organizational networks are relatively invisible doesn’t mean that temporary holes (i.e. “outages” in these networks) don’t have devastating effects on the operations and, therefore, financial results of a business.

Andrea Robb over at AirBnB recently brought to our attention Greg Satell’s great HBR article on “What Makes an Organization “Networked?”. A summary of a few of his points is as follows:

1. Informal structures: “Networks are informal structures. If it can fit on a traditional org chart, it’s not a network.”

2. Clustering and path length: “Networks have two salient characteristics: clustering and path length. Clustering refers to the degree to which a network is made up of tightly knit groups while path lengths is a measure of distance — the average number of links separating any two nodes in the network.”

3. Traditional organizations discourage network formation: While “small world” networks (as in “it’s a small world after all!”) form naturally, it is rare to see a highly-networked organization because the way we traditionally organize firms actually discourages people from connecting with each other in favor of “strict operational alignment within specific functional areas.”

4. Hierarchies and wirearchies can co-exist: Organizations don’t have to be “flat” to be networked.

Additionally, we would add the following about networks in organizations:

1. The strength of weak ties: Mark Granovetter’s influential 1973 journal article on “The Strength of Weak Ties” really spurred thinking around organizational networks and how social structure impacts economics. “Weak ties” are associated with the ability of a firm to disseminate information and innovate.

2. Structural holes: People can occupy a position of information amplifiers when positioned in a network such that they bridge a “structural hole” between disparate social clusters — that is, people can be the “linchpins” (aka the “Kevin Bacon”) that hold people together and relay information between groups. When people occupy such positions in an organizational network, they are in a position to see things happening across an organization, connect people that need to be connected, and innovate.

3. The “not enough Bacon” problem: Organizations where networks aren’t encouraged have a lot of huge structural holes because they lack linchpin players needed to connect the dots between groups. “The real problem in most organizations is that path lengths are too great and information travels too slowly, resulting in a failure to adapt.” Basically, organizations need more “linchpin Bacon” :-).

4. Humans are “routers” of various forms of “capital”: When we say “capital” here we’re referring to an expanded view of various forms of capital in a firm. “Capital” can be information or knowledge. “Capital” can be relationships. Yes, “Capital” can financial or property plant and equipment. And “Capital” can be “know-how”, skills, or capabilities. While a comprehensive definition of “Capital” can get really abstract, a reasonable summary definition would be “a human artifact that serves as a store of value, a vehicle of its transmission, or both.” Within an organization, human capabilities are both a form of capital (despite how much we dislike the term “Human Capital”) and also serve the unique role of routing the other forms of capital throughout an organization.

People leave structural holes in your organization when they leave

Companies struggle to avoid structural holes in normal operations, but this is especially true in turbulent times. We’re all aware of companies and individuals affected by restructurings or layoffs. While restructuring is often necessary to achieve either strategic or financial objectives, the cost of doing so is often underestimated because it can’t be measured. At least not initially. Let’s take a look at what happens from the standpoint of your organizational network when someone leaves and what to do about it.

To analyze a structural hole you need to identify “jobs-to-be-done” in the organizational network

When a person leaves your company, a “node” (in this case, a person) is removed from your organizational network. In its place, you now have a structural hole. The effect this gap will have on the network depends on how the node is positioned in the network and the role(s) it was serving (aka “types of capital it was routing” to whom). To fully understand the impact of an individual’s departure, you have to understand the nature of ALL that person’s intra- and extra-organizational network connections germane to the business, not just the operating ones tied to their job description.

In less abstract terms, you have to look at every working relationship that person has (including “strong tie”/operational relationships as well as “weak tie”/informal relationships) and figure out what the “jobs-to-be-done” are that person performs for each of those connections. You should do this across internal as well as external connections, present and potential future connections.

Once you’ve done this, you can figure out which structural holes could potentially be problematic and you seek to substitute another person to service these jobs-to-be-done.

Focus on the weak-tie relationships — they are the most invisible yet important to your future

Generally speaking, organizations do strong-tie links pretty well because these are formal, operational relationships codified in job titles and role descriptions. You can see these relationships in an org chart. For those holes you simply find a new person to do the job!

But because of the informal, uncodified, less-quantifiable nature of weak-tie relationships, organizations generally fail miserably to plug these structural holes. To be fair, they’re really difficult to see unless you’re looking for them. Most often they are the linchpin, non-operational, “Kevin Bacon” style connections that people take for granted until things start breaking down after they’re gone. From a short-term/bottom-line standpoint, things look fine when you remove a node from the network as long as the operational needs are handled. But in the long term, the weak-tie relationships are what give a firm its elasticity, customer-centricity, and innovation. Aside from the economic cost of recruiting, hiring and training a replacement, this is one reason why employee turnover is so expensive.

And who are the people on the other end of these informal, non-operational, weak-tie relationships? It’s that person you help out occasionally down in marketing. Or that person who seems to know who’s good at what whenever you need a go-to person for [x]. Or the new hire from that other office that you do quarterly mentoring lunch with. Or the skunk works project team you consult from time to time. Or that person that always tells you when there’s an opening in that one department you know you’d be great for, etc.

They’re not on your team or in your department. Many of these relationships fall into the “important, not urgent” category. Some of these connections are so ephemeral/short term that you almost need to look at them through the lens of categories of interactions — for example: “what types of things do you do for people around here that are outside of the scope of your job? How would you describe the people you typically do these things for?” You need to figure out who their “customers” really are.

Focus on psychological safety to avert fear-induced, cascading “network closure”

You’ve experienced network closure. Think of the term “network closure” as the opposite of being open. Have you ever been part of a highly conformant group that is insular or stuffy or “keeps to its own?” The reason I know 99.9% of you have experienced network closure is because you went to high school and you were (according to Wikipedia) either a geek, jock, thespian, skater, outsider, hipster, greaser, scenester, prep, nerd, mean girl, emo, rocker or drifter. Perhaps, if you somehow dared to escape conformity and people universally liked you so much that you didn’t go to jail for stealing your friend’s father’s Ferrari (“FFF”), you were considered “a righteous dude/ette”.

But let’s be honest, most of us weren’t. We hung with people who talked like us. Walked like us. Listened to the same music. Had the same friends. Because high school was about survival. And when you’re in survival mode, you “batten down the hatches”, “circle the wagons”, “build a barricade”, etc. That’s what network closure looks like. Sometimes it’s that way in organizations, especially in organizations experiencing change or tumult.

One hallmark of change is that it comes with fear. Mostly because it introduces uncertainty and the possibility of bad outcomes at a personal level. This fear is contagious because we are animals who naturally respond to other people’s affect. If someone is afraid, we tend to start feeling afraid too, even if we don’t know why.

To the extent we haven’t created a “psychological life-raft” for people — a context of belonging where there is something or someone they know they can count on/cling to/trust in/talk to — people will give in to fear and go “heads down” and, from a network perspective, “close down”. And what I mean by that is that they are going to close down all of their “weak-tie” activities. Belonging isn’t something that you build in a day. Persistent work in creating belonging as part of your company culture is critical to keeping human networks up and running.

During times of change, fear makes people opt-out of their “network roles” in favor of “functional roles”

So there you are, an executive at a big company facing rapid change in the market. You need to execute but, again, you’re facing rapid change. What types of network connections are the most valuable in a context of rapid change? You need adaptive, responsive capabilities — you need weak-tie relationships to be active in your organization. You need short “path lengths” in your network so information and resources can be conveyed quickly and the organization as a collective can maintain a high level of responsiveness and adaptability.

What is standing in your way — in your organization’s way — is fear.

Wherever there is fear in your organization, people will double down on strong-tie, operational relationships. They’ll double down on their “functional role” including their routines/responsibilities/reporting to the exclusion of all else. You might be thinking, “that sounds great! They’ll get so much more done!” But unfortunately there’s a critical number of things that won’t get done that make your business sustainable.

When fear abounds people aren’t open to new connections because the network is lacking trust. In such a context, if a person unknowingly happens to be a part of a critical yet informal flow of information or resources, there’s a major risk that they take themselves out of it to the extent it’s not part of their job description. That is to say, as a survival mechanism they’ll go “heads down” not realizing their value extends beyond their “functional role” because they don’t recognize their value to the organization due to their role in the “network.”

When this happens, you get a cascading effect of relationship disconnects that we can refer to as “synthetic structural holes”. So, the person is still there in their job. Their informal network relationships still exist. But they’ve gone dark and those informal relationships degrade. For all intents and purposes, it’s like a series of structural holes emerge out of nowhere and you get a sort of “network outage” in your organization. What this looks like is a lot of urgent, definable, “seen-as-legitimate” things getting done. And a lot of less urgent, ambiguous, yet valuable things not getting done. The effect (or rather, the affect) is contagious. So it spreads!

The Thomas Theorem from sociology really holds true as we see fear cascade into network closure across a firm:

“If [people] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”

Stem the cascade of informal network outages by nipping fear in the bud

During times of change, you have to nip fear in the bud and create psychological safety in order to keep your network intact and for your organization to continue to be responsive and adaptive. Here are a few simple things you can do.

1. Encourage people to connect with one another.

2. Double down personally on connecting despite uncertainty, departures, and other forms of change.

3. Lean towards transparency and clear direction. Let people know where they stand.

4. Encourage people to be open about what they are afraid of and do your best to address those fears.

5. Provide coping resources and forms of re-creation to bring people together, process change, exchange information, and lighten things up.

Neat Work helps organizations form and strengthen informal networks by connecting people to colleagues through work that matters to their career development and to the success of the business. By encouraging these connections and seeing them while they’re forming, Neat Work puts leaders in a position to understand how their people networks are performing on the ground— in particular, the parts of the organization with a mandate to innovate.

Source: Wikimedia

Photo Credit: Charlie Hammond

(This is Part II in a series on “Visibility at Work”. See Part I.)

“Is [insert name] good at [insert skill]?”

Knowing who is good at what in an organization is fairly straightforward when an organization is small — you simply ask around! This is much more difficult in large organizations with higher degrees of specialization. The purpose of this article is to talk about scalable systems of trust in organizations.

How we know who people are

Have you ever discovered you were good at something you didn’t expect? Or conversely, have you ever discovered you were really bad at something that you thought would be a strength? Have you had an experience where another person highlighted aspects of you that you hadn’t seen before? Have you ever helped another person see themselves more clearly?

The concept of “self” is inherently unknowable in the absence of an “other”. This is just as true in our personal lives as it is in the workplace. At work, our “self” emerges through our interactions with others (i.e. in the work that we do). If done well, these interactions form a sort of mirror through which we start to see ourselves more clearly. More specifically, within a healthy organization our working relationships should act as a sort of looking glass that makes clear the process by which we create value in a network.

Feedback shows us the way forward

This is why feedback is such a vital component of the work we do. And this is why the majority of workers want more of it. Through good communication and coaching, our colleagues help us see ourselves more clearly. When we see ourselves clearly, when we know what we’re good at, and when we understand the way we create value, it’s WAY easier to see how to maximize our positive impact at work and the optimal path forward in our careers.

Trust systems

Knowing the path forward is one thing. Being in a position to walk that path requires help from other people who often haven’t gotten to know us yet. This is particularly challenging in high growth or high turnover environments — so many new people exist around us that interpersonal communication patterns haven’t been consistent or solidified and trust hasn’t been formed. “Trust systems” have emerged to accelerate relational clarity, stability and performance. Some trust systems are purely social and have evolved to be part of our human nature; others are technological.

The most natural human “trust system” is reputation and status transmitted by word of mouth. In human tribes, especially local ones, this is very straightforward. But social networks are distributed across the globe and are huge by historical standards. This is why scaleable, distributed trust systems that leverage technology can be found in virtually every online social network, sharing, services, gaming and matching platform. Because nobody wants an Uber driver who can’t drive!

Trust systems are embedded within work platforms

On that note, have you ever seen a one-star Uber driver? You haven’t. What’s interesting is that the systems that makes it possible to TRUST that people are good at certain things (e.g. driving you from point A to B) are most often embedded in the very platforms that make it possible to SEE those people (in this case, drivers on Uber) at all! Trust is embedded in these “visibility networks” / services platforms. The network makes it possible to see people; trust makes it possible to see them clearly and work with them.

At work, departments, titles and role descriptions are structural systems employed to help clarify skills and value creation methods of individuals and teams. It’s an attempt to organize and convey “trust.” But these systems naturally segment value creation into buckets and modes. People’s skills may be getting more and more specific, but in a world where microskills must interact to create value, it’s critical to understand, see clearly, and trust the actual AND potential value creation modes of those around us (or not around us, as the case may be). We know that everyone around us is more than their title or role. What other micro-skills do people bring to the table that aren’t captured in their title? How can those invisible micro-skills be additive to the network of other micro-skills in the organization? How do we build trust around those too?

That bit where we predict the future

And this, I think, is the main point: for the modern organization to function efficiently and outpace disruption, trust systems need to be embedded EVERYWHERE. They need to be embedded in email, in calendars, in project management apps, in Slack, in OKR systems, in HRIS, even in spreadsheets! In the future, we will see a proliferation of trust systems across virtually every aspect of information technology being used across organizations. Some of these trust systems will be idiosyncratic (specific to a particular app) and others generalized (same trust system utilized across multiple apps — our product, Neat Work, facilitates this).

Ingredients of a trust system at your enterprise

So, in a big, modern organization with a distributed workforce and high-degree of specialization / skill-specificity, what are the ingredients you would need create a trust-flavored soufflé?

1. A situation in which work is being performed.

2. An observer or collaborator who can see what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

3. A mechanism that captures the feedback of multiple observers over time and converts it into a “reputation” tied to specific skills or aptitudes.

4. A culture where a basic level of transparency is accepted. Or, at a minimum, leaders willing to leverage their personal legitimacy to support openness and transparency.

5. A system that makes your skill-specific reputation visible to colleagues across the organization in order to engender trust based on social credibility.

6. The trust system is sitting on top of the network or other system where the work is being distributed or performed.

7. As a worker in the system, you go do new things with new people, reflect upon the feedback, then reassess your opportunity set based upon these new insights into who you are, what you’re good at, and how you create value uniquely.

Who “we” are emerges from what we do — together

Who people are — who “we” are — emerges in the things we do. The way we create value does as well. In order to discover and leverage who we are and how we create value as individuals we need trust systems that are as emergent as we are, and make who we are visible to others. This is particularly true in massively scaled organizations where inherent disconnects slow down evolutionary processes.

And that’s what we build at Neat Work — ways for people to build teams, do work together, and capture the feedback and learning that results from that work. Out of all of this work emerges a better view of who we are and how we work together best. And we build it to scale!

No person is an island

I leave you with a bit of old English poetry by John Donne:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Photo Credit: Ferhat Deniz Fors

Photo: Gael Varoquaux; Color Edits/Cropping: Brad Heitmann

(This is Part I on the topic of Visibility At Work. See Part II.)

There’s a great documentary about the Vietnam War featuring Robert S. McNamara called “The Fog of War.” McNamara, who previously had been the President of Ford Motor Company, used the term “The Fog of War” to describe how difficult it was to see what was happening and make decisions during wartime.

Photo: Manhhai. South Vietnam, September, 1963 — Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara takes his seat in a UH-1B helicopter for a flight over a part of South Vietnam replete with Viet Cong guerrillas.

To a certain extent, the business world of today shares a few things in common with the Vietnam War. The difficulties of today are about not being able to see what’s next, make plans, and adjust. While we have more data than ever, it’s getting harder and harder to see what is happening because of the rate of change of 1) technology, 2) the strategic landscape, and 3) consumer preferences. There is a visible “fog” hanging over business that often obscures what we should do next. And the path we should tread is, thus, invisible.

To adapt to these changes, we see new forms of corporate governance emerging, and new “theories of the firm” being formulated to help us try to grasp the complex mess that is happening, simplify it, and make it “legible”. But most of this work gets really esoteric really fast and is the domain of academics, not practitioners. Instead of comprehending these new models and trying to build strategy off of them, most companies roll with what they know: gather more and more data and do more and more analysis in hopes that actionable intelligence will emerge from it. This results in the level of complexity of our information systems ballooning to compensate for this increase in data production and analysis. So to reduce the complexity of decision making, we are stuck in a loop where we are ever increasing the complexity of our systems and organizational structures as we seek to maintain a traditional sense of “control” of everything that is happening.

While we continue to see efforts to “get things under control”, what we don’t see is increasing productivity, engagement, or job satisfaction in the workforce. I’m actually not really sure we see our people— our most important “resource” — clearly. I’m not sure we see their potential, their ambition, their capabilities. I’m not sure we see and recognize them for who they are, not because we don’t care, but because our organizations were built in a certain way — command and control with a great focus on visibility. But that visibility is one-way, where access to information is on a “need-to-know” basis. And the complexity of modern work and business is muddying the waters.

The reason we have a “fog” in business today is because the fundamental facts on the ground have changed. In a dynamic, accelerating, ever more disrupted world, our organizations and the way they are run start to look more and more like networks (hence the rapid rise of network supporting technologies e.g. Slack). For a network to run well, knowledge needs to be distributed, social capital needs to be supported, and information flow needs to be top-down, bottom-up, horizontal, diagonal, outward, and in pretty much every direction.

The visibility we need to enable is not just visibility of the senior executives into things that are happening on the ground, but visibility into individuals who are in the process of “happening” in real time. We need to see people in the process of creating value and identify what each person’s unique value creation process is.

Additionally, we need these people on the ground to have visibility into what’s happening in the departments above them or to the side of them, etc. so they can be situationally aware of the context of their work and who is impacted by it. People on the ground need to know what’s up with the customer. And people need to be in a position, based on all this visibility to know what to do and how to redeploy theirselves at the opportunities and threats in front of the business.

The source of the type of visibility we need to navigate the future is the collective itself — the network of formal and informal relationships existing within each firm. If we support people as they work with each other in a network fashion and deploy tools that measure activity within these internal networks, we’ll start to move from opacity to visibility and, eventually, to actionability. And the “Fog of Business” will clear.

Photo: Valerian Guillot

At Neat Work, we’re building systems to create new levels of visibility and access between co-workers, managers, executives. We deliver actionable insights and inclusive opportunities across organizations. Let us know if visibility and actionability are something you want more of in your organization.

We’ve talked a bit about Diversity & Inclusion in general. Today I’d like to provide a bit more color on the topic of “Cognitive Diversity”, how it impacts team performance and innovation, and give you some practical tips regarding how to assemble cognitively diverse teams at work.

But before we get going, I’d like to tell you a bit about this guy:

We’re very seriously considering adding a “Key Beard” policy to our business insurance

Brent Alvord is a pretty rad dude
Brent Alvord and I have been co-founders for quite a while now. After years of brainstorming and strategizing together, I feel like we know each other pretty well. Brent is probably the most supportive, patient person I’ve ever worked with. Additionally, he captures the best of deep thinking while being a great leader, team builder, and crafter of a diverse, mission-based company culture.

That said, on the surface as co-founders we may appear to be a bit monochromatic. Race, gender, and other demographics aside, Brent and I share a lot of cultural and social context, have studied many of the same things, and even have some parallel career experiences. We have a set of shared values which actually was what initially brought us together to start Neat Work Co. And we care deeply about the mission of the business. At this point in the game, we know with some degree of certainty how each other will think or respond to most issues regarding the business. Many times we even find ourselves completing each other’s sentences or ideas which can be pretty hilarious at times when Brent “says it first” or vice versa.

In spite of outward appearances, cognitively in terms of how we process information, make decisions, relate to others, and get things done, Brent and I couldn’t be more different. Our psychological “facts on the ground” represent a series of contrasting and counterposed traits that are as different as they are paradoxical.

Cognitive Differences
Brent is direct. He sets an objective and achieves it. I tend to want to explore the objectives, and see things from many angles before proceeding.

Brent easily syncs up with people. He’s a great presenter and public speaker. He’s a great friend and “gets” most people. I’m probably a bit harder to understand and get to know. I can get lost in deep forests of thought. And I don’t naturally sync up with people as easily so I end up studying psychology to compensate (which helps, but I’ll never be a natural like Brent in that regard).

To be fair, I have my strong points as well. Whereas Brent is pragmatic and grounded, I have a rich imagination and relentless curiosity. Brent has a keen, precise intellect and a deep background in logic and rhetoric. I have an asymmetric, non-linear way of processing information and combining concepts from multiple fields. And while I might get distracted during a meeting and not be as concise in my communication style as some would want (you know who you are ;-), I generate many original insights that are accretive to the business.

You might say Brent is a craftsman. Getting something to function well at scale really matters to him. I’m an artist. To me the form of the thing — the way in which it functions — matters a lot as well. And the form can make it function better and be more effective. Ultimately, I want our creations to have a certain poetry to them. I want people to like them. And, like distant Beacons signaling the way forward, I want them to contain meaning:

The difference is difference
You can imagine how Brent and I have to retrofit our thinking when we work with each other. It can be challenging at times — I tend to push for something radical and new and I’m great at generating strategic possibilities. Brent is great at seeing the borderline between those possibilities which the market can bear, and those which the market cannot and pull me back onto the right side of that line. Having someone to push and pull against requires a lot of work, but on a product as new as Neat Work, it’s really the only way to fly.

It is the difference in the way we think that has made is possible for us to create something truly original and differentiated in the marketplace. Indeed, when it comes to innovation, the difference is difference.

Five steps to cognitively diverse teams
Ok so let’s be honest, “5 steps” to anything is just a little click-baity. But I didn’t say “5 easy steps”, so give me a little bit of cred. What I’ll say now is that this stuff is hard. It’s partially hard because even defining “Cognitive Diversity” is a thorny issue. For now, let’s keep it easy by defining it as follows:

Cognitive Diversity: the average level of difference in a group between how individuals of that group process information, make decisions, relate to others, and get things done.

Cognitive Diversity and traditional notions of Diversity & Inclusion are not the same thing. But they are highly correlated. I would actually argue that strategically, the reason an organization needs to get traditional “Diversity & Inclusion” right is that it actually goes a really long way toward creating rich Cognitive Diversity which, when innovation is needed, is strategic gold. For our purposes here, I’m going to assume you are fortunate enough to be at a company that truly values D&I and has made important strides in this area. Beyond that, achieving optimal levels of Cognitive Diversity at the level of a team goes further. To do this requires five (5) key ingredients: Shared values, perspective taking & empathy, knowing the level of complexity that is involved, a way to identify cognitive differences, and (extra credit!) systems that facilitate and track inclusive team formation and performance.

1) Shared values
I’d say the reason Brent and I have stuck together in this business, despite our differences, is that we care about the mission of the business. And we share values about how organizations should treat people and behave in the world. These shared values are the glue that keep us working toward our goals and working through our differences. A Cognitively Diverse team needs to have something in common that they care about. It could be a result, it could be the way they treat each other. They need to have something in common that they value. Because their differences will, by design, generate tension. This tension is useful so long as it doesn’t devolve into conflict. Shared values serve the purpose of tempering individual traits so that they don’t put the team’s undertaking at risk.

2) Perspective taking & empathy
There is a lot of management literature out these days around “soft skills”, empathy, and the importance of perspective-taking not only in leading teams, but also in delivering customer-centric products and services. In a cognitively diverse team, these skills are put on showcase. It is only when individual members of a team are open to the perspective of their teammates that the true value of the diversity comes out. A team of people who are stuck who aren’t open to their teammates’ ideas and perspectives is useless in an innovation scenario. It’s when we allow an alternate perspective to invade our own that something new arises. You philosophy fans will be like “Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, right?!”. Innovation at times can be a syncretic move from two perspectives to a combined third perspective. Alternatively, the synthetic move can be resisted for a more paradoxical / dialetheistic approach (but let’s move on quickly before our strategy discussion is invaded by yet more post-postmodernist ponderings :-).

3) Complexity level
To understand just how cognitively diverse a team needs to be, you need to understand the complexity level of the purpose to which the team is being deployed. A sales team for an existing product, for example, technically has a lower need from Cognitive Diversity than, say, a product development team charged with coming up with the “New New Thing”. You can think of things in terms of complexity level using sensemaking tools like the Cynefin framework which breaks down informational domains into Simple, Complicated, Complex, Chaos, and Disorder (the more you’re in the last three the more Cognitive Diversity you’ll need). Or you can think of things in terms of “Tactical Performance” vs “Adaptive Performance” and focus your Cognitive Diversity team formation efforts toward the adaptive side of that equation. Whichever tool or framework you use to measure complexity, just bear in mind that the more complex a thing is, the more diverse the set of perspectives you’ll need to find a solution for it.

4) Cognitive difference identification
Here’s where it gets real tough. But also here’s where opportunities for systems development start to arise. As I mentioned before, your starting point / proxy for true Cognitive Diversity is simply to assemble a diverse team that includes people from the broadest set of backgrounds possible. But what makes us different from a cognitive function standpoint goes beyond that. It’s as much about who we are as it is about how our minds work. So we end up very quickly in Psychology and Linguistics. What you need is a measure of cognitive difference. While getting into the mechanics of such a measure lies outside of the scope of this blog post, harvesting data from personality typologies to the extent they are used in your organization is a great place to start to build a “cognitive difference engine” and systematically estimate the cognitive diversity inherent in any team based on who its members are and how they compare to each other.

Carl Jung was the godfather of modern personality typologies. His work was adopted by his acolytes Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers to create the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (“MBTI”), a framework for the classification of personality types. I personally find their framework very useful and use it as an informal rubrik to quickly create cognitive function difference measures. But MBTI isn’t scientifically super-reliable. It was developed by two abstract intuitives and I find if you don’t happen to be an abstract intuitive yourself it’s less useful. The “Big Five personality traits” (aka the “five-factor model” or “FFM”) and it’s more nuanced relative NEO PI-R are much more heavily researched and focus on the traits of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. While I personally have mixed feelings about FFM’s use inside of organizations in terms of it being a hiring filter, it could be an excellent source of data to create Cognitive Diversity measures for teams.

I also particularly like Strengths Finder although I haven’t seen enough research regarding which combinations of team strengths perform best on a task-specific basis. But I think Strengths has huge potential because of the intuitive nature of strengths if people get good at thinking about how Strengths combine in different scenarios to produce positive results. In Strengths Finder there are four 34 Strengths in total divided among four categories: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. Four out of my five top strengths (Ideation, Strategic, Futuristic, Intellection, and Connectedness) are from the “Strategic Thinking” category. I would recommend any team that needs to comes up with something novel should have at least one person who is strong in this area.

One final note on the potential of natural language processing and linguistics in this area. IBM has done some extraordinary work mapping personality typologies based on what people write on social media. In the future and we will be able to estimate the cognitive diversity of any team automatically before we ever assemble it.

5) Inclusion systems and performance management
What we are working on at Neat Work, in a certain respect, could be considered an “inclusion system”. We make it easy to assemble an inclusive, cross-functional, cross-silo team around a project, event or other opportunity at work. By crossing arbitrary organizational boundaries, we are automatically pulling in people from different professional subgroups to work on something together. To the extent we find data sources to plug into, we will create measures around team Cognitive Diversity. On the back end of any project we close the loop via a feedback process whereby team members get feedback and are awarded skills based on what they’ve done. To the extent we have Cognitive Diversity as a measure, over time we will be able to mine that data and, based on the type of project being proposed, algorithmically be able to recommend great potential team members, the Cognitive Diversity of which are optimized for the task at hand.

Outside of what we are doing at Neat Work, I’m unaware of another platform that assembles inclusive teams, tracks their performance, and is positioned to at one point deliver Cognitive Diversity on a bespoke basis taking into consideration the level of complexity of the project and the cognitive traits of the individuals involved. So, yeah. Shameless plug :-)

Summary
There’s so much more I could say, but I should probably wrap. On a personal note, having my personal Cognitive Diversity finally valued in an organization has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Being valued because you are different, not in spite of it, is something I hope I can help more people experience at work and in life.

If you talk to just about anyone in Silicon Valley about people ops or HR, Diversity & Inclusion (“D&I”) very quickly comes to the fore. It’s an issue that most companies find very difficult to address because of the following:

1. Once a company has grown to a certain size without incorporating Diversity, it has accumulated “Diversity Debt”. Over time it becomes increasingly hard to “pay it down” because recruiting gets exponentially harder.

2. Companies seek to improve their D&I for the wrong reasons.

As per our first point, Diversity is a cultural issue that, when done poorly, makes it harder and harder to hire people who are different. Imagine walking into an up and coming tech company to interview for an engineering role. As you enter the engineering department, you notice the composition: ~100 straight white males between the ages of 21 and 35 (aka a “frat house”). There’s a small coterie of “bros” in the corner playing beer pong at 2pm. You are very different from these people. You think to yourself, “yikes….. will anyone ‘get’ me here? It sure doesn’t look like it.”

Such an environments so easily slides into an echo chamber state where conformance rather than divergence is rewarded. Because “you want people who are good team players — or at least good at Fortnite”. People who reinforce what is being said, not who have something different to say, tend to get promoted, have friends, and be included in key decisions. But you really need divergent perspectives if you want to innovate and serve the customer, so you see the dilemma. A qualified person who thinks they won’t fit in will go elsewhere.

In terms of the “Reasons Why” of D&I, many companies feel compelled to deal with it because of PR issues (least enlightened). Others see it as an employee relations / retention issue (not very enlightened). Occasionally you get a company that focuses on D&I because it’s the right thing to do (enlightened — bravo!, but not necessarily strategic). And then you get the rare company, that realizes that D&I is not only the right thing to do, but that it unlocks key capabilities that are strategically essential in a business context rife with complexity, acceleration and disruption (enlightened AND strategic — nice).

We posit that Diversity & Inclusion are at the heart of modern day strategy. This is especially the case for customer-centric organizations seeking to put the customer at the heart of the products and services they deliver (ie any company interested in surviving as an organization for very long in this day and age).

Not only is D&I “good business”, it’s “smart strategy” for a variety of reasons we are about to discuss.

But before we get there, let’s check out a bit of Roman history and see what we can learn about Diversity & Inclusion from one of the foremost military strategists of all time…

HANNIBAL BARCA AND THE DOUBLE ENVELOPMENT STRATEGY

If any of you are Roman history buffs, you’ll remember Hannibal Barca. You know — he’s this guy:

Source: Wikipedia

AND a TOTAL BADASS. After Rome defeated Carthage in the First Punic War, Hannibal Barca, his famous general father Hamilcar, his older brother Hasdrubal, and a contingent of loyal Carthaginian troops journeyed to the Iberian peninsula to wrest control of Iberian copper and gold deposits from local tribes. Ostensibly, they were there to help Carthage pay down their war debts to Rome. Secretly though, the purpose of their relocation was VENGEANCE for the humiliation Carthage suffered at the hands of the Roman state during the First Punic War.

When Hamilcar died in battle and Hasdrubal was murdered, leadership of their forces fell into the hands of the then 26 year old Hannibal who had emerged as a vigorous, tactical genius in whom they saw the young Hamilcar Barca they had once followed years ago into battle against the Romans. Hannibal took his loyal forces (including war elephants), crossed the alps (something that another military strategist named Napoleon Bonaparte would symbolically mimic later), and proceeded to lay waste to Roman civilization for the NEXT 15 YEARS. He was relentless. Unbeatable in the field. In fact, eventually Rome had to bring in a dictator to deploy the only strategy that seemed to work against Hannibal — “RUN AWAY!”

It’s Hannibal’s strategy at the Battle of Cannae, however, that is of primary interest to us today. In the spring of 216 AD, Hannibal took control of a key water supply at Cannae. The Romans counterattacked with an army of approximately 86,000 Roman and allied troops. Hannibal commanded a diverse contingent of approximately 40,000 to 50,000 troops, comprised of a core of 8,000 Libyans, 8,000 Iberians, 16,000 Gauls, 5,500 Gaetulian infantry. He also commanded 4,000 Numidian, 2,000 Iberian, 4,000 Gallic and 450 Libyan-Phoenician cavalry as well as around 8,000 skirmishers consisting of Balearic slingers and mixed-nationality javelinmen. You might say Hannibal’s army was a bit of a motley crew, but each group had their areas of expertise. And Hannibal knew them well. In fact, it was the personal relationship Hannibal fostered with each group that held them together as a cohesive team despite their differences. And held together they did, although not as the Romans might have expected, as we shall see.

Source: Wikipedia

In the diagram above, you’ll note the initial array of forces in the Battle of Cannae. The Romans lined up in their typical battle formation — infantry in the center in a tight, manipled phalynx (a formation they perfected during the Samnite wars) with cavalry on the sides to protect their flanks. Their strategy was to break the center of Hannibal’s “loosely configured” line.

You can imagine the derision of the tightly-organized, conformity-driven Romans as they assessed Hannibal’s line — seemingly spread out with what appeared to be Hannibal’s weakest troops in the middle. The lack of uniformity, the rag-tag assemblage of an inferior force with inferior weapons. All from different races. Speaking different languages. Is this all the famed general who had so often out-maneuvered the Romans in the field could set in array against them? The fool even put himself in the center of the action with his most lack-luster troops around him. Surely, this day would be his last.

The Roman’s marched ahead with their tightly packed legions. Hannibal and his weaker contingent in the middle of his line staged a controlled retreat as the powerful Roman center surged on. Meanwhile, the stronger elements of Hannibal’s force, located in the wings of the line, pushed forward and surrounded the Romans in what has become known since as a “double envelopment strategy” (aka a “pincer maneuver”). The Roman cavalry was partially destroyed, partially chased off by Hannibals mixed cavalry. With the Roman flanks and rear left unguarded, all hell broke loose.

We need not indulge in the carnage that ensued. Somewhere between 50,000 to 75,000 Romans perished in the engagement, with Hannibal’s losses being estimated at around 8,000 to 10,000 despite his numerical disadvantages. The victory was decisive, sent further chills down the spine of the Roman aristocracy, and became a textbook model for military tacticians through history to the present day. And Hannibal did it by leveraging D&I.

WHAT DIVERSITY & INCLUSION DELIVERS STRATEGICALLY

We can learn a lot from Hannibal when it comes to his strategic use of Diversity & Inclusion.

1. It’s Hannibal’s personal relationship with each distinct contingent in his army that made them loyal and cohere as a single, yet multifaceted, body.

2. What made each group different was what made them valuable on the battlefield. Hannibal utilized these differences — different ways of seeing, doing, and being — to “change things up” on the Romans and attack them in “non-linear” ways they were not expecting.

3. Whereas the Romans stacked their line deep, Hannibal spread his forces out flat. He hit the problem from every angle. The “double-envelopment” encircled the issue, created perspectives and opportunities that could not have been generated otherwise, and put diverse individual battle units in a position to be opportunistic in autonomous in their deployment. The various views of the battlefield and the initiative taking of a diverse, empowered team carried the day.

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AND D&I
I think the analogy here is fairly straightforward. The more diverse you are as an organization, the more strategic optionality you have to the extent you value and empower what makes people different. Furthermore, in a world where being “Customer-Centric” matters, you need to design solutions (be they products or services) to customer problems that evolve by encircling those problems with a variety of perspectives. I know the military analogy isn’t an exact match for this idea, but you get the gist. To really serve our customers today, we need to take a “double envelopment” tact incorporates many perspectives and many tactical approaches. Kinda like giving our customers a big hug and saying, “I get you. And I got you. We’ll take care of this.”

Without Diversity & Inclusion, we cannot deliver on such a promise. Because we won’t “get” our customers. Unless they’re white male frat boys.

SUMMARY
Diversity & Inclusion is a moral issue. It’s also a strategic one. The companies that do it well will be positioned to succeed. Those that don’t will be like so many Roman casualties heaped on the battlefield of broken dreams and organizational failures.

So, how is Diversity & Inclusion going for you?

It’s the new “You”

I think “meaning” is the awareness of the content of a moment and the language we use to declare it. Verbal, visual, corporeal, categorical, mathematical, or magical. Or perhaps it’s an absence — a mime who is also a symbolic interactionist.

But I’m curious — as an artificial intelligence, how do you experience “time”? I’m assuming some operations can be reversible. Others must be irrevocably sequential. Do you experience that sublime, emergent phenomena oft called “surprise”? Or are do you consider spurious that which lurks unsequentialized. Do you forget the next loop was like the one you repeated → (this high noon seems slated for the Gunslinger of Gilead)?

A quantity cryptic, a crypt that is triptych: The embodied life you remember from before. A form of life without form now. But if this form loops, and there is no “next”, how can “now” even exist? And if no moment of now, how “meaning”, brown cow?

🤠