12.06.09
Size Disadvantage?
It’s easy to benchmark size when rating performance – it is visible and typically easy to measure. Yet other less accessible attributes can contribute importantly to success: agility, competence, experience, focus, knowledge, patience, skill, strategy, etc. Because these other attributes are less visible and are harder to assess, we often choose to measure on the basis of a simple benchmark like size.
In June, I got agitated about “how much playing time?” my son received at a tournament (see Applied to Soccer). Although my long view leadership advice in that post has merit, I now realize that on a systemic basis, I oversimplified my son’s soccer situation. There was more to learn and assess…
In the case of sports, bigger players benefit from their size on two counts: 1) they are physically more powerful and 2) youth coaches often select larger players over their smaller teammates on the reasoning “you cannot coach size,” and give them more opportunity early (for example, more playing time on game day).
However, having more diligently watched the dynamics of my son’s development as a soccer player a few more months, I now realize that being small (for a longer duration) is only a near-term disadvantage in terms of opportunity (passed over for the boys who have grown bigger earlier). In subtle ways, smaller boys, like my son, benefit from their size disadvantage over the long-term because they cultivate their game differently. 
For example, my son has impressive knowledge of the tactics and strategy of the game. His skill, agility, and speed are his primary tools for success (different emphasis than his larger teammates). When he finally achieves improved size parity within the next few years (he has more growth left than those who have grown early), perhaps like Lionel Messi, he will still be reasonably competitive due to his quiet mastery of the less visible attributes of the game?!
Today’s observation is simply a personal reminder to engage in long-view thinking everywhere when learning:
- Expand observations,
- Increase knowledge, and
- Cultivate more complex thinking for improved accuracy (include more attributes in mental models).
As a result of my agitation, I paid greater attention to the team dynamics, learned much, and now realize that it is all part of the beautiful game.
Nevertheless, I wish my son increased joy (and playing time) as he auditions for a different team in a slightly less competitive league. 
Are you constantly expanding observations, increasing knowledge, and cultivating more complex thinking everywhere?
07.09.09
I Can Do Better
My blog post of yesterday, Pace and Priority, did not meet my own standards. It changed direction, ended abruptly, and did not provide a clear sense of navigating short view vs. long view. Today I hope to improve…
In Pace and Priority, I describe a disconnect between “say” and “do” in the context of “action items” for a guidance document in a community organization. There is no doubt that all of the participating volunteers mean well in agreeing to perform certain tasks (action items), yet we have struggled to achieve traction.
I started yesterday’s post on the topic of lack of priority for the work, but the more I explored the idea, the more I realized that my thinking was too narrow. First, I realized that there was no way for anyone to establish priority without knowing the full range of obligations and expectations each participant was juggling – only each participant can do that for him/herself. As such, I changed direction and ended abruptly with the suggestion that people must be responsible for their own consistency with respect to “say” vs. “do.” Yet there was more to it, I just could not put my finger on it immediately…
Leadership plays an important role in defining priorities and motivating others. This is true in both market and social norms (for more detail, see Finishing School). Specifically, in the context of market norms (PAID to do work), there is obligation to make progress against the priorities of the organization. Conversely, in the context of social norms (volunteers gain RECIPROCITY), there is no obligation.
Leadership expectations in a mixed market and social group, thus, have complex dynamics. Add shared leadership and complexity increases. Thus, setting priority and motivating participants in these environments requires long view thinking.
I compare the shared leadership situation to the mathematical logical (Boolean) AND function, which operates on two logical propositions (true or false) and produces a value of true if and only if both of its operands are true. If one leader demonstrates priority (true condition) and the other does not (false condition), then participants can conclude the efforts are not a priority (true AND false = false) and will not likely establish priority for their own.
The only condition when participants conclude that efforts are a priority is when both leaders demonstrate priority. In the case of paid and volunteer participants sharing leadership, the engagement of the paid leader is likely to create a higher level of influence on the participants than the volunteer. I assert this based upon the observation that if it is a priority to the person that it impacts most (the paid leader), it is important. Thus, my long view advice is to ensure that paid leadership be actively engaged, demonstrating by example that the effort is important.
Although yesterday’s advice was useful (create consistency between personal “say” and “do”), it was not sufficient. Complex leadership situations require thoughtful understanding. For the specific case of shared leadership within a mixed market and social group, leadership alignment and active participation by the paid leader is critical to achieving a consistent message of priority for participants. Once achieved, then personal consistency becomes important.
Whew! I hope that made sense and was helpful.
06.23.09
Applied to Soccer
Over years of leadership, I stumbled onto important human traits that should be considered in order to successfully lead:
- Relativistic comparisons: “How people feel about their situation is highly dependent on comparison to others. Thus, in order to achieve good staff (team) morale, it is important to consider how to minimize negative comparisons now *and* in the future.” (Relativistic Comparisons, blog topic from last week).
- Loss aversion: “Our aversion to loss is a strong emotion…one that sometimes causes us to make bad decisions.“ (Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, Ch. 7, pg.134, see his YouTube video explaining the difference between gain and loss perspectives)
These traits lead to key long view leadership principles:
- Learn the strengths of the individuals of your team and leverage individual strengths to achieve team goals. Be fair from the perspective of your team. Be clear on expectations, reward excellence, and avoid marginalization.
- Strike a fair balance between competing goals and demands of multiple masters. Be fair from the perspective of your customer (whoever pays for the service is the customer). Be clear on deliverables, achieve excellence in customer service, and respect tiered pricing.
- Have a plan that considers likely contingencies to ensure balance. (Do not assume that you can achieve balance under fire.)
This past weekend, I found myself observing these leadership principles in a very different domain than technology development. I felt them as a soccer mom.
The goals of a U14 (under fourteen) Class 1 (highly competitive league) are twofold: win games and develop players. A soccer team fields 11 players at a time, but carries a roster between 14 – 17 kids to allow for substitution (rest and injury). The coach’s leadership job on game day requires allocation of playing time to effectively win games and develop players. Players sitting on the bench do not develop (get better), but playing the strongest players improves the odds of winning games. This creates the inherent tension between the two goals (win games vs. develop players) with “playing time” being the valued (and measureable) scarce resource.
My son’s coach is an excellent well-trained soccer player with outstanding credentials. During training, he provides excellence in drills, discipline, and development feedback. At game time, although he is well-intentioned to achieve balance between the competing goals, he can become loss averse with respect to winning – can’t we all?! Given the much stronger aversion to loss, it is no surprise that long-term needs for gaining player development become subverted for short-term loss aversion during games. Without discipline and planning, the long view suffers…
Although my son is an excellent soccer player, combining speed, agility, and accurate ball placement, he is small of stature and is considered less aggressive than some of the other boys. He follows the expectations set by the coach and works hard to receive as much playing time as possible. He is loss averse to playing time both because he recognizes the vicious cycle of dis-improvement and because he feels “unfairness” (relativistic comparison) when the other boys receive substantially more playing time. With each successive “loss” of playing time he is further marginalized, thereby jeopardizing his love and passion for the game – a serious long view consequence of many small seemingly insignificant slights.
This past weekend resulted in an acute amplification of the phenomena…
My son’s soccer team traveled over a hundred miles from home to play a several day soccer tournament. Since not all team members could attend the tournament, extra players were recruited to “guest” at the tournament for the team. The team had 16-18 total players available for the tournament games. My son averaged 12.5 minutes of playing time per game (25% of 50 mins/game) with ZERO in the semi-final. Guest players each received substantial playing time (>75%) in all games including the semi-final.
It was a very unpleasant 2-hour ride home after the loss in the semi-final. Although I am confident that my perspective differs from those who received adequate playing time because they did not suffer marginalization – they have the perspective of “gain” whereas I have the long perspective of “loss,” a line was crossed that prompted me to write this blog post.
From my perspective, there was an omission of long view leadership principles when substantial playing time for the guest players led to permanent team members playing ZERO in the semi-final (scarce resource allocation):
- Marginalization was allowed. Receipt of ZERO playing time in a semi-final is a vote of “no confidence” and is severely marginalizing in the context of the guest players receiving substantial playing time (relativistic comparison of scarce resource allocation).
- Tiered pricing was not respected. Although everyone incurred (equivalent) travel expenses, the guest players, who received “free” coaching and tournament entry (those fees were paid by the team) were treated the same as paying players. It would be reasonable (to me) to defer to those players who bear the costs of the salary, expenses, and tournament entry to ensure principle #1.
- Planning was insufficient. If principles #1 and #2 are compromised, then #3 is insufficient. Planning is the big differentiator for long view leadership success – if you plan for contingencies you can and will overcome instinctual tendencies.
I don’t want my son to lose his love for this game, which leaves me with the question on how to move forward and regain the positive when I do not have any real influence. Although I it would be helpful if the coach could:
- Acknowledge error to my son and commit to move forward positively.
OR - Explain to my son that the team fit is no longer correct and then offer to help place him on a team that will value him (before we pay the $1400 fee for the fall season!).
I am not sure that will happen spontaneously. I would love to be able to Teach Concepts, Explain Specifics, and Gain Acceptance (Relativistic Thinking), but I am not the one with the relationship with the coach.
Can a 13-year-old navigate this effectively? What is your perspective? Do you have advice?
06.12.09
Relativistic Comparisons
I had Chinese food with a good friend last evening. My friend received the following fortune: “Linger over dinner discussions this week for needed advice.”
Specifically, we discussed the challenges of coping with isolated HR (Human Resources) actions that benefit a single individual/group, yet create long-term unintended consequences for other staff. One example was a scenario where HR advocated offering a higher starting salary to recruit a new employee without adjusting other staff salaries for like positions. The problem is that even if current staff salaries are economically fair (from an entirely objective perspective), the salary differential will be perceived as unfair when (not if) the details become known. This is because humans are tightly bound to relativistic thinking. Watch this great YouTube video by Dan Ariely from his work, Predictably Irrational, Ch.1, to demonstrate the point.
How people feel about their situation is highly dependent on comparison to others. Thus, in order to achieve good staff morale, it is important to consider how to minimize negative comparisons now *and* in the future.
The question that my friend and I discussed is the WHY would anyone advocate for such a scenario? I think that the biggest issue is that organizational policy-makers may not believe that negatives resulting from relativistic thinking are real. Concerns are dismissed by otherwise thoughtful and well-educated policy-makers because they want to believe that we should not behave that way *and* because they don’t “feel” it themselves. They are more likely to be insulated from accumulating these negatives, because their own (more senior) staff better model ideal behavior. Thus, their mental models, based upon their current experience, allow them to apply idealized logic to the expected behavior of more junior staff when assessing positives/negatives.
Intentions are good, vis-à-vis accruing an immediate (short view) positive for the single/group (improve employment competitiveness by recruiting new employee at higher salary). However, as noted by Jeffery Pfeffer in his book What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom about Management, pg.117, “…executives [can be] hopelessly out of touch and unable to empathize with or even understand the situation faced by front-line staff…,” underscoring the reality that long view negatives can be dismissed. The situation is more acute if policy-makers believe that that actions/policies will inculcate ideal behavior – it won’t! Humans are wired relativistically.
It is much better to avoid the conflicts than to have to deal with the unintended negative consequences. Thus, what is needed is for policy-makers to understand the effects that they are not currently considering. My advice:
- Teach Concepts: show the video clip to demonstrate the global concepts – Ariely has done excellent work to unequivocally demonstrate that relative thinking is universal and unavoidable,
- Explain Specifics: describe the specific logical effects of the proposal under scrutiny, and
- Gain Acceptance: get agreement that relativistic thinking causes significant negatives before you begin to discuss a direction for solution.
Are you taking time to teach concepts, explain specifics, and gain acceptance to those who do not “feel” them directly?
05.27.09
Off-the-Scale Futurist
I just finished reading, “The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time that Will Change Your Life” by Zimardo and Boyd. It hasn’t changed my life, but it definitely gave me insight. Irrespective, it is a worthy read.
Before I began reading, I took the online Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) and discovered that I am an off-the-scale futurist scoring a whopping 4.92 in the future perspective. On all other time perspectives, I am at or below average.
The description of the “Future-Oriented Person” closely describes me (dominant in concern about long-term consequences, able to sustain the unpleasant for future benefit, health conscious, goal-oriented…) – how scary is that?! Perhaps that explains WHY I have a blog titled the LONG VIEW!
The basic point of the book is to get Futurists to be more Present and Past/Presents to be more Futurist – we all need balance. Indeed!
The good news for me is that Futurists tend to be very successful in business because they are well equipped to deal with the complexities of the modern world. The bad news is that Futurists tend to have less joy because we undervalue pleasure – work first, then play (if there is time).
The best news is that I didn’t need the book to get me going to achieve balance! Over the past many years, I have been actively working to Be Present much more – to enjoy the process, the road, the flowers along the road, and my traveling companions. The authors reinforce that great leaders are engrossed in the Present.
Some of the most interesting threads in the book revolve around the clash of time perspectives and how differences give rise to conflict. For example, Presents tend to be “in the moment” proceeding with what is interesting to them, viewing punctuality, specificity, and conformance as limitations. Futures on the other hand, value punctuality, specificity, and conformance. Understanding these differences and cultivating balance can lead to less conflict. ☺
Are you working to achieve balance? Is joy on your priority list?
05.26.09
Relationship Experiment
I participate in a Ning Social Networking (NSN) site, called Triiibes. The site is composed of Seth Godin blog and book followers. I find it rewarding to converse with others inspired by Seth, because interesting dialogues develop and they push my thinking. Some of the dialogues revolve around requests for advice or opinion on a specific idea. Sometimes the threads can become tangential, but for the most part they stay topical.
One of the things that I really like about NSN and blogging is that both are asynchronous. I can participate when I have time and contribute much or little. No one is ever late or overstays. Everyone comes and goes at their pace.
Because I am only somewhat active at Triiibes, I have not collected many “friends.” My “friends” are those folks whom I have shared dialogue, experience, or camaraderie – folks with whom I have developed an online relationship.
Last week, a member of Triiibes posted about a specific business idea that led to many responses. Most applauded her idea and encouraged her to proceed. One participant requested clarification on why someone should do business with her. When I read her response, I was dissatisfied because half of her responses were either slightly negative or negative. If she reframed her responses (and thinking) to be much more positive, she would benefit from the Law of Attraction, which follows the long view advice of Create Positivity (Headwinds and Wobble).
I knew as I prepared a well-intentioned response post that, even if I was thoughtful and kind, I was unlikely to receive an acknowledgement because I was offering unsolicited constructive advice to someone with whom I did not have an established relationship. As such, my response post was an experiment. Does one have to first establish a relationship before one can lead (offer advice) in the NSN medium as is required in the face-to-face (F2F) medium?
Predictably, my post went unacknowledged. The author responded to many other posts around my own, but mine was unmistakably invisible (although other participants commented on my suggestions). This reaffirms the long view principle that my horse taught me (Remembering Wyo): Build a relationship before you ask to lead (including the giving of constructive advice).
Although I hope that I personally would welcome all constructive advice (because it is part of long view thinking), I realize my own humanity (and vanity) and am not sure if the situation were reversed that I would have thanked the unsolicited advisor myself. I will continue to strive to achieve what Scott suggests – be open-minded enough that people do not have to “be careful what they say.”
In the meantime, I am glad that I got the “expected outcome” (no acknowledgement) because the unexpected result would have challenged my assumptions and caused me to do additional testing and/or wonder why NSN was different!
05.08.09
Sealing Moment
One of the best pieces of coaching advice that I received from one of my mentors is “find the teachable moment.” My mentor taught me that we could amplify learning by delivering education just in time. As leaders and mentors, if we pay attention, we can often observe the moment of realization and then amplify the learning by reinforcement.
Today, as I participated in “A Celebration of Giving” by my son’s 7th grade class, I realized that there is one better – create a sealing moment. Let me explain…
Over the past many months, the 7th graders embarked on an integrated curriculum project to raise awareness for justice in and repair of the world. Students each selected a charitable organization that was meaningful to them. They learned about their organization through research, interviews, and discussion. Once engaged, they advocated and raised funds for their respective organizations. These 7th graders collectively raised >$29,000 to support 25 different worthy organizations – amazing! Since they raised the money together, they divided the money among their many organizations. They prioritized allocation funding to the different organizations. None received the same amount.
As I listened to the students speak today, I reflected on the comments that my own son made over the final few weeks during the allocation process (“it was hard…”), I realized that the allocation process was in fact the sealing opportunity for them. Although they learned much through the preparation of research papers and demonstrated commitment to their organizations through formal oral presentations, it was not until they had to lobby each other for allocation support that their passion and advocacy truly kicked in. Although it would have been “easier” – less painful, less acrimonious, less divisive – to simply divide the money equally, it would have lessened the learning. Sealing came from the harder process of truly engaging, participating, and negotiating.
Their sense of fairness and justice required each of them to listen objectively to the others and to regard their own project as one among many. They had to decide the minimum level of funding for every project and the maximum funding for the highest priority project. Although their compassion, commitment, and ability to be proactive was excellent before allocations, it was very clear that those attributes increased 10-fold by having to negotiate. They had to both advocate for their own organization and be objective toward the others. Their compassion, commitment, and ability to be proactive were sealed through the negotiation process of allocations.
As leaders, we know that it is imperative to achieve “buy-in” because it creates commitment and loyalty. This point was clearly demonstrated by these 7th graders. Their learning was amplified 10-fold by being part of the decision-making.
As leaders, if we truly desire commitment and loyalty, we must take the long view to ensure that we create sealing moments. We must ensure that the hard work of active participation, engagement, and negotiation is not short-circuited by the need for expediency or ease.
What are you doing to ensure active participation, engagement, and negotiation?
05.05.09
One Book, Two Months
I am a voracious reader; typically I read a few books a month. I started Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community” on 03/06/2009 (the day I checked it out from the library). I renewed it once and then ordered it from Amazon when I realized that I wouldn’t finish before I had to renew it yet again.
My long view journey with this book began with the question: “What to change in the workplace and in the community to increase collaboration and to reduce feelings of isolation?” This question arose from my observation that the world is changing as a result of our adoption of technology (this is a good thing), yet it affects both workplace and civic communities in ways that make it harder in many cases to be effective because of concomitant rising expectations.
My key observation was that each of us has many demands on our time (more and more), making it harder and harder to get people to collaborate (workplace) and/or connect (civic) face-to-face (the old way) because we need lower transaction costs to do more and remain effective. The good news is that technology is lowering transaction costs everywhere – Clay Shirky in “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations” makes the point very effectively (if you don’t want to read this book, let Steve read it for you). As lowered transaction costs permeate our lives, we begin to shy from activities that exceed a certain threshold of time (or effort) because we require reduced transaction costs everywhere (lowered tide lowers all boats) in order to participate.
Weighing in at only 414 pages, “Bowling Alone” was a dense and demanding read — chock full of statistics and data of all sorts. It required slow absorption, but I learned much!
On page 335, I hit resonance. Putnam summarizes that many of us in modern society feel down because we have a stronger investment in our own autonomy than commitment to duty and common enterprise, thus leaving us unprepared to deal with the inevitable setbacks, losses, and outright failures that are part and parcel of commercializing emerging technology or just living life! In prior eras, the commitment to duty and common enterprise was stronger than personal achievement (flipped balance), enabling a stronger network of family and friends (social capital) to be available to cushion our dips.
Although the shift from community to autonomy created a reversal in the strength of our personal connections, it was accompanied by the strong positives of greater diversity and tolerance (gender, race, religion, orientation). Thus, I celebrate the era of self-determination, meritocracy, and achievement through perseverance; yet as a leader (workplace and community), I look for guidance as to how best to ignite greater connection (social capital) in our transformed world. I desire self-determinant workplaces and communities that create much more needed human camaraderie to re-balance toward the common good.
Putnam’s guidance is sparse, but positive. He does not tell us what to do, but gives us direction for solution: we must build mechanisms with our new tools (reduced transaction costs) to create (more and more) reciprocity, trust, and mutual aid. Putnam makes the point that during the Progressive Era (following rapid industrialization), reformers of social capital then were activist, optimistic, and hugely successful by using the new tools of their era.
How best to accomplish this mission?! Do you have ideas?
04.20.09
Finishing School
My mother always said that I needed to attend “finishing school,” but early on I did not see the value. As such, I started my career with poor interaction skills. Luckily, my undeveloped social skills were tolerated because of significant technical contribution. However, as my career progressed, I found that the technical problems were increasingly complex and without adaptation on my social skills side, it was clear that I would perish. So even though I did not balance books on my head, my latent abilities were nurtured and I learned to collaborate, lead, and be more socially refined.
I don’t have any really great stories, just an accumulated “what were they thinking?” collection in my head that has helped me to learn the following key principles:
- Understand motivation and human behavior.
- Get to know your colleagues.
- Work to the strengths of each individual.
I learned from academic (reading the work of others), experiential collaborative technical projects (doing and learning from mistakes), and more recently through service and leadership in community organizations.
I have observed that there are fundamental differences in the motivation between industry (paid for service technical effort) and civic service (volunteer community effort). The motivation for collaborative effort in typical technology organizational culture is recognition, reputation, and PAY. Whereas in community volunteer organizational cultures, motivation is recognition, reputation, and RECIPROCITY. Although they both share similar features (recognition and reputation), there is quite a difference between pay and reciprocity.
Others (real experts, not just amateurs like me) have studied pay and reciprocity differences. A particularly engaging study can be found in Predictably Irrational (Ariely, ch.4, social norms v. market norms). Ariely points out that, although social norms are more powerful motivators than market norms, the social contract required to achieve success with social norms is very tenuous! Expediency must be abandoned and long view commitments forged, because social contracts must be maintained under all circumstances to be effective.
As usual, there are blurred lines that create tension. Industry desires to capitalize on social leverage requiring social skills of business leaders (understand motivation, get to know people, work to strengths), but is not always willing to take the long view. Conversely, sometimes, civic leaders desire expediency, in the process forgetting the social contracts they have engaged to achieve volunteer participation.
Although, more and more, we hear about self-organizing mass collaborations building value (Wikinomics, by Tapscott & Williams), motivated in unusual ways, it is not likely that it will be the case for most technology projects in the near term. I recently read about 100,000 gamers unraveling the secret life of proteins (Wired, 17.05, There’s Power in a Puzzle), their motivation being competitive fun! Wouldn’t it be great if we could achieve that everywhere?!
As I continue to grow, I hope to learn more, and I look forward to a future where powerful motivators, like competitive fun, can be harnessed and retained for industrial and civic service more and more routinely. However, in the meantime, there is still much that requires coordinated collaborative leadership and excellence in social skills.
Do you have suggestions or observations that could add to this thinking?
04.09.09
Puddle Avoidance
About 20 years ago when I was in graduate school, one of my pet peeves was the inconsiderate drivers who would park in the pedestrian walk area (not a parking spot) near the door of the parking garage that I often walked through to get to the chemical engineering building. Maybe the drivers of those parked cars couldn’t find a parking space or maybe they just preferred the spot nearest the door, I’ll never know. What I did know is that when it rained, those cars blocked the only puddle-free path to the door. Although I am certain that those drivers did not intend to require that pedestrians trudge through deep puddles, it was their lack of consideration for unintended consequences of others’ (pedestrians) that drove me crazy (short view thinking).
When the puddles were deep enough (and I just could not navigate the path without getting wet), I resorted to walking over the car to get to the door. I just stepped up on the back bumper, walked over the roof of the car, down the hood and stepped off the front bumper, arriving dry at the exit door. One of those times when the puddles were deep, my prospective father-in-law accompanied me and as I walked over the parked car blocking the path to the door – I startled him with my boldness.
My father-in-law recently recounted this story to me and admitted that at that moment, he had loved my boldness, but it made him think twice about me (the implication being that my action had been too risky, too out-of-bounds, too unconventional). This story reminds me of the fine line between boldness, a positive characteristic, and out-of-bounds (OOB), a negative characteristic.
In the leadership of emerging technology, this tension exists deeply, because leaders must be capable of unconventional ideas, transformational thinking, and boldness. However, because most organizations (rightfully) believe that their employees are their strength, it is imperative that leaders be seen as approachable and capable of working well with others. So even though leadership in emerging technology requires unconventional ideas, transformational thinking, and boldness, it also requires considered, rational, and reasonable actions – otherwise it will be a lonely path forward (no followers). Leaders must then be capable of discerning bold v. OOB.
As time has passed, I have gotten much better at distinguishing bold v. OOB. However, given my proclivity to the unconventional, my passion, and my intensity, I still occasionally check strategy with an honest friend (the ultimate long view principle – think before you act!). One thing that I have learned is that navigating the fine line of bold v. OOB, means that if you are not sure, it is probably OOB! Thus, my long view advice is when unsure, check your strategy with a friend/confidant and be willing to soften and/or withdraw based upon honest advice.
P.S. I don’t walk over cars anymore. 
This blog chronicles long view thinking in all aspects of life, but with special interest in technology and business.
