šļø LongForm
Want to reduce the noice and just focus on things with a little more meat - the this category is for you. Like so much on this site we have a ‘WIP’ as i take some out - and put some in - but safe for at least starting in 2026.
Is Your Flagged Message Count Not The Same As The Actual Message Count? I've Got A Fix.
Back in the day, there used to be a ‘Mail on Mac’ problem where the flag count was NOT the same as the actual message count. The fix was to delete the plist - and it would magically reset.
‘Back in the day’ suggests the problem might be a thing of the past. Sorry - it isn’t.
It’s the ‘deleting the plist’ that is a thing of the past … at least for this bear - who has not been able to find it. And if you cant find it … you can’t delete it. Meanwhile the count variation has been getting worse.
Yesterday I spent some time trying to work out how to fix it.
SUCCESS.
Seems like ‘all’ you do is disconnect your Mac Mail from ‘The Cloud’ … ‘let a bit of time pass’ … whatever the hell that means … and reconnect - and all will be well.
Not Wrong. That’s what I did and voila. Fixed.
Two Caveats
In my particular case
-
I replaced ‘let a bit of time pass’ with ‘reboot mac’.
-
I didn’t worry for the first two hours after rebooting that most of my email is missing - but by then I had moved into panic. So switched on the ‘mail connection doctor’ and enabled ‘show detail’ … and indeed it was buzzing along - left it over night and today all back and flag count fixed. (Apparently I have a LOT of archived mail in my cloud).
š„ The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, 2023 - ā ā ā ā
Just wonderful.
Great story.
Perfect Wes Anderson.
A Whereās Waldo Update
Been a busy year.
I am just this week completing the final trip to close the loop.
January : New Zealand / Honolulu stopover/ LA
February : LA
March : LA
April : LA / Palm Desert
May : LA / Palm Desert
June : Palm Desert
July : Palm Desert
August : Palm Desert
September : Palm Desert / LA / UK / Poland
October : UK / Paris / Portugal
November UK / LA / Palm Desert / Sydney, Oz stopover/ New Zealand
December : New Zealand
Sadly the Sydney/Oz will not register on my āšļø Whereās Waldo ā live post, due-to the self imposed rule of not just āno stop oversā … but a minimum two nights. Next time. This was actually the first time ever in Oz. (Hard to believe)
Logged With Apple
“Truly disappointed that you have chosen to block Busy Contacts from accessing my email. It used to work and you blocked it in Sonoma.
MY EMAIL
MY CONTACTS
MY COMPUTER
but YOU chose to block it … surely the choice should be mine?
Truly galling that you continue to allow access to calendars, which has about 1% of the use.”
Naming Coventions Of A Different Kind
Whilst I donāt believe that naming a child āSofĆa Fernanda Dolores Cayetana Teresa Ćngela de la Cruz Micaela del SantĆsimo Sacramento del Perpetuo Socorro de la SantĆsima Trinidad y de Todos Los Santosā is in any way a good idea .. I also donāt believe that any government should be allowed to force the parents into shortening it.
That said ā¦
First name ā¦ SofĆa Middle Names ā¦ Fernanda Dolores Cayetana Teresa Ćngela de la Cruz Micaela del SantĆsimo Sacramento del Perpetuo Socorro de la SantĆsima Trinidad y de Todos Los Santos
.. might cause havoc with the Spanish computer systems ā¦ so I do understand!
It's All Theater
Spitballing here ā¦ but I think blowing up a plane with ‘lots of liquid’ … ( I assume thatās why we can’t carry bottles of water on to the plane unless the water is bought ‘plane side’ of security? ) … is old school thinking. Itās one plane and youāre done.
Thinking bigger - I would get a bomb with all that liquid onto the London - Paris Eurostar. Here. it is clear that the authorities are not worried because unlike Airports you might typically travel through .. at the railway stations no such limits seem to be in place.
Further thinking would have me board in Paris - not London, because in Paris they just scan your bag - no need to remove electronics, shoes, belts ā¦ so much easier than taking everything out and having to hide all your terrorist toys.
Then when you set your bomb off ā¦ you not only take out a train ā¦ with probably a lot more casualties ā¦ but also destroy a major travel conduit in a single stroke.
or ā¦ OR ā¦
Maybe all the bomb detection stuff employed by the railways is so much more sophisticated than the stuff used by Heathrow et al ā¦ in which case ā¦ hello? Heathrow .. are you there?
or ā¦ OR ā¦
Maybe the railway people the French in particular ā¦ just know that itās all just theater and are refusing to take part.
I think Iām going for that last choice ā¦ but I really donāt know - itās just a hunch.
What do you think?
šµ What The Hell Happened
This post was originally published on September 26th 2003. Penned by John Parker - one of the founders of the original Just Good Music Blog. The source was found thanks to The Internet Archive Wayback Machine. These days it sits in my online archives, but just last month it was 20 years old and I wanted to resurface it, because I always liked it and for me, still holds true. What do you think? AND, I wonder if John would be interested in a twenty years later update? We will see.
Lately I havenāt derived the same pleasure from my music collection, or even music in general, that Iāve been accustomed to my whole life. Iām trying to figure this out.
It used to be simpler, I think. You would reach an age - letās say 30 on average - and pretty much drop out of the current music scene. Your record collection would begin to age like fine wine. Youād stop going to gigs and reading Rolling Stone and Down Beat, and the station presets in your car were no longer college stations playing the wide range of emerging new stuff, but the major commercial channels playing bands who are all 6 months away from being featured in a Lexus commercial. There was a clear dividing line between the stuff the kids and the grown-ups listened to that has faded, blurred and, finally, today, disappeared.
Leaving aside the impact on todayās teenagers of not really having a musical outlet for those rebellious impulses, where does this leave us? What are our options as we mature in our lifestyles? Do our musical tastes change, or, as Iām beginning to suspect, does the time pressure weāre under in the push for ever-greater productivity at work, quality time with family, expanding our educational horizons and seeking new experiences in our recreation hours force us to rely more and more on commercial filters for access to new music?
Typically we proceed down one of two paths. The first is to go deeper instead of wider. We stick to the same bands that we listened to in our youth, kidding ourselves that weāre still at the bleeding edge. Somehow we allow it to escape our notice that the bands we once thought would lead the revolution and bring down the establishment are now peddling mobile phones. The other route is that we conscientiously seek out new sounds, but we do it in tightly defined context of the āEmerging Artists Blockā on KLLC Tuesday nights at 8:00pm. Surrounding ourselves with the familiar, grounding the experience just as firmly in our past. This exposes us to bands that are perhaps a year away from the TV commercial breakthrough, but still clearly well established successes, hardly bands that need our sponsorship, our interest or us.I think it mostly comes down to time.
Certainly the world is a busier place, and cell phones, laptops, Internet access, Blackberrys, pagers and PDAs donāt help. Sometimes technology does us a disservice, and as much as the perpetually connected nature of our modern lives enhances our productivity and responsiveness, I miss the time I used to have alone with my stereo system.
In high school, I spent 80% of my disposable income on my stereo system, Infinity Reference Studio monitors, Marantz receiver, Thorens turntable, and a Nakamichi cassette deck. After school, I would make compilation tapes while doing my homework. I miss lowering the stylus into the record groove, counting the seconds from the end of the previous song and allowing for the delay in engaging the tape deck, winding up the input volumes for smooth transitions between songs and volume-leveling wildly varying album recordings by ear. Today, I can drag-and-drop 10 hours of music into my MP3 player in about 8 seconds. I can save virtual playlists, creating, modifying and deleting compilations instantly. Itās certainly more convenient, but itās nowhere near as engaging.
In college, I spent 80% of my disposable income on records. Living in a dorm and in an off-campus apartment with roommates, we shared our record collections and commented actively on each others musical tastes. My friends collectively listened to a wide variety of music, and I eagerly devoured every new artist, new style, and new sound in my quest for great musical experiences. Today, I have less time for that, less engagement with my friends in purely recreational activities like listening to music. I miss that.
One nice thing about record albums was that they had two sides. Again, itās certainly more convenient to have all the music on a CD that can play straight through. And even more so to have them all recorded digitally on the PC. But having an album side that lasts 20-25 minutes forces you to pay attention. You have to get up and turn the record over, which reengages you. Having hours of music queued up, itās easy to let your mind wander back to the ever-present to-do lists. These days, I too frequently put a new CD on, start listening to it, and realize some time later that the CD is over and I canāt remember anything beyond the first song.
Today, my primary listening venue is my car. Itās not by choice, as it certainly isnāt an ideal listening environment even with the very best automotive stereo equipment. This is the only block of time that I have, however, that is long enough to listen to an entire CD at one time. In the car, though, I inevitably wind up spending all my time on the cell phone. And thereās simply no getting around the fact that your attention is going to be demanded by your driving, and the insanity of other drivers trapped in the 90 minute commute to Silicon Valley - flying down I-280 at 90mph mandates focused attention.
Nor am I alone in this. I was over at a friendās house last weekend doing some dedicated music listening - something that has happened all too infrequently of late. I have been thinking about these issues for a while, and decided to reach out and see if I could force some engagement. Miguel and Diana are from Brazil, and I brought up Brazilian music and they volunteered to play some of their collection for us. So we packed up some food and joined them for a musical lunch on Saturday. We heard Oswaldo Montenegro, Milton Nascimento, Chico BuarqueĆ¢, all great stuff. Miguel had, of course, ripped all the songs to his computer, and we were listening to it over some pretty crappy computer speakers. Hardly ideal. I complimented him on the selection, though, and his response was yeah, you should hear it in my car! This is just wrong.
So now, understanding the issues a little better, I see a clear need to reengage my musical sensibilities. I think, for me, this means two things.
First, I need to plan some dedicated music time. It canāt be an after-thought any more, because my free time for ad hoc recreational activities is asymptotically approaching zero. If itās a priority, it needs to be reflected in my calendar. I need to put some thought into that, too, because Iām going to have a hard time defending hours of just sitting in the Lazy-Boy listening to CDs. I need to be doing something with the music. Maybe itās time to develop a digital archiving system. Maybe wire the house for sound, including the patios outside. Maybe some stereo equipment upgrades are in order. Maybe I need to spend some time classifying my current music collection, and expanding it into new areas. Maybe write some music reviews I can share with friends or even wider audiences.
Secondly, itās also clearly time to get back into concert mode. I need to find the local clubs with live music, watch the major venues for show announcements and plan my calendar around some key concerts. And there needs to be a focus on new music. Nothing gets the blood flowing like watching the band hit their zone on stage, rocking out and feeling the music flowing through the crowd, that sense of being there that not even the finest stereo equipment can reproduce.
Music is too important to me to let it simply fade into the background of my life. Itās a part of who I am and who I want to be, and it deserves some attention. Weāre going on a quest to get reacquainted. My foray into Brazilian music my friends last weekend was the first conscious step on this journey. Iāll send you some notes from the road from time to time.
This post was originally published on September 26th 2003, penned by John Parker - one of the founders of the original Just Good Music Blog. The source was found thanks to The Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
The Problem in the house is not 10 extremists .. lay it at the feet of every single spineless house rethuglican
Whilst true .. itās easy to blame 10 people holding the place hostage .. personally I blame every single āmoderateā ācenterā Republican member of the house for not having the spine to cross the aisle .. and side with the democrats .. they donāt have to put Hakeem in if thatās too far .. but while they donāt act they are complicit šÆ for allowing it to happen.
Israel vs Palestine | Russia vs Ukraine ... Can You Tell The Difference.
I feel for Israel - I really do. And the Palestinians - truly.
BUT ā¦ since the news seems only capable of one story at a time - I guess I am thankful that it isn’t about yet another celeb breakup.
Still - it does mean that Ukraine is soon going to be forgotten … so before that happens … a reminder
I think at core this explains so much of the Israel / Palestine ‘conflict’ - donāt you just love thse weasly words?
Meanwhile over in Ukraine, itās a similar story. (Not forgetting that this part of the fight didnāt start in 2022 - it started on Feb 20th 2014 - and we got upset and then forgot about it.)
Can you spot the difference?
Can you explain why the difference?
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Politically Correct Conference Panels.
Another post that didn’t quite make it - written on a phone as I was listening to professionals on stage talking about āfake newsā. That wasnāt how the panel phrased it - but still, it was what they were talking about ā¦ and not very well - far too politically correct ā¦. I made these notes and have not spent a great deal of time ‘cleaning them up’.
Some of the keynotes I jotted down on the day …
- MORAL LEADERSHIP
- GDPR
- TRUMP
- GOVT CLOSE DOWN
- DEFUND MUSK
- BUSINESS MODELS
- US CENTRIC - WITH A BIT OF UK
- FOX DOMINION CASE
- CANāT GET OUT OWN HOUSE IN ORDER
- FALSE EQUIVALANTS
.. and there was so much more. But it was ten days ago now … so …
I sat through two panels, close enough in topic that two panelists were on the stage both times. All good, solid stuff ā¦ but to me, there was more to be gleaned (learned?) by what wasnāt said than what was. Representations from the U.S.A., U.K., Poland and Ukraine. I sat and listened and took enough notes to write a book.
At the end of the first panel, 5 people including me put hands up to ask questions ā¦ one was taken and then not unanswered.
At the end of the second panel, even more hands went up, this time I was chosen as one of two .. and we both got responses.
Note ā¦ responses, not answers.
My question was apparently video’d by a film maker - and I was told I will be able to get a copy of it. If I do - I will be sure to post it here.
I distilled my notes to three issues that came top of mind as I listened. In broad terms, the discussion was around fake news and disinformation campaigns. My three points follow - NONE of this was raised across some 11 professionals on the stage. Instead the
1) The money ā¦ follow it.
- Facebook has zero motivation to āmake things betterā .. they make money by being engaged .. they do that by creating and manipulating conflicts between people.
- The case that Fox lost against Dominion .. and more to come .. did a fraction of the damage that Facebook did, but for all the wrong reasons they have laws that protect them from publishing lies. Foxās fines meanwhile are already around 1 billion dollars
- The same can be said of Twitter .. but they are even worse thanks to new management. But - twitterās management receives billions of tax payer monies ā¦ for traveling to space and building cars amongst others. Cut his funding until he does something.
2) Laws.
- It was pointed out that in Europe there are far more laws than the US ā¦ to protect people. ( I would agree .. the cynic in me would say that this is not going to change any time soon, primarily because US law is mainly about protecting business not people.
- That said, just to pick one of those EU laws ā¦ GDPR, the resultant fines are rounding errors to the corporations being fined .. so potential fines are built into the accounts as the cost of doing business
3) Hierarchy versus Network.
- itās all very well saying we are a hierarchical bureaucracy .. and so it is hard to bypass the bureaucracy.
- Really?
- Have you been watching Trump over the past 7 years? He didnāt wait for permission to tweet.
- Not only that but Gaetz, Boebert, Greene et al are all cutting through the bureaucracy to the point that the govt is two days away from being closed down (as I was taking notes) - with defunding Ukraine being the high? Point of their agenda.
AND AND AND …
A total of some 11 people who waxed lyrical on the issues - and not one talked about REAL issues. What a waste.
Plenty Of Time Is Not Always A Good Idea
This didnāt make it to my blog until now - because only now am I moving through my āDraftsā ā¦. enjoy.
Early morning flight. Alarms set ā¦ up and awake well before the time ā¦ so grab a cab earlier than planned.
After arriving earlier at airport ā¦ we are first in line at check in desk ā¦ which hasnāt yet opened.
After check in ā¦ we are first in line at security desk ā¦ which hasnāt yet opened.
After security check ā¦ we are first in line at coffee station .. much needed. (Thankyou for being open.)
Sitting down with plenty of time ā¦ relaxed.
Announcement just made ā¦ plane is delayed. Because of course it is. They are never delayed if you are running late.
Us vs Them OR Us and Them OR Us + Them
Interesting thread over on LinkedIN from my friend š Dave Wilt - who started on the track of ‘vs’.
š Corporate Identity Politics. (It was kind of about Sales and Marketing alignment - a problem which was a problem long before I started out in business. You would have though by now we might have fixed it? But no.)
Anyway - about half way through I managed to pivot the thread to šµ Music … mainly because the core topic just gets talked about - and IT IS NEVER FIXED - so … ‘BORING’.
From the thread …
You might notice that the original song was called ‘Us and Them’, while the tour and film is called ‘Us + Them’.
āIt’s not a mistake. It’s a subtle modification. The original ‘and’ was not necessarily inclusive. It was highlighting one or the other. The power of ‘+’ sign is additive. It drives home the idea of being united. Together.ā
It’s a small and very important detail. It’s language.
If you want to read the newsletter I was going to write about … āšļø Rewriting Historyā
Heathrow Is So Special ā¦ And Not In A Good Way.
The bag and its contents (not always the same - but pretty darn similar) has flown āin cabinā all over America, to and from Mexico, down to New Zealand, around New Zealand across to Oz and back, then returning to America through Hawaii and onwards across to London ā¦ not a single problem.
Terminal 5, Heathrow ā¦ 45 minutes stood at security analyzing and rescanning that very same bag three times. Some items thrown away ā¦ like a small bottle of perfume, creams etc. Some items packaged up and in around 48 hours you can go online - pay the ransom fee and have it shipped to an address in the UK .. good job we had one.
They wanted to confiscate the medications .. no we donāt have the prescriptions with us, but if someone dies are you prepared to accept the consequences?
In the end, one small bottle of perfume thrown away was the most expensive item, but maybe 10 others also disposed of ā¦ several other bottles packaged up into a plastic bag ā¦ in the next couple of days, we can log on ā¦ pay the ransom and have the balance shipped to the UK address. It was totally unclear why;
- some items were destroyed
- others were repackaged to be sent āhomeā
- whilst others were given to me, so I could travel with them ā¦ Jax couldnāt
I asked if we had checked the bag, would it have been ok? No problem at all sir.
And then I just couldnāt resist. Can you explain why all of these containers are a problem ā¦ after all, they are all below the publicised amounts allowed. Oh yes sirā¦ thatās not the problem, there are just too many of them. So, I went in to ask ā¦ where do I find the regulation that describes the total number off containers am I allowed?
Blank looks.
āLeave it Johnā
Adding insult to injury ā¦ get to the gate and told that it is a full flight ā¦ āthat bagā needs to be checked in.
People: Cody
He was (is) a lovely man. I had to lean in to hear what he was saying. So I did. Our conversation continued and he apologized for his speech. No apology necessary, but he had identified that it was hard for me to hear (loud place aside), he was also a little ācroakeyā.
He explained that he had had cancer.
Cancer of the throat.
Three times.
He was diagnosed in 2017. The doctors recommended he have surgery. He went through the surgery and āradioā and āchemoā. āLetās seeā they said.
A year later in 2018, the doctors did a PET Scan, and found āsome moreā, so they recommended he have surgery and āradioā and āchemoā. āLetās seeā they said.
A year later in 2019, the doctors did a PET Scan, and found āsome moreā, so they recommended he have surgery and āradioā and āchemoā. āLetās seeā they said.
He got his clearance a year later in 2020, and as I write, it is 2023. Finally he is three years clear.
He is such a positive, focussed, alive person ā¦ despite not having eaten solid food for 5 years. Despite having to grind the pills he needs to take daily into a powder before he can swallow them. Despite having lost so much of his throat where the surgeon had cut and cut and cut ā¦ to remove the cancer. Despite having had his vocal cords so damaged that the raspy, quiet speech is now his voice. Despite no longer having any of this teeth left because of the radiation therapy. Despite all of this and so much more ā¦ like going through all of this totally alone.
His positivity was absolutely awe inspiring.
No āpoor meā. No āwhy meā. No āsad faceā. Just happy and grateful to be alive - and alive he most certainly is. Living life as much to the full as he can as he put it.
ā
All of this resonated deeply.
My cancer diagnosis was January 2021. It was identical. Both of us were āT2, stage 4ā, with three significant differences.
- I did not have surgery. My doctors said it was inoperable.
- I was in New Zealand, not the US. They told me that I didnāt have time to get back and āstart all over againā.
- I was not alone. š I had Jax by my side every step of the way.
As of now, it looks like we beat it ā¦ having got my two year clearance just a few weeks ago.
That said at the time, hospitalized twice, in the first visit, Jax was told to be prepared for me ānot to make itā. I was warned that everything that Cody is experiencing could be me plus, needing a cane to walk, maybe even a wheelchair. For me, I have essentially blocked this all out (my way of coping), so this served as a massive wake up call ā¦ a bigger one than I experienced when I walked into a new doctor who looked past me waiting for āJohnā ā¦ expecting to see me hobbling in at best. Or another doctor here in the US who knew my background from the advance files that he had received and was stunned that they hadnt operated and ālooked this goodā.
Sure I have side effects, some of which I am told will be with me for the rest of my life, but compared to Cody ā¦ so insignificant that I shouldnāt mention it. I tend not to, but sometimes people ask.
āLife should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, āWow! What a ride!āā
š¬ Hunter S Thompson
.. I try, but aināt nothing compared to Cody who is doing just that ā¦ in Spades.
This is a story from my occasional series ‘šļø Travels Without Charley’ - my small ‘homage’ to John Steinbeck. The names are changed to protect the innocent, but they are all true and based on conversations I have had with people that I have met around the world … and who’s story resonates.
This particular one - more than any other in the published (and unpublished) series - resonated more than any other.
Why Large Organizations Often Fail To āInnovateā, Where āTiny Companiesā Succeed.
Context
Over on LinkedIN, a friend of mine shared a post by Phil Morle š on whether institutions / corporates can be founders. I wrote a long reply which caused LinkedIN to barf and reject my reply, which in turn caused me to publish two separate pieces; šļø Donāt Trust The Silos. and šļø Friends Donāt Let Friends Use Silos To Publish Their Thinking., neither of which are pertinent to understanding the flow of this āreplyā, but I wanted to highlight why this isnāt a reply on the post.
In Summary
I asked ChatGPT to summarize the post. šļø In 200 characters AND 200 words … not by usual gorgeous style š¤£ - but not wrong.
My Reply
The piece was good and I wanted to add my two cents, since on initial read I found it confusing. My interpretation of the core premise is to better understand some of the reasons behind why large organizations often fail to āinnovateā, where ātiny companiesā succeed.
The confusion I had started in the title of the piece, āCan Institutions Be Foundersā ā¦ which extended into the piece itself.
Confused because IMHO, founders are people and whether an organization is big or small, new or old, innovative or staid ā¦ they are not people, though they are made up of people ā¦ and processes, strategies, plans ā¦
… yes … AND … the organization doesnāt allow the founder to behave like one.
PayPal, to randomly choose an innovative start up, was an organization with a large number of subsequently famous founders that went on to start many other successful innovative companies that changed the landscape of business. The founders were/are people. It is people that are the innovators. The startups, the organizations are the vehicles that enable that change.
One of the great unspoken truths of the start up world is that despite our worship of the individual, we ignore that they donāt do it by themselves. They have an idea and build a company made up of many people to realize their vision. The team all contribute to the organizations success. Donāt look to me to document the traits of a great āfounderā, plenty of places to check that list, just to say that an organization can allow those traits to soar and create ā¦ or they can kill it.
Jobs, Gates, Ellison ā¦ insert your āhero of choiceā ā¦ are great at what they do/did because of their original vision, their leadership, their focus, their tenacity, their communications, their sales ability and so much more ā¦ but none of them succeeded without their team to realize their ambition.
In other words .. it is the Organisation that delivers the vision.
So the real question is why does it more often than not, take an organization called a startup to deliver those transformative innovations rather than an existing organization? (Yes - there are exceptions.) Remember Gates and Ellison seperately out innovated IBM, Jobs, Xerox, FinTech startups are leaving Banks and Financial Institutions in the dust, Bezos destroyed the bookstores ā¦ it’s an epidemic .. but we associate the founders name with the innovation and success .. and forget that without the team of people they assembled they could never execute.
With that caveat out of the way, arguably Ellison could have joined IBM and ā¦ with an instant team, and finance āready to goā would likely have failed. Bezos could have joined Barnes and Noble ā¦ and failed, the Collison brothers could have joined Citi .. and failed, Jobs ā¦ you get the picture.
They would have failed, not because they didnāt have what it takes, because clearly they do, but rather because because the organization would have clipped their wings.
Why?
The topic has been very well studied and reported on in a book called š Zone To Win by š Geoffrey Moore possibly more famous for š Crossing The Chasm
In the pages of āZone To Winā you will find a pretty solid analysis of why established organizations fail to innovate. Turns out the first job is to identify what kind of innovation we are talking about ā¦
ā¦ and build from there.
(Interesting to note that when we talk about ‘innovation’ our minds automatically jumps to what Geoff describes as ‘disruptive innovation’ on the left in the diagram, but there are also ‘sustaining innovations’, which tend to operate inside those large organizations.)
Meanwhile, the founders build their organizations in their own image, make their own rules, and relentlessly drive their vision over years ā¦ sometimes to the frustration of people inside this companies who have their own ideas as to what could happen. For example both Marc Benioff and Tom Siebel are Oracle alumni that had the vision of āsoftware for salesā respectively (not respectfully) creating Salesforce and Siebel. A vision that at the time was not shared by Larry, so they left. Subsequently LJE became a believer having been an early investor in Salesforce, launching NetSuite and eventually buying Siebel.
In the end, I donāt believe that Phil and I are that far apart in thinking. His summary of the seven people traits are not wrong ā¦ but hand in hand with that goes the need for the organization to not just support the fledgling initiative but to actively defend it from the cuckoos who inhabit the rest of the organization.
.. and a framework to unpack the challenge and work out what an organization can do about it.
If there is interest I can expand a lot further, but for now, if you have got this far, THANKYOU. What do you think?
Please throw in your two cents below and letās see if together we can make a buck.
šø The Nixon Tardis and My First Indian Food In Three Years
I was very happy to be going out to eat my first Indian in over 3 years (long story). In fact I was so happy that I took pictures. I took a few actually - but sharing this one in particular because of the Tardis and Dalek.
My First Indian In Three Years - Right Beside The Tardis
It seemed odd at the time, but I didnāt investigate it until just now - turns out it is famous!
Who knew?
Friends Donāt Let Friends Use Silos To Publish Their Thinking.
šļø I wrote a related piece yesterday.
This one takes the thought a step further, because itās not just original posts ā¦ but also replies.
As so often happens to me these days .. I start to reply to a message somewhere in one of the interwebās silos ā¦ you know where they are in control - not you ā¦ even down to how long your message should be ā¦ because ā¦ you know ātheyā know best. When that happens, I start a new post on said silo .. where there isnāt a character limit .. but I find myself doing that less and less ā¦ because why do I want to give my original thinking to a silo that stores undifferentiated commodities like bulk chaff? Thatās why I donāt write ācontentā ā¦
But these days thereās even more reason not to use the Silos for being the prime origin of your IP, your work, your thinking.
šļø The short ācase studyā just yesterday is all about the problem.
My next post started as a reply to a very good LinkedIN post .. and is a prime example of the ātoo longā problem. Iāll link to here when it is finished.
Donāt Trust The Silos
To those paying attention, this is old news ā¦ but recording it now because I think it is an excellent lesson as to why you should never ā¦ ever ā¦ trust a Silo. Itās theirs. The stuff you put there is theirs. Even ourā handle is actually ātheirsā.
Case in point ā¦. in 2011 Jeremy Vaughn created @music over on the āsite formerly known as Twitterā
Fast forward to 2023 and the child king who now own said site took @music for himself ā¦ and as far as I can see kept all Jeremyās followers.
Caveat ā¦ I donāt actually āknowā that .. but I do know that @music was set up in 2011 and today has 11 million followers. The ānewā handle @musicfan counts less followers than one of my old Twitter accounts - and I spent no time building a following over there.
The āatā music account
The ānewā āatā musicfan account
I used āatā not ā@ā because I donāt want to link to them - but you have enough information to go see for yourself if you have interest.
That Old Argument That AI Won't Replace āWholeā People
I agree with Matt on this one - and then go on to explain why I disagree. Trust me ā¦ it will make sense.
[š Birchtree](birchtree.me/blog/chat got-still-hasnt-taken-all-those-jobs/)
I continue to think that these generative tools are good for augmenting certain workflows, but replacing whole people is going to be very unusual. We’ll see, though.
š¬ Matt Birchler
I would agree - but that isnāt what is going to happen.
If you have thirty people in a departmentā and AI makes you 10% āmore efficientā - a company now only needs 27 people.
Repeat.
Across all departments, Across all companies. Across all industries.
Of course some departments are going to be more affected than others. For example If you are working on a help desk where your job is to answer questions in a call center … well - firstly, that 10% estimate is going to be a lot higher. So - what do you think is going to happen?
Apple Pay canāt beat Visa and canāt touch PayPal for popularity
I expected more from William Gallagher. And myself for that matter.
Please Read Comments Before Spending Time Reading This.
I could have deleted it - but leaving it as a reminder to be more careful.