Category Archives: Insight

Insight

NOVA – what Darwin never knew

February 12, 2012 – 12:06 pm

After months of planning to – finally watched the entire NOVA on the genome and how it explains the one question Darwin had – that he couldn’t answer: how?
As it turns out – what I did know is that parts of our DNA control how parts of us develop, correlations to traits or features, parts. What was amazing to me was that the other parts that were previously thought to be junk are switches turning these genes on and still others – tell these switches to turn on or off.

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My big personal insight was how this is so corollary to what we do in business, life and our own social evolution. Consider how our industry and society has evolved to do just the same things. Some build, others manage and still others lead these managers strategically. The parts of computers and robotics, the CPU’s and the instructions to turn these switches on and off in the CPU and Memory chips. It makes me think – could the same thing be true of all the parts of our brain that we assume to be unused? And even the way we develop software here at Intuit – the happy accident resulting from customer driven innovation and design for delight.
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These evolutions in the product come from observation and change based on what works better. The interesting question for scientists I suppose is how they can apply these changes, these bits of insight into forced evolution. Nova touched on this in the end with the treatment of genetic disease. In the show they talked about how this now helps parents to prepare for what they know will be a disability for their children. Is making the change in the embryos the key – or wrong. Now you step into life, creation, evolution and all that – not a battle I want to begin with a I’m conflicted internally as well. But it makes you think – if you have the open mind to do so.

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Insight

Teach your kids to Observe the world – especially the details. #luck #business #parenting

October 30, 2011 – 10:27 am

My kids are amazing – isn’t that what we all say? How the hell do you know what to teach and what not to teach. What to push and what not to push.  I’ve struggled with that from the beginning.  Two of my main mantras were Look for Good and the golden rule.  I can say that extending on that first one as they get older becomes more and more important.  And helps to answer the second question – what to push.  If you observe something different about your kids, don’t be afraid to take a chance – experiment and help them to experiment. If you are wrong – don’t be afraid to stop pushing.  Observation matters there – we all know the parent who gets wrapped up in their own failed goals and dreams, pushing a kid out of their happy zone to get there. In the New York Times today there was an article What’s Luck Got to Do With It   - about how those captains of industry today were able to leverage luck to 10X success than the average person (guys like Bill Gates) – the key was acting on observation and incredible commitment to achievement.  That’s the best gift you can give your kids for future success in careers – the environment to be able to be there, the trust in themselves to see it,  and the tools to be able to commit to following through.  The author is the same author of those Good to Great type books – Jim Collins, his new one is Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All  written with Morten T. Hansen

 

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Insight Tech-Geek

build for your babies

October 20, 2011 – 10:01 pm

Are you building your business for your babies. Think about how they are and how you can change the way you view the way they will consume what you create. Things are different than when I was a Kid. How many generations have said that but take this case in point. I just came home from a two day business trip to Miami from Atlanta – to my three kids.

My sixteen year old was where she always is, Ballet. But I walked into a quite house – up to my 11 year old daughter’s room and knocked on the door. Three girls all giggling and dancing around – what were they doing? Making a video. Its a no brainer these days – she had her camera out and they were scripting, considering the audience – almost anyone anywhere. Its the internet folks.
And then to my 15 year old son’s room, an A student who was simultaneously studying his AP Human Geography while he ran his Minecraft server for his two friends and listened via his headphones via Skype to their banter as they built their virtual world and considered their place in the universe as teenagers.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about its the ramifications of a condensed and connected state – where we are all sharing information, having access to expression, technology is becoming ubiquitous and the way we act is almost a fluid result of what we are thinking in the moment.  To their generation its just a part of their general daily workflow. They text, talk, record, review all online realtime.  Its got its drawbacks with physical connection and expression recognition but that’s our job as parents to facilitate those interactions too. It is as it always is about balance. Then they were bookworms, twenty years ago – nerds, today geeks, goths and emos  - whatever, its general arrested development, or is it.

I embrace this – ask my kids what they need to grow and know – how they think about the way they interact is the way I think about how we can do the same in all we do -business and personal.
How has this changed your business model?

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Insight Politics

Eliza Hamilton

December 25, 2010 – 2:57 pm

I’ve picked up my copy of Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton again. Half way through this incredible 738 page life story. I was affected by this quote that appears on page 353. From a journal entry sometime in the 1840′s recording a conversation with Elizabeth Hamilton about her husband Alexander.

Old Mrs. Hamilton… active in body, clear in mind… talks familiarly of Washtington, Jefferson, and the fathers. I told her how greatly I was interested… on account of her husband’s connection with the government. “He made your government,” said she. “He made your bank. I sat up all night with him to help him do it. Jefferson thought we ought not to have a bank and President Washington thought so. But my husband said, ‘We mush have a Bank.’ I sat up all night, copied out his writing, and the next morning , he carried it to President Washington and we had a bank.”

The night she refers to was when he delivered a 15,000 word document to convince President Washington not to Vito the recently passed bill for a central bank of the United States of America. Jefferson and Madison were against it. This act had an amazing impact on the future of our country – setting the stage for our capitalism based economy, creating the first real argument for broad interpretation of the constitution and invariably the beginning of the political party system. This also shows how Eliza was as much a part of the work her husband did as any other of his advisors; maybe more.

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