Tag: entrepreneurship

The journey

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When a lot of importance is put on a single goal, there’s a huge risk to lose perspective.

As the goal is set and gets nearer, corners are cut, shortcuts are sought, poor work is normalized. And soon, the initial goal is either discounted or made unreachable. There is no more excitement in getting there.

This is why the way things are done are more important than the things themselves and the places they take us.

Goals are temporary and variable, practices are grounded and stable.

Keep a wide view on the horizon as you put one step after the other, relentlessly, day after day. You might spot new destinations, and at the very least you will have developed the muscles that will allow you to continue the journey.

Take AI down to earth

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A number of things a useful AI could take care of in place of the fallible human.

Understand that tomorrow is a bank holiday and suggest that you turn off an alarm set for weekdays.

Read from a list of favourite sites and actually recommend content from such sites.

Organize the notes you have taken in different articles and suggest connection between them.

Collect the common operations done after a certain meeting (e.g. set up a follow-up, send e-mail with notes, schedule update call) and prepare an automation for you to approve.

Send a notification when it’s time to head out of the office to go to an appointment that is scheduled in your calendar.

Remind that the annual subscription to a service is about to expire.

Break up a single, unique goal (e.g. organize summer holidays) in many different tasks (e.g. book flight, book accomodation, rent car, book train tickets, …) and send notifications when the prices on common booking sites are below the average for the period.

These (and many others) are example of a consumer-centric AI.

Many will tell they are just around the corner. But if you have ever interacted with AI, or even if you have just tried to do some of the above operations with your phone, you know that is probably not true.

It’s about time we take AI in the day-to-day, and for this to happen its promoters will have to forget about their agenda for a while and focus on the consumers pain points.

Who will make this happen?

Wishful thinking

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If you are a leader and complain about the fact that people in your team are not as committed, as present, as hardworking, as involved as you are, here are two things to think about.

You are the leader, and in most situations this comes with some benefits (not only monetary) that other team members do not get. So, the fact you care more is absolutely normal. You should care more, they will care less.

To change the situation, to some extent at least, you have to put in extra work. And that is an additional challenge. You have to sell a vision, a purpose, a reason (beyond salary) for the team members to feel that they are part of something bigger. You have to make it so that if they follow you they will enhance their public and self-image. You also have to praise them for their work, and to thank them for their contribution. You need to be present for them when they need it, and hide when they can go alone. It’s a difficult balance to strike between freedom and ownership, and it takes trust and time. If you have none of that, you are stuck at point one.

Any other approach to such a natural situation is delusional wishful thinking.

Picking

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If you are waiting for someone to notice your work. If you are hoping tomorrow your boss is going to praise the project you are leading. If you desperately want somebody to enter the shop and admire your craft. If you believe your effort is not getting the attention it deserves.

If you are waiting to be picked.

Remember you can be the one starting it.

You can notice a colleague’s work, praise a peer’s project, enter a shop and admire someone’s craft, give the appropriate attention to those around you.

You can be the one who picks.

It’s contagious, and once you get in the habit, not only others are going to pick you more often, but you are also going to pick yourself with a lot less effort.

That’s the final goal, by the way.

Communicate or manage

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Most change happens inadvertently. Some things, or more often than not many things, evolve and stop to be what they were in the beginning. Gradually, you change as well, and at some point you stop, look back, reflect, and realise that change has happened. It’s nobody’s fault (or merit), just the nature of things.

Some change happens because of an agent. That’s when a situation is no longer sustainable, and some person, or more often than not a group of people, decide to bring about change. At the beginning, it’s probably not very clear where they are going to land. But the intention is there, and eventually the context and its features are modified. Whether the agents are successful or not.

One way or the other, the people that are touched by the change rarely want to hear “this has happened”. They are often scared, they don’t know what’s going on, they see some of the fundamentals in their worldview shaken. And they want a forum where they can express all this and get some sort of reassurances. This process is part of the resistance to change, and it will happen, one way (in an organised, public way) or the other (in a dispersed, private way).

It’s the difference between communicating change and managing change.