Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Leadership

The problems and perils of perfection

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There are a million – maybe a billion – scenarios for how someone becomes the Founder of a business. But regardless of variability, there is one part of every venture that, almost by definition, will not vary: In the beginning, and often for some time afterward, the Founder will be the first to do all the jobs.

If you’re one of those Founders, you were the first receptionist, the first salesperson, the first accountant, and the first janitor. But you didn’t become a business owner to answer the phone, pay the bills or sweep the floor. You did those jobs because, at that moment, you were the smallest of business entities. An entrepreneurial quark. A team of one.

You have every right to look back on those days with great pride. Starting a business from scratch and growing it into a success story is a modern-day Herculean feat, accomplished against all odds. But there is one perilous byproduct of the Founder being the first to do all the jobs – they were all done perfectly.

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Three words terrorism hates: Let’s do business.

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Since World War II, human behavior has manifested in a classic example of a human paradox. One side of this puzzle is that we possess the intellectual and technical ability to create nuclear weapons capable of global human annihilation. The other side is that, after four generations of nuclear-armed nations aiming those weapons at each other, the value of life ultimately proved more compelling than the potential for political or strategic conquest. What became known as MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – prevailed. So far.

But eighteen years ago this week, the belief that preservation of life as the highest human value would deter unprovoked, murderous attacks on thousands of innocent people turned into an illusion. On September 11, 2001, civilization was blindsided by an ironic form of barbarism. Without respect for any international convention or moral standard, 19 evil humans took the lives of almost 3,000 innocents and declared war on the rest of us.

This barbarism was ironic because these followers of a radical form of Islam employed to their murderous advantage one of the icons of the very society they claimed to hate – technology. Indeed, the same humans who would take 21st-century civilization back to the Stone Age, adopted some of our most advanced innovations to coordinate and conduct their evil deeds. And then the rest of their coward co-conspirators claimed those crimes with more modern technology as they communicated their demented, Dark Ages worldview.

But just as technology became the ironic lever of those who place no value on innocent life, it’s still a powerful lever for those who do. When tolerant, civilized humans use technologies like the Internet and associated applications, they do three very important things: communicate, conduct business and share values.

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Why not an official day for small business owners?

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Labor Day began as an idea in the mind of a 19th-century labor leader – some say Matthew Maguire, others say Peter McGuire – who cared greatly for a very important segment of the marketplace, its workers. 

Regardless of paternity, such a day was first celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, when members of the CLU took an unpaid day off to demonstrate solidarity and, of course, have picnics. And ever since 1884, when President Grover Cleveland’s signature designated the first Monday in September as Labor Day, it’s been an official federal holiday.

In 1898, Samuel Gompers, then head of the American Federation of Labor, called Labor Day, “the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed…that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it.”

Alas, entrepreneurs aren’t organized like our union brethren – probably because we’re too busy making payroll. There is no single Small Business Day officially decreed by the U.S. Government. No Entrepreneur’s Day set aside to honor the few who do so much for so many; a day to picnic and party down in honor of the real heroes of the marketplace, small business owners.

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All hail the Quantum Leap Generation!

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It’s been more than a half-century since the advent of three legendary Digital Age markers: the printed circuit board, the first IBM mainframe, and Moore’s Law. So, by now it would be reasonable to presume that we analog humans would have our digital adoption corn flakes together.
Alas, 21st-century reality doesn’t bear out that reasonable assumption, as the dynamism of digital leverage has matched almost every sweet opportunity with a distasteful disruption, creating a lot of anxiety in the process.

Indeed, when the Fraternal Twins of Innovation – Disruption and Opportunity – set up shop in the Digital Age, they imposed transformation on every market participant. And since Disruption is the Twin that typically shows up first, those adjustments were likely brutal until Opportunity arrived, often fashionably late. Of course, we all know stories where the rude cousin of the Twins, Irrelevance, wrote too many tragic, final chapters.

Thankfully, on the Opportunity side of the Twins’ balance sheet is a list of unprecedented sweetness: awesome communication options; digital leverage at lightspeed; amassed information about everything from local to global to galactic, and all literally at our fingertips. And entrepreneurs benefited further from lower barriers to entry and competitive advantage from the incrementalization of digital leverage at prices we can afford. But the Twins only convert to sugar on the bottom line when we transform them into something customers will pay for today and tomorrow. There’s still much consternation over yesterday’s analog model being tomorrow’s digital fish wrapper.

Today, when I talk with business audiences about their level of anxiety from the urgency created by 21st-century innovation – these are all technology high-adopters, mind you – most admit to still being anxious about the awesome implications of the Digital Twins. Even balanced against the amazing benefits, humans continue to be unsettled about the unabating digital disturbances coming at them from all quadrants.

But, it must now be revealed that what’s causing all this anxiety isn’t technology: The Internet is just a new way to harness fire, and a computer is merely a fancy wheel. In truth, change itself has been an abiding part of the human experience since Adam and Eve. What’s really causing all this unsettledness, intimidation and anxiety is what I call the Sudden Increased Velocity of Change. No previous generation has ever experienced this level of innovation compression, and it’s doubtful any future generation’s innovation ramp will be as steep as ours has been.

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Patience is not standard equipment on entrepreneurs

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One of the markers of American culture is the “sticker” on the window of a new car. This document reveals to shoppers a listing of standard equipment and options, plus, of course, the manufacturer’s suggested retail price or MSRP.

But what if someone is shopping for an entrepreneur to work for? That may sound silly, but prospective employees do it all the time out here on Main Street. And yes, the money comes into play, but these days, increasingly, it’s the list of “equipment.”

A prospective team member would be justified in expecting the list of entrepreneurial standard equipment to include characteristics like courage, creativity, perseverance and adaptability. Innovative, creative, and visionary are other important line-items. One of the newer expectations increasingly prominent here on the threshold of the third decade of the 21st century is values. What are the values of this prospective entrepreneur/founder/employer? What do this business and its founder stand for?

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Revealing the success secrets of highly effective people

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Ever wonder why some people are more effective than others? Life just seems to be easier for them, right? The answer to this mystery is likely found in one of the most obvious traits that separates humans from other members of kingdom Animalia: Self-awareness.

Essentially by definition, we’re all self-aware, demonstrating modesty, shame, joy and greed, just to name a few traits from our awareness inventory. But the most self-aware among us are informed by a bigger picture perspective, regarding the impact of their behavior and actions on the world around them, especially interactions with people. As students of Newton’s 3rd Law – for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction – highly effective people are not surprised at how the world reacts to their actions, because they’ve already played at least some level of that response in their minds, like a role play.

Highly effective people have acquired one more skill. They’ve converted self-awareness into a useful tool: self-analysis. This intuitively named practice helps regulate behavior for maximum effectiveness. More on that later.

In 1970, Noel Burch identified a handy four-level explanation of self-awareness, but he used a completely appropriate alternative word: consciousness. Prepare to see yourself and others as you discover these levels.

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