Do You Keep A Mental Model?

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Most entrepreneurs have unique life experience. Many have encountered adversity. They tend to be thoughtful and self-aware. The humble entrepreneur is also reflective. She questions where she has been, what she believes and how it translates into her business.

This is where “Mental Models” come in. Several years ago I read a commencement speech given by Charlie Munger – longtime partner to Warren Buffet. Mr. Munger – a hugely private person – shared parts of his personal mental model with the graduating class at Southern California University. You can find the address here on You Tube and here on the Web.

Mental models are a road map for your personal belief system. The emphasis would be on “personal” as each of us sees the world in much different ways – in large part based on our unique experience.

It is rare that entrepreneurs find the time to formalize mental models. But entrepreneurs do tend to have strongly held beliefs.

I was inspired by Munger’s address to formalize my personal mental model. And it has helped tremendously in business. Here is how I organize it.

There are 5 parts of my mental model – 5 areas of the belief system. They are:

  • Self-Awareness and Personal Growth.
  • Interpersonal Communications
  • Institutions, Business, and Culture
  • Relationship to the Physical World; and,
  • The Future and Spiritual.

Under each – I summarize principles that most accurately represent what I believe. The principles evolve as I read new books or have life experiences that impact how I view life.

I outline and summarize books that I read and impactful experiences in a Moleskin notebook, and then graduate the best thoughts to principles in two three inch books.

It seems like a lot of work  – but it is not. Like Munger, this practice helps to keep a consistent compass with which to guide personal and business behaviors (and ethics). It also helps to stay in touch with what you believe. And it will help the humble entrepreneur to be effective. Knowing yourself helps you to better know others.

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The Mythology of “The Secret Formula” – “Do This, Not That”

Screen Shot 2015-07-18 at 2.56.59 PMWith the explosion of content and publishing on the Internet, there is no shortage of advice for anyone – especially entrepreneurs! (See Surviving the Entrepreneur Content Apocalypse.)  It often seems that entrepreneurs chase a “secret formula” that every entrepreneur can use to achieve success only if they had it. There is not. This notion is a myth.

Though helpful, much advice has a “Do This – Not That” quality to it. In other words it is prescriptive, often based upon the experience of a given entrepreneur. It promises that if you do “A” then “B” can/will/should happen. Advice like this illustrates linear thinking in a circular world.

I am of the view that entrepreneurship doesn’t work that way. We tend to overcomplicate things when we believe that there is any one way to do anything. In the real world there are few similar experiences. There are many varied conditions. There are many points of learning in the journey.

To achieve success, there is a lot of luck involved. Confidence is a factor. And much of entrepreneurship is common sense. In the “real world” when building and scaling businesses many conditions have to come into alignment in a complex Web of good decisions and luck.

Summed up, success in entrepreneurship is simple: Treat people right. Know your markets. Be honest with yourself. Be ready to deal with adversity. Be kind. Work hard. Work smart. Be smart. Be engaged. Be competent. Be willing to listen and learn. Use your common sense. Surround yourself with good people. Have confidence in your ability to “get it right.” Much like life – Right?

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Lack of Persistence – Out of Sight, Out of Mind

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The third challenge is persistence. If you miss a post – it is gone! And chances are, you will miss most meaningful posts. With personal conversion rates of under three tenths of a percent, the chances of you seeing relevant posts across all of your networks, everyday is less than 1 in 300.Screen Shot 2015-06-28 at 9.02.34 PM

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Distraction – The Loss of Focused Attention

The second challenge is distraction.

Distraction is so common in our online experience that we have come to expect it. And worse – we often accept it.

Screen Shot 2015-06-28 at 8.50.04 PMBut it doesn’t have to be. There is an increasing understanding of how our digital lives are affecting our attention, and what we can do about it. See Linda Ray on Attentional Intelligence.

As described by noted author and speaker Linda Stone “attention is the     most powerful tool of the human spirit.” See The Attention Project.

By publishing many unrelated posts one after another, social networks create conditions called “rapid toggling” and “context switching”. This means that users have difficulty consuming social media and live in a state of “continuous partial attention.” We all do it.

The problem is that sustaining partial attention is driven by fear not opportunity. We are afraid of “missing out”. Id.

The net result is that we personally lose productivity.

To sustain attention, we have to create context from the information contained in all of our networks. And we have to design our information consumption patterns so that information is related.

That is what personalized social media management is all about.

 

Illustrations of Rapid Toggling and Context ShiftingScreen Shot 2015-06-28 at 8.53.25 PM

Your social network feeds may look much like mine. My Twitter feed is a sea of unrelated content. In this page the content spans topics: football, brides (a business interest), finance, and men’s fashion. How can a person possibly toggle between and consider each one?

My Facebook feed isn’t much better. On the page to the right from my Facebook feed of November 14th: There are 100 posts. Twenty five percent (25 %) are sponsored posts of publishers, or advertisers. Seventy five percent (75%) are friends posts – not chronological – the order is determined by a Facebook algorithm. Virtually one hundred percent (100%) of my adjacent posts have a different context.

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Side to Side – Another Way to Think About Vision

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It is often assumed that entrepreneurs have “vision” – often described as the ability to look forward. But the most important part of vision may be different than what you believe.

Most entrepreneurs know where they came from – vision from the rear view mirror. And if they are successful, they have learned from past successes and past mistakes.

And I would argue that most entrepreneurs do a reasonably good job of looking ahead. They know how to postulate what the world will want over the near term. Some get it more right than others.

But the most powerful part of vision may be the ability to look side to side – to look into your “blind spots”. This is true in many ways.

As Kevin Kelly so capably describes in What Technology Wants – most invention is simultaneous. In other words – if you are thinking about it – seeing a need in the market place – chances are fairly good that someone else is as well.[1]

But the “side-to-side” view involves more than identifying potential competition. Side to side views also identify supporting technologies and consumer behaviors that make your invention or business model possible. Are they ready? Can they support your invention?

You might have a view of the world as it should be – or even will be. But if the supporting technologies are not ready – or if the world is not ready because consumers and business won’t and can’t change behaviors – none of it matters.

In 2006 our executive team saw the future of mobile – and acquired a mobile company. It was the right forward vision. However, a side-to-side view would have told us that broadband mobile technologies were not pervasive. We also could have determined that consumers were not ready, nor were businesses adept at leveraging mobile communication. That was 8 short years ago. We failed to maximize the investment.

By looking side to side we could have figured out that the market dynamics of supporting technologies and likelihood of consumer and business adoption were not lining up with our forward vision. Right idea. Right team. Wrong time.

I would argue that what distinguishes successful entrepreneurs is less about the ability to look forward, and to some extent behind them – but side to side. That is where the enabling technologies and consumer and business preferences can be found.

As an entrepreneur with a vision – where are you focused?

 

[1] For excellent resources on innovation here are three of my favorite reads: (1) What Technology Wants – Kevin Kelly; (2) Open Business Models – How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape – Henry Cheesborough; and, (3) Where Good Ideas Come From – Steve Johnson.

 

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The Mythology of “I”

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Credit: Google Definitions

Are you an “I” leader, or a “We” leader?

Responsibility Bias

As Adam Grant so eloquently explains in his work Give and Take it is human nature to have “responsibility bias” – all of us believe that we are more responsible for a good result than we actually are.[1]

And entrepreneurs often take this axiom to an extreme. They are pumped up by their last success, a great idea, and early recognition. They may have had prior financial success. They may receive adoring press. But it is inauthentic in today’s world to stretch personal responsibility too far.

Were you singularly responsible for 100 MM of sales at your last company – as your resume seems to indicate? Do you believe that you single-handedly pushed a spectacular product to market – conceived it, built it, marketed it, sold it, financed it, built the team that drove it? Do you really believe that you did it alone?

Perceptions

When you present your company, product, team, mission – is it “I” or “We”? It makes a difference. Here is why.

First, what you say projects the values and beliefs of your new enterprise. The perception is that the journey is about you – not the team, not the bigger mission, not the families of employees and customers who you touch. It is first and foremost about you. It affects brand. It affects company culture.

The second dynamic is that it deprives your stakeholders of recognition, or at least makes their recognition subordinate to yours. Your stakeholders might be your executive team, your employees, your family, your partners, and your customers – the very people who you want most highly motivated. And much of that motivation is intrinsic.

Finally, when you represent decisions with “I” it makes your company seem small. Does decision making involve others? Do you have to at least achieve some consensus? Overuse of “I” means small thinking, small company.

Be Humble

Being a humble entrepreneur means that you are, well, “humble”. You are humble that you are allowed to be a steward, to guide a big idea, to raise money, to employ people and to affect their careers. And you believe in those values. It is both what you believe and what you say.

In the real world, that isn’t how things happen. There aren’t too many celebrity entrepreneurs who can truly go it alone. Getting things to happen in real life requires systems and networks. Building systems and networks requires the hard work and buy-in of many people. And everyone deserves the credit.

It costs little to recognize others – to use the language of team – “we” and “us” instead of “I”. And the benefits are both amazing and tangible. And after all – others will recognize you for your qualities, and will reciprocate the recognition – reciprocity, too, is a hard-wired human trait.

 

[1] See – Give and Take, by Adam Grant pages 88-89. Give and Take should be required reading for all entrepreneurs. Grant has extraordinary practical advice that is in tune with the business mores of tomorrow.

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Are You on the Right Track, Wrong Track?

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Rarely does an entrepreneurial hypothesis stand the test of time – at least not in its entirety. There often comes a time when you have to pivot. Change is almost always in the air.

Why? – Because entrepreneurs take journeys and those journeys are filled with new learning. The market speaks to us. New influencers speak to us. Customers and potential customers speak to us. An entrepreneur’s radar must be running 360 degrees, 24 X 7.

Checking in is a hard thing to do. Entrepreneurs are often tasked with creating stability and continuity. And if you are in a constant state of flux, it is difficult to keep everyone aligned with vision.

But staying on the right track – even if it means changing course – makes best use of funds, and gives your product; solution and business model the best chance for success.

You don’t want to be the best buggy maker when the public demands cars, as happened in the early 1900’s. Similarly, you don’t want to make the best desktop system when 78% of consumers use new mobile technologies as their primary communication tool. As one of my coaches use to say: “Don’t sell them peanuts when they are buying popcorn!”

Don’t be afraid to ask: Are we on the right track or the wrong track? And adjust.

 

(Image credit: Commons, unknown)

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Fragmentation

The Cost of Network Switching

social-platforms“Fragmentation is the first of the three big dysfunctions in social communication as we now know it. In “social” we often become awed by the big numbers. There are 1.6 billion people on Facebook. Twitter supports 500 million posts per day. Together there are over 173 active social networks and more coming.

It seems logical that with big numbers, would come big opportunities for exposure to a global audience. That is only partially true.

Each social network has a different architecture designed to support different user experiences and to serve many different user interests. To switch from one to another imposes a “switching cost” to each user as they shift attention from one network to another and back again.

Each user has a limited attention budget – estimated at less than 37 minutes. It is commonly accepted that an active user attention span is 8 seconds (2013) – “attention” being defined as the amount of concentrated time without a user becoming distracted. It is also estimated that the average user visits a Web page for just 4 seconds.

In the battle for attention, social networks compete with over an estimated 62 billion emails and 14 billion text messages sent each day.[1]

The bottom line is that network fragmentation diminishes user value. It takes away from both spontaneity and relevance.

[1] For excellent resources on Attention I strongly recommend the recently published, Paid Attention by Faris Yakob and Rapt by Gallagher Winifred.

 

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Social is Big! So Why Is it Broken?

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Like most emergent trends, social networking as we know it will evolve. If you are a frequent social media user, you understand that “social networks” are largely broken. If you are a business, you similarly understand that social networks are not delivering the type of consumer value that would in turn deliver predictable business value. These realities create real opportunities to make the social experience better for both the users and the businesses that support the social business models.  References for statistics: Pew Research and Wikipedia, Business Intelligence.

so·cial net·work”

noun

noun: social network; plural noun: social networks

  1. 
a network of social interactions and personal relationships.
  2. 
a dedicated website or other application that enables users to communicate with each other by posting information, comments, messages, images, etc.

Google Definitions

Though “social” is increasingly important in our lives – the typical social network experience is often frustrating for users and business alike. Why?

The answer is that present day social networks like Facebook, Twitter and their progeny, are losing their social characteristics. When we think of “social” communication we think of open networks – communication that is continuous and uninterrupted, that enables the sharing of experience and which is designed to build relationships and to nourish connections.

These qualities distinguish it from other forms of communication like email, or broadcast media, which are often more informational, linear and hierarchal – characteristics of closed networks.

As modern day social networks have evolved, they, by design, have become less social and more closed. In other words they interrupt the natural flow of dialogue. Embedded ads, discontinuous feeds, and the fleeting nature of posts all contribute to poor user experiences.

Consumer participation (and engagement) will only improve by evolving the current social network paradigm. Similarly delivering sustainable, predictable, business value will require a transformational and parallel shift in what we currently consider the state of the art.

The three core problems are fragmentation, distraction and lack of persistence of information.  We will consider each in the next 3 blog posts in this series. Then we will examine strategies that each of the major social networks might consider to build better consumer experience and to create more business value.

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Mythologies

Screen Shot 2015-07-04 at 3.32.49 PMAnd so it is with entrepreneurs. Mainstream tech media, tech folklore, conference anecdotes, senior advisors, venture capitalists, and many sources that shape entrepreneurial ethos perpetuate entrepreneurial myths “that just ain’t so”.

The last, biggest, greatest thing – the last success story, often influences entrepreneurs disproportionately. Entrepreneurs are often asked to live someone else’s reality – that might have led to a success – but that doesn’t fit the times, the market direction, or the objectives and personality of a given entrepreneurial initiative.

This often happens for many reasons. For first time entrepreneurs, it can be a lack of experience. It might be a lack of command in a subject area. For all entrepreneurs, the driver is often the “loyalty for money” exchange. Money is conditioned upon influence of belief. We tend to recycle advice – even if it might be “bad” advice or inappropriate for the circumstances.

Whatever the reason, these myths should be carefully examined with a contrarian viewpoint and some critical thought when an entrepreneur is building her dream. There is never any one way to do anything. Of that you can be sure.  Said another way:

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