RESQBug.com – Geek Speak to English

After spending the last seven hours in front of my computer, a phrase came to mind that my brother Daniel recently said to me in response to reading The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.  Daniel said:

“What if we we are already working for the computers?”

While The Matrix and Horton Hears a Who! come immediately to mind, his comment was subtler than that.  What if we turn the entire paradigm on its side?  In our biological realm we “evolve”; in our computing realm we “innovate.”  What if the computers are actually evolving and have figured out that the best way for them to evolve more quickly is to convince us to “innovate” for them.

I had to stop and scrunch my eyes together after typing that paragraph.  The first draft I wrote was way weirder and more out there – basically a rant about how computers were having a conversation in a parallel universe that we don’t actually understand and, as part of this, had figured out how to manipulate human beings.

At Ted yesterday, my long time friend John Underkoffler, the co-founder of Oblong stated “Technology is capable of expressing generosity. And we need to demand that.”

While he meant something totally different, I think this is consistent with the parallel universe I’m pondering.  As humans (at least most Americans), we regularly envision ourselves at the top of the pyramid of existence, unless you are not an atheist, in which case god factors in somewhere on your hierarchy.  But – let’s leave god (or the lack of god) out and think about “humans as a species” vs. “computers as a species”.  I started with constructs like collective consciousness and communication hierarchy and was able to quickly come up with a straightforward analogy for each one between the human species and the computer species.

And yet, I still type.  All in the name of sharing and contributing my thoughts via this very interesting mechanism.  I’m going to run for three hours this afternoon.  I’ll have my Garmin 305 on my wrist (with its GPS) and my iPhone in my pack (listening to the end of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ll be contributing a lot of data to both devices, which will then record them and upload them to “the computer”.  The amount of data I’m generating is enormous; I’m not quite sure what the computers are using all of this data for, but what if it was actually something specific?

Before you discard these thoughts as the ravings of a lunatic, just think about them for a minute.  This is a common construct in so much contemporary science fiction.  Maybe the “collective compute infrastructure” of the world has already passed us by and now have us working for them / it.  Wouldn’t that be something to discover 100 years from now.

With thanks to www.feld.com.   To see the original article please click here.

Remember, that the only dumb question is the one never asked. If you have any questions or comments, I look forward to them, please email or call me.

Cheers.

Allan

RESQBug.com Technical Services and PRAD Enterprise

“Managing Your Technology for Improved Workplace Performance”

c: 416.464.1508

e: allan@resqbug.com

t: http://twitter.com/resqbug

Visit us on the Web at http://www.resqbug.com

This article is for information purposes only.  It is recommended that individuals consult with an IT professional before acting on any information contained in this article. The opinions stated are those of Allan Waddington and not a reflection of any company he currently works with or has in the past.

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” -Red Adair

Sometimes a person says one sentence that just sticks with you and is so perfect that it defines a whole category of behavior.  Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, riffed on the phrase “be the CEO of your job” in a board meeting a year or so ago.  It stuck with me and I’ve thought about it many times since.

On Sunday, the NY Times did a great “Corner Office” interview with Mark titled Are You a C.E.O. of Something? Among other things it explored the idea of being the CEO of your job.  Fred Wilson – also an investor in Zynga – wrote a post on Sunday titled Empowering Your Team which talks about one aspect of this.  But Fred left out a great example from one of Mark’s earlier companies (Support.com) which really nails this concept.

“We had this really motivated, smart receptionist. She was young. We kept outgrowing our phone systems, and she kept coming back and saying, “Mark, we’ve got to buy a whole new phone system.” And I said: “I don’t want to hear about it. Just buy it. Go figure it out.” She spent a week or two meeting every vendor and figuring it out. She was so motivated by that. I think that was a big lesson for me because what I realized was that if you give people really big jobs to the point that they’re scared, they have way more fun and they improve their game much faster. She ended up running our whole office.”

Think about the conceptual progression.  First, the CEO (Mark) had to have to courage to make the young, motivated, smart receptionist “be the CEO of her job.”  Then, when the problem was put to him (“Mark, we’ve got to buy a whole new phone system”), Mark resisted doing something so many entrepreneurs (and executives, and managers) do – namely to “manage” the problem.  Instead of spending a lot of his time solving the problem, or setting up a committee to spend a month figuring out the phone system, or asking someone more senior to the receptionist to figure it out, he gave her the responsibility of solving the entire problem.  He anointed her “CEO of her job” – as the receptionist, she was the one that felt the most pain from the inadequate phone system and was probably in the best position to figure out a solution.

In this case, the notion of “be the CEO of your job” was in the culture of the organization so the receptionist – who was in Mark’s words young, motivated, and smart – took this seriously, spent real time figuring out the solution, and then solved it.  I’m sure the early culture of Support.com was “don’t spend a lot of money” so the financial constraint, while vague, was probably understood.  While there’s plenty more behind the scenes in the story, the young reception clearly “leveled up” (it’s impossible not to use game-speak when talking about Zynga) and ended up running the whole office.

I work with CEO’s every day.  So I’m naturally wired to encourage them to be CEO of their own job.  While this is pretty meta, it’s an important starting point as I already think this way all the time.  I’m certainly not perfect and have moments where I just jump in and try to solve a specific problem, but most of the time I let the CEO’s be CEO.  However, when I contemplate this, I realize I haven’t done a good job of encouraging the CEO’s to make everyone in their organization CEO of the job.  Some CEO’s do this naturally and – not surprisingly – these are generally the highest achieving companies.

Pause and ponder the idea.  Assuming you are in an entrepreneurial organization, are you being the CEO of your job?  Is this culturally (and functionally) acceptable?  Do you get rewarded for taking risks and succeeding (or failing) like your CEO does?  If not, would you be more effective if you did?

Now, if you are the CEO of an entrepreneurial organization, do you encourage everyone in the company to be CEO of their job?  Is this culturally (and functionally) acceptable?  Do they get rewarded for taking risks and succeeding (or failing) like you do?  If not, would they be more effective if they did?

If you applied the lens of “be the CEO of your job” to you job, would you behave any differently?

With thanks to www.feld.com.   To see the original article please click here.

Remember, that the only dumb question is the one never asked. If you have any questions or comments, I look forward to them, please email or call me.

Cheers.

Allan

RESQBug.com Technical Services and PRAD Enterprise

“Managing Your Technology for Improved Workplace Performance”

c: 416.464.1508

e: allan@resqbug.com

t: http://twitter.com/resqbug

Visit us on the Web at http://www.resqbug.com

This article is for information purposes only.  It is recommended that individuals consult with an IT professional before acting on any information contained in this article. The opinions stated are those of Allan Waddington and not a reflection of any company he currently works with or has in the past.

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” -Red Adair