Leadership

Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

People who succeeded despite adversity, part 2

[This post is part of a series on people who succeed despite adversity. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Ask yourself which helps more — having advantages or learning to overcome adversity? I base this series on noticing how many extremely successful people had problems that mediocre people claim hold them back. Sure, many successful people emerged from privileged backgrounds and sure, some social problems keep many people from any chance at success, but if you're reading this blog you probably have reasonable access to success. I decided to create a list of people who succeeded and some problems they overcame. I plan to…

September 11, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Education / Leadership

One of the most important lessons I learned in business school didn’t come from a teacher and it applies everywhere in life

I wrote before about "Business school's first major lesson: how to resolve ethical dilemmas." Today I'll talk about another important lesson I learned in business school, also within the first couple weeks, also applying in many places in life I would not have expected from a vocational school. Context First I have to note my mindset before starting business school. I considered the most relevant parts of my life that I'd co-founded a company and I knew more math than probably anyone in the school. I thought business school would be a fun experience filling in a few gaps of how to make spreadsheets and learning some networking skills. What happened One of the major cores of business school is knowing how a business runs…

September 9, 2013

Blog / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Leadership problems today and a call to action

[I alluded to this topic before. I still have to write it up formally and edit it more than a daily post allows. I hope it gets the main ideas across. Please contact me if it interests you.] You only have to read the news to see the problems Do I have to convince anyone that we have many people in leadership positions who lead ineffectively? You only have to read the headlines. As I'm writing these words the New York Times' top headline is about a spy scandal in which the top person at the NSA lied to Congress, which is abdicating its Constitutional checks on the President, who is doing the opposite of what he promised the country during his campaign on this…

August 30, 2013

Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Who is today’s King George III? Who are today’s patriots?

No two people are the same, especially centuries apart. Still, I can't help but think about the leader of a great empire, occupying foreign lands, facing bankruptcy from an expensive victory in a war that galvanized many nations against it , taxing without representation, changing laws arbitrarily, putting his troops in people's homes, with a legislative body insensitive to its citizens' concerns, ... I could go on, and ask "Who resembles this person most today?" I can't help concluding the United States government resembles less its founders than the imperial government they rebelled against. Thinking about Edward Snowden, Chelsea (born Bradley) Manning, and Daniel Ellsberg got me thinking about my country's founders and revolutionary figures. I couldn't help but read about Samuel Adams, Crispus Attucks,…

August 28, 2013

Art / Blog / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Another awesome success — Museum Hack and Nick Gray

An awesome side benefit of writing daily is that awesome people find you. Recently a guy wrote to tell me he liked my writing and invited me to participate in what seemed like a crazy project, but turned out to be one of the most awesome things I've done in New York City in a long time. And I've done a lot of awesome things in New York City. It's an amazing entrepreneurial story too -- the kind we love, which is why I, who endorse entrepreneurship and believe opportunities are everywhere, am sharing it with you. He started doing something that he enjoyed, for fun and personal challenge, and shared what he loved and got good at (another example of how "Sharing what you…

August 27, 2013

Why basketball players are tall and how tyranny emerges

Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Why basketball players are tall and how tyranny emerges

Today's post approaches the recent NSA surveillance revelations from a systems-theory perspective. The reasons basketball players are tall imply consequences to our government. A high-level systems perspective leaves out details, some of which may be more important than this post gives credit for. I'm not saying it's the only perspective, but I consider it important and relevant. Please feel free to comment if you feel I missed something important. Why are most basketball players tall? Why are most basketball players tall? Basketball players are tall because the rulebook puts the basket ten feet high and they want to put the ball in the basket. Taller players achieve the goal better. Basketball players have a goal, they follow rules, and the ones who achieve the goal…

August 20, 2013

Blog / Education / Entrepreneurship / Events / Leadership

See me on Leadership through Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness

Brought to you by the Distinguished Leaders committee of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York (copying the following announcement from that site): Leadership Through Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence In a weekend, learn how to develop your personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence through the latest advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology. While business schools and corporations are increasingly focusing on personal leadership, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence as foundations for leading others, many MBAs never had the opportunity to take a formal course in personal leadership. Joshua Spodek, MBA, PhD, has developed a two-day weekend workshop in just this area. His experiential course combines advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology with successful business leadership…

August 16, 2013

Blog / Leadership

Three stages of understanding how ancient Egyptians built the pyramids

I'm sure many people have thought and written great stuff about the Egyptian pyramids and overcoming the challenges to building them. I haven't read much on them, but I'm writing not so much about the pyramids than on how one person's thoughts developed as he learned to solve harder problems, though nowhere near the scale of a great pyramid. Stage 1: The challenges of mechanical engineering When I first thought of the challenges of building the pyramids, I looked at the challenges the way I think most people do -- from a mechanical engineering perspective. I wondered How could they cut, transport, and lift those stones? How could they measure the angles and distances accurately? Stage 2: The challenges of organizing and leading people At…

July 28, 2013

Blog / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

The risks of someone calling you smart and how to avoid them

When I was a budding entrepreneur, recently having earned my PhD in astrophysics, people would often introduce me as a rocket scientist. At first I enjoyed the praise. In time I found being called intelligent didn't help me in business. By "in business" I mean in business roles with leadership and decision-making. People talk about intelligence as valuable in business and some behave so, but I came to conclude successful businesspeople, especially investors, didn't value intelligence as someone's primary value. On the contrary, I came to find many venture capitalists and other investors viewed people with intelligence as their primary value as people whose inexperience they could exploit to make money off of. I think businesspeople in mainstream music look at talented musicians the same…

July 24, 2013

Blog / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

What kind of leadership is this: Obama fighting for less accountability and more centralized power

Leadership and politics overlap. I generally try not to take political positions on this blog to make it accessible to more people, but the push to increase surveillance and erode protections like habeas corpus seem enough like ineffective leadership that I feel compelled to cover them. In response to this article stating that Congress granted the president the authority to arrest and hold individuals accused of terrorism without due process under the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act of 2012], but Mr. Obama said in an accompanying signing statement that he will not abuse these privileges to keep American citizens imprisoned indefinitely Note it says merely "accused." Note it also says "indefinitely." I wrote the following on Hacker News (an entrepreneurial / geeky community site), which…

July 19, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Leadership

Men, women, attraction, and power

Here's a conversation I had with a friend. It shows the way my physics training gets me to think that I expect others will find interesting. Remember, physics to me means respecting and appreciating nature -- not just something that happens in a laboratory, but how rainbows work, why the sky is blue, and why people are the way we are. My friend also said she found the result enlightening. Normally I don't write about men-women issues, but the way of thinking can apply elsewhere too. You'll see I had to refine my first question and then re-ask it to give clear and unambiguous answers -- like creating an experiment. Physicists like answers that you can measure. Josh: Do you think overall men find women…

July 9, 2013

Blog / Leadership / Tips

Daily models and beliefs that work

[Today's post is an alternative introduction to my series on beliefs and how to change them. It gives a different, more team-oriented approach.] A major tool of leadership is setting the common beliefs and models of your team. Some examples: The head of a corporation may decide that the company's highest priority is product quality when it used to be customer service. Or may decide it is a consumer electronics company instead of a business-to-business company. The coach of a sports team may decide the team is a defensive team where it used to be offensive and before that it fed the ball to its star player. A person in a relationship may decide love means understanding and supporting their significant other where they used…

July 7, 2013

Blog / Leadership / Models

Who or what is a Cathedral-builder and why should I care?

[This post is part of a series on "Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours." If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] The great business guru Peter Drucker illustrated how different people find different value and meaning from their work (and lives) through the parable of the three stonecutters. An old story tells of three stonecutters asked what they were doing. The first looked unhappy. He said, "I'm making a living cutting stones." The second looked happier and proud. He kept on hammering while he said, "I'm doing the best job of stone-cutting in the entire country." The third one looked up with…

July 6, 2013

Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Restore the Fourth

Independence Day is one of the holidays I like to take time to think about its meaning. Today I'm thinking about the U.S. Bill of Rights, as timely today as ever. Why are they as important today as ever? They limit the power of government. It seems unchecked governments tend to try to seize more power. That doesn't mean they're bad or the people in them are bad. Just that people in positions of power feel motivations to increase that power, often for what many people would consider noble reasons. If you've read my posts lately you've read how I consider the NSA's spying a major step toward unaccountable centralized power (which I think the writers of the Constitution would have called tyranny) and an…

July 4, 2013

Blog / Leadership / Tips

Managing difficult teammates, managers, employees, and people

We've all had to deal with difficult team members. Those who have led have had to deal with difficult people reporting to us. Most of us have had to deal with difficult managers and bosses. We've also had to deal with difficult people in general. When someone makes our jobs and lives difficult we want to influence them to stop challenging us and start helping us, or at least getting out of the way (and sometimes to be open to them influencing us, accepting that sometimes we are the difficult ones). When the difficult person is our manager or boss, many of us feel powerless to do anything to influence them. You can influence anyone. I'm writing today's post to increase your ability to influence.…

July 3, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Morality and the development of language

I write a lot here about how counterproductive judging others or imposing your values on them is for leadership or influencing them. (Here are five posts on it, for example: Instead of calling something right, wrong, good, or bad, consider the consequences of your actions, What is morality?, On the counterproductivity of motivating people with guilt and blame — aka moralizing, Talking about "truth" or "reality" always confuses things, How willing are you not to judge?) Thinking about the development of language gave me a new perspective that, I think, helps undermine people's attachment to calling things right, wrong, good, bad, or evil. This post may sound philosophical or esoteric, but I didn't write it that way. My goal, as with the posts I linked…

July 2, 2013

Blog / Leadership

People who succeeded despite adversity

[This post is part of a series on people who succeed despite adversity. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you ever feel like things are stacked against you? Consider how many people succeeded despite the odds. Ask yourself which helps more -- having advantages or learning to overcome adversity? I've noticed how many extremely successful people had problems that mediocre people claim hold them back. I started noticing it with actors on Inside the Actor's Studio, but then started noticing it elsewhere. Sure, many successful people emerged from privileged backgrounds and sure, some social problems keep many people from any chance at success,…

July 1, 2013

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Leadership and United States’ spying

I'd like to look at some headlines from a leadership perspective. I don't intend for today's post to be political. Governments have needed secrecy and spying since before Sun Tzu's The Art of War over two thousand years ago. People will also oppose governments that overreach their influence into their lives. Different people oppose different levels of intrusion so that the more a government intrudes the more people will oppose the government. One of the main roles of a government's highest leaders is to balance the government's secrecy and spying with its citizens' private interests. Government officials and decision-makers have conflicting interests because their jobs get easier with more of the former and harder with more of the latter. If a leader doesn't take responsibility…

June 26, 2013

Blog / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Tips

“Needs as understood”: How to start sales presentations — and conversations where you want to influence someone

I've written before about a student group from Columbia Business School I still contribute to long after graduation called InSITE that promotes entrepreneurship and connects students at several schools including Columbia, NYU, Harvard, and Stanford to entrepreneurs. A recent post on InSITE's blog by Lukasz Strozek, Stanford Business School 2014, described a challenge common in product development and entrepreneurship. It reminded me of a great solution I'll write below applicable to many situations where you want to influence people. The challenge Read that post for the details, but broadly it points out We care about products we create We want to get feedback from customers and potential customers Pitching the product gets closed answers, not broad understanding of a customer's needs or interests So the…

June 25, 2013

Google, strategy, and what your strategy says about you

Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Google, strategy, and what your strategy says about you

I've read a few articles recently how people are using search engines that track you less than Google in light of the spying. I've been using DuckDuckGo for a while since I find Google so spooky. Nobody is challenging in Google's dominance, but competition is increasing. Its search results aren't as good as Google's, but I prefer it, as I'll explain. Nearly every successful company has a strategy or it will lose focus and fail. Same with people, for that matter. Whatever a company or person says, if you know their strategy you can predict their behavior. Usually if you know their behavior you can figure out their strategy. In the case of Google and your privacy, I believe their strategy says a lot about…

June 24, 2013

Exercises / Freedom / Leadership / Models / Tips

A model for one of the most valuable skills related to beliefs

[This post is part of a series on "Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours." If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] This series covered a lot about flexibility with your beliefs -- the ability to try out believing something new and letting the new belief crowd out the old one. Doing so is hard because believing means believing something is right. If you don't get it, changing beliefs is hard because you'll think it means believing what you thought was wrong is right and vice versa. I made a point of undermining beliefs being absolutely right or wrong -- it's impossible for…

June 20, 2013

Blog / Freedom / Leadership

More thoughts on centralized power without accountability

Comparisons to Nazis and Hitler happen all the time, usually backfiring on the people making the comparison. Since almost no one has tried to take over the world or kill everyone they could based on religion, whomever you're comparing looks better. This comparison makes things so black-and-white you lose the ability to learn from the past. Today we know how Nazism ended, but while it developed and grew, nobody knew. When most people talk about the topic, they talk about after their power passed a point of no return. The problem with looking only there is that there was little anyone could do then to change anything. I write this blog about what you can do. I want to share things we can act on.…

June 18, 2013

Blog / Leadership

My main problem with centralized power without accountability

I once read that in the build-up to WWII, people in America were concerned that democracy would hold them back in a conflict with the nations creating strong centralized authorities. They speculated that in a war, while they deliberated, nations with centralized power would win for not having to take time making decisions. Apparently they were right, but only at the beginning. When the strong central leaders made effective decisions, their nations won. Things changed when the strong central leaders started making bad decisions when things got out of their depth. The powerful leaders continued making decisions and nobody could stop them until their nations were ruined. I don't know how accurately I remember what I read or how accurately what I read portrayed what…

June 13, 2013

Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Ad hominem attacks are easy but counterproductive and best ignored

I'm following the story of the government spying more closely than most issues and writing about it here because I see it as a failure of leadership in many ways, most importantly that the system seems to be out of control with the person in charge -- the President of the United States -- exercising little accountability if not outright lying. Yesterday an opinion piece in the New York Times ignored the issues and attacked the character of the whistle-blower, using malevolent tones to insinuate problems. Today the New Yorker challenged that piece, still respecting the Times writer, as if the piece deserved respect. I don't think the piece deserved respect of serious consideration. Instead of addressing it point by point, as the New Yorker…

June 12, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Leadership / Models

A model for intuition, especially in complicated times

[This post is part of a series on "Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours." If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Leading in complicated times can be challenging. Many people prefer not to lead because of the risk of visible failure. Others thrive under pressure. They don't have better odds of success than others. If you can become like that, people will want you around. Even if all you can do is stay calm beyond where others lose their cool, people will want you on their team or leading it. How do you learn to stay calm and perform effectively under pressure…

June 8, 2013

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