Looking forward to more EVs

Published on 22 September, 2009 in Business. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Shai Agassi is a pretty inspiring kinda guy. Having been a jet at SAP, he’s shot into space proclaiming the benefits of replacing internal combustion engines with batteries and motors. It’s a pretty cool thought really.

You might ask, “But what about when you run out of power?” And Shai is glad that you did.

In a few years – if Shai has his way of course – it’ll be a simple matter of dropping through the convenient Better Place to swap your old battery for a new one… and with that, cars get an ‘unlimited range’. Well, at least as much as cars do.

Pretty brilliant piece of business design too. Not only does the company answer a really big problem (how to give electric vehicles the range they need) but it could create a massive disruption to the existing oil-based infrastructure network. Things could get messy I guess.

Australia is coming (supposedly)… I wonder when we’ll see it in China. More on this announcement at Wired.

Create an awesome idea. Change the world.

The Expert on Expertise, K. Anders Ericsson, on “What it takes”

Published on 19 September, 2009 in High performance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert PerformanceAs I was rereading the Introduction of “The Handbook” this morning, it occurred to me how remarkable it is that there is actually a formal domain of expert performance at all.

Being an ‘expert’ is simultaneously honoured and stigmatized in much of the world. In some parts of the world excellence has even been systematically repressed. And yet, we still want to know “what it takes”.

Successful people spontaneously do things differently from those who stagnate. In particular, they have different practice histories. We consistently see that they engage in “deliberate practice” – they work to innovate the way they do what they do.

You can read more about what the lead editor of The Handbook has to say in an interview with Fast Company here.

Being excellent isn’t easy. But it is a lot more simple than you might believe.

It is rational to screw people over?!

Published on 3 September, 2009 in Self-awareness. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

We usually trust people who think rationally more than we trust those who rely on their gut feelings. But should we?

Chen-Bo Zhong (from the University of Toronto) decided to find out by asking whether people would lie and screw someone over. Some did and some didn’t.

If they were encouraged to “make decisions based on gut feelings,” they would rip off the other person by lying just 27% of the time.

But if they were encouraged to “think rationally” they would screw them over 69% of the time!

The effect was so strong that they concluded, “Deliberative processes can license morally questionnable behaviors by focusing on tangible monetary outcomes and reducing emotional influence.”

That’s why it’s important to make moral, ethical and strategic decisions without relying upon the numbers. Sure, use the numbers. Check the downside. Make sure you can afford it if everything goes wrong. But ultimately we make better decisions – at least morally better decisions – when we allow our ‘inner goodness’ to shine through.

For me the warning is that the next time I’m making a decision, don’t just rely on the numbers… You gotta listen to your heart.

Sorry Spock.

Live Play School masquerading as child care-play-music

Published on 23 August, 2009 in Education. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

With only a few months to go, we figured it was about time to check out the child development options around here. Montessori is well known though the implementations can be inconsistent and there isn’t one really close by. So we checked out a local place that is supposedly part of an international conglomerate with 600 or so centres.

I was a little disappointed. Turns out they’re charging ¥240 ($42) per 45 minute class… and you still have to be there. The walls are pretty colours and the leaders are very animated, though the children didn’t seem at all engaged. And I can’t quite call the staff ‘teachers’ since they’re mostly just English majors who did a 2-month in-house course.

Yet what are the options?

The sales guy suggested that Shanghainese parents don’t know how to play with their kids so they bring them there instead. Ouch!

Maybe I had an enlightened childhood but it just looked like the kids were on the set of a second-rate version of the television show, Play School.

Maybe we’ll be looking elsewhere for a place that has a stronger pedagogical foundation than “let the kids play and they’ll learn something”.

Still, what is important in child development?

Attend training? Why not just read the book?

Published on 28 July, 2009 in Education and High performance. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Training courses can be expensive. They can cost a lot more to attend than buying a book on the same subject. Earlier today, was asked, “What is the difference?”

And it’s a good question to ask. A book costs a lot less than a training course – and is far more convenient to read – so if you could get the same thing from a book, it would be a much more convenient way to learn. So why do we teach our children in schools and our corporations through training courses when we could just give them books to read? Anyway, I gave an answer like this:

When I was younger, I read books about martial arts. I looked at the pictures and ran through in my mind the exercises and explanations. And it looked really cool! It got me excited and interested so I kept reading.

One day, my parents allowed me to start martial arts training. It was the same – and yet totally different. While I already knew in theory much of what we were learning, training in a class with other people like me meant that I learnt much more than ever before. I realized that I didn’t really know as much as I thought that I did. And I had the experience of really learning. If I had kept reading books, I could become very knowledgeable, but I could never have become a Master.

If you want to learn about a topic, reading books is great. If you want to develop some serious skill, you will want to find the right context for your to explore, experience and expand yourself in ways that you might have never realized possible.

If you want to develop real skill, you’ll want to find the best training opportunities around.

Only you know if it’s the right time. But that you’re asking about this suggests that some part of you believes that you would benefit from some training. If so, we look forward to having you join us.

So are training courses worth the money?

Flowing in the pool hall

Published on 25 July, 2009 in Creativity and genius. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Late last night, I dragged my brother Andrew out for a quick game of pool at the local pool hall. It’s a simple place – a big room filled with blue felt-covered tables, open 24/7, and cooled by cigarette smoke-infused vents.

A pool table in Café Zéphyr, Paris, France

A pool table in Café Zéphyr, Paris, France

Living on different continents, we don’t get the chance to play as much as we once did and I’m so amazed at how good he is! Refined by many hours of play, his technique is really very good. Impressive… and perhaps a bit scary since he’s so much younger than I!

I’ve noticed how I play my best when I’m not thinking too hard. Not that I’m not concentrating – on the contrary, I’m totally focused on what I’m doing. But I am not consciously thinking and analysing as much as I am allowing the shots to be played.

When I analyse and evaluate, I miss shots. My skills aren’t refined and disciplined enough to consistently shoot the ball where I intend it to go all that often, so even if I calculate things “right” there’s a good chance that it still won’t work.

But if I can allow myself to be guided by my intuition and just go for the shot that I feel is right, it’s amazing how consistently I can pull off the most remarkable shots. You (or Csíkszentmihályi) might call it a state of flow.

Yet, my emotional state becomes even more important. If my attention starts to wander or my mind starts to drift, I can also miss the easiest of shots! Playing through my intuition makes me able to do things my technical skill level wouldn’t allow yet it leaves me vulnerable to making horrible mistakes if I don’t keep in that ‘zone’.

It’s like when I sense that I’m ’supposed’ to call someone or meet with someone, even if I don’t understand ‘why’. Or if I pick up a book that I sense I should read – even if I don’t understand what it could do for me. Being open and being ready is challenging and potentially risky, yet it has the most amazing rewards.

And with thanks to Drew, I can appreciate being in that space through something as simple and common (or, in our case, perhaps uncommon) as a game of pool.

Design Thinking rocks

Published on 24 July, 2009 in Design. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

I love my Moleskine. It is simple. It is not technologically advanced. But it works. It does precisely what I want it to do. It is designed.

I love my mobile phone. It was the most advanced piece of electronic gadgetry I (and especially my inner geek) had ever laid my hands upon when I bought it – and it still rocks today. It does everything that I want it to do. It looks great. It is designed.

I love and marvel at so many things that are beautiful, functional and that work well. The things we love – whether it’s an iPhone or a Brioni suit – are designed. We see the patterns of design in the natural world too, almost as if nature has built-in design attributes to the evolutionary process. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Everything that we love is designed.

Design is everywhere around us – some better, some that might benefit from a bit longer on the drawing board. Bruce Nussbaum came up with a few higher-profile examples last week.

I wonder whether “Design IQ” is the next of Gardner’s multiple intelligences… and how we can cultivate Design Intelligence in our engineers, in our lawyers and perhaps even in our politicians.

In fact, let’s see how we can increase the Design Intelligence of everybody… so that we each can more appreciate the design and beauty around us.

Preparing to Awaken Genius

Published on 30 June, 2009 in Creativity and genius and Self-awareness. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Tonight we have our second Awaken Your Genius event (also on Facebook). It’s really exciting for me – though challenging to compress the very best material into perhaps 90 minutes!

It’s always like that though. There is so much that we can say, yet we have very limited attention spans (ala my friend Warwick’s book, The One Minute Presenter)… effective communication is so often more about deletion than it is about creation.

When we communicate with people that we care about, we need to delete information. We can’t tell them everything. So we generalize. We delete. Sometimes we even (innocently?) distort what happens and what is going on.

One of the participants on my current Personal Transformation workshop shared how she doesn’t tell her parents what she is doing because she fears that they wouldn’t understand and instead would just worry about her. But we all do it.

We change our focus on the basis of many things. Mostly these are unconscious. But what happens when you can take personal responsibility for the spotlight of your attention is amazing.

It’s genius.

Years ago, I found that I could survive on 4.5h sleep but…

Published on 28 May, 2009 in Lifestyle, Self-awareness and What I am doing. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Years ago, I found I could survive on 4.5 hours of sleep per night but that my creativity died. Seems that Jim Collins feels the same way http://is.gd/HCXE

It was while I was at university, and while I found that I could work hard enough to get some of my best academic results, I felt drained. Not that I couldn’t think – but just that I could only think within the rules. I couldn’t look beyond the rules, frameworks and paradigms that were presented to me, and I certainly couldn’t explore the connections between systems. So I went back to enjoying dreams.

Still, it was a worthwhile experiment!

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Finished our fourth NLP Prac

Published on 23 May, 2009 in What I am doing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

NLP training is great fun. It not only provides me with an amazing opportunity to connect with some fabulous people, a context to develop my understanding through explaining useful techniques and strategies to new people, but it also challenges me to grow. It’s one of the most fun things that I’m lucky enough to be involved with :)

Jeff and I are running our next Practitioner-level training in June-July.

Also coming up: Wendy and I will be leading a training on love and intimacy.

And of course, China NLP has events coming every other week if you’re in China.

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