The MVC-ETL Pattern

Nothing's too easy in software development when you haven't done it for a while or don't really have a dev plan.  Hours can be wasted setting up the tools, prototyping and testing.  A friend of mine has been asking me recently how to use MVC for his project.  Last night I spent some time with him and realized that his problem was not just understanding and using MVC, it was also that his data was not ready.  So where to begin?

ETL

When we have a data-driven app, we really have just two options: 1) build forms and code to store our data in exactly the shape we're going to use it or 2) use ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools and techniques to shape our data into the necessary output formats.

The popular visual, gui-based ETL tools that I know of in wide use today are Alteryx, Tableau Prep Builder and Microsoft SSIS.  There are many more.  ETL tools (this could be code like C#, Python, R, etc. but here I'm only talking about visual tools that to me are more approachable and usable) are used to connect to data sources (extract), twist and turn the data into the shapes and outputs you want (transform) and save them off for access later (load).

The Tableau Prep Builder user interface that in the top pane, left side, we connect to some data, twist and turn it into our output shapes, join it and all that visually, then finally output it to a final source.

MVC

MVC is the Model View Controller software pattern.  There are many frameworks that implement this pattern.  My favorite is Microsoft ASP.NET MVC, which I have been using since 2009.  Something that goes really well with MVC in ASP.NET is Entity Framework, which makes it easy to connect to and work with data in a language like C#.  Another powerful aspect of the .NET Framework is LINQ to SQL which makes it easy to work with data within code. 

What the folder structure of an ASP.NET MVC web application looks like.  Note that there are folders for the Models, Views and Controllers.  This makes it easier for developers to separate and utilize these three aspects.

The Model in MVC is the database, and perhaps the one we created above in ETL.  There may be additional database tables we need to use and all the "logic" of the data and its shape and form live within this module.

The Controllers in MVC are those things that help us get and put the data.  From controllers, we connect to, work with, surface and store data.  Some transformations can take place here but for the purposes of this article, I am handling all the "heavy lifting" data transformations in the ETL flow described above.  The benefits of this approach are the we can separate our concerns between MVC which is great for making software applications and ETL, which is great for turning data into the shapes we need for our apps.

The Views in MVC are the actual screens that users see and interact with.  Screens can be created for viewing or entering data.  The views might have ViewModels that go into them that make it easy for the logic of the view to present the data to the user.

MVC and ETL Together: PB&J

By combining the power of MVC to make applications with the power of ETL to turn your data into easily-usable shapes, developers today can expand their reach, improve the quality of their apps and time to market.

Is Subscription Pricing Fair?

Is subscription pricing fair to those involved? Who typically wins and who typically loses in these schemes, the seller or the buyer? 

Subscription is defined as:

"the action of making or agreeing to make an advance payment in order to receive or participate in something."  It should also be added that subscriptions typically happen on a recurring basis.

Modern subscription pricing models give discounts for longer commitments where paying and renewing per-month, for example, is more expensive than paying or renewing on an annual basis.

What is driving buyers (businesses as well as consumers!) to decide to pay for a subscription?  Sometimes it's the only option available.  Some of it can also be explained by FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).  The opposite scenario, would be grandpa Murray's saying, "Tell me what you need and I'll tell you how you can get along without it."

Here is what is driving the move to subscriptions:

1. Limited choice. This affects both seller and buyer.  Barry Schwarz has been absorbed, but the result is sometimes perversion of the intent.
1. Seller – Offer buyer fewer choices to make the sale faster, train sales people on “value” of having all options available
2. Buyer – Less to think about
2. Don’t need to worry about a varying usage pattern.  Big decisions up front (sports or not in package), but then it doesn’t matter if there is a sleep over.  At a business level, I may not be using a specific feature now, but it’s expensive to add.
3. Aspirational.  If I pay for the gym I’m more likely to guilt myself into using it.  If I buy a media subscription, I may come back to read it later, and I know it’s much more expensive to buy single copies.
4. FOMO.  Perhaps.  Water cooler talk about a new show?

We further dissect the elements of subscriptions:

Ease. The ease or simplicity of subscription pricing can be quite disturbing: in a 'set it and forget it' fashion, consumers basically sign up for services that they may never use and grant an annuity payment to the seller if their subscriptions go unmanaged.  It's interesting to wonder how many subscriptions people have versus those that are actually used.  The difference represents waste and likely profit for the seller.

Popularity.  Subscriptions likely take up an increasingly large mix of consumers' market baskets.  This perhaps relates to the previous concept and the perception of abundance: and it is generational to some extent. Taking care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves has been replaced by “it’s only $25 per month” and buyers forget how much all the $25 adds up.

Partiality.  Rather than paying for the entire value of the item up front, in subscription pricing, it is like leasing or renting: it creates a price that may seem more affordable or attractive to the consumer and makes the buying decision easier.

Waste on the Consumer End.  There can be waste for consumers of subscriptions: we sign up and don't use them. Magazines arrive, for example, accumulate and don't get consumed. Subscriptions if used well directly align supply and demand but when the buyer does not make full use of the subscription and its benefits, there is misalignment and therefore waste; the system can be inefficient.

Waste on the Seller End. There are also examples of waste where the company gets the model wrong and loses: a recent example of this was MoviePass who offered for $9.99 nearly unlimited access to movie theaters.  The company quite famously experienced major challenges with this model and folded badly.  Fast followers and larger, more established organizations like AMC quickly swooped in on the opportunity and figured out a set of economics that could more sustainably provide a subscription service to this market.

Returns.  When there is waste it may be the duty of the seller to both detect and re-adjust the subscription plan to better fit the usage pattern of the user. An example of this is cell phone carriers who are willing to recommend a better plan based on the observed usage of the service by the user.  Consumers will expect and want more of this kind of governance and value.

Options and Complexity.  Another common example of waste in subscription models and a "good thing" for sellers are gym memberships: consumers keep paying regardless of use.  Gyms would perhaps be delighted if their members never showed up as long as the revenue stream kept flowing.

Option Time Frames.  Options can be offered in both "pre-facto" and "post-facto" contexts.  For example, in the pre-facto sense, consumers can choose whether or not too add cheese to their burger. This is a competitive differentiator for some: have it your way vs. limiting options by policy because the seller knows what their consumers like.  An example of a post-facto (after the purchase) option would be returning the burger for a full refund if unsatisfied.  A better example, related to subscription, is a refund for unused services or carry forward minutes, as it were.  Carry-forward is not necessarily in the buyer’s interest if they aren’t going to binge to catch up.  This also happens in employment scenarios when employees accumulate "sick days" that expire at the end of the year.  Have an inexpensive service where what the consumer pays seems worth the price, but it's messed up if it's only used as a small fraction of the number of available annual uses.

Increasing Complexity.  It is likely that pricing models will only increase in terms of their complexity over time and this will lead to increased confusion and dissatisfaction of consumers.  End-User License Agreements (EULAs) of software, for example, are notorious for their complexity and consumers are known to just skip over them rather than understanding the language and implications of their engagement with the offering.  Consumers are likely to get tired and "don't have time to do a spreadsheet every time they are going to buy something." There used to be a place for consultants between business buyers and vendors – interpreting what the prospect really needs.  Computers are driving this innovation and ability to deliver more complex mechanisms successfully.

Overwhelm.  In Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice it is argued persuasively that not everyone needs or wants more choice and at some point the buyer becomes overwhelmed with options and relies on gut, emotion, bias or instinct to decide.  From an engineering and innovation perspective more options,  bells and whistles are valuable but it is the job of the marketer or product manger to bundle and package only these innovations into bite size chunks that the end users will actually use, consume and from which they will, at scale, actually receive value and benefit.

Base Plus and Hybrid Models.  Some new pricing models start with the base service and then offer add-ons or subscriptions on top of the base capability.  These can be thought of as hybrid models with fixed and variable expenses.  As if lots of features and pricing models were not enough to confuse the consumers, "modes" and options of features (like colors) add yet another layer of complexity to considerr.

Bundling, Tailoring and Customization.  Rather than one-size-fits-all strategies, companies are starting to play with services that better fit the consumer. Although a side effect is too much choice for the consumer, one benefit is (if the choices can be simplified) that the services and prices can be directly tailored and fit to the needs of the buyer.  There are opportunities to tailor based on buyer psychographics that aren’t being fully utilized, for example, as well.

Returns and Less than Full Utilization.  Return  policies in some way are linked into pricing benefits, perceived value and purchasing decisions.  For example, some snow chains can be returned years later if not used for full money back.   Organizations like Costco and Nordstrom are known for great return  policies.  There could be scenarios in subscription pricing models where the unused portion of the service could be returned for all or a portion of the money back but these seem rare today.  Said differently, rather than consumers having to 'eat' the difference, the seller could detect unused capacity and give the consumer some money back, making the exchange more efficient and less one-sided. Another example of seller graciousness and service is Les Schwab changing unused snow chains for those fitting a new vehicle.

Lack of Ownership.  Traditional, basic pricing models of music, for example, where an entire CD
is purchased and owned may also demonstrate waste but the goods at least become an asset to and property of the buyer.   Possession and ownership also provides the ability to transfer, trade or sell the item post-facto and buyers can recuperate some of the cost.  Leases, subscriptions and downloadable music do not typically exhibit an ability to transfer. Perhaps an album as a coherent offering from an artist whereas streaming services muddy the waters.

Delivery Method.   Many new delivery models are available today as well, which also play into consumer perception of value.  For example, Amazon  Prime's home delivery and one-day delivery are extremely convenient for users and create excitement.  Similarly, Amazon now does delivery to vehicles, garages, and lockers. Innovation in delivery can be captured in pricing.

Customer Service and Trust. The quality of customer service and in some cases access to human representatives of the organization also plays into consumer thought on value and price.  Painful customer service experiences, ridiculous hold times and no access to qualified and capable humans is largely dissatisfying for consumers, resulting in customer loss.  What is driving consumers' perception of trust in providers?  The relationship and perception of care and personalization is a big part of it.   For example, Verizon and Pemco keep good records about customers so the relationship with the organization is maintained over time building trust.  Some businesses calculate Customer Lifetime Value and tailor services based on the perceived (most likely remaining) value of the customer.  There are of course examples where the provider bends over backwards and goes above and beyond what is reasonable to delight a customer or prove a point in the market.  The book Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson tells fictitiously of a Pizza Company CEO who travels to the dissatisfied customer to apologize in person for a poor delivery, then harms the delivery person.

Justice and Equity.  When both parties feel like they have compromised an equitable amount or given up something of equal value during the exchange, interests are aligned and growth can flourish.

Geography, Regulatory Context, Risk-Transfer and Taxes. Sales taxes and their avoidance also plays into product pricing strategies and distribution methods.  In the Supreme Court case of South Dakota  vs. Wayfair, it was ruled that, "states can  mandate that businesses without a physical presence in a state with more than 200 transactions or $100,000 in-state sales collect and remit sales taxes on transactions in the state."

Criticality for Businesses.  Not only are companies thinking about how to avoid tax expenses, they're also thinking about how to best finance their operations.  And what better way to get cash in hand to fund future activities than to get recurring payments from consumers rolling in?  This is one of the key reasons for subscription pricing, and also results in many of the problems and examples of misalignment.

Buyer Beware.  From an early age, as consumers, we are hopefully trained to question what is being sold and marketed to us both in terms of value, price and supplier quality.  As consumers we are raised in a culture of skepticism and a lack of trust for sellers and sales people, for example.  Other cliches abound such as The Customer Is Always Right.  And in practice that principal is not regularly honored.

To Summarize a Few Points:

Special thanks to Mike Pritchard for his great edits and additions to this body of work.  And to Carrie Dugan, Larry Gales, Berry Zimmerman and David Slight for their awesome contributions, experiences, knowledge and ideas.

Please join us next time for a dinner conversation and following article that will address the question, "Is Automation Progress?"

Technology and the Environment: An Approach to Radical Energy Efficiency

The AppsJack group of local change agents gathered on May 22, 2018 and met with Larry Gales, technologist and former UW faculty member about energy efficiency.  Larry is passionate about the environment and shared with the group an "existence proof" he has created about a future where we have reduced our energy usage by a factor of 30x.  The problem?  Getting there.

Here's how Larry paints the future: he breaks it into two areas and this message is for the general consumer.  Area 1 is personal transportation and he has concrete proposals.  Area 2 is residential where he also has specific proposals and integration factors between the home and travel.  If we think about it, we realize that our biggest personal energy foot prints are indeed in these two areas.

Consumer Vehicles

• First, transportation.  Larry proposes that families have three vehicles 1) a 1-person small vehicle 2) a 2-person small vehicle and 3) a larger EV such as a Tesla Model 3.  Electric bicycles are also a small aspect of Larry's vision.

Homes and Housing

• Second, homes.  Mr. Gales' recommendation for significantly reducing home energy consumption is through the European Passive House model. These homes are airtight and use fans and heat exchangers for efficiency.  Although their overall cost to produce is about 5-7% higher than a traditional home, the costs are typically recovered.  Larry's ideas also are predicated on much smaller homes of about 1,000 sqft.

• Larry also imagines an interface between the cars and the home in that the big car's battery charges and runs the home, largely. 

David Slight shared a new acronym that I had never heard: PESTLE.  Pestle stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technical, Legal, Environmental.  These are critical perspectives and views necessary to apply when considering a proposal or plan.  David's statement is there must be sufficient science and due diligence as well as leaders to lead social change.

The group shared cynicism of the USA's ability to transition into such a vision of the future.

Susan Stringer shared positive news that there is a group of scientists running for office.  The group agreed that there is such a vast disconnect between interests and perspectives that a model, resources and great leadership are needed to bridge that gap.

Someone recommended this book about corruption in the American political system.  Someone else recommended this episode of Real Time with Bill Maher that showcases Bill Nye.

The Gates Foundation has a program that focuses on changes within the USA, which is really nice to see.

Some cities are painting streets white in an attempt to combat climate change. Sad!

More From Larry

Larry discussed 3 vehicles.  The largest one is the Tesla Model 3, which you can find just by googling "Tesla Model 3" or going to Tesla's web site at:  https://www.tesla.com/ 
The two tiny vehicles don't really exist yet, but the closest vehicles are called "velomobiles" which may be human or electric powered.  You can see images here. 

But for the full description, you need to see his PPT at:  http://staff.washington.edu/larryg/Energy/CarHouseEff.pptx

Join us June 26, 2018 in Kirkland

Please join us on Tuesday, June 26th for our next gathering to change the world through meaningful dialog and strategic action.

Remaining Human in a Technology World

The AppsJack crew gathered to continue their discussions on causality.  This month, the topic was about humans and we talked about benefits.  Benefits accrue to entities whereas outcomes are higher level.  David talked about their being only two types of jobs: service jobs and design jobs.  Service jobs directly interface with customers and design jobs do not.  There seems to be quite a gray area between these distinctions and most jobs are probably a mix between service- and design-related tasks.

In the house we had Berry Zimmerman leading us, a new attendee named Louis Sweeny who was smart and awesome, Susan Stringer, Reba Haas, David Slight, Jean Bishop and AppsJack founder Eric Veal.

Reba recommended the Humans are Underrated book and was telling us about Amazon getting into the real estate market with a new set of services.

Someone made the claim that, "People are informed but don't care." ie they are often apathetic.

The group talked about the influence that marketing and other people's designs has on us on a daily and unconscious level.  People need to be aware and alert of their environment and recognize what kinds of messages they may be receiving from the designers of their environments. An example of this is our "feeds" online and how they may be curated and presented.  Clearly the tech services providers have a lot of power over our perceptions and what inputs we receive for processing.  We need to be conscious of what we are processing and mindful.

Louis mentioned some innovation that Uber is doing in helping its riders find drivers and vice versa.  They are releasing a flashing colored light called Beacon.  With Simbi.com, users can barter skills and services online.

Eric made the point that being 'humane' is far more easier to understand and think about than being 'human'.  Being human includes everything, whereas being humane is only a subset of the features we would value and want from an individual.

Berry shared several human-defining traits with us: choice, a belief of control, unique experiences, independent, social.  Berry also dropped big questions on us like, "What is the purpose of humanity?"  The group thought the question was perhaps a bit too broad but it definitely got them thinking.

Louis mentioned the 2016 feature film Arrival and others agreed it was a good one.  "Linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world."  And he also shared that he likes the book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

The movie The Perfect Human Diet was also cited as an interesting watch by Berry.  "Filmmaker C.J. Hunt searches for a solution to the obesity epidemic using dietary science, historical findings and ancestral native diets."

Also mentioned were Esther Perel's TED talks.  David is a fan of Jeremy Rifkin who stars in the 2017 film The Third Industrial Revolution and also really likes what he sees from organizations that follow the Holocracy practices of self-organization.  The group talked about Dunbar's Number which states that a human can't scale beyond 148 meaningful relationships.  Humans on BBC was recommended as was the Seattle Liberating Structures group and Crucial Conversations book.

Join us in May to contribute to the fun.

The Latest in e-Commerce Tools, Tech and Techniques from Pros in Seattle

We showed up at an e-Commerce Meetup in Seattle last night and learned a lot.  The group is called Seattle Profit Pirates Mastermind Group - Ecommerce & Amazon Entrepreneurs and was meeting at a coffee shop on Capitol Hill.  We got a lot of tool and tech recommendations and met some thought leaders in the field.  Here are some details for all you e-Commerce and digital marketing people out there.

Terapeak shows you what to sell online.  MerchantWords helps you find more buyers.  Google Adwords is a classic and key tool.  Many people use Facebook to create ads and funnels.  Text / SMS is another technique for capturing emails.  Shopify was considered to be the best e-Commerce tool.  James who runs Wooly Clothing and was telling us about Amazon's practice of  Brand and Category Gating.  Benjamin, who runs the group, was asking about Liquidation services.  He said he's tried FoxBox.  I mentioned Alternativeto.net as a method of finding technologies in a category to support a business process or function. 

We didn't talk about but I was reminded of Mautic, HubSpot and my buddy with Conversion Wizards.  Benjamin says it's important to consider Cost Per Email as a metric.  He also mentioned that MailChimp has an advanced, for pay, feature that provides additional metadata for email addresses to extend marketing.

James was asking about managing multiple channels and Benjamin swore by Skubana, a multi-channel inventory management system, which is $1,000/mo.  He says it's well worth it if you have the volume. 

Flexport, a freight forwarding method, and Keepa, an Amazon price tracker, were also mentioned as useful tools. 

Thanks to all attendees.  Great event and lots to learn.  A whole new domain and area to explore.

Lindsey Coen-Fernandez of Advantage Performance Group Shares Some Wisdom

We just caught up with Lindsey Coen-Fernandez of Advantage Performance Group.  Lindsey is an inspiring entrepreneur and leader in the area of organization development.  I went to one of Lindsey's workshops just before Christmas and had a great time.  Here's our follow up items based on the call with her:

Lindsey has an upcoming workshop she'll be putting on around the May time frame and stay tuned for that.  She believes the will likely be "The Neuroscience Behind Decision Making".  I had never heard of an "analytic network coach" and that's her specialty.  Sounds good.  I can see how helping people with decision making is a very key skill for facilitators.  I typically list options with pros and cons and a recommendation or argument, for example.  David Slight's BDN model and our causality conversation topics for this year sound similar as well.

Lindsey's target market is $100M to $500M businesses: not yet enterprises but rather well established.  She is seeking more business in the NW and has traveled extensively, globally for years.  She also produces webinars.

I plan to connect her with my friends John and Toni from the US Forest Service who run the National Facilitator Cadre when I worked with them back in 2012.  Also, I will connect her with the new Environmental subgroup that formed out of Indivisible Eastside.  Check out IE!  

Lindsey recommended a meetup to me (I shared my involvement in the Corruption subgroup for IE) called "Let's Talk About Race" from DNDA.  I commented to her how Race and Security topics coincide a great deal.  I have a list of local Security experts that I maintain it would be fun to get them together and involved.

Lindsey also recommend Andy Storch who has a podcast called Entrepreneur Hot Seat and a company called "The Hustle", which produces a daily newsletter about the latest tech and business info for millennials and are making good money with their business model.

Thanks to Lindsey to all of her great wisdom.  Check her out! 

Cool Event: Culture Counts - Event Recap

I attended an excellent, uplifting event with my friend Hsuan-Hua Chang on Tuesday called "Culture Counts".  It was led by a very fascinating woman, XXX.  The leader was from South Africa originally and has lived in 15 countries.  She has gathered many principles and practices that she now shares with organizations to help them create environments and experiences that help people be their best and perform optimally.  It was an inspirational topic and very professionally led.

When I showed up at the place in Ballard after work, I was amazed by the impressiveness of the facility: it was someone's house that they had rented, but by no means your typical, run of the mill house at all.  The inside of the structure was large and sprawling and open and lovely.  It was in an industrial neighborhood but once you were inside you felt like you were in a womb.  The large, open structure was expertly decorated and arranged with beautiful artwork and laid out in a very interesting and intentional way.  Our hosts were kind and provided us with hot cocoa and warm greetings on entry; it was the week before Christmas indeed and a large Christmas tree greeted us as well. 

About 20 of us arrived and the session began as we sat around a large table called the culture table.  We were led and asked to write down three things on post-it notes with colored Sharpies: 1) the first word that came to our minds when we entered the space 2) the reason we were there 3) three things that spoke most to us when we walked around the room and took in the experiences.  We were asked to share our findings with peers and soon learned that each of our reactions, perceptions and beliefs were quite unique and different from those around us.  For example, Marc shared that he liked the exposed brass pipes which I had looked right past and still didn't mind.  Another person shared that they loved a jellyfish painting that did nothing for me.  I stated that I liked the kitchen, the velvet couches and the open space.  A third person, Russell, explained that he felt dwarfed when we walked into the space but my feeling was the exact opposite: it made me feel great since I am quite tall.  We learned that we were all quite different and experiencing things in very different ways; we were diverse.

The leader explained some of what was happening: she said that the soul of a building is not the artifacts or thing itself but rather what we, the people, bring into it: our senses, observations, selves and stories. 

It was a great event and we had a lot of good nuggets: culture could be the corresponding personality of a place or group.  We read stats about just how important happy workers are and the many negative consequences of unhappy workers.  We learned that culture always has a purpose or goal.  A culture is the soul of an organization or group.  A few questions came up for me: Is culture the sum total of the intangible benefits and beliefs of an org?  Is culture the compensation, benefits and value that people receive from a group that come for free, organically and naturally?  The goal of creating and influencing a good culture is to have people become the best versions of themselves and sustainably do the best work of their lives.  Some degree of bottoms-up, organic, authentic culture is required and we talked about the idea of leading from the edge.  The idea of an organization's edge is important and is a major place from which change can and does happen.  Yes, organizations do indeed have centers and tops and power structures but also, each person, on the edge may be armed with the same tools and power and ability to influence people and shine a light on opportunities and possibilities.  Taking steps can be risky and sometimes we just need to plunge in.  We can take calculated, planned, intentional  steps that have fallback plans, too.  Or we can just say screw it, go for it and see what happens.

We broke out into small groups to discuss ratings we created of the cultures in our organizations.  In my small group, there was one area where we all agreed was weak in each of our areas: managers.  And we talked about the role of managers and the org for creating a space that feels safe and inspiring. 

We watched a video about a non-profit in Seattle that helped the homeless and then met the star of the video, the founder of the non-profit and got to hear more about her story. 

In all, it was a wonderful, well-planned and executed event.  Thanks to Hsuan-Hua and all the others I met.  I look forward to getting to know the speaker more as well.

AppsJack Group to Change World in 2018

It was a nice Fall day and the biggest and best turnout to date happened for the AppsJack group last night at Big Fish Grill in Kirkland.

Alan Andersen, Andrew Sengul, Berry Zimmerman, Christian Harris, Dominic Wong, Dr. Tom Louwers, Ele Munjeli, Eric Veal, Jean Bishop, Jehan Bharucha, Kifaya Dawud, Mark Mueller-Eberstein, Megan Gaiser, Thomas Mercer, Mike Dodd, Reba Haas, David Slight, Sriram Sabesan, Steve Kubacki, Susan Stringer, Richard Webb

 Here was our agenda for the evening:

• Retrospective and feedback
• Success stories and new relationships from the group
• Best parts
• Worst parts
• Things to change
• Competition - what takes you away from it?
• Purpose and identity - who are we and why are we here, what's our name?
• Schedule and frequency, meeting types and formats, size of meetings
• 2018 Topics
• Ongoing relationship to APQC?
• Organizers / board
• Expansion, scope, milestones, organization
• Fees
• Partnerships, sponsorship, affiliations
• Podcast
• Subgroups and committees
• Technology, tools and online presence
• Venues, Seattle

Here are the main action items and to do's from the meeting:

• Plan in detail
• Change name
• Remove cap of # attendees
• Postpone start by one hour
• Change topics from APQC to BDN + Robots + Humans in 2018
• Get owners/hosts/leads for each 2018 meeting 
• Look into online tech that would help
• Book reviews
• Pre-reading and recommendations
• More detailed profiles for each member - stickers or badges based on the APQC model
• Patreon platform for contributions
• E2B as sponsor?
• Consider and help each other develop what "product" each of us is creating
• Opportunities to share stories and successes annually - a gala
• Leverage what is unique and beneficial about Seattle over other tech hubs like Silicon Valley - be unique, different and stand out.  We are practical and not Hollywood.  We are loggers and fishermen.

And here are detailed notes, outcomes and decisions from the meeting.  Join us at a gathering soon!

• Retrospective and feedback
• Lots of good feedback here.  People were here for:
• "High level thinking"
• Diversity of opinions and perspectives (learning)
• Academic, experienced and educated tone
• Consistent high quality
• Stimulation
• Idea sharing
• Cross-domain thinking and experiences, feedback and ideas
• Random networking
• Stories and experiences are illuminating
• Successes people have had
• Steve and Andrew met through the group and are collaborating
• Christian has met a ton of new people through it
• Thomas met Bruce Follansbee who has opened many doors
• Purpose and identity - who are we and why are we here, what's our name?
• Brainstorm on names, taglines and descriptions
• Descriptions and Taglines
• Thought provoking
• "It's all connected"
• Making Meaning and Money
• Names
• Think tank
• "Talk Tank"
• "Food for Thought"
• Talk, Inc.
• Rethinking business
• Humanist Technology
• Making Business Human
• Saving Business
• Business Humanity²
• Human Tank
• Business Reconnected
• Business & People Reconnected
• H2H: Human to Human
• Unf*ck Business
• Human-Centered Business
• Business Renaissance: Unf*cking Business - This was the most popular (or at least the funniest).  We will continue to think about the best name.
• Schedule and frequency, meeting types and formats, size of meetings
• 4th Tuesdays will continue
• 5 PM official start preferred but people welcome to show up earlier
• No limit on number of guests
• "Owners" / organizers for each meeting - sign up sheet
• 2018 Topics and themes
• Ele: "The automation apocalypse"
• AI vs. Automation
• Robot-Human Interface
• Steve offered this three-pronged approach:
• Economics
• Business
• Praxix / Products (concrete)
• Zodiac signs - Andrew Sengul
• The BDN model with David Slight: Drivers, Objectives, Benefits, Changes, Capabilities, Enablers and then switch between the tech/robot perspective and the human perspective.  
• Ongoing relationship to APQC?
• Nothing will be overt.  Could come up again here and there but it's over for now.  RIP APQC!
• Organizers / board
• Not needed.  Tap individuals as needed.  Build small, focused teams as needed.  Keep organic.
• Expansion, scope, milestones, organization
• Happy to keep it as an Eastside only event for now.
• Eric will talk to Michael Dodd and the Product Camp people about expansion of a group in Seattle.
• Fees
• Keep it free / optional.
• Can charge through meetup.  Runs the risk of turning people away; traction is preferred to profit.
• Some guests are willing to contribute capital.
• Partnerships, sponsorship, affiliations
• Keep this standalone for now to maximize flexibility.
• Podcast
• Yes, the podcast is good.  Keep it tied to the meetup on the same schedule.  Add 1:1 podcasting capability through Janis' Machala or Josh Golden's contacts.
• Subgroups and committees
• No need for this right now.  Will form as necessary.
• Technology subgroup: Ele, Andrew, Eric
• Technology, tools and online presence
• No agreement here.
• An online discussion forum could be good.
• Will talk with Andrew and Ele to decide on a direction.
• Venues, Seattle
• Big Fish Grill fine for now.
• Reba and Berry may have some functional options if we want to switch it up.

AppsJack Capable Communities Podcast Season 1 Completes - Check It Out

We started out with this idea and framework and made it work.  Congrats and thank you to all involved.

It's amazing!  We just finished year one of the AppsJack Podcast: Capable Communities.  How awesome does this feel.  We had this idea a couple of years ago so it's amazing to see it come to frution and be so fun.  

Huge thanks to producer Christian Harris for all of his time and grace, Steve Kubacki for awesome support and content, Ele Munjeli for being so great, Richard Webb and David Slight for their amazing contributions.  We've truly built an amazing community and I am so proud.  

The Season 1 guests are listed below in alphabetical order.  We recorded 30 episodes with 30 guests and published over 16 hours of content, covering each of APQC's 12 areas of business processes.  We ate a lot of breakfasts and brunch, drank a lot of coffee and beer.

Tech Staffing CEO Aftab Farooqi

Leadership Coach Alan Andersen

Lean Agile Fellow Alan Sebring

Smartsheet Developer Andrea Cremese

Developer Andrew Sengul

Executive Andy Scott

Podcast Producer and Real Estate Mogul Christian Harris

Creative Data Genius Dave De Noia

Finance Expert and Restaurateur Dave Niederkrome

Security Expert and All-Around Brain Don Alvarez

The Inspirational and Motivated Ele Munjeli

IT Champ James Murray

Entrepreneur and Sales Professional James Tuff

CEO Joe O'Konek

Startup Attorney and Podcaster Joe Wallin

Patent Attorney Jonathan Olson

Security Expert Josh Barrow

Front-End Developer Josh Bosworth

International Marketing Wiz Kifaya Dawud

Tech Consulting Business Developer Lee Carter

Startup Wonk Leo Lam

Crypto Currency Consultant Mark Mueller-Eberstein

Author and Speaker on Focus and Clarity Michael Cavitt

Author and Conflict Management Specialist Rachel Alexandria

Lean PM and Business Continuity Expert Ralph Kliem

Business Attorney Reuben Ortega

Architect Richard Webb

CEO and Member of the Board Scott Davis

Clinical Psychologist and Very Creative Steve Kubacki

Stay tuned for what will happen in Season 2!

Managing Information Technology Meetup - Kirkland, WA - 6/20/2017 - Recap Notes and Podcast Prep

In attendance were: Richard Schurman (Attorney), Mark Mitchell (CFO), Eric Veal (Technologist), Richard Webb (Technologist), Dominic Wong (Management Exec), Steve Kubacki (Psychologist and Inventor), Kifaya Dawud (Marketer)

RW talked about “Business Stacks”.

RW talked about how good the Amazon TPM (Technical Program Manager) role is:

They own the architecture, PM role and tech

They have clear scope

They are organized to work together

They are measured objectively and fairly: difference between TPM doing poorly themselves (as a leader/worker) and the thing they are producing failing

Example TPM role: there is a person who is responsible for running “events” for Amazon (like father’s day).  Mark: Walmart did this as well with stores in Texas with stuff like Cinco de Mayo.

Amazon TPM rollup structure:

TPM

Regional TPM

Top TPM – meets with Bezos

Same role with widening scope that aggregates

Communication flows up and down this TPM chain

Tools for organizing management:

- Mark: adaQuest has a way to communicate strategy throughout the org

- Also ManageHub - Eric and Mark to further look into ManageHub for organizational uses for process improvement with Doug Hall

CRM Systems

Are they important?  Eric says they are central but there is an issue of adoption and data capture, data quality and people playing games with their data like hiding it strategically.

Examples of modern integration frameworks: Zapier, IFTTT, etc. for integration vs. old tools and people that integrated systems.  "We don't do it like we used to.  It's all as a service now." - EV

RW coined that these types of integration utilities are “(Hardware and Printer) Drivers at a different level”.  Totally agree, very interesting.

Drivers are hard to write because they break if either end changes, which prevent scale.

RW had some funny commentary about SOAP and REST and why one didn't work and other did: "SOAP didn’t work because programmers are dirty.  REST worked because programmers are lazy."  Microservices architecture becoming a big deal.

Eric had a recent VR experience with HTC Valve simulating “in the office” where he made coffee, 3D printed things and ate a donut.  Very amazing stuff.  Changes your mind and belief of what's possible.

Current “dialogs” and programs are too linear in their current form and are too project/product-oriented (developers need to finish and can't guild the lily, just want the basics to get done). 

Eric's vision of the world of the web now (as different from APQC + Process Triggers 10+ years ago):  There are "Listeners" (the people gathering the data with instrumentation and telemetry) + they provide or sell WebHooks to others who + People that write services that hand off of the events.

EV had a question, “Can we teach computers how to HARD SELL and effectively CLOSE a person on a big transaction while the person knows it is happening?”

We seemed to agree that we could and that it was actively happening now.

RS said that it depended on how the information is presented and when.

Richard gave examples of Blue Apron knowing if he read an email from them or not (by tracking a pixel).

Mark said that Google know if you walked into Nordstrom (location services on).  This is clearly very powerful for very many marketing-related things.

Companies every day are designing and running campaigns that work against (with/for) people’s weaknesses, predilections and interests.  Insidious from one perspective, genius, smart, intelligent and useful from another.

Excellent sales processes happen all the time in games (in app purchases), etc.

This can get into some edge / unethical realms if there is blackmail, for example. Open issue/question:  What's a person's recourse against these systems?

Richard talked about how Americans respond best to English and Australian accents, so they are used a lot in advertising to us.

We talked about humans training computers (other-learning) vs. computers training themselves (self-learning).  Humans can also train humans and computers can train humans and humans can train themselves.  Lots of vicious loops and cycles here.

We wondered, "What are the limitations of IT today?"

Richard said, "We have to get rid of the I.T. and make it “we” (make it work for us)

Eric and Richard talked about Enterprise Architecture, strategy and a recent HBR article on data strategy which talked about Offensive and Defensive uses for data.

Steve Kubacki showed up and was entertaining as usual.  Steve, “How many project managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?  It depends on the location of the lightbulb?”  Har-de-har-har but also fairly insightful and true in my opinion; everyone is or should be a PM.

SK when talking about Virtual Reality applications and Andrew Sengul's work with Scenario Tech, "You want people to come forward with their own imagery."

LISP.  Andrew Sengul and Ben Sidelinger are both working on modern applications using the LISP language now.  What's up with that?  List of JavaScript LISP implementations.

We had a discussion about the design/experience of video games being way too open or way too closed/structured and cited examples.

Eric talked about a future computer design where there is immediate feedback between the writing of code and the existence of the application (run time and design time).  "Real time run time."  You heard it here, folks!

SK had many great quotes:

“The Theory of Totality”.  Everything is incomplete.  Goedel. 

SK: Can a corporation have empathy?

SK: “A corporation “has a” sociopath.” (as a property) pretty funny

SK: “We are fundamentally social creatures.  Self-interest is directed by the social interests.”

SK: “Brownian motion” how things aggregate

Eric made the point to Steve at some point about different types of grouping: Aggregation (requires a common interface of the members) vs. Composition groupings (no commonality required, they are simple assembled and joined...but could be very well designed to work together systematically like a car has many parts).

Steve made some great points about how we need to intentionally design and implement systems that decentralize.  Such a great point and such an interesting area.

Someone said that IT Development has been declining over the last 20.  I guess this was something Eric Schmidt of Google has said.

Steve says that we are seeing an increase of democratization within the workplace which sounds like a really good thing to me.

Eric made the point that "ownership" (of the work ie things were fully delegated) was previously delegated to the VPs (for example, the APQC model would probably recommend that someone owns each area and are responsible for throughput and continuous improvement of it) and is now delegated to actual and real units of business (products and projects).  This is the TPM role and how this power has shifted/is shifting from functions and processes to products, which is generally great for innovation, for example.

Steve shared more ideas about how different the culture will be on Mars: it is an un-earth-based culture.  Totally different than anything we have ever known?

Richard Schurman talked about some book tech and mentioned Scrivner, 

Kifaya showed up, too.  Thanks for coming, Kifaya!

Developing and Managing Human Capital - Notes from the May 23, 2017 AppsJack Business Services Meetup in Kirkland, WA

"Human Capital" was the topic to be discussed.  It was a sunny late-May afternoon and I headed down to Big Fish Grill to have the discussion with about 10 others who had gathered.  Unlike the normal gathering, we were given a smaller table, which in the end wound up being a little better: cozier and easier to hear people.  We never broke into smaller groups and had a good dialog with a big group.

At first it was just me, leadership coach Alan Andersen and coach Susan Stringer.  I had never met Susan before and was immediately impressed by her grace, experience and knowledge.  She has a great present and is a very fun conversationalist.  Eventually, more arrived and we kicked off the discussion about "Developing and Managing Human Capital", the first support process in APQC's process classification framework.  The first thing that was made clear is we all agreed that the CAPITAL word in human capital is evil, wrong, etc.  Richard Webb suggested that thinking of people as money is no worst than thinking of them as slaves.  There was agreement on this point.

In search of a starting point, I rattled off the APQC's subtopics:

• Develop and manage HR planning, policies and strategies
• Recruit, source and select employees
• Develop and counsel employees
• Reward and retain employees
• Redeploy and retire employees
• Manage employee information

I told people that I was personally most interested in the "Manage Employee Information" area, where I had the most experience.  It's subtopics are as follows: Manage reporting processes (who reports to whom), Manage employee inquiry process (how management gets info from employees), Manage and maintain employee data, Manage human resource information systems (HRIS), Develop and manage employee metrics, Develop and manage time and attendance systems (we agreed this was an optional step for some places), Manage employee communication.

No one seemed to bite on the above high-level concepts so I started rattling off the discussion topics that we'd covered over the last year: good books we'd read about HR and people-management, alternatives to the resume and is the resume dead, how to get a great job, how to get maximum wages sustainably, what are the current trends and issues, problems in HR management, what does the modern worker like, what do they expect and need, what is the future of employment, what will technology do to HR and management with tools like LinkedIn and CrystalKnows?  Before I could get too far down the list, people locked on the resume topic and we were off on our first big topic.

The resume, truth, recruiting and qualification

Susan gave us some great and interesting facts about millennials in the workforce: that 50% of the workforce will be millennials by 2020 and 75% of the workforce by 2025.  Incredible statistics.  Susan is doing a presentation soon on millennials in the workforce that I will plan to attend.  She is a student of the topic.  I raised issues about complexity dealing with individuals vs. working with people in populations.  Working with 'classes' and things in groups is far easier than but as humans we seem very reluctant to exclusively deal with things in groups and need to give the attention that people and organizations need at an individual level.  

Richard said that the age of authenticity is what's next and was seeking a term for millennials.  I suggested that they were Generation M to keep it simple then we laughed about sequence issues.

We talked about predictive analytics and the power of organizations like Facebook and LinkedIn to predict events from data such as divorce with very high confidence.  Data is a very powerful thing.  

  

I suggested that the resume is just one signal in the collection (stack) of things necessary to understand and work with a person professionally.  Other signals include online profiles like LinkedIn, social media presence, reference checks and the interview.  We didn't believe that the resume would be going away and generrally believed that i was a gateway and door-opener to other aspects of the person.

Susan impressed us with some of her experiences doing hiring at the executive level and gave examples of people she had vetted by requesting 12 references from them: 3 supervisors, 3 peers, 3 suppliers and 3 others.  This sounded very rigorous to me but I could appreciate just how important getting this information really is for some high-risk, high-reward opportunities.

Susan shared that she asks these questions to the candidate, "How would your former managers describe you?" and to the former managers, "How would you describe your former employee?"  They are very open questions and she would listen for incongruity between the stories.  She said she had been referred to by some in the past as "the female version of Columbo", the TV show detective.  What an amazing skill to go this deeply into someone's background not make sure they are who they say they are.

Talent

We got off on a discussion about the quality of leaders and the leadership and it was stated that only A players can hire A players.  Richard told us stories about the Drugstore.com days (joint-venture between Microsoft, Walmart, and some India companies) and how complex and different those cultures were and how they used a 'bus' to communicate effectively.  Another aspect of that collaboration that worked well was to pass information through a key resource they called the seamstress (it was a man) who would bridge the gap and coordinate between the three different teams.  

Books

We talked a little about books here and there and Andrew Sengul regaled us with stories from Aaron Hurst and The Purpose Economy.  The book says that people can be broken up into three categories: those motivated by money, prestige/fame or a deep personal commitment.  The book suggests to only hire the people with deep personal commitment.  Andrew cited quite a few examples of how it is hard to manage and create organizations of these kinds of individuals.

Alan and Susan both highly recommended the book Leadership and Self-Deception.  Alan believes that everyone is a leader (at least sometimes) and they have to start by leading themselves.  

Corruption

Richard is obsessed with the idea that things and people are corrupt.  He believes and here was agreement in the group that one thing we are trying to do with all of these systems and controls in businesses is to weed out corruption, corrupt people and takers.  Richard says that there is a worthy goal to "instrument corruption" (develop systems that can measure and detect corruption at all levels).  Andrew jumped in and offered that experts at corruption really are good at it: that low-grade corruption is easy to detect and that some people really are grade A snakes.  

Steve Kubacki showed up a bit late (but I had already referenced a couple of his ideas) and we talked more about his idea of random firings to weed out corruption and sick cultures.  

Steve says that more of this needs to happen at the top of the organization than the bottom.  Susan said that, "A good leader assesses the talent and weeds out the tenured people."  So her theory is that this can be done by good people but I agree with Steve in some ways that this needs to be done by policy and not just by people (heroes).  We went into a discussion about CEO and he Board and how those two things should work together for control and regulation of the organization.  

Richard wanted to know how to test for integrity.  Everyone agreed that business and corporations really was a battle or war and that more people need to understand that situation.  We went into a discussion about the role of the HR department (few liked it) and Susan gave us examples of HR departments that provided coaching through the "HR Business Partner" who coached the manager of the group.  I have personally witnessed limitations of this model, especially when the management is not ready for coaching.  

"Balancing the bottom line and people" is a big topic that Susan thinks is a key challenge for organizations.  

We went off on a long rabbit trail tangent about sociopaths and predators (evil people) who are ladder climbers.  We tried to separate between those who are sick, ambitious and charismatic.  There is a desire by people to detect and weed these people out.

We talked about the authoritarian personality and how many people are okay with it (even seek it out) and like to live inside of authoritarian structures because they are given something from daddy.  

Conclusions and Next Steps

We had a great turnout.  It was me, leadership coach Alan Andersen, executive coach Susan Stringer, technology architect Richard Webb, professional services pro Lee Carter, delivery operations pro Dena Carter, operations manager Dominic Wong, business owner Thomas Mercer, business leader Thomas Mercer, software product developer Andrew Sengul and creative psychologist Steve Kubacki.

Please join us soon for Episode 8 of the AppsJack Capable Communities Podcast on the HR/Human Capital topic which will feature consulting business owner Aftab Farooqi, coach Rachel Alexandria, psychologist Steven Kubacki, executive and consultant Joe OKonek and professional services sales director Lee Carter.  We will record on Saturday 6/10 and the conversations will be dripped to the major podcast outlets each Sunday morning during June and early July. 

Our next topic for the meetup and podcast will be managing information technology, a topic near and dear to my heart and another key enabler to business.

26 Interesting Things About Modern Product & Service Development

We are prepping for the February Podcast, which will be about Developing & Managing Products and Services.  It's an exciting and fun topics.  Here are some of the highlights from the meetup that we are considering for the Podcast.  Please provide your input and ideas or what you would like us to cover.  What challenges do you have with the topic?  What blind spots are there?  What practices and principles have you used that worked?

1. Chaos Theory and Non-Linear Dynamics
2. The Developing and Managing Products and Services area from the APQC PCF (link) 
3. Known small effects that have lead to huge changes, issues, problems, catastrophes or events: the butterfly effect, the straw that broke the camel's back and other tipping points. 1 degree shifts.
4. What are elements, tools and practices of the modern practice of product and service development?
1. In Software
2. Physical Products
3. Services
5. Which companies are making the best and most innovative products today and how?  Why?  For example, the DJI Mavic Drones, South Park, Air BnB, Uber, who else?
6. Who is providing the best service today and how?  What are the elements of it?
7. The importance of decision making and how differences in beliefs or decisions can grossly impact the quality of success on a project.
8. "Incantations" and parrots.  How many people are simply repeating others and not questioning the cause or underlying assumptions that fed into what they currently see or perceive?  Copy cats might not and should not last. (Developing the deepest and most defensible niche).
9. The topic of "Everything dies or is dying"
10. Application and Product Lifecycle Management, Phases of Product Lifecycles (Plan, Define, Realize, Commericalize, Phase Out) and it also includes Supply Chain Managmeent and Customer Relationship Management (And SUpport Processes)
11. Is PLM the core engine of value and growth within a company (probably)?
12. Techniques for being able to reasonably work with complexity or complex systems, ideas, concepts, etc.
13. What are the problems and challenges in working with complex systems?  What are the tools for overcoming their challenges?
14. Attribution: how it might be hard to determine what really was the original impact, actor, etc. that caused a process to develop into what it is today or what it would / could become.
15. Why did "non-linear management" get so many eye-rolls when shared with the group?  Isn't that what we're talking about after all?  Too much of a buzzword?
16. Challenges with "insight alignment" and how we can have and align group insights for optimal performance, value and outcomes.
17. Entropy and counter-entropy systems.  Organizing around an increasingly chaotic world.
18. "An organizational immune system" and what it would be.  What are its properties and methods?  
19. Product intelligence vs. business intelligence.  Is one bottoms up and the other tops down?  Do both matter?
20. Thresholds and control systems, alerts and alarms for responding to important conditions
21. The need for "crossing domains" for innovation and creativity.  Yin and Yang as opposing forces that somehow find balance in the middle.  If the world could be seen as these components, what would they be and how would they be managed?
22. Which metrics matter and how would we identify missing metrics in our model before it was too late?
23. Divine flaws, fractures, and "seeds of disaster".  Are they really there?  Does this feature really exist in everything?
24. The need to "go up one level of abstraction" and to use data, models and visualization for managing.
25. Failing fast and failing slow.  Combating the forces of failure and death in business.
26. Two separate forces in innovation 1) truly producing something new and out of context 2) integrating that product/service/thing into an existing company, product line, market, etc.  What do we call these practices?

Tune into Episode 4 of the AppsJack Capable Communities Podcast in mid February '17 to hear more about all of these topics.

About Vision & Strategy - How to develop it, other challenges and considerations

We had a motley crew of awesome people show up to the AppsJack Share gathering last in Kirkland to talk about Vision & Strategy. I got a lot of great input (see everything below) that will help me better direct the January version of the podcast.

Key Takeaways:

1. Strategy and approach (what to do) depends on the stage and situation of the business
2. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) a good way to break down complex projects
3. Internal and external lenses/views/perspectives key to understanding and thinking about strategy
4. Personal and corporate authenticity key to successful implementation
5. Aligning an essential skill
6. Nuance and readiness for seeing, understanding, integrating and working with outliers and anomalies is another key
7. Timeframe matters for strategic thinking
8. Context matters (and therefore controlling/limiting scope and having focus)
9. There is a general prerence toward rapid tests of assumptions (failing fast) rather than long and protracted 'strategic' actions but there are times when the latter tactics (strategic actions) matter
10. We couldn't determine whether or not models mattered. Models are meant to be broken, so why manage to them or even think about them?
11. The mitigation and reduction of risk is key to successful strategy
12. Design thinking is a key and related skill
13. Strategy isn't and shouldn't be thought of as linear

We wondered at the very beginning if we should start by discussing vision or strategy and the answer, perhaps not surprisingly, was 'it depends'.  Chris brought up a good point that it very much depends on the stage, phase or status of the organization.  Assessment and triage (qualification) is first needed.  Steve raised challenges he has about breaking down a compelling vision into the component parts.  To me, these are the skills of project managers and other leaders who make complex and challenging things easier, that can be communicated to the necessary suppliers.  Work breakdown structure is a common method.  Mike Pritchard shared that he thinks there is an internal and external vision.  Joe Okonek refers to the vision, values and valued behaviors as things that can / should be externally communicated and publicly shared.  Missions, for example, can be internal documents and communications that help internal relationships focus on comm and strategic goal.  Public/open and private/closed is another dimension on which to explore strategy.

Good parts / what attendees liked: mentions of sex, swearing, arguments, passionate discussion, British accents, food, beer.  Authenticity was brought up as a key factor in this area.  Without true authenticity (and value, quality) your audience will see you as a fake and disengage (won't authorize).  Berry talked about the importance of alignment.  For example, aligning yourself and your company with the market and environment and their vision, values, purposes, needs, interests, ideas, etc.  Dominic talked about the difference between power (which can be personal and thought of as influence) and force, which can be applied from the tops down if someone has a lot of money or ability to coerce.  10 types of power are discussed in this article.  David brought up the point that strategy usually requires a longer and more futuristic timeline.  For example, he said that it's hard to be strategic for two minutes.  

Dominic led us in a discussion of the definition of a strategy and there were many different thoughts and opinions.  Someone defined a strategy as choosing an approach or an approach chosen ie a decision and commitment was necessarily made. I brought up the notion that it is hard to create a perfect product but many people disagreed: that within a domain, there can be a perfect product.  But there is a context, and knowing this context well is critical for product success.  Dominic wanted us to separate 'strategy' generically with 'strategy with a purpose' (a clear why). I brought up an issue I was having at work making a decision to build a feature for a big customer or not.  I am in the process of determining whether their request is qualified or not.  There is much skill required in qualification of certain issues.  Many at the table believed that 'if you are going to fail, fail fast' and people didn't like the idea of dragging on some elaborate process but others believed that caution and due diligence, not just action, were required in certain ambiguous political situations.  There are also scenarios where people cannot afford to fail fast, especially when there is not yet a powerful coalition, agreement and a clearly articulated and communicated vision.  

Richard wanted to know, "How do you know you have strategy?"  It's a good question.  We agreed that force, power, belief, authenticity, conviction and in many ways consistency were required for strategy.  But flexibility and other leadership qualities are also required.  We talked for some time about whether models were important or not.  David did not believe they were beneficial.  I gave the example of NoSQL database strategies where the data gets stored independent of a rigid table schema.  Many new data storage strategies do not rely on a centralized schema.  Differences between abstractions and concrete proof, evidence or data were interesting.  "Insight" or mental models are interesting when derived from data or science.  Steve talked about millennials and their needs.  He says that they share a desire for a better world and have this impediment of the rest of the world who is still alive, their elders.  

Someone pointed out that it is important to seek out anomalies in your data and to test assumptions.  Andy Scott made the point about the import of assumption testing on Episode 2 of the podcast.  Assumptions are a category or area of risk.  Steve shared the saying, "The presumptuous assume, the sumptuous consume."  People do need to build and test (at least mental) models.  Jean brought up the saying to test early and test often.  I shared about test-driven development (TDD), which is about only writing enough code (doing enough) to pass the next test.  It is a Lean approach.  Richard talked about the Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) role at Netflix and how they have build their strategy and plan around mitigating risk.  Managing and reducing risk is a key element of good strategy.  We talked a lot about design, design thinking and its import and spent quite a bit of time talking about Steve Jobs as a visionary and who else he surrounded himself with that helped make him successful.  It was suggested that Jonathan Ive at Apple was very critical to Steve's success and controlled and manipulated him in many ways.  He did of course have many failures as well.  Someone shared the idea of designing for failure, not success.  

Dominic wanted to make it clear that strategy was not linear and that it runs off of principles related to non-linear dynamics and non-linear systems.  Berry shared that it is our intention as managers to create systems that control and constrain--and this is necessary--but does indeed rub up against the truly dynamic nature of people and systems; feedback loops and quality systems that continuously transform and improve systems are indeed required.  We talked about automation and its important and how design decisions like 'who does what' plays big-time into strategy.  In my opinion, users should be the preferred and default / de facto actor and some (many?) of them should have the option to do a task themselves (value add) or delegate a task to a computer or someone else.  We started talking about the podcast toward the end of the event and Bruce recommended The Boss Show, which is a Seattle-area recording about bosses.

Berry posed the question, "How do you know that your vision is not a unicorn?" which is basically to say that you are not living a delusion or tilting at windmills.  The book Black Swan was recommended.  Richard talked a lot about the many types of currencies which relates to the idea of non-monetary economies.  I wondered out loud and Steve agreed that there is some sort of harmonic mathematical equation that describes a leader's oscillation between hypothesis tests and failures.  Bruce brought up 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey and I mentioned that The 8th Habit is about "finding your true voice and helping others find theirs".  The book also talks a lot about connecting strategies of the head with those of the heart which is probably truly about authenticity, believe and conviction.

Questions and topics for further consideration:

• A Strategy (noun) vs. Strategy (verb) - What are the differences?
• The skill of qualification; how to qualify, what to qualify, what to ignore?
• Modern automation thoughts - who does what and what to do with the displaced workers?
• Why do the ideas of internal/private/closed and external/public/open help us in thinking about strategy?
• How do you know you have strategy?  (What is strategy?)
• What are the differences between real-world models and mental models and/or thought processes?  
• Test-driven design in management?
• The applications of flexibility and rigidity in strategy development

Which topics, ideas and points would like to see covered on the podcast about Vision & Strategy?