This post has been a long time coming. It's the idea that keeps coming back; the slow hunch that's been brewing and brewing for months. For some reason, it's taken me forever to actually write it out. So here I finally go. Last Friday night, I had the pleasure of judging a round of the Harvard Ed School's Education Enterprise Competition, where teams of entrepreneurs compete for $10k in funding from the Gates Foundation. I channeled my best Randy Jackson and tried to give some helpful feedback to each of the four teams that presented, both on the ideas themselves and the delivery of their pitches. One of the competing teams was Socrative, a startup that produces a web- and mobile-based adaptive learning platform for use within classrooms. Socrative lets teachers create interactive lessons that adapt to each individual student's performance and abilities, while also creating a real-time report card. The idea is to provide a mechanism for teachers to concurrently personalize and scale (moving away from one size fits all, single track lesson), while speaking the language of today's students (texting and playing games on phones). They don't do hardware and they don't do content; rather, they focus on building the platform and API; a very scale-friendly strategy. All in all, it seems like a smart approach to me, and they've already got some early traction (I don't have the exact numbers handy, but something like 2500 users and 50,000 "actions" in the first 10 weeks). But, the part that stood out to me the most was their marketing approach: rather than go in the front door and try to make an upfront sale to a school or district, they go straight to the teachers, offering a free tool that they can start using right away without requiring institutional buy-in. This is an example of what I call the
This post has been a long time coming. It's the idea that keeps coming back; the slow hunch that's been brewing and brewing for months. For some reason, it's taken me forever to actually write it out. So here I finally go. Last Friday night, I had the pleasure of judging a round of the Harvard Ed School's Education Enterprise Competition, where teams of entrepreneurs compete for $10k in funding from the Gates Foundation. I channeled my best Randy Jackson and tried to give some helpful feedback to each of the four teams that presented, both on the ideas themselves and the delivery of their pitches. One of the competing teams was Socrative, a startup that produces a web- and mobile-based adaptive learning platform for use within classrooms. Socrative lets teachers create interactive lessons that adapt to each individual student's performance and abilities, while also creating a real-time report card. The idea is to provide a mechanism for teachers to concurrently personalize and scale (moving away from one size fits all, single track lesson), while speaking the language of today's students (texting and playing games on phones). They don't do hardware and they don't do content; rather, they focus on building the platform and API; a very scale-friendly strategy. All in all, it seems like a smart approach to me, and they've already got some early traction (I don't have the exact numbers handy, but something like 2500 users and 50,000 "actions" in the first 10 weeks). But, the part that stood out to me the most was their marketing approach: rather than go in the front door and try to make an upfront sale to a school or district, they go straight to the teachers, offering a free tool that they can start using right away without requiring institutional buy-in. This is an example of what I call the
Enterprise End-Run.
I've been thinking about this idea a lot because I spend my time in enterprise land -- the enterprise that I focus on is government. At
. We want to help government "do technology" better, which is an enterprise problem with major economic and civic impacts. Broadly speaking, driving change within large institutions and throughout complex systems is hard (just ask anyone who's working in education). In some cases, there are mechanisms that are expressly created to slow down change (procurement policies, unions), and in others it's just a matter of size, complexity, and intrenched interests. So, recently I've been thinking a lot about the end-run as one approach to affecting institutional change.
The Enterprise Approach
For sake of simplicity, let's define the "enterprise" approach as selling a tool (in this case, software) to a gatekeeper who buys on behalf of many end users. With this approach, the challenge is to convince a major gatekeeper (gov't IT buyer, CIO, etc.) that your idea is a good one, and then sell/implement/deploy and ultimately reach the people who will use your product or service. The leverage in the enterprise approach is that by making a single sale, you gain access to many users. Sales cycles are long, but so are contracts and business relationships. If you're good, you'll build or sell a quality product that gains adoption and is effective at doing whatever it intends to do. And if you're sneaky (evil?), you can eventually lock yourself in to a relationship for a long time on favorable terms. The flip side is that the enterprise world is slow and conservative. It can take a long, long time to go from idea to execution. In addition, the government enterprise environment is political, making it even more risk-averse and short-term in its thinking. As a result, it's not a particularly easy environment within which to push an innovation agenda. Clay Johnson tells us that
-- going in the front door means asking a lot of people for permission before you actually make or deploy anything. This slows you down and is a steady tax on your innovation opportunity cost. And most importantly, when you "buy" your users through an enterprise sale, you've still not engaged them.
The End-Run
The Enterprise End-Run is about empowering enterprise users to be the enterprise change-makers. This is uniquely possible with internet-based tools, as distribution can be free, and you can easily put your tool directly in the hands of the people who will benefit from its use. As Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures
, "there is evidence though that if you let endusers adopt Internet technologies they become change agents for the kind of institutional change that will be needed." Bingo. The End-Run is about building a "magnetic endpoint" that draws change out of the machine, rather than pushing it through. It's typically lightweight, not "enterprise-grade". It's showing, not telling. It's more carrot, less stick. And, most importantly, it's
Build a compelling tool (can be a web service, an open source package, etc.)
Make it easy or free for enterprise users to use it
Your user base becomes your advocates, your revenue base, and/or your sales force
The enterprise adapts to meet the demand created by the tool
The world is a better place
What Socrative is trying to do is one example of this. Here are a few other examples from government / civic tech land: Edmodo is a social network for teachers and students. Their end-run approach is the same as Socrative's, and they've been executing it for longer (now 2 years old, major venture funding, 500k users as of 9/2010). I am not exactly sure of Edmodo's business model, so I can't say if they are ultimately trying to make an enterprise sale at the school or district level, if they're going for ads, or if they will attempt to monetize activities within the network. But they are squarely targeting the teacher / student community to become their advocates and changemakers. Google Transit and GTFS: In 2005, Portland's TriMet and Google Transit changed the game in the public transit information space. By creating a "magnetic endpoint" (the google maps website and all its traffic), and by developing a lightweight data standard (the General Transit Feed Spec), they helped incentive the transit industry to publish data about its operations, such as routes and schedules for transit systems and real-time data. This data has gone on to become fuel for the hundreds of transit apps that have been developed over the past 5 years. GTFS end-ran a handful of standards-setting efforts within the industry. It was able to do this by being more lightweight (and less featureful) than the competing standards, and by being paired to a powerful consumer endpoint like Google Transit. In addition, and it quickly developed an ecosystem of supporting tools which filled out the technical picture, and a communityof advocates who added some push to the pull. SeeClickFix: One of the first projects that got me thinking about the Enterprise End-Run is SeeClickFix. SeeClickFix offers a "non-emergency issue reporting" platform, whereby citizens can capture problems with their cities, then report them to institutions (both public and private) who are empowered or required to fix them. SeeClickFix is an end-run for two reasons: first, because in most cases the responsible parties don't sign up to receive these complaints -- rather, users of the system wire up connections between places, issues, and actors, and reports can go to anyone with an email address. Secondly, because SeeClickFix is not just about government: any organization with a presence in the built environment can receive alerts and potentially become the fixer. In both cases, SeeClickFix employs its citizen users to becomes the institutional changemakers. SeeClickFix creates an end-run in every place within which it operates, and it's also been part of a broader end-run across government IT, within the "311" space: Open311: Many cities operate their own online issue-reporting systems, which are generally described as "311". 311 was first developed in New York City in 2002, and has grown in popularity across cities since then. 311 is a really interesting data set; John Tolva of the IBM foundation once described 311 as "the best way to tell how a city is feeling about itself," and Steven Johnson recently did a great writeup for Wired looking at NYC's 311 data. While many cities have built 311 systems, until recently there hadn't been any examples of cities opening access to this data via an API. That changed in in 2009, with the District of Columbia built an API on its 311 data, in conjunction with the Apps for Democracy contest. DC's official 311 API and SeeClickFix's API became the first two endpoints to demonstrate the value of the institutional change required to "open up" 311. Building on the precedent set by DC, SeeClickFix and others, later that year OpenPlans began working with a number of US cities and private issue-reporting platforms on the development of a standard data format and protocol for these types of requests, called Open311. Since then, the Open311 spec has been implemented by the cities of San Francisco and Washington DC, with several more on the way, several enterprise vendors (including the major players Motorola and Lagan) have implemented the standard, and a number of consumer apps have been developed on the platform. Open311's end-run is somewhat similar to that of GTFS's -- the pull force of consumer endpoints (in this case, apps contests plus online 311 and 311-like services) plus the push force of the OpenPlans' Open311 organizing, helped move the industry to a place of greater interoperability and innovation. Open Source: Last, but not least, a classic (and broad) example of the end-run is the distribution strategy employed by open source software projects in enterprise markets: download for free, use at will, and then come back for enterprise service and support when the time is right. In this case, the end user is typically a technical staffer who, if things go well, will do much of the internal sales work for you. OpenGeo, a division of OpenPlans, operates in this way with great success. Towards a Push/Pull Ecosystem I believe there's something powerful in the end-run, but I'm not trying to say it's the only answer. I think what you ideally want is a "push/pull ecosystem," where some efforts pull change out the back door, while other projects come in the front door to help build new kinds of infrastructure. Through our work at OpenPlans, Code for America and Civic Commons, that's what we're trying to help put in place. So, there it is: the Enterprise End-Run. Phew. I'd love to hear feedback or other examples of this that are surely out there.
Last week, I mentioned an article called The Making of the Corporate Athlete (originally published in 2001 in the Harvard Business Review). If you haven't read it, you should -- it's a short read. Long story short: successful athletes take a "whole body" approach to optimizing their performance, and other kinds of professionals could benefit from doing the same -- in other words, willpower and brainpower alone are not enough. One idea that stuck with me is the importance of rituals as a training activity. In each case study, the authors, who are acting as consultants (or therapists) for corporate clients, make a point of establishing "positive rituals" to help train their clients out of old, unhealthy habits, and turn them into corporate (and personal) superstars. According to the diagram below, rituals are the hand-holds for ascending the "High Performance Pyramid".
Last month, I attended the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's annual unconference. My favorite session, by far, was Bill Warner's "Building a Startup from the Heart". I found Bill's approach to be inspiring, and immediately went home to incorporate his ideas into some OpenPlans materials that I'd been working on (e.g., a new page on our website describing our transportation business -- you can now see Bill's "beliefs / people / intentions" pattern loosely reflected). I won't try to reiterate Bill's big ideas, because that has been done (here is a good overview, and here's a video of Bill's Ted X talk). Both are worth a read / watch. Since then, one takeaway has really stuck with me: the idea of speaking from the heart. A fairly large part of my job is talking & writing about what we do; to funders, clients, partners, students, the press, etc. I believe in our mission, and think that we have done and continue to do good work. At this point, I can speak pretty easily about it, and do my best to weave our complex mission and activities into a (reasonably) cohesive story. But I realized that I don't always speak from the heart as much as I should or could. It's hard to describe, but it's a difference you can feel -- when I think of speaking from the heart, I feel the focus moving from my head down to my belly. To the place where you just know the things you're talking about, and why they're important. You aren't nervous or worried about getting it right. To use Bill's language, speaking from the heart brings you back to feeling the connection your people, your beliefs, and your intentions (the feeling reminds me of the notion of the Ideal Performance State, as described in The Making of the Corporate Athlete which is also worth a read). When I think back on the times when I haven't been happy with how I've performed in a speaking gig, I can usually trace it back to being too much in my head and not enough in my heart/belly. For instance, in September we announced Civic Commons at the Gov 2.0 Summit. I did a small part of of the announcement, which went fine, but I didn't consider it an A+ performance (and got endless shit from Clay Johnson about it). According to my wife, who watched the video (I didn't), it was a B; not completely embarrassing, but not particularly great either. Fine. Afterward, I realized that I had gotten too far into the weeds -- was too much in my head and not enough in my heart. Tired, uninspired. If I were to do it over, I would have focused on the core ideas about why we believed the project was important and why we were part of it. Speaking from the heart gives you energy and confidence. It gets you back to the real reason why you're involved and why you care. It's powerful and easy at the same time. It's an idea that I will keep with me.
Enterprise End-Run.
I've been thinking about this idea a lot because I spend my time in enterprise land -- the enterprise that I focus on is government. At
. We want to help government "do technology" better, which is an enterprise problem with major economic and civic impacts. Broadly speaking, driving change within large institutions and throughout complex systems is hard (just ask anyone who's working in education). In some cases, there are mechanisms that are expressly created to slow down change (procurement policies, unions), and in others it's just a matter of size, complexity, and intrenched interests. So, recently I've been thinking a lot about the end-run as one approach to affecting institutional change.
The Enterprise Approach
For sake of simplicity, let's define the "enterprise" approach as selling a tool (in this case, software) to a gatekeeper who buys on behalf of many end users. With this approach, the challenge is to convince a major gatekeeper (gov't IT buyer, CIO, etc.) that your idea is a good one, and then sell/implement/deploy and ultimately reach the people who will use your product or service. The leverage in the enterprise approach is that by making a single sale, you gain access to many users. Sales cycles are long, but so are contracts and business relationships. If you're good, you'll build or sell a quality product that gains adoption and is effective at doing whatever it intends to do. And if you're sneaky (evil?), you can eventually lock yourself in to a relationship for a long time on favorable terms. The flip side is that the enterprise world is slow and conservative. It can take a long, long time to go from idea to execution. In addition, the government enterprise environment is political, making it even more risk-averse and short-term in its thinking. As a result, it's not a particularly easy environment within which to push an innovation agenda. Clay Johnson tells us that
-- going in the front door means asking a lot of people for permission before you actually make or deploy anything. This slows you down and is a steady tax on your innovation opportunity cost. And most importantly, when you "buy" your users through an enterprise sale, you've still not engaged them.
The End-Run
The Enterprise End-Run is about empowering enterprise users to be the enterprise change-makers. This is uniquely possible with internet-based tools, as distribution can be free, and you can easily put your tool directly in the hands of the people who will benefit from its use. As Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures
, "there is evidence though that if you let endusers adopt Internet technologies they become change agents for the kind of institutional change that will be needed." Bingo. The End-Run is about building a "magnetic endpoint" that draws change out of the machine, rather than pushing it through. It's typically lightweight, not "enterprise-grade". It's showing, not telling. It's more carrot, less stick. And, most importantly, it's
Build a compelling tool (can be a web service, an open source package, etc.)
Make it easy or free for enterprise users to use it
Your user base becomes your advocates, your revenue base, and/or your sales force
The enterprise adapts to meet the demand created by the tool
The world is a better place
What Socrative is trying to do is one example of this. Here are a few other examples from government / civic tech land: Edmodo is a social network for teachers and students. Their end-run approach is the same as Socrative's, and they've been executing it for longer (now 2 years old, major venture funding, 500k users as of 9/2010). I am not exactly sure of Edmodo's business model, so I can't say if they are ultimately trying to make an enterprise sale at the school or district level, if they're going for ads, or if they will attempt to monetize activities within the network. But they are squarely targeting the teacher / student community to become their advocates and changemakers. Google Transit and GTFS: In 2005, Portland's TriMet and Google Transit changed the game in the public transit information space. By creating a "magnetic endpoint" (the google maps website and all its traffic), and by developing a lightweight data standard (the General Transit Feed Spec), they helped incentive the transit industry to publish data about its operations, such as routes and schedules for transit systems and real-time data. This data has gone on to become fuel for the hundreds of transit apps that have been developed over the past 5 years. GTFS end-ran a handful of standards-setting efforts within the industry. It was able to do this by being more lightweight (and less featureful) than the competing standards, and by being paired to a powerful consumer endpoint like Google Transit. In addition, and it quickly developed an ecosystem of supporting tools which filled out the technical picture, and a communityof advocates who added some push to the pull. SeeClickFix: One of the first projects that got me thinking about the Enterprise End-Run is SeeClickFix. SeeClickFix offers a "non-emergency issue reporting" platform, whereby citizens can capture problems with their cities, then report them to institutions (both public and private) who are empowered or required to fix them. SeeClickFix is an end-run for two reasons: first, because in most cases the responsible parties don't sign up to receive these complaints -- rather, users of the system wire up connections between places, issues, and actors, and reports can go to anyone with an email address. Secondly, because SeeClickFix is not just about government: any organization with a presence in the built environment can receive alerts and potentially become the fixer. In both cases, SeeClickFix employs its citizen users to becomes the institutional changemakers. SeeClickFix creates an end-run in every place within which it operates, and it's also been part of a broader end-run across government IT, within the "311" space: Open311: Many cities operate their own online issue-reporting systems, which are generally described as "311". 311 was first developed in New York City in 2002, and has grown in popularity across cities since then. 311 is a really interesting data set; John Tolva of the IBM foundation once described 311 as "the best way to tell how a city is feeling about itself," and Steven Johnson recently did a great writeup for Wired looking at NYC's 311 data. While many cities have built 311 systems, until recently there hadn't been any examples of cities opening access to this data via an API. That changed in in 2009, with the District of Columbia built an API on its 311 data, in conjunction with the Apps for Democracy contest. DC's official 311 API and SeeClickFix's API became the first two endpoints to demonstrate the value of the institutional change required to "open up" 311. Building on the precedent set by DC, SeeClickFix and others, later that year OpenPlans began working with a number of US cities and private issue-reporting platforms on the development of a standard data format and protocol for these types of requests, called Open311. Since then, the Open311 spec has been implemented by the cities of San Francisco and Washington DC, with several more on the way, several enterprise vendors (including the major players Motorola and Lagan) have implemented the standard, and a number of consumer apps have been developed on the platform. Open311's end-run is somewhat similar to that of GTFS's -- the pull force of consumer endpoints (in this case, apps contests plus online 311 and 311-like services) plus the push force of the OpenPlans' Open311 organizing, helped move the industry to a place of greater interoperability and innovation. Open Source: Last, but not least, a classic (and broad) example of the end-run is the distribution strategy employed by open source software projects in enterprise markets: download for free, use at will, and then come back for enterprise service and support when the time is right. In this case, the end user is typically a technical staffer who, if things go well, will do much of the internal sales work for you. OpenGeo, a division of OpenPlans, operates in this way with great success. Towards a Push/Pull Ecosystem I believe there's something powerful in the end-run, but I'm not trying to say it's the only answer. I think what you ideally want is a "push/pull ecosystem," where some efforts pull change out the back door, while other projects come in the front door to help build new kinds of infrastructure. Through our work at OpenPlans, Code for America and Civic Commons, that's what we're trying to help put in place. So, there it is: the Enterprise End-Run. Phew. I'd love to hear feedback or other examples of this that are surely out there.
Last week, I mentioned an article called The Making of the Corporate Athlete (originally published in 2001 in the Harvard Business Review). If you haven't read it, you should -- it's a short read. Long story short: successful athletes take a "whole body" approach to optimizing their performance, and other kinds of professionals could benefit from doing the same -- in other words, willpower and brainpower alone are not enough. One idea that stuck with me is the importance of rituals as a training activity. In each case study, the authors, who are acting as consultants (or therapists) for corporate clients, make a point of establishing "positive rituals" to help train their clients out of old, unhealthy habits, and turn them into corporate (and personal) superstars. According to the diagram below, rituals are the hand-holds for ascending the "High Performance Pyramid".
Last month, I attended the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's annual unconference. My favorite session, by far, was Bill Warner's "Building a Startup from the Heart". I found Bill's approach to be inspiring, and immediately went home to incorporate his ideas into some OpenPlans materials that I'd been working on (e.g., a new page on our website describing our transportation business -- you can now see Bill's "beliefs / people / intentions" pattern loosely reflected). I won't try to reiterate Bill's big ideas, because that has been done (here is a good overview, and here's a video of Bill's Ted X talk). Both are worth a read / watch. Since then, one takeaway has really stuck with me: the idea of speaking from the heart. A fairly large part of my job is talking & writing about what we do; to funders, clients, partners, students, the press, etc. I believe in our mission, and think that we have done and continue to do good work. At this point, I can speak pretty easily about it, and do my best to weave our complex mission and activities into a (reasonably) cohesive story. But I realized that I don't always speak from the heart as much as I should or could. It's hard to describe, but it's a difference you can feel -- when I think of speaking from the heart, I feel the focus moving from my head down to my belly. To the place where you just know the things you're talking about, and why they're important. You aren't nervous or worried about getting it right. To use Bill's language, speaking from the heart brings you back to feeling the connection your people, your beliefs, and your intentions (the feeling reminds me of the notion of the Ideal Performance State, as described in The Making of the Corporate Athlete which is also worth a read). When I think back on the times when I haven't been happy with how I've performed in a speaking gig, I can usually trace it back to being too much in my head and not enough in my heart/belly. For instance, in September we announced Civic Commons at the Gov 2.0 Summit. I did a small part of of the announcement, which went fine, but I didn't consider it an A+ performance (and got endless shit from Clay Johnson about it). According to my wife, who watched the video (I didn't), it was a B; not completely embarrassing, but not particularly great either. Fine. Afterward, I realized that I had gotten too far into the weeds -- was too much in my head and not enough in my heart. Tired, uninspired. If I were to do it over, I would have focused on the core ideas about why we believed the project was important and why we were part of it. Speaking from the heart gives you energy and confidence. It gets you back to the real reason why you're involved and why you care. It's powerful and easy at the same time. It's an idea that I will keep with me.
I particularly like the idea that rituals create an explicit opportunity for recharging:
Our own work has demonstrated that effective energy management has two key components. The first is the rhythmic movement between energy expenditure (stress) and energy renewal (recovery), which we term “oscillation.” In the living laboratory of sports, we learned that the real enemy of high performance is not stress, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is actually the stimulus for growth. Rather, the problem is the absence of disciplined, intermittent recovery. Chronic stress without recovery depletes energy reserves, leads to burnout and breakdown, and ultimately undermines performance. Rituals that promote oscillation – rhythmic stress and recovery – are the second component of high performance. Repeated regularly, these highly precise, consciously developed routines become automatic over time.
and that they are an important technique for stepping off the daily grind treadmill:
The inclination for busy executives is to live in a perpetual state of triage, doing whatever seems most immediately pressing while losing sight of any bigger picture. Rituals that give people the opportunity to pause and look inside include meditation, journal writing, prayer, and service to others. Each of these activities can also serve as a source of recovery - a way to break the linearity of relentless goal-oriented activity.
This makes a lot of sense to me, and I've started to apply it to my own life. For instance, blogging here helps me clear my head and recharge, but it's hard for me to find time or space to do it during the regular day-to-day (plus, that's what Tumblr is for). But I've found that firing up ScribeFire first thing on the mornings when I Amtrak it from Boston to NYC works - so that's what I'm trying to do now each week. Another example: Theo and I have been doing swim lessons together every Saturday morning for the past few months, and that time has quickly become my favorite part of the week. Thinking about it a bit, I realized that, besides the fact that he and I are spending dedicated time together, there's something particularly comforting and recharging about that time being blocked off from the rest of the week -- no email, no phones, etc -- and the fact that it is the same time and day somehow adds to that recharging ability. And then of course there is my hero-blogger Fred Wilson, whose pattern of writing is entirely ritual-oriented (1 blog post per day, ~3 tumbls a day, weekly series, etc.). I am clearly inspired by the way Fred writes and you can see that reflected in how my ownonlinepresence is set up (and probably even in how I write). At a certain point, rituals can become traditions, which take on a different kind of long-term social value. For example, my father in law has been having lunch with his friend Bob every Saturday for the last 40 years (maybe longer). As long as my wife can remember, her dad slipped out for an hour every Saturday. He also recently told me that his father took him out for breakfast every Sunday when he was a kid. There is something really powerful about the connections that these ritual/traditions create. It can be hard to keep them in place, but I suppose that's what makes them so meaningful if you can. So, at risk of caving to my own OCD tendencies and immediately hyper ritualizing my entire life, I will say that I see the value in integrating these ideas. On a personal level, and also on a company / team level. For instance, at OpenPlans, for the past year or so I have been super focused on external issues -- raising money, developing business, making partnerships, etc. -- to the point where now that those investments are paying off, I really want to refocus on making sure our internal operations are healthy. To some extent, I think that means working to institute some positive rituals into our work week (without digressing into toxic meetings). So, there you have it: this week's personal self-help installment, brought to you by a nice window seat on the Amtrak Acela, somewhere in eastern Connecticut. See you next week.
I particularly like the idea that rituals create an explicit opportunity for recharging:
Our own work has demonstrated that effective energy management has two key components. The first is the rhythmic movement between energy expenditure (stress) and energy renewal (recovery), which we term “oscillation.” In the living laboratory of sports, we learned that the real enemy of high performance is not stress, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is actually the stimulus for growth. Rather, the problem is the absence of disciplined, intermittent recovery. Chronic stress without recovery depletes energy reserves, leads to burnout and breakdown, and ultimately undermines performance. Rituals that promote oscillation – rhythmic stress and recovery – are the second component of high performance. Repeated regularly, these highly precise, consciously developed routines become automatic over time.
and that they are an important technique for stepping off the daily grind treadmill:
The inclination for busy executives is to live in a perpetual state of triage, doing whatever seems most immediately pressing while losing sight of any bigger picture. Rituals that give people the opportunity to pause and look inside include meditation, journal writing, prayer, and service to others. Each of these activities can also serve as a source of recovery - a way to break the linearity of relentless goal-oriented activity.
This makes a lot of sense to me, and I've started to apply it to my own life. For instance, blogging here helps me clear my head and recharge, but it's hard for me to find time or space to do it during the regular day-to-day (plus, that's what Tumblr is for). But I've found that firing up ScribeFire first thing on the mornings when I Amtrak it from Boston to NYC works - so that's what I'm trying to do now each week. Another example: Theo and I have been doing swim lessons together every Saturday morning for the past few months, and that time has quickly become my favorite part of the week. Thinking about it a bit, I realized that, besides the fact that he and I are spending dedicated time together, there's something particularly comforting and recharging about that time being blocked off from the rest of the week -- no email, no phones, etc -- and the fact that it is the same time and day somehow adds to that recharging ability. And then of course there is my hero-blogger Fred Wilson, whose pattern of writing is entirely ritual-oriented (1 blog post per day, ~3 tumbls a day, weekly series, etc.). I am clearly inspired by the way Fred writes and you can see that reflected in how my ownonlinepresence is set up (and probably even in how I write). At a certain point, rituals can become traditions, which take on a different kind of long-term social value. For example, my father in law has been having lunch with his friend Bob every Saturday for the last 40 years (maybe longer). As long as my wife can remember, her dad slipped out for an hour every Saturday. He also recently told me that his father took him out for breakfast every Sunday when he was a kid. There is something really powerful about the connections that these ritual/traditions create. It can be hard to keep them in place, but I suppose that's what makes them so meaningful if you can. So, at risk of caving to my own OCD tendencies and immediately hyper ritualizing my entire life, I will say that I see the value in integrating these ideas. On a personal level, and also on a company / team level. For instance, at OpenPlans, for the past year or so I have been super focused on external issues -- raising money, developing business, making partnerships, etc. -- to the point where now that those investments are paying off, I really want to refocus on making sure our internal operations are healthy. To some extent, I think that means working to institute some positive rituals into our work week (without digressing into toxic meetings). So, there you have it: this week's personal self-help installment, brought to you by a nice window seat on the Amtrak Acela, somewhere in eastern Connecticut. See you next week.
