Celebrating Opportunity and Those Who Pursue It

After watching the last two week's political conventions, I am left feeling more encouraged and optimistic than ever. It was not the soaring rhetoric, and certainly not the partisan attacks by each side. Rather, it was the speakers and their compelling life stories that uplifted me. Both political parties showcased examples of what makes America great. We saw impressive individuals from both parties, who took advantage of opportunities to make significant contributions.

Think about the common thread that we saw within both conventions. We saw examples of a great society that helps people to help themselves. Both parties celebrated the pursuit of a better life for ourselves and for our children. With assistance from families, from communities, and from government, ordinary people accomplished extraordinary things through scholarship, merit, hard work, and character.

Outliers

In statistics, an outlier is an unusual occurrence that falls outside of the normal statistical distribution. These random and rare occurrences often seem inexplicable. Consider rolling dice and getting snake eyes 100 times in a row.

Malcolm Gladwell's book by the same name, Outliers discusses unusual patterns of achievement and success. In the book, Gladwell identifies logical causes for what would otherwise be considered statistically impossible events. He identifies cause and effect relationships for statistical outliers.

Collaboration, Innovation and 5G WiFi

The IEEE standards association is a fantastic model of collaboration that brings together competing organizations, ideas and interests to advance technology and the framework for innovation. Companies from all over the world send highly talented engineers and scientists to develop standards within IEEE working groups. Competing companies collaborate to develop the standards that enable interoperability, innovation, and ultimately competition between those same companies. The consumer is the biggest winner of this cooperation and standardization. With a common and open standard, the marketplace creates the competitive environment that leads to innovative new products and drives prices down over time.

A standard that you will likely hear more about is the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (a.k.a. WiFi) standard. A new 5th generation (5G) WiFi standard, designated 802.11ac will deliver multi-Gbps data rates. This is significant because 802.11ac will enable faster wireless data rates than most of us now have with our wired 100 Mbps connections. The 802.11ac standard is still in draft form and not expected to be completed until later this year, but already there are 5G WiFi products available. This shows the pace of market-driven innovation. 

Your Strengths Are Your Weaknesses

Those things that we do well can also be our greatest liabilities. Like a double-edged sword, a strength is also a weakness. The greater the strength, the greater the potential weakness and liability. Consider that....

• Physical strength can limit your flexibility
• Determination can become stubbornness
• Confidence can become arrogance
• Discipline can make you narrow-minded
• Analytical thinking can lead to over-thinking
• Focus can close you off to new opportunities
• Enthusiasm can make you act without thinking
• Spontaneity can lead to undisciplined action
• Meticulousness may become perfectionism
• Resolve can lead to ruthlessness
• Passion can become zeal and obsession

The list goes on...there is a counterbalance to everything. What personal traits are you most proud of? To what do these traits leave you vulnerable?

How The Mighty Fall

Last week, I went to select a book for a short trip that I could easily carry and read quickly. Two books in my need-to-read pile fit this criteria: "Only The Paranoid Survive" by Andy Groves, and "How The Mighty Fall" by Jim Collins. At the time, I did not consider that these two books addressed the same topic. Both discuss challenges facing companies, and explain that some companies rise to the occasion while others falter. Andy Groves describes how Intel transitioned from memory to microprocessor, dealt with a Pentium flaw in 1994, and managed through the explosive growth of PCs. Intel overcame these potentially catastrophic events thorough disciplined pursuit of its core business philosophies. Jim Collins studies great companies that stumbled or failed in an attempt to understand the underlying causes of business decline.