No wilderness, no revelation

No wilderness, no revelation?

In this Bloggingheads.tv interview, authors Robert Wright and Susan Cain discuss how quiet has gone missing from a culture predisposed, metaphorically, to exchange silence for sound and why that quiet person - and quiet time - matters more than ever. The title for this post is taken from an exchange that begins shortly after the 31:00m mark.

Be still.

From abstraction to model-building to patient hypothesizing, there are of course many, many ways to create. Diverse experiences are part of that process, and in an always-on world I wonder if an acquaintance with periods of silence, which has always been part of the human experience, is in jeopardy. So take a walk today and listen to the reedy breath of the trees in your local park, or patiently trace tonight the full length of Hydra on the southern horizon. Lose yourself in a book or make dinner with vegetables that don't come in a can. Hear without comment what your critics - or your spouse - might say.

The satisfying irony of the wilderness is that it is a place of abandon, and of discovery.

Wayne

"Most people would rather be unhappy than uncertain"

Most people would rather be unhappy than uncertain - Filmmaker Erik Proulx in a recent PassionHit video.

That quote also reminded me strongly of Jonathan Fields' belief that a willingness "to live in the question" is the mark of the creative life. What every sculptor, theoretical physicist and entrepreneur knows is that a little discomfort goes a long way toward alternative thinking - the secret is a tolerance for ambiguity and a determination to be still long enough to understand what the disquiet is saying. I know it's been true in my life.

I bet that it's been true for you as well.

Proulx is the filmmaker behind the "Lemonade: Detroit," above, which movingly chronicles the changes a group of people in Detroit have made amidst massive uncertainty. Watch. Thanks for sharing CC!

Wayne

What if the North Korean rocket had strayed? Parag Khanna on untangling geopolitics

What if instead of disintegrating just one minute after launch, yesterday's North Korean rocket had been shot down over Japan or South Korea? What series of events might have followed?

Parag Khanna is curious about "geopolitical chain reactions," how, as he explains, a Tunisian self-immolation can lead the world's most powerful military alliance to go to war in "the country next door." Or how the sub-prime mortgage in the United States leads to troubles in the Eurozone economies. These kinds of interactions are what the Director of the Global Governance Initiative at the New America Foundation studies in hopes of being able to understand, and perhaps, predict, complex international events.

Khanna's video is the latest in the IdeaFestival Conversations series, which in 2011 asked festival attendees and speakers what made them curious. Check them out at IFTV.

Wayne

Secret breathing

Of all the human impulses, I think the desire to be known is the most insistent. From the mischievous child who peeks from behind the sofa during a game of hide and seek just in time to catch her parents' eyes to the more serious - the threat never carried out, the choices that cannot be undone and the risks not taken - we harbor a sense of self, ineluctable and far too-often unspoken, that nags. We want to be known for who we are and who we'd like to be, and rebel against characterizations that target that core. Yes, sometimes changes need to be made, particularly when we harm ourselves or others. But if you've ever sat at the wrong cafeteria table in high school, you know that some judgements carry unwarranted consequences. Women will relate to Ashley Judd's stand-up reply to the oh-so-certain and very public recent commentary on her "puffy" appearance. I think more men should.

Me, I'm a bit nebbishy. Although much better as a I've grown older, I still miss social cues that others, more attuned to group dynamics, see and harmonize with their own desires. I can come across as overly earnest to some people. I learned early on as the son of a pastor, however, that the individual has incomparable value, and spent time over the years on visits with marginalized people who had been pushed away. Convinced they had nothing to offer, some had exiled themselves. I'm thankful for those experiences because I learned that secrets have a physics all their own. And as someone who can get happily lost in books, I learned that the secret holders had flesh and bone, that secret-holding was, in fact, the normal, shallow respiration of people who just wanted to breathe deep.

I learned they had something to say.

PostSecret has been collecting anonymously sent secrets for several years, and some of the stories connected to them were told recently by the web site's founder, Frank Warren. Watch.

Wayne

Five Questions with Backupify's Rob May

Another in an occasional series from IF Blog - see Daniel Tammet's email interview here - I asked Rob May, CEO of Backupify and a former Louisville resident, five questions. Besides growing a successful young company, Rob is an acquaintance and like me, an introvert. Thanks Rob!

What is Backupify? - Backupify is a backup and restore application for Software as a Service.  One third of all data loss is user error, and that doesn't go away if you move to cloud applications.  Backupify protects you from data loss due to hacking, user error, and other things that may be outside of the control of your SaaS vendor.

Can you recall an event or series of events that led you to the idea that would become Backupify? - The original idea came from a friend who wanted to backup his Flickr account.  I built the software as a side project, and it just kept getting more popular.

What have you learned as the CEO of a growing start up that you didn't know before? - I could write an entire book to answer this question, but for now, I will say the two most important things are:

1.    Having the right people is critical, and hard to do.
2.    You always have problems, it’s just that the nature of those problems changes as the company grows.  For example, in the early days you have adoption problems but in the later days you have scaling problems.

Harvard has suggested that in “dynamic, unpredictable environments” introverted people are often more effective leaders than their extroverted counterparts. Two-third of senior corporate executives, according to a 2006 survey it cites, believe introversion is a barrier to leadership. As a self-described introvert, what advantages and disadvantages does introversion confer when it comes to business?

The big disadvantage is that the CEO job requires a lot of people time, and that wears me out.  I have to be careful to make sure I don’t schedule too many analyst or journalist briefings, speaking events, networking events, or large internal meetings in the same day.  Otherwise I am exhausted.  

The advantage is that I like to spend a lot of time digging into data about the business, and I am more sensitive than most people to changes in that data.  Introverts are good at building mental models of how things work, and so we are very tuned in to changes to those models or data that doesn't seem to fit.

What are the most important characteristics of an entrepreneur?
Mental and physical stamina. It takes years of grueling work to become an “overnight success”.  You have to be tough.

What’s your definition of success?
Achieving your goals, whatever they may be.