Wherever You Go

So my father used to say this idea about dealing with life’s challenges:

“Wherever you go, that’s where you are!”

If you think about it for a moment, it really is very profound. 

Some people think that they can run away from their problems.

Move here, there, everywhere. 

Change schools, jobs, spouses, whatever. 

But you can’t run away from yourself. 

Wherever you run, you’re still you!

So you need to fix yourself, your problems, your life. 

Yes, sometimes your in a place is bad, a bad fit, the people are bad, the chemistry is bad, the circumstances are bad. 

And then change can certainly be a welcome and good thing.

But when you change the external, the internal has to keep developing and changing as well, so that we learn and grow to be better people.  

Change your place is not a substitute for changing and growing yourself–that is the only constant with change. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal) 

The Meaning Of Pain

Wow, I am so impressed with my daughter.

I spoke with her this evening and she has grown into such a smart, mature, and good person. 

We were talking about some hard times.

And she said to me so smartly (and I am so proud of her):

“The reason that we have pain is to avoid more pain.”

Wow…think about that for a moment. 

Everyone gets physical, emotional, and even spiritual pain in their lives. 

Even little things like stubbing your toe, getting a small burn, or a paper cut–these things give you a instant or more of pain…but it jolts you into attention of what to avoid and to action how to protect yourself to prevent further and worse pain down the road. 

A little pain now can fortunately save you a lot of pain later!

(Or in the gym they say, “No pain, no gain.”)

My father used to say about difficult life lessons:

“Better to cry now than to cry later!”

He was right–bad situations generally don’t get better with age. 

Continuing the discussion with my lovely daughter tonight, she said to me:

“A person becomes better when they struggle. I’ve become better by struggling.”

Again, like little pains, even larger struggles in life challenge us to learn, grow, and become better and stronger people. 

I remember as a kid–when we went through those growth spurts–it would actually hurt a little–some muscle aches here and some cramps there–whew, a few inches taller already. 

Growth hurts, but it’s kind of a good hurt that only someone with the emotional intelligence to understand maturity and betterment can really grasp. 

No, I’m not advocating for self-flagellation–just that we know when pain and struggle is a defining moment in life–like shaping and sharpening a great sword in fierce fire. 

It’s hot, but the heat is healing and necessary sometimes to grow as human and spiritual beings. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Aging Is A Process

This guy was a hoot on the Metro in Washington, D.C. 

His shirt says:

“With age comes oldness.”

Ah, yeah!

When he was sitting, he had his arms crossed over his chest, and I thought it said:

“With age, comes baldness.”

That too!

Getting old is not easy.

Being young is not easy either. 

But it’s really how you handle yourself during every stage and turn in life that defines who you are and what you become as an person and a creation of G-d. 

You’ve got to get up and walk the dance through thick and thin…life bring old age and oldness…what’s the alternative. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Sleepy Education USA

Education is fundamental to learning, development and preparation for career and life. 

We’ve always believed that if you invest in anything, invest in education!

However, despite initiatives like No Child Left Behind and Every Child Succeeds Act, scores in the fundamentals like reading, math, and science all lag behind other advanced industrialized nations.

As of 2015, the U.S. ranked a stinking 38 out of 71 nations in K-12 education. 

Yet, it is seemingly the complete opposite, with college education, the U.S. has about 75% of the top 25 schools. 

However, the comparison is flawed because university rankings are based not on student academic performance, but rather on research performance, including things like journal articles published and Noble Prize winners. 

When academic proficiency is tested for American adults, the rankings again lag and are at best mediocre. 

While there are many dedicated and good teachers, still too many teachers and unions continue to fight testing and reform so that progress of our education system continues to fail our children and our nation.

We need to end education by memorization, and focus instead on hands-on learning (by doing), critical thinking and problem-solving.

Sleeping through a lecture may not mean a student is missing squat in the current failed education system. 

(Source Photo: The Blumenthals)

Computer Luminaries

I wanted to share these photo that I took at Micro Center, a computer and electronics store, outside Washington DC. 

On the wall are these pretty awesome photos of many of the founders and inventors behind modern-day computing. 

1) Doug Englebart – the GUI and Mouse

2) Dennis Ritchie – C and Unix

3-4) Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston – Visicalc and Spreadsheets

5-6) Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard – HP 

7) Gordon Moore – Intel

8) Grace Hopper – First compiler that led to development of COBOL

9-10) Robert Khan and Vinton Cerf – TCP/IP

11) Steve Wozniak – Apple I and II

Of course, the following deserve a place of the wall of fame as well:

12) Steve Jobs – Apple

13) Bill Gates – Microsoft

14-15) Larry Paige and Sergey Brin – Google

16) Jeff Bezos – Amazon 

17) Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook

On one hand, these are people like you and I, who live, feel joy and pain, and one day die. In the end, we’re all just flesh and blood, plus a soul that is our moral compass. 

But on the other hand, G-d has given some people special gifts to pass to mankind, like a master painter, musician, inventor, or holy person, whose worldly works are as near to G-dly as perhaps we can get outside of Heaven itself.

G-d must have a plan for us as he sends us these people–or more like angels–to guide our development and our destiny. 

Whatever G-d wants from us, we’re definitely on a course to get there and that is comforting and a ray of hope for all of us. 😉

(Source Photos: Andy Blumenthal)

Helping Kids To Stand On Their Own

So my wife and I have a longstanding disagreement on the best way of teaching children. 

Her perspective:

TEACH TO CARE – Get the kids to do them for themselves, learn to be independent, by doing they learn to stand on their own two feet, don’t baby them, by teaching them to do for themselves you are caring for the kids, if you jump every time they ask then there is no reason for them to try themselves.

His perspective:

CARE TO TEACH – Do for the kids when they are young, by showing them how then they start to learn how to do it for themselves later in life, children need to be shown love and caring so they can learn to one day care for themselves as well as for others, by loving and giving selflessly to children they learn that they are valuable human beings and grow to a healthy maturity. 

The reality:

CARE AND TEACH – We need to show care and love to children, but also need to teach them to do for themselves. We can’t smother children nor can we send them out into the world unprepared. Care for them at an early age, show them how, and then give them opportunities to do it for themselves and become full adults. 

Like with most things in marriage, and relationships in general, the bringing together of two heads and hearts is better than just one alone. We balance each other, complement each other, and synergize each other–one is alone and deficient, two is together and with G-d making three, it is a whole. 

And always tell your wife she was right. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Gaming to Get More Bricks and Mortar

Farhad Manjoo has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal on the gamification of the workplace.

In office gamification, employees are treated like gamers–they are measured, given points, and recognized/rewarded for meeting objectives as if you are playing an arcade game or Angry Birds.

The problem is that this is really nothing new and also not very motivating to the workforce.

Already in the Bible the Egyptians oppressed the Israelites by giving them ever crushing quotas for gathering straw and building the great pyramids.

And if they didn’t measure up, the Bible tells us that, “They made their lives bitter with harsh labor…the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.”(Deut. 1:14)

You see while measuring performance is a good and important part to managing and maturing processes and the workforce, tracking people in real life with plus ups for every good thing and minuses for every mistake or failure treats this whole thing as one big game, but it’s not.

A mature adult workforce doesn’t need points and bonus time for doing their jobs, and shouldn’t be made to fear losing their jobs for not meeting their daily numbers.

Even Manjoo admits that he dreads working in a work environment where everything is measured and monitored to the nth-degree.

He says that even in a field like Journalism, he feels undue pressure to produce and that “every time I write a story that doesn’t make the paper’s most-popular list, I consider it a tiny failure. If I do that too many times in a row, I begin to wonder if I should look for a new line of work.”

Now perhaps, many of you are saying, that if you can’t perform at expectations, maybe you should be looking for another job, but the point is that performance measurement should be humane–working toward the long-term benefit of the company and the development of the employees–and not one miss and it’s “Game Over!”

Gamification software, like Badgeville, that gives points for everything from creating a sales lead to responding to a lead and converting a lead to sales opportunities is nothing short of childish micromanagement.

Employees shouldn’t treated like children working for points and prizes and titles like “Super Converter” or “Super Dealer” (like in the demo video), but rather should be treated as professionals, who work for the mission and based on an ethos of excellence, where they are committed to doing their best for the organization, and the organization is committed to developing them and making them a ever better and satisfied workforce–not making them feel like they are coming to a surveillance, tracking, and fear-inspired workplace.

Can gamification have a place in creating some healthy workplace competition and fun? Sure, but when it’s masquerading as a serious tool to engineer people to do their jobs and have a meaningful career, then someone in the C-suite has been playing Farmville a little too long.

My father used to tell me, “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar,” and employees will be far more motivated if they know you are working with them as a team to “get to the next level” rather than infantilizing and prodding them with ridiculous amounts of workplace surveillance to force them to collect more straw and build more pyramids. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

>Who Says Car Companies Can’t See?

>

Check out the concept for the new “Local Motors” car company:

• “Vote for the designs you want. If you are a designer, you can upload your own. Either way, you help choose which designs are developed and built by the Local Motors community. Vote for competition designs, Checkup critiques, or portfolio designs.
• Open Development, sort of like open source. Once there is enough support for any single design, Local Motors will develop it openly. That means that you not only choose which designs you want to drive, you get to help develop them – every step of the way.
• Choose the Locale During the development process, help choose where the design should be made available. Local Motors is not a big car company, we are Local. The community chooses car designs with local regions in mind; where will this design fit best? You tell us. We make it happen.
• Build your Local Motors vehicle Then, once the design and engineering is fully developed you can go to the Local Motors Micro-Factory and build your own – with our help, of course. See the “Buy” page for purchase and Build Experience details.
•  Drive your Local Motors car, the one you helped design and build, home.”

I like this user-centric approach to car design and development. This is how we really put the user in the driver’s seat. 

The is the type of opportunity where we go from Henry Ford’s one car for the masses approach to a more localized implementation.

While I don’t know the specific economics of this approach for a car company, it seems like it has bottom-line potential since they will only proceed with car development once they have enough demand identified. 

Why build cars that no one wants or likes and why pay for internal design and market research studies, when people will willingly participate for free in order to get what they really want?

Finally, this is a terrific example of open source development and crowdsourcing–getting the masses to contribute and making something better and better over time. More minds to the task, more productivity and quality as a result.