Plan B

I've been holding fast to a quote that I first saw on Tom Peter’s web site and wanted to highlight it in support of those starting and growing enterprises. It originated with James Yorke and we'll get to its text in a bit.

James Yorke is a mathemetician and scholar, who coined the term and propelled the field of "chaos theory".

The host of one of my favorite radio shows (Dick Gordon, The Connection, WBUR, Boston) summarized chaos theory this way: "Come on, you know it. The story about the butterflies. How the flapping of their tiny, delicate wings somewhere on, say, the South American continent, will influence a storm in upstate New York or Southern California. The story is used to illuminate a central tenant of what has come to be known as chaos theory, the idea that an act so small, so distant, so seemingly random and irrelevant can have monstrous, life and universe-changing consequences.

The theory applies to more than just the weather, it can be used to explain the course of history, HIV/AIDS, interplanetary gravitational pulls, and yes, even our own messy lives. James Yorke coined the phrase "Chaos Theory." He's this year's winner of the prestigious Japan Prize for his contribution to science....."

The Japan Prize, which Dr. Yorke won in 2003, is globally significant. Past winners include Robert Gallo for the co-discovery of the HIV virus, Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, MIT's Marvin Minsky for his seminal artificial intelligence work, and Johns Hopkins' Donald Henderson (with others) for the eradication of smallpox.

I also like the way that The Exploratorium out in San Francisco described the implications of chaos theory: "Today deterministic chaotic behavior has been discovered in numerous natural phenomena and analyzed in detail in dozens of experiments. From compound pendula to dripping faucets, from predator-prey ecologies to measle epidemics, from oscillating chemical reactions to irregular beats of a chicken heart, the underlying mechanisms have been detected. Despite the scientific successes, though, it is important to emphasize that deterministic chaos, and the various mechanisms that underlie it, are not the only explanations of random, noisy, unpredictable behavior in nature. Many well-known processes, and undoubtedly many waiting to be discovered, can produce behavior that is unpredictable. Thus, this abiding question is, How do we discover which of many possible mechanisms has produced the apparent disorder?

I don't pretend to know anything about the math behind chaos theory. But the fact that there is highly regarded science telling me that random stuff happens from predictable causes is comforting. It means we'll never run out of random stuff and that's a fact we should all plan for.

It's not my point here that you're generating chaos in your enterprise life. That's a given. You're hopefully doing something new, fixing problems and generating new economic geographies. Keep at it.

What I'd like to emphasize is the randomness of the universe coming at you and your enterprise.

This is particularly true in enterprise planning. Former President and Supreme Commander during WWII Dwight Eisenhower is often quoted as saying, "Plans are nothing; planning is everything."

While you're in the midst of everything that you will face, nothing can be taken as certain. Absolute certainties sometimes fail. Sure things, often aren't.

Don't get me wrong. Getting as close as you can to "certain and sure" is the gold standard metric. Push, try, refine, get closer continuously.

But most of the time, life happens. Obscure causes can send waves through your enterprise life that defy logic but do, in fact, occur in spite of your best efforts.

Dr. Yorke, among the most acknowledged and rewarded minds of our time, summed up this position deftly in a quote from New Scientist Magazine and posted by Tom Peters.

I'd like to suggest it as a core value of your enterprise life. It's as close to true as anything I know about sustainable work.

"The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B."



Dr. James Yorke's bio at UMD

Listen to a conversation between James York and Dick Gordon on The Connection from WBUR

The Exploratorium chaos doc

Link to New Scientist article ($4.95 RQ'd but you get print and full on line access for a year)

Tom Peters

Philip Glass on the beachwith his glockenspiel

I'm a music lover who knows nothing more than to follow what's interesting and challenging.

I'm also a lover of the freedoms of enterprise creation. Here also my best recommendation is that you follow what's interesting and challenging to you.

The work of composer Philip Glass is a source of great fun and wonder for me. I came to love Mr. Glass on hearing portions of his opera Einstein On the Beach.

I certainly don't understand it, but I certainly love it. I want to be drawn into the challenge of that music.

Philip Glass didn't start out this good. Mr. Glass started out the old fashioned way. Practice. Getting it wrong. Getting it right, again and again and, hopefully, again.

The March 20, 2006 New Yorker has a short piece describing Philip Glass working with students in NYC. He told them, in advocating for better music education in the schools, that he started out playing bass trumpet and glockenspiel in his high-school marching band during football games.

When you're contemplating your own enterprise, or when you're deep into its early life, remember this wonderful composer, among the hippest alive, marching, practicing, starting over and over, back there in high-school.

Your enterprise life should always follow what's interesting and challenging. The execution may be dull and boring (that's good!) but the drive behind it all should continually light you up.

No harm in liking what you don't understand. Go explore it. The harm comes from not following what interests and challenges you.

Driving two lane blacktops

Commerce and cooperation are typically touted as opposites.

You've heard it. Business as war stuff. Grind your opponent down. Rip their ears off as you speed by. Take no prisoners.

I don't think so. I see enterprise as the great new global commons. Sure, it's been co-opted from the top down in its early stages, as most good ideas usually are. But successful participation in enterprises of many types is increasingly available to more and more of us. The commons of global enterprise needs to be defended from the bottom up. That's you and me, doing it right.

It is a hard enterprise lesson to learn but cooperation, when justified, is far more efficient than conflict.

When you begin your enterprise you'll be tempted turn your own personal fears into enterprise fears, reacting to the world with your fists up. That's not all bad. There's a lot of jerks out there. But it's not all good either.

Life is continuously imperfect, but it's also a world of countless everyday miracles. In your enterprise life, watching trust work and, importantly, trust being rewarded, is one of those everyday miracles. Not just on the personal level, but more so in the ways it builds and grows the public commons for all of us.

If you want to succeed on any enterprise path, look for ways to cooperate with your enterprise partners rather than battling with them. The goal is to create ever increasing value for the solutions you provide. That's means involving customers, vendors, peers, investors, board members and everyone in between in this trust thing.

Sure, you always need to remember the good fences/good neighbors rule. That helps spot the bad ones sooner. Let them fall away. The good ones will reward you with the small miracles, the pathways and the tools of your sustainabe enterprise.

This I Believe, is a radio production based on the original series done by Edward R. Murrow in the 1950s that's been revived by NPR. An essay submitted by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher spoke beautifully to this idea of trust and the public commons, I thought.

"One night recently, I was driving down a two-lane highway at about 60 miles an hour. A car approached from the opposite direction at about the same speed. As we passed "each other, I caught the other driver's eye for only a second"

I wondered whether he might be thinking, as I was, how dependent we were on each other at that moment. I was relying on him not to fall asleep, not to be distracted by a cell phone conversation, not to cross over into my lane and bring my life suddenly to an end. And though we had never spoken a word to one another, he relied upon me in just the same way."

"Multiplied a million times over, I believe that is the way the world works. At some level, we all depend upon one another. Sometimes that dependence requires us simply to refrain from doing something like crossing over the double yellow line. And sometimes it requires us to act cooperatively, with allies or even with strangers."

Your enterprise life may be geared toward non profit work or social entrepreneurship or your own business. In every circumstance, you'll need friends more than you'll need enemies.

Here's Warren Christopher, closing the piece: "In my own life, I've put great stock in personal responsibility. But, as the years have passed, I've also come to believe that there are moments when one must rely upon the good faith and judgment of others. So, while each of us faces -- at one time or another -- the prospect of driving alone down a dark road, what we must learn with experience is that the approaching light may not be a threat, but a shared moment of trust."

Don't worry about roadblocks or competitors. Work on creating ever increasing value with your own work. Provide an ever better mousetrap, day in, day out. Out work and out shine lesser competitors and less valuable solutions.

Then, keep your powder dry and trust those who earn your respect. It's the only path I know to sustainable work.

Warren Christopher essay at NPR's This I Believe project

Get out there and screw up

Get out there and screw up

Nothing should ever be considered "done" in you enterprise life.

If it is, so are you.

One thing is always certain. Your first attempts at enterprise certainly won't be your best.

I don't care if you're starting a convent in Calcutta, building out a non-profit venture or launching into your own biz.

Start ups can be scary from a zillion directions, but one of the biggest is admitting that you might screw it up.

Guess what? Good! You tried something hard and you found a break point. Now you know something the average bear doesn't.

Economic value and sustainability come from information, experience and judgement.

Fail in small ways again, and again and again. Look carefully for what it teaches you. Search out the wisdom of setbacks as much as victories.

You can only get sustainable by knowing what doesn't work.

Get out there and screw up. Charge!

The War of Art

Here's a very nice, short, readily accessible book about moving yourself forward. It's openly talking to aspiring artists, but those who would like to explore entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises would do well to read this.

First published in 2002, it's called The War of Art. Subtitled: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

Esquire called it "A vital gem...a kick in the ass"

The author, Steven Pressfield is a very good writer. Quick, direct and tough with his subject.

Mr. Pressfield writes from an artist's perspective, but he's also a former marine with a love for the harder path. He drove cabs and tended bar in New York, taught school in New Orleans, drove tractor-trailers in North Carolina and California, worked on oil rigs in Louisiana, picked fruit in Washington State.

A number of essays discuss the subject of what it means to be a professional in your attitude toward your enterprise.

A nice quote from that section, I thought: "The professional keeps his eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. He reminds himself that it's better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot."

And another, which speaks to my suggestions that you need to build good bones into any enterprise; "A professional recognizes her limitations. She gets an agent, she gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She brings in other pros and treats them with respect."

Sustainable enterprise as art? You bet.


Steven Pressfiled's web site

Grassfire flamesof emerging enterprises

A nice survey just spotted you.

While you may not be living in Wisconsin, I'm convinced these numbers apply most everywhere. There is a huge movement toward personal involvement in new and emerging enterprises.

If you're not thinking about participating, you should be.

A study released last week by the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Network said the following:

"MADISON, Wis.— Roughly half the people in Wisconsin are thinking about starting a business or have started a business, according to a new study of the state’s entrepreneurial climate. The study, “A Medium for Growth: The State of Entrepreneurship in Wisconsin,” reported the strikingly high figures after surveying 1,144 randomly selected households across the state last year."

“In our study, the level of interest in entrepreneurship at the grass roots level in Wisconsin was encouraging,” said Erica Kauten, managing director of the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Network and state director of the Small Business Development Center (SBDC)."

"The University of Wisconsin-Extension in conjunction with the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Network (WEN) and the Wisconsin Department of Commerce launched the research, led by project manager Susan Yolton, to measure the entrepreneurial mood in the state."

I'm sure you'd find similar numbers of people thinking about their own business wherever you looked. Why wouldn't people explore the idea of creating or joining an emerging enterprise?

Of course, the risk is money. Money is critical, and ultimately its what makes these enterprises sustainable.

But for most of us there is also a great risk in assuming that someone else is going to make a job for you.

Participating in this wonderfully chaotic and wildly accessible free enterprise system is something you ignore at your peril.

Among the most interesting findings from the new entrepreneurship study were:

• "Roughly half of the people in Wisconsin are or have been involved in the Entrepreneurial Process -- they are thinking about starting a business or have started a business."

• "Among people involved in the Entrepreneurial Process, there is a low level of awareness and usage of assistance programs across a wide variety of topics."

The definition of entrepreneurship included starting an enterprise while holding full-time employment.

The second finding, about the lack of awareness of assistance programs is important. There are many support agencies with great people and tools available to you. Search them out. Ask around. Research them on the web. Knock on their doors and use them.

However, you need to pick your support programs in the right order.

While many programs are set up to do financing, don't start there. I believe you need to first flush out your markets and get cash flow moving on its own. It doesn't have to be huge, but you have to prove your market first. Without that, all the start up funding you could ever locate won't matter.

I suggest you look first to assistance programs that offer advice and mentoring. There are wonderful public and private organizations everywhere promoting and supporting the world of emerging enterprises. This level of support is typically free or readily available.

Do your homework. Get your feet wet. First look to the support organizations that can help your planning skills. They're there. Don't go for money. Go for the smarts. Plan small. Prove out your market. Make lots of small mistakes. Get cash flow moving. With that in place the next financing steps will be available. Without those in place, it won't be.

From there, I wish you nothing but a fair wind at your back.

The rest of us are with you, friend, fanning the grassfire flames of your emerging enterprise.

Check out the entrepreneurship study at the Wisconsin Entrepreneur's Network site

Wisconsin's excellent Small Business Development Center

Best said in cartoons

Sometimes things in life are best summarized by a great cartoon.

The Jan 16 New Yorker has a good one done by Barbara Smaller.

A human resource/finacial planner guy is at his desk. Behind him, on the wall, is a poster labeled 'Your Future' with an image of an hourglass, rapidly draining out. Across from him sits an older guy sitting nervously.

The planner is asking, "Have you given much thought to what kind of job you want after you retire?"

Hmmmm. Not too far from the mark, my boomer pals.

For a number of good reasons we should all be looking to put some financial and personal control in place as we get older. You can always be a greeter at Wal-Mart, but running your own enterprise makes getting out of bed every morning a LOT more interesting.


Barbara Smaller cartoons at The New Yorker

You're a trend.Harvard Business Schooltalking about you

OK. Let's start with the fact that I think the word minipreneur is goofy.

It will be used in this post because that's what trendwatching.com and Harvard Biz School call it, but give me a break. When you're involved in your own enterprise there is nothing mini about it, no matter the size. It's a big deal to you on a million fronts. Minipreneur sounds dismissive to me.

However, trendwatching.com is a very nice site. It focuses on consumer trends and markets. They picked the word, and I'm sticking to it.

The Harvard quote I'll follow with, asks how to make money from this trend.

First, some pieces from the Sept. '05 article at trendwatching.com by Neil Shoebridge.

"The minipreneur tag was developed by the research firm trendwatching.com to describe what it calls 'a vast army of consumers turning entrepreneur, including small and micro businesses, freelancers, side businesses, weekend entrepreneurs, web-driven entrepreneurs, part-timers, free agents, cottage businesses, seniorpreneurs, co-creators, mumpreneurs, solopreneurs, eBay traders, advertising-sponsored bloggers and so on'."

"According to trendwatching.com, the rise of the minipreneur is being fuelled by five factors:

• Multinationals of one: Thanks to the internet, resources that were once available only to multinationals are now available to many people, including individuals. The internet has removed barriers to entry in many markets and industries and given minipreneurs a way to access "top talent" quickly and virtually. [Added by Rick - and access to 'top markets' worldwide]

• Being in control of one's destiny: Rising wealth (largely from higher property prices), an increased willingness to take risks and the popular belief that people should have three or four careers during their working lives is encouraging some people to set up their own businesses.

• Enterprising is chic: After falling into disgrace during the 1990s, the term entrepreneur has been dusted off and given new respectability. "There's an explosion of hip, admired ventures - online and offline - around the world," the researchers at trendwatching.com say. "It is being accelerated by the tech revolution and the truly exceptional entrepreneurs with vision and skills that started it. [They are] a far cry from the old boys' networks of the past."

• Experience rules and so does less risk: Business is more accessible and better understood than it was, say, 30 years ago. Producers and consumers alike are interested in business. Consumers know, to varying degrees, how business works so they are more willing to enter the business world themselves. For refugees from the world of big business, the risks they will take as minipreneurs are "no way comparable to the gut-wrenching stress that comes with managing listed corporations."

• A need for the unusual: Bored with mass-market products and services, consumers are increasingly looking for things that are unusual, quirky, customised, personalised, on the fringe and so on. Large companies often struggle with making such products and services profitably, but minipreneurs are well placed to cash in on that trend."

Cool. I agree. You can do it. There's no magic. Opportunities are lying around all over the place. Sweeping them up into a good enterprise model is your job.

I read a Harvard piece discussing the trendwatcher.com article, and they asked how someone could make money on all this. Here's what they say:

"The opportunities for entrepreneurs are not just in creating an e-business, but rather in providing products and services to those who do — in other words, selling shovels to gold miners."

According to Trendwatching, “Ask yourself how you can help them to make money by facilitating their admin, their production, their advertising, their insurance, their travel, their networking, their selling, their tech needs, their learning, their payments, their suggestions, their hosting, and their new business ideas. Don't ask them to consume; help them to create, to produce.”

Yep. This is where you come in, friend.

You can make a contribution. You can participate in this wonderful world of emerging enterprises.

I recommend setting your sights on helping these other enterprises. There are many opportunities and directions for building nice, sustainable biz models in this arena. There are a zillion niches opening that specialize in solutions for enterprises. From the smallest to largest, all enterprises are continuously looking for help. Usually, the bigger they get, the more aggressively they're looking for smart solutions.

Set yourself up to serve a highly focused market you really love. Get great at your specialty. Great, as in the smartest shovels for the smartest gold miners.

Harvard and trendwatcher.com are right. You can start your organization as a multinational from day one. You can build a life for yourself with more control over your day job and your destiny. People and organizations the world over are looking for newer, better, unusually smart solutions. Good biz models have never been more available. Perhaps most importantly, trend watchers understand that smart, sustainable enterprising is not only respectable, even chic, but the core of what's coming.

No other generation in human history has had this much opportunity.

We are living in a great age of convergence. Never before has there been this remarkable combination of tools, opportunity and need, waiting for your solutions.

Get on with it, friend.


Trendwatching.com article

Trendwatching.com home page. Cool free newsletter

Harvard Business School article

Eleanor Roosevelt and your enterprise life

We're the kind of family with stuff taped up all over most available surfaces.

Since our daughters were very young there's been two Eleanor Roosevelt quotes posted on their door, along with zillions of other projects over the years: notes, warnings to parent to stay out, etc.

To see Tom Peters pick one of the quotes out for special notice going into 2006 reminds me of the importance of those words we've walked past for a couple of decades or so.

From Tom Peters blog 12/28/05 Raw Meat for "Resolutions": "But when I sat down, quietly, to think about my stance toward 2006, a quote of Eleanor Roosevelt's drifted before my mind's eye: 'Do one thing every day that scares you'."

Tom will make excellent use of this idea, of course. I'd like to point to it also as a wonderful rallying cry for the world of start ups and emerging enterprises.

As an example, many of the coolest peddlers I know work on straight commission. It can be hard, scary work, and it's also a pretty good metaphor for all of enterprise life at the level we're talking about here. As one of the best just summarized it for me, "I wake up every Monday morning unemployed, and then get to work."

That's what you're telling yourself and the world when you birth your start up or grow your emerging enterprise. That you're intentionally making every Monday a potentially scary challenge and that every day is a call to action.

Does this sound like it may be a bit much? Like you're not feeling up to it?.

A good time for the other Eleanor Roosevelt quote posted upstairs by long yellowed tape; "Most of the good work in the world is done by people who weren't feeling all that well the day they did it."

To enter the world of enterprise or to take scary steps to grow your emerging enterprise, there are no perfect times. There are no greener pastures. There are no certainties.

And yet, no matter how well you feel or how scary each step seems, there are opportunities to improve the world, to fix problems, everywhere you look.

Take the steps this year to launch your startup or grow your emerging enterprise in smart, personally scary new ways.

In the end you, and all the rest of us, will be better off.

Go get 'em.


Time magazine profile of Eleanor Roosevelt as one of their 100 most influential people of the last century


Tom Peters site. Most of us don't work for big Corps or organizations that bring Tom in to speak. However, he puts much of his best stuff on line directly, and comments regularily for free on line. Just go there. This new theme of scaring yourself will be very much worth reading.


Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, also taped up on a stairway wall at home. Great links to source docs here.

New Year's Eve.Looking back,looking forward.

A time to assess and a time to plan.

My prayers and best wishes for those folks hammered by natural disasters this past year. My same thoughts for all those who lost loved ones recently, and to those who continue to endure hardships.

I'm most grateful for my family. I'm grateful for all the continuing laughter as everyone dances through their individual journeys.

My own personal stuff is not what these posts are about, but rather, these posts are supposed to be about your journey into your own enterprise life. Be it a startup, an emerging enterprise or an existing organization in search of some passion.

I will take a personal moment at the end of this year to thank The National Society of Professional Engineers. They awarded our small band of rebels their Small Business New Product of the Year Award for the entire US for 2005.

To anyone who has been through the process, they will know there is typically very little recognition involved.

You pull an idea up out of the muck and mire. You bleed over the thing long before it ever hits three dimensions. When there's patents involved, you fight through all that.

If you're in an ongoing enterprise and you're doing new product development work simultaneously, it's a bit like taking a slow walk across the close end of a busy golf driving range.

And then you've got to make the thing work. Hopefully, better than any other solution before it. Then do it again, and again, and again.

Some past recipients of the Professional Engineers New Product awards include the Boeing 777 and the Mercedes M Class.

The number of people in our small band that was awarded this honor in 2005 wouldn't make up a full crew in a Boeing 777. Our entire R&D budget for this new product award couldn't have bought a used Mercedes.

And yet, the world turns toward sustainable enterprise by little and by little.

The Professional Engineers of the United States saw fit to reward design simplicity and effectiveness this year. They picked a product we designed to work unfailingly in industrial environments most people don't even want to walk past. Importantly, I think, they honored the work of a few very dedicated, highly focused individuals working to make the campground a little better.

What we did was not what Boeing or Mercedes does. None of us will do that as start ups or emerging enterprises, for a while anyway. However, with just a few people, and a lot of hard work, we helped recycle millions of gallons of oil that used to be lost as wastewater and cut soot in the air big time, at least around our customer's plants.

Individuals and small groups can come together and make a difference. I almost wrote, "can still come together", but that's directly opposite of what I mean. It's now much easier than ever before in human history for individuals and small groups to find one another and to make a difference.

If you're looking to make a difference in your own life, you should start taking steps in the coming year to set up your own enterprise, or to smarten up your emerging enterprise. Do it by yourself, or do it with partners. While this partnering process used to be limited to family and friends, you've now got one hell of a lot of new next door neighbors on the internet.

Small, smart enterprise groups have never been easier to start or more needed by the rest of us. You can do it.

2005 brought in some nice recognition. I look forward to taking a great story into 2006.

C'mon along.

God bless and Happy New Year friends.