Recommended Book Mash-up: Evolution of God and Fingerprints of God

I happened to end up reading these two books at around the same time by chance, but if you are looking for something to read during the holiday break, or you are looking for a gift for a reader I highly recommend this combination.

The two books are:

Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

and

The Evolution of God by Robert Wright

It's an interesting combination to read together - Wright focuses on high concepts like politics, economics, and power and their influence on religion, whereas Hagerty focuses on the personal spiritual experience and the real impact of spirituality on individual lives. I won't go into it too deeply as I haven't written a book report since the 10th grade and don't intend on writing one now. Suffice to say, they are both good and interesting books and if you happen to read both and want to discuss them further drop me a line.

(Argh - ok, for those that really need more info before they can commit to reading a book here are two short summaries:)

Robert Wright covers the history of God to show how the idea of "God", gods, and god have historically evolved based on the political and economic realities of the communities. The basic premise of the book is that in order for a religion to thrive it needs to attract an audience. In order to attract an audience and grow, successful religions have to address some fundamental needs - either of the people who worship (in a more open society) or of the people in power (in a more closed society). Wright further argues that accepting the fact that human needs influence religion does not mean that "God" does not exist. In an interesting flip, he actually argues that the gradual historic progression of humans towards more understanding and compassion might be more proof of a divine influence rather than less. From that perspective, the evolution of God over time from multiple morally ambivalent deities to a single morally-just deity today may reflect God's plan for the moral evolution of mankind.

While "Evolution of God" focuses on large things like religion, politics, government, and power, "Fingerprints of God" focuses on the personal spiritual experience and the science around those experiences. In the book, Hagerty seeks to document the stories and experiences of those that have had deep spiritual experiences and delves into some of the new scientific studies that are being conducted around spirituality. The interesting takeaway for me was that there is a real, tangible scientific difference between people that have deep spiritual lives and people that do not (It didn't matter what religion they were, brain scans of Christian nuns and Buddhist monks came out remarkably similar in prayer and in meditation). However, even though there are areas in our brain that seem attuned to spirituality it isn't really clear yet whether those areas of the brain are acting more like radio antenna (and picking up signals from a divine source) or they are triggering the sensations themselves.

All in all - good stuff. BTW - the other reason why its good to read them at the same time is that its nice to have a break from the history of Egyptian deities at some point and read a personal story of someone's encounter with something (possibly) divine.

15 Things I Wish I Had Learned Earlier in Life:

1. Practice doesn't necessarily make perfect, but it certainly increases the odds of getting there

2. Persistence does pay off, but not necessarily in the way you expect

3. Persistence and Practice Build Confidence (in sports as well as in life)

4. Persistence and Practice without failure isn't really persistence and practice. (We need to push ourselves to the edge of our capabilities which means accepting failure as a part of learning)

5. We can control how we feel (if you are moping, you can decide not to mope)

6. Don't mope or complain about things you can't change (it's pointless)

7. Don't mope or complain about things you can change (just change it)

8. Don't underestimate what you can change (more than you think)

9. Don't underestimate the work required to enact change (more than you think and see #4)

10. True confidence is never brash, loud, and arrogant, but assured, steadfast, and humble.

11. Character and Integrity are more important than Intelligence and Strength

12. Who we choose to associate with in life matters - whether we like it or not, our associations influence our thinking and perception of the world and ourselves. (We should actively seek to surround ourselves with people that strive to be assured, steadfast, and humble with Character and Integrity)

13. Teachers, parents, and "old folk" aren't always right, but they are right often enough that you should really pay attention and think about what they say.

14. Human achievement is built upon the knowledge and effort of those that came before us. Learning as much as we can about the past improves understanding of the present, and gives hope for the future.

15. Leading a spiritually rich life can help achieve, identify or enable all of the above

Are you a better person today than you were yesterday?

Decay happens gradually.

I hit 200lbs a few months ago, but I got there an ounce (or less) at a time.

My wife and I had at one point almost stopped talking to each other despite our love for one another.

I barely remember how to calculate an integral. (ok, sorry, I admit it, I don’t remember at all despite 2.5 yrs of Calculus – it was something easy though, I’ll have to look it up)

It seems obvious that without deliberate care and feeding our Body, Soul, and Mind decay.

Body - An artery can close from tiny bits of plaque accumulating over-time.

Soul - A heart hardens gradually as real or perceived slights, disappointments, broken promises mount up over-time.

Mind - what was I writing about?

I think we all recognize this on a intellectual level but following through day in and day out can be tough. If it isn't tough for you (and I know there are some of you mutants out there) then this is probably all part of your daily regimen already. If that's the case, I'm happy for you - really! (Now leave).

Here’s what I’m going to do:

I’m going to setup a simple spreadsheet here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AirpMufiwxzIdFl4SGw0VWY1Ukc0QlF3NEpwaGRDWnc&hl=en

Within this spreadsheet I’m going to keep a simple log of whether or not I’ve done something that day that improves my Body, Soul or Mind. The rules will be fairly simple, each day that I do something that benefits Body, Soul or Mind I give myself a point for that day. Examples might include:

Body: Working out, Eating less, Deferring dessert, etc…

Soul: Praying, Doing something positive for relationships, Volunteering etc…

Mind: Reading a book, Practicing a new skill, Learning a new skill, etc…

Here’s my thinking behind this:

Building the inertia to keep things going is hard (e.g. that first workout after not having done any exercise in 3 months). It’s easy to get discouraged and it’s easy to give yourself excuses (“I woke up too late”, “No time”, “American Idol is on” etc…)

In order to build that inertia it seems to make sense to apply concepts that are effective in the workplace to myself. They are:

Accountability: A daily log is important. Lapses happen. The intent is to make sure that a single lapse doesn’t gain inertia in the wrong direction and quickly become two lapses, then three, then four, etc…There is relatively little value in me cheating (that would be a little sad frankly), so the point here is to provide some history to my progress.

Transparency: It really doesn’t matter a whit if no one ever looks at the log that I post. The important thing is that its out there with a clear goal, metrics, and a history so that if anyone ever does want to hold me accountable they can at any time.

Goal-orientation: My goal 100 points. Weight goals are tough (Lose 5 lbs in 2 weeks!) in that our individual bodies react so differently and the actual day-to-day progress is so difficult to perceive. My point system seems pretty straightforward and simple and gives the person (in this case me) constant positive feedback that I am getting closer and closer to my goal (as arbitrary as that goal may be). Regardless of how long it takes, I’m reasonably assured that at the end of 100 points I’ll at least be a better person at the end than when I started.

The pastor of my church mentioned today how, “some people age like fine wine and others age like milk.” I probably don’t need to explain this as the analogy seems pretty clear – as folks get older some get wiser, more caring, and more open, whereas others become more entrenched, close-minded, and mean-spirited. I doubt anyone ever expects or plans on becoming the crotchety old man (or woman), the unhealthy guy, or the could-be-smarter guy, but I can certainly see how it happens. I’ve certainly seen how it can happen to me. This is my plan for trying to age a little bit more like wine and a little bit less like milk.

What do you think?

Why Religion? A Cynic's Evolution

I haven't written a post in ages - mostly because I originally started this blog to write about work.  However, work really hasn't been my focus recently.  Instead, I have been spending more time focused on family, relationships, and how I can learn to have a spiritually fulfilling life.  So, to the four people out there who read this blog (Hi Mom!), I am going to switch gears a bit and write about some of my thoughts on spirituality and its importance - be forewarned the oxygen gets a little thin in these parts.  Now with that aside...

I'm sure lots of folks out there share my background.  As with many folks with Asian backgrounds, I was raised to appreciate the power and beauty of math and science.   My parents raised my brothers and I with a profound appreciation for rational thought and a healthy skepticism of all things religious.  My parents were always concerned about the demagoguery and idolization that occurs in some religions and I grew up harboring a great deal of suspicion of all spiritual pursuits. All religions and all spiritual beliefs were superstition.  I didn't necessarily think they were bad, and the fact that they offered hope to so many people was a good thing.  It just wasn't for me.  I didn't need an artificial, cosmic source of hope and I certainly didn't need any help learning right from wrong.  I was a good person and would continue to be a good person without religion.  

Unfortunately, I kept running into very well-educated, intelligent, individuals with Faith and a passion for improving themselves and those around them that seemed perfectly sane.  They didn't seem to notice that their mere existence disrupted my world view (quite inconsiderate of them). As I came to know these people better, I could see the tangible positive influence that religion had in their lives.  Largely influenced by these encounters, I decided that I didn't know the first thing about religion and wanted to understand myself what makes religion tick before I passed further judgement.  As you might expect, it has been an incredibly interesting journey and I thought I'd share a bit of my evolution.  

Why Not Religion? The Danger of Religion Without Spirituality

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Spirituality as anything related to or affecting the spirit.  Spirit, in turn, is defined as an animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms.  In essense, without spirit we have no life. 

Spirituality is the recognition of the inherent value of life and the interconnectedness of all life. 

Religion without Spirituality is Religion without an appreciation for life and the interconnectdness of life.  It is the dangerous and hateful cause of much violence and pain all in the name of "religion". Unfortunately all too many examples of religion without spirituality exist in today's world - ranging from the abuse of power within Catholic churches to terrorist bombings.  As a non-religious person growing up - these stories are what I associated with "religion" of any sort.

However, these stories also avoided the fact that the majority of people in the world practice a given faith.  A lot of them are well-educated, a lot of them are smart, a lot of them are doing great things.  There had to be something different about religion and specifically religion practiced with a strong spiritual center that had a real tangible affect on people's lives.  Today I thought I'd cover three tangible benefits that I believe have had a meaningful impact on my own life. 

Why Religion #1: Religion Provides a Forum for Deeper Relationships

I think the very first thing that struck me was how many of the relationships and friendships that these folks developed within their religious circles were much deeper and richer than my own. My own experience with friends and relationships sees the growth and development of rich relationships more as a product of chance than one of intention.  My closest friends were those with whom I had shared specific life experiences and rites of passage (whether it be fraternity life, business school, or even playing competitive sports).  But those life experiences and rites of passage never provided the right forum for discussing deeper issues of life and learning without some sort of catalyst.  It's unfortunate, but deep friendships among men alway seem to require an extreme catalyst for individuals to relate to one another.  Those catalysts can be positive, overcoming adversity to achieve in sports or in business for example, but more often than not, these catalysts unfortunately are most effective in negative contexts whether it be the tragedies of war and sickness to the no less tragic trials of failed relationships and broken families. 

Religion, and its constructs of church, small groups, studies, and fellowship provide a forum and a framework from which individuals can build deep relationships in a positive context.  Those same constructs are there to support when tragedy does strike, but religion provides a positive catalyst in its own right.

This is significant because I believe that if you grow up without Church and without some designated forum to discuss matters of the soul, it tends not to be discussed at all.  Without a catalyst, I personally found it awkward to try to deepen relationships built solely upon upon shared life experiences (school, work, sports) - particularly in the context of a culture that values the idea of the "self-made" and "self-sufficient" man.  

Why Religion #2: Humility and the Fallacy of the Self-sufficient Man

FYI: I personally have the most experience with Christianity at this point, so I'll write mainly from that perspective.  

One of the most powerful things an individual can do for another individual is meet them where they are and hear their story without judgement.  

It is funny how much we all fear being judged by others and how much we feel hurt from the judgement of others despite all of our mythology around being independent and self-sufficient.  Having been married for a few years now, I can tell from experience that some of the deepest hurts a spouse can inflict on the other are from judging the others action.  The fear of judgement is a the heart of many a wounded ego and many an argument.

Christianity teaches that all of us are flawed.  This is such a simple idea, but it is incredibly powerful.  Whether or not you believe it to be true, the power it carries for someone that does believes can be astounding.  Accepting that everyone has flaws (including yourself) allows two things: 1) the strength to ask others for help, and 2) the humility to not judge those that ask for help.  Religion, in this specific case Christianity, provides a context and a framework for individuals to engage with one another without loss of face.  It allows those that believe to confront issues with a transparency that is often lacking in a more material world where "appearances" matter.

Why Religion #3: Religion as a Framework for Spirituality

Religion enables the conversation about spirituality, but it also provides a framework for how to live spiritually.  Part of the beauty of the "we're all flawed" belief is that it enables one to acknowledge that we can all be better people.  This took a bit of adjustment for me as I used to believe that if you could be better that meant that you weren't good now.  The reality is that we are all on a continuum and though there is evil and evil people in the world the majority of us are somewhere on the continuum of "good" people - but, that doesn't mean we couldn't be better.

We all want to be better.  We want to be better at work, better at sports, and better at making lattice-like latte art in our coffee cups (ok, that last one might just be me - we just got a new espresso machine).

If we compared the time we spent improving our skills vs. improving our selves where would the percentages end up?  If folks are like me, their time spent improving is probably similar to what my split used to be: 30% Skills. 69% Slacking and 1% Self (Slacking requires practice - and I was/am a Master!). The world rewards us for skills but not necessarily for self (Sports salaries and our hero worship there are prime examples).  The result is that the spiritual side of ourselves - the side of ourselves that has to do with life and our fulfillment with life is sometimes ignored.  When it comes to our Selves, everyone generally thinks they are Good, but not everyone thinks they could be Better. 

Its more difficult than one might think to acknowledge that you could be a better person.  The tendency for most people is to feel like they are being judged, just as they would judge someone else who could be better. ("Why can't they be more neat?" "Why can't they exercise more?" "Why are they so lazy?")  When you see an area of improvement for someone else - it is very, very difficult not to judge.  So, when someone points out areas of improvement for you - it is very, very difficult to not feel as if you are being judged.  Religion provides a framework for self-improvement that withholds that judgement.  Within a religious framework, acknowledging that you could be a better person, does not imply you are a bad person now. 

Early in my life I was fortunate enough to have a mentor who would constantly challenge me to be a better person.  Everytime I went over his house, he would share with me specific ideas that he was working on about how he intended to improve himself as a person.  His focus, however, was wholly on being a better person in the interactions with those around him - whether it be being a better boss, a better husband, or a better father.  Throughout these interactions I could never help feeling like he was passing judgement on me.  I would think "Why is he friends with me if he thinks I'm such a terrible person?".  Over time going over his house sort of ended up being a drag - it began to feel like an exercise in inadequacy each time I went over ("Barry, here's how you suck at being you").  Now I believe that without a religious framework I simply had no way of processing his advice and criticism in a way that did not bruise my ego.  He took a great risk telling me what I needed to hear, but I simply wasn't equipped to absorb it.

This is because the criticisms are true are the ones that sting the most.  Unfortunately, though, I do not believe that people can come to understand and acknowledge criticisms on their own terms and in their own time unless they have a framework for ingestion that religion can provide.  

Very few people have the ability to absorb direct criticism without inflicting some mental stress upon themselves.  In the few instances where I have followed through on criticism it has usually been the result of "I'll show them!", rather than "This is what I want".  Religion allows us to confront those criticisms in a way that reaffirms us.  For non-believers, it seems ridiculous to think that the fact that a super-powerful, cosmic entity loves you for who you are is reaffirming, but again, the power of that affirmation for those that do believe can be amazing.  The belief that God loves them for who they are gives them the strength to want to change.

Does It Matter if Its Real?

The cynic in me sometimes wonders though whether it really matters if its real.  The belief structure of religion is in itself so beneficial that I'm not sure if it matters.  Simply believing has positive benefits on how you live and how you interact with the world.  If that's the case, why does it matter if God is real or not?  This is the question I had on my mind about three years ago when I was deciding whether or not to become a Christian.  It seemed like a Catch-22 in my mind, how does a non-believer believe when he's a non-believer?  How do you ask for guidance and help from a God that you don't believe in?  How does a God that only appears to believers appear for a non-believer in order to make the non-believer a believer?  I'm fairly certain that I drove my Pastor crazy with these questions - I find them awfully humorous today though because as odd as it may seem, I found my answer.  Or, I suppose, I should say more accurately that I'm finding the answer still.  At the end of the day I believe that people have to find their own way and their own answers.  The first step is want to find the answer.  At the very least I hope I can at least convince some people that the journey is worth doing even if they decide in the end that it's not real.  In the meantime, feel free to ask me questions, criticize me, or offer me suggestions on how I can be better - I promise I won't judge ;)

Am I Lucky or Am I Good?: Sports, Business & Self-confidence

Confidence is a funny thing, if you have it you can sometimes perform beyond expectations, when you don't you can perform well below expectations.

I originally started this post months ago as I was reading "Fooled by Randomness" where the author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, makes the point that in high-randomness professions (like technology management) it is actually pretty hard to tell who is good and who isn't based on results alone. Books like "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Halo Effect" have similar themes in that both warn against placing too much value in the successes of other people. By doing so, both books implicitly warn against placing too much value in your own success.

My initial reaction upon reading these books was to cast a critical eye on my own performance. Where was I strong? Where was I weak? How did I know I was really strong in the areas I thought were my strengths? I began to think about ways to prove to myself that I was Good and not merely Lucky. (Hence - my blogs on "Hiring Great People" and "Calibrating Your Interview Gut" which tried to break down that process into a more measurable process).

As I occupied myself on the professional side with these questions, I happened to start trying to learn how to play golf a bit more seriously on the personal side of my life.

One of the things that I quickly noticed about golf was how important the "mental" side of golf was to the game. Books like "The 15th Club: The Inner Secret to Great Golf" and "The Inner Game of Golf" paid attention to player's tendencies to be overly critical of themselves in pressure situations and the negative effects of those thoughts. As someone who has played a fair amount of basketball, I have experienced the difference in performance between being "in the zone" of confidence versus lacking that confidence and could see how that could play a huge role in golf as with other sports.

Basically, it helps to have a positive outlook and to see yourself succeeding. (It's probably not much of a surprise to hear that the author of "The Inner Game of Golf" also wrote a book called, "The Inner Game of Work".) As I started learning the game more, I began to come to the conclusion that perhaps my self-critical nature actually was NOT a good thing.

In his book, Nicholas Taleb recounts the story of a wall street trader who was able to make million, and then subsequently lose millions, because the trader didn't take into account the inherent randomness of his profession and put too much stock (yes, bad pun) in his own abilities. After thinking about this more though, I'm not sure this was actually a bad thing for the trader in question. By being supremely overconfident (and perhaps arrogant) about his own capabilities he was able to convince many smart, capable investors to place millions with him. If he had been realistic and self-critical about his capabilities this particular trader would never have seen the amount of success that he did.

As I thought about how this applied to the tech world and entrepreneurship, I could see how supreme over-confidence in one's ability can be an advantage in itself. The odds are already stacked against any one entrepreneur, and yet, an entrepreneur has to not only convince himself, but convince his investors and his employees of his ultimate ability to lead the company to success.

I believe there are very few successful entreprenuer out there that would read "Fooled by Randomness" or the "Halo Effect" and think "Yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones - I didn't know what the heck I was doing." (if this is you, you are my kind of person!) It's just like those surveys we've all heard about where everyone ranks themselves as an "above average" driver.

On the flip side, just as all poker winners use skill and all poker losers suffer from bad luck, I would hazard a guess that most failed entrepreneurs do not blame their own abilities but rather "the market", "luck", "timing" or a myriad of other reasons.

This is not a bad thing. Just as any basketball "shooter" knows, the trick to getting out of a shooting slump is simply being 100% sure that the next shot is sure to go in. (This attitude might not endear you to your teammates though :)) This capacity for self-delusion is essential to maintaining your competitive edge.

At the end of the day, our capacity to delude ourselves of our own superiority is only matched by our capacity to delude ourselves of our deficiencies. One delusion can inspire us to achieve the impossible, while the other prevents us from doing the ordinary.

Some of us are "lucky" enough to know people that just seem imbued with overwhelming self-confidence (whether deserved or not). How about the rest of us that are more naturally inclined to be self-critical? Is it possible to balance self-criticism and self-improvement with self-confidence? Sure. How do you do it? I'll let you know when I get there :)

In the meantime, I have a few guesses based on what I've read as well as my own experiences with sports:

1. Practice: Nothing builds self-confidence more than the knowledge that you've done it before. Knowing you have sunk thousands of foul shots makes hitting the foul shot during a game that much easier. What's the equivalent of "practice" in the work world? Talk and think about problems and issues you are likely to run into on a regular basis. At business school we would do case studies, at the work place treat every business situation that you read about in the Wall Street Journal as a case study and think about what you would do in that situation. Don't stand idly by as your managers or exec team make decisions, think about what you would do in there place and find some like minded people with whom to share those thoughts - not to criticize but to practice the thought process.

2. Measure: Track your decisions - big and small - and the results. Whenever you make a decision send yourself a quick note so that you can evaluate it later down the road. Don't worry too much about the end result, focus on whether or not you felt you made the decision the right way given the data you had on hand. Celebrate your good decisions, extract the lessons from the bad but then forget them. Keep a count of your good decisions (and don't count your bad decisions :) ). (This is from sports psychology - the good shooters never remember their bad shots and certainly don't dwell on them)

3. Visualize: This goes hand to hand with practice but I think it helps to be able to see in your mind's eye where you want to be. Just as a good golfer can visualize a ball's path before he hits it, we should be able to visualize where we want to be professionally. I think this comes over time (it's taken me a long time to get even a sense of where I want to be) - but I think its critical.

So, it appears to me that in order to improve we need to recognize our weaknesses, but in order to excel we need to ignore those weaknesses and believe in our strengths. Pretty tricky stuff.

In any case:

If you've had a bad run, you should know its just bad luck.

If you've had a good run, be confident that it was 100% because of you :)

John Doerr, Harry Potter, and the Fear of Failure

No Harry Potters were harmed in the writing of this blog...

Ok, so this article actually doesn't have much to do with Harry Potter - but it does start with J.K. Rowling! I was recently reading through J.K. Rowling's commencement speech that she did this year. Her topic was "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination". Quite a decent speech and certainly left me more impressed by her overall (I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan - heretic! I know...). It got me thinking a little bit about experimentation and failure within a corporate setting. I've argued before that establishing a culture of experimentation and "failing fast" is critical to innovation. However, reading through J.K. Rowling's speech got me thinking about not just the procedural element of failing fast but the human element - particularly how difficult it is to really get "type-A" folks to accept failure as a part of the process.

In Rowling's speech she makes the point:

"...the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success..."

So why does this matter - in particular why does this matter to startups? Well, to start a company you need to hire the best. When you hire the best and the brightest you can't expect someone who has never truly failed to suddenly embrace failure and experimentation. You also want to maintain high expectations and high standards. As a result, there are a lot of conflciting tensions:

By hiring the best and the brightest you tend to hire folks that are not used to failure
But, starting a company involves a lot of failure and persistence
Encouraging experimentation requires encouraging failure
But, failure needs to occur within a culture of high standards and high expectations

So it wasn't really just about encouraging failure (or there is no doubt you would see a lot of it), but about encouraging the right kinds of failure. The ones you want are the ones that try and reach for the impossible but fall short, or the ones that radically alter your product and thinking.

Experimentation and innovation is necessary for a technology startup, because "You can't be normal and expect abnormal returns" (Jeffrey Pfeffer). But, how does one create a culture that conducts business exceptionally but is still willing to invest in the "abnormal" experiments?

Maybe his multiple billions means he was on to something...

At about this point in time I started thinking about a presentation that John Doerr did at Stanford where he talked about choosing to invest in missionaries rather than mercenaries. I thought about this in connection to this "Fear of Failure" topic and it began to occur to me that there might be something to the whole mercenaries and missionaries thing beyond the "Do What You Love" Oprah Winfrey-ish advice I took from it before. (Video here)

So, why is this such a BIG deal to John Doerr? He references it all the time (including in his introduction for Inside Intuit).

Why is a "missionary" entrepreneur better equipped to fight Fear of Failure than a "mercenary" entrepreneur?

Quite simply because mercenaries will be more afraid of failing.

In John Doerr's presentation, he lists a bunch of differences between mercenaries and missionaries but chief among them was "drive, paranoia" for the mercenary and "passion" for the missionary. He makes the claim that he believes that if you are an entrepreneur "for the money" that you will fail. While obviously a generalization, having a "mercenary" mindset vs. a "missionary" mindset most certainly decreases the probability of really hitting a winner and Fear of Failure plays a significant role in this probability.

There are a few reasons for this:

1. Failure to a mercenary will be in terms of personal opportunity cost

A mercenary is going to constantly think in terms of opportunity cost to himself and their personal value going into their next project. Any substantial failure radically changes the mercenaries risk/reward profile for a given venture.

2. Consistent and predictable returns require consistent and predictable management

The opposite of Pfeffer's comment on abnormal returns, is that if you are looking for consistent, stable returns then you don't take the big bets. A good mercenary who is optimizing for stable success is likely to succeed, but unlikely to generate returns well outside the norm. In order to fall outside the bell curve in returns, the mercenary needs to be willing to make bets that are outside the norm, but making bets outside the norm increases the chances of falling to the left of the bell curve just as easily as to the right of the bell curve. As a result, a mercenary will tend to overweight risks that affect their personal worth and underweight risks that don't. Their resulting decision tree will ultimately look markedly different from someone who is calculating risk and expected value from a "mission"-based perspective.

3. Sometimes good business is not just about good business

A good mercenary will be a good business person, look at the bottom line and understand the monetary inputs and outputs. However, on an operational basis, "missionaries" will make operating decisions that might not make justifiable business sense right away - they might offer a 100% guarantee on anything (like at Whole Foods), or they might offer free breakfast, lunch, dinner to employees (like at Google). It's only after these efforts are successful that folks look back at these decisions and say, "Genius!". Many forget that at the time these decisions were made the most likely response from "good business people" was, "Are you crazy?". The folks originally making the decisions optimized on something other than money.

Missionaries embrace and overcome failure

A "missionary" entrepreneur with a passion can create the culture that embraces failure while at the same time keeping expectations high. Having a true passion sets an immovable reference point for which all decisions can be optimized. It helps define "failing right". Failures that were attempts to achieve the mission in faster, cheaper, more innovative ways are good. Failures that run counter to the mission should be dealt with right away.

For example, if you are Southwest and a customer service rep accidentally runs up a $3,000 bill trying to help a customer out - fine. Set some rules, define better boundaries, but praise the employee for trying to show that Southwest "luvs" its customers. However, if a rep makes the "mistake" of being discourteous or rude (even potentially because they were trying to save the company money) there are no second chances and they should be gone asap.

J.K. Rowling's mentions in her speech that her failure helped her "..strip away the inessential..." and "...direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me." A passionate corporate mission does the same thing. A corporate mission strips away the inessential within a company by providing the moral compass by which a company and its employees are expected to run. This provides the safe environment for innovation and failure because employees understand implicitly what "failing right" means.

"Acquiring a mission" is not simply an item to be checked on the way to success. It would be a mistake to say, "John Doerr says I need a good mission statement to succeed - therefore I need to come up with a good mission statement". Companies don't succeed because they have a good mission statement, companies that succeed have good mission statements (both Fooled by Randomness and The Halo Effect cover this natural tendency to confuse causality). The Mission Statement captures the ethos of the heartfelt goal but that goal needs to be there to start.

Said another way: the mission needs to exist before the Mission Statement. Whole Foods does not offer the 100% guarantee because of their Mission Statement but because the founder, John Mackey, believes passionately in his product and service to consumers. His passion drives the Core Values not the other way around. (He is very passionate about his ideas - his blog is here and Whole Foods posts their Core Values here)

When John Doerr talks about "Missionaries" vs. "Mercenaries" he is not just talking about personal lifestyle. He understands that the passion of the founder is very much an economic and a cultural issue. While "Mercenary"-based companies can succeed, they will not deliver "abnormal" returns. The companies that deliver "abnormal" returns are the ones with a mission and a basis for optimizing decisions outside of dollars. That mission enables them to build cultures that attract high quality employees, innovate, and fail the "right" way.

Why Behavioral Targeting is not a Publisher-driven Technology

A colleague recently pinged me to get my thoughts on behavioral targeting companies and the new influx of a number of different companies. Basically, I argued that if you are focused solely on trying to sell behavioral targeting to publishers your company will fail. This dovetails a bit with a post Mike Nolet recently did on the Plight of the Ad-Technology startup where he points out three reasons why its hard to make money as an ad company: 1. Integration sucks, 2. IP Ownership, and 3. Pricing is Hard. While all those points are true, my argument basically comes down to the fact that no amount of technology can change the core audience of a publisher (see my value chain analysis of the ad industry for more detail).

The basic problem of behavioral targeting technology is:

• The sites with good data / good audience don't need you
• The sites that need you don't have good data or a good audience

This is the fundamental reason why companies like Revenue Science and Tacoda had to create their own ad networks (early on RSI tried to sell BT as a product to publishers). They needed some way to transfer value between their publisher partners. The only way to get your BT technology to work is to buy the data/audience from the sites that have it in order to sell it to the sites that don't. (Hence the recent rise of ad exchanges to help facilitate this further)

Unfortunately, if you are publisher-focused, there is an upper bound to how much money you can make. Here's why:

1. The valuable audience you have identified is fixed (if you can target all WSJ members on Facebook, you're still limited to just targeting those WSJ members)

2. If you decide to expand that audience with inferred behavior (e.g. "People like you also liked") you still can't reach the rest of the population and your CPM values will drop

3. Each individual has an upper limit to how many advertisements they will respond to, so you can only target these valuable segments a limited number of times in a given period before they burn out

4. The more niche the audience segment the harder it is to pull together enough volume to be valuable

5. After the initial obvious verticals are gone (finance, autos, electronics, real estate), new valuable verticals are harder and more costly to identify

If you are strictly focused on trying to sell BT technology to publishers, you are not going to make a heck of a lot of money based on the dynamics above. However, there are two other ways to make money if you have invested in good BT technology:

1. Start an ad network and become a facilitator of buying and trading audience between publishers

or

2. Align with Marketers and Agencies to improve the effectiveness of a Marketer's ad buy.

The real value in BT is actually not in raising the average CPM of a publisher site (which is a fallacy in itself), but in improving the effectiveness of a Marketer's ad buy by identifying those individuals most likely to respond to the Marketer's offer. The best way to take advantage of that value is by aligning with the Marketers rather than the Publishers.