Dare You Doubt Me? June 12, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business, Management.Tags: Doubt, Hiring, Personal MBA
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So, as you may or may not know, I am doing the Personal MBA course (www.personalmba.com) and have been reading “First Break all the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. In that book, in a section discussing the best ways to interview a new employee candidate, they ask the question “How do you feel when people doubt you?”
They say that, when asking a salesman, the best answer is “upset” because salesmen hate having their credibility challenged. Their integrity is all they they have to sell! If a teacher answers the questions, it should be “happy” because it implies that the student is “actively learning.” How do I feel about it? Well, indifferent. I wouldn’t do well on this question in an interview!
I feel indifferent to someone doubting me because I expect to have to earn that person’s trust over time. The fact that they doubt me is their choice, and often times, since I am talking to them about things outside of or a stretch from their domain, I don’t expect them to believe me on day 1. When I am doubted, I feel resolve to educate and convince, but I am certainly not upset, or happy, or anything truly emotional. It just is. When someone doubts me so much that the expense I must incur to get them on my side is great, I just move on.
Here’s my point of reference: I don’t bullshit, and I don’t lie (unless it’s funny, and you disclose once the punchline has passed), and so you have no real reason to doubt me. I know that I am not wasting your time feeding you lines. So if you doubt me, it just means you haven’t come to understand or trust me yet. To me, that isn’t an emotional issue. It doesn’t inspire feeling as much as indicate work that I yet must do.
I don’t think someone questioning me should inspire emotional response, that is unless you know me, trust me, and have a momentary lapse in remembering who I am…
The New Breed April 8, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business.Tags: Business, Young Entrepreneurs
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Inventors are rarely good business people or salesmen. But the truth is, that is becoming less and less true. I think I am an example of that progress as I have shown success in science, business and sales alike. I feel like a different person in each of those roles, with a different personality, and it takes that level of schizophrenia to pull each off in parallel. I am finding that talent permeates more and more of the sheik young business-slash-inventors whom I meet these days.
So this is the new trend, the new frontier for budding businesses: Tech-geeks with cool… scientist socialites. More of them were born today than there were yesterday, and it’s the web that is breeding them. They’re coming in force, so look out! You won’t be able to compete if you aren’t of them yourself!
Now, I know for sure that I will become a dinosaur myself, and a lot sooner than my old pardner John did. As a result, my eyes are open for this half-breed and yours should be too. If you don’t see ‘em coming, you’ll be counted as a casualty, not a competitor.
The moral? Embrace them. Align with them. Because an analogue to Moore’s law directly applies to this trend: the next generation is always more powerful than the last, with the generation gap now measured in months and getting shorter.
But there is still hope for those of this and older generations. You can still capture their imagination and their loyalty before they capture those assets for themselves. I imagine that will be my battle cry as I age towards obsolete.
Fear of Truth February 25, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business, Pontification.Tags: Perserverance, Truth
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In my weekend rest, I was reading “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene on the subject of String Theory as a Unified Theory of everything. He is a great writer and I highly recommend this book. It will entertain and engage you. But my post actually doesn’t have anything to do with the book except for the fact that there is a wonderful quote on page 108: “The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.” Cheers to you, Mr. Greene!
Before reading it, I was actually contemplating this very issue today. As an entrepreneur, and as an entrepreneur about to go off to a trade-show in my highly competitive healthcare revenue cycle industry, I am well aware of the fact that there is always something I don’t know, and that there might always be someone else out there ready to trump me. It is probably the scariest thing for me, to go find the truth in life beyond the theories. And yet, it is the most relentless pursuit of my professional existence.
So why is the truth so scary? Well, because things always sound good in your head. But bump them up against the real world and there is absolutely nothing you can do about the result. You can only learn, adapt, and make hay. So many people stop short of learning the truth because, deep down, they don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss, they say, but not if that bliss drives you into destruction!
And that, I think, is the final definition of progress. Pushing on things that you have to do, but don’t want to. Be it getting the sell to the closing decision maker, measuring your product against a competitor, or inviting a third party auditor in to criticize everything you do. All of these acts yield truth and must be pursued no matter how painful.
Welcome to the real world.
Everything I Say is Important February 23, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business.Tags: Communication, Perspective, Presentation Style
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Wow, now that is an obnoxious title! I love it!
I am a picky guy. And I think people can find me annoying as a result. It isn’t rare for me to thunder pure and concise discourse, only to find that it met ears as nothing but a wobbling whimper. More clearly stated, I say something, then nobody hears it.
“Why,” I ask myself, “don’t people hear me?” I use the word “hear” because I have identified that, in my case, it isn’t that my audience isn’t listening or isn’t paying attention, it is literally that they didn’t process my words.
In my world, I often, in a single sentence, ask a listener to be both student and adviser. But I am beginning to realize that most listeners can’t process information structurally and ethically at the same time. I can, so I typically assume that they can, but I now think that is a bad assumption… sometimes.
I should have known better because I know the following to be true: When a listener is a sworn student, they take notes, take the teacher literally, and try desperately to comprehend. The student thinks about what the teacher is telling him. When a listener is a sworn adviser, they ruminate, postulate, and think outside the box. The adviser thinks about what the confider is asking as opposed to taking literally what the confider is saying. The former assumes the confider is authoritative and the ladder assumes the opposite.
Another root of my challenge is my personal frame of reference combined with my own lack of memory. I characterize myself as highly stateful (as if I am a hard drive saving results permanently, largely forgetting about the labor of processing made along the way). Just as I personally don’t remember pain or long flights, I don’t remember what it took to know what I know. As such, I have zero comprehension about how hard an idea will be for someone else to get.
This leads me to a diversion: asking someone “Do you get it?” is completely useless. They don’t get it! If they did, they’d act bored or they’d tell you to shut up.
Back on to the ramble: I also speak with incredible conciseness, even to the point of making up words because there is no word precise enough to illustrate a concept… “n-tupple” is an example (can you come up with a faster way to express the idea of n-number of mutually supportive nodes?). The only place where flowers grow in my speech is here in my blog because I have an interest in adding such fluffiness to my text so that it appears more full and entertaining and perhaps humorous to those who read it. My real speech is typically devoid of excess.
I lay the shortest string of concepts possible from my listeners’ frame of reference to the point I am making, and I then expect my listener to spend as many mind-cycles as it takes for them to connect the dots. But they don’t connect the dots. And their lack of success used to annoy the various intestinal compounds out of me. As a result, would complain that nobody listens to me.
Well, my 25 years of worldly experience has brought me to the conclusion that they simply aren’t hearing me as opposed to not listening to me. I need to slow down, and close the gap between my thought and their frame of reference. It’s the speaker’s job to present something that a listener can comprehend, as opposed to the listener’s job to think really, really hard about every word I say.
What brings this up is my recent experience with a contractor that really, truly, is a magnificent example of complete oblivion (false friend to oblivious, and obliviousness isn’t a word, so I chose to make a new definition for oblivion). I gave concise instructions verbally, confirmed in writing, on how to design and also implement the widget for which I was contracting for. Deadlines are tight here at Benchmark and time was of the essence, so I said only the words needed to convey the point and laid it out hard and fast. Every single word was critical to understanding, every single one. Bottom line, he didn’t even commit to memory a tenth of what was said, or half of what was written. It’s like my words never existed! The product was so counter to the specification that it was akin to asking a writer to produce a children’s book and out comes Silence of the Lambs.
I also asked for other technical nuances and outlined them carefully, stating each in at least duplicate if not triplicate. Well, many of these highly precise specifications were either ignored or so poorly implemented, it indicated to me that he or his contractor just aren’t versed in their own specialty. I know, I’m harsh. But hey, if you tell me you are an expert at something, and I make an effort to communicate concepts in your domain clearly, there isn’t much excuse for you to miss any of it, especially when I’m paying you!
Conclusion? What’s clear to me isn’t to you. If what I am saying is outside of your domain, it is my job to close the gap on that and spend the extra energy of connecting the dots for you. However, if you say that you are expert in the domain I am speaking of, all bets are off. Listen up and take notes, because everything I say is important.
When is Humble, Too Humble February 19, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business.add a comment
I have always had the best advisors and mentors in the world. I also pride myself on my ability to listen carefully and take real lessons from them that I make sure not to forget. That worked very well for the last 15 years, but now, it’s starting to not be so formulaic.
Call it “coming of age”, “arriving,” or anything similar, but realizing that I am indeed authoritative and advisors bring incremental as opposed to primary value is a hard lesson. I have known for ever to listen and trust myself, but how does one override the judgment of others that are so great? You can’t just say “I know all.” That is just as illegal as saying “They know all.”
The truth is, you know best. And if you don’t, you’re still the guy that needs to pull any bad situation out of the fire. As such, get the advice, make sure there are multiple points of input, make a choice and then back it up. You do know, and it’s okay to know.
That being said, you also know when you are uncomfortable or uncertain, and that means that you’re not ready to take the decision. But never assume uncertainty is weakness or reason to delay if a direction must be chosen. In times like that, I lean on my advisors to achieve clarity and I don’t make hard and fast choices without caveats and admission that the choice is on a shaky basis.
This is the final point of this entry. To know for sure is to know for sure. To be uncertain, while pretending to know for sure, is reckless. If you must make a choice without knowing for sure, tell your advisors of this truth and warn of potential turbulence ahead. Watch your progress and seek input regularly… I say that there is no weakness in that.
Surrounded by Greatness February 15, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business, Pontification.1 comment so far
What strikes me each day is the utter greatness that is in the people of this world, and what awes me is that the greater I become, the people around me seem twice greater still. Said another way, the more I learn, the more I realize what others have within them that I do not. What is realization to me is humdrum knowledge to another, and I find that incredibly cool.
Today I interacted with greatness. We were talking with a customer about some new magic we had created to straighten the winding roads of the hospital revenue cycle. Well, what was big to us was but a kernel to him, and truthfully, he was able to take that magic and belittle it with a ten-fold embellishment that struck us hard with “aha!” So what does that make our role? A catalyst. There is a lot of value to being a catalyst. But my point is that this experience took what was conclusion within myself and turned it into the realization of a new, even greater, conclusion. This happens to me every day. I live each day feeling good about what I know, but every day I come home with a heck of a lot more than I started with and that is due directly to the influence of those who are around me.
I must admit that my luck is unsurpassed in being surrounded by great people. They are my family, my partners, my friends, my employees, my investors, my advisers, and my clients. Every day I learn more about myself, enabling me to see in them ever more to draw upon, and ever more to be in awe of. That isn’t to say that I am not confident in who I am and what I know, because confidence has always been a prominent part of my persona. But looking back, I can’t believe I was arrogant enough to be so confident, considering the good company I was in.
Corny you say? Get to know the people I know. Then you won’t think so.
A Case For Ergonomics February 13, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business, Technology, web3.0.Tags: Web4.0
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“Turning data into information.” It’s a marketing cliché, but that is because most people don’t actually understand what it means. Information means that somebody or something (in the case of a self-adjusting logical system) has come to a new understanding thanks to the analysis of data. But there is a rarely considered reality to the concept of information: it is not information if someone doesn’t come to understand it. It is just more data.
In my industry (healthcare revenue cycle software) there are “Business Intelligence” systems such as Medefinance, workflow systems such as Ontario Systems, and Business Rules Engines such as AHIQA. They all produce useful information, but few ensure that it is used. There are even aggregations of similar products, such as Accuro, but they don’t purvey a true portal over them all so that those components are not only seamless, but naturally interoperable.
The ergonomics of information delivery is the key to making information a reality, and that is the art yet unreleased in this age of massive data environments such as healthcare, internet traffic, and everything else.
Very few technologies ensure ergonomics as much as they ensure massively parallel processing, for example. Why? Because such ergonomics are an art and product into of themselves (look at Apple, they differentiate on ergonomics alone). The reality is that, until one combines this art of ergonomics with those of business intelligence, rules and workflow, you don’t produce information, and you don’t get action.
This is where I say, “Benchmark’s solution is the only one in the world to combine these factors into a unified environment.” Well, at least for healthcare it is. But even at “Benchmark, we are striving for a higher mark (pun intended) than even we might think possible.
The current power of technology systems simply hasn’t been fully realized yet because while they process effectively, they don’t communicate with you, the business person, effectively. Moore’s law considers computational efficiency, but what about the efficiency of thought communication? It does little good to process a billion bytes if no human or decision system will ever see or understand the result. Yet, that story plays out day after day with incredible monotony.
I challenge the tech-world to consider that we are deficient in our respect for the human user. We must remember that providing the infrastructure and ergonomic tools to easily structure information from widespread data is the only way to unlock the true power of the web. That, in my view, is the next technology revolution.
Just Another Day in the Dirt February 9, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business.add a comment
I am ripping through the sky right now in a paint shaker. Clear-air turbulence is blurring the keys on my Blackberry as I struggle against the writhing of my two-foot-cubed, $.08 a mile, world of my own. It doesn’t suck to be here. It’s actually fantastic to be here!
Nothing is better to me than customer delight, knowing we did something great, and that it means good things for the world. I am heading home to my wonderful wife after two days of working hard to revolutionize the healthcare revenue cycle over in Atlanta. Yup, that’s me, a CEO on a customer implementation. It makes sense for a company on the rise, but that doesn’t scale. The day I don’t have to be here is the day we’ve arrived, right? I’m not sure.
Now, I am not the foremost authority on running a company of thousands of people, but I am sure that I shouldn’t ever give this up completely. Nothing sets me straight like the reality of our product’s influence, and I can’t help but imagine the number of wars lost to the complacency of leaders about battles.
I think it more than scales to keep your toes in the mud, all the way through to the end. Losing perspective seems to me a precursor to failure.
The Data Currency February 6, 2008
Posted by Tyson McDowell in Business, Pontification, web3.0.Tags: Analysis, Data Warehouse, Google, web2.0, web3.0
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They say, “He who has the gold makes the rules.” Ever more so, data is the gold of our world today.
There is wild power that can be derived from data. Just look at Google’s discovery that probability-based deduction is more efficient at language translation than knowledge-based lexical and syntactic analysis. That means that Google has so much data, and so much computing power to crunch it, it is faster to simply compare translated texts to each other than it is to bother figuring out what the text means or how it is structured!
If data is gold, than those who have gold are banks. Banks only take a portion of the gold in exchange for holding and transacting the gold. A fine business, but the lion’s share of the market value is still in the gold, not the bank. The gold only realizes its value when someone spends it to create something new and useful.
Having tons of data at your disposal is certainly a path to money, and I know that is obvious to most of you. But what is not always understood is that the real value lies in the rationalization of that data more than in the data itself. In the Google example, it isn’t having all the books lying around in different languages that created the value; it is the resulting language algorithm that means something.
When you analyze data, you spend it to create new information and a method to act on it. At Benchmark, we spend data to drive work more efficiently to hospital administrators. This allows hospitals get more of the money that they are owed, thanks to information gleaned from data taken from all over the revenue cycle. At Bank of America, the data is spent to understand what kind of risk they can take on a person applying for a loan (at least, that was how they did it before sub-prime).
So many of the Web2.0 and Web3.0 companies are about becoming banks of data… or databanks… old term, new times. Yes, I know, you get advertising revenues from having lots of people, and advertisers can mine their use statistics to arrive at a CPM value. But that is merely a smidgeon of that data’s earning potential! Mass databanks coupled with ergonomic knowledge systems will resolve serious world issues and drive the final nail into the coffin for information inefficiency and guess-work, regardless of the scale of question to be answered.
Of course, such a utopia will never be fully realized, but we are on the verge of a prototype. Mass storage with Internet accessibility, the concept of (but as yet poor implementation of) semantic web, Google’s indexing of pages, and the ever-more-open architecture of the social-network infrastructure all lay the groundwork for a knowledge revolution.
It is exciting, but few seem to fully grasp the implications. Well, I know one thing for sure: healthcare will be one of the first to demonstrate this great power, so long as I continue to have something to do with it 
