As a reminder — your agenda isn't necessarily everyone else's...

The world of late has reminded me of a "coachable moment" I offered up a lifetime ago... or at least it feels like a lifetime ago.

He stuck his head into my office with concern written all over his face; with all decorum set aside, he needed me to look at an email he just sent and wanted my feedback asap — he had a deliverable that was due.

Putting aside my own deliverable, I took advantage of this coachable moment and simply said, "You know, your poor planning and your urgent agenda is not my agenda". I then went on to offer a perspective on planning, time management and my thoughts on how to engage support. I told him I would read his email as soon as I could but he'd have to be patient. I then politely kicked him out of my office because I had a deadline (plus something else on my to-do list).

This "coachable moment" covers many areas as I alluded to, but recent events have me focusing on patience and the truism — "your agenda isn't necessarily everyone else's". The patience to wait is something evaporating by the minute with this app rich world but the truism is alive and well (maybe more than ever). Even when agendas do align, there are always the influencers that are Murphy's best friends (timing, a bigger boss, mother-nature, and the randomness of the universe) — the chances of you waiting are much greater than you not waiting.

There is a need to become comfortable with being patient, and more importantly, ensure you are being productively patient.

In other words, use this waiting time to be productive with other things (particularly something new). Of course you will use some of this time to influence what you are waiting for but in most cases that doesn't take more than a half hour — so do others things. Yes you are waiting for the "phone to ring", but you are also investigating a new business venture, taking a course, writing a blog, or networking to build your opportunity funnel. Being productively patient will have you increasing the number of agendas that you have on the go and developing out the number of things you need to be patient with. Because the more things you have on the go, the greater the chance the phone will ring.

Murphy will probably have them all ring at the same time.

iamgpe

Changing the narrative...

A recent event has had me reflecting and wondering if it all could have played out any differently — alas, I think I simply had no choice but to change the narrative, and I suppose I had to do it in a dramatic way.

Have you ever come around the corner to find yourself faced with "mischief" that suddenly increases your immediate possibilities exponentially? That literally happened to me as I rounded the bend with my pizza dinner in hand. This particular "mischief"  came in the form of three people, who moments before I passed them, had thrown something at a passing taxi. The taunts for pizza soon followed, and shortly after that the stomping of feet as if they were chasing me — an annoying but harmless narrative.

That was until one of them ran up behind me and jumped in front of me screaming. I then added my own narrative — and punched him in the head.

It was more of a symbolic punch because I had two work-bags over my shoulder and a pizza in one hand. Looking shocked he then screamed, "You hit me". After an exchange of bad punches and the death of my pizza, a Samaritan arrived and deescalated the situation. After some shouting I headed home with the proposition of having to make dinner.

I can still hear one of them saying, "We were just trying to scare him".

I will admit this post is somewhat cathartic but there is another important consideration aside from describing a very poor street fight.  As pointed out, their narrative was to cause "mischief" and "scare" people, and that narrative was only going to change if something happened that did not align (or feed) their story (and shift the paradigm). The narrative shifted from hassling a guy with a pizza to dealing with a poor street fight (and how to get out of it). The Samaritan offered that opportunity (with little resistance), and gave us a new narrative to continue the day.

All of this became a reminder that there are times that if you want to change a narrative, you really have to change the narrative... and sometimes pizzas do get hurt.

iamgpe

PS — I'm not advocating violence, but it's never a good idea to attack someone from behind.

Cryptocurrency — an exercise in semantics

As I continue to build an understanding of Blockchain technology I can't help but run up against it's partner in crime — cryptocurrency. It's something inherently vital if Blockchain is going to be used in a a decentralized way (either to disrupt a current trust institution or support an ecosystem). Simply put, cryptocurrency is the reward for engagement and effort, and it is something that can be assigned value. 

It is important to understand that you can have a Blockchain without cryptocurrency but you can never have a cryptocurrency without Blockchain — they are two very separate things. Blockchain can be a very difficult concept to grasp and even harder to understand from a technical perspective, whereas cryptocurrency is equated to as money and much easier to align your thinking with. You can exchange two Bitcoin for US dollars and buy a car; it's something easy to understand, as well as captures the imagination of making great wealth.

Recently I was having a conversation with a successful investor and entrepreneur (an intrinsic value investor to be specific, and a student of Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffet); in our conversation it came up that I was on a sojourn to understand Blockchain technology. Ultimately the blockchain conversation became a discussion about cryptocurrency and investing. I mentioned that someone ask me if they should invest in cryptocurrency and my answer was if you have to ask me then the answer is "no".

He then looked at me and said, "Speculate. The term is speculating. You don't invest in cryptocurrency"

Investing* — in simple terms it refers to purchasing an asset with the hope that it would yield income in the future. Investments can be made in a number of forms depending on the investment return the investor requires and the risk that he is willing to take. 

Speculating* — the taking of higher risk and standing the possibility of losing all money invested. Speculation is similar to gambling and entails a very high risk that an investor may loose all his money or make very substantial returns if his speculation turns out to be correct. However, it must be noted that speculation is not exactly the same as gambling, because a speculator will take a calculated risk whereas gambling is more of a decision made on chance.

He went on to say that if a "Speculator" came into his office to discuss cryptocurrency he would entertain the discussion because there are many very successful speculators. Although if an "Investor" came into his office to discuss cryptocurrency the conversation would be very short — as an intrinsic value Investor cryptocurrency simply did not align with his investment thinking because it is impossible to calculate an intrinsic value. For me it was good we had this little talk.

So this is what I know about cryptocurrency —

• I would rather be discussing Blockchain.
• If you want to be involved with cryptocurrency you are by definition a "Speculator".
• If you speculate in cryptocurrency you must be prepared to loose all of your money.
• If you are building an ecosystem using Blockchain technology cryptocurrency is vital.
• Cryptocurrency isn't going away anytime soon.

As I said, it was a good little talk.

iamgpe

* Definitions from www.differencebetween.com