15 years ago today, “The Matrix” opened.  I had recently moved to Hong Kong, and to ease the cultural shock, I think I paid to see it in theatre five times.  I love that movie. Thinking about it makes me want to start wearing tight-fitting black latex suits.

I now know that humans actually would not work as batteries. 

Nevermind, the matrix contains three of my favorite ideas.  I know, I know, they aren’t original to The Matrix.  But, they are still great ideas, so I was inspired to write them down in tribute.

• I know kung fu
• There is no spoon
• Beat the machines

What I mean is:

The story became company legend.  Our CTO, let’s call him “Eric,” interrupted band practice to check a developer's status on an important project.  Getting a lukewarm response, Eric shot back, “Is band practice really your highest priority now?”  After he left, the group realized they had found their band name - “Is This My Highest Priority?” They went on to win the first battle of the bands with an electrifying rendition of “Seven Nation Army.”  Inc. magazine published a photo of them practicing above their article on the program.

In my experience, Eric’s skepticism is the norm.

Knowledge acquisition is mostly an afterthought at work.  Managers relegate learning programs to the province of HR, where executives have other priorities, like compliance or making the workplace equitable.  Some companies run, “Welcome to your new job” boot camps, but learning curves are most often viewed as a one-shot climb.  And most staff see themselves as educated - past tense.

How high should learning be on the priority list? 

“Most businesses take care of their shareholders first.  We strongly believed it was employees first ..." - Barbara Anderson

I recently spoke with Barbara Anderson, one of the first employees and a leader at the The Container Store for over thirty years. This company has been a favorite for a long time, partly because they invest 263 hours for each full-time employee's education. This was my first conversation with a founding exec, and I thought I’d write it up.

Check out the wikipedia overview if you don’t know them. The Container Store, which invented a retail category, opened in 1978 and has grown steadily at 22.4%+ annual compounded growth rate to 63 stores today.  Barbara told one story that underscored their success. After selling to retail-focused PE Leonard Green in 2007, The Container Store was the only portfolio company to stay in the black and not downsize during the Great Recession.  They are a great proof point in the power of investing in people as a competitive advantage.

The conversation underscored a few business design principles I believe in:

In 2005, my wife Julie ranked thumb-chewing (and the resultant callouses) as my #1 most irritating behavior. Awesome.  I like nothing better than to knock tasks off a prioritized list,  but I did not know how to fix this sub-conscious self-cannibalization. Cayenne pepper spray, perhaps?  Later that year,  I randomly met Scott Weiner, PhD and hypnotist, at a networking event.  I took a shot. He was so confident. “No problem," he said. "2-3 sessions, $450 a pop and consider it done.”

It worked.  Completely.

Almost.  Seven years later after I decided to sell and then leave my company, I relapsed.  This summer I called Scott.  “A tune-up?” No problem.  One session.  Consider it done.

It worked again.

Scott and I have talked a little bit about his practice.  He juxtaposes hypnosis to meditation.  Some forms of meditation empty the mind.  Hypnosis, on the other hand, suggests specific instructions.  It is not far from “Inception.”  I’m not writing this blog to promote hypnosis.   I’ve had three friends try.  Two were satisfied, one wasn't.  I'm writing because I boil down hypnosis' near-magical effectiveness in to three worthwhile principles that I’ve since applied other places and you might try them too.

“Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.” 
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

Josh Waitzkin commented that one of the most impactful features of the M5 Jiu-Jitsu program was that the CEO was wearing a white belt, symbolizing that I was learning with everyone else.  

My modeling of thirst for knowledge helped foster this value in the company.  And as I’ve often said, a staff of people who love learning is like a CEO’s wish for more wishes.  The tightest bottleneck for us was not capital, or market demand, or technical limitations - it was me, the team, and our own capacity to get stuff done.  So I’d better be working on that.  Besides, improving my own skills on company time was genuinely fun, a borderline guilty pleasure.  C’mon, the training montage is the best part of every action movie - epitomized by one of the best sci-fi books of all time, now a movie, Ender’s Game. (Get it, the game is the end?)

I thought I’d use four concrete skills as examples. Working on these paid big dividends for me.  This is not ...

Yesterday I heard that the head of product I hired didn't last the year.  Product innovation was one of the hardest things for me to scale.  One of the purposes of this blog is to clarify my mistakes so I can avoid them next time, so I thought I'd tackle this topic. Besides, I just read Eric Ries' "The Lean Startup," which also reminded me of how hard this is, and suggested an answer.

To continue the setup, I met an old friend who just closed his startup.  They spent one year, solved many technical hurdles building a cool app, but never got any real market traction.  The entrepreneur's decision pleased his VC, as most companies linger for much longer. The developers who built intensely all year, pleased not so much.

"In 1900, 3% of Americans practiced professions that were cognitively demanding. Today ... 35%." - James Flynn, Ted Talk

I like TED talks for the same reason I like business books.  Inhaling someone's passion and life's work is inspiring, and gets my ideas flowing.  TED talks work well while on a machine at the gym.

This talk gives is a brief history of our cognitive development.  The type of work that the (almost) majority of humans are working on all day has shifted radically in this century.  So the most fundamental ways we think have changed as well.  The opportunity to design new tools and arrangements to meet this challenge is staggering.  We're a completely different animals than we were three generations ago, and it is very disorienting.  Opportunity!  

“Your true strategy is not what's written on your strategic plan; but what's written on your weekly calendar.” - Verne Harnish

“Creative 53%   Teaching 28%  Other 19%  ... That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time ... These aren’t ballpark guesstimates. Mr. Collins, who is 51, keeps a stopwatch with three separate timers in his pocket at all times, stopping and starting them as he switches activities.” - 2009 NYT piece on Jim Collins

It is week three of my blank-page life.  I’ve never had fewer places I have to be.  So what am I doing? One big theme has been how I manage time itself.  Having a clear, unobstructed calendar to shape has lent itself to experimenting with some time management ideas that I think would translate back to work.  So below is not only what I'm filling my weeks with, but how.

"Making Time" is the number one obstacle to learning.  I saw it again and again with people at M5 that just couldn't show up to do the work needed move their careers ahead.  But when something is really important - like a family member in the hospital - somehow we manage to keep everything going.  I often think of getting off the cardio-machine in the gym when it hurts, but I don't, because I already did the work of getting my butt on the thing.  There's a lot to be said for showing up where and when you want to, and it isn't always easy.   So, to try and make sure I'm controlling my time during this period of limitless distraction, I baked a pie chart.

Recently, Russell Sarder, author, and CEO of NetCom Learning sat down with our Dan Hoffman to discuss building a strong leadership team. Dan discusses his leadership style and what makes a good leader in general. Enjoy!