Recently I spent some time with Tom Crum and his daughter, Alia. Tom’s a good buddy of ours and is an Aikido expert. He wrote a wonderful book called Three Deep Breaths. I think I probably have shared these at some point but they are worth repeating… You know, as you head off any day in the car - I think the car is a wonderful place to quiet yourself if you don’t listen to the radio. The first breath is the Centering Breath - you just breathe in, into your center right below your belly button. Just center yourself and feel your breath. Once you have really centered yourself, then the next breath is your Visionary Breath. The vision is the best you that you can possibly be for that day, no matter what you’re doing at work or at home or in the neighborhood or the community—what’s the best you that you can possibly be? After you do that, then take what Tom calls a Discovery Breath, which means to be open to learning. Be open to getting new information, don’t be defensive. Make the day a challenging and wonderful day. So what a wonderful three breaths - the Centering Breath, the Visioning Breath, and the Discovery Breath. That can settle you before a meeting - do those three deep breaths - or before anything that you’re going to do. So center yourself and then be open towards things. Take time to breathe and get yourself centered and visioned and discovered. Have a great week!

At the ASTD conference in Chicago recently, Colleen Barrett made a really interesting point in the session we did together. She said at Southwest, they want to make sure that their customer service is as good internally as it is externally. They believe in the Golden Rule—treating people the way you would like to be treated. One of the things we talked about is that it’s amazing how people will treat strangers or customers better than they would treat people they love or people who are coworkers. I often tell the story about having a group of people over to your house for a party and some new neighbors are there. As they are leaving, you notice that the man has left his hat. So you grab his hat and run out to the road and catch them before they pull away. As he rolls down his window, would you say to him, "You idiot! If your head wasn’t screwed on, it would fall off!"  No! You would say, "Here’s your hat. I’m glad I caught you. So good to have you over." You would be really polite. And yet, we hear mothers screaming at their little kids who left their lunch on the bus. "You idiot, why did you do that! If your head wasn’t screwed on, it would fall off!" We just seem to take license with people who are close to us that we wouldn’t take with people who are less familiar with. So that’s a really interesting thing to think about. Why is there so much divorce? Why are there so many family conflicts? Because we don’t use the Golden Rule all the time. So remember—be as good to people that you love and work with as you are to others.

We would like to think that successful corporations are getting smarter every year.  But how are they getting smarter and where is this improved knowledge?  Well, they get smarter in one sense by learning lessons on each project they complete - both what worked well and what didn’t work well.  Some corporations hold post-mortem meetings at the end of each project to reflect as a team and really uncover these important lessons.  They often store this knowledge in the corporate SOPs (standard operating procedures).  Companies following ISO or CMMI principles then require each employee to review the relevant SOPs every year to make sure everyone is up to date with the latest knowledge.  This is a reasonable approach to capturing lessons learned and distributing them throughout the organization, but in practice people don’t always go get the latest SOP, and review it completely before executing whatever job they are faced with. Discovery Machine helps solve this problem by creating deployable best practice models of critical operations within an organization.  Instead of encoding an SOP in a static document, we model the process of the SOP in a way in which the model can be run and produce some meaningful output.  In this way, we create job aids which actually help people get their jobs done, and they do it in the up-to-date ‘best practice’ way, instead of the way they recall from reading an SOP a year ago.  In addition, these best practice models can be stored on a server and executed from a client interface so all employees have direct access to the latest information. At Discovery Machine, we have been developing a Best Practice Toolkit which can be used to make a corporation’s SOPs more actionable.  Part of this toolkit allows for capture of lessons learned and ways to incorporate these back into the best practices with an optional approval process.  Using elements from the Discovery Machine Knowledge Capture Methodology, we can enhance the capture of lessons learned by getting employees to uncover more than just what worked or didn’t work well.  This feature really helps to keep those SOPs up to date. Are you ready for the next enhancement to employee productivity?  If so, think about a few of your SOPs that are hard to keep up to date or could be made actionable and give us a call.  Once you get started, you’ll realize this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I recently saw a wonderful piece about "If I Had My Life to Live Over." I thought it was worth sharing with you. It’s from the late Nadine Stair of Louisville, Kentucky, who wrote it when she was 85 years old: If I had my life to live over again, I’d dare to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax. I’d limber up. I’d be sillier than I’ve been this time. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances, I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would, perhaps, have more actual troubles but fewer imaginary ones. You see, I’m one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely Hour after hour, Day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments. If I had to do it over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else—just moments, One after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, A hot water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I had to live my life over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring And stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances, I would ride more merry-go-rounds, I would pick more daisies. Isn’t that fabulous? What a wonderful, wonderful way to live. Try it. If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?

Innovation is the motivation that drives our society.  It is the catalyst for change and the means of advancement.  Technology has been rapidly evolving ever since man innovated to make his first tools and information technology has brought forth innovations throughout the decades.  Human intelligence has led rise to numerous inventions that in their time were revolutionary.  Today we look at those same "impossible" achievements and take them for granted.  Things like the TV remote control, microwave oven, industrial robots, LED lighting, video games, smoke detectors, GPS, and more have come about over the last 50 years.  In addition to new devices, the rise of search engines has made the access to knowledge exponentially easier.  Where will we go next, as intelligence evolves? Merriam-Webster defines innovation in two ways: 1. "the introduction of something new" and 2. "a new idea, method, or device".  With the understanding of what innovation means, the question becomes how do we aspire to be innovative?  I believe the answer is through knowledge.  People are by nature curious and so they explore the things that interest them.  They reflect on their experiences and leverage the experiences of others to satisfy their curiosities.  Internet search has made the knowledge of others readily accessible to the masses and allows people to search through articles, videos, podcasts, and more.  The point is, for those who want it, information is available so they can learn and enhance their own knowledge. But what if there were a way to accelerate this process?  What if there was a way to have the experience of others at your fingertips?  What if a search engine not only gave you articles but an intelligent answer that exactly matched what you need?  Wouldn’t that accelerate the quest for knowledge and lead to faster, more efficient innovation?  Imagine the world’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) Decision Engine which leveraged the knowledge of an expert.  This AI Decision Engine would not only give you a list of relevant results based on keywords but instead would give you an answer that was right 9 times out of 10. The recent successes of IBM’s Watson on Jeopardy prove that this type of concept is possible for concrete questions, but I assert that it is possible to ask questions that require experience to answer.  Discovery Machine, Inc. is already on the path to this end goal.  Discovery Machine has a proven process to document the best practices of an expert and recreate them as artificial intelligence in job aids, training programs, video games for training, and decision-support tools.  Discovery Machine works extensively with experts to accurately depict their own knowledge developed through years of experience.  We have had success in multiple domains including bio-technology, logistics planning, military training simulations, and more. Discovery Machine has proved it is possible to document, deploy, and leverage domain specific expertise.  From there it is a small step to create a framework for an intelligent Q&A session which leverages experiences.  This is not only a possibility but an eventuality.  The conventional search engine will be a thing of the past and an AI Decision Engine will be the way of the future, the question is how soon.

I had a wonderful time recently, playing in a charity golf tournament with coworkers Steve Murphy, Randy Conley, and Brent Bystedt. It was really a lot of fun; we played a scramble. One of the things it reminded me of—and this is so important to Colleen Barrett and Herb Kelleher at Southwest—is you really have fun in life and do well when you take what you do seriously, but yourself lightly. That was really evident as we were playing golf. We were trying to do the best we can, but we were laughing and enjoying ourselves. I don’t think there’s anybody who is more fun to be around than Steve Murphy. He’s one of our great consulting partners and he is absolutely fun. He takes what he does seriously but himself lightly, and I think that’s what endears him to clients. We had a great time—Randy and Brent and Steve and I. I just wanted to reiterate the importance of that. I think very often we forget sometimes and start to grind our teeth, whether it be in golf or what we’re doing at work, and one of the joys I have in the world is to hear people laughing out loud with some funny thing we’re doing. Because we take what we do seriously but ourselves lightly. Because we do serious work but we have a lot of laughs, and I think that’s so important. I was reminded of that yesterday while we were golfing. So have a fun day! Take what you do seriously—because we’re all doing very important work—but take yourself lightly. Get your ego out of the way and enjoy your strengths and weaknesses and moments. Life is lived in moments.

I recently heard a story about a young boy who was out at recess one day. He wandered near a line of trees and found a small, blue egg shell. Excited, he ran to his teacher and exclaimed, "I found an ostrich egg!"  Since this took place in central Pennsylvania, chances are it wasn’t an ostrich egg, but actually a robin’s egg. This story is a simple example of having knowledge, but it was either incomplete or incorrectly categorized. The boy was able to correctly identify the object as an egg, but reached an incorrect conclusion about the source of the egg. The color of the egg, the size of the egg, or the location of the egg all should have been clues that it probably wasn’t an ostrich egg. However, without utilizing all of that knowledge, it’s easy to reach the wrong conclusion. Instead, he identified the egg incorrectly as an ostrich egg.  There are many reasons why the incorrect answer was reached. For instance, maybe he just learned about ostriches so that was the conclusion he reached. As he grows, he will gather more knowledge about how to identify eggs. This also demonstrates why capturing knowledge in a computer program has been a difficult problem in the field of Artificial Intelligence. How do you collect, classify, and store knowledge in a way that can be leveraged in the future? When do you know you have enough? There have been several blog entries here about the Watson computer program that competed on Jeopardy. One of the reasons the Watson program was so impressive is because it demonstrated a large collection of information that was correctly classified, connected, and able to be leveraged. At Discovery Machine, we have a Methodology to work with the expert and find out what knowledge is important and how it works together. We can then leverage the knowledge to make intelligent decisions about the situation. We utilize our methodology and our technology to create realistic behaviors in simulation environments. Having logical knowledge structures driven by an expert and being able to leverage these knowledge structures in a visual environment to create robust, executable decision models is something unique that Discovery Machine offers to the world. These completed models and knowledge representations can be useful in teaching others how to make better decisions and understand what knowledge is needed to make correct decisions. In our example, the boy had trouble classifying the egg due to lack of experience.  Using a Discovery Machine model, he could leverage the experience of an expert to correctly classify the egg.  By using the tool, the boy would have learned how to figure out what type of egg it really was so that next time he finds an egg he will know how to use all knowledge at hand.

Here is a small sampling I really enjoyed from my book with Don Shula, Everyone’s A Coach. The way managers treat people is powerfully influenced by what they expect of people. If a manager’s expectations are high, productivity is likely to be excellent. If expectations are low, productivity is likely to be poor. It is as though there were a natural law that caused a person’s performance to rise or fall to meet his or her manager’s expectations. My wife Margie has often said that one of the reasons she didn’t get into trouble when she was a young person was that she knew her parents expected the best of her and knew she would be a good role model for her younger sisters. She never wanted to let her parents down. If you have someone working for you whom you don’t think much of, I think it’s your ethical responsibility to get that person transferred to another department or team. Because no matter how hard you try, you’re likely to treat him as if he isn’t any good. And he’ll prove you right every time! I ask people all the time, "Given the amount of time you spend at work, would you rather spend that time being magnificent or ordinary?" What do you think they say? They shout out, "Magnificent!" And yet, are most of the people in organizations performing magnificently? Of course not. And a key reason is the self-fulfilling prophecy that starts in the heads of leaders, managers, coaches, and parents, with the belief that most people are lazy, unreliable, and irresponsible. This belief plays out in how they treat people and ultimately in how those people perform. People generally respond well to leaders, managers, coaches, and parents who have high expectations and genuine confidence in them. So believe in the abilities of your people, students, and kids, and they will be more likely to believe in themselves.

Discovery Machine, Inc. is delighted to see this critical legislation making it to the Presidents’ office. We hope and trust that President Obama will sign promptly, as predicted by The SBIR Insider. As a woman owned small business we recognize the importance of the SBIR/STTR/CPP programs to innovation and sustainable high quality jobs in Williamsport, PA and the rest of the country. This is a very important victory for all small businesses in the United States. Our hats are off to all those who have worked, so hard, to keep these programs alive. The news release headline from The SBIR Insider is reprinted, below. "Dear SBIR Insider,  With your help and a ground swell of support S.1082, "The Small Business Additional Temporary Extension Act of 2011″ has passed overwhelmingly, thereby extending SBIR/STTR/CPP "as is" through September 30, 2011.  The President will quickly sign this bill and there will be no lapse in the SBIR programs. Repeat: SBIR/STTR/CPP are now extended through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2011.  Preliminary vote count: The bill was passed 387 / 33 Republicans  224 / 11 Democrats 163 / 22….."

I was once involved in a corporate study where criticizing and praising were actually tabulated and the reactions measured. Look at what we found: When there was one praising for each criticism, people felt as though they had a totally negative relationship with their boss. When the ratio was changed to two praisings to one reprimand, people still thought their boss was all over them. It wasn’t until we got to a ratio of four praisings to one criticism that people began to feel as if they had a good relationship with their boss. Think of the power of a reprimand—or even the perception of a reprimand—if one negative word can only be balanced by four positive words.  It’s clear that if you as a business leader, coach, or parent don’t start giving a lot of praise, the people you work around will begin to think of you as negative and unfair. Every time you give someone a reprimand, hopefully you’ll have the opportunity to catch that person doing something right four times—and will give them a praising. I should note that this whole concept can work both up and down the organizational ladder. People can, and should, praise their bosses. And supervisors should be constantly looking for opportunities to praise their people. It’s a two-way street that creates good feelings at all levels. Just as important, it prompts people to want to work harder to be more effective. So remember, in healthy companies as well as healthy families, there’s a need for four positive interactions for every negative one. Have a great week and praise somebody today!