One of the key steps to empowering people is to create autonomy through boundaries.  A problem in the past was the assumption that empowered people could do anything they wanted; they were in charge. That theory just doesn’t make sense.  A river without banks is just a large puddle—what permits a river to flow is its banks.  In empowering people, the banks are the boundary areas or guidelines within which people can operate. Top management takes a lead in providing these boundary areas.  They include the following: Purpose - Everyone needs to know what business you are in. Values - What are the beliefs that drive your behavior? Goals - What are the big picture, bottom-line goals on which everyone should focus? Roles - What are people being asked to do and contribute? Incentives - What’s in it for people if they perform well? Measures - How will people know what good behavior looks like? Boundaries could also include policies and procedures.  As I learned from coaching great Don Shula when we wrote Everyone’s a Coach—you first need to have a plan, and then you need to expect the unexpected and be ready to change that plan if necessary.  In football, an "audible" is when the quarterback or defensive captain changes the plan on a given play when he realizes it won’t work.  Shula emphasized that effectiveness at calling audibles begins with a plan. This concept was verified by two of our top consultants when they had a chance to observe the training of guide dogs for the blind.  They found that two kinds of dogs were disqualified from the program. The first kind, obviously, were the dogs who were completely disobedient—they wouldn’t do anything their master asked of them. The other kind of dogs that were dismissed, surprisingly, were ones that were completely obedient dogs—they would do whatever their master wanted.  The dogs that worked best were dogs that would do whatever their master wanted unless it didn’t make sense. Let me give you an example. The totally obedient dog and its master are standing at a street corner when the dog’s master says, "Forward." The dog looks to the left and sees a car coming at sixty-five miles an hour.  The dog thinks, "This is a real bummer," as it leads its master out into the middle of the road.  But a dog that is intelligent and allowed to think for itself can make a choice that best fits the given circumstances. Many organizations don’t seem to want their people to bring their brains to work.  How many times have you been in a situation where a front line employee said, "I’m sorry, but it’s our policy," when in your specific circumstances the policy made no sense? For example, one time when I was checking into a hotel, the woman behind the counter told me they had no rooms available until after 2:00 p.m.  I said, "That’s okay with me.  Could you please store my bags?" She said, "Fine," and asked me what else she could do for me. I said, "I need to cash a traveler’s check." "I can’t do that," she said.  "I don’t know what your room number is yet." "Why do you need my room number?" I asked. "I have to put it on the back of every traveler’s check." "That’s a good policy," I said, "but you have my bags.  It doesn’t make sense in this case." Her responses included "It’s our policy," "I just work here," "I don’t make the rules," etc.  Can you imagine a guide dog for the blind under those restrictions?  It would be a goner at the first busy street! Empowerment begins with boundaries.  There is nothing wrong with policies or procedures or other guidelines—empowered employees welcome them—but they recognize they can use their brains and call audibles when the policy doesn’t make sense.  Empowering people without giving them any boundaries can lead to disaster and failure.

If you were to look at a model of expert knowledge, you might expect to see some very complex calculations or something hard to understand.  After all, experts are very smart people and they accomplish tasks that the rest of us find difficult.  The reality though is that lots of time when you see the expertise, it doesn’t seem all that difficult or complex.  Often the expertise is just a relatively simple process with a few expert tidbits that make the process execute smoothly and accurately.  These expert tidbits represent how the expert looks at the situation from the right frame of mind, or as we say with the right mental model. Think of an example of an expert model that can plan a meeting.  We all know how to plan a meeting.  You just figure out who needs to be at the meeting, figure out when they can come and then schedule the meeting. Ah, but an expert meeting planner knows it is not quite that straightforward.  First you need to establish a meeting topic and agenda.  This information can be used to determine who really needs to be at the meeting and can avoid having unnecessary attendees that might derail the objective.  It also helps determine the required length of the meeting.  Now with the right list of people, you can go about finding a good meeting time.  An expert also knows that for a big meeting, you’ll sometimes need to think more about logistics.  But what is big?  5 people?  50 people? 500 people? Well, it depends on your perspective.  If the topic is a semi-annual review of company progress done on a webcast, 500 people may not be that big.  If the topic is a working meeting where you expect to accomplish something, 5 people is big and you may need to schedule a meeting coordinator to keep the meeting running effectively.  An expert knows how to deal with these differences and we at Discovery Machine know how to capture this knowledge from the expert and model it correctly.  Of course when we do capture it and a novice looks at the model, it ends up not looking that complex.  But the value is that the model of expert knowledge will always evaluate the breadth of the expertise captured which ultimately results in better results.

I believe the biggest addiction problem in the workplace today is the human ego.  When people operate from their ego, their behavior tends to be based on fear rather than trust. When people behave out of fear, they have a high need to control others and their environment and they have a win-lose orientation toward everything.  Even when discussing the weather they want to make sure you know that they know more about weather than you do. They broadcast a philosophy about life that states "I’m okay, you’re not." I discovered this addiction many years ago when my wife Margie was writing a book with Dr. Mark J. Tager entitled Working Well and studying what made a healthy work environment. One of the questions they asked people in their research was, "Can a bad boss make you sick?"  A lot of people said, "Yes."  They cited examples such as migraine headaches, ulcers, sleepless nights—even heart attacks and cancer. I became fascinated by people’s perceptions of bad bosses, so I started asking people around the country to describe the worst boss they had ever worked for.  The primary description I heard was that of a high ego-driven person.  The worst managers were described as poor listeners who were reluctant to share credit and always wanted to be in the limelight.  While a lot of people would think people with a big ego had high self-esteem, I found the opposite to be true:  Individuals who operate from their ego are usually covering up "not okay" feelings about themselves.  They try to compensate for feelings of inadequacy by overpowering others and controlling their environment. Why do I feel ego addiction is so harmful to the business community?  Because it is holding back progress in organizations.  Companies all over the country are having difficulties moving toward being the kind of organization they need to be to make it in this economy.  Companies today need to be customer driven, cost effective, fast and flexible, and continually improving.  To do this we need high-trust environments.  And yet, throughout the work world managers are hesitant to empower others and give them a chance to have more responsibility and take initiative to make decisions.  The people who are fearful and holding back support of these changes in business are those who are operating from their ego.  They fear loss of power and control. People who are hung up on their egos and who operate out of fear really need love.  Yet it’s hard to love these people because they don’t seem very lovable.  Instead, folks with big egos seem to be demanding, self-centered, and unsatisfied. They feel better about themselves when they can make others feel inferior.  Fortunately, their attempts don’t have to be successful.  As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." Just because someone has power doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a need to feel appreciated.  When was the last time you caught your boss doing something right?  When was the last time you gave your boss a hug?  I’m not necessarily talking about a physical hug—even a psychological hug can help.  Thank her for her support or for doing a good job on a certain task.  In my sessions I ask people who are parents whether their love for their kids depends on their kids’ achievements.  Rarely does a hand go up.  We love our children without any contingencies—it’s called unconditional love.  I think the same approach is needed in the workplace today.  We need to learn to trust and respect others, even if we sometimes have a problem with their behavior. If we can help everyone in the workforce feel good about themselves and raise their self-esteem, we’ll have more people willing to share power by permitting others to take initiative, make decisions, and let work teams be the main vehicle for decision making.  To overcome ego addiction, people have to get in touch with their own worthiness.  If it’s hard for them, others can help. Everyone in organizations should set a goal to maintain or enhance the self-esteem of the people with whom they interact, for the benefit of all.  Big egos can be tamed with the right amount of tender loving care.

I am having a lot of game exposure in the next couple of months. A couple of weeks ago I met Aneesh Chopra the White House CTO at an event where he talked about STEM, simulation, and games in Washington. I went to an Innovation Transfer Network meeting on Serious Games at Shippensburg University yesterday. My daughter asked to play Temple Run while we waited for the bus this morning.  I am going to the Game Developers Conference in a couple of weeks and then Discovery Machine exhibits at GameTech 2012 in Orlando, March 28-30. Where have we been and where will we go with computer games?   I am sure some geek built a cathode ray game in the 40s. Someone tried to build a game to play Chess in England in the 50s and could not get there.  My first game was Pong in 1973.  At Discovery Machine today, one side of our business builds behavior modeling AI for battlefield games like Bohemia Interactive’s VBS2 and VT MAK’s VR Forces.  We build AI for US DoD games. We build intelligent avatars and devices that have a complete life of their own.  You can talk to them and they talk back.  You can make them have a good mood or point your gun at them and their mood drops. Just search Free Online Games. It is actually a slow search because there are 184 million results. While games are fun and I cannot image the games my grand kids will play, some do waste our time. We all have spent 10 minutes trying to get all 9 stars on level IV in Angry Birds. That wasn’t a waste, I won! (note the mood thing) Games are here to teach too.  Games can teach you a language or how to play an instrument. Doctors surgery techniques. Soldiers how to fight. I consider the best games are ones that teach and are intelligent .  I will be seeing a lot of the latest games in the next few weeks. I will tell you what I liked the best. If you are going to GDC or GameTech, drop me a note so we can chat or play a game   jmcassey(at)discoverymachine.com

I was talking recently with one of my old friends who is not a man of traditional religious faith. I asked him, "What is your comfort? What is a philosophy you live by?" And he said, "I have always tried throughout my life to do the right thing. I think of the Golden Rule as my faith. I only try to do to other people as I would like to have done to me and I always try to take that into consideration. If all the faiths around the world would practice the Golden Rule, the world would be a different place. I believe our role in life is to treat other people as if they were important individuals and treat them as we would want to be treated."  And I thought that was really powerful. A large part of being a servant leader and being there for other people is realizing that every human being is important. Even if another person mistreats us, it doesn’t do us any good to lower ourselves to their methods. The concept of turning the other cheek is kind of hard sometimes, but it’s all about not getting hooked into somebody else’s poor behavior. Perhaps it’s easier to just think of it as living by the Golden Rule. I found out from Colleen Barrett that at Southwest Airlines, the Golden Rule is a major part of their company culture and leadership philosophy. Colleen learned that early in her life from her mother, who was a great believer in the Golden Rule. So this week, as we go out and greet each other and greet customers and family members, just remember: Treat them as if it were you - how would you like to be treated? That’s a pretty great way to live life. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving week.

I recently read an interesting article by Eric Beidel in the National Defense Magazine titled, "Avatars Invade Military Training Systems". In this article, Mr. Beidel discusses a current initiative to create a realistic avatar to represent every soldier in the Army. This avatar would be used for simulated training events and allow the soldier to become fully immersed in the synthetic training environment. A key component to the new approach is that the avatar will be realistic down to the physical attributes of the respective soldier. Things like hair color, eye color, physical endurance, skill levels, and more would be incorporated to match the soldier in real life. Realism is the key. A student learns nothing if there are no consequences and learn nothing if it is unrealistic to achieve the same results in real life. The question I ask in reaction to this is: what good is a perfect recreation of a trainee, without perfect representations of the training situation itself? Billions of dollars are spent across the military each year funding various training endeavors. Much of this funding has gone into live training events and pays live actors to portray real life events. The article discusses how the new approach tackles this dilemma by allowing an actor to play multiple characters in the simulation for trainees to interact with. That is the point where I begin to disagree. Yes, you could shave some costs by having one actor perform multiple parts in a simulated training event, but you are still reliant on a few key individuals. Plus, the approach is for an actor to play multiple parts which may lead to confusion for the actors themselves and cause them to incorrectly interact with students. That would deteriorate the training experience as it would contribute to negative training. Instead, I think the true solution is to create realistic, automated, intelligent characters. Discovery Machine offers this ability at a particularly low cost. Why pay actors, when you can create intelligent behavior models of expertise which are more realistic of the real world? Discovery Machine’s proven approaches are capable of doing just that. We work with experts to capture their expertise and then we leverage that expertise to control intelligent avatars in training events with artificial intelligence. In closing: Yes, I believe that realistic training is important and realistic representations of trainee skills should be incorporated into their personal avatars, however that is only half the solution. A truly realistic simulation requires realistic avatars controlled autonomously that are prepared to help or hinder trainees in the same way someone would in the real world.

I have a long-time friend named Walter Green who just wrote a book called This Is the Moment! Walter, in his 70th year, decided he would make a list of the people who really impacted his life at different stages. He had to locate some he had lost contact with, but over the year he traveled the country and met with 44 people to thank them and tell them how important they were to his life. I think the book’s real message is the enormous power of gratitude. Walter wrote this book to motivate all of us. Are there people in your life who have really made a difference? Have you reached out to thank them? Have you thanked your parents, friends, mentors—perhaps a teacher, professor, or colleague who had an impact on your life? Don’t wait to reach out. This is the moment. Yesterday, just one day after being inspired by Walter’s book, I had the perfect opportunity to put his idea into action. Every morning, our newspaper delivery person drives through our oval driveway and drops off the paper right at our front door so we don’t have to go to the end of the driveway to retrieve it. I’ve always wanted to thank her for this courtesy, and yesterday morning I saw her through the window just as she was getting out of the car to deliver the paper. I met her at the front door and said, "I just want to tell you how fabulous and caring you are, and what a difference you make, and how much we appreciate what you do," and I gave her a little money. Her face just lit up and she almost had tears in her eyes as she gave me a hug. She said, "You’re really special," and I said, "I’m not special. You are." This morning, tucked into the newspaper, I found a note from her. On the outside of the envelope was written: "To a great and loyal customer."  This is so consistent with what Blanchard research has found:  If you hire passionate people, they want to go out and take care of your customers. Then the customers become loyal and get excited about the company and tell others, and it keeps going back and forth—and that’s what makes a great organization. On the card inside it said: "Thank you, thank you, thank you. You made my day yesterday. I was flying high on a cloud of appreciation. Your recognition of my service to you has revived me. Thank you for taking the time to think about me."  Then she signed her name and phone number and wrote: "Please call if you ever have a bad or poor quality paper delivered." Isn’t that amazing?  It made me feel good to read her note. I hope this motivates you to reach out and thank people who have done special things for you—people who have made a difference in your life, whether big or small.  If we all took the time to do this, think of the difference we could make in the lives of others. So reach out and say "thank you." It’s such an easy way to make another person feel special, and it is guaranteed to boost your spirits, too.  Have a great week.

Discovery Machine, Inc. and other small businesses are saddled with extended reporting requirements concerning VC/Hedge funds/Private Equity ownership structures, a time for comment. It’s too bad the comments solicitation is on reporting, not the exposure to small business when Wall Street puts their hands on a smaller and smaller source of critical research funding. The SBIR Insider Newsletter recently reported on an "unusual and unexpected move", the SBA published in the March 20, 2012 Federal Register, a request for "Data Collection Available for Public Comments and Recommendations." The request states: "Send all comments regarding whether this information collection is necessary for the proper performance of the function of the agency, whether the burden estimates are accurate, and if there are ways to minimize the estimated burden and enhance the quality of the collection…" (see www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-03-20/html/2012-6702.htm) The SBA offers supplementary information including: The legislation extends and broadens a requirement for the Small Business Administration (SBA) to maintain searchable, electronic databases that include pertinent information concerning each SBIR and STTR award made through the programs. The legislation contains a new data reporting requirement from companies concerning their potential ownership by venture capital, hedge fund, and private equity firms. Additional data fields will be collected from applicants and awardees concerning applicant demographics and company information (such as number of employees, additional funding received).  These new data reporting requirements supplement demographic and company information already collected from awardees (such as women or minority owned, award amount information, research abstract, Principal Investigator’s name, etc). The legislation differentiates between data that is available to the public and data that is available to the government only. SBA is required to collect this information and report on it annually to Congress. The Insider notes "Nevertheless one must wonder why this issue is being broken out from the rest of the policy directive areas that will require public comment. Might it have something to do with the extended reporting requirements concerning VC/Hedge funds/Private Equity ownership structures and the like?" SBA’s Description of Respondents to this notice: Respondents include individuals, and small businesses, that are participating in the SBIR and STTR programs. Individuals and small businesses may be applicants and awardees. SBA wants your comments in hard copy via snail mail, not electronically! Comments must be sent on or before May 21, 2012 to: Mr. Eric Eide Innovation and Technology Analyst Office of Technology Small Business Administration 409 3rd Street, 6th Floor, Washington, DC 20416

The holiday season presents some different challenges for leaders.  Here is some advice I’ve found can help you to get the most out of this special time. Get in the holiday spirit.  It’s important for leaders to get into the holiday spirit.  It’s a wonderful time of the year when people want to feel good and connected to each other.  It is a time to capitalize on team building and allow workers to get to know each other better. Yet often managers end up acting like Scrooge by being too busy or demanding of themselves and of their people.  Bosses can really ruin the holidays by being grumpy, under stress and too demanding.  Try to be a little more lenient, supportive and willing to "go with the flow" in appreciating the time you have and the people you have to work with. Focus on what has to be done. It’s important during the holidays to be clear with everybody on their key goals.  What are the significant things that really have to get done during the holiday season to keep business running as usual?  It’s good to write down these goals so that people are better able to work harder earlier in the season if they are going to be less focused later on.  This is especially true if, for your business, the holiday season is one of the busiest time of the year. Be flexible with employees. Be more flexible in terms of the hours your people work, depending on their needs.  Is there a way they can have a couple of hours off so they can get some of their shopping done and make the time up later?  A lot of people have family and friends fly in and would love to have flexible work hours to accommodate them.  How could the company help employees save time?  For example, at our company, we have people fill out a form that allows them to mail their packages from our company. Avoid negative news. Don’t use the holiday season to give employees negative news.  It is not a time of the year to catch people doing things wrong, nor it is a time to accent the negative.  Instead, do your best to redirect employees without being punitive.  Save more substantive performance issues for after the new year.  And don’t turn what should be good news into bad news by poor timing.  For example, if you are planning to give employees extra days off between Christmas and New Year’s Day, tell them far enough in advance so that they can make plans for that time.  Otherwise, they might end up at home watching television and griping about you. Be sensitive to different religions. Be sensitive to those who don’t celebrate Christmas.  You might set aside some time when people could share information about their religious or cultural celebrations.  For example, one of our Jewish employees had people who wanted to find out more about the meaning of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights celebration, meet him for lunch. Be creative about celebrating the season. Your celebration doesn’t have to be lavish for it to be effective.  You might want to do an activity rather than hosting a party where everyone just sits around and drinks.  It might even allow for more bonding to do something like caroling that allows for a shared experience away from the office.  Another fun group activity that we’ve done is to take the time for our work group to read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol together, giving each employee a role to read.  Activities such as these can help you avoid getting into the position where you have to worry about serving alcohol to people and having them drive home. Whenever possible, include families in holiday activities.  We had an artist come to our company one year during the holidays to teach everybody how to paint landscapes.  There were four sessions and everyone could bring their spouses, kids, and parents.  The artist dressed everybody up in French berets and artist aprons.  At the end of the activity she touched up the pictures and then we had them framed.  It was really a lot of fun. Have fun with celebrations. Think of fun ways to celebrate the season.  I love those parties where everyone buys a three-to-five dollar gift, numbers the gift, and then people pick numbers and open the gifts one at a time.  The person opening the gift has the option of keeping what they open or trading it for one of the already opened gifts. That can turn into a pretty lively time! You can also have people exchange funny cards that they have either bought or made.  You could even set somebody up to be a "Secret Santa," leaving anonymous gifts for random employees. Make the spirit last all year long. A few years ago, after the holiday season had ended, several of our employees at The Ken Blanchard Companies asked, "Why does the spirit have to end at the end of the year?"  From that question sprang an employee-run program called "Blanchard for Others" which sponsors local charities and hosts all kinds of fundraising events through the year. Each year they raise tens of thousands of dollars for charity.  We now have the holiday spirit year round. So get in the holiday spirit this year!  Go with the flow, lighten up, and enjoy this special time with your employees and with your families.

After our successful work with the US Navy, US Army, and a number of commercial US firms; Discovery Machine is investing in expansion for an international customer base.  Discovery Machine will be exhibiting internationally for the first time at the International Training and Education Conference (ITEC) in stand C141 at the ExCel Center in London on May 22-24th.  I am excited at the opportunity to show our artificial intelligence software to potential international customers. ITEC is Europe’s leading exhibition and conference for international military training, simulation and education. At ITEC, we will showcase our current product offerings.  Highlighted among them will be the VBS2 Behavior Modeling Console, the latest version of the Maritime Console, and a variety of other AI based knowledge capture solutions. Dr. Todd Griffith will be presenting to an audience, at the Innovation Showcase at ITEC, on how Discovery Machine works and the benefits of our AI approach. We are also working to set up meetings with key NATO members. So if you are looking for the biggest Modeling and Simulation show outside of I/ITSEC in the US, think about coming to ITEC. As an exhibitor, if I invite you then you get a 10% discount. If you have any friends in Europe who might be going to ITEC, please tell them to stop by and get a demonstration of Discovery Machine’s solutions.