This is the time of year when a lot of people get stressed. You know—running around, making sure they have every present bought and everything done for holiday and new years parties and all that. The holidays can turn into a burden rather than a blessing. This is supposed to be the season of joy and love, not of trouble and hassle. Stress is a major problem this time of year because people have so many "to do" lists. They forget why they’re doing it and get too much into the doing. Too often this time of year we’re human doings rather than human beings. I just want you to check yourself, as I need to check myself as I run around and try to get things done at the end of the year, that I’m a human being, not a human doing.  It doesn’t mean that you can’t get things done and crossed off your list—just don’t make "list accomplishment" the goal of this holiday season. Make LOVE the goal of the season. Reach out to everyone you talk to and wish them the greatest holiday—the greatest Christmas—the greatest New Year. Just tell them you care about them. Maybe you couldn’t find right present for someone. Perhaps you should sit down and write that person a note about how much you care about them and let them know you’ll send them something after the holidays. Sometimes during this time of year, I like to go through my phone directory and call people I haven’t talked to in a while, and just tell them I care about them. That, to me, is a joyful thing to do this time of year. So what can you do to make this a joyous time, rather than a hassled time? Have a wonderful Christmas day. Life is a very special occasion if you keep your "to do" list in perspective.

Serious Game is a term which is gaining great stride within the professional community.  Industries ranging from defense to healthcare; emergency preparedness to engineering; have all embraced the moniker and it has led to an increasingly useful training sector in serious gaming.  But what really is a serious game? If we break apart the term into two fundamental parts, serious and game, things become more clear.  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com) provides a few useful definitions of each.  I have included a few noteworthy definitions for each term below: Serious:    "requiring much thought or work" "of or relating to a matter of importance" "not easily answered or solved" Game: "a procedure or strategy for gaining an end" "a field of gainful activity" "any activity undertaken or regarded as a contest involving rivalry, strategy, or struggle" All of the aforementioned definitions resonate true when we begin to talk about a serious game.  Creating games to train people is not new, but with increases in technology, the true benefits of their application can now be harnessed.  In that regard, the above definitions hold very true.  A serious game is practical because it does challenge the person playing.  Yes, they are still playing a game, but they are doing so with a purpose.  They are doing so in an effort to learn something important that will protect them and will cause them to be more productive at a task in the future. By taking advantage of a serious game, it provides people with an opportunity to repeat situations which are difficult to answer and require hard work and thought.  Plus, there is the added benefit of competition!  It is my opinion that most people are notoriously competitive, and in the world of serious games, that is not a bad thing.  Compete, compete, compete; and win or lose, every trainee learns. Discovery Machine sees the importance of serious games and is addressing the needs of the industry.  As a software company which creates artificial intelligence solutions, Discovery Machine creates serious games which produce great results.  What makes Discovery Machine’s approaches work is straight forward: work with an expert and harness their expertise, use that knowledge to create realistic simulated-scenarios, and deploy the scenarios into training simulations to make state-of-the-art serious games.  Serious games work if they are built correctly, so why not stop and pay attention to the details.  The key to being successful is to deploy the knowledge of experts, but how often does anyone stop and ask them how they think?

It’s getting to be about that time when people talk about New Year’s resolutions. What do you want to do differently in 2011? What would you like to be different in your life a year from now? Just a couple of suggestions on New Year’s Resolutions: Don’t make too many of them. I’ve known some people who say, "This year I’m going to lose weight, exercise more, stop drinking, cut down on the amount of meat I eat," and so forth, and they don’t even want to get up in the morning—it’s too overwhelming! So pick one, maybe two things that you’re going to focus on. Several years ago, Bob Lorber and I wrote a book called Putting the One Minute Manager to Work. We talked about having a PRICE project. I like using that model for my New Year’s resolutions. P is for pinpoint. What is the thing you’d like to do? Is it lose weight, is it exercise more? Identify what you want to work on and be specific. R is for record. What is your present level of performance in that area? Get on the scale if you want to lose weight, or write down your present level of exercise so you have baseline data. Then with that, you can compare it with where you want to go, which involves the next step: I is for involve. Gather all the key people in your life who can really help you and see if you can set a realistic goal. That’s the difference between what you’ve recorded, where you are now, and where you’d like to go. See what kind of help you can get from this group because it’s hard to stick to resolutions and you’re probably going to need a little help. What are they going to do to cheer you on? What are they going to do to hold you accountable? Plan it out and get agreement on your goal or goals. C stands for coach. That means getting underway with your resolution—getting the coaching you need and the cheerleading, the supporting, the redirection. Let other people help to keep you in line. As I say, if you could do it by yourself, you would. E stands for evaluate. That’s the end of the time period when you have achieved your goal, or moved toward your goal, and you look back and evaluate how you did. What could you have done differently? What went well? Any forward progression toward your resolution is worth celebrating. Track your progress and plan your future strategies. What will you pinpoint next? So think about what’s going to be different next year. What are you going to be smiling about next December? Take care and have a terrific 2011!

Imagine you are working on a project and you discover a monumental breakthrough - a more productive process, an alternative technique, a way to delight customers, or a manner to convey a concept to trainees. You run to the white board or your computer to write a note to document this colossal idea.  Your enthusiasm is skyrocketing and you want to share it with your whole team so that everyone can be enlightened.  You know the whole organization will be better off now because of this vision you have just documented. Fast forward 6 months…  Where is your monumental breakthrough?  Who is using your idea?  How has your organization changed for the better?  Is your idea in a file folder on your laptop?  How often do you recall your breakthrough?  Did your idea reach any of the potential you had dreamed for it?  Odds are it did not and instead is wasting its true potential where every you left it. A recent article by Daniel Rasmus in iPhone Life Magazine starts with, "Our brains are wonderful devices for keeping track of information. They are also remarkable sense-making machines, finding patterns in seemingly disparate bits of data. In the information age, however, and in the burgeoning knowledge economy, we find our brains outstripped by their own inventions, their own discoveries, and their own creations."  http://www.iphonelife.com/issues/2012January-February/ManagingYourBrain Storing your knowledge as best practices has become increasingly popular.  Personal knowledge management systems like Evernote http://evernote.com/index.php are becoming popular as a technique to supplement our own brain power.  Perhaps a tool that is always with us - on our phone, our laptop, our tablet - will help us capture ideas, store them in an organized fashion and retrieve them when relevant.  Discovery Machine takes this one step further. When we organize our own items - whether it is files, scraps of papers, bills, discoveries, or project documentation - everyone has their own personal style.  We organize our lives according to the processes we perform.  We develop personal best practices and the best practices provide the context in which the information or artifacts come into our lives.  Whatever best practice is taking place in our heads serves as the context to trigger and retrieve that artifact in the future. To give you an example, have you ever walked into someone’s office that is a disaster area, yet that person can always find what he is looking for?  Your colleague stored the artifact in the context of a personal best practice he was executing and as a result his brain could recall where to find the relevant artifacts for the current situation. Personal and organization knowledge management are not very different.    Knowledge is formed while executing a best practice.  Knowledge will more likely be leveraged if it is remembered under similar circumstances.  Best practices influence the way we leverage scraps of papers, notes, trip reports, project plans, and presentations. Often, continuous improvement efforts include the capture of best practices.    That is important because best practices define the common processes to an organization and provide the context for retrieving relevant information.  Often, all a continuous improvement effort needs is a better way to retrieve the right knowledge at the right time for every member of your organization.  Discovery Machine has a way to facilitate this. Start using your best practices to organize knowledge.  Next time you have an idea, make a note, or create a new document think about the best practice in which you are creating the artifact.  That is the best index to retrieve it in the future. Discovery Machine’s knowledge capture methodology is based on the notion that expertise is organized around best practices.  The Discovery Machine modeling tool will help you capture best practices and help your organization deploy continuous improvement efforts.

Earlier this month Rick Shindell (SBIR Insider) published a very informative article on SBA Rule status and actions we all can take to influence the evolution of new SBA structural initiatives. In particular Discovery Machine, Inc. finds the change to allow VC funded "units/divisions" to qualify as small businesses and compete for STTR and SBIR funding troubling. One would hope that this new structure will not force many small businesses to be taken over by controlling entities and lose their identity and stifle the creativity and independent thinking that has been the driving force behind sustainable job creation. Rick’s article is quoted, below, for reference. "SBIR Insider Newsletter - SBA Proposed Rule, Request for Comments May 15, 2012 Dear SBIR Insider, There has been a lot of SBIR action going on behind the scenes at SBA as work continues on the SBIR and STTR policy directives. Most of the SBA’s work has been behind closed doors with federal agency SBIR program managers and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) officials. To quote my grandmother, "There has been much to talk about, but nothing to say." For the last several weeks her idiom was correct, but now things are a changin’. We are seeing action and it is time to get you up to speed. As mentioned in previous issues, the SBA’s time sensitive mission for SBIR & STTR is the creation of Policy Directives (PD) which serve to guide the running of these programs. In our February interview with Sean Greene (SBA’a Associate Administrator for Investment, and Special Advisor for Innovation), he described the flow of PD creation, and today the first major milestone has been met. On May 15, 2012 the SBA has published (in the Federal Register) its first proposed rule for size standards relating to SBIR/STTR. The reason for publishing a proposed rule is to solicit informed public comment on the rule, which will be considered by SBA before they publish a final rule. This is your chance to make a difference, and you have 60 days to do it (we’ll explain later). This rule is limited to the areas of: A. Definitions and Programs Subject to Size Determinations B. Ownership and Control C. Affiliation D. When SBA Determines Size and Eligibility E. Certification of size and eligibility F. Initiating a Protest or Request for Formal Size Determination G. Time Limits That Apply to Size Protests Although the scope of this rule may seem small, it is tremendously important and complex because it speaks to allowing (for the first time ever) a small business to be majority owned by non-small business entities, and still compete for programs reserved for small businesses. In essence, this rule is established to comply with the new SBIR reauthorization law (Section 5107 of PL 112-81) that allows (under defined circumstances), that a small business may be majority owned and controlled by multiple Venture Capital Operating Companies (VCOC), Hedge Funds, and/or Private Equity Firms, and still be eligible to compete for SBIR/STTR funding. SBA has taken a careful approach to make sure these new rules are limited to SBIR & STTR only, not other small business programs. However, our non SBIR small business readers should look at these rules to make sure they see no slippery slope that could affect other small business programs. Another issue is that of foreign (non domestic) ownership. If the small business is majority owned by foreign entities, they would not be eligible. Of course this could be sticky even with minority ownership by foreign concerns in areas of national defense and ITAR. The SBA has worked hard to make this proposed rule easy to read and even easier for you to comment on. Although your comments cannot reverse the congressional intent of the law, it can help shape how the rules are applied, and what measures can be taken to make the programs more responsive to its intended purpose. There are always several paths to get the information: Title: Small Business Size Regulations, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program Legal Description: 13 CFR Part 121 RIN 3245-AG46 Web Locations: Easiest to read and comment on line (new site): https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/05/15/2012-11586/small-business-size-regulations-small-business-innovation-research-sbir-program-and-small-business Also good and official: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=SBA-2012-0008-0001 Old fashion hard copy Federal Register PDF www.zyn.com/sbir/insider/SBA-2012-0008-0001.pdf You must submit your comments on or before July 16, 2012 The SBA provides good guidance on the rule and how to comment. Please note that in an unrelated recent notice of proposed rulemaking for "Reform of Federal Policies Relating to Grants and Cooperative Agreements" more than 349 universities and non-profits offered comments, greatly influencing that policy. It is important that the small business community show up and comment on these important SBIR/STTR rules otherwise the conversation may be dominated by large special interests. The SBA wants to hear from you! We will be following this SBIR Insider up with some comments and explanations from SBIR experts in the field, with the hopes of clarifying some of the issues for you. I hope to have it for you next week. Federal employees please note: Your comments may be very important in these issues, but it must be as an individual, not a government employee. If you feel uncomfortable posting directly to SBA, feel free to send me your comments and we’ll include them without attribution. Your SBIR Insider does not want, nor should try to shape your comments on SBA’s call for public comment. However, we want to keep you informed so you will be more willing to provide your thoughts to SBA. We will have more information on overall SBIR news in our next issue. Note to our DoD readers: Wednesday May 16, general debate will take place in the House on H.R. 4310, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. The House Report includes Section 1617 "Restoration of 1% Funding for Administrative Expenses of Commercialization Readiness Program (CRP) of Department of Defense. The SBIR reauthorization bill inadvertently didn’t include the 1% funding for the CRP (formerly known as the CPP) and this section corrects that error. This is a non-controversial section and is expected to survive. The big question is when/if H.R. 4310 gets passed in the House. Many expect it to pass, but in this congress, you never know. I’m sorry this Insider is mainly a 1 topic issue, but I wanted you to be able to get up to speed. There are many other items to report on, and I promise you an issue next week. Sincerely, Rick Rick Shindell SBIR Gateway Zyn Systems 40 Alderwood Dr. Sequim, WA 98382 360-681-4123 rick@zyn.com www.zyn.com/sbir Go to Online SBIR Insider Please respond to this email if you want to be removed from this distribution. This and back Issues of the SBIR Insider are available at www.zyn.com/sbir/insider Copyright © 2012 Zyn Systems. All rights reserved."

I’m really excited about my brand-new book, Lead with LUV, that I wrote with Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines. The reason I’m excited about it is that if I were asked to leave a legacy of my thinking today, this would be it. The world is in desperate need of this message of love and people first. If you know anything about Southwest Airlines, you know they’re all about love. (They sometimes spell it L-U-V because LUV is their symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.) They love their people and they love their customers. They love their work and take it seriously—but they don’t take themselves seriously. For example, a colleague of mine was flying on Southwest recently when the attendant got on the public address system and said: "You know, this is the last flight of the day and we’re really tired. To be honest with you, we don’t have the energy to pass out the peanuts, so we’re going to put them on the floor in the front the plane and when we take off and gain altitude, they’ll slide down the aisle.  If you want some nuts, just grab them." And that’s what happened! The whole airplane was in hysterics—laughing, having fun, grabbing peanuts, passing them to their neighbors—just having a blast! That’s leading with LUV. How different is that than your typical experience on most airlines, where everyone seems so uptight? Leading with LUV is about treating your customers right. Southwest really gets this. For example, when you call most airlines to change a reservation, you usually get a recording that says they really value your business, but all of their operators are busy right now; they’ll get to you as soon as possible. Then the music starts.  You could be waiting on hold for fifteen or twenty minutes or more. But when you call Southwest Airlines, you usually get an operator, and if you don’t, you get a recording that says, "Your business is really important to us.  We’re sorry all of our operators are busy right now, but at the beep, please leave your name and phone number and we’ll get back to you in ten minutes." I did this recently, and you know what happened in ten minutes?  My phone rang and somebody said, "Is this Ken Blanchard?" "Yes, it is," I said. "This is Bob from Southwest Airlines," he said. "How can I help you?" Now that’s what I call raving fan service! And that’s how you lead with LUV. No wonder Southwest is the only airline that has consistently turned a profit while the others have struggled. These heart-warming stories don’t happen by accident. When an organization has happy people, happy customers, and happy shareholders, it’s because the leadership has created a culture that supports leading with LUV.  So, how do you do that? First, you have to create a vision—something to love, something with a higher purpose than just making money. Southwest’s vision was that all people—not just the elite—would be able to afford to fly. Second, you have to create the rules of the road—the values that will guide people as they work toward that higher purpose. For example, Southwest has three values: A Warrior Spirit A Servant’s Heart A Fun-LUVing Attitude Third, once you have the vision in place and the values established, the leaders have to get out of the way so they can cheer people on to achieve the vision. This means turning the traditional pyramidal hierarchy upside-down, so that the leaders support their people, rather than vice versa. What does this look like in the real world? How do you, as a leader, lead with LUV? First, by acknowledging people. When she was president of Southwest, Colleen Barrett sent out thousands of hand-written notes to her people every year, celebrating their successes, sympathizing with their losses, and thanking them for being extraordinary. Second, by backing people up. Southwest founder Herb Kelleher once got a letter from a grumpy customer complaining about how much it bothered him that the flight attendants goofed off during the safety announcement. Because a Fun-LUVing Attitude is a Southwest value and this was a customer who tended to complain a lot, Herb didn’t apologize or offer him a coupon. Instead he wrote back, "We’ll miss you." He stood by the values and the people of Southwest. The third way to lead with LUV is to make your people your business partners. For example, pilots at Southwest have personally paid for hotel rooms for customers who, because of bad weather, had to spend the night in an unfamiliar city. The pilots could see that the people needed help. Because the pilots knew they were Southwest’s business partners, they didn’t call and ask, "Is it okay? Will I get reimbursed?" They led with LUV and created grateful, satisfied customers. Leading with LUV is not soft management—it’s smart management. When you put positive relationships ahead of profits, you end up with an abundance of both. Someone once said to my wife, "Margie, you’ve lived with Ken for almost fifty years. What do you think leadership is?" Margie nailed it when she said, "Leadership IS love, it’s not about love.  It’s loving your mission, it’s loving your people, it’s loving your customers, and it’s loving yourself enough to let other people be magnificent." I couldn’t say it any better. So if you’re looking for satisfying, long-term success, remember: Leading with LUV is not about somebody else in some other organization. Leading with love is about you. So treat your colleagues and your customers like family, and Lead with LUV. Here are a few other great things we’re doing around the book: We opened a new webpage for people to learn more about how our company uses the Lead with LUV principles at www.leadwithluv.com. You can even watch Southwest’s fantastic corporate video! Do you know someone who leads with LUV? There are two ways you can let the world know about it: Go to our Lead with LUV page on HowWeLead and post your story in the comments section. Do you know of a great video like Southwest’s? You can even embed a YouTube video if you like! Catch someone doing things right via Twitter. Use the hashtag #leadwithluv and post a quick Tweet about a friend or coworker who exhibits these great qualities. Watch a video introduction by Colleen and myself, read the first chapter of the book, and learn more about leading with LUV at our book page. Have a great day!

Earlier this month, Discovery Machine participated in its first international conference.  ITEC is Europe’s leading exhibition and conference for the military training, simulation and education sectors. ITEC was held in London a couple weeks ago. Discovery Machine had a stand at ITEC for providing demonstrations of our latest artificial technology products.  We provided numerous demonstrations and had set up dozens of client meetings. Overall the show was a great success for Discovery Machine.  We met over a 100 international and US organizations that were interested in our technology. We showcased our current product offerings.  Highlighted among them was 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 presented to an audience at the Innovation Showcase and at the Bohemia Interactive VBS2 Users Group, on how Discovery Machine works and the benefits of our AI approach. Potential users of our VBS2 Behavior Modeling Console were very interested in our latest VBS2 demonstration.  The demonstration showed a scenario to train players in how to defeat an IED bomber in VBS2. Our approach was viewed as a truly "real to the life" situation.  We did not just start with a planted IED which needed to be found. We created a village where all the Non-Player characters (NPC) were intelligent entities with a realistic pattern of life, a social network, and intelligent dialogue capabilities. The IED bomber NPC left his home, went to a place to pick up an IED, looked for a place to plant it, and then found a spot to set it off.  Any village NPC, in VBS2, that saw the bomber had its knowledge updated with the suspicious activity. So when the player entered the game and started to dialogue with the villagers. Some knew about the suspicious activity and some did not.  The player was provided visual cues like shop keepers abandoning stands when they saw the IED planted. A woman stopping a child because her social network had let her know that section of the village had suspicious IED activity.  If the player talked to enough villagers and asked the appropriate questions, then they could find out about the IED and hunt down the bomber.  If not, then they could be the IEDs victim. This demonstration highlighted the power of Discovery Machine’s VBS2 Behavior Modeling Console and the utility of the VBS2 solution from Bohemia Interactive. While the IED topic is unfortunately timely, the best training to eliminate IED threats could be the use of the latest AI technology to make the training true to how the real world works. After ITEC, we hope more military VBS2 users adopt our behavior modeling capabilities to build the most effective "true to life" training scenarios possible. The other Discovery Machine demonstration provided at ITEC was of our Maritime Behavior Modeling Console for the Joint Semi-Automated Forces (JSAF) simulator.  Before the conference, Discovery Machine had received permission from the US Navy to use an unclassified copy of JSAF to demonstrate this capability at ITEC.  The Maritime console received great reviews from viewers who saw its complex entity behavior models seamlessly executing behaviors, responding to player voice commands, re-tasking themselves in response to voice commands, and tasking additional craft to assist in their primary mission.  It was truly a "train as you fight" demonstration. So ITEC so far has been a great entry into the international military market for Discovery Machine.  If you did not get to see our demonstrations, please visit our website at http://www.discoverymachine.com/demos to see online demonstrations of what we highlighted at ITEC this year.  Thanks.

"I wish I was an expert," is a statement which many people make. Unfortunately, expertise is not a notion which spontaneously appears in our consciousness. It is not a state of awareness which we cook up in a dream or are inherently born with. Becoming an expert is a process and is undertaken by the dedicated few who take the time to master their industry or craft. Merriam-Webster describes the word expert as "having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience." but they fail to mention just how much information and experience an individual must amass before they reach the level of expert. This definition provides a concise statement describing exactly what people think of when they think of an expert, but it fails to associate actual values to how long it takes to become an expert. Malcom Gladwell strives to describe just how long it takes to become an expert in his book Outliers. In this book, Gladwell utilizes the 10,000 hour rule.  The concept of this rule is that in order to be a noted expert in your given field, you must invest at least 10,000 hours of practice and study in your area of interest. With this in mind, is it any surprise that people who have worked in the same field their entire lives are the best at what they do? This is why it boggles my mind that large corporations allow their best experts to walk out the door to enter into retirement without even attempting to harness the experiential knowledge of that individual. They simply hire a replacement and start over again from the beginning. Can you fathom the loss of intellectual property for that company? To put it into perspective, let’s do that math. If we assume an average work week of 40 hours and 52 weeks in a year, it would take the average person just under 5 years to become an "expert". However, this number assumes a person will constantly work in one area of expertise for each of those hours and takes no vacation: a fact which is seldom true. So let’s say a new hire spends half of their time on developing experiences, it would take them 10 years just to get to the expert level! At that point, the new hire finally is at the same level as the person who retired… 10 years after the new hire started. Let’s call this the "stairway approach": you will still get there with work and dedication. It does not need to be this way. Artificial intelligence and knowledge capture technologies have come a long way and are now capable of capturing expertise and deploying it in a realistic manner. Discovery Machine has a methodology and technology which does just that. By working directly with experts, Discovery Machine can capture the knowledge of an expert and deploy it in action in weeks. Compare that with the 10 years described above. People who use the complete systems can learn from the successes and failure of their predecessors instead of reinventing the wheel. They can accelerate their climb to the top and learn from others as they go using an approach akin to riding an escalator. Would you rather learn from experiences of others or capture it and accelerate the education of the next recruit? So you choose: climb the stairs or take the escalator? You arrive at the same goal but one way is faster.

Here are 10 ways to identify a best practice. It is documented in a standard operating procedure. Experts like to tell stories about it. You have case studies. It is critical to your business. It is specific to your business. You wish you had better training on the topic. If somebody leaves the company, it will be lost. New hires to the organization do not know how to do it. They change, evolve and adapt with your organization. Some people execute the best practice better than others. How do you identify a best practice for your organization?