Masterful

This week, something a little different . . . three videos that illustrate different strategic issues . . . read (and click to watch each) ensuring you remain curious and open-minded.

Insult response

Now, this is masterful. Watch?Steve Jobs?respond to a blatant insult from an audience member at a developer conference. Jobs is up there, in the glare of the spotlight, with thousands watching him.?

Did you notice the following things that Jobs said?

1. He’s right, but only partly
2. There’s a bigger picture
3. We are working hard
4. I want everyone here to commit to my vision

Question: “What ways do you have to neutralise critics, while valuing their input?”

Octopus teachers

I took a trip to the Maldives earlier this year and one of the most remarkable things I saw was two octopuses mating - right in front of me. The entire act took half an hour, and for both male and female, this is the only time they’ll do it. Afterwards, both consider their evolutionary job done, and the male goes off to die, while the female births eggs and then stops eating until she too dies.

South African filmmaker, Craig Foster, literally falls in love with one of these cephalopods and his ‘affair’ is the subject of the Netflix doco “My Octopus Teacher”, which I highly recommend.?

I didn’t know that an octopus carries the bulk of its brain in its arms and, without a skeleton, it can render itself solid — and even walk on two legs. Foster snorkels every day for a year and gently coaxes the octopus so she eventually allows him to enter her world, and he gets to know every detail of her perilous existence. I came away awestruck by the sheer adaptability of this creature, and teary from the emotional bond Foster forms and which was inevitably broken.?

Question: How closely do you observe others who are completely unlike you? What do you learn from them?

The source of uniqueness

Here’s an interesting theory: many of the most unique cultural features of the USA all originated from a single cause.

Slavery.

Most non-Americans are perplexed by their love of guns. The lack of universal healthcare. The tipping. Even the?US electoral college?is a relic of the need for Southern slave-owning states to have enough representation in Washington. Watch Melissa Harris-Lacewell from Princeton University explain it.?

But what about tipping? Well, freed slaves were not allowed to earn a wage as porters and could only earn tips. That practice then expanded into all hospitality and service sectors, many of which employed African-Americans at first.

Guns? The second amendment permits “a well-regulated militia”. Why do you need a civilian militia? To guard against slave uprisings, of course. And because of a large underclass it was threatened by, the culture of guns persisted among white Americans especially.

And health insurance? Jim Crow laws persisted until the 1960s which prevented freed slaves and their descendants from voting, going to the same schools as white people or living in the same neighbourhoods. A natural extension of this was preventing them from getting the same healthcare as white Americans, paid for by white Americans.?

Yes, it’s perhaps a long bow to draw, but students of history know well that the?‘butterfly effect’?persists in strange ways, and these anomalous US practices are among them.?

Question: What decisions are you making today that may have far reaching, perhaps unintended, consequences??

I love knowing you’re enjoying 5MSM, so please take a moment to comment, and even drop me a line.

Until next Friday, notice peculiarities and ask where they come from.

Stay well,

Andrew