business strategy

Incorruptible Organizations AMA with Eric Ries. Wednesday 2/4 at 3:00 PM CT

Lean Startup author who now focuses on legal structures to protect mission-driven organizations from corruption. incorruptible.co

Free book giveaway! Register here.

AMA with Jordan Myska Allen. Wednesday 2/4 at 12:30pm CST

Founder and CEO of UpTrust, founder of Relatefulness... solving seemingly impossible social problems and having fun doing it

#heywait 

Leave the country or stay? There was a time period where my friends and I were getting invited to these new exciting community projects in the Central America and Asia and Europe. Crypto millionaires and retired billionaires trying to bootstrap whole new civilizations and villages and large retreat centers.

Yet, all of us felt a certain affinity and even responsibility to stay in the States.

Which is a little strange considering probably all of our families also have immigrated here at some point.

How does one assess whether to establish a new home abroad and call it quits on the homeland? Or stick it out and try to make it work?

It reminds me of the dilemma that's often posed around do you try to reform an institute as a player within or do you go off and establish a brand new thing? Does staying in the current system doomed to be corrupted and compromised? Or is going off naive and doomed to failure as a retreat from life?

As I'm writing this, I could see the same dilemma in deciding whether to stay working for a corp or start your own business. Or stay in a currently challenging relationship or call it quits to find a new partner. Or even try to be a lay person in the world or go off to be a monk in the mountains.

I suppose the answer is ultimately context is what matters most.

And I've yet to see a really compelling abroad experiment that seemed actually integrated or likely to deliver on the promises.

I, myself, have been increasingly interested in building out more of the physical and social infrastructure locally to create the new type of village community in AVL. But, those billionaire communities or even rural Portugal tiny communities do tempt me at times.

I didn't book an accommodation because of AI generated images. I love AI because it has helped me save hours by automating systems, analyzing SEO, and creating website content.

But today, while researching places to stay in Buenos Aires, I realized that we need to be mindful of when to use AI so that trust is not eroded.

My wife sent me the link to an apartment listed on Booking dot com. This listing had tons of great reviews but several of the images were clearly AI generated. They were generic. Fake looking. This made me question the reviews too, especially since I saw one name repeatedly pop up under different reviews. 

I searched for this property on Tripadvisor and saw customer submitted photos. Here I could see that several of the Booking dot com photos were generated based off the customer submitted ones. And the Tripadvisor reviews were fewer and not as favorable.

We didn't book this place. It may still be a great place to stay. But the use of AI generated images threw me off. 

I feel like I should have a clearer point to make. But I'm also feeling lazy to come up with one.

"You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”. Dennis Hightower, who at the time was head of Disney International.

He asked me why I wasn’t doing something, and I responded by explaining the pros and cons of two different ways of doing it. Thoughtfully, he replied “You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”

The best Founders avoid over-analyzing. At a startup, you don’t have time — and the result will most likely be marginal. Pick a way and do it. Be consistently decisive.

"You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”. Dennis Hightower, who at the time was head of Disney International.

He asked me why I wasn’t doing something, and I responded by explaining the pros and cons of two different ways of doing it. Thoughtfully, he replied “You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”

The best Founders avoid over-analyzing. At a startup, you don’t have time — and the result will most likely be marginal. Pick a way and do it. Be consistently decisive.

Creative thinking vs winning an argument. Creative thinking needs to be taught and valued as highly as smart thinking, right thinking, and ethical thinking.  

I wonder if we've been trained - consciously and unconsciously - to converse in formats that can be intimidating and arguable ... inviting responses that are judging, which can then be judged back and forth:  smart or stupid, right or wrong, ethical or corrupt ... that binary thing we do.  I propose that this creates anxiety and intimidates creative brainstorming, mutually respectful musing, generous listening, genuine questioning, seeking connection and curious questions?  

I can be as guilty as the next person - fishing for affirmation by winning a point in conversation ...   

#DeepTakes

I don't see any of my posts. The main feed excludes my comments and posts, anybody else?

The Relateful Company should embrace more job titles. We’re under-appreciating orange.

We’ve included the green critiques, like the classic:

What gets measured gets managed — even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so - V. F. Ridgway, 1956

But we need to embrace more healthy competition, striving for excellence, even rankings.

one way we can do this is to make more liberal use of titles, and brag on people. @Valerie Daniel is the MANAGING DIRECTOR, and we should have her listed as such in emails and things

What else is healthy orange and how can we transclude it?
What do we already do that is already healthy orange?

How can meta-awareness be trained? Any ideas? So I’m trying to purposefully train my meta-awareness. One thing that’s hard about it is I want to be seen as super meta-aware and so I hide how I’m not.

My current training method: Catching flies with fly paper.

I eat breakfast outside and the flies always come for the bowl and so I hung up four fly papers in a square and then put the bowl under it when I’m done. It’s really weird to watch them get caught and die. Some get away. One got away today and immediately landed on another strip.

I’m using this like a metaphor right now.

The flies are thoughts.

The paper is attachment.

To train meta-awareness I need to be aware (not pro or con) of the attachment-ability of my mind and its thoughts as well as the space in between where the bowl of food is placed.

I sit in an interaction and wait until I think four thoughts and then I hold them meaning I don’t think about them but I don’t push them away.

I imagine that once I’m holding the four thoughts I have entered a nascent state, like I’m a baby consciousness and I tell myself there is a new action possible but that I maybe haven’t seen it so I both have to do something hard (baby grabbing cup) + something novel (Blas not acting out, Blas not just reporting feelings).

It’s really fucking hard. I kinda fall back on what I know if the stuckness lasts too long.

Anybody have tips about mistakes I could be making with this? Anybody else have ideas? Bonus points and trustability if it doesn’t sound like regurgitated Bhagavad Gita.

I’m really sure I’m meta-aware in some ways and really disidentified with how I got here, how to turn it up, etc.

Left Media Bias bigger than i realized. No matter how you measure (print media, online, page views, paid subscribers, followers, etc) US media leans heavily left, to an extent that surprised me. Most ways I tried back-of-the napkin math have right + right-leaning news sources being below 10%… and even the most generous assessments that include lost of neutral/other outlets still have left + left-leaning above 50% (meaning 5:1 liberal to conservative is the lowest estimate i could find).

Context

The US is pretty evenly split in terms of the two major parties:
> 45% of U.S. adults Republican-ish, 44% Democrat-ish Gallup 2022

Some sources

• Allsides Here’s Allsides review
  their media bias on Allsides.com here’s the site’s own assessment of its own bias
• Googling the top 25 most-subscribed news channels in the United States, and
• Even the more left leaning LLMS can’t help but point out this as a fact of modern media.

Takeaways

• First, this gives me empathy for Republicans. Many American conservatives feel like the underdog, regardless of how much power or influence they yield, because in a very real way, they’re not represented in a substantial part of the public narrative making machine—the media—proportionally. The perception of bias is true despite their being popular conservative outlets with sizable audiences, and as a result the left has influence on public opinion.Impact on Public Trust (but also how come Republicans aren’t better at getting media subscribers?)

• Second, how come Republicans, who are stereotypically thought of us as having more business acumen or money or something, are getting so handily beaten in the media?

• Third, I try not to get involved in politics because I’m scared of loosing connection or turning people off of the value of relatefulness because of my takes, even if they’re nuanced. We’re very good at otherizing people and forgetting to look at nuances. I’m certain I lack nuance. I don’t want a difference of political opinion to get in the way of our connecting. I started writing up this for the TTT email (which I ended up deciding not to send) but I realized others are deeply esconced in politics and way smarter and more educated in the field than I, so I decided to not go there. But here on uptrusting.com I think it’s a cool opporutnity to test; could also be a nice road to empathy, or self-empathy, depending on our identifications.