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Josh Allan Dykstra
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LeadershipApril 2, 2009

Hulu, Napster, And The Sheriff Of Nottingham

UPDATE 2/5/10 Apparently, the U.S. Congress has the same question I do: Why Did Hulu Block Boxee? Despite the strangeness of having something in common with Congress, I am still intrigued by the discussion around this issue; in many ways it represents a larger precedent for what could happen as the lines between television and the internet continue to blur. Click here for Mashable's take on the story. // The other day, I was talking with my friend Steve about tiny, insignificant things like the increasingly dystopian state of the world when we stumbled on the topic of the music industry. It's not surprising, I suppose, that this would happen since we're both musicians and have actually played in bands together over the years. During our conversation, Steve asked me -- "If you had a million dollars and were a musician with a lot of talent, how would you guarantee your success?" I must say, it's a rather brilliant question. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have a simple answer. Or maybe any answer at all. (In fact, my friend Will is attempting to answer a version of this question with a documentary he's currently filming; stay tuned about that... it will be fantastic.) I pulled out my soapbox/preachin' podium and launched into a diatribe about how the music industry has seemingly made the exact WRONG choices at seemingly every turn over the last decade: Napster is born, and the industry instantly feels the cracks in their foundation. They react instinctively, rashly, by beginning to sue their customers, but it's already too late. As the imitable Seth Godin says, at the moment when the musical message was separated from its physical medium the world changed. Forever. It's impossible for the earth to spin backwards. The beast has been released. The toothpaste ain't goin' back in the tube. It's a tricky tenet in business, innovation (which is just a fancier word for change, right?). Because if you don't have a culture that absolutely celebrates it, it really can't happen. It's almost impossible. Innovation requires people pay attention to intangibles and things that don't exist in this present reality, and these are pretty specific talents that won't survive if they are not recognized. And of course organizations have to also deal with tangibles. This is a difficult, paradoxical tension. The thing is, Napster really should have been created by the record labels. There's no getting around it -- they should have seen this coming. SOMEONE should have seen it, recognized it as the logical progression. But like they say... if it ain't broke...? The "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality is dangerous, because the reality is that everything is broken, all the time. Our business systems need to constantly be in a state of progress because that's what the world is. And now, Hulu. What are we going to do with you? You started with so much promise. In my conversation with Steve I was just bragging about you, how the film/TV industry looks like it will avoid the fate of their music counterparts. With a company like Hulu, they're already ahead of the game! But now this? Really? Did we learn nothing from the RIAA? From where I'm standing, this story is akin to when labels began suing music lovers. Boxee is a brilliant, cutting edge program (currently Mac/Linux only, sorry PCeoples) that aggregates video content from the web. With the addition of an iPhone app a few weeks ago, this little program became one of the first significant potential stakes in the heart of cable companies everywhere -- a genuinely feasible TV service provider replacement. But Hulu doesn't seem to want to play, which confuses me given their incredibly innovative spirit. Wouldn't it be true that allowing people to access content would be a REALLY GOOD THING? And the MORE people, the BETTER? Why would you alienate a group of consumers on the cutting edge? Why would you fight the future? Believe me, I understand about quality control and all that. Perhaps there's more going on here behind the scenes. Maybe it's a technology thing. But to me, this decision seems out of character for a company built on pushing the envelope. And that worries me, in a big picture way. We all have something important we can learn from the music industry, here. An organization doesn't have anything if it doesn't have something that people want. Anything. Furthermore, once a company (or industry) turns the corner and becomes the "bad guy," the collective population will not feel badly about taking from the "rich" (company/executives) to give to the "poor" (themselves). Haven't we seen this movie playing out on the screens of the "music business" over the last ten years? If companies don't provide reasonable ways to get content fairly, the people will just take it. Perhaps even more disturbing, they will not even feel badly about it because you have become perceptually unjust. The masses cheer for Robin Hood, not for the Sheriff of Nottingham. Dear Film & TV friends, don't kid yourselves that you are above the fate of the music industry. Sure, your product is less replicable than music because it's more complex. But the crowds will get there. And besides, the content is already on torrents around the world. We can get it for nothing if we want to. But as Hulu has thus far shown, there are viable alternatives to this fate. Many people are more than willing to watch a few well-done commercials in exchange for quality free online programming. It just doesn't seem to make sense to limit the applications we can use to see it. //
LeadershipMarch 6, 2009

Outliers

I finished reading Malcom Gladwell's latest book, Outliers, a few nights ago. I know what I have to say about this book is going to be completely esoteric, in the sense that you will likely have to read it before fully participating. Not that you're not brilliant people; I'm sure you can easily make sense out of my words. But my fear is that if you haven't read it, you may be tempted to take some of the things I say at face value, which is not how they're written -- they're written with the mental tapestry of Outliers as a background. I'm not sure of another way to do this, as I want to attempt to take the concepts Gladwell presents in Outliers one step further. You should probably view these initial paragraphs as much of a disclaimer as anything else, as I don't want to "give away" the book for you. Go read it and come on back! I enjoyed this read immensely, as I have all of Gladwell's works, and this is perhaps even my favorite. Where all his works provide plenty of abstract intellectual fodder for my mind to gleefully process for weeks, Outliers has a sharp edge of pragmatism that makes it special. It also contains tinges of the kind of social activism that really revs my engine, turns my crank, places my soapbox before a microphone... that kind of thing. Here's a few thoughts: 1. Education How can the educational system continue to ignore works like this? In Outliers, Gladwell presents a bevy of facts (not to mention crystal clear logic) for how and why the college admission process, for one thing, is mostly an outdated ludicrous absurdity. But he doesn't stop there; it turns out, the social constructs we've built around most organized projects (schools, sports, music, etc.) have become self-fulfilling prophecies, archetypal facades that have been built on so many layers of edifice that they can no longer even see where they began, and for what purpose. How does one even go about reforming these magnificent disasters of greed and perpetual fragmentation? Do we even try? I'm inclined to encourage the beginning of something else; to foster and support a brand new educational model, for example, that can hopefully someday replace the current system. (Gladly, some of this discussion has already begun: P21, KIPP, etc..) 2. Self-Made BS I love the idea that the "self-made man" is a total myth. I've suspected this to be true for awhile, intuitively, so it's nice to see some logical background for it. The truth is, nobody makes it on their own. EVER. This makes infinitely more sense to me. People don't live in a vacuum; we are constantly "made" by our social surroundings. That's not to say we have no control, but once we begin to realize that we need to change our surroundings and not just ourselves, I think we'll be a long way towards undersatnding how to better create the future. 3. Social Assessments How can we connect an understanding of the social construction component in success with studies of our own lives, past and future? This is the issue that intrigues me the most about the implications of Outliers: is there a way to somehow extrapolate a model from Gladwell's work to where we could analyze our own life story -- our own social constructs, our family backgrounds, the month and year in which we were born, and the particular moment of history we were born into -- and combine it with personal research into individual talents and strengths, and then multiply that knowledge by what we are passionate about, thereby providing a much more insigntful process into each person's unique "place in the world"...?? Seems like a an intense endeavor, to say the least, but just imagine the possibilities if we could! We've already made so much progress within individualized assessments (psychological, emotional, talent, etc.); why couldn't we develop systems to generate "social" or "contextual" assessments? //
LeadershipMarch 5, 2009

Productivity Stats

I came across an fascinating list of stats provided by Dr. Donald E. Wetmore, the President of the Productivity Institute in Connecticut. Some pretty interesting stuff in here!
  • There will be 2 million marriages in this country this year and 1 million divorces. 95% of divorces are caused by a “lack of communication”
  • The average working person spends less than 2 minutes per day in meaningful communication with their spouse or “significant other”. The average working person spends less than 30 seconds a day in meaningful communication with their children.
  • 80% of employees do not want to go to work on Monday morning. By Friday, the rate only drops to 60%.
  • 31% of working Americans do not use all their vacation time that they have earned. On average, three out of twelve (one quarter!) of all vacation days go unused.
  • The average person gets 1 interruption every 8 minutes, or approximately 7 an hour, or 50-60 per day. The average interruption takes 5 minutes, totaling about 4 hours or 50% of the average workday. 80% of those interruptions are typically rated as “little value” or “no value” creating approximately 3 hours of wasted time per day.
  • On an average day, there are 17 million meetings in America.
  • By taking 1 hour per day for independent study, 7 hours per week, 365 hours in a year, one can learn at the rate of a full-time student. In 3-5 years, the average person can become an expert in the topic of their choice, by spending only one hour per day.
  • 95% of the books in this country are purchased by 5% of the population. 95% of self-improvement books, audio tapes, and video tapes purchased are not used.
  • 97% of workers, if they became financially independent, would not continue with their current employer or in their current occupation.
  • 20% of the average workday is spent on “crucial” and “important” things, while 80% of the average workday is spent on things that have “little value” or “no value”.
  • In the last 20 years, working time has increased by 15% and leisure time has decreased by 33%.
  • A person who works with a “messy” or cluttered desk spends, on average, 1 1/2 hours per day looking for things or being distracted by things or approximately 7 1/2 per workweek. “Out of sight; out of mind.” When it’s in sight, it’s in mind.
  • The average reading speed is approximately 200 words per minute. The average working person reads 2 hours per day. A Speed Reading course that will improve the reading rate to 400 words per minute will save an hour per day.
  • 90% of those who join health and fitness clubs will stop going within the first 90 days.
  • 9 out of 10 people daydream in meetings.
  • 60% of meeting attendees take notes to appear as if they are listening.
  • 40% of working people skip breakfast. 39% skip lunch. Of those who take a lunch break, 50% allow only 15 minutes or less.
  • The average American watches 28 hours of television per week.
  • 78% of workers in America wish they had more time to “smell the roses”.
  • 49% of workers in America complain that they are on a treadmill.
  • Angry people are twice as likely to suffer a heart attack as a person in better control of their emotions.
  • 75% of heart attacks occur between the hours of 5:00 a.m.-8:00 a.m., local time, and more heart attacks occur on Monday than on any other day of the week.
  • 25% of sick days are taken for illness. 75% of sick days are taken for other reasons.
  • 95% of the things we fear will occur, do not occur.
  • Taking 5 minutes per day, 5 days per week to improve one’s job will create 1,200 little improvements to a job over a 5 year period.
  • 1 out of 3 workers changes jobs every year.
  • 1 out of 5 people moves every year.
  • 70% of American workers desire to own their own business.
  • 75% of American workers complain that they are tired.
  • The average worker gets a 6 hours and 57 minutes of sleep per night.
  • The average worker spends 35 minutes per day commuting.
  • When someone is asking for our time for a meeting, 80% of the time, there is an alternate date and time that will be acceptable.
  • Good time managers do not allocate their time to those who “demand” it, but rather, to those who “deserve” it.
  • The most powerful word in our Time Management vocabulary is “no”.
  • 1 hour of planning will save 10 hours of doing.
  • Hiring a college student to do routine tasks (grocery shopping, yard work, household chores, etc.) will create as much as 20 hours per week for the average person to devote to more productive uses.
  • The average person today (1999) receives more information on a daily basis than the average person received in a lifetime in 1900.
  • We retain 10% of what we read. We retain 20% of what we hear. We retain 30% of what we see. We retain 50% of what we hear and see. We retain 70% of what we say. We retain 90% of what we do.
  • Half of what is known today, we did not know 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the last 10 years. And it is said to be doubling again every 18 months.
Now, I admit that I do not know where these stats came from (although Dr. Wetmore seems to be a very credible individual), but even if they're just close, they're pretty darn interesting, don't you think? //