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In any leadership situation, whether managing individuals directly or trying to influence them, managing high performers can be a difficult task. Quite often, the intellect, capabilities or ambition of a high performer can eclipse that of their manager which can create a perceived inverted power dynamic (I.e. the subordinate sees themselves as beyond the capabilities of the manager). 

In most instances the management of this high-performer can take one of two roads. The first, a contentious road, where any management of the high performer resents any managerial input or direction and drives the high performer out of the organization or around the manager. The second, a nurturing road that supports the high performers ambition, directs their energies appropriately and fulfills the potential of the individual and the team they are working in. 

The following is an overview of tactics that can help a manager manage high performers and take that valuable, second road. 

Understand their internal narrative:
The most important step you can take in aiming to manage high performers is to understand the internal narrative of who they believe themselves to be and how their work fits into that narrative. More often than not high performers will have created an internal narrative that drives their behaviours to either contribute towards the positive narrative they have created about themselves or contradicts a negative narrative that someone has put onto them. For example, ones narrative could be “I’m a young superstar talent that’s smarter than the rest and I need to demonstrate that in meetings to maintain that perception.” Or, “I don’t need to be at that meeting because I know it all already.” In both instances the ability of the high performer isn’t necessarily in question, but the behaviours are not necessarily productive. Beneath that narrative is likely some point of insecurity which that behaviour is trying to compensate for. Connecting with that insecurity, in time, will build trust and enable you to help direct their efforts in a constructive way.
 

Identify your point of leverage:
In all likelihood the high performer’s talents or skills will eclipse that of the manager. That being said, there will likely be a blindspot or gap in their skillset that will eventually enhance their ability to be successful. For example, they may be brilliant, but that brilliance may alienate people and not enable them to rally support from their peers, subordinates or executives. Identifying this gap is critical to create a point of leverage with the high performer, enabling the manager to use it, in a constructive and positive way, to provide feedback and drive efforts in a particular direction. This leverage can only be used if there is trust between the manager and the high performer and there is alignment of objectives. Which comes to the next point. 

Align your objectives:
Once you’ve identified your point of leverage (I.e. the way in which you can contribute to the high performers success) it’s critically important to align your objectives. If the high performer’s ambition is to be a global domain expert, identify ways you can support that ambition through internal and external means, but do so in a way that helps you, as a manager, be successful. The point of leverage helps you to contribute to the development of the high performer and creates a trusted bond in the name of achieving those shared objectives. Aligning ones objectives creates value for the individuals involved as well as the broader team and organization.  

Fuel their ambition:
One obvious, but important tip, is to fuel their ambition, don’t try to quell it. Especially in instances where the high performer’s ambition has created a less desirable outcome, it is important not to try and manage their ambition. Fuel it in a way that directs their ambition towards the shared objectives and enables their further development. Any quelling of that ambition will only breed resentment. 

Manage your own ego:
One potentially difficulty in managing a high performer is keeping a grip on your own ego. In all likelihood you’ve also been successful, have your own ambitions, and have a strong desire to grow and succeed. Managing a high performer who may challenge those aspects of yourself. It’s critical to not make it about you and your needs. Focusing your intentions and attention to maximizing the output and impact that the high performer has on you and your team is the priority. With strongly aligned objectives you, as the manager, will benefit from their performance.
 

Give constructive feedback:
With many high performers they will likely have some sort of growth mindset that will be directed in the path of what has enabled them to be most successful in their career to date. If they’ve been technically strong, they will undoubtedly want to continue to grow in that direction. If their skills surpass yours, providing constructive feedback in that area may not be well received. That being said, especially in areas where they have an opportunity to develop (I.e. points of leverage), providing constructive feedback in that domain is essential. High performers will tend to be needy when it comes to positive reinforcement but you can’t necessarily indulge this endlessly. Create a cadence of interactions and ensure that constructive feedback is balanced and measured in the frequency of its delivery.

Empower don’t manage:
Finally, your mindset as a manager / influencer of high performers has to be one of empowerment and not management. Finding ways to empower them, even if it requires a certain amount of autonomy, will be much more effective than trying to manage them. Managing them directly, especially in terms of task management, won’t yield the maximal impact and will eventually frustrate them. Empowering them to use their talents in service of your aligned objectives is usually the best path in getting the most out of high performers. 

In summary, managing high performers can be challenging for a variety of different reasons. The key is to best try and understand the dynamics that drive them and understand the dynamics you bring into their lives. You have the opportunity to be an influential figure in their lives which can not only be professionally rewarding, but also personally. Seize the opportunity. 

The forecast, while varied on its timing and depth of impact, is calling for an economic contraction. And while it is always a fools errand to try and time both tops and bottoms of economic expansion it appears that we’re a tad overdue. Record breaking lengths of expansion, aided by incredibly liberal lending and stimulus, has left many of our newer industries entirely unaware of what an economic contraction can look, and feel like. 

This is especially true of the digital economy. The incredible rates of growth seen in digitally oriented industries have staggered even the most optimistic predictions. While the revenue models have hardly been innovative, the growth and size of the entire technology (and digital) sector is enormous. What it means to continue to grow in an economic contraction is entirely different from that of an economic expansion. It can be done, but the work is harder, longer and not without greater degrees of accountability. Businesses without positive unit economics will hardly be able to sustain operations let alone the ridiculous valuations they’ve commanded for some time. 

The technology and digital industry’s aside, growing through economic contractions is old hat for many of the world’s largest companies. Industry by industry, the playbook for absorbing economic contractions is well understood and well implemented. In short, rationalize discretionary expenditures, moderate investment in R&D, focus on core operations, squeeze financing and payables terms, contract the workforce and hope for accommodations from state actors.  

That being said, this time may be different. Beyond the realities of our genuine lack of financial tools to help us navigate an economic contraction (I.e. record low interest rates, liquidity already pouring into markets, tax cuts already made) we have a very strong deflationary force coming out of the digital economy which may further exacerbate the situation. The analogue dollars to digital problem has not gone away. Our lamented friend called scarcity continues to be eroded as our digital vanguards show little care and understanding of how it creates real growth. But that’s a fight for another day.  

With all this in mind there is a path forward to growing in recessionary times. It’s not pretty but it takes preparation, stomach and a dynamism that many companies struggle with. It starts with an aggressive cash position. If you, as a leader, aren’t currently aggressively pushing a cash position ahead of this next economic contraction times will be tough. While overnight lending facilities may fund ongoing operations it will hardly position you well to do what you need to do next which is aggressively pursue digital acquisitions across your value chain. As the economic contraction takes shape, you’ll need to have a good line of sight to all the players in your value chain that have novel, disruptive technologies, but have yet to establish more than a toe hold in your value chain. Buy them. Worry about integration later but scooping up the likely limping technology companies that have novelty in disrupting how you do business can drive yield and new revenues. Avoid data-focused companies for now as the defined value of that data, even in the best of economic times, hasn’t likely been established. Avoid anything that’s discretionary to the value chain as well. If it’s not driving yield it’s not going to be absorbed by the end customer. 

This value-chain acquisition approach will also allow you to develop a better picture of what a progressive, digitally oriented value chain can look like. This will necessitate a clean data path from start to finish which is an investment that’s worth the time and effort. You will need to take this on and clean this up. Outsource if necessary but a clean line of data from start to finish is critical. If you can do this now, ahead of a contraction, great. In parallel, the time is now to redevelop your value chain as a digital ecosystem. Look for byproduct industries that you can spin out, specifically looking for different uses of your technology and data. Partner where necessary and drive strong incentive alignment in those agreements. Growth can be had here even in an economic contraction. 

In terms of the existing operations, do as you’ve done with a lens on digitizing as much as you can. Computation and algorithmic advances will continue at least through academia in these tough times which will further enable discovery. Research partnerships are possible, especially where government subsidies exist. Know them, take advantage of them. 

Finally, reinvent. Business as usual is the corporate equivalent of the banality of evil. If you’re smart, you’ll see this for what it is and resist the temptation to buckle down to it. Any digital disruption will come online with ten times the force it did during the downturn, especially as predatory VCs re-emerge with their coffers to find those disruptors in industry. 

There is a whole other subset of operational activities one can take in an effort to grow in recessionary times. The yield’s tend to be margin compressions of what used to be available operationally with some exceptions (see above). One thing worth noting is that along with any prolonged economic contraction there will no doubt be a political one, both at the grass roots and state level. Seize the opportunity to influence the discourse remembering that ecosystem growth comes from incentive alignment both inside and outside of your organization. Exploitation economics will have no place here and given the sensitive nature of our times one should engage with good intentions.  Good luck! 

Depending on the day, we are immersed in news of economic optimism and pessimism, and technological progress and regress. The narrative always ends up being over reduced and the nuance missed but underneath the headlines are an emergent set of themes that are simple to recognize but incredibly difficult to take advantage of. They are that our world is becoming dramatically more complex, and it is becoming dramatically more sensitive. 

The complexity is self evident. Traditional boundaries that used to delineate domains that provided leaders reliable heuristics are continuing to crumble and the contingent nature of of these domains continue to create cascades of effects throughout organizations and their associated stakeholders. While financial markets are leading indicators of these effects, finding the root cause of the of any contagion is becoming almost impossible. Private actions are made public, public actions are have private effects, technological advances are accelerating and institutional knowledge is being automated. Furthermore, more tasks are being digitized and modelled and the seemingly untouchable domains of work are being challenged. There is no simple narrative that can capture the true nature of these complexities, this is especially true when we test the limits of statistical regression, reinforcement learning and the millions of permutations we are generating computationally. 

In conjunction with this increasing complexity is a sensitization, or tension, in our systems that are creating perturbations into our economic, organizational and social structures. From societal and financial inequities to technological and economical rises and falls the sensitivity of our systems or organization are more sensitive than ever and the constant reorganizing of corporate orientations in light of these effects are mind blowing. The dynamism required to be aware of these changes let alone take advantage of these changes are largely elusive. Even the most nimble of organizations cannot react fast enough. Compound this sensitivity with the arrogance of corporate (and start up) actions and you have a set of outcomes that could quickly cascade throughout our financial, social and supply-chain networks almost instantly.  

While it is quite easy to see these two emergent themes as being overtly negative the truth is that it is subjective. Subjective in what you see when you see the effects of the increasing sensitive complexities. What is critical for us to all recognize is that bound up in these sensitive complexities are value. Value in not only financial terms but also in social ones. Capitalizing and socializing that value is what’s critical to build not only a growth-oriented organization but also one that’s resilient to these effects. The paralysis that many leaders face in these new realities in entirely normal. Where to turn to action is what counts. And as far as many can see just increasing ones cash position in the face of these sensitive complexities is a strategy with limited effects (and viable duration). There is growth to be had out there. The first step is knowing what you’re dealing with.    

I imagine a world, where people’s intentions come to be, where others would admire their beauty, understanding their origins and intent.

I imagine a place, where one’s outward critique, would be met with honest pause and reflection, evaluated only on its merits to create something for others first, satisfying oneself second. 

I imagine a time, when one’s thoughts could drift, unfettered by self censorship, where trust was implied, and anxiety, fear, depression and anger were embraced by others, seeking to soothe their start. 

I imagine an age, where the tranquility of an idea, wasn’t drowned out with all the necessities, conditions and contingencies, of where those ideas may lead.

I imagine a friend, whose life mattered as much as my own, whose health and wellness was bound up with mine, whose hopes and dreams drifted aimlessly along my own. 

I imagine a foe, whose hate ran so deep, such that they would confront me with their words, aiming them at my mind and my heart, trying to bring us closer together with their strike.

I imagine a day, where all our tools and efforts, reflected a love that lay deep within ourselves, enlightening each of us as to the power that we each hold inside. 

I imagine a home, where every door led to other doors, only opened with a warmth of heart, a sharing spirit that transcends the walls that separate ourselves from each other. 

I imagine a life, whose tears and smiles were one in the same, whose days did not bleed from one day to the other, whose senses guided them through the mystery of being, whose address was known by all. 

I imagine a death, whose time came without a sorrow, whose impact was felt by all, whose story was always told.

I imagine to imagine, because without it, I wouldn’t know what was possible. 

A short essay on the meaning of Life in a world of mass transmission

In a world of mass transmission the constitutions we collectively use to define what is Life must be challenged. Call it the evisceration of the Turing test. Our organic origins, the inhalation of oxygen, the photosynthesis of light, seems so basic in comparison to what it means to transmit. As our airwaves pulsate with information, the electromagnetic spectrum is enriched with a density of living stuffs that does more for the world than any oxygen molecule ever could. Our transmissions establish bearings, distance, time and controls. Our transmissions establish relations, benchmarks, status, transactions, emotions, beliefs and attitudes. Our transmissions actually embody the outcomes of our unconscious processes while all the while endowing life to toasters, fridges, cars, trucks and an assortment of other dead objects. Beyond all that our transmissions use their simple 1’s and 0’s to endow us, collectively, with a single, representative language of all things, at all times. While the translation from dolphin to code has yet to be cracked – It can be cracked and it will.

If one were to believe in establishment of Life as the ability to transmit it would immediately beg the question of what kind of morality would suit such a world. In a single voice we would need to start to sing in harmony the songs of a moral code taking into account the status of cars, toasters, dolphins and people and build just relations between them all. Further to these just relations the categorization of life as the ability to transmit will ask of us more fundamental questions that we often avoid. Questions of love, equity, belief and meaning are all ideas that need to be confronted in a world that sees life as the ability to transmit. And what of death? Does the ceasing of transmission establish time of death or do we seek a new category of life – an undead class of people and things that exist but can no longer transmit? The answers to these questions will surely have outcomes that could easily thwart or accelerate our collective progress as a collection of transmitting species.   

To transmit as a categorization of what life is can be easily validated if one were to look back at our scientific origins. The fledgling cellular duplication that happened in a primordial pool millions of years ago is a kind of transmission our world gave us in the beginning. We were given a voice and a means to communicate with our outside world that gave rise to the complexes of humanity we see today. In our age of mass transmission we are at the precipice of endowing the world with a similar voice. If life begins at transmission the codes of what we transmit need original rules by design. Rules that take into account all that we know to be true with the ability to change as new complexes emerge out of our collective transmissions is crucial. The wonderfulness and the horrors we’ve seen need an objective voice to help manage the potential outcomes that lie within the vaults of “big data.” The ask is not small but the potential outcomes warrant the work.

Transmission as life is a gift as much as it is a responsibility. It is us, at this point in our history, that need to take stock of what we’ve done, what we value and what we want for all that transmits. Like a newborn in a crib we nurture life into being both worldly and connected. Our ‘things’ that we see as transmissions are just as subjected to our actions as the trees, the animals, the soils and the atmosphere are to our harm to the environment. In fact, life as transmission actually gives voice to those things that once never had it. The real questions we need to collectively ask ourselves are not “is it us?” or “are we ready?” to bestow life as transmission to all that we choose to transmit. That truth is already upon us. The real questions we must ask ourselves is “what do we think they’ll say?” and “will we choose to listen?”

We blew it. The Internet, we blew it. What was once a potential power center for democracy, the rebalancing of information access, new kinds of state structures, open economic possibilities and a sight line to an egalitarian meritocracy has been co-opted into a new, hegemonic platform of exploit for the extremely wealthy. Sure, many will say that there are still means of achieving such lofty goals but it’s hard to look at all the exploits of the traditional powers of control exerting their force on net neutrality, surveillance and distributed economics to feel like we, the people, are still at the helm. In fact, it’s hard to believe that it was ever any other way. Were we duped? Was this whole public domain called the Internet ever really free? Could it be that the Internet was just a Trojan horse? A horse whose frame shone of all the unifying potential for the world? Or was it, in reality, a horse that was filled with the same ideological controls from the previous centuries dominate modernity? Did we really blow it or was it a ruse all along?

Noam Chomsky was right in that the Internet was born out of the state sector from public investment. And yes, at its core laid an ideological, technical structure that was inherently non-capitalistic. Copying was integral and scarcity was a nonissue. People and access prevailed over copyright and privatization and throughout its early years the Internet lived and breathed the air of the public domain. Its purpose: to share knowledge. But like all emergent effects of anything ‘new’ the Internet had its contingencies, dependencies and would always be subjected to the whims of its broader context. This context is the real killer of what we believed to be true about the Internet.

The Internet was, and still is, hugely dependent on the microelectronics industry to survive and that industry needed the Internet to grow. During in its privatization in the mid 1990’s the Internet was let loose into the private domain in order for it to realize its full potential as a growth vehicle. Capital, patents and copyrights began to take precedent over people, access and copying and the result, as we all know, was the wild speculation with little material delivery. In short, all show and no go. The tech crash in the early 2000’s showed the world of capital that the Internet was not like any other territory to be conquered. The terrain was different and the land itself was not ready to be privatized. In addition, the early pirates of the Internet had hacked enough safeguards and back doors to challenge the old models. It appeared that the Trojan horse had let its soldiers out too early. The unfortunate truth was the first go round was just a test.

Fast forward a few years to today and the land of the Internet is totally privatized and controlled. The things we point to as democratic, egalitarian and free are in the hands of just a handful of people. Massive technology manufacturers control your interface, huge telecoms control your access, and enormous information technology platforms control your identity. This consortium, in effect, has left us in the hands of moneymen who dilute our senses of oppression with sweeping visions, falsified missions and enough diversions of progress to lull us into a daze of supporting a belief in a future that’s supposed to be very different from the past. Do no wrong? Yeah right. In fact, the only honest people in this new, controlled land we call our collective, digital selves is the telecommunication and entertainment industry. Their view: Fuck you and pay me. That’s my fiber and those are my movies so fuck you and pay me. But if we probe further the altruisms of the Valley they are hardly in the name of anything beyond control and capital. In most instances they’re thinly veiled attempts to recruit people towards a purpose while all the while employing massive efforts in the name of users, profiles, targets and sales. It’s pure ideology. But old habits die hard. Do we really think that Amazon’s labor practices are an anomaly or are they just the continued progression of the dismantling of the labor movement even further? Are things really changing that much?

As much respect as I have for Steven Kotler Abundance is a pipe dream, an ideological cocktail of sedation. And sure, scarcity is still an issue but it’s becoming less and less relevant as the TPP comes online and anonymity goes away. Yes there is hope through encryption and leaks but what I’m trying to draw attention to is that being on the Internet and pretending like your start up is going to change the world is the wrong fight. That Trojan horse you’re trying to ride is a myth that’s long been emptied of the people that now own your house, road and app platform you now depend on.

We were duped in believing that the Internet was something different. Hope and Change were slogans not only of the current President but of the Internet as well. But just like the current president the prevailing ideological context, while flawed enough for us to believe in something’s potential, was too strong for any real change to follow through. But the fight is not done and nor are we who believed in the power of the Internet. Our fight has once again returned to the hearts and minds of people around the world. Our commons is now partially connected and is still subjected to populous waves. Our virtual roads, house, parks and cars may be totally privatized but what we do in those places is what can take the power back. It’s time to take our thirst for that Hope and Change and channel it into dismantling that horse from the inside.

The advancements we all benefit from technology and the internet are really beyond scope and imagination. The pace of its acceleration and amplitude continues to astound as more markets, businesses, power structures and veils of control continue to crumble in its wake. Disintermediation of industries continue and as one looks forward, as Wikibrands has, there are up to $34 trillion dollars on the table left to be disrupted. Just like no one can really conceptualize global warming as a thing it is nearly impossible to conceptualize $34 trillion dollars. The abstract nature of just that begs another question though. Are we losing the ability to conceptualize transactions altogether?

A favorite artist of mine, especially when writing, is David Wenngren. His band, Library Tapes, is an interesting blend of piano, strings and industrial noise, drawing to light the contradiction of our desires of tranquility in an age of constant progression. Of all his work there was one song that always resonated with my for some reason. It was Repor from Höstluft which you can listen to below: 

The quiet cranking of the old cash register in the background conjures images and emotions of our cash transactions of old. The nominal gesture of collecting money, as a representation of your or someone else’s efforts, symbolized an exchange of value. It was tactile, with weight, occasionally sound, and definitely provoked a state of thoughtfulness in regards to the exchange value of what was being bought. In fact, we would often pause to take a mental note of the transaction as the sound of the matrix printer symbolized its completion. It was was an exchange with purpose, with meaning. Today this no longer exists. Our transactions today are silent and frictionless. Moreover, our transactions today are so efficient that we are beginning to lose the referential benefit of its existence because of its form.

Think about it this way. By removing the sensory stimulus from our environment our reactions to the implications become dulled. We don’t emotionally register events as significant. It is all just data on servers re-registering values in columns and rows in the sky. It carries nothing but the symbolic representation of value. In fact, money today has become totally abstract and it barely even serves its duty as a reference to the relational value of goods. Furthermore, because of the advent of credit cards, the referential value that does exists is totally delayed. It’s as if transactions are purely abstract!

Another facet that goes beyond the silence of transactions is the centrality of it. With technological advances we are now able to transact in more places than ever before. In fact, we are now able to turn non transactional devices, like phones, into both the cash AND the cash register. All without the sensory registration of the transaction!

We are also in a time where transactions are occurring without ANY human intervention at all. Financial markets operate with next to no human involvement, direct debit campaigns rack up transactions without our touch, and data charges flow dollars per byte without our input. This level of transactional abstraction, especially in a digital age which is quickly moving into the machine-to-machine management space, may either disassociate us completely from

transactions where rules-based decisions are made in the abstract or it will over lever us to a state where we’ll need a full economic reset. Either way something as simple as the death of paper flowing through a dot matrix printer is symbolic in the way it signals the end of the traditional transaction.

The silence of our transactions, while seemingly a trite idea, is yet another way that we, as a society, are pulling away through technology from the internal registration of explicit human behaviour. As we continue to place our faith in technology as a benevolent force we need to occasionally take pause to understand its human implications and what we lose in the inefficient. Because it is in the inefficient that we are able to take pause, as humans, and think about the implications of the actions we are about to take. I don’t know about you but today I am longing for something more than the dull sound of a click in the sky.