THINKING LIKE A FOX

Meet Carol Lifland.

Carol is my business partner.  She’s a lawyer by training and a Yale graduate. She’s one of the smartest people I know. Most important, we have been married for 33 years and have been a “couple” for 39.

This blog centers on the “Yale” part and I give her credit suggesting I write this blog.

Among many Americans Yale is lumped into the elitist category.  For some it is part of an imagined special (not necessary positive use of the word) world for east-coast, power hungry, “establishment” that has or attempts to control ordinary American lives.  It is true it has “secret societies” and has been the college of a great many US presidents.

But the Yale that I know is a world of imaginative thought and fantastic learning experiences.  I did not go to Yale.  I went to Claremont Men’s College.  But every five years Carol and I go to Yale for her class reunions.  I won’t miss one even if Carol couldn’t go.  It still amazes me that typically 50% of her class shows up, not counting spouses and children!

What I most love about these reunions is the panel discussion populated by Carol’s classmates.  Whether its politics, media, arts, science, history or technology the panelists are among the thought leaders of their generation.  And the questioners in the audience are no slouches either.

Every reunion my favorite panel is on technology.  For years it has been moderated by a class mate who just happens to have been one of the co-founders of Palm…remember the Palm Pilot that lead the way to today’s smart phones.  This year’s she focused on AI (artificial intelligence) and its impact on the future.

Many of the panelists focused on disruptive technologies such as Amazon or autonomous driving.  Their points were very refined versions about how these things will change employment patterns, living patterns, and whole industries.  But there always is that one comment that really makes me stop and think.  This year it was from a panelist who is a leading AI researcher and professor at MIT.

Simply put, he said that it was unimportant to talk about disruption or changes.  He pointed out that his labs now had 3D printers that were so big that they were printing whole houses.  Not model houses, not architectural renderings but actual houses you can walk in to and live in.

His point is this is not disruption but revolution that we need to discuss.  It is the revolution showing a potential future where people simply would not need to work or work for much less time as is now required.   For most of us life focus around work…for our economic survival, for our socialization and for a good chuck of our meaning.  Our capitalist system is founded on work.

If we don’t need to work, what will we do?  How will our social structure change, not to mention our economic models?  How do we think about this possibility while living in a social framework that is so different?

I think these types of ideas and the questions they raise are fascinating and important.

But what does this have to do with yours and mine daily lives…our business lives?  While if you have been part of the medical imaging business for the last thirty years you know a thing or two about change and disruption.  At this time of year I look back over the past twelve months and ask the question of what did I expect the year to be like and what actually happened.  For the last five years the answer has always been the same: what I thought would be the drivers in January were not what happen in the next twelve months.   If I had stuck to my “plan” I don’t think I would have had the sales I did.  More than ever it has been important if be listening for all new possibilities and move quickly to exploit opportunities.  The more I am open to the new, the more new opportunities come to me.

So go ahead and ask me, “What business are you in?”  I’m not in the medical imaging business.  That’s just the part of the landscape I’m traveling in.  I’m in the listening business. I’m in the customer problem solving business.  I’m in the use my creative skills to do my customers’ job for them.

Changes will come.  Whether it is the jobless world or some other, change will come.  What do we need to be to live in this world?  I’ll go back to Yale for one good answer.  Click here and read the President of Yale University address to this year’s entering class.  I think he got it right.  

¹ This is the title of Peter Salovey, president of Yale University address to this year’s incoming class.