Kevin Vogelsang

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“I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize, but get used to me. Black, confident, cocky — my name, not yours. My religion, not yours. My goals, my own. Get used to me.”–Muhammad Ali

Ali was an incredible physical athlete, but he was also an innovator of the sport.  He changed the way people fought.

Not only that, his charisma was strong enough that he changed the way people thought.  He was in the head of his opponents and his audience.  He was a champion that people wanted to see win.

He dominated through his feet, hands, and mind.

There are lessons here for any market, not just boxing.

-Kevin
8.6.2010

People love talking about leadership.  It’s quite a strange thing.

Some people say it’s clear that leaders are born.  Training helps smooth the edges, but you have a baseline leadership quotient that you can’t increase much.

Some people say it comes down to the right training.

There are many factors, and leaders seem to have some key characteristics.  But some are quite simple it would seem–not so different from what defines the dominance hierarchies in the animal kingdom.  When I met Julies Pieri, CEO of the Daily Grommet, not too long ago, she made the comment to a friend of mine, “oh, you’re a tall and deep-voiced guy.  Tall, deep-voiced guys always end up in leadership positions.”

Seems we should be aware of why we’re following our leader.  Maybe the reason isn’t very relevant.

-Kevin
8.5.2010

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Did Stanton say I was a damned fool? Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means.
–Lincoln

This statement has long intrigued me.  It’s a damn good response, and it shows a mixture of qualities that made Lincoln a great political leader.

-Kevin
8.2.2010

Another re-post while I’m busy with work and Vogel Labs.  This is a very important insight.

Earlier today, I stopped into MIT’s Kresge Auditorium for the interview between NPR’s Tom Ashbrook and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

During the interview, Eric stated (paraphrased), “corporate social responsibility is good for shareholders….the CEO should be focused on it.”

The first thing that came to my mind was management’s primary responsibility: profit maximization.  While this is of course debatable whether this is management’s only responsibility, I would say it is the primary responsibility.

Eric’s statement also reminded me of another concept: the triple bottom line–the idea that a company’s success can be measured economically (profit) , environmentally (planet) , and socially  (people.)  As one would guess, research seems to suggest that companies that focus solely on profit maximization make more money than those that additionally focus on social and environmental issues.

Let’s assume that this is in fact historically true–companies focused on profit maximization make more money.  Do we have reason to believe this has changed (or is changing)?

I think we do.  This is a product of the Information Age.  Nothing is secret on the internet.  When something evil happens, people know about it.  (Heck, I heard about Kanye taking the microphone from Taylor Swift within minutes, and I pay no attention to their music or the VMA’s.)

If nothing is secret, I think social and environmental responsibility do in fact begin to coincide with profit maximization.  As Eric went on to say (again paraphrased), “Social Responsibility gets you better people and better financial returns.”

All else equal, do you want to pay money to an Evil Empire or a company that provides value beyond the product?  And with the internet, I think people are more aware of that “value beyond the product.”

-Kevin
11.4.2009

A fresh re-post from the early days of the blog that probably no one read since back then there weren’t too many visitors .  It deserves another shot.

A few months ago, I was on my way to the gym listening to the Harvard Business Ideacast.  The episode was entitled “The 5 Leadership Essentials” and featured work done by Dave Ulrich, a Professor of business at the University of Michigan and co-author of the The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead by.

Dave’s book attempts to answer the questions, “What is it that effective leaders have to know or do?  And are there common themes?”  Dave’s team surveyed established thought leaders on the topic and distilled their collective experiences down to five essentials. The five essentials for a leader are as follows:

• Strategic Thinking (has a position on the future)
• Talent Management (manages and engages people)
• Talent Development (develops the future people of the organization)
• Execution (gets things done)
• Personal Proficiency (takes care of themselves)

Based on my experience, these essentials do a pretty good job of boiling down the complex topic of leadership to some common themes.  But, one thing struck me as missing: commitment.

To be an effective leader, you need to be committed to the cause and committed to the people.  That’s the foundation for any leader.

Kevin
9.13.2009

“The man shapes the environment, and the environment shapes the man.”  I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately.  I wrote more about it in my essay “Kevin, Why Entrepreneurship for You? (Part III)”:

“The man shapes the environment, and the environment shapes the man.”  My Dad said this to me once.  I’m not sure where he got it, or if it came from a synthesis of his own experiences.  The phrase describes an undeniable phenomenon, and its effects shouldn’t be taken lightly.  The environment influences us, and we in turn exert force on the environment in some sort of tug-of-war over causality.

You see the effects of this concept when studying evolution, start-ups, work environments, and our own living spaces.  You can even observe this somewhat paradoxical concept when studying cells in a petri dish.  You change the substrate that the cell lives on and the cell changes drastically, and consequently, the environment changes.

But what does this really mean?  Primarily, it means we live in a constant state of disequilibrium.  And this creates opportunities, perhaps a dire need, for growth.

(This is a powerful concept.  I also wrote about this implicitly in my post on Co-Evolution.  Curiously, my conclusion in that post was that coevolution leads to balance in the universe.)

The concept has been on my mind as we steadily pull together Vogel Labs.  It’s impossible to find the perfect physical space in the perfect location at the perfect price.

Here’s what I say:  Find the optimum, take what you have, and make it so beautiful that it changes the greater environment. A great group of people can exert a huge amount of force on their surroundings.  Weaker people will say, “you can’t bend reality to your will.”  This may be so, but don’t interpret this to mean you can only throw your hands up in the air and wait; we aren’t bugs being washed down a river,  drowning in the chaos.  Part of reality is the fact that we create it.

And with this attitude in mind, it will be perfect, all in good time.

-Kevin
5.16.2010

Role models are important.  They are proof to us that we can do what we hope to  some day do.  They’re a source of inspiration.  Also, by paying attention to role models, we can “stand on the shoulders of giants”; if we know of someone that has done something similar to what we aspire to do, we can think about how we can do it better.

I’ve got a few role models, and I want you to know who they are:

• Tim O’Reilly. Tim is the founder of O’Reilly Media, the technology book publisher whose mission is to deliver the knowledge of innovators to the rest of the world.  Tim also believes in “working on things that matter”.  He inspires others to do the same.
• Jeff Bezos. Founder of Amazon, a company that brought to life not only e-Commerce, but other ideas including scalable Cloud Computing where you pay for only what you use (Amazon Web Services) , Artificial Artificial Intelligence (Amazon Mechanical Turk), and other valuable services.
• Peter Diamandis. Creator of the X Prize Foundation.  The X Prizes tangibly set a goal for maverick entrepreneurs to tackle the biggest challenges of the human race.  The Ansari X Prize, which was later won by another inspiring character Burt Rutan, helped push private space flight to the next level with incredible run of SpaceShip One.  We now have Virgin Galactic on the Horizon.
• Richard Branson. A maverick entrepreneur and founder of many companies including Virgin Air, Virgin Records, and now Virgin Galactic.  He’s also an adventurer.
• Ray Kurzweil. An inventor, writer, and futurist who isn’t afraid to evangelize radical ideas on the future.  He’s also a founder of the Singularity Institute.
• Dean Kamen. Dean is an inventor and runs a small invention company called DeKa Technologies. They focus on solving important problems.  Inspired by soldiers that had to have limbs amputated, DeKa developed a prosthetic arm with 15 points of articulation that can pick up a grape (TED Talk video, 5 minutes).  Access to clean water is one of the greatest challenges to underdeveloped countries, DeKa also developed a water purification system (Colbert Report video).  In addition to finding big problems and solving them, Dean Kamen has also started an education program called FIRST with the following mission”“To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders.”

(I feel as if I’ve forgotten another one of my role models. ) These guys have all done great work and embody the embrace of mission.  They’re people you should know about.

Who are some people that inspire you?

-Kevin
5.13.2010

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Getting things done in an organization where people have personal relationships is tricky; in the course of action, toes get stepped on, which stings a little no matter how tactfully done.  If you spend a lot of time with people, you have a personal relationship. Entrepreneurs deal with this a lot in startups, especially if they’re working with friends.  If you claim you don’t have a personal relationship with the people you work with, you’re probably an ass that no one can stand.

The absolute best way I’ve found to deal with this is to develop an “On the Court, Off the Court” mentality.

If you’re an athlete (let’s say you’re a basketball player), you’re friends with at least most of your teammates.  You spend a lot of time together at meals, sitting in the locker room, on the bus to the game.  If you aren’t friends with them, there is a much higher chance you’ll quit the team. And despite being friends, when you’re on the court at basketball practice, you’re focused on getting better and performance.  This will inevitably include getting a little rough with your friends/teammates.  You’re there playing hard, and you need to be.  You’ve got to get better and so do your teammates.

However, when you’re off the court, you’re back to being friends again.  The arena is a separate place.

I haven’t always been able to pull this off.  But the “On the Court/ Off the Court” mentality (and integrating that into organizational processes) allows people to better delineate when it’s game time and when it’s friend time, when you’re the boss at work and when you’re a colleague, when you’re the fraternity Officer and when you’re just another brother trying to have fun in school.  If people don’t understand rules of the relationship, or have uncertainty in how they should act,  things will start to fester, more things get unnecessarily taken personally, and things can quickly take a bad turn.

-Kevin
5.3.2010

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The ideal form of governance is the absolute rule by what Plato referred to as the Philosopher King– an infinitely wise ruler that is capable of perceiving the world and making the best possible decision.  A state ruled by a Philosopher King is the most agile, efficient, and fair.

It’s also the most volatile.

If you’ve ever been a part of an organization, you know transitions in leadership are stressful and dangerous times.  There is no substitute for experience, but it’s always difficult to identify the correct combination of the right experience and the right frame of mind.  There is always risk that this isn’t the right person.  There is also a learning curve for every leader and consequent risk that they fuck up early on.

We’ve seen this volatility in the dictatorships history has seen.

Democracy shifts power to the people, away from one single ruler; all can play a role.  Democratic governments are more stable, less agile, slower, and tend towards average decision-making.

Governance is a huge part of any organization–particularly businesses.

~

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People often complain about the maniacal control Steve Jobs has over it’s product ecosystem and company itself.  If Steve understands what Apple must do to deliver the best product and do the best work, this is optimal.  There might be headaches for developers, and I might have dropped calls, and Apple may have a weirdly secretive culture, but, if it delivers a product I want to use more than any other, that’s all that matters. If not, I can choose an alternative if I’d like.  (So long as the company doesn’t have monopoly power of course.)

However, Apple is taking on large amounts of long term risk by maintaining tight control over the ecosystem and by relying on the seeming absolute rule of Jobs and a culture of secrecy.  If they choose the wrong leader, if they get the user experience wrong for too long, if they fail to deliver, if secrecy gets in the way of a good workplace and communication, the constituents will rebel.

-Kevin
5.2.2010

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In my post communicating the vision of Vogel Labs, I said I was going to leave the post up at the top of my blog for a week.

I’m going to have to rescind that statement; I’m back on the blogging grid. People will still find their way to that important post.  Twitter is a powerful tool for spreading the word to the right people.

I’ve been blogging every day for long enough that I felt muted by trying not to blog. Blogging has become a part of my voice, and it’s an extension of my consciousness.  Plus, the thoughts and ideas on my mind need their outlet, otherwise they rebel.

Especially if you’re a Creative, you need to blog. Start learning what’s important to you, start communicating your thoughts, and start championing them.

Today, more than ever, I believe in a world where great ideas will win.  Nothing is secret. And the democratization democratizing effects of technology lends itself to lend themselves to meritocracy–if people are willing to stomach the risks and potential embarrassment that is.   Your thoughts are only caged in by your ability to communicate them to the right people.  And for so-called idealists, this is important.  For Creatives, this is everything.

-Kevin
4.28.2010