The Active Investor: August 2009

Friday, August 28, 2009

An Item of Interest

Networking is popular these days because it's inexpensive and meaningful. Email, the killer app that propelled global acceptance of the internet, was the same way. Today email filtering companies report that over 90% of all email on the internet at any given time is spam. Can networking be headed in the same direction?

Networking advisers universally maintain that the group meetings are just the tip of the networking iceberg. The real work is accomplished at subsequent one-on-one meetings where individuals meet to discuss if the person they are meeting is someone they can refer to others.

We all want to be trusted advisers and the only way to get there is to have a history of delivering results. Even if you do not personally deliver the final solution, if you have started the solution with an on-target referral, you build trust. This means even if your practice cannot solve every problem you encounter in the market, if you can refer to others who do solve them, you build trusted adviser credentials.

As Active Investors meet one-on-one, they seek a knowledge of reliable solutions to problems their business cannot deliver. The size of their referral network will determine how frequently they can help others generate results, and thereby earn trust.

Relationship marketing has also been popularized as a way to build trust. People prefer to to business with those they know. What confuses many in networking is that this is true but incomplete. People prefer to do business with those they know and trust. The objective of the Active Investor's networking activities is not relationship building. It's the sharing of problem solving capabilities.

Salesmen look for items of interest to bring to meetings. These items give the encounter meaning and dramatically increase the chances of a sale. The item of greatest interest that an Active Investor can bring to a networking one-on-one meeting is a credible solution to a problem our networking partner might encounter. Our personal history, scope of practice, family, hobbies, etc. are nice to discuss but they're of little benefit to our partner's ability to build trust.

Preparing for any business meeting, networking or otherwise, could include a simple exercise. Look at both palms and ask yourself a question, "Am I bringing an item of interest, or am I bringing spam?"

(The blog photo was chosen because in a one-on-one meeting with the Texas networking mentor Jeff Weaver I was insisting that items of interest had to be specific to each individual. Jeff told me about successfully using a history of Valentine's Day as an item of interest on a general basis. The picture comments on Flickr also support how interesting many others have found this related image to be. It looks as if love just might be a universal item of interest. John 13:34,25)

Image credit: naama

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Powerful Symbols of Structure

Today's performance is the result of the strategic resources we had available when we woke-up this morning. Toyota will build many more cars today than I will because they have the resources and intent to do so and I don't. On the other hand, Toyota's contribution to this posting will be a mere mention of their name. My contribution will be its creation because I have access to these resources.

Structure determines behavior. In our past we have intended certain results which has caused the accumulation of necessary resources to accomplish them. These resources for an Active Investor might include things like cash, reputation, customer base, staff, inventory, equipment, technology, supplier relationships, and so forth. What happens in the present is the unfolding result of the levels and structures of our current resources. This is why accounting and business valuations work in the present. We can accurately know our resources as they exist now. Forecasting future performance is another matter.

Financial methodologies are scalable to almost any level of detail complexity; however, they are often not well suited to deal with dynamic complexity. As we move out of the known present and into an unknowable future, resource levels will be dynamically affected. Things will generally not happen in a linear fashion like we tend to imagine. Understanding the dynamics of how we arrived at the present is far more valuable in forecasting than understanding the details. Unfortunately, the study of system dynamics is somewhat challenging (although if it's possible, an Active Investor will greatly benefit from taking a formal system dynamics course).

The rest of us take an intuitive shortcut. We look for symbols that indicate the underlying structure and use that to get clues about dynamics.

Experience in audit and business brokering have helped me develop a sense of symbols. Walking into a business the cars in the parking lot may be symbols that the owner (and therefore the business) is doing well. The maintenance is a symbol of their attention to detail. The decor may become symbolic of their perceived customer preferences.

For all the time and effort spent on marketing assets, it's often our symbols that communicate the most about us to others. They are most powerful communicators that indicate our structure and will be used by others to predict our future behaviors.

Our symbols are both advantageous and dangerous because they communicate instantly. And yet, we frequently are not even aware of what symbols we currently display. The Active Investor benefits from paying attention to them. It takes an examination of our structures to best see our symbols. By being alert to symbols in our markets, we learn both about others and how to better present ourselves.

Image credit: avixyz

Friday, August 14, 2009

Entrainment - Power in Prayer and Meditation

An emerging theme in this blog is identifying key drivers of value by recognizing 3 necessary characteristics. Value Drivers of lasting consequence can be recognized because they are always Repetitive, Powerful, and Gentle (RPG). Certainly prayer and meditation are candidates. They are Repetitive and Gentle; but what about Powerful? A part of their Power may lie within an effect scientists have called entrainment.

Entrainment is the stuff of scientific legend. That legend goes back to 1666. The noted Dutch physicist, Christiaan Huygens, had to adjust the clock in his study each day because it ran about a minute slower than the one in his living room. Both were governed by swinging pendulums. One day he moved them side-by-side. With no other adjustments, the clocks began to keep synchronized time. Any discrepancies disappeared. This observation lead Huygens to the discovery or labeling of entrainment, which is the tendency for adjacent oscillating systems to synchronize.

Where ever there are cycles (Repetitions) there is the potential for the effects of entrainment. The clocks are an example of entrainment in a mechanical system. A striking example in natural systems is the synchronization of menstrual cycles among women who live or work together.

Entrainment is a Powerful effect. Can that power be accessed by prayer and mediation? For one oscillator to affect another, the entrainment has to operate through some medium. Call it the universe, God, or the Zero Point Field, we all must be connected for this scientific effect to occur.

Now consider the processes of prayer and mediation to be bringing yourself side-by-side with God. As you repeat these processes entrainment begins it's subtle work which ultimately results in the changes we call answered prayer. Was the change in the universe, or was it inside of us? Entrainment leads us to the possibility it could be either or both.

Jesus instructed the we should ask to receive (Matt 7:7). His half-brother James later wrote that we can ask but not receive because of our motives (James 4:2). Apparently asking works, but only when a level of entrainment with God has synchronized our motives.

Active Investors have very busy schedules. Repetitive prayer and mediation takes away available time; but if ignored, what will our lives synchronize toward?

Image credit: theilr

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Intention and the Cooperative Universe

A new discipline has emerged this century, the study of Intention. It's often discussed as the Attraction Principle which asserts we attract into our lives those things we dwell on. Examples include if our thoughts are about physical ailments, or poor finances, or an unsatisfactory performance, we will attract poor health, lack of funds, and below standard performances. Alternatively if we genuinely intend good health, abundant finances, and superior performance, these will be what is attracted to us. By itself, the Attraction Principle might be just a sophisticated form of self-delusion; however, in literature such as The Field by Lynne McTaggart evidence is being assembled from advances in quantum physics that provide a scientific basis for its validity.

There is a strange outcome to the Heisenberg Uncertainty measurement problem that results in energy remaining after temperatures reach absolute zero. I was taught absolute zero meant no atomic motion and therefore no energy and scientists of the last century "normalized" their calculations by simply subtracting this away as "background noise". This may have been an over-simplification. When some physicists keep this energy, now called the Zero Point Field (ZPF), in their equations, it appears the discrepancies between classic and quantum physics are resolved. After further study, it appears the ZPF may be a source of abundant, ever-present energy our advancing civilization will surely require. One estimate is that the ZPF energy in one cubic meter of "empty" space would be sufficient to boil all the oceans on our planet. For Stargate Atlantis fans, this is the energy source behind their Zero Point Modules (ZPMs).

This ever-present field appears to be influenced by everything within it and in turns is an influence on everything in the universe. Scientists are now trying to study how one or more individual's Intentions can be "transmitted" through the ZPF. In many of these studies, the universe responds to the changes in the ZPF and appears to cooperate with the Intention.

The science of Intention does not fit well with mainstream paradigms and is currently relegated to the fringes of the scientific community. Yet the research continues and evidence that the universe cooperates with deeply held Intentions continues to accumulate. The research itself has been attractive to physicists, theologians, philosophers, healers, the military, and many others. It ought to be of interest to the Active Investor as well.

The forces around us shape our destinies, yet from this research we learn that we also shape those very forces. Since we see Intention also has all the characteristics of a force to build lasting value, it's repetitive, powerful, and gentle. The Active Investor should be a student in learning to harnessing its potential.

Photo Credit: EraPhernalia Vintage