Greg's Right FIT #419

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on People
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on People

• When optimizing part of your business, consider the loss of any unique competencies that are embedded in your company’s people. Hard to measure, but a potential threat.
• Great fiction (especially spy novels) gives excellent insight into being human. You can learn more about the business world from fiction than most business books. 
• People have the capacity to do things that don't work. Robots don't. 
• We people have the ability to consider responses to stimuli. It goes, stimulus-pause-response. If you are doing something you don't want to do, remind yourself that you're not a circus animal. Pause and make a change. 

Being Human - The machine solves for us

"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity." — Leo Tolstoy

This week I'm thinking about the new machines.

Specifically, I'm thinking who do the machines serve? The cynic says this new technology (AI LLMs etc) doesn't serve us, it serves capital. Companies will deploy it to get more from existing assets and make them more efficient in order to generate more capital. The worker will work just as hard, but produce more and get a share of the value being created.

What's bad about that? 

Maybe nothing. This section is about being human, and it seems like the most inefficient piece of the capitalist system, according to the view of capital, is humans. (Even though the joke "what does AI stand for? Anonymous Indians" suggests new tech may be just "humans all the way down," to be.) 

As you and your teams deploy the new technologies in your business, take a minute to consider what your very efficient company will look like. Especially if you sell to humans. What will this very efficient company look like to them? What will it be like to interact with it? How well will it help them do their jobs? Will they be happy with the value it provides them? 

Random Stuff

“Wisdom comes with winters.” — Oscar Wilde

We're getting our first deep freeze of the year. The last time we were over 32F was January 3rd, and the next time we'll be above 20F is over 2 weeks from now. 

So cold. 

Our first big snow was Tuesday and it was heavy. Every year for 20 plus years I have moved inches/feet of snow from my driveway and walkways to the yard thinking, I should get a snowblower. 

It's not like it's a big purchase. The recommended model is $1200-1500 and once or twice a year, for a few hours, would make my life easier. 

The issue is this. I kind of like shoveling. 

Like mowing, it's one of my activities of modern living with a definite beginning and end. Plus, it makes me feel like I've done something without taking the easy way out. Like my ancestors might have done. I can imagine my people, living up in the mountains of Colorado, waking up to 20 inches of snow, grabbing the shovel, and getting after it. No excuses. Just do it. 

In my mind I am conversing with my mother's mother's mother. She emerges from a mist. Her hair in an old-timey bun, her face like a wrinkled apple. I'm telling her what her great-great-grandson is up to on this chilly morning. I explain my reasoning but notice she has a puzzled look on her face.  

"You have a machine that will do work for you?" she said. 

Yes, but I'm getting a workout and enjoying being outside, I said. 

She pulls her shawl closer to her body, shakes her head, and turns away from me. "Idiota," I hear her say, as the mist engulfs her.