Shoes. Bag. Laptop - A Better Way to SimpliFLY

This is the mantra that I remember when I enter airport security. Now, say it to yourself:

Shoes.
Bag.
Laptop.

The TSA's new SimpliFLY campaign is a ri-donkulous effort to get people to pack a) neatly, and b) one layer of neatly folded clothes alternating with a layer of neatly coiled electronics. BWAHAHAHAHAAHA.

I feel I have some road warrior cred (1.5MM miles, though I am a small fry compared to others), and let me offer a more pragmatic and useful tip. When choosing what to put through the machine first, let me offer this as a faster way to get through the line.

1. Shoes - shoes go in the first bin. Here you put your jacket or other clothing as well.
2. Bag(s) - whatever rollerboard, briefcase or backpack you are carrying. Put this second. I stash my belt, cell, watch key, change, and wallet in my bag as well. Much better than just throwing it in a bin. (Don't be that guy digging his nickel collection of out of the bin. Not cool.)
3. Laptop - Your laptop should be last. If you are traveling overnight, put your plastic baggie of CVS goodies next to it here.

When you are through (don't forget your boarding pass!):

1. Throw shoes on ground. Place feet inside, and don't bother tying until you are clear, if you can help it. Put jacket on, if brought.
2. Open bag to accept laptop and CVS baggie.
3. Insert laptop and baggie.
4. Scurry to a place to tie your shoes and redress yourself to desired comfort.

Everyone will thank you for being out of there sooner. I certainly will.

Shoes. Bag. Laptop.

Now go write that 50 times.

The iPod - I told you so

And while we are speaking about iTunes, let me say something about the new iPod Classic. I had to buy a new one since my car was broken into a couple of weeks ago and now there is a thug in Hartford that is well outfitted with music.

Well, my silver lining (quite literally, since the silver 80GB model is deliciously thin) has been the new iPod. There have been several improvements to the UI that yours truly advocated for. Two years ago, I complained about the difficulty to shuffle and they have finally fixed it.

From the "Now Playing" screen ... just click the center wheel a few times and then you get this screen.


At the botton you see the suffle icon with buttons "Off, Songs, Albums."

Finally! Woohoo!

The Album

I was so refreshed by Jermaine Dupri's recent article on The Huffington Post about a topic near or dear to my heart -- the album. All 5 regular readers of IGSMTOMM know I rarely bite off other blogs, but it was just too pithy to pass up.

Specifically, his title "A good album is more than just a collection of singles" gets right at a topic I talked about in January of this year., "Is it really the best album of the year?"

Any music fan and registered iTunes user should read it.

The Attack on Ivy-ish Education

One of the things that I have been most challenged with in the last few months is hiring and managing people. As anyone can attest to -- it's damn hard.

A standard recruiting playbook would say, "Scour Harvard, Yale, Stanford and a number of other elite institutions for the next 'rock star.'" The problem is that most of them (and I want to stress that this is not all) ... ahem ... well, how do I say this ... are jerks. (I say this as a recovering "jerk.")

The more politically correct recruiting parlance is to say that they are "not a culture fit." But there is a selfish immediacy to the way that I see a lot of recruits approach their work. As if they are too good for the work that they may get. And while I think entrepreneurial vigor is to be admired, there is something that has been offputting and I think there is something to the way that elite institutions educate.

Basically, we are taught analytical skills but business is really a synthetic exercise. To put it another way, an Harvard grad can give you a Hoopes Prize thesis on why Humpty Dumpty shouldn't have fallen off the wall (or been on the wall in the first place!), but business requires us to think about the quarterly project plan on how to get him back (or outsourced overseas for 1/10 the cost!).

This is the attack on Ivy-ish education.

Causes? Well, I think it is how we are taught. That is, we are taught to try to deconstruct these great theorists we read about as part of our formal education. Say, pick apart Descartes' proof for the existence of God. Most of what we are taught is how to pick things apart. Pick. Pick Pick.

Fast forward to work, what happens when you take your first entry level job? Your boss is a ten year veteran with a BS from Ohio State. Surely, I must be smarter than that him, no? And so begins the professional picking ... pick pick pick. But this time, no A's are given. You are most likely laid off or opportunistically downsized. (I was ... though the CEO of a former employer actually wanted to fire me for being a smartass, but I made it to the next round of layoffs).

One of the things that I am proud of at kasina is our Book Club and weekly book reports. Each week we present a book and figure out what we can learn. They have been invaluable to me in my development as a businessperson and a person in general.

However, one of the common criticisms is, "This book is crap." "They are not that smart." Or just ..(cover your ears) ... "Bullshit." It takes an inordinate amount of retraining and reprogramming our people to see the value in these works in a way that doesn't reduce to picking at them like an academic work. But should we be surprised given how we educate at the elite institutions?

We need more synthetic tolerance in our higher education. Personally, I've found the more effective approach has been to really force yourself to think about how do you apply this concept to what you are doing today. What is the unique thing that someone else can teach me? The Ivy arrogance has got to go.

Some of the work that Malcom Gladwell's work around persitence and cooperation is instructive (10,000 hours to mastery, regardless of field). Also, Dan Pink's work about A Whole New Mind is as well.