Nice article from McKinsey Quarterly on how leaders can kill meaning at work. 

How_leaders_kill_meaning_at_work.pdf Download this file

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Decent manifesto on stimulating innovation inside the organization.  A few specific nuggets I took away:

•  Watch out for a culture of ‘yeah but…’ instead of the more desirable ‘what if…?’

•  There is no question that limited resources can stifle innovation, but all too often this becomes an easy and convenient excuse for not doing the critical and creative thinking required to push to the next level—the place where elegance is found.  Do people in your organization see limitations as invitations to ingenuity and opportunities to differentiate or excuses for why it can’t be done?

•  People don’t lay down their lives for a job. They don’t give the totality of who they are to line shareholder’s pockets. But, they will give everything they’ve got to play a role in changing the world.

• The fact is, you can’t innovate without experimenting and you can’t experiment without making some mistakes….By giving people permission to fail, gutsy leaders give them permission to try new things.   When was the last time you rewarded someone for an intelligent failure?

I particularly like the idea of an "Intelligent Failure" award where colleagues nominate and award each other for stepping out and trying a smart experiment that failed and what was learned from it.  

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A set of brief segments from an McKinsey Interview with behaviorial economist Dan Ariely on the topic of irrationality in the workplace.  My favorite clip from this set is on the topic of 'When to trust your Gut'.  Basically you can trust your gut if with lots of experience AND if you can control all possible influences that might impact the outcome of the decision... his point being - experimentation is the key, and he asks a great question - why don't companies do more experimentation?  We should always be testing leaps of faith.  Organizational agility is the mindset needed to support this type of continuous experimentation.  Agile software shops understand it.  Yes, there are costs to experimentation but the early learnings more than outweigh any of the costs.

Ariely has written a couple of books on irrationality.   One that I have read is Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions -  a really entertaining and worthwhile read. 

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Like any type of business the tactics for managing and executing a startup are evolving.  Here is a new presentation by Steve Blank from SXSW 2011 on the topic.  Focusing on 3 topics near and dear to me: Customer Development, Business Models, and Lean Startups.  While the primary slant of this presentation is on software (and also a primary focus of the Lean Startup) these concepts can be applied in any startup environment.  Its more about having the right mindset.

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A facinating post entitled The Connected Company by Dave Gray (Xplane) focused on the concept of building companies like cities.... I am still digesting...  I especially like this comment:

Although we tend to design companies like machines, we instinctively and intuitively understand that companies are not made of cogs, levers and gears. In the end, they are made out of people. For top management, it would be wonderful if we could put our business strategy into the machine, push a button and wait for the results. But it doesn’t work that way. You have to put your strategy into people if you want to get results.

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Music an amazing form of art and creativity.  I have always been told I have a good ear for tones.  When I was young, I used to help tell a friend of mine who played guitar replicate music from our favorite band.  I could always tell if he was hitting the right note to match the song.  The funny thing though is that I have never really played an instrument myself (beyond classes in high school).  Its one of those things on my life to-do list.  I feel called to play some type of instrument, and listening to this wonderful piece of art today on a 4 string Hawaiian ukulele makes you realize how creative humans can be with instruments.

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I recently finished a great book by Randy Komisar and John Mullins called Getting to Plan B:  Breaking through to a better business model.  I originally got turned onto this book from the Startup Lessons Learned Conference in spring of 2010.  While the book has become a must read for startups, and in fact does focus a lot on starting new business's the core aspects of the book can be used across any business that:

• is starting up a new business unit
• carries out new product development
• is developing new service offerings
• is looking at evaluating new business strategies

... so pretty much any modern business that wants to stay competitive will get some benefit from the book.  The title is a good summation of the book:  Always be looking for and testing plan B, C, D etc.  To do this the authors focus on 3 main principals:

1. Analogs:  Don't re-invent the wheel.  Analogs to your idea are successful predecessor companies that are worth mimicking in some way. Portions of others ideas which can be borrowed and/or adapted to you to help understand economics and other aspects of your idea.
2. Antilogs: Be Different.  Antilogs to your idea are predecessor companies compared to which you explicitly choose to do things differently.
3. Leaps of Faith:  Ask the right questions.  Anilogs and Antilogs help you reach conclusions about some things faster with at least some level of certainty, but there will be questions that cannot be answered by historical precedence.  Leaps of faith are the beliefs you hold about the answers to your questions despite having no real evidence that they are actually true.  Therefor you must experiment.

These leaps of faith must be tested, and measured via a dashboard.  This can essentially create the framework for a simple yet effective management framework.  The book has many great examples but I will use one of my own for this post. 

I support and have been involved since the early days with a startup non profit called Create Common Good.  Create Common Good provides training and employment to refugees and others in need through experiential programs that transform lives and enrich communities  One of our programs is a farm program where we train refugees in farming techniques but also use the proceeds from the farm to support our efforts.  One of the ideas that we have had is to create a mobile lunch truck that serves up international cuisine made by refugees based on food from their native homeland using in-season local produce produced at the farm.  In addition to some Anilogs and Antilogs found for mobile food trucks, here is a sample Leap of Faith Dashboard to describe how it can be used.  (results listed below are fictitious:)

Many companies try and create complicated sets of metrics and dashboards, but often they are just patting themselves on the back with metrics that already prove what they know to be true.  Next time try innovating and exploring some leaps of faith in your business using this simple tool to test and measure.

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Another great RSA clip overlaying a discussion by Sir Ken Robinson on Changing the Educational Paradigm.

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For the past few years I have been doing a personal year end retrospective.  Its a fun and relaxing exercise to do over the holidays as you sip on a warm drink, enjoy the Christmas season, and prepare to kick things back into gear in the new year.  Here are a sample list of questions that I have collected and use to carry out this exercise.  I like to write down my answers to some of these so I can then go back and look at them next year.  Some I just think through.   You can do it solo or go through some of them with a good friend.  (Lance - I will miss doing this with you this year!)

Looking Back...

• What is the greatest lesson you learned this year that you never want your kids to forget?
• How might you have behaved or acted differently in 2010 if you had to do it over again
• Looking back over the year what did you set out to do that you didn’t do and why?
• What key discipline did you live out this past year that had significant impact on your life?  What was the impact?
• What are you most proud of this year?
• What was the biggest triumph this year?
• What were the key surprises (good or bad) that happened this year?
• Which relationship in your life grew this year and which regressed?
• If you could go back to the beginning of this year what piece of advice would you give yourself? Why?
• Looking back, what was the overarching theme for this year? / What one word best sums up your 2010 experience?
• What was the greatest lesson you learned in 2010?
• What was the most loving service you performed in 2010?
• What is your biggest piece of unfinished business in 2010?
• What are you most happy about completing in 2010?
• Who were the 3 people that had the greatest impact on your life in 2010?
• What was the biggest risk you took in 2010?
• What was I worrying about at this time last year, and how have things changed?
• What are my current allergies (emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically)?
• What compliments would you have liked to receive in 2010?
• What compliments would you like to have given in 2010?
• What was the smartest decision you made in 2010?
• What else do you need to do or say to be complete with 2010?

Looking Ahead...

• What would you like to be your biggest triumph in 2011?
• What advice would you like to give yourself in 2011?
• What is the major effort you are planning to improve your financial results in 2011?
• What would you be most happy about completing in 2011?
• What major indulgence are you willing to experience in 2011?
• What would you most lie to change about yourself in 2011?
• What are you looking forward to learning in 2011?
• What do you think your biggest risk will be in 2011?
• What about your work, are you most committed to changing and improving in 2011?
• How should I control/adjust my rhythm/pace in 2011?
• What is one as yet undeveloped talent you are willing to explore in 2011?
• What brings you the most joy and how are you going to do or have more of that in 2011?
• Who or what, other than yourself, are you most committed to loving and serving in 2011?
• What one word would you like to have as your theme for 2011?

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In the creative economy you use your mind to solve interesting and challenging problems at work.  For most, working with your hands involves fingers on a computer or drawing ideas on a whiteboard.  We use our mind much more than our physical bodies, but I feel that humans were meant to use both.    In past generations it was the other way around - all physical labor and very little mental stimulation.  Not good either, but in the right quantities physical labor can be invigorating.  I don't the made up physical activity of going to a gym, but real physical work.  Humans have hands and limbs for a reason - we were meant to use them.  I think that is why I enjoy simple activities such as gardening, or building a patio. 

I recently moved to Bend Oregon for a new job.  I am staying in temporary housing for a few weeks until we find a rental and our furniture gets moved.  The house is very modern but also has a wood stove in the family room in addition to the heating system.  Out back there is a wood shed of sorts, so I went out to get some wood to bring in for the wood stove.  The logs were a little big, so I looked around and found an axe.  I then proceeded to chop wood, and it was intensely satisfying!  The feel of the wood handle in my hands, the sense of power as the axe head hits the wood and the pieces explode off to the sides as the energy was transferred from my arms, through the axe to the wood.   I reminded me of growing up in Southern Ontario (Canada) watching my dad chop wood in the fall and we would stack it in piles in the field behind our house to let it dry for future winters.  We would then take wood from the oldest stack (dryest) and bring it in by wagon behind the tractor and put in the basement to be used in our wood furnace for the winter. 

Maybe its the memories or maybe it was the physical exertion, but it felt good.

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A few years back Booze Allen's Strategy+Business(Aug 2006) has a great biographical article about entrepreneur Joi Ito. In this article there was an interesting discussion about how his obsession with World of Warcraft - a MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game), allowed him to experiment with new org design and team management techniques through his WoW guild. This guild was made up of 250 members from all backgrounds from around the globe including a "raid leader" who is an emergency room nurse, and another important player who is an unemployed bartender.

Mr Ito: "I'm playing with all different kinds of management ideas I've had for companies, with a bunch of people who are actually very dedicated. They will set their alarm clocks for 3 a.m. to run a raid of 40 people. They are committed to each other like people in a normal company wouldn't be committed to each other. So as a test bed for these ideas this is actually pretty amazing".

While my wife is against having video games in our home, her view of these is based on what was around when we were kids.  Games have evolved significantly since the days of Donkey Kong and Super Mario.  Many games are  are no longer the mindless couch-surfing, single player games of the late 80's and 90's.  Games now get you moving, and thinking, they can teach strategy, encourage/require collaboration with other real people, and inspire creativity.

Furthermore, the best games win because they figure out how to intrinsically motivate the player to keep playing.  The question is how do they do this, and how can these patterns be used in both business and education more effectively?   Here are two presentations to consider.

The first is a TED talk about 7 ways in which games reward your brain.  (approx 16 min). 

The second is an interactive presentation about Playing to Learn, exploring the role of play in education.

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On this blog I talk about topics related to what I feel are the 3 imperatives to managing a modern business

• Organizational agility
• Creativity through intrinsic motivation
• Customer development

What does it mean to be a modern business?  It's a new world out there and It means you deal with the following:

• The term Global can pretty much apply to any company now
• Disruption is happening all around you
• Wicked Problems are common
• Chaotic environments are normal
• The nature of employment is changing
• Intersectional Innovation blurs industry lines traditional business models

Your organization needs to match the relative stability of the environment you operate in.  Change is nothing new.  The Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (535 - 475 BC) said The only Constant is Change.  However what is happening to rock people's worlds is the pace of change. 

This weekend I came across this manifesto in the most recent issue of ChangeThis written by Allan Lewis, Chairman of Grand Circle Corporation, the largest U.S. direct market tour operator of international vacations for older Americans.  This manifesto summarizes Allan's learning's from being in an unstable environment.  It is titled Change is the New Constant.   It speaks to 5 key lessons learned by the organization, which map back very well to 2 of the 3 imperatives I list above (organizational agility, creativity through intrinsic motivation):

1. Flexibility trumps Efficiency

• efficiency-focused models are focused on managing predictable environments.  Over time, the relentless pursuit of efficiency will cut out the capabilities needed to respond to the unpredictable.  (see related post: Is Agile/Scrum the Process Mgmt Framework for the Creative Economy)

2. Mission and Vision creates Inspiration

• For a company to be adaptable and flexible, its associates must understand and be committed to its mission and vision. To achieve that commitment requires a compelling mission and vision; people will not commit emotionally to a mission that is only about achieving greater profit or growing sales.

3. Values, not Structures, drive effective organizations

• In uncertain environments, decisions are guided by values, not structures. If those values are not in place the wrong decisions will be made.

4. Investments in People and Learning create Advantage

• Structures and systems cannot adapt rapidly enough to unpredictable events. People can. Effective investment in people can create huge leverage and competitive advantages. In changing times investments in developing people are the most valuable.

5. Relentless measurement of Excellence is essential

• If you have a vision and mission you believe in, you must evaluate your people against them all the time, no matter how much you admire their energy or reputation, and no matter how much money they are bringing in. If you don’t, you will live to regret it.

It's worth the 20 minute read!

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The best definition of a startup I have heard is this:

A startup is a human institution designed to deliver new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

With the above definition, many groups other than what you might think of with the word startup could qualify.  Its not just Google or Skype.  It could be a new business unit within an existing company or even a department deliverying new products.  It has a lot more to do with how the team operates and thinks about how to solve the problem - remember its a human institution - nothing to do with company size, sector or industry.

With that - take a look at this slide deck which merges ideas from two of my most favorite books - Business Model Generation and The Four Steps to the Epiphany .  The concepts here apply way more broadly than what is typically thought of as a startup.  Its a way of thinking about solving problems.

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There is a term in the lean startup community called a Pivot, introduced by Eric Ries:

A pivot is when a startup changes direction but stay grounded in what they've learned. They keep one foot in the past and place one foot in a new possible future. Over time, this pivoting may lead them far afield from their original vision, but if you look carefully, you'll be able to detect common threads that link each iteration.

I believe that this also applies very much to ones own career.  Of couse we make micro pivots or optimizations constantly.  In your carreer you may change your approach to dealing with a team mate or manager to optimize results or you may learn a new approach to solving a problem, but I am referring more to what I would call a macro pivot.

Macro pivots happen at major life or career changes.  However often people actually don’t pivot – they just shift direction.  The concept of a pivot is really important – to stay grounded in what you have learned to make the best possible leap forward.  Use your cumulative knowledge to pivot strategically and with purpose.  How do you do that?  I think its important to consistently keep a pulse on yourself – a personal retrospective.  For me I carry out a personal retrospectives every 6 months – typically at Christmas and around my birthday which happens to be in June.  These make it easier to remember.    I ask myself these general types of questions:

• Am I growing professionally?
• Am I where I want/need/expect to be financially?
• How are my relationships with spouse, kids, family and friends?
• Does my career or vocation fulfilling and does it give me purpose?
• Am I living healthy?
• Has anything happened over the past 6 months that causes me concern?
• What major lessons have I learned over the past 6 months?

You won't have five stars beside each of these questions all the time but its about you assessing, what is acceptable given where you are at in your life journey or in business terms - market conditions.  Generally if everything is feeling good, I dive back in and try not to let the roller coaster ride affect me.  If you let ups and downs of any modern business get to you, it will dilute your thinking and reduce your effectiveness.  If there are some yellow flags at the retrospective, I may decide to do some targeted micro pivots and/or go into a monitoring state for a while.  If there are red flags and I determine its time for a large pivot, I now have 6 months to put some plans in place and take some action.

Being disiplined about this process can help you be more prepared and sure of your decisions when you make your shift.  In addition it can prevent you from make a mistake and pivoting too soon, or even worse – not soon enough.

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Recently I have been talking to more and more people about the power of using the Agile/Scrum framework to manage multiple business functions and it struck me that a likely reason for this is that the nature of work is changing for many people and even entire organizations.  

There is a broad shift happening away from the information/knowledge economy (which arguably started decades ago) into the next great stage often referred to as the creative economy.  In this stage, business starts to look, and act more like art.  Furthermore, a company's strength is often less about the systems and processes that it runs on, but more about the people and creative capital within.  For instance in a start-up, treating the business as art is not only required, but also a source of competitive advantage in most cases.

As many more people and organizations move away from factory work, process's become harder to define and lock down.  And when I say factory I don't mean just the traditional assembly line version of a factory that most of us think of.  Seth Godin uses a broader term in his book Linchpin where he defined a factory as:

"... an organization that has it figured out, a place where people go to do what they are told and earn a paycheck" 

This definition goes well beyond assembly lines and encompasses white collar information organizations such as insurance companies, government departments, and franchises with their systems and controls that drive continuity in their offering.

Of course, as business's mature, it is inevitable that parts of the organization will and need to become 'factory-like' -  areas where the work is repeatable and comoditized.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, however more and more things in modern business cannot be 'systematized'.  This can be scary to many people that want to work in a job with a map to tell them what to do.   It can also be a thorn in the side of traditional process engineers who love to create process maps for everything.  What some fail to consider is that if a process can be mapped, it is likely that it can be copied and therefor starts a march down the path towards comoditization.

In the creative economy process engineers and the process's they create can actually reduce operational effectiveness when they attempt to systematize everything in the organization.  Six Sigma works great when trying to create lots and lots of high quality widgets, but it doesn't work as well in value-add service offerings.  Process engineers can fine tune accounting processes but it doesn't work as well when trying to create a musical.  Traditional process engineering is valuable but not when it is used like a hammer and every aspect of a business is a considered to be a factory/nail.

Another common example for almost any company: Most large organizations have ultra detailed software development life-cycles that continue to grow and bloat over time but with all that detail its amazing how few projects finish on time with happy customers.  Why?  Because software development is Art. 

However, in the software world, people have started to figure out that lighter process can actually generate more predicable results.  Agile and its associated offspring (Scrum/XP etc) are not processes in the traditional sense, but frameworks that can both provide structure as well as freedom for the art of software development.  However,  the scrum framework can actually be used outside of the software world as a tool to help manage work in the creative economy more broadly. 

Unfortunately, some that I explain the framework to get frustrated with the lack of detailed direction, but that is exactly why it works!  It is a framework with very basic patters that support creativity, but also the need to produce maximum value for the customer in the shortest time possible. It does incorporate aspects of process engineering such as Lean, but only to provide guidance on direction.

If you find that some or all of your business is more about people creating art than running a factory, traditional process engineering may not be the answer in all cases.  Agile/Scrum could be the process management framework for the creative economy.

• Related post: Agility is an Organizational Value

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Sports like football are great to use when discussing concepts related to organizational agility and startup culture.  They work well because there is a mix of competition, pain and exhilaration in the sport, which is very similar to what you get in a startup environment.  Interestingly, this can be a useful way to help recruit and/or determine the types of people that you want on your team.  The analogy can help prospects understand what they are signing up for, and help weed out candidates that are not interested in getting in the game.  Some people like the idea of being agile and part of a startup culture, but can they play on the field or are they really just an armchair athlete?

Once you have your team – how can you make your players most effective?   While the football analogy works, I think the sport of rugby might be a superior analogy in many respects.  Both games have similar objectives around moving the ball down the field but with some key differences.  Here are a few examples:

Pads and Helmets:  Unlike American football there are no pads or helmets in rugby.  Having extra safety gear can create the impression of indestructibility.  Just put your head down and go.  Without pads and helmets for protection it might drive a different type of behavior – is there a smoother, more elegant way for us to move the ball forward?

Defined Plays - the good:  Executing a defined play can be a good analogy for an agile culture if used in the right context.  For example in most Agile software shops, teams will ‘huddle’ each morning to set out a plan for the day and then resets again the next day based on the results of the previous days play.  Frequent resets and huddles on all aspects of business are important.  However the longer the duration between huddles the more this analogy starts to breaks down. (see post on organizational rhythms)

Defined Plays – the bad:  At a macro/business level I find that 'defined plays' can actually decrease agility.  Plays in football are executed as planned.  If anything goes wrong, play execution fails most of the time.  It typically results in zero movement forward or sometimes a loss of yards.  On the other hand, Rugby is more about continuous sustained play with real time adjustments.  The team is not told what play to execute, nor do they have the benefit of a stoppage in play to huddle up and discuss.  The rules of rugby create a style of play that can appear very chaotic from the outside. (Remind you of your business environment?)  However, team members practice around a basic framework or set of patterns, and when on the field – the team self organizes, and adjusts real time as the environment changes. 

The Speed of Play: Think about American football.  4 quarter hour segments of play time.   Then think about game duration in terms of actual play time.  There is a lot of time where there is no actual ball movement.  Now think about Ruby.  The style of play is much faster – there is a lot more opportunity for real time ‘practice’ – fail, retry, fail, retry.  It happens so fast in the game play that you hardly have time to consider or even think about it as a failed play.  Its just a natural part of the game progression.  This coupled with real time learning on the field creates a very well practiced, fail fast and adapt, agile team operating under minimal constraints.     

One last thought:  The idea of moving the ball down the field in small short plays is a good one, and definitely a potential strategy to get the ball across the line.... as long as the team you are playing against is using the same rules.   Now think about your business environment.  To me, it is much more like rugby with very few rules about how the different teams move the ball.  If your team plays well under the rules of American football what happens when you are put in an environment with the same objective (moving the ball down the field to the end zone) but remove the constraints on how movement takes place and play doesn’t stop?  Think like a rugby team!

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GOOD just released a list of 30 places we want to work.  An impressive list of companies for sure.  I think this speaks to the cultural shift around what the modern creative class is looking for in a company.  How does your organization stack up?  If you want to hire talent that will propel you business forward in the modern economy, keep these in mind.

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The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. Written in 2002 by Steven Pressfield.  A friend recently gave it a glowing recommendation so I picked it up and wasn't disappointed.  This book is filled with timeless advice on the battles we all wage on finding and using the creative gifts we were given.  While following a similar vein as Seth Godin's Linchpin ,  Pressfield takes a more spiritual look at being an artist.  There are 3 ‘books’ between the covers – Book one talks about identifying resistance, book two focuses on combating resistance and book three talks about moving beyond.

Pressfield’s basic premise is that we are not born with unlimited choices and we cannot be anything we want to be.  We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become.  Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.  A large portion of the book focuses on how to be a 'professional', however his definition extends and modifies what you probably think of as a definition for this term..  At its core a professional takes money for work done, but does the work out of love.  He then augments with a lot more detail including my top 12 picks below:

1. The professional tackles projects that will make him/her stretch.  He takes on assignments that will bear him into uncharted waters compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself
2. If you don’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything.  The opposite of love isn’t hate – its indifference
3. The professional arms himself with patients, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work
4. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.  He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread free artist.
5. The professional knows that if he caves today he’ll be twice as likely to cave tomorrow
6. The professional conducts his business in the real world.  Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged.  The field is level the professional understands only in heaven, and it alters every day
7. The professional is prepared each day to confront his own self sabotage
8. The professional is sly.  He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.
9. The professional is always a student of the game and knows that the level of revelation that can unfold in any art form is inexhaustible.
10. The professional endures adversity.  He lets the bird shit splash down on his slicker, remembering that it comes clean with a heavy duty hosing
11. The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality
12. The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and take it for what it is: a supreme compliment

This is just a small sampling of the insights put forth in this quick read.  Swap the word ‘professional’ with Entrepreneur, business leader, artist, or your own name and it will still work.  I will end this post with the last paragraph from the book: Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor.  It is a gift to the world and every being in it.  Don’t cheat us of your contribution.  Give us what you got!

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According to Christopher McDougall, we humans are all literally born to run.  Leonardo daVinci said the human foot is a masterpiece of engineering, and a work of art.  26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments and 19 muscles.  Coupled with our unique ability to breath at various rates and about ability to sweat, makes us unique and different from any other running organism on the planet.  Thinking about this I can’t help but be even more amazed at the intelligent design of humans.

I personally wouldn’t call myself a runner.  I like the idea of running, and I do a lot of hiking, but running has never really done me any favors.  I can do about 6 miles before my knees tend to suffer.  I remember going to a sports medicine doctor in college with a knee injury after a triathlon and his comment to me was ‘you just don’t have a runner’s body’.  I thought ‘well that sucks’!  So when I picked up McDougall’s book Born to Run and hear the author fighting a similar battle, I got intrigued and read on with fascination all the way to the end of this book.   It was an amazing read that had me enthralled and learning throughout.

The book is what I would class as a docu-drama.  It was a great yarn of a story interspersed with documentary style sections on running related topics such as persistence hunting in African tribes, the history of the running shoe, the ultra-marathon culture as well as unique stories about the people in the book, that made the characters much more interesting to read about, and also know that they were all real people.

The book has also got me fired up about running without injury on my 6 ft 205 lb frame.  While my wife thinks I am nuts I have started barefoot running!  While I first heard about this movement back in early 2009 from the blog of Tim Ferriss, reading this book, gave me the kick in the pants I needed to try it out.  I have been easing into it slowly but last night was my 4th go and I did close to 3 miles on both pavement and trail.  I did some research and there is actually quite a bit available on the internet to help you learn the proper technique.  I have to say what I love most about it is feeling the ground and connecting with the earth under my feet.  Every step I feel my foot land and role before the next one hits.  Its makes running shoes feel like ski boots.  The second thing I like is the feeling of freedom of just walking out the front door and just taking off.  Barefoot running forces you to run completely different, and because you normally have your feet packaged into shoes, barefoot running has you using muscles you have never used before in your feet so while you may not be winded your first few times out, your soles need some time to adjust and your legs will be sore in entirely new ways.  However now that I have a taste for it, I will likely try out some barefoot running sandles. (Here are a couple: Luna and Invisible Shoe).  I have known about the vibram five finger for some time but wearing a neoprene foot sock doesn't seem like it would feel as good as open air sandles.

The other thing I have tried based on the book and quite like is a natural energy drink called Iskiate.  Hey anything that gets described as frog pond water and tastes good has to be interesting!   Its actually very good and made with lime, sugar, water and chia seeds.   Yes you heard right – the same seed from the  more widely known chia pet!  Here is the seed I ended up buying.

At the end of the day I will not be running in any ultra marathons anytime soon, but I love to get out and finding a way to run without injury will allow me to go further into the outdoors and enjoy are uniquely human trait of endurance running.  Plus as the book correctly states running is most enjoyable when its fun - when you are doing it for no other reason that the art of craft.  I would say that this goes for almost anything in life and business - not just running.  My next thought is, how will I continue to train like this through the winter? ... but of courses there are solutions to that as well

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