18 days since my last posterous post. I'm working on something secret. As soon as I figure out what it is, I won't tell you.

When I was 16 I worked for the summer in a mailing warehouse in Milpitas, CA - we put together kits, manuals, etc. and shipped them out. There was a broadly accepted practice of assigning tasks by gender. Today some might find that offensive, but it worked. I never heard a complaint as a 'worker' or later while supervising both male and female teams, and the results were readily apparent.

Now, I'll freely admit to being one of those guys who holds doors for women and gives up his seat on a shuttle whether the particular woman appreciates it or not. I've had female bosses and I've worked in an 80% female organization - I just don't see how having good manners has to conflict with giving people equal professional opportunities. When I went on a trip with four female colleagues, they didn't complain about me carrying bags for them and neither did I.

But to this day, when I think about staffing for certain types of tasks, I picture only women in those roles. Are they menial, unimportant tasks?  No. Traditional female roles like teaching and nursing? No. Jobs that don't require heavy lifting? Who does that any more?

What I learned 24 years ago is that women (in general) are better at detailed tasks - doing something detailed, getting it right and then doing it again. Men (in general) are too interested in trying to do it faster, finding a shortcut, moving on to the next step. You want wood chopped? Get a man. You want 100 letters addressed with no mistakes? A woman with no job experience will do a better job than most men, educated or otherwise.

There's no correlation to intelligence or pay. One is not more critical to an organization than the other. Indeed, women are the safer bet for most modern jobs when you look just at that differentiator.

So am I wrong to picture only women when I think about bookkeeping, customer relations and marketing research? I'd give a male prospect an interview - but he'd have high expectations to meet.

PBS recently ran Nova's 'What Darwin Didn't Know' - your local PBS station may run it again and it's worth watching. There are four hours of great visuals and insightful information to bring you up to speed on the current state of genetic research as it relates to the genetic traits in all types of animals. But two problems became readily apparent:

1. The narration and some speakers use "evolution" where in many cases it's clearly more appropriate to use "adaptation" (any instance where a change may be naturally and beneficially reversed is clearly adaptation), such as fur color in mice.

2. Rather than pursuing an objective conclusion, the show sticks to a dogmatic evolutionary perspective. To be fair, they set the expectation that they are referring everything back to Darwin. Alas, that turns out to be strictly titular.

The premise is that Darwin was much more right than he ever could have imaginged. However, that thinking leads the narrative down an ever-narrowing perspective, whereas the information presented actually opens up much broader possibilities.

Here is an alternate, and much more open-minded interpretation of the data:

Suppose you were God. As such, you are much smarter than humans - much, much smarter. If you were to design and build cars, for example - you probably would not start over with every design and give every model a different engine, steering mechanism, cabin layout, etc. You would probably take a couple of basic platforms (think car vs. truck), a few efficient, powerful engines (possibly running on different fuels) and a smattering a mechanical components, interior pieces and safety equipment to build many models of vehicles. In the case of DNA, you would have a collection of 23,000 genes representing 3 Billion possible specifications.

If your list of possible options included (for the sake of giving us a wide perspective) tracks and a turret for a tank, you wouldn't need to build a separate plant or scrap your parts list just because your 2-seat hybrid model didn't require those items. OK, you're smart. You have one list of parts with millions of possibilities. You never have to reinvent cars from scratch - a simple genetic 'switch' lets you turn of the 'armament' section of the common genetic code.

As a result of this process, you might end up with some oddball artifacts like rear seat belts for seats too small for anyone to ever want to occupy. You might even see a place for a spare tire on a model with run-flat tires. You would surely have cargo hooks on some cars that were never loaded on a cargo ship. Of course unlike cars, your product produces offspring which begets the opportunity for adaptation and the results range from Hummer limousines to drop-top Mini Coopers.

Achieving such a feat of genetic creation is not only brilliant, it means you can knock of early and go get a beer. It also means that you can let nature run its course, producing lots of variations. The four-door Toyota pickup can be seen worldwide and Pontiacs go extinct. People will marvel at a restoration of a Model T Ford, but no one will declare that cars are the decendants of horses (you hope).

Here's the problem with strict Evolutionist thinking - in order to maximize the acceptance of evolution, you have to downplay the power of Adaptation. In other words, everything must change in one direction only - from simpler to more complex - to explain how humans are the eventual desscendants of single-cell organisms.

If anyone were to insist that Demotic Egyptian, Hierogliphics and Greek were derived from each other sequentially because all three appeared on the Rosetta Stone, the presumption would quickly be discarded. In the same way, the fact that a whale has pelvic bones doesn't have to mean that it was once a land animal or that land animals evolved from it. It only means that the use of a universal genetic code or a common 'parts bin' results in occassional vestigal items.

And now the bigger problem.

If you dismiss the possibility of universal genetic code as the source of common genetics, you inherently presume that the first and simplest creature had, from its very origination, the genetic architecture for humans. Plants came first and were simpler, you say? No, no - plants have 80,000 genes to animals' 23,000. Such a presumtion would require, I don't know... some intelligence behind the original design? You can't have that.

Darwin's observations of the Adaptation of species were absolutely correct. His rejection of the Victorian era idea that all creatures existed just as they had been created by God without change was perfectly rational. But just as theories built on his work have been refined, Creationist thinking has broadened as well. Evolutionists want to trumpet the superiority of their theory over long-abandonded Victorian Creationism, but current genetic science merits a fresh look the assumptions required by evolutionism.

That objective thinking may lead to some fascinating possibilities - for those whare are not bound by the narrow perspective of strict Evolution.

edits Jan.4 - spelling erros fixed, deleted word, bold/underline for links, especially beer

After spending months on end doing investor pitches, pitch workshops, multiple iterations of business plans and many, many oversimplifications of my life's ambition to please others (all while RUNNING a business!), I did not want to hear one more person giving tired '30,000 foot' advice. You may have even heard me say "The next person who says 'you just have to...' is gonna wake up naked and phoneless in the middle of the desert".

What I really needed to maintain my sanity and make measurable progress on the many goals I had ahead of me was specific advice on execution. Lots of people will tell you that they can talk or contribute 'strategically'. Most of their advice should be prefaced with the translation "I've never actually done this, and I'm not willing to make the effort myself, but here's the common advice that you get from everyone else".

I started looking for (and spending time almost exclusively with) people who could answer tactical questions, give practical advice and cite specific experiences, models and examples. Keep in mind that none of this fixed anything overnight, but none of the 'strategic' platitudes will do that either!

In November and December, Kickstand (a great organization for Startups that highlights Boise's communal willingness to help others succeed) put together a series of 5 sessions to provide some of the tactical advice we needed. You can see agendas for 4 of the 5 'Launchpad' sessions at http://kickstand.org/Event_Calendar.htm#12-2009. If you live in the area go to their monthly meetings - it's time well spent.

So here's a summary of the kinds of things you have to keep within your focus while you seek to build a startup, because without them you'll suddenly find that you don't have a company (italics mine, the rest is from Martin Zwilling):

• Create a vision and instill values. The vision may be yours alone, but the communication has to include your team, potential investors, and customers. For most people the communication is the hard part – written, verbal, over and over again.

  Even if your initial vision has to be 'tweaked' over and over, making it clear will help you identify the strengths and weakness. The payback for all the time spent is getting it right. We figured out how and where we were overshooting our customer needs this way. Now as we rewrite our business plan, our focus is on what we need to do for our success, not what investors want to hear. That means that the plan sounds much more relevant to the employees as well.



• Define a focused strategy. Limit the focus to a few critical areas that will yield the highest possible return. If your strategy has more than ten elements, it’s not focused. Not everything can be a priority. Do not spend any time on unimportant goals.

  For us, it was a matter of separating the many things we do and can do into 'parts of our vision' and 'stuff we do to pay the bills for the moment'. No one has a problem with that, and anything that isn't clearly on one list or the other should be killed off. Then we took the list, sorted by how much we could make in the next 12 months and that's the order of our priorities. Anything without a high probability of coming to fruition just shouldn't be on the list to begin with.



• Get stakeholder commitment. People who are not committed cannot be held accountable for delivering ambitious results. The guiding coalition must demonstrate 100 percent unity, or there will be a mutiny. The worst case is a silent mutiny.

  This was hard because we hadn't built a team of advisors and early customers. We didn't have sales staff on board and we looked like a risky bet to anyone considering selling for us on commission. We're finally getting this on track. Whether it's sales, finance, development or operations when you don't have someone with expertise in an area it's way too easy to think you can do that thing quickly from scratch. The person whose butt is on the line to deliver that thing will raise the red flag.



• Align the objectives of principals. I have seen startups implode when principals were pitted against each other on mutually exclusive objectives, like adding more technology versus keeping costs down. Quantify time and cost goals early, get agreement from all, and measure results regularly to verify alignment.

  OK, easy - if by easy you mean 'the sole stock holder can just work 70+ hours per week to run one business while starting another from scratch. Now we are building partnerships to tackle the unknowns and biggest challenges, and working to ensure that both our goals and theirs can be met at once. I still have a forceful charismatic personality, so I know I have to seek out others who can understand our vision and tell me when we're endangering it.



• Every process needs a system. Define and use well-thought-out systems, manual or automated, to ensure repeatable success of every key process. The most basic element of every startup system is a written, agreed, and measurable business plan.

  We knew from a technical perspective that we were going to need certain processes when we got up to speed, but when we examined where time was going on a daily basis, there was lots of room for improvement that freed up time to work on moving things forward - things like Quickbooks not being used efficiently and making multiple trips to the bank every week. At the same time, we avoided pouring a ton of time into an automated billing system for a service that doesn't have subscribers yet - we know (now) how to watch for the point at which the manual process is a liability and needs to be automated.



• Manage priorities. You must relentlessly communicate to all constituents the current priorities, and keep the total to a manageable number. One of the biggest mistakes I see in startups is a new and larger set of priorities every week, causing the team to lose momentum and lose commitment.

  Because not all of our staff works in the same place on the same days, we can't assume that they all know what's going on in the big picture. I took the same approach that I do to blogging and social media - first you put time in to put out information for others (because there is no doubt that it's needed), then you worry about people using it and tweaking your output to make it more valuable. We use Google Tasks with several lists. No, you can't share lists, but a common Google account and iGoogle config lets everyone see and edit the same lists. One master list shows the priorities for the current week, the rest provide more detail and road maps for future issues.



• Provide team support and training. People are your most valuable asset, so start with the right ones, and make sure they have the tools and training to deliver the results you are asking for. Don’t assume they know everything you know, or learn as fast as you do.

  This is tough with a small team and a shoestring budget. However, if they can see why you don't want to buy the expensive tool right now when they can get by with the cheap one until your next milestone, it's worth the time you spend on communicating vision, priorities and the state of the company. I still don't do enough, but we can get enthusiastic underpaid staff to work on unreasonable goals becasue they are excited about what we're doing. Any time they need input I can not only give them the information they need, I can also use that opportunity to keep them excited about what we're building.



• Measure, adapt and innovate. Things change in a startup, and things will go wrong. You won’t notice if you don’t measure. Measure four or five key drivers, not twenty or thirty things. Motivate everyone with an insatiable curiosity to make things one percent better every day (kaizen).

  We're blessed with employees that are more interested in improvement than status quo. Still, we have to know what the payoff is before we improve something in order to set priorities. If everyone knows you're a startup you don't have to worry that version 1.0 isn't perfect or that you're doing things differently today than you said you would 3 months ago. You do have to worry about missing a practical innovation that would have improved your offering or not being able to deliver at all. That makes it easier to decide what to measure.



• Reward and punish. What gets measured and rewarded gets done. Be exceedingly generous with praise, celebration, recognition, small rewards, and sometimes money. Set high standards for performance and use the three T’s (train, transfer, or terminate) to deal with people unable to effectively execute the plan.

  We lost some significant opportunities and spent too much money we didn't really have by not pulling the plug on some ideas, relationships and people soon enough. Now, every time I update the status of the issues and projects we're working on, I include the names the employees and partners working on that item. Everyone gets credit for what they do, and it helps to remind me that when failures are allowed to persist it prevents the people who are working hard from suceeding like they could have. They deserve better.
  

And then there is humility. We put it to work in two ways:

1. If you still consider yourself a startup, today is not the day to use an expensive tool instead of a cheap one. Don't kill productivity or employee moral with bad tools, but don't buy anything you can avoid buying.
2. When my default perspective on my days changed from 'What are we trying to accomplish?' to 'How am I spending my time and how long is it going to take to hit our goals?' it became clear that execution was everything. We've still got a lot of work to do - but we also have a product that we can sell (profitably) today. Without execution, we'd have nothing to measure but burn rate.

Many thanks for the bulletted list, which I paraphrased - it came from Martin Zwilling's Startup Professionals blog at http://ow.ly/QhGs. Follow Martin on Twitter @StartupPro.

Last week we saw one of the dozens of hotels that we support suddenly go 'red' in our monitoring system. It only took a few minutes to confirm that their Internet service provider had cut their service somewhere outside the hotel. A couple of phone calls got an explanation - there was a scheduled 'disconnect' order (not for non-payment), but it had been executed a week early. They turned service back on within a few hours and we notified the General Manager at that location of what had happened.

Though our customer made it clear to the carrier that they HAD NOT approved a disconnect and service should continue, the circuit went down a week later at noon on the original termination date. As of now, the hotel has had no Internet access for 48 hours and, this being a Friday we have to assume that if it isn't fixed in the next few hours there will be no service all weekend. And they are completely full this weekend.

No Internet at the Front Desk, no Internet for the Guests, no convenient temporary answer like Clearwire, nothing. There's nothing our customer can do and nothing we can do to speed up the carrier. In 48 hours they have not been able to undo the keystrokes that turned the service off. Brining in a new service provider will take at least a week.

And by now everyone is thinking through the monetary damage to the hotel's business - room credits, loss of future revenue and any future business that they cannot book right now because the Property Management System is cut off from the outside world.

And this is not some small-town ISP with duct tape and antennas running a wireless service - it's a T1 from a sizable carrier, which should be the single most reliable service you can get. Our customer is certainly not guilty of taking risks.

So what's the reasonable answer to avoid the possibility of a 3rd party having such a dire negative impact on your operations? We've installed a second ISP circuit in many of our hotels in the last two years. In most cases it has been to increase web browsing speed for the guests as more of them are on-line at peak times. But the secondary benefit is redundancy.

As long as you can add a second carrier that shares as few weak links as possible (don't get two of the same circuit and try to get one that does not use the phone company's wired connection into the building as T1s and DSL do), you can typically add a 2nd circuit for $50/month or less. If you never need, you've spent up to $600 per year for insurance. If you do need it, you may pay for a year of service in just one night.

If you have questions about the benefits and requirement for dual-ISPs, drop me a note at matt-at-tnoc-dot-us.

1. Use Hay-soos instead of Jee-zus in an English-speaking church

2. Wear a Jesus costume to get that 'Rocky-Horror Picture Show' vibe going

3. Use 'To da pizzle' instead of the tired old 'Peace be with you'

4. Correct the Pastor during the sermon

5. Put a 'Need Some, Take Some' sticker on the collection plate

6. Beat box during the doxology or kyrie

7. Practice supplication before God by laying down in the pews

8. Give the people singing with their hands up a high-five

9. Ask for Seconds during communion because the portions are tiny

10. Circle every Seventh letter in the reading to find the secret message

11. Insert Hip-Hop lyrincs into hymns and call it a mash-up

12. Forget to go. Even if you break the other 11 I'd still be happy to have you there.

Wall Street Journal today: The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age http://ow.ly/uuDW

There are numerous academics who have to approve new terms in order to prevent the French language from being dominated by the faster-moving, more efficient English language.

The WSJ story by itself is an interesting read, but it makes me wonder about the other parallels in French society <insert now-embarrassing admission of being more than 1/4 French here>. Their labor force can't compete on the world stage. French companies struggle to survive financially under the strain of taxes and regulation. They are absent from the world stage of high-tech industries. The citizens who have jobs in the French socialist economy take home wages that average just 72% of U.S. workers' pay.

It's a country in denial of so many things. Perhaps if they take long enough to debate the francofication of terms like 'economic catastrophe' and 'failed economy' they can pretend it isn't happening. So who will be worse off? The 96% of their population living in metropolitan areas, or the 4% clinging to the postcard-from-days-gone-by countryside? At least the latter can pass itself off to the world as a quaint tourist destination.

This spring we moved to a new office at the BSU TECenter (Technology and Entrapreneurial Center http://www.bsutecenter.com/). As we've grown and evolved our focus we've moved a few times. Our previous office was a sublet that we shared with a partnered business - when we moved in we had an existing Qwest line moved there.

After the move (done 2 days late and taking that line down for half a day after several promises that wouldn't happen), we got our first post-move bill. We made a mistake - we paid it electronically and I used the wrong account number for two payments. The nightmare begins.

When we got the third bill and noticed that we hadn't been credited for the first two payments we called to see what was going on. Afterall, our bank records clearly showed that Qwest had accepted our payments. We discovered the account number problem and we were asked to get records directly from the bank to show the payments so it could be resolved. That was in June of 2008.

In the following two months we received calls from four different Qwest reps who gave us four different FAX numbers to send the bank records to them. No phone numbers, ever. The phone company apparently does not have phones, so we can't call them to confirm that they received our FAX. Each time we dealt with a new rep we asked about the previous rep. 'Never heard of him/her'. Each new call results in a new 'Payment Investigation' because there are never any notes in our account about the previous one, two, three investigations. Great.

Fine, they have the records, they have the money, it's their problem to fix for themselves. Phone bills show we have an outstanding balance, but we still have dial tone.

Three months later they call again. We owe money? No, dear *you* owe our account money. You want me to FAX everything again? This is getting tedious. New FAX number, but I got a promise of follow-up. Two weeks later, wonder of wonders I got a phone call saying it had been resolved and I would receive an email showing that. Got the email, it shows that we made the payments that they had already credited, but not the ones they lost. Apparently they did nothing as a result of Payment Investigation FIVE. Sent email to complain/clarify/get action - nothing.

We still have dial-tone, so forget about it. Then ten months later we get a letter immediately followed by a phone call from a collections company. <Insert explitives here> we do not owe Qwest money, they owe us!

Two weeks later a call from a new rep at Qwest, who never heard of the previous five reps. There are no records. New FAX number, new email address, request for a new type of document from our bank, but it's been 16 months and I have no idea if we'll be able to get it. I've been to this corner of purgatory, the scenery sucks. So now we're on payment investigation SIX. Qwest owes our account about $375. They show that we owe $190 (we've paid ahead a month since the beginning of this fiasco).

You know what makes the whole thing worse? I get two mailers a week and two phone calls per month asking me if we want to switch to Qwest (the problemed account is one of four telecomm services accounts for the business).

Short of torture, Hell on Earth is not being able to escape incompetence.

Arguing one side of an issue is the norm - put both sides in front of as many people as possible shows a committment to the debate itself. No matter which side of the issue you take, you have to admire the approach they are taking (and hopefully admire it with more maturity than the spoofs on youtube).

We could never raise a fraction of the money that the tournament does for local charities, but doing what we can to help tournament operations is a great way to turn geek skills into great things for our community.

Every year we get Internet access turned up for tournament operations, PGA Tour staff, the press, the players and the public. The kiosks became less popular as everyone started carrying smart phones, so we'll drop those for this year - but we'll expand WiFi coverage. Last year we did a little digital signage and we were able to put the leaderboard up for everyone, but there will be more emphasis on that this year as the layout for food services changes.

If you're thinking about coming out to watch, you'll be able to get Internet access just about anywhere you can get a seat.