The Question: How to maximize productivity in obscurity?
Develop in the shadows:
- Understanding before solving
- Building before selling
- Orienting before outreach
The Temptation: Mimicry – chasing virality; judge growth / development by ‘visibility’?
This is another ‘area’ where my lived experiences afforded me the discernment to distinguish between:
- Tactics – tick the minimum boxes that allow you to ‘get out there’
- Strategy – prioritizing posturing / positioning rooted in respect for self and ecosystem
Allowing others’ timelines and expectations to set the pace and tone, for my offers &/or services – would’ve simply resulting in having traded “windsocks”:
- The ‘windsock’ of corporate seasonal commoditization
- The ‘windsock’ of “square peg in a round hole”: trends, judgement, and ill-fitted engagements – guiding and/or in ‘control’ of my operations
The Consequence(s): of rushing to visibility would leave unsurfaced &/or unresolved?
Trading viability (durability) for instability:
- Aligning operations to markets / trends / hype – seasons; which are fickle and dynamic
- Not establishing what makes you durable – throughout seasons
- Not maturing into positioning (the shift from employee to entrepreneur)
Trading autonomy for the opinions of others:
- Not developing discernment for when ‘guidance’ is actually “showing you what I know
- Ticking ‘establishment’ boxes your business model never needed – based on assumptions &/or empty promise
Doing so accelerates &/or creates unnecessary systems to manage &/or premature overhead
The Exploration: What changed as I learned more?
Fortunately, my ORSA training and experience had established a breadth of capabilities:
- Project management
- Quantitative methods
- Information Knowledge systems (foundation for my shadow twins & FDEs)
- Accounting / finance (economic valuation of operations projects)
- E-commerce and supply chain
- Lean business planning
Collectively, establishing me as a “generalist” ORSA – giving me the ability to recognize misalignment and to mitigate it. I was able to operationalize a career path rather than a single technical skill.
The Insight: What principle(s) emerged?
Establish what matters – durable frameworks and architectures capable of facilitating:
- Discernment – distinguishing advice from based opinions
- Organizational readiness – aligned to my purpose and intentions
- Informed decisions / choices – vetted and/or researched
Defy the rush to failure – build for stewardship:
- I’ve had an ‘explore’, ‘model’, ‘build’ mindset since youth
- Math teams, science olympiads
- Alabama School of Mathematics & Science
- Organizational capabilities mature quietly before becoming visible
- Shadow / twin system
- Future deployed engineering (FDE)
- I’ve had an ‘explore’, ‘model’, ‘build’ mindset since youth
The Porteolas connection: How does this influence how I work today?
My experiences in:
- STEM (youth, military, professional career)
- Rapid learning / prototyping
- Weekly turnarounds
- Modeling operations projects in SUNY Stony Brook graduate program
- Quarterly turnarounds
- Employee evaluation cycle – innovation being a ‘core’ initiative
- Weekly turnarounds
- Building in both development and deployment environments
Contributed to the direct engagement / accountability of every step in establishing Porteolas
… and …
underpin my confidence and inform my diligence as I transition into my next phase.
