A long time ago, while at a Conductiv, we were in search of the Magic Bullet. The magic bullet was the sales pitch that would compel, without hesitation, the prospect to exchange their revenue to invest in a solution to arrive at even more revenue earlier rather than later. We searched high and low for it, we flew in marketing executives from Australia to the United States; we held workshops, offsites and whiteboard meetings. We couldn’t find it, and I, along with others, thought about it constantly, daily. Then I found it, just last night — it was warm, glistening in the nexus of time, space and probability in front of me all along. The magic bullet is… US.
We are the magic bullet, the operative word is “WE”. It is progress toward a more perfect union, each and every moment of each and every day. Our job as leaders is to empower ourselves, the individuals, the teams, the partnerships, the customers that they, themselves are the magic bullet. The bits help, surely, but we’re the ones that receive and transmit it. We are the ones at the end of the day that are responsible for the health and well being of each other, each others’ revenues, capital, business, and ecosystems.
So if you are too searching for the magic bullet, I recommend saving yourself years of anguish, capital and revenue. We burned our capital, cash flows, revenue, business, partnerships, and friendships in search of something that we already had. I always felt that I failed my business partners and our investors, but now I know that we failed as a team. We failed as a team because we believed in the thing we were making and not ourselves to learn, realize and grow each and every day. Don’t get me wrong, many did grow, many learned new things, but we did it in small fashion. We must iteratively improve ourselves together — things that compress time, minimize demand and maximize the amount of work not done not with individuals alone, not between two individuals, but between all individuals.
If you really want to find a work-life balance, I suggest saving yourselves years of chasing after what you think is going to get you there, chance and hard work. Neither of these will get you there alone, you are the magic bullet, you always have been and always will be, and a bullet knows no herd, a bullet is without preference. You are always, like me, at the tip of spacetime traveling down range faster than even a conventional bullet. Find your freedom to grow along the way, be receptive to justice and empower others to do the same. Things will not be as they seem however, for empowerment is better in unity — a unity that knows not only space, but time and for the brave, probability.
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For those looking to go beyond this, I suggest reading some Thoughts on Business; Thinking Deeply and Acting Lightly which was posted recently. For anyone struggling with Agile with some time in the evening, you may want to check out Schrödinger’s Agile Cat; it was an earlier article aimed at academics, but has some useful bits.