Ctrl-Alt-Del: Time for a Reality Reset

Reality Reset

1. There is no such thing as a Free Lunch. This is one of the hardest things for adults to accept. Indeed, it is childish to hold on to the belief that you can get things for free. We learn through dating that there are expectations set when a very, very nice "gift" is accepted. We learn through buying and selling, gaining experience in the marketplace, learning that giving time to a vendor at the door or a salesperson on the phone is an actual commercial exchange - it rarely results in the promises that first come across the threshold, but it's worth the time if you learn something. We learn that the free pens we accept have about a gram of ink in them and are so cheap they're likely to explode and drip ink on our pants, shirt, or hands.

"Free" is always subsidized by someone, somewhere, so there is someone picking up the tab out there, carrying an expectation of a payoff. There's an implied debt when a gift is accepted - I learned that when I told my parents "No Thanks" to their offer of tuition money and went out on my own at the age of 19 - their gift came with strings attached: I had to listen to them and take their "advice." It was a painful transition, but we got along much better when I became independent. There is always a sacrifice of quality when free is accepted. Paying for something should always be acceptable, IF there is a fair exchange of value - that is the definition of commerce. "You can't get something for nothing" is a primary lesson of adulthood that we all must accept and keep in mind, because we're constantly told the opposite by people who want something from us. Growing up means accepting reality, and one of the toughest lessons to learn and relearn is that "free" is not, in fact, "free."

2. Low Bid is Not Always Best Bid. If we can't have it for free, we often shouldn't even want it for cheap! Sorry folks. The Project Triangle, known by many other names, provides a basic pearl of wisdom, a lesson of reality that can be gained only through experience, because most of us don't want to believe it. But it is indeed a pearl. The Project Triangle says that there are three elements to any project: Time, Quality, and Price - you can focus on two out of three, but there is always a sacrifice involved to get those two. I wrote a good blog post about this on November 22, 2006.

The Business Golden Triangle Maxim says, "Only two of these three are available to any consumer." To recognize its truth, just try to imagine getting just what you want that is very high quality, immediately, for very little money - that's a fantasy world. Or the polar opposite, getting something of very low quality over a long period, with project delays, while spending a lot - that's getting taken to the cleaners. So, the rational choices in a procurement or business decision are to pick two factors that are most important and relax the third constraint:

3) Fast and high quality, but costs more. Strategy: Pay more (budget more to accommodate a higher expense, create a strong business case to justify a financial strategy, identify alternate grant or funding sources, etc.). MetroNetIQ Archives: Learning to Live within Boundaries

The Triangle is the essence of Project Management, because it's firmly based in the world of Reality, ruled by the Facts of Life. Accepting these rules up front is a key to happiness on the back end.

3. A changing environment demands adaptation; doing nothing is a choice too. The essence of denial is that if I don't recognize something, if I avoid facing it, then it doesn't exist. Living in denial is alternately seen as childish, immature, or unhealthy behavior. It's often called various things in shorthand: "Burying your head in the sand." "Running away from your problems." "Delaying the inevitable." Mature, healthy people recognize that living life with your eyes wide open is always preferable to the alternative. But often the truth can be so painful that we construct elaborate denial mechanisms that rationalize our courses of action as appropriate.

One of the key things we hold on to is the fantasy that time is not in fact moving forward, that somehow things can stay the same. I have three coffee mugs that remind me of this fact every morning, after I have the coffee started, when I select a mug. There amid my wife's flower mugs and the souvenir mugs and the gimme mugs from the Blood Bank, are my three favorites, with pictures of my kids, my wife and kids, and me and the kids. The mugs in question are about 10 years old, 5 years old, and 2 years old, so the kid pictures are at various stages of cute (my son and daughter are 12 and 13 years old now). I cherish the memories of each stage, but am reminded each morning as well that they're rapidly moving through time, and there is not a damn thing I can do about it, but accept it and enjoy it.

Similarly, the environment we live in is dynamic, and you cannot freeze things or keep at bay the forces of change. People move in and out of a community. Traffic increases or economic activity dwindles. Without a clear strategy to monitor a changing world and adapt a city or organization's strategy to manage it's position in that world, it become inevitable that one's position will decline. Any system faces decline without new energy being fed into it. The concept of Entropy is a physical reality, not readily understood, and even less readily accepted by the psyche - it says that left alone, all things will decay over time, from a state of order to a state of disorder. Quit investing in the future, and watch the world around you slip into decay. If the world is constantly changing, then one must constantly spend energy (time, money, etc.) to adapt in order to stay even, and spend even more energy (time, money, etc.) in order to move ahead and do better than the rest. Doing nothing is a choice, but in a highly dynamic environment, it becomes a choice to fall behind.

4. The world is now digital, demanding a strategy to coexist, to balance the ancient human elements of life with the efficiencies of a newly digital world. My last blog post was about a wireless toy that played around with an analog radio modulator tool - Mr. Microphone. It is a relic of our past, when High Tech was not digital. Gone too are the days when digital High Tech was a novelty, or even an option. Digital Integration is now an essential element of life. No longer is it the case where you could pretend that high tech did not matter - to pretend otherwise, to cling to old analog tools and processes, is to accept less efficiency and more cost. Not all things digital are good, necessary or even effective; to discern the mix between old and new requires an investment of time and attention, to gain the understanding and experience to tell the difference. The silicon chip is now pervasive, and increasingly, connectivity over an IP network is becoming just as pervasive. To deny the need for broadband is to deny reality. To deny the need for mobile broadband is equally evasive, because as new tools become available, they offer an adaptability challenge that we either accept or deny. Going through a digital transition is a matter of When, not If.

5. Life is a Series of Choices and Consequences. Individually and collectively, we each choose to be In the Game or On the Sidelines. There are costs and benefits to either choice, but the reality is that we do not get a third choice. The Reality of Freedom means that there are Choices and there are Consequences. Having to choose is indeed a burden, just as not having an ability to choose is a burden. Life is a burden, that's reality. Freedom of choice places a premium on education and learning to make good choices, profitable choices, beneficial choices, healthy choices, just choices. Refusing to make a choice is in itself a different kind of choice, with its own set of consequences, including the lack of experience that comes with being engaged in a project. Delaying a choice opportunity is a strategy that can be appropriate or inappropriate, given the circumstances at hand. Denying a choice opportunity, at least as an adult in a free society, is an aversion to accepting reality. Sometimes reality can present a series of "bad" choices, that can seem like the same as no choice at all. But in that case, we are forced to weigh the outcomes and choose the least bad option - that is reality - to say that there is no choice is to play the victim, to deny that you are in control.

On this topic, I'm obliged to share a statement actually made by the CEO of a major corporation where I worked - I was only a week or two into the new job, when I took my first trip to corporate headquarters to attend an annual all-hands conference. The CEO gave a headliner speech, where he described the bleak business environment in our industry at the time and shared this pearl.

"Folks, when you have to eat a shit sandwich, you're better off to take big bites."

That was in 1995 - five years later, the 70 year old company was acquired. The CEO was right, but he also steered the company into a safe harbor as his final duty. At the time, I was shocked to hear those words in a public speech, but they stuck with me, 15 years later. The essence of good leadership in bad times is to make hard decisions that offer the best outcome over the long run, with the least pain in the short term. Reality in life is about accepting life as it comes at you and doing the best you can with what you have to work with at the time.

The Bottom Line: God Bless Reality

1. There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
2. Cheap and/or Fast Is Not Always Good
3. Time Marches On
4. Digital is Here to Stay, So Deal With It
5. Freedom means Choice AND Consequences

It's not all that hard to analyze what went wrong and what we now face in regards to metropolitan broadband when you accept reality and review the recent past through the lens of reality. The reality we face is that all cities, all organizations, all communities will have to go through a Digital Transition sooner or later. I'd suggest a Digital Transformation, making the most of a necessary evil, along the lines of the Shit Sandwich analogy.

The sooner we all adopt this mindset that Reality is just fine and put our energies into understanding what Reality means, letting go of the Fantasy that masqueraded for Reality a few years ago, the better off we all will be.

It's up to the leaders among us to be the first to proclaim out loud the following Truths:

1. The Emperor Has No Clothes.
2. Muni Wireless as we knew it is altogether gone.
3. We all share some blame in the distraction and diversion - there were no victims, just free-will actors.
4. There were negative AND positive elements that came from this process.
5. While the promise of Free may have been nothing but a Fantasy, the pursuit of that Fantasy gave us valuable lessons and insights.

Having accepted Reality as what it is, we can start having the adult conversation about what a future based on digital tools connected with ubiquitous broadband would look like, and how we can get from here to there. I'm ready to start talking about Digital Transformation if you are.