The Jay-Blog

Now I'm questioning, "What's next?"

The problem we face is this: if we're good at anything, we keep doing it. The forces of nature that keep us doing certain things are strong, just as the movement from the past that keeps us moving in the same direction is strong. We need to change, to take a step back and look at our situations, to have a new perspective and the courage to break out and move on to the next phase when it's right.

It sounds mundane, but in reality, it's tough. People think they're locked into the career path they're on and it's not obvious to them how to get off and on to something else. Or maybe they don't know how to move on without taking a hit in income. So, we try to deal by lying to ourselves. We say "I love what I'm doing." When really, we don't. The problem with this is that it's toxic-it's not healthy to lie. And eventually, it will hit you that it's a lie.

So we find ourselves in a golden cage, or on a treadmill (it's a nice treadmill, one that serves us caviar!)... but our spirit dies over time.

The challenge is to figure out: "What's the point?" How do we get out and figure out what is the right next thing to do? And how to get to it? When you can do this, you will end up unbelievably energized. You'll look back and say, "How did I do it before? How did I get out of bed before?" And you will achieve more, for yourself, your family, and your company. You will feel vibrant and alive in doing it.

Now I'm questioning, "What's next?"

The problem we face is this: if we're good at anything, we keep doing it. The forces of nature that keep us doing certain things are strong, just as the movement from the past that keeps us moving in the same direction is strong. We need to change, to take a step back and look at our situations, to have a new perspective and the courage to break out and move on to the next phase when it's right.

It sounds mundane, but in reality, it's tough. People think they're locked into the career path they're on and it's not obvious to them how to get off and on to something else. Or maybe they don't know how to move on without taking a hit in income. So, we try to deal by lying to ourselves. We say "I love what I'm doing." When really, we don't. The problem with this is that it's toxic-it's not healthy to lie. And eventually, it will hit you that it's a lie.

So we find ourselves in a golden cage, or on a treadmill (it's a nice treadmill, one that serves us caviar!)... but our spirit dies over time.

The challenge is to figure out: "What's the point?" How do we get out and figure out what is the right next thing to do? And how to get to it? When you can do this, you will end up unbelievably energized. You'll look back and say, "How did I do it before? How did I get out of bed before?" And you will achieve more, for yourself, your family, and your company. You will feel vibrant and alive in doing it.

I've been telling people to slow down and question, asking themselves, "What's the point?" I've made my speech enough to other people that I find myself asking that very question of myself. It's my way of creating this kind of conversation with myself.

I decided that I don't want to be a Harvard professor. I don't want to go to curriculum meetings, I don't want to read dissertations by people we are thinking of hiring, I don't want to walk down the hall to MBA classes at 8:00 in the morning with bright, but paranoid, sharks as students.

I've done it all. And I loved it. But I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm done.

I was the youngest full professor in my arena. As of July 1, I was the youngest full professor to retire. I will always be Professor Kotter... that's how it works... but as of now, I'm officially retired.

Some of us remember from high school what "semantics" used to mean and how it differed from "syntax." (I shouldn't depend on what I learned in high school to write technical articles, but hey, it was a pretty good high school.)

"Syntax" explained nitpicking stuff like why one should properly say "it's whom you know" instead of "it's who you know." In contrast, "semantics" applied to more interesting issues such as the presence of different verbs in Romance languages for knowing information and knowing people, so that the quip "it's not what you know but whom you know" would be not so notable in one of those languages.

What would the Semantic Web really entail to be successful? It would consist of reducing semantics to syntax. The complexities of whatever or whomever you want to know would become formalized in tags. The most subtle areas of knowledge would become subject to the syntactic experience of parsing and tree structure.

n short, I think semantic tagging and Web services are useful for certain business applications and other areas where interactions can be formalized, but they aren't going to create a completely new way of using digital information.

The Next Step Toward a Semantic Web?
While considering the successes and failures of a technology, it often helps to step back and look at how individuals solve information problems on their own, informally and with minimal technological support.

When I want to educate myself regarding a topic, my first step is to find a place where interested people congregate (it could be a mailing list, if I am doing my research in virtual mode) or a collection of useful documents. When I find people who impress me with their insights or who simply intrigue me with their points of view, I spend more time reading what they have to say and ask them for pointers to new material.

This technique uses affinity between individuals, as collaborative filtering does, but the individuals are actively seeking affinity rather than passively waiting for it to emerge from a collaborative filtering system.

A Web Service is a software application identified by a URI [IETF RFC 2396], whose interfaces and binding are capable of being defined, described and discovered by XML artifacts and supports direct interactions with other software applications using XML based messages via internet-based protocols. An Interface represents an abstract Web Service type, independent of transmission protocol and data format. An InterfaceBinding specifies the protocol and/or data format to be used in transmitting Messages defined by the associated Interface. A Message is the basic unit of communication between a Web Service and a Client; data to be communicated to or from a Web Service as a single logical transmission. A Client is a software that makes use of a Web Service, acting as its 'user' or 'customer'. A set of Messages related to a single Web Service action is called Operation. A logical grouping of operations. An Interface represents an abstract Web Service type, independent of transmission protocol and data format. An InterfaceBinding specifies the protocol and/or data format to be used in transmitting Messages defined by the associated Interface. An EndPoint indicates a specific location for accessing a Web Service using a specific protocol and data format. A collection of EndPoints is called Service.

The classic approach to corporate strategy starts with a presumption: that with sufficient analytical rigor and an adequate assessment of the probabilities, strategists can pave a predictable path to the future from the matter of the past. In this world, they make reasonable assumptions about the evolution of product markets, capital markets, technology, and government regulation and, in effect, "assume away" most risk. Chief executive officers articulate strategy every few years, often in the context of a change in top management.

Such traditional strategy formulation often pays lip service to the perspectives of the capital markets, to changing industry structures, and to the forces at work in the environment. But in reality, a "visionary" corporate strategy is often an internally driven reflection of what the company wants the world to look like.

But suppose we no longer believe that the future is foreseeable. What if defining and achieving an enduring competitive advantage is really just a conceit that must be abandoned? What if the outstanding fact of business, as John Maynard Keynes once described it, is the "extreme precariousness of the basis of knowledge"? What if it is no longer possible to block out the "noise" of the world’s messy reality in order to rationalize a plan to achieve predetermined outcomes?

Consider another analogy. Of two runners, one is faster than the other and can be expected to win on a level track no matter how many times the race is run. But what if the race were held at night on a path strewn with rocks and fallen trees? Suppose that the slower runner practiced both in daylight and at night, while the faster one didn’t bother to see the course in advance. The runner with the superior knowledge—the greater familiarity—would probably win even if the other were intrinsically faster. If the prize money were to rise, the value of familiarity would rise as well.

Although the world is increasingly complex, confusing, and uncertain, serendipity doesn’t have to be more important than skill in the crafting and implementing of corporate strategy. Traditional deterministic approaches to strategy aren’t likely to be up to the task of helping companies negotiate these dangerous waters, but executives need not put the fate of their businesses entirely in the hands of chance. As the global environment continually changes and risk levels rise, a portfolio-of-initiatives approach holds out the opportunity for corporations to be as flexible and adaptive as the markets themselves.