Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
By Jeff Finkelstein
As I write this just after the conclusion of another spectacular SCTE show, I can look back at all the excellent sessions, panels, and workshops, being very happy that the seemingly impossible was pulled together in less than a month from when the face-to-face event was turned into a virtual event. Kudos to the SCTE gang for performing miracles and giving us both another enjoyable show and great learning experience. Hopefully we can meet face-to-face next year in my hometown of Philadelphia to swap stories and enjoy some cheesesteak sandwiches.
For this article I decided to focus on two of the greatest challenges to those of us who help guide our companies into the future. What I am referring to is summed up in Jeff’s rules of technology #58 and #60. First, let’s start with rule #60.
Jeff’s Rule #60: Do not look at future technologies wearing glasses from the past
I realized long ago that when most folks look at a new or emerging technology, they quite naturally compare it to past or current technologies. Many of us have a difficult enough time understanding those technologies, let alone trying to grasp something that is still years away.
I think it was summed up best by the great futurist and author, Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote in a 1968 letter to Science magazine:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
A real-life example is that if someone told me 50 years ago when I was a lad that someday there would exist a book-sized object that could hold the entire contents of a library, I would have thought they were loony and dismissed the idea. Even more so if they would have told me that I could search for a word or phrase and have the answers in less than a second.
The reality is that we are all guilty of looking at things and comparing them strictly to what we know or believe to be true. The role of a futurist is to help folks to see beyond our preconceived notions and put them in context in a timeline of technological growth. And therein lies the entire problem. How do you get someone to see things in a new way?
And the answer is…. well, I don’t have an answer. I don’t even have a rule for it. But I do have some experiences to share that may help.
First, let’s start with another quote from Agatha Christy who wrote in her short story The Hound of Death in 1933.
“The supernatural is only the nature of which the laws are not yet understood.”
How this applies is in the fact that when we look at new technologies if we do not have a sufficient grounding in the science around them, we quite often disregard them based on our insufficient understanding and not on their own merits. There needs to be a common ground to begin the discussion, even if that means spending time up front to get the audience to a base-level of knowledge. If not, then the acceptance of the new ideas will be lost in the noise of their own minds trying to understand it.
One interesting thing is we do not need to know all the innermost technical details of the technology or science behind it, but it is important to have a general idea of how it works to grasp its applications. We drive cars, fly in planes, take medicines, and most of us do not really understand how they all work, but we trust those who created them to make sure they are safe for us and others. The reason it works for us is we have a basic understanding of cars, planes, and medicine, which allows us to put our trust in those providing the services.
Imagine telling someone in the 1950s during the infancy of cable that one day we would be able to get 10 Gbps or more through a future cable system. First, we would have to explain what a gigabit was, but even that would be a concept they likely would not be able to comprehend.
So where to begin? At the beginning? At the end?
I believe we begin by explaining it in language that the audience would understand. Which means taking the time to help others even at the expense of the time we wanted to spend showing them our brilliant idea(s).
When we are sharing our future-looking ideas it is not about us, it is about them.
Our responsibility as futurists is to bring folks along with us for the journey.
And as I mentioned earlier in this article my rule #58, I will explain why it is so important to this discussion.
For anyone who has ever tried to get people from your own company aligned behind an idea this will resonate. You spend hours/days/weeks/months/years figuring out how to solve one or more problems, you then write it up and develop slides, then you present it to an audience that you think are the ones who will be glad to hear about the solution. You spend a lot of time preparing for your presentation. Finally, the big day has come. You spend an hour or more presenting it to them, showing them how brilliant your idea is and how it will make things better, only to be met by… crickets.
And all you can think of is “How come they don’t get how brilliant this idea is and how it will fix their problems? Why don’t they get it?”
By way of explanation, let’s get to the rule:
Jeff’s rule #58: Sometimes it’s easier to move an entire industry than your own company
For many of us our biggest technology headaches are not technology. It is that many people in our organizations do not necessarily view technology as an agent of change. To them it is far easier to lock things down forcing their customers both internal and external to not have the best experience possible, all in the name of safety and security. The unfortunate effect of this thinking is that our companies are then crippled as we try to hold or increase our market share by leveraging the new technologies.
Something I noticed quite a while ago is that while I, alone, may not be able to always move my own company, I can have a significant impact on the industry and get these technologies standardized through the specification development process at CableLabs, SCTE, IETF, or other standards bodies. Once standardized and getting press, in many cases our own companies will then become interested in them but likely not remember you were the one who started it in the first place. This is a difficult lesson to learn, but one in which you will hopefully realize achieves the same result, just without you being recognized as the original innovator.
Jeff’s rule #51: Transformative leaders share a transcendent purpose pointing the way to a new reality
If you are in this for recognition and accolades, it is probably best to find a new line of work. Remember, it is not about you. Which is one of the toughest lessons we all must learn in life.
Jeff Finkelstein
Executive Director of Advanced Technology
Cox Communications
Jeff.Finkelstein@cox.com
Jeff Finkelstein is the Executive Director of Advanced Technology at Cox Communications in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been a key contributor to the engineering organization at Cox since 2002, and led the team responsible for the deployment of DOCSIS® technologies, from DOCSIS 1.0 to DOCSIS 3.0. He was the initial innovator of advanced technologies including Proactive Network Maintenance, Active Queue Management and DOCSIS 3.1. His current responsibilities include defining the future cable network vision and teaching innovation at Cox. Jeff has over 43 patents issued or pending. His hobbies include Irish Traditional Music and stand-up comedy.
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