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Monthly Archives: January 2006
The Importance of Rigorous Moral Reasoning
Morality is one of my big interests (and a personal value, of course – top-notch ethics is key). The Chronicle of Higher Education has a good, if overly long, essay (free, for now) on why even devout religious people should subject their decisions to rigorous moral reasoning. It’s so easy and tempting for us to be told what to do in certain moral quandaries. It’s so easy to do what everyone else in your religion is doing, or what God says is right, or what some book says. This does not build a resilient and accurate moral compass. It is the responsibility of every rational person to use the evidence around them and their own personal values to make critical decisions, even if it goes against the status quo of your religion. They say that true character is shown when times are tough. When times are tough, there are no easy answers, and certainly no answers that the convenience of religion can offer.
Seth Levine Offers Profound Moral Advice
After I congratulated Seth Levine of Mobius VC on tagging something in del.icio.us yesterday, he took advantage of his newfound knowledge that I subscribe to his del.icio.us RSS feed by offering some profound moral advice this afternoon through four cryptic tags: don’t do this ben.
How silly of Seth to think I would ever possibly join the ranks of the Top Drunk Dialed Calls which are available as MP3’s and sport such intriguing titles like "I have kissed every girl in the bar – and I is not a guy" or "I was puking and just thinking of you".
Of course, if don’t want to create unacceptably vague delicious tags like "do" and "don’t" just tag things "for:bencasnocha" and I’ll give it a look.
Book Review: Personal History by Katherine Graham (And The Business Lessons Therein)
I’ve always wanted to read Katherine Graham’s Personal History and when I saw Bill Gates was reading it it moved higher up on my list. It was a great book. Though long (600 pages), it’s a fun and easy read, as she chronicles being born into a newspaper family, her husband Phil taking the reigns of the Washington Post and ultimately committing suicide, and then her nerve racking step into the spotlight as publisher of the Post.
There are a number of reasons why I liked the book. It is a Who’s Who of influencers (from Presidents to Warren Buffett). It shows the largely unchallenged discrimination against women. It is some good U.S. history. It is an honest, personal account of journalistic leadership.
But it is also a good business book. I’ve written in the past that entrepreneurs should stop reading business books and instead should read traditionally non-business books to stretch their mind in other ways. As Jim Collins has observed, there are maybe a couple dozen really influential business books with original ideas. Most blatant how-to’s are crap. Also, it’s important to read books other than bestsellers. Novel insights are a dime a dozen and no one is novel if all they cite is The World is Flat/Blink/Freakonomics etc.
Graham’s stories contain a number of subtle business lessons. For example, when the Post union went on strike, she – the publisher – went down to the floor room and starting taking classified ads over the phone. That’s like the CEO of 700 employee company answering the reception telephone line. You gotta do what you gotta do, even when it means getting grimey and rolling up your sleeves.
Accurate Traffic Directions and Predictions – Can't Wait for This
My friend Jonathan Hubbard, CEO of LandSonar, sent me a note saying they’ve emerged from stealth and are publicly talking about their next generation digital mapping technology. Jonathan is a serial entrepreneur, HBS grad, and a nice guy.
LandSonar is trying to deliver accurate traffic information for the *entire* United States by embedding their technology in the products of their partners to allow people to answer questions like, "What is the quickest way to the airport now?" or "Show me all the houses for sale within 55 minutes of my comute" or "How long will it take to drive home if I leave at 6 PM tonight?".
Cool stuff.