I’ll put the concept of communication into perspective and discuss the framework and related concepts like information, exformation, incitation and excitation.

Information theory is a confusing concept. In science it is developed in the telecommunication industry and only concerned with the cost of transmitting information, totally excluding the meaning of what is transmitted.

A core characteristic of communication is that it is transmission of information in a reduced state. A popular example of this is the famous exchange between Victor Hugo and his publisher after the publication of Les Miserables in 1861. After completing the Les Miserables Hugo left Paris for vacation. Being curious about the reception of his book he sent a letter to his publisher only writing “?”. The publisher answered with “!”. And indeed the Les Miserables was a success. Despite the very limited information exchanged they both understood each other perfectly.

What is information?

The common understanding of information is that it is an expression for manipulation and organization of data in a way that adds value to the receiver. It is common to talk about Data – Information – Knowledge – Wisdom (DIKW). In the DIKW chain data is the basic level, symbols, uninterpreted and “as is.” When manipulated, organized and put in a context data becomes information, when you know how to use the information you have knowledge and finally when you know when to use knowledge you have wisdom.

In this explanation data does not have meaning and information is subjective, the reciever of data decides how to manipulate, how to organize and in which context to put the data. Information can be transfered in various forms (newspaper, internet, email, picture, etc). Knowledge only exists in the heads of people, it is highly personal and is harder to transfer since it is concerned with how to use information and the possibilities are endless. A document used for knowledge transfer may cover the most plausible ways of how to use the information but hardly all, for this reason, amongst others, knowledge management is a tricky discipline. In wisdom you add morals and ethics to guide when to use knowledge.

Shannon‘s information theory

Information theory (Shannon and all variation on his theory) was developed to find the limits for compression and communication of data, thus a majority of the research in this field is done by telco industry. Information theory defines information differently than the . Information has similar characteristics as data in the DIKW-chain. The more information, meaning the harder a message is to express differently than itself, the more information is contained in the message. If the message can be expressed shorter than it self it contains less information.

Message 1: XCFEDTFST
Message 2: XCFXCFXCF

Which of the two messages above contain the most information?
Can the messages be expressed shorter than themselves?

Message 1 contains more information as it can not be expressed shorter than itself whereas message 2 can be expressed as 3(XCF), lets call that Expression 2. If we call message 1 and message 2 micro-states we call expression 1 and expression 2 macro-states. In 1 the micro-state equals the macro-state. In 2 the macro-state 3(XCF) represents the micro-state XCFXCFXCF.

Let’s take another example.
Which are the possible micro-states of the macro-state 6 ? Well, you have quite a few: 1*6; 1.5*4; 2*3; 1+5; 2+4; 3+3; 12/2; 666/111; √36; etc……. and that’s just the beginning.
Which are the possible micro-states of the macro-state 1 ? Let’s cover millions of possible micro-states in two expressions: n/n for n greater than zero; n-(n-1). You do the rest!

It has been argued that intelligence is about the ability to quickly see the connections between micro-states and it’s macro-state and vice versa.

What is more interesting, much information or little information?
Much information is or is approaching chaos.

Communication tree

The communication tree is an illustration to explain the communication process between humans (i.e. we are now going back to information in the context of the DIKW-chain).

We have already talked about information but to fully understand that we need to introduce exformation.

Exformation is produced when information is created. It is all the things that are not communicated. Nevertheless, often expected to be understood by the receiver. This presupposes that the sender and the reciever have a somewhat common understandning of the framework of communication.

Before the sender sends the message there is a process of removing unneccesary information. This process is called incitation. There is an unconscious incitation in which the sender’s values, ethics and mood are reflected. Also a conscious incitation based experience from previous conversations about the topic, previous conversation with the receiver, the current situation and the reason for sendning the message.

Upon recieving the message the reciever has to put the message in a context so that the message is (mis-)understood. This process is called excitation and is the process of adding information based on individual values, experiences, motivation, the situation and the reciever’s perception of the sender.

Summary

I hope that my incitation process in writing this article has (consiously and unconsiously) lead me to put this message in a way that your excitation process puts it in the context it was

intended. Consider the exformation process of the reciever in the consious part of your incitation process.

Finally, based on the above about DIKW-chain, information theory, and the communication tree, which of the following three pictures contain the most information?

What I find so appealing wit the I.D. assessment is that is going in depth on why you have behave in certain ways, what motivates you, what are your instinctive drives, and then gives you practical and sound advice how to make the best out of your strengths and potential pitfalls.

The profile report is looking at four areas, your drive to Verify, to Authenticate, to Complete, and to Improvise. Each drive rated from 1 to 9, 5 being neutral and 9 indicating absolute strength.

• Verify: The drive to Get It Right. Being strong in Verify means that you probably need to understand the objective of something before acting, you prefer written documentation so you can study it in detail and you check and make sure things are on the right track to Get it Right!
  More on Verify.
• Authenticate: The drive to Make It Real. If you’re strong in this drive you are likely to mean what you say, you expect things to happen as promised, you deliver sustainable solutions that are fit for use and purpose, and you are good at visualizing outcomes to Make It Real.
  More on Authenticate.
• Complete: The drive to Keep It Whole. “Completers” are the kind who want clear expectations and make a detailed plan to ensure that they deliver to expectation and in time. They make sure they have time to finish the task in time (or they may not even start) and deliver solutions that fit well in the bigger picture to maintain harmony and Keep It Whole.
  More on Complete.
• Improvise: The drive to Make It Possible. If you’re strong in Improvise you are driven by passion and excitement and you make quick decisions based on your gut feel. You probably take risks since you naturally say ‘yes’ to new ideas. You thrive in an fun environment with loads of things happening and you are good at inspiring others since you often make a strong and positive first impression. Since you’re very optimistic your natural response to a challenge will be: Make It Possible!
  More on Improvise.

The personal report you receive after taking the assessment is supplemented by a “manager report”, a one-pager with tips for your manager (partner, friends, etc) on how to leverage your strengths and how to avoid making you stressed and vulnerable .

The I.D. assessment is developed by Australian company Link-Up, founded by Paul Burgess, I recommend that you read more about Instinctive Drives on I.D. Central where you also can order online access to take the test.

Me? ID:6673

Get organized

There is an established concept called Getting Things Done, GTD. This is the 101 on GTD!

The concept of GTD has as many variations as users for the simple reason that we all are wired differently. Nevertheless there are some “best practices” to get you started, implement it and refine as you get used to it.

For many David Allen is the man to look up to when it comes to getting things done (GTD). Although the principles of GTD is a lot of common sense David Allen has structured the approach and boiled it done to three main models. He has even registered Getting Things Done and GTD as trademarks.

His version of GTD is summarized by himself as follows (from his book “Ready for Anything”):
“Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up — not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you’re doing (and not doing) at any time.”

The principles of GTD are used by numerous companies in the time management business and all aim at giving you a system for managing tasks so that they are prioritized correctly, actioned in a timely fashion, none is dropped and you sleep better at night!

The simplest approach and system is to get a notepad, preferably of a size that allows you to carry it with you at all times, that is reserved for tasks. As soon as you create a task for yourself write down in your notepad. Consult your notepad on an hourly, daily basis and decide which task to action. As soon as completed mark it as completed in your notepad.

Note that I write “as soon as you create a task for yourself”. An important realization is that the task is not yours until you have accepted it. It doesn’t matter if your boss comes and drop a task in your lap, there is no such thing as “I was given the task to…”, you must adopt the correct attitude and say “I accepted the task to…”. Remember to communicate your decision to accept or deny a task. Guess who’s the fool if your boss thinks that you accepted a task but you did not…. ? But more on this in a different article. Back to GTD.

Your next step may be to prioritize the tasks, this should be done in two phases. Firstly, as you write the task down in your notepad make a note of the deadline for the task, if there is no specific deadline note the importance of the task, as simply as 1-3, 1 being the most important. Secondly, when you review your complete list of task it is important to prioritize between the tasks to ensure that you have reasonable workload.

Writing down the tasks as you accept them you may not have the complete overview of tasks and therefore be inclined to make everything important and end up with everything having to be done today, or you find that most of your tasks´ deadline is on the same day.

You may even want to estimate the time requirement per task to be able to plan more efficiently. Estimate each task to multiples of 15 min blocks and combine tasks to make up a full working day.

Once you’re into the habit of prioritizing your task list your next step may be to implement a systematic review of your list of tasks. I suggest that the main review and planning is done at the end of the day. There two main reasons for this, (1) you have probably accumulated a bunch of tasks during the day and its good to prioritize and plan while you still have it fresh in your mind, and (2) you will sleep much better knowing that you have control of your tasks as soon as you open your notepad the following day, no more laying awake at night trying to remember all the things you didn’t get done today.

Do a quick mid-day review to fit in any urgent and important tasks to your afternoon schedule. To take it one step further you could do weekly review, lets say Sunday evening, to get an overview of the coming week.

I will soon write an article on urgency and importance of tasks to guide you in deciding how to prioritize and plan your tasks.

Until then, GTD!

To read more about David Allen’s approach to GTD check-out Wikipedia or his corporate website.

Checkout Business Week for more interesting content.

one to a yearly revenue of around 40 billion USD, has the No.1 or No.2 spot in all of the solution markets they are in and has an impressive track-record of very successful acquisitions (around 130 to date). The current market-cap of  100 billion USD is only at fifth of the all-time high on April 11th 2000 when Cisco hit a market-cap of 503 billion USD and made the Guinness Book of Records for the highest market-cap ever of any company.

It all started with a cat!

There are many stories about how Sandy Lerner and Len Bosack founded the company and the central character in the story told at Cisco’s new hire training I attended back in 2001 is a cat. The cat of Sandy and Len.

Sandy and Len were a couple and both worked at Stanford. Life must have been pretty good but they had one major challenge complicating their life – remembering feeding their cat (the story doesn’t give a name to the cat). This little shore was further complicated by Sandy and Len working in different parts of the campus so figuring out if the cat had been fed or not was often difficult. Both Sandy’s and Len’s departments’ had email services for their respective Local Area Networks but the two LANs were operating different protocols rendering them incompatible.

This little conundrum spurred the cat-loving couple to modify one the switches to operate with multiple protocols, bridging the two LAN technologies and allowing for emails being sent between the two.

Another story which may be closer to the truth involves the inventor  William Yeager from which Sandy and Len licensed the code with which the built the Cisco IOS. Sandy’s and Len’s accomplishment was not has inventors but rather in seeing the commercial potential of the packet-switched multi-protocol router.

The Beatles

It took Sandy and Len a lot of knocking on doors be fore they had convinced anybody else of the potential of the router. They may have sought inspiration from the success of the Beatles who where refused by numerous record lables before finally signed to EMI by George Martin.

In 1986 Cisco finally managed to raise funding of $2.5 million from Sequoia Capital after 77 unsuccessful proposals to other venture capitalists. Cisco went IPO on Feb 16th 1990 for USD 18, closing at USD 22.25 on the first day of trading. Since then the share has split a few times and one original share has turned into 288 shares. If you had bought one share at the IPO for it would have been worth around USD 23000 at the peak during the Internet boom and around USD 4900 today.

Is JC going for a new Guinness record?

According to BoozAllen the average tenure of a North American CEO in 2006 was 9.8 years. John Chambers has already beaten that by far.  He has gone from clarity to clarity during the over 14 years in the role and successful navigated Cisco through both recessions and hey-days. Moreover, when JC speaks the world listens. Cisco’s peers and competitors watch every move he makes and the governments take his advice.

He has received recognition for his leadership in magazines such as Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” one of Barron’s’ “World’s Best CEOs,” the “Best Boss inAmerica” by 20/20, one of BusinessWeek’s “Top 25 Executives Worldwide,” “CEO of the Year” by Chief Executive to name a few. In addition Cisco is one of the top 10 companies to work for in US, UK, Germany, France, India, Australia and several other countries.

The secret to success unveiled

Not really, but the interview with the Washington Post clearly shows two of his key traits – learning agility and the thrive to continually improve. JC talks about leadership, the difficulties of moving such a large corporation from a command and control leadership style to one of coaching, and about his own thrive to become a better leader.

Be inspired!

I’ve done the official test 3 times and various free versions of the test 2-3 times. I’ll share my four letter profile further down.

The objective of the MBTI is to indicate preferred behavior (as opposed to actual behavior). So, what is your natural inclination. In a room full of people you’ve never met before, would you (a) introduce yourself, or (b) wait to be introduced?

You may have a professional role where you’re expected to take the lead and be extrovert so you have conditioned yourself to meet that expectation but is it truly you?

It’s important to remember that the MBTI is, as the name states, an indicator. I would recommend using as a starting point for reflection and conversations around personal development and team building. Don’t treat it as science and don’t make hiring decisions based on the MBTI.

Read about MBTI from the source, the Myers & Briggs Foundation.

The best free online test I’ve come across on the web is from SharedPaths.

So, back to my MBTI type… The first couple of times I did the MBTI I came out as ENTP or INTP with very weak E/I. Now, almost 10 years later I am still pretty neutral on E/I and I still have a strong T: I come out as an ISTJ. How can it be so different? In my early twenties I was probably more answering from what I would like to be whereas I am more true to my natural inclination answering the questions nowadays. Guess that’s what’s called “growing up”.