My Plans for 2011

It's not how you start, it's how you finish,

And it's not where you're from, it's where you're at.

- The Hours

About a month ago, I wrote about putting a 2011 Action Plan together with the caveat that I'd share what I'd be up to this year. Below is my list for this year. I plan to accomplish everything, though if this year is anything like last year, it's likely to dish up a lot more than I could have planned. I share it because I am learning that it takes a village to make a warrior and in the spirit of what I learned at The Foundry and my last blog post, I am opening up the details of my strategy so that you can assist in creating the life that is possible for me. If you have experience or connections in any of the areas that I lay out below, feel free to email me (travis.corrigan@gmail.com).

Objectives:

1. High leverage employment - Generate the best possible experience-based learning from my work. Be intentional about the choices I make at Discover, The Foundry and the companies that I am starting. Be a contribution in my various positions and add value to the institutions that I am in service of. Build a community that imprints me with precision-execution management practices while coaching in me in the learning process of growing, developing and interacting with colleagues, subordinates and superiors so that I can begin to distinguish the contexts that enable me to act and lead powerfully and transformatively.

2. Own the stewardship of my financial house - Learn and implement new technology to manage my finances such that I have knowledge and control over my spending and saving. Create and establish a context that accelerates getting out of credit card and student loan debt, allows me to fully contribute to my retirement accounts without impacting monthly cash flow and teaches me financial discipline.

3. Become a finely tune piece of fitness machinery - Generate and follow a training regimen that tracks my gains in strength, endurance and flexibility to achieve new levels of performance in events and competitions.

4. Expand the breadth and depth of my relationships - Make time to have meaningful relationships with the people in my life in order to learn more about them, learn from them and reap the benefits of having relationships founded on resonant bonds.

Key Results:

1. Financial Fitness

• Utilize Quicken to create and live from a realistic budget.
• Reduce revolving debt by at least 25%.
• Complete "Your Money or Your Life", including all the exercises.
• Currate wish list for big ticket items and set savings plans for them.
• Be in a position to max out 401(k) in 2012.

2. Fitness Machine

• Establish Vo2 Max and Lactate Threshold metrics as a baseline for 2011.
• Complete the "300" workout in less than 41 minutes
• Win 2 Cyclocross races
• Move up a criterium class.
• Complete the Wasatch Death Ride.
• Complete LOTOJA.
• 40 mile average ride by July

3. Expand relationships

• Reach out and create the possibility of regularly occurring "dates".
• Schedule and complete dates that have workable contexts for both parties.
• Track insights and learning in journal.

Reading List:

• How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work
• High Output Management
• Why You Do The Things You Do
• How To Write A Lot
• Your Money or Your Life
• When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box
• Decoded
• The Great Reset
• This Time It's Different
• Where Good Ideas Come From
• Mind Wide Open
• The Mind's Past
• The Wave
• The Devil's Teeth
• The Great Divergence
• Dumbing Down America
• Future Shock
• Science of The Brain (research paper)
• The Lesson of Entrepreneurial Experience (research paper)
• The Entrepreneur Next Door (research paper)
• The Nature of Man (research paper)
• The Role of Team Composition (research paper)
• Web 2.0 - Design Patterns for Business Models (research paper)
• Creating Leaders - An Ontological Model (research paper)
• A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation (research paper)
• Integrity, Without it Nothing Works (research paper)
• Introductory Reading for Being an Effective Leader (research paper)
• Procrastination and Impatience (research paper)

Movie Queue:

• How I Met Your Mother -Season 5
• The Big Lebowski
• Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
• The Fighter
• The Hurt Locker
• Memento
• The Social Network

Course Queue:

• MIT OpenCourseware 21F.301 - French I
• MIT OpenCourseware 21F.301 - French II
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.615 - Law for the Entrepreneur and Manager
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.301 - Managerial Psychology
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.316 - Building and Leading Effective Teams
• MIT OpenCourseware 6.090 - Building Programming Experience
• MIT OpenCourseware 6.00 - Introduction to Computer Science and Programming
• MIT OpenCourseware 6.001 - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.975 - Special Seminar in Management - Business Plans
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.060 - Data, Models and Decisions

So there you are. That's my entire year. Again if you have any insight as to how I could be doing something easier, quicker or cheaper, I'd love to hear from you. If you want to get together for the sake of getting together, let me know and we can schedule something. Looking forward to hearing from you.

-Travis

The Foundry - A Graduate's View

It’s a good idea to be yourself, not only because everybody else is taken, but because trying to be anything else doesn’t usually get you very far. - Chris Guillebeau

What is The Foundry?

It's a question that is easy to ask but hard to answer. What's amazing is how glib and cheesy it sounds when you try to describe its state of being its state of being. Foundry is not so much an organization as it is an experience; it focuses more on "doing" rather than "being."

So what is The Foundry? How about I start with what we do:

Participants are trained in the form and function of high-end, lightweight management technology. A high-leverage, precision-execution oriented set of documents that are easy to manage from, communicate the weekly snapshot of the company and allow managers to document their process as they push the frontier of their company forward. We use two documents, each are no longer than two pages. The quarterly planning document is called a MOKR (Mission, Objectives, Key Results) and a weekly planning Management Report that progresses the company to accomplish the quarterly objectives it sets for itself.

CEOs (and Foundry admins) are required to prepare a Management Report each week and upload it to their file within the Foundry Dropbox Folder by 6pm SHARP each Saturday. These documents reviewed by each CEO within a cohort. Each participant views the document with "revision marks" turned on and holds each other accountable for spelling, grammar and format defects. They also review each company's progress, plans and problems, keeping in mind that they are looking to contribute to assisting in any way possible.

On Monday morning they meet at 7:30am SHARP ready to add value to each other by providing insight, solutions or introductions within the their respective networks over the course of an hour so that the group progresses and learns faster together than any one individual would otherwise.

Foundry's role in that meeting is cultivate and batch together commons problems or challenges the cohort is facing ans solve them collectively - often leveraging a group discount or small sponsorship if the solution must be purchased.

The last requirement is to conduct a project review every 4 weeks which serves to model a board meeting. CEOs are encouraged to invite mentors, advisors, potential investors and other participants to engage in a dialoge about the monthly progress (things that are DONE and NOT DONE), personal and organizational learning, forward thinking plans and problems. It's typically a proverbial ass-kicking about your efforts to manage and guide your growing baby.. er, startup. It's an exhausting hour and a half but it provides clarity.

That's it. That's what we do. No fancy pants stratitegery. No superlative "crush it" dialogue. It's that simple. And it's effective.

Here's proof: 7 out 10 startups fail within the first year. 7 out of 10 Foundry companies survive.

So how do we generate the results that we do? The participants do everything. By participating in the Foundry, the act of contributing to each other creates their ownership in its existence. When participants no longer decide that the mechanics laid out above work for them, then we cease to exist. So far it's working.

That's why you can't talk about what it is unless you've been in it. To read and conceptualize what it's like is an order of magnitude different than to actually DO it - just like building a rocket ship out of legos doesn't qualify you to work for NASA.

Yes, we are a cult. Yes, we have rolling enrollment. So with these results and open-source management technology, why doesn't everyone join? The Foundry experience augments the startup experience which, like Fight Club, is confronting. Our management techniques aren't glitzy fancy pants Web 2.0 apps. They are 8x11 pieces of paper and they force you to publicly call yourself out to execute and announce to everyone when you don't. This alone confronts a lot of people who think that "getting the right answer" or "checking off a list" or " appearing to do complicated things with ease" makes them a good person.

For example I have seen experienced entrepreneurs get their asses handed to them in a Project Review or Monday Meeting by a 20-something student founder. And vice versa. This is a culture in which you learn, from everyone - ESPECIALLY when the message is packaged poorly. No one does that naturally, some stick around long enough to be transformed into someone that eventually welcomes this. Which is why most Foundry graduates are seemingly carved out of wood.

All of your inner demons, the thing that you have resistance around, will show up and be present in front of you and everyone else. Those uncomfortable and slimy "realities" that you do a good job of pretending aren't there, start announcing themselves loudly. What you decide to do at that point is what it means to be at risk to learn: you learn something, not about management or your company, but about yourself.

You will do this constantly, day in and day out.

We make a claim about forging entrepreneurs for life. On the surface it looks like company building but it's really the things that one learns when he or she is engages in the trench warfare of starting a company.

This is why Foundry accepts PEOPLE starting companies, NOT companies.

The Man Behind the Myth

This is a funny email conversation that I had late last night with fellow Foundry brother, David Oldham, CEO of O-Codes.

Dave: Would be cool to have a Dropbox folder for resumes/bios where people who wanted to join a startup could post their background and skillset for teams to review and then follow up with the individual if it's a good fit.

Me: Noted. I'll talk to Matt and Rob about that possibility and see if we can get something done formally.

Dave: You are the man behind the myth.

Me: Ha ha, indeed. What is the myth?

Dave: The myth: that a brilliant, ambitious young entrepreneur wander the dimly lit, cubicled halls of the Foundry late at night scheming up the world's next great invention; and if you happen to see him, touch his North Face jacket sleeve and you too will be imbued with magical entrepreneurial powers.

***

The funny thing about this is that I was wearing the exact North Face jacket he was referring to when I read the email this morning.

Let it be known though, that the character I play in life: the ambitious young entrepreneur, is in fact a myth. I am not out to create a world-shifting invention for the sake of personal accolades and bragging rights at cocktail parties. In fact, I'm not out to create a world-shifting invention at all. I just like building things that I find fascinating.

I am just a guy, who likes tinkering with machines that look like entrepreneurial endeavors. The ambition is often misinterpreted as "nerd-fervor" for seeing things come together on a spreadsheet. And young is often misinterpreted as... well actually I am young so there's nothing to say about that. As far as the North Face jacket, it probably won't imbue magical entrepreneurial powers, but it will help protect you against the cold.

So feel free to engage with the man (boy). Because that's who I am.. with a few foibles and flaws. Just like every other human being.