Thoughts in Time

Today is a big day for Kellee and me as we’re closing on a house in Key West, Florida. It is a great time to look to buy, and we believe we got a great deal on a house in the heart of Old Town. Gary Thomas, who is the only key west realtor who consistently blogs (at keywestproperties.blogspot.com) was amazingly helpful in helping us find a perfect property for us and then helping us navigate through the sales process from thousands of miles away. Here’s a pic of us outside the house in early March.

We’re going to be leaving London on April 22nd. We originally were going to stay through May, but decided that we’d rather get to Key West sooner and come back to Europe earlier in the summer to start our around the world trip. We’re having a going away party on April 18th and hope to see many of our friends from London there.

Over the next few months, I’m primarily focusing on finishing my work for my Master in Applied Positive Psychology degree which I should receive in August from the University of Pennsylvania. For my Master’s Capstone Project (like a thesis), I will be focusing on studying the relationship between job performance and job satisfaction with fit between a job and certain dimensions other than skill and experience. If that’s something that interests you, let me know. I’m also working on launching two new organizations.

1) The Positive Policy Institute - I’m working with two fellow UPENN students to create a non-profit think tank that will focus on policy advising and advocacy based on positive psychology research and application. There are many economics based think tanks, we think a psychology based think tank that focuses on helping governments and NGO’s implement policies that are not just based on fixing problems, but also on creating flourishing for their citizens will make a big difference in the world.

2) The Positive Performance Institute (P2 Institute) - I’m working with a friend and former employee of IMG to create a corporate training program that uses the metaphor of sport to teach a curriculum focused on resilience, leadership, and performance. The curriculum is built off of positive psychology research, and we’re going to start by integrating it with a golf program. It will launch in 2010. It will be a 3 day course held at 5 star resorts in the US and UK. Class size will be limited, and I will personally teach the inaugural courses. By integrating sport with the classroom instruction, we will help executives and leaders be able to immediately put what they’re learning to work - making learning more fun and ensuring that what we teach sticks! This company is part of a holding company that I have created to build businesses based on positive psychology and through the application of positive psychology techniques to investing and management. Of course, I’ll still be investing with the guys from Higher One through Top Floor Capital. I hope to write about some of our various portfolio companies soon.

Starting at the end of June, Kellee and I have a massive around the world trip planned. Our itinerary is still coming together, but will roughly be Europe for July and August (including Morocco and Egypt), India, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Belize, Panama… Home to Key West for Christmas with our families.

It’s going to be a great year, and today is really the start.

There’s a great article in the NY Times about how understanding psychology can lead to policies that have more impact on children, resulting in better educational achievement. The full article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08nisbett.html?_r=1&em

This is a great example of why the study of human behavior, i.e. Psychology, can have a big impact on successful policy making. This is an area I’m taking more and more of an interest in, and I’m sure will be writing more about.

As someone with an engineering background (I have a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Yale), I tend towards mathematical and system oriented thinking about problems and opportunities. The final paper I had to write for my introduction to positive psychology class with Martin Seligman at UPenn gave me the opportunity to put together my thoughts on human happiness and well-being. I thought it might be fun to share and see what people thought. I’ve posted the document on scribd. Take a look.

Sean Glass - Happiness / Well Being System

This week, we publicly announced that we were shuttering Pikum. Although very disappointed that a lot of hard work has not panned out, I am someone who always believes that the right thing to do with a setback is to examine it to learn what can be learned, and then to move forward. We cannot change the past, we can only be present in the now, taking positive action to move to our vision of the best possible future. Endings happen all the time. Change is constant, and thus all endings are new beginnings.

I want to thank the scores of people who have written to me directly expressing that they’re sorry that Pikum didn’t work out, and offering support. It has been really touching, and I really appreciate it.

Kellee and I are still determining exactly what we’re going to do. We have come to really love London and our friends here. At the same time, we miss being close to our families and as we consider the next stage of our lives (read - Kids!), we think we may be better of getting back to the U.S.

Our current plan is to remain the UK through May. We’ve always wanted to have a place in the Florida Key’s, so we’re considering buying a place there and moving there initially. Starting in July, we’re planning a trip around the world. The exact itinerary isn’t together yet, but what I’m hoping to do is to meet as many investors, entrepreneurs, policy makers and influencers, and people related to positive psychology as possible. We plan finish the trip in December.

During the next few months, I’m hoping to see many of my UK friends from the Tech community as possible, as well as to meet new entrepreneurs and investors from the UK and europe. I’m also looking forward meeting more of the people involved with positive psychology in the UK. The intersection is something I plan on blogging more about soon.

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK asked if I’d be willing to answer some questions about our angel investing. He published our email interview in full. If you’re a seed stage startup with a promising business, get in touch (we’ll be putting up the TopFloorCapital.com web site sometime soon!). The nicest thing about the article was getting this note from one of the CEO’s of an angel investment I’m involved with (I’m in 6 so far):

Hi Sean,

Congratulations on getting profiled on techcrunch. You’ve been one of our most supportive and helpful angels thus far.

Here’s a link to the full article.

From steve…

Totally off topic but if you’re interested in framework comparisons or know of anyone who is then point them to my video presentation I made at the NYPHP.org group in May …

http://www.stephendrobinson.com/talks/

Image via Wikipedia One of the great things about the start of the UPENN MAPP program has been having conversations with my classmates and with the founder of the positive psychology movement, Martin Seligman. One of the core things I’ve gotten from speaking to Marty and appreciating how he thinks is that he has uncovered a basic opportunity across many different domans. That opportunity I’ve stared to think of as “looking at the plus side”.

I’ll give you the example that relates to his launching the positive psychology movement. Marty realized that traditional psychology, or “psychology as usual” examined what is wrong with us. It was interested in pathology, disease, mental illness, and basically how to fix those of us who have something wrong. What Marty realized was that there were very few people studying the other side. If people with mental illness were say -5, and people who were depressed were -3, the goal of traditional psychology was to understand this so that we could get you back to 0. What about helping normal people go from 0 to +5? That’s what is now termed positive psychology. It’s the scientific (and let me underscore SCIENTIFIC) study of 0+ in the psychology domain.

The neat thing is that one can apply this thinking to other domains. Think about Physical health. Medicine primarly is concerned with fixing people with illnesses. There is work done on the plus side, but not nearly as much.

Think about business management. We tend towards thinking about cutting costs, fixing processes, etc. The study of the plus side isn’t done nearly as often. After all, we tend to think - if it’s aint broke, don’t fix it! This lack of research and attention (outside of books like good to great) presents an interesting opportunity.

I’m sure that there are other areas where Plus Side Thinking(tm )… may open up many new research and applied avenues. I look forward to discovering them!

This week, I started the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology program at UPENN. The program caught my interest for a number of reasons and so far I have certainly not been disappointed. To some up quickly, and I’ll write more in the future, the idea of Positive Psychology is that while traditional psychology has studied what’s wrong with us, and how to intervene to fix us, there has been a lack of study of what makes us great, happy, etc. We’ve approached the world with an idea that happiness is the absence of unhappiness. Intuitively, we know that’s not the case. So positive psychology is the study of the plus side of things. Whether that’s performance in business, parenting, pysical well being, or other domains, there are so many areas where we have studied what goes wrong, but not enough about what goes right and why. An important basis of positive psych is the emphasis of empirical, scientific research. This is not a “let’s be happy all the time” self help guru training program .

The program will unfold over 40 days on campus (mostly those are Friday -> Sunday to avoid missing the work week), and then there’s lots of distance work. It’s going to be a fun challenge as we continue to build Pikum at the same time!

Image via Wikipedia
I haven’t seen the new clone wars animated feature yet, but the ads reminded me of how much I enjoyed the original star wars features. Star Wars provides several great lessons for startup founders.

Do or Do Not - There is no Try
Action is the lifeblood of a startup. There are many ideas, it’s the doing and execution that counts. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how hard you try - did you do? If so, your chances of being succesful will be much greater.

Use Jedi Mind Tricks
Often with a startup, it’s important to remember that perception is reality. This doesn’t mean be untruthful (a jedi would never do that), rather it means that it’s important to understand perception, and work to change it. When you’re selling first customers, talking to the press, etc if you can convince them that “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” even when they’re staring at them, you’ll have a good chance of being able to shape perception and help your startup get the advantage it needs to get ahead.

A few dedicated individuals can bring down the empire
The death star was the most powerful weapon ever built - able to destroy a planet with a single shot. A couple rebels with spaceships they hacked together were able to destroy it. They found the weak point. No matter what industry your company is in, the dominant “empire” has a weak point. Find it, and you can win. Just look at the history of tech and you’ll see this time and time again (DEC -> Microsoft -> Google).

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?
Like Yoda, you aren’t big (YET), but you’re nimble as all hell. Strike fast, hard, and often and remember that like Yoda, people will underestimate your ability due to your size.

I’m sure there are other great lessons for startups that can be gleaned from Star Wars. Look forward to hearing your ideas in the comments.