My newest book, Limit Your Greed, is now available!

and I’m excited, proud, and nervous.

I’m excited both because it’s a new book and because I can finally talk about it.  Yes, this is the project I mentioned a while back.  It’s now finally here, and it is a truly lovely hardback.  Bill Catchings and I wrote it, and our team at Principled Technologies (PT) designed it. 

Click an image to see a larger version. 

For now, you can order the hardback only via the LYG site; as of this writing, the ordering page isn't even live.  Soon, you’ll be able to buy it via Amazon as well.  Right now, Amazon shows us as having one for sale, but that's only because we haven't yet correctly set up the ordering page.  I'll post an update in this blog as we fix these problems. 

I’m proud because I think this book does a good job of conveying a lot of potentially powerful ideas in a very compact space.  Both Bill and I dislike business books that are full of padding, so we tried to keep the text crisp and tight.  I’m also proud because this is not a book full of untested theories.  The principles in it are the ones by which we’ve run our main business, Principled Technologies, for 15 years.  PT is proof that a business can be profitable while still valuing people and principles over profit. 

I’m nervous on many fronts.  Like all new books, I’ve lived with this for a long time, so having it out in the world is always in some ways anticlimactic.  That’s particularly true in this case, because we’ve been working on this book for about six years and talking about it for even longer.  In addition, to avoid further delays--it takes time to sell a book--we chose to have our LYG company publish the volume.  This approach let us create a much nicer physical object than almost any publisher would have printed, and it let us deliver exactly the length we wanted without padding; it is a short volume.  It opens us, however, to all sorts of criticisms common to self-publishing endeavors.  It also means we could easily lose money on the book--and I’m accustomed to being paid by my publisher. 

What matters most about this book, though, is not my feelings.  What really counts is what this book might, just might be able to do:  help make the world better.  Our goal was to show that we could all approach businesses differently, create better businesses, and in the process build a better world.  We genuinely believe that is possible. 

To do this, though, we need your help.  Buy the book.  Read it.  Start conversations about ways that businesses could be better and do more to help both their employees and the world at large.  Even if you disagree with our specific ideas, talk about where you think we’re wrong.  Having the conversations is what matters, because from those conversations, change could come. 

We started promoting this idea in April with the shirts you can also buy at lyg.org.  Now, with the publication of Limit Your Greed, we hope to take a big step forward.

As naive and idealistic as it may sound, we firmly believe in the power of ideas to change the world, to make it better.  We hope the ideas in this book lead to better businesses and a better world. 

As we say on LYG, buy a book (or a shirt).  Start a conversation.  Change the world.

Happy Birthday, Bill!

Today (January 4), is the birthday of my long-time business partner, Bill Catchings.  Last year marked the thirtieth year we've worked together, which is a long time for any sort of partnership.

Over all those years, Bill has given me many things, but the most important of his gifts is that he has helped me become a better person.  Though he and I differ on many issues--as we both say, we've never voted for the same candidate in an election--we manage to agree on so very many topics that matter greatly to us both.  By listening to him and observing him, I've learned a lot and tried to improve myself in the process.

So, thank you, Bill, and I hope you had a great birthday.  Let's keep this rolling another thirty years.  After all, I have a lot of personal growth still to do!

If you're thinking about giving or getting a smartwatch

this holiday season, you should check out what Bill has to say on his Tech Everywhere blog.  A lot of people test tech products, but Bill is one of the few who live with them for weeks or months at a time before rendering his opinion.  The difference between a first impression and an analysis that reflects weeks of steady usage is often significant.

Bill and I don't always agree on tech toys, but I do always find his reviews valuable.

Check it out.




(Disclaimer:  Bill and I have worked together for over 30 years, and his blog appears on the site of the company we co-own.  It's still valuable advice, and I'd say that even if I didn't know him.)

If you're at all interested in gadgets

or more generally want a sneak preview of the coming Internet of Things, you need to be reading Tech Everywhere, a blog by Bill Catchings on the PT site. I look forward to and read every installment. 

Before I explain why I recommend Tech Everywhere so strongly, let me get the disclaimers out of the way. Bill is my friend and business partner. PT is the company we own and work at.

I'm not, though, urging you to read this blog for any of those reasons.  I'm pushing it because Bill does something there that very few reviewers offer: he lives with the gadgets before he reports on them. When he writes about a smart watch, he's lived with it for days, often weeks.  If he tells you about the security weaknesses of some Wi-Fi-enabled light bulbs (a great entry), he's talking from experience.

As much as I love gadgets, I now won't buy one if I know that Bill is getting it and will be living with it for a while and writing about it.  It's great to have him as the canary in the gadget mine. 

Check out Tech Everywhere, and follow it regularly.  You'll be glad you did.

Remember that rule

I said I had, the one about not showing my work to anyone except Dave before the book or story is completely ready for publication? Well, I'm about to break it, and I thought it might be useful to explain why.

I've finished the first draft of the original, brand-new, never-before-seen solo Lobo story--the Lobo Christmas story--for Jump Gate Twist. I'm running it by Dave for a quick check before I do a final polish and send the entire book to Publisher Toni, who will be especially glad to have it because it's due to the printer about, oh, now.

I'm also, though, going to show it to Bill for a reason I consider sufficiently important to break my SOP: He possesses in-depth domain knowledge that I need. I'm not going to say what that domain is, at least not yet, because I don't want to affect anyone's perception of the story, but if you remind me after the book appears, I'll explain then.

My more general form of this exception goes like this: If a person really knows a specific subject that affects your work, and if that person is willing to lend you their expertise, then I think it's perfectly fine both to ask questions of that person during the writing of the work and to show the relevant sections of the not-fully-published prose to that person.

Which is what I'm doing now.

In directly related news, I can tell you that I will be the one person in the world who will be happier than Publisher Toni to see this book head into production. I am tired of being behind schedule and look forward to a return to writing normalcy.

Bill and the value of thoughtful arguments

Bill is my business partner. We've worked together for almost twenty-five years. We co-own PT, we are the only two owners, and yet we have no arbitration methods in place for disagreements; we just work them out. We always have, and I have great confidence that we always will.

What's amazing about that belief is the sheer number of areas in which the two of us disagree.

Without going into specifics, because it's not my place to give out personal information about Bill, it's fair to say that on almost all of the topics that most people would consider "hot-button" issues, Bill and I disagree. We've canceled out each other's vote in every election since we've known one another.

One of the many lessons my partnership with Bill has taught me is that I can have a lot of common ground with someone who is on the other side of all of those issues. For example, we're both fiscally conservative, a trait that no political party today (or for some time) seems to embrace.

What's been most enlightening, however, is the fact that someone who is extremely intelligent, whom I respect immensely, who is thoughtful and who considers each topic carefully, can take a position completely opposite my own.

When I talk with friends of a similar political persuasion, I notice a tendency to dismiss people on the other side of big issues as being thoughtless, or not smart, or not understanding. From my involvement with acquaintances and groups who hold opinions opposite my own, I've seen the same sorts of dismissals; the behavior is not unique to either side.

I can never do that with Bill. On any issue we discuss, his opinion reflects thought, intelligence, and careful consideration--even when I believe he's wrong. Of course, many of our differences stem from the fact that we have different starting axioms, but even when we start from the same point, we sometimes end up at different conclusions.

Some of history's greatest evils occurred when one group was able to class another group as an inferior "other," as somehow being less than them. Having done that, it's then easy to dismiss the other group as not being fully human, and then to justify doing horrible things to the members of that (no longer fully human) group.

To a far lesser degree, many political and religious discussions do the same thing to the opposition by classing their opinions as stupid or ignorant or not well thought out, and so on.

Bill has taught me a great deal over the years, and I've benefited from our partnership in too many ways to list, but one of the most valuable lessons is the constant reminder that there are multiple intelligent perspectives on just about everything.

Thanks, Bill.