Tag: History

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At My Lowest, I Remembered Winston Churchill’s Advice: “Never, Never, Never Give Up”

I always look forward to the beginning of each year since my birthday falls a few days before the New Year, so I get multiple days of celebration. I also enjoy setting personal goals that are significant enough to require focused effort yet are achievable and worthwhile. Examples of past goals achieved include changing career paths, buying a house, and learning to swim (to race my first triathlon). In short, I usually accomplish what I set my mind to. Which is what made this past winter so difficult – for the first time in a long time, I was lost in a maze of mounting stress and couldn’t find a path out.

It started in December when I helped my parents make the tough decision to put our dog down. Some may argue that grief over the death of a pet is silly or somehow lesser than that experienced when a close human family member passes away. But studies have shown that grief over losing a pet can be just as severe. Of course, I didn’t need studies to tell me how to feel about comforting this being that had given me and my family so much unconditional love and joy for nearly a decade as she took her last labored breath. Needless to say, I was not in a great place emotionally. Unfortunately, that’s when the physical pain started.

I’ve identified as an athlete for as long as I can remember but not because I’m particularly gifted. Instead, I learned at a young age that effort put in at practice and in the gym had a direct correlation to results on the field (or the wrestling mat, in my case) – I became hooked on that cycle of continuous improvement. Along the way, I learned through experience how essential daily exercise was to my mental well-being (of course, science backs this up now as well). Over the past five years, I’ve been investing increasing amounts of time, energy, and money into pushing my limits in endurance sports. Specifically, racing increasingly longer distances faster has become an important part of my physical and emotional life as I’ve expanded the limits of what I thought possible for myself (did I mention I am goal oriented?).

The day after we put our dog down, I set out on a run since I knew it would help me process my grief, sadness, and anger – plus, I figured that working toward my next goal of running a faster marathon would help focus my energy in a positive direction. The pain I felt in my left knee after that run wasn’t terrible – I always have a little soreness given my level of activity. But the pain got worse on the next run. And the next. Then the pain flared when I climbed and descended stairs. Finally, I was in pain most of the time I was on my feet or moving my knee at all, which meant I couldn’t swim, bike, or run without feeling like my kneecap was going to explode. X-rays and an MRI couldn’t diagnose the problem, and a referral to physical therapy was all the doctor could provide. This was also the moment when pressure to deliver results at work began to mount. I felt like I was falling without any idea of how to pull the parachute.   

There I was, unable to effectively cope with the growing emotional, physical, and professional stress while a core component of my identity was withering away. At this low point, I was reminded of Winston Churchill’s experience – while Churchill is now well-remembered for his role in leading the United KIngdom through the darkest days of World War Two, he also lost his seat as Prime Minister in the 1945 election. Churchill’s political defeat after shepherding the country through a world war was devastating to him personally. But, despite the very public rebuke of his and his party’s policies, Churchill picked himself up and kept moving forward until he ultimately won the Prime Minister’s seat back in 1951.

Like Churchill, I was able to pick myself up too, with some help. Even though I’m accustomed to solving problems on my own, I couldn’t have pulled myself out without eight weeks of physical therapy and therapists who provided healing that was way more than just physical. I was able to fix the muscle weaknesses, imbalances, and tightness that compounded and manifested into my knee injury. In the process, I learned about my ability to persevere when everything seemed to be going wrong.

While I did not end up running the full marathon like I’d planned since I’d lost most of my training window to rehabbing my knee, I did find a way to build my mileage back up just in time to run the half marathon at the end of April – and set a personal record at the distance in the process. But given what I’ve gone through over the past few months, that half marathon was more than just another well-run race. To me, it symbolized all of the pain I’d endured that didn’t break me. In fact, as my race performance indicated, the struggle had made me stronger. And my comeback felt so sweet.  

Winston Churchill can have the last word, since he really did say it best: “success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Adam F. Caplan is the product leader at a rapidly growing digital healthcare IT company; wellness and fitness enthusiast

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Marathon: What the Greek Victory Teaches about Building Enduring Companies

When the massive Persian invasion fleet arrived at a little Greek village called Marathon in late summer of 490 B.C.E., the Athenians knew they were in a tight spot. Outnumbered at least two to one, and without the feared Spartan warriors by their side (Sparta was observing a religious holiday at the time which prevented them from committing troops until weeks later), the Athenian and Plataean hoplites (Greek foot soldiers) had to find a way to fight off the invaders; if they lost, the Persians would subjugate all of the Greek city-states and much of the classical Greek history revered throughout the western world over the past two millennia would have been written very differently (or not at all). But simply winning one battle at Marathon would not be enough to secure Greek liberty – the Athenians would need to both win the day and throw the invasion force back in the sea.

The Greek army successfully encircled the Persian troops offloaded from their ships in an area full of marshes that prevented the Persian cavalry from landing, but realized quickly that holding the invaders at bay until the Spartans arrived wasn’t going to work – the Persians had superior archers and wreaked havoc from afar. So, the Greeks spread their soldiers out in a single, thin line and advanced, under fire, in protective phalanx formation. The Greeks met stiff resistance in the middle of the line but were able to break the weaker Persian flanks and then both edges of the hoplite formation wheeled around on the stout Persian center, eventually causing a rout as the invaders were forced to flee back to their ships.

The Athenians and Plataeans had just won a huge victory against one of the most powerful empires in the world without assistance from the professional soldiers of Sparta – it should have been cause for great celebration. But, the Persian ships began to sail around the island, headed toward an undefended Athens. For the victorious but exhausted Greeks, the day was not yet over.

Just as winning one battle does not guarantee full victory, being first to market with a successful product does not prevent competitors from entering later, with superior offerings. For example, Netflix, after successfully out-maneuvering a complacent Blockbuster, had to contend with Amazon when it entered the content-streaming business. At the time, Amazon Prime Video was essentially an add-on service designed to justify Prime membership (which provides other benefits, most notably fast shipping on items purchased on amazon.com) and contained far less content than Netflix. It may have been easy for Netflix to continue doing what had been successful before during its campaign against Blockbuster: add more content available to be streamed at any time over the Internet. But what won the first battles would not be enough to win the war against Amazon.

Indeed, the Greeks understood the victory they had won in the marshes at Marathon would be meaningless if they could not beat the Persian ships back to Athens. The mission now: rush back to Athens, in full armor and exhausted from battle, before the invasion fleet arrived. So, the Greeks covered the nearly 24 miles from Marathon to Athens on foot – still a difficult feat today without armor, wearing modern running shoes, and being fully rested – in time to watch the Persians sail away. How did the Greeks achieve such a complete victory? They were prepared to do whatever was required to turn the Persian invasion away, even if that meant pushing the limits of the human body. In short, the Greeks embraced a culture of endurance.

Success in business is really defined by one outcome: building a product or service that someone else is willing to pay for. Many innovative companies are able to address unmet needs with one or two products before competitors enter the market with better solutions, or redefine the market segment altogether (like what Netflix did to Blockbuster in the home movie sector). The companies that enjoy long-term success, however, are willing to do whatever it takes to continuously build new products that people want to buy.

Netflix embodies this culture of endurance well; when Amazon Studios was launched in late 2010 to create original content worth watching (and therefore, worth paying a membership fee for), Netflix offered their first original content to compete (House of Cards, in 2013). We don’t yet know who will win the content-streaming wars, but Netflix has continued to deliver new value as the market shifted: it transitioned from a physical movie rental service, to an online movie streaming company, to creating its own compelling original content.

The most valuable companies understand long-term success is a test of endurance and recognize that the path to product-market fit is not a sprint – it is a marathon.

Adam F. Caplan is the product leader at a rapidly growing digital healthcare IT company.

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“And yet it Moves” – Market Timing Lessons from Galileo

Galileo Galilei stood before the Roman Inquisition in 1633 to defend his controversial theory of heliocentrism. Galileo was accused of heresy because he believed, based on his methodical observations (and application of the scientific method) of heavenly bodies, that the Earth orbited around the Sun. Known to be true today, Galileo’s views were completely contrary to the two main pillars of society at the time: Aristotelian philosophy and the Catholic Church. From Aristotle’s perspective on the ground, the Sun, Moon, and stars traveled across the sky – orbiting the Earth. The Bible also gave clear instructions: the Earth was fixed at the center of the universe and did not move. Galileo observed evidence to the contrary.

Through a telescope, a device he perfected, Galileo discovered and tracked the movement of four moons orbiting Jupiter (now named the Galilean moons in his honor). This was proof that there were heavenly bodies orbiting another object besides the Earth – man, therefore, was not at the center of the universe.

Galileo attempted to sell his innovative explanation for man’s place in the universe by translating his observations into a theory easily understood by those that influenced social policy in 17th century Europe – the clergy – in a similar fashion that a Product Owner (PO) communicates business requirements to a development team in a technology company. Most organizations call themselves technology companies these days – more people than ever occupy the PO role and uncover unmet user/market needs, then translate these needs to an engineering team in an easy-to-understand format called user stories. While this methodology is essential to the short term success of a product, there is another component missing.

The Product Manager (PM) must blend the user/business insight and clarity of language that is integral to the PO role with an understanding of the wider market context to shepherd a product toward sustained success. The PM goes one level deeper to understand the current market forces and future trends so that the right product is delivered at the right time. Put simply, a PO solves currently unmet needs while a PM builds a scalable product to solve needs today and in tomorrow’s market. Indeed, timing is everything.

Galileo’s theory was proven correct, but his timing was poor: the Catholic Church was locked in conflict as the Thirty Years’ War (actually a series of wars born from the Protestant Reformation which pitted Catholics against Protestants) raged throughout Europe and heliocentrism threatened the very foundation of Catholicism. Galileo was acting like a PO as he sought to explain the universe without regard for the wider context – the Catholic Church was in no position to entertain a theory that, if true, would totally refute a major tenant of Holy Scripture at a time when the Church was under siege (literally and figuratively). Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” and his writings were banned for a century.

Of course, Galileo’s failed presentation of evidence for heliocentrism isn’t the only example of an innovative idea that was launched prematurely and without regard for the wider market context.

Makers of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) correctly identified unmet needs – people in the early 1990s wanted to bring the functionality of a personal computer (contact lists, calendars, word processing, email, etc.) with them as they lived their lives. Advances in computing power enabled companies like Palm and Research in Motion to build products that met needs in the short term. One man, however, saw where the market was headed in the future and built a solution to meet it.

Steve Jobs is now revered for his apparent foresight in guiding Apple to the almost mythical status it enjoys today. Sure, Jobs was a visionary who could inspire people to achieve greatness. But, he also acted like any good PM to understand how unmet needs today should also translate to a scalable solution in the market tomorrow. Jobs recognized that as more people bought and used PDAs they would not only expect more functionality from the devices, PDA users would also want greater connectivity to do more with these increasingly powerful hand-held computers. He knew he needed a large wireless carrier partner to maintain both a cellular and data network that could support the growing market opportunity for the so-called ‘smartphone.’ So, Jobs negotiated a revenue sharing deal with AT&T and the rest, as they say, is history.

Jobs understood current unmet needs in the PDA space, correctly identified larger market trends, built the necessary ecosystem to address those trends, and delivered the iPhone at the right time. Galileo knew his theory of heliocentrism (based on his scientifically-sound observations) was correct but failed to account for the wider context of the challenges facing his most important market – the Catholic Church; Galileo lived out the rest of his days under house arrest.

The Product Owner role is essential for translating unmet needs into solutions today, but the best Product Managers go a step further to ensure products find scalable success in his or her lifetime.

Adam F. Caplan is the product leader at a rapidly growing digital healthcare IT company.

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Why?

I get paid to ask this question in my professional life. As a Product Manager, my mission is to unearth valuable problems and then build a business case around intuitive software solutions. To be successful, I’m constantly probing and digging until I understand the root causes behind why a problem exists – only then can our teams work on the right solutions.

I love this work because it blends so many of the things I’m passionate about into one role: leadership, business, technical problem-solving, user empathy, and selling a vision, to name a few.

But above all, I get to be curious. And my curiosity in business (and life) can be traced all the way back to my fascination about history.

As a child, I read about and imagined myself alongside Alexander the Great in Persia, riding with the Mongol horde, at the helm of a Viking longship, storming the Normandy beaches.

History is the story of how we got here. But I had to know why events happened the way that they did – nothing ever happens in a vacuum. Indeed, all of the significant moments of the past were influenced by a number of economic, social, and cultural factors that explain the root causes.

So, why am I creating Aristotle Enterprises (named for Alexander the Great’s tutor, Aristotle – even conquerors need teachers)? Well, this website will help satiate my curiosity about the intersection of the three things I am most passionate: history, business, and product.

I’m excited to explore how the lessons of the past influence tomorrow’s business innovations.

Adam F. Caplan is the product leader at a rapidly growing digital healthcare IT company.

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