Weekly Distillation: No.8
BlackLivesMatter; Coronavirus; The Romans; Education Systems; Innovation vs Institutionalism; Remote Working; Summer Reading Lists; Technology; Future; Leadership; Gin
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
This newsletter is written for entrepreneurial organisational leaders and aims to help identify themes of our current context and provide questions, tips and tools that can help in navigating that.
I never let schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain
The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come. Thomas Carlyle
The future is limitless. Peter Thiel
On Saturday, we learned that Alex Kearns, a Robinhood customer, died by suicide and left a note citing confusion with our product. We quickly reached out to Alex’s family to share our condolences and offer to speak. We are personally devastated by this tragedy. - Robinhood founders
Skim it in a minute
Photo by Ruben Ramirez on Unsplash
As America lapses into State vs State quarantines and a significant upward trend of the first wave, I’ve been discussing with one of my sons the plague among the Romans (thought to have been Smallpox). We listened to it together by saving the app to Pocket and having the app read it to us and then discussing it. Perhaps not the best parenting in Covid19 times - tell your child the story of how it could be even worse and why we don’t have it that bad. My thoughts are with those in Brazil, India, Pakistan, West Africa and USA where the virus is still a major factor for daily life and health. Across Europe cases are rising as lockdowns ease. Scotland took its lockdown seriously (too seriously?) - and we have an estimated 2,000 live cases left in a population of 5.3m. I have not entered a shop or a building other than my house since early March and I have no desire to change that anytime soon. On the other hand I think I have only spoken to 14 people (not counting digital communication) other than my neighbours since early March, including delivery drivers. Cautious re-entry is my stance.
Photo by Tom Parkes on Unsplash
A lot of digital content is now speculating on what sort of future we will have rather than how we optimise the current reality. As I wrote a few weeks ago, some people believe that everything will change for the better and some people just want to get back to the normal they knew before Covid19. Have we gone post-human? Are we seeing the end of tourism? What kind of leadership do we need for the next decade? I believe taking the summer to reflect and read about the possible future and plan for 2021 is a good use of time - there is still enough time to re-engineer our vision, our offering, our processes or our structures before we lapse back into the patterns of pre-Covid19.
Having worked in organisations that have been 100% in the cloud since 2008, I’m looking for the next major trend that will drive productivity and relationships through technology. Seeing Quora go “remote-first” instead of returning to an office based organisation (the post is worth a read - long but insightful), I think a lot of offices will move to this over the next decade.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
There is a narrative in Silicon Valley that technology is the answer to all of the major problems of the world. I don’t believe this, as much as technology has given us and will give us. Others see technology companies as useless in a crisis. There are also significant downsides when it goes wrong and this last week we saw the tragedy of a suicide as a student trading options mis-read how much he owed and thought it was $730,000 and killed himself. (Robinhood’s expression of sorrow is here - not one you’d ever want to have to write - a really tragic situation). A good read on the myths and challenges of the technology world these days is Uncanny Valley by Anna Weiner.
Photo by roman raizen on Unsplash
It has been enjoyable to experience some summer weather in Scotland this week (For US readers this equates to a mere mid-high 70s Fahrenheit). I once explained tapsaff to a French private equity investor and he thought this quirk of Scotland was very amusing. Even more encouraging has been the lifting of more lockdown restrictions which will enable us to go on holiday for two weeks later in July. I’m looking forward to a beach, reading, resetting personal goals and re-energising myself. On my reading list for this summer are books about the CIA & ISI in Afghanistan & Pakistan; Vladimir Putin; Leadership; Abolition; America; Cooking and Punctuation. If you’re looking for a book to read this summer I would recommend:
Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa by Paul Kenyon
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
My writing this week
This week I wrote about education systems, cultivating institutional vs innovation mindsets and taking responsibility for your own learning. Education matters as much as ever and I believe we have to take responsibility for what we learn and not rely on others to deliver it to us.
A long read for the weekend
I’m continuing to read, watch, listen as I try and educate myself on racism in the West, both the history and the current lived reality for people of colour. This article discusses the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement - one of the mass movements of recent years along with Occupy and Stop The War. Whereas Occupy suffered from a lack of clarity and realism in its objectives, and Stop The War actually failed to Stop The War, Black Lives Matter is geared both for the long term but also potentially for specific requests of those in power. Grab a coffee and chew on this one. My stance remains less to critique the methodology of the protests and more to listen to what the lived experience for people of colour is and what I can learn from it and how I need to change in my beliefs, my behaviours and my relationships.
The other weekly distillation
“the action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling.”
A light and quick look at Spirits that have caught my eye or tongue.
Around seven years ago I had the opportunity to work with a highly experienced team of people from the spirits industry who were launching a new malt whisky distillery, assisting them with fundraising for the project. The Borders Distillery, the first malt distillery in the Scottish Borders since 1837, began distilling in 2018 and has been making great strides with its products around the world.
One of the members of the founding team was George Tait (left hand side of the above picture), who died in September 2018. Despite him being a Hibs fan, he was one of the most delightful human beings I have ever done business with and I remember him with high regard and sadness at him being gone. (He once tried to get me to advise on a buyout of Hibs for some American investors but that was a step too far for me as a Hearts fan. There’s money and then there are principles.)
The distillery itself acts as a form of legacy to him - it is an amazing building (the glass roof is my favourite part), with a 1.6m LPA capacity and has restored and renewed an old run- down building in the town of Hawick, which itself needed regeneration after the closing of many of the textile mills that the town grew up on.
I was delighted when one of the founders asked last week if I would review one of their drinks here - and even more delighted when he sent me a bottle of their William Kerr’s Borders Gin. (This is not a sponsored post but I did receive a free bottle and friends of mine designed and built their website - but you can take this post as a genuine personal view)
My wife and I savoured the gin with a Fever-Tree tonic in the garden one evening this past week. The tasting notes say “With strong juniper notes and tangy citrus flavours alongside liquorice and a warm, spicy finish.” We found it really enjoyable, accessible and one to linger over on a summer evening. Definitely will be one to introduce future visitors to our house to.
One aspect of this gin that’s fascinating to me - the vast majority of grain neutral spirit that makes up the base of Scottish gin generally has very little to do with Scotland - often coming from Manchester in England. Kerr’s gin on the other hand is distilled in the Borders, with barley grown in the Borders, by people from the Borders. The specialist still has a copper basket that suspends the botanicals through the vapour from the distillation. Amazing and true. In a trend towards craft, this is a business that manages to be craft at scale.
When the distillery opens up for visitors again, I’d recommend a visit and a tour if you live within driving distance (or are visiting). And you can buy the gin here - I’d also strongly recommend the Puffing Billy Vodka - everyone I know who tries this is saying “wow” because of the flavour and experience. (I’m pretty convinced vodka is the next big thing). I’m sure George Tait would have been proud of the creations that have come from the distillery and I’ll be raising a glass of this gin to his memory.
For my readers in the US who have emailed asking where they can buy the spirits I write about - I will find out the answer and share in a future newsletter!
If you have a favourite spirit you’d like to write about, or you have spirits in your company, please do get in touch as I’d love to share.
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