Dan Needles's Blog

The Truth About Virtual Reality with Tech Guru & Author Dan Needles

Broadcast 10/6/2015 at 9am PST/noon EST

More information available here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c3...

Amazon is hosting this week a promotional giveaway for printed copies of TERMINAL CONNECTION.

You can enter here:
Terminal Connection Giveaway

For those who are interested but haven't picked up a copy of my novel yet, Amazon is sponsoring a giveaway. Click here to enter:

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/e6d74b6...

Like most Americans I am an adrenaline junkie. I am drawn to bailing out organizations and playing the role of the tactical hero. However, after many string of successes, I was surprised at the number of organizations that faltered and folded after I left and that all the tactical changes I made were fleeting at best. Since then what I have learned is that while heroes are needed at the top, they can actually do harm at the bottom over the long run unless properly managed by a strategic hero. This is because tactical heroes absorb the organization's pain and block it from reaching the leadership that could actually make the necessary structural changes.

Let me explain through the analogy lens of the movie - 300. Most folks in IT can relate to this movie. If you can't or worse you hate analogies, then this article isn't for you because the reality is that strategy is based in pattern, structure, and process. That is why analogies work when making structural changes - parts don't matter in these cases, only how the parts fit together. If you do not understand the need for analogies, you are not a strategic hero.

Anyway, the tactics the Spartans took were boring, but they worked. Their tactics showed that picking the right battle/battle site (aka scope) and having everyone do their role in a coordinated fashion (process/procedures) allowed 300 Spartans to hold off over a million Babylonians. In fact, it wasn't until the Babylonian leaders shifted gears and found the hidden passage, which out flanked the Spartans, that the Spartan blockage fell. That is the one time heroes are useful in this sort of situation - changing the posture, process, and approach aka the overall strategy. Without that breach, the Spartans could have hung out forever. Similar results occurred with the Roman army in Britain during Boudicca's rebellion - so this isn't a random aside.

So what does this say about fancy bells and whistles? Well, it was the Babylonians that used all the cool tools, special units, and other fancy/sexy things. None of that worked or mattered. If anything the fancy gear was a distraction from the pain. Pain is necessary to motivate the participants to change the tactics to something that works. The better you manage an organization's pain, the better run that organization is. In fact the more tactical heroes you have present in an organization, the more Babylonian like an organization tends to be and the less pain you actually feel and use. The lack of pain is what keeps the organization in a rut as there is little pressure to change. And humans only change if their tried and true assumptions and approaches completely and utterly fail and they are forced to try something else. This is especially true with tactical heroes. That means people must feel pain to make a paradigm shift of any kind. So the problem is that often tactical heroes are so successful that the leaders not only feel no pain, they have no clue that there is any sort of problem to begin with... that is until the tactical hero leaves and everything comes crashing in like a ton of bricks.

Where heroes are need is on top to restructure things. In the 300 example that occurred when the leaders of the Babylonian army were so humiliated that they started looking around. At that point the Babylonians finally sneaked around and attacked the Spartan's rear. Once this sort of restructuring occurs, there is no immediate need for tactical heroes and day to day drama disappears. The blockages clear. Things just work.

Unfortunately the drama can be addictive in this ADHD/OCD/Aspergers-rich industry - so this sort of shift is easier said than done and as a result tactical heroes leave when things run more smoothly. That is where the real challenge begins for a leader. How do you find the real problems and as such the real drama in an organization to keep your heroes engaged?

Success isn't sexy nor exciting most of the time, but that is sort of the point. As the unlikely, but purported Confucian curse goes - "may you live in interesting times." The curse isn't something to aspire to. 8-)

I am finishing up my research for the sequel to TERMINAL CONNECTION which covered 21 books and countless web pages that allowed me to peek into 2050. There are three big themes:
1. Technology (from VR, to 3d faxing, to SCiO, to nano technology to Space elevators),
2. Global warming and resulting climate change (from loss of glacers, drying out of the US southwest, to massive flooding in China and other places.)
3. Population growth and resource pressures (including everything from peak oil, water shortages, to the aging demographic, to the shift of power toward Asia via China and India.)

The next few decades should be interesting and that is without anything unexpected abruptly throwing a wrench in things.

My mission as both a high-end consultant and a writer is the same. It is the same mission shown in every story ever told – the Hero’s Journey. That journey is the human condition. While a small number of us came in as the Bill Gates of the world, that really is just the 2%ers (as they say in the USA.) Most of us are set on a different path than the one we intended in our dreams. For it is only in pain, struggle, and discomfort that we learn our boundaries and as such who we really are since boundaries separate us from the rest of reality. And that allows us to connect to others on a deep, spiritual level.

On the “other-side” we can be God-like: all powerful, all knowing, and all just – the easy path – and know nothing of who we are or our place in the universe. There we are the universe without end or boundaries. Here we choose to have limits, which allows us to pick the hard choices of: sacrifice, forgiveness, and other human qualities that as a God you have no chance to experience or express. Every story is about this human condition and about how we learn to live with limitations and become greater than the Gods, which is easy. We become human. This last week I met two courageous souls who I hope I can live up to if I ever fall into the dire straights they find themselves in today.

This week my outing with Ben ended up at Dungeness Spit. Though Benjas had a few autistic melt downs, the consistent wind muffled things and oddly made the venture quite private… well except for that poor Japanese couple. I guess they got a new take on the ugly American not yet written about until now.

Anyway, feeling a bit down and sorry for myself, I ended up befriending a man and his two kids. He was camping out (literally) between jobs. It really put Ben’s autistic melt down in perspective and humbled me (not an easy thing to do.) The man kept a positive attitude and giving approach on life despite clearly extremely hard times for him and his family. It also reminded me of events earlier this week

On Tuesday one of my wife’s Facebook friends, due to horrible circumstances, lost their home and had to contemplate putting her autistic son in a home so she could take care of her daughter and hold a job. We scraped together hotel points and with some extra cash secured a hotel for 4 nights. The hope was that other plans would come together to find a more stable place and keep the family together. That didn’t happen. Yesterday Allison told me that her friend thanked her and said it allowed them to spend a few days together as a family before the son had to be separated from them. Again, I am humbled by the strength and foresight of this woman to put the situation aside and connect and plant memories for her son that will carry him through the dark times ahead.

When I encounter great spirits such as these I am always in awe. It provides a mirror into the future possibility of myself. Almost always society takes a different view of these individuals. That view is rooted in fear either due to their differences or the suppressed understanding that any of us some day could end up in their shoes. But if you can see past the trappings of societal norms and connect with them in their darkest days often you will find deeper truths about yourself – because they are at a vantage point where life has allowed them to be closer to truth of reality and their place within it.

Introduction

Like most successful creative ventures, there is a lot of sausage making. Producing a novel is no exception. The reality is that this question should have been asked BEFORE starting the novel. That said, there is always sausage making and it is better to have that during the process than at the end and have a flop.

Assuming you know what is driving you to write the novel (aka the WHY) there are four how questions that need to be answered at some point in the novel process:

How to produce the novel
How to "use" the finished product
How the novel fits into a bigger plan
How to "execute" the first novel from production to sale

1. How to Produce the Novel

Given you are asking "I wrote a novel, now what?" Hopefully you have this covered. This is a great accomplishment in itself. But only one of three. The other two are:

Finding distribution and sales channels
Marketing, marketing, and marketing

These two will be discussed in the last point of this article

2. How to "Use" the Finished Product

Most authors do not make any profit, much less can live off it from their books. So the question of "why bother" comes to mind. But there are many uses for novels. In my case novels and books are good for "branding." I've gone into meetings head-to-head against experts in their fields who were armed with PhD's, special certifications, etc. It is amazing how you can deflate all their accolades by sliding a book across the conference table that you purchased from Barnes and Noble down the street. Without saying a word the client knows - "wow, he wrote the book on this." Sure the expert might blurt something like - "It's just a novel, not a degree." But the simple come back is "So do you need an academic or someone who is experienced and actually lived and breathed the industry for a time. If you want to teach someone, you show them. That is why the lessons here are in a novel, not some text book." Then there is the fact that for some strange reason people question blogs but they still do not question books. It is an inside track into the client's psyche (and yes it is another real-life Jedi Mind trick ( http://linkd.in/PVNCzZ ) - albeit the preparation is a bit excessive.)

3. How the Novel Fits into a "bigger" plan.
In short, invest not in a single book but in YOURSELF. Most authors get hung up on the book they wrote and don't start the next project until the first one sells. The reality is that the first book almost never sells until you write the second. However, this is hard on the ego until you realize it is more important to believe in yourself than any single book you wrote. The "come-to-Jesus" moment for me was when I was talking to a well known, NY Bestseller novelist during a writing group.

I told him about all the details and plotting of my novel how it modeled the mythic structure and roles in the hero's journey.

He shrugged. "What's the hero's journey?"

I was stunned. "What do you do?"

"I write a novel every 6 months and they sell."

That is when I learned the best way to sell more books is to write more books.

4. How to "execute" the first novel from production to sale
The most important piece is to have a plan and realize it may shift as this is your first time out. The three big stakes are:

1) Finalize your book - this never ends but you need to pull the hook at some point. Getting outside evaluations FIRST are a great idea - that is some reconnaissance is needed so you don't "biff" (to use the technical term) from the gate.

2) Find an outlet. This is most likely either:

A) Agent->Big publisher,

B) Small publisher.

C) Self publish.

With the state of the industry B) is probably best - but you'll need to do research. Though A) has a bigger reach, they will pay $0 for #3 (see below) and you can get the outlets you need either through LightningSource or CreateSpace. B) I found easier than C) since as you will see in #3, writing a book is not at all related to selling it - you need a team if you can get it.

3) Market, market, market. This is the HARDEST part for most writers. It is actually a Yin/Yang thing. As a writer you will find your energy is male-like. That is you are thrusting your creativity from within out into the world. However, when it comes to marketing and sales the energy required is feminine. You cannot force the world to buy your book like you can force the words to appear on a page of paper. You need to entice the world that it is in their best interest to buy your book. So you have to switch gears, get confident and pronounce in effective ways about your book. What makes it extra hard is there is something like 1,500 new titles on the market every day. So it is all about discrimination, finding new unsaturated niches, etc.

Hopefully this is of some help for those at this stage and realizing they are only one third of the way through this epic journey. The challenge now is to shift and see the bigger picture and realize the book is more about you and your destiny and less about itself. Just as you believe in your book, it is time you expand that belief to include yourself.

The Terminal Connection Kindle version is FREE May 8th-9th http://bit.ly/TerminalConnection
Three AUTOGRAPHED copies will be given away May 8th-11th via Goodreads - http://bit.ly/TCgiveaway1

Good Reads's Listopia - http://bit.ly/GoodReadsListopia
#1 Indie Technothriller
#2 Best Science Thriller
#4 What to Read Over and Over Again

Part of the proceeds will be contributed to an Autism charity and we would like to know which charity people think is best as there are quite a few charlatans these days. This is near and dear to my heart as both my son and I are Aspies (have Asperger Syndrome)

Also folks who have already read the book are welcome to add to the comment on both Amazon http://amzn.to/1hFUjSX and Goodreads http://bit.ly/Q82OKK

People often ask where did you find the time to write a novel. The answer to that question is founded in the fact that life isn't fair.
I think this reality was as daunting to me then as it is to my teenager today. As a young consultant do we ever work less than a 70 hour week? No, because the professional services manager doesn't want to bother the sales team with a change order to extended the scope of work. And as a young consultant we have no clue that the process even exists? At this stage of our career, life is seen through a younger and much greener lens and the ignorance of youth makes us satisfied to be an enabler/mediator in the drama triangle (http://bit.ly/DramaTriangle.) In that triangle we label all sales folk as perpetrators of evil, all customers as victims, and of course we are the shameless rescuer - not realizing it is us that keeps the drama triangle, or rather wheel, spinning and our customer re-victimized.
So we happily spend our late Saturday night polishing a configuration file and adding an Appendix to a document that no one will ever read. But we are content in "being right" because there is an off change that someday someone as anal and conscientious as us may take a gander instead of charging the customer to forklift remove and replace.
Of course that never happens. In the end, the reality is we are no better than the bright and cheery voice answering the phone when we get transferred to an offshore support center. Like them, our role is about compliance, not doing anything useful, much less doing the right thing. But that is for the post series - Secret Conspiracies and Jedi Mind Tricks that allows you to create your own headless conspiracy and take over the world- http://linkd.in/1qlcpsM and http://linkd.in/1nlKkS3
One day early in my career broke me from my self-righteous trance and taught me that presentation (i.e. sales) cannot be ignored especially as a consultant. I remember a specific event. That event produced the novel TERMINAL CONNECTION that is available for free download May 8th-9th - http://amzn.to/1gLdOqZ
The dot com boom made me do it - that and youth. At least that is what I tell myself now. Over a decade ago, chased by greed and ambition, I jumped blindly like a lemming from C programming into Network consulting.
Young and naïve, I landed my first gig under a director of a government agency. He asked for an honest appraisal of his technical support group. Determined to make a strong impression, I burned a 70 hour week to find the answer: a series of layoffs had decimated their client base. Now his group only supported their own equipment. Elated, I told the director that his people could be redistributed with no impact to the agency. In return the director delivered my first lesson. Not only was my gig terminated, but the entire contract, all ten consultants, were let go.
I was crushed. Though obvious now, I couldn’t see my mistake. Luckily, I worked in the people’s republic of California at the time and not my adopted state of Texas or my most recent home of Washington. My consulting firm couldn’t lay me off. Instead they banished me to the wastelands of the Bay Area - a two hundred mile commute. I was told to baby sit a quiet NOC during the graveyard shift.
Whispers in the hall gave 8 to 1 odds that I would quit by Friday. (And yes money did change hands - you know who you are ;-) But my firm made a strategic mistake. They forgot how little they paid me as an exploited, young and naïve consultant. The expense for one day’s commute miles was $65 tax free dollars or something like $2,000 California taxed dollars. I didn’t give up. I worked harder. The client moved me to the day shift.
My resurrection caught the attention of Mr. Damiano. Twenty years my senior, Damiano had a cult like following at the consulting firm. Over coffee he asked, “Why didn’t you just quit?”
“The miles,” I said.
His seasoned nose caught my drift immediately. His eyes lit up. “Let their trust grow before you break it,” he advised before walking off.
What did that mean? I didn’t know that I had entered the first phase of God mode - the client knew I was good and trusted me to do it. Despite my ignorance, the conversation left me feeling sick, like the after affects of eating a hotdog. I swallowed hard and pushed the discussion out of my thoughts and the slimy film into my stomach.
I won the clients praise through hard work and long hours. Mr. Damiano would visit my desk periodically and offer advice, “Don’t work so hard. Appearance is more important than substance.” Only later did I understand these truths.
On my final day he lingered a bit longer than usual. “What have you learned?”
As it happened, I was working on my final status report. I scanned it and rambled off a dozen approaches and tools I used to fix various issues.
He laughed. “Parlor tricks.”
I smiled politely.
Damiano frowned. “You did three things: wait, reboot, and condemn issues to the help desk.”
Like my first break up, his words tore through me. I looked over my status report. The approaches were ingenious, the insights brilliant. Yet in most cases the problems disappeared on their own accord. For almost everything else, irrespective of the complex causes I discovered, the solution was to restart a service or reboot a server. The help desk got the remaining unsolved issues, never to be heard from again.
My phone rang. It was Kenneth. It was time for my exit interview. I didn’t bother printing out the status report. In Kenneth’s office, Mr. Damiano was already there. I relayed Mr. Damiano’s three golden rules to Kenneth and suggested that I stay a week to train his staff.
Kenneth doubled over laughing. Mr. Damiano, always the professional, mimicked him.
“I’m serious,” I said.
Mr. Damiano winked at me. “Sure you are.”
Kenneth extended a hand across his desk. “The truth is I don’t know what you do. I only know that I need to keep you another six months.”
Just like that, my contract was extended. I had entered the second phase of God mode and back into the realm of distrust. The customer didn't even know what I did anymore, but they knew they needed me and as a result didn't trust me to leave.
I waited until Kenneth and I were alone.
Kenneth read my expression and sighed. “What will it take to keep you here?”
As had happened with the expenses, my inner consultant stirred beneath my integrity. A childhood dream bubbled to the surface. “I want to write a novel.”
“As long as you show up and handle the escalated issues,” Kenneth said.
Over the course of two years I worked and reworked the novel. Every six months Kenneth extended the contract. Later that year Mr. Damiano’s contract ended. The consulting firm had negotiated a higher rate for me, so Kenneth didn’t have budget for Mr. Damiano.
When a router gig opened up, the sales team edited Damiano’s resume to include router experience. In a rare weak moment, Damiano told the client the truth during an interview - he had no router experience. He failed to nail the gig and the consulting firm forced him out a month later.
Before he left, I called him up. “I guess you don’t have the moral flexibility it takes to be a team player.”
He laughed and vowed we’d meet for coffee some day. But I never saw him again. We both knew he had nothing left to teach. The student had become the master.
At the end of the third year, I finished the novel. The double spaced, 12 point courier font stretched the tome to over 500 pages – a ream of paper. That night I stayed late and printed out twenty copies.
I couldn’t have picked a worse time. Mr. White, the division’s VP, was visiting from LA. At 8:50 PM Mr. White strolled up to me as I stood guard over the printer. I snatched up the pages off the output tray and added them to the waist high stack. More sheets streamed out.
Mr. White surveyed the scene. “Are you an employee?”
I shook my head. My knees felt weak. “Contractor.” The word came out feeble; it's own admission of guilt. I was toast.
His face turned red.
I winced.
“Why can’t we hire folks like you?”
"Huh?" My mouth dropped open. I couldn't help it. What was wrong with him?
He pointed at the stack of novels. “You’ve stayed late to finish documentation.” He patted me on the back and exited the cubicle.
The next day I received accolades from Kenneth and Kenneth’s boss. They decided to reward my loyalty. They told me to work from home for the rest of the gig as I entered an unprecedented fourth year. I missed expensing the miles, but I found other freelance hobbies to reward me. By the fifth year all the systems I had worked on were obsolete. Yet the client remained convinced that I was vital to their business. It took a complete re-org and a new set of managers to figure out that I provided no value.
They summarily let me go with an email. I didn’t mind. I had completed a novel and hadn’t set foot on the campus for over 9 months. I might have lost my soul, but I had become a great consultant.
I did not stay lost. Eventually I worked for over 50 fortune 500 companies and government agencies and redeemed my soul many times over (or I hope so.) But that is for another story...
However the product of this story was the novel TERMINAL CONNECTION. It will be free for download May 8th and May 9 on Amazon at http://amzn.to/1gLdOqZ or can be purchased in printed form on Amazon at http://amzn.to/1j7tOpx I promise you it will be less "telling" the story of consulting but rather "showing" it, embellished with a struggle of superpowers, several murders, and other more interesting, that is, sales bits.

The prior blog discussed real secret government conspiracies and how most of them are "headless." As a practicing Cith, this article teaches you how to create your very own secret government conspiracy through fear mongering. In practice, there are many tactical moves that can kick a headless conspiracy into existence. These tactics oddly resemble Jedi mind tricks. I am not talking about the feeble toss of a hand with "These are not the droids you are looking for" as shown in the Star Wars movies. Rather, I am talking about the Zen Buddhist philosophy that flows throughout the series. Strategically, a Jedi mind trick leverages one of: emotions, thoughts, or sensations:

Emotions - Recognize the environment and tap into the pent up emotional energy already there
Thoughts - Set the mental paradigm of others; exploit terminology and the mind's rash interpretation
Sensations - Fool the collective senses of the group into believing another reality, especially in the area of sensual blindness

These three strategies can create the most insidious headless conspiracies.

TERMINAL CONNECTION (http://amzn.to/1mmPM9x ) uses storytelling to "show", rather than "tell", how these Jedi mind tricks express themselves. Among the tactical expressions of these tricks, my favorites are (as a Cith):

Emotional - Fear Mongering
Mental - Statistical Paradigms
Sensual - Boiling the Frog

This blog will discuss the emotional sphere and the Jedi mind trick of fear mongering.

“Fear leads to the Dark Side.”

“Fear leads to Anger,

Anger leads to Hate,

Hate… Leads to Suffering.”

- Yoda, Star Wars: Episode I

Fear mongering is probably the most direct and powerful Jedi mind trick. Exploiting fear is the easiest way to tap into repressed emotions of a collective group. One of the more public examples is the United States response to 911.

If you are old enough to remember 911, then you are also old enough to remember that the United States as a whole, not just President Bush, was gunning for war. Sure it is easy to throw Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld under the bus now, but let's be honest. All of us wanted war. No? Well, if that is your answer you might as well be one of the hapless storm troopers so easily swayed by a wave of the hand. For at the core, all Jedi mind tricks wear off, unless the victim chooses to lie to themselves rather than be embarrassed and have to face the consequences of their actions. It was this denial, as the nation failed to exit the first stage in the grieving process, that perpetuated the lie for over a decade. But back to the main point. The beginning was easy for Al-Qaeda. How hard was it to tap into the helplessness the nation felt, our arrogance as the only remaining superpower, as well as our knee jerk reflex as a teenager-like nation that has only been around for a few hundred years? Terrorism was new. Fear of the unknown drove us collectively into fight or flight and shutoff our ability to reason. When have you diverted enough time, energy, and funds to guarantee no more attacks? The ugly answer is that not only is the beast bottomless but you never know how safe you are. This is a recipe for collective manic behavior and panic.

The reality was Al-Qaeda had no ability to harm us as a whole unless we hurt ourselves and we did that in spades. Their greatest aspiration was to play on our fears, have us lose faith and trust in ourselves, in order to redirect us to misappropriate and squander resources as well as compromise our morality and ethics.

Over a decade later, very few would argue Al-Qaeda did not achieve their goal through the Iraq war. But the damage goes much deeper. What is less known is this knee jerk reaction also caused FEMA to redirect nearly all its resources to combating "terror" to the expense of its other duties. As a result the preparation and response to hurricane Katrina was completely lacking. The United States lost a major city verses a few, albeit large, buildings and almost triple the fatalities in a week. From an Al-Qaeda lens - a huge win. Worse, over the course of a decade we lost the high moral ground as well as being the base currency for the world. The impact of both of these by itself was: catastrophic, long term, and hard to calculate.

However, the damage was not only external in how we allocated resources, redirected our attention, and behaved. The damage was internal as well. FDR had it right when he said, "The only thing we have to fear is… fear itself." Fear has permeated our society and has broken down basic trust which has translated into everything from ridiculous and ineffective TSA rules (see the previous blog) to more serious breaches of trust. It has helped fuel the extremes of our society and we are no longer able to risk our security to keep the luxury of civil liberties. This is not an either/or, nor an all-or-nothing statement. But it is often interpreted that way as a sign of the times. (Only a Cith thinks in absolutes.) Security and freedom are a spectrum and the country is sliding toward the security end and becoming more like its enemies rather than its old self (aka the path to the dark side.) Over time the fear-derived extremism has facilitated gridlock, which reinforced the downward spiral of public trust. Just as with employees or children, you get what you expect. If you cling to fear and expect the country not to protect itself, and as a result put rules in place and operate from that mindset, sure enough the country will fulfill the self-fulfilling prophesy and be untrustworthy.

Of course Al-Qaeda was powerless to do any of this damage without our help and willing participation. But it was easy for them given the fear and cultural personality of the United States at the time. And our pride and embarrassment ensured it would last over a decade. This is the key to understanding how to use Fear Mongering. Fear Mongering is decisively yin or feminine - it is not about projecting what you want, but rather recognizing the pent up pressures already in the environment, the energy that is much greater than yourself, and tapping into it. Think of it as emotional kinetic energy, a sort of "force." In the modern Internet age, where communication flows freely, the easiest energy to spark is pent up human emotion… and the human weakness of hiding from embarrassment-over-failure ensures the victim will perpetuate the obvious deception for you. (That's right. They are completely in the grips of the dark side at that point.)

Though Fear Mongering is a powerful Jedi mind trick, it is not subtle. As such it breaks the cardinal rule recorded in Sun Tzu, The Art of War - “All warfare is based on deception.” Luckily there are two more powerful Jedi mind tricks that, as a practicing business Cith, I can teach you. While Fear Mongering is based on the primal emotion of fear, the other two are based on the mind and senses. These are the subject of the next two blogs.