Sound More Interesting at Cocktails Memo | February 3, 2023

25 talking points for better conversation at cocktails from news of the past week.

1. Russia has more than 320,000 soldiers in Ukraine.

2. The head of the Wagner group is known as a "general without epaulets."

3. US opens embassy in Solomon Islands amid China threat.

4. The US government has 18 intelligence agencies.

5. QOTW: "Who is this Tucker Carlson? All these wonderful Republicans seem somehow terrified of his perspective." -- Boris Johnson speaking at the Atlantic Council

6. US Senate Election 2024: All four border states that touch Mexico – Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas – have Senate races next year.

7. On average, White House chiefs of staff last eighteen months.

8. Arkansas Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders will deliver the GOP response to Biden's SOTU.

9. Nikki Haley plans to announce her presidential run in Charleston on February 15 officially.

10. According to the The Canadian Automobile Association, the prices of EVs currently available in Canada can range from $39,498 to $189,000.

11. Canada moves to make one-fifth of all vehicle sales electric starting in 2026.

12. General Motors will invest $650 million in a US lithium mine to secure EV battery materials.

13. TravelCenters of America will partner with Electrify America to install 1,000 EV chargers at truck stops.

14. Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft broke their lobbying spending records last year as they fended off heightened scrutiny.

15. Apple's advertising unit generates about $4 billion annually.

16. Boeing delivers its last 747 after producing more than 1,500 planes.

17. ExxonMobil notched a record $59 billion in 2022 profit.

18. China's tourists are back: Gaming revenue in Macau jumped 82.5%.

19. More than 50% of employees in major cities are now working in person, according to building-security company Kastle Systems.

20. Scent-a Fe: New Mexico could be the first state with an official aroma.

21. The Sierra Nevada snowpack has been at its highest since 1995.

22. Nike's Jordan Brand brought in $5.1 billion in fiscal 2022.

23. The Seattle Sounders FC will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, making them the oldest American club in MLS.

24. Marty Walsh, the labor secretary, has reportedly been approached to run the National Hockey League (NHL) players' union.

25. Trump courses will host three tournaments for Saudi-backed LIV Golf.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

---

ITK Daily is geopolitical business intelligence for senior executives with global ambition.

ITK Daily curates news @ the intersection of globalization, disruption, politics, culture, + sport and provides actionable insights and sharp commentary.

Build your idea flow.

What makes a venture capitalist successful is that smart and creative people bring them new ideas.

A lot of new ideas.

A venture capitalist calls this process “deal flow.”

Deal flow describes the rate at which new business proposals drop into their inbox or the number of meetups they have.

Deal flow isn't a rigid measurement.

Deal flow is about access to new ideas.

But the better the deal flow, the better the venture capitalist.

What’s true for the venture capitalist is true for a senior executive with global ambition.

The more ideas that land in your inbox or the number of meetups you have, means more and better insights.

You need a process called “idea flow.”

Here are several tactics to help increase idea flow:

• Choose to be creative - creative people have one thing in common, they decide to be creative. 

• Expose yourself to new ideas and experiences - take an artabout, where you wander around a museum. Artabout, a word I created inspired by the Aussie word walkabout, is an informal stroll among art. The purpose of an artabout is a deliberate act where your brain can experience awe.  

Richard Sima in the Washington Post reports: By becoming less attuned to ourselves and more attuned to the rest of the world, awe helps us spark new ideas. Emerging research shows that experiencing awe may make us more curious and creative.

“It helps make you feel like there’s more going on in the world than just you. And it gives you that sense of being a part of something much bigger than yourself.” -- Paul Piff, an associate professor of psychological science at the University of California at Irvine

• Employ the shower effect - according to a 2022 study, one of the best tactics for sparking new ideas is to employ ʺmindlessʺ tasks that are engaging but not boring —  like walking, showering, or knitting, as opposed to watching ambient videos or doom-scrolling on social media.

• Get into the field - embrace your inner anthropologist and see how people engage with products, share ideas, and spark aha moments. 

• Start with a prompt - empty whitespace can be intimidating. Starting with a prompt, an image, or a letter as the foundation for idea dumps. There is a neurological reason Twitter prompts you with “what’s happening?” as a means to get you tweeting.

• Avoid benchmarking - Too often, executives will look to competitors for ideas. This benchmarking is about the past rather than what is possible. Benchmarking is an idea that has already been achieved and is not about embracing a new idea.

• Use a pencil and draw - Asking someone to describe Spring would be impossible. But asking someone to draw Spring, well, that can be visualized. Some ideas simply appear better on paper and cannot be spoken or described.

• Ask why questions - When presented with an idea or an answer, respond with “why?” Ideally, you can ask “why” five times. This tactic is called the 5 Whys. Watch this video to see it in practice here.

• Reframe the question - “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change.” This quote is the first thing Errol Gerson says to his students at the start of each semester. Gerson has taught entrepreneurship, leadership, and business management at Art Center in Pasadena, CA, for nearly half a century. Gerson's challenge from the start is to get his students to look at the world around them differently. A tactic he calls "reframing" or merely seeing things differently. Sometimes a new idea is just waiting to pop out with a different or reframed perspective.

If you need help building your idea flow, Caracal is here to help.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

---

ITK Daily is geopolitical business intelligence for senior executives with global ambition.

ITK Daily curates news @ the intersection of globalization, disruption, politics, culture, + sport and provides actionable insights and sharp commentary.

You can't stay in the classroom endlessly.

Could you learn to ride a bicycle from a lecture?

Possibly.

Could you learn to ride a bicycle from a spin around your neighborhood?

Absolutely.

Michael Polanyi wrote: "There are things that we know but cannot tell.  This is strikingly true for our knowledge of skills.  I can say that I know how to ride a bicycle, but this does not mean that I can tell how I manage to keep my balance on a bicycle.  I may not have the slightest idea of how I do this or even an entirely wrong or grossly imperfect idea of it, and yet go on cycling merrily."

"We know more than we can tell" was Polanyi's dictum. 

Many of us know how to ride a bicycle, but we can't write down how to do it, at least not in a simple manner for a new cyclist to read the instructions, get on their bikes, and ride off merrily.

Polanyi's dictum is a concept called tacit knowledge.

Knowledge that is not formal or codified is tacit.

Knowledge that is difficult to express or extract, and thus more challenging to transfer to others by writing it down or verbalizing it in a lecture, is tacit.

To ride a bicycle it is best to ride a bicycle and figure it out.

Sure, at first, you will fall and fall again.

But as you keep at it with more sessions and practice, it becomes effortless, and you'll soon be cycling merrily.

Modern jets employed by the US Air Force are massively complex machines of speed, agility, and computer power.

Training to become a fighter jet pilot can take roughly two years.

The cost of training a basic qualified US Air Force fighter pilot ranges from $5.6 million for an F-16 pilot to $10.9 million for an F-22 pilot, according to the RAND Corporation.

And time spent in the classroom and listening to lectures isn't enough to produce a qualified US Air Force fighter pilot.

Not even endless hours spent in flight simulators will do.

Becoming a qualified US Air Force fighter pilot means time must be spent in air flying.

Flying merrily.

Watch a video from the US Air Force Academy on the stages of fighter pilot training here.

Like fighter pilot training, the same applies to senior executives with global ambition.

Time spent in the classroom and listening to lectures will help improve your communications, but eventually, you need to leave the classroom and engage.

If you need help getting out of the classroom and engaging, Caracal is here to help.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

---

ITK Daily is geopolitical business intelligence for senior executives with global ambition.

ITK Daily curates news @ the intersection of globalization, disruption, politics, culture, + sport and provides actionable insights and sharp commentary.