Polymathic Being Podcast

Welcome to Polymathic Being , a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains.  These essays take common topics and investigate them from different perspectives and disciplines to come up with unique insights and solutions.  Today's topic is the second of two parts on providing Top Cover. The first essay covered the concept of creating stability and consistency in execution to...

Today's topic is the first of two parts on providing Top Cover. This essay will cover the concept of creating stability and consistency in execution to protect your teams from the chaos of many organizations. The second part will cover providing psychological safety and standing up for your team when they come under criticism. Since Part Two requires the foundation of providing stability, we’ll in...

Today's topic is a collaboration with Andrew Smith who also writes on tech topics at GoatFury's FutureScape . He wrote a piece recently that caught my attention and sparked a conversation resulting in this essay. What we’ll explore today is the challenge that, all too often, conversations around AI reflect an either/or binary between humans and machines. Either AI or a Doctor. Either AI or a Coder...

Today's topic Looks at Product Development and Program Managment from the perspective of sailing. More specifically, why it always seems like we are changing direction with no idea of where we are going or how to get there? Join in as we tackle the headwinds of change and understand how to achieve true innovation by learning to design like a sailor. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polym...

Today's topic grapples with what’s really behind tradition and what the challenges are when we remove them without considering what problems they are solving. Yes, some old expectations or behaviors need to be adapted. Yes, we also need to be careful at how quickly we change things so we don’t unlock chaos. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscribe

Today's topic takes the recent OceanGate catastrophe and demonstrates how it is quite literally the hardware manifestation of Silicon Valley software start-up mentalities. We’ll explore how these simple tropes lead to terrible behaviors, myopic designs, and are behind the vast majority of failures of start-ups to get out of the seed rounds of funding. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.pol...

Today's topic is one I’m still debating whether I should get into since it’s about social media engagement and AI. I won’t deny, I feel like I keep talking about AI when there’s so much more to look at. Yet it also highlights so many topics of human psychology that are part of the Polymathic mindset. So it makes a nice backdrop to discuss. This essay will explore a LinkedIn thread about Art and AI...

Today's topic is a philosophical approach to leadership that rethinks where we put the value in our output. It’s an ego killer in some ways but I think it’s more about an ego focus. This time from the leader to the team they are empowering. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscribe

Today's topic unlocks humanity’s superpower; The ability to critically think, ask questions, and form, unform, and reform ideas. It’s a key aspect that AI currently can’t do and one that underpins Polymathic thinking and feeds into learning, unlearning, and relearning. Once we understand this ability, we can properly contextualize AI into the useful, but limited assistant that it is. Get full acce...

Today's topic is a bit of a book review plus a critical element that I’m finding essential for those interested in the Polymathic mindset. The book is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World and the caveat is to really know who you are so that we can best team together to solve wicked problems. This is Part 3 of the Keys to Innovation Series. You can find the other Keys here: * Part...

Today's topic is an exploration of poor biomechanics and probes the way we poop. I know, this is not what most consider polite conversation but bear with me. We already covered how we breathe wrong and how we walk wrong. This wrongness suffers the same first-world problems of technological convenience. Yet it actually has some serious implications as we grow older. This essay plumbs the nuance of...

Today's topic introduces an old Military Special Operations adage that I’ve found to be incredibly useful throughout my entire career. It’s a phrase I remind myself and others of quite regularly so that we can ensure the proper execution of a strategy or a task. It’s the ability to take it slow, make it smooth, and finish fast. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscri...

Today's topic is an exploration of poor biomechanics and tackles the way we walk and run. I’ll admit, I fell victim to the ideas of running promoted by shoe companies and suffered the consequences in my age. We already covered how we breathe wrong and so this essay will explore walking and share my experiences with how I’ve solved it and the benefits that are provided. Get full access to Polymathi...

Today's topic is an exploration of poor biomechanics and explores breathing. As simple as this might sound, most of us do it wrong, including myself. We’ll explore what we do wrong, how it affects our health, and then show what is possible if we can improve this basic human biomechanical function. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscribe

Today's topic faces the distinctly human characteristic to project our own emotional states on animals and, in the case of AI, inanimate objects. While the first can be cute and innocuous, the second creates an incredible amount of risk in the advancement of AI and the well beings of humans. It doesn’t have to be this way and the first step is to acknowledge what we are doing and what impact that...

Today's topic pokes at a problem I see all too often in businesses. It revolves around all the talk of alignment, execution, and stability and yet, when the first deviation or last-minute request appears, the leadership turns into reaction mode and throws it all out the window. This essay explores that phenomenon and weaves together some of the previously discussed counterintuitive opportunities s...

Today's topic is another collaboration with and delves into what we call Critical Thinking and, in doing so, uncover the core of Polymathic Disciplines captured as the ability to “Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn.” We’ll contextualize the push for, and against Critical Thinking and dive into what we really mean with these two words. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscri...

Today's topic is an introduction to a very important capability called Threatcasting. We’ll get into the goals, the model that runs it, and an example I just participated in this past week. Fundamentally the goal of Threatcasting is to imagine terrible futures so that we can do things today to prevent them from happening. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscribe

Welcome to Polymathic Being , a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains.  These essays take common topics and investigate them from different perspectives and disciplines to come up with unique insights and solutions.  Today's topic looks at Artificial Intelligence (AI) from a systems perspective and strives to understand the layers, the relationships, and the implicatio...

Today's topic looks into how our brains capture, process, store, and recall memories and how that relates to the recent advancements in AI. We’ll explore our ‘second brain', memory recall, and how this ties together with something near and dear to me; PTSD in veterans. This essay provides insight and awareness to help anyone improve their mental health and emotional regulation. Get full access to...

Today's topic explores some interesting stories from my time in the Army and how those lessons apply to my work in the professional world. This intentional reconceptualization of The Enemy’s Gate is Down has also become one of Polymathic Disciplines ’ key elements in Systems Thinking and so it’s appropriate to dive deeper in. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscribe

Today’s topic picks apart the popular trope of inserting Art into Science Technology Engineering, and Math, otherwise known as STEM. We’ll look at why trying to piggyback on the STEM initiatives not only harms Art, but totally misses the point of the relationship between Art and STEM. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscribe

Today's topic takes a different look at our brain, how it operates, and what this means for us in work, life, and play. Hang tight as we explore the things we see and don’t see, and the fictions we create to make sense of the world around us. Don’t worry though, at the end, you’ll also have some tools on hand to check your blind spots and reframe your reality to ensure a solid foundation. Get full...

Today's topic is a historical exploration of Daylight Savings Time (DST). We dive into the history of time, the surprisingly inconsistent application of DST throughout history and across the world and explore ideas for how we could better align our time zones to our advantage. Get full access to Polymathic Being at www.polymathicbeing.com/subscribe

Today's topic has the singular goal of saving lives and when it comes to the past three years’ debates on masks, this requires a much more complex systems analysis than we’ve been offered. We’ll investigate what we missed in the binary debate on whether masks work or not and uncover the truth of how the science of masks, mask protocols, and our own psychology actually led to increased deaths in th...