al and jim lose their way after a mind-bending tour of the gibson guitar factory in memphis.

bold ideas, bold positions, groundbreaking effort… all require the balls to lose everything, because there’s freedom there.

i’ve been struck on this road trip by two people who came viscerally into focus as i traveled to nola for the ux4good conference. the first, oddly enough, was at the fedex distribution center in memphis, tennessee… their world headquarters. the second was in jt nesbitt, a man who has touched the hem of greatness and seems at peace with letting go over and over again.

arriving at the memphis facility shortly after 11p, we were hustled into an orientation room by a very capable tour guide (a worker moonlighting as a guide because fedex believes the only people representing them should be those who actually do the work). we wouldn’t get back out till well after 1:00a. after a quick set of warnings we were scooted along to an awkward, high-powered tram thing. i can’t even explain it. from there, we were driven to the outskirts of receiving, watching 777′s unload, watching other trams haul train-loads of tin boxes hither and yon. the energy was astounding and the disorientation was overwhelming. about 1 and a half million packages come through this location on average each day during the sticatto course of 4-5 hours. then everything’s gone and they fire it up all over again the next night. (the photo is stock, as we weren’t allowed to take any pictures.)

toward the end of the tour, my friend tony asked if the guide knew the story about frederick smith, the company’s founder who had to gamble barely remaining funds over a weekend to keep the company going. as it’s told, they had roughly $5k in the bank on a friday in 1973, which wouldn’t be enough to fuel their jets the following monday. apparently unbeknownst to the board, he took that money to the vegas blackjack tables and came back with $27k. as the legend goes, the board asked angrily what he’d done and why. his answer: ‘what did it matter? we were out of business anyway.’

he bet it all and he’d won.

not quite so for jt nesbitt who, for reasons beyond his control, has been forced to bet it all over and over again and has come to understand the real reason for creation.

his first bet and subsequent loss was getting in business with matt chambers to create confederate motorcycles. with years of design under their belts and industry accolades propelling them to the cover of the Robb Report and every motorcycle magazine worth having, they had the world at their fingertips. to make a very long story much too short, they landed a life-changing angel investment days before katrina wiped out their facility in new orleans and ultimately wiped out their partnership. as jt will say, katrina didn’t just wipe out his business, it wiped out his career.

to recover what was probably more meaning than career, his next endeavor was to build a salvaged lincoln into a world-record breaking custom car for the bonneville salt flats. he spent two years and all of his money working as a bartender to get it done. in the process he lost his best friend early to a senseless murder in the ravaged city… to be left with an unreconciled hurt that haunts him to this day.

on the salt flats, they successfully time-trialed but didn’t break the record. and as he sums at the end of a self-produced documentary, Salt Dreams, he finds that the honor is in the doing, not the winning.

his next project was to build a natural gas-powered car from the ground up over the course of two years from an unexpected windfall in fracking royalties out of his family’s hometown in north louisiana. the magnolia special is beyond stunning and for some crazy reason he even let me drive it while we were together.

the car has been featured on jay leno’s garage, a site about cars and motorcycles that feeds jay’s passion. oh, and jt completed a world-record run from new york to L.A. that has gone largely unnoticed. it is the fastest trans-continental run in a natural gas-powered vehicle to date, proving even the emergent natural gas infrastructure is enough to justify more vehicle development on this fuel.

i left jt for the last time on a cool sunday night, reluctantly walking out of his pristine shop. he was headed to see his dying father in northern louisiana; the same man he’d called crying over the death of his best friend chris. even with all these burdens of loss and unrealized potential, he had the honor and poise to give me a ‘mission’ on my way out. (i’ll post separately about the two motorcycle museums i’m visiting on my return trip.) then he asked me what his mission was; what was i going to ask of him.

i had nothing.

holy shit, man. the world has had its way with you and you’ve ‘lost’ every time. all we can ask of any true artist–a true fountainhead–is to just be.

and that he is, which is my core lesson coming out of this trip. life isn’t worth living in fear of the bottom. we should go there regularly, look it in the face. as elon musk related in a recent speech, if you like chewing glass and staring into the abyss, entrepreneurship is for you. if you don’t, stay away.

admittedly, i’m writing this for myself as much as anyone else right now. but, let’s live it and see what happens next…

as i work to build the strength of a company culture, i am using the following guiding statements to light the way. so far, i have not faced a decision or situation that was not somehow better clarified by one or more of these principles. that said, i’m nowhere near done. my own circumstance is far from perfect… but we’re working hard at it. and if this list can be improved, i’d love to hear about it.

as time permits and circumstance illustrates, i’ll provide further consideration on each of them. and if something needs revision, we’ll do that too. so, to get us started…

I hold these business design truths to be self evident:

1. The value of craftsmanship endures indefinitely
2. Character precedes culture
3. The best innovations make us more human
4. The most effective technologies go unseen
5. Learning is the only path to meaningful change
6. Real business value is found in serving people
7. Efficient, responsible systems persist
8. Transparency ultimately creates clarity and balance

one reason i rode down to new orleans was to take part in ux for good, an initiative conceived at manifest and one we continue to sponsor. the idea is to use the talents of ux designers to tackle some major social problem. this year the challenge was nola’s music economy. here’s a crain’s article on the event.

the author points out that ux designers aren’t just good at coming up with new ideas, but often observe systems in a way that helps them see attributes others don’t. here’s a few highlighted by the article:

• musicians aren’t going to be who they’re not. jeff leitner: “we ought to let musicians be musicians. These are people who keep weird hours and who don’t want to spend time with Quickbooks; they want to stay up all night playing gigs”

• artists keep weird hours. jeff leitner: “If you can’t get them to government or social services offices, then you put them in the clubs during the day while the clubs aren’t having shows, because the musicians still go in there and jam. When they’re together, you can get them the kind of help they need.”

• tourists are a part of the system. jason ulaszek: “They were pretty adamant about not wanting to (to capitalize on) the tourism side. That’s a huge disconnect, because we’re thinking about how you leverage your assets. We’re talking about leveraging music as a natural resource there, but we also have to think about the other natural resource there, tourism.”

there’s no way to develop a sustainable solution without accounting for this stuff. i’m glad our designers did. here’s a link to the ux for good site.

that’s a pic of one of the teams planning their strategy in front of st. louis cathedral

i recently wrapped a great experience meeting with JT Nesbitt whose stories i will share in separate posts. i’m struck by what was and what could have been in the experience itself. for my own part, i wouldn’t change a thing. that said, i might guess many others would have done it differently.

i was fortunate to be able to bring a good friend, howell malham, with me who offered to record some of the meeting. he brought a camera and helped with questions when my head occassionally froze from the excitement of actually being in JT’s shop. the meeting evolved into lunch, which evolved into drinks at his favorite bar. the video camera took further and further steps back as the encounter become more and more personal.

and i’m glad it did. i could have had him aping for the camera and his congenial style probably would have allowed it. but i might guess that would have been the end of the experience. for my own part i count myself very lucky to have gotten to know the man on his terms and in his world without all the digital doodads that get in the way. we continue to wrestle with them as this recent article in the harvard business review confirms.

it’s a long time running goal for me to ‘be in the moment.’ an everlastingnow perhaps…

[photo credit]

got a sneak-preview of information from a friend with inside intel on space exploration company, xcor, who is performing test’s with triumph motorcycles. can’t say much more now… other than i’d like a left-over if there is one ;o)

[update! here's the story.]

just so we have it on record, this is how they do it in the lou. pappy’s, you were the best!

who is that guy all scrubbed clean and full of energy? little did we know we were in for a couple days of cold rain and some serious hours down the mississippi. so far so good. more video and stills to come as we get things downloaded…

as we head down to to #ux4good2012, we’re heartened to see nola getting ready for us. check out this kind article on the event and everything going on in and around it. just one more day till the event begins and then we’ll see what these ux’ers can do. till then, a little more bbq, a few hundred more miles and more reports to come.

i’ve thought for a long time that we problem solve in multiple dimensions. in terms of my company, we solve for user experience, technology, and market/design at the same time (as much as we can). but recently an article from an awfully bright perspective came across my desk (thanks to Tracy Ahern, also from manifest!).

in it, AC4D (the austin center for design) suggests that unicorns exist. you’ll have to read it to get the gist. but the real point is that depending where we come from, we’re often solving for only one or two dimensions of a three-dimensional context. they’re making the point that this problem solving is difficult and designers need to be aware of the context of the ask. the unicorn is found in the unique cross-sections of specialized design with the understanding of a broader system of influences and specialties around each.

it really blew my mind, because we’ve been saying for some time now that we (manifest) are best when applying three-dimensional thinking to solve sophisticated business problems. we’ve characterized these as a category we lump together as ‘high-consideration brands.’ they tend to fall in healthcare, finance, insurance… things are are complicated, multi-layered decisions that require learning and trust along the way. compounded by the fact that market competitors bombard the high-consideration buyer with partial information in attempts to grab their attention, the context just gets tougher and tougher.

anyway, kudos to ac4d for putting a three-dimensional model together that highlights the complexity of design problem solving. once again, we find that design-minded organizations will pave the way to our better future.