Patience / Curt Schwab
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen (the term is to be conservatively applied),
Welcome to those new to Serendipity. As always, the premises of these essays can be found in the provenance email. (In short, it is the highly unlikely, early, and experimental work of a future Pulitzer-winning writer which will one day force you to Google “How do I restore deleted emails from 23 years ago.”)
The overarching and cumulative sentiment of my conversations this month skewed towards the notion of grinding rather than gliding. Targets are looking shaky, economic outlook is iffy, emotions are trumping logic (unintentional political pun), and growth strategies are being questioned. Now, granted, my dataset (500ish emails/calls) is small in the grand scheme of things, but the tone was weirdly unanimous.
As a man with an imperious Bachelor's education and a 64-day streak on Duolingo, I am clearly qualified to provide insightful commentary. However, I, too, have more questions than answers.
I often go through periods of feeling creatively stale. Ideas are bland, words don’t come easy, and you conclude that everything you create is witless and should be resigned to the folder labeled “future creative ideas for financial clients.” Losing creativity is particularly challenging in a profession where “that’s kinda the point of it.”
So, how do you go from grinding to gliding?
I have read copious books by luminaries like Tim Ferriss, James Clear, and my personal favorite, Peter Bregman, but the skill that seems to tie it all together is patience. Your plan can be galactic, your knowledge nonpareil, and your execution flawless, but it all feels fleeting without patience. If anyone reading this has a tangible strategy for acquiring patience other than “you get it as you get older,” please be so kind as to write to me.
Moving on.
This month, I would like to introduce you to a leader amongst leaders: Curt Schwab. His unconventional path to the pinnacle of worldwide enterprises has honed his ability to lead any team to heights they could only imagine.
Curt Schwab
Curt is a bilingual philosopher whose origins harken back to sailing and wrestling and is now at the forefront of the AI revolution. His mastery of patience has enabled him to build and exit several tech and media companies. He now leads Catalyte as President, which is changing the way tech teams are built.
Catalyte is 24 years old and was founded on the idea that mainstream paradigms associated with finding technology talent are inefficient. Degrees, resumes, and even job history are not the most salient factors in identifying successful technologists. These factors are inherently biased (that's part of the reason why 67% of engineers are white men) and don't take into account aptitude.
So, they began building predictive algorithms to identify people with technology aptitude. Over this 20-plus-year span of collecting data specific to technology candidates, pattern recognition began to evolve. About four years ago, Catalyte rebuilt its predictive algorithms into a more formal AI that enables it to identify tech talent at scale. They have eight custom-developed training tracks focused on the most in-demand technology skills.
They now work with some of the biggest brands on the planet and have one of the most formidable AI advisory practices out there.
So, if you are in IT or HR leadership, I suggest you talk to Curt about your tech team's challenges. You can connect with him here.
Curt’s book is also out this month. For all you IT enterprise leaders and consultants trying to boil the ocean, I suggest you give it a whirl to understand how to make the enterprises you serve more responsive. Check it out here.
As always, thank you for reading and for all the feedback as I journey on this quest to connect interesting and like-minded people to help one another.