Michael Labate

Customer-centric global senior executive helping to grow enterprise value

[Ihtesham Ali @ihteshamali]

A mathematician who shared an office with Claude Shannon at Bell Labs gave one lecture in 1986 that explains why some people win Nobel Prizes and other equally smart people spend their whole lives doing forgettable work.

His name was Richard Hamming. He won the Turing Award. He invented error-correcting codes that made modern computing possible. And he spent 30 years at Bell Labs sitting in a cafeteria at lunch watching which scientists became legendary and which ones faded into nothing.

In March 1986, he walked into a Bellcore auditorium in front of 200 researchers and told them exactly what he had seen.

Here's the framework that has been quoted by every serious scientist for the last 40 years.

His opening line landed like a punch. He said most scientists he worked with at Bell Labs were just as smart as the Nobel Prize winners. Just as hardworking. Just as credentialed. And yet at the end of a 40-year career, one group had changed entire fields and the other group was forgotten by the time they retired.

He wanted to know what the difference actually was. And he said it wasn't luck. It wasn't IQ. It was a specific set of habits that almost nobody is willing to follow.

The first habit was the one that hurts the most to hear. He said most scientists deliberately avoid the most important problem in their field because the odds of failure are too high. They pick a safe adjacent problem, solve it cleanly, publish it, and move on. And because they never swing at the hard problem, they never hit it. He said if you do not work on an important problem, it is unlikely you will do important work. That is not a motivational line. That is a logical one.

The second habit was about doors. Literal doors. He noticed that the scientists at Bell Labs who kept their office doors closed got more done in the short term because they had no interruptions. But the scientists who kept their doors open got more done over a career. The open-door scientists were interrupted constantly. They also absorbed every new idea passing through the hallway. Ten years in, they were working on problems the closed-door scientists did not even know existed.

The third habit was inversion. When Bell Labs refused to give him the team of programmers he wanted, Hamming sat with the rejection for weeks. Then he flipped the question. Instead of asking for programmers to write the programs, he asked why machines could not write the programs themselves. That single inversion pushed him into the frontier of computer science. He said the pattern repeats everywhere. What looks like a defect, if you flip it correctly, becomes the exact thing that pushes you ahead of everyone else.

The fourth habit was the one that hit me the hardest. He said knowledge and productivity compound like interest. Someone who works 10 percent harder than you does not produce 10 percent more over a career. They produce twice as much. The gap doesn't add. It multiplies. And it compounds silently for years before anyone notices.

He finished the lecture with a line I have never been able to shake.

He said Pasteur's famous quote is right. Luck favors the prepared mind. But he meant it literally. You don't hope for luck. You engineer the conditions where luck can land on you. Open doors. Important problems. Inverted questions. Compounded hours. Those are not traits. Those are choices you make every single day.

The transcript has been sitting on the University of Virginia's computer science website for almost 30 years. The video is free on YouTube. Stripe Press reprinted the full lectures as a book in 2020 and Bret Victor wrote the foreword.

Hamming died in 1998. He gave his final lecture a few weeks before. He was 82.

The lecture that explains why some careers become legendary and others disappear is still free. Most people who could benefit from it will never open it.

[Michael Labate @michaelnlabate]

Join me Live —- “Talk to Ukraine”: Stories of Global Community Support (Session #3), and learn how you can get involved to support #Ukraine

#StandWithUkraine #TalkToUkraine https://t.co/4wEzWhNvVK

[Michael Labate @michaelnlabate]

Watch the replay (30 min): #TalkToUkraine Session #2 - Perspectives from Ukrainian CEO’s at the frontline.

#StandWithUkraine https://t.co/7EPHcL76bw

[Michael Labate @michaelnlabate]

Join us Tuesday, March 15th, for a Live discussion with CEO’s or Ukraine and how their wartime leadership is protecting people and the business frontline.

#TalkToUkraine #StandWithUkraine https://t.co/BeEuVqMiSi

[Michael Labate @michaelnlabate]

Colleagues have asked how it's been to manage the safety and mass relocation of employees inside and aboard of #Ukraine. Vitaly Sedler, CEO Intellias, shares the company's determination and resilience with #CNN https://t.co/x1220PAO1C

[Michael Labate @michaelnlabate]

Leadership lesson: Recommended podcast (18 min) that looks at what 'war-time' CEO's are facing in #Ukraine, highlighting choices being made for the safety of people and continuity of business.

#StandWithUkraine #TalkToUkraine https://t.co/P3cid4Eujg

[Michael Labate @michaelnlabate]

Leadership lesson: Recommended podcast (18 min) that looks at what 'war-time' CEO's are facing in #Ukraine, highlighting choices being made for the safety of people and continuity of business.

#StandWithUkraine #TalkToUkraine

[Michael Labate @michaelnlabate]

Join me Live for a new non-profit series: “Talk to Ukraine”. Hear real stories from the front line and learn ways you can act and support.

https://t.co/wbhB9bD1cw

[Intellias @intellias]

With the right combination of solutions, #farmers can optimize their daily operations. But are they ready to accept and use technologies? Read the latest article for @AgFunder by Dmytro Lennyi and find out how online #agriculture marketplaces work.https://t.co/G2B3SyagAB

[Intellias @intellias]

Find out how we ensure reliable support of back-office high-load systems by providing managed IT services to a national #telecom pioneer.https://t.co/BzotpBDS0Z

[Intellias @intellias]

Where's the hype on the combo of #DevOps and #cloudcomputing in the automotive industry? Isn't it beneficial enough to become the industry's next normal? Read our latest article to find out. https://t.co/5V06V5SqEQ

[Intellias @intellias]

Human error is the reason for 94% of traffic deaths. Can autonomous cars reduce the number of casualties on the road or is it just a buzzword? Download our whitepaper and read how OEMs can overcome safety challenges in #autonomousvehicles. https://t.co/iNkizvQOjH

[Intellias @intellias]

Read the latest article for @FinExtra by @AnnaOleksiuk, #FinTechIndustry Leader, and learn why the main C of 2021 is not COVID but #cashless https://t.co/C92ACHVIm7

[Intellias @intellias]

Could we have predicted the dethroning of cash in early 2019? Perhaps. But in 2020, multiple tell-tale signs indicated that in the #payments world, cash no longer reigns supreme.

[Intellias @IntelliasCareer]

Бізнес-аналітики знають цінність часу, а ми знаємо, що вони про це знають, тому зібрали усю цінну інформацію в одному місці. Тут і вебінари, і статті, і все про ВА експертизу та вакансії #Intellias.
https://t.co/74j07yTVzu

[Intellias @IntelliasCareer]

А це правда, що на вашій кухні нескінченний запас джемів, а в офісі – душова? Кожен сам планує свій час для відпочинку і роботи? Знайомтесь ��� наш харківський офіс.
До речі, поки матеріал створюва��ся, команда виросла з 60-ти до 90-та Intellias-івців!😎

https://t.co/PusaXe9f2K

[Intellias @IntelliasCareer]

🤞Хочу, щоб в Intellias не було жодної відкритої вакансії. Приєднуйся до нашої Recruitment команди і блискавично закривай позиції.
А от про відсутність вакансій навіть не думай, адже у нас постійно відкриті 100+ можливостей!
https://t.co/nTq3hSn4EH

[Intellias @IntelliasCareer]

Чи задумувались ви колись про те, де зберігаються ваші дані? Які види пам’яті існують в Go?
На вебінарі 20 травня ми розглянемо, як це з’ясувати та коли це треба враховувати при написанні коду. І звісно ж спробуємо зрозуміти, що нам це дасть!

https://t.co/ZpHengGlYZ

[Intellias @intellias]

Recently, we've developed a hospital auditing platform that meets the reading needs of #RTL languages. By applying a mirrored structure, we produced a #UserExperience that will feel natural when presented to the Middle East market. https://t.co/1Am3gK5hBC

[Intellias @intellias]

The latest #vehicletracking systems go beyond traditional location and #navigation functions, becoming essential add-ons for every car. But is it really profitable to place a tracking device in each vehicle? Let’s find out. https://t.co/pD9L3ON0Ux