As a child growing up in New York, I was not the biggest or most athletic kid on the block and as was typical at that time, it led to all kinds of “interesting” interactions with various other people. As a result, my father enrolled me in my first set of Karate classes to help me learn some self-defense and to toughen me up mentally and physically. Over the years, I’ve had the great opportunity to practice Karate, Kung Fu, Krav Maga and several other martial art disciplines. One thing that struck me recently was the similarity between martial arts practice and what we need to do as we modernize the telecom network and its operations.
In martial arts, you’re constantly assessing information from your surrounding environment (as well as yourself), analyzing that information to find common patterns, and then formulating an appropriate response to prevent something bad from happening—sometimes proactively. In essence, you have your own closed-loop automation system you are continuously improving based on intelligence, training and experience.