Anyone who has studied bitcoin for any time knows that proof of work in bitcoin mining is key to the protocol’s security and tamper-proof nature. Bitcoin mining in 2021 requires miners to use specially designed computers [called ASIC’s] to convert real world energy [more than 50% of which is renewable and stranded energy] into encrypted digital monetary energy.

Using this proof of work and following consensus rules, bitcoin miners (and node operators) secure this decentralized network one block at a time or so every ten minutes or so. Some have even called it triple-entry accounting. And the system is designed to work in a way that makes forgery, hacking, theft, cheating, or double spending almost impossible. A metaphor used to describe this is adding a block to bitcoin’s time chain, like adding soil to a skyscraper. Fully understanding how it works is far beyond the scope of this article, but the key design of this system requires the use of real world energy so that you cannot cheat or play with the system. In contrast, Jay Powell of the Federal Reserve Board can increase America’s money supply by trillions with just a few keystrokes.

I have been a business relations coach for over 30 years. For clients, that meant I was an executive coach, their business development coach, their leadership coach, their time management coach, or their performance coach. One of my dearest friends and colleagues, David Lerner, taught me an idea about his training as a coach which he called “completing a work unit”. Its unit of work in coaching is similar to the proof of work in bitcoin mining. The idea as a coach (or leader responsible for getting things done through others) is to complete at least one unit of work with the client or direct report during each meeting. Too often I see leaders of organizations fail to make their conversations with employees a unit of work or a conversation for action. (In the old days, we used to hear the expression “There is no free lunch.”)

In my business model, this meant that the customer would learn and apply at least one concept or be ready to experience a new action, approach, or skill with every call. And we would follow how it worked on the next call. Rinse and repeat. When customers complete at least one unit of work during all meeting or call for a period of three or six months, they are amazed at how much their performance improves. Sometimes this involved clients overcoming self-limiting beliefs that held back their performance and other times it involved learning how to effectively delegate work that was best managed by someone else in their organization. In all cases, the emphasis was on deepening the relationship that my client had with one or more people. Unlike most people in the business world, I tend to see an organization through a relational lens and not just a financial lens. At its core, every organization is nothing more and nothing less than the relationships it cultivates inside and out. Strengthen the relationship and communication between the CEO and their CFO and the numbers will almost always work well.

Over the past three decades, I have hosted over 20,000 meetings and phone calls with clients where completing at least one unit of work was my “proof of work”. I never added any data on this (I have notes from almost every call and meeting), but it was the rare call or meeting that did not end with the customer accepting at minus an action step. This meant that we had “proof of work”. The action step could be an awareness exercise as simple as “keeping track of how many times you said yes when you wanted to say no”. Or the action step can be as specific as “I’ll call Charlene as soon as we finish this call and invite her to speak at our next conference or practice group meeting.” ”

What I have learned from these cumulative experiences and my study of Bitcoin mining is that it is beneficial for any organization to have a proof of work system. Your performance and that of your peers and colleagues will transform when you operate with a proof of work system. For example, those in construction can visibly see the progress they are making each day. I worked as a carpenter during the summers between college and law school, and our daily progress was always quite visible.

Of course, determining proof of work in an office or service company is more difficult and requires thought. One way to learn how a client defined proof of work was to ask them this question at the start of our work together: “What will the success of our working together look like?” Sometimes their answers were vague and other times they were very detailed and insightful. Often times, we would develop a set of metrics based on those responses, which allowed them to keep score on a daily or weekly basis. Achieving those metrics was their proof of work. For example, if you want to expand your network of high net worth individuals, your metric might be to add a new high net worth person to your network each week. There is no single way to determine proof of work, but bitcoin is raising the bar for what is possible.

This whole industry is filled with people who get things done. Instead of thinking that only bitcoin miners or world-class athletes need to do proof of work, ask yourself how to assess proof of work in your business. What does proof of work look like in your business? If you have one that you are ready to share Bitcoin Magazine, please contact us! We would love to hear from you.

This is a guest article by Mark Maraia. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.