Author: alearningaday

I was thinking about a long drive we planned to go on the other day. My mind briefly drifted to the traffic situation.

Oof – what if the traffic gets really bad in the time it takes us to get out of the house?

I began visualizing the frustration of a long drive.

Now I began feeling flustered.

And annoyed at myself for not getting out earlier.

Until I realized it was all in my head.

The only thing I could do is get ready quick and get out of the house. Every other course of action was pointless in that situation.

I marveled at how our thoughts can take us down unhelpful rabbit holes if we let them and make us worry needlessly about things outside our control.

Our thoughts are powerful. Channel them, we must.

PS: The traffic turned out to be fine by the way. A few delays aside, it wasn’t anywhere close to the worst case scenarios I nearly began worrying about.

I shared a post with my reflections from “The Inner Game of Tennis” a few weeks back. Rebecca, a long time reader, had her reflections stuck in her drafts. Thankfully, she found that note and sent it over. I immediately asked for her permission to share this as it changed my perspective.

Thank you, Rebecca, for sharing.

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I was a very intense competitive ski racer when I was younger and I remember a single interaction with a coach on a recruiting visit (it’s the only convo we ever had) that changed literally everything for me. He told me that his absolute best racer often had the slowest times in training… until the last 2-3 runs when he would really go for it and beat everyone. Before that, he was testing. Trying. Playing.

I had always been on the “FASTEST RUN, EVERY RUN” train (as are most ski racers) and I remember thinking — oh wow, I could make this whole run about “what if I started turning earlier” or “what if I only focused on the one really hard turn” or “what if my hands were in a different position than usual” — and, shocking to me — there were no consequences to this “play.” And, with practice, I found that I was actually able to make progress on some of the issues that always plagued me (hands too low, line too aggressive). Sometimes I’d just pick a descriptor and try to ski like that (what if I skied like a river? like a zebra? like a hummingbird?)

I try to keep this play testing in mind and make it into a game whenever I’m teaching kids anything.

Okay, we’re kicking the soccer ball — let’s kick the ball 5 different ways (making some of them really goofy) — with our toe, with our inseam, with the bottom of our foot, backwards, etc. Then let them pick one to work on — okay, let’s kick the ball like a hummingbird! Now like a lion! How’d that feel? And by trying a lot of different things they get a much stronger feeling for what happens when you touch the ball than just “kicking it” the same number of times.

As the adult / coach / parent / aunt, I see my role as demonstrating play and testing, always pointing out when I ‘mess up’ and when I have a breakthrough. Basically, I see my style as keeping it very light hearted, while retaining a degree of focus.

Your post today reminded me of that conversation. I bet that coach has no idea what an impact he had (sadly, I can’t recall his last name and he’s long left the school…). Another good lesson to remember — you often have no idea of the ripples you leave behind, for better or for worse.

“There is no product or service more cost effective, ecological, sustainable and recyclable as the one we do not use.” | Philippe Bihouix*

*lightly adapted to add cost effective

Someone I know has a simple and effective model for the responsibilities of a leader – to bring clarity and energy to their team.

There are many great frameworks for leadership. They all rhyme and draw on similar principles.

This is one that has resonated a lot of late.

The central theme in Eduardo Briceno’s book “The Performance Paradox” is about creating environments with combine a focus on performance with a focus on learning.

Environments that are overly focused on performance burn people out. Environments who focus entirely on learning don’t succeed because learning happens best when there is some tension.

Two stories stuck out to me. The first was about Beyonce’s routine while she’s on tour. Every night on tour, she reviews the entire performance video. By the time her team wakes up the next morning, they would have received notes from Beyonce on the many things they all could have done better.

The next was from research by HBS professor Amy Edmondson examining error rates in hospitals. Logically, she hypothesized that more effective patient care teams made fewer errors.

But she found the opposite. It turns out the first step to solving errors is being aware of them and reporting them. The most effective teams created environments where everyone was encouraged to share mistakes and learn. More errors were a feature, not a bug.

Both of these point to what we can do to create learning environments on our teams. First, create frequent opportunities to reflect via “retros” (or retrospectives) that help everyone grow from mistakes and lessons learnt. Second, encourage conversations about mistakes. The more we’re aware of them, the more likely we’re learning from them.

I came across Charlie Munger’s notes for career success the other day –

• Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself.
• Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire.
• Work only with people you enjoy.

All three of them resonated.

We become like the people we work.

Choose wisely.

Being surprised when things go as per plan is a far more productive approach than the other way around.

One way to understand a person’s character is to pay attention to what they claim credit for.

Strategy is often better understood when we explain what we aren’t focusing on.

Similarly, culture is often better understood when we can explain the kinds of people who’d hate working here.

No trade-offs, no strategy. And no dark sides, no culture.

Like many things attributed to Albert Einstein, he likely didn’t say – “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

It is a great quote though – both simple and powerful.

It is a mistake I find myself making from time to time – doing the same thing and expecting different results.

To change the outcome, we must often change the process.