What is the right answer?
2 questions. Massively different outcomes. Our choice.
Category: Everything else
Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos
I’ve never met or interacted with Ben Horowitz but I have deep respect for his thoughts and work. His book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” was fantastic. In his book, he frequently spoke about the influence Andy Grove’s “High Output Management” had on his management style. A few weeks back, he shared the foreword he’d written for the latest edition of Andy’s book on his blog. As is the case with Ben, there’s a lot of value in reading that foreword alone and I shared with a group of friends while also buying the book.
Half way through it, there have been a lot of interesting nuggets. My favorite one so far has been – “Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos.” As leaders, chaos is a given and being anything other than accepting of it is foolish. However, it is our prerogative to build systems that help us rein in chaos.
I thought of this as I was learning to ski today. A big part of learning to ski is being comfortable with losing a bit of control (especially as a beginner) as you pick up the speed required to make frequent turns. But, it is vital you then do what it takes to get back in control. As time passes, I’ve come to observe that deep lessons tend to be basic principles that, in turn, tend to transcend context.
This is definitely one of those. Thank you, Andy. And, thank you, Ben.
Living with a list
I wasn’t a big list person growing up. I believed it got in the way of relaxation and spontaneity. David Allen’s books – “Getting Things Done” and “Ready for Anything” changed that point of view. I’ve learnt to both use and appreciate lists over the past few years.
As I think about the coming weeks, the list I’ve put together is fairly ambitious considering there’s time off and a fair bit of travel planned. However, the order of tasks make it very clear as to which ones are the “must dos” vs. “nice to haves.” A few lesser priority “nice-to-haves” (including a lot of little improvements to this blog) have gotten pushed back again. But, that’s just part of the prioritization process. I’ve learnt to enjoy it rather than have it stress me out. Thanks to this, I learn to scope work and improve my estimates on how much I can actually get done, to stretch myself a bit (if I want to), to evaluate what actually matters and get better at re-prioritizing and making decisions.
Most importantly, putting these ideas down on a list means being able to take time off without a worry in the world. It means being very well prepared for unexpected obstacles and it means being alive, present and mindful when I’m not working on the list.
What’s not to like?
Reading books and studying books
When you read books, you read them primarily to pass time. Sure, a non-fiction book is a more constructive way of passing time. However, the primary motive is still one of leisure. There is a good chance you’ll glean some insight out of reading an interesting book. But, you can glean insight out of a soccer game, too, if you put your mind to it.
When you study books, you read them to learn. And, reading them to learn is a process that generally looks something like this – read, take notes, think about it, synthesize and share.
Too many people pick up awesome non-fiction books, read them and find themselves disappointed as they didn’t walk away with the insight they expected. Study them, however, and you’ll find a new world opening up in front of you.
Someone once said – “Somewhere out there is a book that will completely change your life. Who knows? It might be your next one.”
My only addition to that quote would be – for it to have a shot at changing your life, don’t just read it… study it.
What they will tell you
Be focused and they’ll tell you to chill out.
Be structured and they’ll tell you to go with the flow.
Be happy and they’ll find ways to convince you that you aren’t worrying enough.
And, vice versa of course.
At any given time, there’s going to be someone or the other that looks at what you’re doing and says – “Stop. You’re overdoing it.”
(Source)
Maybe you are. It is hard to say. There is no globally right balance between structure and going with the flow, for example. It is what works for you in a given situation. So, instead of worrying about what “they” will tell you, focus on listening to a few people that get you. This is similar to a CEO working with his/her Board of Directors instead of listening to every person on the street with an opinion.
Then, use your board’s feedback to train your gut and self awareness. Just because they are your board doesn’t mean they’re always right. Even they will, on occasion, completely miss the boat. The end objective is to be able to improve your process and approach your life in a way that works for you.
After all, in the final analysis, what they might have told you will matter much less than what you will tell yourself.
Doing it wrong, relentlessly
Every once a while, I am reminded of a post from Seth Godin in 2012 – “Doing it wrong, relentlessly.”
Doing it wrong, relentlessly
According to this post by Neil Patel, I blog incorrectly–missing on at least 7 of his twelve rules.
On purpose.
I’m not writing to maximize my SEO or conversion or even my readership. I’m writing to do justice to the things I notice, to the ideas in my head and to the people who choose to read my work.
The interesting lesson: One way to work the system is to work the system. The other way is to refuse to work it.
I remember wading into the comments of the original post and had many thanking Neil for the great advice. After all, as a couple of the comments pointed out – “that’s easy for Seth to say. He has a blog with a few hundred thousand followers after all.”
I’ve reflected on this post a few times. Among the things it has taught me, two stand out.
First, we need to understand what we’re optimizing for. A few years back, I experimented spending a bit more effort publicizing these posts and carefully looking at my page views and analytics. These efforts barely lasted a week. Every aspect of my being seemed to reject it. I learned quickly that I wasn’t interested in optimizing those things. Now, of course, the results would be great to have. :-) I would, of course, love it if these notes resonated with many more people. But, I wasn’t ready to try and maximize it by investing time into self promotion. It just wasn’t/isn’t me. Besides, time is scarce and I’d rather spend the extra time making sure my post for the day is clear and concise.
Second, there is a huge market for easy-to-implement advice. Easy-to-implement advice often assumes certain things about what you are trying to do. Seth’s blog is not remarkable because he writes a certain way or keeps his posts to a certain length. It is remarkable because he’s written, and shared, every single day for more than two decades. That isn’t easy advice as a receiver. It is much easier to be happy with advice that says there are just 12 things you need to do every time you post.
But, as I’ve come to realize, good things are always hidden among the hard things.
Weirdness and the Empty Chair – The 200 words project
Many entrepreneurs who were attempting to create the next big telecommunication startup in the past decade brought out ideas to simplify international calling. But, as technology analyst Ben Evans points out, we tend to over-estimate how many people know enough people (or any people) in another country – outside very specific groups such as immigrants. That violates the first rule of marketing – you are weird. Don’t assume your customers are like you.
Once we get that, how do we make sure we really understand our customer and keep them top of mind? Jeff Bezos offers an interesting approach.
Even during the fledgling days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos worked hard to establish the philosophy of a company that obsesses over their customers. An overwhelming figure that used to always set the tone of his meetings was “the empty chair.” Bezos brought an empty chair into meetings and informed his top executives that they should consider that seat occupied by their customer, “the most important person in the room.” Throughout these meetings, a different weight was held on all decisions as the invisible but clear presence of the customer was always accounted for.
“We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.” | Jeff Bezos
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Source and thanks to: The Everything Store by Brad Stone, Ben Evans’ blog, Prof Moran Cerf @ Kellogg
How you build culture
You don’t build culture within a team/organization by talking about it.
You build culture in three ways –
1. The results you achieve. Results go a long way in creating culture. Consistent high quality work generally comes from a high quality culture. And, on the flip side, if you consistently ship bad work, it doesn’t matter if you have a good culture.
2. How you achieve results. Process comes next. Do you achieve those high quality results by burning people? Or, do you achieve them by stretching and challenging them just the right amount? Is the decision making process dictatorial or is it consensus-driven? All of these processes create culture.
3. Who you fire, reprimand and promote. The final key culture creators or destroyers are the decisions you make around people. When you fire, reprimand or promote people, you send clear signals about what you value. And, if these decisions are aligned with your team’s core values, then you will have created that magical place – a place where the culture is the manifestation of its desired values.
As a wiser friend pointed out, companies and leaders fail most often in getting #3 right. #3 requires you to consistently have the difficult conversations, not tolerate any violation of values, and promote people who perform while being culture ambassadors. This is hard to do.
But, do this right and you build a team/organization that actually does what it says – one of those rare places that can actually claim to have that elusive trait – integrity.
What confidence is and where it comes from
Confidence is not knowing that things will be fantastic the moment you put in effort. Instead, confidence is accepting that things might inevitably go wrong even after you put in your best efforts and knowing that you will cope with it just fine.
So, where does this come from? I think it comes from committing to be a student of life, for life. Once you commit to being a student, you commit to viewing every situation you encounter as a learning. You understand that there would be no learning without experiments and that there would be no experiments without failures. You also choose to keep away the arrogance and stagnation that come with successes because they kill curiosity – the trait that makes a student. Armed with consistent curiosity, you ask questions to understand and relentlessly attempt to understand how things, including life, work. And, part of being relentless is putting away all desire to create an image or “position” yourself in a certain way to the world.
After all, all you’re trying to do is to learn – that means cutting through the noise and doing whats necessary to further your learning journey. When you do that, you realize that the only way to do that is by simply being comfortable with yourself and your learning style. And that, in turn, requires you to believe that “you are enough.”
And, you are. You are a worthy student of life. That’s why you are here.
Now, let’s get on with it – with confidence.
Making it a habit to tell it as it is
For most people, “telling things as it is” or being direct is a hard thing. That’s why there’s so much politicking and disingenuous behavior in large corporations. Our needs to be popular and to be liked are very powerful and make it very difficult to be direct.
However, when building teams and organizations, building cultures of candor where people feel comfortable with directness is critical to survival. The amount of politicking and gossiping is inversely proportional to the amount of trust there is. And, if ever the word “Team” was an anagram for something, I’m pretty sure T would stand for trust.
I’ve worked hard over the years to make it a habit to tell it as it is and have those conversations – especially when building my own teams. I expected them to get easier over time. They did – just not in the way I imagined.
Now, I feel it has become easier for me to discern if a difficult conversation is necessary. It has also become easier for me to identify situations where it is vital to be communicative even if it isn’t pleasant. But, it hasn’t necessarily gotten any easier to have those conversations and deliver the message. This is because the need to be liked is hard wired in all of us. Over time, I’ve learnt that that need is regularly counter productive and that rising above it is both necessary and important. It doesn’t get any easier though.
Ben Horowitz was right in calling his book “The Hard Things about Hard Things.” Most of the stuff that goes into building a great team or a good life isn’t rocket science. However, doing them and then doing them consistently is bloody hard.
A Learning a Day 
