Category: Everything else

Lee Kuan Yew

There’s one word that comes to mind when I think of the Singapore government – smart. There aren’t many governments that anyone would describe as smart.

The person who made that possible, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, passed away today. He was the architect of the modern day Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew’s regime was what many termed a benevolent dictatorship. He believed that democracy wasn’t conducive to the growth of a third world nation. So, he took it upon himself to develop a vision for Singapore in the 21st century. His vision was of a nation that became a trading hub, that compensated for its lack of natural resources with human capital, and where people could enjoy a standard of living comparable to the west. Unlike other politicians, he actually made sure all of this was achieved.

Some critics will point to the fact that Singapore’s size alone enabled such impact. Others will say his authoritarian policies rein in free will and free speech. There’s no end to these debates and I definitely don’t plan to add my point of view to the mix.

I was a beneficiary of smart policy making as a recipient of a scholarship from the Singapore government that attracted many ambitious students from across south east Asia. I enjoyed many wonderful years in Singapore and I was one of the many millions touched by Lee Kuan Yew’s extraordinary work. He approached nation building as a savvy CEO would approach building a Fortune 500 company. And, he was wildly successful in the process. He would also be the first to admit that his approach to nation building wouldn’t work for the modern day Singapore. He understood the importance of change and adaptation better than most.

In transforming Singapore – a task which many thought would be impossible when he took over – Lee Kuan Yew demonstrated to the world that great feats are possible with a vision, guts and a will to succeed and make things happen. He also reminded us that everything great we see around us was made possible by people just like us.

And, for that, I am grateful. Thank you PM Lee.

Staying with problems

Spend time with a problem long enough and you’ll find a way to solve it. You’ll learn to look at the problem differently, find every resource that can help you solve it or perhaps learn from people who’ve solved similar problems.

The sort of problems that experts aim to solve are not those that are weathered by raw intelligence. Every expert knows of at least a hundred others who are smarter than him/her. Those sorts of problems are weathered by persistence.

Great problem solvers possess majors in persistence with minors in patience and grit.

Living the good life requires us to be great problem solvers too. They questions asked of us are – “what is the good life in your definition? what will make you happy? how will you measure your life?” You don’t need a high IQ to solve these. You need high persistence (PQ?).

It is doable and within reach. We just have to be willing to stay with these questions.

What to be vs. what not to be

It is fairly easy to come up with a list of things you don’t want to be. It feels like you have done the hard work of attempting to define who you would like to be in the process. But, really, you haven’t.

“I don’t want to be a flake” is fundamentally different from “I will always keep my commitments.” The former has enough fudge built in for you to keep 7 out of every 10 promises and still be able to rationalize your behavior. The latter, on the other hand, is a commitment to integrity. It swears by the idea of 100% or none. There are no excuses and no easy way outs – you are forced to make real trade-offs.

As a result, there are only so many things you can be. The chances that you’ll pull off research that wins a Nobel prize while being a party animal who paints the city red 3 days every week are minimal. If you want to be a Nobel prize winner, you will need to make some very real sacrifices. Prioritization is essential.

That is precisely why very few choose to take a stand. It is just much easier not to.

But, of course, there is a real trade-off there too – character isn’t built that way.

26

3 things I’m thinking about as I complete my 26th year –

1. Self confidence and the unwillingness to compromise on what matters. The primary reason for starting this blog was to learn to get over my own insecurities and build self confidence. I’ve learnt a few things about confidence over these past few years and a key part of this learning has been the understanding that confidence doesn’t come from dots, it comes from lines. So, a consistent set of small wins does more good for your confidence than an out-of-the-blue big achievement. It is that realization that’s led to an intense, obsessive, sometimes pedantic, focus on process over the past few years. This focus on process has resulted in better results, more happiness and, over time, more confidence.

I’ve begun to observe that this increase in confidence has had an interesting side effect – an unwillingness to compromise on what matters to me.  I think that’s because confidence brings with it a sense of comfort in your skin. And, a mix of this comfort combined with a sense of purpose that’s been a result of all the thinking on the topic for the past 2 years has led to more clarity on why I do things. This, in turn, has helped with making all those little decisions that make up our days. And, as we live our days, so we live our lives.

It is a fascinating evolution though. And, I’m enjoying the change.

2. History lauds the individual but it is teams that make history. Hat tip to Walter Isaacson and “The Innovators” for this one. I’ve really been struck by how every great innovation in the past 150 years was brought forth by teams. I always considered myself reasonably well acquainted with the history of technology and I associated many technology shifts with lone geek genius. I’ve been blown away by the recurrence of this very simple idea – history is made by great teams. That, in turn means, if you want to really make a positive difference, you want to hone your ability to build great teams. (Note: build doesn’t necessarily mean lead)

I have 3-4 interesting team projects in progress and, in the remaining year or so of being a student, I am really interested in digging deep and understanding how great teams are built. It is nice to be able to experiment with no serious consequences. :-)

3. Learning to “see” and learning to make the most of an inch by going a mile deep. A close friend recently said he thought I was very observant. I found this to be an interesting observation as I have always thought of myself as someone with really bad observation skills. And, in some senses, that is very true. I am lost in my own thoughts and world far too often. But, observation in his eyes was to be able to view a situation and take insight from it. And, I think what he described as observant is what the wonderful Seth Godin describes in his post about “learning to see.” 7 years of looking for interesting ideas to blog about has inadvertently taught me to scratch beneath the surface a lot more. Allow me to digress for a moment here – it never ceases to amaze me as to how often people around you can point out things you never knew. I’ve learnt nearly everything about myself, especially about my strengths, thanks to insightful notes from people around me. I do my best to do the same to others around me. These observations around strengths are very valuable – we focus on weaknesses far too much.

His comment, however, led me to think about the idea observation some more. And, the more I think of it, the more I realize that observation is as powerful an idea as it gets. Great learners don’t need too many experiences to learn powerful lessons. They make the most of experiences by extracting an unimaginable amount of insight. I’d like to be able to do that more. And, perhaps that’ll be a great theme to take forward into this 26th year – to be able to make the most of the experiences I choose to immerse myself into by learning to make the most an inch… by going a mile deep.

Thank you to you for reading these notes, liking, sharing, and sending in your thoughts and comments. It is always lovely hearing from you. You make this blog a blog. And, for that, I am very grateful. Thank you for all you do.

(Past birthday notes: 25, 24, 23)

Bad is far worse than none

This is a simple truth that is particularly hard to internalize. But, the fact remains that –
– bad food is worse than none
– a bad hire is far worse than no hire at all.
– or, for the most easily understood example, a bad relationship is far far worse than none at all.

Yes, you can scale your team really quickly by bringing bodies on board. But, bring in the wrong people and you’ll kill the motivation of all those who made your team successful, destroy the culture you worked so hard to build and spend all your time dealing with the kind of crap that comes with bad hires. Your team would much rather shoulder more effort than deal with the wrong person. So would you.

As humans, we’re wired towards feeling good about choosing quantity over quality. It is hard wired into our brains after centuries spent foraging for food in tough conditions all by ourselves. But, in our age of endless choice, it is vital we learn this lesson.

Great things are easily destroyed by a few bad choices made in a hurry. So, choose wisely, and remember – bad is far worse than none.

No, you don’t really know

Yes, you can empathize. You can almost feel what it must have been like to be in that situation. But, no, you don’t really know. Even if you went through something similar, you can never substitute experiences because contexts are not identical.

To shake it off and believe you “get it” and that the person at the other end of the table doesn’t is just presumptuous.

The only way to avoid this trap is to approach tough discussions by acknowledging that you’ll never really understand and then following that up by sharing what you understand and what you have learnt through your experiences.

The first requirement to any great conversation is humility.

(As I write this, I realize how often I fall short of this idea and just assume that I do understand.)

The like-respect conundrum

I find that, if you aim to be liked, you’ll often end up making one too many compromises on your core values to be respected.

The other option is to choose to accept the fact that you might be respected and not liked. This is a hard choice to make because the prospect of universal popularity is very seductive. But, in doing so, you’ll make sure you never compromise on the things that matter and, in doing so, do work that matters to you.

Funnily enough, that generally means you will actually be liked by the people who choose to spend time with you. Sure, it is not universal popularity. But, I’d argue that it is the sort of popularity that actually matters. Our happiness is a by-product of the ten people we spend most of our time with.

What changes and what doesn’t

It was a Sunday evening. I had a yellow table lamp on and put on a beautiful series of songs on my speakers and sat on the couch.

I realized that there are many things that have changed in the last few years. But, at the same time, so many things just haven’t.

15 or so years ago, 100 of us went on a weekend school trip to an amusement park that specializes in water rides. I’d still rank the day spent in that park as among the best in my life. We just had an incredible amount of fun through the day. Just imagine 50 pre-teen boys darting around a water park. At the end of the day, I remember feeling really tired, sitting with a few close friends on the train back home and listening to a a couple of songs on our walkman (remember them?). That moment felt special.

I thought of the little things that have stayed special over these years.

Relaxing in the evening listening to great music. That’s special.
Add a great conversation with a few friends to the mix. That’s even better.
A trip with close friends. Just awesome.

Would this change if I had a few extra 0s on my bank account? Would this change if I achieved incredible professional success?

Absolutely not. Sure, money matters – I’m not debating that. But, beyond a point, there are all these things that either don’t require much money or just can’t be bought.

It helps to make sure we remind ourselves of what they are. And, to collect moments like these. It is easy to be caught up in our plans to do this and that in our lifetimes and to make sure we have no dearth of financial success.

But, in the end, it is these moments that are going to matter.. because, when we’re at an age when we have more money than we know what to do with, all that will really remain are those memories.

Compounding learning

Compound interest is the single most important concept in finance. Time value of money, as an idea, comes close. But, understand compound interest and it’ll change the way you think about saving money for the future. The simple notion behind compound interest is that you earn interest on your interest. This means small amounts invested today that get compounded over time earn a lot more in the long run than large amounts compounded less. It is powerful stuff.

I’d like to make the argument that learning works in exactly the same way.

Let’s imagine you come to me and say – “Hey, I’m going to read a non-fiction book for 10 minutes every day on an interesting subject.”

Great. Do we expect a difference between your understanding of the world and mine tomorrow? Probably not.

Day after? Again, probably not.

But, what about a year from now? Sure, there is likely to be a difference thanks to the accumulated knowledge of 3650 minutes of reading.

What about 10 years from now? Now, there is sure to be a difference. You’ve clocked 36,500 minutes of reading.

Then, what about 30 years?

Little actions carried out consistently over time can have tremendous power. You and I know that. But, learning is a different monster. In that first year, you probably just accumulated a vast amount of knowledge. But, fast forward a few years and that knowledge soon becomes understanding. As you read an interesting mix of topics, you soon begin to realize that science, art, management, psychology, leadership, self-help all become interrelated. You begin to see patterns and links. It is a deep understanding of these links that gives us wisdom. Wisdom is simply an extension of that understanding – it is knowing what to do with all this knowledge in the context of daily life. And, we know that it is one thing to be knowledgeable but it is quite another to be wise.

This is why we see a tremendous difference between people’s wealth, success, happiness and energy as they age. For most of the population, education ends when they finish schooling. But, for the folks who take it upon themselves to learn with greater vigor once formal learning is complete, the effect of their learning over time compounds. Put it simply, if Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates read an interesting book on human behavior right now, they’d get a LOT more value out of it than you and I. That’s because they have so many interesting mental models that allow them to test findings and incorporate learnings. It is these mental models that differentiates masters/learning machines and everyone else. 

Every single day, we have a choice, both with money and with learning, to use the power of compounding or not. Not being aware of the choice is not an excuse. And, not choose is, really, choosing..

Fear, duty or inspiration

There are 3 broad ways to motivate people – fear, duty or inspiration. Each comes with a different narrative –

Fear – “If you don’t do the job, I will… ” – there is typically at least a small degree of bullying involved in this method and works best when you have the power to coerce or when the people you are leading are naive or uneducated.

Duty – “You get paid to do this” – duty is what keeps most city trains full at 8am. This is the most passive form of leadership of the three as you don’t really need to do much. Most of us have an intrinsic sense of duty and a need to be fair.

Inspiration – “Everything we do here has a purpose and we’re building something great” – this is the hardest of the lot. The reason this is incredibly hard is because it requires you, as the leader, to be continuously inspired. And, it also requires you to design and reinforce systems that celebrate and encourage people.

There is no right or wrong style in most cases. I’ve just observed the following –
1. Outstanding organizations are built around inspiration. You don’t need to be a shout-off-the-rooftops leader to be inspiring. There are many in Microsoft who would say Bill Gates was many times more inspiring than Steve Ballmer.

2. You will have a personal preference for one of these styles. Inspiration, for example, doesn’t work for everyone. Just make sure you build teams that work with your style. And, similarly, make sure you join teams that are aligned to your style preference. Style mismatches never end well.

3. Inspiration comes easiest when what you do is aligned with who you are and why you do things. When that happens, you don’t have to try to be inspired – your integrity alone will inspire. The word ‘integrity’ comes from the word ‘integer’ and means “whole.” When it feels consistent, it shows.