Category: Everything else

A few friends and I discussed great managers recently. There’s plenty of literature on this. But, I find myself frustrated when I see lists of the 435 characteristics of great leaders/managers/employees. We generally don’t remember more than 3 things. So, I sought to boil it all down to 3 characteristics.

After a bit of discussion, we ended up at the following framework that characterizes great managers –

1. Great managers understand each member of the team. Every member needs to be managed differently. This requires an understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, personalities, working styles and motivation. The first pre-requisite is, thus, empathy.
2. Great managers learn how to scope work well. The worst managers over-promise to their higher ups/clients and burn their teams by making them work 12+ hour days to achieve unrealistic, unproductive and generally unnecessary results. And, on the other hand, great managers scope work such that their team is regularly in the “stretch” zone and never in the “panic” zone. The ability to scope work is a learned skill. It also requires guts as it necessitates pushing back and saying no to unnecessary work.
3. Outstanding managers care more about their team’s goals and individual ambitions than their own progress. While characteristics 1 and 2 make good managers great, an outstanding manager is one who simply cares a lot more than the next person. When you work with outstanding managers, you believe know that they always have your best interests in mind. And, even when you are going through difficult times as a team, you know that they care more about the team’s goals than their own.

We rarely come across managers who do all 3 things well. But, as a wiser friend pointed out, if you do 3 well / care more about the team, you are forgiven for not scoping work well.

There is, however, no escaping really understanding every member of the team.

I came across this quote – “Confidence is silent, insecurities are loud.”

The ego that arises out of insecurities makes a lot of noise attempting to announce, explain, and justify.

Confidence doesn’t need all that. You know you know.

I’ve found that to be very true. But, I’d never thought of it in this way. And, I’m looking forward to observing my silence and loudness and understanding where they come from in the coming days..

Take it with a healthy pinch of salt.

Nobody (not even your mom, dad or spouse) has the context you have.

Nobody is free of biases. We all love our own thought processes and generally believe we are right.

Nobody has to live with a decision you make in the same way you have to.

Nobody cares as much as you do.

So, listen to people who matter and then forge your own path.

And, if it helps, there is no right answer. There may be a “general” right way. But, there’s no guarantee that it is the right way for you.

PS: If you find yourself sharing your perspective or giving advice, state your biases. It helps the person on the other end.

An idea I’ve increasingly appreciated over the past few years is “equanimity.” Equanimity is defined as a state of mental calmness or composure in difficult situations.

I struggled with something approaching even a semblance of equanimity until a few years back. Highs and lows were the norm. Over time, however, thanks to all the self reflection that writing here required of me, I’ve learnt to keep perspective. And, in addition, I’ve realized that what matters most is to keep focus on the process / things you control.

An example of applying this was when my laptop stopped booting up last night. I had been having intermittent problems over the past couple of days. I hadn’t gotten around to figuring out the issues since I was busy wrapping up a project and switching locations. But, last night, just as I boarded my flight, it gave up on me. So, I reached home this morning and gave it a fresh shot.

Again, no luck. Damn. Can’t blog in the morning. Can’t do some work I wanted to get done. Can’t get through emails that required certain actions for a current project. Not good in my world.

But, I chose instead to spend my time unpacking. I’d been having a good couple of days and just viewed this as the inevitable “down” and moved on. After unpacking, I took it to our IT support folk at school. Within 3 hours, they’d identified that the problem was the result of a hardware loose contact and had fixed it (thanks guys!).

The best part about this was not the fix but the fact that I didn’t experience the slightest amount of stress or anxiety. While this is a classic first world problem, this would have caused hours of irritation and anxiety in the past. But, thanks to focusing on things that I could control, I dealt with it far better than I ever would have.

Truly a transformative experience.

(PS: A big part of this evolution has also been the absence of the manic high. More on that another day.)

It was only this morning that I realized that reviews at work are called “performance” reviews.

Performance has 2 meanings – an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment and the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.

While the second definition is what we think of when we think of work, I am sure you and I know of people who come into work and act as if the only performance they know is the first kind. They prepare incredibly hard for their meetings, show up on time (you can’t be late on stage), bring their whole beings to their work, care for the experience of the people around them and try to make the world better with their work.

Sometimes, I think every word works a bit like the word ‘performance’ – there are always two meanings. You can work or you can “work.” You can be a friend or you can be a “friend.” I realize these differences don’t have as much effect in writing as they do in my head. But, there are those who approach work or friendship as everyone else does. And, then, there are those who just do it differently. Suddenly, work or friendship isn’t what you are used to.

That’s magic.

The magic of a Steve Jobs product launch was that he didn’t treat it as a product launch.

We have data and statistics thrown at us everywhere we go. And, if it is anything you do on a computer, it is likely that data has been analyzed in many ways.

It is tempting to just do things that make the numbers work. Write posts that generate more hits, make management decisions that improve your approval rating, and so on.

But, numbers lie. They might seem fool-proof and indisputable. But, the fact remains that they only show you the state of things at any given time. And, we all know that projections need to be taken with a healthy dollop of salt.

The solution is to learn to use numbers to inform your decisions, but not to let them decide everything for you.

Painting by numbers does make painting easy. But, it is also for amateurs.

I didn’t do my product review post this week. That’s because I’m struggling with 2 questions.

But, before I get to the questions, I had an interesting experience after downloading the excellent Economist Espresso app. This was thanks to a reader who insisted I try out the Economist Digital subscription (thanks friend!). It has been a fantastic experience using the app. I’m sure I’ll review it shortly. But, the big break through was when I scrolled down to the bottom of the article by swiping up. I instinctively tried to swipe up to move to the next article. But, it turns out you have to swipe right. That works for photographs and makes sense. But, does it make sense when you are reading text? I am not sure. But, it feels great to find myself asking such questions and not taking design for granted.

Onto my questions –

1. Do I just review products as soon as I try it? For instance, I might love the Economist Espresso. But, what’s the guarantee I’ll continue to use the app? Isn’t longevity the sign of a good product? The only issue with the longevity approach is that there will be very few products I will ever review as there’s only a few things that stick.
   Perhaps the way to overcome this is to just try as many products as possible and caveat that reviews are based on a short, quick usage experience.
2. What is the right framework? I’m not satisfied with my product framework – I need something simpler that sticks. While borrowing a framework helped me get started, I’m beginning to gravitate towards the next version. So, I’ll plan to give this more thought and put together a simple framework I’ll use for the future

In short, more to follow. Fascinating process so far. And, looking forward to lots more learning and thinking about how technology products are built in the weeks and months ahead.

As a consultant, I worked on a fascinating project back in 2012 to prepare a client for a potential Greek exit from the Eurozone. This was July 2012 and things looked bleak.

Fast forward 3 years later and we’re still in the same situation. There have been a couple of false dawns along the way but, largely, the problem hasn’t gone away. Every time I see a headline in the news about the situation (i.e. every day), I am reminded of sunk costs and bitter pills.

The sunk cost fallacy is when we weigh up all our past investment to make an investment in the future. The phrase “throwing good money after bad” sums it up. Billions of Euros have been sunk into this “relationship.” And, it feels like both sides are consistently looking back at all past investment instead of making decisions based on what lies ahead.

When you fall sick, the recovery path is rarely sweet. Yet, leaders on both sides are refusing to swallow bitter pills. Greek President Tsipras won the previous election by declaring he would be anti-austerity. There was no shred of sense in that campaign. He resigned yesterday. Glad that worked out. There’s a nice saying that says something like – “When 50,000 people believe in something wrong, they are still wrong.” The trouble with politics is that it often involves hundreds of thousands of people screaming populist bullsh*t. Someone is going to have to take the bitter pill in this situation.

Time doesn’t make difficult problems go away. The last 3 years in the Eurozone saga have demonstrated that.

I’ve been following football (/soccer) for 13 years now. Many of the young stars I started out admiring have now retired. Football has taught me a lot about life and careers. I’ve seen careers torn apart due to bad life decisions, personal lives messed up due to hubris and seen innumerable cases of “the next big thing” never turning out to be the next big thing.

There are, however, a handful of legends who did manage to stay true to their status as the “next big thing,”  And, every single time, they did so not just because of their incredible technical abilities but because they were willing to adapt and reinvent themselves. They understood their physical make up and changed their game to suit them as they grew older. Many changed positions and styles. And, what is telling is that they found new strengths as they grew older. If they were pacy in their youth, they impressed with their reading of the game a decade later.

Careers in sport at the highest level are rarely longer than 15 years and, yet, top players probably reinvent themselves 2-3 times in that period.

Careers in the professional world are 30-40 years long generally. How many people reinvent themselves by adding new skills and abilities 6-8 times in that period?

Have you ever had a good work out without feeling a bit of pain, soreness or discomfort? Have you ever achieved anything that you felt was meaningful without challenges? (And, if you did, would you feel it was meaningful?)

Life is a series of ups and downs. And, the way I see it, you can either experience a down or invite a down yourself. This sounds somewhat masochistic – so, let me explain myself.

Take a simple example – you can choose to enjoy a period of eating lots of delicious food combined with no exercise and feel certain that there’s a “down” coming. The down will either be gaining a few extra pounds or just feeling lethargic and unhealthy. Similarly, you can choose to skip studying before an examination or slack off before an important deadline and be certain that there’s pain coming on the other side.

The impulsive and emotional part of our brain is wired to make short term choices. It comes from a few thousand years foraging in forests. Who knows if you’re going to be alive to enjoy the next meal? Might as well make the most of it while it lasts.

The wiring clearly doesn’t apply anymore. So, we’re better off adapting to the times and re-wiring ourselves to be suspicious if there’s too much ease. Instead of coasting towards our critical deadline next week, expect challenges and push to finish earlier and faster by waking up earlier and working longer for a couple of days. A little bit of pain now can ease the path later.

Re-wire yourself to invite pain. That way, you’ll expect problems and eat them for breakfast.

Muhammad Ali once said – I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’

He buried the lead and made it sound like training is a short-term thing. It isn’t. We never really stop training.

So, we might as well get on with it and embrace it.