Category: Everything else

We only learn about how important our priorities are to us on days when everything goes sideways.

It is on those days that priorities become so.

I first put on a pair of skis a decade ago. It wasn’t love at first sight – it took me a few days of trial (with a lot of error) before I began falling in love. That love has only deepened over the last decade. Every time I go out into the mountains, I find myself reflecting and remembering a few powerful ideas. I thought I’d share that compilation:

(1) Enormous amounts of effort for a few glorious minutes. It takes a lot of preparation to go onto the slopes. The equipment is heavy and hard to put on. You often need to carry it for significant distances. Every stop involves effort to get back to the lift. And, if you’re with kids, you can double the complexity. In sum, it is an involved process. For every 6-8 hours spent preparing and getting on the slopes, actual slope time is often just over an hour.

This never fails to remind me of the outsized role of preparation and process in this life. It takes an enormous amount of process to enjoy a few glorious minutes with good results. The tougher the journey, the sweeter the destination. Joy wouldn’t be good if it wasn’t for the pain.

(2) The fundamentals are always a few. Skiing boils down to three fundamental lessons. The first is learning how to turn with skis parallel by putting our weight on the outside leg. The second is learning to lean forward to stay in control. And the third is learning how to navigate the chairlift. Each of these involves mastering something that is counter-intuitive – it isn’t intuitive at first to put our weight on our outside leg, it feels crazy to lean forward when we’re moving down a slope, and it takes time to let the chairlift come to you and nudge you forward.

There are very few fundamental lessons in any practice. And they’re always counter-intuitive.

(3) Learning happens fastest when the consequences are real. I’ve both watched and attempted to teach a lot of folks over the years. Those who learn quickly have one thing in common – they’re willing to let themselves pick up enough speed to master how to turn.

That willingness means embracing a bit of risk as you are more likely to fall. But that consequence also creates the perfect conditions for us to learn how to turn.

Learnings happens fastest when the consequences are real.

(4) Trust but verify. When you’re skiing downhill, you always need to have trust in those behind you. You’ll often hear loud noises (snowboarders! :-)) and some folks don’t do the best job with ski etiquette. But trust is a part of the deal. Just as those ahead of you trust you to work around their paths.

However, 100% trust is a bad idea. There’s often a crazy person who loses control or does something stupid. Look up before you merge. Trust, but verify.

(5) Blue slopes and happiness. Ski slopes are split into green (easy), blue (intermediate), black (challenging), and double back (very challenging – typically with moguls/bumps or rocks). I learnt skiing as an adult – so I’ve stayed away from attempting to learn how to navigate double black terrain which tends to be challenging but comes with injury risk.

The fascinating thing, however, is that blue slopes are a great place to be for most people. The best terrain in most mountains tends to be intermediate terrain – they often have the best views and the longest runs.

I think money and possessions work similarly. Having too little can be a problem. While it is always tempting to keep trying to get more, having just enough tends to unlock a happy life without all the trouble that comes with always seeking more.

(6) The small things are the big things. The best mountains aren’t just about the terrain. They’re masters of the small details – ease of parking, watchful lift operators, lift areas that don’t involve steep climbs or drops, clear signage, and well-organized cafes.

The small things are the big things.

(7) You’ll know when you’ve done the work. Once you have good technique, a day on the slopes will always give you feedback on your fitness levels. Every place you haven’t worked out enough will hurt.

As it is in this life, you’ll know when you’ve done the work. There’s no place to hide.

(8) Conscious -> unconscious -> spiritual. While I’m no expert (see #5), a day in the mountains has become a spiritual experience. It means putting my body to work, having conversations with friends and family, smelling the fresh mountain air, and taking in the nature all around.

When we apply ourselves to a practice, we start with conscious focus. Over time, the fundamentals become second nature and we learn to enjoy the practice without thinking about it. And, in time, it becomes a spiritual experience.

(9) Privilege is the ability to focus on the wants. I didn’t know what skiing was growing up. Even if I did know what it was, we wouldn’t have been able to afford it. Every day I spend out in the mountains, I’m reminded that privilege is when I’m able to focus on the wants without worrying about the needs.

It is a massive gift.

And always a good reminder to make it count when I’m back at work.

Self-confidence comes from insight and/or proficiency.

There are no shortcuts.

A simple idea that is worth internalizing – there is no easy path to payoff that matters.

The rewards that are most worthwhile come for dealing with the most ambiguous problems. It is always messy. We are hardly ever set up for success and the odds always look stacked against us.

Sure, we might get a break. We can certainly hope for one if we’d like.

But hope is not a strategy.

The only way is through… the messiness.

A friend once shared a useful framework for what investors and senior leaders look for when they review a team pitching/presenting to them –

(1) Is the team thinking about the problem in the right way?

(2) Do I trust them to figure out the right solution?

The second question is particularly important as no experienced investor or leader believes the team will get it right on first try.

It is a framework I’ve used a lot over the years as it helps remind me to focus on clarity over comprehensiveness.

“I’m a white belt.”

“That’s amazing. I’m a black belt. But a black belt is simply a white belt that never gave up.”

Heard at a Jiu-jitsu dojo recently.

Such a beautiful sentiment

If we’re not able to get a group of thoughtful people to align on the right way forward, first check their incentives. It is hard for someone to understand something that they are paid not to understand.

If incentives are aligned, focus on getting to shared context. Assuming shared context is often the biggest mistake we make in attempting to get a group of people rowing in the same direction.

Technology analyst Ben Thompson recently referred to an article he wrote from 2016 called “The Curse of Culture“. In it, he took apart Microsoft’s complacency about the phone and former CEO Steve Ballmer’s insistence to cling onto a Windows-centric view of the world.

It fell to Satya Nadella to change the culture. His first public event was introducing Office for the iPad. Ben made an insightful observation on Satya’s move – “This is the power CEOs have. They cannot do all the work, and they cannot impact industry trends beyond their control. But they can choose whether or not to accept reality, and in so doing, impact the worldview of all those they lead.”

It is a beautiful way to think about what leadership. My go-to definition for leadership these days is (aptly derived from Satya as well) – creating clarity of vision, bringing relentless constructive energy, and building teams and systems that deliver exceptional results.

But you can only create the right vision if you are aware and accepting of reality. Ultimately, our ability to see things as they are instead of how we’d like them to be is among the most foundational things we do in any leadership role – at work and in our lives.

There’s a powerful graph that illustrates the importance of safety capacity by explaining how waiting time goes up with increased resource utilization.  

Imagine you have a solitary cashier at the checkout machine. This graph explains that waiting times are going to more than double when the cashier is busy 80% of the time. It doubles again if his utilization goes up 90%.

Why? Because delays can be easily caused by sudden fluctuations in the queue. If a large family brings a massive order, everyone behind them in the queue will simply have to wait. So, if a retailer runs their operation with their clerks at 100% capacity, you can be sure that the customer experience will suck.

The same goes for our lives. If we organize ourselves such that we always find ourselves running at 100% capacity, it is inevitable that things will go awry. Work doesn’t arrive at a constant rate – an emergency project is bound to show up and, if we’re running with no safety capacity, that will be a problem.

Additionally, we’ll never have the bandwidth to deal with other sorts of fluctuations that may occur outside work – an injury, a family member that gets sick, a friend that needs help, etc.

Always build in safety capacity.

If the trade-offs aren’t feeling painful, the strategy is likely not clear enough.

Painful trade-offs don’t guarantee a winning strategy. But they at least point to one that we have a chance of executing well on.