Saying yes, saying no – The 200 words project

Cynthia once recalled an incident from when she was 12 years old. Her father promised to take her with him on a business trip to San Francisco. For months, they talked about the trip. “After his meetings, we planned to take a taxi to Chinatown, have our favorite food, see a movie, ride the cable car, and have a hot-fudge sundae. I was bursting with anticipation,” she recalled.

When the day finally arrived, Cynthia waited eagerly for her father to finish work. At 6:30pm, he arrived, but with an influential business client who offered to take them out for dinner. She felt her heart sink.

In a never-to-be-forgotten moment, her father simply said to his client: “I’d love to see you. But, my girl and I have planned a special evening to the minute.” So, together, father and daughter did everything according to their plans. “That was just about the happiest time of my life. I don’t think any young girl ever loved her father as much as I loved mine that night,” she says.

Cynthia’s father was none other than Stephen R Covey. Covey did put “first things first.” Here’s to all of us doing so over the holidays…

no, yes, stephen covey, prioritiesSource

Every time we say yes to something that doesn’t matter, we implicitly say no to something else that does. And, conversely, every time we say no to something that is lower priority, we implicitly say yes to something that matters. – Anonymous

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Source and thanks to: Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Tension everywhere

For managers – between structure and ambiguity.

For CEO’s – between centralization and decentralization.

For survey creators – between question rich surveys that will yield many an insight and shorter surveys that will actually be completed.

For teachers and coaches – between the stretch zone and panic zone.

For us – between life, work and everything else we want to prioritize.

… and so on.

Tension is a key part of what makes anything great. It is impossible to get something “just right” without the right amount of tension. And, getting it “just right” requires us to accept the fact that it’ll exist, embrace the idea that we won’t always get it right and keep plugging away.
tensionTension accompanies us at every step and in every decision we make. Great strategy is making decisions with a clear understanding of the tension/trade-offs involved. As with most challenging life lessons, awareness is the first step.

Perfection worship

Perfection worship – there’s something about it that just feels right. The issue, as with any choice, is that there is a serious trade-off – the moment you choose to engage in perfection worship, you become an excellent critic, an accomplished talker.

The moment you see a problem or opportunity and roll your sleeves to take action, you learn that the first required step is to shun perfection. That’s because perfection doesn’t really exist. Every initiative that we lead is littered with our biases and reflects our values, character and personality. Perfect work doesn’t move people. Humane work does. Humane work, by definition, is full of heart and imperfection. It won’t work for everyone. But, it’ll move some and that will make it worth it.

Critics are fantastic problem spotters as they can always pick out the pieces that are imperfect. As a doer, you’re going to run into critics every single day of your life. Put yourself out there and there’ll be people who’ll tell you why they hate your work. Pay no attention.

If they care, they will attempt to fix it. And, when they do, they’ll realize your work was perfect all along – in ways they weren’t able to comprehend.

perfection, worship, imperfection, talker, doer

To Think List

First draft of my “to think” list for the next 2 weeks.

  1. A think-week tradition dedicated to my craft. Bill Gates used to take a week off to think about work. I’d love to do some version of the same. I had taken a few days last year to summarize my thinking on tech in 2014 in preparation for internship interviews. Perhaps I do another round of that?
  2. Re-evaluate my social media use and strategy. There’s a lot to think about here. Key questions are – how do I use the various tools?, how should I be using them?
  3. Re-evaluate my phone + laptop use and strategy. As above.
  4. Annual review – focused on getting prepared for re-entry into work. While the preparation for work has been in progress since August, 2015 was my full year as a graduate student. Looking forward to thinking about the next step.

Here’s to making headway down this list.

to think, list,

Boyan Slat

I expected to find a few cool ideas in The Economist’s World in 2016 video and it didn’t disappoint. The piece I enjoyed the most was about 21 year old Boyan Slat’s ambitious plan to clean up plastics in the ocean. Oceanic waters between continents are not governed by any nation and, as a result, have become a dumping ground for plastics. No organization has taken initiative to fix this. So, Boyan Slat stepped forward.

After a couple of feasibility studies, they’re ready for their first big test outside Japan’s waters in 2016. I, for one, will be keeping my fingers crossed that the project works out. Do check out the website for more.

boyan slat, ocean clean up,

I think the story hit home simply because Boyan just took responsibility for a massive problem and is working toward fixing it. I’m sure he has hundreds of critics who’re bent on finding all sorts of problems with his approach. I’m sure many of these problems are real. But, then again, no solution is ever perfect (or even close to perfect for that matter) and I’m sure he understands the difference between talkers and doers.

The rigors of day-to-day living often blind us to the impact we can have on the world. Boyan’s story was a great reminder that there is a lot of great work to be done.

PS: The Economist video is 31 minutes long and is a fascinating watch – it covers China’s $1B Olympic training program, a legion of “super forecasters,” among others. I’m not much of a video watcher. So, I’m not sure what the opportunity costs of watching this 31 minute video are. But, as with most content from The Economist, it is likely to be worth it.

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.

chaos, andy grove

2 year social proof – The 200 words project

After acquiring several small grocery stores in 1934, Sylvan Goldman noticed that his customers would stop buying items when their hand-held shopping baskets became too heavy. This led him to develop the shopping cart. In its earliest form, the invention was a folding chair equipped with wheels and a pair of heavy metal baskets. However, despite keeping them in prominent places and with huge signs, his customers didn’t use it – men thought it ‘effeminate,’ and women felt it demeaned their ability to carry a shopping basket.

social proof, sylvan goldman, shopping cartSource

Frustrated to the point of giving up, Goldman tried one more tactic – he hired shoppers to wheel the carts through the store while accumulating the items they wanted to purchase. Encouraged by some initial success, he continued paying people to push his shopping cart for two straight years(!).

Over time, his customers adopted.. and the rest, as they say, is history. Even if his shopping cart was a superior product, it required Goldman to use the principle of social proof to transform it into a success story.

Nothing draws a crowd… like a crowd. – PT Barnum

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Source and thanks to: Griskevicius, Cialdini, and Goldstein – Applying and Resisting Peer influence

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?

list, priorities

 

Thinking Product: Economist Espresso magic

The Economist Espresso is a new digital product released by The Economist this year. The Espresso is a collection of 6 key pieces of news, a collection of smaller news bytes as part of “The world in brief” and a collection of market specific metrics.

The jobs to be done framework developed by Clay Chistensen explains that customers “hire” products to get a job done (More here). When I think of the job that readers of “The Economist” hire it to do, I think there are 2 kinds of jobs it is hired to do –
Use case 1 – “Make me smarter”  (majority)
Use case 2 – “Prevent me from looking stupid”
I think use case 1 is the majority because it is rare to come across environments where everyone reads and discusses “The Economist.” I’m sure there are isolated cases of teams where the manager is a huge fan and insists on discussing it with the team. But, for the most part, The Economist is akin to a “vitamin” rather than a “painkiller.”

However, newspapers / news apps exist largely for use case 2. Very few people ready the news to make them smarter. It is, after all, more of the same every single day – disaster and negativity coupled with a few bright spots. And, I suspect most people hire newspapers to prevent them from looking stupid when their colleagues or clients discuss the news.

That’s what makes The Economist Espresso a masterstroke. The Economist is now solving use case 2 by promising well curated news. The Espresso is helped greatly by The Economist’s stellar brand – we expect thoughtful, quality content and is a fantastic example of a brand extension. Even if The Economist refers to itself as a newspaper, it is generally a collection of weekly opinions and analysis. With Espresso, The Economist plays in the news domain and actually exists as a painkiller for use case 2.

The Espresso requires you to subscribe to the Digital edition for $22 per quarter. This means $1.83 per week to get smart news news 6 days a week? Absolutely. And, I would also get to read the top 10 odd articles, Editor’s picks and a couple of “round up” articles from The Economist as a bonus? This is fantastic. The presence of a painkiller completely changes the game.

the economist espresso

The Economist, then, follows it up with a beautifully designed app that is just a pleasure to read. I get “The Economist Espresso” by email and consume 3 other emails in the morning – TheSkimm, The Quartz newsletter and Ben Thompson’s “Stratechery” daily update. However, I always find myself archiving the Espresso email and heading over to the app because it is so pleasing to the eye. Even advertisements look gorgeous – so much so that I ignore the fact that I see an ad every day despite the fact that I’m paying for it. I think the maximum word count on an “agenda” item (there are 5 of these) is 150 words – just right for a quick skim. And, the world in brief pieces (7-8 of these) are no more than 75 words.

The only small nits I noted –
– It does feel more intuitive to swipe downward and go to the next article rather than swipe left
– The email edition ends with a quote – I can’t find it on the app
– The Espresso recently added a Saturday edition with news on the arts and sports. I, for one, always hope to find more sports coverage. Here’s hoping that changes going forward.

Overall, a fantastic experience thanks a smart combination of thoughtful product strategy and excellent execution.