A Learning a Day

The definition of strategy that I use in my day to day is that good strategy is defining the right sequence of steps that helps us navigate trade-offs and achieve the end outcome.

There are three key parts of this definition.

It starts with the end outcome. If we don’t have a clear goal, there’s no point writing a strategy.

Next, these is no strategy without trade-offs. Doing everything is not strategy. Good strategy makes clear what we won’t do and helps us navigate them.

Finally, sequence of steps. The order in which we do things matters a lot. Often, being early and being wrong are indistinguishable.

A friend shared this post from Julie Zhuo that had a powerful analogy – words as containers.

“A friend celebrated his 40th birthday the other day. He said, you know, the older I get, the more the cliches seem deeply true.

Cliches like, The days are long but the years are short. Or Having less is having more.

In my teens and 20s I rolled my eyes at statements like these.

They seemed like a soda can’s empty calories. Everywhere and cheap. No nuance, no inventiveness. The easiest thing to serve up when you don’t want to put in effort.

But now, when we utter them to each other — swallowing back the lump in the throat at a child’s birthday party, fingering an exquisite dress before walking away, offering gentle words to a partner after a hell of a week, or mari-kondo-ing the shit out of January — we glimpse the profundity of these so-called words of wisdom, as clear and essential as water.

What I failed to realize back then is that the words are merely containers.

In my teens, the containers were shallow, filled with black-and-white plotlines and youth’s arrogance.

But year over year, these containers gathered more memories. Hues of heartbreak. Textures of love. Mistakes and their sharp aftermaths, slowly eroding the edges of hubris.

The containers became fuller. And speaking their words felt like uttering prayers, like drinking in the past itself. Exquisite and complex. A prized wine growing ever finer.

That elixir is wisdom. How I wish we could drink of each others’ collections!

Oh, but we try. To weave that wisdom into our stories. To convey it in our art. To capture it in our words. Humanity’s best attempts become today’s cliches.

But all of these attempts are still containers, containers of all shapes and sizes, bouncing in our minds.

They have their value; after all, our minds are like houses — more likely to be tidy with a larger collection of containers.

But do not mix up the containers themselves with the wisdom inside them.

To my young-hearted friends: read and learn. Reflect and absorb.

But never forget: Wisdom is life itself.

Sometimes, there is no more advice left to give.

Sometimes, you must simply live.”

It is a beautiful visualization of how we experience the power of words differently with experience.

It resonated.

Keith Rabois, former executive and current investor, had a neat analogy relating to scaling companies by hiring lots of people.

“So I like this idea of barrels and ammunition. Most companies, once they get into hiring mode…just hire a lot of people, you expect that when you add more people your horsepower or your velocity of shipping things is going to increase. Turns out it doesn’t work that way. When you hire more engineers you don’t get that much more done. You actually sometimes get less done. You hire more designers, you definitely don’t get more done, you get less done in a day.

The reason why is because most great people actually are ammunition. But what you need in your company are barrels. And you can only shoot through the number of unique barrels that you have. That’s how the velocity of your company improves is adding barrels. Then you stock them with ammunition, then you can do a lot. You go from one barrel company, which is mostly how you start, to a two barrel company, suddenly you get twice as many things done in a day, per week, per quarter. If you go to three barrels, great. If you go to four barrels, awesome. Barrels are very difficult to find. But when you have them, give them lots of equity. Promote them, take them to dinner every week, because they are virtually irreplaceable. They are also very culturally specific. So a barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company because one of the ways, the definition of a barrel is, they can take an idea from conception and take it all the way to shipping and bring people with them. And that’s a very cultural skill set.“

It is a useful way to think about leverage. In most organizations, small groups of people provide disproportionate amounts of leverage – by helping move people around them in the right direction.

Look out for, and then solve for that leverage.

When there’s trauma in a muscle, our body has a two step process to solve the problem. The first step is to get rid of the damaged tissues and cells – what physiologists term as “waste.” And the second is to regenerate new muscle fibers and connective issues.

Only icing stops this progress by delaying the chemical signals that our body needs to send its repair crew. In effect, icing delays and sometimes even limits healing.

Gabe Mirkin, the physician who first recommended RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) in 1978 also no longer endorses icing.

Researchers in Canada have recommended a replacement for RICE in The British Journal of Sports Medicine. It’s called “PEACE & LOVE.”

P Protect (avoid activities that increase pain in the first few days after injury)
E Elevate (elevate the injured limb higher than your heart if possible)
A Avoid anti-inflammatories (inflammation is good)
C Compress (use bandages or tape to reduce swelling)
E Educate (avoid unnecessary passive treatments)
&
L Load (let your body tell you when it is safe to load again)
O Optimism
V Vascularization (choose cardio activities to get your heart rate up)
E Exercise (take an active approach to recovery)

In sum, stop icing or using anti-inflammatory meds. Protect + elevate + compress for a bit and then start moving.

(H/T: Built to Move by Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett)

I didn’t grow up with Halloween. I like parts of the concept a lot – the walking to neighbor’s homes, knocking on doors, and say hello is brilliant. We need more of that.

I think the dressing up – especially for kids – can be fun.

The part I hate is the candy. And there’s so much candy. It feels like the adults of this generation are all just gifting diabetes and metabolic issues to the kids.

This year, I heard that a neighbor couple who were dentists did something different. They handed out toothbrushes instead of candy with a note reminding them to brush after they overdose on candy. Hilarious. We need more of that.

But it is easy to see that the “when in doubt, reach for the candy” idea is all pervasive. It is just emblematic of our love for easy sugar.

Every government around the world has been governing with the same philosophy. Most large economies need austerity – some more than others. And, given the size of the numbers involved, austerity needs to be a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes.

But austerity isn’t a winning political platform. Even if gains are relatively easy.

As an example, here’s a graph (source) that shows that most American rich people own pass-through businesses like S-corporations or LLCs. Most discussions about rich people in America focus either on corporate CEOs or on the billionaire founders of large public companies. But, in reality, the elite pass close to $500B via pass-through businesses.

If we really cared about austerity, we’d just tax pass-through businesses. It won’t solve the deficit – but we’d begin making a dent.

Then again, it is a tough sell because everyone has gotten used to lower taxes and low interest rates.

It is easy to point fingers at political leaders on this. But this is where we come back to where we started – they’re just doing what we’re doing at home and in our schools.

If we reach for candy when in doubt, can we blame them for doing so?

Ultimately, candy is debt that we just rack up over time.

And debts always come due.

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts…. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what you deserve.” | Charlie Munger when asked by a young shareholder on “How to Get Rich”

It resonated.

PS: Another Munger response that resonated was how to find a good spouse. “The best single way is to deserve a good spouse because a good spouse is by definition not nuts.”

Charles Duhigg, in his book Supercommunicators, has a neat question to understand the expectations of those we’re communicating with – does the other person want to be helped, hugged, or heard?

People who want to be helped are open to problem solved. People who want a hug just want the support. People who want to be heard just need a listener.

The first step in effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring.

“If it is important to you, you’ll find a way.

If it isn’t, you’ll find an excuse.” | Anonymous, seen on the walls of a Jiujitsu gym.

It resonated.

Three decades ago now, Ben Horowitz, an early Product Management leader at Netscape, wrote a short essay on product management. The essay focused on a set of behaviors that differentiated a bad product manager from a good one. One of them, for example, was writing weekly updates.

There are many reasons why weekly updates are a good indicator of good product management. Writing something weekly requires discipline. And as good writing takes logical thinking, a strong weekly update often indicates the ability to structure your thoughts and communicate logically.

All of these are useful assets for a Product Manager.

But they’re just indicators at the end of the day.

In the final analysis, a Product Manager’s success is based on the success of the products shipped. A PM’s ability to figure out what needs to be built and then building it in the most effective way possible is far more important than indicators like weekly updates.

Similarly, many wealthy leaders have structured morning routines. But a structured morning routine does not a wealthy leader make.

It is easy to get attached to such indicators as they’re easier to control. But it is folly to get too attached to these – especially if they aren’t resulting in the outcomes that matter.

Don’t confuse the indicator for the outcome.

There’s an insightful moment on Masterchef when Chef Graham Elliot cooks alongside the home cooks in a breakfast challenge. As part of the challenge, each home cook needs to prepare one elevated breakfast dish in 30 minutes. Chef Graham, however, shares he will cook three.

And, yet, if you look at 0:25 of this short clip, you have Chef Christina Tosi asking Chef Gordon Ramsay what he thinks the home cooks will learn from Chef Graham.

To this, Gordon Ramsay responds – “If there’s one thing they can take away tonight, it’s the organization.”

They go on to show how organized his station is. While the home cooks move frantically to cook their dish, he just takes the time to get his station impeccably organized.

It is an inspiring example of the kind of focus, organization, and calm that signals mastery.