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.

Ask others – The 200 words project

I hope you’re having a nice weekend. Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert.

Researchers conducted a study where the first group of volunteers would flip a coin. Heads meant a gift certificate to a local pizza parlor while tails meant nothing. The volunteers then recorded how they felt.

Group 2 were asked to predict how they’d feel if they didn’t get the gift certificate. Some of the group 2 were shown results from group 1 (“surrogators”) while others did so independently (“simulators”). They then performed the experiment.

The results showed that simulators felt much better than they predicted they would feel. They didn’t realize how quickly they’d rationalize it (“pizza is too fattening”, “I didn’t like that restaurant anyway”). But, those who followed the surrogators guessed this accurately.

The learning? We are terrible at predicting how we’ll feel about an experience. So, researcher Dan Gilbert suggests – “the best way to predict your feeling about an experience tomorrow is to figure out how others who are going through the experience are feeling today. However, you are probably very resistant to this because if you are like most people, then, like most people, you don’t like to admit you are like most people!’

Ask othersSource and thanks to: www.EBSketchin.com

‘Despite the third word of the title (Stumbling on Happiness), this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you’ve bought one, done everything it says to do, and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to understand why.’ | Dan Gilbert :-)

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..

Rules vs. Guidelines – MBA Learnings

One of the more powerful ideas I’ve learnt in my ‘Values Based Leadership’ class is understanding the power of using rules vs. guidelines in setting culture.

Culture is by far the most powerful change tool that exists. If you really want to change behavior, it is the culture you should turn to. The culture is the mixture of norms and rituals that act as the default behavior in every group or organization. There are rule-based cultures and guideline-based cultures. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. And, to analyze the difference, I thought I’d examine how I’ve approached designing my own culture.

There are many ways to think about designing culture. I think of culture as a set of habits that we incentivize, one way or another. The basic habits I’ve been working to develop have been as simple as – sleep 8 hours, eat healthy, exercise 5 times a week, and meditate. This journey alone has taken the best part of the last 4 years and I am still not done. The first habit I sought to fix was sleeping 8 hours. And, my first instinct was to design a rule based system. When the 8 hour rule didn’t work, I mandated a 530am compulsory wake up as a way to encourage myself to sleep at 930pm. This didn’t work well either as I ended up sleeping late and going into work sleep deprived. I had a few similar experiences with attempting to exercise and meditate. These experiences taught me a couple of valuable lessons about rule-based systems. There is no doubt they are great when you just get started as they make you feel like you accomplished something. But, they work on the carrot-and-stick idea of motivation. And, as modern research has demonstrated, ideas of autonomy, mastery, and purpose motivate us a lot more than the carrot-and-stick model.

So, my next series of attempts were using guidelines. No punishments involved here. The first guideline was to attempt to sleep 8 hours every day. 1 year into that, I did that most of the time. Eating healthy was much easier and I didn’t have to try hard. Exercise was a real beast and I started in earnest in January 2013. Since then, I have averaged exercising ~5 times a week (typically a mix of 3-4 times in the gym and football in good weather). Meditation was much harder. After a rules based attempt in mid 2013, I gave meditation up. However, when I worked on my “tracking my purpose” last year, meditation was an important part of what I considered my ideal personal culture. But, as I swear by guidelines these days, I didn’t attempt to force it. As I tracked my progress every week, I just resigned myself to putting in a 0 as my meditation count for the week. And, after 6 straight months of putting in zeros, I abruptly decided to start meditating as soon as I woke up on Monday last week. I logged into my Headspace app and got started again. I’ve been meditating every weekday since.

What changed? I think the fact that I expected meditation to be a part of my personal culture meant I had an subconscious reminder every week. Next, the fact that I didn’t force it meant that it happened out of intrinsic motivation. And, now that it is there, I have no intention of letting it slip. And, even if it does, that’s okay. I’m sleeping, eating, exercising and meditating because I want to. That’s just how I like leading my life. (“This is how we do things here” – is the all powerful statement of culture)

It is that realization that makes a guideline-based culture incredibly powerful. In some ways, the guiding principle of a guideline-based culture is – “I trust you to do the right thing in the long term. And, if you don’t, be kind to yourself and come back and fix it tomorrow”

It is as empowering as it gets.

PS: The MBA Learnings series is an example of a guideline. It is 1 per week. I aim to do it on Wednesdays. But, the one per week guideline is much more important than the Wednesday rule idea.

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.

The $4000 false decision – The 200 words project

I hope you’re having a nice weekend. Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath..

Zappos.com prides itself on world class customer service. So, every hire into Zappos (including a Chief Financial Officer or Head of IT) goes through Customer Service training in their first week. In their second week, they have a person walk in and give them a unique offer. “If you don’t feel Zappos is the right place for you, let us know and we’ll pay you $4000 to quit.”

Why does Zappos do this? Because the offer prods employees to carefully consider the commitment they are making. The misfits (2% of all who get hired) take the $4000 and walk away. Zappos is relieved about this as the cost of a bad hire is much higher than $4000. And, the fits fully commit to succeeding at Zappos. It is a false decision that makes all concerned happy.

Inserting false decisions/check points ensures we check our commitment from time to time and avoid going into “auto pilot” mode. Amazon has started doing the same in fulfilment centers via a Pay-to-Quit program where employees receive a note every year with an offer that starts at $1000 dollars. The headline – “Please don’t take this offer.”

4000 dollar false decisionSource and thanks to: www.EBSketchin.com

‘The $4000 really makes people think, is this the right role for me? Is this the right culture for me? Are these the core values I’m actually going to live by?’ | Jenn Lim, Zappos.com

The double whammy principle

Let’s imagine 2 situations –
– You have an important interview tomorrow and are trying to get through as much of the preparation as possible
– You are going through an incredibly busy time and there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do the things you want to do

In both situations, you could justify an impulse to stop doing one or more of the following “basic” things – sleeping, eating healthy, or taking time to stay organized.

This is where the double whammy principle comes in – The return-on-investment of the “basic” things in our life goes up exponentially in times when doing them feels against the flow. Essentially, not doing them will feel like a double whammy.

So, even if you did pull that all-nighter for your interview and went a bit more prepared, your lack of sleep will ensure you don’t perform to the best of your ability. And, if you did compromise on taking the time to organize yourself before or during a crazy day, there is a very high probability you will lose a lot more time due to the disorganization and lack of planning.

So, what does that mean for you? Very simply, avoid the double whammy. The busier you feel, the more important it is to carve out time for the basic things in your life. In tough times, the time taken to sleep, eat healthy, to reflect and to stay organized will pay themselves forward many times over.