A Learning a Day

Whenever we work on driving change within an organization, we will run into situations where things feels stuck or broken. Everyone was bought in to the promise of the change – but now we’re stuck and unable to make progress.

Every experienced operator knows that is normal. There is generally no shortage of possible ideas – the challenge is finding the one that actually works despite all the constraints.

And the more consequential the decision, the more the constraints (and the number of people who remind you of the constraints).

The key, in these situations, is to get the core group of stakeholders together with one goal – to agree on why things are broken / why we’re stuck.

No expectation on getting to a solution. Let’s just align on the problem we’re solving.

That ends up being the most important thing we can do to get unstuck.

“What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society. A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain.”  | Martin Seligman

A beautiful distillation of what it is to be human.

To be is to ponder about the future.

A recent paper shared the results of a 5 year observation study of 12,000 individuals with Obesity taking GLP-1 drugs (e.g., Ozempic, Wegovy) by a collection of Chinese researchers.

There’s an impressive looking graph in the paper that shows a significant reduction in adverse outcomes (stroke, cardiovascular issues, etc.).

A commentor on the thread, Hank Green, summarized the punchline beautifully.

That’s a ~90% improvement in mortality.

There’s a lot we need to fix in our society with regards to diet and movement. There’s far too much ultra-processed food going around and far too less exercise.

But such changes take time. Obesity needs urgent attention. And while we’re still early in understanding the long-term impact, a 90% reduction in the odds of death should make us all sit up and take notice.

This global population growth chart, from Steven Johnson’s post, blew my mind. It illustrates what happens when growth goes from linear to exponential.

In Steven Johnson’s words – “That’s the 6,000 year history of human population growth. You might notice, if you really squint your eyes, that something interesting appears to happen about 150 years ago. After millennia of slow and steady growth, human population growth went exponential. And that’s not the result of people having more babies—the human birth rate was declining rapidly during much of that period. That’s the impact of people not dying. And while that is on one level incredibly good news, it is also in a very real sense one of the two most important drivers of climate change. If we had transferred to a fossil-fuel-based economy but kept our population at 1850 levels, we would have no climate change issues whatsoever—there simply wouldn’t be enough carbon-emitting lifestyles to make a measurable difference in the atmosphere.

The key idea here is that no change this momentous is entirely positive in its downstream effects. Trying to anticipate those effects, and mitigate the negative ones, is going to take all of our powers of prospection.” 

It also illustrates why I’m particularly interested in the technology adoption curves of solar energy and other renewable energy sources. In cases where the externalities (or second order impacts) are positive, great things happen when growth goes from linear to exponential.

Feedback often shows up like a lump of coal in a clean room – unwelcome and annoying. Heres what we need to do to help us get to actionable feedback –

(1) Acknowledging that all feedback is between 1% and 99% true. It is our responsibility to figure out what we want to do with it.

(2) There’s no point reacting to any emotion around it.

(3) If it comes from someone in a position of authority, best to take them seriously instead of literally.

(4) When we get ideas suggested to us, we need to do the work to understand the problem the ideas are intended to solve. Then we can find the right solution to those problems.

These steps unearth the diamond within the coal.

When making a case for change, many try to get their audience excited. So, they end up “pitching.”

But going all out on pitching doesn’t work because excitement alone doesn’t spur action.

We first have to get the listeners concerned about the problem. Then excitement should follow when they understand how our solution solves the problem.

The pitch works best when there is alignment on the problem.

“You can tell the size of a person by the size of their problems.”

A good friend reminded me of this a few days ago.

I added to my daily morning note to self.

I can’t be reminded enough of it.

When we travel, we often go on road trips and rent a car. A small tip I found useful was to look for the arrow next to the fuel indicator when I’m about to pull up to a gas/petrol station.

The direction of the arrow tells you which side the gas tank is on.

A nice example of a useful Ux/user experience standard.

Sam: “I wonder if we’ll ever be put into songs or tales.”

Frodo: “What?”

Sam: “I wonder if people will ever say, ‘Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring.’ And they’ll say ‘Yes, that’s one of my favorite stories. Frodo was really courageous, wasn’t he, Dad?’ ‘Yes, my boy, the most famousest of hobbits. And that’s saying a lot.’“

Frodo: “You’ve left out one of the chief characters – Samwise the Brave. I want to hear more about Sam.”

Frodo: “Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam.”

Sam: “Now Mr. Frodo, you shouldn’t make fun; I was being serious.”

Frodo: “So was I.”

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“Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam” is one of those memorable poignant lines from the second Lord of the Rings movie. It is poignant because it is a representation of the real hero’s journey.

We love the story of the lone inventor and the fearless leader. In reality, however, they walk in the footsteps of giants before them… and are supported by incredible teams who chose impact over fame.

Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam.

I was reflecting on two somewhat random health “unlocks” over the past decade.

In my third year of college, I started getting painful bouts of gastritis. In the decade that followed, this affliction followed me around. Eating at regular intervals kept it at bay. But such bouts still occurred every three to six months and each bout required consumption of a Magnesium Trisilicate tonic (over the counter).

Until a health-awareness phase when I decided to run a few tests to understand how I was doing. My usual doctor was away on leave and the replacement doctor spotted the bacterium “Heliobacter pylori” and recommended one course of antibiotics. It’s been 6 years since that course – and 6 years since a bout of Gastritis.

I’d mentioned this to multiple doctors over that decade – nobody had answers. Until one spotted this bacterium in a test. Unlock!

The second unlock is more benign – but impactful nevertheless. I remember one of the first times I went to a dentist for cleaning as a child. My teeth seemed coated in black marks and he reprimanded me for bad brushing habits.

That reprimand stepped up my brushing game. But it didn’t seem to matter. A few months after my cleaning, the black marks came right back. I went to dentists across different continents in the subsequent years. They’d all ask me similar questions – do you eat a lot of chocolate? Drink a lot? Any smoking? The answer was no to every meeting.

They all speculated about the cause – one shared that some people are predisposed to it thanks to the nature of the saliva. No one could figure out what I could do to avoid it.

Until a dental hygienist at a doctor close by recommended using a toothpaste from Arm & Hammer. She reasoned that the extra baking soda in the toothpaste would help keep the marks at bay.

It did. Those black marks haven’t come back in the past two years. She solved a 20 year problem that had befuddled so many people. Unlock!

I’ve learnt two lessons from these experience:

The first is to not give up on problems. Both of these were longstanding problems. They could easily have become part of my identity – “I get Gastritis a lot.” They probably were – to an extent. But I’m glad I didn’t give up on them.

Next, the Gastritis issue was spotted by a replacement doctor. Would my normal doctor have spotted it? Unclear. Similarly, I’m grateful for the dental hygienist who I spoke with about my marks. Funnily, I only took action on her recommendation when she repeated it six months later. I probably needed to hear it twice to give it a shot.

The second lesson, thus, is that solutions can come from unexpected sources. Stay curious and keep plugging away on problems – you never know when the solution might present itself.