An excellent essay from Cal Newport's book - How To Win At College
If you want to succeed at college, you have to develop a healthy sense of self-confidence. This doesn't mean you should be arrogant-such people are often secretly insecure. Instead, you want to be self-assured, proud, and modest all at the time. These are the traits of a well-liked, successful student.
Easier said than done? Not really. One good technique for bolstering your confidence is mastering a skill. Everyone is good at something. All you need to do is to find out what this something is for you, and then practice until you are better at it than any of your friends at school. Be it playing a guitar, writing a fiction, shooting hoops, or cooking, develop a skill you can be known for. Again, this is not about bragging rights. People can know you are good at something without you having to constantly remind them. This is about reinforcing your identity and sense of self-confidence.
Why this is so important? Because college is an overwhelming social environment. You are thrown into a small space with thousands of other students who know nothing about you. Many students fail to maintain a strong sense of identity in this situation., and instead begin to peg their self-worth on receiving the respect and admiration of others. If you're invited to a hot party, do well on a test, or catch the eye of that cute girl (or boy) ahead of you in the lunch line, you feel good about yourself. But if you end up with no plans for Friday night, bomb a test, or realize that the cute girl was actually smiling at her bodybuilder boyfriend standing right behind you, well, then you feel pretty lousy. The state of your self-esteem is like a roller-coaster ride, differing from day to to day depending on events beyond your control. You cannot win at college with this mindset.
When you are dependent on good things happening to make you feel good, your life becomes centered on preserving a good mood. This will constrain you, because if you are constantly worried about avoiding anything negative, you will never do anything out of the ordinary. Standout students, on the other hand, do very little that is ordinary. This is what makes them so phenomenal. They find better ways, uncover new approaches, and question everything. The only way to develop such an aggressive mind-set is to have a strong sense of self-confidence to back you up.
Developing these trait is not easy. But doing one thing better than anyone else you know is an excellent start toward accomplishing this goal. By mastering one activity in your life, you are putting a stake into the ground, giving yourself one thing to feel sure of, and making a declaration about who you are. Don't let others dictate how you should feel about yourself, strengthen your identity-then conquer your world.
Friday, November 21, 2014
Monday, November 17, 2014
The Road To Excellence
A few notes collected from 'The Road To Excellence' - An interesting book edited by K. Anders Ericsson.
A more direct claim about the necessity for intense preparation was made by Simon and Chase (1973). They found that about 10 years of preparation was necessary to attain an international level of chess skill and they suggested similar prerequisites in other domains.
. . .
Even when individuals have access to a similar training environment, large individual differences in performance are still often observed. Furthermore, amount of experience in a domain is often a weak predictor of performance. Rather than accepting these facts as evidence for innate differences in ability (i.e, talent), Ericcson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) tried to identify those training activities that would be mist closely related to improvements in performance. Based on a review of a century of laboratory studies of learning and skill acquisition, Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) concluded that the most effective learning requires a well-defined task with an appropriate difficulty level for the particular individual, informative feedback, and opportunities for repetition and corrections for error. When all these elements are present they used the term deliberate practice to characterize training activities.
. . .
They found that concentration is the most essential aspect of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice in music is consistent with the critical role of concentration. Master teachers (Auer, 1921; Galamian, 1962) argue that full concentration is essential and that when it wanes the musician to rest, because practice without full concentration may actually impair rather improve performance (Seashore, 1938/1967).
An analysis of practice sessions (extracted from the diaries of the expert musicians) is consistent with the requirement of concentration. After about an hour of practice in the morning when the ability to perform most complex cognitive activities has been found to be the highest (Folkard & Monk, 1985). There is also indirect evidence for the effortfulness of concentration through the additional need for rest among expert performers. Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) found that the higher levels of practice were associated with longer duration of sleep, typically in the form of afternoon naps. This pattern of napping and resting has also been found in other domains expertise, such as sports.
A more direct claim about the necessity for intense preparation was made by Simon and Chase (1973). They found that about 10 years of preparation was necessary to attain an international level of chess skill and they suggested similar prerequisites in other domains.
. . .
Even when individuals have access to a similar training environment, large individual differences in performance are still often observed. Furthermore, amount of experience in a domain is often a weak predictor of performance. Rather than accepting these facts as evidence for innate differences in ability (i.e, talent), Ericcson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) tried to identify those training activities that would be mist closely related to improvements in performance. Based on a review of a century of laboratory studies of learning and skill acquisition, Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) concluded that the most effective learning requires a well-defined task with an appropriate difficulty level for the particular individual, informative feedback, and opportunities for repetition and corrections for error. When all these elements are present they used the term deliberate practice to characterize training activities.
. . .
They found that concentration is the most essential aspect of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice in music is consistent with the critical role of concentration. Master teachers (Auer, 1921; Galamian, 1962) argue that full concentration is essential and that when it wanes the musician to rest, because practice without full concentration may actually impair rather improve performance (Seashore, 1938/1967).
An analysis of practice sessions (extracted from the diaries of the expert musicians) is consistent with the requirement of concentration. After about an hour of practice in the morning when the ability to perform most complex cognitive activities has been found to be the highest (Folkard & Monk, 1985). There is also indirect evidence for the effortfulness of concentration through the additional need for rest among expert performers. Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) found that the higher levels of practice were associated with longer duration of sleep, typically in the form of afternoon naps. This pattern of napping and resting has also been found in other domains expertise, such as sports.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Smartcuts
Notes taken on "Smartcuts" - a brilliant book by Shane Snow.
Hacking the ladder
Training with Masters
Platforms
10 x Thinking
Hacking the ladder
Bigger or better is a scavenger hunt, a sort of trick-or-treating (young) adults. Players divide into teams and begin with a small object, like a toothpick, then disperse and knock on neighborhood doors, one house after another.
At each answered door, the players introduce themselves with something on the order of, "We're playing a game called Bigger or Better. Do you have something in your house that's slightly bigger or better than this..." (display object) " ...that you want to trade with us?"
The first few houses are the toughest. People relaxing at night in their homes aren't often searching of toothpicks. Even in the friendly Rocky Mountains a homeowner can be put off by such a request. But before long, a stranger will good-naturedly offer a piece of gum or that toothpick, and the game is on.
At the next house, the gum becomes a ballpoint pen. At the next: a pack of Post-it notes. Then: a copy of last month's Nylon magazine. The magazine becomes a bouquet of flowers left by an unwanted admirer. The flowers get swapped for an old hat, and the hat is exchanged for novelty T-shirt. In this phase of the game, the players benefit from a bit of curiosity, a little charity, and the fact that people were planning on getting rid of most of these objects anyway.
But after enough trades, the players hold objects of significant value in their hands. Now the boy who opens the door sincerely wants the T-shirt. He trades his lava lamp for it. The girls next door like the lava lamp and decide to part with a vintage mirror. The old woman down the street collects antiques; she accepts the mirror exchange for an old BMX bike in the garage.
When time is up, the players return home to compare results. After a dozen or so trades, teams have turned toothpicks into a stereo system, a set of golf clubs, and a television set. One group even drags in a full-size canoe.
Not bad for a sober night out.
Training with Masters
Rapid Feedback
Platforms
Effort for the sake of effort is foolish as a tradition as paying dues. How much better is hard work when it's amplified by a lever? Platforms teach us skills and allow us to focus on being great, rather than reinventing wheels or repeating ourselves.
"You can build on top of a lot of things that exist in this world," David Heinemeier Hannson told me. "Somebody goes in and does that hard, ground level science based work.
"And then top of that, " he smiles, "you build the art."
Waves
Another academic duo, Peter Golder and Gerard Tellis of the University of Southern California, published a study in 1993 to see if historical evidence backed the claim that market pioneers were more likely to succeed. They researched that market pioneers were more likely to succeed. They researched what happened to 500 brands in 50 product categories, from toothpaste to video recorders to fax machines to chewing gum.
Startlingly, the research showed that 47 percent of first movers failed. Only about half the companies that started selling a product first remained the market five years later, and only 11 percent of first movers remained market leaders over long term.
By contrast, early leaders-companies that took control of a product's market share after the first movers pioneered them-had only an 8 percent failure rate. Fifty-three percent of the time in the Golder and Tellis study, an early leader became the market leader in a category.
Like early pioneers crossing the American plains, first movers have to create their own wagon trails, but later movers can follow the ruts. First movers take on burden of educating customers, setting up infrastructure, getting regulatory approvals, and making mistakes-getting feedback and adjusting.
Fast followers, on the other hand, benefit from free-rider effects. The pioneers clear the way in terms of market education and infrastructure and learn the hard lessons, so the next guys can steal that works, learn objectively from the first movers' failures, and spend more effort elsewhere. The first wave clears the way for a more powerful ride.
. . . .
Conventional thinking leads talented and driven people to believe that if they simply work hard, luck will eventually strike. That's like saying if a surfer treads water in the same spot for long enough, a wave will come; it certainly happens to some people, once in a while, but it's not the most effective strategy for success. Paradoxically, it's actually a lazier move.
There's a reason some people practice things for twenty years and never become experts; a golfer can put 30,000 hours of practice and not improve his game if he's gripping his clubs wrong the whole time. A business can work five times harder and longer that its neighbors and still lose to rivals that read the market better. Just like a pro surfer never wins by staying in one spot.
"I think that being able to pick and read good waves is almost more important than surfing well,' Moore tells me. "If you don't have a good or better platform to perform on than your opponent, you are going to lose."
Her secret, and Sonny's (and Google's and 3M's and General Motor's), isn't practice-though that certainly helps. It's going to the beach to watch the waves and getting into the water to experiment.
And if you're in the sweet spot when that superwave does come, Sonny says, "It's pure energy."
"You can build on top of a lot of things that exist in this world," David Heinemeier Hannson told me. "Somebody goes in and does that hard, ground level science based work.
"And then top of that, " he smiles, "you build the art."
Waves
Another academic duo, Peter Golder and Gerard Tellis of the University of Southern California, published a study in 1993 to see if historical evidence backed the claim that market pioneers were more likely to succeed. They researched that market pioneers were more likely to succeed. They researched what happened to 500 brands in 50 product categories, from toothpaste to video recorders to fax machines to chewing gum.
Startlingly, the research showed that 47 percent of first movers failed. Only about half the companies that started selling a product first remained the market five years later, and only 11 percent of first movers remained market leaders over long term.
By contrast, early leaders-companies that took control of a product's market share after the first movers pioneered them-had only an 8 percent failure rate. Fifty-three percent of the time in the Golder and Tellis study, an early leader became the market leader in a category.
Like early pioneers crossing the American plains, first movers have to create their own wagon trails, but later movers can follow the ruts. First movers take on burden of educating customers, setting up infrastructure, getting regulatory approvals, and making mistakes-getting feedback and adjusting.
Fast followers, on the other hand, benefit from free-rider effects. The pioneers clear the way in terms of market education and infrastructure and learn the hard lessons, so the next guys can steal that works, learn objectively from the first movers' failures, and spend more effort elsewhere. The first wave clears the way for a more powerful ride.
. . . .
Conventional thinking leads talented and driven people to believe that if they simply work hard, luck will eventually strike. That's like saying if a surfer treads water in the same spot for long enough, a wave will come; it certainly happens to some people, once in a while, but it's not the most effective strategy for success. Paradoxically, it's actually a lazier move.
There's a reason some people practice things for twenty years and never become experts; a golfer can put 30,000 hours of practice and not improve his game if he's gripping his clubs wrong the whole time. A business can work five times harder and longer that its neighbors and still lose to rivals that read the market better. Just like a pro surfer never wins by staying in one spot.
"I think that being able to pick and read good waves is almost more important than surfing well,' Moore tells me. "If you don't have a good or better platform to perform on than your opponent, you are going to lose."
Her secret, and Sonny's (and Google's and 3M's and General Motor's), isn't practice-though that certainly helps. It's going to the beach to watch the waves and getting into the water to experiment.
And if you're in the sweet spot when that superwave does come, Sonny says, "It's pure energy."
Superconnectors
Momentum
Simplicity
10 x Thinking
The secret sounds a bit crazy. Says Teller, "It's often easier to make something 10 times better than it is to make it 10 percent better."
. . .
"The way of doing about trying to make something new or better often tends to polarize into one of two styles, " Teller says. "One is the low-variance, no surprises version of improvement. The production model, if you will. You tend to get '10 percent,' in order of magnitude, kind of improvements."
"In order to get really big improvements, you usually have to start over in one or more ways. You have to break some of the basic assumptions and, of course, you can't know ahead of time. It's by definition counter intuitive."
Incremental progress, he says depends on working harder. More resources, more effort. 10x progress is built on bravery and creativity instead. Working smarter.
. . .
"The way of doing about trying to make something new or better often tends to polarize into one of two styles, " Teller says. "One is the low-variance, no surprises version of improvement. The production model, if you will. You tend to get '10 percent,' in order of magnitude, kind of improvements."
"In order to get really big improvements, you usually have to start over in one or more ways. You have to break some of the basic assumptions and, of course, you can't know ahead of time. It's by definition counter intuitive."
Incremental progress, he says depends on working harder. More resources, more effort. 10x progress is built on bravery and creativity instead. Working smarter.
The brilliant "Smartcuts" by Shane Snow.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Personal notes taken on "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" - an incredible book by Greg McKeown.
If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.
. . .
The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away - it can only be forgotten.
. . .
Non-essentialist: "I have to." - Forfeits the right to choose.
Essentialist: "I choose to." - Exercises the power of choice.
. . .
The unimportance of practically everything. - Haha, nicely said (reader).
. . .
A Non-essentialist thinks almost everything is essential. Views opportunities as basically equal.
A Essentialist thinks almost everything is nonessential. Distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many.
. . .
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs. It's about deliberately choosing to be different. ~Michael Porter
. . .
Without great solitude no serious work is possible. ~Pablo Picasso
. . .
In order to have focus we need to escape to focus.
. . .
Nonessentialist:
- Pays attention to the loudest voice.
- Hears everything being said.
- Is overwhelmed by all the information.
Essentialist:
- Pays attention to the signal in the noise.
- Hears what is not being said.
- Scans to find the essence of the information.
. . .
A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest man. ~Roald Dahl
. . .
Nonessentialist thinks:
- One hour less of sleep equals one more hour of productivity.
- Sleep is for failures.
- Sleep is a luxury.
- Sleep breeds laziness.
- Sleep gets in the way of "doing it all".
Essentialist thinks:
- One hour more of sleep equals several more hours of much higher productivity.
- Sleep is for high performers.
- Sleep is a priority.
- Sleep breeds creativity.
- Sleep enables the highest level of mental contribution.
. . .
Nonessentialist:
- Says yes to almost every request or opportunity.
- Uses broad implicit criteria like "If someone I know is doing it, I should do it."
Essentialist:
- Says yes to only the top 10 percent of opportunities.
- Use narrow, explicit criteria like "Is this exactly what I am looking for?"
. . .
If it isn't a clear yes, then it's a clear no.
. . .
Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to says Yes too quickly and not saying No soon enough. ~Josh Billings
. . .
Nonessentialist:
- Asks, "Why stop now when I've already invested so much in this project?"
- Thinks, "If I keep trying, I can make this work."
- Hates admitting to mistake.
Essentialist:
- Asks, "If I weren't already invested in this project, how much would I invest in it now?"
- Thinks, "What else could I do with this time or money if I pulled the plug now?"
- Comfortable with cutting losses.
. . .
The Latin root of the word decision-cis or cid-literally means "to cut" or "to kill".
. . .
Nonessentialist:
- Thinks if you have limits you will be limited.
- Sees boundaries as constraining.
- Exerts effort attempting the direct "no".
Essentialist:
- Knows that if you have limits you will become limitless.
- Sees boundaries as liberating.
- Sets rules in advance that eliminate the need for the direct "no".
. . .
Nonessentialist:
- Assumes the best-case scenario will happen.
- Forces execution at the last minute.
Essentialist:
- Builds in a buffer for unexpected events.
- Practices extreme and early preparation.
. . .
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Adding by Eliminating...
Jack Dorsey is best known as the creator of Twitter and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company. His Essentialist approach to management is a relatively rare one. At a dinner I attended recently where he spoke, he said he thinks of the role of CEO as being the chief editor of the company. At another event at Stanford he explained further: "By editorial I mean there are a thousand things we could be doing. But there [are] only one or two that are important. All of these ideas . . . and inputs from engineers, support people, designers are going to constantly flood what we should be doing. . . As an editor I am constantly taking these inputs and deciding the one, or intersection of a few, that make sense for what we are doing."
An editor is merely someone who says no to things. A three-year-old can do that. Nor does an editor simply eliminate; in fact, in a way, an editor actually adds. What I mean is that a good editor is someone who uses deliberate subtraction to actually add life to the ideas, setting, plot, and characters.
From "Essentialism - The Disciplined Pursuit of Less", a brilliant book by Greg McKeown.
An editor is merely someone who says no to things. A three-year-old can do that. Nor does an editor simply eliminate; in fact, in a way, an editor actually adds. What I mean is that a good editor is someone who uses deliberate subtraction to actually add life to the ideas, setting, plot, and characters.
From "Essentialism - The Disciplined Pursuit of Less", a brilliant book by Greg McKeown.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Quotes of the day
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~Mark Twain
The ability to be friends with a woman, particularly the woman you love, is to me the greatest achievement. Love and friendship seldom go together. … In all of my life I have known only a few couples who were friends as well as lovers. ~Henry Miller
The things that will bring you the greatest results in your life don’t have a deadline. ~Steve McClatchy
I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief. ~General Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you think, it may inhibit you from thinking improper thoughts. ~Paul Graham
Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying Yes too quickly and not saying No soon enough. ~Josh Billings
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. ~Abraham Lincoln
You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are. ~Fred Rogers
Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow. ~Doug Firebaugh
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead
The ability to be friends with a woman, particularly the woman you love, is to me the greatest achievement. Love and friendship seldom go together. … In all of my life I have known only a few couples who were friends as well as lovers. ~Henry Miller
The things that will bring you the greatest results in your life don’t have a deadline. ~Steve McClatchy
I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief. ~General Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you think, it may inhibit you from thinking improper thoughts. ~Paul Graham
Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying Yes too quickly and not saying No soon enough. ~Josh Billings
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. ~Abraham Lincoln
You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are. ~Fred Rogers
Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow. ~Doug Firebaugh
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead
Thursday, July 10, 2014
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Personal notes taken on "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" - a brilliant book by Ben Horowitz.
An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project. An engineer might get stuck waiting for a decision or a manager may think she doesn't have authority to make a critical purchase. These small, seemingly minor hesitations can cause fatal delays. I could not afford any hesitation, so I scheduled a daily meeting with Anthony, Jason, and the team- though they were now based in Plano.The purpose was to remove all roadblocks. If anyone was stuck on anything for any reason, it could not last more than twenty-four hours-the time between meetings.
. . .
After confirming that acquiring would be superior to building, we negotiated a deal to buy Rendition Networks for $33 million. Within three months of competing the acquisition, John negotiated a deal with Cisco Systems- the world's largest networking company-to resell our product. The included an agreement to prepay us $30 million for advanced licenses. As a result, the Cisco deal alone paid more than 90 percent of the acquisition costs. Note to self: It's a good idea to ask, "What am I not doing?"
. . .
In the end, I did find the answer, we completed the deal with EDS, and the company did not go bankrupt. I was not mad at Bill. To this day, I sincerely appreciate his telling me the truth about the odds. But I don't believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
. . .
I put this section first even though it deals with some serious end-game issues such as how to fire an executive and how to lay people off. In doing so, I follow the first principle of Bushido- the way of the warrior: keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions. Similarly, if a CEO keeps the following lessons in mind, she will maintain the proper focus when hiring, training, and building her culture.
. . .
Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place.
The Struggle is when people ask you why you don't quit and you don't know the answer.
The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right.
The Struggle is when you don't believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred.
The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop. The Struggle is unhappiness.
The Struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse.
The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The Struggle has no mercy.
The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. The Struggle is where your guts boil so much that you feel like you are going to spit blood.
The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure,. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak.
Most people are not strong enough.
Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through the Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is the Struggle.
The Struggle is where greatness comes from.
. . .
Prior to executing the layoff, the CEO must address the company. The CEO must deliver the overall message that provides the proper context and air cover for the managers. If you do your job right, the managers will have a much easier time doing their jobs.Keep in mind what former Intuit CEO Bill Campbell told me-The message is for the people who are staying. The people who stay will care deeply about how you treat their colleagues. Many of the people whom you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with the appropriate level of respect. Still, the company must move forward, so be careful not to apologize to much.
. . .
Once you have decided to hire someone above your friend and decided on the alternatives that you'd like to offer him, you can have the conversation. Keep in mind that you cannot let him keep his old job, but you can be fair and you can be honest. Some keys doing that:
Through all of this, keep in mind that it is what it is and nothing you can say will change that or stop it from being deeply upsetting. Your goal should not be to take the sting out of it, but to be honest, clear, and effective. Your friend may not appreciate that in the moment, but he will appreciate it over time.
. . .
My old boss Jim Barksdale was fond of saying, "We take care of the people, the products, and the profits-in that order." It's a simple saying, but it's deep. "Taking care of the people" is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don't do it, the other two won't matter. Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work. Most workplaces are far from good. As organizations grow large, important work can go unnoticed, the hardest workers can get passed over by the best politicians, and bureaucratic processes can choke out the creativity and remove all the joy.
When everything went wrong from the dot-com crash to NASDAQ threatening to delist the company, the thing that saved us were the techniques developed in this chapter. If your company is a good place to work, you too may live long enough to find your glory.
. . .
Ironically, the biggest obstacle to putting a training program in place is the perception that it will take too much time. Keep in mind that there is no investment that you can make that will do more to improve productivity in your company. Therefore, being too busy to train is the moral equivalent of being to hungry to eat. Furthermore, it's not that hard to create basic training courses.
. . .
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
The rationale behind the law is that the other employees in the company with lower titles will naturally benchmark themselves against the crappiest person at the next level. For example, if Jasper is the worst vice president in the company, then all of the directors will benchmark themselves against Jasper and demand promotions as soon as they reach his low level of competency.
As with the Peter Principle, the best that you can do is mitigate the Law of Crappy People and that mitigation will be critically important to the quality of your company.
. . .
Ask ten founders about company culture and what it means and you'll get ten different answers. It's about office design, it's about screening out the wrong kinds of employees, it's about values, it's about fun, it's about alignment, it's about finding like-minded employees, it's about being cultlike.
So what is culture? Does culture matter? If so, how much time should you spend on it?
Let's start with the second question first. The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that's at least ten times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people switch to the new things fast enough or in large enough volume to meet. The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market. If it's possible to do something ten times better, it's also possible that you won't be the only company to figure that out. Therefore, you must take the market before anybody else does. Very few products are then times better than the competition's, so unseating the new incumbent is much more difficult than unseating the old one.
If you fail to do both of those things, your culture won't matter one bit. The world is full of bankrupt companies with world-class cultures. Culture does not make a company.
. . .
Over the past ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
. . .
In peacetime, leaders must maximize and broaden the current opportunity. As a result, peacetime leaders employ techniques to encourage broad-based creativity and contribution across a diverse set of possible objectives. In wartime, by contrast, the company typically has a single bullet in the chamber and must, at all costs, hit the target. The company's survival in wartime depends upon strict adherence and alignment to the mission.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company was weeks away from bankruptcy-a classic wartime scenario. He needed everyone to move with precision and follow his exact plan; there was no room for individual creativity outside the core mission. In stark contrast, as Google achieved dominance in the search market, Google's management fostered peacetime innovation by enabling and requiring every employee to spend 20 percent of their time on their own new projects.
Peacetime and wartime management techniques can both be highly effective when employed in the right situations, but they are very different. The peacetime CEO does not resemble the wartime CEO.
. . .
Be aware that management books tend to be written by management consultants who study successful companies during their times of peace. As a result, the resulting books describe the methods of peacetime CEOs. In fact, other than the books written by Andy Grove, I don't know of any management books that teach you how to manage in wartime like Steve Jobs or Andy Grove.
. . .
If you are a founder CEO and you feel awkward or incompetent when doing some of these things and believe there is no way that you'll be able to do it when your company is one hundred or one thousand people, welcome to the club. That's exactly how I felt. So did every CEO I've ever met. This is the process. This is how you get made.
. . .
Addressing the skill set issue proved to be difficult because, sadly, the only way to learn how to be a CEO is to be a CEO. Sure, we might try to teach some skills, but learning to be a CEO through classroom training would be like learning to be an NFL quarterback through classroom training. Even if Peyton Manning and Tom Brady were your instructors, in the absence of hand-on experience, you'd get killed the moment you took the field.
. . .
When I first became a CEO, I genuinely thought that I was the only one struggling. Whenever I spoke to other CEOs, they all seemed like they had everything under control. Their businesses were always going "fantastic" and their experience was inevitably "amazing." I thought that maybe growing up in Berkeley with Communist grandparents might not have been the best background for running a company. But as I watched my peers' fantastic, amazing businesses go bankrupt and sell for cheap, I realized that I was probably not the only one struggling.
As I got further into it, I realized that embracing the unusual parts of my background would be the key to making it through. It would be those things that would give me unique perspectives and approaches to the business. The things that I would bring to the table that nobody else had. It was borrowing Chico Mendoza's shocking yet poetic style to motivate and focus the team. It was my understanding of the people underneath the persona and skin color that enabled me to put Jason Rosenthal together with Anthony Wright to save the company. It was even my bringing in to the most capitalistic pursuit imaginable what Karl Marx got right. On my grandfather's tombstone, you will find his favorite quote: "Life is struggle." I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.
An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project. An engineer might get stuck waiting for a decision or a manager may think she doesn't have authority to make a critical purchase. These small, seemingly minor hesitations can cause fatal delays. I could not afford any hesitation, so I scheduled a daily meeting with Anthony, Jason, and the team- though they were now based in Plano.The purpose was to remove all roadblocks. If anyone was stuck on anything for any reason, it could not last more than twenty-four hours-the time between meetings.
. . .
After confirming that acquiring would be superior to building, we negotiated a deal to buy Rendition Networks for $33 million. Within three months of competing the acquisition, John negotiated a deal with Cisco Systems- the world's largest networking company-to resell our product. The included an agreement to prepay us $30 million for advanced licenses. As a result, the Cisco deal alone paid more than 90 percent of the acquisition costs. Note to self: It's a good idea to ask, "What am I not doing?"
. . .
In the end, I did find the answer, we completed the deal with EDS, and the company did not go bankrupt. I was not mad at Bill. To this day, I sincerely appreciate his telling me the truth about the odds. But I don't believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
. . .
I put this section first even though it deals with some serious end-game issues such as how to fire an executive and how to lay people off. In doing so, I follow the first principle of Bushido- the way of the warrior: keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions. Similarly, if a CEO keeps the following lessons in mind, she will maintain the proper focus when hiring, training, and building her culture.
. . .
Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place.
The Struggle is when people ask you why you don't quit and you don't know the answer.
The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right.
The Struggle is when you don't believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred.
The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop. The Struggle is unhappiness.
The Struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse.
The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The Struggle has no mercy.
The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. The Struggle is where your guts boil so much that you feel like you are going to spit blood.
The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure,. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak.
Most people are not strong enough.
Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through the Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is the Struggle.
The Struggle is where greatness comes from.
. . .
Prior to executing the layoff, the CEO must address the company. The CEO must deliver the overall message that provides the proper context and air cover for the managers. If you do your job right, the managers will have a much easier time doing their jobs.Keep in mind what former Intuit CEO Bill Campbell told me-The message is for the people who are staying. The people who stay will care deeply about how you treat their colleagues. Many of the people whom you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with the appropriate level of respect. Still, the company must move forward, so be careful not to apologize to much.
. . .
Once you have decided to hire someone above your friend and decided on the alternatives that you'd like to offer him, you can have the conversation. Keep in mind that you cannot let him keep his old job, but you can be fair and you can be honest. Some keys doing that:
- Use appropriate language. Make clear with you language that you've decided. As previously discussed, use phrases like "I have decided" rather than "I think" or "I'd like." By doing this, you will avoid putting the employee in the awkward position of wondering whether he should lobby for his old job. You can't tell him what he wants to hear, but you can be honest.
- Admit reality. If you are a founder-CEO like I was, it probably won't be lost on the employee that you are just an underskilled for your job as he is for. Don't dodge this fact. In fact, admit that if you were a more experienced CEO, you might be able to develop him into the role, but two people who don't know what they are doing is a recipe for failure.
- Acknowledge the contributions. If you want him to stay in the company, you should say that and make it crystal clear that you want to help him develop his career and contribute to the company. Let him know that you appreciate what he's done and that your decision results from a forward-looking examination of what the company needs, not a review of his past performance. The best way to do this, if appropriate, is to couple the demotion with an increase in compensation. Doing so will let hom know that he's both appreciated and valued going forward.
Through all of this, keep in mind that it is what it is and nothing you can say will change that or stop it from being deeply upsetting. Your goal should not be to take the sting out of it, but to be honest, clear, and effective. Your friend may not appreciate that in the moment, but he will appreciate it over time.
. . .
My old boss Jim Barksdale was fond of saying, "We take care of the people, the products, and the profits-in that order." It's a simple saying, but it's deep. "Taking care of the people" is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don't do it, the other two won't matter. Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work. Most workplaces are far from good. As organizations grow large, important work can go unnoticed, the hardest workers can get passed over by the best politicians, and bureaucratic processes can choke out the creativity and remove all the joy.
When everything went wrong from the dot-com crash to NASDAQ threatening to delist the company, the thing that saved us were the techniques developed in this chapter. If your company is a good place to work, you too may live long enough to find your glory.
. . .
Ironically, the biggest obstacle to putting a training program in place is the perception that it will take too much time. Keep in mind that there is no investment that you can make that will do more to improve productivity in your company. Therefore, being too busy to train is the moral equivalent of being to hungry to eat. Furthermore, it's not that hard to create basic training courses.
. . .
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
The rationale behind the law is that the other employees in the company with lower titles will naturally benchmark themselves against the crappiest person at the next level. For example, if Jasper is the worst vice president in the company, then all of the directors will benchmark themselves against Jasper and demand promotions as soon as they reach his low level of competency.
As with the Peter Principle, the best that you can do is mitigate the Law of Crappy People and that mitigation will be critically important to the quality of your company.
. . .
Ask ten founders about company culture and what it means and you'll get ten different answers. It's about office design, it's about screening out the wrong kinds of employees, it's about values, it's about fun, it's about alignment, it's about finding like-minded employees, it's about being cultlike.
So what is culture? Does culture matter? If so, how much time should you spend on it?
Let's start with the second question first. The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that's at least ten times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people switch to the new things fast enough or in large enough volume to meet. The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market. If it's possible to do something ten times better, it's also possible that you won't be the only company to figure that out. Therefore, you must take the market before anybody else does. Very few products are then times better than the competition's, so unseating the new incumbent is much more difficult than unseating the old one.
If you fail to do both of those things, your culture won't matter one bit. The world is full of bankrupt companies with world-class cultures. Culture does not make a company.
. . .
Over the past ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
. . .
In peacetime, leaders must maximize and broaden the current opportunity. As a result, peacetime leaders employ techniques to encourage broad-based creativity and contribution across a diverse set of possible objectives. In wartime, by contrast, the company typically has a single bullet in the chamber and must, at all costs, hit the target. The company's survival in wartime depends upon strict adherence and alignment to the mission.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company was weeks away from bankruptcy-a classic wartime scenario. He needed everyone to move with precision and follow his exact plan; there was no room for individual creativity outside the core mission. In stark contrast, as Google achieved dominance in the search market, Google's management fostered peacetime innovation by enabling and requiring every employee to spend 20 percent of their time on their own new projects.
Peacetime and wartime management techniques can both be highly effective when employed in the right situations, but they are very different. The peacetime CEO does not resemble the wartime CEO.
. . .
Be aware that management books tend to be written by management consultants who study successful companies during their times of peace. As a result, the resulting books describe the methods of peacetime CEOs. In fact, other than the books written by Andy Grove, I don't know of any management books that teach you how to manage in wartime like Steve Jobs or Andy Grove.
. . .
If you are a founder CEO and you feel awkward or incompetent when doing some of these things and believe there is no way that you'll be able to do it when your company is one hundred or one thousand people, welcome to the club. That's exactly how I felt. So did every CEO I've ever met. This is the process. This is how you get made.
. . .
Addressing the skill set issue proved to be difficult because, sadly, the only way to learn how to be a CEO is to be a CEO. Sure, we might try to teach some skills, but learning to be a CEO through classroom training would be like learning to be an NFL quarterback through classroom training. Even if Peyton Manning and Tom Brady were your instructors, in the absence of hand-on experience, you'd get killed the moment you took the field.
. . .
When I first became a CEO, I genuinely thought that I was the only one struggling. Whenever I spoke to other CEOs, they all seemed like they had everything under control. Their businesses were always going "fantastic" and their experience was inevitably "amazing." I thought that maybe growing up in Berkeley with Communist grandparents might not have been the best background for running a company. But as I watched my peers' fantastic, amazing businesses go bankrupt and sell for cheap, I realized that I was probably not the only one struggling.
As I got further into it, I realized that embracing the unusual parts of my background would be the key to making it through. It would be those things that would give me unique perspectives and approaches to the business. The things that I would bring to the table that nobody else had. It was borrowing Chico Mendoza's shocking yet poetic style to motivate and focus the team. It was my understanding of the people underneath the persona and skin color that enabled me to put Jason Rosenthal together with Anthony Wright to save the company. It was even my bringing in to the most capitalistic pursuit imaginable what Karl Marx got right. On my grandfather's tombstone, you will find his favorite quote: "Life is struggle." I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.
The amazing "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" on the top.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
The Hardest Working Man In Mobile
. . .
The pace at Xiaomi has slowed somewhat since the early days, though employees continue to pull 10-to-10 schedules before major product launches. "But we are still happy every day, " says Joy Han, a Xiaomi spokeswoman.
The hardest worker, employees are fond of pointing out, remains Lei. Lin estimates that his partner easily works 100 hours a week. Huang Jiangli, who oversees the company's new $110 home media server, has four-hour morning meeting every Saturday with the boss to go over product plans. The server, if all goes accordingly to strategy, will allow users to easily control the coming wave of new devices, such as smart thermostats and appliances-many of which Xiaomi no doubt wants to make itself.
. . .
From Bloomberg Businessweek, 6/9 - 6/22, 14 Issue
- With Bruce Einhorn and Christina Larson
The pace at Xiaomi has slowed somewhat since the early days, though employees continue to pull 10-to-10 schedules before major product launches. "But we are still happy every day, " says Joy Han, a Xiaomi spokeswoman.
The hardest worker, employees are fond of pointing out, remains Lei. Lin estimates that his partner easily works 100 hours a week. Huang Jiangli, who oversees the company's new $110 home media server, has four-hour morning meeting every Saturday with the boss to go over product plans. The server, if all goes accordingly to strategy, will allow users to easily control the coming wave of new devices, such as smart thermostats and appliances-many of which Xiaomi no doubt wants to make itself.
. . .
From Bloomberg Businessweek, 6/9 - 6/22, 14 Issue
- With Bruce Einhorn and Christina Larson
Friday, May 30, 2014
For proving that the sky is not the limit
The first item that shipped via Prime Air, Amazon's drone delivery system, was a Kindle. Team leaders Gur Kimchi and Daniel Buchmueller chose it for its compact size, but the symbolism in this test flight was clear: If the Kindle revolutionized Amazon's business by enabling the company to deliver good digitally, Prime air could bring the same level of instant gratification to the physical world. In December, Amazon unveiled Prime Air on 60 minutes, wowing viewers with its portrayal of a future where unmanned aerial vehicles zip around the sky ferrying parcels to your door in 30 minutes. Right now, the system isn't ready for market, and some have called it a PR stunt, considering the questions left unanswered: How would drones deliver big cities or bad weather? But Kimchi and Buchmueller say it demonstrates Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's appetite for bold bets. "The culture here allows you to be creative without being constrained by what's possible," Kimchi says. "For every project like Prime Air that you know about, we probably have 100 more that you don't".
By Austin Carr
Fast Company, June 2014
By Austin Carr
Fast Company, June 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Боловсролын философи
Хэрэв Хятадад 1 сая хүн цөмийн физик судлаж, тооноос чанарт шилжих хуулийн гайхамшигийг бидэнд харуулах гэж байгаа бол --- бид дэлхийн боловсролын системийн түүхэнд урд хожид хийгдэж байгаагүй агуу амбицтай, цоо шинэ Боловсролын аргачлалын бий болгож --- ердөө 5000 хүнийг цөмийн физикт дайчлаад л Хятадаас 2 дахин их Нобелийн шагнал авах төвшинд БҮТЭЭМЖИЙГ аваачих ёстой.
БҮТЭЭМЖ бол Эдийн засгийн хамгийн анхдагч асуудал. Эрэлт нийлүүлэлтийн хуулиас өмнө Бүтээмж байдаг.
Миний өнөөдөр ярьсан зүйлс бол зөвхөн Эдийн засгийн асуудал.
Эдийн засгийн сургуульд ийм л асуудлыг зааж, яаж шийдэх гарцыг буюу цоо шинэ мэдлэгийг бий болгож чадах эдийн засагчдийг бэлдэж төгсгөх ёстой. Эрэлт нийлүүлэлтийн хуулийг харин интернэтээс унших ёстой байхаа.
Ө.Ганзоригийн 'Боловсролын философи' нийтлэлээс.
БҮТЭЭМЖ бол Эдийн засгийн хамгийн анхдагч асуудал. Эрэлт нийлүүлэлтийн хуулиас өмнө Бүтээмж байдаг.
Миний өнөөдөр ярьсан зүйлс бол зөвхөн Эдийн засгийн асуудал.
Эдийн засгийн сургуульд ийм л асуудлыг зааж, яаж шийдэх гарцыг буюу цоо шинэ мэдлэгийг бий болгож чадах эдийн засагчдийг бэлдэж төгсгөх ёстой. Эрэлт нийлүүлэлтийн хуулийг харин интернэтээс унших ёстой байхаа.
Ө.Ганзоригийн 'Боловсролын философи' нийтлэлээс.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Stubborn Entrepreneurs
In the face of everybody is telling them they are wrong. Let's take Google. You see these stubborn entrepreneurs, even in the face of guy who gave them the money saying "Do it this way, you are wrong." And they say "No, you are wrong, my vision is right, screw you." They end making the most money.
...
I think a lot of VCs, unfortunately say, "This is hot sector, we need to fund a company in that sector." So they do. The CEO behaves almost like he is an employee of the VC. The best founders I have seen, they do not care about any of that stuff. They are just pursuing their vision with a relentless abandon.
From Tarang Shah's interview with Mike Maples (FLOODGate Fund: Twitter, Chegg, Digg, SolarWinds, ModCloth).
Venture Capitalists at Work
...
I think a lot of VCs, unfortunately say, "This is hot sector, we need to fund a company in that sector." So they do. The CEO behaves almost like he is an employee of the VC. The best founders I have seen, they do not care about any of that stuff. They are just pursuing their vision with a relentless abandon.
From Tarang Shah's interview with Mike Maples (FLOODGate Fund: Twitter, Chegg, Digg, SolarWinds, ModCloth).
Venture Capitalists at Work
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Always Learning...
WHAT WERE THE TRAITS OF THE WEAK PROGRAMMERS YOU’VE SEEN OVER YOUR CAREER?
That’s an easy one—lack of curiosity. They were so satisfied with the work that they were doing was good enough (without an understanding of what ‘good’ was) that they didn’t push themselves.
I’m much more impressed with people that are always learning. The brilliant programmers I’ve been around are always learning.
You see so many people get into one language and spend their entire career in that language, and as a result aren’t that great as programmers.
DO YOU FEEL THAT THE PAIN A PROGRAMMER GOES THROUGH IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE CONTRIBUTES TO THIS UNHEALTHY ATTACHMENT TO USING ONLY ONE LANGUAGE?
My advice to programmers to avoid this trap is to learn lots of different languages. We’re in sort of a language renaissance right now and there are a ton of brilliant languages to learn from.
To learn new languages takes nights and weekends outside of work, and that’s a commitment. The great programmers are the people that are constantly picking a project and diving into it, learning a language that way.
From Jacob Cook's interview with Doug Crockford.
Source: Smashing Magazine
That’s an easy one—lack of curiosity. They were so satisfied with the work that they were doing was good enough (without an understanding of what ‘good’ was) that they didn’t push themselves.
I’m much more impressed with people that are always learning. The brilliant programmers I’ve been around are always learning.
You see so many people get into one language and spend their entire career in that language, and as a result aren’t that great as programmers.
DO YOU FEEL THAT THE PAIN A PROGRAMMER GOES THROUGH IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE CONTRIBUTES TO THIS UNHEALTHY ATTACHMENT TO USING ONLY ONE LANGUAGE?
My advice to programmers to avoid this trap is to learn lots of different languages. We’re in sort of a language renaissance right now and there are a ton of brilliant languages to learn from.
To learn new languages takes nights and weekends outside of work, and that’s a commitment. The great programmers are the people that are constantly picking a project and diving into it, learning a language that way.
From Jacob Cook's interview with Doug Crockford.
Source: Smashing Magazine
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
You gotta know what that feels like in your stomach...
"You gotta know what it feels like to be up at night, worried about a problem. You gotta know what that feels like in your stomach," Carter says. "Getting terrible sound at clubs, playing to audiences that heckle, to venues that are half empty, so you know how to adjust to it. "Resilience, he says, isn't something he can teach them. Everyone has to experience their own Eve, their own Gaga. Only then you do know how to get back up.
By Danielle Sack, from interview with Troy Carter.
Fast Company, February 2014
By Danielle Sack, from interview with Troy Carter.
Fast Company, February 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)