Trust the system

When things are not going great, and results aren’t going their way, football players often say that they’ve got to trust the system and to keep doing what their manager wants them to do.

This is an important thing because this trust is what gives them hope and keeps them…

Observation to theory

We are all observers.

We observe what’s going on around us, either consciously or unconsciously. Everything from how people behave with us, what the latest fashion style is, what the cool restaurants are, what features companies are rolling out, etc.

Distracted from what?

I was listening to Nir Eyal talk to Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project Podcast today about distractions and being indistractable (Nir has a book by this title), and heard a lot of things that reinforced what I’ve written before on this blog and follow with my weekly schedule.

Externalise your thinking

Amazon has a strong culture of writing narratives. At the start of any meeting, everyone attending spends the first 15–20 minutes (longer for longer meetings) reading the narrative on what decision needs to be made at the meeting.

Cold start

The term ‘cold start’ derives from cars. When it’s really cold, the engine has problems with starting up, but once it reaches its optimal operating temperature, it will run smoothly.

The term is also used in the context of digital products to indicate a start state that isn’t yet…

Move slower and get there faster

Though it sounds impossible, it can happen under certain conditions.

When you know where ‘there’ is and the other people moving faster don’t.

When ‘there’ is far out, and the other people that start off moving faster tire…

Big ideas

Big ideas — the ones that turn into billion dollar companies, the ones that turn into bestselling novels, the ones that turn into high grossing movies, are worth pursuing.

In fact, everyone in the world is pursuing a big idea in some aspect of their lives that matters to them, and it…

Structure

In Business School, we learn a lot of frameworks for evaluating situations and making decisions. There are frameworks for how to position and price a product, how to enter a new market, how to evaluate competition, how to design an organization, how to interview prospective employees, etc.

Three ways to do a task

There are three ways to approach a task.

We can be negligent about it and not meet expectations. The expectations can be our own or someone else’s. Sometimes, we do our best and still don’t meet expectations. That’s when we have to re-evaluate the expectations…

Culture

Culture isn’t what you write down, it’s what you do.

Companies often write down what their culture ought to be. And just as often forget that it is something that ‘ought to be’ and confuse it with what already is.