How You Do In Small Things Is How You Do In Big Things, or Why Proof-Of-Work Is All That Matters.
My dad has a saying: #HYDISTIHYDIBT: “how you do in small things is how you do in big things.
This was a constant life lesson he would impart over the many years growing up, usually while teaching me the intricacies of some home improvement project or appliance repair. This saying was both a reminder and an admonishment, and I took it to mean that when you’re faced with the easy wrong or a hard right, you always chose the hard right. Every single time.
Ultimately I believe that #HYDISTIHYDIBT means you come at everything 100% all the time, regardless of scale or size of outcome. I think his perspective is rooted in his time as a surgeon and teacher of medicine — implying that the mark of a good practitioner is that they perform flawlessly in all aspects of their job, 100% of the time, day in and day out. I think that in the context of his job which is life and death, he must act in which to minimize loss in a different way than we may do in business or other walks of life. While the concept of a move fast and break things is highly applicable in tech, it is at odds with medicine’s core principle, focused on the Hippocratic oath, of ‘do no harm.’ I’m of the opinion that a better alternative is to move purposefully and fix things.
This mantra of #HYDISTIHYDIBT is a life of intentionality that usually allows you to live a more open and integrated life, which means your choices and actions withstand scrutinizing. From a scientific perspective, it would indicate reproducibility.
It also means that if actively practiced, you become a known quantity, a good teammate and leader, and build a brand through outcomes. The benefit of this approach is that you, are consistently on brand, and your actions are honest and trustworthy. You can also act without fear that what you do will not contradict anything you’ve done in the past. All things unseen can be revealed in their entirety and they will pass any due diligence or inspection.
For surgeons it takes 12–15 years of training on average before they may be allowed to operate on the patient.
It’s not dissimilar with sushi masters.
In the Western World, an itamae is often associated with sushi (also commonly referred to simply as “sushi chefs”)
In Japan, becoming an itamae of sushi requires years of training and apprenticeship. Apprentices must spend 5 years working with a master itamae before they are able to prepare the sushi the rice! The rice is prepared according to the strict instructions of the senior itamae, and each sushi restaurant has its own “secret” recipe of rice, salt, and rice vinegar. Once the senior itamae is satisfied with the consistency of the sushi rice made daily by the apprentice, the apprentice may then be promoted.
Five years before you’re allowed to make rice.
And you graduate only when your skills are consistent and you can demonstrate the proof-of-work.
Proof of work is an important concept that we find discussed in technology around blockchain.
Via Wikipedia
Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic zero-knowledge proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of computational effort has been expended for some purpose. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expenditure with minimal effort on their part. The concept was invented by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1993 as a way to deter denial-of-service attacks and other service abuses such as spam on a network by requiring some work from a service requester, usually meaning processing time by a computer. The term “proof of work” was first coined and formalized in a 1999 paper by Markus Jakobsson and Ari Juels.[1][2] Proof of work was later popularized by Bitcoin as a foundation for consensus in permissionless blockchains and cryptocurrencies, in which miners compete to append blocks and mint new currency, each miner experiencing a success probability proportional to the amount of computational effort they have provably expended. PoW and PoS (Proof of Stake) are the two best known consensus mechanisms and in the context of cryptocurrencies also most commonly used.
For a long time, credentials and the power of brand names have helped humans who claim those logos as their own to grease social transactions and interactions.
If you went to a specific school or had a certain set of letters next to your name you were automatically assumed to have done well in the small and big things necessary to earn that degree.
Your association with these brands, or big name schools, banks, or consulting companies provided a veneer of respectability, and an assumption of capability, with a modicum of trust.
With the rise of the internet, we have started to decouple credentialing from knowledge transfer. New age knowledge transfer systems do help provide knowledge and insights — but the knowledge gained must be applied for it to be useful. Their brands are not big, nor well known enough to impart some credentialing.
I recently met some startups, individuals and enterprise partners who were all touting new-age vanity metrics / qualifications / endorsements that were actually not indicative of any knowledge. You may feel the same way too. How do you know the people you are interacting with are real? And if they are real, how do you align what they say they can do, with what they have done, and what they might do going forward?
The decoupling of credentialing and knowledge transfer in the era of near-to-zero costs for building and creating mean that all that matters is what you can do with that knowledge. What are the ideas that you actualize? What are the data crumbs that indicate you’ve been working and doing and manifesting the words that you are exposing? What does your portfolio look like?
Your portfolio is more than just a body of work — it stands as your proof-of-work and the output and outcomes that you have created or helped produce based on your knowledge, expertise and effort. All of that provides context to evaluate your claimed abilities. And it is more secure because it represents the outcomes and outputs of your skill, knowledge and creds.
Traction based evaluation is important when considering businesses, but even more so with people. Show me your history of demonstrated conscientiousness, honesty and trustworthiness — that proof-of-work is the foundation of good, long-term relationships, and I want more of that.
Here are some good heuristics regarding #HYDISTIHYDIBT:
- When prompted to act without any oversight, do you personally enrich yourself or take care of your team?
- Do you follow the honor code and only take one candy when at the self-service Halloween bowl?
- Are you nice to people lower on the organizational chart, or do you only kowtow to senior leaders only?
- Do you treat people in service positions well or are you rude to your waiter, bartender or service agent?
- Do you return the shopping cart when you’re done?
In my 20+ year working career, I too am guilty of under-delivering, dropping balls or not coming correct. I would like to think that this happened in my youth, but I acknowledge that I am an imperfect work in progress and am always trying to improve and seek to get better.
That said, #HYDISTIHYDIBT is a good way to evaluate partners and partnerships. If people and organizations treat you poorly in small areas when there is not a lot at risk, then there is no reason to assume that if the amount of risk increases, that you should expect that they will keep their interests aligned with their own. This response doesn’t need to originate from a place of malice. Instead it might originate from misalignment, or different world views. Either way, it’s always better to learn about this early, so that you don’t waste time or opportunity.
Lil Wayne once said that “Real Gs move in silence like Lasagna”, sight unseen, but I’m unsure if Weezy has anymore credibility to offer, after being exposed for just looking after his own interests.
Focusing on the outcomes, while living in public and providing an audit-able data trail is the best type of reference for personal and professional proof-of-work, the hallmark of a good partner and the basis for long term relationships.
Everything else is just fool’s gold.
