Naming concepts = Making concepts easily usable

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

Summary: Useful concept = 1. Develop concept to sufficient+ * 2. Have usable language for the concept. The better you can name a concept the easier it is to use. I’ve come to believe the ability to name a concept well is almost as important as being able to come up with valuable concepts. 

I used to worry mainly about developing the value of concepts, not really about naming a concept so it could be easily used.

• Einstein’s levels of mental cultivation: 

  • L1: Smart 

  • L2: Intelligent 

  • L3: Brilliant 

  • L4: Genius

  • L5: Simple

• IMO you want to make knowledge / concepts as ‘simple’ to use as possible. If you don’t have a clear, intuitive, memorable name for a concept then even if it’s really valuable, it’s not likely to be easily used and as such frequently used. 

• I used to not even not just worry about naming concepts, many times there would be no name at all! 

• Each blog I write is meant to be on one concept. Now each blog is meant to have a clear name for the concept too! 

• The name is normally the first words of the title. Eg:

  • Automaticity

  • Team dynamic

  • Upgrade spreadsheet

  • Detail vs Accuracy

• I realised that some concepts I’ve come up with are used all the time at Edrolo, and some never spoken about. The concepts named well were used, the ones that weren’t were not! 

• Levels of concept naming: 

  • L0: no name

  • L1: hard to use name

  • L2: easy to use memorable name

• Jingle: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" If a concept has a poor name / no name, can it be used? 

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Examples of blog titles I’d change

• It's not about strengths & weaknesses, it’s about trajectory & levelling-up! you can improve at everything always :) => Levelling up: It's not about strengths & weaknesses, it’s about trajectory & levelling-up! you can improve at everything always :) 

• What I might have called this blog in the past: Implemental knowledge = 1. Valuable * 2. Usable 

• What I’m calling it now: Naming concepts = Making concepts easily usable 

• How to be the ultimate intellectual companion => Munger: How to be the ultimate intellectual companion. 

• Devil (un)disqualified decisions: only move ahead with decisions that the devil cannot disqualify (aka the work needed to build an opinion) => Angel’s Advocate: only move ahead with decisions you cannot disqualify. 

Usability = How you communicate the idea in a word or short amount of words in the future

• Internal Edrolo examples: 

  • Sufficiency vs Perfectionism

  • Treasure Taxonomy

  • Genome

  • Angel’s advocate 

  • Constrained unconstrained thinking 

  • Mental chocolate

  • Counterbalance high cognitive load and low cognitive load tasks

  • Unsickers

  • Finite vs Infinite knowledge

• External examples

  • FOMO

  • Catalyst

  • Growth mindset Vs Fixed mindset 

“Your Vocabulary Defines Your Thinking: The more words you have at your disposal, the higher quality of your thoughts” – Chris Williamson

• “Be intolerant of people who try to suppress speech. They want to control your words so that they can influence your thoughts and actions.” Naval. 

• “The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.” —H.L. Mencken. A rearticulation: the best teacher is the one who is able to use the best words. 

The most upstream part of most businesses is knowledge creation and the usability of this knowledge / concepts

• If you aren’t writing you aren’t making much knowledge / concepts. 

• If you don’t make it easy to communicate the concepts created they don’t have much value. 

• If you don’t have a company glossary then you haven’t made much knowledge?

• Language is the first scalable technology. If you aren’t creating new language (i.e. new concepts and naming them), then perhaps you  aren’t upgrading the most upstream technology that you run on, and that your company runs on. 

The best people in most fields, while speaking ‘english’, are speaking a language you don’t understand

• Trusty Dreyfus Taxonomy

• Novice = No industry specific language. Just ‘everyday’ english. 

• Proficient = Know 80% of the language others have created for concepts in your field. 

• Master = You have made significant new concepts that help you make progress you otherwise wouldn’t in your area AND you have named the concepts well so they are easily applicable. 

• Examples: 

  • Restaurant = I don’t know the names of most of the ingredients or utensils, let alone the processes people use to cook. But I do like eating food :) 

  • Sport = I barely know the rules for AFL, let alone the positions on the field, let alone strategy moves etc. If someone is commenting about Chess they may as well be speaking another language. 

  • AI = I didn’t know what any of these concepts meant 5 years ago: Machine learning, Deep learning, Image recognition (or “computer vision”), Natural Language Processing, Neural networks, Semantic analysis, Supervised learning, Unsupervised learning. To me these are all well named concepts as they are easy to remember and use. 

  • Lawyers

  • Doctors 

• When Edrolo started making education resources any person could have overheard and understood what we were talking about. It’s getting to the point where you can’t understand what we are talking about, as we have made many new concepts and named them usably. 

  • 7 years ago I didn’t know core concepts created by others such as cognitive load, spaced repetition, interleaving, backward design, dual coding, metacognition, etc etc. I was most definitely a novice in the education space. 

  • 4 years ago we started to create concepts at Edrolo that helped us solve the problems we were wrestling with. Examples include: genome, question ingredient equation, knowledge unit, unstickers, infinite vs finite knowledge and many more. 

If you only take away one thing

• The major modalities I see: reading, thinking, talking, building and writing. 

  • If you want to progress in an area I recommend doing all of these modalities. 

  • I didn’t get 5 years ago that one core output of this would be creating your own new concepts and naming the concepts that you can hopefully use to level up everything. 

• Outcome = Duncan * The tools Duncan has 

  • Mental Tool = 1. Concept * 2. How easy the concept is to use

  • So make lots of valuable and easily usable mental tools. 

• Mental tool = cool! 

Source of Challenge vs Source of Support vs Source of Inspiration

By Duncan Anderson and Alison Montalti. To see all blogs click here.

Reading Time: 6 mins

Summary: I think we are taught to be sources of support, but I think at work it’s normally far more impactful to learn how to be a positive sum source of challenge. 

We are all players, we are all coaches… and hopefully sources of support, challenge and inspiration! 

• Taxonomy levels

  • Poor team player/bad manager = Source of support when you shouldn’t be, ie having someone become dependent - AKA negative sum support

  • Good team player/manager = Source of support when external circumstances necessitate - AKA positive sum support

  • Leader = 1. Positive sum source of support + 2. Source of challenge

  • Visionary/playmaker = 1. Positive sum source of support + 2. Source of challenge + 3. Source of Inspiration

• Comment: 

  • Traditionally, in the workplace we consider people as workers, managers and then leaders. However, not everyone can be or wants to be a manager, but they most definitely can be team players. Therefore, ‘we are all players, we are all coaches’. At work, I’ll try to help you, I expect you to try and help me too. 

  • Effectively I think one can be a bad manager of oneself (a poor team player), a good manager of oneself (a good team player), a leader of oneself (a leader) or a visionary for oneself (the playmaker)… or others! 

  • One area I didn’t get at all 10 years ago was even the concept of being a ‘source of challenge’ for others. If you can’t be a source of challenge for yourself then you are likely significantly under achieving. If you can’t be a source of challenge for others then they are likely significantly under-levelling up. 

• Jingle: learning how to be a source of challenge… is a source of challenge… you’ve got to challenge the source of the challenge! 

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I think that what a visionary is can be shown as a classic iceberg = what you see is the outcome of more complex mechanisms.

I think the impact that support, challenge and inspiration can have is likely an upside down pyramid.

• I think the impact that support can have is less than challenge. 

• You only have 24 hours in a day and can support people only so much. 

  • Often 1 hour of support given = 1 hour of support received. 

• But someone can challenge themselves when you are not around! 

  • I think that challenge normally means you need to interact with someone, eg they work in your team. 

  • 1 hour of challenge provided can turn into 10 hours of someone challenging themselves. On average the multiplier of challenge is bigger than support. 

• However, one can get inspiration from people you never meet. 

  • As an example I’m inspired by Andrew Carnegie and he died ~100 years ago. I hope I inspire some of the people at Edrolo even though we don’t work together on a daily basis. 

  • If you’re inspired/or others are, the effects of inspiration are limitless because when you are inspired you are enabled.

If you want to get to visionary status...

• L1: Source of Positive Sum Support

  • Good team players can make good managers because they enable and create self-managing people, they don’t just manage people well. 

  • Work on yourself to be self-sufficient 80-90% of the time. 

  • Help others to level up to the point of being self-sufficient 80-90% of the time. 

  • If you are properly in a state where  you need support, then ask for it = Positive Sum

  • If someone properly needs support, then provide it = Positive Sum

  • But if someone doesn’t need support then don’t provide it. Providing support here = Negative Sum

  • We don’t want dependents, we don’t want independents, we want a mutually positive sum ecosystem.

• L2: Source of Challenge

  • Roger Federer’s coach wouldn’t beat him in a game of tennis, but hopefully Federer’s coach makes Federer a better tennis player than he would be if the coach wasn’t around. 

  • There are different kinds of jobs, and while not everyone needs to be nor should be like this, I hope many people are like this: “Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally.” Sam Altman. 

  • If this is your aim then you should be challenging yourself every day at work. Likely not all day everyday, but likely at least some part of each day. 

    • Take a moment to think about those you work with, who makes you feel supported, challenged or even inspired? How do they do it? Then, who do you support or challenge? How do you do it?

  • Learning how to challenge others in a way they want to lift is key. Some blogs:

    • A framework to articulate expectations: Level of expectations ≈ Amount of new 

    • Professional self development: an essential tool to cultivate yourself, an essential capability to build inside of companies. 

    • I almost never start off knowing how to make something better

    • Growth generations: current skill levels < growth rate of your skill levels

    • Building innovation ability in others = the best thing you can do? 

  • But it’s hard to challenge people much if they don’t respect you. 

  • Michael Jordan “I never asked anyone to do anything I didn’t do.” 

  • Learning how to challenge people in a positive sum way is key. Like most things, I think one gets better at challenging people by trying to first challenge yourself, and then to challenge others! ***more on this below

• L3: Source of inspiration

  • I wrote this blog on inspiration. 

  • Inspiration = 1. Being inspiring + 2. Saying inspiring things

    • 1. Being inspiring = 1.1 Aim to be the best + 1.2 do the work to be the best + 1.3 When you get knocked down get up

    • 2. Saying inspiring things = … saying inspiring things hopefully each day or week. 

  • In some respects inspiration is challenging others indirectly = Having others be inspired to challenge themselves to level up

Positive Sum vs Negative Sum Challenge

• There is much literature on how high expectations are good for learning outcomes. As they say, people rise to the level of your expectations if they feel supported and adequately challenged. 

• Model:

  • Low expectations = Bad

  • High expectations = Good

  • Unrealistically high expectations = Bad

• Normally finding the middle ground is key. 

  • This can be messy and challenging for you as you navigate the intricacies of your team.

  • As an early manager I tried to help people as much as possible. Now I think you want to be the best at ‘helping others help themselves’. 

  • As an early manager I wanted to be supportive, which often meant expectations that were too low (well I wasn’t consciously thinking about what the right level of expectations were). I think one way I’ve been able to level up significantly in the last 10 years is as a positive sum source of challenge. 

  • At work, as long as challenge is positive sum, I think the more the better. 

  • As per positive sum support: I think you should be supporting someone 10-20% of the time and only when external circumstances necessitate it. 

  • I think you likely should be challenging people to some extent for the other 80-90%.

  • … and hopefully inspiring yourself and others 100% of the time! 

If you only take away one thing

• I find at work that often it’s easy to support people too much. 

• And easy not to challenge others enough. 

Counterproductive school mindsets: one of the most important forms of education are positive sum mindsets

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 8 mins

Summary: Whether you know it or not, there are likely principles / mindsets governing the events in your life. A counterproductive principle / mindset can make it very hard to have a good outcome. I believe building a positive sum ecosystem, with the right principles and helpful not harmful mindsets, is one key to building a good life and improving the common good. 

Harmful Mindsets / Principles often inculcated at school that I think are useful to try and undo / level up!

• Details on this below on each of these

• The idea of growth mindset is now well known in schools, and I don’t know of a school that isn’t trying to help build growth mindsets, so things aren’t as bad as the 90s, but IMO on average schools and people can still do much better at ‘moving towards the green’. 

• Jingle: Either you manage your mindsets or your mindsets manage you! 

• Outcome = 1. External event => 2. Principles / Mindsets => 3. How you process

  • I used to spend lots of time trying to have good output… and wasn’t even aware of mindsets! 

  • Now I spend significant  time trying to discover and build helpful mindsets and principles. 

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Details 

Outcome = 1. External event => 2. Principles / Mindsets => 3. How you process

• They say that ‘mindsets are psychological prisons’. 

• “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ― Carl Jung

• I didn’t realise that a principle / mindset was significantly affecting almost all of my life until starting ~ 10 years ago. 

  • What Duncan 15 years ago thought: Outcome = 1. External event => 2. Principles / Mindsets => 3. How you process

  • What Duncan today thinks: Outcome = 1. External event => 2. Principles / Mindsets => 3. How you process

• An example of a mindset / principle

  • I’m a fan of “Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West” by Jin Li. 

  • Li shows how the western canon of literature purports that “learning privileges those who have superior ability” AKA fixed mindset. While the eastern canon purports “learning does not privilege anyone and neither does it discriminate against anyone. Everyone is capable of seeking and achieving knowledge regardless of one's inborn capacity and social circumstances” AKA growth mindset. 

  • Many of the stories we have grown up with, in books, songs, movies etc in the west say ‘someone’ is born great at sport / music / academics / etc or not. While in the east the books, signs, movies, etc someone does well at sport / music / academics / etc it is through the hard work of levelling themselves up. 

  • “By explicitly stating hidden assumptions of Western culture, Li not only deftly expresses how well she understands you (which can be a bit unnerving), but demonstrates how your most deeply held beliefs, so deep that you would not have even considered them beliefs but obvious truisms, not only don't have to be accepted by other cultures, but in fact usually aren't.” 

  • Hmmm, what kind of inculcation / indoctrination are we reinforcing in young people? Is it locking them in a prison or setting them free? Are we opening people's minds or closing them? 

• A summary of  “Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West” by Education Bookcast. 

  • Chinese learning attitudes: 

    • Number one, learning is the most important thing in life, it is life's purpose. 

    • Number two, learning enables one to become a better not just smarter person. The ultimate purpose of learning is to self perfect and to contribute to others at the same time. 

    • Number three, learning is a lifelong process. It starts early in life and continues throughout one's life. 

    • Number four, the kind of knowledge that sets one person apart from another does not come to one automatically, one must seek it. seeking knowledge requires resolve, diligence, endurance, or hardship, steadfastness, concentration, and humility. One must have what the Chinese call a heart and mind for wanting to learn or how she has seen a passion for learning. 

    • Number five, learning does not privilege anyone and neither does it discriminate against anyone. Everyone is capable of seeking and achieving knowledge regardless of one's inborn capacity and social circumstances. 

    • Number six, one begins the learning process as a beneficiary from others dedicated guidance, but one will become a benefactor to others learning and self cultivation as one matures, making harmony with the world. 

  • Now, here are the traditional western notions: 

    • Number one, human curiosity about the external world is the inspiration for knowledge. 

    • Number two, relentless spirit of inquiry will lead to knowledge. 

    • Number three, mind has the highest human faculty that enables this inquiry. 

    • Number four, reason not heart, is the process by which we know the world 

    • Number five, learning privileges those who have superior ability, and 

    • Number six, the individual is the sole entity for inquiring, discovering, and ultimate triumph.

  • Comment:

    • Which of these attitudes do you think is going to lead to better learning (mindset) outcomes? 

    • Oh god, how much of this socio-cultural indoctrination is reinforced around me!?! 

    • As another example of cultural (socio cultural programming differences), on average children of Chinese parents have the highest motivation to do a task when their mother has input, and western children have the lowest motivation when their mother has input! 

What I believe is common/traditional for schools in the west to inculcate vs A better outcome (how on average I think the world is)

• Growth mindset vs Fixed Mindset

• Fixed mindset = one's mental abilities are set and cannot be changed. 

• Growth mindset = one’s mental abilities can be developed. 

• Or the best graphic I’ve seen on growth mindset!

• Zero sum mindset vs Positive sum mindset

• Before the industrial revolution on average the world was zero sum. Eg. there was a fixed amount of food produced by nature, if you took more someone else got less. ie. the pie size is fixed. Then we could mass produce food/intensively farm, aka positive sum. 

• Now the world is on average positive sum. What this means is that on average the more capable everyone’s minds the more humanity can do. ie. the pie size grows based on human abilities. So technological progress isn’t limited as much by resources, but more by human ability.

• One outcome: don’t compare yourself to someone else and say they are better at maths than me, we want everyone to be as good at maths as possible. More knowledgeable people are the better outcome for everyone. 

• For more see: Positive Sum Mindset vs Zero Sum Mindset

• I’m good / bad vs The trajectory of my growth is what matters

  • In almost all mental pursuits you start at Level Zero. 

  • For ceilingless areas, you can level up indefinitely. 

  • So what matters is if you are levelling up, not if someone is currently at a higher level than you (AKA they are good and you are bad). 

  • You are ‘good’ at things where you have done the work to level up. 

  • You are ‘bad’ at things where you have yet to level up. 

• There is a limit vs Things are limitless

  • Traditional testing has a limit of 100%. Assignments often are given an arbitrary grade or % based on capabilities.

  • But in reality most things are limitless (aka ceilingless). There will likely always be more maths to invent, the best book today isn’t only twice as good as an average book, it’s more like 100x or 1000x… and the best book ever is yet to be written. 

• There is a right / wrong answer vs There is no answer

  • Again, often there needs to be an artificial ‘right’ answer for a test. 

  • When you are trying to eg figure out the best way to improve education I don’t think there is a ‘right’ answer. Just your current best view of how to help. 

  • Questions you cannot answer are much better than answers you cannot question. 

• External reward on outcome vs Internal reward on effort and trajectory 

  • External reward is a grade on a test at school. 

  • But I think you want to link your motivation to how hard you tried (effort is the secret to life) and whether this effort is being done well. It’s hard to be the person who never gives up! 

• Feedback is a dressing down vs Feedback is a way to help people level up

  • Often at school feedback is why you are getting marked down from an A+ or a 10/10. If you can show why their feedback is wrong then you can ‘claw back the mark’. So you are often trying to show why the work you did doesn’t have problems. This is classic ‘defence mode’ or zero zum. 

  • At work hopefully feedback is to try and help you level up. It’s not something to defend against, it’s something to try and understand incorporate! 

• … I’m sure there are more. 

If you only take away one thing

• I find that often one of the first things to address with people who are new to the workforce are the mindsets / principles they may or may not be aware they have from the traditional education system. If you don’t address this I can find you are often ‘pushing on a string’ when trying to help someone level up and to build a positive sum ecosystem. 

• Also, I think we should try and figure out what the most helpful principles / mindsets are and how to incorporate them into all education settings... if only someone was building an education company that might be able to help here ;).

Subjective Language: don’t use objective language for subjective things

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 2 mins

Summary: Discussions can be positive sum or negative sum. One of the best ways I’ve found to turn a positive sum discussion into a negative sum discussion is to use objective language when you should be using subjective language. 

Subjective Vs Objective

Use subjective language for subjective things. The vast majority of things are subjective. It’s ok to use objective language for objective things. When in doubt, use subjective language. 

• Jingle: the only way to be objective about subjectivity is that you can’t be objective about subjectivity!

• Using objective language often makes things ‘black or white’, which makes it very easy to strawman. Objective language often pushes people into ‘either or’ discussions which can often lead to ‘defence mode, not understanding mode’. 

• Normally the things you discuss are subjective. Many things don’t have ceilings, ie can be improved indefinitely. Eg how to live a good life, how to be a good friend, how to improve education, what is the best strategy for the project you are working on, how to help someone level up etc etc. If you are discussing something that is ceilingless then you normally just have your current best version of what to do, that hopefully you’ll be able to upgrade soon! I find that normally objective language makes it hard to discuss ideas. 

Word choice > Idea choice? 

• Outcome = Messaging * Message = Word choice * Idea choice

• If you mess up your messaging so much that many don’t even make it to your message, then you might find yourself in a mighty big mess! 

• Basically, messaging is what you wrap your message in, get the wrapping wrong and people often don’t understand what was underneath. 

• So yeah, I think it’s quite possible that word choice is more important than idea choice. 

• One of the most important components of word choice to me is having appropriately soft, subjective language. 

Positive sum support: done well support is a positive sum outcome, not making someone dependent on you

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 8 mins

Summary: Leaders make more leaders, not more followers. Managers make self managing people, they don’t manage people well. 

• Work on yourself to be self sufficient 80-90% of the time. 

• Help others to level up to the point of being self sufficient 80-90% of the time. 

• If you are properly in a time you need support, then ask for it = Positive Sum

• If someone properly needs support, then provide it = Positive Sum

• But if someone doesn’t need support then don’t provide it. Providing support here = Negative Sum

Love Love (when to provide support) Vs Tough Love (when to push someone to support themselves)

• Asking for help when you don’t need it = Robbing yourself of the opportunity to level up self sufficiency

• Providing help when it’s not needed = Creating dependency of the other on you

• Asking for help when help is needed = Not a sign of weakness, but a sign of self awareness

• Not providing help when help is needed = Screwing the other person and ultimately yourself as the ecosystem is weaker

• Jingle: We don’t want dependents, we don’t want independents, we want a mutually positive sum ecosystem.

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Self Management = Transformation Point = Self Authoring 

• Richard Barrett Model

• Others build you to the transformation point. You can build yourself after the transformation point. Others are likely needed to get you to be able to self manage. But after that point not only can you self manage, you likely can level up others to get to the self management point. 

• Robert Kegan Model

• Joining Barrett and Kegan:

• If these numbers are to be believed, ~36% of the population in a developed country get to the transformation point. 

• Comment:

  • One articulation of what a manager does is to get people up the curve to the transformation point, IE the point they can self manage. I don’t think one should try to be the ‘best helper of others’, but the best at ‘helping others help themselves’. 

  • Good at helping others = Making people dependent. 

  • Good at helping others help themselves = Setting people free. 

What is self management? Some thoughts on this through the lens of ‘Emotional Intelligence’

• Goleman model: 

  • Self-awareness – the ability to know one's emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals and recognize their impact on others while using gut feelings to guide decisions.

  • Self-regulation – involves controlling or redirecting one's disruptive emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.

  • Social skill – managing relationships to get along with others

  • Empathy – considering other people's feelings especially when making decisions

  • Motivation – being aware of what motivates them.

• DA model munging

• Comment:

• I’m going to oversimplify here to say you want people to get to the point where they don’t need external support the vast majority of the time. AKA to the point of self sufficiency, AKA the transformation point. 

• I want to help, I don’t want to have to help...most of the time... 

No human is an island… or at least done well (positive sum), we are stronger together. 

• Ok, so you want to get to be ‘self sufficient / not need external support’... but there likely will be times when you should ask for and / or happily receive support. 

• Asking for support all the time is IMO silly. Asking for support 0% of the time is IMO just as silly. 

• My rule of thumb is that someone should be self sufficient 80-90% of the time. When they need support there needs to be a good reason. IMO if someone is asking for support when they don’t need it, then it’s normally a bad (negative sum) idea to provide support. 

  • There are a range of potential reasons that someone genuinely needs support. They can include:

    • Extenuating external circumstances

    • Stretched far beyond current capabilities with no prospect of being able to upgrade self before the piece of work needs to be done

    • Risk of deadlines being missed that cannot be renegotiated

  • If you’re finding you’re never needing to ask for help, you might be ‘playing it safe’. This means you might be missing out on potential growth.

• Positive Sum Support Vs Negative Sum Support

  • Let’s say there are two types of time: Type 1: Normal and Type 2: Support Needed. 

  • During normal times a unit of work costs one unit of energy. 

  • Example 1: Extenuating circumstances requiring additional support

    • When support is needed, one unit of help is valued higher than the cost to provide it if the support provider is in ‘Normal time’. EG one unit of support might require two units of energy from the receiver of help, but only cost one unit of energy from the person providing help. 

      • In other words the value of a unit of help is worth more to the person who needs support than the cost of the unit of support is to provide. IE this is positive sum. 

  • Example 2: Stretched too far with a task with risk of bad downside occurring

• When support isn’t needed, one unit of help is actually lowering someone’s self sufficiency and as such likely decreasing the overall amount a company can get done. IE this support is negative sum. 

• Overall goals: 

  • Work on yourself to be self sufficient 80-90% of the time. 

  • Help others to level up to the point of being self sufficient 80-90% of the time. 

  • If you are properly in a time you need support, then ask for it = Positive Sum

  • If someone properly needs support, then provide it = Positive Sum

  • But if someone doesn’t need support then don’t provide it. Providing support here = Negative Sum

If you only take away one thing

• With each person a company hires you want the output to increase. Hopefully in an exponential fashion. 

• One way this can be possible is if there is 1. A strong self sufficiency network + 2. A strong positive sum support network = You are part of a mutually positive sum ecosystem

• Support = Helping people get to be self sufficient 80-90% of the time = Not making people dependent… but independent

• Support = Helping people in a positive sum way when they need support 10-20% of the time = Stronger together 

• Yes this is a dichotomy, like many of the best things!

Automaticity: How to go from a novice to a master

By Duncan Anderson and Taylen Furness. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 10 mins

Summary: Automaticity is key to how masters in all fields function. By consciously cultivating one’s abilities in a certain area, I believe one can achieve automaticity and, therefore, mastery of anything. The best areas to achieve mastery in are areas that have wide reaching impacts, and that have multiplier effects. Want to melt minds with your seemingly magical mental moves? Become a multi-area, multiplier master! 

Automaticity = The ability to perform a task by automatic processing, independent of conscious control and attention. Strong automaticity is almost entirely automatic and can be carried out without attention.

• Working memory vs Long term memory. 

• They say you have 4-7 slots of working memory. This is where you can make your working memory work for you to build new automaticity. 

• However, it appears you can build unlimited amounts of automaticity in your long term memory! How cool is this? 

• Your working memory is limited, your long term memory is unlimited. 

"People who jump from project to project are always dividing their effort, and producing high quality work becomes difficult without intense effort. Meanwhile, your average work day can be leisurely, yet also productive, if you return to the same project each day. Do one thing well and watch it compound." James Clear

• A chess master needs less time to make massively better quality decisions than a chess novice. But the chess master can also do things that the novice can’t even imagine. So a master does higher quality versions of what a novice can do in way less time but also can do things a novice can’t do. The reason? Automaticity!  

• In your field of work, a master will be able to do what a novice can do in a far shorter amount of time AND at much higher quality… and also do things that a novice cannot do no matter how much time they are given. 

• So if you want to be really good at something, focus on improving at it for a LONG time. Focus on building large amounts of automaticity in one area. 

• Jingle: Automaticity turns complexity (what masters do) into simplicity. 

++++++++++

Details

Masters: built not born. 

• In almost all areas we start off as novices, and if we do the work to upgrade ourselves we can become masters. 

• One core way to upgrade is to build automaticity in more and more things. 

• The Dreyfus taxonomy

• Examples of building automaticity

• One thing that I think is super cool about automaticity: it doesn't necessarily take the chess master any longer to think of a high quality move than it does the novice to make a low quality move. In a game of chess, if you gave both the master and the novice five seconds to think of a move, the master’s move is going to pants the novice’s! 

• Why is this? It’s the difference between dial up (novice) and broadband (master) - while the novice is still waiting for the page to load, the master has already loaded 10+ moves - they’ve got more moves to choose from

• The master also can more quickly filter through this set of moves because they’ve seen each move played before and learnt the possible outcomes of it. It’s as if they have more time to think than the novice

• Master = 1. More moves + 2. More time. The novice doesn’t stand a chance!

• I think you can have the same thing happen at work. You can go from having no idea what you are doing to ‘checkmate in 5 moves’. 

• If you have done lots of upgrading, aka building automaticity, others can look at what you are doing and it seems like magic. It’s like being a chess novice and watching a chess master play, you don’t understand how they are coming up with the moves but they are crushing their opponent while barely breaking a sweat! 

• *Aside: the vast majority of workplaces are positive sum (IE win win) vs chess which is zero sum (win loss, yes I know you can have a stalemate). So seeing someone play well at work is normally good for everyone. 

• Another example is driving a manual car 

  • First off you have to very consciously change gears, control the clutch, all without stalling or messing up your gear box

  • Later, after hours of practice, you change gears effortlessly without even thinking - that’s automaticity! 

  • Who needs automatic transmission when you have manual + automaticity transmission! 

• "Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence." - Daniel F. Chambliss

Neural net analogy

• An untrained vs trained neural net has the same input layer, output layer and neuron layers in between. 

• Training the neural net (AKA building automaticity, AKA loading schema into your mind, AKA building and seeing patterns) builds the right connection settings amongst neurons. This means the neural network can go from having no idea of what it is doing to being bloody good! AKA it goes from a novice to a master. 

• This is from ‘Brilliant - An Intro To Neural Networks’. 

  • You can play with the trained vs untrained neural network in this course. 

  • Untrained - See the output layer at the top has no idea of what is going on

    • In the right example, the number “2” has been drawn, but the neural net doesn’t recognise it 

• Trained - See the output layer at the top for very similar input has a strong idea of what is going on

• In the right example, the neural net strongly recognises the “2” as being the number 2!

• For reading you can go from having no idea what letters are to automatically recognising letters, to seeing whole words, to seeing thoughts as sentences, to intertwining your thoughts with the writers seamlessly. The input layer is the same, the output layer is something entirely different. 

• You can build automaticity to a level where you seemingly have otherworldly abilities. 

• This is an SBS documentary on adults who can’t read called ‘Lost for words’. One lady routinely gets lost as she can’t read street signs, train stations signs, etc. It’s super sad - to her, people who can read have ‘other worldly abilities’. 

• Again, I think you can do this at work. To go from looking at a problem and having no idea what you are looking at let alone what a good solution might be; to understanding the problem space almost instantly and being able to start articulating high quality solutions as fast as you can think! 

From individual data points, to patterns, to patterns of patterns, ad infinitum

• Making patterns your mind can see = Chunking (academic research name) = Schemas

  • Effectively one can build ever greater patterns of patterns and make more and more sense of a problem space! 

  • Building patterns, and then patterns of patterns is one articulation of ‘automaticity’. 

• Chess analogy

  • What a novice sees: 

• What a chess master sees

• An oldie but a goodie

• Effectively one can look at the same problem space but masters can see many more patterns / apply multiple different schemas / have higher automaticity.

• If I look at an AFL game I see the novice layer. 

• When I looked at a secondary school resource 7 years ago I didn’t really see much (was a novice). When I look now I see WAY more! It’s like I have a microscope or am ‘inside the matrix’. 

"People who jump from project to project are always dividing their effort, and producing high quality work becomes difficult without intense effort. Meanwhile, your average work day can be leisurely, yet also productive, if you return to the same project each day. Do one thing well and watch it compound." James Clear

• If you build high levels of automaticity in an area, you can have outstanding output with leisurely input. 

• Build automaticity in areas that have multiplier effects, and that can be applied to multiple areas. This is a core way to have epic output with leisurely input. 

  • Multiplier effect: 1+1=3

  • Multiplier example 1: Learn about Pedagogy (Pedagogy, most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners) and apply this to helping improve a maths resource. There are also likely learnings you can take from the maths resource to help improve a science resource. 

  • Multiplier example 2: Learn about making things engaging. Often the same area (eg curriculum dot point) can be interesting and relevant or boring and irrelevant. Making education delicious and nutritious is difficult but, done well, fun and rewarding. Figuring out how to make geography interesting and relevant has learnings for how to make science interesting and relevant. 

• A personal example:

  • At the start of Edrolo 8.5 years ago I was god awful at making secondary school resources. Why should I have been any good - I literally had never done it before. I was at Level Zero. 

  • But now I've spent a lot of time trying to get better at making education resources. Like 10,000+ hours. I better be better at making better resources than I was 8.5 years ago!!!!!

  • I used to look at an education resource ~5 years ago and have no real idea if it was good / bad or how to improve the resource. Now I normally describe what I’m looking at as fast as I can think. After I can understand something I can normally think about possible ways to improve something again as fast as I can think. This most definitely did not used to be the case. 

  • It feels to me like I’ve built automaticity in 100s of areas, and that these areas combine together to create emergent new possible outcomes (aka multiplier effects). 

  • There are lots of education resources to think about improving. From at least birth to 18, children are involved in some form of education. So the area that I’m levelling up in has no ceiling in terms of quality and a massive set of resources for which we can try and improve. Yay! I’m confident I can easily spend a life trying to level up here (build automaticity) and not run out of things to do. 

• Examples of areas I think one can build automaticity in:

  • General areas: 

    • Jobs To Be Done

    • MECE

    • Problem Solving Ability

    • Ability to articulate yourself

    • Perspective taking

    • Useful concepts for the modern world (eg justice, politics, economics, etc)

    • Etc etc

  • Specific areas

    • Detailed maths academic research

    • How to make education interesting and relevant

    • Understanding all key education resource players in the market

    • Etc etc 

If you only take away one thing

• They say that 5% of people have something biologically off in their brain that counts as a significant impediment. This means that for 95% of people you can become a master in things if you do the work. I think this is bloody cool. 

• However, to become a master takes time, so the more you jump around the less likely it is you’ll be able to get to master level. The old adage of it taking 10,000 hours to become a master doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Also, IMO for most areas there is no ceiling, so you can continue to level up infinitely. After 20,000 hours you’ll be a master2! 

• Done well, becoming a master is fun, rewarding and good for the world. I’ve tried to pick an area that is big (the education system: pre school, primary school and secondary school) and where I think trying to make improvements is worthwhile. Working on making education resources for the rest of my life and working to constantly level myself up sounds like lots of fun. Hopefully, a life well lived. 

Upgrade Spreadsheet: A system to build changes / upgrades into your mind.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

Summary: Life doesn’t get easier, you get better at it… if you can systematically put changes / upgrades into your mind. Below is one system I use to try to upgrade. Very inventively I’ve called this the ‘Upgrade Spreadsheet’.  

Human mind ability = Number of upgrades one has put in

• A framework: 

  • Unconscious incompetence

  • Conscious incompetence

  • Conscious competence

  • Unconscious competence

• Comment

  • They say “Your conscious mind is limited. You unconscious mind is limitless.” You conscious mind has 4-7 working slots of memory, but you can have unlimited number of ‘unconscious upgrades’ in your mind. 

  • How do you go from “Unconscious incompetence” to “Unconscious competence”?

  • Figure out “1. What you want to change” and then “2. Have a system to build the change”

• Jingle: Hope is not a strategy. But hopefully if you use the spreadsheet below you’ll cumulatively build upgrades

How to change  = 1. What you want to change / upgrade * 2. Have a system to build the change / upgrade

• 1. What you want to change / upgrade

  • There are many ways to identify areas for self improvement. I’m not really going to spend time here on this area. 

  • Suffice to say I think you should be reading, writing, thinking and talking to others constantly about things you want to change. 

  • As an example, after most meetings and bigger projects do Post Game Analysis with someone to find possible areas you want to upgrade in. 

• 2. Have a system to build the change / upgrade

  • I have a spreadsheet open all day every day with date on the x-axis and things I want to change on the y-axis which I call the ‘Upgrade Spreadsheet’. See examples below of the Upgrade Spreadsheet. 

  • Then check the Upgrade Spreadsheet multiple times a day (eg morning, lunch and end of day) where I fill out next to each y-axis item if I have performed the new desired change / upgrade. 

    • I give myself one point for everything I do and a negative 1 point if I forgot to do something / did it poorly. 

    • I need to constantly check on ‘potential upgrade areas’ for them to eventually become ‘unconscious upgrades’. 

  • Over time things can move from: “Unconscious incompetence => Conscious incompetence => Conscious competence =>Unconscious competence”. 

  • Once you hopefully get to “Unconscious competence” you can stop needing to track this item in the Upgrade Spreadsheet. 

  • How long does it take to build an upgrade (aka Unconscious competence)? I’ve found it’s related to 1. How frequently you encounter a circumstance where you you can do the upgrade * 2. If you do the desired upgrade. 

Examples

• Example 1: implementing a framework for how to problem solve

  • 1. What you want to change / upgrade

    • Let’s say that you have built a problem solving framework that you want to use. It can look like this: 

      • No new (aka no problem solving) = go with what worked last time

      • Medium amount of new (aka medium amount of problem solving) = 2-3x options put forward and propose your favoured solution

      • Large amount of new = 

        • 1. Who is this problem for and create personas

        • 2. Set Jobs To Be Done for the personas

        • 3. MECE up the problem space

        • 4. Create model from the MECE

        • 5. Crunch scenarios through the model

        • 6. Synthesize

  • 2. Have a system to build the change / upgrade

    • Here is what an Upgrade Spreadsheet could look like for implementing this problem solving framework. 

    • Link

What I find normally happens is that you don’t ever remember to do the desired ‘upgrade’ (unconscious incompetence). 

• Then you slowly remember to do it as you remind yourself about doing it multiple times a day but you are not great at doing it (conscious incompetence). 

• Then you do things as you are reminded by the Upgrade Spreadsheet and you do things well (conscious competence). 

• Finally you don’t need to have this item in your Upgrade Spreadsheet as 90%+ of the time you remember to do the item (unconscious competence). 

• Example 2: Direct approach Vs Indirect Approach

  • 1. What you want to change / upgrade

    • Please see this blog for full details. 

    • You decide that most of the time you should try the ‘indirect approach’ first, if this isn’t working then you slowly get around to the direct approach. 

    • An example of direct vs indirect approach:

      • You have an idea for a product that you think someone should be considering: 

        • Direct approach: I think we should put this idea into the product.

        • Indirect approach: 

          • I’ve been thinking about the idea of ‘skills’ as a separate concept we can use to make the curriculum interesting and relevant. 

          • Then you sit and chat for 1 hour to explore the idea of skills. 

          • After this chat you ask the other to write some metacognition thoughts about the idea of ‘skills’?

          • Then, after this, you ask them if they think they want to include the idea of ‘skills’ in the product. Normally you are on the same page, but if not you have the basis for a really interesting conversation! 

  • 2. Have a system to build the change / upgrade

    • How I would put this into the spreadsheet. 

    • Link

What not to do (what 10 years ago Duncan used to do) 

• Read about something you think is cool and then hope that you’ll start magically doing it. 

• Get feedback from someone once that you think is quality and then hope you’ll remember to action at the appropriate time in the future. 

If you only take away one thing

• They say “Your conscious mind is limited. Your unconscious mind is limitless.” Your conscious mind has 4-7 working slots of memory, but you can have an unlimited number of ‘unconscious upgrades’ in your mind. 

• Jingle: Hope is not a strategy, but a good strategy can give you hope. If you want to upgrade, upgrade how you do upgrades! 

• Try using some form of an ‘Upgrade Spreadsheet’ and checking in on it multiple times a day. It’s so much fun. 

Team Dynamic: Building a great team > Hiring the strongest people you can

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

Summary: When hiring = 1. What roles you need + 2. What will a hire do to the team dynamic. Getting team dynamics right is a crucial part of a high performing team. 

Jingle: to have a dynamic team you need team dynamics to be right! 

Company vs Division vs Team

• A breakdown of the different component of a company: 

  • Company wide dynamics / culture: it’s likely there are some values that are company wide… but IMO not everything. 

  • Division level dynamics / culture: you might have the tech division, the sales division, the support division etc. Each of these divisions likely have different cultural attributes that suit them best. 

  • Team dynamics: for most white collar work you are not talking about having more than 6-7 direct reports per manager. Normally a team of 4-7 is what can work really closely together. 

• Comment:

  • What I’m referring to in this blog is the dynamics of a 4-7 person team. 

  • Inside a division you might have 1s or 10s or 100s of teams. 

  • There are likely some company wide dynamics / cultural attributes you want. There are likely some division wide ones as well. 

  • But I’ve found that the most important one to get right is ‘team level dynamics’. This is because these are the people you work with the most. It’s like this is the foundation upon which all else is built. 

  • I’ve also found that almost always each team is different. For the purposes of this blog let’s assume that a division is made up of 10 teams. You can often have eg 7 teams functioning really well in a division and 3 not functioning well. There can be many reasons for this such as a poor individual contributor, a manager who can’t lead, someone who is burned out, etc etc… but also team dynamic is a key area that can have a team not functioning well. 

“A champion team will beat a team of champions.” - John Mcgrath

• Part of a champion team is the team dynamic. 

• Each team is different. So I don’t think there is ‘one right’ way to have team dynamic. As an example how one sports team wins premiership might be very different to how another team does. So even inside a division I think that it’s likely getting the team dynamic right for each team is different and will take effort. 

• You can have someone who is really strong in a certain area but might be ‘team dynamic lopsided’. You can hire them but you need someone to balance them else their strengths will be more than offset by worsening team dynamic. 

• A way to think about team dynamic - lens 1: existing teams

  • Rate the team dynamic of all teams in your division from best to worst with reasons why. 

  • Draw a line of sufficiency - ie any teams above this line have a team dynamic that doesn’t need addressing. 

  • Then compare and contrast through the teams to see what is driving the differences in team dynamic. 

    • *Aside: I personally find it very difficult to understand team dynamics without being able to compare across teams. 

  • Figure out a plan for what to do. The normal areas I look at: 

    • 1. Speaking to an individual about changing part of their behaviour. 

    • 2. Looking to change part of how a team operates, eg decision making.

    • 3. What is missing from a team and how you add this through a hire.

    • 4. Thinking about removing an individual.

• A way to think about team dynamic - lens 2: hiring into a team

  • When hiring, say who you think a candidate is like in the existing company. Normally a potential hire is a combination of 2x people who are working at your organisation or who have left. 

  • Then put forward how you think the addition of this person will affect the team dynamic. IE will the potential hire improve / not affect / worsen the team dynamic and why. 

  • Comment:

    • Until about 3 years ago I didn’t look at the ‘team dynamic’ lens when hiring. 

    • When I first started trying to describe ‘team dynamic’ I was very bad at it. But like most things, if you spend consistent time trying to do something you normally level up. 

    • I’ve found that team dynamics are a crucial part of a high functioning team. 

Building a great team > Hiring the strongest people you can

• I used to just look for the strongest individual candidates. But you don’t want a team of ‘all captains’. There are people who I previously wouldn’t have thought of as a great hire but I now do when I take into account the ‘team dynamic’ lens. IE hiring this person will be great for team dynamic is a core reason to hire someone! 

• Example 1: People managers Vs Content Creators

  • Let’s say your team makes content for secondary education resources. 

  • I used to be looking for highly driven people who ‘always want the next opportunity’. Eg wanted to go into management. 

  • But we don’t want nor need everyone to do this. It’s arguable that the thing we need more than anything is great quality content. So people who love the subject matter and love making content are mega key. 

  • An analogy is that there are developers who love writing code and don’t want to go into people management, they just want to write code. You need people like this. 

• Example 2: Inspiring people Vs Lovely people

  • Loveliness is a superpower. 

  • Sometimes what a team needs is just a lovely person who makes everyone chill out a bit. Intensity can be good, intensity can be bad. Literally 1x super lovely person can significantly change the tenor of team discussions AKA team dynamic. 

• Some examples of different types of people we talk to: 

  • *please note: the best way I’ve found is to refer to how someone is, is to say how they similar to 1-2 existing people AND how we think they will affect team dynamic. Not by labelling them as ‘team player’, etc. 

  • Team player

  • Team leader

  • Coach

  • Chill person

  • Heavily driven hungry person

  • Camaraderie builder

  • Someone who loves making content / coding, AKA people who do not want to be in ‘management’. 

• If you can’t describe how a new hire will affect the team dynamic then I don’t think you understand team dynamics enough. 

Build vs Buy Team Dynamics

• Of course you can build team dynamics and affect existing teams. I think one should definitely have this as a focus. There are many frameworks and tools for building / changing team dynamics. One I like is Five Dysfunctions Of A Team: 

• Another from Brene Brown:

• However of course when hiring each new hire will affect the team dynamic. So you want to be looking for what you think will happen to a team dynamic when adding someone. I think it is essential to ask yourself what you think an addition to a team will do to the team dynamic. 

• One way I try to screen for team dynamic / soft skills is through knowing what you are looking for and asking questions like in this blog. 

If you only take away one thing

• Team outcome = 1. Individuals in the team * 2. Team dynamic

• You can hire for team dynamic. You can shape team dynamic for existing teams. 

• The sooner you start discussing team dynamics and trying to move them in the right direction the better you get it!

Detail vs Accuracy: ​​“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading Time: 4 mins

Summary: I normally find there is a tradeoff between detail and accuracy when forecasting the future. To make high quality decisions you want accurate predictions. One key strategy I have to make accurate predictions is to do the hard work to build a simple to understand explanation of the problem space you are considering. 

Einstein mental cultivation levels 

• The levels: 

  • L1: Smart

  • L2: Intelligent

  • L3: Brilliant

  • L4: Genius

  • L5: Simple

• Comment

  • “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” - Einstein

  • “If you can’t explain it to a 6-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” - Einstein

  • You are not born able to talk or do maths etc. You don’t start off smart or dumb, you start off without knowing much of anything! 

  • You don’t start off understanding new concepts, it is cultivated over time. You build concept proficiency to a point where you’re able to explain to others simply. The more you understand, the better you can explain. 

  • Jingle: IMO it is not simple to explain things simply. Something easy to understand (aka put simply) is normally the outcome of hard work. 

Detail vs Accuracy - I often find there is a tradeoff when making decisions about the future

• Example 1: Financial model for a company

• Detail: You do need a full detail financial model that has all of the expenses, eg every subscriptions to software and the pay for each employee. 

• Accuracy: But when you are making budgeting decisions for the next year it’s simply not possible to have all this detail in your mind at one time. I personally look at 3 revenue scenarios for the business (bull, base and bear) and then ideal spend plans for each division and the 1-2 key variables that each division has. For example productivity per head in sales. From this you can normally make quality tradeoff decisions about who gets what budget. 

• This can fit on one screen whereas the full financial model is 10,000s of cells. 

• Example 2: Forecasting completion times for a project

  • Let’s say 10 people are working on a project with a hard completion date of 6 months away. 

  • Detail: You can build a model that maps all the core tasks and the estimated time for each task to try see if you are under or over resourced. This is likely 1000s of cells in a spreadsheet. 

  • Accuracy: OR you can then reduce this full resolution model into a summary on one page with three scenarios for productivity (bull, base and bear). Under the base case scenario you might be just completing on time. You decide 20% buffer is reasonable so you need to add two people. This can normally be seen on one screen. 

• A rearticulation: 

  • Accuracy = Not missing the wood for the trees. 

  • Detail = Missing the wood for the trees.

A way to make Simple Accurate Decisions: One Screen Occam's Razor Description

• This blog is highly relevant: To solve problems effectively, first build a complete picture of the problem space.

• My experience is that building a simple to understand full picture of a problem space is not easy but is crucial.

  • Working smart = going in the right direction. 

  • Working hard = going fast.

  • If you are going in the wrong direction it doesn’t matter how fast you are going, you are not making progress. 

  • If you are going in the right direction it doesn’t matter how slow you are going, you are making progress. 

• My rules of thumb for a simple explanation:

  • 1. It should fit on one screen (be it a doc or a spreadsheet). Synthesising, summarising and simplifying  until it fits onto one screen is hard but is worth it.

  • 2. Normally 3-5 variables make up 80%+ of the problem space (link). Find the most important variables and explain them well. 

  • 3. Normally the most important 1-2 variables should have a quantitative measure or taxonomy (as well as a qualitative measure and be part of a model :) ).

• Comment

  • However projects are so varied that how you report massively changes. 

• The Occam’s Razor explanation is the simplest explanation that allows you to make high quality decisions. Too simple = bad. But I normally find that too complex is a far bigger problem. 

If you only take away one thing

• Simplicity is not simple. Simplicity is the height of making sophisticated (high quality) decisions. 

• I’ve found it takes a lot of hard work to get things to be easy (simple) to understand. But I’ve found it’s much easier to make high quality decisions when you understand things enough that they are ‘simple’. 

Culture: uniform in some areas, diverse in others, but always updating

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 

• Summary = 4 min

• Details = 5 mins

Summary: I think you can hire for hard skills and cultural attributes… but you should also try to build new cultural attributes in people and constantly update a company’s culture. Done well, I think culture is uniform in some areas, diverse in others, and constantly updating.! 

Hard skills Vs Cultural attributes

• Almost everyone is aware you can hire for ‘hard skills’. E.g. can Candidate A code? Then the candidate is given a coding task to see how well they can code.. 

• I was aware that people have different cultural attributes, I wasn’t aware of how to hire for cultural attributes for so long. 

  • See below for thoughts on how to do this. 

Build vs Buy

• Some hard skills you can buy, some cultural attributes you can buy. But others you have to build. 

• This blog is on ‘culture’ so I’m going to focus on cultural attributes. I normally think of cultural attributes on this continuum: 

  • Pointing the wrong direction ⇔ Neutral ⇔ Pointing the right direction

• Reasonable to expect someone to know about an area Vs Not reasonable to expect someone to know about an area

  • Example: I think it’s reasonable to expect someone to know about: diligence, developing emotional intelligence, building themselves. A more extensive list is below. 

  • Example: I think it’s not reasonable expect someone to know about: Sufficiency > Perfectionism, Learned Help Yourselfness, high level systems thinking.

• For areas that are reasonable to expect someone to know about: I want people who are ‘pointing in the right direction’. 

• For someone pointing in the wrong direction, it is normally hard to turn around. Typically, I don’t mind how strong someone’s hard skills are if they have key cultural attributes that are pointing in the wrong direction. 

Diversity as a feature Vs Diversity as a bug

• There are areas where I think you want cultural uniformity: eg diligence, hard working, show initiative, growth mindset, build themselves, intellectually flexible, no fuss, interested in the field your business is in (eg education). 

• But there are other areas where I think you want diversity: what books you read, how you think it’s best to help students, general interests, the areas you have tried to build empathy in. 

• I think I’m about to contradict myself, haha! I think you want as much diversity in your team for = 1. Diversity in understanding of other humans' experience + 2. Diversity of interests and consuming different viewpoints + 3. Diversity of skills beyond the core skills required.

  • Details on this below. 

• Jingle: So we want uniformity in everyone having diversity… Well, we want uniform diversity in the right areas. 

Cultural values that update over time - the only constant is change

• From Wait But Why:

• In 1953 it was mainstream to think smoking was fine. In 2017 it was mainstream to think smoking causes cancer.

  • Cultural values update over time, company's cultural values should also update over time.

• “Try to go to bed a little wiser each day.” Charlie Munger. 

• In some respects society is constantly building more and more cultural attributes. There used to be only ‘10 commandments’ and now the body of law is so large no one person can know it all! 

• Learn cultural attributes from others, influence people in a positive sum fashion, and build your own new cultural attributes. 

• What is one key strategy I have for doing this? Writing these blogs. An example of a cultural attribute I believe I came up with: Sufficiency > Perfectionism

+++++++++++++++++

Details

A list of cultural attributes I currently think people should have for Content at Edrolo and how I think about testing for them

• Diligence: 

  • Do they prepare for the interview and think things through properly (hopefully to the point of being a systems thinker)?

  • What do you know about Edrolo?

  • Why did you apply for this role?

  • What questions do you have for me?

• Interested in the field your business is in: 

  • E.g. is there an education researcher/author you like and why? 

• Show initiative: 

  • Have you made any resources for your classes? 

  • What is your favourite resource and why? 

  • What is a resource you’ve made that you don’t like so much? Why? How would you improve it?

• Growth mindset: (reasonable for people in education to know about this, not outside IMO)

  • Are you able to outline how you might think about good feedback vs bad feedback to a student?

  • What is something you’ve changed about your teaching vs 2 years ago?

  • Can we talk through something that didn’t go well and why?

• Build themselves: 

  • At work: 

    • Is there a new idea you’ve come across in the last 12 months that has changed how you teach? 

    • How do you reflect on your teaching in order to improve?

  • Non-work: 

    • Are you able to please describe a time you taught yourself a new skill, started a new hobby/found a new interest etc. and how you went about it?

    • Can you share one of your favourite podcasts/youtube channels/non-fiction books/documentaries etc and explain why you like it?

    • Describe how you learn most effectively?

• Social and emotional skills:

  • Please talk through one relationship with a student that went well and why?

  • Can you please talk through one relationship with a student that didn’t go well and why? If you had your time again what would you do differently? 

  • What is something you have learned about relationship building with students in the last year? (I want to time cap it so they need to show recent growth. If someone says nothing in the last year that is a signal). 

• Intellectual flexibility - pragmatists not idealogues: 

  • Is there something new you’ve found for teaching recently that you like? 

  • Is there something where you changed your mind? What happened and why? 

  • Was there a diversity teaching approaches in your department? Can you explain some of what they were please? (I’m looking for how they articulate differences in either a positive sum or negative sum fashion). 

• No fuss

  • What type of people do you like to work with? Why?

  • What type of people do you not like to work with? Why? 

A non-exhaustive list of cultural attributes that I think are reasonable for someone NOT to have before starting at Edrolo in the Content team (i.e. that we try to build in people after starting): 

• Sufficiency > Perfectionism

• Systems thinking

• Learned help yourself-ness / Post traumatic growth

• Resilience (one rearticulation of this is stress management skills)

• Many of the blogs on CloudStreaks are attempting to build skills in myself and others. So have a look through here if you want more ideas. 

I think you want as much diversity in your team for = 1. Diversity in understanding of other humans’ experiences + 2. Diversity of interests and consuming different viewpoints + 3. Diversity of skills beyond the core needed skills

• 1. Diversity in understanding of others

  • Diverse Teams vs Diverse People is a blog I wrote a while back. I think you want diverse people. 

  • First hand experiences ONLY VS Importing the experience of others VS Building profiles that represent different types of people allowing you to ‘masquerade’ as someone else: 

    • L1: non-diverse human = only has their first hand personal experience to draw upon

    • L2: diverse human = systematically imports the experience of others (e.g. walks a mile in the shoes of others through reading, speaking, podcasts, documentaries, etc) and thereby broadens their ability to empathise.

    • L3: ‘L2’ + ability to masquerade as other types of people = builds experience sets into defined profiles one can inhabit = one creates profiles from the imported others experience that she / he can draw upon to see how a type of person would view the world

      • E.g. create the following teacher profiles: 

        • P1: Traditional vs P2: Hard Worker/Traditional vs P3: Innovator. 

      • This means that if you are making a textbook you ‘pretend’ to be each of the profiles (e.g. if I was an Innovator (P3) how might I view the textbook?)

      • I find this extraordinarily fun. 

      • One of the best parts is figuring out the areas of similarity and difference between the profiles!

• Comment

• It’s impossible for one human to know all of the humanities experience… but it’s possible to know more than just your own personal experience. 

• 2. Diversity of interests and consuming different viewpoints

  • Diverse Reading vs Undiverse Reading AKA Building Knowledge vs Digesting Facts.

  • Consume information about as many areas as possible.

    • “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” Bertrand Russle. 

  • Consume many different perspectives from a variety of sources . (e.g. education, politics, economics, philosophy etc.) 

• 3. Diversity of skills beyond the core needed skills

• Example: you might need to write well and have quality systems thinking skills for Content at Edrolo, but on top of this it is good if people are into game design, script writing, acting, standup comedy, etc etc. 

If you only take away one thing

• They say culture eats strategy for breakfast. Well I try to make culture for breakfast 😜

• In some respects: Future ability = 1. Cultural attributes today * 2. Effort

• Getting cultural attributes right (ie uniform in some areas and diverse in others) and having an ability to influence and upgrade culture I think is key to your personal growth and those around you. 

Always be prepared to absorb a big hit. Always be focused enough to create a big win.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 12 mins

Summary: "Always be prepared to absorb a big hit. Always be focused enough to create a big win. Diversified enough to survive, concentrated enough to matter." - James Clear

Areas I believe you should be prepared to absorb a big hit but also be resourced enough to create a big win

• Work - financially

• Work - personally

• Non work - financially

• Non work - personally 

Work - financially how much money should one have on hand at a company (or conversely how much money should one raise in a funding round)? 

• Ideal = 1. Money to weather a crisis + 2. Money to invest in known high value projects + 3. Money for emergent new opportunities

• Ideal - L1 = 1. Money to weather a crisis + 2. Money to invest in known high value projects 

• Ideal - L2 = 1. Money to weather a crisis

• Ideal - L3 = Cannot weather crisis. This means it’s a matter of time till you die. 

Work - personally

• I’ve found a proper work crisis is ~1 month long, sometimes longer. 

• I think you want to build ~5 work relationships to the point where someone would support you deeply for ~1 month. 

• I think you want to have ~5 work relationships where you would happily support someone deeply for ~1 month. 

• “To have a friend, first be a friend.” One key path to having people who will be there to support you? Support them first. 

Jingle: If you want work to be a hit, be prepared to absorb a big hit. If you want others at work to help you win big, be prepared to help others when they are taking losses! 

++++++++++

Details

Work - financially: how much money should one have on hand at a company (or conversely how much money should one raise in a funding round)? 

• I’ve written about part of this before in “why having a Plan Z should mean you’ll never be dead”.

  • It’s not “hope for the best, plan for the worst”. 

  • It’s “plan for the worst, so you can do your best”. 

    • Planning for the worst => lowering stress as you can see how to get through the worst case scenario

    • Lower stress => execute better (do your best) so it’s much less likely that worst case scenario will occur

  • Plan Z = Running the worst case scenario to see what you do and how everything will be ok (ie not death of company). 

    • If your company dies under the worst case scenario occurring then IMO you are operating without enough reserves and / or spending too aggressively. 

• What I think is ideal: 

  • Enough money to weather any storm. Not doing this you are going to die unnecessarily. Ie have a Plan Z.

  • Enough money to be investing in your top 1-3x projects.

  • Enough money to capitalise on emergent new opportunities.

• In taxonomy form:

  • Ideal = 1. Money to weather a crisis + 2. Money to invest in known high value projects + 3. Money for emergent new opportunities

  • Ideal - L1 = 1. Money to weather a crisis + 2. Money to invest in known high value projects 

  • Ideal - L2 = 1. Money to weather a crisis

  • Ideal - L3 = Cannot weather crisis. This means it’s a matter of time till you die. 

• Comment

  • Stress = Death… ok a slight over exaggeration. 

  • But to me why wear unnecessary stress? I’ve found building a business like Edrolo is a huge amount of energy, you have to get so many things to work, to me you are fighting against the odds in so many places. If you can, why put extra stress on due to financial overengineering (ie not having enough capital to be at ‘ideal’)?

  • When Edrolo raises capital I try to make sure we are at ‘Ideal’. 

Work - personally: What kind of work relationships should you try to cultivate? What kind of support should you provide others? 

• I like this from Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships by Robin Dunbar

  • “The important thing about friends is that you need to have them before disaster befalls you. One reason is that, as we shall see later, people are only likely to make the effort to help you if they are already your friend. We are all much less likely to help strangers or people we know only slightly – despite what we sometimes claim. Making friends, however, requires a great deal of effort and time."

• This is an oversimplification and the numbers are more to be illustrative vs something hard and fast. 

• Types of time:

  • Normal = No support needed. IMO one should level up oneself to be able to be ‘self sufficient’ in normal times. If normal times are too much then either 1. Grow yourself or 2. Change job etc. 

  • Support needed = Only if extenuating circumstances make it so (note for me extenuating circumstances can be internal work or external work driven). Support provided here is ‘positive sum’ ie in the best interest of the common good. 

  • Support not needed but support asked for = “You get exactly the behaviour you allow.” Support provided here is ‘negative sum’ ie not in the best interest of the common good. 

• Close work friends (close doesn’t seem better than best haha) = 5 in number & will wear ~1 month of supporting someone… and for the right people often a lot longer.

• Best work friends = 15 in number & will wear ~1 week of supporting someone

• Good work friends = 50 in number & will wear ~1 day of supporting someone

• Work friends = 150 in number & will wear ~1 hour of supporting someone

• Acquaintances = 500 in number & you likely shouldn’t be asking these people for support

• Done well, the value of a unit of support received = more valuable than the cost to provide a unit of support. 

  • Let’s say Person A needs support for 1 month in a year. During this one month, Person A is taking a big hit and as such is in a crisis. 

  • Person B provides support for this month. 

  • The value of the support provided to Person A in this month is worth 2 units to each 1 unit it costs Person B to provide, as Person B is ‘not in a crisis’. 

  • Later in the year Person B needs support as they are in a crisis. This time Person A provides support. The support for Person B is worth 2 units for each 1 unit it costs Person A to provide. 

  • If done well, support is a positive sum outcome. Done well, it means you are stronger together… just hope everyone doesn’t have a crisis at the same time! 

• Non exhaustive list of types of help:

  • First of all, sometimes someone just needs to let someone know there is a lot going on but that nothing else needs to happen. 

    • Helping Humans Handbook - don’t just support, also push, intervene and leave alone!

    • When someone came along with things not going well, 5 years ago Duncan would almost always try to provide ‘support’. Now I attempt to think about whether one should ‘support vs push to lift vs intervene vs leave alone’. 

    • Conscious complaining is also something 5 years ago Duncan wasn’t really aware of. Done well, conscious complaining is the ‘self explanation effect’ for your problem / big hit / crisis. Self-explanation is a powerful learning strategy because learners “generate inferences about causal connections and conceptual relationships that enhance understanding” by talking through the problem in front of someone. Done poorly complaining is endorsing a counter productive narrative of events. 

  • Taking something off someone's plate:

    • Bulletproofing Your Business - “the person who does not have time to help has no advantage of the person who cannot help.” 

    • In short, try to make sure all mission critical components of a business have at least two people who can do them. 

  • Problem solving help - let’s build a plan together (see this blog)

  • Confidant - can have off the record conversations about anything and everything

  • Counsellor - this is more problem solving for emotional headspace, mindset, etc etc. 

  • True sounding board = 1. Will tell you when what you say is fair and reasonable + 2. Will tell you when what you say isn’t fair and reasonable (tough love). 

• Trust = Consistency * Time

  • To have a friend, first be a friend. 

  • Ideally I think you want to have “5x Close work friends who you would happily wear ~1 month of supporting them”. 

  • So to me relationships don’t have to be symmetrical, ie what is a ‘close work friend for you’ might not be for someone else… but you don’t want to be more than one level away. Ie someone might be a ‘close work friend’ to you but for them you are a ‘best work friend’. If you’ll wear 1 month of support for someone and they would only do 1 day for you then I don’t think things are great. 

  • To get to be a ‘close work friend’, normally you first need to level up through the other stages. How things might look: 

    • “Good work friends = 50 in number & will wear ~1 day of supporting someone”

      • For anyone in my direct team this is the starting level. Frankly if someone is in your immediate team and you aren’t willing to support them for 1 day we will be having a discussion. 

    • “Best work friends = 15 in number & will wear ~1 week of supporting someone”

      • Normally we are talking about working together for 6-12 months+ AND having been through a 2-3x rounds of providing support for each other for ~1 day. Ie 2 rounds or receiving support AND of giving support too reach this level. 

    • “Close work friends (close doesn’t seem better than best haha) = 5 in number & will wear ~1 month of supporting someone”

      • For me it normally takes years to get to this stage. Like 2-5 years of working together AND multiple times of ‘1 week long support being provided by both sides’. 

      • If you change companies every 3-4 years you might never have built a ‘close work friendship’. Before Edrolo (which I’ve been doing for 8.5 years full time) I think I had in total 2 ‘close work friendships’. 

  • In some respect, Friendship quality = Trust level = Time * What you have been through

• Comment

  • I think I now have 1. High quality ‘Close work friends’ & ‘Best work friends’ + 2. A full compliment in each bucket (ie ~5 close work friends and ~15 best work friends). 

  • This doesn’t just remove downside (ie mean I have support in the hard times); it also adds mega upside (ie people to have new ideas, people to build things with, people to share wins with, people to laugh with, etc). 

  • For me: Quality work relationships = A core component of quality work!

    • Quality work relationships = Support in the hard times

    • Quality work relationships = Better work output

    • Quality work relationships = More enjoyable work 

Non work - financially: no financial buffer = life is a bugger 

• Now of course people are of different financial circumstances and of course so are countries. 

  • I live in Australia. Australia is widely regarded to have the highest minimum wage on a purchasing power parity basis in the world (link). I think this is a good thing and that the US minimum wage is too low and that this causes heaps of negative second order consequences like high crime, poor health, unnecessary low education outcomes etc. 

• For me, my Level 1 personal financial goal has been to have ‘1 year’s worth of money saved up’ so that if everything went pear shaped I didn’t have to get a job immediately. 

  • 20s Duncan: When I was younger I didn’t have a mortgage or really any ongoing overheads. So my plan involved moving back home with my parents and having enough money to get through a year. If you don’t have to pay rent then your overheads aren’t that high! 

  • House owning Duncan: we’ll I don’t really own the house, the bank does! Now I want to have enough money to be able to not have a job and not default on my mortgage for a year. 

• Here is my personal money taxonomy: 

  • L1: Have enough money to get through one year of no work

  • L2: L1 + holiday money for one year

  • L3: L2 + money to invest in any opportunities that come up (eg startups from close friends)

• How does this affect me? 

  • I have set myself clear goals of money I want to save each month and then I manage spend into this. If I didn’t have the savings goal I can pretty quickly find things to spend money on! 

Non work - personally: the foundation of a good life is good relationships 

• “No one gets to tell you what you like, you get to choose.”

• IMO there isn’t one way to live a good life, hopefully you get to choose what makes sense for you. 

• I’m just going to talk about my current thoughts.

  • From Esther Perel

    • “Modern love comes with an unprecedented list of expectations. Relationships can of course be a source of amazing connection and joy, but they can also be really hard. We want our partner to be our best friend, lover, confidant, coworker, therapist, and so much more. We want from one person what an entire village used to provide. To take it a step further, we want a soul mate; we want in another human what we used to look for in the realm of the divine. We want that person to help us become the best version of ourselves.” Esther thinks the modern set of expectations are unrealistic, I agree. 

    • “We used to leave a marriage if we were unhappy, now we leave to be happier.” 

    • “The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.”

• As with Robin Dunbar above, I think you want ~5x ‘close friendships’ and ~15x ‘best friendships’. 

  • "Always be prepared to absorb a big hit. Always be focused enough to create a big win. Diversified enough to survive, concentrated enough to matter." - James Clear

  • A non exhaustive list of the types of time: 

    • Absorb a big hit types of time: 

      • True sounding board: person who will do ‘love love’ as well as ‘tough love’ for you.

      • Confident

      • Therapist

      • Support partner - will do heavy lifting for you if needed. See above for not needing support in normal times and ~1 month for ‘close friends’ and ~1 week for ‘best friends’. 

    • Focused enough to create a big win - this isn’t an exhaustive list 

      • Relax partner

      • Laugh friend

      • Share good times

    • I don’t have children, for a lot of people much of their ‘building time’ is growing children. I feel I get much growing time from Edrolo but I do also spend time trying to grow other’s children too! 

• Non relationship angle: I try to run at 75% of maximum work hours in ‘non crisis’ time so that if something comes along I can flex up to 100% immediately. 

  • The person who does not have time to help has no advantage over the person who cannot help. 

  • Conversely, if there is a quiet week and I can eg finish early on a Friday then I try not to load on more new work but take a bit of time to offset for when I need to flex up to 100%. 

If you only take one thing away

• It’s mainly to be prepared in all parts of your life to absorb a big hit. 

• One test measure I have for this: are there ~5 people in your life who you’d happily drop everything for to provide support for ~1 month. If there aren’t then there probably aren’t people who would do this for you. 

• Also, make sure you have time to help, ie don’t run at 100% of hours in non crisis times. 

• For me, the biggest hits I normally take are at work, building ‘close work friendships’ then is crucial. 

Good life = 1. Healthy Mindset + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to / stay in a good place

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time:

• Summary: 2 mins

• Details: 13 mins

Summary: One equation for a good life = 1. Healthy Mindset + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to / stay in a good place. 

Life doesn’t get easier, but you can get better at it. An easy life isn’t necessarily a good life. 

• Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. 

• Good life = 1. Healthy Mindset + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to / stay in a good place

  • 1. Healthy Mindset

    • Condition yourself to look for things to be grateful (vs pessimistic). Don’t do pessimism practice, do gratitude practice. 

    • Much of life is a Rorschach Test: those who look for beauty find it, those who look for ugliness find it. 

  • 2. Can learn from circumstances

    • If something bad happens, you take it as a learning opportunity

• 3. Have a plan to get to / stay in a good place

• If i’m in a good place but don’t have a plan for how to stay there = unhappy

• If I’m in a bad place but have a plan for how to get to a good place = happy.

Jingle: If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then ugliness is also in the eye of the beholder? So look to beautify :). Be the change you want to see, build yourself into the person you want to be. 

+++++++++++

Details

What is a rorschach test? 

• The Rorschach test is a test used by psychotherapists and researchers to gain insight into subjects’ unique perceptions. The test consists of a series of Rorschach inkblots, intentionally ambiguous spatterings of ink, that are then described by patients. These unique descriptions then form the basis of analysis: a scary monster may reveal one’s fearful disposition; a beautiful butterfly a sunny one - or so Rorschach intended. Although now largely dismissed as pseudoscientific in therapy, the Rorschach test serves as a useful metaphor for life: we all possess unique interpretations of otherwise neutral stimuli and these are informed by our past experiences and subjective mindsets.

• In short: you can look at many things in different ways, both positively and negatively. How do you try to look at things in a positive way? 

Cognitive behavioural therapy

• From Wikipedia: “Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention[1][2] that aims to improve mental health.[3] CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and behaviors, improving emotional regulation,[2][4] and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems.”

• One key way to change how you view something (ie positive vs negative on a Rorschach Test) is to change your thoughts and beliefs around something. 

Positive psychology: Gratitude practice vs Pessimism practice

• I’m a big fan of Martin Seligman (one of the founders of positive psychology) and Danny Kahenman (a current influential psychologist who has conducted landmark research on judgement, biases and decision making). 

• Neuroplasticity = Neurons that fire together wire together.  

  • In short you can train your brain to have certain prioritised behaviour responses (what Kahenman calls ‘thinking fast’ (vs thinking slow)). 

  • Eg do you want to wire in pessimism or gratitude? 

• Gratitude practice = Noting 3 things each day you are grateful for

  • Evidence shows that 1. slowly people increase the range of things they find to be grateful for, 2. People start to find things to be grateful for in ‘bad’ circumstances and 3. Start to have more grateful thoughts across a day. 

  • Examples

    • Increased range: I’m grateful for the yummy dinner I ate => I’m grateful for all the people needed to grow the food for dinner I ate => I’m grateful for the new environmentally friendly packaging at the supermarket => I’m grateful for the paddock to plate movement

    • Grateful in ‘bad circumstances’: I’m grateful for the opportunity to see what not to do from the behaviour another demonstrated => there is no good without bad, I’m grateful for the opportunity to have seen this bad thing as it helped me realise these good things I had take for granted (in some respects gratitude = not taking things for granted) => I’m grateful I’ve realised now that I acted in a way that I would change if I had my time again… imagine if I didn’t realise this? 

    • Start to have more grateful thoughts across a day: eg when walking to get a coffee and have a free moment do you think about how much work you have to do, how someone said something poorly in a meeting, why the weather is nice now but you have to work VS how you are grateful you got this project done, how someone said something poorly in a meeting but you now have the possibility to give them a ‘upgrade opportunity gift’, so nice that I get to be outside for a minute and see the dappled light through the trees. 

  • Comment

    • I've been doing gratitude practice each day for 5 years and I’ve found it’s totally rewired my brain. It’s literally the first thing I do in the morning before I meditate. With the benefit of hindsight, I used to have stuff all grateful thoughts a day. My best guess:

      • 5 years ago Duncan: 0-3 grateful thoughts a day on average

      • 3 years ago Duncan: 3-6 grateful thoughts a day on average

      • Today Duncan: 7+ grateful thoughts a day on average

    • But it’s more than this, it permeates my mindset through almost everything. For me gratitude practice is as valuable as meditation for my mindset and emotional health. 

• Pessimism practice = in some respects the opposite of gratitude practice

  • Eg instead of waking up and thinking of 3x things to be grateful for each morning you wake up and think of things that ‘aren’t going well, why someone did something annoying yesterday, how you have too much on today, etc etc’. 

  • Comment:

    • I’m not saying at all that one should be ‘unreasonably optimistic’. 

    • The glass isn’t half full (optimism), half empty (pessimism), it’s 50% full (realism). 

    • I try to be a realist who looks for things to be grateful for when things go well AND when things go poorly. I find a ‘grateful mindset’ is a quality precursor to be able to learn from a circumstance.

• Some more in this area: 

  • Those who look for beauty find it, those who look for ugliness find it. 

  • There are two wolves in your mind, the good wolf and the bad wolf. Which wolf wins? The wolf you feed the most. 

  • In some respects gratitude practice is pavlovian classical conditioning. Use the same idea to constantly build habits etc. An example of something that research says massively helps with mood is exercise (I’ve personally found this to be the case). First you build your habits, then your habits build you. Setting up the right habits like gratitude and exercising will pay off over your life. 

  • Helpful vs harmful inner voice

A good life equation = 1. Healthy Mindset (eg condition yourself to look for things to be grateful (vs pessimistic)) + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to a good place

The only way to fail is to fail to learn

• In the present good and bad things will happen, but bad things in the present can be good long term if you can learn from them. 

• “The good learn from everyone and everything, the average only from themselves, and the stupid already know everything.” Socrates

• I find that the ability to learn from ‘bad events’ is one of the most powerful things one can cultivate. 

• If you can learn from a ‘bad event’, then often it stops being ‘bad’ and can actually turn into a ‘learning event’... so something good can have happened or you can have learned something! 

• “A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it” - John Lennon

• But if something good happened in the present and you want more of this goodness in the future then best to learn about the good too :). 

• The only way to fail is to fail to learn. If you can learn from any circumstance then you can win all the time? 

• Either I was right, or I learned something.

• *Aside: 

  • It is of course important to acknowledge that the harder one’s environmental circumstances, the harder the work to condition yourself into a positive mindset will be. The number of ‘hits’ you’ve had in life, the more negative experiences there are to undo mentally through gratitude: traumatic/bad experiences also affect your neural networks. 

  • Stress outcome = External (Environment) * Internal ( Experience + Tolerance + Resilience)

  • In this way, someone who has experienced more hardship will likely have to work harder to undo conditioned negative experiences and thereby reach a positive mindset

A good life equation = 1. Healthy Mindset (eg condition yourself to look for things to be grateful (vs pessimistic)) + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to a good place

Viktor Frankl & Logotherapy

• “Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersively imagining that outcome.” - Wikipedia. 

• Some Frankl quotes: 

  • “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

  • “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

  • “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

  • “Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

  • “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.”

  • “Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”

• Or as Nietzsche put it: “One who has a 'why' to live for can endure almost any 'how'.”

  • Guess what, you have a big say in the why’s of your life! 

  • … and by this definition, the man without a why cannot withstand any what?

• More on this area

  • Post traumatic stress vs Post traumatic growth

  • Learned helplessness vs Learned help yourself-ness

  • Antifragile: 

    • Fragile = something bad happens and you are worse after

    • Anti fragile = something bad happens and not just aren’t you worse, you are stronger! 

A good life equation = 1. Healthy Mindset (eg condition yourself to look for things to be grateful (vs pessimistic)) + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to a good place

• The opposite of happiness is not sadness, it’s hopelessness.

  • The opposite of hopelessness = having a plan for how to get to a good place. 

  • I don’t care if I’m in a good place or a bad place, I care if i have a plan to get to a good place and / or stay in a good place. 

  • So, if i’m in a good place but don’t have a plan for how to stay there = unhappy

  • If I’m in a bad place but have a plan for how to get to a good place = happy. 

• Micro plans

• Someone is not performing at work, what do we do? 

• COVID lockdown might go for ages, how do I do some new types of socialising (eg online cooperative multiplayer games)?

• Macro plans

  • Where does passion come from? You can create, grow and sustain passion!

• 10x work goals: human beings, not human doings - thoughts on how epic work can be a reason for being

• *aside: 

  • One lens I have for life: 5 days a week of purpose, 1 day a week of play, 1 day a week of peace. 

  • I don’t think one should be looking for ‘macro meaning’ in all hours of all days. As an example, to me relaxing done well is recharging. 

  • Purpose = 1. Fun * 2. Consequence

  • Play = 1. Fun * 2. No consequence

  • Peace = 1. doing nothing (aka not doing fun) * 2. No consequence

If you only take away one thing

• Don't be bitter, be better. Bad things will always happen, it’s crucial to deal with bad things in a good way! 

• I don’t think you can be given a good life, but I do think you can build one. 

• Hopefully some of the strategies in this blog help!

Ideas vs Ego: disassociating your ideas from your ego is key to growth

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins 

Summary: To me, far more important than ‘how good one is today’ is the ‘trajectory of one’s growth’. As such what matters is not if one is right or wrong but how fast one can upgrade. A key strategy I have for improving upgrade trajectory is to try to dissociate one's ideas from one’s ego. The corollary of this is to set the expectation in meetings that feedback is about ideas, not about individuals (ego). 

Jingle: If you want to have a massively capable mind (AKA have done lots of upgrades, AKA have a large ego), then first I think you need to let go of your… ego! 

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Details

What matters is not ‘how good one is today’ but the ‘trajectory of one’s growth’. 

• I think it’s innate not to like being ‘wrong’, but trying not to be wrong can be a large impediment to growth. 

• Ideas vs Facts

  • For Facts there is a right / wrong. Eg today is Saturday, eg the coffee costs $4. 

  • For Ideas there is no right / wrong, just your current best version of what to do. Eg how to best spend a Saturday. Eg how to best make a coffee. Eg how to improve education the most. Eg how to best be a friend. 

• Ergo, for Ideas you can never not improve further. 

  • *aside: this also relates to the idea of places with ceilings vs ceilingless places. 

• As such, for Ideas, what matters is not being right / wrong, but the trajectory of your improvement with Ideas. 

For most of high school there is an artificifical ‘right / wrong’ (ceiling of 100%). For most Ideas in life not only isn’t there an agreed upon right/ wrong, things can almost always be improved.

• For example you can get 10/10 on the english essay, or A+ for a history project. 

• At school if you can defend against someone why you are ‘right’, then you often get the ‘mark’ and a good outcome.

• In life if you defend against someone why your Idea is ‘not wrong’, you often lose the opportunity to upgrade your idea and get a bad outcome. 

• I find that normally the default story is to try to defend against why someone says your thought might be ‘not correct’. 

• But I think a far more helpful story is to try to collaborate with others to upgrade Ideas. 

• In short, normally in school it’s about the marks you get, aka your ego. 

• In the real world, normally it’s about trying to improve Ideas you and others have, aka about the Idea. 

• *aside: this is a partial rearticulation of ‘Defence mode Vs Understanding mode’

Give feedback about Ideas in public, give feedback about people in private.

• Often half the battle is about taking feedback as about the Idea, not about yourself (ego). 

• I think you want to set the expectations that in group meetings feedback is always about the Idea, not about people. 

• When everyone in a group meeting understands that all feedback is to improve an Idea, I find often the tenor changes. 

• This doesn’t mean you don’t give feedback more directly to people, just I normally find it much better to give feedback about a person in a 1:1 setting

• Clearly defining meetings as “For your information” or “For Discussion” also helps to guide what type of feedback you are seeking in a meeting - ones about ideas or ones about people? 

• Group people feedback can be handled in group meetings if the discussion is around group behaviour. 

• Personal behaviour should always be handled in 1:1 settings, this also includes emails 

  • some emails are better if sent directly to the person rather than to the whole team

Associate your ego with growth trajectory, not with being right / wrong. 

• Defending against feedback = Trying to protect ego = Seeing why you are not wrong = Not trying to see how you can grow

• Trying to incorporate feedback = Trying to upgrade Idea = Seeing where you can level up = Trying to see how you can grow

• Future self = Today self + Growth Today

  • Growth Today = Trying to incorporate feedback

• Normally what matters is not you vs others. What matters is you vs yourself yesterday. 

• I’ll often refer to ‘5 years ago Duncan’, I like to think I’ve grown a lot because of the work put into upgrade myself. 

Sometimes there is someone you feel that you want to impress so if they are putting forward ways to improve your idea, you might feel you haven’t impressed them. 

• However, often the best way to impress is to show your trajectory growing. 

• AKA is to show you have dissociated your ego from your Ideas. That you can incorporate real time feedback / upgrades and level up! 

• Fixed mindset = there is nothing wrong with your proposal = good

• Growth mindset = we found a way to improve the proposal = good 

  • Seeing mistakes as learning opportunities and positive experiences rather than focusing on the negative. 

  • Learning from a mistake can be > creating a new idea on your own from your ego.

  • The only way to fail is to fail to learn

Intellectual insecurity often lowers growth trajectory

• Zero sum = People have intellectual insecurity = About not getting things wrong = Feedback is about you

• Positive sum = Low intellectual insecurity = About trajectory = Feedback about Idea

• So in a funny way the best way to grow your mind is to not care about whether your mind is relatively strong / weak vs others (aka to let go of ego). The more you have let go of ego the faster your mind can grow? I think so! 

If you only take away one thing

• The human mind is the most complicated thing in the known universe. 

• I believe the human mind is limitless… if you get out of your own way! 

• One key to human mind growth is trajectory, AKA focusing on upgrading your ideas by seeing your mistakes as positive learning experiences AKA not worrying about being right or wrong. 

To solve problems effectively, first build a complete picture of the problem space.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

Summary: To problem solve, you should first build a picture of the problem space. A complete, internally consistent picture of the problem space is the foundation upon which any solution is built. If you have a poor foundation (incomplete or inconsistent picture of the problem space) then any solution is built on ‘quicksand’ AKA your proposed solution is likely to have significant flaws because of your misunderstanding of the problem space.. 

Problem solving = 1. Understand the problem space * 2. Build a solution for the problem space

• Jingle: If you want to build an epic ‘skyscraper’ solution for a problem space with many floors, first make sure your understanding of the problem space (foundation) doesn’t have any flaws!

• 10 years ago Duncan would often start immediately building solutions, now I start by first trying to understand the problem space. 

• Two key strategies I use to understand the problem space are: 1. To MECE the problem space and 2. To build a model for the problem space. 

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Details

The blind men and an elephant parable

• Six blind men who have never before come across an elephant  try to describe it. Each man has a piece, none has the full picture. 

Problem solving analogy

• For ‘knowledge problem solving’ there is no physical thing (problem space) you are looking at, so in some respects you are ‘blind’. 

  • What I find is that often for ‘knowledge problem solving’ individuals can be like the blind people first encountering an elephant. In the worst case, everyone has one piece but thinks it’s the full picture. Then they talk to others and feel like others are missing the point! 

Suggested approach to problem solving vs. Suboptimal approach

• Suggested steps for problem solving:

  • Step 1. Define Job To Be Done.

  • Step 2. Build the full picture for the problem space (i.e. get all the pieces and see how they fit together).

  • Step 3.  Have a positive sum discussion to figure out how to join everyone’s pieces all together into the full picture.

  • Step 4. Synthesize what solutions make sense for the problem space.

• Suboptimal steps that can lead to suboptimal outcomes:

  • Step 1. Define Job To Be Done.

  • Step 2. Build part of the picture for the problem space (i.e. get only some of the pieces, not the full picture AND don’t join them together).

  • Step 3. Have a negative sum debate about how your piece is more important than someone else’s piece 

  • Step 4. Don’t synthesize at all! 

• An example of a discussion when the suboptimal approach is used:

• Person A: I think ‘a snake’ is really important.

• Person B: I think ‘a tree’ is really important.

• Person A: You are not listening to me.

• Person B: You are not listening to me.

• Comment

  • There normally aren’t two equally valid solutions for a given problem space. 

  • Often I find when two people have different points of view it’s because one or both of them don’t have the full picture. 

Analogies for building ‘the picture’

• Each piece is a dot point. 

• You need to join them together to form a picture (i.e the ‘rope’ is actually a tail when connected to other pieces).

• But more than this, some pieces (ideas) aren’t actually part of the picture. So you don’t have to incorporate all of them.

• Another way to think about this; collect pieces (data), join them into a picture (information), find considered solutions (knowledge) and then we can synthesise the knowledge into a theory or system that can be used in different problem spaces (wisdom)

Strategies for building pictures

• Strategy 1: MECE

  • MECE = mutually exclusive collectively exhaustive 

  • To build a ‘full picture for the problem space’ you need to MECE the problem space’. Without a proper ‘MECE’ you only have part of the picture or a distorted picture.

• A couple of examples of MECEs

• Strategy 2: Build a model and weight the factors 

• After you have ‘MECE’d’ the problem space, build a model to weight each of the variables to understand what to do overall (i.e attribute relative importance to each variable). 

  • *Aside: I’ve written about building equations to model reality in “All models are wrong, some are useful”. 

• Example: done well

  • Let’s say you are trying to decide between going to Restaurant A or Restaurant B. 

  • You MECE out the following 4 ‘pieces’ (variables): deliciousness, nutritiousness, cost and distance. 

  • How do you weight these factors and make a decision? You might do the following: 

    • ‘On Friday night I don’t worry about cost, nutritiousness or distance.’  - Duncan.

• Link if you want to play with the model. 

• The model says go with Restaurant A

• ‘On Tuesday, I want a quick and nutritious lunch.' - Duncan

• The model says go with Restaurant B

• Example: not done well

  • Possible problem 1: You leave out a factor (piece of the picture) like cost. Then your recommendation of which restaurant to go to is off. 

  • Possible problem 2: In the discussion each person is only considering one piece (variable). E.g. Person A thinks deliciousness is all that matters and Person B thinks that nutritiousness is all that matters. 

    • "If you just focus on the smallest details, you never get the big picture right." - Leroy Hood

  • Possible problem 3: you don’t weight variables. 

    • Either everything is equally important or everything is not equally important. Normally not everything is equally important. 

    • But more than that, some variables (pieces) can be deal breakers. I.E. not having this variable included means everything else doesn’t matter. 

  • Possible problem 4: including a variable (piece) that doesn’t belong in the picture. 

If you only take away one thing

• Problem solving is hard. Start by collecting pieces so that you can join them together and build the full picture. Then when you have a sufficient+ understanding of the problem space, build a model to find a considered solution.

• Remember, don;t fail at the startline by building solutions with only part of the picture!

A framework to articulate expectations: Level of expectations ≈ Amount of new

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 9 mins

Summary: How much progress someone should be able to make on a project is often related to how much ‘new’ there is in the project. If you have lots of experience you should be able to crush it on your first attempt, but if you have minimal experience it might take multiple attempts until you get to a good place (i.e. above sufficiency). We should therefore always seek to understand how much ‘new’ there is before we begin a project so expectations can be set in an energising manner.

Energising expectations = 1. The amount of ‘new’ is understood at the outset of a project + 2. The expectations hurdle is proportional to the amount of new

How the amount of new can affect expectation hurdles

• Problem size = Amount of new

  • No new = You should be able to reach 100%+ of sufficiency on V1 (your first attempt). Another articulation: if you’ve done this activity multiple times successfully before you shouldn’t have any trouble crushing it the first time! 

  • Small new = You should reach 50%+ of sufficiency on V1 and 100%+ of sufficiency on V2.

  • Medium new = You should reach 33%+ of sufficiency on V1, 66%+ of sufficiency on V2, and 100%+ of sufficiency on V3. 

  • Large new = You should reach 25%+ of sufficiency on V1, 50%+ of sufficiency on V2, 75%+ of sufficiency on V3, and 100%+ of sufficiency on V4. 

  • Extra large = You should reach 0%+ of sufficiency on V1, and 100%+ of sufficiency on V5+. Mega projects might take 50 versions until you reach sufficiency. 

    • In these cases, hitting sufficiency often also means setting a new high water mark.

    • For more about sufficiency please read this blog. 

• Going deeper for a ‘large amount of new’

• How does this relate to expectations in this example?

• Expectations that are too low = expecting someone would need10 versions to get to sufficiency when only ~4 may be required. This is not energising as there is no challenge and could be construed to indicate a lack of faith in someone’s ability.

• Expectations that are too high = expecting someone to be able to get to sufficiency on the first attempt. This is not energising as it is setting someone up for failure.

• Expectations that are energising (just right) = might be ~4 versions to get to sufficiency.

• Happiness = Reality - Expectations

  • Jingle: if you can’t set expectations for yourself and others well you can expect to be unhappy! 

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Details

When doing a project you need to figure out what the goal is (sufficiency) 

• Please read Sufficiency vs Perfectionism

  • Ceilingless vs Having a ceiling: Most things don’t have a ceiling, this means one can improve indefinitely. 

  • For things without a ceiling you can’t ever reach ‘perfection’. So you need to set a point where you stop trying to improve, otherwise you will only ever work on that one thing! EG the goal for Edrolo products = to be the new high water mark for all core areas. 

• Normally I have the goal of reaching sufficiency. 

• How long should it take someone to reach sufficiency? This depends how much experience they have with the problem they are working on. Another way to articulate this: how much ‘new’ there is. 

Problem size affects how much progress someone should make

• Problem size = Amount of new

  • No new =  You should be able to reach 100%+ of sufficiency on V1 (your first attempt). Another articulation: if you’ve done this activity multiple times successfully before you shouldn’t have any trouble crushing it the first time!

  • Small new = You should reach 50%+ of sufficiency on V1 and 100%+ of sufficiency on V2. 

  • Medium new = You should reach 33%+ of sufficiency on V1, 66%+ of sufficiency on V2, and 100%+ of sufficiency on V3. 

  • Large new = You should reach 25%+ of sufficiency on V1, 50%+ of sufficiency on V2, 75%+ of sufficiency on V3, and 100%+ of sufficiency on V4. 

  • Extra large = You should reach 0%+ of sufficiency on V1 and 100%+ of should reach sufficiency on V5+. Mega projects might take 50 versions until you reach sufficiency. 

    • In these cases, hitting sufficiency often also means setting a new high water mark.

• It may feel unintuitive that making 0% progress on your first attempt might be the appropriate ‘hurdle for expectations’. But sometimes 0% progress is exactly the right expectation to set? 

  • If you’ve never done something before I don’t think you should expect someone to know what they are doing. To me, what matters is not the absolute amount of progress someone makes but the trajectory of their improvement in progress. 

  • So I normally say I don’t mind if you make zero progress on this project on V1, but I do mind if you either 1. Don’t try or 2. Don’t believe you can make progress. 

    • “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.” Henry Ford. 

    • I know I said that for a small amount of new one should get to 50% on V1, but I’ll often say that 0%+ progress is fine as long as you 1. Tried to make progress and 2. Didn’t give up on yourself! 

    • If someone makes zero progress I’ll normally try and help. I find it very rare that someone makes zero progress

    • I find that if you don’t set expectations people often think that for V1 they need to get to 100%+ of sufficiency. IMO for any problem with a small+ amount of new, 100%+ of sufficiency on V1 is an unrealistic expectation. 

Net amount of new = 1. How much experience someone has with the problem - 2. How much support they are provided

• I think one goal of a manager should be to grow their direct reports. 

• One measure of growth is ‘how much progress can someone make on things that are ‘new’’. 

• One core strategy to get better is through experience. So if you have never had any ‘new’ to deal with then you probably aren’t going to be good at making progress with ‘new’. 

• I’ve found that many first time managers think that ‘good managers are good helpers’. This can often actualise as:

  • A. Here is a problem with a medium amount of new

  • B. As the manager I’m going to give you a medium amount of support. 

  • C. So the actual net experience is nothing new for the person tackling the task:

    • Amount of new = 1. New amount Medium - 2. Support size Medium provided by well-intentioned manager = 3. Direct report experiences net zero of ‘new’. 

• A core strategy I use to develop people’s ability to get better at ‘medium amounts of new’ is to 

  • ‘1. give them a problem with a medium amount of new - 2. Give them no support + 3. Set expectations properly (ie help them understand now much progress to make on V1)’ 

  • This means exposing a direct report to ‘new’ and not robbing them of a growth opportunity by providing support

  • If this was done without setting appropriate expectations this would be setting them up to fail

    • You shouldn’t expect someone to get something right the first time if they haven’t tackled it before and don’t get any support!

  • But if you set the expectations that you don’t expect them to get to sufficiency on their V1 then this can be energising: you’re giving room to grow with permission to fail.

• One approach to growing people’s problem solving ability:

  • Start off giving them problems with small amounts of new with no support and appropriate expectations. Once someone is good at small amounts of new then move onto giving them medium amounts of new. 

  • Now give someone medium amounts of new with no support and appropriate expectations. Once someone is good at medium amounts of new then move onto giving them large amounts of new. 

  • Now give someone large amounts of new with no support and appropriate expectations. Once someone is good at large amounts of new then move onto extra large amounts of new. 

  • Etc etc. 

  • Comment

    • One goal I have is to get people to be good at all sizes (i.e. amounts of new) of problem solving. This happens by giving them the opportunity to have experience with all sizes of problem solving. 

    • Once someone is good at extra large problem solving they are ‘free’. They can do anything :) 

Flailing is not failing

• You get good at medium amounts of new by doing medium amounts of new. 

• Energising expectations are setting expectations that are appropriate for the amount of new. 

  • Eg if you are given a medium amount of new, then the expectation might be that it will take you 3 versions to get to sufficiency. 

  • This likely means lots of ‘flailing on the way to sufficiency’.

  • Managers may try to help someone too much with the well-intentioned view to removing the ‘flailing’. In doing so they rob the opportunity to get good at dealing with ‘new’. 

  • Why do they do this?

    • Because flailing is often thought of as ‘on the road to failing’ 

    • Why do people think that flailing = ‘on the road to failing’?

      • Because the wrong expectations have been set (or expectations have simply not been set at all)

      • If you reset the expectation that ‘flailing’ = great growth opportunity and instead set the expectation that ‘you won’t get to 100%+ sufficiency and this is okay you’re creating a safe environment for someone to experience maximum growth

• So not only is flailing not failing, IMO flailing is a core component of levelling up your ability to deal with ‘new’. 

• Flailing * Energising Expectations = Growth

Expectations should be energising

• Expectations too low = bad.  You’re selling someone short!

• Expectations too high = bad.  You’re setting someone up to fail!

• Energising expectations = reasonable level of progress expected.  You’re setting someone up to grow!

  • Energising expectations set a reasonable hurdle that both parties understand.

  • Energising expectations maximise growth in one's ability to deal with ‘new’.

• But when should you help vs maximise the someone's ability to ‘flail’ AKA experiment with making progress with new? 

  • If you have time pressure on a deliverable then provide help. 

  • If you don’t have time pressure then don’t rob someone of the opportunity to grow, ie don’t fail to give them the gift of flailing! 

If you only take away one thing

• IMO what matters is not how good you are at something, but how fast you can get better at something. 

• I don’t want to get good at being taught how to do things. I want to get good at teaching myself how to do things. 

• I don’t want to be good at training others how to do things. I want to get good at growing others’ ability to teach themselves new things. 

• Jingle: you can get good at not being good at things. 

Sufficiency > Perfectionism

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

Summary: Most things in the world do not have a ‘ceiling’, meaning you can never not improve further. For ceilingless places, perfection is not attainable. As such you need to stop somewhere as ‘enough’, I normally refer to the line you stop as ‘sufficiency’.

Ceilingless Vs Ceilings

• Some places do have a ceiling. 

  • Eg do you properly administer the vaccine, you can’t 140% administer the vaccine. Eg is the water drinkable, you can’t have 140% drinkable water. 

• For ceilingless places you can’t ever reach ‘perfection’. 

  • Examples of ceilingless places:

    • 1. How good a book can be. 

    • 2. How to make the best coffee. 

    • 3. How to best teach maths. 

    • 4. How to be a friend. 

    • 5. How to best help the common good. 

Sufficiency vs Perfectionism

• Perfectionism = striving for something to be as good as possible, but perfectionism can be a concept that when what you are working on is ceilingless, can mean you strive for an infinite amount of time

• Sufficiency = When something meets realistic criteria in order to get a ‘Job To Be Done’ done

Lines of sufficiency

• The line of sufficiency is the point at which you cross where all criteria are fulfilled for your Job To Be Done. 

  • This can be somewhat subjective, but it is important to try define what your line of sufficiency is so you know when you have reached it.

• A non-exhaustive (aka sufficient :p) list of sufficiencies:

  • L1: done. 

  • L2: best effort in a time frame, 

    • eg whatever you can get done in 5 hours. 

  • L3: a number, 

    • eg. 100% for factual correctness. 

    • eg. Some people say ‘Ps get degrees’ and are going at 50%+ for university exam results. 

  • L4: new high water mark. 

    • eg As soon as you believe you are the new high water mark, stop and move onto the next thing. 

  • L5: new high water mark by an instantly recognisable irrefutable dealmaker

• I’ve found that often ‘perfection’ can be the default goal. 

  • For places that don’t have a ceiling, perfection is never attainable so obviously this is counter productive. 

  • Either everything is equally important, or everything isn’t equally important. 

    • IMO everything isn’t equally important. So spend more effort on the important things. 

    • Rearticulation 1: the line of sufficiency for very important things should be higher than for less important things. 

    • Rearticulation 2: Not everything needs to be perfect / the new high water mark, so investing the energy to get to perfection / new high water mark has an opportunity cost (ie robs you of the time to spend elsewhere). 

    • For some things good enough is enough, for other things you want the best in the world! 

“Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Winston Churchill

• For ceilingless places, you can keep improving forever, but we don’t have infinite time, you have to stop somewhere. 

  • For Edrolo resources, the line of sufficiency is to aim to be the ‘new high water mark’ for all core areas. Eg the new high water mark for theory, activities, questions and answers. 

  • Education resources are ceilingless - there is no such thing as the perfect lesson, content can be improved endlessly.

  • We don’t want to bring to market a resource we don’t deeply believe is the new high water mark for all core areas… but we have to stop somewhere. 

  • A resource that takes longer to get to market helps less people and means we have less time to build other new products

  • However, there are places within our resources which have a ceiling in making a resource however, eg 100% factual correctness. Of course for factual correctness Edrolo’s aim is 100% factual correctness and we try extraordinarily hard to do this. 

• An equation for how to improve the world:

  • Lens 1: Improvement to the world = 1. How much better your solution is * 2. How many people use your solution

    • If you increase “1. How much better your solution is” by taking much longer to build the resource, then “2. How many people use your solution” might overall decrease the amount of net improvement to the world. 

  • Lens 2: Improvement to the world = 1. How many solutions you are able to implement * 2. How many people  use your solutions

    • The more time you have to make solutions, the more solutions you can make

    • The more solutions you implement, the more problems that are solved

    • If you spend too much time on one solution, the opportunity cost could be many other problems left unsolved

• I think the aim at Edrolo should be to try and utilize the resources we have (i.e cash, people and time) to achieve as much high quality improvement to education as we possibly can

  • This means that we firstly optimize to have the best solution (new high water mark) and secondly we solve as many problems with the resources we have at our disposal

  • Optimizing for sufficiency = stopping at a reasonable point so you can solve the next problem

Examples of how to apply sufficiency > perfectionism at Edrolo

• Authoring a lesson

  • Perfectionism = Spending 5x the average time of other Edrolo authors due to wordsmithing every sentence to be as articulate as possible

  • Sufficiency = Content is a new high water mark, no factual errors, meets writing conventions/tone and aligned to recipe 

• Recording a video solution

  • Perfectionism = No errors in any of the presented audio, perfectly done in one take

  • Sufficiency = Allow for natural pauses, um, ahhs etc

• Creating a visual asset 

  • Perfectionism = Super detailed illustration that looks realistic

  • Sufficiency = Abstract illustration that makes sure the core concept comes across

• Creating a recipe for a new product

  • Perfectionism = Spending 5 years finessing details of a recipe before bringing it to market so you are 100% confident in every decision

  • Sufficiency = spending several months creating a recipe to the point you are highly highly confident that the resource will be the new high water mark for all core areas. 

Serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

• God grant me the serenity to accept that for some things done is good enough, courage to work at some things until they are the best in the world, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

• For many tasks I work on with others, before we start we’ll try to together define ‘the line of sufficiency’. For better or worse I think almost everything has a line of sufficiency. Not defining sufficiency is often a path to wasting time, spending too little time or spending too much time. 

• It’s unlikely you can be the best at everything in the world, but I hope you are aiming to be the best at atleast a few things. 

• In this way, I think sufficiency actually is a core strategy to be able to be the best at some things. 

• Jingle: Learning about sufficiency sufficiently allows one to fight ‘negative sum perfectionism’ and thereby (hopefully) be the best (at something)! 

• OR: Sufficiency > Perfectionism.

Conversation outcome = 1. Mindset * 2. Messaging * 3. Message

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

Summary: Conversation outcome = 1. Mindset * 2. Messaging * 3. Message

• 1. Positive Sum Conversation Mindset = 1.1 What did I learn? + 1.2 How does the other person feel? 

• 2. Messaging = 2.1 Empathy * 2.2 Word choice * 2.3 Confidence

• 3. Message = 3.1 Quality ideas + 3.2 Ideas put forward ‘like a scientist’ + 3.3 Not committing any logic fallacies

• Jingle: Getting good at conversations ≈ Getting good at life

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Details

1. Positive Sum Conversation Mindset = 1.1 What did I learn? + 1.2 How does the other person feel?

• Please read the blog link if you would like more info.

 2. Messaging = 2.1 Empathy * 2.2 Word choice * 2.3 Confidence

• I’ve found that messaging is hard to do well. But even if you do messaging well, if you don't have a positive sum conversation mindset then you are likely pushing sh!t uphill… and we haven’t even gotten onto message yet! 

• Empathy = 1. Understand how the other is feeling + 2. Have the other believe you understand how they are feeling

  • In some respects, empathy is the opposite of narcissism. 

  • I believe one key part of a good conversation outcome is to have someone feel good towards you at the end of a conversation. A key strategy I have for this is ‘empathy’. 

  • One way I attempt to build and show empathy is to ask questions like: ‘How did that make you feel?’ ‘Did that make you feel X?’ ‘Would this have impacted you in [the following way]?

  • But also not to just talk about logic, but to talk about how things make you feel. This often opens the space to get more into the emotions / empathy side of things. 

• Word choice: Soft ⇔ Absolute

  • Give yourself enough rope to change your mind gracefully, give others enough rope to change their mind gracefully.

  • I’ve written about this before here: IMO good messaging tries to provoke thought, not tell people how it is. 

  • Absolute vs Soft words

    • Must vs Should

    • Will do vs Could do

    • I like vs That is interesting

    • There are my thoughts vs What do you think

    • Etc etc. 

  • All else equal, I’ve found that it’s much better to use ‘soft words’ than ‘absolute words’. Using absolute words can often push others out of ‘understanding mode and into defence mode’. This can often turn a conversation from positive sum to zero sum. 

  • Ideas vs facts. 

    • Fact: today is Sunday. Idea: how to best spend a Sunday. 

    • Fact: coffee costs $4. Idea: how to best make a coffee. 

    • IMO you can be absolute about facts. 

    • However ideas can almost always be upgraded; you have your current best thoughts on what to do which you will hopefully upgrade soon. As such I’ve found it best not to be absolute about ideas.

• Confidence

  • Your word choice might be soft, you might be trying to empathize, but if your confidence says ‘I’m the sh1t’ it will likely ruin your messaging. People are unlikely to like you. 

  • I’m wanting to listen to you and learn from you even if i might know way more about this topic than you ⇔ I’m the sh1t and know way more about this than you. 

  • Too little confidence: don't put point forwards, fumble things.

  • Too much confidence: arrogance, not looking to be intellectual flexibility, to learn new things.

  • Just the right amount: listen, and want to be listened to. Change your mind when needed and have others want to change their mind when it makes sense. 

3. Message = 3.1 Quality ideas + 3.2 Ideas put forward ‘like a scientist’ + 3.3 Not committing any logic fallacies

• For some reason most of the ways I’ve seen people talk about improving conversations is around ‘3. Message’, not so much on ‘1. Mindset' or ‘2. Messaging’. To me they are all important, anything times zero is zero. So I try to do all well. 

• ‘Quality of ideas’ is of course important, but it’s certainly not the only thing! Having good ideas to add to a conversation is ideal, but also how you respond to others ideas is crucial. 

• Two frameworks from good to bad: 

  • Tim Urban - Zealot ⇔ Scientist

    • Scientist = trying to objectively improve our thinking through things like falsification. Updating views when it makes sense. 

    • Zealot = denying any and all facts that go against your point of view. Never updating a view. 

    • Read the whole blog, so good!  

  • A framework for conversations I like

• Things to avoid doing. These are ‘logic hacks that can maybe help you ‘win the argument’ but normally push a conversation from positive sum to zero / negative sum. 

• Debate = Zero Sum = Winner and loser

• Discourse = Positive Sum = Win win

• I’m trying to improve my understanding of ideas, to help others improve their understanding of ideas and to have all parties enjoy the process. 

• An example of what I think two key ideas are: 

  • 1. What does it mean to live a good life?

  • 2. What is the common good? 

• Below are a list of ‘logic fallacies’ that can mean you ‘win the argument’, but to me that is almost never the point of having a discussion. The point is normally to try to learn, to help the other learn and to have them feel positively afterwards. So try to be aware of these logic fallacies, to not commit them, and try to help others become aware of them too!

• A defence strategy against logic fallacies: Angels Advocate

If you only take away one thing

• In some respects you are in a conversation with yourself and with others constantly.

• So getting better at ‘conversations’ could be one of the most upstream things there is, and a key way to get better at almost everything else? 

• Put another way, I think I’ll work on getting better at conversations for the rest of my life. IMO the better one is at having positive sum conversations the better one’s life will be!

Positive Sum Ecosystem = 1. Principles * 2. Proportionality

By Duncan Anderson and Lauren Fisher. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 14 mins

Summary: You get exactly the behaviour you allow (downside). You get exactly the behaviour you celebrate (upside). One of the key ways I’ve found to remove downside and add upside in an ongoing fashion (ie build an ever more positive sum ecosystem) is through the creation of principles and the proportional implementation of the principles. 

Positive Sum-ness of an Ecosystem = 1. Principles * 2. Intent * 3. Proportionality 

• 1. Principle

  • What is the principle?

  • Why is it in someone’s self interest?

  • Why the principle is in the interest of the common good?

• 2. Intent

  • L-1: Didn’t know it was bad

  • L0: Didn't intend bad and not reasonable for someone to have been able to foresee a bad outcome ensue

  • L1: Didn't intend bad but reasonable to foresee to have been able to foresee a bad outcome ensue

  • L2: Intended bad 1st time

  • L3: Intended bad multiple times

• 3. Proportionality 

  • What is under?

  • What is proportional?

  • What is over?

• Comment

  • Ruinous empathy vs Radical Candor as defined by Kim Scott. 

    • Ruinous Empathy is “nice” but ultimately unhelpful or even damaging. The classic story  for ruinous empathy is where someone doesn’t let someone know they are doing something bad (ie no principle stated, ‘under’ for proportional response as not saying anything as it’s easier to avoid) until one day that person gets fired. This I’d argue is a ‘negative sum way’ of addressing something bad. 

    • Radical Candour is where you care personally and say things upfront in a positive sum fashion. An approach I have to be positive sum is to: 1. Articulate the Principles * 2. Figure out Intent * 3. Respond Proportionately… or PIP. 

  • Jingle: If you want to avoid Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs), get good at Principles, Intention and Proportionality (PIPs). 

Examples

• Example of good thing: doing weekly reading and writing for Edrolo Content Weekly (a type of professional development)

  • Principle

    • What: doing weekly reading and writing for Edrolo Content Weekly. 

    • Why in self interest: growing your mind should mean you add more value and hopefully have increased remuneration

    • Why in interest of common good: the more able each team member is the greater the emergent outcomes of the team. 

  • Intent: not late because of valid extenuating circumstances, just ‘lazy’. AKA Intended bad. 

  • Proportional implementation

    • Downside removal:

      • 1st don’t do it: 

        • Under = do nothing

        • Proportional = explain clearly why this is an expectation and why it’s in the person’s self interest and the common good. 

        • Over = unofficial warning

      • 2nd time don’t do it: 

        • Under = do nothing

        • Proportional = unofficial warning

        • Over = official warning

      • 3rd time don’t do it: 

        • Under = do nothing

        • Proportional = official warning

        • Over = put person on Performance Improvement Plan

      • Etc

    • Adding upside: 

      • People who do the best at writing get more opportunity (aka better job) and more remuneration is a fair and just fashion. 

      • Not people who happen to be ‘best friends’ with the boss. 

• Example of bad thing: someone being dismissive of another in a meeting

  • Principle: 

    • What: we provide feedback in a positive sum way

    • Why in self interest: if you provide feedback this (negative sum) way the other person is likely to dislike you and not understand what they can do to improve

    • Why in interest of common good: if everyone provides positive sum feedback then we all grow faster and annoy each other less

  • Intent: while they might have been dismissive because they felt someone’s input wasn’t helpful, being dismissive is likely to be received in a negative sum fashion, so this is not ok. 

  • Proportional implementation: 

    • Under = do nothing 

    • Over = talk down to the person being dismissive in the meeting in front of others. 

    • Proportional = have a chat to the person after the meeting and do some ‘post game analysis’. Replay the point where you feel the other was being dismissive and ask them to articulate things from their side, explain you feel that it was reasonable to receive what was said in a dismissive manner. Ask them their thoughts etc etc. Say please be aware of this going forward. If it happens multiple times then ramp up severity. 

Positive Sum Ecosystem Outcome = 1. Number of Positive Sum Principles * 2. Ability to proportionally implement the Principles

• Comment

• Where DA was 10 years ago. IE no self built positive sum principles

• Where I think I am today. ~50 external principles like ‘radical candor’ and ~50 internal principles like ‘professional self development’ and solid ability to implement proportionally. 

• Where I think Ray Dalio is today = where I hope to be in ~10 years = ~1000 Principles and high ability to implement them proportionally. 

• A principle from Dalio: "Dreams + Reality + Determination = A Successful Life"

  • Principles * Proportionality = one way to understand reality better

  • Principles * Proportionality = one way to upgrade reality to be more positive sum. 

  • “Be the change you want to see.” Gandhi. 

  • Get great at making principles and implementing them proportionally so that you can create the reality you want there to be!

• In some respects - Work Maturity = 1. The number of principles you can articulate + 2. How well you can proportionally implement the principles

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Details

Good ‘laws’ stop the bad and interfere with superordinate outcomes as little as possible. 

• I’ve called this ‘positive sum principles’ in the past. Basically good laws / principles stop the bad and allow a net increase in what is possible. 

• As an example, today in Australia we have more laws than ever… but we can do more things than ever before. So on average these laws / principles are ‘positive sum’ AKA stop less than the new they allow.

• Generations of Laws / Principles: 

  • L0: none, eg dogs with just the ‘laws of nature’. Might is right, etc

  • L1: customs which are optimal solutions for specific circumstances. Eg in some hunter gatherer societies if your tribe was being attacked and as a male you didn’t stand and fight then the tribe would kill you after the attack had finished as ‘people who don’t fight mean the tribe is weaker and maybe “as good as dead” ’. 

  • L2: fixed small number of laws. Eg the 10 commandments.

  • L3: a larger number of laws that can change and increase / decrease but not with fair process. Eg the King sets laws

  • L4: a Constitution that can be updated through some kind of fair process like voting, eg a basic democracy like in ancient Greece. 

  • L5: courts, judges, jail's etc with strong rule of law and optimising for the common good with multiple ways that laws / principles can be updated / added / removed (eg representative democracy, courts, etc). This covers most of the long tail ‘cannot dos’ such as property rights, employment law, etc. I think of this as a broad ‘operating system’, to me it’s more removing downside and allowing upside. But I think much more than allowing upside can be done. 

  • L6: company specific principles and proportional implementation of the principles that build a positive sum ecosystem. 

• Jingle: The stupid forgive and forget. The bitter never forgive and forget. The wise forgive but do not forget. 

• What are you going to do about it if you don't want it again? Make a principle and implement it proportionally. 

• A core strategy I used to be able to forgive but not forget is to make a principle and implement it proportionally. 

Workplace Maturity = Principles + Proportionality

• One articulation I have for ‘Workplace Maturity’ is the number of positive sum principles one can articulate in eg a blog and how well one can proportionally implement these principles.

  • It’s important to point out that it’s not just about coming up with a bunch of ideas and hoping for the best – they also need to be put into practice, understood/valued by the team, and reflected back/built on over time.

  • They can’t just be something that gets talked about once – they need to be integrated into the culture of the workplace.

    • Some strategies for how to do this below.

• This is an oversimplification, but people can have ‘soft skills’ (e.g. empathy) and ‘hard skills’ (e.g. technical proficiency with a specific program).

  • I think principles can be used to help create and level up positive sum environments for both soft and hard skills. 

  • I’m going to focus on ‘soft skills’ right now. 

• Here is a quick MECE of principles that relate to soft skills I try to look for when hiring and to foster internally at Edrolo:

  • A partial articulation of Emotional Intelligence

    • Zero fussness (eg being able to dissociate your idea from your ego, and take feedback given as about the idea and not about yourself)

    • Dampener vs Neutral vs Enflamer - be a dampener

    • Being easy to work with is the outcome of hard work

  • Ability to grow yourself and to grow others (some might call this IQ but I personally think that is fixed mindset over simplification)

    • Learned help yourselfness vs Learned helplessness

    • Growth mindset vs Fixed mindset

    • Resilience (how long till you give up on growth mindset in an area)

    • Innovation ability (years of conceptual problem solving experience * number of verticals with problem solving experience)

  • Comms ability

    • Writing ability

    • Conversation = mindset * messaging * message (link 1, link 2)

• What is ‘Principles * Proportionality’?

  • In some respects, every blog I write is a ‘principle’. Eg Defence mode Vs Understanding mode. The links in the soft skill MECE I’d say are ‘principles’. 

  • One approach I have to trying to implement principles proportionally: 

    • I get my core team to read and respond to them as one avenue to implement them proportionally. 

  • So I would hope that the number of positive sum principles I’m able to articulate is 100x what it was 5 years ago (I really only started writing / blogging ~4 years ago). I also believe I’m finding ever improving ways to implement these principles around me (both in my personal and professional lives). 

An external example of ‘Principles & Proportionality’: Ray Dalio and Bridgewater Associates

• Over the last ~30 years Dalio built the largest hedge fund on earth (Bridgewater Associates) with $150bn in funds under management and his personal fortune according to Bloomberg is $17bn USD. 

• Over the last ~30 years Dalio also built this list of principles and implemented them at his company Bridgewater. 

• While I’ve never met Dalio and haven’t worked at Bridgewater, I think a core reason for Dalio and Bridgewater’s success is the development and proportional implementation of principles such as the ones Dalio outlined in this document.

• I think Dalio’s ‘Work Maturity’ (AKA ability to develop and proportionally implement principles) is extremely high. I like to believe my Work Maturity is leaps and bounds ahead of what it was 5 years ago… and is growing at an exponential rate. More than any other factor, I attribute this to trying to writing blogs like this.  

Principles of Proportionality: Justice needs to be served, justice needs to be seen to be served. 

• Power rather than law (principles) often rules international relations. Is it the same at companies? It can be, but you get unhappiness if you have injustice. So IMO it’s optimal to have Positive Sum Principles implemented in a fair proportional manner. 

  • You want a just fair society. This is not where the most powerful rules. 

  • No rules = Anarchy = Negative sum environment 

  • Variable rules = Tyranny = Negative sum environment

  • Clear rules that are created and updated as required = Happy = Positive sum environment 

• Taxonomy of intent

• The taxonomy: 

  • L-1: Didn’t know it was bad

  • L0: Didn't intend bad and not reasonable for someone to have been able to foresee a bad outcome ensue

  • L1: Didn't intend bad but reasonable to foresee to have been able to foresee a bad outcome ensue

  • L2: Intended bad 1st time

  • L3: Intended bad multiple times

• Sub Taxonomy: Intended to be bad for (hopefully this is more around school aged children)

  • Just like stirring the pot

  • Wanted to annoy someone because they felt targeted/attacked

  • Having a bad day and frustrated/lashing out

  • Impress others

  • Wanted attention

  • Cry for help

• Comment

  • If someone didn’t know that what they were doing is wrong then you shouldn’t come down on them like a ton of bricks. You should gently explain why you consider what they have done to be wrong through eg a blog + a chat. 

  • If someone has done the same thing wrong more than once and they know it’s wrong then come down on them like a ton of bricks. 

• Proportional responses

• For something bad that happened: 

  • If you do too little: then you are effectively condoning the outcome and should expect more of it. 

  • If you do too much: then you can often have the other party not feel remorseful but aggrieved and then ante up. This can lead to ‘an eye for an eye and the world is blind’ type outcome. 

  • If you do the right amount: justice is served. 

  • An example: speeding while driving in Australia

    • If you are only marginally over the limit then you get a fine and lose some points. 

    • If you do this multiple times you can lose your licence for eg 3 months. 

    • If you keep on speeding and losing your licence then the second time you lose your licence the suspension is longer. 

    • This can go all the way up to permanently losing your licence. 

• For something good that happened: 

  • If you do too little: then the person can often feel under appreciated / taken advantage of and they don’t want to do more good in the future. 

  • If you do too much: then you can get Campbells Law

    • “Campbell's Law is the observation that once a metric has been identified as a primary indicator for success, its ability to accurately measure success tends to be compromised.”

    • Basically people act not in the common good but in their own narrow self interest. Eg I’m just doing this for the money… and I only do things for money. 

  • If you do just the right amount: people strive to do good for themselves AND the common good. A mutually positive sum outcome or a positive sum ecosystem. 

• Comment

  •  A framework to try and think about what is proportional = 1. What is under + 2. What is over + 3. Can we think of any longer term negative 2nd order outcomes from pulling someone up / rewarding someone in this way? = Hopefully a proportional response. 

• When is the best time to respond?

  • Options:

• At the time

• After the meeting

• 24 hours - 7 days later

• 1-6 months time at formalised 6 monthly feedback

• Never

• Comment

  • I find that normally it’s best 24 hours - 7 days later. 

  • You have a ‘moment’ in time where you can respond

  • But it’s almost never best to respond real time.

  • Depending on your intent in delivering the feedback and whether the feedback is positive/constructive, you might choose a different time frame for delivery. 

  • As a general rule, delivering feedback on the spot or soon after can be perceived to be more casual/might be better for minor issues/praise, whereas waiting e.g. a week can make it feel more significant.

    • The receiver might assume that if it’s still on your mind days/weeks/months later then it must have been a big deal – this can be used to positive effect if you think it’s important that they understand the weight (either good/bad) of their actions.

Using Kohlberg’s ethical framework as a way to give feedback to remove downside (bad) and add upside (good) 

• Example: you might want a child to read for 15 minutes a day 5-6x days a week. 

• This framework is from Kohlberg who was a harvard professor. 

• An example of using Kohlberg’s framework

• Stage 1: Punishment - no iPad at all unless 15 mins of reading is done. 

• Stage 2: Rewards

  • The number of minutes reading above 15 mins = the number of minutes one can play of their favourite game with you. 

  • Do this for more than 25 days in a month of reading 15 mins a day and get $50 to spend. 

• Stage 3: Good intentions - mum is very good to you, she would like you to do literacy work. Because mum has asked I should do it. 

• Stage 4: Obedience to authority (i'm modifying this) - reading will level up your mind so you'll be able to be rich one day. 

• Stage 5: Difference between moral and legal right - it's ok to have a day off reading if there are extreme extenuating circumstances. 

• Stage 6: I want to read to have a very capable mind so I can then help others and make the world better. 

• Comment

  • Try to use all of 6 Kohlberg’s stages in some combination to try and build a positive sum environment when proportionally implementing things! 

"Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

• Good Principle = increases positive sum-ness of the ecosystem

• A well explained Principle = has someone understand why adhering to the Principle is in their self interest AND the common good

  • The best strategy I have to do this is to explain things with all 6 of Kohlberg’s stages. 

• Motivation Principles & Proportionality is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do is in their self interest and the interest of the common good (aka positive sum) because they want to do it understand why it is in their self interest and in the interest of the common good. 

If you only take away one thing

• The best avenue I’ve found for building principles is to write each week about something you want to change (either downside you want to remove or upside you want to add). This is one articulation of what the CloudStreaks blogs are. 

• The best way I’ve found to implement principles is to have people write about them, discuss them and then report back on how they are using them. 

Positive Sum Conversation Mindset = 1. What did I learn? + 2. How does the other person feel?

By Duncan Anderson and Lauren Fisher. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

One Sentence Summary: With the right mindset I believe almost all conversations can be energising (vs draining). Key questions I ask myself at the end of a conversation are 1. “What did I learn?” and 2. “How does the other person feel?”

I find more than half the battle is the mindset each party of a conversation has. 

• If you both have a ‘positive sum conversation mindset’ then the likelihood of you both learning and both feeling positive about each other at the end is 10x higher. 

• Win vs Loss

  • Negative sum = Loss / Loss

  • Zero sum = Win / Loss

  • Positive sum = Win / Win

• I think the world today is mostly positive sum, but that prior to the industrial revolution it was mostly zero sum. 

  • The standard historical stories are ‘winner / loser’ aka zero sum. Eg if our tribe prevails then we get more of the food roaming around. 

  • Most of primary and secondary education has a ‘zero sum’ bent. Eg 1 debating has a winner and a loser. Eg 2 there is a ranking of people from best to worst in maths class. Not students growing vs themselves. 

  • We owe it to ourselves to have a ‘positive sum’ mindset.

• The key elements of a positive sum conversation are how you approach the conversation (“What did I learn?”) and how you try to have someone feel after a conversation (“How does the other person feel?”).

  • Positive Sum Conversation Mindset = 1. What did I learn + 2. How does the other person feel at the end of the conversation

  • Negative Sum Conversation Mindset = 1. Did I win the argument + 2. Not concerned with how the other person felt 

• Goal = Communicate your current view (which is likely different in some way to the others) + Use messaging that helps the other learn something + Listen to the other person’s point of view + Learn something from the other and update your view + They like you more + You like them more.

++++++++++++

Details

 1. “What did I learn?” - how you approach a conversation

• “The good learn from everyone and everything, the average only from themselves, and the stupid already know everything.” Socrates

  • Negative sum: Focus on why I’m right and defend anything others say about me being wrong as being wrong is tantamount to being ‘stupid’. 

  • Zero sum: Try to listen to the other party

  • Positive sum: What can I learn? 

    • IMO not changing your mind when new information comes to light is being an idealogue. 

    • “When I find new information I change my mind; What do you do?” - Keynes

    • “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” - Keynes

    • “When I’m wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?” - Keynes

• Ideas vs Facts

• Fact = there is a right and wrong. Eg today is Wednesday. Eg a coffee costs $4. 

• Ideas = there is no right and wrong, there is just your current best view on the idea (opinion) that can always be upgraded. Eg how to best spend your wednesday. Eg how to best make a coffee. 

• For more see: Agreeable Disagreement - A Key Life Skill

• If you are discussing how to live a good life, what the common good is, what immigration policy should be, how to best improve education, how to help someone level up at people management, what price to charge for a product there likely isn’t a ‘right’ answer. 

  • So what you want to do is hopefully have found new information and have updated your view at the end of the conversation through discussing with the other party. 

  • And… you want to want to discuss with them again so you can further upgrade AND want them to discuss with you again.

• Jingle: If your opinion cannot be ‘right’ (ie cannot ever be upgraded), then the only thing you can be right about is being... wrong. Ah haha!

2. “How does the other person feel?” - how you try to have someone feel after a conversation

• “They won’t remember what you said, they won’t remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou

  • Negative sum: They like you less. You said your view was ‘right’ and by inference that their view was ‘wrong’... or you just directly said they were wrong! 

  • Zero sum: Neutral, don't like you more or less. You tried to have someone understand your view. 

  • Positive sum: They like you more. You tried to understand their view, you tried to help someone understand your view. Tried to show what you learned and show how your view changed because of this. Tried to help the other change their own mind, eg with socratic questions. 

• Outcome = 1. Message * 2. Messaging

• 10 years ago I focused almost exclusively on ‘1. Message’. I was ‘unconscious’ about the importance of ‘2. Messaging’. 

  • Now I try to have more than 50% of effort for a piede of comms (eg written, verbal) be on ‘2. Messaging’. 

  • I’ve found you can mangle your ‘2. Messaging’ to the point where others won’t even listen to your ‘1. Message’. 

• Likability ≠ Value of input 

  • Likability = Messaging

    • Agreeable disagreement. 

    • IMO Messaging is more important than Message. 

  • Value = Message. 

    • I think likability can be almost uncorrelated to the value of message.  

• Jingle: Want someone to listen to your point of view, do it in a likable fashion. Want someone to respect you, update your view when new information presents itself in a reasonable fashion! 

How these two key questions are connected

You don’t learn anything from people who agree with you. You don’t normally learn from people you dislike. 

• Often people want to speak to people who agree with them. 

  • Have you changed your mind about something? Do you look back on your 20 year old self and think you might have had some strongly held views you don’t necessarily agree with today? 

  • “I am not young enough to know everything.” - Oscar Wilde

• A serious skill is to be able to have a different view to someone AND have them like you more after a conversation.

• Don’t be a d!ck. Be someone who people respect (update your views appropriately) and look forward to speaking to (converse in a positive sum way). 

• Someone you like says something = Great idea

  • Someone you don’t like say the exact same thing = Horrible idea

Socratic Questioning helps with both key questions

• Socratic Questioning = One strategy to help yourself change your mind

• Socratic Questioning = One strategy to help others change their own mind

If you only take away one thing

• By considering the two key questions “What did I learn?” and “How does the other person feel?”, you’ll be consciously trying to improve your messaging and message. IMO the fast majority of conversations should not be about trying to be right or wrong, but how you can learn, help the other party learn, and hopefully both want to have another conversation in the future. 

• 10 years ago Duncan didn’t proactively try to think about ‘messaging’, almost all energy was on ‘message’ (eg acquire new information). Now for each piece of communication I try to have a significant component be on messaging. Eg rewriting this blog at least once before it goes out. Having a podcast where I speak and then listening to it specifically focussing just on my messaging.

Inspiration - a path to a better life, a path to a better company, a path to a better world

By Duncan Anderson and Rex Roseman. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 12 mins

One Sentence Summary: I find inspiration a core element of being able to enjoy what you do. I find inspiration a core element in having others want to join you in doing something. 

"Public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed" Abraham Lincoln.

• With inspiration almost anything is possible. Without inspiration everything is very difficult. 

• Leadership taxonomy: 

  • L-100: 'Leading' through intimidation: 

    • Threats

    • Coercion

    • Punishment

  • L1: 'Leading through information'

    • Traditional management

    • Processes, systems, timelines, deliverables etc

  • L10: 'Leading through inspiration' 

    • Providing vision, storytelling, relationships and role modelling to grow others and the environment

Built not born. IMO inspiration is something one builds, not something you are borth with.

• People proactively cultivate excel skills, people meditate to try to build better ‘calm skills’, people try to build management abilities. 

• I think one can, and should try to, cultivate inspiration skills. Details on this below. 

• Work * Inspiration = Fun

• Jingle: Work * No inspiration = … Uninspiring

• Inspiration - a core element of a well functioning team

• Inspiration - an essential element of leadership

• Inspiration - a path to a better life, a path a better company, a path to a better world

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Details

For companies = 1. Inspiration is a core element to get past go + 2. Inspiration is a core element to go from small to large

• IMO the founders of large companies are almost always inspiring… as they have had to be to get the business started and then to build it to be big. 

  • Large companies have many people from all sorts of backgrounds, inspiring such a diverse array of people requires a strong ability to inspire

  • They are effectively always working on how to improve their ability to articulatethe vision + Improving the actual underlying vision each week. 

• I try to link what we are doing in Edrolo products to ‘improving education’ multiple times a week. 

  • I think I’ve slowly gotten better at this not because I was born good at it (fixed mindset), but because I work at trying to get better at ‘vision’ every week (growth mindset). 

  • My growth plan = Spend hours each week trying to level up on things like vision and inspiration. 

  • If I had not spent the time trying to improve my ability to inspire, I would be nowhere near the ability I have now

Inspiration - an essential element of leadership

• Some quotes for you:

  • “It’s easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar.” Lincoln. What is one type of ‘honey’ in a modern day workplace? Inspiration. 

  • “You can lead a horse to water, but can you get it to drink?” One key strategy to get a ‘horse’ to drink water? Inspiration. 

  • “If you aren’t excited [inspired] about what you are doing, should you expect anyone else to be?” Elon Musk. One key strategy to get people excited? Inspiration. 

• From Anthony Meek - Leadership Taxonomy:

• L-100: 'Leading' through intimidation: 

  • Threats

  • Coercion

  • Punishment

    • I worked under a vice principal like this and it was horrific to watch him go about it. 

    • One particular quote I remember was 'you have to DEMAND respect' when speaking about teachers and students, gross and weird.

• L1: 'Leading through information'

  • Traditional management

  • Processes, systems, timelines, deliverables etc

    • All good, regular, getting stuff running smoothly and well

• L10: 'Leading through inspiration' 

  • Providing vision, storytelling, relationships and role modelling to grow others and the environment

• DA comment

  • Kholberg’s theory of moral development / ethical reasoning. 

• All well functioning societies they know of have rules and regulations. No rules = Anarchy. Variable rules = Tyranny. 

• Regulation = Actions require proportional responses. 

  • Downside: you get exactly the behaviour you allow. If something bad happens and you do nothing, expect more of it. 

  • Upside: you get exactly the behaviour you celebrate. If something good happens and you do nothing, don't expect more of it. 

• In short I think leaders need to: 

  • 1. Craft and regulate rules / principles

  • 2. Lead through information

  • AND, 3. Lead through inspiration. 

  • AND, 4. Not allow bad behavior to go unproportionally responded to. 

  • OR operate on all levels simultaneously of Kholbergs

Inspiration through company comms: 1. Vision * 2. Communication (done well) = 3. Inspiration 

• You don’t start life with the ability to talk, to do maths, to write… and likewise I don’t think you start life with the ability to be inspiring. In effect you start at Level 0. Like how one can learn to do algebra, I think one can learn to be inspiring. 

• IMO every single week / month try to build your ability to be inspiring. 

  • I don’t think this should be just for the most senior people, I think it should be for everyone :). 

  • I normally find trying to be inspirational for others is also inspiring for myself. 

  • I also see some young people at Edrolo trying to find ways that what they are doing is cool and / or new cool things to do and getting excited / inspired. It’s infectious. Those people I’ve seen go far! 

• How I do this:

  • Try to write up / say a levelled up version of your vision. 

    • I often use ‘forcing functions’ to make sure this happens, typical ones for me are trying to say something ‘inspirational’ at the start of my teams weekly meeting, the monthly company all hands where I try to say something new and inspiring about the product, quarterly board meetings where I try to have something new about how our products can help improve education. 

  • Work on improving my communication. 

    • I would have presented publicly at Edrolo 100s of times now, I still get nervous before every single presentation. 

    • Presentation = 1. Underlying idea * 2. Word choice * 3. Tone * 4. Animation & gesticulation * 5. Humour (I think presentations should try at least to give others a smile - link) * 6. Personableness (likability, authentic vulnerability but not false humility, are you enjoying it, etc)

Good ideas can come from everywhere. Inspiration should come from everywhere. 

• Hopefully you work with some people you find inspiring. Hopefully you don’t expect all inspiration to come from others. 

• When a human is born they are almost 100% dependent on others. My goal is to work to get to a place where I’m self reliant, where I don’t need help from others but that I do want to be good at accepting help from others, and that I also hopefully help many others. 

• Rearticulation: I want to be inspiring to others, have others around me who are inspiring to me, and be inspiring to myself. Honestly, I hope inspiration in my life is equal parts from myself and from others. 

• It might be that when you start full time work almost all inspiration comes from others, but hopefully the inspiration you provide for yourself and others increases. 

• What a good outcome might look like:

• A bad outcome involves minimal inspiration from others and to yourself. 

• An equation, Inspiration = 1. Intrinsic inspiration (Inspiration from yourself) + 2. Extrinsic inspiration (Inspiration from others)

  • 1. Intrinsic inspiration (Inspiration from yourself)

    • Examples: Making progress towards a person career goal, communicating your own authentic view on a shared goal with  your team, improving yours and others understanding of how to make the world a better place

  • 2. Extrinsic inspiration (Inspiration from others)

    • Example: Role models, buying into the narrative around the companies vision, seeing feedback from users etc

  • When we first start our careers its hard to do intrinsic inspiration before we have some runs on the board and absorb extrinsic inspiration from around us

    • Over time we get better at intrinsic inspiration and there is a shift in what motivates us at work

• In short, I think you should take a lot of responsibility for providing yourself with intrinsic inspiration. 

  • “Those who look for beauty find it. Those who look for ugliness find it.” - Proverb

  • IMO those who proactively cultivate inspiration eventually do inspire themselves and others. Those who don’t proactively cultivate inspiration normally don’t inspire themselves and others. 

• A rearticulation: Apathy <=> Inspiration

  • Apathy = a lack of inspiration

  • IMO inspiration is built, it’s not something that is innately part of a person, a product or a business. 

  • Apathy = Atrophy

  • Get busy living (cultivating inspiration), or get busy dying (atrophying). 

The ability to inspire, is the product of hard work

• 1.  Growth in inspiration ability = 2. Vision levelling up * 3. Communication / presentation skills * 4. Drive to level yourself up (aiming to be the best at what you do) * 5. You put in the hours each week to level up * 6. Credibility built through progress in output

• Typically with each unit of time one is either building a unit of credibility or burning a unit of credibility. 

• At work 90%+ of the time I’m trying to level myself up, level others up, to build units of credibility. Non work time I’m typically trying to relax or do play (fun * no purpose). 

• I’ve written about this here, but IMO aim to be the best, do the work to be the best, have high standards for yourself, have high standards for others. This isn’t necessarily what everyone wants to do with their work life, but hopefully it's what many people want to do with their work life. 

Inspiration from innovation 

• Inspiration = Problem solving ability * Progress

• If you ain’t innovating (this can be in product, systems, people management, self management, etc) you are not making progress towards a high level goal (at Edrolo, this is improving education or improving humanity)

• And if you are not making progress then I think it’s much harder to craft a narrative which will inspire yourself and others. Also typically innovation I find just fun. 

Inspiration is an input and output. 

• Some activities can’t be inspiring, eg getting water from the kitchen. But many can. For example looking into how to build a better Year 7 Maths textbook.

• Finding a way to see and explain the inspiration (inspiration as an input) of an activity I’ve found is a key way to enjoy an activity (inspiration as an output). 

• 1. Activity has possibility of being inspiring * 2. Inspiration  = 3. Enjoyable activity (Inspiration as an output)

• 1. Activity has possibility of being inspiring * 2. Don’t do inspiration  = 3. Not enjoyable activity (No inspiration in output)

• I’ve found you have to work to try and proactively find inspiration. So making time to articulate inspiration as an input = inspiring. 

One recipe for Inspiration = 1. Find a place you think the world should be better + 2. Build a strategy you think will improve the world here + 3. Clearly explain why you think you can make progress

• I see one of the core roles of the leader(s) of a company as creating the conditions where people can be inspired… but that others need to take some responsibility for their inspiration, it’s not 100% dependent on others. 

• We can think of inspiration in levels

  • None or below = Apathy or worse

  • Small = Feel inspired for some of the time 

  • Medium = Quite committed to the work you are doing, able to inspire others

  • Large = Leaping out of bed in the morning to get stuck in your work, rant about how inspired you are to everyone

• Small vs Medium vs Large inspiration

  • While I think the leaders in a company should be trying to have the conditions for all staff to be small+ inspired, I think ideally you have medium or large levels of inspiration, and the parts above ‘small’ are your responsibility. 

• Inspiration from leadership = 1. The product strategy * 2. Your ability to explain your product strategy to a diverse array of people

  • Sufficiency for the inspiration from leadership = When >90% of the company is small+ inspired to do their job

    • I.e It isn’t the responsibility of leadership to get everyone to large+ inspired, if this happens its good but to get the majority of people over a “small” of inspiration, it requires everyone in the business to focus on their own intrinsic inspiration

• Another lens, Inspiration = (Why * How) * Quality comms strategy. 

Another articulation of inspiration: Inspiration = Self-actualisation

• Self-actualisation has the word ‘self in it’. 

•  Self-actulization is on you to do for yourself, not others to do. I think a big part of inspiration in your life is your responsibility, not the responsibility of others. 

• You can’t expect to “become the most that one can be”, without the ability to inspire yourself

• Intrinsic inspiration is a core responsibility if you want to exceed expectations and succeed in all your goals

If you only take away one thing

• IMO inspiration makes things easier. 

• IMO inspiration makes things more enjoyable. 

• Inspiration makes having others join you to help do something far more likely. 

• I’ve found that inspiration abilities can be fostered like most mental skills. I’d honestly put inspiration ability as as important as problem solving ability. IMO constantly try and level up your inspiration ability. 

• The inspiration your feel, is a product of input around you but ultimately you are responsible to lift your inspiration to the highest possible levels