You cannot do anything wrong, if you don’t do anything!
– Dave Dallam
Management
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
Interesting article on Arstechnica (https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/revealed-the-secret-notes-of-blue-origin-leaders-trying-to-catch-spacex/) about an internal memo from Blue Origin. The memo is about the discussion and feedback from senior leadership at Blue Origin on a report put together by an external consulting company on challenges facing Blue Origin.
Bezos is famous for growing Amazon into a behemoth by focusing on principals like Customer Obsession, Hire and Develop the best, Frugality… https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles .
Wonder why he did not implement the same tried and tested playbook at Blue Origin.
My take, it is as important to have a team that can execute on your vision as it is to have a vision.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Overheard : Process
Love this quote about process attributed to Tobi Lutke in multiple interviews. He said it in different ways, but here is the gist
There are three kinds of processes
- Process that makes things that were previously impossible to do, possible. That’s good.
- Process that makes something that was previously possible significantly simpler, which is also good.
- Remaining 99.9% of all process that exists in corporate America is the third category, which is actually just telling people to behave slightly different from what common sense tells them to do.
Source :
Overheard : Giving your best
A power quote by Abraham Lincoln. Ran across it while reading The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World . BTW, the book itself it a great read on history and leadership.
I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right won’t make any difference.
Simple & Effective One Page Resume
I have always been a fan of crisp and clean resumes. I could never understand why anyone would have a 5+ page resume. Personally that is a turn off for me :).
Just wanted to bookmark this very effective 1 pager template from this article on CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/an-example-of-the-perfect-resume-according-to-harvard-career-experts.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab)
Overheard : Improving skills
This quote/statement by Tim Ferriss in one of his recent podcasts really got me thinking
Subconscious : Incompetency → Conscious : Incompetency → Conscious : Competency → Subconscious : Competency
So simple… but so deep 🙂
Overheard : Failure
When you do your job well, no one notices. When you screw up the whole internet notices – Julia Grace
during a great keynote speech at Velocity 2017 on how to build efficient engineering teams.
Overheard : Communication
Mark Horstman, on his podcast about when not to use email (https://www.manager-tools.com/2017/05/when-not-use-email-part-2)
No delivery of information is purely about information. Every delivery of information has some effect on the relationship that is formed during the communication or (relationship) that previously existed.
Overheard : Quote about Servant Leadership
Quote (or rather statement) by Arthur Brooks on Servant Leadership. Credits for capturing the statement and documenting it, goes to Bret Simmons.
“We in this country are facing a lack of visionary servant leadership. Any leader you can think of will say they are fighting for people, and this is a necessary but insufficient condition for being a leader, to fight for people that need you. But what we really need for real vision is level two and level three servant leadership. What’s level two servant leadership? It’s fighting for people that need you that you don’t need. Level three servant leadership is fighting for people who don’t like you. This is the problem, where we split into tribes where leaders only lead their followers.” Arthur Brooks, February 18, 2016, TED 2016, Vancouver, British Columbia