management

Overheard : On vision

Patrick Collison (Co-Founder and CEO of Stripe) shared this snippet of an internal email that David Stearns (Staff Engineer at Stripe) wrote about Dee Hock. Dee Hock was the founder of Visa and this statement on Dee’s vision really connected with me

Today, I can hop on a plane to most anywhere in the world and use my Visa card to purchase goods and services regardless of the language spoken by the merchant, the currency of the merchant’s bank account, or the time zone difference between the merchant’s shop and my issuing bank. In the 1960’s this was unthinkable. Today’s magic was yesterday’s dream, and Hock was one of the biggest dreamers of all.

Full copy of the snippet below

Overhead : Tactic vs Strategy

Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do; Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.

Savielly Tartakower (French-Polish Chess Grandmaster)

Overheard : Call to action

I don’t even recall where I heard this :)..  but it stuck with me for me to write it down

For somebody to do something.. three things much happen at once. The person must want do do it, they must be able to and they must be prompted to do it.

A trigger – the prompt for the action – is effective only when the person is highly motivated, or the task is very easy. If the task is hard, people end up frustrated; if they’re not motivated, they get annoyed.