List of Professional Learnings and Mental Models — Open Journal

I started an exercise of listing all the quotes that I came across and struck me (of course based on my current professional context).

The goal of documenting these is to get better at preserving and reflecting on learnings as I go along on my journey.

Started this exercise on March 20, 2023, and let us see how it goes.

1️⃣ Tie to goals and problems but be flexible about finding the best solution and not get tied to a particular solution

The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.
~ Oren Harari

Some notes on practising it: 

1. Have objective goals / metrics / reflections for assessing success 
of your approach over a week or month or over a quarter.

2. If you are starting early and do not have enough data points then 
take a step back and reflect around your house, see your people, 
see your users observe what is bothering them. 
Take objective view of challenges of your approach and not be dissmissive.

3. Be aware: Is your approach aligned with the natural user behaviour today? OR does you approach asks people to change their behaviour and if you expectto change the behaviour then what kind of value does it unlock? is that value quantifiable? AND does your approach reastically factors the time & resources it takes?

4. Be aware: you are not overpromising by controlling attributes that are 
fundamentally not controllable like
--> gyms don't promise guaranteed six packs; 
--> doctors understand risks while operating; 
--> treks don't offer that natural disaster may not happen;
--> tinder don't promise that you will find a match

5. The crucx is balancing "persistence" and "flexibility" on an approach while keeping your problem as the "north star" or like a compass.
It requires a very "objectivity" and "flexibility" in mindset and high "grit" in efforts.

The impact of this thought can be from minor initiatives to large projects as big as finding PMF, scaling biz, etc.

2️⃣ Be humble about your judgement & predictions: An expert who is 80% right may actually be making “good” decisions only ~57% (less than 80%) of the time. On improvement

Some decisions can be “good” or “bad” AND
There is an “ability of an individual to identify those correctly”

One is likely to do much better if one gets better at avoiding what is bad.

So be humble. believe you are ignorant. seek truth.

More on this LinkedIn post

3️⃣ Purity of goals: Produce excellence because you care about the cause and not because you want something in return.

Charlie Munger says “Discharge your duties well each day”

Deepak Parekh’s video sums it up well:

4️⃣ Direction and market triumphs over a smart team while executing for 0–1. Focus on signals that help you gain confidence in the direction before start optimizing your efforts.

5️⃣ Don’t take away things from a person via virtue of the power that they have earned via their hard work.

6. [Started adding a new theme on my blog around org building/team building / creating mission-driven team etc.]

Can a leader’s overexcitement create a situation of underconfidence for the team? The excitement in a team should be inspiring people but can it create underconfidence if not dealt with care. I have had observations around this topic in my journey. A lot of literature and thoughts are available around ego management but I think excitement also requires a similar thought process.

I thought of synthesizing some of those learnings through this article:

• A leader’s excitement should not push its team way beyond their limits in a way that it creates stress for team members rather it should result in excellent quality work. e.g. while delegating tasks to the team, assigning too many tasks with varying skill requirements vs giving a few tasks with focus/inspiration for delivering excellent work on those.
• Expressing excitement very often may create a situation in which team members may not be open to sharing their opposing views. Most commonly happens also. Need to create an environment for opposing views to be openly shared.
• A leader generally visualizes a grand utopian view of their idea which may be away at the moment which is usually the source of the excitement as well. It is the responsibility of the leader to help others see it by documenting it, holding discussions with the team, asking team members to propose their views on how should things be done, etc. Not having a shared vision is the biggest reason why teams move in different directions or fail to move fast in a focused manner. Just having a vision is not sufficient.
• The over-excitement in a leader coupled with authority bias may make the team fearful in general. The team may view it as if stakes are very high, they can not afford to make mistakes. Such an environment may result in a situation where power and decision-making are concentrated. No one wants to own it because they are just too afraid of breaking it. Need to be cautious with this also. The energy devoted to creating a shared vision among the team helps in dealing with this.
• Under excitement, do not end up creating a situation where you assert more ownership of vision than your team e.g. refrain from statements like it was my idea, you realize what will it cost all of us, etc. Let the team remains the ultimate owner always.
• Handling situations in which one may feel that expectations are not being met → Under excitement, an over-excited person is likely to operate from the position “you aren’t doing what you should be doing or even worse this is soo simple” because everything may be clear in that person’s mind. Response like that can create insecurity, self-doubts even among the top-performing team members. And, if that happens way too many times, they get stressed to make any calls of their own.
• When countered with a situation where you may feel that work can happen better, you must start with an objective evaluation of the situation instead of passing careless judgment on team members e.g. it is not important. It requires an objective inquiry so as to remove maximum assumptions in the discussion.

P.S. I’ll add things in no particular timely fashion but will add whenever find something that leads to deep reflection starting March 20, 2023.

P.S. It does not represent the only mental models I rely on, nor the most important ones, but these I used or thought about deeply in a particular context in a particular week and jotted it here.