From Gabriel Weinberg’s book “Superthinking”
Unlocking People’s Potential
“Both Joy and Rumsfeld acknowledge that organizations hardly ever have perfect resources, nor can they always afford to wait until they have better ones before moving forward. Joy’s law further stresses that great people are unlikely to be concentrated in a single organization.”
“Rumsfeld’s Rule: You go to war with the army you have. They’re not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
“Keeping Joy’s law in mind, however, reminds you that just seeking out 10x people is a trap for two reasons. First, they are extremely rare; not every organization can hire world-class talent, because there just isn’t enough to go around.”
“It means that such outsized output can be created within an organization, not by recruiting world class all stars, but by crafting the right projects and roles, ones that allow excellent people to reach extraordinary performance given their unique set of characteristics. As a manager, if you can help your team members in this way, you can create a 10X team around you.”
“Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better. When you foster a 10X team, you draw on people’s different skills and abilities, allowing each person to play their unique part and collectively achieve outsized impact.”
“Whether invading countries or markets, the first wave of troops to see battle are the commandos…A startups’ biggest advantage is speed, and speed is what commandos live for. They work hard, fast, and cheap, though often with a low level of professionalism, which is okay, too, because professionalism is expensive. Their job is to do lots of damage with surprise and teamwork, establishing a beachhead before the enemy is even aware that they exist…”
“the infantry. These are the people who hit the beach en masse and slog out the early victory, building on the start given them by the commandos…Because there are so many more of these soldiers and their duties are so varied, they require an infrastructure of rules and procedures for getting things done-all the stuff that commandos hate…”
“These third wave troops hate change. They aren’t troops at all but police. They want to fuel growth not by planning more invasions and landing on more beaches but by adding people and building economies and empires of scale.”
“People who like rules and structure are much better suited for police roles, whereas anti-establishment types gravitate toward and excel in commando roles. If you put a commando person in a police role (e.g., project manager, compliance officer, etc.), they will generally rebel and make a mess of everything, whereas if you put a police person in a commando role (e.g., a position involving rapid prototyping, creative deliverables, et.), they will generally freeze up and stall out.”
“Hedgehogs tend to have a focused worldview, an idealogical leaning, strong convictions; foxes are more cautious, more centrist, more likely to adjust their views, more pragmatic, more prone to self-doubt, more inclined to see complexity and nuance. And it turns out that while foxes don’t give great sound-bites, they are far more likely to get things right.”
“Again, each type of person should be placed in roles that suit them. For example, a hedgehog will be better at marketing roles, communication a vision clearly and succinctly. A fox will be better at strategic roles, wading through the nuances of uncertainty and complexity. And you will need both types of people on your teams.”
“You also need to keep individual characteristics in mind when you manage the people on these teams, and adjust your management accordingly. We call this managing to the person, as opposed to managing to the role or managing everyone the same. In other words, good people management is not one-size-fits-all.”
“Peter Principle– managers rise to the level of their incompetence. What he’s saying is that people get promoted to a new role based on how they performed in their previous role; however the abilities required of their new role may be completely different, and possibly ill-suited for them. Eventually, they will be promoted into a role that will not suite them (the level of their incompetence), where they will struggle.”
“If you try to fill a role for a long time and you aren’t seeing any qualified candidates, then you might be looking for a unicorn candidate.”
“DRI- directly responsible individual– “After every meeting, it is made clear that there is one DRI who is responsible and accountable for the success of each action item. DuckDuckGo similarly assigns a DRI to every company activity-from the smallest task to the largest company objective.”
“DRI concept helps avoid diffusion of responsibility, also knows as the bystander effect, where people fail to take responsibility for something when they are in a group, because they think someone else will take on that responsibility.”
“deliberate practice is the fastest way to move from being a novice to being an expert. It is difficult to do alone, however, because it relies on continuous specific feedback about what you could be doing better.”
“Ideally this person is a true expert who can provide direct feedback and identify the best goals, practice, environments, and coaching methods.”
“To make deliberate practice work in a organizational context, you need to find a way to provide people the continual feedback and reinforcement learning they need. One way to do this is through a weekly one-on-one standing meeting with a manager, mentor, or coach.”
Consequence-conviction matrix-
Pygmalion effect– “higher expectations lead to increased performance, as people tyr to meet the expectations set for them.”
Golem effect– “lower expectation lead to lower performance.”
Imposter Syndrome– “someone is plagued with the feeling that they are an imposter, fearing being exposed as a fraud, even though in reality they are not.”
Dunning-Kruger Effect- “describes the confidence people experience over time as they move from being a novice to being an expert.”
“This quick progress up the learning curve propels you to have high confidence in your abilities. However, you may trick yourself into thinking that this must be a really easy skill, when in reality you are not yet fully grasping everything you don’t know about the skill and how you could be better.”
Hindsight Bias– after an event occur, in hindsight, there is a bias to see it as having been predictable even though there was no real objective basis on which it could have been predicted.”
Survivorship Bias– “tells you that when looking to see what past failures had in common, you should consider that past successes might have also had these thing in common.”
“Another way to counteract hindsight bias is to take notes as events occur in real time. That way you have a more objective record of what happened and are not relying solely on potentially compromised recollections.”
Culture– “Culture describes the common beliefs, behavioral patterns, and social norms of group members. For example, different families have different norms for resolving disputes: some talk openly about emotions, some hardly ever; some have heated discussions, some much less so.”
“Culture is what happens when managers aren’t in the room”
“if you don’t shape your organization’s culture, it will shape itself, and may develop in ways you don’t want.”
Loyalists vs Mercenaries– “Loyalists are devoted to an organization even in the face of adversity. Mercenaries, by contrast, are in it primarily for the money, and are much more likely to leave for greater reward elsewhere.”
Dunbar’s number– 150- “the maximum group size at which a stable, cohesive social group can be maintained.”