Blog

• Industrial Age language
  • Continue
  • Escalation of commitment
  • Coercion
• We tend to focus on other people’s behavior instead of changing our own
  • “Feel free to speak up” vs “I am listening to your suggestions”
• Emotions are needed to make decisions
• “Discuss then vote” creates poorer results where voting first gives better results
  • Couples tend to estimate household contributions that total to 130%
• In manufacturing, we strive to reduce variation
• We need to shift between “thinking” and “doing” modes
• “How sure are you?” is better than “Are you sure?”
• White collar work is about thinking
• Blue collar workers are not supposed to think
• Added stress reduces an ability to learn
• Control the clock instead of obeying the clock
• Scheduled check-ins lets the team fully focus on delivery
• “How likely is it to work?”
• Inputs don’t need to be binary even if the decision is
• “How does that align with our objective?
• Descriptions tap a different part of the brain than emotions
• Invite descent
• Give information rather than direction
• Consider having senior people do the evaluation with junior people making the decision
• Immediate, positive, and certain outcomes are most important
• Antecedent behaviors are not important
• Scheduled check-ins lets the team fully focus on delivery
• Celebrate with, not for (“I see…”, “I noticed…”, “It looks like…” not “I’m proud of you…”)
• Improvement should be a stairway, not a ramp
  • Specify the exit from Red work before starting it
  • Hold off on updates or changes until after the celebration
• Red work should be learning work
• Self-determination theory
• Phrase to focus on next time or handing to someone else
• Pilots crash more often than co-pilots because people are more scared to suggestion corrections to them

You need to change!

• Leader-leader vs leader-follower
• Leader/Follower is optimized for extracting physical work
  • The message is empowerment but the actions require the leader to empower
  • Instead, all can lead
• “Captain, I intend to…”
• Give broad guidance
• Empowerment is needed because we have disempowed people
• “It doesn’t matter how smart the plan is if the team cannot execute it”
• The system doesn’t track performance in the long run, limiting the scope of decisions being made
• Performance decreasing on departure is treated as compliments for a great leader rather than problematic that the team wasn’t better trained
• Questioning is not the same as being curious
  • What do you hope we don’t change
  • What are you hoping gets changed
• Criticality can come after trust is established
• Focus on excellence, not just avoiding errors
• Move authority to the information, not shuffling the information to the authority
• Have a clear goal and talk about it all the time
• Don’t be afraid of short, early conversations
• Trust is different from reality
  • (Issues of accountability are not issues of trust)
• “We/I will” instead of “Can we/I”
• “What do you think I am thinking about this?”
• If the decision can be delayed, get input and make a decision
• Even if the decision needs to be made quickly, try to get inputs
• Lack of informal conversation impedes learning
• Taking deliberate action gives a chance for the team to reduce mistakes
• Competence needs to grow with control
• Don’t brief, certify
• Make sure your leaders are engaged in team processes
• Emancipation is the step beyond empowerment

• Knowing what to do is different from how we feel about it
• You are already living the dream
• Brothers are more likely to make the similar income than be similar heights
• Be content with what you have
• Don’t give up what you have because you want/need for something you don’t have and don’t need
• Ice ages are caused by mild summers that don’t melt all the winter snow
• Highest returns tend to be one time hits
• Margin of safety is the most important thing
• Having cash on hand is vital to weathering downtown
• Having expensive things does not make us content
• Fevers are good
• Invest based on what is reasonable not what is rational
• “Things that have never happened before, happen all the time.”
• It is different about 20% of the time
• We started develop a notion that all Americans should have basically the same lifestyle and using debt is okay to do this
• “The more the internet exposes difference in lifestyle, the more people get pissed.”

• Proximity is the fastest way to change values
• Conversation, even thinking about having one, is a powerful change
• There is a large gap between perception is equity gap
• (I don’t see the connection between Rights and Treatment. I understand that we have equal Rights but that is not translating into equal treatment.)
• When other people are around, people are less likely to help
• “Bias Credentials” are when we support a person of color and we feel entitled to judge other people of color
  • (This is the, “I have a black friend, so it is okay” moment)
• Racism is more of a sticker than a tattoo
• People are more often complicit than racist
• Getting benefits is different from having detractors… They are not opposites
• A strong grounding in authority is associated with racism
• When we feel diminished, we are comfortable to diminish others
• There will always be an “other” group but it is a malleable group
• Brown people have been settling white people since forever
• Key identity trigger: Am I competent? Am I a good person? Am I worthy of love?
• Witnessing discrimination tends to lower our opinion of the person being discriminated
• Compassion is not empathy
• Humans do better recognizing affiliation than race
• Try to add extra categories (try for 4) in addition to race
• Use concurrent validity to avoid timing or measuring bias
• Make sure the thing you are measuring matches the thing you want to improve
• It’s less about having the right answers and more about asking the right questions