Action Figure Daniel

Category: Notes

  • “Turn the Ship Around” by L David Marquet

    • 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

  • “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel

    • 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.”

  • “The Conversation” by Robert Livingston

    • 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

  • “The Draw of the Sea” by Wyl Menmuir

    • The ocean is not so vast that we can do whatever we want with it
    • Holding your breathe is more about getting rid of carbon-dioxide
    • We should be working in partnership with the ocean ecosystems
    • We each take different paths to the ocean

  • “Faster” by James Gleick

    • “Type A” is not a real thing (at least, not a defined measurable attribute)
    • “Cigarettes and shots of whiskey: quick little packages.”
    • “Speed” used to be more akin to “success”
    • Everyone with email complains about having too much of it