DEVELOPING THE LEADERS AROUND YOU

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Developing the leaders around you is about creating other leaders while leading. It boils down to having a growth environment that encourages others to emerge from their closed selves and become leaders.

The first chapter of this book capitalizes on a leader’s success. A leader’s success is determined by maximizing utilization of the abilities and resources/talents under him/her. The author draws our attention to a biblical story of Moses as an example of the importance of developing leaders who you can trust and delegated duties to. When Moses failed to delegate work, he began to burn out. Jethro advised him to seek for other people’s assistance which he yielded to. He was glad he did. A leader who carries others along tends to be more efficient and successful.

The second chapter further encourages the development of potential leaders. We must create a space around us where leaders can rise and feel safe. In the next chapter, John Maxwell unveils how to identify potential leaders. He made the process easy by giving some interesting principles that help to determine a potential leader. I will talk expressly on one of these principles.

John Maxwell says the next thing to look out for in any leader, after strength of character, is ability to influence. A leader must be heading somewhere and have the ability to persuade others to follow him. There is more needed to be a person of influence. Some potential leaders are like a rough diamond. Some may carry the ability to influence but not yet possess other needed attributes. They should not be discarded, instead, consult the Holy Spirit. He alone can rightly judge a man. When you influence the right set of people, you will not be left with regret when raising up the future leaders.

The fourth chapter discusses the nurturing of the identified leaders. Once potential leaders have been recognized, you must start building them into the leader they can become. To achieve this, John Maxwell describes a strategy using an acronym, BEST, which means; Believe in them, Encourage them, Share with them and Trust them. Those closest to a leader will determine the success of that leader. Energy, drive and vision is not enough to be a leader. A leader must possess the ability to develop the leaders around him. You can only estimate the strength of a leader by looking at the those around him. You attract who you are. In developing a leader, there is a need to work on yourself and be personally secure. According to John, organizations either rise or fall depending on the trend of the leaders. A team must develop the habit of building a generation of new leaders, a strategy that requires a great deal of careful selection, planning, preparing, nurturing and follow through.

THE BIG THREE: KEY POINTS

Keypoint #1: Leaders must build an environment that encourages growth.

Keypoint #2: Leaders should not just lead but invest in others by seeing the possibilities in them and developing their potential.

Keypoint #3: The success of a leader is not only measured by the number of followers but the number of potential leaders he has been able to build.

The Power of Habit. Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

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Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discovery that opens up our minds to how habits come to be, why habits exist, how patterns are formed and how we can change and rebuild them. With his ability to distill the vast amount of information and penetrate intelligence, Duhigg shares his perception about one of the most challenging human natures and how it can be transformed. In this book, he divides the science of habit into three levels: individuals, business, and society. This book is based on interviews, organizational research and a load of studies.

 

HOW HABITS WORK

In the first chapter, the author tells a story of Eugene Pauly, whose brain was damaged by a virus. After the damage, he finds it difficult to remember the slightest event for more than a minute. Despite that, he was able to navigate his way around his house and even the outside world to some extent, which was only possible because the part of the brain responsible for habit was intact. What supports this theory is that whenever something changes, his behavior falls apart; he would get lost and unable to complete the simplest of activities.

Even though habits are automatic and sometimes are an unconscious series of actions, they can be changed. The author gave his insight base on a further experiment with Eugene Pauly, “Habits are powerful but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness or can be deliberately designed.”

The habit loop starts with a cue which is like a trigger followed by an automatic response which can be mental, physical or emotional and then reinforced by a reward and then the cycle of a new habit begins. What keeps the habit loop rolling is the craving and anticipation of reward which locks in the routine and habit. Once a habit is formed, it runs automatically even without conscious thought and continues that way even when reward changes.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF HABIT CHANGE

Chapter three of this book describes how transformation occurs. Once you are aware of how your habit works, once you recognize the cues and reward, you are halfway to changing such habit. This was supported by a story of a girl who has the habit of nail-biting. The cure involved was to make her aware of the cues, making her note when the cues emerge. Eventually, she was able to replace the habit with rubbing her hands together. The signals stayed, the behavior changed.

At the end of the chapter, the author makes two essential remarks which are: it is difficult to draw the line between habit and addiction and the second is the process of habit change is easily described, it does not necessarily follow that it is easily accomplished.”

Other chapters of the book explore why some habits are stonger than others, willpower and dow it can be turned into a habit, organizational habits or routines. The final chapter discusses moral questions related to habits and to what extent we are responsible for them.

 

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

 

Key point #1: Habits can be changed by removing cues that trigger the routine or by replacing a bad habit with good one.

Key point #2:  It is difficult to draw a line between habit and addiction.

Key point #3: Once you’re aware of how your habits work, once you recognize the cues and rewards, you’re halfway to changing them.

 

One Last Thing

“The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.” ― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

SPRINT Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

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Jake Knapp a Google venture partner, alongside John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz birth the idea of Sprint which majors on how to solve problems and test new ideas in just five days. This book is a practical guide to choose among many best ideas and make most out of the experience.  The concept of sprint came up when Jack had to come up with an essential feature for Gmail which would automatically sort messages. He had to innovate fast. To do that, he came up with three key aspects to manage the project process:

DEADLINES: Tight deadlines eliminate procrastination. The shorter the time, the faster the result because every allotted time is filled with an activity

GET PEOPLE WITH DIFFERENT SKILL SETS: Get people with a different skill set into one room. The more diverse a team is, the better.  A better sprint team usually consists of seven categories of people and less irrespective of their hierarchy level.

THE RESULT: The result must be a concrete prototype. What gets you real feedback is when you present a functional idea. Brainstorming vague ideas is easy but not worth it.

These three-fundamental concepts work well when each sprint get together one on one and work together to produce something of actual value.

Jack furthermore explains sprint as a method that helps define a problem, compare ideas, prototype one of them and get feedback from customers all in five days. Though it might seem like an intensive process, it has a great potential for a big payout.

Before the sprint process, a recommended number of seven people with a different skill sets must be included:

 

  • The Decider (someone who have enough information on the problem or the leader of the company

 

  • The Marketing Expert
  • The Finance Expert
  • The Customer Expert (someone who has a unique customer view preferably from the customer care unit)
  • An Engineer or Logic Expert
  • The Troublemaker (Someone who always have contrary opinion)
  • The Facilitator (someone who is unbiased about a decision and keeps things on time). Usually a project manager).

 

 

 

The idea is to make sure everyone on the team understands the problem that needs to be solved and create a purposeful start on Monday.

Jack did a great job by defining the purpose of each day and what needs to be accomplished.

Monday’s goal is to create a discussion around the set goal, map out the challenge and define the problem that will be tackled on the sprint

Tuesday’s goal is to find a solution to the problem identified on Monday. Each person on the team writes down their proposed solution on a piece of paper and is given at least three minutes to present the solution to the whole team out of which the best there will be selected.

Wednesday’s goal is to make a decision. The best way is to critique all ideas and choose the one that will be explored in the sprint. This can be done by discussing sketches and then participants can get to vote via color stickers for their favorite idea. It is advisable to keep all ideas anonymous to avoid skewing of people’s opinion. Once the idea is picked, the team can then storyboard the prototype

Thursday’s goal is to make a prototype of the concept selected on Wednesday. Not a perfect prototype but a reality. The team can make use of keynotes or interactive prototypes other than professional tools. Professional tools take longer time and make you focus on too many details.

Friday’s goal is to see the customer’s reactions by interviewing them. You do not need thousands of customers to carry out the interview; five to six people is enough to expose 85% of the problem and get qualitative feedback. Record your conversations so the team can see the result. Jack gave some hints on how the interview process should go like interacting with the customer, putting the customer at ease, etc.

Once the interview is concluded, the team should go ahead and analyze the result to know if the prototype us promising and deserves further development or if the prototype fails.

Either way, design sprint is a way of finding answers to big questions, bring attention to work that matter, reduce risk and get better solutions.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1:  Design Sprint reduces risk, proffers the answer to significant problems and brings about a better solution.

Key point #2: Sprint is not a one-man business; it can best be carried out by a team made up of different skill sets.

Key point #3: The core concept of Sprint is to decrease the waste of resources (time, energy and money) on the wrong ideas.

One Last Thing

“By asking people for their input early in the process, you help them feel invested in the outcome.”

― Jake Knapp, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

The Everything Store. Jeff Bezos and The Age of Amazon

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“The Everything Store” offers an intrinsic view of the harsh business world. The book is divided into three parts, each part describing how Amazon transcend from a book selling store to everything store. The vision was birth by Jeff Bezos, a dogged visionary and the founder of Amazon.  Brad Stone breaks down the book into three parts as said earlier, the faith which describes the early years of Amazon, Literacy influence which explains the days of struggle and the Missionary which define the success stories of Amazon. The book tells how Amazon started up with a small family like business on a shoestring budget. What keeps the dream growing is the success stories. No matter how little the success might be or how large, they celebrate every success. This helps to keep the goals, achievement, and expectations attainable.

Jeff took every possibility he has to develop himself and learn something. Frequently he quotes Alan’s observation that “Point of view is worth 80 IQ Points”.  This is a reminder that looking at things in a new way can enhance one’s understanding. Jeff made customer satisfaction his priority which leads Amazon to the continual development of new features that traditional publishers often find doubtful such as the customer review.  He also initiated a platform for individuals to sell new products. He was able to realize the potential in e-commerce over traditional businesses and explored it with some features like product recommendation.  Jeff has a saying that you can work long hard and smart, but in Amazon, you can only pick two out of three. Over the years, Amazon approach has been to establish fulfillment of centers in economically weak areas to exploit cheap labor and the ability to fire worker once the season is over.

The author made an actionable point which is one of the key takeaways of the book; he said marketing budget could be well spent on enhancing customers experience instead of tweaking the website, improving services or reducing prices. Not all product and companies can be feed on marketing because sometimes achieving ROI on marketing campaigns is simply not possible. When the company reached success, what matters is the perception of the success of the company. He listed all the virtues companies need to have in order to be considered cool.

The Cool and Not Cool Effect list includes: "Rudeness is not cool. Defeating tiny guys is not cool. Close-following is not cool. Young is cool. Risk taking is cool. Winning is cool. Polite is cool. Defeating bigger, unsympathetic guys are cool.  Inventing is cool. Explorers are cool. Conquerors are not cool. Obsessing over competitors is not cool. Empowering others is cool. Capturing all the value only for the company is not cool. Leadership is cool. Conviction is cool. Straightforwardness is cool. Pandering to the crowd is not cool. Hypocrisy is not cool. Authenticity is cool. Thinking big is cool. The unexpected is cool. Missionaries are cool. Mercenaries are not cool."

The Everything Store also tells about how Jeff makes most of his decisions, why he made it and how it brings about customer satisfaction. There are too many takeaways from this book and can only be tapped into if you get a copy.

THE BIG THREE - KEYPOINTS

Keep Point #1: Reinvent your business model without completely renegotiating it

Keep Point #2: Never allow cynics to change your mind

Keep Point #3: Involve your employees in your decision-making process. Let every voice be heard.

One Last Thing

"There's so much stuff that has yet to be invented. There's so much new that's going to happen...It is still Day 1 in such a big way" - Jeff Bezos

Elon Musk Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

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Ashley Vance, a prominent writer on technology ranging from cyber espionage to DNA Sequence and Space exploration, describes an informative and easy-to-flow biography of one of today’s top innovators. While maintaining a lively pace, he delves into Elon Musk’s works with particular passion in a way that is more accessible and exciting.

Elon Musk, one of the most impressive contemporary American “Engineering Entrepreneurs,” has developed a reputation for boldness, brashness and vision in many ways and competence. He is passionate about not just landing people on Mars but creating a new human society there.

Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971 to a Canadian mother and Afrikaner father. Musk’s father was a rare researcher, neither Elon nor anyone else in the family will talk about the ways he was a scarring influence. Musk suffered enough violence as a child both at home and school. The author gave an instance of back when Musk was in eighth or ninth grade, he was kicked in the head, thrown down a flight of concrete stairs then set upon the landing. He was kicked and beaten till he blacked out. He required hospital care and a week at home to recover. Irrespective of that, Elon Musk was a die-hard reader. He exhausted the school library and literally read the encyclopedia. He was good at spotting facts statistics, explanations and most importantly remembering what he read. As an undergraduate, he was an exceptional kid who was versed in space-based solar power plants and its use of ultracapacitors for energy storage with a consistent interest and a goal to make a difference.

Vance underlines the degree to which Musk’s dual-track undergraduate years were obviously reflected in his thinking even in his early 20s. He presented that those Silicon Valley experiences gave Musk both the capital and contacts that he was able to use as a springboard for his more ambitious projects. They gave him an early introduction to corporate infighting which bred a strong impulse going forward to make sure that he kept control of his companies and they taught him at least limited lessons in how to be an effective and hard-driving manager. “I could code way better,” Musk says to the software engineers at Zip2 “And I would just go in and fix their code. I would be frustrated waiting for their stuff, so I’m going to go fix your code, and now it runs five times faster, you idiot”. The author cites another example in which Musk publicly chastised and then corrected an engineer who had miswritten a quantum mechanics equation, “I’m like, ‘how can you write that?’ Then I corrected it for him. He hated me after that. Eventually, I realized though I might have fixed that thing now I’ve made the person unproductive. It just wasn’t a right way to go about things. He learned a profound lesson not to completely ignore how other people feel.

Musk has consistently brought clarity on both the engineering problems and the financial hurdles that have heretofore kept humankind earthbound. The triumvirate of companies most dear to Musk, and with which he is most closely associated is made up of Tesla Motors, which produces electric cars, SolarCity, which produces electricity; some feeds free fueling stations for Tesla owners and SpaceX, a private company which is not entirely low key but aims at making humanity a multi-planetary species.

Vance quotes Antonio Gracias, a friend of Musk, also an investor in both Tesla and SpaceX, founder and CEO of Valor (Equity Partner). He said “I’ve never seen anything like Musk’s ability to take the pain. The year 2008 was a big year for Musk both personally and financially. His first marriage ended; he became perilously close to losing just about every penny he had earned; both Tesla and SpaceX were on the brink of bankruptcy. There are few important bright spots as well. In July, Musk met Tallulah Riley, a British actress 14 years his junior who would end up being his second wife. September, he finally launched Falcon I and most importantly his business was financially reprieved.” Vance wrote, “the deal ended up closing on Christmas Eve, hours before Tesla would have gone bankrupt. Musk had just a few hundred thousand dollars left and could not have made payroll the next day. Musk eventually put $12 million, and the investment firm puts the rest.”

One of the strengths of Vance’s book is healthy skepticism. Within Silicon Valley, he writes in his first few pages, Musk was a “deity.” Wrapping it all up at the end provides a good overview and synthesis. The author concluded with a sentence that was drawn from Vance’s last supper with Musk which includes the following quoted line:

“ I will like to die on Mars, Just not on impact.”

THE BIG THREE - KEYPOINTS

Key point #1: Musk invested enough time studying as a child. He believes in effective time management.

Key point #2: He worked with the right people ranging from company employees to the investors

Key point #3: Musk survived through the brink of bankruptcy, divorce, even near-death diseases because of his unwavering drive and passion for his dreams.

One Last Thing

“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.”
― Ashlee Vance

The Age of Agile

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Stephen Denning, the former program director of knowledge management at World Bank, now works with various organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia on leadership innovation, Agile management, and organizational storytelling to discover the unfolding age of agile. This book focuses on how some organizations are learning to operate in a way that is much better for those doing the work, recipients of the work, the organization and the society.

The author discovered the default operating system for almost every medium-sized business and large-scale business to be bureaucracy (an organization system that discriminates between the managers-thinkers and the employees-doers). This system of management was designed to produce a consistently average performance to a set of internal rules. Its vertical chain of command was never designed nor is it capable of moving fast enough to respond to what is known as VUCA Markets. VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous marketplace also referred to as ‘Agile.’

 

The agile movement began decades ago in the manufacturing arena but gained traction recently in an unexpected place; software development. It was published in Agile Manifesto in 2001. The unusual part is that no one would associate the Information Technology department with such a robust management system. The author affirms that organizations that operate as agile are capable of being highly innovative and pragmatic. Take, for instance, an organization like Morningstar. The world’s largest tomato processor has no manager and all the key decisions are made by the “Blue Collar” employees. The company has move competence down to the individuals who have information and the context to make the best decision instead of moving it upward.

The Age of Agile offers insight on how to get individuals to think and behave like owners and reap the financial benefits that flow from this. One of which is the organization must be transformed into small localized units, each with its profit and loss responsibility. Most importantly, traditional management practices such as manipulating staff and trying to manipulate the customer must be dumped and replaced with treating people like an adult. The Agile paradigms are neither easy to understand nor easy to implement for traditional managers. Agile has become widespread and popular over the past decades with tens of thousands of organizations around the world. The author explains that the new paradigm is a journey, not an event. It involves unending innovations regarding specific innovation generated by the organization for the customers and steady improvement to the practice of management itself. He further explains that Agile Management is based on three laws; the law of the small team, the law of customer and the law of network. The law of small team requires that work is done in small, autonomous, cross-functional teams, working in short cycles on relatively small tasks and getting continuous feedback from the ultimate customer or end user. When you work in such teams, situations can be analyzed, decisions can be made and action taken as a single uninterrupted motion. Work can be fun and everyone will flow with it.

 

The law of customer is that the highest priority is to satisfy the customer.  Many managers are aware of the common phrase “The customer is number one”! While continuing to be internally focused, bureaucratic and fixated on delivering shareholder value. In an Agile organization, everyone is passionately obsessed with delivering more value to customers.

The third law according to Stephen Denning is the Law of the Network where leaders are not fierce conquering warriors but rather like curators of gardens.  When an organization truly embraces Agile it is less like a giant warship and more like a flotilla of tiny speedboats. This law is the recognition that competence resides throughout the organization and outside the organization. A problem can be solved and innovation can emerge through networking inside and outside.

Age of Agile furthermore cites common mistakes leaders make when planning to implement and derive the benefits of Agile. These include introducing agile as just another business process with top management hedging their bets on its success by a less than fulsome commitment.

The author affirms that agile can continuously deliver more value to customers from less work and will result in terrific returns to the organization.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1:  Agile helps organizations to be highly innovative and efficient as well as passion filled and pragmatic.

Key point #2: Agile management, when done right, can continuously deliver more value to customers from less work and yield a substantial result.

Key point #3: Agile organizations also have a hierarchy, but one of competence and not authority.

The Lean Startup

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This book conveys the concept of validated learning (trying out new ideas and measuring its effect on potential customers to ascertain its effectiveness) and build-measure-learn feedback loop. It introduces a systematic approach to measure the progress of a project at startup. A start-up has its vision that employs a strategy such as product roadmap, business model, view of partners, competitors and customers. The result of the strategy used is the product. Strategy changes occasionally, product changes continuously while vision rarely changes.

A startup is designed to create a new product under uncertain conditions. Successes from these scenarios come from constant experimentation and learning from experts experience. A lot of learning is involved in the startup process and the most important thing is to figure out validated learning. The goal is to learn and know what the customers want and discard everything else.

As a startup, do not delay charging your customers as many startups do. Eric affirms starting with a low-quality prototype, charging customers from start date and using low volume revenue target for accountability.

One of the cores of Lean Startup model is the Build-Measure-Learn loop. Once an MVP is built, the goal is to make use of user feedback to iterate upon the product. After building an MVP, test the riskiest assumption first and then put it out for early adopters. Then define a baseline metric, a hypothesis to improve the metric and set out experiment targeted towards the same metric. As soon as you get the result, choose whether to persevere or pivot. Wealthfront pivoted from gaming platform/virtual stock trading to E-commerce service that offers money management by money managers.  Most entrepreneurs are afraid of failure thereby delaying the pivot. Also, due to vanity metrics and unclear success hypothesis, most entrepreneurs suffer from unnecessary regret for delaying the pivot. There are various types of pivot, some of which are customer segment Pivot, Zoom in Pivot, Customer need pivot, Business Architecture pivot, Value capture pivot amongst others. It is important to copy the essential features not just the superficial features when pivoting.

As the product grows, customers begin to patronize the product. Customers built overtime inform others about the product or end up purchasing the product again. Consequently, the product grows and achieves a product/market fit. When product/market fit happens, it leaves no room for doubt.

Likewise, as the startup grows, it has to adapt to changing customer base. Every company has to deal with four types of work. These include: launching a new product, scaling it for broad adoption, combating its commoditization by incremental improvement and maintenance of the product in the long run as part of the company’s product line. All steps are essential, but the last step can be a bit difficult for an entrepreneur.

A startup must pass through the learning stage, experiment hypothesis, build MVP, measure MVP, decide if to persevere or pivot, grow to adapt and innovate.  

The Big Three - Key Points

Key Point #1:

Measure the startup progress using the build-measure-learn feedback loop.

Key Point #2:

A startup is designed to create a new product under an uncertain condition, successes from these scenarios come from constant experimentation or learning from experts experience.

Key Point #3:

Every company has to deal with four types of work: Launching a new product, scaling it for broad adoption, combating its commoditization by incremental improvement and maintenance of the product in the long run as part of the company’s product line.

One Last Thing

“We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”

― Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses