Setting Context To Maximize Learning

The brain creates shortcuts in order to make fast decisions when it hits information or inspiration overload. 

These shortcuts form unconscious biases so it’s easier for your brain to categorize information and make quick judgments over and over again.

This means that when something good happens, you take the credit, but when something bad happens, you blame it on external factors.

Self-serving bias may manifest at work when you receive critical feedback. Instead of keeping an open mind, you may put up a defense when your manager or team member is sharing feedback or constructive criticism.

Employees' health and well-being should come first. There may be a perceived choice between productivity and well-being. But, engagement is a natural by-product of well-being.

People are worried about health, job security, their kids' education, life on the other side of the crisis. Micro-managing will not create focus. Tactics like time-tracking software will only compound the problem. Instead, focus on easing their fears. The more distractions we as leaders can clear away, the more effective our people will be.

• Part of the response is to hold performance and growth check-ins to acknowledge the contribution each employee is making and help them manage their longer-term professional goals.
• Err on the side of overcommunicating. Create a communication plan and be consistent. E.g., a daily email from the heads of each unit, or video messages from the CEO. Share even the bad news, to prevent employees from inventing their own stories to fill the void.
• Keep a tight feedback loop. Know how your employees are coping, how their work is affected, and how they think leadership can help.
• Be mindful of the resources you're consuming. Don't consume additional masks, disinfectants, and other supplies that hospitals need.

• Ask about passion projects. Learners tend to pursue something else outside work (training for a marathon, playing with a band, etc.)
• Focus on curiosity as much as hard skills. Bring up problems currently facing the team and see how the candidate responds.
• One of the most important things to a learning mindset is the ability to admit you don't know something. So be aware of how they approach the things they don't understand.

This means explicitly defining ongoing learning as a core company value.

Empowering employees can mean providing the time or money to enable learning - in other words, offering learning opportunities as a job benefit like health insurance. 

• Build trust through transparency.
• Foster healthy connection.
• Lead by example
• Incorporate fun into the day job.

... and failure is good even if it feels really bad when it happens.

 Look for the greater message of the experience and expect it to, eventually, turn out for the good.

It means you are actually active, doing something, moving forward.

We limit ourselves, and we impede our ability to make big things happen when we buy into what society says will work or not work.

We must take a leap, take calculated risks, and be patient for the results. We don’t need to have everything worked out beforehand.

Intentionally design for the same interactions that would otherwise happen if people were in the office.

• Culture is what naturally happens when a group of people gets together for any period.
• A great culture happens with intentional design and influence. It's the reason you should make your company's mission, vision, values, operating principles, standards, and agreements visible. 
• Culture is experienced through emotions, including how your employees feel about the company, you, other leaders, and peers. That feeling is developed through human interaction at the water cooler, kitchen, or hallway conversations.

Your people need to feel your presence as a leader as they will have fewer opportunities to see you face to face when they work remotely.

• Regularly show up in a variety of forms that can include weekly video meetings, periodic company-wide emails, or presence in public channels.
• Err on the side of more communication rather than less.

Leadership has become a kind of morality tale: Leaders are supposed to be authentic and truthful, paying attention to their employees' well-being and building trust.

The moral framing of leadership does not consider the real complexities and difficulties that leaders face.

Sometimes, being pragmatic necessitates doing seemingly bad things to achieve good results. This means that leaders may have to act in strategic misrepresentation, contrary to their own feelings.

The term ‘Cobra Effect’ originates from Colonial India, which was under the rule of the Britishers. To tackle the problem of the growing number of cobras, the British government announced a bounty on every dead cobra. Enterprising locals started breeding cobras and kept on claiming the bounty reward. When the Britishers realized this and stopped the reward, the snakes were set free, increasing the population in the city.

This anecdote revealed that a linear, logical solution could also make the problem worse.

A dynamic system has two types of feedback loops:

• Positive Feedback: This feedback loop keeps the coveted effect in progress.
• Balancing Feedback: Also called negative feedback, this loop keeps the system in a balanced state.

Instead of assuming that a dynamic system is a chain of linear events, we need to step back and look at the big picture and try to understand the complex feedback interactions.

Narcissists believe they're unique and superior, while humble leaders know they're flawed. 

The humble narcissist has grand ambitions but doesn't feel entitled to them. He is also willing to acknowledge his weaknesses and learn from his mistakes.

We're all drawn to someone who shows confidence - that is the reason that narcissists are more likely to be promoted or get elected to political office. But on its own, narcissism is dangerous. It tends to promote overconfidence and it dismisses the criticism.

Adding humility to narcissism prevents capriciousness and complacency. It helps you remember that you’re human.

• Appoint an executive sponsor to work with a project lead to frame important decisions for senior leaders to weigh in on;
• Break things down (with decision meetings at each stage), and connect them up.
• Focuses on debating the solution (instead of endlessly elaborating the problem) and gather the right people.
• Move faster without losing commitment: get comfortable living with imperfect data and being clear about what “good enough” looks like.

• Identify decisions that involve a cross-cutting group of leaders, and work with the stakeholders of each to agree on what the main steps in the process entail.
• Work through a set of real-life scenarios to pressure-test the system in collaboration with the people who will be running the process.
• Limit the number of decision-making bodies, and clarify for each its mandate, standing membership, roles etc.
• Create shared objectives, metrics, and collaboration targets.