When you spend years responding to problems, you can sometimes overlook the fact that you could be preventing them.

Downstream actions are reactions to problems. These efforts are fast and tangible.Upstream actions attempt to prevent those problems from happening in the first place by systematically reducing the harm caused by those problems. These efforts are slower and broader. A sign of upstream work is that it uses systems thinking.Example: You can offer a homeless person a meal today, but to figure out how to reduce evictions so that people don't become homeless might take years.

Upstream thinking

<ul><li>Expedia: 58% of customers who booked travel on Expedia placed a call afterwards for a copy of their itinerary. No one was responsible for ensuring that customers didn't need to call for support. It was identified as an upstream problem. Once changes were in place, the need for customers to call for help decreased to 15%.</li><li>Dutch Bicycle Company: VanMoof regularly received complaints that many of its bikes were damaged during shipping. They started printing images of flat-screen televisions on their shipping boxes, thinking couriers would be more careful. It resulted in 70 - 80% less damage.</li></ul>

Examples of upstream thinking

<ul><li>Problem blindness. "This problem is inevitable." You can't fix a problem you can't see.</li><li>A lack of ownership. "It's not my problem to fix." People resist acting on a problem because they may feel it is not their place. When no one owns the problem, it probably won't get solved.</li><li>Tunnelling. "I can't solve the problem right now." Researchers found when people lack money, time or mental bandwidth, the little problems take preference over the big ones. When people juggle many issues, they give up trying to solve them and instead adopt tunnel vision.</li></ul>

Barriers that prevent upstream thinking

In 2014, the C-section rate in Brazil was 57%, the highest in the world. In the country's private health system, 84% of children were delivered by C-section. The system was designed to prefer C-sections. After educating doctors and patients, the upstream solution caused a 40% increase in natural childbirth.The move away from problem blindness is the shocking realisation that you've come to treat the abnormal as normal.

Example of problem blindness

Organisations have a tendency for downstream thinking. To succeed, leaders should change the focus to upstream thinking.<ul><li>Identify problems early</li><li>Target leverage points in complex systems</li><li>Find reliable methods to measure success</li><li>Consider new ways of working together</li><li>Embed their successes into systems.</li></ul>Find new ways of working together:<ul><li>Hand the problem to the right people.</li><li>Give them enough notice of that problem.</li><li>Align their efforts toward preventing instances of the problem.</li></ul>

Upstream thinking in leadership

Measures can fool you in three ways:<ul><li>“A rising tide lifts all boats.” Your measure shows that you're succeeding, but you mistakenly attribute your success to your own work.</li><li>Your short-term measures don't align with your long-term mission.</li><li>Your short-term measures became the mission and undermined the real work.</li></ul>

Ghost victories

<ul><li>“Rising tides” test. What else might explain the short-term success other than our efforts?</li><li>Misalignment test. How can we find misalignment as early as possible? What alternative measures could provide potential replacements?</li><li>Lazy bureaucrat test. What would someone do to succeed on the measures with the least possible effort?</li><li>Defiling-the-mission test. If short-term success undermines your long-term mission, what was the cause?</li><li>Unintended consequences test. What if we succeed at our mission, but cause negative unintended consequences? What should we pay attention to?</li></ul>

Find reliable ways to measure success

Banning plastic bags in San Diego caused serious unintended consequences.The deadly 2017 hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego is attributed to the lack of plastic bags. Homeless people used the bags to dispose of their own waste. But when the bags became hard to come by, the alternatives were much less sanitary.

Unintended consequences example

This book is about how to build a good product

Wall Street Journal Bestseller New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers. So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention? Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream—including “problem blindness,” which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset. One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade. A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture. And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas. Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

business

Business

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Wall Street Journal Bestseller New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers. So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention? Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream—including “problem blindness,” which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset. One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade. A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture. And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas. Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?

Dan Heath is a Senior Fellow at Duke University's CASE center. Dan has an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and a B.A. from the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin.He co-wrote a book titled Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard with his brother Chip Heath.

Dan Heath

Upstream

One of the biggest mistakes founding leaders make is that they assume that everyone in the company is clear on the vision.
Just because it is clear to the founding leaders, it's not necessarily clear to everyone else.

Acculturating the vision

Unfortunately, many visionaries replace themselves with operators. An operator can do a visionary job, however, they have to understand it's a different job with a different skill set. The difference between a visionary and an operator is that one skill set is up and out and the other down and in.

The visionary and operator are not interchangeable

Many CFOs or COs are considered the number two in the company and in line for the big position.  However, what makes an organisation highly functional is <ol><li>the partnership between its visionary and operator, and </li><li>the tension between the two ways of operating up-and-out and down-and-in.</li></ol>

The partnership between visionary and operator

You want a visionary person to do a visionary job, and the operator to do an operator job. <ul><li>You should extract the purpose from the founder in terms that are compelling and resonant with everyone.</li><li>Build into your incentive structure performance and values so that the organisation is equipped to survive the founder leader if necessary.</li></ul>

How an organisation should function

A company needs both visionaries and operators, but they have different skill sets. One is focused on up and out, while the other is focused on down and in. + + + Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game. + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Live Online Classes: http://simonsinek.com/inspireU Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek Simon’s books: The Infinite Game: https://simonsinek.com/product/the-in... Start With Why: https://simonsinek.com/product/start-... Find Your Why: https://simonsinek.com/product/find-y... Leaders Eat Last: https://simonsinek.com/product/leader... Together is Better: https://simonsinek.com/product/togeth... + + + #SimonSinek

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

startup

Startups

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Videos

A company needs both visionaries and operators, but they have different skill sets. One is focused on up and out, while the other is focused on down and in. 

+ + +

Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. 

Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do.

Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game.

+ + +

Website: http://simonsinek.com/
Live Online Classes: http://simonsinek.com/inspireU
Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek
Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/
Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek

Simon’s books:
The Infinite Game: https://simonsinek.com/product/the-in...
Start With Why: https://simonsinek.com/product/start-...
Find Your Why: https://simonsinek.com/product/find-y...
Leaders Eat Last: https://simonsinek.com/product/leader...
Together is Better: https://simonsinek.com/product/togeth...

+ + +

#SimonSinek

Simon Sinek is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together.

Simon has devoted his life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and return home fulfilled at the end of the day.  Every day is an opportunity to inspire someone. 

Official Simon Sinek brand account.

Learn more at simonsinek.com.

Simon Sinek

Visionaries vs. Operators | Simon Sinek

Absence Blindness is a cognitive bias that prevents us from identifying what we can’t observe. It seems pretty obvious — if we can’t observe something, of course we’ll be blind to it. That shouldn’t always be the case, though, and absence Blindness can lead to two problems.

Absence Blindness rewards drama

First is the lack of ability to “do nothing”, even if that’s the right move. I <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/we-have-to-do-something-about-it/">shared last year</a> about a number of situations where the urge to “do something” was absolutely not the right move.

Do Nothing

Second is the problem of efficient workers often being overlooked. Suppose you have two employees doing the same job:<ul><li>One of them is quiet, doesn’t say much, and gets their job done.</li><li>The other is more chaotic, causes a variety of problems, but then works hard to fix the problems they’ve created.</li></ul>In most cases, the second one will be more noticed and more likely to be promoted.

Being Overlooked

Great management is boring—and often unrewarding. The hallmark of an effective manager is anticipating likely issues and resolving them in advance, before they become an issue. Some of the best managers in the world look like they’re not doing much, but everything gets done on time and under budget.

Some of the best people I’ve ever worked with have been quiet, unassuming, and simply get things done. They’re fantastic! I work hard to make sure people like that don’t slip under the radar, and I hope others can do the same for them as well.

Absence Blindness is a cognitive bias that prevents us from identifying what we can't observe. It seems pretty obvious -- if we can't observe something, of course we'll be blind to it. That shouldn't always be the case, though, and absence Blindness can lead to two problems. First is the…

remotework

Remote Work

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

teamwork

Teamwork

The relationship between a manager and their report is a two-way street: navigating the road falls on both parties. Some managers are easy to get along with, while others can feel near impossible. However, there are several strategies you can use to manage up:<ol><li>Leave your assumptions at the door.</li><li>Hone your delivery for communication that comes through clearly.</li><li>Boost your chances of hearing 'yes' to your ask.</li><li>Get comfortable with feedback.</li><li>Set the tone in your1:1s</li><li>Share your impact the right way.</li><li>Build lasting rapport and trust.</li></ol>

Managing up - How to manage your boss

The biggest reason people can't manage up is that they don't understand their boss's job. You only see a small part of what your manager does.<ul><li>Regularly align on these two questions: What is success for me personally? What is a win for my manager's team?</li><li>Show your work. It's about knowing what your boss wants, then ensuring that you provide them with a steady drumbeat of the things they care about.</li><li>Understand what is your manager's most urgent priorities, then adjust accordingly.</li><li>Focus on what's keeping your manager up at night and identify what you can take off their plate.</li></ul>

Leave your assumptions at the door

<ul>
<li>Open up about your "work love language." From early on, share with your manager what motivates and drives you, including what's important to you outside of work.</li>
<li>Observe how your manager listens and processes inputs. If he stops listening halfway through describing a problem, switch to your proposed solution first.</li>
<li>Calibrate to match your manager's involvement. Share your team's wins, and ask for feedback on challenges.</li>
<li>Communicate early and often.</li>
<li>Don't get stuck in your ways of doing things.</li>
<li>Focus on OKRs to ensure you know what's important to your manager.</li>
</ul>

Hone your delivery for communication

<ul><li>Leave some breadcrumbs. Don't hoard information until you feel you have all the answers. Anything complex needs multiple exposures for someone to internalise the concept.</li><li>Create a shared understanding of the problem. Share information you have and consider alternative paths.</li><li>Don't bury your requests. Write regular email updates, including project updates, team wins or personal progress. But don't mix requests in. Treat it separately.</li><li>Always do your homework. Include two or three options and create a table with pros and cons.</li><li>Keep communication open.</li></ul>

Boost your chances of hearing 'yes' to your ask

<ul>
<li>Feedback should be ongoing and not be left to a formal discussion during performance reviews.</li>
<li>Allow positive feedback to come through louder. When you receive constructive criticism, try to stomach it even if it first rings false.</li>
<li>Don't just try to please your boss. Push back if you believe it is in the company's best interest. If your manager dumps a task on you, mention all your other priorities on your plate and ask where this new task fall.</li>
<li>Train your manager on how to treat you. E.g. don't answer emails after 7 pm or at weekends.</li>
</ul>

Get comfortable with feedback

You likely got a regular 1:1 meeting with your manager. While they can feel more obligatory than critical, meetings are a powerful tool to build trust and up-levelling your impact. <ul><li>Ensure that the shared agenda and notes are pre-populated with topics you want to discuss plus necessary context.</li><li>Ask a new manager what they care most about, their biggest challenges, your role and responsibilities, and their pet peeves.</li><li>Give a bird's eye view before going deep on any topic.</li><li>Grade yourself on alignment. After a meeting, ensure you know what's top of mind for your manager.</li></ul>

Set the tone in your 1:1s

<ul>
<li>Give regular updates. Written asynchronous communication is vital in the remote world. Managers can read at their leisure and comment async rather than live discussions.</li>
<li>Send weekly "State of Me" emails to your boss. Share what you're doing, what you plan to do, and what you've done. Include current priorities, things on your mind, and blockers you need help with. Using a template can make it easier to digest.</li>
</ul>

Share your impact the right way

<ul><li>Build rapport. You don't have to be best friends to build rapport. However, show interest. Pick a few topics you feel are common ground, such as kids or a shared hobby.</li><li>Get tactical with building empathy. Assume positive intent. Check assumptions and ask questions to get clarity on how your manager is thinking. Summarise what you're learning to ensure you understand their point of view.</li><li>Understand that your manager is likely a mentor. They see the good and bad and provide guidance and direction. A sponsor can indirectly help you manage up. They see your potential and can sway a manager.</li></ul>

Build lasting rapport and trust

Top startup leaders share their best tips for managing up, including communication tactics, building trust, and goal setting with your manager. 

A Tactical Guide to Managing Up: 30 Tips from the Smartest People We Know

In any industry, your business regularly needs to improve if you want it to succeed.
When change is required at your organisation, acting on a plan without evaluating the progress can be harmful to a business. The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle (PDCA) can be beneficial to facilitate change.

Success depends on improvement

PDCA is a continual cycle of improvement of people, products, services, and business processes. It consists of four steps. <ol><li>Plan</li><li>Do</li><li>Check</li><li>Act</li></ol>Each step sets you up for success in the next stage.

PDCA

Ask the following questions:<ul><li>What problem do you need to solve?</li><li>What resources will you need to fix the issue?</li><li>What resources do you already possess?</li><li>How can you best solve the problem with your available resources?</li><li>What does success look like?</li></ul>

Plan

With your plan sorted out, it's time to focus on executing your ideas. Of course, issues will arise even if you have a solid plan, so be willing to adjust as you go. Effective communication with your team members will limit the number of problems as everyone will have a clear idea of their responsibilities.

<ul><li>How did your plan work in the controlled environment?</li><li>Did you achieve your goals?</li><li>Identify the flaws in the process and correct them. </li></ul>

Check

If you met your goals during the Check phase, you could apply your initial plan. This becomes the best practice for this part of your organisation. It becomes the starting point for your next change implementation.

<ul><li>Ensure that upper management agrees with the changes.</li><li>Never stop improving. ThePDCA is a repeat cycle, making improvements with each revolution.</li><li>Once you've implemented a policy change, do so for the entire organisation.</li></ul>

PDCA best practices

The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle helps your business plan and innovate — learn how to implement the process at your own business. 

What Is PDCA? Understanding the Plan-Do-Check-Act Method

<ul>
<li>Team coaching is a discipline distinct from consulting, team building, team leading and other roles. It is more complex, not least because it deals with the systems that influence teams and how those teams interact with them.</li>
<li>Highly effective coaching is both systemic and dialogic.</li>
<li>Line managers face challenges and conflicts of interest in becoming effective team coaches.</li>
</ul>

The Three Big Ideas

It means partnering with an entire team in an ongoing relationship, for the purpose of collectively raising awareness and building better connections in the team’s internal and external systems and enhancing the team’s capability to cope with current and future challenges.

Defining Team Coaching

Systemic coaching is ‘being aware of three worlds and how they interplay to produce outcomes’
<ul>
<li>The Face-to-Face World – interactions with the client, and their face-to-face interactions with other key people.</li>
<li>The Larger External World - client’s organization, their business, their customers, and their marketplace</li>
<li>The Deeper Internal World - how/what client leaders think and feel, their mental models/underlying assumptions, their deeper beliefs.</li>
</ul>

Systemic Coaching

<ul>
<li>Coaching individuals, who happen to belong to the same team</li>
<li>Coaching only part of a team</li>
<li>Team building</li>
<li>One-off interventions such as an off-site workshop</li>
<li>Training and consultancy.</li>
</ul>
Another team coaching definition is: Helping the team improve performance and the processes by which performance is achieved, through reflection and dialogue.

What Team Coaching Is Not

Managers are prone to misattribute the causes of poor performance. They tend to over-emphasize motivation and under-emphasize other factors – in particular, lack of knowledge or skill. Poor performance has a lot more to do with poor management and failure to coach than with unwillingness on the employee’s part.
Team coaching can lead to team improvement. Line Managers seeking to coach their team face challenges.

Line Manager as Team Coach

<ul><li>The tendency for managers and direct reports to fall into ‘parent/child’ roles.</li><li>Hidden agendas. For example, on the manager’s part about their plans to reorganize the team and on the employee’s part about how long they intend to stay with the company.</li><li>The conflict between the employee’s desire for some things to remain confidential and the manager’s accountability for the welfare and performance of the team as a whole</li><li>The conflict between pressure to deliver short-term task objectives and the longer-term development needs of team members.</li></ul>

The Main Barriers

To increase coaching success these conditions must be present:
<ul>
<li>Psychological safety.</li>
<li>Everyone in the team needs to know how to coach and how to be coached (including the line manager)</li>
<li>Everyone in the team takes collective responsibility for performance and for each other’s learning.</li>
</ul>

The Environment: Three Coaching Conditions

<ul><li>They don’t feel the need to control. They trust others because, if mistakes happen, the leader has big enough shoulders to share responsibility.</li><li>They demonstrate that they care – both about the team goals, but also about each of the team members as individuals. They make time for human interaction.</li><li>Instead of trying to manage the team, they support team members in managing themselves.</li><li>These leaders encourage the team to decide what they need to inform the leader about and what to take responsibility for communicating themselves.</li></ul>

Traits Of The Best Line Managers 

<ul>
<li>When there is no compelling rationale for being a team – for example, when members of a group have little interdependence.</li>
<li>When it is too large to be a real team – above eight, it will become harder to gel as a team.</li>
<li>When only the leader wants team coaching to happen.</li>
<li>When the team has no prospect of acquiring the resources it needs to succeed.</li>
<li>When you have close relationships with some members of the team, but not with others.</li>
</ul>

When Is Team Coaching Useless

The most enlightened coaches hold space for the client, while he or she has the conversation they need to have with themselves.Highly effective team coaching is both systemic (seeing the client and their issues within the context of multiple systems) and dialogic (a conversation that creates its own path, developing new insights and new meaning)

Developing Team Coaches

<ul>
<li>Listening. The team coach needs to listen to both the person talking and to everyone else in the room. Being aware of their silent conversations, through observing body language.</li>
<li>Using silence.</li>
<li>Powerful questions. In team coaching, the emphasis is on helping the team find its own powerful questions.</li>
<li>The story. The team coach has to help them accept and integrate each other’s version of the team story into a narrative that helps make coherent and compatible future choices.</li>
<li>Identity. Coaches help individuals articulate and understand their own identities.</li>
</ul>

The Main Skills Of Coaching

In one way or another, pretty much every study of team effectiveness identifies the quality of interpersonal relationships as a critical component. 
There is surprisingly little evidence that people in the team have to like each other, but they do need to respect, trust and be open with each other. In high performing teams, there is high reciprocity of attitudes and behaviours that reinforces these qualities; and an ability to manage conflict in ways that contribute to rather than undermine teamwork.

Building Team Relationships

A good technique to understand the relationships within the team is to observe their dialogue. What does this team discuss?
<ul>
<li>Social - Weekend plans, hobbies, the weather.</li>
<li>Technical - How to do tasks within the team</li>
<li>Tactical - What needs to be done today?</li>
<li>Strategic - What needs to be done in the future?</li>
<li>Self-Insight - How are we performing? Retrospectives, Lessons Learned etc.</li>
<li>Change - What can we do differently?</li>
<li>Integrative - Who do we need to work with?</li>
</ul>

Talking To The Team

What you need to know in order to start building a culture of learning

Creating A Culture Of Learning 

Team coaching can transform teams and improve their outcomes. This book will guide your development and give new insights into how coaching teams work.

'This book is a must for anyone involved in organizational coaching' Adrian Moorhouse, Managing Director, Lane4 & Olympic Gold Medallist Coaching the Team at Work, 4e is the result of research over 20 years with practising team coaches and with major corporations around the world. It recognises that in a complex and constantly evolving business and social environment, teams can only keep up if they adapt frequently. But to adapt, they must have clarity about their internal and external systems and how these contribute to or undermine performance. There are multiple aspects of team function that underpins performance - and each influences and is influenced by the others. This revised edition explores the six most significant aspects: * Purpose and motivation * Systems and processes relating to external stakeholders * Relationships, especially within the team * Systems and processes relating to internal functions (such as quality and decision-making) * Learning (how the team adapts to keep up with the pace of change) * Leadership (how the functions of leadership are exercised within the team) When these aspects are aligned, a team can perform at its best; but when any one or more of the aspects is malfunctioning, the result is underperformance. This book helps team coaches develop their skills to support teams in understanding these complex dynamics and, as a result, in developing more effective ways of working together.

'This book is a must for anyone involved in organizational coaching' Adrian Moorhouse, Managing Director, Lane4 & Olympic Gold Medallist Coaching the Team at Work, 4e is the result of research over 20 years with practising team coaches and with major corporations around the world. It recognises that in a complex and constantly evolving business and social environment, teams can only keep up if they adapt frequently. But to adapt, they must have clarity about their internal and external systems and how these contribute to or undermine performance. There are multiple aspects of team function that underpins performance - and each influences and is influenced by the others. This revised edition explores the six most significant aspects: * Purpose and motivation * Systems and processes relating to external stakeholders * Relationships, especially within the team * Systems and processes relating to internal functions (such as quality and decision-making) * Learning (how the team adapts to keep up with the pace of change) * Leadership (how the functions of leadership are exercised within the team) When these aspects are aligned, a team can perform at its best; but when any one or more of the aspects is malfunctioning, the result is underperformance. This book helps team coaches develop their skills to support teams in understanding these complex dynamics and, as a result, in developing more effective ways of working together.

David Clutterbuck

Coaching the Team at Work 2

Coaching the Team at Work

Effective leaders don’t buy into or try to suppress their inner experiences. Instead, they approach them in a mindful, values-driven, and productive way—developing what we call emotional agility. 
In our complex, fast-changing knowledge economy, this ability to manage one’s thoughts and feelings is essential to business success.

Emotional agility

The first step in developing emotional agility is to notice when you’ve been hooked by your thoughts and feelings. That’s hard to do, but there are certain telltale signs. One is that your thinking becomes rigid and repetitive. Leaders stumble when they are paying too much attention to their internal chatter and allowing it to sap important cognitive resources that could be put to better use.

Recognize your patterns

When you’re hooked, the attention you give your thoughts and feelings crowds your mind; there’s no room to examine them. One strategy that may help you consider your situation more objectively is the simple act of labeling.
Labeling allows you to see your thoughts and feelings for what they are: transient sources of data that may or may not prove helpful.

Label your thoughts and emotions

The opposite of control is acceptance—not acting on every thought or resigning yourself to negativity but responding to your ideas and emotions with an open attitude, paying attention to them, and letting yourself experience them. Take 10 deep breaths and notice what’s happening in the moment. This can bring relief, but it won’t necessarily make you feel good. In fact, you may realize just how upset you really are. The important thing is to show yourself (and others) some compassion and examine the reality of the situation.

Accept your thoughts and emotions

When you unhook yourself from your difficult thoughts and emotions, you expand your choices. You can decide to act in a way that aligns with your values.
Is your response going to serve you and your organization in the long term as well as the short term? Will it help you steer others in a direction that furthers your collective purpose? Are you taking a step toward being the leader you most want to be and living the life you most want to live?
The mind’s thought stream flows endlessly, and emotions change like the weather, but values can be called on at any time, in any situation.

Act on your values

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

Emotional Agility

Working Backwards is a narration of the processes and work culture followed in Amazon. The authors strongly believe that the success of Amazon can be attributed to its work culture. If you get past the praises for Jeff Bezos, there are a few thought-provoking high-acheivers' processes in the book. For some, it might look like a handbook for running a factory of new ideas. Amazon has simply tried many ideas. Few of them are successful and that's good enough.

Introduction

Powerpoints convey too little information. The outcome of a presentation using Powerpoint depends completely on the skills of the presenter. Instead, write 6-page description of the idea being presented. The first few minutes of the meeting is devoted to reading the 6-pager. The idea needs to speak for itself rather than the presenter.

Ban PowerPoint

Do not try to control the output metrics. They are hard to control. Instead, work on the input metrics. The output metrics will reflect your work.

Focus On Input Metrics

Articulating a company's motto or core elements will tell its employees and stake holders what is important for the company. An employee working at any level in the company will be able to take decision autonomously if they know what the values are.

Articulate The Core Elements Of Company's Culture

Everyone is a leader in their own right. Everyone is making autonomous decisions everyday. Leadership principles ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction as a company.

Define A Set Of Leadership Principles

Working backwards is a good read. Talks in depth about the processes that make Amazon successful.

Working Backwards is a narration of the processes and work culture followed in Amazon. The authors strongly believe that the success of Amazon can be attributed…

Working Backwards

According to Eric Ries, there are two main reasons for startup failures:<ul><li>Traditional management methods do not work for a highly uncertain startup</li><li>The second reason may seem completely opposite to the first one </li><li> seeing that traditional management approaches do not work, entrepreneurs let things go by themselves and are guided by the "just do it" principle.</li></ul>

Why Do startups fail ??

<ul><li>Many people share the opinion that entrepreneurial success is a combination of perseverance, intelligence, a good product, and the luck of being in the right place at the right time.</li><li> Routine, small things, and boring details do not matter. </li><li> it is nothing more than just a myth, partly imposed by pop culture. </li></ul>It's exactly the boring little things that are critical to a startup's success.

What is a Lean Startup?

<ul><li>Entrepreneurs are everywhere. </li><li>Irrespective of the size of the venture if you guys are working on a product that solves a problem in a new and better way then you are entrepreneurs</li><li>Entrepreneurship is management. Startups need a new type of management that will handle the conditions of extreme uncertainty.</li><li>Confirmation by facts. A startup needs continuous learning through a scientific approach and empirical hypothesis testing.</li></ul>

Five Principles of the Lean Startup:

<ul><li>Instead of making complex plans based on many assumptions,</li><li> you can make constant adjustments with a steering wheel called the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. </li><li>Startups are greatly analogous to driving a car to our office as we know the destination but we may change the routes according to our ease  </li></ul>

Startups are not rocket science they are like car rides

The feedback that a startup receives in its experiments can be qualitative (which product options they like and which they don't) or quantitative (how many customers use the product, the number of registered users).The Lean Startup concept is based on a Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. The most important challenge of startup management is to strive to reduce the feedback cycle time. But all the elements of this cycle deserve equal attention.

How to go into practice?


<ul><li>For a startup, you need to start creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as soon as possible. </li><li>MVP is a version of a product that allows you to start the Build-Measure-Learn cycle with minimal effort, spending as little development time as possible.</li><li>Such a crude product may be devoid of the options that will be most appreciated by customers in the future. </li><li>Still, at the same time, enough to be usable and understandable by first users.</li></ul>

Build #step-1

<ol><li>Video MVP {A video that explains your product or solution to measure traction}</li><li>The Concierge MVP {idea that when you’re just starting out you don’t need to be able to handle thousands of customers, you just need to make one customer happy} great way to validate your hypothesis</li><li>The Wizard of Oz MVP. In a Wizard of Oz MVP customers believe they are interacting with your technology product; however, the reality is that behind the scenes a human is doing the work</li><li>Landing Page MVP: make a landing page with an explanation of your solution if people are showing interest and interacting its a good sign </li></ol>

Types of MVP


<ul><li>"Measure" means determining whether the efforts to create a product are producing the desired results. </li><li>And this is the key difference between Lean Startup valuation and standard methods, where deadlines and budget utilization are assessed, </li><li>but it may not be considered that the startup has created a useless product. </li><li>The primary assessment method in a Lean startup is innovation accounting.</li><li>This is a quantitative approach that allows us to find out how successful our attempts to trigger the growth mechanism are. It also helps identify intermediate learning outcomes.</li></ul>

Measure #step-2

<ul><li>It means to figure out whether the chose path lead to success or we need to pivot</li><li>When an entrepreneur sees that the chosen path does not lead to success, </li><li>he must be ready to find a new strategic hypothesis and stop spending money on following the unnecessary direction.</li></ul>

Learn #step-3

<ul><li>It is not uncommon for entrepreneurs to first create a product and then find out consumers' reactions. But the point is to do the opposite.</li><li>The goal of creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is to start learning and testing in practice as soon as possible. </li><li>An MVP is needed to test the hypotheses of entrepreneurs. It should not be perfect. It should be quality enough to attract the first customers, but no more.</li></ul>

Do what scares perfectionists

<ol><li> Create MVP and get feedback to understand the real state.</li><li>Try to bring metrics closer to ideal ones. It can take a lot of trying.</li><li>Decide whether to move in the same direction or make a pivot.</li><li>If you are close to the ideal metrics, you need to move in the same direction.</li></ol>

Three stages of innovation accounting:

<ul><li>If nobody uses your product, then optimization or marketing will make no sense. </li><li>A startup must be very clear about making clear and well-founded predictions to prove that a good business can be built with the product. </li><li>The necessary indicators are often replaced by those that look nicer but are useless ("vanity metrics"). </li><li>These metrics usually include ad views, page visits, app installs, and more.</li><li> Real metrics should prove the value of your project, that it really solves user problems.</li></ul>

Vanity metrics

<ul><li>When it becomes clear that the initially chosen path will not lead to success, </li><li>the entrepreneur is required to make a pivot - to radically change the strategy, create and test a new hypothesis about the product.</li><li>The pivot's essence is to take into account everything that you have learned earlier, but at the same time radically change the strategy to get even more grounded knowledge.</li><li>It is a combination of the scientific method of hypothesis testing and vision, intuition, and creativity.</li></ul>

When should you make a pivot?

Small batch approachThe Lean Startup methodology is based on a small batch approach, borrowed from the concept of lean manufacturing.<ul><li>When working in small batches, the finished product is produced every few seconds. </li><li>When working in large batches, all the finished goods are produced simultaneously, at the very end. </li><li>Imagine what this means when it comes to hours, days, weeks. </li><li>What if a customer suddenly decides they don't need a product? </li><li>Would we like to know about this earlier? In the small batches approach, this risk is minimized.</li></ul>

How to get traction?

<ul><li>The rules that govern sticky growth are pretty simple: if the acquisition rate exceeds the loss rate, then the popularity of the product rises. Therefore, companies need to track consumer losses.</li></ul>

1. The sticky engine of growth

<ul><li>For a company to grow steadily over a long time using a paid-growth tool, it needs a differentiated ability to 'monetize' a particular group of users.</li><li>For example, at IMVU (Ries' ex-company), this was due to introducing the ability to get off funds from mobile phones, which helped the company attract more customers than competitors who focused only on bank cards.</li></ul>

2. Paid engine of growth.

<ul><li>The lean startup is developing a product based on the expressed desires of the market.</li><li>The lean startup uses validated learning, which is a process by which companies assess consumer interest.</li><li>Lean startup methods focus heavily on customer-related information such as customer churn rate, lifetime customer value, and product popularity.</li><li>In lean startup practices, experimentation is favored more than adherence to a rigid plan.</li><li>Lean startup standards will involve releasing a small form or early concept products to assess the customer reaction to the product.</li></ul>

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

This book is a good business bible for new approach to manage a new company known as startups in the post - modern 21st century as the world economy is becoming a knowledge economy where human is at the centre of producing goods and services.

Outlines a revisionist approach to management while arguing against common perceptions about the inevitability of startup failures, explaining the importance of providing genuinely needed products and services as well as organizing a business that can adapt to continuous customer feedback.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

The Lean Startup

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Upstream

Visionaries vs. Operators | Simon Sinek

Absence Blindness rewards drama

A Tactical Guide to Managing Up: 30 Tips from the Smartest People We Know

What Is PDCA? Understanding the Plan-Do-Check-Act Method

Coaching the Team at Work

Emotional Agility

Working Backwards

The Lean Startup

The 10 Golden Rules of Effective Management

It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.