Go ahead = 1. better + 2. not worse

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

Summary 

• Go ahead if = 1. Better + 2. Not worse

  • There is always an existing solution to a problem… even if the solution is ‘nothing’. Ideally you want to make a better solution than the existing high water mark. 

  • “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” — Charlie Munger

  • It doesn’t matter how brilliant your idea is if it’s also filled with stupidity. AKA for your idea to be brilliant it should be devoid of stupidity. 

  • Good idea = 1. Helpful * 2. Not Stupid (note that is a *, not plus).  If our ideas unintentionally confuse people, then is it a bad idea. Don’t do that. 

  • I didn’t use to think about making sure the solution wasn’t worse. I used to focus only on the proposal being ‘1. Better’. I often find it’s easy to explain why a proposal is ‘1. Better’ but hard to explain why it’s ‘2. Not worse’. 

  • You should always be angel advocates on your idea.  Think of all the ways to break your idea and why it’s bad.  If you can’t think of any, then simple, it’s a good idea.  

• Evidence echelons - you want ‘incontrovertible evidence’ to explain why something is ‘1. Better’ + ‘2. Not worse’

  • L0: my thoughts

  • L1: some corroborating external justification - however this can easily also be confirmation bias / data mining

  • L2: an uncontroversial externally validatable reason why something is ‘1. Better’

  • L3: incontrovertible evidence - uncontroversial externally validatable reason(s) why something is ‘1. Better’ AND ‘2. Not worse’

• In some respects a business is a series of accumulated decisions. Ergo, if you make quality decisions then you build an epic business. 

  • Go ahead with proposal if it’s = 1. Better + 2. Not worse

  • AKA go ahead with proposal if it’s = 1. Good + 2. Not bad

    • See above: Good = 1. Helpful * 2. Not Stupid

• Jingle: to be good, get good at explaining why you are not bad ;). 

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If you are making a decision you have not made before there is a range of outcomes 

• “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” - Einstein

• When making a decision, IMO spend as much time on trying to add upside possibility as removing downside possibility. 

• Range of possible outcomes from the decision: 

• Ideally you can focus on why something is ‘2. Not worse’ until the lower bound of the range of outcomes is a net improvement. This is the best fun. 

• Some sample questions to ask for downside removal AKA ‘2. Not worse’ justification (in some respects this is a rearticulation of Devil’s undisqualitifed decisions)

  • Where could this go wrong? AKA Angel’s Advocate. 

  • Can anyone find a hole in the logic? 

  • For Reason A (‘variable’ if you are explaining with models / equations - link) is there another ‘counter characterisation’ of the affect? 

  • What are we missing (eg is the Job To Be Done wrong, eg have we incorrectly MECE’d the problem space)? 

  • What blind spots do we have? AKA is there a user persona who will view the proposal differently? 

  • Where is my ego distorting my view of the world? AKA tell me my biases please. 

User personas - you are unique... just like everyone else

• One key area I’ve found to get into trouble is not understanding the different user personas and how they look at the world from different perspectives. 

• Levels of user base modelling - aka user persona creation

  • -L2: assuming that the entire user base thinks like you. Unfortunately I think this is the default for many people. Your personal experience is valid, your personal experience does not represent the entirety of all human experience. It’s likely you are not just solving a problem for yourself, so IMO think beyond yourself. 

  • -L1: assuming the entire user base is homogenous but different to you.

  • L1: segment user base into 2-5x personas

  • L2: segment user based into 2-5x personas that cover 80%+ of the different user types and are mutually exclusive. 

• If I’m making a decision with a large amount of unknown (new) I try to: 

  • Build an equation to explain the solution that has 2-5x variables and associated taxonomies. 

  • Then I try to build the 2-5x personas for the group of people I’m trying to help. 

  • Finally I try to explain why the proposal is ‘1. Better’ + ‘2. Not worse’ for each persona on each variable! This is normally done in a spreadsheet identifying only a few major key points. Avoid trying to identify too many variables as it muddies the data. Be specific on what each persona things is Good and what is Bad, then move on.  

Different good vs Different bad - ideally you want incontrovertible evidence. 

• In the past I think I could explain why my proposal was different, but was it different good or different bad? I had a reason why it was 'different good', but did I have incontrovertible evidence that we are right or just 'I feel'?

• Evidence echelons - you want ‘incontrovertible evidence

  • L0: my thoughts

  • L1: some corroborating external justification - however this can easily also be confirmation bias / data mining

  • L2: an uncontroversial externally validatable reason why something is ‘1. Better’

  • L3: incontrovertible evidence - uncontroversial externally validatable reasons why something is ‘1. Better’ AND ‘2. Not worse’

• Comment: 

  • With the benefit of hindsight I think that 5 years ago Duncan was often just saying why things were different… and I had some “L0: my thoughts” reasons on why that was better but frankly it was pretty weak. 

Example - Year 7 Maths Questions

• Let’s say you want to try and figure out how to make great maths questions for a year 7 textbook. You want these questions to be the best in the market, so as such be different to the way existing questions are done. How do you try and characterise ahead of time if your decisions are better or worse rather than existing outcomes? 

• This is just one component of what we are doing in Year 7 Maths. 

  • For Year 7 Maths we systematically try to find all the misconceptions students have for each lesson and then try to custom build a learning journey (question sequence) that does not result in the misconception. 

    • Poorly designed learning journey = misconception

    • Well designed learning journey = no misconception

  • Go ahead with incorporating misconceptions = 1. Better + 2. Not worse

    • 1. Better = we can design a learning journey to not result in the misconception

    • 2. Not worse = we have validated that this misconception is a common misconception (eg through academic research) and not actually something irrelevant. In the worst case scenario we would change the learning journey to ‘not build a misconception we had identified’ but 1. This wasn’t actually a misconception so not solving anything and 2. Through changing the learning journey we have an unintended 2nd order consequence of actually building a different misconception due to ‘blindness’. 

Example: Leaving your job to try do a startup

• When Ben, Jeremy and I started Edrolo we all committed to working on Edrolo 10 hours a week on top of our full time jobs. AKA we were moonlighting. 

  • IMO this was ‘1. Better’ & ‘2. Not worse’ than quitting our full time jobs immediately as we had so much stuff to figure out. 

  • ‘1. Better’ = we got to learn about Edrolo and education

  • ‘2. Not worse’ = we didn’t have cash runway issues as we still had full time jobs

• Then Edrolo got some traction and we thought about quitting our full time jobs but at the time it would have meant no income as Edrolo wasn’t generating enough cash to pay us. 

  • We found out about Startmate, similar to Y Combinator but in Australia. Startmate is a startup accelerator. 

  • At the time I was working at Google, I realised that if Edrolo got into Startmate and then died shortly after that this would look better on my resume than ‘just staying at Google’. 

  • So aside from having no income for eg 6-12 months if we could get Edrolo into Startmate it was actually a win for my career long term. 

  • Edrolo applied to Startmate and got in while we all still had full time jobs, so we didn’t have to quit without knowing about this ‘safety net’. 

  • Edrolo + Startmate: 

    • 1. Better = Get to try and make Edrolo work and if it goes well then can hopefully help improve the world and have an epic job.

    • 2. Not worse = Edrolo got into Startmate and worst case scenario Edrolo died shortly after the end of the Startmate program = better on my resume than staying at Google = no brainer. 

Example: hectic

• The above two examples are pretty light on examples. If you want to see the hectic way we try to explain how entire product recipes are ‘1. Better’ + ‘2. Not worse’ you’ll need to crawl ~1000 cells in a spreadsheet and work at Edrolo! 

• Honestly, I find trying to do this one of the most beautiful things… but also it’s typically super dense. Duncan = dense and intense? Nonsense! 

If you only take away one thing

• You keep the good decisions. You stop the bad decisions. 

• But a bad decision can kill you. So to me it’s likely more important to try and justify why decisions are ‘2. Not worse’ / Bad than it is that they are ‘1. Better’ / Good. 

• To be good, get good at explaining why you are not bad ;). 

The direct and indirect approach. Try to come up with both.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

There is almost always a direct and an indirect approach

• You can lead a horse to water but can you get it to drink? 

• Often, I find the indirect approach is a much better way of getting someone to ‘want to drink the water’. AKA I often find that the indirect approach is more positive sum than the direct approach. 

• Outcome = 1. Quality of the idea * 2. How much someone wants to get on board with the idea

  • 2. How much someone wants to get on board with the idea = IMO SUPER IMPORTANT!

  • It doesn’t matter how good your idea is if someone doesn’t want to get on board. 

  • They say ‘politics is the art of the possible’. IMO ‘helping others is the art of what it is possible to get people on board with’. 

  • IMO ideas can be put forward in a ‘positive sum, zero sum or negative sum’ fashion. 

  • I find that it’s hard to figure out how to put ideas forward in a positive sum fashion… but that it’s almost always possible. 

  • IMO, ideally all ideas are put forward in a positive sum fashion. One key method I have for making things positive sum is the ‘indirect approach’. 

  • Before doing something I try to ask myself (and others): What is the direct approach? What is the indirect approach? Which approach is less likely to encroach?

  • I'll be more direct, I almost never think one should move ahead until one has come up with and considered the indirect approach. 

• Jingle: for the most direct progress, try the indirect process. 

Direct vs Indirect Approach - Examples

• You have an idea for product that you think someone should be considering: 

  • Direct approach: I think we should put this idea into the product.

  • Indirect approach: 

    • I’ve been thinking about the idea of ‘skills’ as a separate concept we can use to make the curriculum interesting and relevant. 

    • Then you sit and chat for 1 hour to explore the idea of skills. 

    • After this chat you ask the other to write some metacognition thoughts about the idea of ‘skills’?

    • Then, after this, you ask them if they think they want to include the idea of ‘skills’ in the product. Normally you are on the same page, but if not you have the basis for a really interesting conversation! 

• You are interested in someone’s thoughts on an idea: 

  • Direct approach: What do you think about Idea X?

  • Indirect approach: What do you think Person A would think about Idea X? What do you think Person B would think about Idea X? 

  • Comment

    • Inside of me asking you how two different people would think of something you also point out what you would think. 

• Put the shoe on the other foot: 

  • Direct approach: We have a process for making content, but you didn’t follow the process, can you please let me know why? 

  • Indirect approach: Hey, with new colleague X, do you think it’s important that they follow the process? 

  • Comment

    • Often without realising it people have different standards for themselves to others… which they realise when you point it out. 

    • You don’t need to talk to them directly about the point, as it’s pretty clear they don’t want others to do the behaviour they just did. And if they do it again you can have a very direct conversation. 

    • In some respects my default is: 1. Do the indirect approach (intended 2nd order message). If this doesn’t hit home then you have a good basis for the 2. Direct approach. 

• Wanting to encourage a type of behaviour in someone: 

  • Direct approach: I think you should do more of X. 

  • Indirect approach: You praise the behaviour you are wanting more of when another person does it publicly in front of someone. Then you get their manager to bring up this behaviour in their next 1:1. 

  • Comment

    • IMO one should be constantly trying to build and encourage the behaviours you want in yourself and others. 

    • Be the change you want to see. 

    • Build yourself into the person you want to be. 

    • Try to help others see changes that they want to make to themselves (indirect approach), not tell them something is not good enough (direct approach). 

• To have a friend, first, be a friend: 

  • Circumstances: you want to have an in depth conversation about how they might want to change their approach. 

  • Direct approach: I think you should consider changing your approach. 

  • Indirect approach: 

    • (first be a friend, aka demonstrate a unit of vulnerability) you ask the person for advice and how you are thinking about changing your approach here. What do they think? You then have a nice 15 min chat about things. 

    • (then you can see if they are also wanting to be vulnerable) You then say ‘hey, thanks for the chat 2 weeks ago. I’ve been thinking about other places we might want to consider different approaches. What do you think about approach B for this? 

    • Comment

      • You don’t necessarily talk directly about their approach being suboptimal in your opinion, you just put forward another approach and they felt you listened to them, so they should also listen to you. They feel that you are there to help! 

      • We are all players, we are all coaches. 

• The only feedback you should give is an ‘upgrade opportunity’. IMO one of the best ways to give an upgrade opportunity is to 1. Help someone understand their metacognition and 2. Be able to upgrade their metacognition. 

  • This is from this blog. 

  • Feedback levels:

    • -L1: your output was good / bad. What is someone meant to do with that? 

    • L0: your output was good / bad with specific reason

    • L1: your output was good / bad with specific reason + here is an example of better output with reason

    • L2: awareness of and explaining what possible metacognition could be for a certain output. Eg are we all having the following blind spot? Eg are we stuck with anchoring bias? 

    • L3: L2 + explaining how to have better metacognition, aka increase the quality of someone’s thinking

  • Direct approach: your output was bad. 

  • Indirect approach: can you talk to me about how you came to this output? Ah, that’s an interesting strategy (metacognition pattern), what I’ve tried to do is think about including Perspective B as well and that this can mean I think the optimal output might be different here, thoughts? 

  • Comment

    • Talking to metacognition often comes across as helping. 

    • Talking to output often comes across as a dressing down. 

If you only take one thing away: 

• I find typically you don’t get very far telling people what to do. Normally, I try to provoke thought and let others consider what to do. 

• I like to think I’m a work in progress, I like to think I’ll always be a work in progress. 

• Please try to help me progress… ideally in a positive sum way… I’ll try to do the same for you. 

Improving at thinking = metacognition

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 10 mins

Summary: We often make decisions/create outputs based on intuition and thoughtless thinking. IMO the best outputs are products of thinking about the thinking that went into creating that output. Then, levelling up that thinking to improve the system for that output.

Input * Metacognition = Output 

• Culture happens by default or by design. 

• Metacognition is happening by default or design. 

• Whether you are aware of your own or others metacognition doesn’t mean there isn’t metacognition. 

• Levels:

  • L0: just doing. For the longest time I wasn’t even aware of the concept of metacognition, I was just ‘trying hard’. 

    • This is only focusing on input. If you don't work nothing will. But are you working smart or working dumb?

  • L1: feedback on output. IMO feedback on output is better than no feedback, but IMO this is often treating the ‘proximate cause, not the root cause’. 

    • Ie this output was good / bad vs let’s talk about your process for making output. 

  • L2: feedback on metacognition. I want to get good at not having problems, not good at fixing problems. 

    • IMO talking about metacognition = becoming aware of metacognition. Whilst I don’t think one will ever likely fully know oneself (unless one stops growing), I do believe that each day one can try to know a little more about oneself… and try to help others learn about themselves. One key way I have to do this is to talk with others about your own and their metacognition.

    • IMO improving metacognition is working smarter. 

• Jingle: Improving at metacognition = unlocking mind consciousness (awareness)

  • understanding metacognition --> improving metacognitive processes --> levelling up --> unlocking mind’s potential

  • IMO want to improve yourself? Get better at understanding and explaining your metacognition. 

  • IMO want to improve at helping others? Get better at understanding and explaining others metacognition. 

  • If you can’t explain the metastructure of how you are thinking? Do you know how you are thinking? 

• “You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.” John Dewey

  • IMO good reflection on your experiences = metacognition.

  • Experience = Our assumptions (why we do what we do) + Strategies (what we do) 

  • I think with effort one can try to become aware in real time of one’s metacognition (assumptions and strategies). 

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Details

Socrates “Know thyself.”

• “You are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings.” Eckhart Tolle 

• They say one can observe one’s consciousness, i.e. one can become aware real time of one’s metacognition. 

• Eg I am not frustrated, I am experiencing frustration. Eg I am not sad, I am experiencing sadness. 

• In other words: 

  • 10 years ago Single loop Duncan: Mental Input = Mental Output. Eg duncan experience frustration = duncan frustrated. 

    • “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ― Viktor E. Frankl

  • Today, Double loop Duncan tries to be: Input * Metacognition = Output

    • Ok, this is a ‘frustration stimulus, why is that? Ok, now what should I do about this?’

  • When looking at others: Input * Metacognition = Output

    • Ok, what this person said doesn’t appear to make sense to me, don’t become frustrated, let’s try and see if you can think about and then talk about their metacognition to see why they said this vs saying ‘I don’t get it’. 

• IMO one core part of ‘knowing thyself and others’ is the ability to describe your own and others metacognition. 

  • -L1: assume because someone said something that doesn’t make sense they are a bad person. 

  • L0: give feedback only on output

  • L1: are able to explain the metacognition of yourself and others after the fact

  • L2: are able to explain the metacognition of yourself and others realtime

  • L3: are able to express in a positive sum way the metacognition of others real time as part of a discussion.

  • L4: L3 + able to transfer your own and others metacognition across domains and problem areas in real time to make reasonable predictions about future outputs.

    • I often find now that eg 10-50% of work discussions are about the metacognition of the participants vs ‘I like proposal A, well I like proposal B’. 

One articulation: “Metacognition = the structure of how you are thinking” = “thinking about thinking”

• Most of the time, I find it much better to have a model to explain a problem space than not to (All models are wrong, some are useful). 

• I often segment problems by ‘amount of unknown’: small, medium or large amount of unknown. 

  • At work, for a problem with a ‘large amount of unknown’ I normally try to figure out ‘a model of 2-5x variable with associated taxonomies that give 80%+ explanatory power’. 

• One key way I find to talk about metacognition is to use a model we are building to try and explain a problem space during a discussion with others. 

  • Eg is someone oversimplifying and saying that there is only one variable that matters vs trying to balance it vs ~3 key variables?

  • Eg is someone oversimplifying a variable as ‘black or white’ when it’s grey? 

  • Basically think aloud and possibly draw on a board the model you are building and the variables you consider important and try to balance against each other. IMO typically the more interesting a problem the more complex a problem. Most things worth discussing are not black or white. 

    • Metacognition = explicitly integrating the model you are building and balancing variables

    • Output = just that someone said eg ‘I like X’

• Another key way I find to talk about metacognition is to look for cognitive biases.

  • A nice list of them for ya.

• From my perspective we have all these biases baked into our source code. If you are not aware of them then you are biased. IMO the way to try and be neutral (unbiased) is to 1. Be aware of the cognitive biases and 2. Try to lean against them. 

• I’ve found “Confirmation Bias” is a big one. This is where we overweight information that confirms our point of view and underweight info that disproves it. Of your ego… you need to let go! 

No direct ‘brain mouth connection’

• Another articulation of metacognition = strategically thinking before you speak (vs thinking aloud)

• Talking taxonomy

  • -L1: direct brain mouth connection. Input = Output

    • Problem solving ≠ going with the first idea you have

  • L1: do a layer of thinking before you speak, ie what are two possible options for what to say here and which one should I go with? 

    • IMO in a work discussion this is normally the minimum level of metacognition one should be doing. 

    • IMO minimum level of problem solving = coming up with two options and considering which one you should go ahead with

  • L2: what is the model I’m building in my head to explain the problem space and how is what I’m saying fitting into this. 

  • L3: explaining aloud your metacognition (eg model you are building) and meta-tagging what you are saying vs the model. 

• Good intention ≠ good outcome

  • It’s not acceptable not to have good intentions… IMO it’s also not acceptable to have a “-L1: direct brain mouth connection” in a work discussion. 

  • I find a well intentioned low level strategic thinker (aka “-L1: direct brain mouth connection”) can be one of the most destructive things in a work discussion. 

  • Think (metacognition) before you use your mouth for output… else your mouth might put you out (of a job). 

• One possible ways to represent this taxonomy:

There are two types of thinking: Cognition and Metacognition

• Cognition = running the machine

• Metacognition = explaining how the machine runs and as such being able to upgrade how the machine runs. 

• Comment: 

  • You can work for 10,000 hours and be exactly the same at the end (aka 100% cognition)

  • Or you can do 10 hour of metacognition upgrading and be 10x better. 

  • You upgrade your thinking by doing upgrades, not by doing more.

  • The better you are at metacognition, the more meta your cognition.

You get better at metacognition by doing metacognition 

• IMO what should one consider doing:

  • Trying to learn all key cognitive biases and  counter  them by leaning against them. 

  • Trying to blog once a week as I find often one can implicitly see one’s metacognition after rereading what you wrote (imo much harder to see it when you are discussing). 

  • Trying to metatag any verbal conversations real time to try explicitly see your own and others metacognition

  • When writing blogs put in equations which try to show you balancing multiple variables

  • After key meetings at work do post game analysis where each participant puts forward one ‘metacognition thought’ about every  other  participant. 

  • Increasing the pace one can think so that one has space not just to listen to what is being said (output) but to try and consider the metacognition of what is going on as well. (Blog link: Brain upgrading: increasing the rate at which you think!)

• Modes of metacognition:

  • -L2: try to win arguments (ego) vs look after the over best outcome (common good)

  • -L1: have a subconscious metacognition bias you commit consistently. Eg strawman, eg over simplify

  • L0: no conscious metacognition while thinking (aka direct brain mouth connection)

  • L1: state metacognition while talking

  • L2: state metacognition and build useful models real time in a discussion - link to blog

    • Ok I think we currently have 2 variables in the model, I’m proposing we add a 3rd variable which is ‘X’...

  • L3: can guide conversations towards improving the common good if there are participants at L0 or below

  • L4: can guide people to level up on this taxonomy

The only feedback you should give is an ‘upgrade opportunity’. IMO one of the best ways to give an upgrade opportunity is the help 1. Someone understand their metacognition and 2. Be able to upgrade their metacognition. 

• Feedback levels:

  • -L1: your output was good / bad. What is someone meant to do with that? 

  • L0: your output was good / bad with specific reason

  • L1: your output was good / bad with specific reason + here is an example of better output with reason

  • L2: awareness of and explaining what possible metacognition could be for a certain output. Eg are we all having the following blind spot? Eg are stuck with anchoring bias? 

  • L3: L2 + explaining how to have better metacognition, aka increase the quality of someone’s thinking

• After a meeting get the participants to explain 1x thing about the metacognition of each person there. Ie about the way people were thinking. IT IS THE BEST FUN! To me this is not explaining the play (then Person A kicked the ball to Person B), but explaining the strategy (I think Person A might have been thinking about the concept of esteem and that is why they were approaching the topic from X). 

• If you can explain to someone their metacognition and how to possibly improve it they want to give you a hug (for the way they think they can upgrade; this is not a dressing down, it’s a way to level up). If you can’t explain the metacognition and how to improve then often they just shrug. 

• At work, I now try to include metacognition (eg tagging) when I’m speaking, and when I’m trying to help someone level up I try to talk about their metacognition, not the output alone. I find that talking about output alone is often counterproductive.

  • This can be achieved with some simple questions; how did you get to that decision, what was the thinking behind selecting X, how would you change your approach if you had to do it again?

If you only take away one thing

• 10 years ago Duncan wasn’t aware of the concept of metacognition. 

• 5 years ago Duncan was aware of the concept but didn’t really understand what it meant. 

• Today Duncan believes that metacognition is one of, if not the most, important way he can upgrade himself and others. 

• If you want a way to try and improve metacognition skills try the following: 

  • When was I the happiest this week and then try explain why (ie unpack the metacognition)

  • When was I the least happy this week and then try explain why (ie unpack the metacognition)

  • When was I the most frustrated this week and then try explain why (ie unpack the metacognition)

  • When was I the most relaxed this week and then try explain why (ie unpack the metacognition)

• “You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.” John Dewey

  • IMO good reflection on your experiences = metacognition. 

  • I think with effort one can try to become aware in real time of one’s metacognition. 

All models are wrong, some are useful

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 11 mins

Summary: 

• Almost always the world is more complex than one binary variable. 

• Often the world is infinitely complex. 

• What to do? 

• IMO build a model of 2-5x grey variables that explain 80%+ of a problem space. 

• IMO the right 2-5x variables normally explain 80%+ of a problem space. 

• IMO normally your mind can understand and flex a 2-5x variable model… I find that 10x variables is almost always too much! 

• IMO if you don't have a model to explain a problem space, it's likely you will have large blind spots and ego distortions for that problem space. This means you can often think you are progressing when in fact you are regressing!

The solution to all problems is understanding. One core method I use to improve ‘understanding’ is upgrading models to better explain problem spaces.

• I believe the best problems are infinitely complex: eg what does it mean to live a good life, what is the common good, how to be a good friend, how to run a government, how to improve education…

• Whether you are aware of it or not there is always an existing solution to a problem space… even if the solution is ‘there currently is no solution’. 

• For the most complex problems I believe you can likely always improve the solutions, one approach is building generations of upgraded solutions. So I try not to worry about ‘what the perfect solution is’ but ‘is this solution better than the existing outcome’. 

• IMO one of the most important skills one can cultivate is the ability to build ‘useful’ models that explain problem spaces. 

  • Useful model = 1. A model that has 80%+ explaining power of the problem space + 2. Is simple enough that you can manipulate the variables (either in your mind or eg a spreadsheet) AND understand the overall changes, changes in one variable make on the model. 

• I find building models to try and improve my understanding of the world is hard… but oh so much fun. 

• IMO for the major areas of your job you should consider having and constantly upgrading models that explain the problem spaces in which you operate. 

  • One lens: Input * Model = Output

  • People often give feedback on output, or say try harder on input. I believe that often the optimal layer for which you can understand how someone is thinking, and for which someone can upgrade is by grasping the model they are using to understand the world. To sustainably improve output (to teach people to fish, not give them a fish), I often find the best approach is to understand and help improve the model someone is using. 

• Jingle: all models are wrong, some are useful. 

Models, skinny things you hang clothes on or ways to improve the world?

• In some respects, IMO your ability to problem solve / innovate = your ability to create useful models. 

• In some respects, IMO your ability to improve your own understanding (vs others improve your understanding) = your ability to create useful models. 

*Examples of models are at the bottom of the blog. 

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Details

Is the world just a series of decisions? 

• One lens for life: a series of decisions. 

  • If life can be viewed as a series of decisions. 

  • And decisions done well require problem solving. 

  • And problem solving is based on an understanding of a problem space. 

  • Then your ability to make models to explain problem spaces is key to living a good life. 

• One lens for businesses: the accumulation of a series of decisions...

  • IMO if you work at a restaurant you need to make decisions like the menu, hiring etc

  • IMO if you are a teacher you need to make decisions like how to give feedback, what activity to do, etc

  • IMO if you are doing a startup you need to make decisions about what your product should be, how to market your product, etc

• One articulation: Decision = 1. Understanding of problem space * 2. Synthesis of possible solution sets

  • IMO building useful models that explain problem spaces => one key way to improve at “1. Understanding of problem space”

  • IMO building useful models that explain problem spaces => one key way to improve at “2. Synthesis of possible solution sets”

• If much of life is ‘decisions’, then IMO one core way to a better life is to improve at ‘building useful models that explain problem spaces’. 

  • IMO the CloudStreaks blogs are a ‘model + words’

  • IMO the Edrolo products are ‘model actualised into eg a textbook’ (ie a recipe * a machine)

  • IMO feedback to someone is a ‘model actualised into an upgrade opportunity’. 

  • I don’t think I used to be able to see the world this way, I think 5 years ago I was ‘just trying to do good’, not ‘systematically trying to do good through building models’. 

  • IMO if you can’t explain what you are doing in eg a model it’s very unlikely you understand what you are doing. IMO if you can’t explain how to do something well or how to do something badly you likely don’t understand what you are doing. One core way I use to try and explain what I’m doing, what is good / bad is through models :). 

  • IMO for all core parts of work one should have models to compliment explaining what you are doing. 

  • IMO your ability to create models to explain problem spaces in some respects is your ability to change the world. 

  • Models, don’t scout them, build them ;). 

Strategic thinking stages V1 - IMO almost never over simplify the world into ‘one binary variable’

• What I find: 

  • Typically the most important variable will have 30-60% explanatory power of a problem space and needs 3-5x levels in a taxonomy (see taxonomized thinking). 

  • The 2nd most important variable has 20-40% explanatory power of a problem space and needs 2-5x levels in a taxonomy. 

  • The 3rd most important variable has 10-30% explanatory power and needs 2-4x levels in a taxonomy. 

  • Variables 4 & 5 are 10-20% explanatory power and need 2-3x levels in a taxonomy. 

  • Comment

    • Figuring out what these variables are and then creating taxonomies for each variable that are ‘useful’ (ie have high explanatory power) I find super duper hard… but is the core approach I’m aware of for making better decisions. 

• Strategic thinking stages V2: 

  • -L2: argue not for what is the ‘overall best solution’ but whatever your first view point is. Changing your mind is a super power. If you want to be ‘right’ often you need to change your mind often. 

  • -L1: oversimplify a problem space to one binary variable and say that because of this variable it’s either a good / bad idea. 

    • Honestly I feel that this is the default way people put forward ideas in verbal discussions until they are trained up. 

    • IMO this is one articulation of a Strawman Argument. 

    • If someone is doing this, I say ‘please build me a multi variable model to explain the problem space’. Otherwise you can have one party talking about Variable A and the other about Variable B and both thinking the other isn’t listening… when it’s that both are doing low level strategic thinking. 

  • L1: can understand multiple variables and discuss the pros and cons of them vs each other trying to balance. 

  • L2: can create taxonomies for variables that have high explanatory power.

  • L3: can figure out the 2-5x variables and accompanying taxonomies that give 80%+ explanatory power of a problem space.

  • L4: can manipulate the variables in relation to each other understanding how changes in one variable affect other variables.

• Comment:

  • IMO it’s not ok to argue for your position vs the overall right thing to do.

  • IMO it’s not ok to simplify to the point of absurdity. 

• Typically one is going after a solution better than the existing outcome. IMO for the most complex problems (aka the best most fun problems) there likely is never going to be a ‘perfect solution’, but hopefully slowly improving generations of solutions. 

• IMO don't think about if the idea is right or wrong, think about how the idea might be useful… and how you can layer this into a high explanatory power model. 

• All models are wrong (ie not explaining everything), some are useful (ie help explain more than you previously understood). 

• IMO you are trying to build a multi-coloured 3D model, not a black / white 1D piece of poop! 

• Modelling: one key way to create beauty in the world ;). 

“A Posteriori” vs “A Priori” models

• A Posteriori = a model created from existing data points. So you have a set of information and build a model to explain the data. 

• A Priori = a model created to explain the world before having data points. You then run scenarios through the model and see how well they explain outcomes. 

• Models almost always need to be calibrated to reality. But IMO if you can’t build models ‘A Priori’ you are going to be moving way slower. The key way I know how to get better at building models is to… build models AKA deliberate practice. 

• I’m almost always building models to explain ‘thought’, not building a regression based on actual hard datasets. In some respects you are trying to get a high R2^2 value but you can’t ‘know’ like eg if you are doing regression analysis on actual data. 

• Explaining thought (eg how to give feedback, eg how to make high quality exam style questions, eg how to build self esteem through textbooks) normally means you can’t have ‘hard data sets’ to actually ‘regress’, but through building a model with high explanatory power a priori IMO one can ‘progress’. 

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Example: Secondary Textbook Questions - A Posteriori

• This is an example of a model built to try to explain ~80% of the variation of past Exam Questions. 

• Question = 1. Theory + 2. Question Information + 3. Task Word + 4. Marks

• This had a far more complicated taxonomy for ‘3. Task Words’ than I’m generally talking about. Yes some of the models we use are way more complicated that I’ve alluded to here. Bah!

• Comment

• Through this model we believed we could understand ~80% of what made up exam questions and as such make high quality new exam style questions. 

• Edrolo only reference: one articulation of a collection of models are the content recipes and content machines. 

Example: types of teachers - A Priori

• MECE of teacher types: 

  • 1. Out of area (teaching a subject they don’t know well)

  • 2. Traditional

  • 3. Hard working Traditional

  • 4. Innovator

• Comment

  • You are unique… just like everyone else. Your personal experience is fair and valid, but your personal experience does not represent the entirety of human experience. 

  • The more you can empathize with the people you are trying to help the more you should be able to help. 

  • While each teacher is different, if you segment up the teacher cohort intelligently into 2-5x ‘personas’ you should be able to have ~80%+ understanding broadly of what the full cohort of teachers want. 

  • Then when building products you try to understand how each persona sees the world and explain how the different personas will respond to the parts of your product. 

  • One variable we carefully consider at Edrolo: by switching to Edrolo from an existing product will a teacher persona get back time or need to spend more time. 

Example: feedback - A Priori

• Feedback = 1. Specific (the other party understands what you are referring to) + 2. Upgrade opportunity + 3. Tone

  • 1. Specific - Taxonomy

    • Bad: the other party doesn’t know what you are referring to

    • Good: the other party properly understands what you are referring to

  • 2. Upgrade opportunity - Taxonomy

    • Good: not just this was done well or done badly, but exactly how to improve in an understandable and implementable way. 

    • Bad: this output was good / bad. Please do better next time. 

  • 3. Tone - Taxonomy

    • Bad: negative sum dressing down that makes someone scared to bring ideas to you

    • Good: positive sum we can all improve at almost everything always, we improve best if we help each other. 

Example: life - A Priori

• Model: MECE of time = 5 days of purpose, 1 day of play, 1 day of peace. 

  • Purpose: Find a way to make the world better (eg improve education) => take on responsibility to affect change => get meaning => are happy. Or Purpose = Fun * Consequence (responsibility) 

  • Play = Fun * No consequence (no responsibility) 

  • Peace = Do nothing (not having ‘fun’)

• Comment

  • Understanding that I want different types of time in my week and that doing each ‘well’ can be totally different took me a while. 

  • I believe to work well, one should rest and relax well. 

  • IMO one can’t try to relax, it’s a paradox. But IMO one can and likely should try to work well. 

  • So in some respects, the modus operandi for working well is the exact opposite modus operandi for relaxing well. 

  • I personally don’t think I’m that good at relaxing. For 2021, I think one of the key ways for me to work better is to relax better. 5 years ago Duncan was all ‘how do I improve my productivity’. Today Duncan thinks he’ll improve work productivity by doing relax time each week better. Relaxing time = zero productivity. So… for Duncan to improve work productivity = get better at zero productivity :) 

Examples from my blogs - I try to have a model is every blog

• Treasure Taxonomy

• Decision frameworks: “How to approach solving problems is itself a problem to solve.”

• Helping Humans Handbook - don’t just support, also push, intervene and leave alone!

Examples from others (there are heaps)

• Bloom’s Taxonomy

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

If you only take away one thing

• To get better at understanding the world get better at building A Priori models that explain the world. 

• I honestly believe you can make models to help explain almost all parts of life. If you don’t have a model for an important part of life, I’ve found it’s really easy to miss the wood for the trees. 

• Want a model life? Model out life! 

• IMO improving one's ability to a priori create models for thought problem space is one of the key ways to improve at everything!

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Addendum: I couldn't help myself

• “In a comprehensible universe, if something isn’t forbidden by the laws of physics, then what could possibly prevent us from doing it, other than knowing how? In other words, it’s a matter of knowledge, not resources.” David Deutsch

• Engineers today are biologically indifferent to those 200 years ago but today we build iPhones and rockets to Mars. What we can do is literally other-worldly. 

• We build models for things like atoms (electrons, neutrons, protons etc) and this allowed us to build things like computer chips. Then computer chips allowed us to build rockets with very intricate designs. Now we can send things to Mars! 

• So knowledge creation ability = model creation ability?

• So as above, model creation ability = problem solving / innovation ability? Maybe!!!

Nature vs Nurture vs Self Authoring: determined not to be determined

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

Summary

• IMO you don’t choose where you start life, but IMO you can have a strong say in where you end up. 

• You have biological set points and your environment matters a lot… but IMO these two don’t determine everything. I believe in a modern developed economy, most people, through hard work, can self author to where their start points become effectively barely relevant. 

IMO the best people in almost any field have cultivated themselves massively, ie are majority ‘self-authoring’. 

• IMO Michael Jordan wasn’t always going to be ‘Michael Jordan’. He put in the hard work necessary to go from ‘good raw ingredients’ to ‘greatest of all time’. 

• IMO Taylor Swift wasn’t always going to be a megastar. She put in the hard work to ‘self author’ from a very young age. 

• IMO if Einstein had instead worked as a farmer he wouldn’t have come up with relativity. He had to toil away at it for thousands of hours. 

• IMO physical starting points matter much more than mental starting points. 

  • Race horses haven’t gotten faster in 100 years, they reached the limit of breeding and training 100 years ago. 

  • Today a human can build a rocket that goes to mars., 100 years ago there was no internet, no computers, only ~50% of houses had power. 

• While an oversimplification: the body is limited, the mind is limitless. 

  • IMO mentally you start with personality traits etc… but you don’t start able to speak let alone do math etc. 

  • IMO your mind is your ultimate possession. IMO, with hard work, your mind can be your ultimate creation! 

  • Jingle: I don’t believe in determinism, I don’t believe life is fated… I believe, with hard work, a good life can be created! 

Visualisation of what I think is possible across a life

• Effectively I believe you can grow your mind indefinitely. 

• First you learn to read, then you read to learn. 

• IMO the point of the education system is so that you can eventually educate yourself. 

• You go to school but eventually you are hopefully ‘self authoring’. I’ve put a step change in the amount of self authoring possible post 18 as typically that is when the formal secondary education system stops. 

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Details

The work of Harvard Developmental Psychologist Robert Kegan

Duncan’s adaption of Kegan’s framework

• Definitions

  • Nature (biology): everyone has a different mind start point, eg serotonin levels etc and different personality traits at birth. IMO these of course affect you but they don’t necessarily determine the rest of your life. 

    • “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” - Betrand Russel

  • Nurture (environment): the more a child is spoken to the better their language development. If you are born in a christian country you are very likely to be christian. If you are born in a muslim country you are very likely to be muslim. 

    • “If you put someone in a cult they become a cult member. If you take someone out of a cult they stop being a cult member.” - Unknown. 

    • Feral Children Documentary - what the opposite of ‘nurture’ is :(. 

  • Self authoring: yeah this is the same bloody name as one of the levels in Kegan’s taxonomy so is confusing. Effectively for my definitions you don’t get to choose your biology, often you can have little say in your environment (eg don’t choose to go to school or that you have to learn maths) but IMO you can choose / have agency in some areas. 

    • “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” - Viktor Frankl

    • “A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.” — James Allen

• Model 1:

• According to Kegan the majority (58%) of the adult population are ‘3rd Order Socialised Mind’, 35% are ‘4th order: self-authoring’, and 1% are ‘5th order: self-transforming’. 6% are 1st or 2nd order. 

• For the purposes of this thought experiment, I’ve left nature (biology) as flat from birth. Yes apparently some people are more susceptible to alzheimer's etc but I’m just trying to have a model that helps add colour. 

• Kegan posits that ‘3rd order: socialised mind’ happens post adolescence so effectively once someone is ‘grown’. For this thought exercise I’ve left the effect of ‘nurture (environment)’ to be flat from this point onwards. I think that modern society is ever increasingly complex so the amount of its effect on someone today is, all else equal, greater than 200 years ago. Basically humans know more and have more access to information than ever before so the effect of ‘nurture (environment)’ slowly increases. 

• I’ve made it so for my definition of ‘5th order: self-transforming’ that one is ‘majority self authored’. I don’t think you’ll ever not be affected by your biology or eg your childhood but I do think that it can become an ever smaller portion of who you are. 

• Model 2: 

  • What is possible if one proactively self authors continuously across one’s life. AKA gets to ‘5th order: self-transforming’.

• Kegan purports that the majority (58%) of adults are at ‘3rd order: socialised mind’. Something like this.

• *aside: in some ways this blog is a rearticulation another blog I wrote of ‘Brain upgrading: there is no such thing as intelligence’. 

• Model 3:

• Nature is obviously non-controllable. Someone biologically programmed to be short will never be able to be a champion basketballer 

• Nurture is both controllable and non-controllable. Some aspects of nurture are controllable e.g. choosing to read as a kid. Other aspects are not controllable, such as one’s material wealth, education, supportiveness/attentiveness of parents and so on. Unfortunately, these latter aspects of nurture can have a major influence on one’s mind potential as well as nature. 

  • In other words, someone who has two wealthy, educated parents is far more likely to have greater space for mind development and an easier road to ‘self-authoring’ later in life. 

  • In this way, ‘hard work’ is not the only barrier to achieving one’s self-authoring potential and overcoming the barriers to success. Material circumstances in nurture are also important 

Example 1: Michael Jordan

• IMO Michael Jordan clearly started with quality biology (nature). 

• However one could argue that he was one of the hardest working at improving himself (self authoring) and his team in the history of the NBA. The Last Dance documentary is just epic.

• IMO Jordan was getting mentally better and better at Basketball his entire career… it’s just that he was fighting the inevitable physical decline...

• … but what about pursuits that don’t involve your body? 

Example 2: myself (Duncan Anderson)

• When I was 18, in hindsight, I had ‘the innocence of youth’... which is a nice way of saying ‘I was ignorant AF and didn’t know it’. 

• I honestly thought I was ‘my own person’ when I was 18, aka that I was something like 90% ‘self authored’. I had no idea of most of the concepts in this blog. 

• In hindsight I didn’t choose which school I went to, what I studied, my best friends were the ones with houses closest to my parents house… etc etc! 

• I don’t think I’m ‘a different person’ to what I was when I was 18, but I do like to think I’ve grown a lot. Mentally I like to think i’m 10x what I was when I was 18… which isn’t saying much as in hindsight IMO 18 year old Duncan had done stuff all self authoring. 

• I don’t think I’ve ‘changed’, I like to think I’ve ‘grown’. 

  • Visualisation 1

• Visualisation 2 - Duncan at 18

• Visualisation 3 - Duncan at 36

• Done well, I find time spent growing (AKA self authoring) to be super rewarding. An example of this is the CloudStreaks blog. 

• I think when I was 18 I did zero proactive ‘self authoring’ hours a week. 

• I think I probably do 10-40 hours a week today of proactive ‘self authoring’. 

• I like to think I’m majority self authored today. 

Example 3: Elon Musk

• Musk went from trying to buy and refurbish russian intercontinental ballistic missiles to building SpaceX and reusable rockets. 

• Do you think Musk was born able to design reusable rockets? IMO Musk was born like the rest of us, unable to talk, no maths ability, no engineering skills. 

• IMO each year Musks abilities grow. One reflection of this is what Tesla and SpaceX are able to do. IMO almost everything you see is the product of human minds growing. Eg a skyscraper, a road, the self driving capabilities of Tesla cars. 

• In some respects the internet is the hive mind of humanity. I believe the average human mind today has the possibility of being wildly more capable than a human mind of 100 years ago. 

If you only take away one thing

• We all have different start points in life (eg socioeconomic status, biology set points, some personality traits, supportive or not so much parents, etc etc). 

  • *aside: I think one path to meaning is to try and, in aggregate, improve the start point of humanity. On average, I think humanity is much better off than it was 200 years ago. 

• While of course your starting point matters, IMO it doesn’t entirely determine where you can finish. IMO through hard yet hopefully rewarding work I think you can slowly self author more and more to build yourself into mentally what you want to be. From undoing behaviour traits, to forgiveness, to relativity, to building companies. 

• “Be the change you want to see.” Gandhi. 

• “Build yourself into the person you want to be.” Duncan Anderson. 

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Education addendum

• IMO one articulation of the ‘Edrolo fuzzy north star’ is trying to get people to ‘5th order: self transforming’. 

• If Kegan’s numbers are right only 1% of humans currently get there. I think maybe we can try and have 90% of humans get there. 

• 200 years ago only 10% of humans could read, now 90% can. 

• IMO self-transforming is being able to build yourself into the person you want to be, is being able to build your own values and live by them. 

• First you learn to read, then you read to learn. 

• IMO in some respects I think the point of the education system is so that you can eventually educate yourself. 

• As a society, we are slowly ascending Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. 

• In some respects I see self-actualisation = self authoring. I think we can level up the existing education system to where hopefully 90% of people can self-actualise / self author. IMO money helps well with the bottom part of maslow's hierarchy (eg more food) but money doesn’t help well with the top. The education system done well can help well with the self actualisation.

Hiring as a ‘not no’ vs a ‘yes’

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

Summary: Good outcome for new hire = 1. Hiring process + 2. What happens after hiring

• “Hiring” doesn’t stop after someone signs the contract.

• IMO “2. What happens after hiring > 1. Hiring process”

  • IMO it doesn’t matter how many good people you hire that could potentially work out if you butcher things after they start. 

  • 1. Hiring process = have the wrong people screened out

    • This is still a very important step 

  • 2. What happens after hiring = have the right people to work out

• Life doesn’t get easier… but you can slowly get better at it. 

  • I like to think I slowly get better at life. 

  • This is a positive way of saying that, of the hires that haven’t worked out at Edrolo in the last 8 years, if I was better at ‘2. What happens after hiring’, then I think 80% could have worked out. 

• Hiring heuristic: ‘not no’ vs ‘yes’? 

  • What this means is that I think a more appropriate hiring heuristic is ‘not no’ vs ‘yes’. 

  • IMO one can’t know for sure if a new hire will work out… but can have high confidence a ‘not no’ hire will work out if a good job is done ‘2. after the hiring’. 

  • A ‘not no’ heuristic (vs ‘yes’) shifts the nexus of responsibility into the appropriate place of ‘2. What happens after hiring’. 

• Jingle: IMO hiring is much like dating, a good first few dates doesn’t precipitate a good long term outcome. IMO it takes ongoing work from both parties to get things to really sing. 

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Details

Expectations expectations expectations

• They say real estate is ‘location location location’. I often think management is ‘expectations expectations expectations’. 

• An often repeated mantra is ‘hiring is your most important task’. 

  • While I think the hiring process is very important, I think what actually matters more for whether someone works out or not is what happens after someone starts (vs ‘getting the interview process right’). 

  • Hiring is very important...

  • … however, everything after hiring is even more important. 

• The stages of hiring:

• There is a lot of emphasis placed on “selecting” and “hiring”...

• ...however I posit that what we do in onboarding and beyond plays an even bigger part in a candidate succeeding in the company

• Three categories of hires: 

  • 1. Those who definitely won’t work out => which you can screen for in the interview process with a ‘no’

  • 2. Those who work out if you do a good job post hiring => you get a ‘not no’ in the interview process and then you need to do well after they start for things to work. 

  • 3. Those who will definitely work out => despite poor execution post starting working the person works out. 

    • Very rarely you get a ‘hard yes’ in an interview process IMO. 

• “Try to go to bed a little wiser each day.” Charlie Munger. 

  • Slowly over life I hope to get wiser. 

  • IMO one key component of management is ‘expectations’:

    • Expectations Equation = 1. Figuring out expectations + 2. Setting expectations well + 3. Regulating and guiding people towards the expectations in a firm but fair fashion

  • Comment:

    • In hindsight, IMO at the founding of Edrolo 8 years ago I had stuff all idea of what ‘positive sum expectations’ were for different role types let alone was any good at the rest of the Expectations Equation. 

    • Of the people who haven’t worked out during my 8 years at Edrolo, I’d say 80% could have worked out if we had done a better job post hiring. 

    • If you want a school analogy: a good classroom with happy students learning and working as part of a community is IMO far more on the teacher than the luck of the draw of which students the teacher gets. 

    • I’m not saying hiring doesn’t matter, I’m talking about the percentage of the people who work out after we hired them. 

      • Let’s say you are hiring for one available role:

        • you receive 50x applicants, phone screen 10x and do 5x in person interviews

        • Based on criteria, and some intuition, we’ve picked the person who we believe will have the best chance at succeeding in the role and at the company. 

        • However, could any of the 5x in person interviews have worked out? Quite possibly. To get to this stage, it’s very rarely an obvious decision

    • Of the people you hire that don’t work out, IMO possibly 80% could have worked out had we done better post hiring. 

    • If someone didn’t work out, 5 years ago Duncan thought ‘we hired the wrong person’. Today Duncan thinks ‘5 years ago Duncan’ thought wrong about hiring people. 

Some key factors that matter for a new hire to work out well: 

• 0. Quality hiring process

• Factors that matter after a new hire starts: 

  • 1. What the job entails is well understood (eg defined vs undefined job descriptions)

  • 2. Expectations around role set correctly before starting

    • Funnily, part of a start up’s expectations usually involve ‘not knowing what the future holds’

  • 3. Person has skills needed to succeed prior to starting the job vs person has expectations that they’ll need to level themselves up 

  • 4. Person builds relationships with appropriate people to sufficiency+ (eg this blog)

  • 5. Onboarding is sufficient+

  • 6. Ongoing management is sufficient+

  • 7. Vision of company is sufficient+

  • 8. Progress of company towards vision is sufficient+ 

• Comment: 

• I think doing well at all of the above factors is important. 

• However doing well for different types of roles means doing different things. 

• Good managers manage different people differently… 

• ...but we are also ‘all players, we are all coaches’ (ie it’s not only the managers responsibility to get things to work out. It takes two to tango. 

• Ultimately, different businesses have different ways of operating, different cultures etc. 

  • I don’t think a business exists that would be a perfect fit for every single person in the world

  • The relationship needs to be two ways

Set Job Descriptions vs Undefined Job Descriptions (doing something new)

• For a job with a defined job description you can either 1. Buy the expertise or 2. Have strong training to build the expertise post hiring. 

  • Eg professional development here is key. 

• For a job with an undefined job description (aka need to figure things out) things are different.

  • Eg levelling someone up to be able to do ‘professional self development’ here is key. 

  • In many respects the path to a successful outcome is almost the opposite for a role with a defined job description.  

• Examples: 

  • Set job description: someone hired to be an Administrative Assistant at real estate office

  • Not set job description: someone hired into a team to help figure out what a brand new product should be (eg Year 7 Science textbook)

  • Set job description: someone hired to be a tax accountant for an established business

  • No set job description: someone whose role is specifically ‘undefined’ for a team with the purpose of ‘making sure things work’. 

    • “The person who does not have time to help has no advantage over the person who cannot help.”

    • This person’s role is specifically ‘time to help’ with whatever comes up. A big part of the role is figuring out where help is needed (eg seeing speed bumps ahead in the road we can avoid driving into at full speed). 

Another lens: reportability vs responsibility

• “Reportability vs Responsibility: people often think they want a new job, but what they want is more responsibility”.

• IMO for a job with ‘Secondary school’ level of responsibility you should be able to train people well (eg professional development). 

• IMO for a job with ‘PhD’ level of responsibility, for the hire to succeed they will need to be able to do ‘professional self development’ well. 

• So the expectations are significantly different in what is needed for a hire to work out. 

If you only take away one thing

• Hopefully you think you have grown vs yourself 5 years ago. 

• If this is the case then if you were to encounter some of the circumstances you encountered 5 years ago instead of a bad outcome occurring a good outcome would occur. 

• To me, in many ways this is equivalent to saying you are now better at “2. What happens after hiring”. 

• Which is perhaps equivalent to saying in 80% of the circumstances you encounter a bad outcome if you had done things differently you might now be able to get a good outcome!

Good mistakes vs Bad mistakes

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time:  4 mins

Summary: 'A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new' Albert Einstein.

• IMO not all mistakes are bad; in fact I think some aren’t just good, but healthy and should be publicly celebrated! 

• Mistakes that break new ground should be celebrated.

• Jingle: When should mistakes be celebrated? When should mistakes be excoriated? 

Magnitudes of mistakes

• Whether a mistake is good or bad depends on 1) whether you’ve done the work before and 2) whether the mistake is foreseeable. 

• -L2: Have done before AND make mistake. No excuses = excoriation. You get exactly the behaviour you allow. You do not allow this. 

  • For example, in a previous round of hiring you took too long to respond to a top-quality candidate and another company hired them by the time you made them an offer, then in another round of hiring you make the same mistake.

• -L1: Have not done before BUT a foreseeable mistake. Not good. Get the person to write a ‘post mortem’ about learnings. 

  • For example, you make a plan to figure out resourcing for a build and you forget to factor in the team’s Christmas leave – you haven’t done this task before but it’s a basic mistake that should have been foreseen.

• L0: Have not done before AND not foreseeable mistake BUT someone else points out the mistake. 

  • If you are doing ‘knowledge work’ mistakes are often not ‘clear’. This isn’t ‘I crashed the car and no one could reasonably not know’. This is ‘I’ve just realised I’ve been beating my head against the wall for 3 months and didn’t know’. As an example ‘ahh crap, our onboarding has the ‘activation a-ha moment’ in step 4 but we can put it in step 2. Why have we been optimising getting a higher percentage of people to step 4 when we should have just removed 2 steps?’ However someone else points this out to you, you don’t see it yourself. 

• L1: Have not done before AND not foreseeable mistake AND you personally find the mistake. You get exactly the behaviour you celebrate. Tell others about the way to improve. 

  • In the previous example you find the way to improve (aka ‘mistake’) instead of someone else pointing it out. 

  • Another example: in many places you need to have quality assurance processes. However for a while quality assurance was just ‘finding bugs’ and not also ‘celebrating something cool’. To me no one is perfect, there is almost always a bug or two, but there is also almost always something cool to celebrate. Consciously celebrate cool unless you want to be a fool.

  • I didn’t get consciously celebrating a unit of cool 5 years ago.  

Mistakes vs Ways to improve

• I think mistakes are tainted with a bad wrap. 

• ‘Doing something new’ vs ‘Learning something already known’. 

  • In secondary education you are almost always ‘learning something already known’ like ‘maths’. Getting anything wrong is a ‘mistake’ and normally seen as bad. 

  • When you are doing something new… you don’t know what to do! Getting good at seeing ‘mistakes’ is also known as getting good at finding ‘ways to improve’. 

• However I’ve found that often when you figure something out it feels ‘obvious’ in hindsight and as such it feels like a ‘mistake’ and something one should be ashamed of. 

  • IMO it’s shameful to think of all ‘ways to improve’ as ‘mistakes’. IMO it’s stupid not to be ashamed of some mistakes. 

  • Don’t be stupidly ashamed… stupify people with your ability to improve!

  • ALL mistakes should be openly acknowledged whether or not they are ‘bad’ or ‘good’ – hiding a mistake because you’re ashamed is actively harmful. Bad mistakes aren’t good but we are all human!

• Thinking all mistakes are a mistake is a mistake… did somebody say steak? 

Progress = Doing something new + Removing ‘mistakes’ 

• IMO things get better by adding upside (doing something new) and by removing downside (finding ‘mistakes’). 

• “The first draft of anything is shit.”― Ernest Hemingway

  • Things get better by adding gold and removing sh1t. Ha! 

  • If you think your sh1t don’t stink… you stink like sh1t. Haha. I am mature. 

• IMO don’t be ashamed of finding downside you can remove. I try to spend as much time looking for downside I can remove as I spend finding new ways to add upside.  There is an upside to removing downside!

• I try to celebrate breakthroughs from either adding upside or removing downside. 

• I care about progress, not where it comes from. 

  • “It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” Deng XiaoPing. 

  • Deng you are a hero, we miss you. Xi JinPing, you are a piece of poo. 

• IMO if you don’t publicly celebrate removing downside then people don’t look for it as much as they should. If you don’t remove downside (ie poo) then you might have a sh1t company? 

• Ok enough poo jokes. Also, enough writing for today. I’m not exactly sure when this will go out but I hope everyone has survived COVID 2020 ok. All else equal, for myself, at a macro point of view 2020 has been a success… but at a micro level, god it has also been a mess! 

I almost never start off knowing how to make something better

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

Summary: I’ve found that things improve gradually through much time spent trying to improve (innovate). Normally, initially for a problem space, I have no idea how to improve it. I think it’s unreasonable to expect to have ideas for how to improve a problem space without having spent significant time trying to find ways to improve. Most things that are worth improving don’t happen easily - otherwise it would already be done. It takes resilience. Expect to be stuck at first. But by committing time and effort, you make new connections to be able to innovate and improve more easily.

No nothings or start knowing nothing?

• Do you know what we knew about improving education when we started Edrolo? Nothing. 

• Do you know how many ideas I normally have when I start thinking about a problem space? None. 

Improvement Process: 

• 1. Find a problem space (aka Job To Be Done)

• 2. Figure out V1 of a North Star (North Star = how completing this Job To Be Done will improve the world… not just get something done)

• 3. Spend time in the problem space slowly figuring things out, earning little secrets that accumulate. (See: ‘There are no lightbulb moments. There are however earned secrets.’)

  • Normally I find it takes ages to improve and progress is particularly slow at the beginning. However I’ve found there is only one way to get better at something, to spend time trying to get better! 

Ceilings vs No Ceilings

• 1. Ceiling: things that can’t be improved beyond a point (eg the water that comes out of my tap is perfectly fine)

• 2. No Ceiling: things that can never not be improved (actually IMO most things such as secondary education)

• Comment: 

  • I try to spend my time on things that are important for society and can never not be improved (no ceiling). 

  • Things that are important for society = rewarding (eg like secondary education)

  • Things that can never not be improved = fun! You are never going to get bored, it’s endless :). 

  • Done well, I believe work can be ‘rewarding fun’. 

The biggest problem is figuring out what the problem is AKA finding something you want to improve. 

• And… even once you have found a problem space you want to try move the game forward in… typically “the first draft of anything is shit.”― Ernest Hemingway

• Not just that… I normally find it takes ages to even make V1! 

• So the first draft is sh1t and slow! Slow sh1t… or constipation… the way things often are in the beginning ;). 

• Trusty Dreyfus Taxonomy tuned to improving

• Dreyfus Taxonomy

• DA morphed for improving in a problem space. 

• IMO you start basically all problem spaces at ‘Novice’. While I might know something about building a secondary school textbook I know nothing about being an AFL coach. 

• I do believe however you can get much better at going from Novice to Master in a problem space, ie no idea how to improve it to making a new high water mark. Honestly I feel that I’m 10-100x better at going from ‘Novice => Master’ in a problem space than I was 5 years ago. That is to say it now takes 10% to 1% the time to get to ‘Master’. 

• Jingle: the way to building a diamond often starts off as slow and sh1t. A long time * Hard work (high pressure) => Diamond (big improvements)

What is the line at which you have something that will ‘get traction’? 

• An oversimplification: 

  • Consumer products (eg like iphone app) = when your solution is 10x better than existing outcomes 

    • However this often happens after 10 rounds of interaction in a public ‘beta’. 

    • Many consumer products are free, this ‘10x’ improvement rule is IMO especially pertinent for free consumer products. 

  • Enterprise products (eg like the HR system your company has or a textbook) = when you are better than the existing outcome. 

    • Typically enterprise products are paid and companies (or schools) normally won’t pay for the same thing twice. 

    • Eg typically don’t pay for two email systems, don’t pay for two accounting systems, don’t buy two textbooks. If you are better and doing in person sales then you can normally explain why something is better much easier then ‘I’ll try this app for 60 seconds and if I don’t love it by then I give up’. 

• What about if you are doing something completely new? 

  • IMO there are only 24 hours in a day and every hour is currently allocated to something even if that is ‘boredom’. So what are you replacing and why is it a better way for someone to spend their time. 

A couple of examples: 

• Secondary Textbook: 

  • For Year 7 Science typically 20-50% of a class will be ‘teacher led theory’. 

  • This is a large chunk of time and doing it well is clearly very valuable. 

  • When we look at the existing products we have no instant ideas of how we can improve. 

  • What could we do? 

    • Option 1: move on as we don’t have any ideas instantly. 

    • Option 2: do the hard work of ‘earning secrets’? 

    • Comment: 

      • I think that the question quality we make at Edrolo is other worldly vs even 2 years ago. 

      • IMO this has come from literally 1,000s of hours of thinking about how to make better quality questions. 

      • I now love finding a new problem space where I have no idea how to improve upon what is currently being done. Done well, I find learning how to improve so so much fun! 

      • For strategies for how to improve see ‘There are no lightbulb moments. There are however earned secrets.’

      • The point is that IMO it’s unreasonable to expect to have ideas for how to improve a problem space without having spent significant time trying to find ways to improve. 

      • IMO as ‘teacher led theory’ is important we should buckle down and do the work to slowly figure out how to improve upon existing outcomes. 

      • I likely think it will take us 5x+ generations (versions) of thinking about building teacher led theory resources for Year 7 Science till we have something we consider to be a ‘new high water mark’. 

      • The process will look something like this: 

• Podcast app: 

• A way to break down content consumption: learning vs entertainment. 

• Much of my podcast listening is ‘learning’. 

• For learning content I thought it would be great to be able to follow people (eg Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Andrew Fauci, etc) when they are interviewed in a podcast. So we built this for OwlTail and while I get how this feature works (I helped built it), new users currently don’t :(. The user experience for people with no context is not great :(. 

• So we are doing generation after generation of levelling up the user experience.

• Value Outcome = 1. Value of feature * 2. How much is understood by user (user experience of feature)

• IMO we have much improvement to do in “2. How much is understood by user (user experience of feature)”

If you only take one thing away

• I almost never start off knowing how to improve a problem space. 

• And even when I try to improve a problem space normally my first attempt is ‘sh1t’. 

• Slowly, through much work I can normally make progress until I have something that can possibly be awesome! 

• So, to be awesome, first you must be sh1t…

• … and make sure not to give up if at first you are shit! 

• And just because you have gone from novice to master in one problem space, that don’t mean you don’t start off as novice in a new problem space. 

• You start off with no idea about everything, if you put in the work, slowly you can improve anything!

Serious with a smile :): Humour is no laughing matter… and a lack of laughing is a serious matter!

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 

• Summary: 4 mins

• Details: 11 mins

Summary: 

• IMO one can be serious with a smile. 

• I’ve found cultivating your ability to be serious with a smile is one key way to enjoy work more, to be more creative and to lower stress. 

• IMO having the right ‘energy’ at work is crucial, I’ve found ‘serious with a smile’ time one key way to create and propagate good energy.

One lens for types of time 

• Times of time: 

  • Serious only

  • Serious with a smile

  • Smile only

• What is ‘serious with a smile’ time?

  • This is where the smile is part of the serious, not an adjunct. AKA something interesting and humorous about what you are discussing, not a separate humor. 

  • As an example I try to have smiles as part of these blogs. Done well, writing these blogs makes me smile every few minutes. 

  • ‘Serious with a smile’ time is normally a low single digit percentage of total time. Eg in a meeting ‘serious with a smile’ time means saying a few things that make yourself and others smile per hour. 

• Humour taxonomy:

  • L0: nothing

  • L1: smile

  • L2: smile and one “ha”

  • L3: outright two “ha”s

  • L4: many outright “ha”s and want to tell other people about the joke. 

• Detailed definitions

  • Seriously only = work occurring but no ‘L1: smile’+ happening

  • Serious with a smile = any normal work activity but with ‘L1: smile’+ as part of the work

  • Smile only = no work occurring but ‘L1: smile’+ happening

For white collar work not with external clients (ie with internal team members) I believe it is optimal to have a majority of time being ‘serious with a smile’ time. As an example in a hour long meeting you might smile 1-10 times. 

• I’ve found ‘serious with a smile’ time makes work more enjoyable.

• I’ve found ‘serious with a smile’ time can, all else equal, lower stress.

• I’ve found ‘serious with a smile’ time can allow greater creativity. IMO looking for humour is often an orthogonal way of exploring a problem space. 

• I’ve found ‘serious with a smile’ can help with increased stamina. Sometimes you have a 3 hour meeting, zero smiles can mean you finish spent. With some smiles you often finish the meeting content! 

• I’ve found ‘serious with a smile’ time normally saves time, not takes time. A lifted energy meeting normally has a faster pace. So in 1 hour you might smile 3-5x times but all else equal things move along at 20% faster pace so the couple of mins smiling about the work is a win! 

  • A meeting with no smiles is a sin. 

  • A meeting with a few smiles ‘for the win’. 

There are times when it’s optimal to be ‘serious only’ and times when it is optimal to be ‘serious with a smile’

• (At the right time) doing ‘serious with a smile’ time instead of just ‘serious only’ time as an input should mean better and more enjoyable output… which leads to a more enjoyable and better culture! 

• An example of where ‘serious only’ is optimal? EG giving constructive feedback. 

• Jingle: ‘Serious with a smile’ time is time where having a smile is optimal. IMO consciously cultivating ‘serious with a smile’ time isn’t optional!

Is humour happenstance… Or is laughter learned?

• “Hiring Advice: Screen people for a sense of humor.  20-30% are humorless. They’re hard to work with.” - Tucker Max

• Life Advice: Learn to laugh, it makes life better. Help provide laughs for others; it helps improve their life… and your life. 

• Laughter is the best medicine… laughter is the best prevention for needing medicine :) 

• IMO like almost all mental skills humour is something one cultivates, not something one is born with. 

• People spend time trying to learn more about the field their job is in (eg education, finance, etc). People spend time trying to cultivate calm  through meditation. 

• IMO one should do the same for humour, consciously try and cultivate it! 

• I’ve found I’ve been able to smile and laugh a lot more at work. I’ve found this has made work much better! 

+++++++++++

Details

Questions that aren’t really questions (a funny way to describe rhetorical questions?)

• Who do you like hanging out with? People that make you laugh. 

• If someone needs to lighten up what do they need to do? Be able to laugh at themselves. 

• Do you find that with your best friends you laugh a lot? 

• Do you find with people you don’t know well you don’t laugh much? 

• Is one of the best hacks to an enjoyable life being able to find the humour in things? 

• Is a workplace without laughter something to laugh at? 

What is funny is how I used to think about funny

• 23 year old Work Duncan

  • When I first started full time work post university I really wanted to do a good job. Initially this translated as ‘be as serious as possible as much as possible. No slacking off, work hard only!’ 

  • Indirectly I had thought smiling and having a laugh was ‘not working as hard as one could’. Hmmm. 

• Today Work Duncan

  • Now I still want to do the best job I can… it’s just that my characterisation of what it means to do a good job has massively changed. 

  • Now I think that to do a good job, yes there are times when you shouldn’t smile and just be serious (eg constructive feedback), however there are significant amounts of time when it’s optimal to ‘be serious but with a smile’ and ‘just laugh outright’. 

  • One could say that my 23 year old idea of doing a good job was laughable… as it didn’t include any laughter as part of doing a good job!

• Three types of time: 

  • Taxonomy if time: 

    • Serious only (smiling is a bad idea)

    • Serious with a smile (having a smile is optimal)

    • Smile only 

  • Comment: 

    • 23 year old Duncan didn’t didn’t know one could be ‘serious with a smile’. 

    • 30 year old Duncan knew about being ‘serious with a smile’ but wasn’t very good at it. 

    • 36 year old Duncan (today Duncan) tries to proactively build humour ability AND be serious with a smile when it’s appropriate (which I currently think is actually like 75% of the time). 

  • Visualisation time

Get funny or die trying ;P

• There are many many studies on how ‘stress kills you’. 

  • I’ve found one of the best antidotes to stress is being able to smile / laugh at a situation. 

  • I’ve found that you almost have a ‘smile tank’, if you’ve had a bunch of smiling in a day then this can offset a bunch of frowning meaning overall yes, a not good thing occurred, but it didn’t ruin your day. 

• Each day is different but over a year I’m going to hazard a guess I think the following split of time at work makes sense:

  • Serious only (smiling a bad idea) => 25%

  • Serious with a smile = 70%

  • Smile only = 5%

• Seriously, I think that being ‘serious with a smile’ can totally change the enjoyment of a work task vs being ‘serious only’. 

  • 1. Same task * 2. ‘Being Serious’ = Meh

  • 1. Same task * 2. ‘Serious with a smile’ = enjoyable! 

• I think this might have been the split of my time at work 10 years ago. 

  • Serious only (smiling a bad idea) => 75%

  • Serious with a smile = 20%

  • Outright having a laugh = 5%

• Effectively 50% more of my time now is ‘serious with a smile’ AND this has made 50% of time is WAY more enjoyable than it was before. 

  • So it could be exactly the same job with the same people BUT it’s a wildly more enjoyable job if you can have the right amount of ‘serious with a smile’? Yeah. 

• Comment

  • A job with the optimal amount of  ‘serious with a smile’ should mean much better mental health and as such better physical health and increased health and life spans. 

  • A job with the optimal amount of  ‘serious with a smile’ should mean better retention of employees. 

  • A job with the optimal amount of  ‘serious with a smile’ should mean better ability to attract new employees. 

  • A job with the optimal amount of  ‘serious with a smile’ should mean you have better relationships with people at work. 

  • As such working on your humour ability is a very serious matter ;)?!?

You get exactly the behaviour you allow. You get exactly the mental skills you cultivate. 

• If you allow poor quality work to stand you’ll have lots of poor quality work. If you foster a work environment that is ‘serious with a smile’ at the appropriate time you’ll have lots of smiling :) 

• If you deliberately practice improving at a video game you’ll improve. IMO if you deliberately practice ‘humour’ you’ll get better at humour. 

• IMO one of the best hacks to making a good work environment is the right amount of ‘serious with a smile’ time. 

• IMO one of the best hacks for enjoying life is to have a laugh. 

• IMO one of the best ways to be a better friend is to give your friends smiles and laughs. 

• IMO cultivating your ability to do humour (smiles and laughs) is one of the most important skills to cultivate. 

  • IMO one should meditate each week. 

  • IMO one should blog (write like this) each week - link. 

  • IMO one should try to build humour skills each week.

Humour Ability = 1. Practices making jokes + 2. Will make jokes + 3. Can laugh at themselves + 4. Builds relationships to where can poke fun at each other + 5. Will in a positive sum way poke fun at and laugh with others at work. 

• Humour taxonomy

  • -L1: frown (sometimes a humour will miss to the point of getting the opposite reaction intended)

  • L0: nothing

  • L1: smile

  • L2: smile and one “ha”

  • L3: outright two “ha”s

  • L4: many outright “ha”s and want to tell other people about the joke. 

  • Comment: do you know who has “ha”s? The person who spends time trying to make “ha”s. 

• 1. Practices making jokes

  • People like Seinfeld wrote a joke a day - link.

    • “

    • He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself — even when you don’t feel like it.

    • He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.

    • He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day.

    • “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

    • “ 

    • To me this is great ‘deliberate practice’. 

  • At Edrolo we write an email about our week which contains many things, one being ‘work learning of the week’. I decided a couple of years ago that I had to write a ‘humour’ as part of each ‘work learning of the week’. 

    • Initially it was super hard and actually, at times, draining to try write a humour.

    • But I’ve found this journey of acquiring and improving at almost all new mental skills. 

What was once difficult, time consuming, draining and low quality can slowly become easy, take no time, be energising and be high quality. 

• It used to take me AGES to write one humour for the weekly learning AND be IMO pretty bad (eg just alliteration). Now I see humours all over the place and they can be written as fast as I can type. It’s literally gone from at times 10 mins to try and find a seriously mediocre humour to an implicit subconscious part of writing! I’ll now often chuckle to myself when writing, I almost never used to do that! 

• Constantly attempting to cultivate humour has 1. Made me see humours all over the place and 2. Be able to make many humours. 

• Honestly trying to cultivate humour has made work and non work life much more enjoyable. Same hours, same people, same activities BUT more more enjoyable! 

• I hope it’s clear (and at times humorous) that I try to put humours in the CloudStreaks blogs. I hope the humours are improving. 

• Some ideas for humour:

• Alliteration

• Rhyming

• Pointing out the absurd

• Changing a quote

• Juxtaposition

• Finding a no-brainer in hindsight

• Etc etc

• 2. Will make jokes

  • Don’t just regularly practice trying to make humours (IMO daily is best :) ) but also have a place to share them. Eg in your weekly learning put a humour or two. 

  • I’ve found you can make yourself laugh. You can start to see humour everywhere. 

    • Eg I had a knee operation recently. In the discussion about whether to have an operation or not, the surgeon said ‘this needs to be a joint decision’ and I burst out laughing because ‘knee joint operation and joint decision between surgeon and myself’ and the surgeon looked at me dumbfounded! I said ‘joint decision’? I thought it was a standard gag the surgeon had! I’ve found you start to find funny in places you didn't before.

    • You create funny in places there was none before.

    • You inspire funny in others. 

    • IOM there is such a fixed mindset about funny. Humour is no laughing matter… because laughing is a humous matter. 

    • My father in jest says ‘who has most toys wins’. DA version: ‘who laughs most wins’?

    • How to live a good life? Laugh lots! Give laughter to yourself, give laughter to others. 

• 3. Can laugh at themselves

  • One key way to address some learning you’ve had through humour. Eg I can’t believe I used to think doing a good job meant being as serious as possible and not being ‘serious with a smile’ at work! 

  • Brene Brown has helped popularise the value of vulnerability, I think being able to be authentically vulnerable is a key way to have a strong connection to reality (vs distortion). Basically IMO vulnerability done well is a key way to a better life. 

    • “Vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of self awareness.” Brene Brown. 

  • Basically sometimes with a bit of humour you can bring up a topic that without humour it’s SUPER hard to bring up. 

  • It just opens space for others to be up front with you but also changes the culture of work :). 

  • It also means people can poke some positive sum fun at you. 

  • “To have a friend first you must be a friend.” To have people be able to poke fun and raise things with vulnerable humour for your, first do with to yourself. Yay! 

• 4. Builds relationships to where can poke fun at each other

  • Just because you can laugh at yourself doesn’t mean you have the relationship to be able to talk about others' vulnerabilities. 

  • I’ve written about some ways to build work relationships here and here. 

  • One strategy I’ve found to build relationships is through being able to laugh at yourself in front of someone else. I found that I did this with some people but not others… so now I try to strategically laugh at myself in front of everyone and that this can really help build relationships.  

• 5. Will in a positive sum way poke fun at and laugh with others at work

  • You need to be super careful here but again I’ve found that there are a category of things you can discuss with humour that are real hard without. 

  • Also, that just laughing makes work more fun! 

If you only take away one thing

• Life with laughing > life without laughing

• Work with much ‘serious with a smile’ > work without much ‘serious with a smile’

• I’ve found that while it’s not appropriate to laugh in all circumstances, actually the majority of work time it’s not just possible but optimal to be ‘serious with a smile’ mode. 

• Basically, for me, the percentage of life with a smile or laugh has increased massively vs 10 years ago… because I’ve tried to make this happen. 

• Making a humour used to involve massive effort, now many times making a humour is effortless and real time. Eg in a conversation. 

• Spending the time to cultivate humour abilities has had big benefits to enjoyment of work and life… both mental and physical. 

• You can be serious with a smile: humour is no laughing matter… and a lack of laughing is a serious matter!

+++++++++++++++

Addendum: Secondary Education Resources - ‘seriously only’ or ‘serious with a smile’? 

• Obviously, education is no joke… however I find how dry some existing resources are no laughing matter. 

• IMO we should take learning seriously, we want to care, but we don’t want to care so ‘hard’ that resources are dry to the point of being unlovable. 

• Caring done well = a resource is loveable = can elicit smiles and possibly a laugh or two. 

• Clearly a secondary resource isn’t a ‘book of jokes’, but IMO hopefully it can be a ‘book of interesting useful information that at times elicits smiles and even every now and then a laugh’. 

You get exactly the behaviour you... celebrate? Taking pride in pride

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

Summary: You find what you are looking for. Be the change you want to see. 

• If you are looking for things to be proud of you'll do more things you are proud of. 

• If you aren't proud of your work then IMO it's likely not going to be high quality work. 

• If you aren't proud of your work then then IMO it's hard to enjoy doing the work. 

• Jingle: IMO publicly celebrating a unit of pride… is something I’m proud to celebrate! 

Route out bad performance, celebrate good performance. 

• People will often do quality assurance for bugs and removing downside. 

• IMO people should also quality assurance for something that they think is worth celebrating (they the maker is proud of and / or the reviewer things is neat). 

++++++++++++

Details

You get exactly the behaviour you allow

• Poor behaviour cannot stand else it'll be everywhere. 

  • You can’t let low quality work to stand else people doing high quality work will be annoyed AND your customers will be unhappy! 

  • You don't let people take an excessive amount of time. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you need to spend resources as wisely as possible. 

• But IMO a well functioning society and company doesn’t just remove downside, it fosters and celebrates in a positive sum way upside. 

You get exactly the behaviour you foster

• Not doing a bad job ≠ doing a good job. 

• The absence of bad doesn’t mean something is good, it just means it’s not bad! 

• IMO work you are proud of = quality work

• IMO work you are proud of = possibility of being enjoyable work

• If you are not proud of the work you are doing are you doing work wrong? 

• Hope is not a strategy. IMO ideally one is proud of the work one does. 

• Can you foster pride in your company? IMO yes. 

• IMO one should privately celebrate a unit of pride per unit of work. 

• IMO one should publicly celebrating a unit of pride per unit of work (in a positive sum way): 

  • Yourself:

    • 1. Inspires you to do good work

    • 2. Helps make work enjoyable

    • 3. Provides the opportunity for others to appreciate what you have done thereby making you feel appreciated

  • Others:

    • 4. Inspires others to do good work

    • 5. Shares good ideas

You find what you are looking for

• IMO if you are looking for things to be proud of you find things to be proud of. 

• I often find half the problem is knowing what to look for. Once I know what to look for normally I start to find more and more of it. 

• However if I’m not looking for something I almost never find it. 

• Looking for problems to solve = interesting. 

• Looking for things to be proud of = … fun! 

• Looking for problems to solve * looking for things to be proud of when solving the problems = interesting fun! 

IMO a well functioning society removes downside while allowing and fostering as much upside as possible

• You need to have laws, police, courts and jails otherwise you’ll have eg way more crime than if no police. 

• But you also want to create the space for people to do great work, where they can start a business and succeed. They can have financial success, personal recognition and help the common good. 

IMO a well functioning company removes downside while allowing and fostering as much upside as possible

• Let’s say you are making lessons for a textbook. 

  • You need to have a lesson done with no factual errors and you need to check for this (factual correctness quality assurance) - downside quality removal

  • You need to have a lesson done in a reasonable amount of time. 

  • You should also look for upside quality addition, AKA something you are proud of :). 

• After a unit of work IMO one should look for something one is proud of. One should then share this with one’s team in a positive sum way. 

• In summary: 

  • You don’t allow factual errors.

  • You don’t allow inefficient work.

  • You don’t not celebrate good work… AKA celebrate a unit of pride. 

  • IMO all parts are needed for a well functioning company! 

A tangible example of ‘celebrating a unit of pride’

• After authoring a lesson the lesson author needs to find 1 thing they are proud of and articulate why they are proud.

  • A framework for how articulate what a unit of pride: 

    • What exactly are you proud of?

    • Why it’s delicious and nutritious?

    • Why are you proud of it?

    • Are there any possible negative 2nd order consequences?

• In the appropriate forum (eg daily standup meeting) the author:

  • Expresses unit of pride

  • One or more other people celebrate unit of pride - explain what they think is cool

  • Unit of ‘not getting high on our own supply’ - one or more other people see if there might be unintended 2nd order consequences from the cool thing. 

• IMO this can be done in a team forums (eg daily standups, weekly team meeting) or 1:1 with eg someone who is looking at the lesson or even in a Slack channel.   

Positive sum vs negative sum ‘units of pride celebration’

• Negative sum: 

  • Used to stack rank employees

    • The point is not that one unit of pride is better than another. It’s that pride begets pride. 

    • IMO the vast majority of white collar work places are positive sum, ie there is space for everyone to do well. 

  • Is a tax vs something that helps you find cool things. 

• Positive sum: 

  • We want everyone to do great work. Everyone doing well is good for everyone. Ie most work places are a positive sum game. 

  • We want to share good ideas. 

  • We want to give people the opportunity for a public pat on the back. 

• If a pride celebration is a mardi gras...

  • Good pride celebration = mardi f@ck yar

  • Bad pride celebration = mardi waa

Either you manage your headspace or your headspace manages you

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

In secondary school they teach you maths, science, history etc, IMO they should also try to teach you about mental health. 

• 20 year old Duncan thought that if I had a good day it was because good things happened. And if I had a bad day it was because bad things happened. In other words mental health (aka mental headspace) was 100% about external things happening to me. 

• Today, Duncan in 1st world Australia with a solid income, thinks 90% of my mental health is about internal headspace management. 

• A rearticulation:

  • I used to think: good life = doing the right things. Figure out what the right things to do are and doing them means you'll have a good life and doing the wrong things means you'll have a bad life. 

  • Now: good life = doing the right things * doing things right. 

    • For me, ‘doing things right’ is much about headspace management. 

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Serenity Prayer

• So what can one change? IMO actually so much! The way we interpret an event alone can have a major effect on our headspace:

  • Is challenge good or bad?

  • Is sacrifice good or bad?

  • If trauma has happened, do you have post traumatic stress or post traumatic growth?

  • Are you relaxing by yourself or missing out on something getting FOMO?

• All of these things will determine whether we view events positively or negatively, thereby affecting our future actions

• Perhaps most importantly, our evaluations are informed by malleable personal narratives. This is where our own power to shape our mental health comes in! 

• How I used to think:

• What I now think is a better characterisation:

• In other words... 

5. Headspace outcome =1. Environment * 2. Narrative for environment * 3. Event of environment * 4. Event mental processing

Environments always have a narrative. Narratives can happen by default or by design. 

• Do you want to look after something 24/7 and get no sleep? Sounds like hell right?

• What about looking after a newborn (aka 24/7 job with no sleep)? A tiring yet life affirming experience that helped you get your priorities in order? 

• Sacrifice * Meaning (AKA the right narrative around an environment) = Purpose

• Sacrifice * No Meaning (AKA the wrong narrative around an environment) = Suffering 

• IMO you can't always pick your environment, but IMO you can always have a say in what the narrative is. 

• Viktor Frankl - “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

• I’ve found that narrative creation and cultivation is one core element to headspace management and as such mental health. Also, recognising that often others will have a different narrative to the same environment is key. 

• As an example with internal Edrolo communications, now much of my time is thinking and communicating about what narrative I feel is most supportive and productive and trying to see if others feel similarly. 

Bad event != Bad experience - does it make you bitter, or does it make you better? 

• There will always be bad things that happen, ‘traumatic’ things that happen. 

• Given that IMO it’s not possible to stop bad things from happening, when they do happen it’s crucial how one responds. Does one respond with ‘post traumatic stress’ or ‘post traumatic growth’. 

• Cultivating a ‘post traumatic growth’ mindset is now something I spend time for myself and others. Even just knowing about  ‘post traumatic stress’ vs ‘post traumatic growth’ I’ve found extraordinarily helpful. 

If you only take away one thing 

• Sometimes it’s your environment that you need to change. 

• But I’ve found one needs to have the right narrative for their environment. By considering the way you evaluate events (as informed by personal narratives), you have the power to shape your mental landscape and thereby your tangible outcomes. I’ve found that it’s your job to try to get these components right, I’ve found that it’s others job around you to help as well. 

++++++++++

Addendum: 

• I sometimes break my types of time into these three categories: purpose, play and peace

• I try to do:

  • 5 day a week of purpose

  • 1 day a week of play

  • 1 day a week of peace

• Mini definitions: 

  • Purpose: 

    • find a way you want to make the world better => take on responsibility to change something => get meaning => get happiness

    • Or Fun * Meaning = Purpose

  • Play: Fun * No meaning = Play

  • Peace: Just doing nothing! 

• I don’t think one should proactively manage one’s headspace 100% of the time… but also not 0% of the time. I’m mainly trying to proactively manage my headspace during ‘purpose’ time.

Mental chocolate: done well, chocolate is healthy

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

Summary

• Mental Chocolate tasks are tasks with such positive energy that they override whatever your current headspace is to be ‘positive’. 

• I use Mental Chocolate tasks strategically through a week to have a break and / or override (break myself out of) a drained place. 

• Jingle: IMO strategically using Mental Chocolate tasks is a healthy headspace hack. 

• Jingle #2:

Is chocolate healthy or unhealthy? 

• If you ate chocolate for all caloric intake it would likely be very unhealthy. 

• However if you eat chocolate a couple of times a week and doing this helps you eat healthy for the other meals as you know you can look forward to some chocolate; then it’s likely overall eating chocolate a couple of times a week is ‘healthy’. 

What is Mental Chocolate? 

• IMO each work task comes with an ‘energy’ attached to it: from super draining to super energising. 

  • Some work tasks are super draining. 

  • Some work tasks are energising if done at the right time.

  • And, some work tasks are super energising no matter what time they are done! These tasks I call Mental Chocolate tasks. 

• Examples of Mental Chocolate for DA: 

  • Example 1: I’ve found a new product like ‘Open Middle Maths’ that I can’t wait to spend time to try and understand. 

  • Example 2: I want to write a new internal blog on an updated view of what the long term goal for secondary education could be. It’s something that I can’t wait to write! 

  • Example 3: there is a new strategy blog from a part of Edrolo, yay! Can’t wait to read it and process! 

Life is not about time management, life is about energy management

• I try to find and set aside 1-4 hours of Mental Chocolate tasks a week that I use if I’m super drained at work as a ‘pick me up’. 

• My energy levels at work can vary massively from energised to super drained. 

  • While I do think one should try and accept some things (vs be drained or energised by an event) I don’t think one should accept everything. 

  • Some things are awesome and IMO you should get excited and happy from them. 

  • Some things are crap and IMO it’s ok for one to be drained and unhappy about them. Done well this can serve as an impetus to something about the root cause of the draining event. 

• Normally I’ll get super drained 0-3x times a week. When this happens I either take a break… or wheel out some Mental Chocolate :) 

  • Doing a normal work task when I’m super drained often = frustration

  • Doing a Mental Chocolate work task when I’m super drained = happy and a system break out of the drained state. 

  • Doing a Mental Chocolate work task when I’m super drained = like having a holiday form work

  • Doing a Mental Chocolate work task when I’m super drained = wiping my mind of whatever was getting it down. The Mental Chocolate is so energising and engaging that the draining thing occupies zero headspace.

  • Doing a Mental Chocolate work task when I’m super drained = a healthy headspace hack. Don’t just sit in the drainedness. Don’t just try and mind over matter and ‘accept’ to try to get to enquantimity. 

Visual representation

• Worded example for the visualisation. 

• Let's say something really bad and as such draining had happened like a bad personnel issue. After addressing the issue you are down in the dumps with low motivation and drained etc. Time for some of the mental chocolate you had set aside this week. 1-2 hours of mental chocolate and your energy is back! 

• Enjoyment of tasks = 1. Existing energy state * 2. Energy of task

  • “2. Energy of task” taxonomy: 

    • Draining = lowers your mental headspace

    • Neutral = neutral to your mental headspace

    • Energising = improves your mental headspace

    • Mental Chocolate = change in your mental headspace to energised. 

  • Comment

    • In some respects I think of Mental Chocolate like a magic trick, imagine if you could magically snap yourself out of drained and unmotivated into energised, not thinking about your troubles, enjoying things headspace? Well I think it might be possible with Mental Chocolate.

• When used as a pickup after a draining event, it can also get your productivity back on track to avoid spiralling into a drained abyss

• If you want to read another blog I wrote on managing your energy please see here. 

If you only take one thing away

• IMO either manage your energy or it will manage you. 

• Calmness is a super power. 

  • IMO one strategy for improving your calm capabilities is meditation. 

  • When you meditate and concentrate on your breath it’s possible to slowly let go of whatever emotions are kicking about and when you have let go of all emotions what you are left with is ‘calm’. 

  • I think that one articulation of meditation is practicing and strengthening your ability to get to calm. 

• IMO another crucial tool to manage your energy level (aka mental headspace) is to proactively use Mental Chocolate tasks during your week to get your energy levels to work for you. 

• Often your headspace might be a consequence of work tasks… but with Mental Chocolate you can task your headspace to work for you!

Diverse Reading vs Undiverse Reading AKA Building Knowledge vs Digesting Facts.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 8 mins

You are what you eat… so I’m about 10% chocolate ;)

• IMO to a large degree your mind is what you feed it. IMO feed your mind junk information and it’ll get unhealthy. 

• You could go to the supermarket and eat only junk food, but we now know not to do that. 

• Information has gone from deficit in pre internet times to surplus in post internet times. While the vast majority of us know what is healthy and unhealthy food, IMO most of us are yet to know what is healthy and unhealthy information. 

• “If we put someone in a cult, they become a cult member. We take them out, put them someplace else, they change their mind. If you live in one particular setting, you adopt norms, you become blind to certain things.” - Unknown

• IMO undiverse reading = unhealthy information

• IMO diverse reading = healthy information

Reading Stenography vs Reading Cartography

• For any area you are learning about IMO one should try and build a ‘map’ of the knowledge terrain. IMO one is not digesting facts, one is trying to build a 3D knowledge map. 

  • Reading stenography = just consuming facts

  • Reading cartography = building sick knowledge maps! 

  • A taxonomy for ya: 

    • L1: read and gather dots 

    • L2: build dots into maps

    • L3: systematically fill out the maps so you have a rounded understanding and are not ‘biased’

      • This is systematically trying to find your blind spots and ego distortions and nullify. 

      • This is systematically trying not to be an idealogue, to try and be a pragmatist. 

      • This is systematically trying to understand the different sides of an argument and being able to articulate each side clearly. 

        • “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” — Charlie Munger

  • Comment

    • If you are learning about an idea try to find the ideas that counter balance it so you can get some perspective. 

    • Basically you need to proactively search out counter views and relevant balancing theories and then try and build a map with this :)

• Jingle: IMO no just getting facts, but building maps! 

• Everything works somewhere nothing works everywhere. 

  • One articulation of some taxonomised thinking re ‘diverse reading’

  • Another taxonomy for ya

    • L1: just read lots about eg ‘education’

    • L2: try and collect ideas and put them into continuums

    • L3: put two continuums together into a 2D space

    • L4: layer multiple ideas across a problem space to see where some ideas help and some ideas hinder.

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Details

Education example: 

• Taxonomy

  • L1: just read lots about education => this idea of conceptual understanding for maths is interesting

  • L2: try and collect ideas and put them into continuums => ok people have two opposing ideas with ‘conceptual vs procedural understanding’. Hmmm. 

  • L3: put two continuums together into a 2D space => ok let’s layer ‘procedural ⇔ conceptual understanding’ vs ‘direct instructions ⇔ inquiry based learning ⇔ socratic discussion’ into a 2D problem space

  • L4: layer multiple ideas across a problem space to see where some ideas help and some ideas hinder => ok now let’s try and put the Australian Curriculum across this problem space and see if we can intelligently layer these ideas across the curriculum prescribed Year 7 Maths areas of ‘Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning’. 

    • What we are trying to do is this: 

• Not this:

• Comment

• IMO adherence too closely to single doctrine is likely dangerous. This is similar to being part of a cult where you can’t question the validity of an idea. 

• IMO it’s super important to have a view on where an idea works… but also where it doesn’t work. 

• IMO in any given area I’m normally trying to combine the best 2-5 different ideas intelligently. Only one idea is IMO effectively being an ideologue and likely having large ‘blind spots and ego distortions’... and more than 5 ideas is unwieldy and very hard to have a ‘cohesive solution’. 

  • Only 1 idea = large blind spots and ego distortions

  • 6+ ideas = normally a dog’s breakfast

  • 2-5 ideas well layered together is hard but done well = delicious and nutritious meal :). 

    • Picking the most important ideas to work with is rewarding… 

    • Layering the ideas together in a positive sum way is fun! 

    • I like rewarding fun! 

    • See examples of groupings at the end

No Reading vs Echo Chamber Reading vs Diverse Reading vs Systematic Diverse Reading

• Systematic diverse reading allows you to do Rapoport’s Rules to encourage civil discourse:

  • You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

  • You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

  • You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

  • Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

• Aristotle’s misquote, “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without accepting it”.

• IMO listening to the wantonly biased and trying to recognise their bias is one key approach to start yourself not being biased. 

• To have three dimensions you have to be able to see the circle, the square and how things are put together. 

• This done well is not listening to the same thing 3x times where you enjoy each piece less, it’s listening to 3 sides of something where each piece you enjoy more. 

• Taxonomy time

  • L0: No reading

  • L1: echo chamber reading = only reading the same biased viewpoint meaning it’s hard not to be biased

  • L2: diverse reading = reading multiple viewpoints but not necessarily trying to see how they might be biased or not

  • L3: systematic diverse reading = reading all major viewpoints and then trying to see how people who only consume this information see the world. 

• Ok more… Systematic diverse reading = 1. Reading for counterview points to where you currently are + 2. Trying to understand the key continuums + 3. Reading to understand at depth the different points on a continuum + 4. Understanding what works where (“everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere” and how to blend things together) + 5. Acquire different sources of reading to fill out the picture. 

  • Ie it’s not direct instruction vs enquiry based learning vs socratic discussion

  • Ie it’s not student centered learning vs teacher centered learning

  • Ie it’s not blocking vs interleaving vs spaced repetition

  • Ie it’s not rote learning vs first principles learning

  • It’s a blend of all and how to do both well and poorly. 

  • This is trying to map the world. Not just a random walk (reading), echo chamber or worse, just your own experience. 

    • Your own experience matters, but it is just that, yours and it may only represent a small portion of the broader human experience. 

    • “The good learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences, and the stupid already have the answers.” Socrates. 

Some more examples of Diverse Reading 

• Learning about a company - learning about Facebook

  • I’d recommend reading the following alternating chapter by chapter through each book

    • SnapChat book

    • Recent Facebook book

    • Instagram book

  • Then I’d do 1-3x interviews with each of the authors of the books about the books

  • And then I’d listen to 1-3x interviews with the founders of Snap, Facebook and Instagram. 

  • Comment: 

    • I find this gets you a much better understanding of reality vs just one source. Way less chance of being biased. 

    • IMO you can never be 100% not biased… but unfortunately I think one can be 100% biased. 

    • IMO to move to be more and more ‘unbiased’ one needs to be able to understand the key biases people have and to be able to explain what drives them. 

• Learning about education - here are some groupings of books on education I’d recommend (I’ve read all these and more) 

  • Grouping

    • What works may hurt

    • Changing Australian Education

    • Urban myths about education

  • Grouping

    • Ultralearning

    • Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

    • Teacher proof

  • Grouping

    • The Teaching Gap

    • How I wish I’d taught maths

    • What School Could Be

  • grouping

    • The Paideia Proposal  - Mortimier Adler

    • Reimagining education for democracy

    • The art of learning - Josh Wazedzki

  • Grouping

    • What's Math Got to Do with It

    • In search of deeper learning

    • Why knowledge matters

  • Grouping

    • Making kids cleverer

    • What does this look like in the classroom

    • Creating the schools our children need

  • Grouping

    • Educating Australia: Challenges for the decade ahead

    • The learning rainforest

    • Theory of instruction

  • Grouping

    • Motivating and inspiring students

    • Seven Myths about education

    • Trivium 21c

  • Grouping

    • Beyond ATAR by Tom Bently

    • "Changing Australian Education: How policy is taking us backwards and what can be done about it" by Alan Reid.

    • Outliers: The Story of Success

• Politics example: a map of politics for ya! Build your reading to understand this :) 

If you only take away one thing

• If you don’t know anything, nothing can be interesting. 

• If you know only biased things (undiverse reading) then it’s possible for many things to make you unhappy (interesting bad).

• But if you systematically try to broaden your perspectives and attempt to see the full picture it’s possible to see many ways you want to try and help improve the world (interesting good).

• IMO diverse reading is one core component of a good life. Diverse reading = deliciously rewarding :)

Growth generations: current skill levels < growth rate of your skill levels

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

Summary: 

• Good managers help change directs’ growth trajectory (see building innovation ability in others)

• Good employees are able to grow themselves. 

• Great employees grow themselves AND can show their growth trajectory… through ‘growth generations’.

• Jingle: everything you do should be the best thing you have ever done. 

What are ‘Growth generations’?

• Each instance of growth opens up the next level, or generation, of growth...and each level is exponentially better than the one before. In fact, you could say that growth generates new growth, as long as you reflect on it sufficiently.

 Some examples

• Edrolo Product

  • G1: we find the best teachers and give them scale

  • G2: G1 + we provide the best teachers with boundary conditions so they don’t trip up unnecessarily (eg total course length, eg individual lesson length)

  • G3: G2 + we give guidelines for what to include in a lesson (eg formally break down a lesson into component parts, summary, definitions, analogy, model, interactive question)

  • G4: if we do in house content development we can spend more time on content development and collaborate more effectively. Done well this should unlock new emergent outcomes. 

• How to identify the root cause to help others:

  • G1: person is a good / bad employee

  • G2: person has strengths and weaknesses

  • G3: strengths and weaknesses have strengths and weaknesses :) (eg someone is good at managing a certain type of person but bad with another type of person)

  • G4: G3 + when looking for the root cause, did it originate from the individual (I used to assume far too often things originated with the individual), others (eg someone has poor tone because someone provoked them vs the individual originated the tone) or the environment (eg looming deadline is causing stress leading to poor tone)

  • G5: G4 + including how ‘emotional tank levels’ for all parties at G4 can affect things (eg if someone is in a really bad spot their comms tone might be far worse because of this, eg if you are really drained today you are probably looking at the world more negatively than is fair)

• Leadership

  • G1: does a good job

  • G2: G1 + communicates with the company about direction

  • G3: G2 + communicates about why the long term is better than before (ie potential of how much the company can positively affect humanity has increased year on year) + shows how in the short term the company has ‘learned’ (can be learned what to do or what not to do)

  • G4: G3 + has a proactive strategy to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the company. IMO this is effectively like running an internal media company. Basically a significantly more involved and complex version of G3. Often companies will have a Public Relations team for managing the external view of a company. IMO companies should often have an ‘internal’ Public Relations team to try and have the company know what is going on. 

You don’t learn from your experience, you learn from reflecting on your experiences. 

• I often only improve my approach to a problem… when I spent time writing about how to improve my approach. 

• One key component of this is trying to write out how my approach has changed historically.

• Writing = thinking

  • Then often magically I’ll be able to see the next generation because of writing out the past generations. 

  • So weirdly, writing growth generations = creating the next generation! 

  • The prefix ‘auto’ means ‘self’....so you might even say that writing growth generalisations = auto-generating growth!

• *aside: this is very similar to ‘taxonomised thinking’. 

• So... writing growth generations = improving your growth trajectory

• Writing growth generations = how to level yourself up if something didn’t go well

• Writing growth generations = how to show others you are growing which means you should build credibility (hopefully meaning more opportunity AND more remuneration)

• Writing growth generation = help others stand on your shoulders (learn from your learnings)

• Writing growth generation = cultivating growth mindset

Writing ‘growth generations’ for the core parts of your role = professional development

• IMO for the core parts of your role try and write down ‘growth generations’ every 6 months as part of ‘job performance review’. 

  • If you are not growing you are atrophying… and atrophying I find… terrifying!   

• Some more equations because...

  • Writing growth generations = giving to yourself as you build your ability

  • Writing growth generations = giving to others as you help them incorporate your learnings

  • Writing growth generations = giving to your team as done well writing growth generations means you build credibility with others in turn meaning respect and interoperability level up :) 

  • Writing growth generations = selfish, selfless and… sublime :) 

• … even more equations because why not?

  • No growth = job boredom 

  • Someone helping you grow = being given a fish

  • Figuring out how to help yourself grow = teaching yourself how to fish = building innovation skills

  • Writing growth generations = (for myself) good fun! 

Building innovation ability in others = the best thing you can do?

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 8 mins

Summary: 

• IMO what matters is not your current skill level, but the growth rate of your skill level. 

• IMO what matters is not how good an organisation is at programming new skills into you, but how good an organisation is at being able to help you build new skills for yourself; to build new programs for yourself. 

• I used to think that good managers improved the skill levels of directs as much as possible. I now think that good managers help directs figure out how to improve their own skill levels as much as possible. 

  • Giving yourself new skills = Innovation = 1. Figure out what the problem is * 2. Solve the problem 

  • IMO one core measure of a manager's quality is their ability to build innovation skills in others. 

• Generations of thought:

  • Past view: 

    • manager quality = the rate of skill growth of their directs

    • team member quality = strong work ethic and attitude

  • Current view: 

    • manager quality = how much the manager has improved a directs ability to improve themselves AKA innovate

    • team member quality = has shown growth in problem solving and innovation

  • Future view: I don’t know yet… however the only constant is change! 

• Helping = building others ability to upgrade themselves. 

• Hindering = upgrading others (and thereby robbing them of the opportunity to upgrade themselves). 

• “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Churchill

• Jingle: To grow is to improve; to grow yourself is to be able to innovate; to grow others is to unleash human potential!

The body is limited, the mind is limitless… if it can innovate. 

• IMO the goal of education is for people to be able to eventually educate themselves. IMO the goal is not to increase the speed at which we can program skills into others, the goal is to minimise the time until everyone can create new programs for themselves. IE accelerate the time till 90%+ of humans can innovate. 

• Visualisation time: 

• Elon Musk - “Tesla should really be measured by how many years we accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. It will happen, with or without Tesla, but the fundamental good is by how many years do we accelerate it.” 

• Perhaps Edrolo should be measured by how many years we can accelerate the advent of 90%+ of humans being able to innovate? 

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Details

Giving yourself new skills = Innovation = 1. Figure out what the problem is * 2. Solve the problem (see blog)

• IMO innovation is the master skill as it is the skill that creates all other skills. 

• IMO the best managers build innovation ability in others. This means the best managers are:

  • Able to improve others ability to “2. Solve the problem”

  • Able to improve others ability to “1. Figure out what the problem is”

• Generations of thought - perspective as a manager

• G1: it’s all about hiring the people with the right skills

• G2: G1 + onboarding people well and building a team where ‘1+1=3’

• G3: where an employee starts is important… but ultimately should be miniscule to where their skill levels end. It’s the organisation’s / manager’s job to level up their direct employees

• G4: while of course you want to help others, IMO the ultimate way to help others is to ‘help them figure out how to help themselves’. AKA can build innovation skills in others. 

• Generations of thought - what it means to be a good team member

• G1: someone who is enthusiastic and has a strong work ethic will go far

• G2: G1 + has growth mindset

• G3: G2 + can be given a problem and figure out a solution (“2. Solve the problem”)

• G4: G3 + can “1. Figure out what the problem is” AKA can innovate AKA can add new skills to themselves

• G5: can build innovation skills in others. “We are all players, we are all coaches.” 

Innovation is the new literacy 

• 200 years ago 10% of humans could read, now 90% can (related blog)

• “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ” ― Alvin Toffler. 

  • All repetitive jobs (physical and mental) are being replaced by machines as the capacity of what can be replicated improves. 

  • As such eventually the only jobs left will be ones requiring innovation. 

  • As such to have a job eventually you’ll have to be able to innovate. 

  • So the most important skill to build is ‘innovation ability’? IMO yes. Not just for ‘future proofing yourself’ but also as it’s the skill that builds all other skills :). 

• IMO currently ~10% of humans can ‘innovate’. Just like one can learn to read, IMO one can learn to innovate. Let’s get humanity to the point where 90%+ of humans can innovate. 

• Generations of thought:

  • G1: First you learn to read, then you read to learn. 

  • G2: First someone teaches you how to innovate, then you teach yourself how to innovate. 

  • G3: First you learn how to innovate, then you learn how to build resources (that can scale independent of humans) that can teach others to innovate. 

  • Comment

    • IMO a person can close your mind and teach you to hate. 

    • IMO a person can open your mind, help you discover the love of learning… and teach you to innovate :)...

    • … IMO a book can close your mind and teach you to hate. 

    • IMO a book can open your mind, help you discover the love of learning… and teach you to innovate :). 

    • IMO what a textbook can do is limited only by our imagination. I believe a book can help teach any mental skill. Trying to see how for example we can teacher Innovation through a Year 7 science textbook is some of the most epic fun I’m aware of :)!!

Hope is not a strategy. Innovation is not magic. You make progress in solving problems you try to make progress in. 

• Good managers help change directs’ growth trajectory. 

• An example of manager strategy to build innovation skills: helping vs hindering

• An oversimplification: there are two states: 

  • 1. You have time pressure to hit a deadline => optimise for getting things done - short term win

  • 2. You don’t have time pressure to hit a deadline => optimise for the directs’ growth trajectory (aka innovation ability) - short term loss, long term win. 

• An organisation is the sum of the capacity of its people. 

  • IMO to optimise for the long term ‘growth’ / ‘potential’ of an organisation; optimize for the short term innovation ability of your people. So ‘going slow’ in the short term IS going fast in the long term? I think it so. 

• Problem solving = going from a unit of unknown to a unit of known. 

  • If you show a direct how to solve the problem at hand IMO you are ‘robbing’ them of the chance to build a unit of ‘problem solving’ ability. 

  • If something is not right (eg unhappy customer) and you ‘figure out what the problem is’ and then give it to a direct to ‘problem solve’; IMO you are giving them the opportunity to ‘figure out what the problem is’ BUT robbing them of the opportunity to “1. Figure out what the problem is”. 

• Growth generations:

  • Past view: the best manager is the best helper. Often this actualised as the being the best at ‘robbing’ a direct of the opportunity to build innovation ability by ‘helping’. So in fact past ‘helping’ was actually ‘hindering’ innovation ability improving. 

  • Current view: the best manager is the best at fostering innovation ability. This means providing the space for a direct to ‘wrestle’ with unknown and slowly make progress. 

    • Flailing is not failing. Flailing is a necessary step in building innovation ability called ‘wrestling to a unit of unknown to hopefully turn it into a unit of know’. 

If you only take away one thing

• I don’t want to do an endless series of university subjects, I don’t want the possible upgrades I can do to myself to be determined by what I can order from an online course list or what the organisation has internally. 

• I don’t want to be able to only learn things others have already figured out. I want to be able to teach myself new things. I want to be able to do things that have never been done before. 

• I want to be the limit. When I’m the limit, am I limitless? I hope so! 

• IMO try to get great at adding new skills to yourself (aka innovating).

• IMO try to get great at helping others get great at adding new skills to themselves (aka improving others ability to innovate).

• IMO try to get great at building resources that help others build innovation skills (aka improving humanities ability to innovate). 

+++++++++++++

Addendum: some further thought on innovation and jobs (not Steve) - the percentage of jobs that could have innovation vs the percentage of jobs that have to have innovation

• In some respects there is a race on. 

  • That abilities of machines are improving means slowly there will be no repetitive tasks left that machines can’t do better than humans. 

  • So for humans to have jobs in the future they will have to innovate?

  • So we are in a race to build innovation ability in humans faster than machines can replace repetitive jobs?

• Oversimplification: 

  • Which jobs are the machines replacing? Repetitive low wage bad jobs. 

  • What are the new jobs? Interesting non repetitive high wage jobs. 

• If you look at places like the US pre COVID there were more jobs advertised as a percentage of the total workforce than ever before… and the types of jobs with job shortages had a higher salary vs average than ever before. Bigger shortage = higher salary. 

  • IMO there isn’t a shortage of jobs. However, the new jobs have the higher and higher required skills than before. 

  • So there is a skills shortage, not a jobs shortage. 

• In hunter gatherer times the world was zero sum. IMO if you can innovate the world is positive sum.  

• Many unemployed people = social unrest. 

  • Idle hands are the devils workshop.

  • The machines are improving. If we don’t improve humans' ability to ‘innovate’ then we’ll have an increasing portion of the population who are ‘unemployable’. 

• Perhaps Edrolo should be measured by how many years we can accelerate the advent of 90%+ of humans being able to innovate? 

  • IMO improving the percentage of humans who can innovate should significantly improve societal cohesion. 

  • If you can innovate, machines are your slaves?

  • If a significant portion of humans can't innovate will we all be slaves to demagogues?

  • *aside: I’m talking about a time before the advent of general artificial intelligence. IMO the recent gains for machines have been in ‘specific verticals for neural nets’ like ‘can convert audio to text based on huge corpus of training data and powerful new processors’ or ‘can convert an image to text saying ‘it’s a cat’ based on huge corpus of training data and powerful new processors’. This will mean there is a new class of activities machines can do, not that they can ‘invent’ or ‘problem solve’, just a new category of repetitive tasks they can do that eg involve vision in manufacturing. 

• Societal output = 1. Innovators * 2. Ability to scale

  • The only way to scale used to be humans, then slowly we built technology to replace repetitive tasks. Eg a tractor. Eg a factory to make widgets. 

  • When the only way to scale was through humans, almost all of us were involved in just getting enough food to not starve. Now in Australia 1.3% of the workforce feeds everyone else. Innovators have freed us from subsistence farming. 

  • Eventually machines will be able to scale any task. Then the size of the pie (total societal output) will be dependent on the number of innovators. 

  • Want to future proof your ability to have a job? IMO learn how to innovate. 

  • Want to help improve society? IMO learn how to innovate AND learn how to build innovation skills in others. 

  • We can have enough for everyone. We can have a constantly rising social safety net. But can we only do this if we constantly increase the number of people who can innovate? IMO quite possibly. 

  • If everyone has the tools to build a good life (strong societal safety net) and everyone knows how to use these tools to build a good life for themselves (innovation ability) then the chance of a cohesive society should be very high! 

  • IMO the biggest risk to humanity is humanity itself. One core strategy for civility is improving innovation ability? 

• Percentage of jobs that could be ‘innovation’ = percentage of jobs that have to be ‘innovation’?

  • IMO there is likely a slight lag between the percentage of jobs that can be innovation vs percentage of jobs that need to be innovation.

• Yuval Harari talks about the advent of a ‘useless class’ as machines abilities improve. IMO before general artificial intelligence this is only if humans can’t innovate. 

• If we don’t have human’s who can innovate then they won’t be able to have jobs so we’ll have to have something like a universal basic income which I think will be hard to pass politically…  but more than that IMO if we have unlimited ability to scale through machines then the only reason we won’t have abundance for all humans is due to a lack of innovation ability. 

• Everything for everyone? 

  • If everyone can innovate we’ll all be able to have jobs? 

  • If everyone can innovate we’ll be able to make sure that most everyone has all the basic necessities met? 

  • If everyone can innovate we’ll have grown the ‘pie’ (aka total societal output) massively more than if eg ‘50% of humans are a useless class AKA unable to innovate’? 

• The bigger the gap between the percentage jobs that need innovation and the percentage of people who can innovate IMO the more likely there is to be civil unrest. As such, what Edrolo is trying to do (get 90%+ of humans to be able to innovate) isn’t just nice to do, it’s must do?!?

• Innovation ability = one path to a good job. Lack of Innovation ability = one component of social unrest. 

• So as such building innovation ability isn’t just a path for a better humanity? It’s a necessity to make sure inequality isn’t too high, that there are not the haves and have nots but that everyone has, it’s the path to ensure no useless class?

• I think the biggest risk to humanity is humanity itself. 

  • Once we were barbarians, now we have modern civilization. 

  • IMO if we don’t have good jobs and rising living standards for everyone then, as is happening in many places now, we could have civil unrest until we turn back into barbarians! This isn’t equality of opportunity, it’s improved opportunity for all segments of society generation on generation. IMO this is what Rawls put forward in his ‘veil of ignorance’. 

  • Yes we need to get to sustainable energy and transport, but IMO we also need to level up all humans to be able to innovate which will hopefully mean we can provide a job for everyone that is above the living wage (...if people want a job). 

  • IMO if eg 50%+ of people are unemployable due to not being able to innovate (similar to being illiterate and trying currently to get a white collar job) then this could well be the conditions for civil war. 

  • IMO improving secondary education to help people build themselves better lives is nice…

  • … but more than this, improving secondary education to where 90%+ of people leave with the ability to innovate so that everyone can have a job could be a necessity! 

Taxonomised thinking: if you don’t taxonomise your thinking you’ll get your results taxed

By Duncan Anderson and Gig Mogiannis. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

Summary: 

• Making a taxonomy involves breaking up the problem space into sequential levels. I find making levels... ‘levels up’ your ability to understand the problem space. Without taxonomising your thinking I find you end up focusing on a piece of the picture, but with sweet sweet taxonomised levels you can often see the bigger picture! 

• Creating taxonomies can be a really helpful way to better get to know the problem you’re trying to solve, and is an effective strategy for use across a wide (maybe limitless) range of topics.

What is a taxonomy? 

• Making a taxonomy is the process of classifying something into levels.

• Some of my fav taxonomies: 

How it’s simple to seem like a genius when problem solving

• Einstein's five ascending levels of intelligence: 

  • L1: smart 

  • L2: intelligent

  • L3: brilliant 

  • L4: genius 

  • L5: simple

  • Comment: 

    • “If you can’t explain it to a 6 year old you don’t understand it.” Einstein

• DA’s addition to Einsteins levels :) 

  • L1: smart 

  • L2: intelligent 

  • L3: brilliant 

  • L4: genius 

  • L5: simple

  • [DA addition]L6: make a taxonomy

  • Comment

    • Know how it’s simple to be a genius? Make a taxonomy!!

I used to think making taxonomies was super hard… but I used to think that writing cursive was super hard. You get better at the things you try to get better at :)

• Here is a taxonomy for you: 

  • Small

  • Medium 

  • Large 

• I often split problem solving by ‘small vs medium vs large amount of unknown’. 

  • For a problem with medium+ amount of unknown I’ll normally try and make a taxonomy to help explain the problem space. 

  • The taxonomy I make is often with levels. You’ll see ‘levels’ or a taxonomy in many of my blogs on CloudStreaks, I just make them up :). 

• Here is a taxonomy I’ve just made for writing blogs: 

  • L1: just words

  • L2: words + equations

  • L3: words + equations + visuals

  • L4: words + equations + visuals + a taxonomy

• I remember when I first saw Bloom’s Taxonomy and I thought it was one the most insightful things ever. Mind blown. It changed how I thought about education.

• I thought making a taxonomy like Bloom’s was a level (pun intended) of thinking someone might hope to do once in their life. 

• Imagine if you could make one taxonomy in your life I thought. Wow, that would be incredible. 

• Now seriously I’ll make at least one taxonomy a week, at times multiple taxonomies in a day. 

  • I had a severe fixed mindset towards taxonomies in the beginning. But I should have realised that making taxonomies is like any mental skill, you start with no abilities and if you do deliberate practice you slowly get better. 

  • Duncan’s journey of mindset towards taxonomies… in a taxonomy: 

    • -L1: taxonomies are so awesome, I could never do that

    • L0: maybe one day I’ll be able to make a taxonomy, right now I’m just able to use Bloom’s taxonomy and Dreyfus taxonomy and modify slightly (transfer) into new places. 

    • L1: hazar!!! I’ve made a taxonomy like ‘student who don’t try vs students who try and fail vs students who try and succeed’. 

    • L2: OMG I can make taxonomies if I try, it’s not an act of god that somehow materialises the taxonomy in my mind

    • L3: I proactively know to make a taxonomy to help myself explain the problem space. 

Some examples of taxonomies I’ve made in CloudStreaks blogs

• Helping humans, hard fun? But the best kind of fun :)! - Generations of models for how to help humans

  • G1: person is a good / bad employee

  • G2: person has strengths and weaknesses

  • G3: strengths and weaknesses have strengths and weaknesses :) (eg someone is good at managing a certain type of person but bad with another type of person)

  • G4: G3 + when looking for the root cause, did it originate from the individual (I used to assume far too often things originated with the individual), others (eg someone has poor tone because someone provoked them vs the individual originated the tone) or the environment (eg looming deadline is causing stress leading to poor tone)

  • G5: G4 + including how ‘emotional tank levels’ for all parties at G4 can affect things (eg if someone is in a really bad spot their comms tone might be far worse because of this, eg if you are really drained today you are probably looking at the world more negatively than is fair)

• Decision frameworks: “How to approach solving problems is itself a problem to solve.”

  • Problem 1: no problem solving done at all

  • Problem 2: treat all decisions as irreversible

  • Problem 3: do not balance solution confidence vs decision sufficiency threshold to make a decision

  • Problem 4: do not take into account how much change a decision is and / or how controversial it is

  • Problem 5: make decision only in ‘theoretical land’. IMO most decisions about whether to go ahead with something should have data gathered from ‘practical land’.

• Levelling up problem solving ability through the 'Treasure Taxonomy' - what to do during a user feedback interview for your product:

  • Level 1: summary - verbatim = just writing down what happened

    • This is not useful. When you are problem solving / in a conversation / reading article please only try to do Level 2+

    • IMO, during work time you should never be eg reading an article and not trying to do Level 2+

    • Once people know about the higher levels of the ‘Treasure Taxonomy’ I find they are typically much better at doing them. That’s right, simply knowing about higher levels makes people much better problem solvers!

  • Level 2: summary - key points = being able to extract the key points and articulate them in a significantly shorter manner.

    • eg you get 80% of the value of a 1 hour conversation in 3 mins AND then can take the components and use elsewhere.

    • this is extracting the key ingredients of a problem space / a conversation and packaging them nicely

  • Level 3: synthesis - key point push back = you will disagree with part of an problem space solution / article / conversation AND have a reason why. No reason no disagreement!

    • saying how one of the ingredients from the problem space / article / conversation doesn't make sense.

    • "Opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one. But unlike arseholes, opinions should be examined very closely!" Tim Minchin.

    • Also see Devil (Un)disqualified Decision.

  • Level 4: synthesis - internal joining = you can take two components of the problem space / article / conversation and join them together to create something new.

    • you able to join two ingredients together to make a new ingredient. This is not saying these two ingredients belong next to each other, it’s creating a new ingredient from the combination of two ingredients found in “Level 2: summary - key points”

  • Level 5: synthesis - external ingredient = join an ingredient from the problem space / article with an external component to create new knowledge

    • you are able to join an ingredient form the article with an external ingredient and make a new ingredient

  • Level 6: create a model - internal joining = join pieces together into a new meta story

    • you are able to take the ingredients from the problem space / article / conversation and join them together into a recipe that makes sense. This adds a meaning layer above all the ingredients

    • put another way you get pieces of a picture (ingredients) and you join them together into a cohesive picture.

    • this might involve pushing back on different individual ingredients as in “Level 3: synthesis - push back”. “Level 3: synthesis - push back” is more 'I don't like this ingredient and here is why' vs Level 6 is 'I don't think this ingredient fits into this recipe and here is why'.

  • Level 7:  create a model - external ingredients = joining what is in the problem space / article with external ingredients into a cohesive structure/ recipe

    • As at the top, god I find this is fun.

    • Problem solving * good for the world = purpose.

    • Group * problem solving * good for the world = purpose + joy.

      • Group problem solving I find even better than individual problem solving!

    • IMO getting good at problem solving is a key way to have a lot of fun in life!

    • Making a taxonomy is problem solving, so this is problem solving about problem solving! Or fun about fun :)

  • Level 8: Heston Blumenthal - joining multiple recipes (models) together into epic scrumptiousness!

    • This is taking 2 existing recipes (ie collections of cohesive ingredients) and then combining them together into a way a better super recipe.

Now that we know what taxonomies are, how can they improve problem solving?

• They give you a new lens through which to consider a problem, which can foster creativity

  • “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” – Albert Einstein

  • See, Einstein knew it was important to break our thinking into ‘levels’ when trying to solve problems :)

• They can make progress feel more achievable by breaking it down into steps/levels to work towards, which can be more motivating and less intimidating than trying to tackle a big problem head on.

• They allow you to address individual facets of a problem separately – sometimes one idea will help to solve one part of a problem while a different approach is required to deal with a different component of the issue.

• They teach you to think with nuance and recognise that almost nothing is straight up black and white – nearly every situation has shades of grey! Blog link

• They provide you with a bigger vocabulary that you can use to discuss an issue, which gives you greater capacity to find a solution. If you can’t communicate effectively about something, how do you know you really understand it?

  • “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” – John Dewey

• They can aid in self-reflection, by giving you a framework you can use to identify where you’re at and where you need to go.

A taxonomy about taxonomies – taxonoception?

• Consider where you might be at in the below pyramid, and what you need to do to upgrade yourself by just one level.

• Instead of ‘thinking outside the box’, try ‘thinking inside the pyramid’!

If you only take away one thing

• If you pay lots of taxes you normally are rich. 

• I thought to make a taxonomy meant one must be rich of mental ability. [high mental ability => can make taxonomy]

• But I’ve realised one route to be rich of mental ability is to make lots of taxonomies. [make taxonomy => level up to high mental ability]

• One of the best hacks I know to improve your problem solving abilities is to ‘just make a taxonomy’. 

• Give it a try :)

Language is the ultimate tool. Writing = improving at language. As such: writing = cool!

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 

• Summary: 5 mins

• Details: 10 mins

Summary: 

• US Declaration Of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

• DA’s Declaration Of Intelligence: We hold these words to be self-evident, that words are our greatest gifts. That they are endowed with stupendous powers. Among these are documentation, communication, expression... and education :)  

• Words are inheritance from previous generations. Learn a new word, learn a new thought / emotion / idea / colour / sound / etc etc. 

  • Without words do we have anything? Without words is all we have confusion? 

• IMO language is everything and words are the main expression of language. You think in words, not feelings that you then translate into words. Learn a new emotional word (eg schadenfreude), IMO learn a new emotion you can have!!!! For example, studies show that, all else equal, the bigger your emotional vocab the better your emotional health. 

• Jingle 1: the more words you have and the better you are at using words, the better you are at everything mental! That's mental man! 

Don’t learn another language, learn the next level of ‘english’... can one ever be ‘fluent’ in english? 

• There are ~750,000 words in english up from 50,000 a millenia ago. And english is growing at a faster rate than ever before! 

• To be considered fluent at english you need… just 10,000 words! I don’t know about you but knowing ~1% of the words in english doesn’t sound like fluency to me. 

• On top of this language ain’t just words; it’s quotes, it’s models, it’s taxonomies, it’s analogies (see a fuller list below). 

  • To give you an example: language > words. 

  • Thoughts = words. 

  • You can read a 100,000 word book (average book length) and not really remember anything about the book… or you can read a 10 word quote and it can change your life. So… the right 10 words > 100,000 average words :)! 

• “Words have magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.” Sigmund Freud. 

• “The human tongue is a beast that few can master.” Unknown. 

• Let’s just say that you somehow knew 100% of all words, IMO that doesn’t necessarily make you good at language. 

  • You need IMO hundreds of literary devices. 

  • And then you need 1,000s of ideas.

  • OMG yes, the fun you can have with language will never end! 

• Jingle 2: I think english is unmasterable. IMO that makes the concept of language masterful. IMO language is the ultimate tool. 

  • The more tools you have the more things you can build. 

  • I think it’s possible to get thousands of times better at ‘english’. 

  • While I thought I was fluent at english when I was 15, in hindsight what english (language) could do for me was <1% of what I can do now! 

The best way I know to get better at anything is deliberate practice. 

• “Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.” James Clear

• The best form of deliberate practice I know of for ‘language’? Writing an unstructured ~1,000 word blog a week (AKA what you are reading right now). 

• Playing with language and learning new language is some of the best fun I know of! Writing this blog is some of the best fun I know of. 

• You should do exercise for your body, IMO you should do exercise for your mind. IMO one should write a ~1,000 blog each week. 

• Jingle 3: I find writing to be so beautiful that at times I can’t… speak :) 

• IMO writing ~1,000 words a week will slowly lead you to be 1,000x better at language :). 

I’m trying to improve my ‘language’ ability by becoming proficient in as many literary devices as possible. 3D knowledge requires 3D language? I’m trying to develop and popularise communicating in more than ‘just words’... writing in 3D to get ‘just desserts’. 

• I used to think that english was just words, maths was just equations and chemistry was where you drew visuals to represent molecules but you’d never draw a visual anywhere else! 

• Now I try to be proficient in as many literary devices as possible. 

• The trusty old Dreyfus Taxonomy:

  • L1: Novice

  • L2: Competent

  • L3: Proficient

  • L4: Expert

  • L5: Master

• Let’s say ‘language’ has the following three areas: 

  • 1. Words

  • 2. Non words (equations eg ‘pain + reflection = progress’, taxonomies like the Dreyfus Taxonomy, colour coding, etc etc)

  • 3. Visuals (eg your body is limited, your mind is limitless, eg a 2x2 matrix, etc etc)

• IMO 3D language is being able to use “1. Words”, “2. Non words” & “3. Visuals” to express anything you want! 

  • This is what I try to do with the CloudStreaks blogs. Write in 3D, help move the ‘english language’ to using literary devices like equations, taxonomies, visualisations etc :). OMG SO MUCH FUN! 

  • A couple of examples I really like are WaitButWhy The Story of Us & The ABC on COVID-19

  • 5 years ago I’d rate myself as the following: 

    • 1. Words - L2: Competent

    • 2. Non words -  L0: Nada

    • 3. Visuals - L0: Nada

  • Now I think I’m somewhere around here: 

    • 1. Words - L3: Proficient

    • 2. Non words -  L3: Proficient

    • 3. Visuals - L3: Proficient

• I’d say I’m wildly better at ‘english’ (or my ability to use language) than I was 5 years ago. 

  • IMO language = problem identification

  • IMO language = problem solution

  • IMO language = communication

• An analogy: IMO humanity is wildly better at ‘Physics’ than it was 200 years ago. 

  • Society has created a huge amount of ‘Physics language’ vs 200 years ago. Eg relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, electrons, etc etc. 

  • This repository of ‘Physics language’ allows the next generation to identify, solve, and communicate physics problems that previous generations never could.

  • “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” Isaac Newton

  • i.e. the hardware (physicists) isn’t getting any better but the software (the language used by physicists) is getting better.

  • IMO what has been done for Physics can and is being done for all areas of life. 

• Brain * No language = Nothing. Brain * Language = Anything you want! 

  • Humans are biologically indifferent to 10,000 years ago. But what a human can do today is other-wordly vs even 100 years ago. IMO the key reason for this is because of ‘improved / levelled up language’. IMO improve your language abilities = improve your everything abilities. 

  • We are trying at Edrolo to create ‘new education language’ and use it to create ‘new better education resources’. It is so much fun! 

• IMO everyone can add to ‘language’. IMO trying to add to language and the broader knowledge base is some of the best fun I know of! 

+++++++++++

Details

Physical vs Mental Abilities - might used to be right, now it’s the mind that matters! 

• It used to be that 'might was right'. A human's value was determined by physical ability. eg by how well a sword could be swung or how many animals caught. 

• Now it’s ‘the mind that matters’. Things are moving to have a human's value be determined by mental ability. eg thought, eg how many words you have and how well you can use them. 

What is fluency in english? 

• They say there are 750,000 words in English now and there were 50,000 words 1,000 years ago. English is regarded as the biggest and fastest growing language. 

• The level for being considered ‘fluent’ in a language is 10,000 words. 

  • “At around 10,000 words in many languages, you've reached a near-native level of vocabulary, with the requisite words for talking about nearly any topic in detail. Furthermore, you recognize enough words in every utterance that you usually understand the unfamiliar ones from context.”

• 10,000 words is ~1% of the known words in English. That is somehow fluent? 

  • IMO 10,000 might be fluent to be able to travel to a country with that language and *just* scrape by. 

  • You know that frustrating feeling that happens when you don’t speak the language and can’t articulate yourself as you know you could in your native tongue? You are missing words and the ability to use them. That is what you were like as a 15 year old, you thought you could speak ‘english’ but in highsight you were… 15. 

• “Studies have shown that the average English native speaker knows about 20,000 words with university-educated people knowing around 40,000 words.” - link 

  • 10,000 to be fluent but when travelling being unable to articulate yourself except for the most basic things. 

  • 20,000 to be average today for english.

  • 40,000 for the very educated apparently. 

  • … this is also known as 5% of the known words!  

• Word taxonomy

• Example 1: who are some word masters? 

  • This is the first debate between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson (both of whom I consider word masters). 

  • Honestly, I don’t think I understood any of this debate the first time I watched. I literally had to stop and google a word every ~30 seconds. The word I had to google was normally the most pivotal word in the 30 seconds without which none of what they were saying made sense to me. 

  • I’ve watched these series of debates between Harris and Peterson 4x times now, each time I somehow get massive amounts more. It’s like I’ve never watched them before! These debates, I adore ;) 

  • 1st time watching: literally don’t know the pivotal word every 30 seconds so none of the debate makes sense. 

  • 2nd time watching: I’ve got a one dimensional understanding of the pivotal words so that means I can start to see the arguments as they are being put forward. 

  • 3rd time watching: I now have a grounding in the arguments each side is putting forward so I can start to see how each person is pushing back and / or adding to what is being said. I’m not just spending 100% of my effort to try and keep up. 

  • 4th time watching: I now have a 3D understanding of key words and familiarity with arguments before hearing about them from Peterson & Harris, so I can start to build a bigger picture of what is being said in my head and maybe even form some of my own views on the topics being discussed. 

  • Honestly… I can’t wait to watch this a 5th time. I’m saving it up for 6 months time :). I’ll break out the popcorn, sit back and enjoy :). 

• Example 2: judges reading emoji in court

  • I think most people would say that a Judge is a ‘word master’... a word master of ‘old english’ it appears. 

  • Link

    • “Does a heart emoji from a manager constitute sexual harassment?”

    • Does an emoji with Xs for eyes — also known as the "dizzy face emoji" — count as a threat?

  • I used to bemoan that you couldn’t have ‘emotion in text’. Eg I need a sarcastic font, I need a ‘this is killing me font’. It was so easy to write something in eg an email or text that got taken out of context and instead of giving someone a delight, you gave your relationship a blight! 

  • In a super simple case, if I’m trying to make a joke in email I’ll stick a :) next to the joke to let people know I’m joking around. IMO totally changes the tone. 

  • So effectively IMO: text + emoji = emotion in text. 

  • I’ve found that using emoji in text can totally change the way what you write is received… and as such massively increase the aperture of what you can communicate. 

I think the ability to use language is the most uncapped skill there is. You can get better at playing the violin, at playing chess, at maths, become a knee surgeon… IMO language use is the master skill, because it is the skill upon which all other skills are built. 

• The chair you are sitting on is ultimately the outcome of human thought in words / language. 

• The food you eat is ultimately the outcome of human thought in words / language.

• The computer you are reading this on is ultimately the outcome of human thought in words / language.

• The internet is ultimately the outcome of human thought in words / language.

• Improving at language = improving at everything? 

Language ain’t just words. Language = Words+

• IMO there is ‘no such thing as intelligence' (many studies on this, I’ve also written about it eg here). 

• There being ‘no such thing as intelligence' is about ‘intelligence compounding’. 

  • What I don’t think mental abilities progression looks like:

• What I think mental abilities progression looks like:

• If language is upstream of all mental output, then improving at language = levelling up mental abilities = upgrading intelligence. 

  • *aside: IMO intelligence is a word imbued with much fixed mindset. Eg someone is born smart or dumb. 

  • I don’t think someone is ‘born intelligent’, I think some people however have special mental abilities. I think their ‘special mental abilities’ are built through systematically upgrading their mind. What someone who is ‘intelligent’ does is not hard, it is the product of hard work! 

  • Baby Elon couldn’t design rockets that go to Mars. 

  • Baby Ada Lovelace (widely regarded as the inventor of computer programs) didn’t know what an algorithm was. 

  • Baby Duncan was… infantile! 

• I think words are one component of language, but there are many other literary devices. Example of consecutive ‘s-curves’ for ‘written communication’:

  • S-Curve 1: using words alone

  • S-Curve 2: incorporating quotes

  • S-Curve 3: using analogies

  • S-Curve 4: use of juxtaposition (what something isn’t)

  • S-Curve 5: using colour highlighting for text

  • S-Curve 6: using equations, eg pain + reflection = progress

  • S-Curve 7: using taxonomies, eg L1: remember, L2: understand, L3: apply, L4: analyse, L5: evaluate, L6: create

  • S-Curve 8: using visual models like the a 2x2 or the ones further up this blog. 

  • S-Curve 9: using humour

  • S-Curve 10: using multiple definitions to try explain a concept in 3D

  • Etc etc. seriously this list goes on and on and on… and that is before you are even using concepts like growth mindset inside of language. IMO it’s unlimited! 

  • Aside: so much of the fun is finding new s-curves to surf. Super gnarly bro! 

• Writing is like sketching, you get a little better each time you do it. 

  • Want to get 100x better at communication? IMO write a 1,000 word blog for 100 weeks in a row, at the end I think you’ll find that your language abilities are other worldly! 

  • You should do physical exercise each week, IMO you should do mental exercise each week. 

  • For me: Mental Exercise = writing an unstructured blog on a topic of your choosing using as many literary devices as you can. 

  • For me: Mental Exercise = so so so SO much fun. Honestly I love writing these blogs. 

  • See this blog for what I see ‘unstructured writing’ as. 

3D Fluency: 1. Number of words one knows * 2. Literary devices * 3. Concepts * 4. The ability to use them

• IMO knowledge compounds. How else can one explain that 200 years ago we didn’t have scalable electricity and now we are able to put things on mars? 

  • They say humans are biologically indifferent vs humans 40,000 years ago. 

  • Humans abilities today are other worldly even vs 40 years ago. 

  • I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell think I can do more than I could 10 years ago. Frankly IMO what I think I could do 10 years ago is ~1% of what I think I can do now. 

  • I honestly think the key way I’ve upgraded myself is through ‘levelling up my language ability’. 

  • I honestly think that a rocket to Mars is the outcome of increased language ability (eg physics => transistors => code => design => manufacturing => rocket :) ). 

• A possible example of how language ability compounds.

• This says it’s possible to be billions of times more capable with language. Do I think this is a reasonable conclusion? Yeah. 

• What humans can do now is beyond what humans a millennia ago thought gods could do. 

  • I eat better than kings did 100 years ago… I don’t know how to cook. 

  • We used to have to gather wood that had fallen off a tree for heat… now a human with a chainsaw can cut 25x more wood in a day than 1x humans with an axe and a saw… let alone how much wood could be chopped before axes and saws! 

  • Humanity is going to colonise mars… we used to think the earth was flat. 

    • Some people still do, and you could say this is a result of scientists failing to use language effectively enough to communicate ideas and the ‘flat-earthers’ failing to learn the language of science.

  • Infant mortality in hunter gatherer times was ~50%... IMO humans will eventually transcend biology and be able to live forever. 

  • IMO these otherworldly improvements are the outcome of language levelling up! 

Language = Mental Tools

• A human with only hands might be able to dig a shallow hole. 

• A series of humans with tools can build a 100 story skyscraper.

• A human without language can’t build any knowledge. 

• A human with epic new physics language can build rockets that go to mars. 

• A human with epic new education language can build an education system that graduates more humans that can make... new language. 

• Language = the tool that builds all other tools. Therefore language is the ultimate tool? 

• If you can create new ‘language’ you can create anything? I think it so yo!

If you only take away one thing...

• IMO words and language are the best. For me they are the ultimate tool. 

• It’s possible that improving at language is improving at everything mental… and that’s mental! 

• The best deliberate practice I know to improve at language is unstructured writing for ~1,000 words a week. 

• Unstructured writing of ~1,000 words a week is also some of the most rewarding fun I know of. Do you have any idea how much fun writing this blog has been? THE BEST! (If you are interested from scratch this took me 3.0 hours to write. If I’d tried to write this 5 years ago it simply wouldn’t have been possible. IMO my words have leveled up hard, my literary devices have levelled up hard, the amount of concepts I know has levelled up hard. Yay!)

• IMO you should do physical exercise each week. IMO you should do deliberate mental practice each week AKA unstructured writing of ~1,000 words each week. 

The biggest problem is figuring out what the problem is. Blogging is practicing figuring out what the problem is.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 10 mins

Innovation vs Problem Solving vs Rote Learning

• Innovation = 1. Figuring out what the problem is * 2. Solving the problem

• Problem Solving = 1. Being given the problem to solve * 2. Solving the problem

• Rote Learning = 1. Being given the problem to solve * 2. Being given the solution to the problem

• Comment: 

  • I believe all mental skills are cultivated. You aren’t born able to walk or talk. You aren’t born able to do maths or draw. 

  • IMO you aren’t born able to Problem Solve or Innovate. 

  • Mental skills are like sketching, each time you do them you get a little better. 

  • IMO one can cultivate one’s ability to Innovate. IMO one can cultivate one’s ability to Problem Solve. 

  • For me, I’ve found it much harder to ‘1. Figure out what the problem is’ than to ‘2. Make progress solving a problem’. So…

  • Jingle: the biggest problem is figuring out what the problem is :)

The best way I know to build Innovation ability? Write a ~1,000 blog on the same problem space each week.

• Steps: 

  • Step 1: pick a problem space like ‘the product of Edrolo’ or ‘the business of Edrolo’ or ‘what ways to I want to help improve the world’, etc

  • Step 2: write a ~1,000 word blog on the problem space each week

• Outcome

  • Writing a blog = ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ = what should I write about = figuring out the question

  • Writing a blog = ‘2. Solving the problem’ = the making progress for the question you have identified

• Each week one should eat well, exercise, meditate, learn about the world… And IMO systematically build Innovation and Problem Solving ability AKA write a blog of ~1,000 words a week on the same problem space. 

  • If I look back at where my personal growth has come from in the last 5 years; IMO more growth has come from writing 2-3x blogs of 1,000 words per week than any other source. 

  • If I look back at where increases in my personal happiness have come from in the last 5 years; IMO more growth has come from writing 2-3x blogs of 1,000 words per week than any other source. 

  • Honestly, I’d stop exercising before I stopped writing each week. For me, writing = essential life element. 

++++++++++++

Details

Secondary school context: Innovation vs Problem Solving vs Rote Learning

• At secondary school you are almost always given the problem to solve, eg the english essay prompt, the maths question. The exam isn’t ‘do anything you want’. From my perspective there is almost zero ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ AKA Innovation AKA figuring out what the Job To Be Done is in secondary schools.  

  • Innovation would be making the maths questions to help you understand the concept in the lesson. 

  • Innovation would be making an exam for eg Legal Studies. 

• Problem Solving = making the if/then statement for a question = getting from the start point (the question) the finish point yourself = conceptual understanding

• Rote Learning = being given the if/then statement to answer a question = being shown how to get from the start point (question) to the finish line = memorising steps without understanding why = procedural understanding

• IMO for most people the goal in secondary school is ‘100% on the test’. 

  • IMO most people are unaware of the difference between ‘Problem Solving vs Rote Learning’ (AKA making the if/then statement yourself vs being given the if/then statement). 

  • So unwittingly many students and teachers actually learn / teach in a Rote Learning manner (procedurally) as this is often the path of least resistance to get the exact question in front of them ‘right’. 

• So in effect the secondary school learning environment IMO:

  • Has little to no Innovation...

  • … and can massively overweight towards Rote Learning vs Problem Solving :(

Real life ≠ secondary school exams

• IMO in real life you need to figure out what problems you want to solve. So Innovation is important. 

• IMO in real life for the most important things there is no ‘right’ answer, eg how to improve education, eg what to do for work, eg what is the best way to fight COVID-19, eg what is the best way to make a coffee! There is just making the best decision possible with the information you have at the time

  • So you can’t rely on Rote Learning, you have to Problem Solve. 

• "Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question" - Yuval Noah Harari

  • As we ascend Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we go from questions with answers to questions that can never be answered :). 

  • As we ascend Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we go from money being able to solve the problem to money being low in relevance. No money will make you sad, lots of money won’t make you happy :). 

Is it possible for one to systematically build Innovation skills? IMO yes. 

• Each week I systemically do units of ‘unstructured problem identification’ AKA ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’. 

• How do I do this? 

  • The best way I know to build ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ is to pick a problem space and then to write about it each week. 

  • IMO Writing = 1. Figuring out what the problem is * 2. Solving the problem = Innovation

  • One example is this CloudStreaks blog you are reading. I give myself a problem area and then I make myself write about that problem area each week.

• Figuring out the problem space

• Defining the problem space

• Solving the problem

• How

• Execution

• Writing = 1. Figuring out what the problem is * 2 Solving the problem = Innovation

• Writing = F * P * S = Innovation

• Problem Space Example 1: the business of Edrolo

  • The CloudStreaks blogs are meant to be ways for Edrolo as a business to improve. 

  • Each week I write a blog on a way that I hope to help Edrolo improve. 

  • For me the hardest part is ‘figuring out what to write about’ AKA ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’. 

  • Writing the blog = ‘2. Solving the problem’ = thinking = making progress to level up my thoughts for a certain area

  • Writing the blog ≠ putting what is in my head on paper

  • Writing the blog = figuring out a theory to help with the new problem I’ve found (or levelling up an existing theory)

  • Writing a weekly blog for CloudStreaks = systematic unstructured problem identification = systematic (ie weekly) unstructured (ie no prompt) ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’

• Problem Space Example 2: the macro product of Edrolo

  • I write a blog each week on product for Edrolo. This is internally only and not company wide. 

  • Again the hardest part is trying to figure out a problem I want to improve my thoughts on. 

• Problem Space Example 3: specific product for Edrolo - eg Year 7 Maths

  • I write a blog each week / fortnight for the major product I’m working on. Again this is internal only and not company wide. 

  • I might work on a product for eg 6 months and then write 25x of these little blogs. I find that slowly together they compound into a big step forward. Normally there isn’t one big step forward. I wrote about this in a blog called ‘earned secrets’. 

• Problem Space Example 4: my non-work life

  • Yeah I do this for non-work things too :). But I normally only write these for myself (ie no one else sees). 

  • Example topics (aka ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’): 

    • Do I want to have children? 

    • What different types of friendships are there? 

    • Do I think I have the relationship nourishment I currently want in life? 

Some prompt questions I have for ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ AKA figuring out what the Job To Be Done is AKA figuring out what to write about AKA building Innovation ability?

• Anything that confused you (didn’t make sense)? 

• Anything that frustrated you (didn’t go well)? 

  • Eg did you have an interaction with someone that didn’t go well. 

• If you had your time again what would you do differently? 

• If you could go back in time and give yourself one key learning for when you started this project what would it be?

• An upcoming project you want to get off to the best start with? 

• Anything you really enjoyed?

• Anything that went really well?

• Blue ocean: anything new you want to create (eg I want to create more Innovation ability at Edrolo)?

• Comment: I’ve slowly been able to see more and more ‘problems’ aka things I want to try and develop a better theory for. 

I used to think there were ‘ideas people’ and ‘not ideas people’, now I think there are ‘people who have cultivated their ability to see problems to solve’ and ‘people who are yet to cultivate their ability to see problems to solve’.

• I never had product ideas for Edrolo as an example. Now I have more than I can deal with. 

• I used to charge through a week and not see many things I’d like to improve. Now I could write blogs 100% of every day about things I’m wanting to change. Writing blogs to solve an identified problem normally allows me to identify new problems. 

• Picking a problem space (eg ‘the business of Edrolo’ eg ‘the macro product of Edrolo’) and then making myself write about them each week has turned me from ‘I don’t see any problems’ to ‘I see things all over the place I’d like to help improve’. 

• I honestly feel like my eyes were previously shut. 10 years ago I think I saw 1% of what I see now. 

  • That is to say that 10 years ago I was 1% as good at ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’. 

  • Or that I’m 100x better now. 

• This didn’t happen by accident. In hindsight I was systematically cultivating my ability to ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ by writing all the time. In an average week I’ll write 3-10x blogs. 

  • ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ is like sketching. Each time you try and do it you get a little better. 

  • IMO when I finished secondary school I had almost zero ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ ability. 

  • Then I did Engineering & Commerce at university where I was always given the ‘problem to solve’ (just like secondary school) so IMO at the end of university my ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ was similar to at the end of secondary school, basically non-existent. 

• Again, by picking a problem space (eg the business of Edrolo) and then writing about it each week I believe I’ve been able to systematically improve my Innovation and Problem Solving abilities. 

• The biggest problem is figuring out what the problem is. Writing ~1,000 words a week on a problem space = systematically improving ones ability to ‘figure out what the problem is’. 

  • “With your eyes open, doors open.” --A.r. Kane

  • “With your eyes open, figuring out problems to solve open”

If you only take away one thing

• What 10 years ago Duncan thought: people who are enthusiastic and have a good work ethic = will go far. *Aside: you can get good secondary school results with this. 

• Now what I think: 1. Enthusiastic * 2. Good work Ethic * 3. can Problem Solve * 4. can Innovate = will go far.

• I see many people who have done ‘well’ at secondary school but in fact have actually just ‘rote learned lots’. 

• I see some people who have done ‘well’ at school and have built ‘problem solving’ skills by figuring out the ‘if/then’ statement for a given question. 

• I see almost no one who has finished secondary school with any ‘Innovation’ skills, AKA is good at ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’. 

• If you have never done sketching why would you be any good at it? Each time you sketch you get a little better. 

• If you’ve never spent time trying to ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ why would you be any good at it? For me blogging / writing each week on the same problem space is easy the way I know to build ‘1. Figuring out what the problem is’ skills. 

  • So… writing each week makes Innovation easy :) 

  • Writing is also some of the most rewarding fun I know of. 

• IMO one should write ~1,000 words a week on a problem space. Done well this will make innovation go from hard to easy! 

Alight one more: different sizes of ‘figuring out what the problem is’

• Small: ~100 words in a weekly email on what I learned to help me at work in the last week

• Medium: ~1,000 words a week on a specific problem space like ‘Edrolo product’

• Large: ~10,000 words once a quarter on the long term vision for Edrolo. Honestly, I find to level up the long term vision for Edrolo simply sit down and start writing about ‘long term vision’. The problem to solve = long term vision. Writing = problem solving. 

Quality work relationships make work no hardship: 6 areas for building relationships

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

Summary: IMO there is an art and a science to life. IMO there is an art and a science to relationships. IMO if you want a great romantic relationship you should put in effort.  IMO if you want great work relationships you should put in effort. 

A great team has great relationships (also see this blog)

• “A great team is more than the sum of its parts.” AKA 1+1=3. IMO one core component of great teams are quality relationships.

• “A champion team > team of champions.” AKA 1+1=3. IMO one core component of great teams are quality relationships.

• You can have the best designer and the best engineer in the world but if they dislike each other they'll make crap quality output. 

• “We are all players, we are all coaches.” I hope to help the people around me grow, I hope they help me grow. IMO it doesn't matter if someone is a direct report or a manager, everyone should be helping everyone!

There are many parts to having great relationships, this is by no means everything, but I’ve found it’s best to have all these components and to try to continually actively foster them: 

• The areas: 

  • 1. Take an interest in someone

  • 2. Caring

  • 3. Vulnerability

  • 4. Two way street (support but also push people)

  • 5. Serious but with a smile

  • 6. Inspire

• Comment

  • You don’t have to do all but I find it best to try to do all. 

  • While the steps are numbered and I often find it good to go in that order, you can do any order. 

  • Jingle: it might seem a bit inauthentic to consciously build work relationships, but doing so will mean you can win the work championships, not have work shipwrecks! 

  • Jingle 2: want to ship epic product? Build epic work relationships! 

Component complications (details) 

• 1. Take an interest in someone

  • "Friendships are built doing nothing together, not something together." Sheldon Kendrick

  • See this blog on the value of ‘doing nothing time’ to build work relationships. 

  • Based on previous unstructured ‘doing nothings’ together learn 1-3x things about each person and then bring them up in the future

    • Ask about how their band is going that they told you about when you had coffee last week

    • Ask about the project they’re working on that they told you about at the last work drinks

    • Make a joke about their footy team that lost to yours

    • Learn something about an important event in their life that is coming up. Then ask about it before the event and after. 

    • Reference that cafe you both love

  • Comment: 

    • These may seem small or trivial pieces of information and could even be criticised as ‘inauthentic’ if they are ‘structured’ but it is the listening, remembering and rearticulation of these small ‘unstructured’ pieces of information that makes them genuinely authentic even when used as part of structured relationship building.

    • Do you know what I think is inauthentic? Not knowing anything about your coworkers beyond work. 

• 2. Caring

  • “No one cares how much you know till they know how much you care." Theodore Roosevelt

  • "To have a friend, first you must be a friend." Barack Obama

  • I try to give a unit of caring to someone ASAP and without an implicit short term quid pro quo. The job is to open an account of give and take mutually positive sum caring. 

• 3. Vulnerability

  • "Being vulnerable is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of self awareness." Brene Brown. 

  • You need to provide a story where you didn't do well, or ask for help, or where you overcame adversity that is similar to something they are facing so they feel comfortable talking to you about vulnerabilities! 

    • This is both a relationship building opportunity as well as a learning opportunity

      • Not only are you showing vulnerability but you are inviting them to do the same ie not only building the relationship but also establishing a mutually positive sum dynamic that not just values vulnerability on both sides but encourages and celebrates it right from the beginning of your relationship

      • You are also finding out what makes them tick and how they operate when faced with adversity ie learning about them as both an employee and a person and you might even learn something new that you can try when faced with a similar situation next time. The simple act of sharing doesn’t require a ‘push’ just genuine interest, care and vulnerability. 

• 4. Two way street (support but also push people)

  • "The purpose of a friend is to make you better than you otherwise would be." Socrates

  • When you have built caring and vulnerability you can then do 'pushing'. 

  • Sometimes you need to tell people to lift. 

    • Eg “Come on, believe in yourself, you can do this.” 

    • Eg “This isn’t good enough, you are better than this, what happened here?”

  • If you don't also support people then they often won't take you pushing them in a positive sum way. 

  • You won’t push them to improve (positive sum pushing)… you’ll push them away (negative sum pushing)! 

• 5. Serious but with a smile

  • "A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life." William Arthur Ward

  • Have a sense of humour = 1. Make jokes + 2. Can laugh at self

  • Have you noticed with your good friends you laugh a lot? Have you noticed with people you don’t know you rarely laugh? 

  • People say you should meditate every day, you should exercise every day. I think you should laugh at work a few times every day! I try to have a ‘humour’ in each of these blogs, in most of my emails, in most meetings. It’s so much fun trying to make up a humour… it’s selfless and selfish! 

• 6. Inspire

  • “Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right.” Henry Ford. 

  • If you help someone with doing good work that is great. If you can help someone learn something about how to do good work that is inspirational. 

  • Read a lot, write a lot, use quotes a lot :). 

An example - you have a poor relationship with someone, eg have gotten off on the wrong foot, how can you try to improve the relationship? 

• 1. Take an interest in someone: take a genuine interest in them by asking about them etc at work drinks. 

• 2. Caring: offer to help with a work project (unit of caring) without an explicit payback (aka extending an olive branch).

• 3. Vulnerability: be vulnerable about a relevant experience, e.g. are you able to let  me know what you think about this presentation? I’m worried about X & Y? 

• 4. Two way street (support but also push people): after you have shown you care and have been vulnerable you normally have the relationship strength with which to ‘push someone in a positive sum way’. Eg hey, I really liked your previous presentation. However this one I felt wasn’t quite as good because of X & Y, here is something I’d consider. 

• 5. Serious but with a smile: here is a possible joke for your presentation! 

• 6. Inspire: I read this article I think you’ll like. 

Interlinking relationships… for building relationships

• The points picked above and the order ain’t an accident. 

• If you try to show you ‘2. Care’ before you’ve ‘1. Shown an interest in someone’ it’ll often feel inauthentic and possibly be rejected. 

• If you try to be ‘3. Vulnerable’ before you show you ‘2. Care’ it can come across that you have a weakness, not have implemented an upgrade (showing something you have improved on) or that you would like help to upgrade. 

• If you try to ‘4. Push’ someone to eg lift before they know you ‘2. Care’ and are comfortable being ‘3. Vulnerable’ in front of you then it can be seen that you are unreasonable. 

• IMO one can be light hearted at any point, but if one never laughs at a joke or themselves then I find you can often respect someone but not like them. IMO it’s best to have both! 

• Finally, saying inspiring things is great… but if you don’t have respect for someone (know they care + are comfortable being vulnerable + can push each other) then saying inspiring things can often come off as someone ‘being full of themselves’. ‘Yeah so and so knows a lot, but he’s a bit of a d1ck.’

• Comment:

  • Of course this alone isn’t all there is to good work relationships; eg like the quality of work someone does, doing nothing time, getting off to a good start etc. 

  • This is just one lens I hope... lends a helping hand! 

If you only take away one thing

• Good relationships > average relationships

• Relationships = some art, some science

• IMO consciously spend some time trying to cultivate quality relationships. 

Building work relationships - to build something you first have to do nothing

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 

• 5 mins for summary

• A further 13 mins for the details

Summary: 

• A great team is more than the sum of its parts. Ie Great team: “1+1=3”; Average team: “1+1=2”. 

• IMO the most important difference between a great team and an average team is the quality of the relationships in the team. 

Output quality = 1. People quality * 2. Relationship quality

• IMO work relationships can be consciously built and maintained. IMO spending some time on this is crucial:

  • Output quality = 1. People quality * 2. Relationship quality

  • Enjoyment = 1. People quality * 2. Relationship quality

  • Employee retention / longevity = 1. People quality * 2. Relationship quality

• People try to consciously get better at their jobs. IMO people should be consciously trying to get good at building and maintaining work relationships. 

  • It doesn’t matter how good two individuals are independently if they don’t have a quality relationship , they won't do good work together. IMO the best people have quality work relationships with everyone… and it’s not an accident they do. 

• Companies worry about getting culture right. IMO companies should consciously foster quality work relationships. 

  • It is a case of quality relationships creating a quality culture as much as a quality culture creating quality relationships

    • Culture and relationships are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive

  • It doesn’t matter how good your mission is if employees are all strangers to each other, they won’t care, won’t level each other up and won’t challenge ideas that don’t make sense to them etc. 

  • A bunch of strangers = average team = “1+1=2”. 

  • People who have quality work relationships = great team = “1+1=3”

“Friendships are built from doing nothing together, not something together.” Sheldon Kendrick

• You can have one night out with someone (doing nothing time). 2 years later you see you see them down the street and you say ‘buddy, how are you!’ 

• You can work with someone for 2 years (work can be all doing something time) and have left that job 2 years ago. You see them down the street after not seeing them for 2 years and you hide hoping they don’t see you so you don’t have to say hello. 

• Examples of doing nothing [deeper examples below]:

  • Chatting on the way back from a meeting for 2 mins

  • Talking in the kitchen for 2 mins

  • Getting coffee

  • Having a chat at monthly drinks. 

  • Team offsites (done well)

• Examples of doing something:

  • Basically everything else. 

  • Eg working on a project, weekly team meeting, etc

• Jingle: To build something (at a company) first you have to do nothing (with your coworkers and build your work relationships so you can do something well).

• Work relationship levels (full explanation of levels below):

  • -L1: don’t like: “Poor team = 1 + 1 = 1.5”, won’t ask for help, are a sourpuss

  • L0: don’t know someone: “Average team = 1 + 1 = 2”, won’t challenge an idea, are neutral energy

  • L1: friendly: “Great team = 1  + 1 = 3”, will ask for help, will challenge an idea, will laugh etc. 

  • L2: work BFF: “Special team = 1  + 1 > 3”, have many new emergent ideas

• Thoughts on getting to “L1: friendly” work relationships in 30 mins, not 3 months

  • I loved this “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love” from the NYTimes 5 years ago. 

  • Here are my 11 questions to get to “L1: friendly” work relationship strength in 30 mins at Edrolo (full explanation of where the questions came and suggestions on authentic vulnerability below. IMO you’d likely want to change these to fit your company. If you want I’ll make ~10 questions for your company for $10k :) ): 

    • 1. Prior to school people often love reading, lego, board games, playing sport or something else. Did you love anything prior to school? 

      • I ask the question and then answer first, trying to be vulnerable and allow someone else to open up if they want when they answer the question. 

      • This is the same for all 11 questions, ie I go first. 

    • 2. Did you like primary school or not really?

    • 3. What subjects did you end up doing in Year 12 and why? 

    • 4. If you could go back in time give yourself advice on what subjects to do in year 12 what would the advice be and why? 

    • 5. What did you do at university, did you enjoy it and if you could have your time again would you do something different? 

    • 6. What is your fav part of the existing secondary education system and what is your least fav part? 

    • 7. [before this meeting have them watch the latest version of product vision] Any initial thoughts you have on the Edrolo product strategy? 

    • 8. If you are comfortable, what were the main reasons you applied for this job? Is there anything that worries you about this job? 

    • 9. If you made a lot of money and were going to give some money to a charity what charity would you choose and why? (this is getting into what they care about, if they have any big passions etc, it’s a softball way of asking this)

    • 10. Are there any developments in the world in the last year or two that worry you? 

    • 11. Anything you want to ask me? 

  • … if you read to the bottom i’ve made a generic 11 questions for any company for ‘getting to L1: friendly’. 

++++++++++++++++++++

Details

Output quality = 1. Quality of people * 2. Relationship quality

• If you have a great designer and a great engineer who… hate each other (poor relationship) the joint work output ain’t going to be high quality. 

• If you have an average designer and an average engineer who really enjoy working (great relationship) with each other output quality can be great! 

• “A great team is more than the sum of its parts.”

  • Great team = 1  + 1 = 3

  • Average team = 1 + 1 = 2

  • Poor team = 1 + 1 = 1.5

• A great team has great work relationships. Work relationships are a multiplier (positive and negative) on everything. 

  • Output quality = 1. People quality * 2. Relationship quality

  • Enjoyment = 1. People quality * 2. Relationship quality

  • Employee retention / longevity = 1. People quality * 2. Relationship quality

  • High output quality + high enjoyment + high retention = quality company culture

Are “Great relationship quality” more important than “People quality”? Maybe

• [hopefully] Duncan (today) > Duncan (yesterday)

  • Duncan (today) = Duncan (yesterday) * Output Quality * Enjoyment * Work Relationships 

• I hope to go to bed a little wiser each day. I try to make myself a little wiser, I try to make others a little wiser, I hope others try to make me a little wiser. 

  • Trying to make others a little wiser is partially dependent on relationship strength. 

  • Others trying to make me a little wiser is partially dependent on relationship strength. 

• Seriously I think that I’m 100x more capable than I was 10 years ago. A mega portion of this has come from others helping upgrade me and 2nd order personal learnings from trying to upgrade others. 

• So for myself: relationship strength is one of the single most important factors to personal growth. So relationship strength > today’s people quality. Because relationship strength = tomorrow’s people quality! 

Work relationship strength levels

• Levels: 

  • -L1: don’t like

  • L0: don’t know someone

  • L1: friendly 

  • L2: work BFF

• There is much literature about the strength of work relationships being important, eg see HBR here. One component of relationship is whether you laugh (link). And here is one on the value of ‘work best friends’. 

• For a bit of fun I’m going to harvest the ‘Five dysfunctions of a team’ framework to make my ‘levels of relationships strength rubric’. 

• Levels: 

  • L1: Trust = trust

  • L2: Conflict = will challenge an idea they don’t agree with

  • L3: Commitment = cares about company and others and will work to get things done

  • L4: Accountability = will ask for help, will pushback if timelines need to change, will ask for support if needed

  • L5: Results = enjoys work, enjoys working with coworkers. 

• The concept of ‘emergence’

  • From WaitButWhy

• When ideas (people) mix well together you don’t just choose between the best idea, you have new emergent ideas possible from the mixing of ideas together. 

  • Ie it’s not just should we do with “Idea 1 or Idea 2?”

  • But “Idea 1 * Idea 2 = new emergent Idea 3. Now which of these three ideas should we go with?”

• So: Quality work relationships => quality idea mixing => high ‘emergent’ new ideas => ‘1+1=3’

  • An average team (company) is a collection of separate individuals with minimal emergent ideas. 

  • A great team (company) is a hive mind (combination of individuals) with many emergent ideas. 

  • In visual format:

• Work relationship level details (god I love making taxonomies like this, fun fun fun!)

• What is a Work Best Friend? 

  • Someone with which you are willing to talk about anything. 

  • Someone you laugh with. 

  • Someone you care about and want to be friends with even if you don’t work together in the future. 

  • Someone you look forward to seeing.

  • There is much literature that having a work best friend massively improves work enjoyment and longevity. 

“Friendships are built from doing nothing together, not something together.” Sheldon Kendrick

• 22 year old Duncan really wanted to do a good job at work. 22 year old Duncan thought that meant trying really hard (doing something) and no slacking off (doing nothing, eg small talk). Today Duncan thinks work relationships are very important, and that as such doing nothing is very important. Today Duncan tries to do ~90:10 something:nothing time breakdown. 

• “For machines downtime is a bug, for humans it’s a feature”. Arriana Huffington. 

  • For work output do nothing time is a bug, for work relationships do nothing time is a feature. 

  • [an even better version] For work output do nothing time seems like a 1st order is a bug (decrease output), however for work relationships do nothing time is a 1st order feature… and as such a 2nd order improvement for work output. 

• Details of doing nothing! Doing nothing is complex ;) 

  • Ongoing

    • Micro- <5 mins

      • Unstructured: 

        • Chatting when walking back from a meeting for 2 mins

        • Chatting when you bump into each other in the kitchen for 2 mins

        • Walking to get coffee together

        • Talking about something you know they will be interested in at their desk for <5 mins

      • Structured: 

        • Based on previous unstructured ‘doing nothings’ together

          • Ask about how their band is going that they told you about when you had coffee last week

          • Ask about the project they’re working on that they told you about at the last work drinks

          • Make a joke about their footy team that lost to yours

          • Reference that cafe you both love

        • These may seem small or trivial pieces of information and could even be criticised as ‘inauthentic’ if they are ‘structured’ but it is the listening, remembering and rearticulation of these small ‘unstructured’ pieces of information that makes them genuinely authentic even when used as part of structured relationship building

        • Small talk is no small matter. 

        • Do you know what I think is inauthentic? Not knowing anything about your work colleagues beyond just work.    

    • Medium - 5 - 30 mins

      • Unstructured: 

        • Having a coffee together

        • Having lunch together

        • Having a chat at monthly drinks / quarterly day 

        • Toastie Tuesday

      • Structured:

        • 10 min structured chat with another person at work where you explain what you do day to day in 2 mins, then they do the same then you chat for 6 mins based what what you’ve just learned! 

        • 1-3 hour structured do nothing team time. It can be as simple as a dinner with 3 courses where you change who you are sitting next to for each course. It can be some of those team bonding sessions you have external people come in for. 

    • Macro - 30 mins + 

      • Eg 6 monthly team offset for 1-2 nights. IMO a well designed offsite is ⅓ strategy, ⅓ planned do nothing time (eg team building exercises) and ⅓ unstructured do nothing time (eg cook dinner, have some board games and people can play / not etc). 

      • Comment: 

        • I worked at Google in 2011 / 2012. I used to enjoy the offsites there which in hindsight had lots of ‘unstructured do nothing time’ which I didn’t understand the value of. I thought it was a ‘junket’. 

        • “The best things in life are selfless and selfish.” DA

        • I really looked forward to the offsites, they were such fun and good bonding with people. Also, I didn’t really have to work for 2 days on work time! In hindsight the offsites massively build work relationships and as such improved work quality, enjoyment and employee longevity during ‘normal work times’. 

        • We had two 2.5 day work offsites a year. This 5 days / 250 work days = 2% of time. Did this 2% of time improve quality, enjoyment, speed and employee satisfaction more than 2%? You betcha! More like 50% if you ask me! 

        • So doing nothing is actually doing something :). So while I thought in 2012 that offsets were a junket (waste of money), they were actually a way to save money (increase output quality and quantity). 

        • To make money often you have to spend money. 

        • IMO to have a great team (company) you should consciously invest in work relationships. 

        • Without a regular offsite your people will be put off! 

  • Getting started - Structured 

    • I loved this “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love” from the NYTimes 5 years ago. 

    • I made a version of them for ‘getting to know new people at work’. It’s basically my attempt to get to “L1: friendly” in 30 mins. It used to take me eg 3 months to get to “L1: friendly”! 

    • Deconstruction of “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love”

      • IMO they are a set of questions that slowly become more personal. 

      • Here is my version of this for Edrolo (an education company so the questions are very education heavy).

      • Principle: “to have a friend first you must be a friend.” Be vulnerable first and allow the space for someone else to also be vulnerable. 

    • Questions to get to ‘L1: friendly’ in 30 mins for Edrolo: 

      • 1. Prior to school people often love reading, lego, board games, playing sport or something else

        • [going first] I (DA) personally loved Lego. Played it all the time! 

        • Did you have a love of of these things or something else? [you let the conversation roll around here for up to 5 mins]

      • 2. Did you like primary school or not really?

        • [going first] I didn’t mind it. I was solid academically but I was not cool. I had friends but I suppose I worried about having friends etc. 

        • How did you find primary school? 

      • 3. What subjects did you end up doing in Year 12 and why? 

        • [going first] I did what the school recommended to me: Physics, Chemistry, 2x Maths, English and Mandarin. I did well at maths and science but average at English and Mandarin… and didn’t really enjoy any of the subjects. I didn’t hate them, but I didn’t like them. 

        • What subjects did you do and why? 

      • 4. If you could go back in time give yourself advice on what subjects to do in year 12 what would the advice be and why? 

        • [going first] I didn’t find any of the subjects real world applicable or interesting and I didn’t learn about writing skills really. I’d tell myself to swap Physics for Legal Studies and 1x Maths for Economics as IMO both those subjects are clear real world links and also would have helped improve my writing skills. 

        • Would you have any advice for yourself? 

      • 5. What did you do at university, did you enjoy it and if you could have your time again would you do something different? 

        • [going first] I did Mechanical Engineering & Commerce. It was a highly theoretical degree and I didn’t understand why it would be useful in the real world. It was basically ‘more of Year 12’ for me. 

        • If I had my time again I’d do Computer Science & Commerce and I’d do some Philosophy and more Economics in the commerce part and less Finance. 

        • What about you? 

      • 6. What is your fav part of the existing secondary education system and what is your least fav part? 

        • [going first] 

          • Good: I think school is much more than just ‘learning maths, english, science, etc’, it’s friends, baby sitting, extracurricular activities like sport etc. IMO the best schools are a community that fundamentally change what it’s possible for their students to do. They are beautiful, wonderful places. 

          • Not so good: I think that often teaching of existing subjects like maths, science and humanities can be done in a rote manner vs explaining how to get the answer and how to use in a students life. I believe the existing curriculums have the possibility of being interesting, but that often they are currently taught in a very boring fashion. I hope to help change this. 

        • Do you have any thoughts about what you like and don’t for the existing education system? 

      • 7. [before this meeting have them watch the latest version of product vision] Any initial thoughts you have on the Edrolo product strategy? 

        • [go first] Recap the product vision journey (ie generations of how we got to where we are in <5 mins. Explain why you think what we are doing is a step up over what occurs now but also 1x thing to be mindful of. 

        • Do you have any questions about the Edrolo product strategy? 

      • 8. If you are comfortable, what were the main reasons you applied for this job? Is there anything that worries you about this job? 

        • [going first] For myself, I love that I can tangibly see the improvements we make to education resources over what schools use now. One key worry area for me are the deliverable deadlines. We can’t get 90% of a textbook done by the print deadline. Because of our immovable deadlines basically every year there are periods of non-trivial time pressure stress. 

        • Do you have any initial thoughts here? 

      • 9. If you made a lot of money and were going to give some money to a charity what charity would you choose and why? (this is getting into what they care about, if they have any big passions etc, it’s a softball way of asking this)

        • [going first] A bit esoteric: I think a free independent press is vital for a healthy democracy and that we are losing part of his with the decline of newspapers and the rise of the internet. So I’d help fund the ‘Wakely awards’ specifically for investigative journalism making the price money WAY bigger. 

        • Do you have any thoughts here? 

      • 10. Are there any developments in the world in the last year or two that worry you? 

        • [go first] The idea of ‘fake news’ scares me. One articulation I have of this is ‘just disregard any information you see in the media that goes against your view as ‘fake’’ don’t think ‘ok well that contradicts my view here, so maybe my view needs updating.’ 

        • Do you have any thoughts here? 

      • 11. Anything you want to ask me? 

        • [Hopefully after the above they are massively more comfortable around you, ie relationship strength is ‘L1: friendly’ and will ask a question or two.]

        • [In some respects this is the NPS question to measure how well the previous 9 questions have gone. If someone has “L1: friendly” relationship strength with you now they’ll be asking questions. If they are not comfortable then they won’t! IMO it’s not just a matter of asking the questions, it’s also about being authentically vulnerable AND taking an interest in others]

• V1 11x generic questions for a company to get to know people.

  • 1. Prior to school people often love reading, lego, board games, playing sport or something else. Did you love anything prior to school? 

  • 2. What did you do at university, did you enjoy it and if you could have your time again would you do something different? 

  • 3. [before this meeting have them watch the latest version of product vision] Any initial thoughts you have on the company product strategy? 

  • 4. What did you like most about your previous role? 

  • 5. What was something that frustrated you about your previous role? 

  • 6. What was your first impression of [Edrolo] and has this changed at all since you have started?

  • 7. What is a company you admire and why? 

  • 8. If you are comfortable, what were the main reasons you applied for this job? Is there anything that worries you about this job? 

  • 9. If you made a lot of money and were going to give some money to a charity what charity would you choose and why? (this is getting into what they care about, if they have any big passions etc, it’s a softball way of asking this)

  • 10. Are there any developments in the world in the last year or two that worry you? 

  • 11. Anything you want to ask me? 

If you only take away one thing:

• Work relationships are crucial to good work outcomes. 

• IMO one can and one should consciously build and maintain work relationships. 

• Quality work relationships should help you win the work championships. Poor work relationships will likely lead to work shipwrecks!