Great podcasts to end the year

Breaker.audio (@breaker) recently published Top 100 Hot Podcasts of 2019. It has some great podcasts. I've listed a few here - mostly on leadership and self-development. 

Some of these are pretty long (>60mins), but it is very difficult to put them off once you start listening to them. Its a great way to learn new things when we are commuting.

• Deep work: We haven't admitted the true cost of interruptions. In this conversation with computer scientist Cal Newport talks about shutting down distractions and focus on meaningful work.

• Interview with Jim Collins: This is one of the rare interviews with reclusive author of Built to Last and Good to Great. He talks about leadership, how he manages his time (the 50:30:20 concept, 20 mile march, etc.,

• How to get rich - by @naval: Naval talks about concepts like - Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status, Make Abundance for the World, Make Luck Your Destiny, Pick Partners With Intelligence, Energy and Integrity, Read What You Love Until You Love to Read, Judgment Is the Decisive Skill, Eventually You Will Get What You Deserve, There Are No Get Rich Quick Schemes

• Act like a owner -by @naval: If you think and act like an owner, it’s only a matter of time until you become an owner.

• The surprising habits of original thinkers - Adam Grant: "The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most," Grant says. "You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones."

• What You Do Is Who You Are - Ben Horowitz: "One of the key insights from Bushido is that a culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions.". Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and t, What You Do Is Who You Are.

• Lessons from a Trillion-Dollar Coach - Eric Schmidt. Eric talks about a wide range of things, including about the book Trillion-Dollar Coach, which is a book about Bill Campbell, who helped to build some of Silicon Valley’s greatest companies—including Google, Apple, and Intuit—and to create over a trillion dollars in market value. A former college football player and coach, Bill mentored visionaries such as Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt, and coached dozens of leaders on both coasts.

• Keeping the Flywheel in Motion - Jim Collins: The Flywheel effect is a concept developed in the book Good to Great. No matter how dramatic the end result, good-to-great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.

Learning by Observing

We all learn in different ways (BTW, do you know how you learn?), and mine is by reading and observation (specifically observing leaders that I admire). One of the things I practice is to observe how leaders run the Q&A part in a townhall/allhands meeting. When someone asks a question in, I try to see how I’d answer the same and then compare with the answer the leader gave and check the difference. In most cases, I’d have given out the same content, but the difference lies in sequencing, choice of words, tailoring to the audience, maintaining composure etc., I’ve learnt quite a lot this way and continue to learn. Do try it out next time, I’m sure you’d learn something. 

Yesterday, I got an opportunity to learn from a senior leader. I know this leader ever since I joined National Instruments. He taught me our standard leadership course during my first year and his class inspired me to become a facilitator myself. In yesterday's class I noticed the following:

• He was not rushing to answer. He took time to phrase it correctly (couple of times he did tell that he is thinking on how to put it concisely). It was a very tricky meeting in that one or two incorrectly phrased sentences or wrong choice of words had a potential to create unwanted confusion.
• He was repeating the questions or rephrasing it (particularly when people meandered with their questions) before answering. This (repeating the question) is a great technique in that it helps in multiple ways:
• It helps others also to understand the question correctly. Specifically important in conference calls involving many sites
• It makes sure that we have correctly understood the question and gives us a choice to correct ourselves if we have misunderstood the question and started on a lengthy sermon for a question that was not asked
• It allows us time to frame the answer (common mistake many of us make is to start framing the answer before we completely hear the question)
• In few cases it also helps the questioner to get clarity and actually get what they exactly wanted to. We saw examples of these through the Q&A

• He kept an eye on the time, but we didn't get an impression that he was rushing 
• His answers were very precise. He didn’t disclose anything he was not supposed to. Didn't make any commitments he could not have made. He was open in admitting he cannot give the answer or do not have the answer. He also said why he’d not disclose the answer
• He was humble to acknowledge things he was not aware of 
• He did a great job in representing the corporate, was very respectful about the sites and local issues
• Frequently he was drawing the senior folks of the site to bring in local examples.

• Above all, the preparation was important too:
• He came to the stage about 30mins before the scheduled talk, made sure his laptop, mic etc., were all working. This allowed him to be in a relaxed frame of mind when the meeting actually started
• He had a printout of the slides and had made some notes in it and was frequently checking the notes to make sure he didn’t miss anything. 
• He had a print out of the questions that came in email and that helped him to answer them all without having to rely on the memory
• He also had a print out of the FAQ, he glanced at it again and made sure everything was covered.
• Knowing this leader I’m sure he’d have rehearsed it multiple times

Do not discard these as they seem like little things. These seemingly small little things are the ones that would add up. Afterall, excellence is doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way. 

Love to hear other things you might have observed.

What RamP's Reading: Dec'19

These books are recommendations I came from knowledgable folks. Many are released in 2019.

The Infinite Game: In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.

Not Caring What Other People Think is a Superpower: Not caring what people think is a superpower that will allow you to get what you want out of life. Most people worry about what others will think, so they suffocate their actions. As a result, they never live up to their potential. Within this book are insights about life and living to the fullest in 7 categories. You Will Learn: -The real reason the ability to work hard is so highly valued. -How to identify where to invest your emotional energy for the greatest return -Why you can't afford to have low standards for anything you do or the company you keep. -The greatest source of motivation that's untapped by most. -Vital paradigm and mindset shifts that will allow you to get more out of life. -The difference between strategy and tactics and how to develop a mindset for both. -How to select the best people to have a relationship with and get the most out of it.

The Upside of Stress: The Upside of Stress is the first book to bring together cutting-edge discoveries on the correlation between resilience—the human capacity for stress-related growth—and mind-set, the power of beliefs to shape reality. As she did in The Willpower Instinct, McGonigal combines science, stories, and exercises into an engaging and practical book that is both entertaining and life-changing, showing you:

• how to cultivate a mind-set to embrace stress
• how stress can provide focus and energy
• how stress can help people connect and strengthen close relationships
• why your brain is built to learn from stress, and how to increase its ability to learn from challenging experiences

What scares you more?

I recently ran into Tim Ferriss's podcast on "When to Quit: Lessons from World-Class Entrepreneurs, Authors and more". There are several contributors to this podcast including my favourites Seth Godin and Debbie Millman. I was particularly fascinated by thought provoking insights by Debbie Millman. Recommend going through the same (from 37:12 to 45:20). 

I've noted a few points below:

Rejection is never final until you stop trying.

Why do you feel the need to give-up? Why do you feel you should settle for something else? What are you most afraid of? – Settling or hating what you do? If you think you are not capable of achieving your dream – is it because you are really not capable or are you afraid of putting your whole hearted effort and try.

What scares you more?

• Heart break or rejection?

• Resentment or rejection?

• Regret or rejection?

If you are doing what you think you should be doing rather than doing what you want with your whole heart, you are not persisting. You are resisting the truth about who and what you are. If you are doing something that makes your heart sing, never ever give-up. Remember its not a failure until you accept defeat.

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I cannot recommend enough Debbie Millman's work. Do listen to this episode, where Tim and Debbie discuss how to recover from rejection, how to overcome personal crises of faith, class exercises from her most impactful mentors, and much more.

25 Principles of Adult Behaviour

Chanced upon this gem by John Barlow. Difficult to follow all of them all of the time. Still worthwhile to go over it regularly and re-orient our compass where needed. Backstory on this here.

What RamP's Reading: Nov'19

Some more travel and long weekends give me an opportunity to keep my standard pace of 4 books a month.

      

Mindfullness: Connecting with the Real You: Like it or not, a large part of our thinking is wasteful be it guilt, fear, anxiety or stress. This drains our energy and hinders our decision-making. Mindfulness is an eye-opening take on how to stay in the moment. Not a reheated fix for our daily struggles, this book serves as a guide for intelligent readers and urban professionals to focus and practise mindfulness.

Stillness is the Key: All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing. Ryan Holiday calls it stillness--to be steady while the world spins around you. In this book, he outlines a path for achieving this ancient, but urgently necessary way of living. Drawing on a wide range of history's greatest thinkers, from Confucius to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius to Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stuart Mill to Nietzsche, he argues that stillness is not mere inactivity, but the doorway to self-mastery, discipline, and focus.

User Stories Applied: Thoroughly reviewed and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, User Stories Applied offers a requirements process that saves time, eliminates rework, and leads directly to better software. The best way to build software that meets users' needs is to begin with "user stories": simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality that will be valuable to real users. In User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn provides you with a front-to-back blueprint for writing these user stories and weaving them into your development lifecycle.

Continuous Delivery: Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This groundbreaking new book sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers, and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours—sometimes even minutes–no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base. Jez Humble and David Farley begin by presenting the foundations of a rapid, reliable, low-risk delivery process. Next, they introduce the “deployment pipeline,” an automated process for managing all changes, from check-in to release. Finally, they discuss the “ecosystem” needed to support continuous delivery, from infrastructure, data and configuration management to governance

Rules vs Principles

My first job was with a company (now called Sasken) that had only 20+ employees when I joined and I  witnessed it grew to 1000+ over the next 10 years. Being one of the early employees, I had a great opportunity to participate in framing the policies as the company grew from a "start-up" to an established one. I had a great fortune of learning directly from the founders and some very senior executives on building and sustaining culture, governance, ethical behaviour at all times and I've been able to use these learning later in my career when I built teams from ground-up and even running large teams in established MNCs.

One of the key learning of those early days was the striving to make decisions based on "principles". Infact, one of the apt repeated question was "what is the principle behind it?". Sticking to principles removes any biases one might have towards a particular person or an idea. I continue to ask this question when we struggle to make a decision or there are multiple competing choices - each favouring one or the other aspect. Once the discussion moves from this vs that to agreeing on a principle, the natural decision or the outcome becomes clear and obvious.

I also frequently run into folks that act as bureaucrats (one definition that I like is "a bureaucrat is a person that believes his job is to say NO"). They'd be very well and perfectly operating within the rules and seem to believe they are doing as expected and getting needlessly blamed. Such people do not bother about the spirit, but really go with the letter. Principles are "spirit", Rules are "letter". How to spot them? These people:
- add more non-value adding work to colleagues
- have their first instinct to usually deflect the work to someone else citing the (correct) rules
- cannot (or do not want to) distinguish between routine vs emergency
- are pretty good in telling everyone "not my job" (and they'd still be right)
- do not understand the concept of (internal) customer or more precisely
- are quick to escalate "deviations" by other colleagues who might be bending the rules, but operating within the principles
- do not understand the concept of being of "service" to someone
- insist on sticking to "rules" even when rest of the world agrees it is stupid to do so.

etc., etc., (all these while strictly being within the rules)

Now how do we deal with such people?

There are some standard ways - provide direct feedback in STAR/STAR-AR format detailing how such an attitude is creating problems, talk to the person's manager and seek help, provide formal feedback via survey offer to mentor etc.,

However if you are in a leadership position and such behaviour is counter-culture, one cannot escape responsibility from setting it right. Remember culture is not a set of beliefs, but a set of actions. When not corrected quickly the org can quickly degenerate into a huge bureaucracy.

I'm not suggesting we bend rules all the time. If we can do justice to both letter and spirit it is great. However, sticking to rules for the sake of it and at the cost of principle is grossly incorrect - foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, said the great Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Next time when you instinctively say NO or quote some rule, think whether you are acting from principles or against it.

Food for thought for the Weekend (26-Oct-19)

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, and excerpts from my own reading.

Articles:

Culture is not a set of beliefs, Its a set of actions - A podcast with Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are, available October 29th. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.

In this podcast, Tim Ferris talks to Ben Horowitz whose new book "What You Do Is Who You Are" which is creating waves. In this podcast, Ben talks about management and leadership, advice for first time executive, tools and techniques Ben found useful for leadership, self-talk, sharpening the contradictions, and many more things.

Creating the Habit of Not Being Busy - Leo Babauta (ZenHabits)

Most of us have used this “too busy” rationalization, because it feels very true. It feels absolutely true that we’re too busy. And there’s a corollary to this: if we want to be less busy, we have to get all our work done first (and be more busy in the meantime). Is it true? Or can we develop a habit of not being busy, even with the same workload?

In this blog post, Leo talks about a more focused and meaningful way to work and some tips to put together all the learnings.

Bonus:

Here are couple more interesting articles from Leo:

How to not believe your ultra-persuasive rationalizations

A magical way to work with our habitual patterns

Resource:

TED Talks on fighting Imposter Syndrome

Quote to ponder:

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.” ― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

Food for thought for the Weekend (19-Oct-19)

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, and excerpts from my own reading.

Articles:

Mastering the "Infinite" Game of Leadership

Simon Sinek has introduced the concept of Infinite Game Mindset. So what does it mean to play the infinite game as a leader? It means you leave something behind that outlasts your finite presence or contributions. An infinite leader builds a culture so strong, that when the leader is no longer there, the culture lives on. Infinite leaders commit to their just cause. The work produced by striving for that just cause has the indelible fingerprints of the leader, and lasts far beyond the time of the leader’s tenure. Here are the five must-have components of will if we are to succeed in the infinite game:

• Just cause: It’s the passion or hunger that burns inside that compels you to do what you do.
• Courageous Leadership: Playing the infinite game requires leaders to prioritize the just cause above anything else.
• Vulnerable Team: invested the time and energy to build a culture in your organization where people feel safe to be themselves. 
• Worthy Adversary: In the infinite game, adversaries are acknowledged and treated with respect, but our success or failure isn’t measured against them. Ultimately we are competing against ourselves, and our success or failure should be measured against our just cause.
• Open Playbook: Having an open playbook means leaders and organizations are willing to have flexible strategies and plans that change as needed to pursue their just cause. 

5 strategies to deal with imposter syndrome

It is now understood over 70% of us suffer from Imposter Syndrome at some point of time in our life. Ed Latimore, a professional boxer and a veteran of United States Army National Guard and now a popular blogger on self-development offers some scientifically proven ways to deal with Imposter Syndrome:

• Realize that your wires are crossed: One can un-cross the wires by learning from mistakes, doing more newer things and refusing to believe you cannot do or not-do something.

• Remember that you’re not special: Seven out of ten people feel or have felt the way you do. Some of the most accomplished people in the world have struggled with imposter syndrome. Chances are some of them are even your role models.

• Keep a journal of your daily accomplishments, both small and big: Imposter syndrome is an internal experience, not an external reality. By keeping a journal of accomplishments, eventually, you are going to start internalizing your accomplishments. The things you focus on become your reality.

• Change your expectations: do like the tech bros in Silicon Valley and focus on creating something that meets the minimum criteria of “good enough”. Once you have that, you can start improving on it.

• Seek out social support: At the end of the day, everything’s a lot easier when you’re not going it alone. When you feel like you have a lot of social support, you find more productive ways to deal with your impostorism.

Bonus:

If you liked the above article by Ed, you might like the following too:

Not caring what other people think is a super power

Why am I so unhappy?: Five possible reasons

Resource:

Adam Grant lists 20 new books on behavioral science, Leadership and Life. Excellent recommendation.

Quote to ponder:
“To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.’” — Anthony de Mello

What RamP's Reading: Oct'19

Holiday Season and travel is giving me an opportunity to catch up with some books I always wanted 

to read.  As I gear up to lead large scale agile transformation initiative, it is only natural that such books are dominating.

 

On Writing Well: Re-read. So many authors that I regularly read (continue to) recommend this book, as one of the best in non-fiction writing. It teaches brevity, simplicity and core essentials of writing well - an email, an article, a blog post or even a book.

Clean Architecture: Martin’s (Uncle Bob) Clean Architecture doesn’t merely present options. Drawing on over a half-century of experience in software environments of every imaginable type, Martin tells you what choices to make and why they are critical to your success. This book talks about:

• Learn what software architects need to achieve–and core disciplines and practices for achieving it
• Master essential software design principles for addressing function, component separation, and data management
• See how programming paradigms impose discipline by restricting what developers can do
• Understand what’s critically important and what’s merely a “detail”
• Implement optimal, high-level structures for web, database, thick-client, console, and embedded applications
• Define appropriate boundaries and layers, and organize components and services
• See why designs and architectures go wrong, and how to prevent (or fix) these failures

Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results: 

Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress―and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture.

Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale: How well does your organization respond to changing market conditions, customer needsand emerging technologies when building software-based products? This practical guide presents Lean and Agile principles and patterns to help you move fast at scale—and demonstrates why and how to apply these methodologies throughout your organization, rather than with just one department or team.