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January 12 - January 22, 2023
Few of us are criticized if we faithfully do what has worked many times before. But feeling comfortable or dodging criticism should not be our measure of success. There’s likely a place in paradise for people who tried hard, but what really matters is succeeding. If that requires you to change, that’s your mission.
At its heart, Nelson crafted an organizational culture that rewarded individual initiative and critical thinking, as opposed to simple execution of commands.
In the words of British sociologist John Urry, “when China gets a cold . . . the US sneezes.”*
Setting oneself on a predetermined course in unknown waters is the perfect way to sail straight into an iceberg.”
In complex environments, resilience often spells success, while even the most brilliantly engineered fixed solutions are often insufficient or counterproductive.
Resilient systems are those that can encounter unforeseen threats and, when necessary, put themselves back together again.
Humans are great optimizers. We look at everything around us, whether a cow, a house, or a share portfolio, and ask ourselves how we can manage it to get the best return. Our modus operandi is to break the things we’re managing down into its component parts and understand how each part functions and what inputs will yield the greatest outputs . . . [but] the more you optimize elements of a complex system of humans and nature for some specific goal, the more you diminish that system’s resilience. A drive for efficient optimal state outcome has the effect of making the total system more
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“if we cannot control the volatile tides of change, we can learn to build better boats.”
“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing.”
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Harvard Business School teams expert Amy Edmondson explains, “Great teams consist of individuals who have learned to trust each other. Over time, they have discovered each other’s strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to play as a coordinated whole.” Without
Purpose affirms trust, trust affirms purpose, and together they forge individuals into a working team.
And once the first shot is fired, reality diverges from expectation very quickly.
A contingency plan is like a tree that branches at every variable outcome (if they fire when we arrive, choose path A, if not, choose path B). But when dozens of saplings shoot out from those branches every second, the possibilities become so overwhelmingly complex as to render complete contingency planning futile.
The competitive advantage of teams is their ability to think and act as a seamless unit (this is sometimes called “joint cognition”).*
The creation and maintenance of a team requires both the visible hand of management and the invisible hand of emergence, the former weaving the elements together and the latter guiding their work.
The crew’s attachment to procedure instead of purpose offers a clear example of the dangers of prizing efficiency over adaptability.
adaptability is more characteristic of small interactive teams than large top-down hierarchies.
when confined to silos like those of our Task Force, teams might achieve tactical adaptability, but will never be able to exhibit those traits at a strategic level.
Teams can bring a measure of adaptability to previously rigid organizations. But these performance improvements have a ceiling as long as adaptable traits are limited
to the team level.
Joel Peterson, a professor at the Stanford School of Business, says the rigidity that sets in with scale is one of the main causes of start-up failure.
teams are much trickier to build and maintain than we like to think. The issue is not that teams never work, but that team dynamics are powerful but delicate, and expansion is a surefire way to break them.
As a team gets bigger, the number of links that need to be managed among members goes up at an accelerating, almost exponential rate.”
The Apollo project . . . is generally considered as one of the greatest technological endeavors in the history of mankind. But in order to achieve this, a managerial effort, no less prodigious than the technological one, was required.”
“Working together always works. It always works. Everybody has to be on the team. They have to be interdependent with one another.”
collective intelligence of groups and communities has little to do with the intelligence of their individual members, and much more to do with the connections between them.*
“when the flow of ideas incorporates a constant stream of outside ideas as well, then the individuals in the community make better decisions than they could on their own.”
“The degree to which the opportunity to use power effectively is granted to or withheld from individuals is one operative difference between those companies which stagnate and those which innovate.”
An individual who makes a decision becomes more invested in its outcome.
The role of the senior leader was no longer that of controlling puppet master, but rather that of an empathetic crafter of culture.
The gardener cannot actually “grow” tomatoes, squash, or beans—she can only foster an environment in which the plants do so.
“Thank you” became my most important phrase, interest and enthusiasm my most powerful behaviors.
we have a problem that only we can understand and solve.
Gardeners plant and harvest, but more than anything, they tend. Plants are watered, beds are fertilized, and weeds are removed. Long days are spent walking humid pathways or on sore knees examining fragile stalks. Regular visits by good gardeners are not pro forma gestures of concern—they leave the crop stronger. So it is with leaders.
Even quantum leaps in artificial intelligence are unlikely to provide the personal will, moral courage, and compassion that good leaders offer.
