Tim > Tim's Quotes

“Success is not just dependent on before-the-event reasoning, it is also about after-the-trigger adaptation.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Growth Mindset and the Secrets of High Performance

“The reason is not difficult to see: if we drop out when we hit problems, progress is scuppered, no matter how talented we are. If we interpret difficulties as indictments of who we are, rather than as pathways to progress, we will run a mile from failure. Grit, then, is strongly related to the Growth Mindset; it is about the way we conceptualise success and failure.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Growth Mindset and the Secrets of High Performance

“As Duflo puts it: “It is possible to make significant progress against the biggest problem in the world through the accumulation of a set of small steps, each well thought out, carefully tested, and judiciously implemented.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

“Marginal gains is not about making small changes and hoping they fly. Rather, it is about breaking down a big problem into small parts in order to rigorously establish what works and what doesn’t. Ultimately the approach emerges from a basic property of empirical evidence: to find out if something is working, you must isolate its effect. Controlled experimentation is inherently “marginal” in character.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

“The secret to modern F1 is not really to do with big ticket items; it is about hundreds of thousands of small items, optimized to the nth degree. People think that things like engines are based upon high-level strategic decisions, but they are not. What is an engine except many iterations of small components? You start with a sensible design, but it is the iterative process that guides you to the best solution. Success is about creating the most effective optimization loop.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

“The marginal gains approach is not just about mechanistic iteration. You need judgment and creativity to determine how to find solutions to what the data is telling you, but those judgments, in turn, are tested as part of the next optimization loop. Creativity not guided by a feedback mechanism is little more than white noise. Success is a complex interplay between creativity and measurement, the two operating together, the two sides of the optimization loop.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

“the most powerful engine of progress is to be found deep within the culture of the industry. It is an attitude that is easy to state, but whose wider application could revolutionize our attitude to progress: instead of denying failure, or spinning it, aviation learns from failure.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

“This, then, is what we might call “black box thinking.”* For organizations beyond aviation, it is not about creating a literal black box; rather, it is about the willingness and tenacity to investigate the lessons that often exist when we fail, but which we rarely exploit. It is about creating systems and cultures that enable organizations to learn from errors, rather than being threatened by them.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

“Proper investigation achieves two things: it reveals a crucial learning opportunity, which means that the systemic problem can be fixed, leading to meaningful evolution. But it has a cultural consequence too: professionals will feel empowered to be open about honest mistakes, along with other vital information, because they know that they will not be unfairly penalized—thus driving evolution still further. In short, we have to engage with the complexity of the world if we are to learn from it; we have to resist the hardwired tendency to blame instantly, and look deeper into the factors surrounding error if we are going to figure out what really happened and thus create a culture based upon openness and honesty rather than defensiveness and back-covering.”
― Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

“golden rules for career success 1 Specialize in a very small niche; develop a core skill 2 Choose a niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming an acknowledged leader 3 Realize that knowledge is power 4 Identify your market and your core customers and serve them best 5 Identify where 20 percent of effort gives 80 percent of returns 6 Learn from the best 7 Become self-employed early in your career 8 Employ as many net value creators as possible 9 Use outside contractors for everything but your core skill 10 Exploit capital leverage”
― Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less

“It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways.”
― Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less

“HINT 3: ONLY WORK FOR AN 80/20 BOSS What is an 80/20 boss? Someone who consciously or unconsciously follows the principle. By their works you shall know them: They focus on very few things—the ones that make a BIG difference to their customers, and, if they still have them, their bosses (hopefully a temporary arrangement—the best 80/20 bosses are not themselves constrained by a boss). They are going places fast. They are rarely short of time, and never flustered. They are usually relaxed and happy, not workaholics. They look to their people for a few valuable outputs. They pay no attention to inputs such as time and sweat. They take the time to explain to you what they are doing, and why. They encourage you to focus on what delivers the greatest results with the least effort. They praise you when you deliver great results, but are constructively critical when you don’t—and suggest that you either stop doing something unimportant or do something important in a more effective way. When they trust you, they leave you alone and encourage you to come to them when you need guidance.”
― Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less