MACHINA Quotes

“The history books ever and always celebrate the daring battles, but the wars are won before and after the battles, not during. Battles lead to defeat, not victory. Hidetada, you must learn this. Fighting desperately is not glorious; it means you have already made a mistake and taken an unnecessary gamble.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Despite his inauspicious roots and lack of a recognizeable last name, this guy not only excelled at the art of war, but rose to the point where he became the de facto ruler of one of the most powerful industrialized military empires on the planet, the supreme commander of the Japanese army, and one of the most face-melting samurai warriors of all time. That's so completely over-the-top insane that I can't even think of an analogy absurd enough to compare it to.”   -- Badass of the Week: Hideyoshi Toyotomi”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“An individual who experiences inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance, as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time;”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“In the era of the Roman Republic, as with today, whoever spoke first in a debate got to frame the terms of the whole debate.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“It seems like both strongly introverted people and especially those who have mild to severe autism are more likely to be cardinal; they don’t relate with “normal human stuff” as much, and both don’t understand status games and typically eschew them.   But this is not the norm – the vast majority of people have at least some ordinal inclinations, if not being outright dominated in their thinking by ordinalism.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“To me, so much of today’s writing comes across trite, repetitive, safe, sanitized, patronizing and talking-down to the audience. Few writers want to explore truly deep and hard things. That’s the second reason – to go beyond the stagnation and over-caution in most of the current era’s writing.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“You, obviously, cannot control time.    You can, however, study it – measure it – navigate it. You can choose your next actions and do them. If things don’t unfold the way you like, you can study why and make adjustments. This is a good thing.   And we do this similar to Quality Control engineers.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“To get going, do analysis, then prioritize (you’re already prioritizing, consciously or not), and drive right at the heart of the matter.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“In Temporal Control #6, Heart of the Matter, we learned the cut right to the issue. What actually matters here? What gets it done?”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“The first practice is to ask what needs to be done. Note that the question is not "What do I want to do?" Asking what has to be done, and taking the question seriously, is crucial for managerial success. Failure to ask this question will render even the ablest executive ineffectual. ”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Nevertheless, no matter what, you should inventory and do analysis if there are many things at stake that compete for limited resources.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Sooner or later, you need to both accurately assess the current situation and what you want to have happen.   You can start from either end of the spectrum. Sometimes you can set a goal and then research how to reach the goal. Other times, there is no goal; and you set guiding policies instead.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“As a leader yourself, you should always study the bounds of tradition and what the current agreements are between stakeholders. Things change and move as time passes; how are they moving?”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Reducing the time you spend on core business duties, personal habits and maintenance, basic things like grooming and food, and anything else you do – starting with the time reduction aspects means freeing up time to keep making improvements.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“My friend Taylor Pearson is a terrific operationalist – I learned a lot of what I know from him.   His approach to Ops is to open a Google Doc every time he’s doing a task that should be repeatable, alongside the work.   Then, as he works, he writes down exactly what he’s doing in the Google Doc.   It’s rough and messy at first, and it means completing the task takes 20% longer than if he just did it without documenting, but he winds up with the start of legible processes that can be improved directly or delegated.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Drucker lists Vail’s four strategies:   1. An emphasis on constant service, back when this was an unusual way of thinking, 2. Working with regulators to create a framework of prices and coverage that served both public goals and made business sense,   3. Establishing Bell Labs as one of the top industrial labs in the world, in order to generate the “creative destruction” type of innovation despite monopoly status,   4. And ensuring AT&T was well-capitalized to keep expanding and growing via a brand new type and class of finance.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Once you discover a method that is very powerful and potent, you need to ensure it reliably happens all the time to get the relevant gains.   This is operations.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“The key is to always hone in on the most critical issue, recognize it, and go from there.   Once that aim is secure, the next most important issue. And so on.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“In business, the two key matters are typically product (broadly speaking) and revenue in normal circumstances; and perhaps product, growth, and financing for some class of startups.   You can get all other details right, but if your customers do not want what you’re selling, or you’re not making money, you’re going out of business. This tends to be the heart of the matter in business.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“I’ll remind you that I’m largely apolitical; I reject left nor right; the only direction that appeals to me is – up.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“The intersubjective is true by mutual agreement.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“If you’re leading or coordinating a diverse group of people, make sure they know a single way to default to doing things under stress. A “58% higher reaction time” translates to being 37% slower.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“We want to confuse the enemy with a variety of possibilities, but we do not want to do that to ourselves. Thus, a simple set of skills […] all extensively rehearsed, allows for extraordinary performance under stress.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Sun Tzu said the same thing many centuries ago: "The more possibilities you present an enemy, the more diffuse he is forced to become. The more diffuse he becomes, the more difficult it is for him to concentrate sufficiently to make a successful attack.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“*They played it halfway and didn’t evacuate or advance when they took casualties on the initial landing, thus being in the worst of all possible worlds. Lesson: Never play it halfway in anything that matters.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“*Once Carden resigned, Churchill should have ensured Vice-Admiral de Robeck knew the plan and triple-confirmed it, since it was counterintuitive. Lesson: Don’t assume people understand the plan.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“*De Robeck withdrawing on the verge of victory was disastrous. Lesson: Ensure your people know their relative priorities and context (a few ships sunk to save at least hundreds of thousands of lives, and maybe millions if the war ended earlier, would have been a good trade. De Robeck didn’t see the bigger picture and context.)”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“*If Governor Potiorek had insisted the Archduke wait for soldiers to arrive instead of encouraging the bravado, it would not have happened. Lesson: Arrogance can be fatal.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“*If the Archduke had waited for soldiers to arrive, it would not have happened. Lesson: Do not act too hastily in a risky situation where there is no advantage to speed.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA