Why Deliberate Execution Builds Expertise?

Edition #164

Apr 02, 2025

Introduction

Welcome to The ContraMind Code.

The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.

The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.

The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation here.

Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.

The Case For Muting the Boss.

When you are in a meeting, and your boss is attending that meeting, sometimes you wish he or she listened more than just keep talking. However, when you are having meetings with your team or when you are the boss of that team or department, have you ever asked yourself a question - ‘Does my team feel the same way during meetings?’ This article from Kellogg Insights provides some nice tips and ideas about this topic:

‘By intentionally keeping silent, leaders create space for new ideas and talent development—which fuels innovation.’
‘One step that will help leaders follow through with being muted is to define the meeting’s objectives with a narrow, actionable focus.’
Find a way to ‘Empower the right voices.’
Break teams into smaller teams for safety, which helps them huddle, discuss problems and come back.
Move meetings from brainstorming to problem-solving.
As a leader, remember that not speaking is not the only problem. People pick up on body language, too. It tells them whether you are comfortable with what is being discussed.
Reconvene again to make the decision after hearing them. This shows you are processing their suggestions and actively listening to their viewpoints.

Read the article here.

How To Build The Future: Tony Xu, Co-Founder and CEO, DoorDash

In this Execution Beats Expertise Podcast by Y Combinator, Tony Xu speaks about cardinal truths that build any business. If you remove all the hype and chatter around startups, valuations, exits, millionaires, etc., the principles of running a company don’t change - be it a multi-billion dollar company or a startup. In fact, these principles matter more than ever if you are building a startup. Here are some key thoughts that Tony Xu shares in this conversation:

If you have an idea, think of it as a project first rather than a company. Immerse yourself in what it takes to do it and carefully evaluate with whom you want to do it. Treat each other as project mates first, not as co-founders as the project evolves. There may be a point when some of the project mates would not like to continue for personal and professional reasons. It also serves as a way of testing relationships, work ethic and ambition.
Observe customers and their problems deeply. A day in the life of the customer helps you uncover many insights - “Remember, sometimes it is very hard for the customers to exactly tell you what is in their brain when you ask about the problems they have.”
If you are an entrepreneur, promoter, or founder, have a vision larger than the immediate revenue or business goals. Understand that it may take time, and you will experience many ups and downs, but the larger overarching vision allows you to stay the course.
If you look up to a start-up or a company and have some heroes and examples as benchmarks, the company you see today may not be the same as when it just started. Going back to its early days will reveal many truths that may provide invaluable learnings for you.
Ask yourself tough questions to filter and question your business idea rather than getting excited and jumping into it, like ‘If something doesn’t exist, there may be a good reason why it doesn’t.’
Ask yourself one question, as dumb as it may sound - ‘Will the consumers pay for this service.’
Experiment and test your hypothesis.
A lack of customer demand can kill your company. However, even a demand tsunami can kill your company, too. How you treat your customers, then, serves as an essential strand in how the company culture gets built.
Be aware of your strengths and weaknesses as founders. Do each of you bring complementary skills to the table? Transparently discuss that.
Building a company - be it a startup or a large one at scale - will always be a fight between ambition and the availability of financial resources. Learn to live with this contradiction.
There is one metric that won’t lie -“One of the hardest things to really fool is the retention and the engagement of a product.”
“There is no better way to be an expert than to do the work.”

You can also listen to the entire conversation on:

Spotify | YouTube

How To Have Amazing Conversations: Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School.

Alison Wood Brooks is the O’Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She is also the author of the book Talk. In this video, she speaks to Cal Walters, Founder of Intentional Leader. She shares some findings from her research that have found their way into her recent book Talk.

Here are some secrets she shares about how to have great conversations:

Break your conversations across a 2x2 quadrant - which has relational in one axis and informational access in the other. Strive as far as possible to have conversations around the high relational and high informational access quadrants.
Alison shares a TALK framework for having great conversations, which is:
- Topic - Do enough preparation for your conversation on the topic -‘Even 30 seconds of forethought makes your conversation more enjoyable and productive.’
- Asking - Follow-up questions add magic and learn to switch topics.
- Levity - Look for sparkly moments and find ways to keep everybody engaged. “You don’t need to be funny, but you can’t be boring.”
- Kindness: It makes a big difference to conversations when you nod, smile, use nonverbal cues, make eye contact, lean forward, etc. This shows you care about the person and the conversation.

You can watch the video by clicking on the above link.

Why Deliberate Execution Builds Expertise?

DoorDash Co-Founder and CEO Tony Xu’s conversation is a powerful reminder of how great businesses are built. In fact, it has a stronger message about what it takes for people to build successful careers as experts, too. When you combine both of these, successful businesses are built.

Prof.Andrew Ericsson was a world-renowned thought leader and researcher on expertise. His research on what it takes to build expertise is considered seminal. He coined the term ‘Deliberate Practice’ to refer to specific learning methods used by experts to achieve superior performance in their fields. His book Peak summarizes the findings of Ericsson's 30-year research into the methods and models of acquisition of expertise.

In fact, Prof. Andrew Ericsson disagreed with Malcolm Gladwell that he had oversimplified his research on 10,000 hours of practice in his book Outliers. He goes on to explain how people become experts when they do a sort of ‘deliberate practice’ which includes things like:

Pushing oneself beyond one’s comfort zone.
Having a training regimen designed by an expert to develop specific abilities.
Using feedback to identify weaknesses and work on them.

When you reflect and apply these principles, what does deliberate execution do?

Why Is Transformation So Hard?

Edition #163

ContraMinds Labs

Mar 26, 2025

Introduction

Welcome to The ContraMind Code.

The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.

The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.

How I’ve Run Major Projects: Ben Kuhn, Anthropic.

Ben Kuhn works for Anthropic, one of the world's leading AI companies. In his blog, he shares his playbook for managing major projects.

Here are some good ideas from his article that could resonate with you, especially when managing large, complex projects.

Focus—Clearing any other schedule to entirely give it attention is vital. Being distracted by many other things competing for your attention could prove costly. Avoid it at all costs.
Maintain a detailed plan for victory - Have clarity on what defines success and victory for you and your client(both internal and external). It is essential to list detailed steps if you are moving towards the finish line as per the plan.
Run a fast OODA loop. OODA stands for observe, orient, decide, and act. Most large projects are characterized by incomplete information. Eliciting complete information is usually the hardest part of the project. It can take up a substantial portion of the estimated time costs, which may not have been calculated correctly. Hence, OODA becomes important, making what you do daily flexible and adaptable as issues arise. How can you overcome these uncertainties and unplanned things in a project?
- Track and prioritize the biggest open questions.
- Don’t shy away from overcommunication - ‘Communicate uncomfortably much.’
- Constantly keep reorienting - Look at our list of priorities, asking yourself whether they should still be the top priorities,
Create a high level of ‘ambient awareness’ in your teams. Having ‘Situational Awareness is essential.
In large projects, you don’t just delegate the execution but you have to delegate the project management of the deliverables.
Remember, in complex projects, direction is more important than magnitude.
Learn to ‘play well with others’.
Maintain a ‘master document’ of every day’s status so that anybody can learn about the project, and you need not be a bottleneck for them when you have time constraints.
When you give project updates, optimize for signal-to-noise ratio.
Plan for retrospectives: As much as you plan for weekly meetings and updates, take time for retrospective meetings to reflect on what went right or wrong.

Read the entire article here.

Why Kids Need To Take More Risks: Science Reveals The Benefits Of Wild, Free Play.

We live in a society where parents are increasingly protective of their children. As countries become more developed economies and people become more wealthy, it seems parents get more ‘anxious’ about their children and don’t allow them to take risks of any kind. Since they have the financial resources, they engage in acts and activities to reduce their anxiety, affecting kids mentally as they get into the real world, which is uncertain and volatile. This podcast from Nature Podcast provides a great perspective on this and, specifically, what science has to offer from the research that is being done in this area.

Here are some findings and insights for you to reflect on this:

What is risky play? Risky play consists of activities kids do, like climbing and jumping from heights to leaving them away from the watchful eyes of parents.
Research shows that it is vital for kids to experience opportunities for risky play, as this develops their spatial awareness, coordination, tolerance of uncertainty, and confidence.
Research also shows children know more about their abilities than adults might think!
It is vital for parents to understand risk is not the same as danger.
When kids are involved with ‘Risky Play’, it gives them self-confidence, resilience, problem-solving skills and social skills like cooperation, negotiation, empathy, etc.
When kids are allowed to experience the cycle of challenge, arousal and coping, it helps them understand anxiety and physiological stress are not indicative of disaster and do not last forever.
An adult’s role is to provide a conducive environment and get out of the way!
There’s a key takeaway for even adults. They need to practice risky play that can give them this ’funny, scary’ feeling and help them navigate the uncertainty they deal with in their world.

You can also listen to this episode on:

Spotify | YouTube

Integrating Generative AI Into Business Strategy: Dr. George Westerman

There is so much talk about AI, Gen AI and how it will transform the workplace, jobs, industries, functions, and more. This is a brilliant talk by George Westerman, a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Founder of the Global Opportunity Initiative, who outlines how to approach this systematically.

Here are some key thoughts from this talk that will help you think more about this topic:

“Technology changes quickly. Organizations change much more slowly.”
“Technology is NOT the problem. TRANSFORMATION is.”
“AI can seem intelligent, but you need to be intelligent in how you use it.”
“Start with the problem. Not with the technology. Many solutions will be a combination of technology, people and processes.”
“Get started now - pilots, policy, org capability.”
“Help people be ready and willing to participate.”
“Continuously iterate and improve. What can you do with small t transformations that will help the large t transformations later on.”

You can click on the above video to watch this talk.

Why Is Transformation So Hard?

In his talk, George Westerman makes a profound statement, ‘Technology is not the problem. Transformation is.’ This statement raises many curious questions as to why transformation is so hard.

First things first, transformation requires conviction. In organizations, it is not restricted to the belief of one person who initiates the technology change but the conviction of many people who are either driving or participating in the expected adoption of a new technology, process and behaviour change. Here begins the challenge, as many people resist change or don’t inherently believe what is being done will work, or some of them don’t understand why this is being done. Hence, they are not involved or, worst of all, not committed. This leads to half-hearted attempts, and such people do not apply their minds enough and adopt them during their daily work methods. A lack of conviction leads to a lack of transformation.

Transformation requires a precise clarity of outcomes. Outcomes may include improved customer experience, reduced costs, improved margin, quicker turnaround time, higher productivity, etc. When outcomes are unclear, people don’t feel comfortable and find ways to resist or adopt them. Moreover, they highlight the time spent and effort being put in, which may not necessarily influence the expected outcome. Looking within in terms of behaviour change, adherence to new work processes, micro-level reviews play an important role more than daily huddles and standups. Successful transformations have visible outcomes defined, practised and published periodically. Transformation becomes hard because the tool becomes the hero and not the outcome.

The Perils Of Managed Dissatisfaction.

Edition #162

ContraMinds Labs

Mar 19, 2025

Introduction

Welcome to The ContraMind Code.

The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.

The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.

Remembering Daniel Kahneman: A Mosaic Of Memories And Lessons.

It’s been a year since the legendary Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist best known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making and behavioural economics, passed away.

This article is a brilliant collection of his memories, ideas, and thoughts. You will be amazed at the sheer nature of his impact and influence on this field.

What does all this mean to you, and what can we learn from his work?

Have a desire to ask deep, meaningful questions, try to answer them rigorously, and, ultimately, get it right
Also, remember that “Right” is temporary; there is always more to learn.
The deeper you get into anything, the more you will discover - Invest hours, weeks, and years on one paper, project, or idea.
Be a skeptic about your own ideas and stress-test everything.
How many different topics can you hold an in-depth conversation and connect them to the main idea being discussed?
Never sacrifice precision for readability. Don’t allow deadlines to affect you, and time constraints can’t influence you to compromise your pursuit of perfectionism.
Learn to enjoy being wrong.
Deep learning happens when you keep changing your mind!
Practice the art of premortem. Because it legitimizes dissent and allows organizations the opportunity to consider and close potential loopholes in their plans.
Don’t take the rejection to heart—turn it into an opportunity.

Read the entire article here.

Karthik Sastry On Animal Spirits And The Economy.

Prof.Karthik Sastry, a macroeconomist, Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Economics and the School for Public and International Affairs shares his insights in this conversation that personal instincts and primal urges are known to cause cycles of boom and bust. One way to gauge those emotions is through economic narratives.

Here are some of his key thoughts from this conversation:

Storytelling is central to how we interpret economic events.
How do we measure the impact of these economic events? We lack effective tools to identify these narratives, measure their contagiousness, and quantify their contribution to economic events.
Prof. Karthik discusses using Natural Language Processing(NLP) to turn words into hard data.
It has been found that companies with more optimistic narratives tend to accelerate hiring and capital investment. Strikingly, firms with optimistic narratives do not see higher stock returns or profitability in the future and also make overoptimistic forecasts to investors.
Data also supports the idea that narratives spread contagiously like viruses.
Prof. Karthik's study estimates that narratives explain about 20 per cent of fluctuations in the US business cycle since 1995. In particular, his study estimates that narratives explain about 32% of the early 2000s recession and 18% of the Great Recession of 2008–09.
Here are key conclusions from Prof.Karthik’s research:
- ‘What people say is highly informative about both individual attitudes and broader trends in the economy.’
- ‘Some narratives are more influential and contagious than others.’
- ‘Narratives introduced by policymakers have the potential for significant impact.’

You can also listen to this podcast on:

Apple Podcast | YouTube

The Milk System: Uncovering Truths About The Dairy Industry.

One of our guests on the Contraminds Podcast, Elena Aniere, is a Network Coordinator for Slow Food International. In her LinkedIn post, she recently shared documentaries worth watching, which bring to life their vision and goal of good, clean, and fair food for all.

One of the documentaries Elena recommended was The Milk System. It was really moving, powerful, shattering many myths, beliefs, and benefits of milk ecosystems built around the world.

You can click on the above video link to watch the documentary.

The Perils Of Managed Dissatisfaction.

In last week's newsletter, one term was used to describe Blockbuster’s downfall and Netflix’s rise—‘Managed Dissatisfaction’. This behaviour showed how vital it is for companies to proactively observe customer problems and find viable solutions for them.

Let’s first understand how companies fall into the trap of ‘Managed Dissatisfaction’:

Today, automotive brands put customers under tremendous duress after purchase. They mandate after-sales service under certain conditions by overcharging on spares, scheduling unwanted service, etc. Customers know this but are left with little choice. The post-service satisfaction survey, which measures and reports satisfaction, is a good example of ‘Managed Satisfaction’ until a new competitor comes and disrupts this practice.
Take the case of the banks and financial services category. Once you become a bank customer, the pain of handling banking relationships is enormous - be it high payment transaction charges, ballooned loan repayment schedules, credit card usage fees, bank account minimum balance charges, high forex transaction fees, insurance premiums, etc. —is an example of customers ‘putting up’ with dissatisfaction as they have no alternatives. However, financial services conference rooms are filled with meetings to analyse satisfaction scores of their services. Customers move out in large numbers when there is a viable alternative. This can explain the growth of fintechs in this category.
Software and technology products face the same challenge. Let’s take the example of Google search. Search engine volume is predicted to drop by 25% by 2026! Again, because there was no alternative to Google search, though customers had been dissatisfied with search results and their quality over the last decade, Google did little until OpenAI disrupted their business.

As these are ‘fat and inefficient’ revenue sources companies earn, they get comfortable with them because they know customers have few alternatives. Company executives know these are ‘easy’ revenue sources, but since they fit their revenue forecasts and goals, they continue to pursue them until a competitor comes and disrupts this revenue stream.

How can you reduce ‘Managed Dissatisfaction’?

Behaving like a customer first rather than as somebody running a business operation is vital. It allows you to be truthful and ruthless about the ‘fat’ that accumulates due to inefficient practices, which leads to cost bloating before you know it.
Ask yourself one honest question - ‘What gives me the right to earn this revenue?’
Your teams will always push for ‘Status Quo’ because their argument will be, why fix something that is not broken but when it breaks, all hell breaks loose. Case-in-point: Look at the results on the Google search bar today with Gemini AI or how traditional automotive companies respond to the EV threat.
Don’t get into the trap of vanity metrics and measurements that push you back to your comfort zone. Don’t use a checklist, and create a tickbox of metrics that will make you happy.
Break your revenue into three parts and review it diligently. Take a hard look at each part and what you are doing about it. Dr.Vijay Govindarajan’s three-box solution is a great mental model to adopt and practice:
- Manage the present - That’s your current bread-winner
- Selectively forget the past - Forget what made the business successful in the past
- Create the future - Create a new model

Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:

Learn to think, contemplate and be a skeptic of your own ideas.
Storytelling can be a great way to understand and interpret economic events.
Proactively observe customer problems and find viable solutions before a competitor disrupts your business.

Needing Resources Vs Being Resourceful

Edition #161

ContraMinds Labs

Mar 12, 2025

Introduction

Welcome to The ContraMind Code.

The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.

The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.

Casual Viewing - Why Netflix Looks Like That.

There is always a lot of a ‘sense of wow’, hype and incredible stories around new business models that go on to disrupt old business models that have existed for decades. It always needs contrarians and deep-thinking minds who study and analyze some of these new models. They can unwrap some of the challenges, issues, and practices the majority might ignore in the excitement surrounding the success of such models. Will Tavlin does just that in this article.

Here are some powerful thoughts shared by Will Tavlin in the article:

‘Netflix doesn’t just survive when no one is watching — it thrives.’
‘Blockbuster collected nearly $800 million in late fees, accounting for 16% of its annual revenue. Internally, company executives described its business model as one of “managed dissatisfaction.”
‘Blockbuster punished customers for being forgetful; Netflix rewarded them for being mindless.’
‘A decade before Airbnb persuaded homeowners to transform their homes into hotels, Netflix convinced its users to turn theirs into mini Netflix warehouses.’
Netflix’s concern was scale rather than the cinema it was scaling. Movies….were merely a means to an end - acquiring subscribers who paid for access to Netflix’s entire library of content every month.’
‘Reaching seventy-two million households didn’t mean what it sounded like it meant. What it actually meant was that seventy-two million accounts watched at least two minutes of The Old Guard.’
‘by insulating their films from failure, the streamers have destroyed the meaning of success.’

Read the entire article here.

Creativity Vs Control: Where AI Fits In The Creative Toolbox.

How will creativity be redefined and transformed in the AI era? This a16z podcast provides a lovely perspective on this topic. Scott Belsky, a Partner at A24, previously served as Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Chief Strategy Officer and EVP of Design and Emerging Products, and Founder/CEO of Behance.

Here are some key highlights from this conversation:

“One core conviction I have is we're going from the prompt era to the controls era of AI-based creativity. And what I mean by that is, you'll actually be able to generate assets with layers.”
“Every creator is inherently creative, so their workflows are diverse, unpredictable, and highly personal. But they also want magical, modern experiences.”
“We're all creative, but like creative professionals, they hold dear their ability to achieve what's exactly in their mind’s eye. And if you think about that, it's the antithesis of the notion of these generative AI models that essentially are trained on a discrete data set.”
“What makes creative content really effective is when creative content moves us in some way.”
“My thesis for the next 10 years, it's going to be that tastes will outperform skill. Because skill is going to be offloaded to compute.”
“And with the human labor you free up from that meticulous production work, you're going to come up with, instead of one campaign to test, you're going to come up with 100 campaign ideas.”
“What happens in periods of abundance for any item. So, when shoes become ubiquitous and commoditised, what do we end up doing? We end up seeking more scarce versions of shoes by buying higher price shoes that are branded.”
“Resources, when you have them, you throw them at problems like carbs. It feels good but dissipates quickly. Whereas resourcefulness is like muscle.”
“Customers do things in very strange ways. They won't use an enterprise product even if it makes their life better because they won't get as much credit with their boss.”
“If you understand me across platforms in a way that other products can't because they're only one platform, you're going to have me as your customer.”

You can also listen to this episode on:

Spotify | Amazon Music

One-Person Enterprise | World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025

How far are we from a true one-person unicorn, and what does this mean for the future of employment and capital? This is an emerging viewpoint on how businesses don’t need to rely on traditional structures of large teams. By using technology like AI, nimble new companies will be created.

Here are some key takeaways from the conversations:

The high-performing companies of the future will have just one person at the helm, which will have profound implications for capital and entrepreneurship, displacing young talent in large companies and the higher-order skills people need to work on to thrive in such environments.
AI-native companies will have a significant advantage as AI systems will do the work of entire teams. They are bound to disrupt traditional businesses, as they can only achieve so much efficiency and innovation.
Redeploying existing AI agents for existing workflows is difficult, and hence, agents need to be reconceptualised. Delegating to an AI agent is also difficult and is quite a struggle for many people.
Adopting AI systems and agents allows one individual to do 10x the work. We will be the first generation to manage people and AI agents.
A ‘tech company’ scales with humans non-linearly, with productivity and output as a goal, while ‘AI-native companies’ scale with AI agents non-linearly with a human in the loop to start with and then move humans out of this loop. AI-native companies will look like some kind of a founder with some decision-makers, infrastructure, and some human experts in the loop.
We will need people who can rapidly adapt, have the ability to update their mental models, and not pride themselves in doing or mastering one narrow task but build the engine that does the tasks for them.
Think of AI as software tools that are custom-built for people rather than looking at them as replacing tasks and people in different roles. The most empowering view of AI agents is to look at them as one who allows everyone in the world to create their own software.
Each one of us should not just be ‘AI literate’ but ‘AI Proficient’.
Try to think of products that the current billionaires have that a middle-class teenager does not have. That’s where AI has the potential to disrupt.

You can click and watch the above video.

Needing Resources Vs Being Resourceful

As companies rapidly adopt new technologies, we will see a distinct transformation in how work is done. AI is only accelerating this process further, as its reasoning and context-led automation capabilities are only getting better every day, and the costs of deploying these models are falling rapidly.

Therefore, in the future, companies will not grow both in scale and resources simultaneously as they have in the last hundred years. So, to stay relevant in this era, you must understand the critical difference between resources and resourcefulness.

Resources can be defined as people and tangible assets that are in demand or needed when companies want to grow. Hence, a company’s growth always had a linear correlation with the demand for resources —the assumption being we will need more and more people and more tangible assets like offices, equipment, capital, etc., to sustain growth. However, the need for resources diminishes when technology and AI become core.

Working In A Small-Big Company.

Edition #160

ContraMinds Labs

Mar 05, 2025

Introduction

Welcome to The ContraMind Code.

The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.

The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.

Should Managers Still Code?

This is an often-discussed and hotly debated topic when people move into manager or leadership positions - What mix of doing and managing must you adopt? Can you learn a best-in-class formula from others who have gone through this phase? James Stanier, Director of Engineering, Shopify, writes about this and shares some lovely perspectives on how to think about this topic.

Here are some interesting perspectives that James shares:

The legendary technologist and co-founder of Intel, Andy Grove’s equation of a manager’s impact, can serve as an excellent reference for this - ‘The output of a manager is the output of their team, plus the output of the neighbouring teams under their influence.’
Understand this subtle difference - ‘All managers should be in the code, but not all managers should be writing code.’
What does the difference between ‘being in the code’ and ‘writing the code’ mean. Here are some points that he makes for you to understand this better:
- ‘Should they be able to write code? Yes’
- ‘Should they be able to do code reviews? Yes.
- ‘Should they review all design documents and architecture proposals from their team? Yes.’
- ‘Should they write code themselves? Maybe.

James ends by beautifully summarising it:

‘Should managers be in the code? Yes, absolutely.

Should managers write code? Maybe, but it also depends on what you mean by writing code.

Read the entire article here.

Ravi Gupta - AI Or Die.

Ravi Gupta is a partner at Sequoia Capital and the host of Glue Guys, a podcast on the Colossus Network that discusses business and sports. In his conversation with Patrick O’Shaughnessy, he shares his insights on how AI will transform and disrupt industries, how people and small teams will not be a constraint to solving big problems, and how there will be unprecedented opportunities for people who are willing to embrace change aggressively. Every sentence in this conversation is laced with excellent thoughts and insights.

Here are some thoughts that Ravi Gupta has shared in this conversation:

How will AI change what each person will do in the future? Sam Altman’s quote is coming true - ‘Every person will become more capable than any person is today.’ The pace of change is rapid, and AI is rapidly democratising knowledge and information through access and context.
Leave how AI will change business, careers and jobs. It will profoundly impact our kids and how they will need to learn and work. - “What is the right way to teach them in a world where the tools that are going to be available to them are going to be totally different?” They need to be curious, resilient, adaptable and have high agency.
AI will trigger the rise of small companies that can scale without too many people. Most large enterprises have a hidden cost that is not captured anywhere today: ‘The hidden cost of having a lot of people. How much of your time is spent dealing with employees in a way that actually does not help your customer?'
AI will start to define job roles and their needs. “You do have to go roll by roll and figure out what the AI superpower version of each of these roles is. Is it that it's replaced?”
AI will change how people will buy software - “Today, a lot of companies have seat-based pricing models. I don't believe that that will be the future of the way that people buy software….“Maybe they're just gonna say, I want this piece of work done, and I wanna pay just for that piece of work done. I don't wanna pay for each person that uses your software.”
In an AI era, you must develop the ability to provide context. The art of providing context will become more critical than ever.
You are in an era where you can’t accurately predict the future. Therefore, learn to become a world-class reactor rather than a world-class predictor.
AI will break and disrupt our status-seeking behaviours, such as asking, ‘How many people do you have?’ or ‘The size of the team you manage.’
Learn to embrace and develop new KPIs like ‘Magic Per Employee’ - What does that mean? - “Oh my god, you did that with 10 people. That kind of thing.”

You can also listen to this on:

Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

Leaders Vs. Bosses: What Does It Take To Become A Leader?

This conversation about leadership in Founding Fuel has some profound insights shared by senior and experienced leaders: Dr. Anil Khandelwal, Ajay Piramal, and Nitin Paranjpe. The conversation is anchored by some very thoughtful and profound questions by Indratjit Gupta.

Here are some key takeaways from this conversation that can help you think about various facets of leadership:

Integrity, humility, authenticity and vulnerability are core to being a leader.
Leaders must be willing to do different things and constantly learn.
To become a truly respected leader, spend time on self-mastery.
Leaders must understand that if people lose their jobs, they must be willing to accept that it was first their mistake and that there was something they had not done right in the past.
Great leaders take risks with their people by believing in them.
Best leaders are deeply anchored in their values, regardless of outcomes and consequences.
To become a truly great leader, one must learn to be resilient and self-aware, develop the ability to connect the dots, be hungry, have conviction and build an immutable character.
Great leaders are also great followers. They are also the best followers of their belief system.

You can watch the video by clicking the above link.

Working In A Small-Big Company.

What difference does working in a big company make compared to working in a small company?

In a big company, roles seem distinctly clear, policies are set regarding what you are expected to do or not, the hierarchy is well-defined, tasks are identified and given to be completed, the business is in a steady state for the process to thrive, responsibility and accountability seem neatly carved out for people, work is predictable, work boundary is well defined etc. Work is broken down into small components within a department, like a factory, within functions, within roles in those functions, etc. Therefore, from the outside, for many people working in a big company, everything looks organised and perfect. The day begins at the said time and ends at the set time. If something is not delivered or delayed, they know who to point fingers at, and if something gets done well, there are more than enough people to take credit.

Loading more posts…