Efficiency Is The New Growth.

Edition #177

Jul 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. It also enables you to draw a blueprint for what it takes to get extraordinary things done. You can 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.

New Advice For Aspiring Managers.

In a world that was growing insanely fast over the last many decades, money was chasing even crappy ideas, peoples’ jobs, work roles and methods of working also had taken a beating. When making money becomes easy for businesses with fat margins, inefficiency creeps in. That’s the law of life. Mediocrity creeps in through inefficient business processes and unlimited hiring approvals, which lead to more people producing less output. The party goes on till growth stalls and reality hits businesses hard. It creates a downstream impact on people who are accustomed to working inefficiently, and soon, they come to realise the need to reboot themselves. We may all be living in a time like that now.

James Stanier, former Director of Engineering, Shopify and CTO of Nordhealth, alludes to the change that is happening in the tech industry. James writes about the changes managers need to make in the way they work in this emerging work scenario:

You need to learn to work in an environment where “Growth is expanding impact, not headcount.”
“You don't become a manager to become hands-off in 2025: that's a surefire way to be seen as underperforming.”
“In a capital-constrained environment, the focus is on efficiency.”
“Some companies have even stated that managers will have to justify that AI can't do the work before they can hire a new person.”
“Being entrepreneurial and scrappy is now essential. It goes hand in hand with the efficiency focus, but it is also a mindset that is increasingly expected of those leading teams.”

Read the entire article here.

TV Option For B2C, GenAI For CRM, Data Centres Go Nuclear.

It’s a well-known fact that technology disrupts and transforms industries. Forrester’s What It Means Podcast covers three industries that are going through this transformation.

The first one is the Media Industry, where Warner Bros. Discovery is separating its businesses into streaming products and networks. It is a recognition of the fact that more and more audiences are moving from legacy and linear TV networks to streaming platforms. B2C marketers need to start adding streaming to their media planning and follow the audience. Also, live events are becoming big in streaming. Just like linear and legacy TV, increasingly live events will be available on streaming platforms. Brands need to take advantage of that.

ChatGPT is being embedded in your CRM. Hubspot announced a connector for ChatGPT. HubSpot users will now have access to this connector and start doing analysis and strategic plans based solely on CRM data. The real question is, will it work as most CRM systems don’t have the best quality data in place?

Finally, data centres demand huge ‘power needs’ in the AI era, and big tech firms like Google and Amazon are going nuclear to power their data centres in preparation for the AI tsunami. It is important to balance these investments and closely watch AI growth and adoption.

You can listen to this episode on:

Spotify | Amazon Music

Demis Hassabis On The Future of Work In The Age Of AI.

Demis Hassabis, Founder and CEO of DeepMind, is a Nobel Prize winner and here is a conversation with Steven Levy, Editor at Large at Wired.

Here are some thoughts that Demis shares as a part of this conversation:

“ I don’t think we are at AGI yet because of the consistency of responses.”
“It’s not clear to me if this is an incremental transition versus a step function.”
“What generally tends to happen is new jobs are created that are actually better… that utilize these tools or technologies.”
“When a doctor does the diagnosis.. one can imagine being helped by an AI tool, but on the other hand, (jobs)like nursing, there is something about human empathy of that and care… that is particularly humanistic..”
“Immerse yourself in these new systems, understand how they are built and maybe you can modify them yourself…try to become incredible in fine-tuning, system prompting., system instructions, etc.”
“In 20 to 30 years, we will be in an era of radical abundance, solving root node problems.”
“I think this will be as big as the industrial revolution, probably if not bigger.”

You can click on the above link and watch this video.

Efficiency Is The New Growth.

This phrase by James Stanier really sounded very powerful and relevant. And it is something to think about as to how it will impact each one of us personally and how it will affect economies, jobs, workplaces and everything that’s around us.

We have been and are living through an era of abundance for several decades now. We have been spoilt with innumerable choices to choose from. We are used to seeking more people to do a job than what may be typically required. Businesses were able to fund these excesses when they had fat margins. The question really is, will businesses be able to afford that in the future? It will include new businesses that emerge within their portfolio or existing businesses that are being forced to transform themselves. However, the hard truth is we are moving into an era where growth will come at the cost of headcount. Imagine having one headcount along with multiple AI agents. That’s the reality, from what it looks like in the near future.

So what will life and work look like when:

You don’t have to spend time driving your car to work or school? Especially when cars turn into autonomous vehicles.
An AI agent does a bulk of the heavy lifting of the code, and you then need to refine, prompt and instruct to get the code right for your needs or business requirements. It leaves you with more time to think and innovate.
People don’t need to actively manage people. AI agents will take care of that. You will need fewer people to manage, and more people will have to work on things directly or be hands-on.
You don’t have to spend time shopping as your shopping assistants will do it. Your financial assistants will take care of your financial planning. Or doctors, lawyers and accountants will be having AI agents supporting their practice.

Work Will Transform Into An API

Companies will move from being ‘monoliths’ to ‘microliths’.

People will prefer to work across a network of companies, which gives them varied experiences or opportunities. Organizations will transform work opportunities into an API. People will have many ‘Work APIs’ to access their place of work. They will want extreme flexibility to work while looking for challenging problems to solve or contribute to. Individuals who are hands-on yet open to flexible earning and learning options and have the ability to continuously build expertise will be preferred. Once the work is done, they will want to shut down their ‘Work API’ and move to the next challenging opportunity.

Companies, too, will prefer people who are not a burden to their balance sheet, as businesses will want to remain nimble and agile. People costs will move from being fixed costs to opex costs. Firms will prefer people who don’t create an overhead but can work efficiently across work streams and projects. Individuals who can work in ‘lite teams’ will be preferred as they consume less time, energy and effort in getting things done. This will make companies lean and fit to change their course when needed, and also innovate.

As we move into an era where efficiency will be the new growth model, it will drive ‘Right Time’ employment and not ‘Lifetime’ employment. Are you getting prepared for it?

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

Growth and headcount will decouple over the next few years.
Legacy and linear TV networks will soon give way to streaming platforms. Brands need to find ways to take advantage of this transformation.
GenAI will be as big as the Industrial Revolution, solving root node problems.

Understanding And Measuring Ownership At Work.

Edition #176

ContraMinds Labs

Jun 25, 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 Ownership Gap.

Why do some people demonstrate ownership better than others? What stops people from taking ownership of anything that they do? Often, many initiatives in companies get delayed or fail because there is a lack of collective ownership across people and functions. Finally, is a lack of ownership a root cause of mediocrity?

Justin Welsh makes you think about some of these aspects in the article.

People with an ‘Ownership Mindset’ look at every problem they see around themselves as theirs and strive to find a solution!
People with ownership look ‘inwards’ when something that they take up does not get the desired outcomes they expected.
You can spot a lack of ownership in somebody when he or she constantly blames outside forces, beyond their control, for not getting the results or outcomes.
Observe where a person is spending their energy to spot a ‘ gap in ownership attitude’ - “Energy is spent fixing things while energy is spent explaining why things can’t get fixed.”
“In my experience, they'll even take responsibility for problems that aren't actually their fault.”
“Successful people have an almost obsessive sense of ownership.”

Read the entire article here.

Rare Steve Jobs Interview.

The reason why it is always great to go back to the history of people, their life and thoughts, etc., is that it teaches a lot about how these people imagine things, how they think about problems or opportunities and how they find ways to make it work.

This is a rare interview with Steve Jobs, in February 1985, which has been decoded and incredibly analysed by David Senra of Founders Podcast on what went into the mind of this man and how he was thinking about computers and their future at that time. It may have taken two decades to make his imagination and dreams come alive, but the question that begs attention is “Do you have the ability to stay with your thinking, ideas, beliefs, convictions and work on them relentlessly by shaping them for many years, even if they take time to fructify?” Also, it teaches you the most important character trait that each one of us needs to develop- “How can you develop the ability to question what you see around and seek alternative or new ways of doing it?”

You can also listen to this entire episode on:

Spotify | YouTube

Software Is Changing (Again).

These are some of the questions in everybody’s mind today:

Is AI making software coding irrelevant?
How will the software code of tomorrow look like?
What skills should a software programmer of tomorrow need in the age of AI?
Will software programmers not be needed anymore for coding, and will this job be replaced by AI?

Here is this video, Andrej Karpathy, Founding Member of OpenAI, is talking about how software is changing in the era of AI.

We are moving from an era of software 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0: “I think kind of there's a growing category of new kind of code, so not only is it a new programming paradigm, it's also remarkable to me that it's in our native language of English.”
“At Tesla, when we were working on the autopilot, I observed that the software 2.0 stack literally ate through the software 1.0 stack”
“If you are entering the industry, it is a good idea to be fluent in all three paradigms - software 1.0, software 2.0 and software 3.0. You must be able to fluidly transition between these paradigms - You are going to train a neuralnet, you are going to prompt an LLM, and make a decision if this piece of code is going to be explicit.”
The analogy of AI to electricity throws many new dimensions on how it is expected to change the industry when Andrej Karpathy quotes Andrew Ng, who said, “AI is the new electricity.”
“AIs are like superhuman things but have cognitive deficits.”
“A lot of software will be partially autonomous.”
Andrej Karpathy stresses the importance of human-AI collaboration loops.
There will be a lot of code that needs to be built for LLMs.

Click on the above link and watch this video.

Understanding And Measuring Ownership At Work.

What exactly is ownership, and why is it important?

“Ownership refers to the mindset and behaviours of individuals who take full responsibility and initiative for their tasks, roles, and outcomes, both successes and failures.”

The important words in this definition are:

Responsibility
Initiative
Success and Failures

When we look for people to work for us or hire, we evaluate for grades, analytical thinking, communication, functional and technical skills, but do we evaluate if they have demonstrated ‘ownership’ in what they do? The individuals may have all the competencies, but if they have no ownership, it shows in the quality of work and starts to show in the attitude of the team and company culture. The question really is, how do you ‘understand’ and ‘measure’ ownership?

To understand ownership, it needs to go ‘beyond the job or roles’ that people do or hold. When somebody demonstrates ownership, they look at the problem or job given to them from a bigger lens rather than a narrow view. They ask vital questions like:

“What factors affect in achieving the results other than what is visible?”
“Who are the actors in helping me achieve the results I want? Who are the doers, influencers and decision makers?”
“If it has not worked in the past, what were the reasons - controllable and uncontrollable factors?”
“What can be done differently to fast-track the results much better than what we need? Is there a hack that is possible?”

Individuals with an ‘ownership mindset’ look at all dimensions from every perspective rather than just the task at hand. They also look at co-opting people in different ways after assessing their level of buy-in into the initiative. For them, the only focus in front of their eyes is the ‘results’ to be achieved. They do everything possible to break hierarchies, silos, mindsets to get the results that is needed. They really don’t care about designations, job descriptions, but have a ‘keen eye’ on relationships and enablers who can get the objective met. They are ‘not insecure about failure and credit’, especially who takes the credit for the results. But they are willing to stand in front, if there is failure. They don’t resort to blaming others and finding scapegoats in case there is a problem or a bump in achieving the required results. They have a ‘limitless boundary’ in terms of patience, and they go as far as they can to see things through. They have an incredible way to be both ‘hands-on’ and ‘hands-off’ when needed, as they are very perspective about people, process, and closure on schedule. The last thing you will see is that they don’t ‘abandon the boat’ till they have given their last bit to any project or initiative or even to a company they have worked for.

The next question is, how can you evaluate people with an ‘Ownership Mindset’ beyond just competence and standard tests?

Ask or look for examples of failures in their life or career, and the reasons. We normally look for success markers, but failure teaches more lessons in what it takes to own up to things.
Look for behaviours when the individual has gone ‘beyond the brief ‘ to get things done and mine for reasons as to why she or he did it. It can actually reveal a story behind the mind of this individual.
Understand any individual’s ‘Circle of Mentors’, ‘Circle of Influencers’, ‘Circle of Followers’, ‘Circle of Advocates’ and ‘Circle of Believers’ both at work and outside. That can help you understand the leverage the individual has built for himself or herself.
One observation that can help unravel the work ethic of the person is when you ask them about their view on the ‘circle of competence’ that they need to do their role successfully now and in the future. And where do they stand in terms of capabilities around this?
Ask them what they would like to sacrifice in the short term for the long term. People with an ‘ownership mindset’ have a lot of clarity on this and don’t miss the forest for the trees.

Ownership is the art of believing in no barriers or bottlenecks but possibilities.

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

Ownership is about spending energy fixing things.
Outstanding leaders are missionaries. They can see the future far ahead of others.
The best software programmers will need to be fluent in all three paradigms - Software 1.0, Software 2.0 and Software 3.0.

Moving From Cost Arbitrage To Innovation Arbitrage.

Edition #175

ContraMinds Labs

Jun 18, 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.

Is All Micromanagement Bad?

When you become a leader, you believe you don’t want one thing your boss or manager probably did to you - micromanage. Many of us have grown up hearing this advice - ‘Don’t ever micromanage if you really want to get the best out of people.’ Is micromanagement really as bad as it is made out to be? When you become a leader of a team or a manager, or a senior leader, the compelling reasons for you to do it hit you hard. This article in First Round Review breaks traditionally held myths around micromanaging.

Here are some key thoughts on why, how and when to micromanage effectively!

“One good way to use micromanagement is for standard setting and demonstrating the calibre of thought, work and effort that you want to see,” - Jack Altman, Co-founder Lattice.
"Leaders shouldn’t live in the dashboard. When the anecdotes disagree with the data, you've got a problem. You have to go and see for yourself.” - Matt MacInnis, COO, Rippling.
“It was about improving the work rather than questioning the strategy. Set 20% and 80% checkpoints.” - Krithika Shankarraman, Stripe.
“ Great managers are like porpoises, the aquatic mammals that can swim at both the surface and the depths of the ocean” - Mike Brown, Uber.
“The number one way that I see new engineering leaders struggle when they come into a new place is that they assume the context from their previous company applies as is,” - Will Larson, CTO, Imprint.
“I am hands-on until I trust you. Once I trust you, I’m hands-off and we’ll collaborate as you need me or when I bring you ideas for us to work through together,” - Jay Desai, Former Founder and CEO, PatientPing.
“Instead of giving people a list, good leaders offer them a box and fill it with interesting ideas.” - Michael Lopp, Apple Engineering Leader

You can read the entire article here.

What Is An AI Agent?

Today, there is so much chatter around Agentic AI that it is important to first define, distinguish, and differentiate what an AI Agent is. This episode in the a16z podcast provides a good perspective on this.

Here are some thoughts on AI agents that were shared in this conversation:

“An agent is just something that does complex planning and something that interacts with outside systems.”
An agent, according to Anthropic, “this is an LLM in a loop with a tool”
“The LLM takes the output of a prompt, feeds it back into itself and based on that, makes decisions on what the next prompt should be.”
“It's like a multi-step LLM chain with a decision tree.”
“There's one type where the agent is replacing humans, work with humans. There's the other type of agents as more low-level system processes. They work with each other, they hand off tasks to each other.”
“How should companies think about pricing their agents? Per seat?
Per token? Per task? Price(It) based on the margin, but price based on the value you add, whatever that could be(Is key).”
“The winners will be the specialists, not the foundational models. It's the people who will build on top of the foundational models, who are fine-tuning the foundational models.”
“If you just think of it as normal, right, like water or electricity or the Internet or things like that, I think that's the world we're kind of headed towards. An agent is this kind of way to help us get there.”

You can also listen to the entire episode or learn more about AI agents on:

Spotify | YouTube | AWS

How Work From Anywhere Will Transform Businesses - Prof. Raj Choudhury, Harvard Business School

The COVID years permanently changed the way businesses functioned and how people worked. More recently, there has been a push to ‘Back-To-Office’ by leading companies, and there has been resistance and backlash against these policies. What we really need is answers to the following questions:

“What is the best definition and effective process of working from anywhere?”
“Does working away from the office really improve or deplete productivity?”
“Can companies remain the way they have hired and employed people over the last 100 years without any HR policy changes or transformation?”
“What support does work from anywhere need from local governments?”
“Finally, what kind of work ethic, work culture and maturity do people have to develop if they want more companies to embrace work from anywhere?”

This conversation, which is a two-part series between Prof. Raj Choudhury, Harvard Business School and Indrajeet Gupta, Founding Fuel, provides a lot of answers and insights to these questions.

You can click on the above link and watch the video.

Moving From Cost Arbitrage To Innovation Arbitrage.

Listening to ‘What is AI Agents’ and watching the video conversation ‘The World is your office’ fueled a lot of thoughts and ideas.

There seemed to be one common theme that was emerging, we are currently going through an era of convergence of technology and workplace transformation. This kind of change happens once in 100 years, and this is really when virtually new cities, new industries and new job profiles emerge and get built.

For example, take the scenario when the Industrial Revolution happened, Manchester(UK), Birmingham(UK), Glasgow(UK), Lowell, Massachusetts( USA), Detroit(USA), Pittsburgh(USA), Essen(Germany), and Osaka(Japan) were built. New industries threw up new work-related skills that were required, leading to new jobs like factory workers, machine operators, mechanical and civil engineers, railway workers, coal miners, telephone operators, clerks and typists, automobile engineers, etc.

The same thing happened when the tech and internet revolution took place, leading to creation of new cities like Silicon Valley(USA), Shenzhen (China), Ho Chi Min(Vietnam), Bangalore(India), Tallinn (Estonia), Dubai(UAE) and new job profiles like Computer programmers, IT technicians, System Analysts, Electronic engineers, etc. emerged. The business and jobs moved to geographies where cost arbitrage provided a huge advantage to businesses like China and India, when it came to manufacturing, programming, etc.

However, cost arbitrage is not sustainable forever as wage growth, quality of life and aspirations rapidly change during these phases of hyper-growth. Between 1865 and the 1930s, the US resembled the low-cost economies of today, but soon had to shift gear to become an innovator to sustain high wages and plateauing productivity output. China has gone through this phase and is transforming itself into an innovator in areas like automotive(electric vehicles), AI(Deep Seek), etc.

Similarly, India needs to pivot from being a cost-arbitrage economy to an innovation arbitrage economy. This requires a fundamental transformation in thinking, research & development and application innovation. India can no longer afford to ‘throw people’ at problems, because AI Agents, as and when they get mature, will do the jobs at a far more cost-effective price and value. India’s workforce productivity is abysmal, and therefore, unit costs of output are increasing every day. There will be newer job profiles that will emerge, like digital twin specialists, smart factory technicians, drone operators, etc. This requires a mindset shift in moving from ‘low value work’ to ‘high value work’.

The US missed the opportunity of ‘Skill Transformation’ of its workforce and is facing a deep crisis today. For example, as of 2023, it is estimated that the United States employed approximately 12.9 million workers in the manufacturing sector and about 139,400 computer programmers. This resulted in a ratio of roughly 93 factory workers for every 1 computer programmer. When manufacturing jobs vanished in the US and technology jobs emerged, it led to a serious workforce crisis.

Similarly, India needs to manage this transformation, and the hard truth is that the responsibility lies with each one of us. Businesses will move their operations to where they can make more profit and grow stakeholder value. India will need to build ‘smart cities’ with the right digital and social infrastructure that can house digital twin specialists, smart factory engineers, etc.. All of them first need to have a deep and extensive domain knowledge of managing high-value jobs remotely. Workplace professionals of the future need to compete with the world’s best not on price but on value.

Any country’s research and patents inventory, which will drive this kind of innovation, needs to radically scale, including those of India. For example, today the US has 1,801 patent applications per million people, China has 1,191 patent applications per million people, and India stands at 45 patent applications per million people. India needs to rejig its workforce mindset and innovation ecosystems.

The brutal reality is that it needs to start at an individual level. Even a mature economy and country like the US could not manage this skill transformation change at a policy level. It’s the private players - companies, educational institutions, working professionals themselves - who have to drive this transformation. Otherwise, India will face the ‘Factory worker-Programmer per million crisis’ that the US faces today.

Countries, including China and India, need to move from a ‘Cost-Arbitrage’ economy to an ‘Innovation Arbitrage’ economy.

Each one of us at work needs to move away from a ‘scarcity-led cost arbitrage’ mindset to an ‘expertise-led value arbitrage’ mindset. Geographies, paying a premium due to scarcity of available resources and costs, may cease to matter anymore. Work will move to where expertise resides.

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

Micromanagement is not the problem. Adding value and inspiring people is more important than simply micromanaging their day-to-day tasks and deliverables.
An AI agent is a multi-step LLM with a decision tree. It does complex planning and interacts with external systems.
Companies need to prepare themselves for a world where work from anywhere will become the norm.

Being Internally Coherent Vs. Externally Coherent.

Edition #174

ContraMinds Labs

Jun 11, 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.

Why Do Big Businesses Seemingly Suck At Innovation?

Rohit Krishnan shares a lovely perspective on this topic in this article. Big businesses lag behind in innovation because they become extremely risk-averse and worry about investor backlash and stock price. Hence, they work in a culture of ‘Lowest Common Multiple(LCM)’ when it comes to making decisions. This leads to slow decay, often over a decade or two, in their market leadership and talent.

Here are thoughts from the article that can make you think and reflect on the reasons:

“The execs have figured out kind of what they need to do, in a vague outline sort of fashion, and are interested in getting some justification that gives them some sense of whether their intuition is okay, and also if the others in the organisation agree.”
“Everyone is afraid of complexity, and even if your solutions are only internally coherent rather than externally coherent, it'll still get purchase!”
“For any number of tasks where it's crucial to ensure everyone's pulling together as a team in the same direction, internal coherence is paramount.”
“Most times, if the results of your actions are easily visible or measurable, that goes in the easy pile. If they can't be disentangled easily or needs long time horizons to bear fruit, then that's the complex pile.”
“We don't want to be judged by black boxes. We want to be judged by black boxes that try to explain themselves.”
“Until we find better ways to be okay with not knowing what's going on, or create better information wrangling mechanisms, businesses will still focus on legibility and internal coherence.”
“If you’re small, you get the luxury of being nimble. If you’re large, you’re stuck between Scylla and Charybdis. Maybe that's the point.”

Read the entire article here.

How To Identify Great Leaders and Find Your Why.

This conversation, on Masters of Scale, between Reid Hoffman and Simon Sinek is about the 15th Anniversary edition of Simon Sinek’s best-selling book, ‘Start With The Why?’

Here are some key ideas and thoughts for you to reflect on from this conversation:

“You can't incentivize performance. Performance is an outcome.”
“True missionaries will tell the money to go screw themselves. True missionaries are not afraid of the short-term losses.”
“If we select the people who have the qualities of good leadership, that over time, they will enjoy mission success more often than not.”
“We want people to be able to repeat our ideas in their own words.”
“Optimism is not blind positivity.”
“Growth requires struggle. A marriage gets stronger because of conflict, not the absence of it. Even at work, the deadline, the product crashing, the team forced to come together,…”

You can also listen to the entire episode on:

Spotify | Amazon Music

The Truth About Overnight Success.

In this video, Rob Dial, host of The Mindset Mentor Podcast, explains what success really means and how success is a journey rather than a destination.

Here are some ideas from this video for you to think about:

“When you see overnight success, you don’t see ten years of their hard work behind it.”
“We live in a world of instant gratification, and we think we can get what we want immediately. But in life, success, happiness, joy, everything that is great in life takes. time.”
“Great things take time.”
“You just have the work in. There’s no shortcut.”
“If you just don’t stop, you can’t fail at anything. Most people don’t give themselves a long runway.”
“Make the decision of the thing we want to master, and we have to dedicate ourselves to it.”
“Your goals take only 3 things - Direction, Action, Time.”

You can click the above link and watch the video.

Being Internally Coherent Vs. Externally Coherent.

The phrases ‘Internally Coherent’ and ‘Externally Coherent’ are pretty compelling. They conjure up many images of what happens, mainly to working professionals and organisations.

As a leader or an individual working in a team, think for a minute how long it takes to build ‘internal coherence’ on any specific strategy, policy, new product ideas, a new business, or any decision you want to take. Does most of your time get spent on getting internal coherence? That’s a terrible sign.

So, what can this mean? If you spend disproportionate time ‘seeking internal coherence,’ the root cause may be a misalignment of your ambition for the business as a leader and the people working with you. The reasons could be a lack of understanding, belief, conviction or capability to execute. This is when meetings take precedence over execution.

On the other hand, imagine you are an individual team member and you spend a significant amount of time building ‘internal coherence' to get people, peers and seniors on the same page for what you do. Then, it is safe to assume there is no common purpose and clarity of agreed-upon outcomes from your teammates or within functions or departments for a specific project or initiative. This slows down the momentum in any organisation or team tremendously. And it is also energy-sapping, literally for every team member, to convince each other and get things done.

When a lot of time is spent on ‘external coherence,’ clearly the diversifications, market segments, new emerging business opportunities, pricing and margin differences or complexity, etc., come to the fore. This is because a lot of time is spent getting the stakeholders aligned with what is happening externally. Also, diversification and expansion become contentious issues as there is no alignment, and a lot of time is spent analyzing this. Therefore, not enough time and attention are paid to ‘internal coherence’, which can lead to poor execution and deployment.

The rule of thumb is that if too much time is spent on ‘internal coherence’ in an ongoing as-is business operation, it is a sign of trouble. However, if too much time is spent on ‘external coherence’ for strategic bets the company is taking for the future, then that’s a red flag too. This means there is a lack of alignment and conviction in that strategy amongst stakeholders.

The right balance of time is needed for ‘internal coherence’ and ‘external coherence’. Successful companies and leaders have the ability to manage this better. The truth is, there is no perfect answer to how much coherence you need to strive for. In some instances, after enough efforts are made to align stakeholders, you may need to push things through before it is too late and hurts your business.

Organisations and the people who work there need to develop ‘a strong sensitivity’ to find the right balance between internal and external coherence, as this can affect growth and innovation.

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

True innovation happens at the edge of complex problems and external coherence.
Great leaders tend to be missionaries rather than mercenaries.
Great things take time to achieve. There are no shortcuts.

Don’t Manage Your Way To Irrelevance.

Edition #173

ContraMinds Labs

Jun 04, 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.

When The Mismanagerial Class Destroys Great Companies.

The book Good To Great outlined, with detailed research and insights, why only some companies take the leap from ‘Being Good to Great.’ However, what brings some of these great companies down, and understanding the reasons they go into an abyss, can also provide an interesting perspective and lessons for us. Great companies don’t remain great forever, and some of them lose their way.

This article by Marko Jukic from Bismarck Analysis provides a fantastic perspective as a starting point. It makes you think about the vulnerabilities of these great companies and the possible reasons why this happens. Marko writes about what can be learnt from the failures of Intel, Boeing, and Sony.

Here are some key highlights from the article that can trigger your thoughts on this topic:

As you observe these failures, you can see one common thread - “Failures can be traced to bad strategy or structure, the mistake’s origin might already be decades in the past.”
“…the problem seems to stem from a particular way of thinking about what a company even is, what its goals are, and what measures are or are not appropriate to achieve those goals.”
“Without attentive, zealous, and knowledgeable leadership from the top, even the most well-resourced companies will quickly devolve from innovation and functionality into stagnation and dysfunction.”
“The company becomes not the organization itself, but the financial product wrapped around it. Such companies demonstrate a strong tendency for regular acquisitions, mergers, divestments, spinoffs, rebrands, and internal reorganizations, as executives tear apart and stitch together new combinations of brands and divisions in the quest for the ideal bottom line.”
“The most impressive, dynamic companies look not like portfolios, but disciplined squads with a single-minded, laser focus on achieving one clear mission…”
“The difference between a holding company and a conglomerate is that a holding company is optimizing for passive financial performance, whereas a conglomerate is optimizing for strategic autonomy.”

Read the entire article here.

Why Understanding The Difference Between A Job And A Career Is Key To Your Success.

In the ContraMinds ‘Be Extraordinary’ Podcast Series, the conversation on why it is essential to understand the difference between a job and a career is brought out with some very lucid examples and insights. It has the potential to ignite and help you make a mind shift in reimagining your current job and re-architecting your thinking around a career mindset.

Here are some key takeaways from the conversation:

“A job is what you do today for money with a short-term focus, while a career is a life journey requiring a 15-to-30-year vision and imagination of where you want to be professionally.”
“Extraordinary professionals build capabilities beyond their current job requirements by studying what skills they’ll need for their dream role.”
“Job-focused people stop learning and eventually lose relevance in their 30s and 40s.”
“Learn to say no to attractive but misaligned opportunities, and pivot to stay ahead of industry trends.”

You can also listen to the entire episode on:

Spotify | Amazon | YouTube

Philosophy Eats AI: What Leaders Should Know.

In this video, authors Michael Schrage and David Kiron explain how the philosophical frameworks of teleology, epistemology, and ontology shape what artificial intelligence systems prioritize and produce.

They ask a fascinating question “ If software is eating the world, and AI is eating software, what is going to eat AI?”

There are some very powerful thoughts that they speak about:

“Your business philosophy will transform your AI strategy”
“Competitive edge isn’t in having more sophisticated models, but in thinking more clearly about what they should accomplish.”
“If you are not learning as much as your AI models are, something is wrong with your human capital balance and human capital portfolio.”
“What kind of virtuous cycle do we want to enable and empower between machine learning and human learning?”

You can click on the above link and watch this video.

Don’t Manage Your Way To Irrelevance.

Taking off from the brilliant quote in the article ‘Great companies don’t remain great companies forever, ’ it may also be worthwhile to give some thought to the following quote, which is an extension of the same idea - ‘Great leaders don’t remain great leaders forever. Great professionals don’t remain great professionals forever. Great managers don’t remain great managers forever.’ Have you ever explored the possible reasons why this happens?

These are reasons this possibly happens. And each one of us needs to watch out for the following symptoms or root causes and avoid them at any cost:

Complacency -We tend to become too comfortable with how things are and rely overly on what worked for us in the past. Therefore, we stop questioning our biases and assumptions and forget to refine them continuously. We rest on our past laurels, underestimate change, and build a false sense of security in our heads. This leads to stagnation in our skills and capabilities, which hurts us over time.
Lack of awareness of the changing environment—The ‘Intel’ case is an excellent example of a lack of understanding of the shift in mobile phone operating systems and hardware. Success tends to breed an ‘echo chamber’ effect as you lose a sense of the underlying shifts till they become a crisis much later.
Infallibility myth —Most people overestimate their success and take undue credit for it, as if it is because of their individual contributions or decisions. They tend to underestimate other contributing factors such as the right team members, timing, supportive environment, etc. This leads them to develop a sense of infallibility, leading to poor judgment and, therefore, wrong decisions or bets.
Skill Decay — Due to rapid changes in the marketplace, continuous technological disruptions, and fast career growth, refreshing ourselves with new skills is vital. These have a lag effect vis-à-vis our professional growth. Growth sometimes blinds us into believing we have all the skills until we hit a roadblock, but by then, it is too late. Ironically, our organisation too pays little attention to this till it becomes blatantly apparent, as its success and growth blinds it too. Being a lifelong learner and being aware of the shifting skill mix is vital.
Comfort and Growth cannot coexist. For us, comfort and growth are at the two ends of a spectrum. We need to come to terms with this contradiction. Comfort is all about knowns, familiarity, predictability, and relatively few risks. Growth is all about uncertainty, volatility, stretching and taking an untrodden path. Trying to achieve a delicate balance between both is critical.
‘Yes Man’ Effect - As you grow senior, you will hear and be exposed only to ‘filtered’ information. People around you will want to feed you with information you want to hear. Also, leadership and authority lead you to be surrounded by people keen to impress you for personal gain. You need to develop the ability to differentiate the ones who can speak ‘the truth to power.’ This will stop you from making decisions due to wrong judgments and biases.

Staying grounded, aware, flexible and adaptive are vital for sustained growth and leadership.

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

Failures of the world’s greatest companies can be traced to strategic mistakes made decades ago.
Understanding the difference between a job and a career is vital to building professional excellence.
Your business philosophy has the potential to transform your AI strategy.

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