Scaling Business Vs Scaling People
Edition #107
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.
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.
Scaling Yourself
In this article, Ryan Peterman writes about what does it take to scale yourself. So, Ryan defines scaling yourself as knowing how to multiply your impact through others.
Here are some key takeaways to think about and reflect:
Know how to influence and delegate
Share your knowledge
Build tools yourself and find ways for several people to use them.
Read the complete article.
The Evolving Role of Humans in the Age of AI
In this conversation, Prof. Vasant Dhar is a professor at the Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science at New York University. He is also the former editor-in-chief of the journal Big Data and the founder of SCT Capital, one of the first machine-learning-based hedge funds in New York City in the 1990s.
Here are some ideas Prof. Vasant Dhar shares in this conversation:
What are the Paradigm shifts AI has gone through over the years
How Open Should AI be
A leader’s role in the age of AI
Customer service in the age of AI
The revival of the era of craftsmanship in the Age of AI
Listen to the full episode here:
Fireside Chat Between Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi & Nandan Nilekani
In this conversation between Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber and Nandan Nilekani, Non-Executive Chairman, Infosys, Dara Khosrowshahi shares his experience of running Uber.
Here are some key points that Dara shared during this conversation:
“Sometimes, when you want to speed up, you have to slow down.”
The importance of giving a unifying goal to a team.
Building the rails for innovation to happen is essential.
The worst things that happen to a company could be the best thing that could have happened when you look at them in hindsight later.
Engineering teams typically identify the size of their team with the value they bring to a company, and that thinking had to undergo a massive change at Uber - They had to do more with less - during and after COVID.
The best test of an entrepreneur is not how they do in their best days but how they do in their worst days!
What does it mean when we say a company needs focus? - It means “..Saying no to an excellent idea… It also means that the ideas you are saying yes to are even better…”. Celebrate the NOs.
The standards by which autonomous/robots are being measured will be very different from how humans will be measured - in terms of acceptable mistakes by society.
You click the above link and watch the entire conversation.
Scaling Business Vs Scaling People
When you go through many books, papers and research over time, there is a lot of focus on how vital it is to scale a business and also, a lot is written as to what it takes to scale a business.
However, for a business to scale, little attention is given to what it takes to scale people. The real challenge for scaling a business on the ground is the challenge of scaling the people who are working there. The ones who helped a business start-up from scratch rarely are the ones who can help scale it up. Similarly, the ones who have helped and managed a business in a scaled-up state are seldom the ones who can help a start-up get off the ground from scratch. What could be the reasons for this?
Let’s take the scenario of scaling people as a business scales. As a business scales, the management methods of running the business rapidly transform - influence and delegation become far more important than doing it all by themselves. The vital aspects of passionately explaining the business value proposition effectively to new segments and clients by more people, managing a wide variety of stakeholders and their needs, handling people and large teams, outlining a unifying goal for them, inspiring and motivating them, reviewing the process and productivity tightly and creating standardised workflows that can improve efficiency and effectiveness of team members start to make a huge difference and impact while scaling.
As a business starts to scale, helping people understand and prepare them for this transition is essential. The people, too, need to prepare and get themselves ready with upgraded skills and capabilities for this change. The ones who are extremely good at ‘being hands-on’, working in small teams, etc., when the business is small need to transform to become ‘enablers’ or ‘catalysts’. This is when the art of communicating, building trust, providing clarity, breaking down the problem, sharing knowledge, and grooming people take precedence over just getting things done as an individual. Not many businesses prepare people for this change. Hence, people become the biggest bottleneck to scaling, and sometimes, it is not the business or the market opportunity that is the stumbling block. Therefore, scaling people is as important a strategic goal as scaling a business.
Therefore, you must constantly find ways to scale yourself as your company or your career scales. You'll need to look at areas where your strengths lie and see which skills you need to reboot or upgrade to handle scale. Often, you need to move from ‘being an expert’ to ‘grooming others to be experts’. You will need to build capacity and capability in your team to take up larger tasks and goals. Your strategic and visioning skills take precedence over good operational skills. Your ability to spot opportunities and trends far ahead of others will become vital. Spotting and grooming talent will require a significant investment of your time. You must be willing to learn and apply these new skills in ways you may have never done before. Being flexible, adaptable and open to new ideas is essential.
If businesses need to scale, people must find ways to scale themselves.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Scaling yourself starts with moving from ‘doing’ to ‘enabling’ others. And also from ‘being directed’ to ‘setting the direction’.
Over time, Machine Intelligence will surpass Human Intelligence. And humans must learn to collaborate and work in tandem with machines.
Focus is all about celebrating the NOs.