Getting Comfortable To Play Your Own Game.
Edition #110
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.
Talent doesn’t make the team—the team makes the talent.
David Burkus is one of the leading thought leaders on leadership and teamwork. He is also the author of several books, and his book ‘Best Team Ever’ and many of his articles provide lovely counter viewpoints about what makes a team:
David writes about the importance of shaping the habits and practices of a team that can bring out the best in every team member.
The best teams don’t just talk but they walk the talk. They do and show you how you, as an individual team member, can also do the same.
A team without an individual purpose for every team member cannot stay motivated, and this can seriously affect the team's work.
A team, if they don’t have a meaning for why they are working, cannot be motivated to perform as a team.
David discusses a concept called prosocial purpose, in which he says research suggests motivating your team with prosocial purpose leaves them not only more motivated to pursue the objectives but also gives them meaning to what they are doing.
You can read the article written by David here.
Going Back To The Foundation Of Kleiner Perkins With Mamoon Hamid Through Clear Business Model Focus And Culture.
In the Venture Unblocked podcast, Samir Kaji speaks to Mamoon Hamid, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, discusses the importance of culture and focus in building a long-term firm. The discussion is thought-provoking, highlighting some vital points on building, growing and sustaining a firm. These lessons can be extended far beyond investment firms but can also be applied to any company that has or wants to build a reputation and an ambition to grow over the long term:
When venture firms back companies aligned with their core values and beliefs, rather than just parting with a certain amount of investment or money they have access to, the outcomes can be far more meaningful and impactful.
Many people are attracted to such venture firms for their own ego or because they are celebrities in their own right due to what they may have accomplished in the past. However, when their aspirations and goals are not aligned with those of the institution they work for, cracks begin to surface, and misalignment hits the firm hard.
Senior leaders must truly think of themselves as stewards of an exceptional firm.
An OKR that is not based on what you have accomplished but on what you may have missed as an opportunity is a great lesson to take away. Listening to what is happening outside rather than just inside a company is quite a revolutionary thought to learn and adopt.
‘Failure Mode’ is another concept Mamoon Hamid discusses. Many of us have our own biases in how we process information and make decisions. Looking at our decisions over time to see what could have been the trigger for those decisions that we would have wrongly made, based on some assumptions that we could have come to, is worth looking back to reflect on and learn from.
Learning to play our game and play on our own turf by creating our own turf and in our own field, so that we can play to win is an excellent piece of advice to really think deeply and act on it.
You can listen and read other articles on Venture Unblocked here.
Product Management Theater.
In this conversation on Lenny’s Podcast, Marty Cagan, Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group, makes provocative statements about product management that most product management teams, managers, and companies may not always want to hear.
Here are some of the points he makes:
Many companies hired way too many people during and after the pandemic, and there are too many confusing roles and positions in product management teams today. Small teams can often produce better results!
Remote working has significantly impacted velocity and innovation in companies. Things are going slower, and many companies are not able to achieve the same level of innovation as they did earlier.
Empowered product teams are given problems to solve.
A product manager has to understand the customers and business deeply. Not manage feature releases.
A product manager is responsible for value and viability.
Today, product managers perform the roles of project managers and delivery managers or manage and coordinate feature releases only. The day of reckoning has come because they are not adding value today, and companies find them irrelevant in their roles.
Product leaders need to do product strategy. Product teams need to be given latitude and space to come up with valuable and viable solutions to make the strategy tangible in a product.
Marty has just written a book called ‘Transformed,’ in which he discusses a ‘Product Operating Model’ - a set of 20 principles that companies live and die by, and these he believes are the underlying reasons for their success as a product company.
You can click the above video link and watch the complete conversation.
Getting Comfortable To Play Your Own Game.
One vital point that resonated in the ideas shared this week was that you should play your own game. This means that you must follow your convictions about what is needed for you both professionally and personally and how you believe you will go about achieving them.
This is the most difficult to practice - as your game and the way you believe it must be played may not necessarily see immediate results, outcomes, or success and sometimes may or may not be acceptable to many. You should ask yourself, “Am I willing to stay the course, come what may?”. Remember, conviction comes from deeply held beliefs that lead to your consistent behaviour and actions.
The next is that you play the game on your own turf. Many of us get swayed by what the majority of people around us consider markers of achievement or accomplishment. Take the case of Mamoon Hamid. When you carefully plot his career and professional aspirations, he did not follow the traditional path of working for large, reputed investment banks and then moving from one to another, unlike his other HBS colleagues. He followed his chosen path of working for USVP, moving to set up his own firm and then leading Kleiner Perkins. This journey led him to specific learnings and assumptions over the years - on what kind of people he needs as his employees or colleagues, what kind of entrepreneurs he would like to back, what kind of venture firms fit with his values, philosophy, pedigree and their history. Therefore, the question you should ask yourself is, “Does this job or role help me play to my belief and strengths, reach the ultimate destination that I aspire to reach, and will it serve as a platform for skills that I want to acquire and improve over the years?”.
Lastly, can you create your own turf, or do you want to play on somebody else’s turf? It’s not easy to create and find your turf; it takes years of patience, hard work, experiments and practice. It’s not rare to see even the most talented people play on somebody else’s turf because it is less risky, needs no explanation for others, requires relatively less effort, and is a path of least resistance. Marty Cagan is an excellent example of what he believes are good product management practices, and he is willing to question mindless practices in companies when it comes to product management. He has created his own turf of what it takes to build great products. The question you should ask yourself “If I were running a company on my own, why would I need the services of myself that people with similar capabilities like me bring to the table, and how much of added value do I see in myself - both qualitatively and quantitatively vis-a-vis others?”
When you are on the treadmill of your profession and personal life journey, you must learn how to control it.
Some lessons we learnt from this week’s missions:
Teamwork works when individual team members have a common purpose and meaning.
Learn to play your game on your own turf.
Product managers can only hit the success button when they deeply understand customers and business.