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.
The Founder's Mentality
How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth by Chris Zook and James Allen
In this book, Chris Zook and James Allen write why it is vital for companies to retain many traits of their founder’s DNA in their quest for growth, especially when the firm starts to grow into a bigger and larger firm.
Here are some key takeaways:
Their prognosis is that growth creates complexity, and complexity is the silent killer of growth.
As the company grows, it adds layers, and companies then become bureaucracies.
In their five-year study, where they visited 40 countries in the course of their research and writing this book, they found that 94% of the largest companies had significant barriers to achieving their growth targets. But, another statistic which was a revelation to them was that 94% of the barriers were internal!
They also found that most companies with over $5 billion in size have between 9 and 14 layers between management and the front line.
To hack growth, the company needs to bring back three elements of a founder’s mentality into their culture:
Insurgent mission - Every founder is either at war against their industry standards because they are frustrated with them or trying to create something new.
Frontline obsession - Founders always work close to customers and look at how customers perceive, buy and use their products or services, including how their employees serve them.
Owner’s mindset - Founders dislike bureaucracy and want to jump on problems and take responsibility immediately.
Even though founders did not run some companies, the best ones managed to maintain the founder’s mentality by keeping very flat organisations, where there were many positions in the firm, which the authors call mini-founder experiences. And characteristics of the founder’s mentality were practised by these leaders.
Breaking up with Perfectionism
by Adam Grant
In this Podcast, Adam Grant, who is an Organizational psychologist and bestselling author of some incredible books like Think Again, Give and Take, and Originals, to name a few, talks about the downsides of perfectionism.
Here’s a quick summary:
More than ever, there is a growing expectation of wanting to be perfect, to do things more perfectly than others, and also parental & peer pressure of wanting their children or colleagues to be perfect, driving many young college-goers and adults into depression and mental anxiety.
An interesting study found that perfectionism had a stronger prediction of higher performance at school but not at work!
Individuals seeking perfectionism are hyper-vigilant about how they perform and how others perceive them. This puts tremendous mental stress on themselves, and that’s a lot of energy spent trying to uphold their image!
Also, perfectionism can help when it comes to formulated tasks; therefore, individuals can ace a math test, but there is rarely one right answer at work.
Why perfectionists burn out is that they overdo it and never let go.
Perfectionists hold off their effort after they fail the first time.
Creativity has a very high difficulty of breakthrough when one has a high perfectionism mindset.
The difference is that when a perfectionist fails, it is an indictment of self that makes them not try new things, as they fear they will fail.
There is a need to normalise your own mistakes and failures. Adopt Anti-perfectionism. Excellence does not require perfectionism.
Founder Traits - What Naval Looks for
Naval Ravikant is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList. In this Video, Naval talks about what he looks for in Founders before investing:
The importance of how deep the Founders understand what they want to do is vital. Intelligence is key.
The ones who succeed are the ones who persevere. So, having the energy is critical.
Integrity is important. Otherwise, you will end up working with ‘Hardworking Smart Crooks’, which is undesirable.
Imperfect Ten
Going through the books, articles and videos this week, one thing that stood out was the Founder’s traits - Insurgent mission, Frontline obsession, and Owner’s mindset are so anti-corporate success benchmarks. Also, as you hear Adam Grant’s Anti-perfectionism model, it looks so out of context in a corporate world where you are only rewarded for success. Failure is taboo.
It would help if you started getting comfortable scoring an Imperfect Ten.
This means that many people get into the ‘comfort zone’ of doing ‘repeatable but experienced tasks’ very well, as the degree of chances of failure is very low. Imagine an organisation where everyone is working in their comfort zone. There will be zero failure leading to zero innovation, zero learning and zero experimentation.
Here are some ways to get an imperfect Ten and embed a founder’s mentality in companies or in anything that you do or start up:
Don’t look for experience. Look for in-experience: What in-experience does is there is no fear of failure and following norms. Has the person you are looking for done work with no experience when they started in their recent or past job or role? How long did the person preserve in the ‘inexperienced’ job or role to make things happen? What’s their ratio of success to failure in these roles? It is a good sign if there is enough evidence of hard work and effort but failure too. Embed teams with such people.
Differentiate builders vs harvesters: Designations lie. So, don’t go by designations. Find if the individual built something from scratch. Even in a company or corporate setting, these are risky roles - starting a new division, creating a new product line, starting a new venture, starting a new distribution model etc. They are the ones who come with a Founder’s mentality of insurgent mission. They must have worked against the tide and near zero revenue to build something of value. Harvesters tend to grow what is already there by creating incremental changes, and they play a role during a particular phase of a company's growth. They are essential but don’t bring in the Founder’s mentality culture naturally.
Lateral movers may be a good fit: By nature, they are highly leveraged individuals in their professional careers. They move industries, so the learning needed to be done would have been quite steep. They would be agile, fast learners, can implement quickly, and work with new teams. All these are markers for a Founder’s mentality of Frontline Obsession and an Owner’s mindset. If these individuals make lateral moves after many years of experience, this is a good indicator of this mindset.
These moves and a mix of success and failures is an imperfect Ten for you to consider.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Any firm must retain elements of the Founders’ mentality as it scales. Keeping a close watch on these mini-founder experiences in departments and functions is critical.
Rather than practising perfectionism, practising anti-perfectionism ensures there is a chance of doing new things and creates an opportunity to experiment and fail. As there are no right answers at work, it is essential to build the excellence muscle rather than the perfectionism muscle.
Founders who bring integrity, energy and intelligence equally are the ones to back.
People who score an imperfect ten are the ones you should look for at every level in every department in any company. They are the ones who can create a Founders’ mentality and culture in the company - be it an early start-up or a large established company.