Why Deliberate Execution Builds Expertise?
Edition #164
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:
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?
Deliberate execution starts with ‘Deliberate Observation’ as to why a particular problem exists. It does not begin with sitting in a room and imagining about a problem or a need.
‘Deliberate Observation’ requires ‘Deliberate Action’ first. This means going out and looking at what is happening in people’s lives, what they do, how they overcome the problem or find shortcuts to solve it or live with it as no alternative exists, etc. This is moving out of your comfort zone and doing the hard work of being on the ground.
‘Deliberate Observation’ leads to ‘Deliberate Thinking’. Deliberate observation leads to questioning and thinking about why people behave or do things the way they do. It triggers thinking around constraints, costs, unavailability of resources, unwillingness to see value, finding it expensive, lack of trust or credibility, etc.
‘Deliberate Thinking’ leads to ‘Deliberate Problem Solving’. Deliberate problem solving involves developing multiple hypotheses and testing them. It could be hypotheses around the product, distribution, price, customer segment, people, technology, etc., and all these need to be tested devoid of any bias that one may come with.
‘Deliberate Problem Solving’ leads to ‘Deliberate Solution,’ in which different hypotheses have been tested, rejected, selected and refined continuously. The final solution evolves out of this hot crucible and filters it has gone through.
‘Deliberate Solution’ must be followed through ‘Deliberate Implementation’ where every detail must be looked into - product development, design, quality, people training, distribution, communication, service, etc.
When you look at each stage, you will see a feedback loop to identify what is working, what is not working, what needs to be improved, what further work needs to be done, etc.
When things are executed with deliberate rigour, they often build deep expertise within people. This creates a robust system and culture with the proper checks and balances. It also ensures a significant quality of output that redefines the market and competition. The outcomes then take care of themselves.
Only execution with deliberate rigour can build expertise. The converse is also true, expertise gets built only when execution is done with deliberate rigour.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Best bosses always find a way to empower the right voices.
If you learn to execute yourself, you will manage your business better.
Applying enough forethought about a topic before a conversation can make conversations richer and more engaging.