How are you going to coach your team?

You can talk about culture or you can answer this question: How are you going to determine what your players are going to feel when they walk into the building every day?

Steve Kerr’s core values for his team are

• Joy,
• Mindfulness,
• Compassion, and
• Competitiveness.

Steve has won 9 NBA Championships: five as a player and four as a head coach.

 

I got a good chuckle out of this linguistic analysis: Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages

Here’s an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.

Take “leveraged buyout,” a polite name for stealing a whole goddamned company.

The author uses other examples. Beyond the linguistic observations, the article addresses the underlying issues as well.

 

Long-term governance: the Declaration on Future Generations

The present is overwhelmed with complex global challenges–polycrises that threaten to persist into the future. In this context, the need for a framework that necessitates policymakers consider long-term impacts when making decisions has never been more critical. The United Nations’ report, Our Common Agenda, proposes a landmark solution: a Pact for the Future and a Declaration on Future Generations.

The Declaration is a set of commitments that member states are signing up to – expected to be finalised soon.

Here is the most updated Declaration.

It left me wondering what such a Declaration would be like in the companies where we work, in our communities, in our families…

 

 

Why your brain needs other people

Clinical work and life experience have revealed the ways in which, to a surprising degree, cognition is also something that goes on within our relationships with other people. It seems counterintuitive in the age of neuroscience, but I increasingly think that how cognitively impaired you are is a function of the social context in which you find yourself.

(…)

Consider those times when the presence of others has reminded you of an appointment, a name, or simply encouraged you to focus your attention differently. Our relationships provide a context in which to think, and a reason to think. We deliberate with one another to arrive at important decisions, talk through ideas to test them out.

(…)

So while my brain is important, cognition exists beyond my head. I make important decisions by consulting with those close to me. I use reminders and rely on family and colleagues to deliberate about plans. This sort of social process is not only supportive of my cognition – it is my cognition. By extension, the extent to which a person is cognitively impaired is a function of the social supports they have around them.

 

One-on-One Meeting Format Ideas

An excellent post by Marc Gauthier:

• Objective (“to build a good work relationship with my direct reports”),
• Format (30 minutes, weekly),
• Notes (yes, handwritten), and
• Content (10-10-10).

It’s a quick read and it might help as a refresher.

If you feel like it, leave in the Comments section the one key feature of your 1-on-1 conversations that has been working well for you.

 

Most companies aren’t talking about AI

So far this quarter, 44% of S&P 500 companies that have had earnings calls have mentioned “AI” or “artificial intelligence,” while 56% have not. That ratio has been steadily shifting in recent years as companies try to use the technology to save money and boost profits, but the majority of these companies have still yet to embrace AI.

 

The fine people at RawSignal suggest that we reinvest and restitch social and community ties

Because as Peter Block says: “Connection before content.”

But it’s hard.

It’s not that we were unaware of Robert Putnam’s work or the impact of Bowling Alone or growing social isolation. It’s just that a profound love of your living room can push decades of research on social capital to the wayside.

You can tell us that it’s just us, but we don’t think it is. We don’t think it’s just us and our friends. We don’t think it’s just the introverts, or just the COVID-sensitive folks, or just the tech people.

We suspect there’s rather a lot of us in this spot. And while we don’t need you to join every club. And we don’t need you to abandon your living room altogether.

If you’ve been prioritizing a bunch of other things over social connection, now is a great time to interrogate those choices. At home, sure. But also in that other place most of us spend a full third of our waking hours. Because whether you’re feeling it or not, we’re pretty sure the people you work with are.

 

Jason Fried: Questions I ask when checking references

Here is a sample:

• What’s something that would surprise us about them?
• Specifically, any areas where you were surprised they weren’t as good as you expected with A, B, or C? Or much better than expected with D, E, and F?
• What’s the difference between how they interview and how they deliver on the job?
• Is there a difference between how a boss, a peer, or a direct report would describe them? If so, what’s the difference?
• If you were at another company, would you absolutely hire this person again for a similar role?
• Who do they naturally gravitate to inside an organization? Or naturally avoid?
• What are they better at than they think, and, on the flip side, worse at than they think?
• What sort of things do they do that often go unnoticed or are under-appreciated?
• What don’t they get enough credit for?
• Do they make other people better? How?
• Why do you think we’d be a better company with them on board?
• Who else should I talk to that would have something to say about them?

The whole article is worth reading.

 

And now, for something different

CEO to employees: “We’re not asking, we’re informing. Don’t mess with us.”

This seems to be a true story. Bizarre doesn’t even begin to describe what is going on here.