The Big and the Small

I just finished reading Malcom Gladwell's random collection of stories*. It was an entertaining read and there were a few interesting take-aways.

1. Remote misses can be a big advantage.
   When we encounter hard times and survive, there are 2 possible outcomes:
• A near miss - we get hurt badly, are unable to get up, and are crushed. This is bad.
• A remote miss - we get hurt, but somehow manage to overcome the difficulty and develop a layer of immunization. We might also develop strong compensating skills enroute.
There are always remote-misses in a large-scale disaster that allow us to bounce back as a community.
2. Change your pond, if it is too big
   We usually evaluate ourselves based only on the local population we are part of. When we feel like a small fish in a big pond, perhaps we should change the pond such that we are a big fish in a small pond!
3. Too much can be as crippling as too little.
   The law of diminishing returns is quite pervasive. This means that
• Having less resources might be advantageous, when you are competing against someone who has more than the optimal amount of resource.
• If you are the big guy, you can't always keep throwing more resources at a problem. After a point, it makes more sense to force a constraint instead.

In summary, If you are the underdog, you can become the champion by changing the rules to match your strengths. What looks like a disadvantage, need not be one!

*My theory is that he had a book of "stories" that was getting filled up too fast, so he decided to encash a bunch of them under the vaguely relevant title "David and Goliath". It was a fun read though.. lots of interesting stories!

Decisions vs. Decision Processes

Following up on my previous posts, one of the key points reinforced in the book is to pay attention to the decision making process, instead of the decision itself.

I was discussing this with my dad when he shared 2 anecdotes - 

1. When my uncle did really well in his high school, many elders / mentors suggested he move to a bigger city for better and greater opportunities. My grandfather wasn't too keen (change is difficult - plus there were job perks associated with their current location), but grandmom forced the issue and it was to be Vellore or Chennai.

Everything favoured Vellore. It was closer. Decent college. Nice city. Grandfather could get a transfer.

Chennai was the bigger city, and it didnt have much else going for it. Nevertheless it was deemed that the choice was best made by the Gods. An elaborate ceremony followed, offerings were made, and God's will was focussed onto a ballot. God picked Vellore. Mentors prevailed though, God was ignored and he went to Chennai. It was definitely the better decision and was instrumental in opening up doors and ushering in financial stability for the family.

2. Soon after coming to Chennai, he got a promotion and was assigned to a town called Gwalior half-way across the country. No-one in my family had heard of the place before, nor knew anyone who knew about it. So it was decided to keep things simple, reject the promotion and stay in Chennai. Until the officer in Gwalior, worried that he couldn't go back home if my uncle rejected the offer, personally came over to re-assure him and convinced him to go. Good decision again, it gave him more exposure and pushed his career forward. 

Both were decisions with positive long term results, and the "right" things to do in hindsight. But the process to decide them was non-existent, and borderline hilarious. There was no strong reasoning, and the decisions could have swayed one way or the other purely based on external forces.

To rephrase the Bhagvat Gita a little, my take-away is this:

"You have the right to create a decision making process, but you are not entitled to the fruits of the decisions you make.

And do not let the fruit be the purpose of your process, so you won’t be attached to the lack of a process."

What do you watch for when you make decisions?

I just finished the fantastic book "Decisive" by Chip and Dan Heath. Here is my compressed cheat sheet. Do read the book - it is full of examples and useful nuggets on how we can build a better decision making process.

So, there are 4 main villains of decision making

1. Narrow framing
2. Confirmation Bias
3. Short term emotion
4. Overconfidence

So, how do you counter them?

Here is a list of questions to ask yourself when you are making a decision

1. Narrow frame -> Widen your options

• Are you asking a "whether or not" question?
• What else could you do with the same amount of resources?
• What if you current options disappeared?
• How can you try multiple options at the same time?
• Are you stuck in the prevention / promotion mindset?
• How do you find someone who has already solved a similar problem?
• Can you think of analogies, inside and outside your scope, of similar problems?

2. Confirmation Bias -> Reality-Test your assumptions

• What would have to be true for the opposite opinion to be the very best choice?
• What facts would have to be true for your assumption to be wrong? Find those facts and check them.
• Are you too caught up in an assumption? Have you tried making a deliberate mistake?
• Are you too zoomed in? If so, try zooming out
• Get a broader (average) picture. Experts are good at giving you this.
• Are you too zoomed out?
• Zoom in : Get a close-up view of a sample
• Did you try doing a trial run? (except when you need commitment)

3. Short term emotion -> Attain distance

• How would this decision affect you in 10 hour /10 months /10 year
• Are you going with the flow (familiarity)?
• Are you over-emphasized on avoiding losses?
• What would you tell your best friend to do?

4. Overconfidence -> Prepare to be wrong

• What would happen in the best case? How can you prepare?
• What would happen in the worst case? How can you prepare?
• Have you set tripwires to revisit this decision in the future?

Finally, here are some good practices to follow generally to make better decisions:

• Build a playlist of questions to ask for different types of decisions
• Define and focus core priorities
• Build a "Stop doing" list
• Ask every once in a while : Am I doing what I most need to be doing now?
• Focus on the process, and less on the decision.
• In a team, decisions must be seen as fair even if they are not favorable.
• Bargaining helps
• Procedural justice is imporant
• State back the other side
• Defend a decision by pointing out flaws

If you must compromise, do so on the brilliance not culture

"Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men" says the unconventional title of the article a friend shared.

That sounds wrong, with all the talk of hiring only A players to build an A team. I found the article (written almost a 100 years ago) quite interesting though, simply because it went against conventional wisdom and offered an analysis to support the view. But it looks like the author completely missed the concept of a "Cultural Fit"

It looks like the author was looking at hardworking A-players to build a steady slow growing business. I would call them brilliant men too, men who have control over themselves and have figured out how to provide consistent low risk returns with good processes, hardwork and dedication. The author was however, not ready to handle the kind of brilliant men with bigger risk appetites who liked to shoot for the moon. Or the kind of men brilliant only in creating an illusion of brilliance. They would obviously contradict the culture he was looking to build.

Perhaps the maxim should be "Always hire brilliant men who fit with your values and culture. If you must compromise, do so on the brilliance"

What affects our energy levels?

I have been observing what affects the level of energy I have to work on something, and how to optimize it.
My first "Equation" was that, we had a long term base level formed by good / bad habits (health, inner peace etc). Our "state of mind" then acted as a multiplier on short term modifiers like level of sleep, hunger, coffee and so on influence the amount of energy we had at any point. But after some discussion with friends and observation, I realized that this is only our store of "potential energy".

We also need a trigger (or "Do Work") to convert this into Kinetic energy that is actually used. Tiggers could be a deadline, an interesting project, good company, energetic environment, force of habit, nice weather or probably even Coffee.

To optimize for energy, we need to watch our potential energy reserves and keep them high, and then look for triggers that allow us to use them. And then be mindful of how fast an activity drains our potential energy reserve. For an introvert like me, talking to people drains my reserve pretty fast, while being in the zone working on an interesting project is a much slower drain.

What should you measure?

One of my thrusts this year is to understand myself better using data and objective analysis. 

The way I am going about this is to collect whatever data I can, look for patterns, form hypotheses, and then try to verify them.

Online activity, Phone calls, location are some relatively easy ones. RescueTime can help you track your computer activity, phone logs can be obtained (with difficulty) from phone companies, and location data from foursquare or a similar API. Fitbit tells you how active you were. These require little effort,  but might not give all the information you need to measure performance.

Other things like mood, productivity, output, food consumption are more specific but require more effort to collect.

The challenge is to figure out how to collect maximum relevant data with minimal disruption.

Pull or push?

I think there are 2 types of innovation - The pull, and the push.

Pull is more lean-startup. Look for the lowest hanging fruit, pluck it as fast as possible, and iterate. A consumer problem creates demand for a solution which pulls development of solution. Like Dropbox. And I think Amazon was pretty lean too.

Push, on the other hand is more like traditional research. Someone feels Solution X will benefit the world, builds it and pushes it into the market. Like Tesla, SpaceX.

There is a lot of focus on lean startups these days, but I think we need a balance of both. While pull innovation reduces risk and forces companies to start creating value quickly, we also need a healthy dose of wild swings and huge bets to keep shaking things up and push new ideas into the market.

After all, greedy algorithms don't always lead to the best solutions.