Growth Club

Simple habits of top managers, who attract and retain top talent

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:39:19 GMT

1. They deeply care about the customer, the business results and every team member.

2. They create a clear customer-centric, vision/strategy for their team.

3. They build the machine that builds the machine.

4. They create phycological safety. Build an inclusive team culture where everyone openly voices their opinion. They actively listen and make themselves accessible.

5. They encourage career growth. They share feedback often. Their team grows skillset and scope faster.

6. They think clearly. They write to think. They teach their team to think clearly.

7. They practice Radical candor. Care personally and challenge directly. So, their people grow super fast and are able to take on more.

8. They have technical skills to advise the team. They keep learning as the tech advances. They keep learning to become better leaders.

9. They make timely decisions. They know when to make fast decisions vs when to be deliberate. (one-way vs two-way doors.)

10. They connect the bridge between their team with the rest of the company. They shield noise and share signals that matter.

11. They coach their team. Ask thoughtful questions that help their team solve their own challenges.

12. They set the right culture in the team through whom they hire, whom they fire, and whom they promote.

PS: What habit of your manager do you like the most?

Your influence is proportional to how well you can initiate and handle difficult conversations

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:38:00 GMT

Steal this playbook to ace difficult conversations. Be in the top 5%.

1. Understand the game. There are 3 conversations going on simultaneously.

a. Is about the content. What happened? What's the problem? What do we need to do about it?"
b. Is about the relationship between the people involved. How do we feel about each other? How do we want to feel about each other after this conversation?
c. Is about the process of the conversation itself. Are we listening to each other? Are we being respectful?

Most amateurs focus on only a. And fail.

2. Decide. Is this a conversation worth having?
Is it important enough to risk discomfort and potential conflict?
What's the worst that could happen?
What's the best that could happen?

Not every conversation is worth having. Pick the right battles.

3. Prepare.
What do you want to accomplish?
What information to gather?
What are your options?
To stay calm and focused, practice what you're going to say.

4. Listen actively.
Listen to their words. Their feelings. Their intentions. Their body language.
Ask clarifying questions.
Summarize what you understand. Make them feel heard.

5. Be honest without being hurtful.
Use "I" statements to express your feelings.
Avoid name-calling and personal attacks.
Focus on the issue, not the person.

6. Find common ground.
What are the things you both agree on?
What are your shared goals, values?
Use the common ground as a foundation for a solution.

7. Be willing to compromise.
In most cases, there's no perfect solution.
Know what are you willing to give up?
Know what are you not willing to give up?
Be creative. Look for solutions that meet both of your needs.

8. Know your own triggers. Know what tends to set you off when things get heated? Avoid getting triggered.

9. Be ready to walk away. If a conversation is becoming too heated, walk away. You can always come back to it later when you're both feeling calmer.

10. Use humor to diffuse tension in a difficult conversation. Use it carefully. Never make fun of them.

11. Be patient. Difficult conversations take time. Don't expect to solve everything in one conversation. Play the long game.

12. End on a positive note. Even if the conversation was difficult.
Thank them for listening to you.
Summarize what you've agreed on.
Express your hope for the future.

13. Don't take it personally.
If it was bitter, remember that their words and actions are often about them, not you.
Stay focused on the issue, not the person. You can't control how they react, but you can control how you react.

14. After every difficult conversation, reflect. Learn. Get better.

Did I miss anything?

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Strategic Patience: Jeff Bezos' Response to Steve Jobs and the iTunes Challenge

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:36:07 GMT

Steve Jobs, invited Jeff Bezos to the Apple campus, Cupertino in 2003.

An Apple employee took Jeff and his VPs to a conference room with a Windows PC and two platters of takeout sushi for dinner.

After the informal chat and dinner, dabbing his mouth with a napkin, Jobs announced that Apple had just finished building their first Windows application.

Jobs calmly and confidently told them that he thought it was the best Windows application anyone had ever built. Jobs then personally gave them a demo of the soon-to-be launched iTunes for Windows.

During the demo, Jobs talked about how this would transform the music industry. Now anyone with a computer would be able to purchase digital music from Apple on PC or a Mac.

Jobs said that CDs would go the way of other outdated music formats like the cassette tape, and their importance and portion of overall music sales would drop quickly.

His next comment could reasonably be construed as either a matter-of-fact statement, an attempt to elicit an angry retort, or an attempt to goad Jeff into making a bad business decision by acting impulsively. Jobs said,

“Amazon has a decent chance of being the last place to buy CDs. The business will be high-margin but small. You’ll be able to charge a premium for CDs, since they’ll be hard to find.”

Jeff did not take the bait. We were their guests and the rest of the meeting was uneventful. But we all knew that being the exclusive seller of antique CDs did not sound like an appealing business model.

While it is tempting to suggest the meeting impacted Jeff’s thinking, only Jeff can speak to that. What we can say is what Jeff did and did not do afterward. What he didn’t do (and what many companies would have done) is to kick off an all-hands-on-deck project to combat this competitive threat, issue a press release claiming how Amazon’s new service would win the day, and race to build a copycat digital music service. Instead, Jeff took time to process what he learned from the meeting and formed a plan. A few months later, he appointed a single-threaded leader—Steve Kessel—to run Digital, who would report directly to him so that they could work together to formulate a vision and a plan for digital media.

In other words, his first action was not a “what” decision, it was a “who” and “how” decision. This is an incredibly important difference.

Jeff did not jump straight to focusing on what product to build, which seems like the straightest line from A to B. Instead, the choices he made suggest he believed that the scale of the opportunity was large and that the scope of the work required to achieve success was equally large and complex.

He focused first on how to organize the team and who was the right leader to achieve the right result.

(Story Credit: Book - Working Backwards by Colin Bryar(One of the VP's in the Story) and Bill Carr)

Do 10X engineers really exist? Here's what Steve Jobs said.

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:29:50 GMT

>>Most things in life have a dynamic range in which the ratio of “average” to “best” is at most 2:1.

For example, if you go to New York City and get an average taxi cab driver, versus the best taxi cab driver, you’ll probably get to your destination with the best taxi driver 30% faster.

And an automobile; what’s the difference between the average car and the best? Maybe 20%?

The best CD player versus the average CD player? Maybe 20%?

So 2:1 is a big dynamic range for most things in life.

Now, in software, and it used to be the case in hardware, the difference between the average software developer and the best is 50:1; maybe even 100:1.

Very few things in life are like this, but what I was lucky enough to spend my life doing, which is software, is like this.

So I’ve built a lot of my success on finding these truly gifted people, and not settling for “B” and “C” players, but really going for the “A” players.
>>

I personally have the fortune to work with and lead many of these 10X engineers at Amazon and Adobe.

Here are some common 10X engineer traits I see.

1.They take pride in their craft. They care deeply. You will find them refactoring critical stuff that no one is aware of. They do it not for credit or bragging rights, but for the love of their craft.

2.They obsessively protect their time. They can seem rude from outside; they are not afraid to say no and let low value stuff drop.

3. They never make excuses. They don't say it cant be done. Instead they give options on what can be done given the constraints. They love the challenge, when someone says it cant be done.

4. They under promise and over deliver. Even on rare occasions, when they over promise, they stretch and over deliver.

5. They build quick prototypes. If you ask them if something hard can be done, they immediately prototype when unsure.

6. They are curious. They are always trying new and better tech on the side even if their main work does not give them that opportunity.
They always have a couple of cool side projects.

7. They obsessively invest for speed. They invest in best tools, they invest in their typing speed, they invest in short-cuts, automation. They eliminating steps. They love command line. All of these compounds and gives them super hero speed.

8. They run away from teams with politics, braggers and weak managers. They value and contribute to team culture and collaboration.

9. They almost always have some unique quirks. Some hate meetings, some don't like operations, some don't like documenting, some don't like giving presentations, some don't like talking to upper management. They stick around managers and teams who value them for their super powers, rather than who try "to fix them" and make the fish climb a tree.

What other traits have you seen in 10X engineers?

Learning from Failure: The Amazon Unbox Launch and Jeff Bezos' Response

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:26:52 GMT

In 2006, Amazon VP, Bill Carr led the launch of - Amazon Unbox.

Customers hated it.

Here is the painful self-review he wrote in his annual performance review.

And here's how Jeff Bezos responds to such failures.

Bills annual Self-review.>>
Overall, my performance was dreadful in 2006. In Unbox, our launch was poorly received, partly due to DRM [digital rights management] and licensing issues that restrict content usage, and selection, partly due to bad product choices we made for consumers (erring on the side of quality over download speed) and partly due to engineering defects. In any case, I didn’t manage these issues appropriately and the result was a weak launch with weak consumer response and negative press reaction. Net my performance versus goals can be summarized by a poor execution percentage in terms of projects completed and the main project that is complete (Unbox Video) is not a compelling customer experience (yet) and the rate of sales is pitiful. I think a grade of ‘D’ for my performance vs. goals would be generous.

>>>

In retrospect, it is easy to see the mistakes. We had rushed Unbox out the door before it was ready. We didn’t want to come in second to Apple so we were in a frenzy to ship Unbox and ship it fast. This was directly antithetical to the notion of focusing on the customer, not the competitor.

Painful to read! At least I can say it embodied the “vocally self-critical” aspect of the Earn Trust leadership principle.

In any other company, I probably would have been fired. Fortunately for me, Amazon’s commitment to long-term thinking includes its investment in people.

They understand that when you innovate and build new things, you will frequently fail. If you fire the person, you lose the benefit of the learning that came along with that experience. Jeff would say something like this to a leader who had just laid an egg:

“Why would I fire you now? I just made a million-dollar investment in you.

Now you have an obligation to make that investment pay off. Figure out and clearly document where you went wrong. Share what you have learned with other leaders throughout the company. Be sure you don’t make the same mistake again, and help others avoid making it the first time.”

Story Credit - Working Backwards - Colin Bryar; Bill Carr

85% of my "failures" are because of this

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:22:39 GMT

I love to start. Starting a new project is exciting.
I love to finish. Pushing myself when I am close to the finish line is rewarding.

But, it's the goddamn middle where I really struggle.
Between my inspiration and the result, right in the middle, is a deep valley of despair.

The middle is cold, ambiguous, and lonely.
It's where most of my ideas/projects/posts die.

But why is the middle is so hard?
Its because,
The middle is where my conviction is tested.
The middle is where my limitations confront me.
The middle is where I am the most afraid to make mistakes.
The middle is where that lurking failure looks me in the eye.

But, how do I handle this monster who has killed so many of my ideas?
Well, I am not always successful, but I have a chance of success when I do the following.

1. Apply Parkinsons law
I set tighter deadlines for myself. By limiting the time I have, I automatically limit the time I spend in the middle. I force myself to prioritize.

2. Go back to the "Why?".
When you begin, write down your strong why. Why is this worth your time?
I keep going back to the why when I feel lost.

3. Be self-aware.
Self-awareness is deeply understanding my own strengths, my weaknesses, my motivations, my demons, and my biases.
Self-awareness lets me manage my emotions and face my dark reality.
Without self-awareness, I am a slave to my biases. I make impulsive decisions. I beat myself up. I complain. I act like a victim.

4. Focus.
Focus lets me do less. Say No. Concentrate my attention on a single goal.
Focus lets me avoid distractions. To stay on track.
Applying #1(Parkinson's law) also sets the foundation for focus.

5. Iterate - Make small, incremental changes.
Iteration pulls me out when I am stuck in the middle.
The more I iterate, the more I get to experience the joys of starts and finish.
Iteration lets me fail small, to learn, to improve. Lets me face my fears one small demon at a time.

6. Team up
If you want to go fast go alone. if you want to go far go together.
- African proverb.
Picking complementary partner(s) has been the key here. A pessimistic project partner will kill your fire.

7. Celebrate.
Celebrating my small wins releases Dopamine, which in turn, boosts my mood, motivation, and attention. Allows me to be optimistic.
I would love to hear, what strategies have worked for you. Do share in the comments.

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My curation of top career advice from Sheryl Sandberg

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:19:32 GMT

In 2007, Mark Zuckerberg met Sheryl Sandberg at a Christmas party.

While Zuck had no formal search for a Chief Operating Officer (COO), but thought Sandberg as "a perfect fit" for this role.

Back then, FaceBook was interested in building a really cool site for people to hang out. Profits, they assumed, would "follow".

After joining Sheryl began to figure out how to make Facebook profitable. By 2010, Facebook had become profitable.

Sheryl is now worth $1.8B.

Here is my breakdown of her key career moments and top career lessons.

1969: Sheryl Sandberg was born in Washington DC
1991: Earns her Bachelor's in Economics from Harvard.
1995: MBA from Harvard Business School.
1996: Management consultant for McKinsey.
2001: Joined Google as Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations. Gains reputation as a tech luminary.
2007: Mark Zuckerberg convinced her to join FaceBook.
2008: Becomes COO at Facebook. Takes on the goal of making Facebook profitable.
2009: Joins the board of The Walt Disney Company.
2012: Sheryl made history by being the eighth member and the first woman of Facebook's board of directors
2012: Recognized as one of the most influential people in the world, in Time 100's annual list.
2013: Released her first book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
Quote from her book "..we're failing to encourage women to aspire to leadership. It is time to cheer on girls and women who want to sit at the table, seek challenges, and lean in to their careers."
2013: Creates the non-profit - LeanIn.Org.
2015: Lost her husband Dave Goldberg unexpectedly.
2017: Sandberg released her second book, Option B. The book puts emphasis on grief and resilience in challenges within life.
2022: Step down as Meta COO. Continues to serve on its board.

Here is my curation of top career advice from Sheryl Sandberg.

Q: Can you share your most significant career challenge and how you overcame it?
My most significant challenge was dealing with the sudden loss of my husband. It was incredibly tough. I overcame it by leaning on my support network, being open about my struggles, and seeking help when needed. This experience taught me the importance of resilience and the value of compassionate workplaces.

Q: What's the most important piece of career advice?
Lean in. Don't be afraid to take on challenges, raise your hand for opportunities, and believe in yourself. Embrace your ambition. Be willing to step outside of your comfort zone. Advocate for yourself, be assertive.

Q: Can you share your perspective on achieving work-life balance?
Work-life balance is a constant challenge, especially for women. Set boundaries and prioritize what matters most to you. Communicate openly with your family, partner, and employer about your needs. Remember that it's okay to ask for help when needed.

Follow along for more Career Breakdowns.
My Deliberate Career Design workshop starts tomorrow.

Most people are lousy at networking.

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:11:12 GMT

98 of 100 linkedin network requests I get, fail to build any meaningful connection.

Here is a great example of cold emailing and networking.

Few things Jay Khedekar did well.
1. Get to the point quickly. Convey your intent in the first message. People are busy. Show them that you will not be a time drain..
2. Ask pointed questions.
3. Show humility. Eagerness to learn.
4. Pick a time when busy people may have some free time. Jay did this on a Sunday evening.
5. Jay had a crisp profile headline. Lets people know who you are.

Of course, there is an element of luck. I was free at that time. I am a Tesla and Elon fan boy. But you have to take action to give luck a chance.

I am really happy to see young folks like Jay being proactive about their careers.

Reminds me - When Steve Jobs was 12 years old, he cold-called Hewlett-Packard's co-founder Bill Hewlett. His goal was to request some leftover electronic parts to build a frequency counter. To Steve's surprise, Hewlett picked up the phone. Bill not only gave Steve the parts, but also gave an internship job at HP.. This was a pivotal moment for Steve jobs and for Apple and for the world.

We are lucky to live in this era of hyper connectivity. Folks who use this wisely have an unfair advantage

Actionable Tips for Overcoming Common Feelings

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:01:41 GMT

If you feel,

Low ➡ Play music.

Old ➡ Play with kids.

Not enough ideas ➡ Read.

Lazy ➡ Take a cold shower/walk.

Imposter ➡ Look at your past success.

Nervous ➡ Write/talk to a trusted friend.

You procrastinate ➡ Do it just for two mins.

Stuck ➡ Write to an expert or a rubber duck.

Inexperienced ➡ Write/talk to your role model.

Burn-out ➡ Set boundaries. Make your work meaningful.

Scared ➡ Write down the worst outcome. Mitigate risk. It's usually
not as bad as your mind tricks you.

If you feel, DO SOME (Little) THING about it.

If you don't feel ➡ Talk to a therapist.

To all engineers new to a role..

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:58:16 GMT

Just finished a call with a mentee. I have done this mistake myself, and see this pattern again and again.

Self-doubt is a slippery slope.

A new role can plant self-doubt even in the most talented engineer. Engineers are most vulnerable, when they are new to a role.

To all engineers new to a role..

The way you see yourself and carry yourself is how you’ll be treated.

Show up timid or act like you don’t belong, and you’ll be treated
that way.

Show up like you’re supposed to be there, and you’ll be treated like you’re supposed to be there.

You already earned the spot on your team. It's ok you don't know everything. Just focus on showing up strong, learning and adding value.

Adding value as early as possible is the best way to boost your confidence on a new role. Don't wait to learn everything before you begin adding value. Here are a few ideas.

1.You bring fresh perspective, because you are new to the role. Leverage it. Use your product or service as a customer and bring what you learn to your team. Pain points, new ideas etc. With this you learn fast and you add value.

2. Document what you learn, issues you faced, permissions you needed, how you solved setup issues. Make it easy for the next person to ramp up. Share it with rest of team within your first month and ask for input.

3. Ask if you can to do initial projects with someone experienced in the team. Your rate of learning will be much higher rather than doing an independent isolated project. Do your best to add value to your team mates. Focus on what you can do to make the team successful. testing, code reviews, deployment etc.

4. Begin doing code and design reviews as soon as possible.(at least 10-15% of your time) Be humble with your comments. "I am new to this, but I was wondering if we can handle this exception in a better way.... ". You will learn faster if you throw yourself in to action.

5. Volunteer to do small tasks in critical components. 20% of the components are modified 80% of the time. Get comfortable with core components early.

6. Your team knows you will take time to ramp up. They are not judging you by your first month's delivery. No question is dumb. Batch your questions so that you are mindful of your teams time.

What other tips would you share with an engineer new to the role to gain confidence?

Elon's offer to twitter

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:55:00 GMT

Elon Musk is one of the rare people willing to put their money where their mouth is.. Mad respect for him.

Here is Elon's offer to twitter.

I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.

However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.

As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.

If you aren’t working on your boss’s top three priorities, you are not working on the agenda

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:51:34 GMT

Here is a checklist to ask yourself when you feel stuck.

First check if you are really working on stuff that matters.

You are working on stuff that matters, when

- People have time for you, calendars open up, and meetings get scheduled quickly.
- Resources become available. Funds typically flow to the most important work.
- Work gets easier. As support for the work increases, progress comes faster and more efficiently.
- There’s more pressure. Because the work matters, expect to feel more weight on your shoulders and greater pressure to perform.
- There’s more visibility. When your sights are set on what’s important, all eyes are on you.

And when are you off the agenda?

- No time. Meetings are hard to schedule. You hurry up and then wait for peoples time. One-on-ones with your boss are often canceled.
- No response. You send emails but don’t receive replies.
- No feedback. When you ask people to review your documents, you get little/no feedback or receive a cursory “Looks good.”
- Stalls and delays. Initiatives get stalled and then scrapped. Or progress is slow; needs change before the work is complete.
- Not on the boss’s short list. Your boss isn’t asking you about your work.

PS: Recommended book reading - "Impact players" - Liz Wiseman.

The richest man in the world, slept in meetings

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:45:10 GMT

John D. Rockefeller was an American oil tycoon and the richest man in the world.
He built Standard Oil into the biggest monopoly. So big that monopoly prevention laws had to be created.

Rockefeller had a strange habit.

He would not speak much in meetings. Instead he would lie down and close his eyes. People thought he was not paying attention.

When asked why, he told a peom:

A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke, the more he heard,
Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird?

Rockefeller knew his job was not to drill wells, load trains, or move barrels.
It was to think and make good decisions.

Rockefeller’s value wasn’t what he did with his hands, or even his words. It was what he figured out inside his head.

Closing his eyes and deeply listening let him see things that only he could see.

Rockefeller did not speak less because he was rich. Be became rich because he listened and connected more dots.

Thanks for reading!
If you found this useful, let me know. Share it with your community. Follow along for more.

Thought of the Day

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:41:31 GMT

When you are good at something, you tell everyone.

When you are great, they tell you.

- Walter Payton

Combine Skills You Enjoy and Become World-Class

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:39:16 GMT

There will always be high-paying jobs for anyone who can

Code/build well
Think well
Write well
Speak well
Sell well

To Code/build well - Read good code. Leetcode. Build side projects. contribute to open source. If you are a dev learn to build business skills. Propose your own ideas, take feedback, learn and iterate.

To think well - Study people who think well. The best minds in the world have left their ideas in their books, their blogs, their podcasts

To write well - Read people who write well. Practice writing. Blog, distill ideas for others.

To speak well - Put yourself out there. Grab every opportunity to speak.

To Sell well - Everyone is always selling. We sell our ideas, our products, our service. We sell to our boss, to our customers, our kids, our friends. Learn persuasion. Learn the phycology of selling.

It's hard to become top 5% in one of these skills alone.

But I have always found it's much easier to become top 5% in the combination of these skills.

Combine skills you enjoy doing. Then go become world class at them.

Free yourself from unnecessary stress

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:34:37 GMT

Two liberating truths I remind myself anytime I feel stressed.

1. People don't really care about you.
We overestimate how much other people notice or observe our actions. The "spotlight effect" is real.

Remember, everyone is just going through their life worried about themselves.

So, go try out things you like to do. Goof up. There is no one looking.

2. “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.”
This is the "focusing illusion" from Daniel Kahneman.

So anytime something feels like a big deal, I ask myself - “Am I making it important by overthinking it?”

Free yourself from unnecessary stress.

Crazy story: 4 students, 2 Hours, 1 Idea, some luck = $33 Billion!

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:29:44 GMT

Back in 2012, 4 Stanford students spent their nights on an app for small merchants.

They gave the app to small businesses to test. A small bakery in Palo Alto. They thought the app will work perfectly.

Well, no, it didn't. The app failed to solve the bakery's real needs which by the way were pretty simple.

Evan one of the 4 said - "We went door to door and asked business owners to tell us about their work. The most useful question, for me, was

Tell me everything you've done since getting here today?

We tried a few things. One of them was a short marketing attribution survey placed on ipads at retail point of sale. It was a nice-to-have, not obviously compelling."

They realized all their ideas were just "good to have" and not painkillers. Until one day they found the real customer pain point.

"One day, we were wrapping up an interview when we overheard the manager turn down a delivery order.
“This drives me crazy. I have no drivers to fulfill them and I’m the one doing all of it.”

Lightbulb moment 💡. Why can't businesses send things across town, on-demand? There should be an on-demand Fedex!

On Jan 12 2013, they quickly created a static html page, pasted a pdf menus from local restaurants and their personal google voice numbers. They called it PaloAltoDelivery(dot)com.

They kept a $6 delivery fee and started a small AdWords campaign to see if anyone was searching for it.

"Hours later, Tony and I were driving home when we got the first order. I grabbed a notebook and wrote down what the guy wanted from a local Thai restaurant. We placed a takeout order, drove to the restaurant, bought the food, took it to the customer and charged him with Square.

We quickly had trouble keeping up. I remember running out of class to answer the phone more than a few times. We started hiring from craigslist, flyers, and by ordering pizza and hiring that driver on the spot.

I'd start my day by taking out cash from the bank. I'd go to multiple Safeways and buy the max allowed number of Green Dot cash cards, give them to drivers to pay for food, then I'd dispatch and drive, collecting the cards at the end of the day and pay drivers in cash.

Soon, the conversation with restaurants totally changed. "I see you here all the time -- why are you buying so much food? How can we work together?"

They joined YC and changed to Doordash. - "At YC, we came with a list of 20 ideas for how to grow, and asked the YC partners which to prioritize. They said something like ‘How would I know? Do all the things.’”

Doordash went IPO in 2020 and today is valued at $33B and had a peak valuation of $96B.

My takeaways:
1. Test with customers early. Live their lives.
2. Speed matters.
3. Big things start small.
4. Do things that don’t scale.
5. Do all the things. Then double down on winners.

I post career breakdowns and growth insights. Follow along growthclub

Habits

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:25:41 GMT

Habits are like Rockets.

Rockets use the most fuel in the first minute of flight.

But, once they get outside the pull of gravity, it’s effortless.

Remember, the first few days of a new habit are the hardest..

Hours at work ≠ Promotion

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:24:06 GMT

The biggest lie. "Hard work pays off."

I hear countless stories of people who spent months working hard, staying late, sacrificing…

Then one day wake up to figure out, that nobody ever cared about their project.

"Hours at work ≠ Promotion."

So, please don't let this happen to you.

Hard work is necessary but not sufficient.
Before you put in hard work, make sure you are working on the right problem with the right people.

Promotions are not a time contest, it's an impact race!

The quality of your thinking = the quality of the ideas you consume.
I post high-quality ideas to improve your thinking and career. Follow along to improve your thinking.

Giving feedback

growth club — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:20:38 GMT

I sucked at giving feedback, when I became a new manager, 10 years ago.

I sugar coated critical feedback. I was afraid people would hate me and quit, if I gave them negative feedback.

I was over protective of my team. One time a senior engineer gave critical feedback that delayed one of my engineer's promotion. I got personally offended and I tried everything possible to change their mind with counter points. And failed.

They were right about the feedback.

I shared the feedback so that the engineer can fix the issue and we could retry the promotion next cycle. However, I added my own sugar coating so that my engineer would not feel hurt. This sugar coating likely diluted the impact of the feedback.

On the contrary, I was following a different style with my wife, my family, friends and folks in my inner circle. Here I was brutal honesty and many times unkind while delivering criticism and feedback. Because for some stupid reason I thought they would automatically understand my intent and good will for them. I was overly blunt. This lead to obvious friction and pain.

Over the years, after some painful lessons, I adopted a direct yet empathetic approach.

Kim Scott in her 2019 book Radical candor, does an amazing job explaining how I was operating in different situations. I wish she had written the book 10 years sooner. I could have avoided painful mistakes. 🤦🏼‍♂️

Kim shares 4 ways to share critical feedback.

1. Obnoxious Aggression is when you challenge someone directly, but don’t show you care about them personally. I sometimes was slipping into this place when dealing with family members.

2. Ruinous Empathy is when you Care Personally, but fail to Challenge Directly. It’s praise that isn’t specific enough to help the person understand what was good, or criticism that is sugar-coated and unclear. Or simply silence. Ruinous Empathy may feel nice or safe, but is ultimately unhelpful and damaging.

I started off here as a manager often sugar coating feedback, made my mistakes and quickly learnt my lessons.

3. Manipulative Insincerity — backstabbing, political or passive-aggressive behavior — is what happens when you neither Care Personally nor Challenge Directly. It’s praise that is insincere, flattery to a person’s face and harsh criticism behind their back. Often it’s a self-protective reaction to Obnoxious Aggression. This is the worst kind of feedback fail.

I have noticed most people tend to start at #1 or #2.

As kids we either learn to be nice and kind, or confrontational or manipulative based on our environment.

4. Radical Candor is Caring Personally while Challenging Directly. At its core, Radical Candor is guidance and feedback that’s both kind and clear, specific and sincere. This is where the magic happens.
This is where the growth is maximum.

This 2X2 matrix is a wonderful way to reflect on how you give feedback.

Thoughts?