Join 📚 Roger's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what roger's read, .
Another important function of undesirable metrics is that they can be used as guardrails, alerting us when desirable metrics are having too much sway. Former Intel CEO Andy Grove, a metrics pioneer whose approach to quantifying performance influenced a generation of Silicon Valley leaders, believed that every metric has the potential to backfire. Grove is credited with introducing a crucial imperative: “For every metric, there should be another ‘paired’ metric that addresses the adverse consequences of the first metric.”
Decoding Greatness
Ron Friedman
In 1957, a committee Eisenhower appointed to study civil and continental defense sent a delegation to SAC to review the command’s defenses against a Soviet surprise attack. The delegation included Robert Sprague, president of the Sprague Electric Company of Massachusetts, and Jerome Wiesner of MIT.2555 LeMay dismissed the delegation with a superficial tour. Sprague arranged for the President to order LeMay to cooperate. From air defense headquarters in Colorado Springs, Sprague had LeMay stage an alert. SAC needed more than six hours to take to the air. To Sprague that performance meant the command was vulnerable to surprise attack: Soviet bombers could make the flight over the North Pole in less than six hours. At SAC headquarters in Omaha, Sprague challenged LeMay. The general dismissed Sprague’s concerns contemptuously. SAC had reconnaissance aircraft flying secret missions over the Soviet Union twenty-four hours a day, he explained. “If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack, I’m going to knock the shit out of them before they take off the ground.” Sprague was shocked. “But General,” he countered, “that’s not national policy.” Sprague remembered LeMay responding, “I don’t care. It’s my policy. That’s what I’m going to do.”2556 Wiesner says LeMay responded, “It’s my job to make it possible for the President to change his policy”—a less insubordinate answer, but only barely.2557 Sprague chose not to report the renegade commander to the President and buried the incident for thirty years. At least, he reasoned, US strategic bombers would not be destroyed on the ground.
In looking back, Steve Kerr recalled his favorite memory of Jordan and his final Bulls team. It involved a typical Phil Jackson assignment for his players as the 1998 regular season came to a close. “Phil had this great moment,” Kerr explained. “It was the last day of the regular season and he told us, ‘Tomorrow, at practice, I want everybody to write down a few words about this experience you’ve had with this team. It can be anything, you can write a poem. You can just write a letter to your teammates. You can take some lyrics from a song that are meaningful. Whatever. But bring something tomorrow.’ Half the guys brought stuff, about half the guys forgot. I forgot. But Michael brought something and it was a poem that he wrote about the team.” It was the ultimate triumph of Jackson’s effort over the years. Jordan, the game’s angry man and all-time badass, had written a poem. “It was shocking,” Kerr recalled. “What happened was, every guy ended up saying something, whether they read something or said something. Phil told me later that June, his wife, had told him about this and suggested the idea. And so what he did was after each guy spoke, whoever had written something down had to crumple up the paper and put it into a big coffee can. It was like a Folgers can. Then when everybody was done, he lit a match and he lit the contents on fire in the coffee can. The lights were out and there was this glow in the room. And it was like, ‘All those memories that you guys just talked about, those are ours and nobody else is gonna see.’ He didn’t say that, but it was the metaphor. This is ours and they’re gone and they’ll forever live within us and nobody else will ever see ’em.” Phil Jackson burned Michael’s poem?! “I know, that thing would be worth millions right now, right?” Kerr said, laughing at the memory. “Michael’s poem was, what does this mean to you? What does this experience mean to you and where have you been and where are you going? It was so cool. In a legacy of powerful moments that Phil, you know, left with us, that was by far the most powerful one. I’ll never forget it. I was crying. A lot of guys were shedding tears.”
Michael Jordan
Roland Lazenby
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise