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The Expert Identification Problem and the Challenges of Democratic Decision-Making Key takeaways: • The expert identification problem is a major concern when it comes to trusting experts in a democracy. • Democracies aim to harness the intellectual power of diversity for better solutions. • The challenge lies in recognizing the best solutions when they require expertise that the democratic entity may not possess. • There is no clear solution to this problem, and democracy remains the best way to organize society according to the speaker. Transcript: Speaker 2 So for a long time I would say that the problem I've been most obsessed with is something I call the expert identification problem it's like how does the non-expert figure out which expert To trust if they don't have the expertise and one of the worries about a democracy is that it runs straight into the expert identification problem right like if we're democratically Voting on what to do we are aggregate non-experts I mean I'm not talking here about like oh we are the experts and you all are not even if you are the world expert in X you're a non-expert In a million other fields right so as an aggregate we are non-expert so here's the real worry for me if you have the right solution how would that get democratically approved Helen Landemore Is this a political theorist I really like she's part of a movement who are epistemic democrats and they think that democracies are the best way to harness the intellectual power of Diversity and the basic model is something like diverse people will come up with a better set of solutions and when you put them together the best solutions will rise to the top and my Worry is how will the democratic entity recognize which are the best solutions because if the best solution requires expertise to recognize and the democratic entity as an aggregate Is not an expert how will they figure it out and that's a problem I'm not sure there's a solution to and I also can't think of a better way to organize the world than democratically

Paul Smaldino & C. Thi Nguyen on Problems With Value Metrics & Governance at Scale

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

DEEP Framework: Documenting Decisions, Events, Explanations, and Proposals in Your Org Summary: The DEEP framework emphasizes the documentation of decisions, urging the recording of the rationale behind business and general decisions. It also stresses the importance of documenting events such as meetings and town halls, highlighting the need for summarization. Furthermore, the framework encourages documenting explanations, especially in the context of onboarding, as they often involve repeated material. Lastly, it emphasizes documenting proposals or ideas, allowing individuals to present their rationale to others and providing time for considered reactions. The acronym 'DEEP' serves as a reminder for teams to consider the documentation created within their workflow. Transcript: Speaker 1 So I came up with an acronym as well, and I call that acronym deep. I think you'll identify with some of these. So deep for decisions, if there's ever a decision, then you should record the rationale for it. And we've talked about it endlessly on our tech radar's decision record systems. But I extend that to business decisions as well and general decisions as well. So similar format. Then there's events. So you have a town hall, you have a meeting, all of those are events, right? And you better document them for the benefit of other people. And when I say document, I mean, summarize, sure, you can have a recording or snippets of recordings if they are useful for people, but the summary is the more important thing. Then there's explanations, and I found these very useful in the context of onboarding, because there's a lot of explainer material that gets repeated in onboarding. And those are definitely great candidates for documentation. And the last one is proposals. And I called that proposals, but really I'm trying to talk about things like ideas. So let's take an example. I want to use this new library on my project. I have a certain rationale for it. Let me write down the thought process. What value is it going to bring? Let me present it to everyone. Everyone has the time to consume it. Oftentimes we go into decision making with a lot of cognitive load, where, you know, Ken explains in rapid fire things that he's been thinking about for the last 15 days. And now I have to consume it in the next 30 minutes and give Ken a year or nay. It's really difficult because Ken's done all the deep thinking, I need the time to process it and writing gives me the time to process it, right? And I can also not give knee jerk reactions, but considered reactions. So proposals, and that starts to include design documentation, idea papers, any kinds of proposals that you make on the team. So that acronym deep is a good trigger for teams to kind of hold on to and think about what is the documentation we're creating in the flow of work.

Asynchronous Collaboration — Getting It Right

Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

Level's Company Onboarding Process Summary: The company has a well-guided onboarding checklist for all employees, which spans over a full month. Each new employee is guided to take onboarding seriously, and not expected to start producing for the first month. There is emphasis on reading specific documentation that outlines the company's culture, which is highlighted as significantly different from past experiences. The company eases new employees into the transparency of operations and has a unique practice of requiring employees to update the onboarding process at the end of the month, reflecting the value that 'everything's written in pencil' and is subject to change. Transcript: Speaker 1 And we have an onboarding checklist in notion. We have a template. We copy it for each new person that joins and they have a set of tasks that they do each day. It's pretty well guided. I can share the template with you if you're curious. That'd be amazing. Speaker 2 I would love that. Is this for all employees or EA specifically? All employees. All employees. Okay. Speaker 1 And there is a video of me at the start of each week. It's a loom where I specifically say, Hey, at this point, people usually want to skip onboarding and start jumping into their tasks. Don't do that. It's always a mistake. Really take onboarding seriously. Our onboarding process is a full month. And we don't expect people to start producing for a month. It really does take that long for a lot of people to get fully up to speed. And we help guide them in more slowly. Read these books. Read this documentation that we have about how we built our culture, especially for our case, because the way that we operate is very different than a lot of people's previous experiences. And so it's pretty jarring when you see a lot of the transparency of when your first one on one gets published to the rest of the company, it's pretty jarring. Speaker 2 And so we try to ease people into these things. You know, it's also going to be jarring is if you become a public company, yeah, totally. Things will have to change a bit. Probably. But yeah, continues. All right. That's a job. Speaker 1 That's true. And over time, people get used to it over the course of about a month. I think the biggest thing is the cultural assimilation. In our case, has been the biggest hurdle over the course of onboarding is getting people reading the memos, practicing some of the things. One of the cultural values that we have is everything's written in pencil. But also you can change things here. And one of the things that we do is at the end of onboarding, everybody is required to update the onboarding process for something that was out of date, and then post to a channel confirming What they changed and just giving a list of what they changed. And it's pretty weird for people, especially those who come from larger companies, like when they've had, you know, the same onboarding process that the company's had for 20 years, And then they go in the actual files and edit it themselves. I'm a new employee.

#694 — Sam Corcos, Co-Founder of Levels — The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Assistants, 10x Delegation, and Winning Freedom by Letting Go

The Tim Ferriss Show

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