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Perspective on Managing Different Projects: Cultivating a Garden v.s. Hacking Away in a Mine Summary: A friend suggested thinking of my projects as a garden, where some ideas will flourish while others won't. It's less predictable but more enjoyable than physically laboring in the mines. Transcript: Speaker 1 I remember one point when I was pretty stressed out, and I was saying to my wife, oh my gosh, I've got all these different projects, and I have to work on this one, and I have to work on that One. I have to go to work in the mines. I have to go chip away at this project. And it might work out, it might not work out. And she said to me, you should think of all your projects as more of a gartan. You're planting lots of ideas. Some of them will come up, some of them won't. That's a little unpredictable. But you should think of it that way rather than going down with your hard hat and your pick and toiling away in the pit to find the seam of truth.

Glen Weyl & Cris Moore on Plurality, Governance, and Decentralized Society

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

One of the most effective tools for building a culture of trust is simply saying, “I trust you to do the right thing.” Backing those words with action shows people that you’re serious. Larry once had about 40 people reporting to him in a research unit of a major consulting firm. As a manager, he was expected to read and approve all travel and expense forms. Since many of these consultants traveled extensively, this would have meant spending a half-day or more on paperwork each week. This struck him as a tremendous waste of time and energy that did not add any value to his unit. At a group meeting, he told the team that he trusted them to stay at a Marriott rather than a Four Seasons hotel, and that he wasn’t going to dive into their expense reports. He realized that the cost of not trusting the group would be far greater than an infrequent upgrade from coach to business class. This not only gave Larry time to do more worthwhile work, but it added to the group’s social capital.11 They knew they were trusted and proved to be trustworthy over the years.

The Smart Mission

Edward J. Hoffman, Matthew Kohut, and Laurence Prusak

Create a User Manual of Yourself for Others Summary: Creating a user manual for yourself, including strengths, weaknesses, triggers, blind spots, and insights for working effectively with you, enables others to understand and collaborate with you more easily. By soliciting feedback from colleagues and using their input to enhance self-awareness, you can provide new team members with valuable insights about working with you, facilitating quicker and more effective collaboration. Transcript: Speaker 1 He said, you know, when i buy a new car, it comes with an owner's manual, so i know how to operate it. But when i work with a new person, whose way more complex than a car, i don't get anything. And so i'm kind of starting from square one, when fact, they have all these experiences that could teach me something from their past about how to work with them better in the present And the future. And so what he did, same as orschol nick, he sat down and he wrote up one pager on how to work with him effectively. What are his strength what are his weaknesses, what are the triggers that bring out the worst in him? What are the the moments that bring out in the best in him? And then he didn't stop therehe asked his team to write their user manual for him, so that he could gauge his own self awareness. And of course, he found the team's os is much more ecihtful and accurate than his own, because of the blind spot factor in part. But now every new person who works with him gets that one pager and gets to immediately start as if they'd known him for a month or two, and say, ok, you know, here are the things i might want To adapt if i want to be really affective with this nager. And so i've gone, i've gone and done that. I asked a bunch of people who worke with me to write my user manual. Andit is very simple. The questions are, what are my strengths? What brings those out? What are my weaknesses? What brings those out? What are my blind spots? And what do you know now about working with me that you wish you had known when we first started working?

#399 — Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything

The Tim Ferriss Show

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