Idea Surplus Disorder #82

In this week's edition: innovation speed, the cost of low performers, delegation frameworks, communication misfires, rapid idea generation, poor decision making, and why learning from failure might not be as common as we think.

Idea Surplus Disorder #82

Happy Monday, and welcome to another issue of Idea Surplus Disorder newsletter.

In this week's edition: innovation speed, the cost of low performers, delegation frameworks, communication misfires, idea generation, poor decision making, and why learning from failure might not be as common as we think.

I'm Matt Homann, Founder of Filament. I'm glad you're here!

Ideas + Insights

Next time you're wondering how others (people, teams or companies) seem to have succeeded so much faster and better than you, remember that you don't get to see all their false starts and failures before their success. Paul Graham reminds us why:

Because biographies of famous scientists tend to edit out their mistakes, we underestimate the degree of risk they were willing to take. And because anything a famous scientist did that wasn't a mistake has probably now become the conventional wisdom, those choices don't seem risky either.
Newton made three bets (physics, alchemy, and theology). One of them worked. But they were all risky.

Speaking of accountability, your low performers might be dragging everyone down:

Researchers gave treadmill desks to a group of employees and then provided them with data on their and their coworkers' activity levels on the treadmills over a six month period.
They found that there was a tendency to converge to the lowest common denominator—meaning participants slowly aligned their walking behavior with their least active coworker.

There are lots of nuggets in this guide to holding people accountable, including this simple framework to tee up a delegation conversation:

  1. What will you do? (the committed action)
  2. When will you do it? (the timeframe)
  3. How will I know? (the reporting method)

And these questions from the same article are worth keeping handy:

  • What were you trying to achieve?
  • What was your plan?
  • What options did you consider?
  • What drove your decision?
  • What actually happened?
  • How did you react?
  • When did this happen?
  • What did you learn?
  • What would you do differently?

I've shared Bascamp's guide to internal communication before, but it is worth a re-read if you're struggling with communication inside your organization:

  • Companies don’t have communication problems, they have miscommunication problems. The smaller the company, group, or team, the fewer opportunities for miscommunication.
  • If you want an answer, you have to ask a question. People typically have a lot to say, but they’ll volunteer little. Automatic questions on a regular schedule help people practice sharing, writing, and communicating.
  • If your words can be perceived in different ways, they’ll be understood in the way which does the most harm.
  • Communication shouldn’t require schedule synchronization. Calendars have nothing to do with communication. Writing, rather than speaking or meeting, is independent of schedule and far more direct.

We all say we want to learn from failure, but do we, really?

When I ask executives to estimate how many of the failures in their organizations are truly blameworthy, their answers are usually in single digits—perhaps 2% to 5%. But when I ask how many are treated as blameworthy, they say (after a pause or a laugh) 70% to 90%. The unfortunate consequence is that many failures go unreported and their lessons are lost.

Google's Re:Work has lots of great tips and useful frameworks you can apply to any size business to improve work.

Stressed? Focus on these eight skills:

  • Positive events: Notice when positive things happen in your life
  • Savoring: Relish the positive things in your life
  • Gratitude: Appreciate what brings you happiness
  • Mindfulness: Focus on the present moment without judgment
  • Positive reappraisal: Find the silver lining 
  • Self-compassion: Be kind to yourself
  • Personal strengths: Recognize your unique abilities
  • Attainable goals: Make plans that set you up for success

People tend to believe that they have enough data to make an informed decision, regardless of the information they actually have.

Come up with 20 new ideas every day:

I draw up 20 boxes on a page and go about filling them in with ideas. It’s just a different way of seeing things. When I was introduced to this method we did 25 boxes per page and were often tasked to come up with 150 boxes of ideas.
When you physically write or draw an idea onto paper it is effectively getting it out of your head and leaving space for more ideas to come forward. It’s kind of like a mini purge of thinking, get it out of your head no matter if it’s good or bad and keep going.

Here's a simple ChatGPT prompt hack:

ChatGPT and other chatbots are often more useful when you ask them to help you write your prompt. For example, instead of asking “Write an action-item list for planning a trip to Kyoto next fall,” ask “I’m taking a trip to Kyoto next fall. Write a prompt I can use to ask you to create an action-item list.”

Fun Finds

Words of Wisdom

"If you’re going to measure hours, the ones worth measuring are the ones you don’t waste, not the ones you spend." - Jason Fried
"Business is not a battle to be waged — it’s a puzzle to be solved." – Sam Zell
"Being kind to others is mostly about your actions. Being kind to yourself is mostly about your thoughts." – James Clear
"Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. It genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own minds about everything. It's just a coincidence that their beliefs are identical to their peers'. And the independent-minded are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly." – Paul Graham
"You will never change your life until you change something you do daily." – Benjamin Hardy
"A degree of relaxation is necessary to have good ideas because one doesn't have them so much as receive them — and one cannot receive anything with clenched fists." – Justin Murphy
"Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful." – Govindappa Venkataswamy
“In life the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game; the challenge is to figure out what game you’re playing.” – Kwame Anthony Appiah
"What engages us most deeply enlivens us." – Yvon Chouinard

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