"So when you’re making a decision as an executive, a CEO, or any leader, this listen, decide, communicate sequence is really important. You once told me that it’s important to do those three things in that order. You listen first, then you decide, then you communicate it, and in close proximity with one another."
"The Pyramid Principle advocates that “ideas in writing should always form a pyramid under a single thought.” The key take-aways from the Pyramid Principle: 1. Start with the answer first. 2. Group and summarize your supporting arguments. 3. Logically order your supporting ideas."
“I think that every single day there are many decisions that people make and they all have consequences. And your life essentially depends on the cumulative quality of the decisions you make.” “You have to be an independent thinker in markets to be successful because the consensus is built into the price. You have to have a view that’s different from the consensus.” “To win at stocks or entrepreneurship, you must bet against the consensus and be right.” — Ray Dalio
"In this model, the company runs on two tracks. Most of the company's operations (say, 80 percent) will run on conventional management principles, with traditional management controls and performance criteria such as ROI and maximizing shareholder value. Another part of the company's activities (say, 20 percent) are "exempted" from these controls and in this time, employees are "free" to explore experiments as they see fit.
"The method is a framework for when you should check in with your product teams. I’ve taken it and adapted it to my own studio. If you want to use this method, you should check in with your product team at these critical points: -During the beginning of the project, when there’s still 99% of the work left to be done -The halfway point, where there’s around 50% of the work left -Just before the finish line, where there’s 1% left to complete"
"Blockchains are politically decentralized (no one controls them) and architecturally decentralized (no infrastructural central point of failure) but they are logically centralized (there is one commonly agreed state and the system behaves like a single computer)" — Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum
"“Their self worth is often based on how good I am relative to others”. In order to feel good about themselves they have to be better than everyone else. Some people even go so far as to consider everyone in their office a competitor."
"In days of old, a castle was protected by the moat that circled it. The wider the moat, the more easily a castle could be defended, as a wide moat made it very difficult for enemies to approach. A narrow moat did not offer much protection and allowed enemies easy access to the castle. To Buffett, the castle is the business and the moat is the competitive advantage the company has. He wants his managers to continually increase the size of the moats around their castles."
"Economies of scale refer to reduced costs per unit that arise from increased total output of a product."
"The biggest trap they fall into is that they judge their performance based on outcomes. “If they win, it’s because they made good decisions. If they lose, it’s because they were unlucky.”"
"Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. "
"Most of us have been guilty of making decisions without thinking about the long term consequences, and the 10/10/10 rule can be used to reflect on the long-term by asking yourself: How will we feel about it 10 minutes from now? How about 10 months from now? How about 10 years from now?"
"What Matters Now cites Apple as an exemplar of a firm where the entire organization is devoted to continuous innovation and finding new ways of delighting customers. The new bottom line of this kind of organization is whether the customer is delighted (e.g. Net Promoter Score)."
"If the vertical axis is caring personally and the horizontal axis is challenging directly, you want your feedback to fall in the upper right-hand quadrant. That’s where radical candor lies."
"In a Team of Teams, decision-making authority is pushed out to each team leader instead of residing only with the very top leadership of an organization. The role of upper leadership changes from one focused on making every decision throughout the organization to a role of providing information and context to each team so that they are all connected to a common purpose and have the best information on which to make their own decisions."
"As Hamel points out, traditional management is uncongenial to innovation. “Most of our management rituals were invented a long time ago to promote discipline, control alignment and predictability—all laudable goals.” But the resulting processes are fundamentally at odds with innovation.”
"A management concept, originally championed by Apple, that good things come if someone is explicitly responsible for something."
"Game theory is the study of how people behave in strategic situations. By “strategy” we mean a situation in which a person, when choosing among alternative courses of action, must consider how others might respond to the action he takes. Strategic thinking is crucial not only in checkers, chess, and tic-tac-toe but in many business decisions. "— Greg Mankiw
"Fire all of the managers and let those doing the work (“colleagues” rather than “employees”) get things done through self-management, thus relieving them from the dead hand of traditional management."
"Here’s one pro-tip that I learned from one of my mentors at McKinsey: The Rule of 3. Whenever you’re trying to persuade a senior person to do something, always present 3 reasons. Not 2, not 4, but exactly 3."
"“The effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. When a network effect is present, the value of a product or service is dependent on the number of others using it.” Nothing scales as well as a software business, and nothing creates a moat for that business more effectively than network effects."
“The reason big new things sneak by incumbents is that the next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.” This is one of the main insights of Clay Christensen’s “disruptive technology” theory. This theory starts with the observation that technologies tend to get better at a faster rate than users’ needs increase. From this simple insight follows all kinds of interesting conclusions about how markets and products change over time.”
"Getting a 100 people to love you is far better than having a million people just sort of like you. 100 customers or users that love you will tell the world about your tiny little company and give you feedback or ideas that help you make the experience much better." “It’s better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy” — Paul Buchheit
"To Steve’s surprise, Warren responded sternly, “No. You’ve got it wrong Steve. Everything you didn’t circle just became your ‘avoid at all cost list’. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”