A Book A Day - Weekly Digest 32

What Color Is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles, Katharine Brooks

💡Key takeaway💡

The bible for job-seekers. I really like the flower exercise, will bring it to coaching 😊

💎 Key ideas💎

Want to get hired? Think like an employer. Prospective employees, employers have the same objective: match the right candidate with the right role. Job-seekers might wait for companies to flag they're hiring, but companies prefer candidates taking the initiative. Easier also if recommended by a trusted person. Hiring, onboarding is expensive so your approach needs to be tailored to the firms needs.

Picture a drawing of a flower with seven petals, each represents a component of your working life. In each, put keywords, statements.

1st petal: people. What social environment do you like? Holland Code: six social workplace contexts: realistic (data-driven), investigative (curiosity, problems), artistic (creativity), social (connections, collaboration), enterprising (influence, persuade), conventional (organized, details). Pick three.

2nd: working conditions (remote, dress code, etc.).

3rd: transferable skills. List achievements = which skills used. Do it 7 times. Pick 5 key skills.

4th: knowledge from past jobs, outside of work, interests. Sort with enthusiasm, expertise as metrics. Narrow down to top 5.

5th: salary. What do you need for your goals? Level of your responsibility you want to reach?

6th: geography. List preferred factors, rank in order of importance. Research places fitting.

7th: purpose. Look at your life philosophy in a few sentences.

A résumé should have your employment, education history, skills, expertise, accomplishments. Include concrete data. Your other résumé is your LinkedIn profile, YouTube, etc. Have a profile on LI, keep it updated, grow your network, find connections in firms you approach. Use other social media sites according to what you want to show (Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube).

As soon as you receive an invitation for an interview, google the key stats for the firm, find people who works there that you can talk to. Tell me about yourself is about skills, core competencies. Frame experience, skills as stories. Be ready to prove the skills advertised for the role. It's like a data, talk, but also listen, ask questions. The firm is also on trial.

Be prepared for a full and frank negotiation process for your salary package. Don't be the first to state a number. Do your research, talk to industry connections, use Glassdoor. Anchor your range by putting it just under their maximum range. Don't close until benefits are discussed.

If you can’t find your dream job, create it! List five things you're good at, five things you'd love to do. Cross-reference the lists. A-B=C. A is skills needed to succeed. B are skills what you already have. C is what needs to be developed. Research A, reach out to entrepreneurs to learn about tips, challenges, etc. Then develop and launch!

#ABookADay #readingbooks #jobsearch

How to Measure Anything by Doug Hubbard

💡Key takeaway💡

There are lots of intangibles that are left in the domain of subjective views in companies. One way or another, most things can be measured for better decisions.

💎 Key ideas💎

Estimating with intelligence. Enrico Fermi (Physics Nobel) challenged his students to estimate the number of piano tuners in Chicago. He encouraged them to split the problem into smaller, manageable questions (Chicago population, frequency of tuning, etc.). By combining approximations they came to a number close to the reality. You can do the same for your business and new ventures.

Making confident predictions. There are plenty of uncertainties in business. A way to express them is to consider them as a range of possible values, a confidence interval (CI). Then you say you have a 90% confidence of 3 to 7 new customers this quarter. By checking after the quarter you can see if you have a good skill in quantifying uncertainty. Most people suffer from over/under-confidence though. To improve, estimate the pros and cons of an estimate's validity. Or treat each bound of the range of an estimate as a separate question. It forces you to reconsider your confidence for each bound.

Using calibration methods. Don't use high, medium, low, that's over-simplifying. For dealing with calculations involving ranges, use Monte Carlo simulations. It generates large numbers of scenarios based on probability ranges of different variables. Buy a new machine for $400,000, you want to break even using it. You make calibrated estimates of ranges for all variables (maintenance, labor, etc.). You run the simulation, see that 14% of scenarios don't break even.

Decomposing problems. Imagine trying to measure a productivity improvement. The estimate might 5-40% improvement for a set of employees. That's too broad. Talk with an engineer, ask: what do you spend most of the time on? How much time saved with this tool? etc. You break down elements of the problem into more measurable bits. Then you recombine them for a better range.

Using Bayesian analysis. If you try to estimate the average height of men in a city, a Bayesian approach gives you a distribution of plausible values, with probabilities. Bayesian analysis starts with a prior belief (expert opinion), then updates the belief as new data becomes available. Decisions get more refined, accurate over time. It also works with risk management, and it helps combat cognitive biases distorting decision making.

Understanding choices and preferences. Surveys are great for gathering data about people's preferences, quantifying subjective assessments. But there is a disconnect between stated preference (what they say) and revealed (what they do). Subjective responses can be correlated to objective measures. The Willingness To Pay is a way to translate subjective values into monetary terms.

#measurement

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

💡Key takeaway💡

The fight against short-termism through playing an infinite game for business. This is also the path to a more just world, where the fruits of labor are shared between all stakeholders.

💎 Key ideas💎

The business world is an Infinite Game. No fixed time frame, no agreed way to keep score. The goal is to stay in the game as long as possible. Profit and revenue are not the only signs of business strength. Leaders should build something not about winning, but rather lasting. If you focus on short-term goals, you get tunnel vision, forget about innovation, creating the best product/service.

Five essential practices making up the infinite mindset.

1) Advance a Just Cause. It looks towards a better future and let your employees know about it. It's inclusive, bold, idealistic, representative of your business benefit. It's resilient.

Do you put shareholders or customers first? Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations) thought it was clearly the customer. Milton Friedman view in the 1970s was that the primary responsibility of a company was to make money which belonged to shareholders. Businesses moved in the short-term profit focus. Cost-cutting, laying off, reducing R&D became good. But a great imbalance has happened. CEOs are much richer, not the rest of the employees.

A strong leader will put the will of their employees before earnings. Apple decided to trat their retail outlet employees the same way as corporate ones. Same package for health care, retirement. Levels of retaining jumped to 90%, then less spent on recruitment, training, loyal and motivated employees.

2) Build Trusting Teams. Have regular meetings where people share concerns. A culture of trust requires that company's values and behavior are aligned with the people, and not for profit.

3) Study your Worthy Rivals. Like Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, asking managers to drive cars by Toyota, or Lexus. Also supporting other car companies to stay afloat in 2008, because it would hurt the industry if they'd disappear.

4) Prepare for Existential Flexibility. A self-prescribed change of course, self-disruption. Like Steve Jobs adoption of graphic interface from Xerox (point and click). Hence the Macintosh.

5) Demonstrate the Courage to Lead. CEOs are often hired from within, and have been COO or CFO. Jobs with finite responsibilities. A CEO is a Chief Visionary Officer, guardian and voice of the company's Just Cause. Your courageous choices will be guided by that.

#infinitemindset

Raising Human Beings by Ross W. Greene

💡Key takeaway💡

Instead of being adversaries, parents can become their children's allies through collaborative-problem solving. It helps your children become good human beings.

💎 Key ideas💎

One of the biggest challenges for parents is power. When children act out, we clamp down, enforce our will because we know best. Often with violence, 80-90% of toddlers in the US are hit by their parents. Tantrums, bad grades, are symptoms of a real issue. Learning to communicate is how you influence without authority. Be on the same team, give up your illusion of control.

Children have expectations thrust upon them by you, and the world. Those are based on our culture, upbringing, experiences. But some children might not be able to socialise as expected, or unable to meet academic demands. This incompatibility shows up at all ages (red-face wail, meltdown, sulking). Read those signs. The job of a parent is to decide on when to step in or not.

When parents jump to conclusions, they often come up with the wrong solutions. Bad grades might not be a lack of motivation. Though parents might want to reason, bribe, threaten with no result. Children often don't lack motivation. There might be other hidden problems (bullying, self-conscious, etc.).

The first step to collaborative problem-solving is learning to listen. Sit with your child to ask them to share concerns. Use nonjudgmental language. Wait for what they have to say. Practice reflective listening: echo back what you're told to show you heard it. Understand situational variability in their problems (when it works, and not). This shows curiosity.

If you listen to your kids, they are more likely to listen to you. Share your concerns honestly. They usually involve the impact of the problem on the child (its future), or people around (relationships). Briefly summarize the problem first, with your concerns. Then question how you, together, can come up with a solution. Work on solving both sides' concerns.

If you want to find solutions, don't wait to be in the middle of it, you will react to them. When calm, sit down, make a list of regular conflicts. List expectations on both sides, and incompatibility. Then assess expectations, prioritize, then collaborate with your kids, one topic at a time. Pick a rested time.

Don’t let your anxiety derail your budding collaboration with your child. It's normal to have anxiety but it can spiral, into reactivity, screaming. Check what's fueling that behaviour. Fear of other people's judgements? Get help from other people outside the conflict. Shared problem solving removes anxiety too.

Humans have the capacity to behave very badly: selfish, impulsive, violent. But also kind, empathetic. Build, create but also destroy. You need to model the positive qualities for your child. Authoritarian tactics don't do that. Collaborative problem solving models all the qualities.

#raisingkids

The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul

💡Key takeaway💡

Extending our mind through usage of our body's external senses, gesture and all the objects around us. Powerful and eminently practical concept.

💎 Key ideas💎

Paper written in 1998 by Andy Clark and David Chalmers (The Extended Mind).

Our bodies store subconscious knowledge, and by tuning into our sensations, we can tap into this intelligence. John Coates noticed that the best traders seem to be the ones who can listen to their guts at the right moment. Our senses are always active and take on a lot of data which is processed subconsciously in our brains. Embodied cognition: Signals are sent to us by our brain to our body to signal something based on subconscious processing. Interoception: detecting changes in our bodies. Beats of their own hearts - detection of that gave hedge to traders. Body scan exercise. Moving our bodies can help us generate new ideas, sharpen our attention and improve memory.

Moving our body brings awareness. Two groups of radiologists: seated physicians and treadmill physicians. First group detects 85% of anomalies, second group detects 99% of them. In the savanna we kept moving and that was linked to our brains acuity about our environment. Acuity of visual system improves when we move forward.

Gesture is our first language and we can use it to explore, form and convey complex motions. Hands precede words: gestural foreshadowing. First language was most likely from the hands. Let yourself gesture next time you talk to someone. Your gestures arrive at an idea before your mind get there. Your hands unburden your brain from its cognitive work, so you can speed up your thinking.

Natural landscapes have a unique power to refresh and open our minds. Jackson Pollock, painter, moved from NY to Long Island. There he created paintings that had never been seen before. Restorative power of nature and trees. Strolling through an arboretum increases our memorization by 20%. Fractals exposure, help us navigate and judge distance. Awe opens the mind (big mountain, canyon, etc.), drops our tendency to go with pre-conceived notions.

The ideal built environment for sustained and challenging thought offers us refuge and empowerment. Pollock had a very specific set-up for his barn, sense of privacy and ownership. Study that exposes people to four types of office space. The one which gave the most freedom to decorate and arrange as the pleased has the highest level of productivity. A sense of privacy empowers workers which encourages creativity: so open space is really not great. Human mind finds it difficult to ignore a face that enters our field of vision, this keeps our brain very busy: again not great with open offices.

When struggling with abstract concepts, transform ideas into objects. Robert Caro, journalist, biography of Lyndon B Johnson, 3500 pages long so far. How top keep track about all of the elements?. Pins notes to a corkboard that spans an entire wall, re-pins new trajectories and steps back, until this becomes a map. Then he starts to write. Offloading: transferring information from brain into environment. Detachment gain: stepping away from our own thoughts. Interactivity: turning ideas into objects, can think with his brain, eyes and hands.

Social interaction is a powerful driver of human intelligence. Carl Wieman and teaching difficulties. Excellent physicist, noble price. PhD students were different in behavior compared to under-grads. PhD spent a lot of time debating and discussing together, which generated new angles and approaches. Changed his teaching technique with putting problems in small groups, then exchange and debate: active learning. We are deeply social creatures so it is not that surprising.

#extend #expand #mind