Hello everyone,
I hope we are all well and safe. November is here and 2021 is almost gone!
Highlights of the week!
> the WebSummit in Lisbon. Ohhhh so good to be back in a place with thousands of people! The WS was outstanding. We kicked off with Verve’s Happy Hour on Monday - 100+ people showed up and we drained out 7 kegs!!!!
The event was full on from Tuesday to Thursday and I think the big winner is Crypto - It’s everywhere!
> Started to read Legacy by Jamer Kerr - a #1 Best Seller book about the New Zeland All Black. I love this quote from Bloomberg: “Unputdownable”.
“Leaders design and create an environment, which drives the high performance behaviours needed for succes” - Owen Eastwood
> Tim Ferris Show - the man is out with not just one but two amazing shows hosting Eric Schmidt - former Google CEO - and John Doer - the amazing investor and godfather of OKR’s ( I highly recommend reading his book Measure What Matters ).
Here are the best ones from last week:
Audio & Video
> Tim Ferris Show - John Doerr on Picking Winners (listen on Spotify)
John Doerr (@johndoerr) is an engineer, venture capitalist, the chair of Kleiner Perkins, and the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Measure What Matters. His new book is Speed and Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. John was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon, helping to create more than half a million jobs. A pioneer of Silicon Valley’s cleantech movement, John has invested in zero-emission technologies since 2006. He’s passionate about encouraging leaders to reimagine the future, from transforming healthcare to advancing applications of machine learning.
> Tim Ferris Show - Eric Schmidt on the promise and perils of AI (listen on Spotify)
Eric Schmidt (@ericschmidt) is a technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He joined Google in 2001, helping the company grow from a Silicon Valley startup to a global technological leader. He served as chief executive officer and chairman from 2001 to 2011 and as executive chairman and technical advisor thereafter. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a culture of innovation. In 2017, he co-founded Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative that bets early on exceptional people making the world better.He serves as chair of the Broad Institute and formerly served as chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. He is the host of Reimagine with Eric Schmidt, a podcast exploring how society can build a brighter future after the COVID-19 pandemic. Eric has a new book out titled The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, which he coauthored with Henry A. Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher.
> In Depth - Instacart co-founder Max Mullen (listen on Spotify)
In the first half of our conversation, we dig into company values. Max shares both the process the Instacart team used to come up with unique values like “Every minute counts,” and his advice for making sure values actually guide behavior. He has tons of creative tactics for making employees feel more connected to them, as well as lots of helpful advice on hiring for values early on.
After getting into measuring culture and better surfacing feedback from employees, we end our conversation by chatting about some of the pitfalls when it comes to culture — the mistakes that are easy for founders to make, the factions that can develop between early employees and newcomers, and the onset of politics and bureaucracy as the company gets bigger.
> 60 Minutes - Yuval Noah Harari on the power of data, artificial intelligence and the future of the human race
- Anderson Cooper: You started as a history professor. What do you call yourself now?
- Yuval Noah Harari: I'm still a historian. But I think history is the study of change, not just the study of the past. But it covers the future as well.
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> Harvard Business Review - Plan a Better Meeting with Design Thinking
Nine out of ten people admit to daydreaming in meetings. Seventy-three percent do other work. That’s because most meetings are poorly designed. How do you improve the situation? By applying design thinking principles.
> Andrew Chen - Hiring a Head of Growth
“Network effects emerge when products, like marketplaces, social apps, B2B collaboration tools, and so on, get more useful the more users that are on them.”
> Inc Magazine - 13 Best-Led Company CEOs Reveal Their Pro Tips for Leadership Success
“Culture will shape the behaviors of your team and the quality of the outcomes your company is able to deliver. As you scale, there will be many forces that push you to be less deliberate on this. Resist those forces." - Javier Ferreira
> Harvard Business Review - Make Learning a Part of Your Daily Routine
“In our increasingly “squiggly” careers, where people change roles more frequently and fluidly and develop in different directions, the ability to unlearn, learn, and relearn is vital for long-term success.”
> The First Round Review - The Feedback Founders Need to Hear — How to Grow Yourself To Grow The Company
“Founders need to learn to reflect, get in the habit of reflecting, and turn to reflection — rather than reaction — when bad things happen”
> McKinsey - From the Great Attrition to the Great Adaptation
“If you ask employees what they want, they say, “No, actually I’m OK with you saying I need to be in the office however many days a week, as long as there’s some logic. But I want flexibility to decide which days in which hours I come in.” And, again, this goes back to the conditions we’ve created. Understanding what is important to employees means you can turn it around and create a more desirable environment, not only to keep the ones you have, but also to start attracting other employees from other places, who are also leaving their jobs, in many cases, without another job in hand. In fact, some employees are starting up side gigs as a “passion project.”
Looking forward to another amazing week as I expect to record episode #001 of B4D1 the podcast. Stay tuned and thank you all for coming.
Dan