From Stanford E-Corner.
Highlights: How he validated the idea for Quicken, People Management, Need for having a Coach
Highlights: How he validated the idea for Quicken, People Management, Need for having a Coach
Showing posts with label People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label People. Show all posts
Friday, November 13, 2015
Saturday, May 18, 2013
"I Like/I Wish/I Wonder Meetings" - Way for Startups to Train Away Authority Bias?
In a fascinating recent lecture at the LSE, Swiss writer and entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli (author of The Art of Thinking Clearly), talks about the various common "thinking errors" that we committ. Here are a couple of them:
Sunk Cost Fallacy
If by mistake - in the same week - you have paid a non-refundable prices to vacation in two different cities, Paris (which is your favorite city where you are sure to enjoy yourself the most) and Rome.If you have paid $4,000 for the Rome trip and $1,000 for the Paris trip, where will you go?
Answer: Go to Paris!
"If it's non-recoverable then it should not have any bearing on our decision. It is irrational," Dobelly says. In a business context, this error causes good money to be thrown after bad. Eg: the Concorde aircraft was kept alive well even after it became clear it wasn't going to make money just because too many millions had been spent in developing it.
But avoiding this error might not be too easy in familial settings as the author himself relates: "The weather and setting at our Swiss home was beautiful and I thought I would like to just watch the sunset and relax. But my wife has bought expensive movie tickets and said we should go. I told her: "Honey, that is a thinking error". She 'loves' it when I say that."
Authority Bias
People tend to over value/follow blindly/not challenge someone who is seen as an authority. "Whenever we are in presence of an authority figure, we stop thinking clearly." This can be dangerous for example, if a junior co-pilot, who even when he notices the Captain make a mistake, does not point it out. In 1977, 600 people died when two 747s crashed in to each other owing to such an error. As a result of this, the airline industry has "trained away" authority bias by insisting that, as part of each pre-flight briefing, the Captain will say to the co-pilot, "I'm not the Pope; I'm not infallible; I will make mistakes. If you see me make a mistake, please speak up." (Download the full podcast from here)
While the founders of the news aggregation software Pulse (that was acquired recently by LinkedIn) were not specifically referring to the dangers of authority bias, their practice of asking their employees to speak up about any concerns in their Friday all hand meetings - titled "Ask Absolutely Anything of Akshay and Ankit (AAAAA)" - seemed like a good way for startups to achieve this. "It's better to have small quakes (than a big blowup)," they put it in their Stanford e-corner interaction. The employees can bring anything in the forum as long it starts with "I Like" or "I Wish" or "I Wonder". (Download the full podcast here).
Sunk Cost Fallacy
If by mistake - in the same week - you have paid a non-refundable prices to vacation in two different cities, Paris (which is your favorite city where you are sure to enjoy yourself the most) and Rome.If you have paid $4,000 for the Rome trip and $1,000 for the Paris trip, where will you go?
Answer: Go to Paris!
"If it's non-recoverable then it should not have any bearing on our decision. It is irrational," Dobelly says. In a business context, this error causes good money to be thrown after bad. Eg: the Concorde aircraft was kept alive well even after it became clear it wasn't going to make money just because too many millions had been spent in developing it.
But avoiding this error might not be too easy in familial settings as the author himself relates: "The weather and setting at our Swiss home was beautiful and I thought I would like to just watch the sunset and relax. But my wife has bought expensive movie tickets and said we should go. I told her: "Honey, that is a thinking error". She 'loves' it when I say that."
Authority Bias
People tend to over value/follow blindly/not challenge someone who is seen as an authority. "Whenever we are in presence of an authority figure, we stop thinking clearly." This can be dangerous for example, if a junior co-pilot, who even when he notices the Captain make a mistake, does not point it out. In 1977, 600 people died when two 747s crashed in to each other owing to such an error. As a result of this, the airline industry has "trained away" authority bias by insisting that, as part of each pre-flight briefing, the Captain will say to the co-pilot, "I'm not the Pope; I'm not infallible; I will make mistakes. If you see me make a mistake, please speak up." (Download the full podcast from here)
While the founders of the news aggregation software Pulse (that was acquired recently by LinkedIn) were not specifically referring to the dangers of authority bias, their practice of asking their employees to speak up about any concerns in their Friday all hand meetings - titled "Ask Absolutely Anything of Akshay and Ankit (AAAAA)" - seemed like a good way for startups to achieve this. "It's better to have small quakes (than a big blowup)," they put it in their Stanford e-corner interaction. The employees can bring anything in the forum as long it starts with "I Like" or "I Wish" or "I Wonder". (Download the full podcast here).
Saturday, September 15, 2012
"It's all About the People" - The Truism that Stays True
From a Mixergy podcast interview with Dr.Rajiv Kumar of US-based corporate wellness service ShapeUp. (Emphasis mine)
What’s the one takeaway that you have? One thing that you say, hey you know, I am better because I have this one understanding after having built this business.
Rajiv: Yeah, I think it would probably sound very obvious and maybe somewhat cliché, but at the end of the day, every single thing that a business does, successes and failures, are all about people, and can’t underestimate that. I think we know it, but we forget it sometimes. But it is the people that makes everything happen or makes thing not happen. There’s a huge opportunity cost to having a wrong person in a position, and you don’t realize that opportunity cost until that person leaves, and because either there’s a void and you realize that this person was actually dragging the company down, or someone who comes in that’s much better and you realize how much more quickly you’re accelerating. And when you have that right person in place, magical things start to happen and it really has an amazing effect on the company.
And so, at the end of the day it’s all about the people and you can’t invest enough in people and culture. I think in early parts of start-up companies, often you just focus on the product or the vision or whatever it is. You don’t focus as much on people and culture. But it’s true. It’s not just smoke and mirrors or just something that people are paying lip service to. It is all about people and we need to optimize our companies around investing in people and finding the right people and keeping the people that we have happy and motivated.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
"Startups, by definition, should disrupt" - Ashok Soota of Happiest Minds
At a time when IT Services is hardly the flavour of the season among Venture Capital firms, that Happiest Minds was able to attract brand name investors within a months of its founding is testament to the credibility and experience of its primary founder & Chairman, Ashok Soota. This "seasoned manager" feel is also something that comes across right through this interaction. - The Venture Intelligence Team
Interview by Sanjay Anandaram, Founder of Jumpstartup, followed by interaction with students and other entrepreneurs at IIT-Madras on January 5, 2012. Event Co-Hosted by C-Tides, the entrepreneurship cell at IIT-Madras. More photos from the event.
Highlights (click on the links for individual audio snippets):
As a Late Stage Entrepreneur, you need to plan on a larger scale since you don't have the luxury of time
Attracting and Inspiring People: Having a Mission & Higher Purpose
- "Have a (company) name that you have to live up to"
A startup should, by definition be disruptive
- How Happiest Minds is taking on the incumbents by leveraging the emergence of cloud technologies, mobility and social media
Winning the first customers
Decision Making should be through "Head, Heart and Gut"
Don't take "bet the company" type risks
Services and Products are Different
- They Operate to Different Rhythms, Different Risks & Rewards
Click Here to Download the full length audio - 1 hr 33 mins; 43 MB
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