The 32nd Edition - On Picasso's Bull, the CEO Test & effective teams
The 32nd Edition - On Picasso's Bull, the CEO Test & effective teams
How many Gen-Z's are excited about crypto?
Did you know that only 30% of Gen Z’s are excited about cryptocurrency and their investments in it? Their main reason for not liking crypto is volatility. BTC’s annualised volatility is >5X of the Tesla stock, for instance. (source)
Read: What Makes an Effective Team
I noticed that you don’t often click these articles that I share.
I also don’t want to bother you with questioning. You might not even recall last edition.
This time, I’ll try a more skimmable piece. It’s still good.
It’s written by Peter Diamandis (the executive chairman of Singularity University), on the findings from Google on what makes an effective team.
It’ll take you less than 1 minute to skim. Check it out.
Watch: Wisdom From a Hedge Fund Manager
This is an awesome long-form interview of Stanley Druckenmiller (a legendary American investor, hedge fund manager from the 80’s and 90’s) by John Collison (co-founder of Stripe).
I specifically liked how he talks about work ethic (2+ mins).
Often, people say that they are lazy, and then you see them spend hours on a particular activity that requires mental effort. Something doesn’t stack up. Stanley explains it well:
Remember
Best thing about metrics is "Retiring dumb stuff".
Mike Gordon, VP of Engineering at Hippo (source)
Whenever I get discouraged and want to quit something, I remember the words of my then 3 year-old after she puked carrots all over the living room floor: "I'm gonna need more carrots."
Jessica Valenti, author (source)
Consider
The 70/20/10 Model of Learning:
10% of learning from formal sessions
20% from shadowing mentors & practitioners
70% from actually doing the work (source)
The CEO Test: A different cut of the pre-mortem technique. You take your argument, and imagine sharing it with the CEO. Maybe it’s an ugly trade-off you’re having to make, a suboptimal choice. How does that argument sound to you? What would the CEO say? If you can imagine what they’ll say or ask, it helps to first look into those things upfront. (source)
Picasso’s Bull: In design, we are taught to start with paper sketches and work our way up in fidelity as we understand more. Picasso on the other hand started with a high-fidelity picture of a bull, and worked it down to its bare essence in a sketch. (source)
I’ll write more on the currently polar views that seem to divide many people in product development. After all, it’s the same old bottom-up vs. top-down argument, but the devil is in the details, as always.
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Have a great week ahead & see you next week.