I procrastinated in publishing this set for months. There is something in the resistance in sitting down for this, something that goes beyond the process of putting these words on the screen. I'm glad that this managed to come out, and I can be candid about this resistance to you, reader.
1 | Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone
Feedback is one of the most common conversations we have at work, and yet we don’t learn how to get better at both giving and receiving it
…feedback comes in three forms: appreciation (thanks), coaching (here’s a better way to do it), and evaluation (here’s where you stand).
This book comes with plenty of tactical advice in giving and receiving feedback.
Receiving feedback sits at the intersection of these two needs—our drive to learn and our longing for acceptance. These needs run deep, and the tension between them is not going away.
Much of giving feedback is also relationship management, and seeing the hidden needs of the feedback.
2 | slide:ology: The Art and Science of Presentation Design by Nancy Duarte
I started this book in preparation for a workshop that I needed to facilitate in slide design. Through its pages, a whole world of design considerations opened.
Expressing these invisible ideas visually, so that they feel tangible and can be acted upon, is a bit of an art form. The best place to start is not with the computer. A pencil and a sheet of paper will do nicely.
In a world of AI-generated content, human-crafted work is at a premium. Don’t forget the effectiveness of drafting ideas on a piece of paper.
Every decision a designer makes is intentional. Reason and logic underpin the placement of visual elements. Meaning underscores the order and hierarchy of ideas.
It is easy to let go of the joystick and let automated systems take the wheel. With the availability of many systems like that, here is a reminder to exercise mindfulness in the things we craft
3 | Exclusive Analysis of ‘How Do You Use ChatGPT?’ With Logan Kilpatrick
what we did is we just made a really rough thing. We played through the rough thing. We made some notes and now we're modifying it and we're just iterating that way, rather than trying to make something really perfect from the beginning, we just got something done. We made some notes and now we're doing it again, which is how this stuff works. So here we are, we're playing the Allocator.
The podcast participants created a game from scratch, and used ChatGPT to run through an iterative process
Part of learning how ChatGPT works is learning new ways in which you can interact with the chatbot, and this interview contains multiple techniques that seamlessly flow into one another.
One example that I love was writing out notes while experiencing a game created by ChatGPT, then uploading those notes into ChatGPT as a quick way for prompting the chatbot into iterating on its work. The powerful thing is the notes were not specifically crafted to be a prompt, hence relying on the medium-warping capabilities of ChatGPT.
4 | The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy by Dan Shipper
With how common AI tools are to the laypeople, a more important skill is learning how to delegate the task we have to suitable tools. Within that skill of delegation is figuring out how and what to communicate, so that our new helper has enough context to do the work.
We’ll go from makers to managers, from doing the work to learning how to allocate resources—choosing which work to be done, deciding whether work is good enough, and editing it when it’s not.
The skill in prompt engineering becomes understanding to which level of detail does the AI tool need (and is receptive to) in order to do the job for us.
Good managers know when to get into the details, and when to let their reports take the ball and run. They know which questions to ask, when to check in, and when to let things be.
5 | The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life by Steven Bartlett
Steven Bartlett publishes a book that many YouTubers I follow started raving about in late 2023. That made a high-priority pick-up.
Every achievement and creation in your life can be attributed to what’s in those 5 buckets.
The sum of these five buckets is the sum of your professional potential. The fullness of these buckets will determine how big, believable and achievable your dreams are to you, and to those that hear them.
Bartlett also gives a reminder that no matter what happens (flood, drought, horde of angry carnivorous ducks), nothing can take away your knowledge and your skills. Invest in them.
There are only two buckets that any such professional earthquake can never empty-it can take away your network, it can take your resources, it can even impact your reputation, but it can never remove your knowledge and it can never unlearn your skills.
The main point I took away was to aim for my personal brand of absurdity - that is what differentiates your great execution from the rest.
your public story will be defined not by all the useful practical things that you do–in many cases, not even by the products that you sell–but by the useless absurdity that your brand is associated with.
How to attain perfect execution?
- Make sure the goal is worth going for
- Reduce the barriers in going for the goal
discipline = the value of the goal + the reward of the pursuit–the cost of the pursuit.
6 | Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
Working Backwards provides a toolkit for leaders to provide quality products and services, as Amazon has done with their multiple successes.
People often ask, “How do you remember all 14 principles?” The answer is not that we are particularly good at memorization. In fact, if a company’s principles must be memorized, it’s a warning sign that they aren’t sufficiently woven into the fabric of that company. We know and remember Amazon’s principles because they are the basic framework used for making decisions and taking action.
Among of the ideas in the book is the requirement for presenters to instead write their ideas instead of skimming over them in a Powerpoint slide deck.
The act of writing will force the writer to think and synthesize more deeply than they would in the act of crafting a PP deck; the idea on paper will be better thought out, especially after the author’s entire team has reviewed it and offered feedback. It’s a daunting task to get all the relevant facts and all one’s salient arguments into a coherent, understandable document—and it should be.
Strong six-pagers don’t just make their case, they anticipate counterarguments, points of contention, or statements that might be easily misinterpreted. Adding the FAQ to address these saves time and gives the reader a useful focal point for checking the thoroughness of the authors’ thinking.
There are many tactics that can be learnt from in Working Backwards, but most important is how Amazon treats failure despite following their Leadership Principles.
Sometimes things don’t work despite all the processes you have put into it. How do we treat the one who was leading the team in that failure?
They understand that when you innovate and build new things, you will frequently fail. If you fire the person, you lose the benefit of the learning that came along with that experience.