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The Subtle Influence of No-Oriented Questions

The Subtle Influence of No-Oriented Questions

Do you know the feeling when someone is not-so-subtly driving you towards a "yes"? Then you also know how it feels like you are being lead into a trap, like you are about to accidentally commit to something. When my kids ask me for something, my mind almost
24 Sep 2024 2 min read
Managing Meetings Better
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Managing Meetings Better

We have all felt the meme-ified sentence "this meeting could have been an email". We all sit in a bunch of meetings every day and all know the feeling of only being able to get concentrated work done after 6.00 PM. I think there are some really
09 May 2024 3 min read
Why Problem Solvers Beat Problem Talkers
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Why Problem Solvers Beat Problem Talkers

One type of person approaches a problem with a "How can I make this work?" mindset. Another type of person enters the same situation with a position of "What are all the reasons this wouldn't work?". The first person will need to solve the
20 Mar 2024 1 min read
Balancing Extreme Ownership with Decentralized Command
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Balancing Extreme Ownership with Decentralized Command

I've written before on accountability being part of the underlying philosophy accompanying everything I do. This extreme ownership means that I take 100% responsibility for my team's plans, our operation and our execution. Also for the success but especially the failure of those missions. Extreme ownership
15 Jan 2024 3 min read
The dichotomy of the Tyranny of the OR
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The dichotomy of the Tyranny of the OR

The "Tyranny of the OR" refers to the belief that we must choose between competing beliefs as if they are mutually exclusive. In other words: It postulates a fallacy that something must be A or B, but never both. A failure to embrace paradox. When we buy into
30 Nov 2023 2 min read
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so
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There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

The title of this article is out of Shakespeare's Hamlet and perfectly encapsulates the core Stoic belief that the quality and our happiness in life is determined to a very high degree by our value judgements. Situations are most often out of our control . But the way we
04 Sep 2023 3 min read
Tilt the odds in your favor before entering the fray
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Tilt the odds in your favor before entering the fray

I've written previously on the utility of fast decision-making. This should not be confused with running into situations as a headless chicken without a plan. It was Sun Tzu who said that "the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won". Good preperation
14 Jul 2023 2 min read
The Paradox of Joy: Stoicism and Gratitude & Perspective
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The Paradox of Joy: Stoicism and Gratitude & Perspective

A compliment I receive surprisingly often when receiving feedback is that I am a stoic person. For most people this refers to being mentally resilient, enduring adversity without complaining and generally having a tight upper lip. But there is a different between stoicism with a lowercase "s" and
22 May 2023 4 min read
The case for fast decisions
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The case for fast decisions

We as humans are confronted with decisions all day, every day. Most of them are really inconsequential ("what pizza place should I order from?"), while others can can affect the trajectory of your entire life ("should I really take that job offer?"). We're not
25 Apr 2023 7 min read
Fostering an obligation to dissent
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Fostering an obligation to dissent

I only had a brief stint in consulting after graduating college, but I use many of the mental models and mindsets from that time to this day. One that has really stuck with me is engraining cultural mindset of an obligation to dissent into the team. That's just
23 Apr 2023 2 min read
Unsupervised search metrics to truly understand your users
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Unsupervised search metrics to truly understand your users

The metrics I talked about in my previous post are rooted in information retrieval and all require human supervision. We need a labelled dataset and a human to compare the data against each other. Alternatively (or better: additionally) we can go to ours users directly and treat the behavior of
20 Mar 2023 3 min read
Rocking the Boat: Scrum Masters as Change Agents, Not Peacekeepers
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Rocking the Boat: Scrum Masters as Change Agents, Not Peacekeepers

I once worked with a really good Scrum Master who made my views on the importance of the role do a 180. They can do a lot more then share their screen during the daily, schedule the scrum ceremonies or remind the team to stay in a meeting's
17 Mar 2023 2 min read
Become data informed, not data driven
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Become data informed, not data driven

There are few phrases that get thrown around as much as the necessity to become data driven. It stems from the desire of building organizations and products more objectively. That's a good thing. Data moves us away from making products on the back of intuition and feeling, but
20 Feb 2023 2 min read
Taking more effective notes
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Taking more effective notes

I used to take absolutely horrendous notes. And most people I encounter have similar underlying issues in regards to note taking. It’s something I noticed occasionally when working in-person, and something I have heavily noticed since the assimilation of remote work, as documents and notes are much more regularly
02 Nov 2022 4 min read
Metrics that matter for measuring search performance
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Metrics that matter for measuring search performance

Pivoting from being an SEO to being a product manager responsible for building a search engine made me really appreciate just how unassailably good Google is in its quality and sophistication. And yet, when building a search engine you will inevitably be benchmarked against Google, maybe internally but especially by
01 Nov 2022 7 min read
Knowing when to show grit and when to quit
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Knowing when to show grit and when to quit

Grit is viewed as a great virtue everyone should seek, while quitting is the mark of defeat and failure. Perserverance and fighting against the odds captures imagination and has a hero-like connotation to it. Historically quitting and cowardness has always been a heinous attribute. Andrew Jackson was once called a
29 Oct 2022 6 min read
Pareto Principle: Doing less on more projects increases your overall contribution
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Pareto Principle: Doing less on more projects increases your overall contribution

One of the most eye opening concepts I’ve encountered during my life is the Pareto Principle, also often referred to as the 80-20 rule. This mental model states that 80% of results are created through 20% of inputs. It is named after the italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who demonstrated
19 Oct 2022 5 min read
The Rule of 3 -  packaging arguments into triads
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The Rule of 3 - packaging arguments into triads

There’s a Latin phrase that states “omne trium perfectum”, which roughly translates to “everything that comes in threes is perfect”. Linguists will immediately think of the literary device of hendiatris. If you pay close attention you will notice how packages of three seem to appear all throughout life: * Literature:
09 Oct 2022 3 min read
Owning Your Truth With Core Principles
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Owning Your Truth With Core Principles

Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the bedrock of our behavior—deeply held convictions that guide our actions and decisions. They are heuristics that can be applied again and again, becoming a compass and offering a tool set for dealing with different situations. We are confronted with an avalanche
02 Oct 2022 5 min read
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