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Christopher P. Brown edited this page Jan 25, 2022 · 5 revisions

greatness

A nebulous concept. How to be great.

Cooking ramen

How to be the greatest ramen chef.

Good to Great

Framework

There are three disciplines:

  1. Disciplined people

  2. Disciplined thought

  3. Disciplined actions

The transition from good results to great results is represented by two stages:

  1. Build-up

  2. Breakthrough

And there are six aspects of a great company

  1. Level 5 Leadership

  2. First Who Then What

  3. Confont the Brutal facts

  4. Hedgehog

  5. Culture of Discipline

  6. Technology Accelerators

And they all fit together in this way:

| **Stage**      | Build-up           | Build-up            | Build-up       | Breakthrough | Breakthrough          | Breakthrough      |
| **Aspect**     | Level 5 Leadership | First Who Then What | Confront Facts | Hedgehog     | Culture of Discipline | Tech Accelerators |
| **Discipline** | People             | People              | Thought        | Thought      | Actions               | Actions           |

Details

  1. Level 5 Leadership

    Level 1 is a functional individual. Level 2 is a functional team member. Level 3 is a functional manager. Level 4 is a functional leader. Level 5 is a magician. They are humble and driven. Plowhorse, not a work horse. Window/mirror: they lookout outward to credit success and inward to take responsibility for failure.

  2. First Who Then What

    • Get the right people on the bus. and the wrong people off it.
    • Be rigorous, not ruthless.
      1. When in doubt, don't hire—keep looking. (Corollary: A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.)
      2. When you know you need to make a people change, act. (Corollary: First be sure you don't simply have someone in the wrong seat.)
      3. Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. (Corollary: If you sell off your problems, don't sell off your best people.)
    • Compensation does not motivate or encourage behaviours. There's no such thing as compensation like that. It is instead an attraction and a retention tool.

  3. Confront the Brutal Facts, Yet Never Lose Faith

    • Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

  4. Hedgehog concept

    • Three circles:
      1. What are you passionate about?
      2. What can you be the best in the world at?
      3. What is your economic driver?
    • You can be a content hedgehog or a process hedgehog.

  5. Culture of Discipline

  6. Technology Accelerators

  7. Flywheel and the Doom Loop

    • accumulated results through sustained effort, which drives build-up and then breakthrough, and which encircles parts 1 - 6.
    • the anti-flywheel is the doom loop
    • there is no single push or unique effort that drives the flywheel. it is the accumulation of effort.

Essentialism

  • Essence

    • Choose - choices can be taken away, but never the ability to choose
    • Discern - "You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything" -John Maxwell
    • Trade-off - Southwest airlines. The most profitable company from 1972 - 2002 because of ruthless trade-offs

  • Explore

    • Escape - make yourself unavailable. Gates' Reading Week
    • Look - journaling and journalism
    • Play
    • Sleep
    • Select

  • Eliminate

    • Clarify
    • Un-commit
    • Edit
    • Limit

  • Execute

    • Buffer
    • Subtract
    • Progress
    • Flow
    • Focus
    • Be

Quotes

  • "Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them." - Andy Grove as quoted in Measure What Matters, end of chapter 3

Great Programmers

According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris

  1. Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it.

  2. Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.

  3. Hubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about.

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