Incite Your Month: June 2021
At CTQ, we kick each month off with a 5 min collection of ideas & recos from the team’s recent curiosity diet. It helps us ‘incite’ the rest of the month. Here’s this month’s edition.
Read the shownotes below
Prefer an audio version of this episode? Listen below.
One article
Culture is a product by Dharmesh Shah
What: Companies put in a lot of effort in defining, designing their product and selling a story and narrative to customers. But they need to think on similar lines for internal audiences. You're selling a product to your employees. You need to be as deliberate and do things like collecting user feedback. Just like a product is never done, you have to keep iterating on culture all the time.
Check it out if: ...you are interested in designing and scaling culture in your organization!
One insightful book
Upstream by Dan Heath
Dan Heath is true to form with this book. Upstream is about why we should not only react but change something to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. He cites a parable at the beginning of the book - two guys are trying to save children from drowning in the river. One of them decides to swim upstream to stop whoever is throwing the children in the water in the first place.
The book talks about why upstream thinking is not commonplace because it's difficult to measure something that did not happen, how upstream thinkers should think to find maximum leverage and what to watch out for!
Check it out if: ...you want to think about how to prevent problems.
One Book Summary
The Science of Living by Dr Stuart Farrimond
A pop science book that collects tips on the best way to conduct one's daily routines, from sleep to mealtimes to mental health. Tips like: breakfast isn't all that important as it's been made out to be, and sleep has 3 important factors: temperature, darkness, and routine.
One takeaway: if you can't sleep, don't lie in bed - your brain will end up associating waking and the bed. instead, get up and return when you are sleepy.
Check it out if:...you like to learn about building smart, simple routines that lead to a better life.
One Smartcast
Models for career growth and better decisions, with Aseem Datar
What: Aseem Datar is GM Microsoft Cloud. He has grown rapidly from an entry-level engineer to holding several important roles at Microsoft in under two decades. He told us how he handled these shifts. Even though these shifts were inside the same company, he encountered three different types of businesses.
One takeaway: When evaluating a shift, look at it from 3 aspects: the people you work with, the domain, and your skills. Try to keep at least two of these constant and change the third. This makes it easier to manage the shift.
Check it out if: ...you are curious about career shifts and decision-making.
One podcast
In Our Time, BBC Radio: ‘Longitude’ episode
By the early 1700s, the oceans had become critical to commerce. Seafarers and astronomers knew how to systematically calculate the latitude of a position, but the longitude still eluded them. In 1714, the the British Government announced a prize via the Longitude Act for anyone who devised a reliable way for ships to determine their longitude at sea. This is a fascinating tale of how innovation can develop, the role of the state, and the use of prizes to spur ideas.
One takeaway: Be careful when designing such prizes. There were several candidate solutions but only later did the government realise that not all of them would be feasible to mass-produce
One Habit Hack
Visual Reminders
One useful hack for habit building is having visual reminders. Like the Seinfeld strategy of putting a cross on a calendar and then you don't want to break the chain. Another example of using this to your advantage in habit building is having a bottle of water in front of you all the time. What are such visual reminders that you use to stay on course with your habits?
Closing with our favourite reflective ‘FutureRing’ question from last month
“What is the one skill you wished you learnt in school ( before grade 12)?"
[We also have a video version of these recommendations here.]