Hidden Potential – Adam Grant

Hidden Potential by Adam Grant
Date read: 8/9/24. Recommendation: 8/10.

This is a great complementary book to Range by David Epstein, that focuses on dispelling the belief that greatness is mostly born. Grant illuminates how we can achieve greater things by focusing on the forces fueling our progress. The book is built around three sections: developing character skills, creating structures to sustain motivation, and building systems to expand opportunity. I love the sections about asking for advice, not feedback, character vs. personality, and the power of writing to clarify your thinking. Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Character:
“Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition—your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.” Adam Grant

“If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.” Adam Grant

The primary character skills that matter most are proactivity, determination, and discipline. 

Discomfort:
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller

Becoming a creature of discomfort requires three kinds of courage: “to abandon your tried-and-true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts.” Adam Grant

Similar to voluntary hardship: “Embrace, seek, and amplify discomfort.” Adam Grant

Writing:
“Writing is more than a vehicle for communicating—it’s a tool for learning. Writing exposes gaps in your knowledge and logic. It pushes you to articulate assumptions and consider counterarguments.” Adam Grant

“Unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking.” Adam Grant

Reading:
Reading improves comprehension and activates analytical processing. Reading is the key to building critical thinking skills. While listening helps promote more intuitive thinking.

Pay attention to what you pay attention to: “If we want our kids to enjoy reading, we need to make books part of their lives. That involves talking about books during meals and car rides, visiting libraries or book stores, giving books as gifts, and letting them see us read. Children pay attention to our attention: where we focus tells them what we prize.” Adam Grant

Growth mindset:
Absorptive capacity: “Absorptive capacity is the ability to recognize, value, assimilate, and apply new information.” It hinges on how well you acquire new information and the goal you’re pursuing when you filter new information—ego or growth?

Seek advice, not feedback:
People suck at giving feedback, it focuses on past performance. Instead, ask for advice, and it shifts people’s mindset to focus on more specific suggestions and constructive input. 

First Break All the Rules – Gallup Press

First, Break All the Rules – by Gallup Press
Recommendation: 7/10. Date read: 10/3/20.

A solid introduction to management and how to better develop your team. I found it particularly useful as someone who is currently trying to build this skill and help others grow in their careers. The book centers on four key elements: 1) When selecting someone for a role, select for talent. Not simply experience, intelligence, or determination. Gallup emphasizes, “As a manager, your job is not to teach people talent. Your job is to help them earn the accolade ‘talented’ by matching their talent to the role.” 2) When setting expectations, define the right outcomes, don’t prescribe the right steps. 3) When motivating someone, focus on their strengths, not their weaknesses. 4) When developing someone, help them find the right fit, not blindly moving them up to the next rung. Basic, but fundamental concepts that are worth digging into.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

The focus of great managers:

• I know what is expected of me

• I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right

• At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day

• In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work

• My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person

• There is someone at work who encourages my development

Select a person, set expectations, motivate the person and develop the person:

• When selecting someone, select for talent (not simply experience, intelligence, or determination).

• When setting expectations, define the right outcomes (not the right steps).

• When motivating someone, focus on strengths (not weaknesses).

• When developing someone, help them find the right fit (not the next rung).

Talent:
“A love of precision is not a skill. Nor is it a knowledge. It is a talent. If you don’t possess it, you will never excel as an accountant. If someone does not have this talent as part of his filter, there is very little a manager can do to inject it.” Alex: talent in product is a love to create/build.

Three kinds of talent: striving = why of a person, thinking = how/decision making, relating = who of person. 

The talent alone isn’t special, you must match it with the right role. For example the relating talent of empathy with nursing. 

“As a manager, your job is not to teach people talent. Your job is to help them earn the accolade ‘talented’ by matching their talent to the role.”

“A broker with lots of desire and focus is not necessarily a better broker than one with lots of achiever and discipline. But she would certainly fit better in the entrepreneurial company, just as the broker blessed with achiever and discipline would be better cast in the more structured company.”

Focus on strengths:
“You succeed by finding ways to capitalize on who you are, not by trying to fix who you aren’t. If you are blunt in one or two important areas, try to find a partner whose peaks match your valleys. Balance by this partner, you are then free to hone your talent to a sharper point.”

Interviewing:
Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior, but only give credit to the person’s top of mind response. If the behavior is consistent, a response will come to mind will a single prompt. If they need two or three probes to describe an example, they likely haven’t faced that scenario with any sort of regular frequency.

A person’s source of satisfaction are clues to his talent. Ask what their greatest personal satisfaction is, what kind of situations give them strength, what they find fulfilling. 

Performance Management:
Foundation = simplicity, frequent interaction, focus on the future, and self-tracking.

High Growth Handbook – Elad Gil

High Growth Handbook – by Elad Gil
Date read: 3/21/20. Recommendation: 9/10.

There are tons of resources out there for starting a company, but this book is a resource for scaling one. Gil focuses on tactical advice for scaling a company from ten employees to thousands. He emphasizes that the advice is meant to be painfully tactical in order to avoid the platitudes from investors who have never run or scaled their own company. This book is most valuable for founders, executives, and employees who are facing hypergrowth and scaling for the first time. Gil covers everything from the role of the CEO and managing the board to recruiting, organizational structure, product management, financing, and valuation. An incredible resource filled with dozens of relevant interviews with leaders who have real experience scaling great teams and products.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Focuses on tactical advice for scaling a company from 10-20 employees to thousands. Tons of resources on starting a company, this is a book that serves as a resource for scaling one. 

Most valuable for founders, CEOs, and employees who are facing hypergrowth and scaling for the first time. 

Skin in the game: “The advice presented here is meant to be painfully tactical and to avoid the platitudes you will get from investors who have never run or scaled a company.” EG

Distribution matters:
It’s a myth that most successful tech companies are product-centric. In fact, most are distribution-centric. Startups with better products get beaten by companies with better distribution channels.

“Since focusing on product is what caused initial success, founders of breakout companies often think product development is their primary competency and asset. In reality, the distribution channel and customer base derived from their first product is now one of the biggest go-forward advantages and differentiators the company has.” EG

Viability:
Tactics to stay viable = product iteration, distribution, mergers and acquisitions, moats (defensibility). 

Moats + Pricing:
“The definition of a moat is the ability to charge more.” Marc Andreessen

“Charging more is a key lever to be able to grow. And the companies that charge more therefore tend to grow faster.” Marc Andreessen

If you charge more you can allocate more to both distribution efforts and R&D.

Higher prices = faster growth. 

Product:
“Give me a great product picker and a great architect, and I’ll give you a great product.” Marc Andreessen

Product picker/manager/originator = people who can actually conceptualize new products. Great architects = people who can actually build it. 

“Great product management organizations help set product vision and road maps, establish goals and strategy, and drive execution on each product throughout its lifecycle.” EG

“Bad product management organizations, in contrast, largely function as project management groups, running schedules and tidying up documents for engineers.” EG

Product managers are responsible for:

1. Product strategy and vision (reflect the voice of the customer)

2. Product prioritization and problem solving

3. Execution (timelines, resources, and removal of obstacles)

4. Communication and coordination

Characteristics of great product managers:

1. Product taste

2. Ability to prioritize

3. Ability to execute

4. Strategic sensibilities (how is the industry landscape evolving?)

5. Top 10% communication skills

6. Metrics and data-driven approach

Interviewing PMs:

1. Product insights

2. Contributions to past successful products

3. Prioritization

4. Communication and team conflicts

5. Metrics and data

Product Management Processes:

1. PRD templates and product roadmaps: Build agreement and clarity on what you are building. What are the requirements for the product itself? Who are you building this for? What use cases does the product meet? What does it solve for and explicitly not solve for? What are the main features and what does the product do? What are the main product dependencies? A PRD may include wireframe that roughly sketch out the product user journey.

2. Product reviews

3. Launch process and calendar

4. Retrospectives

Small, self-sufficient teams:
“There are exceptions, but in most cases, you need original thinking and speed of execution, and it’s really hard to get that in anything other than a small-team format.” Marc Andreessen

Design: Usability, how do we design this? Create the optimal user experience.

Engineering: Feasibility, how can we build this? How can technical road map drive product and vice versa. 

Product: Viability, should we build this? Set product vision and road map to ensure the company builds a product that the user needs. Make trade-offs between design, engineering, and business concerns.

Traits to look for in executives:

1. Functional area expertise: Do they understand the major issues and common failure points for their functions?

2. Ability to build and manage a team in those functional areas: Do they know how to motivate people in their functions?

3. Collegiality: Do they do what’s right for the company even if it’s not in their best interest? Create mutually supportive environment.

4. Strong communication skills: Do they have cross-functional empathy?

5. Owner mentality: Do they take ownership of their functions and make sure they are running smoothly and effectively?

6. Smarts and strategic thinking skills: Do they think strategically and holistically about their functions? Are they first principle thinkers? Can they apply their expertise in knowledge in the context of your company, team, and product? Or do they just try to implement exactly what they did in their last role?

External hires: “The way to retain people who are performing and who you really want to retain is to hire someone that they can learn from.” Keith Rabois

Flagship offices in the era of remote work:
Onboarding at headquarters helps to build initial connections and creates significant long-term value. 

With remote teams, create a great teleconferencing setup and consider the timing of your key meetings.

Who to emulate?
“I think people should select carefully the companies they seek to emulate and learn lessons from.” Patrick Collison

With great software companies in China (JD, Tencent, Alibaba), there’s a lack of entitlement, complacency, and a determination that there’s a void of in Silicon Valley.

Interviewing (to remove unconscious bias):

1. Articulate the relevant qualifications for every role.

2. Designing specific questions to assess for each qualification.

3. Limiting the domains that each interviewer has to assess. Don’t go in and try to decide “Should we hire this person?” What you want to focus on is, “Does this person meet what we need on these two things?” When you’re trying to assess people on five different areas, it’s really hard, and you start to take shortcuts/allow biases to factor in. 

4. Create rubrics to help interviewers evaluate answers to the questions that they’re asking.

Mindset – Carol Dweck

Mindset – by Carol Dweck
Date read: 11/25/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

This is a foundational book that I wish I would have read in college or at the start of my career. Dweck’s lessons in cultivating a growth mindset can be heard in passing on dozens of podcasts and seen referenced in countless other books. But this is the source. As she discusses a fixed vs. growth mindset, the biggest difference is revealed not when things are going well but when coping with failure. In a fixed mindset, failure is any type of setback. In a growth mindset, failure is not growing. A growth mindset is about building resilience and belief in change. Your skills and abilities can be developed. This allows you to embrace and enjoy the process that is learning, rather than seeking immediate gratification or giving up. The earlier you’re able to read this, the better it will help shift your outlook. But there’s something for those at every walk of life—Dweck discusses how these concepts apply in parenting, business, school, and relationships.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Growth Mindset:
“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of a growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” CD

Growth mindset allows you to convert life’s setbacks into future successes.

By cultivating a growth mindset you can begin building perseverance and resilience.

“The growth mindset is based on the belief in change.” CD

Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets:
The biggest difference is revealed not when things are going well but when coping with failure. Fixed mindset immediately goes into a victim mindset, obsessing over externals. Growth mindset focuses on a sense of ownership and identifying variables within your control. 

“Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.” CD

What is Failure?
Fixed mindset: failure = setbacks.
Growth mindset: failure = not growing. 

“I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures…I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners.” Benjamin Barber

With a growth mindset, failure can still be painful. But it doesn’t define you. It’s an opportunity to learn and grow. 

Validation:
In a growth mindset, the rewarding part is the process—the learning and growth as an individual. External recognition (awards, money, etc.) is always nice, but it’s not sought as a validation of self worth. Those with a true growth mindset possess a Stoic indifference to the winds of fortune. 

Students:
Fixed mindset while studying is all about memorization. Growth mindset is about looking for themes and underlying principles. 

Judgment:
A fixed mindset often reveals itself through a judged-and-be-judged framework. A growth mindset is the shift to a learn-and-help-learn framework. The commitment in the latter is to growth which takes time, effort, and mutual support.

Grit – Angela Duckworth

Grit – by Angela Duckworth
Date read: 10/30/18. Recommendation: 8/10.

A detailed look at what sets apart highly successful people. Top performers, as Duckworth suggests, are unusually resilient and hardworking. But they’ve also developed something else–a deep awareness of what they want. Grit is this combination of direction and determination. She discusses the importance of effort, deliberate practice, purpose, and stamina over intensity. The best thing about the book and her writing is that she makes it real. It’s not about a magical experience that leads you to your passion, purpose, or life’s work. Instead, she emphasizes that this comes through a discovery period–often messy, serendipitous, and inefficient–followed by years of refinement, and a lifetime of deepening. It’s not going to happen overnight. You have to figure out what you’re working towards and what you can sustain indefinitely.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Grit = Direction and determination
-Highly successful people are unusually resilient and hardworking, AND know in a deep way what they want.
-Grit corresponds with well-being, no matter how you measure it.

Effort:
-An ability to suffer (effort) proves far more important than talent. It factors in twice.

-Talent x Effort = Skill, Skill x Effort = Achievement

-When you quit showing up, effort plummets to zero, skills stop improving. 

Darwin and Grit:
-“For I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work; and I still think this is an eminently important difference.” Darwin

-Darwin didn’t possess supernatural intelligence or genius. He made slow, meticulous progress through his power of observation and attention to detail. Forced himself to ponder difficult questions and ideas for years, instead of giving up or tabling it for later and forgetting.

Power of small, calculated actions, decisions, habits:
-“The most dazzling of human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary.” -AD

-“Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities…There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.” Dan Chambliss

-“Greatness is doable. Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable.” Dan Chambliss

Prefer mystery to mundanity:
-We want to believe people are prodigies, we don’t want to sit on the pool deck and watch Mark Spitz progress from amateur to expert.

-“No one can see in the work of the artist how it has become.” Nietzsche

Stamina > Intensity:
-“Developing real expertise, figuring out really hard problems, it all takes time–longer than most people imagine.” AD

-“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” AD

-What can you sustain indefinitely? Have to hold the same top-level goal for years. 
*Make sure mid-level goals correspond to unifying top-level goal.

Passion as a compass:
-Think of these ideas as interchangeable with authenticity

-Takes time to get right, constantly adjust, realign, recalibrate. Takes you on wandering journey to where you want to be. The obstacle is the way. 

-“Passion for your work is a little bit discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.” AD

Discovering your interests:
-Not through introspection but interactions with outside world. Can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. 

-Early interests can be fragile, vague, and need years of refinement.

Deliberate Practice:
-Clearly defined stretch goal, full concentration and effort, immediate feedback, repetition with reflection and refinement

-Supremely effortful, working at the far edge of your skills. Only sustainable for an hour at a time.

-Deliberate practice is a behavior, flow is an experience. Don’t always go together.

-Deliberate practice is for preparation, and flow is for performance. 

-Self-awareness without judgment. 

Purpose:
-Higher scores on purpose (importance of living a meaningful life) correlates with higher scores on grit scale.

-But purpose isn’t a magical entity waiting to be discovered, requires years of dedication and exploration.

-AD: Someone who had inkling of her interests in adolescence. Clarity about purpose in twenties. Experience and expertise to find and calibrate with single top-level, life-organizing goal.

Leadership:
-Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase), looks for three things on leadership team: capability, character, and how they treat people.

Writing:
-"Writing is failure. Over and over and over again.” Ta-Nehisi Coates

-Challenge of writing is to see your bad writing and go to bed. Wake up, refine it, make it not so terrible, go to bed. And do this on repeat until you have something decent.

Your Move – Ramit Sethi

Your Move: The Underdog’s Guide to Building Your Business – by Ramit Sethi
Date read: 9/20/18. Recommendation: 8/10.

Ramit Sethi is one of my favorite humans and writers (I Will Teach You to Be Rich is a gem, if you haven’t read it). He’s someone who gets it. Whether it’s finance, or in this case business, he’s always focused on the things that matter and assigning things their proper weight. In Your Move he offers insight into handpicking customers, being more selective about who you target, and why that’s fundamental to success. He emphasizes authenticity and crafting a message that resonates with your target audience’s hopes, dreams, pain points, and fears. It’s a book that should be able to point you in the right direction whether you’re struggling with your initial idea, defining your audience, or putting yourself and your product out there. There’s actionable insight for each.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

A successful business doesn't mean more money. It means more success, peace of mind and time.

Don't give things away for free:
-People value what they pay for
-Huge difference between free reader and paying customer
-Paying customer is far more likely to engage/open/use whatever they've paid for

"Most people reading this will not become millionaires because it involves extremely hard work and insane perseverance." -RS

Invisible risk of doing nothing > risk of starting a business

If you create value, people will be more than happy to pay for it.

Authenticity matters. Listening matters. When you sit down with customers, encourage them to open up by saying "Tell me about that." Or if you're sending emails, ask "What are you struggling with today?"

Make sure you've identified and are talking with your target market.
-If Ramit had talked to people his parent's age when writing his first book, he probably would have heard something about saving for retirement earlier. That message doesn't resonate with someone in their early 20s who wants to know what to do with their money, make it work for them, and buy a round of drinks for their friends.

Be selective and handpick your customers
-Allows you to target wants, needs, hope, fears, desires of that audience with pinpoint accuracy (and create products they want).
-"Students for life" philosophy.
-Regularly encouraging people to unsubscribe from newsletter (those who stick around are highly committed and engaged).

"Your biggest challenge is customer selection. You pick the right customer, you win. You pick the wrong customer, you lose. Focus on helping great people get better." -Marshall Goldsmith

Learn to embrace mistakes, otherwise, you get stuck in analysis paralysis (thinking instead of acting).

"Focus on being decisive and less on trying to make the 'right' decision. You'll never know until you try, and if you're wrong, you can always try again." RS

Beginners focus on the wrong things – worry about minutiae that won't change a thing and ends up exhausting.

Experienced pros have gone through this and know what to pay attention to (and what to ignore).

"Anyone can be 'efficient'–meaning they can do a given task pretty well. But very few can be 'effective,' meaning they select the right things to work on in the first place. Focusing on the right things is a true superpower." RS

Focus on your audience more, your competition less.

"Be different to be better. Don't be different for the sake of being different." RS

When you nail the right audience, price is a mere triviality. People will pay substantial money if you're solving a problem that's important to them AND they believe you can solve it.

Systems mentality: Life is always going to be messy. Successful people don't rely on "motivation or "working harder" to make things happen. They have systems for the big wins and let the inconsequential stuff fall by the wayside.

To sell you need to know four key things about your customers: their hopes, dreams, pain points, and fears.

Get comfortable being uncomfortable. The things that worked from $0 to $100,000 won't always work when you're trying to crack $500,000.

Change the words you use to sell your products and you can drastically increase revenue.
-Focus on the reader and their pains, challenges and frustrations as they relate to your niche.
-Articulate their biggest hopes, dreams, and goals.
-What do they want? What's frustrating? What's going on inside their heads?

Product or service tiers (i.e. intro, intermediate expert) changes the question from if I should buy, to which should I buy?

If you view yourself as their trusted advisor and you have a product that will help them, you should be doing everything in your power to let them know about it.

"Stop and ask yourself: Are your products awesome? Do they really help people? If the answer is 'No,' then you need to make a better product." Graham Cochrane

30% Raise:
-Change the words on your promotional pages (take focus off product, shift towards customers)
-Offer more expensive option (tiered pricing)
-Begin selling sooner and more often