The Song of Significance – Seth Godin

The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams by Seth Godin
Date read: 5/23/24. Recommendation: 8/10.

Our work matters. And the old way of working built upon mechanizing people, redundant tasks, “management,” and compliance, are no longer serving us. As Godin discusses, we’re all faced with a choice in how we approach leadership and our work: do we want to lead, create work that matters, and build alongside people who care? This is the song of significance. It’s up to us to create the conditions for both ourselves and others to pursue meaningful work through trust, agency, and dignity. Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

The choice is ours:
Decision we are all faced with: “To lead, to create work that matters, and to find the magic that happens when we are lucky enough to cocreate with people who care.” Seth Godin

Best job factors:
In a survey of 10,000 people describing the conditions of the best job they ever had, the top four characteristics were: 1) I surprised myself with what I could accomplish, 2) I could work independently, 3) The team built something important, 4) People treated me with respect.

People want agency and dignity.

Song of significance:
Work that matters, creating a difference, being part of something, and doing work we’re proud of.

“This is what motivates people to do the work that can’t be automated, mechanized, or outsourced.” Seth Godin

“Work is the expression of our energy and our dreams.” Seth Godin

“Bigger isn’t the goal, better is.” Seth Godin

The most valuable skills:
“What companies need has shifted, and suddenly. Instead of cheap labor to do the semiautomated tasks that machines can’t do (yet), organizations now seek two apparently scarce resources: creativity and humanity. Both skills involve dealing with other humans, creating strategies, and finding insights in a fast-moving world.” Seth Godin

“The planet does not need more successful people, but it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind.” David Orr

Management vs. leadership:
“We shouldn’t be doing management to our employees. If we’re good, though, we might be able to do it with them.” Seth Godin

“You tell me where you’re going and what you need. You make promises about your commitment and skills development. I’ll show up to illuminate, question, answer, spar with, and challenge you. I’ll work tirelessly to make sure you’re part of a team of people who are ready to care as much as you do.” Seth Godin

“Management runs a race to the bottom; leadership offers a chance to run for the top.” Seth Godin

Create conditions for other people to do work that matters: “Leadership is the art of creating something significant.” Seth Godin

“If you want to lead, you’ll need to be trusted. One way to do that is to make promises openly and consistently—and then keep them.” Seth Godin

Conforming:
Racking up meaningless points: “Work and school and our leisure time are becoming an endless hamster wheel, with small treats doled out for behaviors that feed corporations, not our souls.” Seth Godin

“How many followers do you have online? How much can you fit in? Here’s today’s dot, go stand on it.” Seth Godin

Disrupt yourself:
“What got us here isn’t going to get us there.” Seth Godin

Microsoft, under Steve Ballmer, chose convenience over significance and nearly rendered themselves obsolete. 

“The people you hire to follow instructions are rarely the people who will help you build something of innovation and substance.” Seth Godin

“Great work creates more value than compliant work.” Seth Godin

“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” Kathrin Jansen

Our job is to dance with fear: “And dancing with fear requires significance, tension, and the belief that we’re doing something that matters.” Seth Godin

“Change is the essence of work. Industrialism fears change; significant organizations cause it.” Seth Godin

“We don’t apologize for change because change is the point.” Seth Godin

Tension:
“Without tension, we wait. Without a deadline, we meander. Without urgency, it’s easier to stall.” Seth Godin

“Tension is not something to avoid. You can’t walk outside on a sunny day without casting a shadow, and you cannot create significant without encountering tension.” Seth Godin

“Significance is inconvenient.” Seth Godin

“You don’t need more time. You simply need to decide.” Seth Godin

Trust:
Joni Mitchell worked with Jaco Pastorius and Herbie Hancock on her breakthrough album, Mingus. Herbie asked Jaco if they were supposed to play the music as it was written. “She wants you to paint. That’s something you can do, Herbie. Paint.”

“Jaco and Herbie brought genius to that record. And Joni brought the guys to provide large blanks for them to paint.” Seth Godin

“Culture that is based on goodwill and connection is more resilient, faster moving, and more productive than one that is based on mystery, selfishness, and power. Don’t hoard. Don’t hoard information, interoperability, access, or love.” Seth Godin

Radical Candor – Kim Scott

Radical Candor – Kim Scott
Recommendation: 8/10. Date read: 8/12/21.

I’m late to the game when it comes to this book. Radical Candor has long been cemented in the business world and catches quite a bit of flack as a buzzword. But criticism, as Nassim Taleb suggests, is a far better indicator that a book is worth reading than silence. Scott’s core concept is that radical candor is the combination of caring personally and challenging directly. The best managers align themselves to this while avoiding ruinous empathy, manipulative insincerity, and obnoxious aggression. This is one of the best all-around resources for managers that I’ve read with insightful sections on responsibilities, how to run meetings, and growth management.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Empathy and the golden mean:
“Healthy emotional empathy makes for a more caring world. It can nurture social connection, concern, and insight. But unregulated emotional empathy can be the source of distress and burnout; it can also lead to withdrawal and moral apathy.” John Halifax

Responsibilities as a manager:
1) Create a culture of guidance (praise and criticism) that will keep everyone moving in the right direction.

2) Understand what motivates each person on your team well enough to avoid burnout or boredom and keep the team cohesive.

3) Drive results collaboratively.

Radical candor:
Radical candor = care personally + challenge directly

“Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. You have to accept that sometimes people on your team will be mad at you.” KS

Growth management:
Steep growth trajectory: change agent, ambitious at work, want new opportunities, superstar

Gradual growth trajectory: force for stability, ambitious outside of work, happy in current role, rock star

You need both types on your team. Rockstars are better for roles that require steadiness and accumulated knowledge. Superstar might not have the focus or patience for the same type of project. Best way to keep superstars happy is challenge them and make sure they’re constantly learning. People often shift between growth trajectories at different phases of their life/careers.

“To be successful at growth management, you need to find out what motivates each person on your team. You also need to learn what each person’s longe term ambitions are, and understand how their current circumstances fit into motivations and their life goals.” KS

Don’t over-promote as the only way to reward your best people: “In World War II, the U.S. Air Force took their very best pilots from the front lines and sent them to train new pilots. Over time this strategy dramatically improved the quality and effectiveness of the U.S. Air Force. The Germans lost their air superiority because they flew all their aces until they were shot down; none of them trained new recruits. By 1944 new German pilots had clocked only about half of the three hundred hours an Allied pilot would have flown in training.” KS

Refinement:
“It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.” Georgia O’Keeffe

“The essence of making an idea clear requires a deep understanding not only of the idea but also of the person to whom one is explaining the idea.” KS

You are the exception to the “criticize in private” rule of thumb:
Determine who on your team is comfortable criticizing you and ask them to do it in front of others at staff or all hands meetings. Will demonstrate you want the feedback. “The bigger the team, the more leverage you get out of reacting well to criticism in public.” KS

“Remind yourself going in that no matter how unfair the criticism, your first job is to listen with the intent to understand, not to defend yourself.” KS

Hiring:
“If you’re not dying to hire somebody, don’t make an offer. And, even if you are dying to hire somebody, allow yourself to be overruled by the other interviewers who feel strongly the person should not be hired. In general, a bias towards no is useful when hiring.” KS

Staff meetings:
-Learn: review key metrics (20 minutes)
-Listen: put updates in a shared document (15 minutes)
-Clarify: identify key decisions and debates (30 minutes)

The Coaching Habit – Michael Bungay Stanier

The Coaching Habit – by Michael Bungay Stanier
Recommendation: 7/10. Date read: 1/30/21.

This is a quick read focused on coaching others to unlock their potential. Stanier details seven core questions that are critical to successful coaching and guides readers through best practices for asking better questions. He also emphasizes how effective coaching can break the three vicious circles of creating overdependence, getting overwhelmed, and becoming disconnected. I would have preferred this to be an essay with the core concepts outlined above, rather than a book. But it’s short and well worth the read for those who want to become better leaders.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Coaching:
Coaching = helping others and unlocking their potential.

Three vicious circles:
Coaching helps break three vicious circles: creating overdependence, getting overwhelmed, and becoming disconnected. 

Creating overdependence: steal learning moments from the team, people become excessively reliant on you.

Getting overwhelmed: taking on more than you can handle and executing at a fraction of your ability because you’re spread too thin.

Becoming disconnected: getting disconnected from work that’s meaningful to you where you can have the most impact. 

Best practices for asking questions:
“What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question.” Jonas Salk

Ask one question at a time then shut up. Never ramble off multiple questions at once.

Stop trying to setup questions and provide backstory. Just ask it. 

Uses what questions instead of why. Rather than “why did you do that?” instead ask “What made you choose this course of action?”

When you receive an email that triggers the advice monster, instead of writing a long answer full of solutions, decide which of the most seven questions below would be most appropriate and ask that question by email. e.g. “Before I jump into a longer reply, let me ask you: what’s the real challenge here for you?”

Questions for successful coaching:

1) What’s on your mind

2) And what else?

3) What’s the real challenge here for you?

4) What do you want?

5) How can I help?

6) If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?

7) What was most useful for you? (spaced repetition)

Before saying yes, ask more questions:

• Why are you asking me?

• Who else have you asked?

• When you say this is urgent, what do you mean?

• According to what standard does this need to be completed? By when?

• If I couldn’t do all of this, but could just do a part, what part would you have me do?

• What do you want me to take off my plate so I can do this?

The Making of a Manager – Julie Zhuo

The Making of a Manager – by Julie Zhuo
Recommendation: 8/10. Date read: 1/7/21.

The best resource that I’ve read to date for individual contributors who have recently been thrust into the world of management (which requires an entirely different skill set). Zhuo provides an honest assessment of the fears and concerns that come along with venturing into a new world of management. But the bulk of the book provides insightful strategic and tactical advice for new managers. Zhuo emphasizes the primary focus on purpose, people, and process. She also provides frameworks and specific advice on how to evaluate your own performance as a manager, how to delegate, how to run meetings, how to run one-on-one’s, how to provide great feedback, how to articulate a vision, and why focus matters—to name a few.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

What is your job as a manager?
Your job is not to be the best at everything or know how to do everything yourself: “Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.” JZ

Three areas of focus in your day to day:

1. Purpose: Outcome your team is trying to achieve. Ensure your team knows what success looks like and cares. This is the why.

2. People: Are the members of your team set up to succeed? Do they have the right skills? Are they motivated? This is the who.

3. Process: What principles govern decision making, how does your team work together? This is the how.

Evaluating your own performance as a manager:

1. What did the team achieve? Did we hit our goals?

2. Did I do a good job hiring and developing individuals? Was team engaged and working well together?

Delegation:
If you do every job yourself and are unable to delegate and coach, you’re doing work that is additive, not multiplicative. 

Delegation: “Spend your time and energy on the interaction of 1) what’s most important to the organization and 2) what you’re uniquely able to do better than anyone else.” JZ

Supporting your team:
Support and respect your reports unconditionally. If this is based on performance and you only demonstrate support or respect when things are going well, it will make things difficult for a report to be honest with you when things get tough. 

“We are more than the output of our work on a particular team at a particular moment in time, and true respect reflects that.” JZ

One-on-ones:
Focus on your report and what they need/how you can help them be more successful. Not what you need or status updates. 

• Discuss top priorities

• Calibrate on what great looks like

• Share feedback

• Reflect on how things are going

Listen and ask questions that allow your report to uncover the answer on their own: “Your job isn’t to dole out advice or ‘save the day’—it’s to empower your report to find the answer herself.” JZ

“Remember that your job is to be a multiplier for your people. If you can remove a barrier, provide a valuable new perspective, or increase their confidence, then you’re enabling them to be more successful.” JZ

Potential questions for great 1:1’s:
Identify what matters for your report and what’s worth spending time on: 

• What’s top of mind for your right now?

• What priorities are you thinking about this week?

Understand and seek to gain context and find the root of the problem:

• What does your ideal outcome look like?

• What’s hard for you in getting to that outcome?

• What do you think is the best course of action?

• What’s the worst-case scenario you’re worried about?

Support by determining how you can be of service to your report:

• How can I help you?

• What can I do to make you more successful?

Feedback:
Always ask yourself, “Does my feedback lead to the change I’m hoping for?”

You’re probably not giving feedback often enough. Start by doing it more, then dial in the type of feedback you’re giving. 

Make feedback as specific as possible, clarify what success looks/feels like, suggest next steps.

Pointer for critical feedback: “When I heard/observed/reflected on your action/behavior/output, I felt concerned because…” or “I’d like to understand your perspective and talk about how we can resolve this.”

Meetings:
Decision-making meetings:

• Good: get the decision made, includes people directly affected by the decision, clear decision-maker, presents all credible options objectively, give equal airtime to opinions, and makes people feel heard.

• Bad: people feel their side wasn’t presented well so they don’t trust the resulting decision, decisions take a long time to make (think about reversibility here), decisions keep flip-flipping, too much time is spent trying to get a group to consensus rather than escalating to decision-maker, time is wasted on rehashing the same argument.

Informational meetings:

• Good: group feels like they learned something, conveys key messages clearly, keeps the audience’s attention (storytelling, interactivity), evokes intended emotion.

Feedback meetings:

• Good: everyone on the same page for what success looks like, honestly represents the current status of work, clearly frames open questions, key decisions, or concerns, ends with agreed-upon next steps.

Who should you invite to a meeting: Which people are necessary to make your desired outcome happen?

“As a manager, your time is precious and finite, so guard it like a dragon guards its treasure stash. If you trust that the right outcomes will happen without you, then you don’t need to be there.” JZ

Process:
“Process isn’t inherently good or bad. Process is simply the answer to the question, ‘What actions do we take to achieve our goals?’…Bad process is heavy and arbitrary. It feels like a series of hoops to jump through. But good process is what helps us execute at our best. We learn from our mistakes, move quickly, and make smarter decisions for the future.” JZ

Team vision:
To define your vision for the team, ask yourself the following…

• What do you hope will be different in 2-3 years compared to now?

• How would you want someone who works on an adjacent team to describe what your team does? How far off is it from where things are today?

• What unique superpowers does your team have? When you’re at your best, how are you creating value? What would it look like to be twice as good?

• If you had to create a quick litmus test that anyone could use to assess whether your team was doing a poor job, a mediocre job, or a kick-ass job, what would that litmus test be?

Portfolio approach: a third of team works on projects that can be completed on the order of weeks, a third works on medium-term projects that may take months, another third works on innovative, early-stage ideas whose impact won’t be known for years. 

Focus:
“Few people take objectives really seriously. They put average effort into too many things, rather than superior thought and effort into a few important things. People who achieve the most are selective as well as determined.” Richard Koch

Facebook’s original photo upload feature was pretty basic and was competing against incumbents like Flickr which had more features (navigation shortcuts, search capabilities, full-screen displays). But what allowed Facebook to win was focusing on one feature, photo tagging. Triggered a network effect and drew upon the insight that the most valuable part of photos to most people are the people in those photos. 

“Executing well means that you pick a reasonable direction, move quickly to learn what works and what doesn’t, and make adjustments to get to your desired outcome.” JZ

Build, measure, learn: “Our goal is to build simple, conclusive tests that help us understand which things we should double down on and which things we should cut from the list.” JZ

Decision making:
“Most decision should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.” Jeff Bezos

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.