Courage & Work 🤺- Creating Luck 🎰- Think Again & Unlearn 🤹🏻‍♂️- Remote (work) Control 🎮- Community & Marketing 🪢

Trust the Weekend Test "What the smartest people do on the weekend is is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years."

Feb 27

Episode #51. Happy Sunday!

Digging into my takeaways goldmine. I found some wonderful treasures left by our expert learners. Special mention to Olivier Cambournac, Patrick Kervern, and David Guerin.

The Timestamp is a collective effort to cast a bit of sunny inspiration to our 2000 readers every Sunday.

I hope you will enjoy this 5minute read!

Sorry for mixing French 🇫🇷 and English 🇺🇸 this week but I felt it was better this way 👇

#1. Is courage important at work?

Faut-il avoir du courage au travail ? from the Harvard Business Review published on July 3rd, 2021. Takeaways of Olivier Cambournac.

Prendre une décision signifie nécessairement faire un choix dans un environnement teinté d’incertitude.

Un manager laxiste et attentiste peut finalement faire autant de dégâts qu’un chef autoritaire. Le manque de courage d’un chef crée de la solitude, de l’impuissance et de la méfiance au sein des collaborateurs. La présence de collaborateurs courageux permet alors de les faire progresser.

Faire du courage une compétence :

Fixer des objectifs prioritaires et secondaires.
Déterminer l’importance de vos objectifs.
Identifier et influencer la balance du pouvoir.
Evaluer les risques et les avantages.
Etre patient et agir au bon moment.
Avoir un plan B et anticiper l’échec.

Etre courageux au travail est une entreprise risquée qui n’est pas innée, bien que certains soient plus naturellement audacieux que d’autres. L’individu courageux est celui qui manie l’art - d’évaluer les risques - de s’adapter à son environnement - d’assumer ses décisions, en cohérence avec ses valeurs.

#2. Learn how to create more luck

How to create more Luck written by Sahil Bloom on a Tweeter thread about Luck, published on Feb 19, 2022.

“I believe that much of what we call "luck" is the macro result of 1,000s of micro-actions. Your habits put you in a position where luck is more likely to strike. If you want to create more luck, start by increasing your luck surface area.”

“Write in Public. When you write and publish your ideas and insights, you are casting a web of magnets out into the world. Those ideas and insights will attract some people to you—and perhaps repel others. As your web grows, the connections—and luck—compound accordingly.”

“Be the Dumbest in the Room. If you have a choice between entering two rooms, choose the room where you are more likely to be the dumbest one in the room. Once you are in the room, talk less and listen more. Bad for ego, great for luck. Good things tend to happen in these rooms.”

“Hang Out With Optimists. When choosing who to spend time with, prioritize spending time with optimists. Pessimists see the doors that are closed. Optimists see the doors that are open—and probably kick down the closed doors. Remember: Pessimists sound smart, optimists get rich.”

“Trust the Weekend Test "What the smartest people do on the weekend is is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years." - @cdixon

Observe the weekend projects of the smartest people in your circles. These are a looking glass into the future. Make asymmetric bets.”

#3. Think again and enter a new era

Rethinking everything we know | Adam Grant interviewed by Vikas Shah MBE from a Youtube video posted on Feb8 2021. Takeaways from Patrick Kervern.

Selon Adam Grant, professeur à Wharton , psychologue et auteur de “Think Again” auparavant l’intelligence consistait à penser et apprendre, aujourd’hui l’intelligence c’est savoir re-penser et désapprendre.

Les nouvelles valeurs : la flexibilité, l’humilité et la curiosité vs. les convictions aveugles.

“Ne laissez pas vos idées devenir une idéologie” : Pensez et recherchez la vérité comme un scientifique et non comme un prêcheur, un procureur ou un politicien ( cf. le modèle de Philipp Tetlock).

#4. Remote (work) Control

The digital body language cues you send – or don’t send from an article on the BBC published on June 24th, 2021. Takeaways by Patrick Kervern.

Online, as in real life, it's not just what you say – but how you say it. According to Erica Dhawan we all have a “digital body language” – a concept that serves as the title of her new book. Like our in-person physical body language, digital body language concerns the subtle cues that signal things like our mood or engagement, and change the meaning of the words we say – be it in text, on the phone, or in a video call.

For instance, Dhawan cites research from 2005 on how people interpret sarcasm. Overall, around 56% of people correctly detected the sarcasm when it was written in an email – barely better than chance – compared with 79% of people who heard the same words spoken out loud.

She also found out she found that 70% report poor digital communication as a frequent barrier to their work, leading to around four hours of wasted time each week. “If you quantify that, it's 10% of a normal working week,” she says.

This is where Emojis and punctuation are very important argues Erica Dhawan. Whether you’re signaling urgency or excitement with ALL CAPS, impatience, and irritation with an “?!?” or mutual appreciation with a fist-bump emoji, you are helping your text to convey the feelings you would have embodied in person.

Research shows that roughly 60% to 80% of our face-to-face communication is a non-verbal language, such as pacing, pauses, gestures, and tone. All of these cues bring energy and emotional nuance to our message,” she says. “In many ways, punctuation and the use of symbols in a digital world are the new means of signaling that emotion.” So, don’t feel shy about adopting these more informal digital cues.

You should also think carefully about the timing of your responses, and what that may say about your engagement with the project or person in question. You may not want to answer a query until you are able to do it justice, but the delay can seem like a lack of interest – resulting in sometimes intense anxiety. In these cases, Dhawan suggests that you send an initial short-and-sweet reply to signal that you will give it consideration in due course.

Proofread your messages to ensure that the meaning and the emotional subtext are as clear and appropriate as possible could turn out to save time and hassle in the future. “When it comes to communicating carefully, less haste is more speed.” It’s a simple step, perhaps, but one that is regularly forgotten.

In group calls, people could be asked to raise their hands before speaking, for example. It can also be useful to designate a moderator for the call, who can ensure people stick to an agenda and don’t get distracted.

Dhawan strongly advises against multitasking during these calls or allowing yourself to be distracted by other devices. “It is so obvious if you are busy looking down at your phone when others are trying to make video eye contact with you

Be especially careful to express your appreciation. “In the past, the handshake, and the smile gave us those signals,” says Dhawan – but in online communication, our gratitude is often less apparent, or may not be expressed at all. Measures to remedy this could be as simple as sending a follow-up email, after a virtual meeting, to make it clear that you valued someone’s input, or cc’ing a junior colleague on an email to a client, acknowledging the role they played in a project.

#5. Why do you need a go-to-community strategy?

Community ≠ Marketing: Why We Need Go-to-Community, Not Just Go-to-Market - Future from the a16z blog published on June 15th, 2021. Takeaways by David Guerin.

👯 Community is the “new” moat. Having a community helps protect against competitor companies or products entering your territory.

😩 One of the biggest challenges for companies today is a lack of a go-to-community strategy. -> Why? 🤨 Too often, companies view a community as a nice-to-have, an add-on to the GTM efforts.

🙈 Most people think ”community = marketing”, but community and marketing have different inputs and different outputs.

🙋‍♀️ Companies with a go- to-community strategy will be more incentivized and equipped to participate in building a better relationship with their customers.

🛠 This means that go-to-community needs to be a first-class competency: one with the team, budgets, tooling, and a spot at the leadership table.

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