New season starting 🏁- War philosophy 🏴☠️- The essence of leadership 🪄- Gorilla businesses 🦍- About Saint Patrick ☘️
Certainty is an impossible goal. Each of us has a given ability to face uncertainty.
Episode #54. Hey this is Gilles, are you ready to read & learn?
Even though the past week was super intense, I am glad to share with you a few learning snippets about a diversity of topics either profound or not serious at all. We will talk about:
Formula 1 with a new season starting this week,
War, what philosophy tells us about it,
Leadership tips from retired US Army general,
A masterclass in business strategy with Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm),
Everything you do not know (yet) about Saint Patrick.
#1. A new season starting 🏎
TLDL From Carlos Sainz: ready to win with Ferrari, an interview recorded for the podcast called F1: Beyond the grid was published on March 16, 2022.
Shoot for 1 target at a time: First victory then target for winning the championship. Becoming a race winner is a prerequisite before becoming a champ winner.
Taking care of his body helps Carlos Sainz take care of his mind.
Any F1 driver you pick on the grid is fast. In case you have any doubt, check their career track before getting to F1. The laptime difference between 2 drivers on the same only comes down to 1 or 2 tenth of a second per lap at the end. This is equivalent to braking 3 or 4 meters later when going at 320kph.
About the upcoming season, it is always difficult to know from the pre season practice session which car is the fastest. That is because team are not telling with of much fuel they perform those tests. 10 liters of fuel in a tank (capacity of 110 liters) can make 2 tenth of difference per lap. Sandbagging is easy.
#2. War philosophy 🪖
TLDL From Comment penser la guerre (How to think war), a podcast from Charles Pepin called Une philosophie pratique published on March 10, 2022.
La fin ne justifie pas les moyens. Selon Fenelon, la guerre ne célèbre aucun vainqueur car tout le monde perd dans la guerre.
« L’art de la guerre » (de Machiavel ou Sun Zu) ne devrait donc pas être. N’en déplaise à Heraclite.
La guerre est l'échec de la politique qui vise à faire cohabiter des individus ensemble pour s'améliorer.
#3. Being a good leader
TLDL From Ret. Gen. Stanley McChrystal - The Essence of Leadership, a podcast called The Knowledge Project published on March 8, 2022.
Leaders are here to show reality rather than changing reality.
Certainty is an impossible goal. Each of us has a given ability to face uncertainty.
Most of the time some decisions are delayed because you do not like it. Once you know the answer you should take actions/ make your decision.
People are willing to make really difficult decisions if they understand the purpose clearly.
#4. Building a Gorilla
TLDL From Geoffrey Moore: Building gorilla businesses, snippets by Patrick Kervern from a podcast called Invest like the best published on January 27, 2022.
1- A Gorilla company is a market share leader in a powerful category. The hierarchy of power says the most powerful power is what we call category power. What an investor needs to understand, is it's not just the company; your company power is a function of your allies as well as of your own enterprise. And so it's the sum of the company itself plus all of the innovation that comes from its ecosystem equals their total company power within the category.
2- Enabling technologies are more interesting than application companies.
3- The idea of trapped value : category has a useful life until somebody comes along and says, that category, which when it came to power, actually released trapped value in our business. Where's the trapped value? Who knew that we had trapped value in the backseat of our cars? Well, Travis Kalanick (Uber) figured out that. Who knew that we had trapped value in our spare bedrooms? Brian Chesky (AirBnB) figured out that we had trapped value.
4- Most management teams in most industries are playing zone defense because that's the kind of courage you need. The zone offense tends to be founder led because only founders can voluntarily put their company in play.
5- What is a level five leader ? A leader who has the ability to galvanize an organization to go beyond its comfort zone.
#5. That was Saint Patrick’s Day
TLDR From Saint Patrick: 6 choses à savoir sur la fête nationale irlandaise, snippets by Patrick Charles from a article published on March 17, 2022.
Saint-Patrick n’était pas irlandais.
La couleur de Saint-Patrick est le bleu, à l'origine.
La Saint-Patrick est Américaine.
Saint-Patrick n’a pas fait partir tous les serpents d’Irlande.
Boire à la Saint-Patrick? Non, ce n’est pas vraiment le moment!
La célèbre bière Guinness bue à la Saint-Patrick est rouge rubis.
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See you next Sunday!