10 beliefs I can use 💎 Issue #62
Plus: history's greatest victory, a cute game to understand supply chains and '90s NY in HD.
Happy Friday👋
What’s up?
🧭 Three issues ago I wrote about my beliefs. Well, the next chapter in the 'Leadership Step by Step' was all about the importance of recognizing and dealing with other people's beliefs. This is vital for leaders and coaches.
All teams have people whose beliefs conflict. If such conflicts are inevitable, then a leader who doesn’t take responsibility for handling them has abdicated that responsibility. Without a coach, each teammate could have a different belief about what kind of game they’ll play: an offensive game, defensive, fast scoring, winding down the clock, or whatever.
🏆 A leader knows where the team should go, and only by taking care of different, conflicting, beliefs between team members can they reach their best version and their objectives. It’s not about reading people’s minds, but being aware that all the decisions contributing to the team’s outcome are based on what each individual believes, and leading from that awareness.
💰 Here’s a tip: asking, “What belief does that person have to hold so that behavior makes sense?” usually helps reveal the belief.
🧾 While the exercise for the week was paying attention to people, and society in general, to uncover and write their beliefs, I found the effort not that motivating. I did something else instead. Last week’s Here are 50 ideas that shape my worldview thread I shared inspired another thread on Hacker News where everyone shared similar ideas. I decided to dig through to it and extract 10 of my favorite ideas/beliefs from other people. It’s basically the same right?
Becoming good at something requires enduring strings of days without visible improvements and bad results. All our idols have a thing in common: not quitting when they sucked.
Insightful conversations don't use "yes" or "no" questions. Ask accordingly.
Avoid defining who you are by what you believe. The world around us changes and with it our perspectives. That's the healthy way to go at least, and it might be harder for us to adjust if a new belief clashes with who (we think) we are.
If you don't put something into words you can consider you know nothing about it. Writing, or talking, about it makes a problem easier to solve, a concept easier to understand, an intuition easier to trust, or a belief easier to validate and change.
Growth mindset vs Fixed mindset. Through meaningful actions, I can improve at what I do vs I can do what I was born capable of doing.
Things we have in life were made by humans, not some other species of super-geniuses. We might not all be able to theorize about black holes but we are made with the same capabilities as those who do. We all can make our mark in the world and we can't call it a surprise.
Focus on the process, the task at hand, and on enjoying it. The end result benefits should be a bonus.
Actor-observer asymmetry: we judge our actions based on the circumstances affecting us and the actions of others based on their personality. That's why the others are always the bad drivers.
"Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." ― Terry Pratchet
You can be 100% right, but if you make the others feel 100% incompetent you will never change anyone's mind. Getting ‘how to transmit the message’ right is part of getting the message right.
And now on to what were the best things I found on the Internet this week.
New to me 💡
The Battle of Cannae – How History’s Greatest Victory Inspired Generals for 2,000 Years | 5 min read
⚔ Last Monday marked the 2237th anniversary of one of the most famous battles in history. Roughly 86k Romans soldiers (playing at home) went against 50k Carthaginians and you’ll never guess what happened. Suffice to say it was ingenious and legendary enough to feature on this tiny newsletter all these years afterward.
🌅 “Rarely before or after has a military commander incorporated so many natural elements into a plan-of-battle – the breeze off the Adriatic, the rising sun, the dusty, hilly terrain – while luring his enemy to the site of their demise by means of a long, exhausting march.”
The Bullwhip Effect and Supply Chain Inflation | 10 min read
📈 This ‘Interesting Times’ newsletter issue was particularly insightful. It managed to explain supply chain problems to someone who’s totally outside of the context like me while making it super engaging. This is a theory of mine that when you are an expert in a topic you can make it interesting for anyone, including people who usually find that topic boring.
🍺 “The key learning from the beer game is that small changes in end demand can create huge imbalances as they move up and down the supply chain. The game illustrates in a compelling way just how hard it is to run an efficient "just in time" supply chain, even for a relatively simple and idealized supply chain.”
New York City 1993 in HD | 1 min watch
🏙️ I guess this video was not successful enough since I never heard of the technology that it was intended to promote: D-VHS. Anyway, as you know, New York has to do very little to feature on this newsletter, but the ’90s and HD is something of a rare cocktail and I couldn’t pass it.
Please help me grow this newsletter! I’d love if you shared it with your more curious friends.
A most moving tweet 🚶♂️
This week in a gif 🤺
High note ⚡
This issue cover picture comes from here.
Last issue most clicked link was Here are 50 ideas that shape my worldview.
I hope you enjoyed these last minutes as much as me putting this together.
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Until next week,
Filipe