29th November 2020 Evolution Partners Newsletter
“You get knocked down 100 times, you get up 100 times, you learn 100 lessons.” – Mike Tyson
Hope you’re Thriving!
It’s been a very productive week for me this week which ended in a 2-day retreat in the country, about 3 hours from home. It was a fun, energetic team that I hadn’t worked with before. I’m always wary of 2-day retreats away with teams because I’ve seen teams drink way too much after day one, and then they’re hungover and unable to really do meaningful, impactful work on day 2.
So I set the ground rules for this reason – don’t drink too much! At the end of day 1, we went out to dinner, came back to the ‘vineyard homestead’ and decided to play a game called What do you meme? The concept is that a meme image is selected from a deck of image cards, placed in front of the team and the team has to select the funniest caption for the meme image. It’s definitely 18+ humour, but I haven’t laughed as hard all year and the CEO was crying it was so funny. Needless to say, the team were a little hungover for day 2, but we finished an awesome strategy and plan.
The Infinite Game
The other significant thing earlier this week was Simon Sinek talking about his book The Infinite Game at an event I attended with clients. Well, he wasn’t as much talking about it, as answering questions.
Simon is a great thinker, with some very good ideas.
One thing that stuck with me was about the impact of discovering new things, and for that, he recalled a Chinese proverb.
Before enlightenment chop wood carry water.
After enlightenment chop wood carry water.
The book which is about the difference between a finite and an infinite mindset is rooted in common sense, but a great reminder. Here is one of the key concepts from the book.
Any leader who wants to adopt an infinite mindset must follow these five essential practices.
1. Advance a Just Cause.
2. Building Trusting Teams.
3. Study your Worthy Rivals.
4. Existential Flexibility.
5. Courage to Lead.
Watch Simon Sinek present on The Infinite Game here.
Building an Enduring Business
A few weeks ago Kevin and I recorded a podcast about what it really takes to build a company that continues to succeed for decades. And on reflection, it was one of the best conversations we’ve had to date. So much so that this week Kevin wrote a blog post on it.
From our discussion, the 8 things that are required to build an enduring business are:
- A strong balance sheet
- Consistent profit growth
- Data to make the right decisions and to learn from the wrong ones
- A system to identify and complete the most important priorities
- A strategy to deliver a sustainable competitive advantage
- People-magnet machine
- Strong culture and behaviours
- Long-term vision
Read Kevin’s article here Building an Enduring Business.
Gitlab work from home playbook
It must have been at least 3 times in the past week that I’ve been asked: “What do you think the future of work from home will be?”.
My answer of course has been “It depends”. But there’s a chance it will be a hybrid, and that work from home will be seen as a perk, like a company car, and that it may end up being a 2/3 day week. This means we will go from 5 days working at the office and 2 at home to 2 days working at the office, and 3 days working at home, with 2 days off. But as I mentioned, it depends.
A front-line retail worker certainly won’t be doing that.
This week I came across an excellent, detailed work from home playbook from GitLab, a 1,300-employee company that has been fully remote since it was founded and built rigorous processes from day one to make it work.
GitLab’s Remote Playbook comprehensively answers a simple question: “How do I work well remotely?” Due to global issues concerning COVID-19, many teams face a new reality: They’re remote, and they’re unsure when they’ll be able to return to the office. For many leaders, the question of “How do we do this?” is a giant one. Whether it’s unwinding from offices entirely and going all-remote, or attempting to level the playing field for in-office and remote team members in a hybrid-remote arrangement, leaders should consider key forcing functions to ensure a commitment to remote-first practices.
I found this definition and breakdown of the types of remote work interesting.
Download the GitLab remote work playbook here
That playbook was referenced in this interesting article The biggest work from home mistakes: Harvard Business School remote expert.
In the article, Harvard Business School professor Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury who is an expert on remote work discussed the primary reason an organisation should be looking at remote work. From the article:
‘For starters, any firm that is looking at real estate savings as a primary driver is making the decision for the wrong reason. Yes, there are cost savings to be had, but it is the ability to hire talent globally and allow talent to choose a location based on their own preferences — whether a lower-cost locale or to be closer to family — which should be understood as the much bigger driver.“You really need to be convinced of why you are embracing this model. … This is the way to attract and retain the best talent. There are real estate costs and other benefits, but those are secondary,” he said, and he added that the competition among employers for the best talent, based anywhere, will be intense on the other side of the pandemic.’
Bitcoin’s leading indicator
This week Bitcoin surged to $19,359 USD, the highest its been since 2017. Of course, it dropped down again in the past few days, but why? An interesting question is what drives Bitcoin to these huge fluctuations?
Perhaps it’s the percentage of retail investors, compared to institutional investors. And this article speaks to the current trend where Billionaires are flocking to Bitcoin, while retail investors seem uninterested.
And within that article, I found this compelling chart, which at surface value ‘seems’ to track the leading indicator for Bitcoin price – Social Media mentions. It seems that each time Bitcoin spikes social mentions (volume) increases and then the Bitcoin price drops. And at the moment the difference between the price and the social volume is further apart than it ever has been, leading the article to predict a $37,000 price by mid-2021.
From the article;
“Santiment’s social volume index is an important metric to measure whether retail interest starts picking up. Historical data shows that spikes in Bitcoin’s volatility are always accompanied by substantial jumps in the number of BTC-related mentions on social media.
During the peak of the 2015-2017 bull market, social engagement metrics surged to an all-time high of over 132,000. The increased levels of attention that Bitcoin was able to capture in the last few weeks of December 2017 was followed by a price dump towards $7,600. Alongside prices, social volume dropped to 83,500 as retail investors began to lose interest.”
This week on The Growth Whisperers podcast
On episode 33 of The Growth Whisperers, Kevin Lawrence and I talk about the following.
When hiring experienced leaders from global brands might be a bad idea
This week on The Growth Whispers Brad & Kevin talk about the magic, and sometimes mayhem that comes from hiring someone from a much larger company that you believe can bring you competence and skills to help you to grow more successful like the company they came from.
They share stories of organisations that have hired from much larger exciting companies that turn sour. Finally, they discuss the five things that you need to do to ensure that you can be certain that you avoid those pitfalls.
Listen to The Growth Whisperers
On my website
Apple podcasts
Spotify
Or watch it on YouTube
From the vault
Profit per X at Southwest Airlines
In this interview, Herb Kelleher former CEO of Southwest Airlines talks about the Profit per X of his business and the Hedgehog concept. He also discusses how they originally set out to be the most productive short-haul airline in the world, and how the Core Values were established.
If you would like to receive our weekly newsletter as an email, simply complete the “subscribe to my newsletter” form at the top of this page.
Keep Thriving!
Brad Giles
