Category Archives: Decision Making

Reflective practice is the new deliberate practice

For years we’ve been told that deliberate practice is the key to getting better at ‘anything’. But it turns out that deliberate practice is only effective in well-structured, stable, ‘kind’ learning environments. Learning maths, learning to code, or learning a new language all take place within kind learning environments. So does playing sports or chess. The rules of the game are fixed, the outcomes of actions are evident and feedback is fast, clear and actionable.

But much of business, leadership and life isn’t like this. As Heraclitus told us “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man“. Many of the more challenging situations that we experience, and their context, will be different the next time from the last time. It turns out there is another type of practice that can help us in these more ‘wicked’ learning environments that hasn’t gotten the air time of it’s well-publicised counterpart. It’s called reflective practice.

When our environment is constantly changing it isn’t just the person who works harder and practices more deliberately that succeeds. Let’s dig into the limitations of deliberate practice in the workplace, and how reflective practice can help us instead to make better decisions and accrue wisdom in business, leadership and life.

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“Playing tennis on Mars”: Why lessons from sport can sideline victory in business

What could Kobe Bryant have taught you about being a better CEO? What can you learn from Bill Belichick about driving your team’s performance? With their shared focus on performance and winning, and because our brains are wired to think in analogies and metaphors, it’s quick and easy to draw comparisons between sport and business leadership. But it can also be lazy and problematic.

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Charlie Munger was a complexity thinker

I’ve read a lot about Charlie and his work. Peter Bevelin’s book Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger is in my top ten. I’ve a signed copy of his Almanack (I figured he’d respect me for that, as I suspect it will make a good financial as well as phenomenal personal investment). His reading list has strongly influenced my own. I’ve written articles that explore his wisdom and mental models.

Charlie Munger has had a big influence on me. But despite everything that I’ve learnt, it wasn’t until Cedric Chin emailed me with a speech by him from 2003 – Academic Economics: Strengths and Faults After Considering Interdisciplinary Needs – that I finally grokked that Charlie and I share a similar worldview around a central concept:

Charlie Munger was a complexity thinker.

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The Duck-Rabbit & the Polarities of Leadership

A polarity is a paradoxical situation in which two interdependent and seemingly contradictory states must be maintained for success over time. In business, leadership and life, we find ourselves presented by polarities all the time, often without even realising.

As leaders, we’re told that we must be great problem solvers. That’s true, but a polarity is not the same thing as a problem, for which a definitive solution can be reached at a given point in time. That’s why the ability to recognise when we are facing a polarity – otherwise known as a paradox, duality, dichotomy, tension, or wicked problem – can be a developmental leap for leaders. Embracing polarities with a both/and mindset, as opposed to trying to solve them as problems with an either/or approach, opens up whole new ways forward.

We’ll meet a number of leaders who are facing polarities at work. We’ll focus on Shrupti, the founder and CEO of a crypto analytics business. We’ll unpack how she identified and navigated a polarity that was holding her leadership back. With these practical examples, you’ll gain a greater understanding of how to identify and work more effectively with polarities.

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A Complete Guide to CEO Coaching

It is indeed lonely at the top. The opportunities are huge but so are the responsibilities. Which is where CEO coaching comes in, because even the most seasoned leaders benefit from a trusted thought partner. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about executive coaching, tailored specifically for CEOs.

Every famous athlete, every famous performer has somebody who’s a coach. They can give them perspective. The one thing people are never good at is seeing themselves as others see them.

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google

More about me: I spent the first half of my twenty plus year career at Deloitte Consulting and at HM Treasury. I became an executive coach in 2013. Based in London and working globally, I coach founders, CEOs & executives in high-growth technology businesses & the investment industry.

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8 Executive Time Management Techniques for CEOs

Time management is one of the most common themes in my coaching conversations with CEOs and other leaders. There’s just not enough time in their calendar to get everything done. It’s a challenge for any leader but it’s particularly acute for executives in the high-growth businesses that I work with, as they realise that they can’t scale themselves at the same rate as their business. 

Born out of real coaching experience with CEOs and other C-Suite executives, here’s 8 proven time management techniques that will help you manage and leverage your time better. Experimenting with these time management techniques will, at the same time, reveal some deeper, psychological truths about what drives you and your behaviour.

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Cynefin: a decision making framework for leaders

There’s no shortage of “how to” advice, playbooks, formulas and even secrets and guarantees for business success (at least that’s what the gurus will have you believe). This can work well in complicated situations. But high-growth technology businesses are not complicated, they’re complex. That requires a different approach to growing and leading a business, explored here through the lens of the Cynefin framework.

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Learning to think for yourself

Advice is everywhere, everyone has an opinion. It’s what to do with it that’s hard. If you want want to be your best self, then need to stop listening to what everyone else tells you and learn to think for yourself. Let’s explore what that means, including the problem with “how to” advice and the benefits of becoming an independent thinker in a complex world.

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Beware the Illusion of Certainty

We like to think that our lives are ordered, predictable and subject to a great deal of control. The past is finite; we see only one outcome. We attach causality and narrative to it so that it makes sense. We roll our ability to make sense of the past over into the future, which is infinite; there are many outcomes, as yet unknown and unknowable. Randomness, chance, and luck influence us far more than we realize. Certainty is an illusion. Uncertainty is everywhere.

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How can leadership team coaching help your technology business scale?

In his 2017 TED Talk Want to get great at something? Get a coach, Atul Gawande tells the story of the Harvard and Yale American-rules football teams: “In 1875 Harvard and Yale played their first game. Yale hired a coach Harvard did not. The results, over the next three decades Harvard won just four times. Harvard hired a coach”. Every high performing sports team has a coach, why doesn’t every leadership team?

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Trillion Dollar Coach – A Summary

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell is a book about a man who coached the CEOs and leaders of some of America’s greatest companies, including Apple and Google. He passed away in 2016, leaving a legacy of growing companies, successful people and an enormous amount of respect. The book is essential reading for any manager or leader operating in a fast-moving, high growth business.

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2 powerful ways to get better at coaching your employees

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier is one of the best books I’ve read for managers and leaders who want to use a coach approach with their employees but don’t have the time or inclination for formal training. It’s short on theory but long on practical tools and techniques that are a shot to the heart of great coaching.

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Victor Frankl on finding meaning & happiness

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl is essential reading for anybody interested in happiness, personal growth, the psychology of suffering and mental health. It chronicles the author’s time as an inmate in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. The early chapters do not make for easy reading but the book opens up into one of the deepest and most eloquent explorations of finding meaning and man’s search for meaning and happiness.

Striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man… This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can only be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

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Superforecasting: The Art & Science of Prediction – Summary

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction is a book about how to become a superforecaster, an often ordinary person who has an extraordinary ability to make predictions about the future with a degree of accuracy significantly greater than the average.

In a landmark study undertaken between 1984 and 2004, Wharton Professor Philip Tetlock showed that the average expert’s ability to make accurate predictions about the future was only slightly better than a layperson using random guesswork. His latest project, which began in 2011, has since shown that there are some people with real, demonstrable predicting foresight. In his book, co-authored with Dan Gardner, Tetlock identifies how you can become a superforecaster too. Read on for a summary of how:

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Second-level thinking & how to get better at it

Second-level thinking is a deep and complex approach to decision-making that goes beyond superficial analysis. Second-level thinkers ask probing questions and consider multiple perspectives to gain a more comprehensive understanding of a situation. They examine a range of potential outcomes, assess probabilities and compare their views to the consensus. They uncover insights that others may overlook, allowing them to make more informed decisions and achieve superior results. By thinking unconventionally and holding well-reasoned, non-consensus views, second-level thinkers position themselves to succeed in investing, business and life.

But how do they do it? Howard Marks is the Chairman and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management and one of the finest purveyors of second-level thinking (sometimes referred to as second-order thinking). In his book The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor, Marks explains why second-level thinking is so important and how you can get better at it.

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Col. John Boyd’s Strategy Masterclass: “The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War”

Robert Coram, author of Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War describes John Boyd as “first, last and always a fighter pilot – a loud talking, cigar-smoking, bigger-than-life fighter pilot”. But also as more than that: “he was that rarest of creatures – a thinking fighter pilot.” Boyd is widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest military strategists, despite the fact that it’s unlikely you have ever heard of him. Over his career he bought the Air Force its Aerial Attack Study, invented Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) Theory, was the father of the F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and created a decision making framework called the OODA loop. His thinking about strategy spread across the US armed forces: his Patterns of Conflict briefing provided the basis for the US military’s strategy in the first Gulf War, leading to their 100 hour victory. It still underpins US Marine Corps fighting doctrine to this day.

John Boyd was an endearing eccentric and strategic genius who is brought wonderfully to life by author Robert Coram in his meticulously researched book. Coram demonstrates what one man, surrounded by a few devoted and loyal Acolytes, can do to change the world. Maneuverability, as it relates to military (and business) strategy, we learn is key. 

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What’s wrong with The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries, was first published in 2011 and has since become the bible for startup entrepreneurs around the world. More recently, the approach outlined in The Lean Startup has received criticism, but is that fair? In this post I argue that it is not, because that is all it is, an approach, albeit a very good one. 

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