Write out new ideas.
At Amazon, senior executive meetings don't start out with conference calls or PowerPoint presentations, they start out with reading. Lot's of it. From a Fortune profile:
Bezos says the act of communal reading guarantees the group's undivided attention. Writing a memo is an even more important skill to master. "Full sentences are harder to write," he says. "They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking."
As Ben Casnocha points out, when you're speaking it's easy for audiences to fill in the gaps in your ideas and for you to gloss over the details. By demanding his team to write everything out, it makes them consider all aspects of an idea to make it more durable for years to come.
2. Incentivize team members for the long term: make them owners.
Compared to the lavish salaries and perks of some other established Silicon Valley tech companies, Amazon likes to run lean. The company doesn't give its employees free snacks, keeps salaries low, and even once (allegedly) preferred to use doors as desks instead of expensive modern furniture. But that doesn't mean employees aren't well compensated.
Amazon prefers to reward employees with stock options rather than cash. Bezos explains his logic in the 1997 letter: "We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner."
3. Follow the "two pizza rule."
Bezos believes in avoiding complacency at all costs, especially when reinforced by groupthink. From a Wall Street Journal profile:
One former executive recalled that, at an offsite retreat where some managers suggested that employees should start communicating more with each other, Mr. Bezos stood up and declared, "No, communication is terrible!" He wanted a decentralized, even disorganized company where independent ideas would prevail over groupthink.
His antidote? Make his teams as small as possible while throttling communication where appropriate. Bezos said he believed in "two pizza teams": if a team couldn't be fed with two pizzas, it was too big.
Dedicate time to think about the future.
A 1999 Wired profile of Bezos revealed that he purposefully keeps two unstructured days a week on his calendar so he could allow his mind to wander and generate new ideas. Sometimes he just surfed the web, other times he set up his own meetings.
5. Routinely "check in" on long-term goals.
The same Wired profile reported that Bezos meets with his assistant every quarter to assess his progress on 12 pre-selected initiatives. Mainly, he wants to assure himself that he is spending adequate time on each one by reviewing the past three months of his calendar. The exercise enables him to "check in" to make sure he stays true to his long-term goals and while not getting distracted by new and fleeting ideas.
6. Work backwards.
As Amazon jumps from books to music to web hosting to content creation, its endeavors may seem random, but are all the result of working backwards from a common goal of customer satisfaction. This is opposed to a "skills-forward" approach where people - and companies - let what they are good at determine next steps.
From Bezos' 2008 shareholder letter:
Eventually the existing skills will become outmoded. Working backwards... demands that we acquire new competencies and exercise new muscles, never mind how uncomfortable and awkward-feeling those first steps might be.
Bezos even applies this logic to his personal life. When he has to make big decisions he often works backwards and thinks about how he'll feel about the choice when he is 80. As he was weighing whether to quit his day job to start Amazon, he told Wired that potential regret made him say yes.
"Am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? Yes."
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How about you?
What have you done to keep your eye focused on the long term?
YOUR IQ DOESN'T MATTER & OTHER LESSONS ABOUT CREATIVITY FROM CHILDREN
by Sean Blanda
From 1962 to 1967 researchers selected students with low-income and low-I.Q. parents at the Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti, Michigan and divided them into two groups. One group received a special high-quality education, while the control group used the school's normal curriculum.
The students that received the high-quality education showed short-term gains in I.Q. but by the third grade, they were again even with the control group. The experiment was seen as failure - until the researchers followed back up with the students later in their lives. The students that received the high-quality education were more likely to graduate high school, more likely to be employed at age 27, and more likely have a salary over $40,000 at age 40. If the gains in I.Q. didn't stick, then what happened to make the students more successful?
The path to success that has been preached for decades, get good grades, ace the S.A.T., and then get into a good college, is being turned on its head. In his book How Children Succeed, Paul Tough leans on a new generation of educators and researchers to argue that our success as adults is better measured by certain character traits than by our G.P.A. as children. While the gains made by the Perry students in I.Q. eventually petered out, as a side effect they picked up characteristics like determination and motivation that led to their success later in life.
Tough reasons that "non-cognitive" traits like optimism, zest, gratitude, and grit make children (and adults) more likely to succeed. I chatted with him about what that means for our children's creativity and how we can apply his findings to our working lives as adults.
Our success as adults is better measured by certain character traits than by our G.P.A.
Why focus on children?
My background as a reporter was writing about kids and education. Doing my first book about the Harlem Children's Zone left me with some questions about how kids succeed. The other thing that happened is my wife and I had our first child three years ago. He was totally my experimental subject.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book was that though an affluent family has more resources at its disposal, money wasn't a cure-all for producing children with the characteristics you described.
Moderate amounts of adversity are really good for kids. Some kids in poverty are experiencing way too much adversity and that's damaging them in all sorts of ways. And then we have kids who aren't experiencing enough, and that's hurting them as well. I think of it as an "adversity gap." Negative trauma certainly has a negative impact but on the other hand we have helicopter parents that don't let our children fail.
How does anyone judge what is the "right" amount of adversity? I'm sure you struggle with this with your own son.
There are these moments during a child's life where he's trying to learn something new, and I have to let him do it on his own and pull back, even though I don't want to. When he falls, it means literally not helping him back up and letting him get up on his own. There are lots of little choices parents make when it comes down to protecting their kids or letting them figure it out for themselves.
Another part of your book quotes researchers that think our modern school system stifles creativity by creating "excessively contained" children and, eventually, adults.
I don't totally buy it. I think the evidence is really strong that self-discipline is important for anyone. Being a really creative person without any discipline to direct that creativity is not so good. If kids don't have self-regulation or self discipline it can lead to all sorts of negative outcomes. But just coloring inside the lines won't help you succeed. More esoteric character strengths like optimism and zest are things that can be taught and are also predictive of success.
How can people be taught any of these character traits?
I think one thing that all the educators in the book stress is that, in adolescence and early adulthood, just reflecting on these skills and thinking about them as something you can change is an important process in changing them. There's a psychologist from Columbia in the book, Carol Dweck, who discovered that when kids think they can change their I.Q. they work harder.
Just coloring inside the lines won't help you succeed.
We think of these character traits as fixed: you're either outgoing or you're not. There's such a thing as temperament, but I think its useful to think of character as something you can change. I think that, in some ways, it's the only way you can do it. There is no "zest" curriculum out there.
As you wrote the book did you see any examples of kids changing their character?
Not in a way that I've seen measured with clear assessment, yet. There is this one organization in the book, OneGoal, that works with kids through high school and during their first year in college to help them succeed. They don't talk about grit, but they talk about perseverance. So far the results seem really powerful. The cohort I followed has 85% of their kids going on to the second year of college. That's good for any demographic, especially kids from the South Side of Chicago who are often the first in their families to go to college.
What can your learnings about children teach us as adults?
Thinking of these character strengths as malleable is really powerful. In the past I thought that I was either a good writer or I wasn't. I thought it was a skill some people just had and that it couldn't be taught.
When kids think they can change their I.Q. they work harder.
Thinking about the non-cognitive side of my trade is huge. Getting up and getting my work done, bouncing back from a bad review, that's all stuff that I can work on. It's hard, but when people believe they can change, it's remarkable what they can do. I don't want to give the impression that all there is to it, though. The fact that you can just want to change isn't enough. Anticipating the obstacles and planning for them is also important.
But kids don't have decades of life experience, it's easier for them to change. As adults, we have a lot of baggage, even if we know the psychology behind it all.
In lots of ways our brains may be less malleable but there's lots of resources that we have that kids don't. We've seen the effects of our choices over the years while it's hard to get a kid to perceive the effects that their actions have on the future. But when you are in your twenties or thirties and beyond, you can make those connections much more clearly.
How About You?
Do you think character traits are malleable?
THE SURFER'S GUIDE TO TAKING RISKS
by Srinivas Rao
Life is like the ocean: sometimes it's stormy, choppy, and a complete mess. Other times it's calm and perfect. In the ocean, risk and opportunity go hand-in-hand. The more waves you go for, the more you'll catch. Every day in the water and every wave presents a new opportunity.
As a surfer, every time I get in the water it's a risk, every time I paddle for a wave it's a risk, and every time I catch wave it's a risk. Surfing is completely unpredictable, which keeps me constantly coming back for more. But there's a strong correlation between your success and your tolerance for risks in both the ocean and life - and both require the same approach and process:
1. Get In the Water
As you stand on the shore suiting up, you can watch other surfers catch wave after wave, in anticipation of the perfect ride. But you're not going to catch any waves unless you're in the water.
The more waves you go for, the more you'll catch.
The game of life is quite similar. It's exciting to watch people start companies, push their limits, and experience new things. But living vicariously through other people just means you'll be standing on the shore watching others catch waves your entire life.
2. Understand and Accept the Fear
When you initially get in the water on a bigger-than-average surf day, the excitement you felt on shore dissipates and turns into fear. Mother Nature shows her temperamental side and you'll often find yourself submerged, waiting for that moment when you'll be able to come up for air. Every surfer strives to align themselves perfectly for the "take off point" of a wave, but in order to get there you have to get past the rough whitewater.
With any risk, once the excitement of a new opportunity passes, fear sets in. What if you fail when you start your new company, attempt to write a book, or catch your wave? Like the whitewater, you will face obstacles that seem like they're there to keep you from getting to your goal. But you have to realize they're just a part of taking risks.
3. Go For It
Waves are completely unpredictable, which makes surfing thrilling and terrifying at the same time. As each wave rolls in and you contemplate going for it, you'll have an initial tinge of doubt. The only way to know if you'll make it is to go for it. The author Jamail Yogis:
The take-off is arguably the most scary and difficult part of riding a wave. Too far forward or back can be the difference between a smooth glide down the face [of the wave] or being pitched—what surfers call “going over the falls.” It's best to catch a wave just as it's setting up, when there is enough incline to catch it, but before the wave goes concave. In the take-off, and really throughout the entire ride on the wave, the surfer, like the Zen student, must constantly find the middle way.
When opportunities present themselves, you'll experience doubt. This is completely natural. Instead of fighting the doubt, let it be. If we embrace it, it tends to dissipate.
4. Embrace Uncertainty
There's a moment on a wave known as "the drop." It's the moment when either our hopes are crushed or our hard work comes to fruition. It's also the most uncertain moment of a wave. A wave's shape is in constant flux and the surfer must adjust accordingly. But the shape also has a tendency to disappear or "close out," meaning that a seemingly perfect wave can crumble into whitewater, leaving a surfer scrambling.
Nothing in life is guaranteed and living your life according to a predetermined formula is not a guarantee of success. You can't predict your company will succeed, your art will fly off gallery walls, or your love will be returned. You have to embrace the uncertainty of it all and remember that the more waves you go for, the more you'll catch.
5. Enjoy the Bliss
Ask any surfer what it feels like to ride a wave and you'll start to wonder if they're talking about sex or surfing. The moment you stand up on your board something magical happens: fear, doubt and uncertainty dissolve, transforming into absolute happiness. Some researchers call this being “in the zone” or “in flow.”
Standing up on your board is the moment when your risk pays off. For the entrepreneur, it could be the day the company goes public or turns a profit. For the author, it could be the day the book gets published. Everything you went through to get there will seem worth it.
Ask any surfer what it feels like to ride a wave and you'll start to wonder if they're talking about sex or surfing.
Reflect on the Choice
One of my friends once said that "surfing is the greatest natural high in the world." Maybe it's because it forces us to be truly present - there's nothing else on our minds when riding a wave, both literally and figuratively. Catching that perfect wave can bring a peaceful calm to your life.
Once you know the consequences of your risk (whether good or bad), you're overcome by a sense of calm. You're no longer forced to confront a fear of the unknown. For the performer, it could be the standing ovation. For the entrepreneur, it could be knowing that the value created will result in job security for employees for years to come.
Do It All Again
After you catch that first wave and the adrenaline kicks in, all you can think about is catching the next one. You're overcome by a sense of confidence that anything is possible. A surfer may call this being "stoked." You realize what you're capable of and become interested in continuing to defy your own limits.
There's nothing else on our minds when riding a wave, both literally and figuratively.
It's why entrepreneurs start multiple companies, authors write multiple books, and musicians produce multiple albums. There really is no moment when you've arrived. The journey is the destination and now you just have the confidence that becomes a part of who you are when you take the scenic route through life.
Talk to a surfer and he or she will tell you "all it takes is one good wave and you'll be hooked." The way you develop a tolerance for risk is by going for your wave.
The wipeouts of life and business are inevitable, but they're never as bad as you think. It's all just a part of surfing - and a part of living.
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What do you think? How do you approach risks you take in your life?
JK Rowling: I feel duped and angry at David Cameron's reaction to Leveson
If the prime minister didn't want to implement the report, why were people like me asked to relive our painful experiences in public?
I am alarmed and dismayed that the prime minister appears to be backing away from assurances he made at the outset of the Leveson inquiry.
I thought long and hard about the possible consequences to my family of giving evidence and finally decided to do so because I have made every possible attempt to protect my children's privacy under the present system – and failed. If I, who can afford the very best lawyers, cannot guarantee the privacy of those dearest to me, what hope did the Dowlers, the McCanns and the Watsons ever have of protecting their own children and their own good names? Those who have suffered the worst, most painful and least justifiable kinds of mistreatment at the hands of the press, people who have become newsworthy because of the press's own errors or through unspeakable private tragedy, are those least likely to be able to defend themselves or to seek proper redress.
My understanding is that Lord Justice Leveson's recommendations would give everybody, whatever their degree of celebrity or their bank balance, a quick, cheap and effective way of holding the press to account. They would also protect the press against frivolous complaints and reduce costly lawsuits. At the moment, only those of us who can afford the immensely expensive, time-consuming and stressful services of the legal system are able to take a stand against serious invasions of privacy, and even this offers little or no protection against the unjustified, insidious and often covert practices highlighted by the Leveson inquiry.
Without statutory underpinning Leveson's recommendations will not work: we will be left with yet another voluntary system from which the press can walk away. If the prime minister did not wish to change the regulatory system, even to the moderate, balanced and proportionate extent proposed by Lord Justice Leveson, I am at a loss to understand why so much public money has been spent and why so many people have been asked to relive extremely painful episodes on the stand in front of millions. Having taken David Cameron's assurances in good faithat the outset of the inquiry he set up, I am merely one among many who feel duped and angry in its wake.
I hope that those who share similar concerns will speak up now and signthe Hacked Off petition. Cameron said that he would implement sensible recommendations: it is time for him to honour that commitment and join the other political leaders by supporting the Leveson recommendations in their entirety."
