The Cost of Training

Before:

CFO: What if we train our employees and they leave?

CEO: What if we don't train them, and they stay?

Today:

CEO: What if we train our AI and they leave?

CIO: (And they 'leave'?!?) What if we don't train them, and they stay?

Accountant on a Ship

An accountant taking a cruise on a luxury ship, saw another passenger fall overboard. Panicking, she screams: "Help! Someone's fallen over! Someone's fallen over!" The ship's second mate hears her and shouts: "Which side did they fall? Port? Starboard?" Accountant: Port...star...what?!?? (Then frantically points to the left) DEBIT SIDE! DEDIT SIDE! 

User Stories are not requirements

Treating user stories as requirements may not be too different from asking users to estimate how long it takes to do their tasks and using those estimates as your project estimates.

Santayana

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Those who are not aware of the past are condemned to repeat it.

History repeats itself because the past is not the dead past but a mirror (albeit incomplete) of the very much alive present and future.

Battle Success vs Project Success

Every battle between armies results in success for one side failure for one side. There is a winner and there is a loser (ignoring ties). That means 50% of battles are a success, and 50% of battles are failures. 

In contrast, 60-70% of projects fail (according to popularised stats). 

In other words, armies do better at succeeding against obstacles that ACTIVELY aim to LITERALLY devastate and rip them apart, than projects do against the comparatively passive triple constraints.   

(I know there's fatal flaws in this argument, but still).

Favourite TV Series

Top favourite TV series, not in any order. The ones I can watch over and over:

• Buffy. All-time favourite. 'Once More With Feeling' is a supernatural tour de force. Perhaps the height of Joss Whedon's genius.
• Yellowstone. Screenwriting is brilliant. Compelling characters.
• Landman. Another Taylor Sheridan work.
• Silicon Valley. I can watch the whole series every year and not get tired. Some episodes are uncomfortable and I wish they can be PG'd: the grafitti with Chuy Ramirez, the stallion mating in the stable, the Satanic baptism.
• Fringe. Great fun because the science fiction covers physics, chemistry, biology, and not so much computers. Would not be as good without Walter and 'Asterisk'
• The Crown.
• Community. Really creative fun comedy.
• Lioness.
• Bosch. An ordinary police detective series that for some unexplainable reason is very good.
• Luther
• Line of Duty. One of the best ever detective shows.
• The Shield. Great dialogues. Forrest Whittaker's guest character is unmissable.
• Frasier
• Cosmos. The one with Carl Sagan. 
• Cosmos A Spacetime Odyssey (Cosmos: Possible Worlds was, painfully, nowhere near as good as the first two)
• Firefly
• Friends
• Narcos
• Fawlty Towers
• Hot in Cleveland
• Belgravia
• Justified
• Cobra Kai. Nostalgia trip, but way better than the original 80's movies. William Zabka is the standout actor here.
• Sons of Anarchy
• John Adams
• Black Books. Crazy fun. Tamsein Greig at her best.
• Maybe:
• Picket Fences
• Northern Exposure

Worth watching once:

• Anne with an E. The first two seasons. The last season feels it became woke.
• The Big Bang Theory (maybe the first 2-3 seasons only)
• Sanditon
• The X-Files
• Sherlock
• Breaking Bad
• The Simpsons
• Downton Abbey
• Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister
• The IT Crowd
• The Knick
• Poldark (2015)
• Jamestown
• Chernobyl

Good ones, but didn't really like them that much:

• Peaky Blinders

From Dreams to Reality

A dream written down with a date becomes a goal.

A goal written down with steps becomes a plan.

A plan backed by action becomes reality.

Razors

From https://twitter.com/SahilBloom

The Feynman Razor

Complexity and jargon are used to mask a lack of deep understanding.
If you can’t explain it to a 5-year-old, you don’t really understand it.
If someone uses a lot of complexity and jargon to explain something, they probably don’t understand it.

The Luck Razor

When choosing between two paths, choose the path that has a larger luck surface area. Your actions put you in a position where luck is more likely to strike. It’s hard to get lucky watching TV at home—it’s easy to get lucky when you’re engaging and learning.

The Arena Razor

When faced with two paths, choose the path that puts you in the arena. It's easy to throw rocks from the sidelines. It's scary and lonely in the arena—but it's where growth happens. Once you're in the arena, never take advice from people on the sidelines.

The Optimist Razor

When choosing who to spend time with, prioritize spending more time with optimists. Pessimists see closed doors. Optimists see open doors—and probably kick down the closed doors along the way. Remember: Pessimists sound smart, optimists get rich.

The Gratitude Razor

When in doubt, choose to show MORE gratitude to the people who have mentored or supported you. Say thank you more. Tell someone you appreciate them. Not just on special occasions—every single day. Lean into gratitude daily and your life will improve.

New Project Razor

When deciding whether to take on a new project: First, ask yourself if it's a "hell yes!" opportunity. If not, say no. If it is, imagine that it's going to take 2x as long and be 1/2 as profitable as you expect. If you still want to do it, say yes.

The Uphill Decision Razor

When faced with two options, choose the one that’s more difficult in the short-term. @naval calls this making "uphill decisions”—a forced override of your pain avoidance instinct. It's worth it—short-term pain creates compounding long-term gain.

The Invested vs. Spent Test

Time is either *invested* or *spent*. Invested time—actions that compound:

• Reading
• Physical activity
• Mindfulness
• Relationship building

Spent time—actions that don’t. When choosing what to do, prioritize investing time, not spending it.

The Rooms Razor

If you have a choice between entering two rooms, choose the room where you're more likely to be the dumbest one in the room. Once you're in the room, talk less and listen more. Bad for your ego—great for your growth.

Occam's Razor

When you're weighing alternative explanations for something, the one with the fewest necessary assumptions should be chosen. Put simply, the simplest explanation is often the best one. Simple Assumptions > Complex Assumptions. Simple is beautiful.

Listen Mode

If you encounter someone with opinions or perspectives very different from your own, listen twice as much as you speak. Our natural tendency when we hear a view we disagree with is to respond and refute it. Default to Listen Mode. You'll learn way more that way.

The Lion Razor

If you have the choice, always choose to sprint and then rest. Most people are not wired to work 9-5—long periods of steady, monotonous work. If your goal is to do inspired, creative work, you have to work like a lion. Sprint when inspired. Rest. Repeat.

The Smart Friends Razor

If your smartest friends are all interested in something, it’s worth paying attention to. If that something seems crazy, it's worth paying a lot of attention to. The passions of the smartest people in your circles are a looking glass into the future.

The Young & Old Test

Make decisions that your 80-year old self and 10-year-old self would be proud of. Your 80-year-old self cares about the long-term compounding of the decisions of today. Your 10-year-old self reminds you to stay foolish and have some fun along the way.

The Duck Test

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. You can determine a lot about a person by observing their habitual actions and characteristics. When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.

Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. In assessing someone's actions, we shouldn't assume negative intent if there's a viable alternative explanation—different beliefs, lack of intelligence, incompetence, or ignorance.

Hitchens’ Razor

Anything asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword If something cannot be settled by reasonable experiment or observation, it's not worth debating. *These will save you from wasting time on pointless arguments!*

The Opinion Razor

"I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do." - Charlie Munger Opinions are earned—not owed. If you can't state state the opposition's argument clearly, you haven't earned an opinion.

The Writing Knife Block

If you're struggling to understand something, try writing it out. When you write, you expose the gaps that exist in your logic and thinking. Study to fill the gaps. Writing is the ultimate tool to sharpen thinking--use it as a "knife block" for life.

Taleb’s “Look the Part” Test

If forced to choose between two options of seemingly equal merit, choose the one that doesn’t look the part. The one who doesn’t look the part has had to overcome much more to achieve its status than the one who fit in perfectly.

The Braggers Razor

Truly successful people rarely feel the need to brag about their success. If someone regularly brags about their wealth or success, it's fair to assume the reality is likely a small fraction of what they claim.

The Reading Razor

When deciding what to read, just read whatever grabs you. When it stops grabbing you, put it down. Avoid the trap of only reading “impressive" books that bore you to death. Never establish reading vanity metrics as goals.

The Stress-Reward Test

Too many people take on stress that has no upside. If something is going to be stressful, consider whether the reward is sufficiently outsized to justify the stress. If it isn't, don't take it on.

Market Operations Books

Some books on market operations:

Baker, Robert P. The Trade Lifecycle: Behind the Scenes of the Trading Process 2nd Ed (2005).

Dickinson, Keith. Financial Markets Operations Management (2015).

Loader, David. Clearing, Settlement and Custody 2nd Edition (2013).

Loader, David. Clearing, Settlement and Custody 3rd Edition (2019).

Simmons, Michael. Securities Operations: A Guide to Trade and Position Management (2002).

Simmons, Michael and Dalgleish, Elaine. Corporate Actions: A Guide to Securities Event Management (2006).

Weiss, David M. After the Trade Is Made, Revised Ed.: Processing Securities Transactions (2006).

Quotes

Some interesting quotes:

• Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do, is who you become - Heraclitus
• I am not what happened to me. I am who I choose to become - Carl Jung
• When you are alone, mind your thoughts. When you are with friends, mind your tongue. When you are angry, mind your temper. Whn you are with a group, mind your behaviour. When you are in trouble, mind your emotions. When God blesses you, mind your ego.
• The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject. - Marcus Aurelius.
• Discussions are always better than arguments, because an argument is to find out who is right, and a discussion is to find out what is right - Morgan Freeman?

Invert the Problem

One of  things Charlie Munger is well-known for is his principle to 'always invert'. Was trying to understand what this technique was about. He has some good YouTube videos explaining how he uses it.

As far as I can tell, it works something like this.  If you wanted to figure out how to ensure your project ends up successful, you should invert that problem and ask, how can you make the project fail? If the project fails, then it cannot be successful. If somehow you can prevent it from failing, then you have increased the chance of making it successful. 

Understand the causes of failure, and then prevent them and avoid doing them.  In addition to how you can make the project fail, think about what else can make the project fail, and then plan against them. The latter is more risk management though.

How to Arrive at the Perfect Solution to Any Problem

If your solution does not fix the problem, you have two options: 

1. Revise the solution so it fits the problem. 
2. Revise the problem so it fits the solution. 

 Option 2 is more cost-effective from a solution perspective.

The Children and the Donuts

Researchers placed young children in a room and gave each of them a doughnut, and a promise:" We'll be back in 30 minutes. If you don't eat your donut, we'll give you another donut." The researchers observed the children and followed their life for the next 40 years.

Some children didn't touch their donut, and waited for the researchers to come back. They led safe lives with moderate success.

Some children ate their donuts before the researchers even finished explaining. They became visionaries who refused to be bound by rules. Some became criminals.

Some children ate their donuts after 15 minutes of waiting.  They led happy lives.

Some children offered to buy other kids donuts. They became consumers.

Some offered their donuts to other kids. They became social workers.

Some children sold their donut to other kids. They became small business entrepreneurs.

Some children ate other children's donuts but not their own. They became politicians.

Some children took donuts from those who didn't want donuts and gave them to those who really wanted the donuts. They became socialists.

Some children sold their donut to other kids, and argued with the researchers that they are still entitled to another donut since they literally didn't eat their donuts. They became defense lawyers.

Some children bought donuts from other kids, and argued that *they* are the ones entitled to the future donuts, since the future donuts are contingent on who owned the donuts. They became derivatives traders.

Some children observed the researchers and tried to figure out what they were researching. They became sociologists and joined the team of researchers for the next 40 years.

Some children analysed their donut instead of eating them. They became scientists.

Some children ate their donut and claimed another child ate it. They also became politicians.

Some children wrote about the event. They became writers.

Some children forgot about eating the donut and wondered why the hole made donuts more fun. They becme philosophers.

PDCA Shouldn't Always Lead to Improvement

 PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), and its alternative PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act), are popular quality improvement frameworks. The truth is, they shouldn't always lead to improvement. If every single PDCA cycle you implement leads to improvement, I'd suggest you take a deeper look. Maybe you're not doing PDCA properly.

Briefly, PDCA is about the following 4 steps:

• P - Plan an improvement experiment. Plan how to test if this proposed improvement really brings about an improvement.
• D - Do the experiment.
• C - Check / Study the results of the experiment.
• A - Act on the results of the study. Implement the change or perform another cycle. 

The 3rd step in PDCA, Check, requires you to check the results of what you did in the 'Do' step. The output of performing Check can result in one of the following conclusions:

•  The proposed improvement works, let's implement it.
• The proposed improvement actually makes things worse, let's not implement it.
• The proposed improvement is not an improvement, or not enough of an improvement, let's not implement it.

The point of C (or S) is to serve as a control gate so we don't implement changes that are not worthwhile improvements.

Problem Solving

So many different techniques being peddled on how to solve problems.

How did we get so prolific at creating problems without any training at all?

Often, people don't go about creating problems for others, but merely solving their own problems. Their solution inadvertently creates problems for others (and sometimes for the person who came up with the solution as well).

So, if a persons has the problem of failing business revenues and solves that problem by coming up with new products, then the other businesses may experience loss of revenue and all the problems that bring.

Mind the Gap

 Mind the Gaps. Or, why systems fail to deliver.

The sponsor and the stakeholders describe the problem situation to the professionals whose job is to solve the problem. Their description does not describe the problem properly.  They may present relatively minor problems as serious ones, they may forget some aspects, they may disguise some problems, they may have solutions in mind and describe problems in terms of the solutions. They may even be innocently unaware of the real problems. 

The actual problem is different from the one they described.  The first gap: The real problem state P, and the described problem state P'

The system developers conceptualise solutions for P'. The chosen conceptual solution S may seem to address P' but conceptual incongruencies remain hidden,  That is,  S may solve some aspects of P' but not as much as thought.  The second gap.  S vs S'.

The builders build T, the implementation of S.  T is never perfect and falls short of the expectations of S.  What is delivered is T'.  The 3rd gap.

T' is operated not as ideally as it should.  It becomes T''.  The 4th gap.

In the end, we have solution T" being used to solve problem P, whilst also delivering its own new set of problems p(T''), producing a new problem situation P(T'').

Risk-Managed Men

Manage your risks or your risks will manage you.

Do risk management or be risk-managed men. 

(Get it? "risk-managed men", rhymes with "risk management". No?)

Bruce Lee is a Lean Guru

"Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own" - Bruce Lee

"Useful" = value

"Useless" = waste

"Your own" = don't just copy the TPS.

No Stupid Questions, Stupid

 Playing with the order of the words:

No stupid questions.

No questions, stupid.

Stupid! No questions!

Stupid questions,  no.

Questions, stupid? No?

Questions? No? Stupid.

Training

The essence of training is acquiring or improving skills.  If you undergo training, and no change occurs in how you do the things you were trained at, then the training did not matter.

If you had a certain way of planning projects, and underwent training on how to plan projects more correctly, then you went back to your way (which was not as good), then the training did not matter. Sometimes the reason you went back to the old way was not due to yourself. Perhaps the organisation you work in prefers the old way, and resists the new way (a very common situation), then you face incongruity. You know what you're doing is not as effective as the new way, but you 'have no choice'. It takes a lot of effort to try and change an organisations. If you tried, you may end up alienating people, or making enemies. There is also the risk that your execution of the new way won't be as effective as the old way. This is a real risk, because after all, you are just a beginner in the new way.