Biweeklycast

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube. Dima and Slava discuss different facets of having fun, discover the golden pentagon of productive state of mind, and nearly form a consultancy to preach that around the world. Theme's corner: times flies Is "leisure" the same as "rest"? Is having fun while working on something important to achieve great results? Slava: "Having fun is overrated." Internet: Having Fun Won’t Make You Happy Create space for having fun however you do that Here's why you should make a habit of having more fun How to Have Fun: 19 Ways to Enjoy Yourself & Think Positive Can you put having fun on the calendar? Some things only happen when you plan for them Axes of the "golden" pentagon of productivity Having fun – being bored Tensed – relaxed Focused – distracted Stressed – not stressed Pleasant – unpleasant Balance is always(?) the key How important is "disconnecting" to being able to "have fun"?

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Dima and Slava discuss how management relates to leadership, signs that can point to lack of leadership, and what leadership misses can entail.Management is the process of planning, organizing, and controlling resources to achieve objectives efficiently and predictably.Leadership is the ability to offer compelling vision and inspire, influence, and guide people toward a shared goal.Failure modes of management without leadershipNo value added by a manager at their level on managerial hierarchyManager not having an opinion about team’s role and placeManager not taking responsibility for their decisions and actionsManager acting as an external consultant to the teamCoaching leadership style

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Dima and Slava discuss the complexities of estimation in business contexts and the challenges of striking the balance between ambition and realism.Estimation, forecasting, and projectingDesired level of confidence for the estimate makes a differenceShort-term vs long-term estimation50/50 goalsBenchmarking is helpful when you do something novelWorking backwards can help in planning projectsIs your thing really a special snowflake?Illusion of precision, or precision biasRealistic estimated vs ambitious goalsEstimation and benchmarking was also discussed in Biweeklycast #36 How Big Things Get Done.

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Dima is doing his best to explore a particular flavour of ambiguity and Slava keeps him in check by sticking to definitions and anchoring the discussion to reality.Ambiguity – the quality of being open to more than one interpretationIs ambiguity merely a lack of proper definitions?Approaches that help in dealing with ambiguityExplicit definition of how success looks likeClear definition of the problem to be solvedValidate hypothesis with real-world inputsAt times, dealing with ambiguity requires a leap of faith

📺 Watch this episode on YouTubeDima and Slava explore Richard P. Rumelt’s book Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters and share insights they took away from the book.https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/0307886239https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Safari-Through-Strategic-Management/dp/0743270576The Kernel of Strategy: diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actionsWhat does coherence have to do with policy and strategy?Building on your strength is a great foundation of strategyBad strategy is the result of a leader who’s unwilling or unable to say “No”Cut through that “strategic fluff” with focus on concrete and specific elementsDon’t trust examples from business books. Do your own research6 reflections after reading the bookRating the book: 3 and 5 out of 10The greatest closing quote ever by Dima Malenko: “Think for yourselves!”Check out other bookclub episodes of Biweekly

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Dima and Slave talk about what strategy is and what strategy isn’t.From Wikipedia: Strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty.Dima’s characteristics of a strategyMulti-step plan, a “pattern of decisions”Built on a particular world viewAims at global (long-term) maximumDoes not rely on competitors making favourable choicesRequires agency and ability to executeDifferent flavours of strategy: business strategy, product strategy, etcNot every entity needs a strategyVision without execution is a daydream. Execution without vision is a nightmare.

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Dima and Slava count priorities and discuss how having to count priorities is a problem in and of itself.Dilution of terminology: priorities, KPIs…“Focus” is a good alternative that is expressly singularPriority: importance vs orderingDoes priority get most time or the best time?One with 10 priority tasks gets to choose what the true top priority isPriority management cultures: collective and individualDoes need for prioritisation arise having a lot more work that one can do?Have a stack of priorities and be very explicit about themLimit number of top priority items that you have at any given time

📺 Watch this episode on YouTubeDima and Slava discuss the end of the second season of Biweeklycast and talk about what to expect in the upcoming third season.

📺 Watch this episode on YouTubeDima and Slava discuss the practice of Open Feedback Circle and challenges of providing specific and actionable corrective feedback.Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI | Lex Fridman PodcastThe Hedgehog and the FoxOpen Feedback CircleFour A’s Feedback of FrameworkNo Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Erin Mayer. Discussion in Biweekly #28What is the value that people get from Open Feedback Circles?“Assume positive intent”Talking to people does help a lot

📺 Watch this episode on YouTubeDima and Slava start with discussing routines and dealing with them, and discover that there is a lot more than routines out there: habits, behavioural patterns, traditions, and rituals.Dima’s season of decoupling is… goingSo, basically your next step is “sit and wait” 🤔Routines are important for making changes in life. Or not?From Google AI Summary: “A routine is a set of actions regularly followed to create order and structure in daily life.”Routines vs habits vs behavioural patternsIs forming “an identity” around habit helpful?Episode #52 Needs analysis about chain of resultsHabit points and “well done” techniqueDoing things together also helps to build a habitExternally forced routines, which some call “rules”Desire for novelty does not necessarily go against building a routineOne more flavour of “routine”: traditionReactance theoryOne more flavour yet: ritual!

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Slava brings three stories from his recent professional practice and together with Dima they discuss using case studies in business training, designing a card game, and running strategic sessions for military units.

📺 Watch this episode on YouTubeDima and Slava discuss a report from a foresight exercise by Aspen Digital about second and third order effect of AI, criticize the output, and agree with demise of practical skills driven by different kinds of automation.Second and Third Order Effects of A.I.AI or A.I.?What are foresight exercises?Wisdom of the crowdBiweekly 52: Needs Analysis – episode about chain of resultsLoss of practical skills is a real, but that is not necessarily related to AIExpeditionary Force by Craig AlansonRemember "World Wide Web"?

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Dima and Slava discuss the spreadsheet mentality and the general difficulties of making data-driven decisions while not loosing the forest for the trees.Theme corner: Dima's season of decouplingSpreadsheet mentality (sometimes called "spreadsheet thinking") refers to an overly mechanistic or reductionist approach to decision-making and management that relies too heavily on quantitative metrics while ignoring qualitative factors and nuance.Improving a number while loosing track of why we started this in the first place.Measure = quantify, at least for the purposes of this discussionCult of data-driven decisionsBiweekly 52: Needs AnalysisThe “Traffic Light” Approach to Problem SolvingQuotes on the topic"What gets measured, gets managed.” – attributed to Peter Drucker or W. Edwards Deming"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." – W. Edwards Deming"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” – Goodheart’s Law“Tell me how you will measure me, and then I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way, don’t complain about illogical behaviour.” – Eliyahu Goldratt

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Dima and Slava discuss all the so familiar ways in which business meetings can fail and share their thoughts on how to prevent meetings from failing.Theme corner: Slava's winter of nucleus and spring of connectionMagic of longer vacationsMeeting is when people get together to achieve a specific purposeMeetings have a goal. Effective meetings achieve their goals.How meetings failGoal or purpose is not definedMeeting setup is not fit for the goal it tries to achievePeople, who are needed, are not in the meetingThe purpose of a meeting is misplacedLack of focus in a meetingWrong pacing of meeting: too fast or too slowLack of follow-upAre there kinds of meetings that absolutely must happen face to face? Is it possible to hold any kind of meeting remotely?Is there a best duration for a meeting?The Surprising Secret of SynchronisationEpisode about results chain 52: Needs Analysis

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.Dima and Slava discuss the ineffable concept of thought leadership and politely disagree with the author of publication that sparked the discussion.Dima's contribution to the pile of undead documentationThe Ineffable Concept of Thought Leadership"Thought leadership is content" – how can that be?Martin FowlerSerhiy HaydaychukCortext podcastMeta-discussion: last-minute praparation and different ways approaching multi-step tasks

📺 Watchthis episode on YouTube.Dima and Slava discuss documentation for systems, processes, and so on, and debate how to prevent it from crossing the line from being helpful to being actively misleading.Dima's January of putting one foot in front of the otherHacker NewsFighting undead documentationDocumentation evolves independently of the systems/processes it describesPut date of last update in the document to signal that it may be outdatedDoing something vs documenting somethingFinding a updated document can also be a challengeHow often and how much to document?Ideally, documentation is integrated into the system is documents1-2-3 rule for automation writing documentationJust feel it!

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube. Dima and Slava kind of follow up on the discussion of Customer Development in the previous episode and talk about chains of results in assessment of customer needs. Other ideas that are connected to what The Four Steps to Epiphany discusses Jobs To Be Done Disruptive innovation Theme corner: Slava's winter of nucleus Results chains in needs assessment: inputs - outcomes - outputs activities inputs "The more "whys" the better." In education, output of a learning activity (e.g. training on giving feedback) is clearly disconnected from desired impact (supportive culture of effective continuous improvement) How does one know if a learning activity is going to lead to the desired impact? How does one know how to do something if they are not an expert in the particular field? Reshaping expectations of a customer

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube. Dima and Slava read and discuss "The Four Steps to Epiphany" – a classical book for entrepreneurs and startup founders. The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win Steve Blank Opt for paper or e-book. This book isn't really meant to be an audiobook. Key idea: for success enterpreneur needs to hit product-market fit. The book explains how to approach that systematically. Spreadsheet mentality: not everything that is important can be expressed numerically OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, act Thought experiments for CustDev for the theme journal and a coffee shop Jobs To Be Done (JTDB) Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) What if CustDev tells something different from what one wants to hear?

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube. Dima and Slava follow up on the conversation they started in episode 47 and Dima tries to articulate more precisely what he means by people not being specific enough and gives example of common pitfalls of obscure communication. Theme corner: Dima's year of next Example 1: "System X is broken" Clear call to action is very helpful High context and low context situations and personalities Example 2: "Uber for X" Metaphors can be useful, but must not be the only means of describing an idea Effectiveness of metaphors depends a lot on pre-existing context Example 3: "System will to be reliable" Context is important for everything!

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube. Dima and Slava dive into wonderful season of strategic sessions and try to deduce why everyone does them in December and how to make working on strategy a time well spent. Theme corner: Slava's fall of nucleus Slava's another podcast: Starsphere Talks (in Ukrainian) What is a "strategic session"? And why everyone tries to have them in November and December? Difference between strategizing and yearly planning What to consultants or external facilitators bring to strategic sessions? Leadership and collaboration for strategy development Work on strategy: a point in time or a process What's "strategic" in your work?