Benchmarks to a better startup ecosystem

Few benchmarks to a better startup ecosystem:

Is it easier for an aspiring entrepreneur to start a venture now than 10 years ago?

Do the current entrepreneurs face the same challenges as the ones that started 10 years ago?

Who are the entrepreneurial success stories in the current business environment?

What are the main reasons entrepreneurs fail in the current business environment?

How diverse are the upcoming/current entrepreneurs and investors in the market?

Are there better resources (tools, entrepreneurial network/support, access to financing) now than 10 years ago?

 

Generating best ideas in meetings

Give participants advance notice about the meeting’s agenda.

Have participants bring at least 3 ideas to share at the meeting.

Let the newest member of the team go first.

Have the most experienced member or team lead go last.

Keep the meetings in the mornings.

Do the meeting in a setting that gets lots of natural sunlight.

 

 

 

Closer to Automaticity

Is Stephen Curry thinking through each 3 point shot he’s taking in practice and in games?

Does Oprah practice each question beforehand she interviews her guests?

After a certain point in their careers, world-class performers and creators reach a level where their skills and talents look effortless, simple, and automatic. Having put thousands of hours into honing their skills, the performers are not processing their work/craft in a rational and step wise way. It’s Automatic!

Automaticity is the ability to perform a behavior without thinking about each step, which occurs when the unconscious mind takes over. All habits follow a similar trajectory from effortful practice to automatic behavior. (James Clear, Atomic Habits)

 

Decision on Data

Data keeps growing. There’s no shortage of data.

Some data is valuable than having no data at all. However, a lot of data doesn’t necessarily mean better decisions and outcomes.

It comes down to making decisions on the data that you have. Decision making skills play a critical role here.

How much data is needed to make a good decision on it?

What insights can we gather from the data we have?

How did we collect the data?

What’s the quality of the data?

These are some helpful questions to make decisions on data.

 

Better Habits

Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day. 

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits writes on his website that “Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. How in shape or out of shape you are? A result of your habits. How happy or unhappy you are? A result of your habits. How successful or unsuccessful you are? A result of your habits.”

Generally speaking, who you are today can be traced to what your habits are.

Want to live a healthier lifestyle? Learn and implement good health habits.

Want to become better in client management? Learn and implement good client management habits.

Want to become really good at asking thoughtful questions at work and in school? Learn and implement good inquisitive habits.

Our habits are our secret authentic superpowers. If we want to achieve our goals and visions, we need to have the best habits in place and not only rely on daily motivation, discipline, and will. Habits will take us further than we tend to realize. Establishing better habits early in our development years (health habits, financial habits, social habits, and more) is key to living our authentic greatness!

Thoughts on Skill

The word “Skill” gets used very casually these days.

It’s a Skills driven world. It’s about Skills. Skills over Degrees.

A skill is the ability to complete a set of tasks well.

In a workplace, people use their various skillsets to get a task done. A designer will use her/his design skills, knowledge, and experience to work on a website, app, or do design work. A training coordinator will use his/her training knowledge, skills, and experience to develop training programs and assessments. The college degree can help land the job but the skills learned and polished overtime will certainly help to accelerate your personal and professional growth.

With technology, devices and tools changing how we live, communicate, and work, professional skills will continue to be important and the differentiator between getting ahead and getting left behind in the workplaces.

Personal growth

Personal growth is your responsibility.

Schools, colleges, and workplaces can help facilitate our personal, intellectual, social and professional growth. However, the main responsibility for our personal and professional growth is in our hands. With technology disrupting our daily lives and changing how/where/with/way we work, the continuous self learning is the key to remain competitive, relevant, and ahead in today’s world.

Schools, colleges, and workplaces can become a foundation for our growth but not the ultimate places.

Few places to get started or continue on your growth:

https://www.khanacademy.org/college-careers-more

https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=free

https://www.udemy.com/topic/chatgpt/?price=price-free&sort=popularity

 

Giving feedback

Giving feedback is both an art and science!

There are different ways to put the content together to give constructive feedback. Constructive feedback will combine both good/positive and negative/improvement areas of the person you are giving feedback to.

Several ways to provide feedback:

  1. Go through all the good/positive parts first and then cover the negative/improvement areas second
  2. Combine good/positive parts as well as negative/improvement areas
  3. Ask the person you’re giving feedback to on which one she/he like to hear first
  4. Use the feedback sandwich method (positive, negative, positive)

The feedback content is as important as the style, tone, and way you are providing feedback. Practice providing feedback with a colleague or a manager, reflect on where you can improve on providing feedback, and then deliver feedback frequently to become a skilled feedback giver.

Which muscles are getting exercised?

Creativity gets better when creative muscles are getting exercised.

Writing gets better when writing muscles are getting exercised.

Presentation gets better when presentation muscles are getting exercised.

Painting gets better when painting muscles are getting exercised.

Dribbling gets better when dribbling muscles are getting exercised.

You get the idea!

 

Are leaders born or made?

Leaders are made.

Leadership is a skill.

Individuals become better leaders by honing their leadership skills.

To hone leadership skills, take the lead wherever possible-community, company, family etc.

We all start from somewhere and become better with practice, smart work, learning, and reflecting.

Coaching Teams for Global Customer Success

Multinational companies need to coach their team to handle clients based in different time zones, cultures, languages, and more. Easier said than done. Countless number of hours, sessions, content, and materials are shared internally to help the company’s team to properly and successfully interact with global clients.

A few tips on coaching teams for Customer Success with global clients (North America based):

1. Conduct sessions between team members based in Customer regions and other office locations. If your company’s customers are based in the US and you have a team based in Nepal, then have your Nepal team members interact as much as possible with their US counterparts. Similarly, if your company’s customers are based in Nepal and you have a team based in US, then have your US team members interact as much as possible with their Nepal counterparts. These sessions should focus on cultural greetings, acceptable language and behaviors, ways of doing business in each culture etc.

    2. Inter-office company visits. Organize company visits between your US team and Nepal team members. Nepal based team members will visit the US and learn about US culture and business and vice versa. These cross cultural experiences will add tremendous value to the respective team members and organizing knowledge sharing sessions post the team members’ visit can be fruitful and productive to the rest of the team.

    3. Look outside company’s network for cultural learnings. Besides facilitating ways to internally assist the team members based globally, do look outside your company to find creative ways to provide team members with wider cultural knowledge and experiences. If a team member’s friend or family member is visiting the US or Nepal for a short period or someone is moving to study or work in the US or Nepal, meet them and hear their experiences and share your experiences as well. You’ll get a broader perspective on the culture and it can enrich your cultural knowledge and cultural nuances.

    Skills over Location

    A skilled professional should be respected, valued, and paid as much as someone that can be found in a particular region.

    With remote work and freelancing work becoming more common than ever before, companies have a global talent pool to fill their vacancies. A skilled professional based in the US would generally get paid more than a skilled professional with similar qualifications in South Asia because the argument went that the cost of living in the US was higher so the professional needs to get paid more. Over the span of few decades, companies have been looking for talent in offshore regions for cost savings (primarily), time zones turnaround, work flexibility, proximity to customers etc.

    The talent pool and the job/career marketplace is now global. Companies can have skilled professionals working on their products/services from anywhere in the world and the skilled professionals have a global job/career opportunity pool. Skilled professionals based in South Asia should get paid equally to a professional based in the US if the individual has similar qualifications, work ethic, quality of work produced and such. It’s a win-win for both companies and skilled professionals everywhere!

    Skills Degree

    What if we could have a Skills degree similar to a College degree?

    A Skills degree would show all the skills you have accumulated over the years. Writing skills, editing skills, sales skills, Excel skills, technical skills, marketing skills and more skills. In a knowledge economy, our skills are our biggest assets. Skills are learnable and we can get better overtime with practice and repetition.

    What skills do you have or working to be better at?

    A College Degree is great but not required. 

    I saw this on a job vacancy post.

    A college degree is great but not required. What’s more important is having the skills to do the job.

    Skills are the way to go. Whether its for an Account Executive, marketing, or technical role, skills are becoming important than ever. With the speed of technological developments everyday and shortage of skilled talent across various industries, skilled professionals will continue to be in higher demand across the globe.

    What skills can you gain while in college and what skills can you gain outside of college?

    What’s your Trillion Dollar Venn Diagram Of Success?

    Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot shares his thoughts on rare skills and the Trillion Dollar Venn Diagram Of Success (phrase credit to him).

    Dharmesh shares that “You probably have a few valuable skills right now. The question is, how do you turn those skills into a successful career or company? By combining skills together. But combining any set of skills won’t necessarily get you where you want to go. You need to be strategic about which skills to acquire. Here’s my framework for combining skills to maximize your potential.”

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=WghyEbmPWgk%3Fsi%3D08-AmPfcl47pxRhZ

    Want to become better at…?

    Want to be a better writer? keep writing.

    Want to be a better storyteller? keep telling stories.

    Want to be a better leader? keep leading.

    Want to be a better creative? keep getting creative.

    Want to be better negotiator? keep negotiating.

    Want to be a better coach? keep coaching.

    Want to be a better teacher? keep teaching.

    Want to be a better manager? keep managing.

    Want to be a better mentor? keep mentoring.

    Want to be better skilled at any craft? Keep at it.

    Prioritize and work on the craft that you want to become the best in the world at.

    Talent vs Skill

    What is Talent and what is Skill? Are they the same or different?

    Talent is a natural ability to gain a skill or set of skills. Skill is the ability to complete a set of tasks well. Skills are learned and we get better at a craft by practicing intentionally over a period of time. If we want to become better writers, athletes, teachers (or at anything), we can because it’s an skill or set of skills. The beauty of identifying and understanding that something is a talent or a skill is liberating and profound. Once we find clarity that it’s an skill, we can learn and become better at it. Having talent does not mean that hard work, discipline, effort (and others) are not that required or important to become excellent at a craft or a task. While some who are talented can understand or do certain tasks better because of their “natural ability” or “gift”, talent by itself would not be enough for them to be excellent or world-class in their craft.

    Here’s a simple distinction between Skill and Talent.

    SkillTalent
    DefinitionAn ability developed with practiceA natural affinity for a skill
    ExplanationAn ability that, with practice, a person can become an expert inAn ability one is born with that, when nurtured, can develop more quickly than those without the
    innate talent
    ImpactsAnyone willing to work on itFewer people, who must be born with it
    DevelopmentTraining, education, coaching, and practiceNature, along with training,
    mentoring, education, and practice
    Source : https://www.upwork.com/resources/difference-between-skill-and-talent

    Seth Godin, author of The Practice Shipping Creative Work says that “It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.”

    So was Micheal Jordan talented or skilled or both when it comes to basketball? Was Mira Rai a “gifted” trail runner than other runners? Is Warren Buffet more skilled or talented or a mix of both at analyzing businesses and financial numbers?

    Attitude and Skill

    Attitude and Skill were found to be the two key differences between great competitors and good ones in swimming in a study done by Daniel F. Chambliss and shared through his paper “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers.”

    Daniel reviewed the habits, backgrounds, and performance of competitive swimmers and discovered that attitude and skill were the main differentiators between the great swimmers and good swimmers. The great swimmers swim differently (strokes, turns etc) than the good swimmers. The great swimmers have practiced and honed their skill(s) and technique(s) over a period of time. Also the great swimmers came with a different attitude to their swimming training compared to the good swimmers.

    How are you approaching your craft everyday and where’s your current skill level at that craft?