Week 2: Leadership Challenge

THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE: PERSONAL STRATEGY

Last week, You got A TON of data.
​
By completing Week 1's challenge,  you learned about your strengths and what you're good at.

THIS WEEK we are going to work together to:

Turn that data into powerful actionable insights.

By taking your strengths - and applying them against opportunities.

In order to turn potent “potential” into actualized advantages!

That's where personal strategy comes in!

So you can: 

• Climb the ladder faster. Simply by knowing HOW you work and finding things that are EASY for you and hard for others.
• Beat out your competition. Because they don't have a direction or "drive" and you do. 
• Know what situations to say no. So you don't spend years going down a dead-end ---since you know EXACTLY the scenarios that don't fall in your "wheelhouse". 
• Get to your meaningful goals FASTER! Instead of listening to what someone else's vision is for you. 
• Always come up with POWERFUL new ideas. So you become the "go-to" person for new ideas AND become THE person when leadership leans on for answers.

So...let’s answer the most basic question first...

Why a personal strategy?

Strengths applied to the right opportunity = Greatness

Having a personal strategy is the difference between:

“going with the flow” and WRITING the flow other people read!

• You’re on offense INSTEAD OF defense.
• ATTACKING what you want VERSUS WAITING for it to come to you.
• You are ACTIVELY CHOOSING what’s in your life---instead of what’s being offered to you.

Life is under YOUR control.

To start creating your personal strategy you need to start...

Crunching Insights

You are training to become a well-oiled machine!

Each of the tests came with their own set of tried-and-true recommendations.

{Example:}

You’ve already written down where you can improve.

​Now you ask yourself: 

How you can use recommendations to your advantage SYSTEMATICALLY? 

Answer:

By having an action bias!

Basically, Taking action IMMEDIATELY instead of waiting. 

Let's work through two examples of having an Action Bias.

Action Bias Example #1: Global Learner Structuring Immersion.
For example, let’s say you’re a “global learner” from the Learning Styles Inventory and it mentions you would benefit from “immersion.”

You think to yourself:

​How can I set up a process for “immersion”?

Then you brainstorm multiple solutions.

You then create an experiment and observe how you do. 

That's taking data and crunching it into an insight!

Action Bias Example #2: Visual-Global Learner to Animation

A personal example: I was classified as a “visual-global learner.”

So I asked myself:

What skills I can learn to further support that strength?

here’s how the analysis played out in my head:

Data: “you think in pictures”
Insight: “what If I studied people who professionally thought in pictures?”
Research: Method that they use- “storyboarding”
Experiment: What if I did storyboarding too? In order to develop my strength of “thinking in pictures”? What would happen?
Results: “holy shit. It’s natural it works. Do more of it.”

The idea behind the tests is simple:

Find (and do more) of what’s working.

Do less of what isn’t.

But before you do let's discuss...

Why Set up experiments?

"I'm waiting for you to tell me Mustafa. I can't stare at this Petri Dish ALL DAY!"

A new strategy is, in the language of science, a hypothesis, and its implementation is an experiment...A good strategy is, in the end, a hypothesis about what will work. Not a wild theory, but an educated judgment.

- Strategist & Professor Richard Rummelt

Part of building an effective personal strategy is running experiments. 

By creating a series of small experiments YOU see what’s working---FOR YOU!

No one else but you. 

Think of these experiments as a master tailor---crafting a smooth, elegant, and refined wardrobe just for YOU. 

To fit you like a glove AND

HIGHLIGHT the best parts of you

To paint you in the best light. 

Tailor-Made Experiments provide new strategic insights into how YOU operate!

INSTEAD OF taking someone else's cookie-cutter approach.

Now, the questions are:

• "How do you create an experiment?"
• "How do you structure it?" 
• "WHAT does an experiment look like step-by-step?"

Don't worry.

For this we are going to put our scientist hat on and... 

Create Your Own Lab NotebooK

Yes! a lab notebook can be stylish. "Gucci,Gucci, Louis, Louis, Fendi, Fendi, Prada"

Over the next few weeks of the challenge (and beyond), you'll be running tiny little strategy experiments.

To keep track of what is working and what isn’t working--- this week- your creating your own lab notebook.

A pocket tracker for successful strategy.

You're more than welcome to use a physical "lab" notebook.

I personally do a hybrid of physical notebook and digital database. 

BUT... 

Overall, I recommend Airtable.

• It’s fast to sort through data.
• You can quickly find what you need.
• And see what is working AT A GLANCE.

Here’s what it’ll look like:

How to Structure Your Experiments--- step-by-step

First, Let’s go over the steps.

Then we’ll go each in-depth.

Step 1: Write down the experiment.
Step 2: Plug in the date you will do the experiment.
Step 3: write down your “method”. This is a step-by-step approach for your experiment.
Step 4: Do the experiment.
Step 5: write down your results.
Step 6: see if it worked or didn’t work.
Step 7: Wash.Rinse. Repeat.

Step 1: Write down the experiment. 

Simply jot down the TITLE of the experiment. 

You should be able to at a glance look at it and go... 

"Oh yeah! That's what the experiment is. That's what I'm going to do." 

Good rule of thumb: 
15 words max. 

More than that and your eyes just glaze over. 

Examples include: 

• "Try structuring a visual learning immersion" (6 words)
• "Read copywriting book and try 3 of the exercises to see if I like it." (15 words)
• "Try graphic design to see if it speaks to me." (10 words)
• "Try a half day block /immersion where I just work on ONE area instead of 7."(15 words)
• 'Try Dictation to find a faster way to get my thoughts on to paper. (15 words)​

Step 2: Plug in the date you will do the experiment. 

Step 3: write down your “method”.

This step is simple.
​
You just bullet point all the steps you would need to run an experiment.

​Aim for 5 steps. 

At first, be detailed. Since you are learning this skill.

For example, above, I wrote the SPECIFIC topic I want to write about ("Creating a personal strategy") 

That was intentional.

To not give my brain a way out by saying:

"Oh- I don't know what to write about." 

Just write down a specific detail. You can change it later. 

It's important just to get into the habit! 

After your third or fourth experiment, you'll simply just quickly jot down the main parts of each step and keep moving. 

But for the early repetitions... be detailed. 
​

Step 4: Do the experiment. ​

Expect this kind of grin. Since you TOOK ACTION instead of waiting around.

Step 5: write down your results.

My favorite part: Collecting Data!

Step 6: see if it worked or didn’t work.

Step 7: Wash.Rinse.Repeat.

#FeaR: “What if things don’t work? Am I wasting my time?”

This is a NATURAL fear to have during the experimentation process.

All we are going to do is REFRAME how you think about failure. 

Who better to learn from that founder of Amazon- Jeff Bezos.

Here are 2 AWESOME EXAMPLES...

​of Jeff's mindset regarding failure and experiment: 

Video #1

“You cannot invent without experimenting. Here’s the other thing about experimenting- lots of them fail. If you know it’s going to work in advance, it’s not an experiment.”

”you cannot invent and pioneer if you can’t accept failure.”​
​

Video #2

"If I said to you if you had a 10% chance of a 100x return you should take that bet every time! But you’re still going to be wrong 9 out of 10 times. With technology the outcomes can be very long tailed. The payoff can be very asymmetric. Which is why you should do so much experimentation. If you swing for the fences, you hit more home runs. You also strike out more. But that analogy doesn’t go far enough. No matter how well you connect with the ball, in Baseball you can only get 4 runs. The success is capped at 4 runs. But in business every once in a while, you step up to the plate and hit the ball so hard you get a 1000 Runs!  When 1 at-bat can get you a 1000 runs, it encourages you to experiment more.

(Video Clip between: 10:49-12:50)

Think about that---"1 at-bat can get you a 1-0-0-0 runs!

That's impressive.

Makes you think about failure different, too. 

INSTEAD of "Oh, I hate failure." 

You turn into:

"I must go off into the unknown and experiment because If I don't THAT is the biggest failure."

Because if you don't--- your missing you chance at a DISPROPORTIONATE RETURN. 

That's why you MUST experiment AND Fail. 

And trust me--- you don't want to miss that as a leader.

So now that you know:
- step-by-step how to structure you lab notebook. 
- the value of experimentation 

The last piece is how to know you've designed a good experiment.

ThE 3 musT-follow rules of experimentation

The three rules of experimentation are:

1. They are bite-sized. You can throw them out afterwards. They are like k-cups (caption: except without the terrible impact on the environment). Single-use and toss it out. If you like the flavor you keep it. If you hate it- toss it out.
2. They are exciting. You are only looking for experiments you’re excited to do. Feed your curiosity. If it becomes a chore, stop.

Answer the prompt: "I really want to know if [x] will work."

3. They search for the sweet spot of momentum. The sign of a great experiment: momentum. Once you run one experiment, and you find yourself saying: “hey I want to do more of that”. You’ve reached success. You are looking for what works. Things that take on a life of their own.

Action steps

This Week: 

• Design 2 small experiments. Seeing how each of these things apply in your life.

BONUS: If you've already designed your experiment and it worked.

See what it would look like to "double down". 

For example, I realized being a visual learner spoke to me.

For me- "doubling down" was to build infrastructure to do it more. 

To make the process faster.

So I bought software to help me draw workflow diagrams.

​Looking forward to talking about your progress. 

-Moose