Future Potential
PayPal founder Peter Thiel would give employees titles based on their future potential and abilities, not on their present experience. See episode #500 of Tim Ferriss Show with Jason Portnoy, former employee at PayPal. Jason said Thiel was incredible at seeing potential in people that they themselves and others did not see yet. That’s a big reason why so many successful people came out of PayPal. “Thiel was good at seeing general ability, not just ‘can they just do this specific job’, but more of ‘is this person exceptional at anything they do?” Thiel also hired lots of people that didn’t have specific experience in the industry they were in. He hired on general capacity rather than a specific skill set.
As my professor said, “Some people have the ability to see the oak tree in the acorn.” As a leader, I’ve been asking myself what latent potential and gifts do I see in my team and clients that they possibly haven’t seen yet? Developing a lens for this, and pointing out gifts and potential in others is a gift to them.
The 12 Brand Archetypes
Which one are you?
How to Work Hard by Paul Graham
This essay is one of my favorites – great work is a combination of extraordinary talent and hard work.
Using Design to Manipulate: Dark Patterns
Design has so much potential to elevate the human experience. It can also be manipulated for evil. Sometimes it helps to contrast something with what NOT to do. Check out these deceptive user designs made to try and manipulate people into making the choice the company wants them to make. It’s a good example of how we can design things in a “human” way, to help people flourish or we can use design to manipulate. The choice is yours.
When you are missing, part of us is missing
When C.S. Lewis’s dear friend Charles died, he observed:
“Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [Tolkien’s] reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald…In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each of us has of God.”
This is another amazing element of community. Which is another reason to show up…when you don’t show up, you’re not just missing yourself but part of everyone is missing.
Do Nothing for 2 Minutes
Calm (the business) started by two guys shooting around ideas on a couch in England. One of them found the domain “Calm.com” and thought the name was cool. They built Do Nothing for 2 Minutes to see if people would do it. It went viral. They collected thousands of email addresses and used those for their website. They then used this list to launch the Calm app, which has gone on to extraordinary success. It’s a great example of an experimental mindset. If the experiment had not gone well, that would have been OK too. They would have learned from that. It went well and they built on it.
A Cool Idea
My friend Patrick Richter’s gym allows people to hang their company’s banner. Patrick recently acquired his first business and was able to show it off at the gym. What a cool idea for this gym to build community and brag on their members. I’m thinking about how we might be able to do something similar with our clients…
