10 Of The Best Bars In Sydney’s Inner West | The Urban List – A handy checklist!

Leveraging Content and Design to Grow Your Food Startup – Food Tech Aus (Sydney) – Meetup – I’m going to be speaking at this event in Sydney on July 9th about how to use Canva to grow your foodie startup. Come along!

MOOMIN EDITION FINNISH BABY BOX is now ready for order! – Moomin : Moomin – THIS IS THE CUTEST THING EVER AND I WANT IT EVEN THOUGH I DON’T HAVE A BABY.

Creating Beautiful Graphics with Canva – The Leading Librarian – Lovely review of Canva from a librarian. (I know I’ve been there less than two weeks, but it’s so nice to work on something that people genuinely like!)

On Monday, I got up super early and headed into the city for a talk on leadership by David Marquet. David is the author of Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders. I heard about David’s book a few months earlier from some friends who work at ansarada. Their CEO Sam is such a believer in the principles from the book that he bought a copy for everyone there and arranged for the author to come to Sydney to spend time with them! And fortunately enough for me, I was one of only a few outsiders to score a ticket. It wasn’t filmed, but you can get a pretty good overview from watching this video:

I’d read most of the book the week before, so nothing David said on the day was brand new for me. But it was great to hear his stories in person. I took some notes in Evernote if you’re interested…

Submariners are geeks 🙂

If your leadership was right for the past, it’s wrong for the future

The Industrial Revolution was all about reducing variability

• …including boardrooms, leadership, the way we talk
• Constrained thinking.

* Of 135 on sub, only 15 have college degrees!

The leader saying “I don’t know” makes it okay to ask questions

In a fear-based environment, bias is towards inactivity, avoiding decisions

“I intend to…”

Goal is to get to Know All, Tell Not. (Technical competence but still getting team to make decisions.

When hiring/recruiting:

• Look for victim language – How much control do they evince in their life?
• Do they have a growth mindset?

Assessing risk of letting employee take control when you disagree with decision – is outcome going to be “above the water” or “below the water”? (Below sinks the ship.)

In the future, leaders will get people to THINK rather than do

Don’t brief – certify

• The people doing the jobs tell what they’re going to do
• The group makes a decision
• Relies on management making sure everybody knows what the plan is

Look for legacy practices that constrain variability and keep us from thinking

Covey’s Ladder of Leadership

Added 7. I’ve been doing…

Leaders should make people feel safe – not stressed

Teams use “we” not “they”

Weasel words: Effectively, operationally…

The Most Efficient Way to Save a Life: Malaria Nets – The Atlantic – Interesting article about applying SCIENCE to find out where your charitable donation can have the greatest effect on the world. It’s also eye-opening to play with the linked “How Rich Am I?” calculator, which tells you exactly how well off you are compared to the rest of the world. (And if you’re reading this, you’re pretty damn well off.) I was inspired to donate some money to the Against Malaria Foundation, and I’m excited to see where the mozzie nets we funded end up!

Silicon Valley Job Title Generator – Very tempted to start using this and changing up my title very week.

This new site keeps track of failed startups and why they flopped | Business Insider

Listen to Ben Folds’s New Song — Vulture – I like it. Very much in line with the concert he did in Sydney last year with the Symphony Orchestra.

The Iceman List – The Message – Medium – Fun little essay about watching the movies of the 80’s and discovering the antagonists aren’t really as bad as we thought. Random aside: I remember studying Top Gun in one of the film classes I took at ND, and I was astonished to find out that the elevator love scene was only added to the movie at the last minute. I think we were studying it as part of a unit on “camp,” and we talked a lot about the homoeroticism of the movie. (The volleyball scene, amirite?) That was a fun class.