Welcome to the weekend edition of my newsletter - ideas, mindsets, and technology to innovate your best self and unlock high performance.
🎧 Use the Substack app to listen to the audio version of this newsletter.
🌟 I hope you find one nugget to practice this coming week.
✍️ Share your comments at the bottom of this post.
📚 Books
Here are three book recommendations with key takeaways.
Mastery
Mastery by Robert Greene is for anyone seeking to find their Life’s Task, accelerate learning through mentorship, and achieve mastery in a field through three transformations. While this book is relevant to anyone, it’s especially useful for early-in-career professionals in helping them embrace the mentorship mindset and use it for job selection and accelerating learning.
Here are five key takeaways:
The Apprenticeship Phase: Greene emphasizes the importance of going through an apprenticeship phase, where one learns from a mentor or through experiences. This period is crucial for acquiring practical knowledge and skills. It involves observing, practicing, and constantly refining one's abilities, often through menial or basic tasks, to build a strong foundation.
Finding Your Life's Task: The book encourages readers to discover their true calling or "Life's Task." Greene suggests that this is a unique vocation that aligns with one's passions and inherent talents. Pursuing this path leads to greater satisfaction and the potential for mastery. It involves deep self-exploration and the courage to follow one's instincts rather than societal expectations.
The Importance of Creativity: Mastery involves not just skill, but also creativity. Greene argues that true masters don't just replicate existing knowledge; they innovate within their field. This requires a deep understanding of the subject matter, the ability to think independently, and the willingness to take risks and make mistakes.
Social Intelligence: Achieving mastery isn't just about individual effort and skill; it also involves navigating the social environment. Greene highlights the importance of developing social intelligence to effectively communicate ideas, negotiate conflicts, and persuade others. Understanding the dynamics of power and relationships within one's field can be as important as technical expertise.
The Mastery Mindset: Lastly, Greene posits that achieving mastery is a lifelong journey that requires patience, persistence, and a growth mindset. Masters are those who are committed to continuous learning and improvement, are resilient in the face of challenges, and are adaptable to change. They view mastery not as a final destination, but as an ongoing process of exploration and development.
Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings
One-on-one meetings are critical for excelling in a role and for top managers seeking to maximize impact and leverage talent. While I have not read this book yet, it’s on my reading list and has a 4.9-star rating on Amazon. Most of us are not trained in preparing for or conducting 1:1s, and therefore, there is a lot to be gained from mastering this meeting type.
Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings by Steven G. Rogelberg
Never Split the Difference
Life requires constant negotiation regardless of what type of work we do.
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss and Tal Raz is a book I read a few years ago and is full of practical techniques you can apply quickly to work and personal life.
Here are key takeaways from the book:
Active Listening: Voss emphasizes the importance of active listening, which involves closely paying attention to the speaker, mirroring their words, and summarizing what they've said. This technique helps build rapport and trust, making the other party more open and willing to negotiate.
Emotional Intelligence: Understanding and influencing the emotional state of the other party is crucial. Voss suggests using a calm and steady tone, acknowledging the emotions of the other party, and labeling their feelings to demonstrate empathy and de-escalate tensions.
Tactical Empathy: This is about understanding the feelings and mindset of the other party and using that insight to your advantage in negotiations. It goes beyond traditional empathy by strategically acknowledging the other side's perspective and emotions to move the negotiation forward.
The Accusation Audit: Before entering a negotiation, Voss recommends preparing a list of negative things the other party could say about you and addressing them upfront. This preemptive approach can neutralize potential criticisms and clear the way for more constructive dialogue.
No Deal is Better Than a Bad Deal: Voss advises that walking away from a negotiation is sometimes the best option. The willingness to walk away gives you leverage and ensures that you don't agree to unfavorable terms just for the sake of reaching an agreement.
“That's Right” vs. “You're Right”: Getting the counterpart to say “That's right” by accurately summarizing their perspective can create a breakthrough in negotiations. It's a sign that they feel understood. On the other hand, “You're right” is often a polite way to end a conversation without real agreement.
The Power of Open-Ended Questions: Voss advocates for the use of calibrated questions that start with "how" or "what," which force the other party to think and provide information, rather than questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. This can lead to more insightful discussions and reveal the other party's true needs and desires.
The Illusion of Control: By asking the right questions and steering the conversation with empathy, you can give the other party the illusion of control while you actually guide the negotiation towards your desired outcome.
The Ackerman Model: This is a bargaining strategy that involves setting a target price, starting with an offer that's 65% of that target, and using calculated increments (to 85%, 95%, and 100%) while using non-monetary terms to soften the counterparty's resistance.
🚀 Career
This week, I am sharing two articles to help you improve your resume and LinkedIn profile.
Resume Best Practices
As a coach to graduate students and clients seeking a job change, I review and provide feedback on several resumes each week. There are typical issues such as the visual appeal of the formatting - ideally, it should be styled clean and easy to consume either by the reader or the Application Tracking System (ATS). The most significant issue I see for every resume I review is the lack of a clear bullet that describes what you did, how you did it, and the business impact of your work. When prospective recruiters or hiring managers read a resume, how easily they consume it and are in a position to ask relevant questions is a crucial consideration.
The article below primarily focuses on improving resume bullets and includes leveraging ChatGPT for key optimization. Resume bullets can also be used on your LinkedIn profile to boost readability.
LinkedIn Profiles
Here is a best practice guide of ideas to consider for improving your LinkedIn profile.
How does the top part of your LinkedIn profile quickly communicate your brand and value proposition?
How well does your profile reinforce the skills and positioning of your next move?
What makes your profile unique and interesting for people to want to connect and know more about you?
🤖 Tech
Gen AI Business Strategy
I teach an executive education course at the Berkeley Haas School of Business on applying AI to business. While it does discuss technical concepts, the primary focus is on how AI can be applied to business problems and the strategy and organizational issues that must be addressed to derive value. Given the massive shifts underway, understanding where and how to leverage AI in a business context is essential.
These few recent articles can help you understand more about AI in a business context and use this knowledge in your work.
Turn Generative AI from an Existential Threat into a Competitive Advantage (HBR) - This article presents three levels to derive value from AI:
Level 1 - Adopt publicly available tools. Since this technology is available to any business, the competitive advantage is short-lived.
Level 2 - Customize the tools. This consists of combining a generative AI tool with internal data to provide customers with a more intuitive user interface and more-personalized services. This feedback loop will create differentiation and accelerate product innovation.
Level 3 - Create automatic and continuous feedback loops. This implementation uses data from business processes to automatically create a feedback loop where the model is constantly improved.
Leading in a World Where AI Weilds Power of Its Own (HBR) - This article presents the concept of autosapiens: “Auto” in that they are able to act autonomously, make decisions, learn from experience, adapt to new situations, and operate without continuous human intervention or supervision. “Sapiens” in that they possess a type of wisdom—a broad capacity to make complex judgments in context—that can rival that of humans and in many ways outstrip it. The focus is on how we live and work alongside autosapiens to increase value and enhance our human agency.
How to Capitalize on Generative AI (HBR) - This articles review the issues of LLM hallucination (or confabulation), privacy, intellectual property, and bias risk while reinforcing its essential to embracing experimentation to learn and innovate.
Helping Employees Succeed with Generative AI (HBR) - This article presents the STEP framework to help leaders ensure that employee-facing AI is set up for success in their organization. The framework includes these four activities: 1) segmenting tasks for either AI automation or AI augmentation; (2) transitioning tasks across work roles; (3) educating workers to take advantage of AI’s evolving capabilities and to acquire new skills that their changing jobs require; and (4) evaluating performance to reflect employees’ learning and the help they give others.
Keep Your AI Projects On Track (HBR) - This article presents five steps for selecting and delivering value from AI:
Selection - choosing the right projects
Development - building a CoE and AI factory
Evaluation - using experimentation to quantify the impact
Adoption - understand users and change management
Management - proactive management strategy to sustain and enhance results
Weekend Reflection
Life is not forever, and making the most of each day has been a principle I have embraced over the last several years.
If today was my last day, would I regret how I am spending the day?
Am I working with amazing people I admire and learn from who are also interested in my well-being?
How does my work today align with my values and vision for what I want from life?
How does what I am doing right now move me closer to what is most important in my life?
What can I do today to build a stronger relationship with someone I love?
What am I grateful for?
Who can I call today to surprise them and tell me I was thinking about them?
👀 Thanks for reading and listening to Graymatter. I would love your help sharing my work with others!
I look forward to hearing your feedback and ideas.
- James