I jotted down some of the work principles I live by. I’ve learned some of these through experience, and many of them through books and mentors. This will act as a reference for me, those who work with me, and others. It’s still a work in progress.

• Don’t take your job for granted.
  • Do your best to earn your place every day. This goes to everyone, from janitor to CEO.

• Work hard in silence. Period.
  • Don’t even anticipate success to make the noise. Don’t crave the noise or recognition.
  • Gain gratification and satisfaction intrinsically, not extrinsically.
  • Press and fame are vain.
  • Be in love with the process, not the results.

• Always ask why.
  • Knowing why you’re doing something helps you do it tenfold better.
    • This goes for both your intrinsic motivation for doing things, as well as why you and your team are focusing on a certain task or project.
      • If the why isn’t convincing, reevaluate.
• Be low on ego.
  • You will be wrong more times than you’ll be right. Accept that, take a punch, and get back in the game.
  • Getting offended says more about you than the person on the other side. Be objective. There’s always a reason why someone’s saying something.
    • If that reason turns out to be mere resentment or disrespect, you’re not in the right place.
  • It’s not enough to take feedback. Seek it. Ask for it. Embrace it.

• It doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what the market wants.
  • Building a business is very humbling. It’s never about you. It’s always about who you’re serving.
  • You can have opinions and hypotheses. The market will tell you which ones are right. If you do good work, the market will reward you.

• Embrace failure.
  • Don’t be afraid to fail. Be courageous to dream and experiment. Take studied risks and leaps of faith.
  • Don’t romanticize it. Failure sucks. But the recipe for success is made of different variations of the same ingredient: failure.

• Grow slack.
  • Life is tough. Humans have problems. Unexpected things happen. Design everything with the ability to take a punch in the stomach.
  • The human body is designed this way. You have 2 kidneys. If you deadlift 100kgs, your body will adapt to handle 110. Build resilience and antifragility.
  • New products and experiments need to be lean since the likelihood for failure is high. Once they work, they need fat.
  • Don’t confuse this with complacency.

• Be accountable.
  • Take ownership. If you can earn from the upside, you should also take risk on the downside.
  • If you’re not affected by the downside of a decision, then you shouldn’t be the decision maker.

• Build models of carrots and sticks, for yourself and others.
  • Humans thrive on rewards, but can grow entitlement and become too comfortable with no downside.
  • The stick has to be there. Reward and punish. Any system without the carrot & the stick fails to thrive in the long run, as it promotes complacency while accountability disappears.
    • Deciding what’s the stick is challenging.
    • Remember that humans react to 3 types of incentives: economic, social, and moral. Economic incentives are the least effective the higher you go. Social incentives are powerful. Moral incentives are decided by your culture.

• Make yourself obsolete. Build teams & a culture to replace you.
  • Culture is how your team makes decisions when you’re not there.
  • A manager’s output is the output of his/her team and the neighboring teams. Your individual efforts are important, but your success as a manager is tied to other people’s output.
    • That by definition makes you a coach.
  • Making oneself obsolete is a sign of maturity and confidence.
    • If you really become obsolete, a growing organization should have another challenge you can move to.

• Being comfortable in one’s own skin is a key characteristic to becoming a team player.
  • Insecure employees will create toxic environments as they project their insecurities on others to comfort themselves. You must identify that and stop it immediately.
  • You can’t change people, but you can influence them and give them a chance.
  • Related to being low on ego; one can only be so if they can like themselves. Read The Courage to be Disliked.

• Build feedback loops.
  • Every relationship can be looked at as a supplier-customer relationship. Supplier must always seek to hear customers’ feedback
    • Product Development is the customer of Operations. Consumer is the customer of Product Development. Employee is the customer of HR.
  • Bring things full circle by setting recurring feedback meetings. The newer the relationship/project, the more frequent these must be.
    • It’s not enough just to schedule them. Ask questions. Find your fault. Improve.
  • This is the golden rule of building new products: the Build > Measure > Learn cycle. It applies everywhere simply as Do > Gather Information > Learn.
    • The learning part is reflection. It’s best done alone through journaling.

• Detach.
  • Every now and then, it’s very healthy to detach and spend time alone to reflect.
  • It’s easy to drown in the seemingly productive day to day. Don’t be stuck in the rat race. Take a step back and evaluate big picture decisions. Do this often.

• Be honest and transparent with yourself and others.
  • More times than not, honesty is uncomfortable. If you think someone isn’t doing their job right, be sure to tell them.
    • If you don’t, then the company won’t make progress.
      • This wastes opportunity cost, which is immoral.

• Be kind.
  • Life is hard on everyone. Make sure your presence brightens up the day for others.

• Be reliable.
  • Not showing up on time, or not following through on a deadline shows disrespect and complacency.
    • Things don’t always go according to plan. That’s normal. Not communicating that before the ship sinks is unacceptable. It doesn’t matter how small or large the task is.
  • You can have a fun and friendly environment without compromising on this.