Denner's Digest - 2023-01-09

Y-Combinator sharing some wisdom on how the role of CEO changes with company maturity. The three phases of the company align with Kent Beck's Explore-Expand-Extract concept. Due to the change in context, the people suited to a company in "explore" may not fit as it moves to "expand". So either the people need to adapt or you need to hire others. The article alludes to the changes for the founder-CEO of phase 1: "At the end of Phase 2, you’ll have a leadership team that you’ve “road tested” to the point that you can confidently delegate everything you did in Phase 1. ... You can then shift the burden of company building to your leadership team so that you can start working on Phase 3: taking profits from the core business and investing them in new, transformative products." So phase 2 is not only about establishing the company for longevity. It's also about questioning if you, as founder, are best suited to the phase 3 CEO. You need to make sure that the company centers around your vision rather than you as an individual, even if you continue in the role.

First a bit of a warning: this article has references to violence and opinions that may offend. There's a lot to digest in here. It must be extremely difficult to work in certain areas knowing that whatever you do your words will be twisted to fit agendas. Here racism appropriates genetic studies. Studies that show one thing are used to show the exact opposite. Fundamental flaws in laymans "science" are used to take results and apply them in a false situation. But even the reaction to race in science appears to be flawed. There's been a shift from using "race" to "continental ancestry". That is, we've moved from a perceived dangerous categorisation to one based on arbitrary boundaries. Those boundaries formed by societies and natural guides for the flow of genetic lineage. In other words, we're almost white-washing the problem. Our nature makes us want to put things in boxes. It tends to makes us lazy in doing so. As groups interpret these boxes differently we move to relabelling them. Rather we should recognise that the box is wrong on a fundamental level. Unfortunately in science boxes are required in order to make sense of results. This leaves the problem as one of trying to find those boxes that reduce the opportunity for misinterpretation or misuse of the conclusions. Like the racist misuse of scientific studies, I've undoubtedly misinterpreted some of the content of this article. My hope is that I am a better human being after having read it.

This is a wonderful short piece about self appreciation. People feel better about themselves when they are intrinsically motivated, driven by their own feelings & rewards. We often feel pangs of guilt when we don't meet others expectations. I know I do. So rather than being extrinsically motivated we should make our main goal to not disappoint ourselves.

The word "ritual" has been intrinsically bound with "religion". The dictionary definition says "a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order". But drop the leading part of the sentence and it's just a sequence of actions that can be repeated. The first order effect of a ritual is imposing order. Through repetition it establishes a known state. As you progress through the ritual you know the next step. You know how it'll feel. Detailed here is the second order effect. With order, and familiarity, comes calmness. Thus rituals lead to lower anxiety in times of stress. It's only when the ritual becomes controlling, or interrupted, that it's effects are no longer positive. As someone who's lived close to OCD in the past I can attest to their destructiveness. Whilst this focuses on individuals, I think groups can also benefit. If you have a high trust environment the group rituals can be equally useful.