Weekly Pulse by William Meller | Week 33, 2022

The Weekly Pulse is my content curation and my highlights from readings, books, podcasts, insights, and everything I discovered during the week.
The Weekly Pulse is my content curation and my highlights from readings, books, podcasts, insights, and everything I discovered during the week.

So, let’s go with some discoveries from the week!

#1 – The Young and the Clueless
#2 – 1,000 True Fans
#3 – Tim Ferriss Show with Kevin Kelly
#4 – Lessons from Levi’s’ Digital Transformation
#5 – Your Strategy Won’t Work If You Don’t Identify the New Capabilities You Need

The Young and the Clueless

Source: Harvard Business Review 
Author: Kerry A. Bunker, Kathy E. Kram, and Sharon Ting

Summary: It’s not unusual for a star performer to be promoted into higher management before he’s ready. Yes, he may be exceptionally smart and talented, but he may also lack essential people skills. Rather than denying him the promotion altogether, his boss might do well to delay it—and use that time to help develop the candidate’s emotional competencies. Here’s how.

3 Highlights:

“… Encourage the manager to develop informal learning partnerships with peers and mentors in order to expose him to different leadership styles and perspectives. This will provide him with honest and ongoing feedback and continual opportunities to learn...“

“… Don’t give the inexperienced manager the impression that emotional competencies are optional. Hold him accountable for his interpersonal skills, in some cases taking a tough stance by demoting him or denying him a promotion, but with the promise that changed behaviors will ultimately be rewarded…“

“… Work to institute formal development programs that teach leadership skills and facilitate self-awareness, reflection, and opportunities to practice new emotional competencies...” 

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1,000 True Fans

Source: Kevin Kelly Blog
Author: Kevin Kelly

Summary: To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.

3 Highlights:

“… 1,000 true fans is an alternative path to success other than stardom...“

“… A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans….“ 

“… But in every case, cultivating my true fans enriches the route I choose…” 

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Tim Ferriss Show with Kevin Kelly

Source: The Tim Ferriss Show Podcast
Author: Tim Ferriss with Kevin Kelly

Summary: A Polymath, Kevin Kelly is considered by Tim Ferriss the real-life Most Interesting Man In The World. He is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine, which he co-founded in 1993. He also co-founded the All Species Foundation, a non-profit aimed at cataloging and identifying every living species on earth. In his spare time, he writes bestselling books, co-founded the Rosetta Project, which is building an archive of ALL documented human languages and serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation. As part of the last, he’s investigating how to revive and restore endangered or extinct species, including the Wooly Mammoth.

3 Highlights:

“…  That to be fully human we have to have a future. We have to look forward to the future. That is part of us is looking into the future…“ 

“… You don’t have to do everything yourself. You can hire people to do stuff. I wish I had known that when I was younger. I wish that I had, when I was 20 working for Whole Earth catalog, wish I had known that I could have hired a programmer to do something…“ 

“… So I think it is, that’s maybe part of the philosophy of thinking about our time and whether, even if you believe in the extension of life, longevity, living to 120, you still have to think in these terms of, what are you going to do if you – because you don’t know if you’ll live to be 120 – what are you doing to do if you have a year, and what would you do with a billion dollars? And what’s the intersection of those two?...” 

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Lessons from Levi’s’ Digital Transformation

Source: Harvard Business Review
Author: Harmit Singh 

Summary: Digital transformation can be tough for legacy businesses. Take Levi Strauss & Co.: The challenges at this iconic retail and apparel company are different given the company’s more than 168 years of deeply rooted habits and traditions. But when the pandemic hit, the company was forced to change and learned important lessons in the process.

3 Highlights:

“… Test, learn, fail fast, and move on. Repeat…“ 

“… Focus on leapfrogging over the competition, not catching them…“ 

“… Pushback is normal, and an opportunity to have open conversations…” 

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Your Strategy Won’t Work If You Don’t Identify the New Capabilities You Need

Source: Harvard Business Review
Author: Ron Ashkenas and Logan Chandler

Summary: Combining capability development with strategy execution does not need to be a complex undertaking.  The key is to make capability learning as overt and intentional as possible.  This will allow you to build organization muscle at the same time that you are getting business results.

3 Highlights:

“… This will allow you to build organization muscle at the same time that you are getting business results…“ 

“… To get started with this approach, think about your company’s own strategy, and what capabilities are critical to achieving results…“ 

“… Doing this will ensure that capability development is a real and tangible part of your organization’s growth, instead of a hope or an afterthought…”

Access the Weekly Pulse reading here >>

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