Start with WHY and Measure what Matters

I’ve been reading two books in my pursuit to improve my leadership abilities, and I feed those two should be read and make connections between what they can offer.

Start with WHY, from author Simon Sinek was the first I read. It was in the title of the book afterall, so I started with it. This book shows why should something be done and why should we care. But overall it’s a book for new starts and for reminding us why we started in the first place.

Sinek and his «golden triangle» is important to keep in mind that although we could aim for rationality and following a scientific method when making decisions, the part of the brain that controls decision making is more primitive, emotional and instinctive. We may rationalize our decisions, but in the end, most people will simply choose what «feels right».

But more than decision making, this is also important for motivation. And hard work, specially the one that derives from the mind, more than coffee. it needs motivation (although coffee is easier to get). More than products, we want a cause to support, and we want to be identified by an emblem, a symbol who represents what we are or what we stand for. As Sinek explains: «You can’t have a good product without people who like coming to work».

I’ve seen this in myself: I choose tools such as Apache Beam, Apache Airflow, Apache Spark and other open source tools not only because they are the best in the world, but because the whole world can improve because of them, because that knowledge is free to obtain and the whole world can coordinate to improve together and trust in what we do.

Trust is indeed another substantial topic Sinek covers. The lymbic brain leads us to give bigger importance to the opinions of those we trust, and we trust the ones with whom we share values and beliefs. Of course, we can balance that by using our rational brain and have models and methods for trusting something, getting data to analyze, experiment with a falsable statement, perform root cause analysis, observe acts and get more and more information. But ultimately, trust will result from validating other people or organizations have the same ways than us.

But also, Sinek talks about «giving structure to the dream» and while he offers valuable insights on HOW to proceed, that «an infrastructure is what actually makes any measurable change our success possible», it is the book from John Doerr, «measure what matters» that provides this insight about HOW to fulfill the objectives needed for the dream.

Measure What Matters is promoted as «How Google, Bono and the Gates Foundation rock the world with OKRs». Having being indirectly involved with the Google culture while working with EPAM Systems, the objectives and its measurements were already familiar to me, but the explanations from Doerr and all his guests, including Larry Page and Bill Gates, makes this book an absolute must-read for anyone leading anything.

Doerr also indicates that although an objective should be concrete, they also inspire. So, we shall play with both the lymbic and the rational sides of the brain to achieve our goals. Or at least, to have a better performance in reaching our dreams.

The explanation on the 4 super-powers we can achieve with an OKR system (focus & commitment, alignment & coordination, goal tracking & accountability, and stretching for the amazing) along with the explanations on how to proceed with the phases of the OKRs and what we need to do along the way, Doerr gives a framework for all of those who are committed on making things happen.

I’ve also added URLs for the webpages related to each book, which would be my next step in improving my abilties of HOW to keep going on and help people proceed on how fascinating life can be.