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Dima and Slave talk about what strategy is and what strategy isn’t.

• From Wikipedia: Strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty.
• Dima’s characteristics of a strategy
1. Multi-step plan, a “pattern of decisions”
2. Built on a particular world view
3. Aims at global (long-term) maximum
4. Does not rely on competitors making favourable choices
5. Requires agency and ability to execute
• Different flavours of strategy: business strategy, product strategy, etc
• Not every entity needs a strategy

Vision without execution is a daydream. Execution without vision is a nightmare.

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Dima and Slava count priorities and discuss how having to count priorities is a problem in and of itself.

• Dilution of terminology: priorities, KPIs…
• “Focus” is a good alternative that is expressly singular
• Priority: importance vs ordering
• Does priority get most time or the best time?
• One with 10 priority tasks gets to choose what the true top priority is
• Priority management cultures: collective and individual
• Does need for prioritisation arise having a lot more work that one can do?
• Have a stack of priorities and be very explicit about them
• Limit number of top priority items that you have at any given time

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Dima and Slava discuss the end of the second season of Biweeklycast and talk about what to expect in the upcoming third season.

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Dima and Slava discuss the practice of Open Feedback Circle and challenges of providing specific and actionable corrective feedback.

• Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI | Lex Fridman Podcast
• The Hedgehog and the Fox
• Open Feedback Circle
• Four A’s Feedback of Framework
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Erin Mayer. Discussion in Biweekly #28
• What is the value that people get from Open Feedback Circles?
• “Assume positive intent”
• Talking to people does help a lot

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Dima and Slava have read the book “Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World” and discuss what it means to be a generalist and what it takes to triumph.

• Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World by David Epstein
• Biweekly 42: How Mind Change
• Wicked and kind learning environments
• Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO
• "Story telling with some examples"

• General statements cannot be proven with just an example
• Who do we call “generalists”, anyway?
• T-shaped skills
• Lateral thinking
• The Market for Lemons – a theory behind bad products succeeding on a marketplace
• Best sellers vs best readers
• All bookclub episodes of Biweekly
• Next bookclub episode is going to be an experiment: a book vs podcasts
• Book: The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age by Claudia Hammond

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Dima and Slava start with discussing routines and dealing with them, and discover that there is a lot more than routines out there: habits, behavioural patterns, traditions, and rituals.

• Dima’s season of decoupling is… going
• So, basically your next step is “sit and wait” 🤔

• Routines are important for making changes in life. Or not?
• From Google AI Summary: “A routine is a set of actions regularly followed to create order and structure in daily life.”
• Routines vs habits vs behavioural patterns
• Is forming “an identity” around habit helpful?
• Episode #52 Needs analysis about chain of results
• Habit points and “well done” technique
• Doing things together also helps to build a habit
• Externally forced routines, which some call “rules”
• Desire for novelty does not necessarily go against building a routine
• One more flavour of “routine”: tradition
• Reactance theory
• One more flavour yet: ritual!

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Slava brings three stories from his recent professional practice and together with Dima they discuss using case studies in business training, designing a card game, and running strategic sessions for military units.

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Dima and Slava discuss a report from a foresight exercise by Aspen Digital about second and third order effect of AI, criticize the output, and agree with demise of practical skills driven by different kinds of automation.

• Second and Third Order Effects of A.I.
• AI or A.I.?
• What are foresight exercises?
• Wisdom of the crowd
• Biweekly 52: Needs Analysis – episode about chain of results
• Loss of practical skills is a real, but that is not necessarily related to AI
• Expeditionary Force by Craig Alanson
• Remember "World Wide Web"?

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Dima and Slava discuss the spreadsheet mentality and the general difficulties of making data-driven decisions while not loosing the forest for the trees.

• Theme corner: Dima's season of decoupling

Spreadsheet mentality (sometimes called "spreadsheet thinking") refers to an overly mechanistic or reductionist approach to decision-making and management that relies too heavily on quantitative metrics while ignoring qualitative factors and nuance.

• Improving a number while loosing track of why we started this in the first place.

• Measure = quantify, at least for the purposes of this discussion
• Cult of data-driven decisions
• Biweekly 52: Needs Analysis
• The “Traffic Light” Approach to Problem Solving

Quotes on the topic

"What gets measured, gets managed.” – attributed to Peter Drucker or W. Edwards Deming

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." – W. Edwards Deming

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” – Goodheart’s Law

“Tell me how you will measure me, and then I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way, don’t complain about illogical behaviour.” – Eliyahu Goldratt

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Dima and Slava discuss all the so familiar ways in which business meetings can fail and share their thoughts on how to prevent meetings from failing.

• Theme corner: Slava's winter of nucleus and spring of connection
• Magic of longer vacations

Meeting is when people get together to achieve a specific purpose

• Meetings have a goal. Effective meetings achieve their goals.
• How meetings fail
• Goal or purpose is not defined
• Meeting setup is not fit for the goal it tries to achieve
• People, who are needed, are not in the meeting
• The purpose of a meeting is misplaced
• Lack of focus in a meeting
• Wrong pacing of meeting: too fast or too slow
• Lack of follow-up
• Are there kinds of meetings that absolutely must happen face to face? Is it possible to hold any kind of meeting remotely?
• Is there a best duration for a meeting?
• The Surprising Secret of Synchronisation
• Episode about results chain 52: Needs Analysis