Biweeklycast

Biweeklycast

By BiweeklycastBusinessManagement
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Biweeklycast episodes

  • 16: Culture Map

    📺 Watch this episode on YouTube

    Dima and Slava have read "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer and discuss what they think of and how they to dimensions of communication offered by the book.

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    • "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer
    • Dima's distinction between "complimentary" and "contradictory" book
    • Book builds on experience rather that compiles scientific research. This, probably, makes it more honest
    • One sentence summary: idea of cultural dimensions is useful and, as often, everything is relative
    • Negative feedback, as narrower aspect of communication, makes a lot sense as a dimension that is important in professional collaboration
    • Paradox of US communication culture: low-context communication, but indirect negative feedback
    • Pay attention to upgraders and downgraders when giving and receiving feedback
    • Does persuasion dimension has more to it than principles-first vs applications-first?
    • Leadership dimension builds on research on power distance by Geert Hofstede
    • Looks like, both Slava and Dima use both decisioning styles: consensual and top-down
    • Decisions with capital D and with lower D
    • Continued interaction over time can allow task-based trust grow into relationship-based trust and vice versa
    • How to build relationship trust?
    • Does confrontational disagreement come from inexperience in other methods of debating and arguing?
    • Flexibility with scheduling seems to be heavily dependent on context
    • Is our constant connectivity of modern world makes people feel like they can be more flexible with time?
      • 1 hr 14 min
    • 15: Team Jargon

      📺 Watch this episode on YouTube


      Dima and Slava talk about effective communication in teams, how bad jargon really is, and what to do with acronyms. PSA: this episode contains a lot of TLAs.


      * What do we mean by "effective communication"? Precise and uses least possible time to reach mutual understanding


      "Communicating requires some practice, but just communicating is not a practice"


      * Communication in and out of the team

      * 6 examples of corporate jargon you should stop using now

      * Every water park is "best" according to some metric

      * Source of truth and indicator for turning a pump on and off

      * PSA: you are entering the TLA land

      * What's the difference between acronyms and abbreviations?

      * Style guide from UK Government Digital Service

      * Slava tries to humiliate Dima checking how good he is with technology abbreviations


      In the next episode: discussion of "Culture Code" by Daniel Coyle.

      57 min
    • 14: Building Corporate Culture

      📺 Watch this episode on YouTube

      Dima and Slava discuss corporate culture, debate if it can be built, and, if so what are the challenges and the tools can help.

      • Stanley Tucci Taste: My Life Through Food
      • What it is "corporate culture"?
      • The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture from HBR
      • How come "Results" and "Caring" are the dominant culture styles in the study by HBR?
      • Tools for shaping corporate culture
      • Mission statements: meaningful instrument or culture charade
      • Feedback loops are very important for driving the culture
      • Beware of pitfalls of employee surveys
      • Recognition is not the same as rewarding and arguably recognition is more important than rewards
      • How to practice recognition regularly?
      • Soft Skills Engineering podcast
      • Navier-Stokes equations
      • Double edged sword of driving change with performance or just metrics
      • Challenges can be reframed as opprtunities
      • Social events for building corporate cultures

        • "Informal meeting at 5pm. Agenda is in the attached document."

        • Social events, though, can be a useful indicator to understand the culture
          • 1 hr 2 min
        • 13: Automating The State
          Watch this episode on YouTube (https://youtu.be/iXqDNZWJD2c)
          Dima and Slava talk to Vasyl, once CEO of ProZorro, about automation of the government and government services, dynamics of state-owned enterprises and getting back to "regular" business.
          * ProZorro (https://prozorro.gov.ua/en) – public procurement service used by Ukrainian government
          * State in a smartphone
          * Starting from zero allow for leaps in adoption of new technology
          * Does "technology" equal "no corruption"?
          * If underlying process is bad, automation will just amplify it, not fix
          * 10 Functions of the State (https://effectivestates.org/ten-functions-of-the-state/)
          * Government is obliged to serve all citizens and cannot choose to have smaller marketshare
          * Social Credit System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System) in China
          * Arrow's impossibility theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)
          * Techno-optimists, techno-pessimists, and techno-realists
          "What is the problem we are trying to solve?"
          * "Nobody Gets Fired For Buying IBM" (https://www.forbes.com/sites/duenablomstrom1/2018/11/30/nobody-gets-fired-for-buying-ibm-but-they-should/)
          * Risk acceptance and dependence on public opinion
          1 hr 7 min
        • 12: Hyperfocus
          Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qWJRbR68vkU
          Dima and Slava read the "Hyperfocus" by Chris Bailey and discuss the ideas and lessons they drew from the book.
          * "Hyperfocus" (https://chrisbailey.com/hyperfocus/) by Chris Bailey
          * Slava has really put ideas from the book to work for him
          * Is the book over-indexing on email?
          * How is this book different from "Deep Work" (https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/) by Cal Newport?
          * Focusing on external and internal in managing one's productivity
          * Dima's most important takeaway: managing attention space
          * What is a good way to refer to scientific research and findings
          * Thinking about the most productive day
          * Making intentions very specific vs. intentionally board themes
          * Problems with the motivation to not break streaks
          * Cone of Uncertainty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty)
          * The "fog of the future" from the video about lockdowns (https://youtu.be/SVmEXdGqO-s)
          * Slava's super productive day was a scatterfocus day
          * What is scatterfocus and how to enter it?
          * "How To Calm Your Mind" (https://chrisbailey.com/how-to-calm-your-mind/) – next book by Chris Bailey
          57 min
        • 11: Tactical planning
          Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bExjWqJ4XWQ
          Dima brings up the challenges of tactical planning, Slava introduces the concept of "digital travel time" and both of them try to apply the GTD 2-minute rule to examples from an article.
          * Funny coincidences and the frequency illusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion) (also known as Baader–Meinhof phenomenon)
          * Tactical planning: where plans and ideas collide with the realities of life
          * Focused #166: The Social Dilemma (https://www.relay.fm/focused/166)
          * Time blocking as a planning method
          * Dima uses Apple Watch to remind himself of daily goals
          * Having tasks not done at the end of the day is... frustrating
          * Challenges of winding down for the day
          * Pro tip: to avoid overworking just let people know that you are late with something
          * Slava does day blocking instead of time blocking
          * Scheduling end-to-end vs having buffers and "digital travel time"
          * Use the Two-Minute Rule To Stop Procrastinating (https://blog.doist.com/two-minute-rule/)
          * Many to-do apps have quick tasks filing functionality
          Next episode: book club discussion of Chris Bailey's "Hyperfocus" (https://chrisbailey.com/hyperfocus/)
          1 hr 5 min
        • 10: Workplace learning
          Watch this episode on YouTube(https://youtu.be/eZEtdefAPA0)
          Slava came across a peculiar workplace learning trends report and together with Dima they dissect the elusive trends highlighted there and discuss possible motivations and challenges of producing reports on industry landscape.
          * "Ideal outcome" is the definition of done for a theme
          * Definitions: report, research, and survey
          * 2023 Workplace Learning Trends Report (https://business.udemy.com/2023-workplace-learning-trends-report/) from Udemy
          * Simpson's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)
          * What is really trending and how come it is different from what is popular
          * Why ~people~ companies create trend reports?
          * Ideas for making reports less dry and faceless
          * Udemy's market capitalization (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UDMY/key-statistics?p=UDMY)
          * Company valuation methods (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/business-valuation.asp)
          * Why startups burn through investment and it is ok
          * Is technology important for valuation?
          * Points (https://points.work/) series of events
          * Unexpected challenges of running a research on the landscape of corporate learning in Ukraine
          * Deep Space Industries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Industries)
          Next topic: tactical planning. That is planning on the scale of days and weeks.
          1 hr 3 min
        • 9: Themes. 2023 Edition
          Watch this episode on YouTube (https://youtu.be/L-P71qki3U8)
          Dima and Slava discuss their yearly themes for 2023 and how they plan to go about working on them.
          * Cortex (https://www.relay.fm/cortex) podcast
          * The Theme System (https://www.themesystem.com/)
          * Can one fail their theme?
          * Lighthouse Planning (https://www.lifejunctions.com/lighthouse/)
          * Quinquennial (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quinquennial)
          * Slava's theme hierarchy
          * Dima's new theme
          * MinimaList (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/minimalist-to-do-list-widget/id993066159)
          * LogSeq (https://logseq.com/)
          * Rocketbook (https://getrocketbook.co.uk/)
          * Bullet Journal (https://bulletjournal.com/)
          * Multi-tasking is the enemy of focus
          54 min
        • 8: How we learn
          Watch this episode on YouTube (https://youtu.be/6YlLkmYB2ik)
          Slava and Dima welcome Yulia Kudina and together they try to figure out what learning is, how they do that, and unexpected things they learned recently.
          * Yulia Kudina (https://www.instagram.com/yk.career/)
          * Подкаст Льоші і Юлі (https://podcasts.apple.com/cy/podcast/%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82-%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BE%D1%88%D1%96-%D1%96-%D1%8E%D0%BB%D1%96/id1644674115)
          * Chapter numbers Audible (https://www.reddit.com/r/audible/comments/7unce0/comment/dtmned8/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
          * Video about knife sharpening (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY8jvFqpZ_o)
          * Past episode (https://sonar.one/biweekly/203) about how we learn
          * What is "learning"?
          * Is intentionality important for learning? Social learning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_theory)
          * Deliberate practice (https://bit.ly/3vjR9hK)
          * Social learning and corporate culture
          * Mentoring someone to exercise critical thinking. Yes, letting people fail is also a method
          * How to learn when there is no accepted solution
          "Starting with why is always a good thing"
          * ...unless it is a book. Listen to an older episode (https://sonar.one/biweekly/39) to figure out why
          * MasterClass Online Courses (https://www.masterclass.com/)
          * What is the course or a training program that inspire us
          * Learning 0%->20% vs. 70%->90%
          * Study groups for deeper understanding (and learning)
          * Learning from ideas one disagrees with
          * Unexpected things we've learned recently
          1 hr 29 min
        • 7: Tell To Win
          Watch this episode on YouTube (https://youtu.be/k1xrwaKxV-A)
          Dima and Slava talk about book "Tell to Win" by Peter Guber and tell their own stories about the role storytelling plays in their lives.
          * "Tell to Win" (https://www.peterguber.com/leadership/telltowin/) by Peter Guber
          * Structured decision making for choosing a school
          * Chapters in the audiobook do not line up (https://www.reddit.com/r/audible/comments/7unce0/comment/dtmned8/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) with chapters in the paper book
          * What is a story? Is everything a story?
          * Key parts of the story: challenge, struggle, resolution
          * Hero's journey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey)
          * Stories and storytelling, the process
          * Case studies are usually dry. That is because they miss the "struggle" part of the story
          * A-ha moment from the book: "Demonstrate vulnerability; it isn’t a liability, it’s an asset."
          * Stories need heroes, but Slava disagrees that a location can be hero
          * Dima likes the idea of stories taking a life of its their own
          * "Board of directors" story (https://www.peterguber.com/steven-spielberg/)
          * Both Slava and Dima like telling stories and think they are very valuable for communication
          * Can one learn to be a great story teller?
          * Pyramid of proficiency
          In the next episode we will discuss learning with a mysterious guest.
          1 hr 1 min

        About Biweeklycast

        From the publisher's feed

        Friendly discussions about life, business, engineering, and learning between Dima Malenko and Slava Rudnytskyi.