On the Edge Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Embracing Failure

Own It. Come Back with a Vengeance

In this chapter, Levine talks about how people usually define failure.  Once someone told her that she did not climb everest because she did not reach the top, even though she was only shy a few hundred feet from the summit.  She stresses not to “define success or failure in such concrete terms”. here example in this chapter is the story of Chad Kellogg.  He has been trying to beat the speed record for climbing Everest. However, each time the weather send him back when he is so close to reaching the summit.  Though he has not yet reached the top, he is still one of the best climbers in the world.  The moral of the story is to not judge a person by their success because they have also had failures that have made them stronger as well.  

She then gives a detailed account about the final hours before summiting Everest.  She talks about a picture and an article that was published in the New York Times,  She states that the picture of her standing on the top of Everest is very misleading because it doesn’t show all the people who were there every step of the way, which i thought was really great and humble.

I am glad that I had a chance to read this book.  I have learned so much about leadership.  I will now strive to use everything I learned to become a better leader, no matter the environment.

On the Edge Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Your Three Words

What’s your Mantra

In this chapter,  Levine talks about the importance of a having a credo.  Though these are usually associated with companies or teams, it is also important to have a personal one as well. “We all need a set of key words that remind us how we want to behave in our professional and personal life.”  Your credo should embody what you strive to daily and your purpose.  It also helps you structure what type of leader you want to be.  

Levine’s credo is “Count on Me”

This chapter also explains how Levine became an awesome keynote ( and I talk from experience).  One thing that stood out to me is that she had to cold call bureaus to get them to give her a chance.   This is something an entrepreneur can not be scared to do.  You can not be discouraged by no’s because like Walt Disney (and Alison Levine) learned; it only takes one yes.  

it was very inspiring to hear how Levine got to where she is today. I am sad that this next chapter is the last.

On the Edge Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Ignore the Rules

Do the Right Thing. Always.

In this chapter, Levine stress the importance not to follow rules blindly. There rw sometimes that leaders must make the decision that has the best possible outcome.  

Her example in this chapter was pretty extreme, but still got the point across. She talks about a young soldier that got an undetonated rocket powered grenade stuck in his pelvis.  Normal protocol is to get he person far away from everyone else and just leave them there to die.  Instead his team member and the medical staff decided to forget the rules and save this man’s life.  They all in te end where rewarded for their valor.  This shows how breaking the mold can have even better results.  

She gave another example of when following the rules can have bad consequences. Long story short,  an electrical company gave a fine to a small town who was trying to honor a fallen soldier by hanging american flags all over the town on the electrical poles.  They ende getting a lot of backlash from the neighborhood for the fine.  

Leaders should have the “ability to take action based on the situation at the time”

“Leaders need to make sure that the people on their teams know when to follow the rules and when to interpret them in ways that lead to better outcomes.”

On the Edge Chapter 8

Chapter 8

You’re Not Special

Building Trust and Loyalty

It is important to treat others with respect no matter what environment you are in.  the only people who can get away without doing it are people who are good at what they do. Example: Dennis Rodman

Levine talks about the importance of this, especially in extreme environment.

Once a climber’s lack of manners gave a one way ticket off the mountain.  This because leaders of this expeditions also control your permits, so they can easily be revoked if they fill you are a threat to the team.

She emphasizes the Golden Rule;  if you treat people with kindness, it will only be reciprocated.  

She also talks about how people do not trust you because you have a title.  The most successful guides are the ones that mentor and support their team rather than those who just want to collect a paycheck.  

“‘Leader’ is a mindset.”

To build trust, you have to get to know your team.  It keeps you from making wrong judgements about people.  Lastly, you need to show your team that you roll up your sleeves and work towards the common goal.   This is easy for expedition leaders.  “There is no class system in these environments.  Leaders sleep in the same type of tent as everyone else.”  Another example is Mark Zuckerberg.  He does not have some secluded office by himself, but instead has an office amongst everyone else.  

On the Edge Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Bring It

“Leaders are supposed to know what skills and equipment are needed to get a job done right or to achieve a goal. “

Levine talks about the importance of bringing the right equipment to be successful.  Her example in this chapter is when she climbed Carstensz Pyramid, the highest peak in Australia.  

Her lack of preparation almost costed her goal to climb the mountain

Mistakes

1. She forgot to bring extra hand warmers - which was important to treat her Raynaud's syndrome (fingers and toes become numb in cold temperature)
2. She did not bring an extra light bulb for headgear
3. She forgot her regular prescription glasses

You are responsible for knowing what tools are needed to be successful.  There are no excuses.    

On the Edge Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Coming up short

There always be a weak link in the group, and sometimes it could be you.

Even though you are the weakest link, you always find a way to compensate.

Compensating for a weakness can be done by leveraging attributes and innovative ways that can move you.

A good leader knows that it is their responsibility for every team members productivity.

In this chapter, Levine talks about her expedition to the South Pole as an example.

Here are some fun facts about traveling to the South Pole

1. You must consume 5000 to 6000 calories a day.

2. They have to consume entire stick of butter without bread everyday.

3.  You have to wear a lot of sunscreen because the UV rays reflect off all of the lovely white snow. If you do not, you will get terrible blisters on your face

Because of Levine's short stature and small size, she was slower than her taller teammates.

She felt terrible that she was the weakest member on the team

Luckily, she had a good leader. He offloaded some her stuff and did it in a way that she did not feel any worse than she already did.  She found a way to compensate by helping them shovel snow on to their tents every night.  

“Great leaders find unexpected ways to bring out the best in themselves and in others.”

“Most people no matter how talented, will at some point find themselves in a position where one or more of their skills don’t measure to the skills of those around them.”

Guinea Pig for a Day

Today, I volunteered to be apart of a class for a potential new teacher.  Next year's class is very lucky.

On the Edge Chapter 5

Complacency will kill you

Levine starts off by talking about all of these very experienced and world renowned climbers fall to their death because of many stupid reasons.

One died because he had climbed so many times he was assured he did not need to clip himself to a safety line while going across the ladders through the Khumbu Icefall

Another decided to use a slightly worn harness that ending up snapping and he fell to his death

It is easy to become complacent when something seem routine. It will kill because unpredictable things can happen like an avalanche. To avoid complacency, you must keep yourself and your teammates in check. Complacency is also following the crowd and not knowing how to adapt.

This is why companies  like Ford and Blackberry almost went bankrupt

She also talks about the Khumbu Icefall moving ice with many dangerous cervas that you get across by walking across shaking ladders.  There are also 62 foot tall seracs that could fall at any time.  It is also in between Camp 1 and Camp 2. Even though an Everest climber goes through it up to 7 times, she stresses that it is important that a climber does not to become complacent because it is very unpredictable terrain

On the Edge Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Friends in High Places

This chapter really taught me about the importance of networking.  

The first thing Levine does when she gets to base camp is to go introduce herself to the other teams. People are more willing to help people they know.  She gave the example of climbers leaving an injured climber to die on summit day.  She talked about an instance where a lone climber was left for dead by others because they did not know him.  Another example is where a man saw a guy that he met at base camp and gave up his chance to reach the summit to save the other man’s life.  

“Think about who you may need to call on for help at some point, and make sure you have relationships in place before you need the help.”

“ There are time in life where you have to step up --- even if you feel like you aren't ready.”

Levine talks about how she got her corporate sponsor, Ford.  If she would not have maintained her college network, she would have never had a friend who worked at Ford who could send her proposal to executives.

The statement “people are more willing to help people they know” really resignated with me.  I am usually a little nervous about networking especially with adults.  I now know if I do not put myself out there, I could miss out on an opportunity of a lifetime.  

On the Edge Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Choosing a Team

Levine talk about how she picked the ladies to participate in the first American Women’s Expedition to Everest.  She talks about some people were in it for the wrong reasons, asking how much they were getting paid and what private jet would they take.  They actually did not get paid at all to do this trip

She learned about the importance of ego from Coach K, a renowned coach for Team USA’s basketball team.

He talked about two types of egos

1. performance ego - which shows that they players has confidence in their abilities
2. team ego - players feel like they are privileged to be apart of this team

In the end, players are confident their own and the team’s abilities to be successful

“Just because you have a group of people doing the same thing at the same time with the same goal does not make you a team.  A group is only a team when every member of the group cares as much about helping the other members as they care about helping themselves.”  She compares this to a time to when she climbed Mount Everest without a team.  No one had any obligations to take others people’s opinions into consideration

because everyone was there for their own reasons. There was no common goal

Coach K said’ “If you try to win alone and you’re successful, you’re going to jump up to celebrate alone.”

On the Edge Chapter 2

It is false that progress is “ a constant forward motion in the same direction”

Levine talks about the rigorous climb of Mount Everest.  An Everest climb is not straight to the top.  Here is the order

1. Base Camp
2. Camp 1
3. Back to Base Camp
4. Back to Camp 1
5. Camp 2
6. Back to Base Camp
7. Back to Camp 1
8. Back to Camp 2
9. Camp 3
10. Back to Base Camp
11. Back to Camp 1
12. Back to Camp 2
13. Back to Camp 3
    then the Summit (or the top)
     

There is so much back tracking you must do because the human body has to go through acclimatization - the process of getting use to higher elevations by the body producing more red blood cells to carry oxygen more evenly through the body

If you dont do this, you can get very dangerous altitude illnesses

“The mental trick is to understand that going down does not mean you’re losing ground, but rather strengthening the foundation of your effort.” 

Absent

I was not here, due to snow. 

On the Edge Chapter 1

Here are my takeaways from Chapter 1 of On the Edge

If you are caught unprepared, let it be for something that you can not control.  At least then you don't question your ability

Ex.  Many people on high mountains turn around because of unforeseen environmental factors.  Otherwise, they are asking themselves could I have trained harder?.

People expect more from you when you are a leader, so make sure you come prepared in every way.

“To be an effective leader, it’s important that you condition yourself for time that sleep is not an option.”

Many people would say I have this covered.  I can make it through a day with only 4 hours of sleep

Levine talks about a how you want to go on a climb with people more skilled than yourself, same when choosing teammates.  If you surround yourself with people better than you, you will get better.

She also talks about the importance of finding a mentor.  She said, “ Don’t wait for mentors to come to you.”  

“When you see someone scared about making huge leap-reach out”

Levine also talk about how you can develop a strong team by allowing others to lead and empowering others to take responsibility. It helps the leader share the workload.   It also prepare them for worst case scenarios.

Ex. the 1996 Everest climb - the team leaders where not to be found during a deadly storm, so many just sat in confusion.

“Good leaders understand it's their duty to develop leadership skills in others”

Lean Startup Chapter 12

Here is the Last Chapter of Lean Startup!

First a recap on vanity metrics

an overly long cycle time

the use of large batch sizes

an unclear growth hypothesis

a weak experimental design

a lack of team ownership

With these there is very little learning

The innovation sandbox

The sandbox also promotes rapid iteration. When people have a chance to see a project through from start to end, they benefit from the power of feedback.

By making the batch size small, the sandbox method allows teams to make cheap mistakes quickly and start learning.  Small initial experiments can demonstrate that a team has a viable new business that can be integrated back into the parent company.

Ries talk about how entrepreneurship should be considered a career path for innovators inside large organizations. Managers who can lead teams by using the Lean Startup methodology should not have to leave the company to reap the rewards of their skills.  Instead, “they should have a business card that says simply "Entrepreneur" under the

name.”

Questioning the Lean Startup

“Those who look to adopt the Lean Startup as a defined set of steps or tactics will not succeed. I had to learn this the hard way.” It is true that if we try a new way of working, people will blame the new system for the problems that arise  “You have to be able to predict the outcome of the changes you make to tell if the problems that result are really problems.”

Lean Startup Chapter 11

Here are my noted for Chapter 11

Adaptive organization - one that automatically adjusts its process and performance to current conditions.

The Five Whys method is important to adaptive organization because it can help uncover the root problem and correct it.

Example from the book

1. Why did the machine stop? (There was an overload and the fuse blew.)

2. Why was there an overload? (The bearing was not sufficiently lubricated.)

3. Why was it not lubricated sufficiently? (The lubrication pump was not pumping sufficiently.)

4. Why was it not pumping sufficiently? (The shaft of the pump was worn and rattling.)

5. Why was the shaft worn out? (There was no strainer attached and metal scrap got in.)

Asking these “whys: got to the base of the problems, instaed of just scratching the surface.  

When frustrated teammates start pointing fingers at each other, it becomes the Five Blames,

Recommended tactics for escaping the Five Blames.

Whoever is left out of the discussion ends up being the target for blame - so make sure everyone apart of the process is brought to the meeting

It also requires executive leadership to sponsor and support the process.

Lean Startup Chapter 10

Here are my notes from Chapter 10

The engine of growth is the mechanism that startups use to achieve sustainable growth.

Sustainable growth is characterized by one thing: “New customers come from the actions of past customers.”

There are four ways customers drive sustainable growth:

1. Word of mouth - caused by satisfied customers' enthusiasm for the product.

2. As a side effect of product usage - product drives the awareness of themselves whenever they are used (ex. luxury items or Facebook)

3. Through funded advertising - Advertising paid for out of revenue, not one-time sources such as investment capital. .

4. Through repeat purchase or use . Some products are designed to be purchased repeatedly either through a subscription plan (a cable company) or through voluntary repurchases (groceries or lightbulbs).

Shawn Carolan said that, "Startups don't starve; they drown." because there are always a many new ideas about how to make the product. The engines of growth framework helps them stay focused on the metrics that matter.

Companies use the sticky engine of growth track their attrition rate or churn rate very The churn rate is the fraction of customers in any period who fail to remain engaged with the company's product. The rules: “if the rate of new customer acquisition exceeds the churn rate, the product will grow. The speed of growth is determined by what I call the rate of compounding, which is simply the natural growth rate minus the churn rate.”

Its focus needs to be on improving customer retention.

Online social networks and Tupperware are examples of products for which customers do most of the marketing

Ex. Hotmail was slow growing company at first then they added this to the bottom of each email

"P.S. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail" along with a clickable link.

This increased their customers exponentially.  

The viral engine is powered by a feedback loop, called the viral loop , Its speed is determined by a single mathematical term called the viral coefficient . The higher this coefficient is, the faster the product will spread. The viral coefficient measures how many new customers will use a product as a consequence of each new customer who signs up. “Put another way, how many friends will each customer bring with him or her? Since each friend is also a new customer, he or she has an opportunity to recruit yet more friends.”

A viral loop with a coefficient that is greater than 1.0 will grow exponentially, because each person who signs up will bring, on average, more than one other person with him or her. For example look at the chart below:

Companies that rely on the viral engine of growth must focus on increasing the viral coefficient more than anything else, because even tiny changes dramatic changes. A consequence of this is that many viral products rely on indirect sources of revenue such as advertising.

It is recommended  that startups focus on one engine at a time.

Product/market fit to describe the moment when a startup finally finds a widespread set of customers that resonate with its product:

Lean Startup Chapter 9

Here are my notes for Chapter 9

The Lean Startup methodology advocates for the small batch approach. The biggest advantage of working in small batches is that quality problems can be identified much sooner. The small-batch approach produces a finished product every few seconds, whereas the large batch approach must deliver all the products at once, at the end

Example of large batch

It is like the changes that are made to a product such as the iPhone when it is updated.  All 1,500 updates are released to customers in one giant batch

.

Small batching is also called continuous deployment. This is where you make changes everyday then check for defects and remove them immediately.

Small batches allow startups to get through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop quickly. The ability to learn faster from customers is the essential competitive advantage that startups must possess.

Here is an example of small batches at work from the book

THE PROJECT TIME LINE
Design and engineering of the initial virtual prototype	1 day
Production and assembly of initial hard prototypes	3 days
Design iteration: two additional cycles	5 days
Initial production run and assembly of initial forty units	15 days

Large batches end in problems that lead to interruptions for the next batch.  It also causes a focus on how many you can produce rather than getting it to the customer.

Lean Startup Chapter 8

Here are my notes from Lean Startup Chapter 8

Every entrepreneur eventually faces an overriding challenge in developing a successful product: deciding when to pivot and when to persevere

Failure is a prerequisite to learning.  

Most entrepreneurs wish they would have pivoted sooner than they did. There are three reasons for this.

1. Vanity metrics can allow entrepreneurs to form false conclusions and live in their own private reality
2. When an entrepreneur has an unclear hypothesis, it’s almost impossible to experience complete failure, which is the only way you can change
3. Many entrepreneurs are afraid. They fear their vision will prove to be wrong without having been given a real chance to prove itself

Different Types of Pivots

Zoom-in Pivot a single feature in a product becomes the whole product.

Zoom-out Pivot - what was considered the whole product becomes a single feature of a much larger product.

Customer Segment Pivot - change to a different customer base than originally anticipated.

Customer Need Pivot - when a company learns the problem they were trying to solve is not very important.  The company finds other related problems instead.  This may require a completely new product.

Platform Pivot - a change from an application to a platform or vice versa.

Business Architecture Pivot a pivot between two major business architectures: high margin, low volume (complex systems model) or low margin, high volume (volume operations model).

Value Capture Pivot - they change the way they capture value.  Value captures are like monetizations and revenue models

Engine of Growth Pivot - changes its growth strategy to seek faster or more profitable growth.Commonly but not always, the engine of growth also requires a change in the way value is captured.

Channel Pivot - changes sales channel or distribution channel (the way the customer gets the product)

Technology Pivot - a company that discovers a way to achieve the same solution by using a completely different technology.

Lean Startup Chapter 7

Here are my notes from Chapter 7

Innovation accounting enables startups to prove objectively that they are learning how to grow a sustainable business. Innovation accounting begins by turning the leap-of-faith assumptions into a financial model.

Vanity metrics are cumulative totals and gross numbers such as total revenue and total number of customers.  These can be misleading and do not show trends that can be attached on because they hide confounding data.  For a report to be considered actionable, it must demonstrate clear cause and effect. Otherwise, it is a vanity metric. With vanity metrics, it’s so common to have a meeting in which the marketing departments thinks the numbers went up because of a new PR or marketing effort and the engineering department thinks the better numbers are the result of the new features it added.

Cohort analysis is one of the most important tools of startup analytics. Actionable metrics like a cohort analysis look at the performance of each group of customers that comes into contact with the product independently. Each group is called a cohort. The graph can show the conversion rates of new customers who joined your company in each indicated month. Each conversion rate shows the percentage of customer who registered in that month who subsequently went on to take the indicated action.  

Here are examples of a cohort graph

A split-test experiment is one in which different versions of a product are offered to customers at the same time. By observing the changes in behavior between the two groups, it is easier to make inferences about the impact of the different variations.

Only 5 PERCENT of entrepreneurship is the big idea, the business model, the whiteboard strategizing, and the splitting up of the equity.

The other 95 percent is the hard work that is measured by innovation accounting: product prioritization decisions, deciding which customers to target or listen to, and having the courage to subject a vision to constant testing and feedback.