As a quick follow up to last week, I made progress on a few AI-related projects I wanted to share with you.
NotebookLM - I directly synced my Readwise account with Google’s NotebookLM. I now have all 23,000+ of my book/podcast/article highlights synced with Google Drive, separated by source, which I can pull into Notebook LM as needed.
With this I can pull specific books into a project and use NotebookLM’s features, like generating: - an FAQ - an audio podcast - a study guide
My Ryan Holiday Stoic notebook in NotebookLM. The audio overview was good!
Custom GPTs with OpenAI - I used the NotebookLM work above to generate PDFs for books by Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene, and loaded these into two separate custom GPTs.
I can call these custom GPTs in other conversations. For example, I can ask Ryan Holiday to give me a Stoic perspective on something.
I also created a marketing GPT. I pulled all my books on marketing into a single GPT that can give me targeted insight.
Full Highlights GPT - Lastly, I exported all my 23K highlights into a single .csv, which I uploaded into a single GPT I called Book Nerd. My highlights are all in one place, connected to an LLM. The responses to my early testing are not very smart, so I’ll keep working on this.
Last week some of you shared interesting use cases for how AI supplements and supports your work (like employee onboarding/training).
I just recently got notified at work that I’m due for my annual privacy training. It would be great to have little AI agents trained on various policies available to call into your work. Instead of relying on my memory from annual training, I could call the privacy agent into my project and ask it to assess non-compliance or risk.
If you’ve got an example of how you’re using AI to supplement and support your work, I’d love to hear it! Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz.
Kevin 😁
A Quote
“
...we resist self-exploration especially when emotions are involved. We don’t change well on our own. To stop adverse thinking patterns, someone outside our head needs to disrupt our thinking by reflecting our thoughts back to us and asking questions that prompt us to wonder why we think the way we do. These statements and questions enable us to see our concocted stories as if they were laid out in front of us in a book to be read and analyzed.
— Marcia Reynolds in "Coach the Person, Not the Problem"
Three Things
1 - 🏝️ Principles You - Adam Grant and Ray Dalio created this personal assessment tool. It will identify your ‘archetypes,’ along with where you’re positioned on a variety of spectrums (e.g. Tough, Leadership, Status-Seeking). It also shows how you behave in common situations (e.g. on a team, under stress). Connect with your friends/colleagues, and you get a custom comparison report. A large number of my team did this and found it fun and insightful! (FYI, I’m a Growth Seeker)
2 - 🏋️ Grid League - I recently found this interesting mix of Crossfit and racing? It’s a large set of coed teams that compete head to head in a race, doing Crossfit-style movements - but weirder. It mixes burpees and pistols, there are muscle-ups with a medicine ball between your legs, or burpee pullovers. High speed, heavy weights, and weird movements seems like injury risk is higher, but they all seem like they’re having fun.
3 - 📗 Fortune’s Children - This was a great book covering the rise (and fall - spoiler!) of the House of Vanderbilt. Commodore started life very poor, but through ingenuity and pretty aggressive techniques, came to amass an enormous fortune in his lifetime - $95M - more than was in the US Treasury at the time. His son doubled it in a decade, but then lavish spending and distribution amongst heirs meant it was essentially all gone within two generations. I particularly liked the introverted George, grandson, who bought 5,000 acres of land, but didn’t like the neighbors being so close. He upped it to 146,000 acres; a perimeter that would take a week to travel on horseback!
Deeper Dive on the Behaviors to Drive Transformation
As leaders we’re all in the business of transformation.
If we’re not transforming our businesses, they’re in stasis. Stasis leads to decline.
The companies and technologies we enjoy today are here because a leader created the transformation.
History is also littered with companies that fell to the wayside because their leaders did not transform when they needed to.
After exploring countless stories of leaders and companies through books and podcasts (special mentions to Founders and Acquired!), I’ve noticed something: there’s no centralized list of the things that are needed to drive transformation.
I’m talking about the on-the-ground, sitting in a meeting with your team, day-to-day things. What are the behaviors?
On the ground. Get it? Sorry; I'll show myself out.
I’ve sucked at being a leader on transformation, and I’ve also periodically nailed it. I’ve watched and worked with leaders around me for two decades having their own successes and failures.
Together, all of these experiences have given me insight into the areas that’ll improve your chance of transformation success.
This won’t give you everything you need to be successful - that’s what this overall Catalyst newsletter is for - but it’ll give you a good sense for the things that should be top of mind for transformation.
As a reminder, we live in the gray, not the black and white. Everything exists on a spectrum, and sometimes two principles will be in tension with each other. Use your judgment.
Before sharing the list of key behaviors for driving transformation, let’s start with a key general pillar - driving transformation requires you to get in there.
Get In There
Do you know Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘arena’ quote? That’s what you have to do to drive transformation.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Transformation is not passive work. You must get in there and understand the problem. You must understand the context and the challenges.
You need to lead from the front.
Everything I share in the rest of the newsletter will not work if you’re not in the arena.
Roll up your sleeves and get to work.
What is the work? Next I’ll share a list of nine key behaviors to employ.
The List
Here’s the full list of ideas. I’ll elaborate in the sections below. 1. Have a perspective 2. Create structure 3. Be present 4. Set the speed 5. Make decisions 6. Establish goals 7. Manage the team’s brand 8. Align staffing with scope or strategy 9. Set the mood
Have a Perspective If you don’t have a perspective, you’re mush. There’s nothing for the team to push against.
There’s no structure. You cannot give guidance.
When the team looks to you for leadership, you cannot provide it. You can only defer or fake it.
The team can tell, and you’ll lose their respect and trust.
How will you know what needs to be done if you don’t have a perspective?
Look at the work from multiple angles to generate your perspective.
Create Structure Leaders are organizational architects. You need to ensure that the set of people and processes can deliver on the necessary transformation.
You must establish, align, and honor roles and responsibilities.
You must set up your key rituals (aka meetings) and artifacts. This is information flow for you and the team, including those teams that don’t report into you.
And if possible and necessary, take a look at the actual org. structure. These systems have power, so make sure yours is working for you, not against you.
Be Present If you have too many things going on and you can’t be present for the team, you’re being less effective in your transformation efforts.
You need to either scale yourself or focus on what you can effectively be present for. I’ve seen a lot of people put themselves in the leadership seat, but then not be around to actually lead.
Set the Speed The team cannot move faster than you, so you set the tone. Working on fewer things faster beats trying to move many things slower.
Innovation comes from ideas having sex, so you’re not going to get far if there’s only a monthly review. To meaningfully drive transformation you should be engaging with the team more frequently.
Not everything has to be a meeting, although well-organized meetings are highly effective. It could be reading and providing written comments on a team’s report. If could be Slack messages or email.
When you’re setting due dates for next steps, don’t default to one week or one month. What can be done tomorrow?
Speed can be high, but not frenetic. Methodical and intentional.
Make Decisions At least, make the decisions that need to be made. You shouldn’t make everything or you’ll be a bottleneck.
Focus mostly on architecture or those things that are otherwise expensive to change. Remember, driving transformation is active work. You need to know the details and drive things forward.
For most decisions, move authority to information. Delegate decisions to those capable below you so that the overall speed remains high.
Establish Goals The team can make better decisions if you’ve aligned everyone towards the ultimate outcome.
If the desired outcome isn’t clear or commonly known, you’ll get chaos. You’ll have a lot of people working towards different futures in different ways.
Set goals, ideally something quantifiable, and communicate it consistently.
Manage the Team’s Brand While you get a lot of interaction with your boss or other senior leaders, your team may only get a handful of interactions.
You need to give the team space to make mistakes without that negatively affected their brand.
Conversely, you need to nurture the positive elements of their brand by giving them the credit for the great work they are doing.
Manage the brand of the team.
Align Staffing with Scope and Strategy You need the right number of people with the right skills to reach the stated goals.
If you can’t get them, then you need to adjust the goals or scope to meet the staffing levels.
And if that’s not possible, then you’ve got to get creative with the strategy.
Remember, you go to war with the army you have. You do what you can with who you have. Constraints drive creativity, so get into the details and see what you and the team can come up with.
Set the Mood Leaders bring the weather, and your organization looks like you. You establish the mood for the team in ways large and small.
Mood is set by how you start and stop meetings. It’s the things you celebrate - or don’t. It’s your tone and your language. Do you show that you believe the work is possible, or impossible?
Be intentional about the type of mood that’s needed for the big picture, and make adjustments meeting by meeting, depending on what’s needed at the time.
That’s the list of the nine key behaviors you should have top of mind when working to drive transformation.
You’re paying attention to and making adjustments with these behaviors because transformation is about managing momentum.
Teams have mass, just like in physics, and they’re subject to the same laws. When playing with the concepts above, you’re trying to keep momentum high.
If you take a mis-step, the team and the work can slow down incrementally. Do it enough, and it’ll grind to a halt.
Once stopped, trains take a lot of energy to get moving again. The same applies to your people.
Use This List as a Diagnostic
If your transformation work feels off, or the momentum is gone, use the above as a mini diagnostic check.
For example, do you have a perspective on the work? If not, why not? Do you not have the right information flow? Review the structure.
Check the roles and responsibilities. Adjust the rituals.
Change the cadence. Adjust your mood.
Start building back the momentum bit by bit.
Call to Action
Start your diagnostic. What transformation are you driving?
If you’ve got a lot of plates in the air and can’t be present for them all, do you need to get aligned on priorities - including canceling or pausing any that aren’t set up for success?
Are you on the sidelines, or are you in the arena with the team?
How are you doing on each of the items in the list? Adjust what needs to be adjusted.
I’d love your feedback! Does the list resonate? What would you add? Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz and let me know! I’d love to hear your thoughts.
