See the world as it is

Welcome to the “The Catalyst,” Kevin Noble’s weekly newsletter about becoming a more effective leader.

Past newsletters can be found online here.

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Quick Note

One of my favorite bits of career advice is from Frank Slootman who says you should be careful which elevator you step into.

Some elevators go up, some go down, and some don’t move.

He’s touching on a few things we talk about here.
1) Systems are powerful.
2) Focus on what you can control.

You can be an absolute baller, but if you join a company that’s in a bad market or with ineffective leadership, you’re not going to do very well.

Conversely, you can be average to poor, but if the company is accelerating like a rocket ship, you’re going to benefit from that growth.

One way to assess how elevators move is to look at stock price. I got curious about different elevators so looked at the past five years of performance for different companies.

What do you think it’s like being an employee for the past five years at each of these companies? What are the performance and compensation conversations like?

Is the mood one of scarcity or abundance?

Hertz probably has some amazing people. Nvidia probably has some average people. The average person at Nvidia is exposed to a lot more financial upside and career opportunities than the amazing Hertz person, by virtue of which elevator they choose to get on.

So, it’s worth considering; which direction is the elevator you’re on going, and how fast?

Kevin

A Quote

“ I sleep well at night because I’m at peace with myself and my soul. I wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror and really love the woman who looks back at me. She’s flawed AF but knows without question that she is better than who she used to be. And she knows her mistakes do not define her; her lessons do. — Luvvie Ajayi Jones in “Professional Troublemaker”

Three Things

1 – 📱 Reelgood – On Sunday night, when I’m trying to figure out which movie streaming service might have “The Hudsucker Proxy” available so I can continue my kids’ Coen brothers education, I have to search on each individual service. It’s 2024; what am I doing?! I found Reelgood, which solves this problem. Search movies, keep track of a watch list. It makes navigating multiple services much easier.

2 – 🐶 Austin Pets Alive! – If you’re looking for a new dog, consider getting them from a shelter. We’ve rescued our last four dogs, the most recent two from APA! here in Austin. There are lots of sweet dogs looking for good homes (see Goofy and Itty Bitty Pitty Committee). My family tries to get me to say yes to a third dog by flipping through the available dogs – some of whom have been in a shelter for years 😕. I’m not ready for a third, but maybe you have room?

3 – 🏰 Restoration of French Château de Purnon – Check out this video walking through the restoration of a crumbling French Château. The estate has 20 buildings on 56 acres. They purchased it for roughy $0.8M USD! The first stage of work, fixing the exterior, will cost $3.1M. They get financial help from the government and private grants. They’re four years in and it’s still not finished. Check out this Q&A video if you want to go down the Purnon rabbit hole.

Deeper Dive on Seeing the World as It Is

There’s a natural human tendency to see the world as we wish it to be, as opposed to seeing the world as it is.

It seems so simple, to see the world as it is. It implies passivity. It implies the natural state of things.

It’s actually really difficult to see the world as it is.

Our brains put so much distortion around our view. Seeing reality is not passive. It’s a skill we have to develop, and actively engage with.

Today I’ll share thoughts on why seeing reality is so important and how to get better at it.

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Why should we want to see reality

You are many things. You might be a leader, a parent, a spouse or partner. A singer. A chef. A mentor.

No matter your identity, you’re living in the real-life world, and interacting with the people in it. You have to drive action within that world and with those people in order to get anything accomplished.

Before sharing how to get better at seeing reality, let me share why it’s important.

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Creating Enduring Outcomes

If you want a solution to stand the test of time, you need to build it for the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.

This principle was used when America’s founding fathers were designing the United States system of government.

George Washington, in writing a letter to John Jay, who was the secretary for foreign affairs in the Articles of Confederation government – one that wasn’t quite working – said:

They were aware that humans were not perfect, and therefore should not design a government around the assumption that they were.

Similarly, you need to design solutions for the world as it is.

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Assessment Drives Action

Actions come from your assessments. If your assessments are off, your actions will be off. The world won’t contort its reality to meet your mythology; it’ll stay as it is and your actions will be ineffective.

So if you care about driving actual outcomes, you’ll care about seeing reality as it is, not what you wish it to be.

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Stress Reduction

Seeing reality can also impact your levels of stress. Stress is the difference between what you’re experiencing and what you want to experience. If you persist in seeing a world that doesn’t exist, you’ll perpetuate your stress because the world will constantly be different than what you want.

If you can accept the world as it is, you’ll find it to be a much less stressful place.

As an example, I’ve seen this with complex transformation programs. Leadership wants a certain outcome, but they understaff the team, and the team is missing key skills.

The team gets stressed – reinforced by leaders who don’t see reality – because they’re being asked to deliver on something that literally cannot be achieved! When you’re being judged on something outside your control, it creates stress.

Once you accept reality, the stress falls away and you can focus on action.

You can focus on bringing in the skills and staff members you need.

Or you can escalate a decision to change the scope down to what the team can achieve.

Or you can get to work achieving the utmost possible with the time, staff, and skills available to you (you may have heard the saying, “go to war with the army you have”).

While you can’t force everyone to see reality, you can be confident and less stressed because you’re doing the right thing given the circumstance.

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Unlocks Real Growth

Ignoring reality can block your own growth.

How can you work on your skills and behaviors if you don’t accept what they really are?

You can ignore feedback and pretend like you’re not having a negative impact on someone, but that won’t make it true.

If your view of self is disconnected from reality you’re going to continue suffering from those shortcomings because you won’t allow the feedback in.

If you can see yourself as you really are – without judgment – then you can get to work on the things that’ll truly unlock your growth.

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What gets in the way of seeing reality?

Mostly it’s your ego that gets in the way 😁 That pesky ego tries to protect your sense of self by not letting certain information in.

Since the ego can’t change reality, the only tool available to it is to distort the way you see the world.

The ego does this through a series of cognitive biases. It hijacks your low effort system 1 thinking mechanisms, preventing thoughts from being interrogated by the more reasoned system 2 thinking.

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How to improve your skill in seeing reality

I’ve got some suggestions for how to improve this skill. They center around the dual themes of receiving information or removing distortion.

Improve Metacognition and Remove Biases

​Metacognition is the ability to think about your thinking. Since cognitive biases operate in a subconscious level, you’ll have to go into metacognition to be able to notice where they’re working on you.

Charlie Munger actually advises that you have a list of cognitive biases present that you run down. I haven’t yet done this myself, but it’s a good idea! You can ask yourself, for example, “Is social proof affecting my thinking?” “Is this confirmation bias?”

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Cultivate Honest Mirrors and Create Psychological Safety

You need people to tell you what’s actually going on. They will not do this if you shut down the messages.

You need to encourage people to share bad news. You need to encourage people to be honest with you.

You need to create an environment of psychological safety so that they’re willing to do that. (by the way, we’ll continue that psychological safety series soon!)

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Practice Active Listening

Hearing is passive, and easy.

Listening – really listening – is an active task and much more difficult.

If you’re not really listening, you’re not getting all the information you could from the other party. This hinders your map of reality.

What I’ve found helpful in active listening is to listen with the intent that you’ll summarize what the person said back to them.

Try it. It’s hard!

When you do this well, if you’re like me, you’ll realize how little active listening you’ve really been doing. 🤣

While actively listening you won’t be thinking your own thoughts; you’ll be too engaged in paying close attention to what the other person is saying. Engaging in this behavior gives you much more accurate information about the world and people in it.

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Get Data

Listen for your assumptions and the assumptions of others – then challenge them.

Ask, “is it true?” Then get the data to support or refute your assumption.

This happened with a friend recently. They’re looking to buy a business and were told that it’s a good business because the customers are sticky.

Great! It might even be true! But rather than take someone’s word for it, get the churn data. How sticky are the customers?

See the world as it is, not as someone tells you it is.

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Call to Action

This week work on taking off your “reality distortion glasses” to see the world more as it is.

Do that by engaging in any of the practices suggested above:
– Think about your thinking. What cognitive biases are at play?
– Encourage people to give you honest assessments and information
– Practice active listening
– Get data!

Let me know how things go this week! Let me know how it goes by emailing me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz.

Kevin 🫡

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