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Your weekly dose of new ideas & inspirations

Hi 👋, Pritesh here. 

Welcome to the post #115. 

Last week’s post had an unusually low open rate. I’m not aware of any change in this newsletter’s setting or in general any external event. So I’m assuming that the post’s title did not connect with many of you. If there was any other reason, do let me know.   

Here’s a quick glance of today’s post:

🎯 Amp it up

⏳ Two types of patience

💪 Three levels of courage

📔 Invisible details of interaction design

🤝 Rituals of hyper-growth

And much more…

Please leave a comment or send a message with your feedback. It’s highly helpful & encouraging. If that’s too much of an effort (or not required), at least hit the ❤️ at the start or end of the post to show your love. 

And with that, let’s dive in.

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1. Amp It Up

Frank Slootman has led three companies to their IPOs: Data Domain, Service Now, and Snowflake. “Amp It Up” is his magic formula for this kind of turnaround. It has three pillars - 

1. Increase the tempo, 

2. Raise the standards, and 

3. Narrow the focus.

David Perell did a highly useful summary of Slootman’s book in this essay. He does a brief coverage of Slootman’s ways of working as well. Worth a read!

I picked up “Amp It Up” on audible and have enjoyed it so far!

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2. Types of Patience

Via Active Patience on FS Blog

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3. Levels of Courage

A recent post from the “Founding Fuel” newsletter had a snippet from Tim Urban’s book “What's Our Problem?”. It’s simply brilliant and helpful for everyone. So, I’ve taken the liberty to put it as a snapshot.

Via Founding Fuel Newsletter

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4. Invisible Details of Interaction Design

Rauno Freiberg’s “Invisible details of interaction design” has a feel of a do-it-yourself learning kit for interaction design. He shows an interaction and makes it relatable with real world metaphor. 

This parting thoughts from Rauno summarizes why this post exists and why you may want to read it.

For me, understanding and articulating why something feels right does not come as intuitively as designing something to feel right. But they are two sides of the same coin. There must be a reason. It can be as simple as a particular spring curve or something more innate, like metaphors. Analyzing and making sense of design details beyond just "it feels nice" helps nurture taste, amplify level of execution, and grow appreciation for how hard the pursuit of excellence is.

I love my apple products for those tiny little details, this post helped me connect with a lot of those. I’ve a new level of appreciation for folks who think and build like this.

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5. Rituals for hypergrowth

Shishir Mehrotra has extensively written around org rituals and practices that power high performing teams. I have covered some of his ideas in earlier posts (Golden rituals in #57, Eigenquestions in #58 and in #69)

His writeup “Rituals for hypergrowth” shares a good overview of operating system & org rituals at YouTube during its hyper growth phase. From six-monthly goal setting to weekly execution rhythm, he has covered a wide range of tools and shared relevant context to make it more actionable for anyone reading these now. 

This one is not for a quick read, so bookmark it for the time you want to design (or redesign) your org rituals. 

I liked the concept of Tag-ups very interesting. Here’s a brief snippet about the reason tag-ups existed in Shishir’s org.

The problem space is highly relatable, I am exploring how I can leverage the tag-ups in my team setup as well.

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6. Light reads

Some interesting posts & essays that are well worth reading.

1. Good businesses have margin by Justin Jackson

Adding more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster often makes catastrophe all the more likely.

2. How teams remember by Giles T.

Sainsbury’s, Jony Ive, the teams at the House of Commons and the Welsh Revenue Authority and Defra, the museum at the Land Registry: what they all have in common is a decision from a senior leader. Someone at each organisation has thought to themselves: “There is value in remembering, and I must allow time / money / opportunities for it to happen.” … Remembering will only happen when someone has made a decision like that. 

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7. Everything else

Some random goodness from the internet:

1. Animalograms by Zana Briski (via Rishi’s 10+1 things)

2. Surgeon who performed India’s first heart transplant in 1994 tells the story. No drama, so much emotion. (via Founding Fuel) 

3. Exploring people's comfort with expressing vulnerability - Screaming as loud as you can or jump off of a 10-meter diving platform for the first time (via Kottke)

4. Mariko Kusumoto creates magic with fabric in ways you cannot imagine (via Dense Discovery)

The title of today’s post is taken from Patrick Collison’s event. I found it in David Perell’s post on Amp It Up.

That's all for this week, folks!  

I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.

- Pritesh