Day #16 Grayleap Reading Challenge #Streaks #OneThing #Leadership #Business

SUMMARY

Book #1: Extraordinary success is built on a series of small steps executed sequentially, leading to cascading and dramatic impact over a period of time.

Book #2: The culture of a company can take it to the greatest heights or totally destroy it.

Book #3: OKRs combined with personal mission-oriented zeal and commitment can help successfully execute even the most complex and huge projects.

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1) The One Thing - Review of Chapter 2 by Daizy Patel

Chapter 2 - The Domino Effect

In this chapter, the author talks about the DOMINO EFFECT. He explains how the geometric progression of dominoes helps a small piece of 2 inches in height make a plywood of 8 times its size fall with just a little effort. By using this phenomenon, the author convinces us that if we are smart enough to figure out which small thing can act as a domino for us, we can achieve great things with little effort.?

On page 16, the author underlines, "FIND THE LEAD DOMINO AND WHACK AWAY AT IT UNTIL IT FALLS." This chapter emphasizes that "extraordinary success is sequential, not simultaneous." People with immense knowledge and higher skills have acquired the learning over a period of time, one skill at a time. No one can achieve that in a day. These are the results of the sequential efforts put in day by day, every day. In the end, the author summarizes that the key is "over time" - success is built sequentially, one thing at a time.

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2) Leaders Eat Last - Review of Chapter 16 by Rajesh Madan

Chapter 17: So goes the culture, so goes the company

Goldman Sachs used to be a name taken with the utmost pride among its employees and respected by others in the industry. They were known to be a company of people who believed in "long term greed" - doing the right thing for the customers no matter what the cost, because they knew that it would pay off in the long term. And it did. Until their culture started changing in the 90s. This was the time when different kinds of people started getting hired—people who cared only about short-term targets. Feeling suffocated, the earlier employees started leaving the company. Before long, the culture at Goldman Sachs had changed beyond recognition. And it came to be known as a company of crooks. The company collapsed in 2008, but the seeds of that fall were sown in the early 90s.

Sinek also mentions the Taj group of Hotels and 3M for their culture.?

The Taj Group for the way its employees protected guests during the Bombay shootouts in 2008. Half of those who lost their lives at the Taj Mahal Hotel were employees. Among these were those who went back to the hotel after being evacuated in order to help their guests.?

3M for its culture of sharing information without any insecurity or fear. The post-it notes resulted from a failed experiment designed to make super strong glue. But the scientist, Spencer Silver, didn't try to hide his failure. He shared it. The rest, as they say, is what has helped 3M create history over and over. Today, the company has over 20,000 patents on products of everyday use. If there was a sticker like "Intel inside" on every 3M product, the average customer would see it 60 to 70 times.

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3) Measure What Matters - Review of Chapter 5 by Amarendra S.

Chapter 6 - Commit: The Nuna Story

In this chapter, the healthcare firm Nuna's fascinating and inspiring story is presented. Nuna partners with state and federal government agencies to assist businesses in developing their wellness initiatives and health insurance plans. The founder, Jini Kim has been involved in caring for her brother, who has severe autism, since she was nine years old. At that age, because her parents had difficulty communicating in English, she had to work on the process of signing her brother up for Medicaid. Much later, using her experience with Google Health, she founded Nuna in 2010.

In November 2013, at 2 a.m., Jini Kim received the call that would forever alter her life. As technologyreview reports:

"The White House needed the former Google product manager’s help with Healthcare.gov, which had been meant to help people buy health insurance but was riddled with embarrassing glitches."

Jini took the challenge head-on, though she knew that "the effort had already failed multiple times."

The technologyreview report continues:

".... (She) worked marathon hours to fix the site, giving up Thanksgiving, Christmas, and her birthday. By the time she left, six months later, the site had enrolled eight million people in insurance plans—and Kim had gained insight that would be crucial for her own health-care analytics company, NunaHealth."

By 2015, Nuna built Medicaid's first consolidated data warehouse, which houses information on 74.5 million participants nationwide.

Nuna used OKRs from day one, though not everyone on the team implemented them diligently. Finally, Jini decided to take charge and chase down each and every team member until they all started working on their OKRs. She shares:

"To inspire true commitment, leaders must practice what they preach. They must model the behavior they expect of others."

Further, sharing her own OKRs with team members and taking their feedback helped the entire company enthusiastically adopt the OKR system.

OKRs combined with the founder's personal mission-oriented zeal and commitment helped create one of the most significant impacts on the US healthcare system.?

References:

1) https://www.technologyreview.com/innovator/jini-kim/

2) https://www.nuna.com/about-us/