The One Word Talk #TOWT - Episode 3: One (One Small Step, One Giant Leap)

“That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” - Neil Armstrong

Different authors, influencers, and corporations have different ways to approach and interpret the topic of "One". For me, those could be listed as the following:

• “One” could be the number 1, the starting number of all natural numbers, also called positive integers, counting numbers; They are the numbers {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …}.
• “One” could be the beginning, such as to start from one, or to have a beginner’s mindset.
• “One” could indicates a lift from zero, meaning a progress, an innovation, even a breakthrough, in the field of technology and entrepreneurship.
• “One” could be a mini small step that you take everyday, consistently, which over the time, could help to generate great improvement.
• “One” could also be a unit, indicating a unique individual / entity, whose characteristics and personality only belong to that individual / entity, creating its uniqueness.
• “One” could also indicate a collective group of things or people, an ecosystem, a team, in which each unit / individual become stronger when they are together, when they become One.

Last week in episode 2 of The One Word Talk, I have talked about “Failure". The whole concept is that you shouldn't be afraid of failure or try to avoid failure, instead you should grant yourself and your team a permission to fail. Aim for rapid learning, be wrong as fail as you can, learn from your mistakes, and create a culture of trust, be willing to trust people to make mistakes and fix them quickly. After you fail, stand up again, iterate, take in additional information and feedback, learn how to improve, modify your approach, adapt to new situation, and innovate, in the pursuit of the next great win. Everytime after you fail, you come back stronger and wiser. After "Failure", it has inspired me to explore the topic of "One" for The One Word Talk - Episode 3, a start but a better start each time. There are so many different ways to inteprete “One" and each would give you an interesting perspective about how things work. So let’s dive in!?

Zero to One

The concept from Zero to One (0 to 1) has been mentioned and discussed in the same-name book “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir. Thiel is also a venture capitalist who founded Founders Fund. What exactly does Zero to One mean and why does it matter? Zero to One (0 to 1) talks about the vertical or progressive progress, meaning the process of doing new things, with regards to especially technology. Zero to One focuses on using technology to build a monopoly business. The book lists down 7 important questions that every business must answer to go from 0 to 1:

1. The engineering question: Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
2. The timing question: Is now the right time to start your particular business?
3. The monopoly question: Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
4. The people question: Do you have the right team?
5. The distribution question: Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
6. The durability question: Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
7. The secret question: Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?

“One" in this case is a lift up, not just about incremental improvements, but about breakthrough technology, that make it difficult for your competitors to copy. In addition, you have the advantage of monopolizing the entire market. According to Thiel, monopoly business must have 4 characteristics: propriety technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding. The below examples will give you a clearer understanding about each characteristic:

• Propriety technology: Google's search algorithm is one example of propriety technology, which is the most substantive advantage because it makes your product difficult to copy, and your propriety technology must be at least 10 times better than the next competitor.
• Network effects: Facebook provides the instant for network effects which were made famous through the movie “The Social Network". If all your friends are on Facebook, you will, too. One thing to note is that network effects businesses always start with a small but loyal markets. In the case of Facebook, the started with Harvard students. For Apple, they build a larger ecosystem of users and developers (App Store) and this makes more and more people use the platform. The latest prevalent platform now is TikTok. TikTok is available in over 150 countries, has over 1 billion monthly active users (MAU) as of June 2021, most popular within the age range 10-19, which comprises of Gen Z (60% of TikTok users are Gen Zers, and Gen Zers are defined as trendsetters).
• Economies of scale: A monopoly business will get stronger as it gets bigger - that’s the economies of scale. If your business has the power to scale up, it has one characteristics to be a monopoly business.
• Branding: Finally, branding is an essential part of a monopoly. Apple has the strongest tech brand today. They built their strong brand through marketing and branding initiatives such as paid advertising, cool branded stores, high-quality materials, sleek design, impressive keynotes and premium prices.

To strive to go from Zero to One takes a bold move, in both of your mindset and your actions, but when you do, it creates the greatest impact to the world possible.

Day One

Amazon is famous for its 14 Leadership Principles. One of them is “Learn and Be Curious”. A closed mind cannot see new ideas or paths, so Amazon leaders are encouraged to have a beginner's mindset, never stop learning and always seek to improve themselves, like it's still Day 1.

“There’s so much stuff that has yet to be invented. There's so much new that's going to happen. People didn't have any idea yet how impactful the Internet is going to be and that this is still Day 1 in such a big way.” - Jeff Bezos

Sinced its founding, Amazon has strived to maintain a “Day One" mentality as a critical part of the company's DNA. The Day 1 mentality means that even though the company is nearly 25 years old, Amazon encourages its employees to treat every day like it's the first day of the startup. Day 1 philosophy helps Amazon to stay relevant and always on its toes.

“The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.” - Jeff Bezos

Bezos has always emphasized obsessive customer focus as by far the best way to achieve and maintain Day One mentality. Why? Because, according to Amazon's founder, “customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissastified, even when they report being happy and business even great. Customers want something better, and a constant desire to delight customers drives Amazon to constantly invent on their behalf.” Bezos notes that the world is currently involved in a major trend involving ML (machine learning) and AI (artificial intelligence). Amazon embraced this trends in a number of ways, such as investing in Echo/Alexa, its virtual assistant using AI and voice recognition technology, its delivery drone, as well as the Amazon Go convenience store, which uses machine vision to eliminate check-out lines. With the Day 1 philosophy, the company is internally driven to invest in the latest technology, improve its service, add benefits and features, invent new products, lower prices, and speed up shipping times, and always focus obsessively on customers.

One Small Step, One Giant Leap

One of my favorite books to build good habits and break bad ones is “Atomic Habits" by James Clear. In a nutshell, an atomic habit is a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do but is also the source of incredible power as a compound interest of self improvement. Just one small step, one percent better everyday, but if you do it consistently, these changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results and enormous impact over months and years. For example, if you can get just 1% better every day, you'll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year.

The framework to create positive behavior change is a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are:

1. Make it obvious: One of the great way to make it obvious is to use the habit stacking formula: After [current habit], I will [new habit]. For example, I have been able to maintain a new positive habit for the past 3 months. After [I wake up and both my husband and I bring my son to school], I will [go for a 30-min walk around the neighborhood with my husband].
2. Make it attractive: The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming. Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. For example, in my 30-min morning walk habit-forming, after the walk, both of us will always stops at a barista at 8am for a cup of coffee and a nice breakfast.
3. Make it easy: The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it. I have made this new habit easy for me to maintain everyday. I don't run, but walk, because personally I always enjoy a leisure walk in the nature. That is also my me-time or my sacred time before the work day starts. I also keep it as 30 mins on average. And when I make it easy, I am able to keep it on consistently every day for the past 3 months.
4. Make it satisfying: We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying, because the human brain will prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards. So when I pair the 30-min morning walk with the coffee experience, it make the habit become satisfying. I also have an accountability partner, who is my husband, as we do this habit together, which gives us energy booster to prepare ourselves for the new work day. After 3 months, both of us feel happier, healthier, we are able to lose weight, and we also feel more energetic and efficient.

One small step can really creats one giant leap, if you do it consistently every day. Let me borrow a very famous quote from Neil Armstrong just to inspire everyone to start your one tiny step. These are the words he spoke when he became the first person to set foot on the Moon: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

By the way, talking about space, in July, Sir Richard Branson has successfully reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, a vehicle that his company has been developing for 17 years. He returned safely to Earth just over an hour after leaving the ground. The trip has made him the first of the new space tourism pioneers to try out their own vehicles.

A few days later, Jeff Bezos has also made a short journey to space, in the first crewed flight of his Blue Origin's rocket ship, New Shepard. Giving his comment about space tourism, Bezos said: “It's going to take decades and decades to achieve, but you have to start, and big things start with small steps... that's what this sub-orbital tourism mission allows us to do, it allows us to practice over and over.”

So, just one tiny step at a time, but practice over and over, for remarkable results after.

One Ohana

At Salesforce, we've stayed true to our four core values for over 20 years: Trust, Customer Success, Innovation and Equality. These values guide our business and we align with our customers to achieve more, together.

• Trust. Trust is our #1 value. We are committed to trusted stakeholder relationships, reliable infrastructure, and data privacy.
• Customer Success. At Salesforce, we put our customers first, acting as trusted digital advisors and creating the right solutions to deliver transformative outcomes and mutual success.
• Innovation. We apply a beginners mind, creativity, and continuous learning to disrupt and transform all that we do.
• Equality. We strive for a more equal, inclusive, sustainable, and better world. We believe that equality and diversity make us a better company. Each of us all have a role to play in making the world a better place.

At Salesforce, we talk about One Team, One Salesforce, One Ohana. We listen, build trust, partner, and succeed with our customers. In this case, “One" is a collective group of individuals, like Ohana (meaning "family" in Hawaian), having the same values and goals, striving for customer-first approach, and putting the customer at the center in everything we do.

The One Word Talk - Episode 3 about “One” has given me so much inspiration. I hope it could spread some positive energy and motivation for you too. Let's start with 1 and move forward! :)?