I'm Interested [04] - Talent Management, A 24 hr Marathon, Findings From a 75 Year-Long Study
This is the 4th newsletter issue. 8500+ words delivered to your inboxes. 8 weeks of trying to ignore the voice that asks why I’m doing this? You know, the voice that is so critical of your own work that it often keeps you from sharing it? Here’s to another week of cognitive dissonance and continuing to write and share.
I’ve cherished the conversations I’ve had with you all on things I’ve brought up in the newsletter. Here’s to more thought provoking chats about today’s topics!
If these have been a positive contribution to your content diet in any way, or if you look forward to receiving them — please share the love and forward along to a friend.
Alright, on to I’m Interested.
I'm interested in a lot of things. I know YOU are too. Not everyone has the energy or attention span to dig through the vast expanses of the internet and then read & prioritize what would be worth a chunk of that idle time we spend on our phone.
I'll be that someone.
I went a bit shorter on most of the sections this week, you can always read more at the links if you’re particularly interested. Let me know what you think.
Talent Management
This article on talent management came across my inbox, and I had to share.
Imagine after Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl in 2001, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft sat Brady down and told him, “Tom, you had a fantastic season. We want to see you keep growing with the organization. We are going to promote you to General Manager.”
In sports, we would quickly question Kraft’s sanity. Yet, in the corporate world, we call this talent management.
This article also focuses heavily on how Google compensates its employees and rewards those who perform at one to two standard deviations above the average. Google lets their MVPs '“stay on the field” — and continue their outstanding work as a contributor rather than forcing them to manage.
Not all MVPs want to move up the ladder, manage people, and deal with politics and more domains of knowledge. That said, they do want to be compensated for their impact.
We are requiring today’s leaders to be the best player on the team, the coach, general manager and CEO. Instead of attracting people that want to lead and inspire, we end up attracting those types of people who are motivated by money, power and status.
Enter: The Coach.
Instead of promoting the MVPs, how about we find and promote the right leaders (read: coaches)? People who are energized when they are able to help employees grow and develop. Who empower teams to be at their best, and as I always like to put it, lead without limiting. In large organizations, there is usually a dearth of real leaders moving up the chain. They don’t seek out and promote the person who is a game-planner and gets the best out of the talent they are working with. In the modern working world, you have to throw ‘50 touchdowns’ before you even have the chance of leading others. Has Bill Belichick ever thrown 50 touchdowns? Didn’t think so.
We need more organizations that want to let their star quarterbacks stay on the field and keep contributing in their area of expertise (while compensating them accordingly) and create better paths for those who support, empower, and inspire others.
Psilocybin: The Future of Mental Healthcare?
What if one, professionally guided, psychedelic trip on a therapeutic dose of psilocybin could alleviate or entirely remove symptoms of anxiety and depression for 6 months to a year with little to no side effects?
How about shedding a drug addiction? Quitting cigarettes? Am I sounding crazy now?
It’s real and psilocybin therapy is gaining momentum.
In November 2019, the FDA designated psilocybin therapy as a "breakthrough therapy" for depression. FDA uses these designations to speed up development and review of investigational drugs in an area of unmet need — in this case, mental healthcare.
Due to its Schedule 1 designation, very few research institutions are able to study the therapeutic uses of the mushroom. John Hopkins is one of them and they’ve started to see results on depression and have expanded their studies to more than 2,400 participants.
I believe more clinical trials are coming, and legalization may follow in certain states. In November 2020, voters passed a ballot initiative in Oregon that made psilocybe legal for mental health treatment in supervised settings starting in February 2021.
Until then, people will continue to hit up their local hardware stores, clear them of mason jars and rubber gloves, and cultivate mushrooms in the comfort of their home. Read more about the culture behind at-home cultivation at WIRED magazine.
Products!
For those of us that are still stuck working 100% remotely *one year later*, can we agree that Zoom is not the right tool to empower creative, problem solving, collaborative knowledge work? You can’t do it alone, but you also probably can’t do it on Zoom. It’s a big problem space waiting for something with product-market-fit.
Enter Around.co.
Around is a new tool that allows people to collaborate online, share video, work in audio-only rooms, and have an overall more organized/seamless experience than the classic conference call setup.
They offer to help you ‘create with less fatigue’ in another attempt to create real time collaboration that is closer to what we expect in an office. This tool seems to do a better job at simulating in-person conversation and democratizing the experience of a remote meeting with others who are in office together.
Around recognizes common noises like sirens, barking dogs, washing machines, kitchen activity, and laptop fans, and applies AI-based filtering to suppress them while prioritizing human voice.
An AI-based mute feature, what a novel idea? How about lower latency to help promote more natural conversation in groups? Now we’re talking.
Everyone can be on their own laptop and equally involved without the need for the traditional conference phone. This is the perfect set up for a blend of remote and in-person employees.
Zoom’s stock soared this year as massive corporations shifted to remote workforces. I expect better solutions entering the space to start taking noticeable slices of that market share, Around.co could be one of them.
Relationships = Health
What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? In the TED Talk embedded here, psychiatrist Robert Waldinger speaks about the 75 year-long study on adult development (starting in 1938). In perhaps the longest term study of this nature ever conducted, they captured a wealth of data that gave Waldinger and his research team unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. Their findings were clear:
People who are more socially connected to family, friends, and to community are happier, physically healthier, and they live healthier than people who are less well connected.
It’s not just the number of friends, but the quality of your close relationships that matters.
Watching this made me think about the correlation with previous topics I shared on friendship, community, and even building cities to support human connection. What might leaning into friendships look like for you?
A Different Kind of Marathon
In the Spring of 2020, I attempted to run 4 miles every 4 hrs for 48 hrs with two friends (crazy motherf**kers). The 4x4x48 challenge brought to you by resident crazy motherf**ker, David Goggins. I’ll spare the story, but I washed-out at 3:20 am within the first 12 miles. They finished (see profanities above).
Last week, I came across this guy absolutely getting after it. He ran one mile every hour for 24 hrs, and completed as many tasks and to-dos in between as he could manage. This is a full day. The videography and commentary is top notch and made me want to be friends with this guy.
Really, half your day should be like this all the time.
- Beau
Watch this end to end, enjoy the Australian wit, and soak in Beau’s energy. I absolutely love his shed, the fireplace, his woodworking skills.
Does this interest you? Could this be spun-off into a volunteer or fundraising effort? Could you run a mile every hour on the hour for that long? I know a guy who might ask, why not 48?
Closing with the Jigs
The holiday has aligned. If you thought I was going to pass up this chance, you were wrong. If you don’t believe that my family would bump Irish music in the car all-March-long growing up, you’re wrong about that too.
So, I have two jams for you to try something different this week. ‘Seven Drunken Nights’ is one rollercoaster of a story — a bit sobering innit?
‘Whiskey in the Jar’ is the classic jam you’d hear on the streets of Galway, spilling out from the lively pubs at night.
If I can get you to replace 15 minutes of mindless phone scrolling with some intentional content in a newsletter, I'll rest easy.
If I made that happen, or there was something here that you enjoyed, please pass this along to a friend or comment below on this post.
If you’re not feeling it, please reply or reach out and provide some feedback. I don’t know what I’m doing and I can only improve through iteration — stick with me.
Acknowledgements: Editing is hard, thank you Ky.