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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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      I think in 2018 for the first time I may have made more of my income from climate/energy/sustainability type gigs than “tech” gigs. I’m amazed. It’s the first time I’ve tried to deliberately steer my consulting life (starting about 3 years ago) and it actually kinda worked.

      2 replies 4 retweets 69 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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      Don’t know if it will stay that way, gyroscopically snap back towards old direction, or fishtail/spin out of control leaving me stalled in a snowdrift pointed somewhere random. Still, interesting feeling and experience. Real steering is HARD. And unavoidably lossy ($, momentum).

      1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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      I don’t often try to proactively steer my life with deliberate intent. I’ve done it maybe 3 times in 44y. I generally keep doing things out of momentum for ~2y too long before unsustainability forces a steer, like arriving at a T-junction or running off a cliff, Bugs Bunny style

      10:35 PM - 1 Jan 2019
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      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          I value momentum more than direction. I guess I take a good-big-company-CEO-style attitude to my life: minimize steering, which as I argued here, is a key trait. The more complicated and momentummy the business, the less you should steer:https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/09/ceos-dont-steer/ …

          1 reply 2 retweets 16 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          I honestly don’t much care what direction I’m headed so long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, pays bills, and is fun. Instead of steering, if I get bored, I increase, not explicit risk, but brinkmanship. Pushing things to see how far they can go without breaking. Crash-only steering!

          1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          I suppose I’ve come to believe (or rationalized) that the best way to steer is to crash faster, bringing you to a meaningful and forced crossroads, rather than trying to theorize a proactive decision. Steer on post-crash reboot where possible. Like a hypervisor.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          So it’s interesting to experience a different mode of being. In particular just how LONG it takes to achieve a meaningful true reorientation, not cosmetic. It’s not a snap insight-decision/turn on a dime thing. Lives are like oil tankers. If they’re moving, takes miles to steer.

          1 reply 1 retweet 25 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          I think we’ve come to overvalue “agility” and crazy steering in response to every new stimulus. Every unnecessary steering event bleeds momentum. Startups can “pivot” pre-PMF because they’re going nowhere anyway. Ironically, Lean done right is about “pricing” steering correctly.

          1 reply 7 retweets 40 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          The “fat thinking” idea I’ve been developing slowly over the years is in part an effort to firewall “momentum” operations from “speculation” ops. Costly real steers vs dummy fake steers that might get real. Have cake, eat it too.https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/07/28/fat-thinking-and-economies-of-variety/ …

          2 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          This 2x2 captures a lot of my ideas about how to firewall lean from fat, momentum from experiments, etc. Here’s a newsletter I did last year about it. https://mailchi.mp/ribbonfarm/guts-the-grand-unified-theory-of-striving-or-slacking …pic.twitter.com/T9ybU38DMr

          1 reply 3 retweets 20 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          Ideally, if you have meaningful momentum, you should be playing with 100 interesting steering ideas all year, saying no to 90 of them, doing cheap-fail learning experiments on 9, firewalled off from momentum ops, and maybe taking ONE real momentum-risking steering action.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          Note that this is not applicable if you’re underemployed relative to how much you want to work (individual) or overresourced (too much cash and smart people sitting around) as a company. Adding activities is “steering” in a different sense from replacing/altering existing ones.

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          In fact, I’d say that if you have any momentum at all, any attempted steering is definitionally attempted self-disruption. This is why most (~70% iirc) “change” projects fail. Improving “change management” won’t help. One does not simply change-manage self-disruption.pic.twitter.com/YQ07LcHPst

          1 reply 2 retweets 6 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          Anyhow, reason I tried this steering at all was partly curiosity to see if I could self-disrupt, and partly because climate action is one of those rare cases where if you’re going to steer at all, you should try to make it proactive. Crash-only climate action is a bit too risky.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          We’ll see if it sticks. I’d like to do more energy/climate/sustainability work (hint hint!). It’s interesting work. Though I mostly do management/org consulting around this stuff, the tech domain is quite challenging to master even at that level. I’m learning a lot.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          It’s also become clear to me that software eating the world is central to effective climate action. It’s the only metalever that can act fast enough, broadly enough across all the levers. It is also how everything else gets operationalized. But that’s a story for another day.

          2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          Anyhoo... Moral of story: don’t even think about steering until music slows and the groove starts to feel like a rut. If steering feels easy, check momentum. I’ll bet it isn’t there. Steer by forced-hand, crash/crisis, or run-off-cliff if you can. Momentum is THAT valuable.

          1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          But in the rare cases real steering is called for: science it to death, bring all the momentum into play, and treat it like an aircraft carrier turn, not a juvenile “pivot” fueled by the the latest pot-smoking session. It’s a bet the momentum-farm self-disruption. Not a joke.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jan 2019
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          It’s resolutions season. Fun exercise and it’s always good to send out reflections to people affected by your potential steering, whether it’s just your wife and cat like me, or a 100,000 person org. But the best resolution might be NO resolution. No steering. Unless you must

          3 replies 0 retweets 13 likes
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        18. End of conversation

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