Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
Media mogul. Suppose you were really wealthy, or otherwise you maybe inherited your dream sort of media studio or production house. What would it be? A film studio? Record label? Magazine? If you were guaranteed of succeeding, what kind of media mogul would you be? Followup: what sort of movies, or books, or artists, etc would you be looking to make, showcase? (I have a lot of followup questions about what the whole operation would look and feel like.)
Bank Heist. What role would you play in a “bank heist”? Feel free to modify the heist so that it’s not a bank, maybe you’re retrieving a stolen diamond from an evil dictator and returning it to a museum or something. Safecracker? Getaway driver? Hacker? Mastermind? Brute? Conman? Fixer? Inside man? Wild card?
Theme park. You’ve been given a plot of land in a surprisingly accessible location and all the resources you need to build “some kind of theme park”. What would it be like? It doesn’t have to have rides, it can be literally any kind of festival or event you dream up.
Golden ticket. What would be the most incredible thing that could happen to your project/business/operation? Why? How could we make that more likely? What are some intermediate steps we could define?”
/// 100 QUESTIONS /// to gain clarity via Alex Morris:
Why are we doing this?
Ask that of yourself and the team with regularity.
What’s the simplest explanation?
What reaction should all the creative achieve?
What’s your most controversial opinion?
What little frictions exist that might bleed out the work if allowed to compo
How to sharpen your ideas
This is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame; to become a prisoner of one's own persona. The desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized world lures us to be who strangers wish us to be. And with personal development so arduous and lonely, there is ease and comfort in crowdsourcing your identity. But amid such temptations, it's worth re... See more
Gurwinder • The Perils of Audience Capture
People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world
... See moreMalcolm Gladwell • Outliers
Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.*
Malcolm Gladwell • Outliers
Redefine Your Ambition and Storytelling / Narrative
Choosing your ambition is not easy. The power of cultural context is strong.
This is an example of what’s called a “divergence test” (as opposed to a test like the Raven’s, which asks you to sort through a list of possibilities and converge on the right answer). It requires you to use your imagination and take your mind in as many different directions as possible. With a divergence test, obviously there isn’t a single right
... See moreMalcolm Gladwell • Outliers
Some people are stronger at converging than diverging
According to Restrepo-Echavarria and her peers at the St. Louis Fed, this economically-driven shift in marriage preferences accounts for approximately half of the increase in household income inequality between 1980 and 2020 — a figure so profound it almost seems unbelievable. “This is a huge thing,” says Restrepo-Echavarria. “If inequality is larg... See more
Link
Assortative mating is a huge factor on income inequality
Does a coach need to have done my job before in order to be effective?
This is a contentious question. Research demonstrates that executives (and organisations who hire coaches) do want business experience – 85% of executives selected “Business Experience” as important to their selection process. However, the criteria relating to coaching expertise rated higher:
“Ability to build rapport, trust and comfort with coach” (100%)
“Experience and skills as a coach” (96%)
“Experience dealing with specific leadership challenges” (85%)
The research concluded that coaching expertise trumps executive experience. Executive experience can help improve rapport-building and empathy but is not a replacement for coaching expertise.
If you've carefully analyzed a situation but something still feels wrong, that discomfort deserves attention. It might signal that your unconscious mind has recognized a pattern your conscious analysis missed. This is particularly true in uncertain and dynamic situations where, as Gigerenzer points out, logical analysis often falls short.
George Sudarkoff • Stop Analyzing Your Gut Feelings: A Counter-intuitive Guide to Better Leadership
Intuition should be the last call, not just the first