Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and brilliant misfits build companies and partnerships they’re deeply proud of.
Jason Shen
jasonshen.com
To be effective, we must act decisively on decisions we disagree with. This may seem obvious, but it remains one of the most challenging tasks.
Cedric Chin • Decisiveness is Just as Important as Deliberation
It is often better to be aligned in any direction than not at all
Let’s say airships captured half of the 13 trillion ton-km currently served by container ships at a price of 10¢ per ton-km. That would equal $650 billion in annual revenue for cargo airships, notably much bigger than the $106 billion Boeing reports for the entire global air freight market. I
Eli Dourado • Cargo airships could be big
Your ads are saying, “look, I’m don’t have Porsche’s speed or Chevrolet’s muscles. I’m not as sexy as Mercedes-Benz and I’m not as classy as Cadillac. I’ll never be as patriotic as Ford because I’m German to the core. I know what I am…and I’m proud of it. I’m not made to be shown off, I’m made to be functional: my purpose is to get you from point A... See more
Embrace your weaknesses
First off, I realize I can continue refining my humanity and my empathy skills. I hope to take more listening, relationship, and communication courses in 2023 to sharpen this critical skillset.
Jason Shen • 131: How to Be Human in the Age of Generative AI
Microessay about how things take time by Justin Duke
https://x.com/jmduke/status/1788307295526338883
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation - Yamamuchi Nintendo & Co., LTD - was established nearly fifty years later, in 1933. They spent forty years selling playing cards, then another decade operating merely as a distributor of electronics before coming out with their first piece of electronic hardware.
The Lego Group began in a Danish workshop in 1932; it took them 26 years until a confluence of technology, iteration, and luck led them to what we now refer to as a Lego. (Er, sorry - a Lego brick.)
Nike spent eight years merely re-selling (literally, not figuratively) Onitsuka shoes to a U.S. audience.
Gates and Allen ran Microsoft as what was essentially a freelance firm for eight years, too, before scoring a contract with IBM (and even that took an additional two years to be parlayed into MSDOS.)
(There are, of course, some companies that like Athena sprout fully-formed from the head of their creators - Amazon and TSMC come to mind.)
When we build hagiographies of the companies we love (or at least find most interesting), it can be tempting to draw clean, neat, satisfying arcs and fast forward through the boring eras that do not inform our modern understanding of those organizations.
But neither the Nike Cortez nor the Lego System 236 Garage with Automatic Door came from the first decade of either company's existence.
Part of success is staying alive long enough to have the right kinds of things happen to you all at once.
“I’m 76 years old and I have never learned a lesson in my entire life.”
Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm, “No Lessons Learned” | Season 12, Episode 10
Larry David had a rule of “no hugging and no learning” to describe Seinfeld. Sometimes that attitude is necessary
closeness creates room for greater conflict
They found that in the opinions of managers, computer use increases the need for skilled workers, computers tend to increase workers’ autonomy, and computers increase the need and ability for management to monitor their workers. All of those features will feed into the need for workers who are smarter, better trained, and more conscientious.
Tyler Cowen • Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
Replace the word computer with AI and every point is magnified. AI powered workers gives more autonomy, requires more skill, and needs more oversight (lest things go sideways)