Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
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.
it was my daughter’s love that freed me from my delusions of grandeur. It liberated me from the tyranny of trying to prove myself. Since her birth, I feel calmer and more secure. I have a sense of security I haven’t felt since I was a young child, living with parents who unconditionally loved me. Now, I care less about what other people think of... See more
Meaning & satisfaction is often found in doing doing what is needed
IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?
It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or... See more
It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or... See more
Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.
Jim Simons on luck: "People underestimate its importance except when things go badly. Then they’re very happy to ascribe it to bad luck, which it may be, of course.
One has to recognize that luck plays a meaningful role in everyone’s lives. You get born to decent parents in a good part of the world, and you’re way ahead of the game.... See more
Frederik Christopher Gieschenx.comA remarkable investor comments on the importance of luck (versus skill)
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.
In using standards, it is important to ask for precedents. “Have you ever done this before?” and “Have you ever made an exception?” should be part of your everyday vocabulary.
Stuart Diamond • Getting More
Negotiation and Getting Your Way
Think like a judge when negotiating—look for precedents and exceptions
As a first point, the Hook, we get to know Harry Potter and the story’s context. He lives with his aunt and uncle in a basement. He later discovers that he is a wizard and that his destiny is to go to Hogwarts, the school of magic. This phase is Plot Turn 1, i.e., the first turning point in the plot.
The antagonist begins to be recognized. A troll... See more
The antagonist begins to be recognized. A troll... See more
The 7-Point Story Structure
The 7 Point Story Structure
Sometimes I worry I’m the fast thinker / responder and don’t have deep follow on wisdom.
Jason Shenx.comNo matter if you are fast or slow. Make it work for you.