Three stage of change curve:

Ending -> Transition -> Beginning

Amygdala hijacking - emotional control

• self-aware

When It Comes Time to Execute

Common pain points of a small organization:

• The team is overwhelmed by having to create systems that are far beyond their experience or skill set.
• The various stakeholders (suppliers, customers, accountants, lawyers, tangential departments) have a hard time understanding the communications coming from the senior leadership who has never successfully done what they're trying to accomplish.
• The project fails in less time than it took for the original PowerPoint presentation to be created.

First Do This, Not Six Sigma

I tried jumping straight to optimization too early in my first company. I wanted everything to be structured and scalable before I had even mastered the fundamentals.

It was a disaster. I spent time and money implementing complex, time consuming processes that no one could understand, much less comply with.

Instead, do this:

↳ Organize your company’s workflow into a small number of core processes.
↳ Talk to your team about the mistakes they keep seeing.
↳ Identify the top one or two problems that cause the most waste and solve those first.
↳ Build a culture of small, iterative problem-solving.
↳ As you repeat this process, patterns will emerge, and only then should you consider advanced methodologies.

First Do This, Not 360 Reviews

360-degree reviews are fantastic in theory. But if your company has never had a structured feedback process, jumping straight into full-circle feedback can backfire, creating resentment, confusion, and unnecessary drama.

I earnestly tried and thought I was fostering an open culture, but all I did was create an environment where people were afraid to speak up or, worse, used the system to settle personal grievances. I had to go back to the basics.

↳ Train leaders to give clear, constructive feedback.
↳ Establish a simple quarterly review system where managers and employees discuss performance expectations.
↳ Use a straightforward evaluation form, shared in advance, so employees know what to expect.
↳ Encourage employees to self-assess before their review so discussions are collaborative.
↳ Once people are comfortable with structured feedback, you can gradually move toward a more advanced system.

First Do This, Not TDABC

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) is powerful. It's the system from this article that I am most enamored of, but if you don't have accurate, well-maintained data, it is useless.

Instead, do this:

↳ Create a Google Sheet that breaks down your company's basic cost (labor, materials, operations).
↳ Identify the two-to-three biggest cost drivers.
↳ Run small, informal time studies to understand how long core processes take.
↳ Establish simple KPIs to track efficiency and quality improvements.
↳ Focus on steady process.

Once you have a year of clean data, then consider implementing a more advanced system.

No Stupid Questions, But Plenty of Stupid Mistakes

To start tracking wins, you have to be ready to take a lot of Losses. You have to learn to good deep in assessing the root causes of the problems at hand. You have to become maniacal about understanding the chemistry and biology of your personal failures, your team's failures, your company's failures.

There are no stupid questions, but there definitely are stupid mistakes.

Start by eliminating the stupid mistakes that make failure inevitable before your even get going.

The best teams, companies, investment thesis and startups don’t begin from a place of perfection. The successful play begin by learning to avoid the worst errors. The best of us on the playing field are those who accept the inevitably of constant failure by being the fastest learners in the market.

Business is the same. Relationships are the same. Life is the same.

First, win the loser’s game.

Then you can play to win.

• Reference:https://johnbrewton.substack.com/p/first-win-the-losers-game