Strategy - Abhishek Chakraborty (Page 2)

What Disasters Can Teach Us About Good System Design

The Chernobyl disaster didn’t happen simply because of Soviet Communist top-down regime. The Challenger disaster didn’t happen simply because of the O-ring seals failure. These so called “root causes” are part of many reasons, and they are definitely not the main reason.

Relaxation: Why the Next Best Option is the Best Option

When somebody tells you to relax, it’s probably because you’re uptight and you make a bigger deal problems than you should. Here’s some counterintuitive advice: you don’t have to relax yourself. Relax your problems instead.

How to Win Arguments with Honesty

Honesty and truthfulness are not the same thing. Being honest means not telling lies. Being truthful means actively making the full matter known.

Optionality: When More is Merrier

When you have options, you don’t have to care about the average outcome—only the favourable outcomes. Because your wins far outweigh your losses. You get a larger payoff when you are right, which also makes it unnecessary to be right too often.

Chasing Uncertainty

The future is uncertain. No matter what we think or believe, we have no control over it. Uncertainty will be a factor in everything we undertake. It makes no sense to try to guess it. The best we can do is to learn to control what we can, i.e., our thinking, our decision process, and our reactions.

What it Takes to be a Contrarian

When you take a position the market disagrees with, or when you build upon an idea that everyone says is ridiculous, it pays off tremendously. Being a contrarian has its benefits. The question is, how do you become one?

Know Your Competition

Whenever there’s a finite resource, there’s competition. It’s not important to lose your sleep over that, but it would be foolish to ignore it. Knowing where you are standing is important, because that helps you find leverage, and build a specific strategy.

The 85% Rule: Why You Should Not Do Your Best

“Do your best and forget about the rest” is good advice. It prevents you from the anxiety of results, but that’s half of the problem. The other half of the problem is the continuous pressure while performing at full-throttle. Truth is, you don’t produce your best work when you give your 100%.