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A personal value I strive to live by, both as a dad and as a professional, is leading by example.

If I'm not willing to change, why should anyone else? I must behave in ways that are consistent with the values, norms and changes we have agreed on as a team. Practice what I preach.

It's my actions that send the strongest signals about what matters and what others should be doing. Consistency between words and actions also signals reliability. It builds trust.

This means my actions and behavior need to be visible and present. I need to show up and let people see what I stand for.

I am not always great at expressing expectations or coming up with a fancy uplifting speech on the fly, but I can step forward and carry some of the weight. Go first. Be willing to do the hard work alongside my team. It’s my way to demonstrate my investment in what we are trying to achieve.

If I want others to be committed, then I have to be 100 percent, without doubt, fully committed myself.

But there are pitfalls. I risk becoming a bottleneck if I feel the need to be involved in everything or be the “best” at every task.

I also believe our actions and behavior tend to come back on us. You get what you give. If I act in a disagreeable or negative way, that's often what I will get in return.

For example, want more proactivity in your team? Or a stronger tolerance for uncertainty?

I can take the first small step before everything is defined. I can share imperfect ideas to signal that it's okay not to have all the answers. I can meet new ideas with curiosity instead of reacting with doubt or negativity too quickly. I can stay open and calm in ambiguity.

Little by little, we adopt the thoughts, the attitudes and standards of the people around us. It's contagious - for better or worse.

I can never expect people around me to be more open and willing to learn and improve than I am.

It always starts with me.

Food for thought.

If someone mirrored your behaviour, what would that look like? What are people likely to pick up from you?

What is one behaviour you expect from others that you don’t consistently model yourself?

Here's my favorite aphorisms by Nassim Taleb.

• Your brain is most intelligent when you don't instruct it on what to do - something people who take showers discover on occasion.
  
  
• It is harder to say no when you really mean it than when you don't.
  
  
• The ultimate freedom lies in not having to explain why you did something.
  
  
• There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.
  
  
• Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize the distance between a decision-maker and the risks of the decision.
  
  
• Under opacity, incomplete information, and partial understanding, much of what we don't understand is labeled "irrational".
  
  
• Technology is at its best when it is invisible.
  
  
• What I learned on my own I still remember.
  
  
• The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds.
  
  
• You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.
  
  
• To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
  
  
• Knowledge is subtractive, not additive - what we subtract (reduction by what does not work, what not to do), not what we add (what to do).
  
  
• When someone starts a sentence with "simply", you should expect to hear something very complicated.
  
  
• The first, and hardest, step to wisdom: avert the standard assumption that people know what they want.
  
  
• It is much better to do things you cannot explain than explain things you cannot do.
  
  
• You need to keep reminding yourself of the obvious: charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.
  
  
• When people call you intelligent it is almost always because they agree with you. Otherwise they just call you arrogant.
  
  
• Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
  
  
• Change your anchor to what did not happen rather than what did happen.

What's your favorite?

Incentives send signals. Unfortunately, too often there is a conflict between what you say and what your incentives signal.

• You encourage teamwork, but incentivize individual success.
• You say you value autonomy, but punish deviation.
• You want innovation, but reward predictability.
• You talk about empoweremnet, but override decisions.

An incentive is a tool used to motivate people to do something they would not do otherwise. It can be used as a solution to a problem. We can use it to better understand why people do what they do.

When you push people to increase one dimension of their output, you can create unintended effects on the other dimensions.

You need to make sure what you incentivize is indeed what you want to encourage because sometimes incentives achieve the opposite of what they were designed for.

Such as the fine introduced to discourage parents from being late picking up kids in the kindergarten, that actually promoted late pickups. Before the policy, parents felt bad when they arrived late. Now parents could just pay to avoid the feeling of guilt.

You need to understand the psychology behind the incentives to make them work.

For instance, we have a tendency to settle for a smaller present reward rather than to wait for a larger one in the future. The idea is simple: "now" is very strong and hard to resist.

With behavior change, the costs are now; the benefits are in the future. Therefore, make the incentive not too far in the future. If someone changes their behavior in the desired direction, give them an immediate reward.

Clear thinking

There is nothing stronger than biological instincts hardwired within us. They control us often without us even knowing.

For instance, like all animals, we are naturally prone to defend our territory.

Territory can also be psychological. When someone criticizes our work, status, or how we see ourselves, we stop listening and go on the attack. We instinctively defend ourselves.

We react without thinking.

We have a set of defaults that our brains will automatically execute when triggered unless we stop and take the time to think.

The emotion default.

We tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts. Emotions can drive us away from clear thinking. Emotions can multiply all of your progress by zero.

Sleep deprivation, hunger, fatigue, emotion, distraction, stress from feeling rushed, and being in an unfamiliar environment. If you find yourself in any of these conditions, be on your guard.

The ego default.

Our ego can turn confidence into overconfidence or even arrogance. We get a bit of knowledge on the internet and suddenly everything seems easy.

When someone steps on how we see ourselves, or how we want to be seen, the ego leaps into action, and we often react without reasoning. The ego default urges us to feel right at the expense of being right.

The social default.

We fall in line with an idea or behavior simply because other people do. The social default encourages us to outsource our thoughts, beliefs, and outcomes to others.

We want to belong to the crowd. We fear being an outsider. It comes from our history. Survival inside the tribe was hard but survival outside the tribe was impossible. Our individual interests became secondary to the group interests.

The inertia default.

We resist change even when it is for the best. Keeping things the way they are requires almost no effort.

The inertia default leverages our desire to stay in our comfort zone, or the "zone of average", relying on old processes and standards even when they are no longer optimal. It's the point where things are working well enough that we don't feel the need to make any changes.

Groups create inertia of their own. Group dynamics end up favoring people who don't deviate from the defaults. People are rewarded for maintaining status quo.

Protect yourself from yourself

We can't eliminate our defaults. But we can reprogram them into forces for good. We need to learn to manage them. Which defaults do you struggle with the most? How do you think clearly? Which tools do you use to protect yourself from yourself?

"Clear thinking" by Shane Parrish

What do we mean by Excellence?

Is it a grand aspiration or a destination at which we arrive one glorious day? No. Excellence is not a finish line. It's a way of being.

I believe we are what we repeatedly do, and therefore, excellence is not an act but a habit. It isn't complicated. Just hard.

Few of us can watch a video or get something explained and then know how to do it. We have to do it several times to absorb it. If it doesn't become a part of us we lose it the second we experience difficulty.

Don't focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.

For example, "Prioritization is so hard.", many say. To become great at it we should do it more than once a year then.

Unfortunately, the harder a thing is, the less often we do it.

Find the painful things you want to become extremely good at, and start practicing them. Deliberate repetitions with feedback. Outside your comfort zone.

Working with a master firsthand is one of the best educations. Learn from people who've done it before at a higher level than you. Apprenticeships have existed for centuries, helping people develop skills and transfer knowledge across generations.

You unconsciously adopt the thoughts, attitudes, behaviors and standards of the people around you. The master's excellence demands your excellence. Their standards become what you measure yourself against.

Is excellence the pursuit of perfection then? No. To be excellent in some areas, you must let others go. Know when to push for the very best and when to settle for good enough.

Over time, the habits you build become your culture, and your culture becomes your excellence.

What is excellence for you?