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Focus on The Critical Hit

Get it really done or die

Valentin Preobrazhenskiy

Tom King, a former star boxer, found himself yearning for a steak. He had spent his earnings from past victories generously, choosing to travel instead of training. In his last fight, he performed well but failed to deliver a critical hit for the win. As a result, he was now so impoverished that local merchants wouldn't even loan him enough money for a steak.

The next day, he was to fight against a rising star, Sandel. All he could afford to eat was bread and gravy, and he had to send his wife and children to bed without food.

King lost the fight. He was convinced that if he had been able to eat a steak before the fight, the outcome would have been different. Having already taken out credit on the loser's share of the purse, he left the fight penniless and in despair. King wept during his two-mile walk home, unable to afford a cab ride. He knew he would never win again.

"A Piece of Steak" by Jack London, 1909

Consider a jaguar that chases an antelope several times but fails to catch it. The jaguar may run out of energy for the next chase. Each subsequent chase with less energy means a lower probability of success and a lower chance of replenishing its energy. The jaguar is in its death valley, where death is imminent. The jaguar will die of hunger.

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San Francisco is full of homeless entrepreneurs - Jaguars who went into

the Death valley.⁠

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Mobilise effort to make a critical hit to break the wall or all of your work will be in vain, leading to burnout.

If multiple random light shots can't break a heavy wall, then you've just wasted energy, and you'll die, taking your teammates down with you. Breaking a wall means delivering a change in business with sustainable value that exceeds the costs used and ideally surpasses alternative costs.

You must have a laser-focused vision to hit the weak spot with a single, well-powered shot.

You have one or a few shots to take aim. If the shot is too light, we won't be able to determine if the aim was correct.

If you break the wall, you get recharged. If you don't hit and if you're a normal person, your brain will command you to conserve energy with each miss. Consequently, you'll be less likely to make a sufficient effort to make a hit with each subsequent shot. This is the Death Valley.

That's why we seek exceptional people determined to succeed. They never give up, never quit because they learned to make critical hits back in their childhood.

What did they learn in childhood that forged their character to break walls that stop others?

They learned to be conscious and responsible for their actions. They learned how to use each miss to correct their aim, double their effort, and ensure the target will be hit, unlike those who prefer to make excuses. Unlike excuse seekers, strong characters can endure failure while doing everything to hit with a single shot at all costs.

They focus with clear WHO needs WHAT for WHY stories and prohibit others from blurring tasks with vague, poorly structured definitions.

Focus for crit hit, be determined to succeed, never give up, never quit.

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“The Death Valley”

#nakedmanagement

"The Death Valley" is a self-perpetuating decline in the probability of achieving a product-market fit. This decline is due to a decrease in the effort to make critical hits as the team wastes energy and sees a lack of traction. The self-enforcing process begins with a lack of vision for the end result. A team that doesn't see where it's going, won't get anywhere. A lack of progress means a lower probability of getting a return on effort. Thus, there's less incentive to make the extra effort to start developing a vision for the end result.

Creating a vision for the end result requires extra effort:

The effort to visualize it: Write a WHO/WHAT/WHY Story, Vision novel, Problems/Solutions, To Do, draw a mind map (avoid seduction to write just few bullet points, always write Stories at least to build a habit)

The painful responsibility of acknowledging the result (Recognizing that sometimes what you do is useless, regardless of the effort put in).

If I don't see where I'm going, then I'm not responsible. I'm just doing something someone told me to do or what I feel like doing at the moment, regardless of whether it's needed for the clients or not.

Instinctively, I want recognition, higher titles, a better salary, and more influence, while wanting less responsibility and effort. So, I aim for a higher risk-adjusted ROI on my effort. If I don't measure the result for clients and don't take responsibility for that, then the value for clients is not in my ROI formula. Naturally, I expend energy only on variables in my ROI formula: recognition, titles, salary, influence. There are no client metrics here. And I feel demotivated if I don't get recognition, etc., for consulting teammates and jumping around, I feel the tensions of normal and median people. This is the lack of commitment and accountability well described in “

Five dysfunctions of teams⁠

“.

Connect your brain's ROI formula with the client metrics, or abandon the ambition to build a product and remain a median person.

Done 2

Done 2

Learnings

Done 2

Upvoters

I will Raise the Bar to avoid the Death Valley

👍

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I will focus energy to hit the target outlined in Priorities Ranking

👍

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There are no rows in this table

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The Shocking Rules Culture is not what we feel in our hearts. Culture is not a set of principles. Culture is a set of actions. If we follow our Principles, we have the Culture. We act boldly to make our principles work.⁠

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The Principles: Olympics of Freedom and Responsibility to Build the Future Once agreed on the Principles - we agreed on many decisions based on them. Teammates leverage the agreed principles to make their judgements and decisions aligned with the common goal without infinite reconciliations. So they move faster and hit targets.⁠

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