Hi, I'm Ray 👋 and this is where I write posts and collect links.

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Strategic Choices and Operational Imperatives

Roger Martin:

The latter meet my definition of a Strategic Choice. Since the opposite isn’t stupid, it represents a real choice to do something meaningfully different than some or all competitors/peers. The former don’t meet the definition. Does that mean they are unimportant and shouldn’t be mentioned in a strategy document? No. This is what I have come to call an Operating Imperative. Because it is smart and there is no other obvious approach, we will fall behind if we don’t do the positive thing that everybody else is doing.

We make Strategic Choices when we want to gain an advantage over our competitors. That doesn’t happen when we do the same things as competitors. We follow Operating Imperatives when we want to avoid falling behind competitors on a meaningful dimension.

With respect to Operating Imperatives, this is the domain in which you should be doing rigorous benchmarking to determine best demonstrated practices. This is the power alley of the (so-called) strategy consulting firms. They have worked for everyone in your industry (at least the biggest ones have) and they can give you chapter and verse on exactly what your competitors are doing and how they do it. They encourage you and tell you how to copy the best practices currently out there. It isn’t particularly ethical for the consulting firms, but that is how that world works. Clients buy their services on that basis so clients shouldn’t be surprised that the firms subsequently sell what they learned on the resultant assignment with (perhaps) their closest competitor. In any event, after receiving this advice about what competition is doing, the task is to rigorously follow the best demonstrated practice.

With respect to Strategic Choices, this is indeed where Benchmarking is for Losers, as I have written about before in this series. This is the domain in which you need to focus your bold choice-making. This is where you need to make sure that the opposite of your choice is what your competitors are doing. This is where you are going to get zero help from those who spend their lives figuring out what your competitors are doing and telling you to do the best version of that. In fact, zero is the best you can expect. They are actually most likely to convince you to replicate your best competitor, which is a recipe for losing. These unique choices are going to be the source of your competitive advantage.

You should have a limited number of Strategy Choices. The number of Operating Imperatives can be longer — say five-to-ten. More than ten and they cease to become real imperatives, in my experience. But there should be three-to-five Strategy Choices. It shouldn’t be one because a singular unique choice is easier to replicate and hence not sustainable.

This framing resonated with me and it’s worth reading the whole post.

I’ve seen loads of strategies that were actually lists of operating imperatives. These are useful, but different to strategic choices.

Unified Theory of Fucks

Mandy Brown:

This is one of my answers to the question of, why give a fuck about work? Why love your work? It won’t, of course, love you back. It can’t. Work isn’t a thing that can love. It isn’t alive, it isn’t and won’t ever be living. And my answer is: don’t. Don’t give a fuck about your work. Give all your fucks to the living. Give a fuck about the people you work with, and the people who receive your work—the people who use the tools and products and systems or, more often than not, are used by them. Give a fuck about the land and the sea, all the living things that are used or used up by the work, that are abandoned or displaced by it, or—if we’re lucky, if we’re persistent and brave and willing—are cared for through the work. Give a fuck about yourself, about your own wild and tender spirit, about your peace and especially about your art. Give every last fuck you have to living things with beating hearts and breathing lungs and open eyes, with chloroplasts and mycelia and water-seeking roots, with wings and hands and leaves. Give like every fuck might be your last.

Listen and Watch Later

MusicBox and Play app icons

I’m giving MusicBox and Play a crack for keeping track of music I want to listen to and videos I want to watch1.

I was previously managing my music to listen to via a specific playlist in Spotify so I migrated that across.

For video, I migrated my YouTube Watch Later list, Instapaper videos folder, and AppleTV+ and Netflix watch later lists across.

I like how the apps sync across all my Apple devices and everything is in one spot.

I’m especially keen to give the Play app on AppleTV a try.

Now I need something similar for all my podcasts and audiobooks.


  1. I already use Instapaper for articles I want to read later. ↩︎

The Psychology of Money 📚

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

The Psychology of Money covers how doing well with money is more dependent on your behaviour than what you know.

Here are some of the topics that stood out to me.

Wealth is what you don’t see

Wealth is income not spent. An option not yet taken to buy something later. Its value lies in giving you options and flexibility.

General advice

“Does this help me sleep at night?” is the best universal guide post of all financial decisions.

If you want to do better as an investor the best thing you can do is increase your time horizon. Time is the most powerful force in investing it makes little things grow big and big mistakes fade away.

Use money to gain control over your time because not having control of your time is a powerful and universal drag on happiness.

The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, pays the highest dividend.

Getting wealthy vs staying wealthy

Only the paranoid survive. We can’t assume that yesterday’s success will translate to today.

What differentiates those who succeed is survival, not growth or brains, the ability to stick around for a long time.

Having an edge and surviving are two different things, the first requires the second, you need to avoid ruin at all costs.

Appreciate the following:

  1. Rather than focus on the greatest returns be unbreakable—because being unbreakable means you get to stick around long enough for compounding to work. Compounding doesn’t require big returns, just sustained good returns.
  2. Planning is great. Plan on the plan not going to plan. Embrace the downside and plan for it. Build in room for error (aka. Margin of Safety) so you can live without worry.
  3. Have a barbelled personality—optimistic about the future but paranoid about what will prevent you from getting there.

It’s all in the tails

A small number of events can be responsibile for the majority of outcomes.

All big wins come in the distribution tails. Grab a broad set of things and wait for the winners to emerge. Most will be worth nothing, a very few may win big.

Art collectors grabbed portfolios of art across different emerging artists. Most of their collection was worthless, some had a bunch of Picassos.

Save money

Much of investing is out of your control. Personal savings and frugality are within your control and is effective now and in the future.

Have a buffer for the inevitable surprises life will throw at you.

Room for error

History is littered with good ideas taken too far which makes them indistinguishable from bad ideas.

The only way to deal with unknowns is to increase the gap between what you think will happen from what can happen while still leaving you able to fight another day.

Ben Graham: “The purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary.”

Margin of safety is the only effective way to navigate a world dominated by odds and not certainties.

Even a five percent chance of ruin is not worth the risk over the long term. Leverage is something that can push routine risks into areas where they can produce ruin.

Think of your own money as barbelled. Take risks with one portion and be terrified with the rest.

Charity Majors on Engineering Management

Charity Majors:

The “socio” and “technical” of sociotechnical systems are not neatly separable, they are interwoven and interdependent. There is actually precious little that is purely technical work or purely people work; there is a metric shitload of glue work that draws upon both skill sets.

If you aren’t making building the organization someone’s number one job, it won’t be anyone’s number one job, which means it probably won’t get done very well. And whose responsibility will that be, Mr. CEO?

Things I Enjoyed in 2023

Here’s a roundup of things, mostly media, I enjoyed in 2023.

Music

I create a Spotify playlist each year where I add songs I like. Here’s my 2023 edition.

I scrobbled about 6700 songs this year.

Here are my top ten tracks and top ten albums.

My most listened tracks in 2023
My most listened albums in 2023

TV shows

Slow Horses — A season a year, six episodes each, sharp, great cast, Oldman ripping three zingers an episode, set in London which hits me in the nostalgia spots, can’t wait for this season’s finale next week.

The Bear — Season two built nicely on the first season. Episode seven of the second season was a highlight.

Scavengers Reign — Body horror stuff isn’t my thing but this show was great. The creativity on show in the flora and fauna design is incredible. The art reminds me of Mœbius.

What We Do in the Shadows — After each season I feel like the show is running out of steam but then each season I laugh during each episode. It has the best intro song ever and Matt Berry is a genius.

Hijack — Idris and some tightly shot thrills.

Deadloch — Everything is inverted. Finished strong.

Succession — They stuck the landing.

Better Call Saul — Finally finished this slow burn. Satisfying finish to the series.

Jury Duty — Wild that this worked. Made me laugh.

Station Eleven — Unexpectedly uplifting post apocalyptic story.

Silo — I love a good mystery. Made me start reading the books.

Movies

Dune (2021) — Well done. Sent me off reading the books again.

John Wick: Chapter 4 — So over the top. Beautifully shot. They shouldn’t make any more, though.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — The best comic movie fare by a wide margin.

Dunkirk — I’m seemingly on a five year lag with Christopher Nolan movies.

The Killer — Fassbender and Fincher on one.

Books

Dune Chronicles — I reread Dune and then read Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and most of God Emperor of Dune. I underappreciated Herbert’s world building which is incredibly influential. I lost steam about three quarters into the fourth book.

Faith, Hope, and Carnage — Whirls around creativity, spirituality, loss, religion, partnerships. Probably only for Nick Cave sickos like me.

The Psychology of Money — Principles around money and how to handle it. Hold strong and let the power of compounding do its thing.

This is How You Lose the Time War — Sci-fi time travel done well.

Rendezvous With Rama — Classic mysterious space objects baby.

Podcasts

The Watch — Chris and Andy forever.

The Rest is History — Educational and funny. (The live show was great too.)

Dithering — 15 minutes is a sweetspot.

The Rewatchables — Always makes me laugh.

Bandsplain — Yasi has charm for days. The Afghan Whigs episode was a particular favourite.

Conversations with Tyler — I love Tyler’s interview style. I always learn things.

Games

God of War Ragnarök — Nothing more satisfying than that axe flying back into your hand.

Elden ring — Only scratched the surface as I don’t have the hours or energy to get up the difficulty curve of this.

Diablo 4 — As addictive as ever. I ended up mashing buttons on this on many evenings.

Baldur’s Gate 3 — Throw back CRPG. Will crack this back open once time allows.

Cyberpunk 2077 — Cool world. Choices didn’t seem like that big a deal. Will crack this open again at some stage given the latest patch seems to have changed a bunch of things up.

King of Tokyo — The kids love playing this. Quick to set up and is great fun.

Products

AirPods Pro 2 — I use these every day. Apple’s best product in a while.

Leica Q2 Reporter — I’m back in Leica land. I carry this camera with me often and have shot way more this year as a result.

True Classic Shirts — These dadcore shirts go good.

Classnames

Paul Robert Lloyd:

This small website provides a list of words that you can refer to when naming something like an HTML class, custom CSS property or JavaScript function. Each word links to a page on Wordnik, an online dictionary that does the hard work of providing multiple definitions and listing related words.

Atlassian Doubles Down on Distributed Work

Annie Dean (via Jeremy Anderberg):

“What I can say is that when we look at the challenges at work today, I think it’s pretty well accepted that our greatest challenges have to do with distraction, the lack of ability to focus, the fact that we can’t prioritize important work fast enough because we’re letting our calendars dictate on time. And when you look at those as the key problems and impediments to productivity, fixing where we work is not the answer to any of them.”