Good morning to all new and old readers! Here is your Wednesday edition of Faster Than Normal, exploring one short story about a person, a company, a high-performance tool, a trend I’m watching closely, and curated media to help you build businesses, wealth, and the most important asset of all: yourself.
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Today’s edition:
> Stories: Jayshree Ullal & Microsoft
> High-performance: The ecosystem of wicked problems
> Insights: Inventory of trust
> Tactical: Life priorities and career choices
> 1 Question: Indulgence trap
Cheers,
Alex
P.S. Send me feedback on how we can improve. I respond to every email.
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Stories of Excellence
Person: Jayshree Ullal
Jayshree Ullal, CEO of Arista Networks, has become a powerhouse in the tech world. Born in London and raised in India, she moved to the US for college. Her career took off at Cisco, where she led the Catalyst switching business to $5 billion in revenue. In 2008, Ullal took a risk. She left Cisco to join Arista, a tiny startup with just 50 employees. Under her leadership, Arista went public in 2014 and hit $2.4 billion in revenue by 2019. Ullal's success hasn't gone unnoticed. Forbes named her one of the top five influential people in networking. She's also become a billionaire, with Forbes estimating she owns about 5% of Arista's stock. Ullal's story is one of vision, risk-taking, and relentless drive.
Key Lessons from Jayshree Ullal:
On finding your strengths: Find your dream, and find what you're not just good at but excellent at. It takes a while; I'm not saying we all know right away. But you all have a gift; each and every one of you have a gift.
On continuous learning: In today's world, interdisciplinary fields are more important than ever. I ask you all to seek, not just what your gift is, but how you connect the dots between your gift and other areas.
Company: Microsoft
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gates, a Harvard dropout, and Allen, a college dropout working as a programmer, saw an opportunity in the emerging personal computer market. They started by developing a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 microcomputer. In 1980, Microsoft secured a crucial deal with IBM to provide the operating system for their PCs, leading to the creation of MS-DOS. The company went public in 1986, making Gates the world's youngest self-made billionaire at 31. Microsoft's breakthrough came with Windows 3.0 in 1990, which sold 10 million copies in two years. By 2024, Microsoft had grown to a ~$3 trillion market cap company with annual revenue of over ~$220 billion.
Key Lessons from Microsoft:
On long-term thinking: Invest in the future, even when it hurts. Microsoft has consistently invested in R&D, even during tough times. They've been willing to take short-term hits for long-term gains. Gates emphasized this approach: "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten."
On hiring: Recruit for intelligence, not just experience. Microsoft famously used brain teasers in interviews to test problem-solving skills. They valued raw intelligence over specific experience. Gates said, "I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." This approach helped them build a team of innovative thinkers.
Something New
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Try asking: "How did Steve Jobs think about product focus differently than his peers?"
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High-performance tool
⎯
The Ecosystem Of Wicked Problems
Insights
Brene Brown's "B-R-A-V-I-N-G" Inventory of Trust:
"Boundaries: Setting boundaries is making clear what’s okay and what’s not okay, and why
Reliability: You do what you say you’ll do. At work, this means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don’t overpromise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities.
Accountability: You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends.
Vault: You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential.
Integrity: Choosing courage over comfort; choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy; and practicing your values, not just professing them.
Nonjudgment: I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgment.
Generosity: Extending the most generous interpretation to the intentions, words, and actions of others.
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"Why do we need to break it down? For a very simple reason. How many of you in here have ever struggled with trust in a relationship, professional or personal? It should be everybody, statistically, right? And so, what you end up saying to someone is, “I don’t trust you.” “What do you mean you don’t trust me? I love you. I’m so dependable. What do you mean you don’t trust me?”
How do we talk about trust if we can’t break it down? What understanding trust gives us is words to say, “Here’s my struggle. You’re not reliable with me. You say you’re going to do something, I count on it, you don’t do it.” Or maybe the issue is non-judgment. But we can break it down and talk about it and ask for what we need, very specifically. Instead of using this huge word that has tons of weight and value around it, we can say, “Here’s specifically what’s not working. What’s not working is we’ve got a boundaries issue.”
So, one of the things that’s interesting, I think, is one of the biggest casualties with heartbreak and disappointment and failure and our struggle, is not just the loss of trust with other people, but the loss of self trust. When something hard happens in our lives, the first thing we say is “I can’t trust myself. I was so stupid. I was so naive.”
So, this BRAVING acronym works with self-trust too. So, when something happens … I just recently went through a really tough failure, and I had to ask myself, “Did I honor my own boundaries? Was I reliable? Can I count on myself? Did I hold myself accountable? Was I really protective of my stories? Did I stay in my integrity? Was I judgmental toward myself? And I give myself the benefit of the doubt? Was I generous toward myself?"
Tactical reads
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> When reflecting on life priorities and career choices
ZEN PENCILS » 98. ALAN WATTS: What if money was no object? (Read it here)
> When seeking advice on conducting groundbreaking research
You and Your Research (Read it here)
1 question
What are you good/bad at saying 'no' to?
That’s all for today, folks. As always, please give me your feedback. Which section is your favourite? What do you want to see more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
Have a wonderful rest of week, all.
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