July 26, 2021
I’ve written a lot about my marvelous mother, Chic (“chick”) and how she taught me to ask for help and how she created the first council back in 1960.
Today I want to talk about *our* great grandmother, Lucy and why I love her and why you should too.
Let me explain.
In November 1974, a paleoanthropologist and his team discovered a nearly complete skeleton of our great, great, great+ grandmother.
They called her Lucy.
As they examined the bones of our 3.2 million year old short grandmother, an interesting question came up: how did she survive?
Keep in mind that Lucy had to evade two species of saber-toothed tigers — one was bigger than modern-day lions — as well as many other animals ready to eat her (they also had hyenas as big as lions back then).
Yet, the short Lucy was slow on foot, less agile in trees than other primates, and had small teeth. She also was not particularly strong.
In other words, she was seemingly defenseless against the many predators on the African savannah.
To further complicate matters, Lucy’s brain was not only bigger, but took at least twice as long to mature as her primate cousins making her even more defenseless during her long childhood.
Long childhoods typically only occur in species that face few predators like whales and elephants.
The one exception is us and our ancestors like Lucy and we had many predators.
So, again how did Lucy and her kind survive?
You guessed it.
Lucy asked for help.
Or as paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva puts it in his new book, First Steps, our ancestors created a social buffer against predators by looking “out for one another.”
And because our social buffer was so important for our survival, natural selection went to work creating bigger and bigger brains that we put to use in creating more advanced ways of cooperating with each other.
Known as the “social brain hypothesis“ this evolutionary dynamic eventually created the species who created cities, companies, and sitcoms.
The only problem is that now we are tragically facing a crisis of loneliness and isolation.
According to the book Together by former Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, at least 55 million Americans are lonely. Further, his research shows that loneliness is a major factor behind many of the problems we face from the opioid crisis, to obesity, diabetes, and mental health problems like depression and anxiety.
And research shows that loneliness increases the more senior you get in your career and it can have a direct impact on the quality of your decisions (and of your life).
To battle this modern-day loneliness plague, we all have to relearn the very skills that made us possible.
Ethiopians call Lucy Dinkinesh, which means, “You are marvelous.”
She is marvelous.
So are you.
In fact, Lucy has given you everything you need to become even more marvelous.
Next time you face some modern saber-toothed tiger in the form of a difficult business, career, or personal challenge, channel our grandmother.
And don’t just love Lucy.
Be like Lucy.
Look out for one another.
And certainly ask for help.
Love,
Phyl
P.S. If you have a saber-toothed tiger problem (or even a small house cat-sized challenge), then reach out. Homo sapiens are standing by ready to help!
Recent Talks and Activity Recordings
- Clubhouse and the Audio Revolution (not recorded)
Jonathan Ehrlich, Partner, Foundation Capital
Talk Type: In the Moment
Audience/Roles: All Roles
Two things to know about Jonathan Ehrlich:
1) he co-led the seed round in Clubhouse and was thus the first venture capitalist to spot its potential;
2) he’s a Councils alum with an interesting career arc.We held an informal conversation with Jonathan about Clubhouse, the future of audio, and Jonathan’s career journey from a mostly offline retailer in Canada to relocating to Silicon Valley and reinventing himself.—
Bio
—Jonathan Ehrlich is a Partner at Foundation Capital who invests in early early-stage consumer, marketplace, commerce, and SaaS startups and technologies. He joined Foundation Capital in 2013 as a partner after spending nine months with the firm as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Before joining Foundation Capital, Jonathan spent 17 years as an operator during which he founded three companies, built a $100M+ revenue business, and ran marketing for Facebook. He is the first institutional investor in Clubhouse and currently sits on the board of Bulletin and Chord. His Foundation and personal investments include Shelf Engine, Mainstreet, Truepill, Hooked, WayUp, League, Front, and Flexport. When not working, he can be found on his bike or chasing his four kids around.
- No Ego, Part 2 (not recorded)
Cy Wakeman, Best-selling Author and CEO
Talk Type: Leadership Development, Culture
Audience/Roles: All Roles
We had a follow-up session with Cy last Friday that was amazing. We did NOT record it due to confidentiality. We will be planning more.
In the meantime, you can watch the spring keynote with Cy, which was a GREAT session. Members loved it. I collected live case studies from members, which I anonymously shared with Cy to get her reaction on what was to be done. You gotta watch to see her great answers.
Cy Wakeman is a drama researcher, global thought-leader, and New York Times best-selling author who is recognized for cultivating a counter-intuitive, reality-based approach to leadership. Backed by over 20 years of unparalleled experience, Wakeman’s philosophy offers a new lens through which employees and executives alike, can shift their attention inward, sharpen their focus on personal accountability, and uncover their natural state of innovation simply by ditching the drama.
Deemed “the secret weapon to restoring sanity to the workplace,” Wakeman has helped companies such as Google, Facebook, Viacom, Uber, NBC Universal, NASA, Pfizer, Johns Hopkins, Stanford Health Care, Keurig Dr. Pepper, AMC Theatres, White Castle, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and countless others learn to navigate our rapidly changing world using good mental processes to harness energy wasted in workplace drama and reinvest that effort into achieving profound business results.
- Battle Buddies – A Way to Support Your Teams
Craig Hopkins, CIO, City of San Antonio
Talk Type: Leadership Development; Skill Builder/Practitioner
Audience/Roles: All Roles
We ran a short QnA-focused webinar with Craig to introduce an idea that has taken off in his org, the City of San Antonio, where he is the CIO.It’s called Battle Buddies. So, what is a Battle Buddy?Adapted from the US Army, a battle buddy is a partner assigned to an employee in an organization who is expected to assist his or her partner.Even though we are not in military combat, Craig says our corporate responsibilities can feel just as stressful and overwhelming at times.A battle buddy is not only intended for comradery and support, but also to help reduce stress, provide professional and leadership guidance, and at times, get into the trenches together to get things done. Since we will each be watching each other’s actions, we are all battle buddies to each other, as partners and as a leadership team, driven by our mission while adhering to our Core Values.Craig talked about how this has worked in his organization and how to set it up in yours.
- JTBD in Large Distributed Environments
Jay Haynes, Founder & CEO, thrv.com
Talk Type: Product; Skill Builder/Practitioner
Audience/Roles: All Roles
Jobs To Be Done has proven to be an effective methodology for building much better holistic end-to-end products and customer experiences.
*But* CG Council member companies with large distributed environments are finding it difficult to apply JTBD in effective ways.
Jay Haynes, CEO of thrv, and a global expert on JTBD will come and speak to the Councils community on this specific challenge of using the methodology in large, complex technology environments.
- Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products
Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin, co-Authors of Groundwork
Talk Type: Product
Audience/Roles: All Roles
Product leaders are all too familiar with the one to two-year period it typically takes to train and coach PMs. Product leaders hire smart people and then work with them individually, guiding them through how to think about product management, and watching them develop. Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin wanted a much faster way to help cultivate efficient and effective product managers that consistently create products that delight customers, regardless of the industry, the environment, and the development methodology that the team employed. They took years of experience as product executives and working with hundreds of teams as product coaches to create a framework to Get Better at Making Better Products.
The design philosophy and methodology behind Groundwork was created to help product leaders be confident that their teams were committed to solving the right customer problems, minimizing costly rework by using individualized needs, and leveraging actionable personas in big and small product decisions. Vidya and Heather want Groundwork to help product teams have a much higher chance of success in the market—and help every product manager shine.
Join Vidya and Heather as they share the background, principles, and methodology behind the Groundwork to help you, and your team, get better at making better products.
- Making the Case for Empowering Your People
Marty Cagan, Partner, Silicon Valley Product Group
Talk Type: Product, Leadership Development, Culture
Audience/Roles: All Roles
From Marty: “I have long been interested in the difference between how the best companies work, and the rest. Working with both types of organizations for so many years, there are many differences ranging from culture to process to staffing to roles to techniques. But at its core, strong product companies empower their people, and most of the rest do not. My focus over the past few years has been tackling this issue head-on, which means the product leadership. In this talk, we’ll discuss why this model consistently yields better results, and what’s necessary to transform to work like the best.”
Marty’s Bio: Marty Cagan is the founding partner of the Silicon Valley Product Group, which he created to pursue his interests in helping others create successful products through his writing, speaking, advising and coaching. Before starting SVPG, Marty served as an executive responsible for defining and building products for some of the most successful companies in the world, including Hewlett-Packard, Netscape Communications, and eBay.As part of his work with SVPG, Marty advises tech companies of all sizes and stages, stretching far beyond Silicon Valley. Marty is the author of the industry-leading book for product teams, INSPIRED: How To Create Tech Products Customers Love, and the upcoming book EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products. Marty is an invited speaker at major conferences and top companies across the globe.
- See talks from the last month and beyond here.
