The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #60

Hi there

I hope you had a great week!

Here are the topics in today's edition:

Power Politics Is Everywhere - Even in Your Office
Your Brain Doesn't Use Folders - Why Should Your Notes?
"Thanks for Your Message!" - Why Short Emails Aren't as Useless as You Think

Please reach out if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!

Talk soon 👋
Tom

KickKerK

LEADERSHIP FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS

Power Politics Is Everywhere - Even in Your Office

Why restricting space for the loudest voices creates room for real progress

Power politics are back on the global stage. Look at Russia, China, and the United States.

But wait, what exactly is power politics, and how does it apply to my life as an entrepreneur?

Power politics is a strategic approach to governance and international relations in which states or individuals prioritize power and influence over ideology, morality, or cooperation.

Beautiful. It’s not the state that wields power politics; it’s individuals. The same is true for corporations; they are made up of individuals, too.

Let’s look into some examples.

Politics

Let’s leave the great powers for a second and look at Switzerland, a tranquil small state and my home country.

When we hold elections, candidates tour the country and talk to everyone. Ahead of the recent election of a new defense minister, I had the chance to speak to both candidates at a gathering organized by the Swiss Officers’ Association — that’s the beauty of the Swiss active reserve system, under which I serve as an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces.

One of the candidates was an executive politician, well-rounded and conciliatory. Besides the usual small talk, I had a discussion with him on military topics and received an immediate and reflective answer to my points.

The other candidate was a classic power politician, interrupting people to make sure he shook all the hands he wanted to shake. While the first candidate put the subject matter of defence into the center of the discussion, the second candidate put himself at the center of the stage.

Corporations

Some 10 years ago, I left a well-paid and prestigious corporate job because of corporate politics. As the Head of eOperations at Swiss International Air Lines, corporate politics existed both within Swiss International Air Lines and the Lufthansa Group, to which Swiss International Air Lines belongs. Therefore, in all matters, you were upsetting one or the other party: Either you tried to push through group policies and met resistance from your own company. Or you defended your company’s interests and met with fierce opposition at the group level.

Just like in politics, corporate politics are not shaped by the organization, but by a few individuals who put their egos and personal interests over the interests of the organization.

Customer Relations

In my almost 10 years as the Founder & CEO of Yonder, I have seen individuals from customer organizations accusing my team of lying, altering our RFP answers in their favor, or holding back payments due to problems caused by other suppliers.

I’m sure you have the odd individual in your customer base who screams “urgent, urgent!” all the time — even if an issue is not urgent, or if the issue was caused by the customer’s internal IT.

When confronted with such situations, always remember it’s usually not the customer organization that is to blame, but those very few individuals who scream the loudest.

What Can You Do?

If we want to withstand power politics in our troubled times, we need to restrict the space for those very few loud individuals to make room for the cause.

That’s less sexy than putting yourself at the center of the stage, but more purposeful for whatever activities you are involved in.

LIFE HACKS FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS

Your Brain Doesn't Use Folders - Why Should Your Notes?

Rather than talking about tools, let’s talk about organizing information in a brain-like structure

All of today’s major problems are connected to many subjects.

You always meet people twice or three times, but in different contexts.

Information comes from a wide range of sources.

Yet we still treat information in a folder structure. Literally, by sticking a piece of information into a single digital folder. More gravely, by mentally categorizing information without second thoughts: This person is associated with that company. This subject is only relevant to that investment. To solve this problem, I need technologies A, B, and C.

Wrong. Everything is connected. But maybe you don’t know yet, or you simply don’t see the connections yet. In the flood of information, I can’t blame you for not seeing all the connections. Nobody can. But some freely available software technology can help you.

There are many tools for connecting the dots out there, such as Roam Research, Bear, or Obsidian — I am using Obsidian.

But rather than talking about the tool, let’s talk about how I organized information in a brain-like structure.

1. Follow the Anatomy of Your Brain

Information management should be about mimicking the processes taking place in your brain, not following the flow of a software tool that you will replace with yet another tool shortly.

Let’s use a very simple example to illustrate this point: learning vocabulary in a foreign language. In the good old days, people wrote flashcards, queried each other, and wrote the hard-to-remember words down seven times in order not to forget them. Nowadays, there are many tools around to assist you with learning vocabulary. But even with all these tools, there is still no way around getting those difficult words in a foreign language into your short-term memory and then transferring them into your long-term memory.

If no tool can help you, you need to set up a process to assist your learning. Here is my process (yes, I am a very structured person):

Whenever I read interesting articles, I flag the ones I like in all my newsfeeds. At regular intervals, I transfer the key points into my notes tool (Obsidian). If possible, I do this first thing in the morning. In this way, I can decide with a fresh mind if each piece of information is relevant to my activities or not. If it is, I am getting another touchpoint with it, thereby assisting the transfer into my short-term memory.
Once a week, I take some time to refactor my notes. In software engineering, “refactoring” describes a process to rewrite existing functions, making them more scalable or using new technologies. I do the same thing with my notes. I rearrange them, I add links, I merge notes, I divide notes. In this way, the pieces of information get their place in my brain, assisting the transfer into long-term memory. Because my brain develops, I keep refactoring my notes over and over again. Just like in software engineering.

2. The Macrostructure

The anatomy of my brain needs a macrostructure to organize information and thought. It’s important to keep this structure very flat, otherwise, you will very soon start losing yourself in folder-like structures.

I defined the following macrostructure to which I link every piece of information:

Input — whenever I have a meeting or read an article relevant to me, I write down the relevant information for later use.
Subject — what topic is the piece of information about?
Source — where does the piece of information come from?
People — who gave me that piece of information, with whom did I discuss it, and whom did I recommend it to?
Product — what product will I use the information for?
Action — do I need to investigate the topic further, discuss it with somebody, or read it in a quiet minute?

After some years of using Obsidian, below are some examples of what my information graph for different macro structure items looks like:

Obsidian screenshot — All the Obsidian notes tagged as “inputs” (source: author)

The screenshots show that I condense all my notes and thoughts on very few subjects, but I interact with many people and process many inputs.

It’s important to understand that this is my brain’s anatomy; your information graph will look completely different.

3. Feed The Digital Brain

Such a system only works when you develop the discipline to log all your inputs consistently in your Obsidian database. That’s often the hardest part.

Using templates for inputs eases the pain of keeping up with logging inputs. I set up a very generic template covering all inputs. Remember, in most cases, at the time of recording, you will not know what you will use a piece of information for in the end.

Obsidian has a “daily notes” plugin that allows you to organize inputs along the timeline. Every input goes into the corresponding daily note, using the generic template I described above.

Color-coding the daily notes in my graph view as red dots, you can see all the daily notes in my information graph:

Some daily notes contain multiple inputs, while others contain little input. That’s a typical neurological pattern — sometimes your brain is more active than at other times.

4. Synthesize

Now comes the fun part. Everyone who knows me has experienced how I love jumping from one discussion topic to the next, making connections that seemingly don’t make any sense.

Your digital brain is filled with seemingly unconnected yet connected information about subjects, people, and products. The graph view gives you unlimited possibilities to uncover connections between subjects, people, and products in real time.

Because Obsidian is my digital brain, it maps my thinking. And because my thinking develops over time and by connecting new inputs to existing inputs, my digital brain is in constant evolution. Topics may come up and disappear in the depths of the dots, only to resurface later. Just like in a real brain.

INSPIRATION FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS

"Thanks for Your Message!" - Why Short Emails Aren't as Useless as You Think

How simple, immediate responses keep momentum in business and prevent frustration

“Thanks for your message! Best regards, Tom”

“I will revert when I’m done! Kind regards, Tom”

“I’m on it! Brgds, Tom”

I’m sure you have received thousands of such presumably empty emails before. Are they really that empty, or is there some value in such shell emails?

Cultural Aspects

If you ask Americans, they will argue that such shell emails aren’t empty, but that they show interest in the other party.

If you ask Europeans, many will say that such shell emails don’t provide any value. At the same time, most Europeans will still appreciate it when they receive a message from somebody showing that they are working on their issue.

American business is very transactional: What value can you provide to an American business partner? If there is value in your offering for your business partner, they will interact with you and get the deal done. If at some point they find out that there isn’t any value in your offering, they will walk away, possibly not even telling you that they are no longer interested.

In contrast, in Europe, we like to discuss and debate everything and anything. Sometimes, a healthy debate is needed to come up with the best solution. But sometimes, you just have to end the discussions and move forward. That’s when you’re writing a short email to tell people that you are on it. And then you set to work on the issue rather than wasting your time with pointless discussions.

No matter if you are American or European, it shows that you give a f**k about the task at hand.

Customer Support

No customer likes to wait for an answer when they have a problem. Whenever a customer raises a support ticket, by default, there is a problem. In such situations, people tend to be even more impatient.

A quick email that you are working on the issue will work wonders, provided you write it immediately after the support ticket is raised.

If the problem resolution takes longer than anticipated, write regular updates to your customer, affirming that the issue is still in progress and hasn’t been forgotten.

Contrast this with not hearing anything for days or weeks after you have raised a support ticket. You will agree that “I am on it” shell emails are a better idea than not replying for days or weeks.

Sales

Sales is about creating excitement about a product and getting the deal done as quickly as possible.

When both parties interact with little delay, the deal is on track. As soon as you receive delayed answers or no answers anymore, most probably the other party has lost interest in the deal. At Yonder, my sales team would tell me that we are being ghosted.

If you are on the buyer side, you can use the same shell email tactic as in customer support: If a decision needs more time, tell the suppliers when they can expect an update.

Conclusion

It’s too easy to narrow shell emails to cultural differences between America and Europe. Even if you’re European, I would advocate for using shell emails widely.

They don’t hurt, they don’t take much time to write, but they can make all the difference to your counterpart.

About Me

Growing a company 📈 in uncertain times 🔥🧨 is like running a marathon—it demands grit, strategy, and resilience.

As a tech entrepreneur 💻, active reserve officer 🪖, and father of three 👩👦👦, I share practical insights and experience on entrepreneurship and resilience in The Resilient Entrepreneur, my weekly newsletter.

When I'm not solving problems, I recharge and find inspiration in the breathtaking mountains 🏔️ around Zermatt 🇨🇭.

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