Opportunity Knocks 100 - 100 Lessons & Beliefs
Every week I share reflections, ideas, questions, and content suggestions focused on championing, building, and accelerating opportunity for children.
This is my 100th post. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me each week.
I’ve learned so much working with kids, teens, and young adults in countless ways since my first job as a camp counselor 25 years ago. I’ve also learned just as much from the incredible adults who devote themselves to helping young people thrive.
In that spirit, I’m sharing 100 lessons—ideas that have turned into beliefs (maybe even values). Some focus explicitly on children, education, and policy; others center on work, leadership, human nature, and relationships. I’m not an expert, and these lessons aren’t directions. For me, they’re more like bumpers on a bowling lane, preventing me from repeating mistakes I’ve made in the past and reminding me of the path that works best for me.
I’ve tried to organize them for easier reading. Hopefully, you’ll find a few that resonate and maybe disagree with others. Either way, I hope they make you think.
Kids
Kids don’t learn (well) from adults they don’t respect.
Heuristic to assess youth thriving: what’s in a kid’s backpack?
Often, the most significant challenge to getting things done for kids is a failure to focus (this has broader applicability).
Telling kids they can do whatever they want to do is more important than telling them they can be whatever they want to be.
Getting kids to and through college is a family—usually, an extended family— undertaking.
Student learning parallels adult learning.
My child benefits when your child thrives (see more from Opportunity Knocks #55 - Parental Responsibility).
Having pity for a child is one of the greatest disservices you can do them.
Kids notice who’s valued and who isn’t.
It’s not about kids, without kids. Have to figure out appropriate ways to elevate youth voice.
Industrial complexes that purport to be about kids—ed tech, parenting, toys—are usually about something else entirely (money, data, etc.).
Watching kids grow a little every day is a reminder that we should keep growing, too.
Kids are the most direct path to a good laugh.
Honor children’s truths.
Human Nature/Behavior
The best way to persuade people is with your ears.
To connect: story → data/facts → story.
Avoid the trap of feeling passive in your losses (they don’t only happen to you).
People are more emotional/sentimental than they are logical/rational.
Work to expand your surface area for luck (e.g., be curious, try new things, meet new people).
Guard against defaults (cultural, social, ideological etc.).
When we start believing your own bullshit, it’s time to step back, pivot, or move on.
People are generally bad at calculating risk because they are unaware—or don’t understand—their own biases.
Our initial thought is usually not an original thought but rather just our interpretation of conventional wisdom. Never settle with your first thought unless pressure-tested vigorously.
Humility isn’t what really matters—it may actually be just an illusion anyway—what matters is the confidence to be humble and the ability to suppress and deploy your ego appropriately.
Broaden your risk horizon (at the end of their lives, most people don’t regret the risks they took).
Take measures to prevent the echo of your own voice from becoming deafening (e.g., by practicing self-overhearing, thinking about how you think, pressure testing you priors).
Trust your stomach, but try to limit it’s use to 50/50 decisions.
Ask for observations not advice. You are more likely to get objective feedback.
Individual stories motivate, statistics overwhelm.
The most powerful emotions are fear, greed, and hope.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Heuristic to measure personal growth: what have you recently changed your mind about?
The best way to deeply understand someone is to travel with them.
Power and certainty don’t usually mix well.
There is strength in kindness.
Grief is the price of love.
Beware of false comforts (e.g., cravings, impulses, bad habits, bad people).
Substance is always more rewarding than prestige.
There are some questions we might not want to know the answers to because those answers come with responsibility, and sometimes, the burden of knowing can be overwhelming. More in Opportunity Knocks #24.
Consistently consider what the consensus is probably wrong about.
Leadership/Work
How to create trust? Be calm, be kind, no surprises.
A pound of threat is worth an ounce of action.
Decisions are not necessarily wrong just because thy led to failure (or a middling outcome).
Figure out how to ask ask the right questions or be prepared to disappoint/upset.
“Stop-dos”—individually and organizationally—are as important as “start to dos.”
Feedback is gold, criticism is fools gold.
When you’re in charge, be in charge.
Only do the things that only you can do.
Experience does not always equate to expertise. Respect experience, but probe for expertise.
Always take more than you share of the blame and less than your share of the credit.
On a single topic/task/ask, it’s fine to say I don’t know once. Then get the answer.
Don’t plan to fail, but prepare to.
Three questions to ask yourself when considering a professional decision: Why me? Why this? Why now?
Figure out the things you are not willing to compromise on and don’t comprise on them (e.g., values and relationships). Everything else is negotiable.
Work to understand the difference between complicated (building a machine) and complex (love) in you area of expertise.
Working smarter not harder is misleading. Both are equally important. In fact, nearly every successful person I know—not matter how you measure success—has spent some period in their life working extremely hard.
On succeeding early in your career: pick a problem to focus on, pick your boss (not your job), identify things that are really hard for you boss, solve those things.
It’s necessary to fully understand the rules before you break them.
Nonlinearity in career path = exposure to different approaches, thinking, experiences = effectiveness.
It’s never safe—or smart—to make assumptions.
If you are a young leader, people are more likely to watch what you do vs. listen to what you say.
Build a personal board of directors.
Be quick, but don’t hurry.
On hiring: assess for integrity. Figure out workarounds for negative personal attributes to a point (e.g., if you want a real no assholes policy).
Keep in mind that external incentives—beyond you or your organization—won’t always be/stay aligned with your goals.
Fire people if you have to and own the mistakes in selection.
Code-switching is overrated. Be yourself.
If you are not failing often in the first five years of your career, find different opportunities.
In your 20s, be mops to mics (do a bunch of different things and figure out the three-five you are good at). In your 30s, narrow those to one-three that you think you can be great at. In your 40s, work towards becoming world class at one thing.
Policy
Across the K-12 sector, we still struggle to effectively communicate to parents what a high-quality school is.
Schools are conforming institutions, not uniqueness accelerators. We have to build systems to help our kids be the best versions of exactly who they were meant to be (we’re not there yet).
Reorganizations usually aren’t worth it. Change is more likely to come through affecting day-to-day operations.
Find smart and honest people you disagree with and spend time getting to understand their perspective.
Momentum matters. What’s the smallest component of the potential solve to the big problem? Start there.
Never underestimate the value of non-experts.
The purpose of education is to discover and find meaning in how the world works.
Effective policymakers deeply understand how to naviagte uncertainty.
Communities often have the answers to their problems.
Never dismiss individual experience.
Systems are designed to get the results they get. If the results are bad. The system design is bad.
Money (economics) and risk (law) usually lead the way. Everything else (e.g., evidence, impact, etc.) follows.
General powers of governments as an administration matures → tell, fund, ask.
On the difference between national politics and local kids’ politics: national is about coalition maintainence; local is about coalition building.
Policy implementation is hard because second-order thinking is hard.
Policy implementation failure is common because overlooking or underestimating second-order thinking is equally common.
It’s hard to talk about—let alone fix—poverty when the middle class is deeply concerned about their own futures (and that of their kids).
Relationships/Family
Heuristic for marriage: is this the person I want to have dinner with every night?
In the short/medium-term, regular daily/weekly rhythms are much more attainable than balance.
Take an annual retreat with your significant other. Go somewhere, have an agenda, talk about your goals for the year. We do it at work, why wouldn’t we do it at home?
Avoid absolutes at all costs (e.g., you always, you never, etc.).
Don’t do things for the people you love that they should do themselves.
Take advantage of opportunities that make you make decisions as we (e.g., opening a joint bank account). We is a shortcut to trust.
Parenting
Put your oxygen mask on first.
Most parenting advice—see #28—is worthless.
Apologize to your kids when you make a mistake.
It’s easy to be the world’s greatest parent before you become a parent.
Avoid sliding into the transactional. It’s not a baby business, you’re not a project manager.
It’s important to figure out how to make your normal your kid’s normal.
Sometimes, it’s about surviving—not thriving. That’s fine.
From Opportunity Knocks #9: I consider myself fortunate; my life has largely been pretty easy. Like most folks, I’ve encountered some gnarly family stuff, I’ve done some truly difficult things professionally, and I’ve committed more than a few mistakes. While these experiences were crucial, they offered only a fragile foundation for becoming a quality father. To be a present, patient, compassionate, fair, and playful dad requires a commitment to constant intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth. I'm still a work in progress in all of these areas. Fortunately, I have the world's best teachers in my daughters.
Until next week, be calm and be kind,
Andrew