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Lessons from “Multipliers” – How the best leaders make everyone smarter

Below are some of my learning points from the book “Multipliers: How the best leaders make everyone smarter” by Lize Wiseman.

In the book Wiseman introduces 2 types of leaders: Multipliers and Diminishers. As the names suggest, Multipliers are leaders who can “multiply” the smartness of the organization they manage, while Diminishers do the reverse.

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Fundamental Approaches in Second / Foreign Language Acquisition

Below is a summary of the fundamental approaches to second / foreign language acquisition. More will be added as discovered.
(If you find a popular approach that hasn’t been included, please let me know in the comment)

Note: L1: a person’s first (native) language; L2: the second / foreign language

Input hypothesis by Stephen Krashen
- What matters to language acquisition is comprehensible input
  - Using L1 to aid understanding of L2 is therefore discouraged, and used only when absolutely necessary
  - A (quite surprising) corollary of this is that speaking practice is not the key to language acquisition
- Affective filter hypothesis: emotional aspects, such as motivation, self-esteem and anxiety, affects the acquisition of languages
- Focal skills:
  - Focusing on improving one skill (3/4 of the time) at a time until reaching mastery (a predetermined level). Order of skills by priority: Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking
Comprehensible output hypothesis by Merrill Swain
- A speaker’s output assists language acquisition in 3 ways:
  - Noticing function: through attempts to output, the speaker realizes what they don’t know how to express
  - Hypothesis-testing function: what the speaker outputs implicitly conveys his or her assumption / understanding about the language
  - Meta-linguistic function: the speaker’s reflections (and hence learning) of the target language
Dual comprehension by Wolfgang Butzkamm
- Effective comprehension of L2 must take place at 2 levels: meaning of the phrase as well as literal translation (“mirroring”) to L2. This is necessary since it would expedite language transfer from L1 to L2.
- The use of the native language in literal translation to L2 and in aiding understanding of L2’s linguistic features is therefore highly encouraged (Note that this is in contrary to the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis)
Skills-based theories of language acquisition
- Learning a foreign language is a skill, just like any other skills. Hence, it requires practice
- Stages of language learning in ACT: declarative knowledge (facts), procedural knowledge (how), autonomy (fluency)

Your business and your growth as an entrepreneur

2016 is coming to an end and as usual, I think I should write some thing as I reflect over my actions and results of 2016.

But that would be too broad a topic to write about and would make this post unfocused. So instead, I’d share with you about one of the most important points I’ve learned over the past year about the growth rate of entrepreneurs.

How many books should entrepreneurs read a year?

I’ve been a book enthusiast for a long time and that means I’ve read, say, for average 7 books a year for the past 10 years or so. Before doing startups, most of the books I read are about personal development and for the past 3 years or so, they’re all about business and startups.

7 books a year used to seem like a big deal for me. I’m an action-all-the-time person so to finish a book it would spread over a few weeks. And from time to time, I got distracted by other things and this prolonged the reading time even more.

Then one day I got curious as to how many books other entrepreneurs read. And here is a startling stats:

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Lessons from Perelman Story

The life story of Perelman:

the mathematician who solved the PointCaré Conjecture
rejected the Fields Prize (the first and only person to do so)
rejected 1 mil US$ prize for his solution of the Conjecture.

has left me with some realizations that I think you may find useful or otherwise thought-provoking.

If you don’t know about him, you can read my summary about Perelman story here.

Below are the main lessons I’ve learned:

I used to dislike early specialization programs for young pupils. But Perelman’s story has made me more open to this.
I now accept that it may be necessary for finding and growing exceptionally talented people (esp. in Math?). Hence, it seems important to help children identify their talents as early as possible, by giving them many opportunities to get exposed to various disciplines. (This is not the same as forcing young people to follow a field decided by parents or someone else)

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Muhammad Ali: When it really counts

Muhammad Ali is one of the greatest heavy boxers in the sport’s history.

It was told that in a conversation, the interviewer asked him: “How many sit-ups do you do?”

He answered “I don’t count my sit-ups”.

But he then elaborated:

“I only start counting when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, that’s when I start counting, because that’s when it really counts.”

That’s when it really counts: not the miles you’ve run or the work you’ve accomplished, but the extra miles, the extra hours, the extra work, the extra responsibility that you take, while others refuse or not motivated enough to do or take.

That’s what really matters. The extra miles, not the miles.

I’ve been hearing a lot about him through the news.

Now I know why he’s among the greatest athletes.

Perelman – The Math Genius Who rejected the Fields Prize

Grigory Perelman is:

A Russian, born in 1966.
Careful, disciplined and precise in his thinking, ever since his childhood. Since a young age, he’s already quite uninterested in the “real” world, because the only world to him is Math.
Won IMO 1982’s gold medal – and he’s known for “there is no Math question he can’t solve” (I guess, no high school Math question).
A geometry type of Mathematician: he solves problems using shapes, drawing lines, etc. This explains why he’s born for Topology, a field of Math that concerns a lot of shapes and dimensions.

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