Sturdiness seems, from what I’ve learned thus far, to be composed of two factors:Energy managementStress responseIf that’s true, then improving sturdiness requires two things:Improving your system’s ability to convert potential energy into useful energy. Improving your system’s ability to adapt to stress.Easier said than done. Requires you to think about the inputs you give your system so that you’ll have useful energy to draw on later. Requires you to stop and take an inventory of the situation before deciding to respond. Improving the quality and quantity of thoughtful decision making is a good place to start.

I think of sturdiness as the capacity of a system to maintain consistent useful output and internal order over time. And I believe this personality trait is worth thinking about for a minute.When you’re looking to build or launch a thing, you want to engage people who consistently produce useful outputs while keeping it together. I think of session musicians — musicians who show up and do a record/soundtrack with very little-to-no time to prepare and execute at a high level while being a great person to hang out with — as fine examples of sturdiness. If I was building a team or helping a company jump into growth mode, I would test for sturdiness. I would look for people who talk about projects that had seemingly insurmountable odds. I would look for two things: How well did the candidate manage their energy? I would inquire into their outputs and how much utility it generated for others.How did the candidate manage failures encountered along the way? I wouldn’t be afraid to challenge the candidate if I felt they were hedging in their answer. Sturdiness + conscientiousness + drive = strong hire!

The most interesting thing about conscientiousness is that it appears to be an interplay of many (though not necessarily complex) things — culture, our nervous systems, inherited chemistry, and how we have adapted to survive. If you want to improve how you express this trait, it’s possible you’ll need to look at the whole versus the part. What are you trying to improve? Sense of responsibility?Goal orientation?Thoughtfulness?Efficiency?Self-discipline? Attention to detail? Organization?What’s getting in your way?Fear?Brain chemistry? Perhaps you’re made a certain way and you’ll have to learn strategies to leverage your uniqueness.How you interpret the world? Perhaps you’re quick to judge. Nutrition?Something else?Do you know how to change it? Do you have strategies? Have you done something like this before? Do you know best practices?Do you have access to people who can help?Is it worth changing?Ultimately, you have to determine if the return of improvement exceeds the cost of change.

Conscientiousness is a personality style. Generally, it means to be dutiful, reliable, express attention to detail, persevere, exercise good time management skills — to have a thoughtful and efficient work ethic. Hiring a conscientiousness person is hiring a person that is committed to doing their best and fulfilling promises. A way to test a candidates level of conscientiousness is to examine how they make decisions. And a fine model to use is an After Action Review. Here’s how you might use this model.Ask about a previous and consequential decision that a candidate made in a previous project/job. Ask about the outcome the candidate hoped to achieve. Ask about what the candidate knew going into the decision. Ask about what first, second, and third order the effects the candidate considered. What was most likely to happen? Ask how the candidate brought others into the decision making process. How did they query the brains of others for inputs? How did they assess those inputs? What ultimately was incorporated into the candidates analysis of a go-forward plan? What decision did the candidate make? How did they communicate the decision? What were the effects? What learnings were pulled forward? You can see, most of the meat happens at questions 4 and 5 because that’s where decision making friction happens — the anxiety of “what if”. Conscientious candidates demonstrate thoughtful decision making processes that incorporate many inputs from many types of people, thoughts about the second and third order effects, and continuous improvement implementations.You can use this same framework for hiring artistic talent talent too.

When starting a new role or tackling a new problem, first answer the question: “what does normal look like?”Then, you’ll have an easier time identifying and tackling the variances of life. Inspired by Robin Hanson’s conversation with Tyler Cowen:Hanson: “The first thing to understand about anything is the middle of the distribution. If you’ve got that wrong, you’re just way off. You need to get that roughly right before you can start looking at the variance in the distribution and along which dimensions, higher or lower variance.”Application for leaders: teach the middle of the distribution when onboarding new team members.

A colleague, who grew up in ecology and the parks system, told me that when deer became overpopulated wolves were introduced. The wolves feasted and became overpopulated. Nature balanced the scales — the wolves caught a virus which ended up bringing the wolf population down. The ecosystem became balanced — wolves and deer together.Could we see the effects in human systems? A study hints at it:“Our key findings are that (i) larger groups lie more, (ii) all-male groups stand out in their proclivity to lie, (iii) already the first female in a group causes an honesty shift, and (iv) group behavior cannot be fully explained by members’ individual honesty preferences." - Honesty of Groups: Effects of Size and Gender CompositionThe takeaway: diversity acts like natural balancing force. Though, be careful not to draw conclusions — human systems are complex, and the study only focused on gender.

In thermal dynamics, the heat capacity is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a thing by one degree. How much stimuli is needed to increase your motivation to make one action towards achieving a goal? Leaders: Recognizing that different people have different “motivational capacities” could help you effectively motivate and support team members.

There are times where you will regret a decision. Don’t look back.The arrow of time moves forward. Leverage your wisdom and make better decisions next time.

I’m rethinking my earlier thinking on drive.In physics, generally speaking, physical systems seek equilibrium. What if drive is a form of seeking equilibrium? Hang with me.Imagine that your perception of your life is a system. You know this because you say things like “you only have so much energy” or you make work for other people. You are transferring your energy to the world via work. Imagine that you have this external force — like a voice in the back of your head, or a vision, or an idea — that makes the world seem out of balance. You suddenly have infinite amounts of energy to realize that vision, tackle that problem, or get that last item crossed off your check list. That seemingly infinite energy could be drive. That infinite energy is an imbalance in a sense. That imbalance compels you to spend time and energy chipping away at that vision or that idea. With each exertion of energy, your system is that much closer to equilibrium. Perhaps drive is not a desire to keep going, but perhaps it’s a desire to achieve balance? Application for Leaders:How well do you know your team and what positively stimulates their creativity or productivity?How might you leverage what you know and introduce positive external forces that create that energy imbalance that all but compels your team to make productive outputs? Recruiting for drive? Consider this interview prompt: Tell me about a project you worked on where the work was so exciting that you felt you had near-infinite amounts of energy to work on that project.