Something I’ve previously underrated is the importance of positioning. The idea of being in the right place in the right time and how this can benefit or harm you. This idea that the machine or environment is blind to the motivations of people within and will pull and push them however it needs.

One of the main ways I’ve seen this is being on an important project at a company with way too much scope for the team and therefore the project gears need to continue churning forward so people are pulled upwards by force to tackle harder and more ambitious problems than they would want.

Think these idea bleeds elsewhere and feeds into this idea of riding waves when building companies, the market determines what it wants and you really want to position your company to be able to be pulled upwards by the needs of the market.

So now the question is how do you recognise what gets pulled upwards by the machine? Don’t have a clear idea here but my current thoughts is that the only way to know is by observing the machine. Are people fanatical about something? Is this critical?