Front Row Bulletin #2 (Thinking Too Much, The Great Divide & Principles for Living)

Hello friends,

Here are the three reads and one snippet for your upcoming week.

Snippet Of The Week

I had a chance to interview the former CEO of McDonald's China, Kenneth Chan about how he helped them blitz-scale their business when they struggled to grow in China.

Here's a snippet of what he shared,

Instead of a scattergun approach, we adopted an "inkblot" strategy. We concentrated resources on the top 11 cities where urbanization and middle-class growth were strongest. This allowed us to scale more efficiently. For example, in Shanghai, we initially had 80 stores but spent hundreds of millions on advertising. By increasing to 300 stores while keeping the same advertising budget, we achieved greater efficiency. The same applied to supply chains, logistics, and other operational areas

Here's the clip of the interview.

It's a reminder of how vital focus is (even for McDonald's)

Reads Of The Week

The Problem of Thinking Too Much by Persi Diaconis and Barry C. Mazur

Persi Diaconis is a leading American mathematician and former professional magician (How cool is that?)

In this presentation, he wanted to deal with a problem caused by rumination:

We can spend endless time thinking and wind up doing nothing-or, worse, getting involved in the minutiae of a partially baked idea and believing that pursuing it is the same as making progress on the original problem.

You might think an expert in Bayesian probability, would tell you the exact formula to make the perfectly rational decision.

But, this is his recommendation instead,

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any, the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny. No-not so that chance shall decide the affair while you're passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you're hoping.

The Great Divide by William Dalrymple

Dalrymple delves into the causes and consequences of the partition between India and Pakistan, highlighting the mass migrations and sectarian violence that ensued.

One of the things that got me thinking was that had Mountbatten (Yes, the same Mountbatten who received the Japanese surrender back in Singapore) not rushed the decolonization process and tried to reason with Jinnah, could the disastrous partition have happened?

In March, 1947, a glamorous minor royal named Lord Louis Mountbatten flew into Delhi as Britain’s final Viceroy, his mission to hand over power and get out of India as quickly as possible. A series of disastrous meetings with an intransigent Jinnah soon convinced him that the Muslim League leader was “a psychopathic case,” impervious to negotiation. Worried that, if he didn’t move rapidly, Britain might, as Hajari writes, end up “refereeing a civil war,” Mountbatten deployed his considerable charm to persuade all the parties to agree to Partition as the only remaining option.

In early June, Mountbatten stunned everyone by announcing August 15, 1947, as the date for the transfer of power—ten months earlier than expected.

The British in their decision to hastily retreat from India, while leaving its borders unresolved, sowed the seeds of enduring enmity and conflict.

Now, could the ten months have yielded a more peaceful outcome? We would never know but wouldn't it be worth a shot?

Principles by Nabeel S. Quereshi

Nabeel left Palantir to work on his stealth startup.

He wrote this fantastic white-paper on policy recommendations to encourage greater innovation in Artificial Intelligence within the US. (If you have more time, go read this!)

This blogpost is a must read for anyone looking to get ahead in life.

Here's my favourite one,

Don’t network, make friends. Writing online is great for bringing interesting people your way. Having a wide network of friends really makes a difference to the opportunities you get and how easy it is to launch your projects.

May the sun shine upon your face,

Keith