Training & Development

A learning culture is not built by offering more training. It emerges where curiosity, connection, and purpose intersect. Andrew Barry, in The Curious Lion, describes learning culture as a lotus where several forces overlap. I find this framing helpful because it moves the conversation beyond HR programs and into the fabric of the organization. At the individual level, there is curiosity. People must feel invited to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and explore. Without individual curiosity, learning remains compliance. At the organizational level, there is mission. Learning needs direction. When people understand what the company stands for and where it is going, their curiosity becomes focused rather than scattered. At the relational level, there is human connection. Learning accelerates in environments where people feel safe to speak, experiment, and reflect together. The fourth circle is continuous learning. Learning must be ongoing, not episodic. Not a workshop, but a way of operating. Continuous learning ensures that curiosity, mission, and connection reinforce each other over time rather than fading after the latest initiative. When these circles overlap, deeper elements emerge: Shared vision aligns effort. Shared experiences create collective memory. Shared assumptions shape how reality is interpreted. Shared stories transmit meaning across generations. At the center sits what we call learning culture. Not an initiative, but a pattern of how people think, relate, and evolve together. The question for leaders is not, “Do we offer learning opportunities?” It is, “Do curiosity, mission, and connection truly reinforce each other continuously in our organization?” That is where learning becomes cultural rather than occasional.

Evaluating reasoning models is non-trivial. But you can use a verifier to check if answers are actually correct. I just finished a new 35-page chapter of Build a Reasoning Model (From Scratch), which is all about building such a verifier from the ground up. Symbolic parsing, math equivalence, edge cases… this was quite the project. But it’s now submitted and will hopefully appear soon on Manning’s Early Access platform. This chapter also includes a recap of other popular evaluation methods (multiple-choice, leaderboards, and judges): 3.1 Understanding the main evaluation methods for LLMs 3.1.1 Evaluating answer-choice accuracy 3.1.2 Using verifiers to check answers 3.1.3 Comparing models using preferences and leaderboards 3.1.4 Judging responses with other LLMs 3.2 Building a math verifier 3.3 Loading a pre-trained model to generate text 3.4 Implementing a wrapper for easier text generation 3.5 Extracting the final answer box 3.6 Normalizing the extracted answer 3.7 Verifying mathematical equivalence 3.8 Grading answers 3.9 Loading the evaluation dataset 3.10 Evaluating the model The code and sneak peak are on GitHub: 📖 https://mng.bz/lZ5B 🔗 https://lnkd.in/g8_7WtRX

I was shadowing a coaching client in her leadership meeting when I watched this brilliant woman apologize six times in 30 minutes. 1. “Sorry, this might be off-topic, but..." 2. “I'm could be wrong, but what if we..." 3. “Sorry again, I know we're running short on time..." 4. “I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but..." 5. “This is just my opinion, but..." 6. “Sorry if I'm being too pushy..." Her ideas? They were game-changing. Every single one. Here's what I've learned after decades of coaching women leaders: Women are masterful at reading the room and keeping everyone comfortable. It's a superpower. But when we consistently prioritize others' comfort over our own voice, we rob ourselves, and our teams, of our full contribution. The alternative isn't to become aggressive or dismissive. It's to practice “gracious assertion": • Replace "Sorry to interrupt" with "I'd like to add to that" • Replace "This might be stupid, but..." with "Here's another perspective" • Replace "I hope this makes sense" with "Let me know what questions you have" • Replace "I don't want to step on toes" with "I have a different approach" • Replace "This is just my opinion" with "Based on my experience" • Replace "Sorry if I'm being pushy" with "I feel strongly about this because" But how do you know if you're hitting the right note? Ask yourself these three questions: • Am I stating my needs clearly while respecting others' perspectives? (Assertive) • Am I dismissing others' input or bulldozing through objections? (Aggressive) • Am I hinting at what I want instead of directly asking for it? (Passive-aggressive) You can be considerate AND confident. You can make space for others AND take up space yourself. Your comfort matters too. Your voice matters too. Your ideas matter too. And most importantly, YOU matter. @she.shines.inc #Womenleaders #Confidence #selfadvocacy

If you REALLY want to support women in the workplace, you need to start: → Offering flexible work arrangements, especially to support mothers. → Encouraging women to go for internal promotions → Paying women fairly and transparently → Creating environments where women’s voices are heard → Calling out microaggressions and biases when you see them → Offering leadership training and mentorship for women → Rethinking how performance and ambition are measured (not just who shouts the loudest) → Making networking and career progression opportunities accessible to all → Championing women even when they’re not in the room → Reviewing your hiring and promotion processes to eliminate bias → Creating policies that support women through all life stages (not just maternity leave) → Holding senior leaders accountable for diversity and inclusion goals → Ensuring workplace policies support women’s health, including menopause and period policies International Women’s Day should be about real, tangible action. Too often, we see businesses celebrating IWD while their leadership teams are still male-dominated, pay gaps persist and workplace policies don’t support women’s real needs. So, if you’re a business leader, hiring manager, or even a colleague... Ask yourself: What are you actually doing to make the workplace more equitable for women? 🤔

It’s simple math 🧐 I use to think that motivation was the key to monumental success. Long story short, it’s not. It’s about the little things you do every day that will take you from reasonable to slightly unreasonable to completely unreasonable progress. Your future is not defined by how motivated you are, but by your daily routines and systems. I believe in this so much that we named our company Butterfly 3ffect to reflect the value of incremental gains. we believe that that’s how the best people and brands grow. Here’s how you grow the small way: 1. Start by setting achievable goals, like reading one chapter of a book each day or going for a short walk 2. Practice gratitude by writing down three things you're thankful for every night before bed 3. Engage in daily self-reflection, even if it's just for a few minutes, to assess your thoughts and actions 4. Incorporate small acts of kindness into your daily routine, like holding the door for someone or offering a genuine compliment 5. Learn something new every day, whether it's a fun fact, a new word, or a new skill 6. Prioritise self-care by getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, and taking breaks when needed 7. Surround yourself with positive influences, whether it's uplifting books, supportive friends, or inspiring podcasts 8. Embrace failure as a learning opportunity and a stepping stone to growth 9. Stay consistent and patient, knowing that small progress over time adds up to significant improvement 10. Celebrate your achievements, no matter how small, to stay motivated and encouraged along the way.

A recent Huberman Lab guest (their episode will be released soon) who is a world expert on memory teaches that genuine curiosity significantly ramps up levels of neural activity in human brain circuits that release dopamine, which in turn allows deeper, more stable learning. This makes sense and yet is an often overlooked aspect of “increasing dopamine” for the sake of learning and plasticity. I’m not a big fan of most prescription approaches to dopamine augmentation unless there is a clinical need. Curiosity, however, is something we can all leverage.

Do you feel anxiety when looking at your Product backlog with those 1014 tickets? What if I told you there is another way? Here are 8 ways to keep your backlog clean and actionable: 1) Differentiate between a backlog item and an idea - It's ok to have a notebook, Figma, mural, whatever, where you collect all ideas and requests. However, the backlog should only contain items you aim to work on FOR REAL within the next 1-3 quarters. 2) Set a hard limit of tickets - In my experience, only the top 20-30 tickets will actually have any chance to ever be closed as completed. There are too many new directions, opportunities, and urgent tasks coming in overriding the priority of tasks further in the backlog. Just close the items that will never happen or at least move them to your ideas space. 3) Don't make it a BUGlog - bugs are tasks like all others. They need value and effort estimation and have to be prioritized against any other product opportunity. If they don't make the cut, they don't make the cut, sorry. No point collecting bugs - they are not Pokemon! 4) Keep the tickets high quality - However, if there is something in your backlog, let it shine! Make sure to include the user story, impact hypothesis, requirements, and links to design and tracking specifications. The tickets should be able to speak for you when you are not around. 5) Try to have 3 months' worth of refined items ready to go - It might be hard (try daily refinements!) to achieve and it's worth it! With items ready for the next 3 months for the team can pick up, you will have so much time to do proper long time planning and assessment. It's worth the initial effort! 6) Introduce visual cues - It's much easier to look at the backlog if you can easily tell apart a new feature task, improvement initiatives, bugs, and research. If you add other color cues to represent item status, you will be able to tell everything at a glance. 7) Add key stakeholders to their tickets of interest - A personal update email may work. Automated status updates work too and keep relevant people in the loop with no time investment on your end! 8) Create a task document associated with a backlog item - This is basically an extended version of the ticket, where you can collect all the pre-development research and post-development results and observations. Collecting this info in one place saves you hours when it comes to writing progress updates and presentations. At the same time, your tickets remain clean and hold only the relevant information. There you go! Here are my 8 ways to keep the backlog neat and functional. Will those work for your backlog and if not, why? Or perhaps you can contribute more pieces of advice? Sound off in the comments! #productmanagment #productmanagers #backlog P.S. Having a clean backlog is one thing. Having great tasks to put there is another challenge every Product Manager faces. To be well equipped to face that challenge, check out my courses at drtbartpm. com :)

Founders: your job isn’t to be the gatekeeper of ideas. 🚀 When you say no, an idea dies before it ever has the chance to prove itself. That’s how creativity gets stifled and teams stop bringing bold ideas forward. Instead: ✅ Don’t kill ideas; let them prove themselves. ✅ Push ownership back to the person who suggested it. ✅ Say “Prove me wrong” and watch innovation take off. When people feel trusted to test their own ideas, you’ll see more experimentation, more ownership, and ultimately—better ideas.

In 2008, Michael Phelps won Olympic GOLD - completely blind. The moment he dove in, his goggles filled with water. But he kept swimming. Most swimmers would’ve fallen apart. Phelps didn’t - because he had trained for chaos, hundreds of times. His coach, Bob Bowman, would break his goggles, remove clocks, exhaust him deliberately. Why? Because when you train under stress, performance becomes instinct. Psychologists call this stress inoculation. When you expose yourself to small, manageable stress: - Your amygdala (fear centre) becomes less reactive. - Your prefrontal cortex (logic centre) stays calmer under pressure. Phelps had rehearsed swimming blind so often that it felt normal. He knew the stroke count. He hit the wall without seeing it. And won GOLD by 0.01 seconds. The same science is why: - Navy SEALs tie their hands and practice underwater survival. - Astronauts simulate system failures in zero gravity. - Emergency responders train inside burning buildings. And you can build it too. Here’s how: ✅ Expose yourself to small discomforts. Take cold showers. Wake up 30 minutes earlier. Speak up in meetings. The goal is to build confidence that you can handle hard things. ✅ Use quick stress resets. Try cyclic sighing: Inhale deeply through your nose. Take a second small inhale. Exhale slowly through your mouth. Repeat 3-5 times to calm your system fast. ✅ Strengthen emotional endurance. Instead of avoiding difficult conversations, hard tasks, or feedback - lean into them. Facing small emotional challenges trains you for bigger ones later. ✅ Celebrate small victories. Every time you stay calm, adapt, or keep going under pressure - recognise it. These tiny wins are building your mental "muscle memory" for resilience. As a new parent, I know my son Krish will face his own "goggles-filled-with-water" moments someday. So the best I can do is model resilience myself. Because resilience isn’t gifted - it’s trained. And when you train your brain for chaos, you can survive anything. So I hope you do the same. If this made you pause, feel free to repost and share the thought. #healthandwellness #mentalhealth #stress

🥊 “Jingjin, have you ever considered that women are just inferior to men?” That was her opening line. The lady who challenged me was not a traditionalist in pearls. She was one of the top investment bankers of her time, closed billion-dollar deals, led global teams, the kind of woman whose voice dropped ten degrees when money was on the line. And she meant it. “Back in my day, if I had to hire, I’d always go for the man. No pregnancy leave. No PMS. No emotional volatility. Just less… liability.” And she doesn’t believe in what I do. Helping women lead from a place of wholeness. Because to her, wholeness is a luxury. Winning requires neutrality. And neutrality means: be less female and suck it up! I’ve heard versions of this many times, and too often, from high-performing women who "made it" by suppressing. But facts are: 🧠 There are no consistent brain differences between men and women that explain men’s “logic” or women’s “emotions.” 💥 Hormones impact everyone. Men’s testosterone drops when they nurture. Women’s cortisol rises in toxic workplaces, not because they’re weak, but because they’re sane. 📉 What we call “meritocracy” is often a reward system for those who can perform like they have no body, no children, no cycles. None of those are biologically male traits. They’re artifacts of a system built around male lives. So, if you're a woman who's bought into this logic, here are some counter-strategies: 🛠 1. Study Systems Like You Studied Deals Dissect the incentives, norms, and bias loops of your workplace the same way you’d break down a P&L. Don’t internalize what’s structural. 🧭 2. Redefine Strategic Strengths Stop mirroring alpha aggression to prove you belong. Deep listening, self-regulation, and nuance reading, these are leadership assets, not soft skills. Use them ruthlessly. 💬 3. Name It, Don’t Numb It If your hormones impact you one day a month, say so, but also say what it doesn’t mean: It doesn’t cancel out 29 days of clarity, strategy, and execution. 🪩 4. Build Your Own Meritocracy Start investing in spaces, networks, and cultures where your wholeness isn’t penalized. If none exist, build them. 🧱 5. Deconstruct Before You Self-Doubt When you catch yourself thinking “maybe I’m not built for this,” pause. Ask: Whose rules am I trying to win by? Who benefits when I question myself? This post isn’t about defending women. We don’t need defending. It’s about calling out the internalised metrics we still use to measure ourselves. 👊 And choosing to rewrite them. What’s the most 'rational' reason you’ve heard for why women are a liability?