Rands Cheat Sheet, #1

There’s a lot of content hiding in the Rands archives from the past three decades. Over the years, some of that content keeps showing up. I keep forwarding the same links to the same articles; I get asked the same questions at Q&A. I’ve decided to synthesize the advice into a single artifact.

My writing style has historically been nice and introverted. I don’t tell you what to do; I tell you a story, usually about my experience. If you want, you can derive lessons from this story, but I’m not insistent that you learn anything. I just want to tell you a story.

I suspect humans need more direction.

Download PDF Rands Cheat Sheet #1 — 1:1s

I’m fond of 1:1s not just because they are immediately useful meetings, but because they were one of the first leadership topics I wrote about, where the response from the Internet instantly demonstrated a clear hunger for leadership mentorship. It was the beginning of a literary love affair with documenting leadership habits I found to be obvious, but that were not obvious to everyone. I have just explained the primary reason you are reading this sentence right now. Hi.

Another goal for the cheat sheet is to make Rands Ltd more accessible elsewhere. Blogs make no sense on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, and I am unlikely to start filming 37-second shorts, but I am going to see how tight, well-designed, and digestible content fares elsewhere. We’ll see.

There are two definitions of cheating out there right now: one definition is akin to hacks, clever approaches to beginning to solve a complex issue. The second is dishonestly or unfairly acting to gain an advantage. A non-goal for this cheat sheet is the latter. The fact that I’ve distilled decades of knowledge into an easy-to-read one-pager doesn’t make the act of scheduling, preparing, and running a 1:1 any easier. If you don’t do the work, you won’t learn the lesson.