First Principles Thinking in Leadership

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What is First Principle Thinking?

Have you ever heard about “The First Principles Thinking”? If you are / want to be a leader, this is a necessary part of your arsenal. It could possibly be the best method to “think for yourself”. Elon Musk uses this ideology very often and is considered to be one of the biggest secrets to his success.

The phrase was coined by Aristotle thousands of years ago - close to 350 BC. He strongly believed that a person learns much more - by understanding the basic principles of a subject.

So essentially, you take the problem; break it down into smaller pieces (fundamentals that you know are true); and then try to generate solutions for each of these. So, it effectively allows you to build everything from scratch.

A quick disclaimer though - this is different from “Continuous Improvement”. So, for example if you are currently exercising once a week, you decide to hit the gym thrice instead. Here, you are improving within the existing contours (or boundary) set by the original vision.

So, while “First Principles Thinking” is very useful in building innovative products - it can be used in Sales, Marketing, Go-To-Market strategies.. and even life! So let’s dig into each of the facets with my podcasting as an example.

Start with Why?

I basically started podcasting after successfully exiting my startup (into mobile repairing & refurbished premium devices) & then scaling my wife’s startup (thought franchising). I am a huge fan of Gary V. & he suggested that podcasting helps you build your personal brand. Having built 2 B2C brands, you didn’t have to tell me twice. I had (or even to date) have no monetisation intent from my podcast.

The other advantage I realised was the power of networking. Believe it or not - I’m an introvert - and very proud to be one too (separate newsletter on that soon). So, the standard networking processes of meeting 50 people in a room & chatting for 5 hours non-stop - always drained me. I knew that if I’m able to talk one-to-one with 10 intelligent people, it would be much easier to stay connected with 8 of them going forward.

Time & Effort

Of course, this is a lot of effort - since it would be time consuming - but that’s precisely the reason you should do it. There wouldn’t be too many other people who would bother to do it! In Marketing terms - higher barriers of entry!

So, for example, I know that each podcast episode of Brain Box takes me approximately 6 hours - to connect with the potential guest around the topic, co-ordination, research on the person, actual interview & then post-production.

I’ve completed 55 episodes - so that’s 330 hours - or nearly 6 weeks (considering 10 business hours a day). So, there are a whole tonne of podcasts starting every week - and most of them die out before they reach Episode 20.

The key to success is consistency. So, when Spotify decided to consider 1800+ podcasts pan-India in 2022, it was much easier for me to rank 9th! Of course, my guests were handpicked, so a huge thank you to them as well.

The Process

Podcasting when I entered was quite laborious from a post-production perspective. You would get recordings of each speaker individually & then collate them to make the final recording. This is where I engaged “First Principle Thinking”. I realised that the learning curve for this was steep and the continuous time engagement would be huge. Even if the post-production quality was a 8.5 (instead of a 10), but I would make up with the content - it’s not that big a deal.

So, my wife, Arpita Bose convinced me to buy a good microphone, use my existing Beats headset.. use Zoom to record the session and voila .. I was ready for action! I can bet that this is one of the “simplest” set-ups of any award winning podcast in India!

The other important aspect came to topics. I started with leadership - why? I had the vested interest of being a great one; I knew a whole lot of them personally; and I would love to get acquainted with many more! I keep discussing with Arpita regularly, on how to improve.. so why not listen to other leaders’ opinions too?

In the Season 9 finale, a CEO in Bangalore admitted on my show that he was very depressed when he was a kid & had attempted suicide! This made me realise that while we take everything for granted.. it’s critical that focus is brought to what matters most - mental health and wellness. So, from Season 10 onwards, it started with a 11-minute episode and concluded with my 50th episode focused on Leadership & Wellness.

So, you can experiment with innovative solutions, that no one thought possible - at the time. Even now, leadership & wellness aren’t topics that are discussed together - but I know and believe that it should be… apparently the audience agrees. It took me about 40 episodes to get 15,000 downloads.. and in the next 15, I’ve reached close to 23,000.

Conclusion:

If you want to enhance or improve an existing process - Continuous Improvement would be your answer. But if you want to learn how to think for yourself - using The First Principles - is one of the best way to kickstart the journey.