The Ideal Gas Newsletter

The Ideal Gas Newsletter focuses on the intricacies of 21st-century organizations, including business strategies, organizational culture, web3 communities, innovation, human resource alignment, decision-making, and the application of technology in the workplace. It aims to provide insights on navigating and succeeding in modern work environments.

Business Strategy Organizational Culture Web3 and Blockchain Innovation and Creativity Decision-Making Human Resources Technology in the Workplace Community Building Behavioral Psychology Financial Mechanisms

The hottest Substack posts of The Ideal Gas Newsletter

And their main takeaways

Creating a cool committee

79 implied HN points • 03 Dec 21
  1. Web3 focuses on decentralizing and giving ownership back to the community.
  2. Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is discretionary behavior that promotes effective functioning and change within an organization.
  3. To create a successful community, articulate a timeless aspiration, involve members actively, and establish governance.

Transient Advantage

79 implied HN points • 26 Nov 21
  1. Transient advantage is the new normal in business strategy.
  2. Organizations need to continuously innovate to stay ahead in the market.
  3. Experience-focused strategies and changing metrics are essential in the era of transient advantage.

Web3 Communities

79 implied HN points • 24 Nov 21
  1. Communities play a critical role in web3 development and success.
  2. Strong web3 communities focus on transparency, ownership, memes, and utility.
  3. Understanding and participating in communities is key to navigating the evolving web3 landscape.

What is culture really?

79 implied HN points • 03 Sep 21
  1. Culture is the personality of an organization - it's 'how things are around here'.
  2. Organizational cultures can be categorized into four types: control, compete, collaborate, and create.
  3. Identifying the dominant culture of your team can help you focus on the competencies needed for success.

Fixing the TVA - A 'Loki' perspective

75 HN points • 12 Aug 21
  1. Importance of aligning HR initiatives with business strategy for successful organizations
  2. Analyzing work, people, structure, and culture alignment is crucial in evaluating organizational performance
  3. Maintaining congruence and adapting to emerging incompatibilities is essential for organizational success
Get a weekly roundup of the best Substack posts, by hacker news affinity:

Understanding Zebras

1 HN point • 27 Oct 21
  1. Reaction videos on YouTube are popular because they evoke empathy and emotional connections.
  2. Conformity can play out in social interactions, as demonstrated by the Asch test.
  3. Fostering non-conformity and individuality in teams can drive creativity and innovation.

They lied to us about Bayes' theorem

1 HN point • 15 Sep 21
  1. Beliefs can shape who we are and how we behave.
  2. Bayes' theorem helps in systematically updating beliefs with new evidence.
  3. Egocentric bias affects how we perceive our contributions vs others'.

The Social Learning Theory

1 HN point • 08 Sep 21
  1. Behavior is learned from the environment through observational learning.
  2. Mediating processes play a role in getting the desired response.
  3. Peer learning can be a valuable avenue for workplace development.

#2 Capturing Value

0 implied HN points • 26 Dec 21
  1. Blockchains have different layers that enable value capture, like hardware, consensus, and compute layers.
  2. Value in the web3 stack is often captured through multi-sided platforms that connect different participants in the network.
  3. Smart contracts in layer 2 of the stack follow a business model where service providers on the supply side are paid by the demand side, with a portion going to governance token holders.

Player Inactive

0 implied HN points • 12 Nov 21
  1. Inaction is also a choice with consequences.
  2. Accountability is important to prevent shirking in teamwork.
  3. Inaction can be beneficial, but there are also basic tasks that require attention.

Assessing Self-Image

0 implied HN points • 22 Oct 21
  1. Feedback is crucial for growth but can be hard to receive without getting defensive.
  2. Feedback helps us see our blind spots and areas for improvement.
  3. To effectively use feedback, resist the fight or flight response, validate feedback with multiple sources, and take visible actions to show improvement.

Playing Games

0 implied HN points • 23 Feb 23
🎭️ Culture Gaming Narrative Storytelling
  1. Games fulfill our self-actualization needs predictably, offering rewards without unknowns.
  2. Games model real-world complexity with instant feedback and decision-making.
  3. Games provide a unique medium for players to interact with narratives and experience consequences firsthand.

#11 Zero Knowledge

0 implied HN points • 31 Jul 22
  1. Zero knowledge proofs help prove you know something without revealing what it is.
  2. Properties of zero knowledge proofs include soundness, completeness, and zero knowledge.
  3. ZK protocols are predicted to become mainstream in the next 5 years.

#10 Story Time

0 implied HN points • 03 Jun 22
  1. Explaining new tech should focus on how it makes things easier or enables new possibilities.
  2. Community-driven storytelling projects like the writer's room can leverage NFTs for collaboration and creativity.
  3. Projects like writer's room demonstrate innovative ways to work collaboratively and distribute profits using Web3 technologies.

#7 Greasing the flywheel

0 implied HN points • 02 Mar 22
  1. Understanding tokenomics involves evaluating supply and demand drivers for the token.
  2. Supply factors include token supply, allocation, and distribution.
  3. Demand factors include Return on Investment (RoI), memes, and game theory.

#3 What's up with protocols

0 implied HN points • 27 Dec 21
  1. The internet's innovation thrived on open protocols like HTTP, leading to the creation of powerful companies.
  2. Blockchains have 'fat' protocols where most value is captured at the protocol layer, incentivizing new networks.
  3. Tokenized networks incentivize early participation and growth, creating a self-reinforcing cycle boosting network value.

#1 The hive mind

0 implied HN points • 25 Dec 21
  1. Ideal Gas is delving into web3 technology and applications over 21 days.
  2. Axie Infinity is a blockchain game where players can earn tokens through battles and trade for real-world value.
  3. Axie Infinity operates on a Play-to-Earn model, allowing players to own and trade Axies for in-game rewards and real-world income.

The Manipulation Matrix

0 implied HN points • 15 Dec 21
  1. The Manipulation Matrix differentiates between good and bad manipulation by asking key questions about user impact.
  2. Creators can be Facilitators, Peddlers, or Entertainers, depending on their intentions and impact on users' lives.
  3. Exploitation occurs when products are created solely for profit, without considering user benefit or personal use by the creator.

OODA Loops

0 implied HN points • 17 Nov 21
  1. The OODA loop involves observing, orienting, deciding, and reacting.
  2. Agility can help overcome raw power, as demonstrated by the OODA loop.
  3. Being disrupted in decision-making calls for executing a 'nested' OODA loop to counter the disruption.

How to small talk

0 implied HN points • 20 Oct 21
  1. The airport test helps determine if someone is good at small talk in a work setting.
  2. Small talk is about maintaining relationships and social function, not just the content of the conversation.
  3. Improving small talk involves empathetic listening, asking open-ended questions, and avoiding competition in conversations.

Order in the Chaos

0 implied HN points • 15 Oct 21
  1. Benford's Law states that the first digit of numbers in real-life data sets follows a fixed distribution.
  2. The Central Limit Theorem explains the common appearance of the bell curve in real-world data.
  3. Performance appraisals should consider both absolute and relative measures, and feedback loops within the system.

Justice Outside Courtrooms

0 implied HN points • 08 Oct 21
  1. Justice should not only be done, but also seen to be done - emphasize procedural fairness.
  2. Process fairness in business decision-making is crucial for employee engagement.
  3. Fairness is a professional skill that must be practiced in workplace environments.

Where is the funny?

0 implied HN points • 17 Sep 21
  1. Understanding what makes things funny is understanding people
  2. Humor occurs when a situation is a benign violation
  3. Using humor at work can boost creativity and collaboration but should be mindful of normalizing bad behavior

Managing Older Workers

0 implied HN points • 10 Sep 21
  1. The modern workplace is becoming more multigenerational.
  2. Remixing the workplace involves blending practices of different generations.
  3. Older workers bring valuable knowledge and can increase team output by facilitating knowledge transfer.

DAOs and the (near) future of work

0 implied HN points • 25 Aug 21
  1. The growth of the passion economy has shifted power from corporations to individuals.
  2. DAOs offer a decentralized way of organizing work, incentivizing collaboration and efficient task execution.
  3. DOs align individual incentives, promote autonomy, and redefine how work can be engaging and rewarding.

How to perform inception

0 implied HN points • 18 Aug 21
  1. Individual change is essential for successful organizational transformation.
  2. Changing someone's mind is more effective when you help them find their own motivation.
  3. Writing can be a scalable alternative to conducting motivational interviews for encouraging change.

Assume Ideal Gas

0 implied HN points • 01 Aug 21
  1. The post is about Ideal Gas and human capital newsletter.
  2. The newsletter offers a behind-the-scenes look at organizational design.
  3. Readers are encouraged to subscribe and share with friends.

#9 Rolling in the deep

0 implied HN points • 06 Apr 22
  1. Scaling layer 1 blockchains is hard, rollups help with that process.
  2. The DCS trilemma: decentralization, consistency, scalability - you can have any two but not all three.
  3. Optimistic rollups use fraud proofs, ZK rollups use validity proofs - each has pros and cons.

#4 Second-Price Auctions

0 implied HN points • 28 Dec 21
  1. Mechanism design is about designing games to incentivize desired outcomes for players.
  2. In second-price auctions like Vickery auctions, bidders have a dominant strategy to bid their true valuations.
  3. Vickery auctions have strong incentive guarantees, maximize social surplus, and are computationally efficient.

Right click, save culture.jpg

0 implied HN points • 10 Dec 21
  1. NFTs have the potential to be the building blocks of a global culture machine.
  2. Simple systems can evolve into complex systems that work well. Starting simple is key in system design.
  3. NFTs serve as a store of culture, encapsulating the essence of a community in a tangible artifact.

Mental Model Lattice

0 implied HN points • 20 Nov 21
  1. Mental models help us navigate the world by simplifying complex situations.
  2. Different mental models have the power to both fuel progress and limit our thinking.
  3. Diversity in mental models, like diverse perspectives, can enhance decision-making and problem-solving.

King, Queen or Knight?

0 implied HN points • 29 Oct 21
  1. Politics in the workplace is not inherently negative and can be essential for getting work done
  2. Developing political competence involves understanding your role within different political archetypes
  3. Organizations have varying political levels, and it's important to align personal political styles with the organization's level

Context Switching

0 implied HN points • 13 Oct 21
  1. Context switching in computers involves storing and resuming tasks, impacting performance.
  2. Multitasking is not really working on multiple tasks simultaneously, but rapidly switching between tasks.
  3. Understanding the psychology of satisfaction can help manage distractions and improve productivity.

Noise

0 implied HN points • 29 Sep 21
  1. Humans are unreliable decision makers due to noise affecting judgment.
  2. Bias reflects consistent errors, while noise shows variability in judgments.
  3. Reducing noise in professional judgments can be achieved through structured tasks and leveraging multiple independent opinions.

Perverse Incentives in Complex Systems

0 implied HN points • 24 Sep 21
  1. Perverse incentives can lead to unintended and undesirable results.
  2. Common pitfalls that lead to perverse incentives include modularity, band-aid approaches, and wrong measures/metrics.
  3. Setting up good feedback systems is crucial to avoid falling into the trap of perverse incentives.

#8 Keeping up with promises

0 implied HN points • 05 Mar 22
  1. Web3 promises to shift power back to content creators
  2. Key principles of Web3 include digital scarcity, ownership investment, wealth sharing, and platform control
  3. Concerns exist about access to quality content, community exploitation, and consumer impact in the evolving creator economy

Negotiation: Letting people have your way

0 implied HN points • 01 Sep 21
  1. Negotiation is a part of everyday life, whether we realize it or not.
  2. Understanding rational and irrational decision-making can make us better negotiators.
  3. Techniques like starting with 'No', using mirrors, and avoiding emotional traps can enhance negotiation outcomes.

Dance Monkey

0 implied HN points • 20 Aug 21
  1. Engagement at work is not just about activities but also about autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
  2. Employee engagement starts with managers setting a tone of listening, speaking, and making an effort to connect personally.
  3. To improve engagement, focus on individual preferences and provide meaningful experiences that align with autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

How to manage the Beatles

0 implied HN points • 22 Sep 21
  1. Understanding competencies and potential is crucial in managing high potential talent.
  2. Culture plays a significant role in the success of a team or organization.
  3. Starting a movement requires both leadership and followership.

#5 The Moving Parts

0 implied HN points • 30 Dec 21
  1. Deconstructing Mirror.xyz helps in understanding the moving parts of a decentralized platform.
  2. Mirror.xyz revolutionizes publishing by turning creative writing into NFTs and enabling various functionalities like crowdfunding, NFT editions, and token races.
  3. Exploring Mirror.xyz showcases the power of community, governance, and native web3 thinking in real-time implementation.