Do-lectures, going above and beyond: Gabriel Branby.

You know how you go to conferences, or receptions or other official events, and the food is not, ehm, well, not very good? Yeah, the Do Lectures weren't like that at all! The food was stellar, every breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee time was a feast. And most of all, they provided a wonderful accompaniment to the conversations.

The night before Gabriel Branby, CEO of Gränsfors Bruks AB axe company spoke at Do Lectures, I sat next to him at dinner and we had wonderful conversation about choices in life, how to build a good company and why reading is so important. After that conversation I was looking forward even more to his talk. And did he deliver!

He stressed the importance of learning as much as you can when you start with something new, since that will help you make the most out of it. If you learn everything there is to know about a subject (including its history, history's important because it shows you precedent), then you're the king. Knowledge trumps everything else. It's important to read deeply and widely. [oh boy, do I agree, as you can probably tell from the list of books I've read]

What I loved best was when he talked about how he started on the path of developing the best axes in the world: 'take away something, replace it with more information instead and you'll have a better product' (words inspired by Paul Hawken). If you think about what you can take away from a product (e.g. the paint on an axe) and add information (in this case a booklet telling you all you could possibly want to know about axes), you have a better product. Even a product like an axe can have information attached to it which makes it a richer product. 

And you need knowledge to figure out how to compete: if you know why product features were added in the past, you know what to take out.

After knowledge about the product comes knowledge about yourself. Know why you're doing things. Something in what you're doing has to be important. 

I have to admit that I wasn't too sure what relevance axes had in my life, which shows a serious lack of humility. Learning comes from the seemingly strangest places, books, events, and people (not that Gabriel was strange, on the contrary).