TwosWrite things down

The hard things about hard things takeaways

The hard things about hard things takeaways

by Joe · 53 things on Twos

Figuring out the right product is the innovators job, not the customers job. The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage. Sometimes only the founder has the courage to ignore the data
It’s good to ask “what am I not doing?”
Keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions
Remember that this is what separates the women from the girls. If you want to be great, this is the challenge. If you don’t want to be great, then you never should have started a company
In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust
Play long enough and you might get lucky
The struggle is where greatness comes from
The more brains working on the hard problems the better
If I trust you completely, then I require no explanation or communication of your actions whatsoever, because I know whatever you are doing is in my best interests
A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems geeky and openly can quickly solve them
Flowers are cheap, divorce is expensive
Don’t always think about yourself first. When you are part of a family or part of a group, thinking only of yourself can get you into trouble. Stop being a boy and become a man. Put first things first. Consider people you care about most before considering yourself
No matter who you are, you need two kinds of friends in your life. The first kind is one you can call when something good happens, and you need someone who will be excited for you. Not a fake excitement veiling envy, but a real excitement. You need someone who will actually be more excited for you than he would be if it had happened to him. The second kind of friend is somebody you can call when things go horribly wrong—when your life is on the line and you only have one phone call. Who is it going to be?
“If you’re going to eat shit, don’t nibble” - Dave Conte
What would I do if we went bankrupt? Is there a way to do that without going bankrupt?
Only people who have been through awful, horrible, devastating circumstances can give advice
All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current mess. Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares; just run your company
Take care of the people, the products, and the profits-in that order
Being a good company doesn't matter when things go well, but it can be the difference between life and death when things go wrong. Things always go wrong. Being a good company is an end in itself
If you don't train your people, you establish no basis for performance management
The best place to start training is on the knowledge and skill they need to do their job; functional training
Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence. They take full responsibility and measure themselves in terms of the success of the product. They know the context going in and they take responsibility for devising and executing a winning plan. They are not part of the product team; they manage the product team. They crisply define the target, the "what", and manage the delivery of the "what". They communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally. They don't give direction informally. They gather information informally. They create collateral, FAQs, presentations, and white papers that can be leveraged by salespeople, marketing people, and executives. They anticipate serious product flaws and build real solutions. They focus the team on revenue and customers. They define good products that can be executed with a strong effort. They think in terms of delivering superior value to the marketplace during product planning and achieving market share and revenue goals during the go-to-market phase. They decompose problems. They think about the story they want written by the press. They ask the press questions. They assume members of the press and the analyst community are really smart. They err on the side of clarity. They define their job and their success. They send their status reports in on time every week, because they are disciplined
Every executive must understand the product, the technology, the customers, and the market
Nothing will accelerate your company's development like hiring someone who has experience building a very similar company at larger scale
"If you don't know what you want, the chances that you'll get it are extremely low" - Tony Robbins
People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of
The proper reason to hire a senior person is to acquire knowledge and experience in a specific area
Knowing how your target customers think and operate, knowing their cultural tendencies, understanding how to recruit and measure the right people in the right regions of the world to maximize your sales—these turn out to be far more valuable than knowing your own company's product and culture
The manager should do 10 percent of the talking and 90 percent of the listening
The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that's at least ten times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing
You must also take the market before someone else does
When an organization grows in size, things that were previously easy become difficult. Communication, common knowledge, and decision making become big challenges as you grow
Basic steps to organizational design
Figure out what needs to be communicated
Figure out what needs to be decided
Prioritize the most important communication and decision paths
Decide who's going to run each group
Identify the paths that you did not optimize
Build a plan for mitigating the issues identified in step five
The act of judging people in advance will retard their development
The people who are already doing the work in an ad hoc manner should design a process
Focus on what you need to get right and stop worrying about all the things that you do wrong or might do wrong
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company
Everything is hard when you don't actually know what you are doing
Even if you know what you are doing, things go wrong
Techniques to calm your nerves: make some friends, get it out of your head and onto paper, focus on the road, not the wall
In life, everyone faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong versus doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly
Great leaders have the ability to articulate the vision, the right kind of ambition, and the ability to achieve the vision
Truly great leaders create an environment where the employees feel that the CEO cares more about the employees than she cares about herself
Keys to giving effective feedback: be authentic, come from the right place, don't get personal, don't clown people in front of their peers, feedback is not one-size-fits-all, be direct, but not mean
Say what you think. Express yourself
As CEO, you should have an opinion on absolutely everything
Life is struggle, so embrace the struggle