How leaders can best support builders

In my early career, I used to have crystal clear visions in my head for the products I wanted to build.

I learned the hard way, however, that there's a big, big gap between vision and reality.

It takes countless tiny little decisions executed very, very well to turn potentialities into realities. Further, what might be clear in your head from 40,000 feet, can often actually be little more than a rough sketch when you get up close.

In actuality, the people who have to execute your vision (including you) need to figure out (or at least internalize) a lot of very important details to make it happen.

Therefore, be sure to place proper value on the effort (and the people) it takes to turn exciting high-level vision into fully-fleshed out operational plans, products, and programs.

Said another way: There's a big difference between dreaming up an Airline, and designing the blueprints and construction process for a plane, developing booking systems and establishing safety procedures, hiring and leading operations teams etc, etc.

Placing proper value includes...

1. Meeting with the execution team regularly

2. Helping them to get alignment and make decisions quickly

3. Giving them the appropriate amount of time to do a good job

4. Trusting the people you hire to make decisions and be accountable

5. Asking tough questions - particularly to help them find the hidden assumptions, complexities, and edge cases

6. Demand excellence and look for rapid iteration/learning

Strategists…

Strategists... “take complexity and simplify it, so it becomes actionable”.

I love this.

So many people add so much unnecessary complexity. Very often, with my advisory work, I’m simply helping them clear the noise and focus on the essential things that matter.

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Warning: Startups can trigger an existential crisis

It's been said that founding and building Startups is a fantastic personal growth exercise disguised as a business endeavor.

It's so true. Startups force you to think about who you are, what you really care about, what you are uniquely suited to contribute, where your limitations are and what your blind spots are.

Unlike a job where you have a defined job description and managers and peers who will tell you what to do and how you're doing, a Startup forces you to march to the beat of your own drum and gives you nowhere to hide from your faults and insecurities.

Become a founder, and you might just find yourself receiving years worth of therapy in the space of months.

Some Q&A

Today I had a PR person ask me some questions for a press release. Thought I’d share the questions and answer here for posterity.

Q: What capabilities does a student entrepreneur need?

A: Curiosity, grit, high tolerance for risk, hustle, an open mind, an ability to formulate and articulate clear plans to build alignment between stakeholders both internal and external

Q: What are your thoughts on Brisbane’s entrepreneurship ecosystem?

A: It's small and inexperienced, but passionate and engaged. Rich ground for great experimentation and, eventually, a growing number of big success stories.

Q: Is entrepreneurship important as businesses face disruption? If so, why?

A: It's essential. The disruption is coming from entrepreneurs and from tools, technologies, and attitudes that build on each other at ever-increasing speeds. As the rate of change accelerates in the world, large companies and slow, organic execution are too slow to catch up or keep up with the problems and opportunities in the world.

Q: Who is it you turn to for advice? And what advice do you offer, given your time at Uber?

A: I look for those more experienced than me - ideally, those who have tried and failed and learned their lessons well. Even better if they have then turned around and succeeded in the end.

My advice coming out of Silicon Valley and Uber is: Go faster, ship more, and get more users. Stop worrying about external validation from the media, government, and academia. The only validation that matters is user growth and then revenue growth.

Q: A report by the Foundation for Young Australians indicates a young person will have five career changes and an average of 17 jobs in their lifetime – do you have any thoughts regarding that?

A: Careers are an anachronistic construct. We are all free-agents. We live, we learn, we identify bigger and more complex problems we can help with, and we help. When we solve real problems people pay us for our contribution. Rinse and repeat.

Q: What’s the best job you’ve ever had?

A: My current job. Advising startups so they can avoid the key mistakes and fast forward to the best answers as fast as possible. Nothing beats seeing the eyes of an entrepreneur light up when you help them avoid a mistake or expand their thinking.

A good example of product polish

I just spent over an hour with a great startup (including the founder, lead engineer and UX designer) just to design and add one feature/checkbox.

This, is product polish.

Take your time, think it through, polish until you can see your own reflection. That’s the difference between building tech and building beautiful products.

Strategy is about collapsing potentialities into realities.

Strategy is about collapsing potentialities into realities.

Said more pragmatically, it requires you to make hard choices and close doors of potential tangential opportunity as you execute small tactical steps to capture specific value along a predetermined (but correctable) trajectory.

If you’re constantly floating along where the wind takes you ineffectually grabbing at what passes by you’ll never actually capture a segment, a market or any kind of sustained growth.

So when you’re looking at others with resentment or confusion about why they achieved something that you didn’t, it might be because they made hard, effective choices that you were unable or unwilling to make. In this case, to pick a hard but valuable path - and stick with it.

Apps are not businesses

Business requires a clear mission, target market, brand and brand voice, go-to-market strategy, business and pricing model, customer journey, user experience and more.

These things need to align and work as a system over a sustained period of time and iteration to produce a successful result.

This requires that your team and its leadership are collectively explicitly aware of these key decisions and work in alignment to execute them well. It might even require that you create a new business unit or business!

If you can’t get alignment, someone needs to be the final decision maker and the others need to disagree and commit.

Sometimes the decision is made by leadership. Sometimes the leadership trusts the operations team of domain experts they assembled. But it needs to get made and the others need to commit.

The decision should be fully informed (with all the facts and best thinking) and fully committed (even by those who disagree) - or a team struggle will persist, undermining morale and effective execution of anything.

If you just ship an App, or a new feature, without aligning the business properly, it will fail.

The clearest example I can think of in recent memory is the Taxi industry, In response to the threat of Uber, many of the Taxi companies released or started more heavily promoting an App. What they failed to do, however, is understand that Uber's entire business model was totally different and more efficient than theirs.

Peer-to-peer supply without pre-determined shifts (meaning a more elastic supply with less scarcity), lightweight enablement of drivers via mobile phones (vs. 100k fit-outs of the Taxis with cages, livery, proprietary meters and other in-car tech, etc), mutual accountability with ratings (vs. unaccountable drivers and riders doing unaccountable things) and yes, massive subsidies powered by a global high-growth, venture capital based business plan (vs. regional, revenue-based model).

These were the things they were really fighting - not just an app.

Product Management can sometimes feel like magic

Product management is a little bit like magic. It's like making wishes about what you want to see in the world (in the form of PRDs) and they come true a few weeks or months later.

Of course, those wishes take the amazing craftsmanship of designers and engineers who turn thoughts into reality.

The elements of a basic marketing site

A basic marketing web page should not be complicated or vague...

1. One sentence "Who are we"

   Explain the problem and the solution (Ideally includes an explainer video).
   E.g. "We help fishermen catch more fish with better tackle and fishing rods"
   

2. How it works (No more than 3-4)

   E.g.

   a) We make amazing tackle that glows in the dark

   b) Our custom fishing rods make the tackle move like a fish

   c) Bigger fish love to come eat it - and get hooked!
   

3. Benefits (No more than 3-4)

   E.g.

   a) Spend less time sitting and more time grabbing fish out of the water

   b) Eat bigger, healthier fish

   c) Look like a hero!
   

4. Who already loves us (Case studies/testimonials).

   E.g. John from Florida loves us - look at this picture of him holding up a huge fish!
   

5. How to get involved (including pricing, next steps).

   E.g. Small: $10, Medium: $15, Large $20. Buy now!
   

Remember to keep everything visual. Big headers for each feature/benefit with 1 or 2 sentences to explain each.

How do you judge your actions?

I try to judge my actions by the question "Is it effective?".

Or more specifically: Do my priorities, communication style, actions, reactions, personal narrative, personal brand, location, media consumption, things I focus on etc, get me to an outcome that is moving my life (and the life of the people I love) up and to the right with as little thrash and delay as possible?

How to spot a toxic person

When you encounter people who are regularly badmouthing others and constantly surrounded by drama that “isn’t their fault” - you can usually be rest assured that they are the source of the problems in their life.

It’s pretty easy to tell how they operate, though, because as part of their bad mouthing, they are typically reflecting their worst traits onto others. Just listen. Whatever they’re blaming others for is exactly what they themselves have done.

Historically the small tech community has hesitated to call these kind of people out because we don’t want blow back. But many of us know who they are. I think it would help a lot of founders if we collectively made a stand against these people more swiftly.

Sometimes it’s extra hard because these people, at times, appear to add a lot of value. But really it’s like an abusive relationship. As a friend of mine once said, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Etiquette for Scheduling and Attending Meetings using a Calendar

1. Check the availability of the other guests before sending the invite (Unless sending it as a tentative hold)
   

2. Be sure to invite everyone directly by adding them to the calendar event so they can see changes that might occur (i.e. don't forward invite emails)
   

3. Unless there's a good reason, make the event editable by guests so they can add details or move it in a pinch
   

4. Try to include any related materials/instructions in the notes field so that everyone has the resources they need to participate
   

5. Make sure you accurately update your RSVP status to any events you're attending/invited to
   

6. If you indicated that you're going to make it, show up on time
   

7. If you can't make it, try to give maximum notice via email and update your RSVP status
   

8. If you're running the meeting: If you can, try to end the meeting on time, because attendees likely have other meetings scheduled straight after that one

Etiquette for getting a warm intro

When there's someone you know (first-degree connection) that knows someone you WANT to know (new contact)...

1. Talk to/pitch the first-degree connection - get them interested (or better, excited).

2. If they express enthusiasm, let them know you'd like to an intro to the person you're trying to reach and ask them if they'd be open to receiving a forwardable email request for an intro.

3. Email them a short thank you for the meeting with some key bullets recapping your conversation, asking for the intro to the person you’re trying to reach.

4. They should reply to you, copying in the person you’re trying to reach with a short intro for each of you.

5. Reply all, move the first-degree connection to BCC and start your email with “Thanks [first degree’s first name], moving you to bcc to save your inbox. Great to meet you [new contact's name]”. Proceed with your email asking for whatever consideration you need (keep it short).
   
   In this way a) you have some credibly with the new contact bestowed by your contact b) your contact knows you’ve picked up the ball but is not inundated with a continuing conversation they don’t want to see c) your contact will get some social capital if the intro generates value.

6. The new connection will hopefully reply/continue the discussion without flooding your mutual connections inbox with the rest of the chain

How can product meet the needs of the business in the early phases?

I just got two questions via email. Here are my very quick answers

Question: In the early days of a startup balance the needs of the business with what a small engineering team can complete?"

Answer: Break the needs of the business down into small, discrete product moves (i often call these minimum viable product iterations) and get them done one after the other as fast and well as possible.

Question: What's the best way to prioritize features and break them up with data that can sometimes be statistically insignificant?

Answer: Talk to customers directly (or ideally you are the customer) and extrapolate good generalizations from concrete pain points. How? With experience and instinct. That's why good advisors are very helpful.

Be wary of fortune cookie wisdom found in books & blogs

For every clever saying, there's an opposite, equally profound sounding quote. Wisdom is knowing which piece of sage advice to take in which circumstance/context.

You can read all the blogs and books, but unless you've deeply internalized the advice through hands-on experience it can be difficult to know what to apply to what situation.

Should you "do the unscalable thing first" or "scale at all costs"? Should you "focus on growth" or does "revenue cure all ills"? Should you "undercut the competition thanks to software efficiencies" or "charge a premium"?

These decisions depend on many variables and need to form part of a cohesive strategy.

This is one of the reasons why good advisors are priceless.

Be careful, though, Many "advisors" are career advisors. All they do is talk and teach. Find people who've been in the trenches building real things at real scale. They should help you know which piece of sage advice to apply at any given time and as part of a holistic business and product strategy.

A Product Manager’s secret weapon

As a product manager, your PRD is your source of power. You need to train the other stakeholders that if it’s not in the PRD it’s not happening.

Emotional design

The most important emotions to create with your app are friendship, excitement/competitiveness (dopamine) and nostalgia. They fulfill deep human needs and drive habit forming behavior.

Responsibilities of a Group Product Manager/VP/CPO

• Articulate the vision for the overall product strategy

• Determine the high-level KPIs/Goals for the org/business

• Collaborate with all fellow VPs/Execs (eng, design, ceo, impact etc) to determine the business priorities

• Review the roadmaps from their PMs and push for additional clarity or ambition

• Review PM KPIs/Goals and push for additional clarity and ambition

• Hold PMs accountable for their results against the KPIs/Goals

• Act as a point of escalation and conflict resolution when their PMs are not getting what they need from other functions

• Rinse and repeat

See responsibilities of a Product Manager here

Responsibilities of a Product Manager

• Articulate the problem

• Understand the customer (through research etc)

• Determine the KPIs/Goals for the product/problem area

• Collaborate with all stakeholders (execs, eng, design, customers, partners, product marketing etc) to determine the priorities

• Articulate a compelling vision and drive alignment across all stakeholders towards that vision

• Develop and evangelize a roadmap to all key stakeholders

• Drive the design and feature specs for each iteration

• Work with the craftspeople (designers, engineers, data scientists etc) to turn concept into reality through a regular cadence of checkins, reviews, and other project management techniques

• Work with Product Marketing/Sales/BizDev to announce and drive adoption

• Measure the results against the KPIs/Goals

• Rinse and repeat

See responsibilities of a Group Product Manager/VP of Product/CPO Here