PB 13/09 13 Wise Words
Friday 13th special!. 13 of the smart things I've heard over the years, and find myself repeating over and over again.
As I’m officially An Old Man, I’m very prone to repeating myself. But not everything I say is nonsense (yet!). The combination of having worked with some very smart people; having had my fair share of hits and misses at work, and having spent more time than I really should reading about work related stuff, means I’m often repeating things that I’ve picked up along the way and found to be consistently useful.
Some are very product focussed. Some are general principles that can get applied to product work. There’s probably a few too many from Amazon..but on reflection, that’s where I hear more genuine wisdom about how to operate than anywhere else I’ve worked.
So - in absolutely no particular order…
1. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth
aka: No plan survives first contact with the enemy
aka: The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry
So I’m a bit sceptical about having Mike Tyson as a role model - but this quote attributed to him is so perfect..and so applicable to so many situations that I find myself saying it again and again. The fact it has earlier versions (from Helmuth von Moltke and Robert Burns) shows its universality.
The standard scenario is ‘we were going to follow this happy path…then guess what? something we didn’t want to happen happened, and we ended up taking a different route…to a much less happy place’
That product / feature launch that your customers just weren’t bothered about. That delivery plan that hit the buffers because of some unanticipated dependency. That genius competitive move that your competitor seemed to have already anticipated. Fill them all under: under ‘punch in the mouth’.
Work is full of punches in the mouth. It’s why pre-mortems are such a good idea. But it’s also why we need to be very careful when we’re sitting in a room getting very excited about our genius ideas ignoring the fact that their success is going to be dependent on a whole load of stuff that we often have very little control over; or that our customers aren’t dumb…and won’t just ask ‘how high’ when we ask them to jump.
Planning is good. But being able to adapt when you’re plan blows up is where the really great work starts.
2. Better to build half a product than a half assed product
The best mantra about prioritisation that there is. From Jason Fried, 37 signals. It’s ok to build a lot less functionality than you’d like, but it’s not ok to build it in the wrong way.
3. ‘Leadership is taken, rather than given’
Said to me by a very wise former boss, and advice I’ve often passed on. He was explaining that change and disruption provides opportunities for people who step up to progress.
Too often people are sitting back and waiting for leadership roles to be granted to them: the promotion that will fall in their lap. But more often what happens is leadership roles are given to those who step up of their own accord, not being held back by their job description and often helping and unblocking others as a result..
Example: The (incredible, utterly inspiring) conductor Charles Hazlewood tells the story of how he became a conductor. Once when he was a musician in a youth orchestra, they were waiting for the conductor to appear. He was late. They were sitting round doing nothing. So Hazlewood just went up to the front…grabbed the baton and said - let’s get on with it. Shortly the conductor came in. ‘Where were you? Is there a problem? ’ Hazlewood asked. ‘I was hiding at the back to see who’d pick up the baton…I thought it might be you’. And his career in conducting started! I suspect the story is a slight polish on what actually happened - but who cares!
4. Distribution beats features
This was the mantra when I joined Prime Video. The business was way too small, and the real blocker was just not having our app on enough TVs, games consoles, and other devices. At the same time there were lots of things our app couldn’t do that the obvious competition could. So yes, we knew we needed a Watch List..and a whole load of other stuff - but first of all we needed to just get our app on as many devices as possible. Hence our iOS app launched without any search on it. (half a product..but not a half-assed product).
The point is - there’s always a ton of things you need to build. But some needs are greater than other. You need to be clear about what’s really going to drive the business and focus on those. The rest can - and usually will - follow.
5. Our UX isn’t great…but it isn’t bad enough to stop us being number 1
Another Amazon lesson - when we launched Prime Video in Europe we were a clear number 2 to Netflix everywhere. Except Germany, where a number of factors (including having the rights to The Big Bang Theory) thelped us be number 1.
The point is - the product (ie the bit we work on as product people) isn’t the only thing that matters to customers. Or to put it another way: ‘the product’ that customers see, is often a lot more than ‘the product’ that we actually work on.
Often having something that is good enough can be good enough if a lot of other boxes are ticked for customers.
Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit
This is one of the Amazon Leadership principles. It’s brilliant both for it’s epigrammatic brevity, and for being a very powerful cultural mantra.
The principle is simple - teams and individual will disagree. But you need to air that disagreement. Make a decision between you - or get one made. And then move on.
My experience before Amazon was that conflict at work either meant furious blow outs; or time-consuming, passive-aggressive, politicised, conflict-avoidance. You might disagree or not. You definitely didn’t commit.
It takes a while to realise that tension is a feature of good organisations, not a defect. And great companies know how to get the best out of that tension, not to quash it or pretend it isn’t there.
7. When people feel they’ve lost control of something, they compensate by ‘over controlling’ the things they still have some authority over
I wish I could find a more eloquent way of repeating this. Something like this was said to me by an exec at Sky, and it such a truism about how life can be in big (and often not so big) businesses..
This is the opposite of ‘Disagree and commit’. It’s more like Disagree..and if it doesn’t go your way, leverage what power you have to demonstrate that the decision that’s gone against you was totally misconceived.
Example 1: a local team suddenly gets told the product roadmap is going to be driven by the group team. The local team’s reaction is to make ‘localisation’ a really major issue, general blocker etc - in order to demonstrate to the group team that they have no idea just how difficult/ complex/ unique their market is.
Example 2: a platform team is working on a feature that needs to be rolled out across a load of client teams. This means the client team has to work on it instead of something they wanted to do. They suddenly organise a whole load of user testing of the proposed feature to show that the platform idea really doesn’t understand *their* audience.
The second this exec (who was actually explaining some of his own team’s behaviour to me) said this, I realised that I’d done exactly this many times in my career. Once you know this behaviour - you see it everywhere. Including in yourself. It’s totally natural. Better understood, anticipated, and accommodated rather than hoping you can avoid it.
8. “If you’re stuck, just imagine you’ve been sacked, some awesome person now has your job. Ask what they’d do…and then just do it.”
I think I might have come up with this myself, and I’ve written a bit about it, but to be honest, I’ve seen lots of other people say something similar, so I can’t really claim it. We often know exactly what needs to be done, but for whatever reason we just can’t see ourselves doing it. This simple act of detaching ourselves from the situation can be incredibly powerful.
9. Don’t sell your ideas - explain your decisions
When presenting work it’s natural to switch into a subconscious sales mode. Which basically means presenting our genius work with as much conviction. You are utterly convinced about what you’re presenting and if you can just get that sense of conviction across - everyone will be equally convinced and glory and applause will follow!
I’d say that can work about one time in 10. The normal reaction is ‘have you thought about this?’ ; ‘have you spoken to x'?'; ‘what else did you think about’.
The point is you need to show your working. Explain the decisions you’ve made along the way, the alternatives you’ve considered. You need to make your solution feel like the best solution to your problem given the circumstances, and the evidence you have available. Not just a stroke of genius you had this morning in the shower.
10 . Think of the question you least want to be asked, and make sure you have the answer to it.
In some variation of Sod’s Law: ‘If there’s a question you don’t want to be asked, it will be asked’. Be prepared. Have your answer. Better still cover it up front…
11. Listen to the question you’re asked and answer it
Sometimes we’re in a meeting and there’s something we really want to get across. We then get asked a question, and the first thing our brain does is see this as a great opportunity to say the thing you really wanted to say, rather than answer the question we’re asked.
Or, even more common: we get asked a question that we don’t quite know the answer to - so we shoe horn in something else that we know lots about.
For politicians and execs doing media training, this is actually an art form…but for us normal human beings - it’s something we need to be careful about.
There’s an old Amazon mantra (sorry, yes, another one) that the correct answer to a question is either ‘yes, no, a number, or ‘I’ll get back to you’. There’s no need to be quite that robotic, but when you’re asked something - really listen, and really answer.
And if you don’t have the answer…well, that’s because you haven’t followed the previous bit of advice…but best to admit it and get back to them.
12 Judo not Sumo
From a negotiation course I did at the Guardian. Not that I’ve ever really done much Judo or Sumo - but with Judo the real skill is going with your opponent’s momentum, while with Sumo you’re going to try to push them over the line with shere might.
Judo moves are smarter, and less effortful. But this isn’t just about negotiation, but often when thinking about products/ features - sometimes we want our customers to do a particular thing with our product. It’s 1000x simpler to get them to adapt something they’re already doing (Judo), rather than getting them to do something completely different (Sumo).
13. Always take your full holiday allowance
Best. Career. Advice. Ever. Way way back there was a trade mag for journalists tha had a feature at the back where some big name editor would offer their wisdom to the world.
The last question was always ‘What’s your one bit of advice to young journalists?’ Most people would say something worthy like ‘always pursue the truth’/ ‘never reveal a source.’ etc etc…but the then editor of Esquire (I wish I could remember his name) said this.
There’s so many reasons its true…just do it!
Well - hopefully you made it to the end of that! Feel free to share a few of your own.
Have a great weekend!