The Hard Thing About Hard Things

The problem with these books is that they attempt to provide a recipe for challenges that have no recipes. There’s no recipe for really complicated, dynamic situations.

The simple existence of an alternate, plausible scenario is often all that’s needed to keep hope alive among a worried workforce.

The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.

It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job. The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product.

Good product managers take written positions on important issues

Good product managers decompose problems. Bad product managers combine all problems into one.

Even if you know what you are doing, things go wrong. Things go wrong because building a multifaceted human organization to compete and win in a dynamic, highly competitive market turns out to be really hard.

“If you don’t know what you want, the chances that you’ll get it are extremely low.”

WFIO, which stands for “We’re Fucked, It’s Over” (it’s pronounced “whiff-ee-yo”). As he describes it, every company goes through at least two and up to five of these episodes

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. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter.

“There are no silver bullets for this, only lead bullets.” They did not want to hear that, but it made things clear: We had to build a better product. There was no other way out. No window, no hole, no escape hatch, no back door. We had to go through the front door and deal with the big, ugly guy blocking it. Lead bullets.

The key to getting to the right outcome was to keep from getting married to either the positive or the dark narrative.

Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.”

Good product managers crisply define the target, the “what” (as opposed to the “how”), and manage the delivery of the “what.” Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out “how.”

“If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?”

Tip to aspiring entrepreneurs: If you don’t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don’t become CEO.

The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true.

Focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.

Seeing people fritter away money, waste each other’s time, and do sloppy work can make you feel bad. If you are the CEO, it may well make you sick. And to rub salt into the wound and make matters worse, it’s your fault.

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.

Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.”

Good product managers anticipate the serious product flaws and build real solutions. Bad product managers put out fires all day.

managers never even explain the obvious. Good product managers define their job and their success. Bad product managers constantly want to be told what to do. Good product managers send their status reports in on time every week, because they are disciplined. Bad product managers forget to send in their status reports on time, because they don’t value discipline.

The knowledge gap between you and them is so vast that you cannot actually bring them fully up to speed in a manner that’s useful in making the decision. You are all alone.

If you are going to eat shit, don’t nibble.”

Write down the strengths you want and the weaknesses that you are willing to tolerate.

Good product managers communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally. Good product managers don’t give direction informally. Good product managers gather information informally.

Sometimes, however, the things you’re not doing are the things you should actually be focused on.

In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.

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.

When I used to review executives, I would tell them, “You are doing a great job at your current job, but the plan says that we will have twice as many employees next year as we have right now. Therefore, you will have a new and very different job and I will have to reevaluate you on the basis of that job. If it makes you feel better, that rule goes for everyone on the team, including me.”

“We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.”