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we’re all enduring a fair bit of volatility as builders right now, big and small. here are a few insights for enduring tough periods that i find myself coming back to in #TheMessyMiddle - some essential hacks and perspective that may help: (1/8) 
you’ll have tough decisions to make that require uncomfortable debates. be the one to say what others are thinking. be optimistic about the future but pragmatic now. people make progress when they feel like they’re making progress. so surface the hard truths but transfer energy.
in rough periods we’re liable to make decisions out of fear (and at peaks, we falsely attribute success to ourselves). point is: we’re not our greatest selves during volatility.
trace gut feelings to the source. admit triggers. be especially permeable to feedback right now.
trace gut feelings to the source. admit triggers. be especially permeable to feedback right now.
While a product’s simplicity is its advantage, building a business requires serving your “power users” which ultimately breeds complexity and makes products more powerful but less accessible. It’s called “the product life cycle”...
“The Product Life Cycle”: (1) Customers flock to a simple product, (2) Product adds new features to serve customers + grow biz, (3) Product gets complicated, (4) Customers flock to simple product. 😩
Managing the (un)comfortable tensions to better serve customers AND engage new customers is a big part of #TheMessyMiddle of building product that most teams only learn the hard way.
Even the best of leaders struggle between optimizing for optionality vs. decisiveness. But in a world of real-time tests and a value for lessons learned from incremental failures throughout a venture, decisiveness wins in the modern org.
To make this real, when you see a proposal from your team that is well-vetted but conjures up discomfort, you’ll be tempted to put it in a holding pattern. Don’t. Whether a no or a yes, decisiveness unlocks the potential of a modern high-performing team.
An old-school leader may refrain from being declaratory and give vague, inconclusive feedback (or use the gravitational force of operations as a delay tactic). A modern leader will either decide or propose a plan to do so.
I’ve long believed that “process” is the excretion of misalignment. One question I explore at length in #TheMessyMiddle is how you scale alignment as you grow without tripping over yourself.
Process is how we force alignment that doesn’t happen naturally. When teams grow and complication ensues, you embed systems for accountability, more managers, and more meetings. Corporate obesity kicks in.
A few things to keep in mind as the steward (and killer) of process in your organization:
