Thread by @shreyas

You might have heard people say:
“Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.”

People conclude from this that, to be a true professional, they should fixate on logistics/operations.

Such conclusions are flawed & can even be harmful.

The Curse of Brilliance, a thread:

Before we dive in, let’s look at another quote, commonly attributed to Picasso:

“When art critics get together they talk about Form & Structure & Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”

Same thing here.

People hear this, get impressed, and conclude that, if you want to be great at something, you should ignore all the abstract crap and just focus on the tactics that The Great Ones employ.

I mean, who’s going to argue with Picasso, right?

Let me tell you a personal story:

Mid-way through my career as a PM, I was sure I was 100% correct about certain things. One of those things was that “In product management, ideas don’t matter. Strategy is for MBAs and is irrelevant for tech products. Execution is everything.”

Boy was I wrong!

How did I end up with such strong conviction?

The products I had worked on until then at Google were very successful. When I looked back to evaluate which unique contributions [0] of mine helped make them successful, the answer was clear: the discipline of just getting sh*t done

[0] And to be clear, there were many other success factors that I had little/nothing to do with. Here, I was trying to dissect the few factors in which I had a major, unique role to play. Now, back to the main point about my strong (but flawed) conviction.

Why was my conviction so strong?

Because I had found it *extremely* hard to get things done. The areas I worked on initially were in the mature parts of Google’s business, with wild complexity across technical, legal/privacy, cross-team alignment, and people dynamics.

So if my products were very successful, if I got promoted quickly due to my contributions, and if disciplined execution was the hardest part here, then it must be the case that execution is the main thing that matters for PMs, right?

Wrong. There are 2 major flaws in this logic:

Flaw 1.
Just because I thought that a given thing mattered most for the success of my products doesn’t mean that that thing matters for every product everywhere, or even every product at Google.

This is the easy-to-spot flaw & I’ve written a lot about context.

So, on to Flaw 2

Flaw 2.
My assessment of what unique contributions of mine helped bring this product success had some glaring holes.

What did I miss?
A number of other things, but chiefly, it was my User Empathy.

You see, what I didn’t realize then that I see now is that, since my very early days as a PM, User Empathy had been my superpower.

(note: This is not boasting. I take zero credit for it, because *I* did not actually do anything to get this superpower. I was just born that way)

It was off the charts.

Let me give you a concrete example of just how off the charts it was: I was consistently able to reach more correct conclusions about what users *really* needed in 2 days than the average product manager who would spend a month trying to do the same thing.

The other innate brilliance for me was Creativity. You see, the parts of Google I had been working on at the time had all sorts of constraints on what you could do & how. This made the typical Google PM’s job extremely challenging. But not for me. I could always find a way.

Now I know it can come across as distasteful (in many parts of the world) to be speaking so openly about your strengths & superpowers. A part of me just wants to hit the Backspace key on most of the words I’ve written above. And that is why the Curse of Brilliance exists.

The Curse of Brilliance:

When dissecting what makes them successful & prolific, people unwittingly tend to overemphasize the things they found very difficult and underplay (or altogether ignore) the importance of things at which they were naturally brilliant.

The Curse of Brilliance is why a tremendously successful repeat founder will often say things like “speed is all that matters”. Many founders are visionaries, people who can see things that no one else can. This is a very rare trait. Even they can’t explain how they do it.

They take the vision & strategy part for granted. Early in their careers, they assume everyone else is also like them. Later in their careers, they realize that most people aren’t great visionaries & strategists. But they are also humble, so talk at all about their superpower.

So when asked what makes them successful [1], they say things like “going fast, against all odds”, “hiring great people”, “creating a fabulous culture”, etc. etc. These tend to be things that they personally found very hard (and often they had to learn them the hard way).

[1] Btw, this is not a great question to ask, but that’s besides the point here, because the reality is that it gets asked all the time.

Back to the point from the previous tweet:

Now, of course all of those things are very important. But thanks to the Curse of Brilliance, you will hear a lot more about things that the founder found very hard & thereby skew your view of the factors that *holistically* play a role in drastically increasing odds of success.

Even if you are not an aspiring founder, the Curse of Brilliance, Survivorship Bias & the Halo Effect will conspire together to create an inaccurate view of what it really takes to build consistently successful products.

You will dutifully “move fast” but often not get anywhere.

This brings us to the Picasso quote:
When a gifted artists get together, of course it doesn’t make sense for them to talk on and on about Form, Structure, Meaning. They just viscerally “get it”.

So they’ll talk about the stuff that’s hard. They are poor. Hence, cheap turpentine.

Let’s take the “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics” quote. Professionals talk logistics to learn from each other, because that’s the hard part *for them*. But don’t forget that this quote exists because of the Curse of Brilliance. They are strategically gifted.

I am writing about this topic because I see this problem very often. People aspiring to be “one of the greats” seek out the *tactics* of The Great One. They then try to replicate the tactics. The tactics usually don’t work the same way. So on to another Great One. And on and on.

In prod mgmt, there is no better example than the obsession some people have with tools. I am sorry, no note-taking app, no matter what its features, is going to make you a top notch PM. That’s like me thinking that I can play more like LeBron by wearing the same type of shoe.

So how can we overcome the Curse of Brilliance?

It is a two sided solution. On one side, the brilliant ones ought to become more self-aware about what *really* contributes to their success & share it. I know this may be hard to talk about in public. But you can at least start with private settings e.g. with people you mentor.

On the other side are the rest of us who aspire to be world-class at something. For us, it’s vital to understand that Tactics are only part of the answer. In prod management for instance, truly consistent success requires a grasp of Principles, Frameworks, and the right Mindset.

Perhaps even more importantly, don’t try to “be like somebody” whose success or work you admire. By all means, learn from them, but don’t forget the Curse of Brilliance. Identify your own brilliance, leverage that, build around it, eliminate or mitigate deadly weaknesses, repeat.

Last but not least, think critically. Quotes like the strategy/logistics one & the cheap turpentine one *sound* very cool & smart. For effective learning, evaluate these things more critically so you can take the right lessons & avoid the wrong ones

I wish you all the very best!

Back to the top of this thread:

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1442165948417392642

Related (but IMO not the same), the Curse of Knowledge:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_…