Funny thing is that I both agree some people are really good at certain things

AND I also believe that certain environments are conducive to elevating everyone such that one person being really good at something doesn’t mean much (though it is helpful)

1/n
The difference boils down to predominantly team oriented views of our work vs individual oriented views.

If you got all the best ppl at doing X in the world together and put them in a room… the differences would be minimal

In their org they are…. 2/n
Much better than everyone at X. They might even be 10x at it. If you leave them alone to do X they will outperform everyone at X.

But in a team setting, you’ll also need to do Y and Z. And A, B, and C.

Being 10x at X doesn’t mean much. 3/n
The core of this ongoing debate is actually a clash between perspectives:

between 1) the individual can he a lot better at X and that matters VS 2) that may be true but it doesn’t really matter (and holding the idea over people might actually hurt)

4/end

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More from @johncutlefish

1 Oct
genuine question

the first instinct or product / design folks when getting a new gig is to talk to customers. LOTS of them. As quickly as possible.

...but in other roles, this is a foreign concept.

assuming great intent and high skill in their respective domains...

why?
...could the intent be there, but it is more a question of fear, and feeling like you are being put on the spot?
another could be ...

whereas a product/design person knows what signals to look for

other people will assume that the customer will not be able to tell them something they don't know?
Read 4 tweets
18 Sep
A thread on "Starting Together"

1/n Here is how lots of teams work:

1) PMs and designers focus on the "next thing"
2) Developers work on the "current project"

What's wrong with this?

Outcomes suffer, even if it feels more efficient.

Why ...?
2/n While seemingly more efficient -- it causes problems:

1) information loss
2) "resetting costs" during transfer of knowledge
2) distances developer from "the problem"
3) higher work in progress (WIP), less flow
4) split focus for PMs/designer

So...
3/n When thinking about starting together, teams get a little paralyzed because they somehow can't imagine all focusing on research/discovery

You have...

A: The status quo
B: How they imagine starting together
C: How it happens in practice
Read 5 tweets
13 Sep
I am a huge advocate for visualizing work.

But there's one huge trap that I see teams fall into.

Start with the Why not the Way

Visualizing work is not the goal. ___ is the goal.

What do I mean?

1/n: Imagine if you emptied out all of your messy drawers just for fun. Well..
2/n: You would have succeeded in making a big mess and reminding yourself how messy you are, and how much you like collecting old subway cards, but you wouldn't have really achieved anything.

Now say you....
3/n: Started by committing to a powerful mission of making it easier to find things. You spend valuable time every day checking multiple drawers.

Or committing to a more public display of keepsakes and caring for your things better?
Read 6 tweets
11 Sep
I've met with ~70 teams in the last three weeks.

One thing that sticks in my mind.

Paradoxes.

1/n: you can have...

a mid-stage startup team that is highly dysfunctional

...but due to timing and early product/market fit, they succeed (by some measure) for years
2/n: you can have...

a team of incredibly thoughtful, experienced, people

...but due to disruption of the business model and the inertia of the legacy business, they go circles.

They're stuck.
3/n: you can have...

a bunch of new hire team contributors (engineers and designers) that are excited to tackle the new strategy

...but middle-management is severely underpaid, and burnt out by buffering "the teams" from "the biz".

The new hires leave quickly.
Read 11 tweets
4 Sep
was asked recently how I would go about "benchmarking self-service analytics performance".

Some thoughts:

1/n: You can't *just* look at the experience of the end-user. There are many humans involved in making self-service work. Their experience matters.
2/n: A great example is telemetry/instrumentation.

Someone has to figure out how to capture that data. What is the developer's instrumentation experience? What is the experience of deciding which events to track? How fragile is the process?

That's part of performance.
3/n: You can't measure performance by focusing solely on accessibility to the data or insights. Or even the timeliness of the data.

At the end of the day the goal is better decisions and business outcomes.

You'd need to include that...
Read 6 tweets
1 Sep
One of the highest leverage thing teams can do...

Is stop trying to optimize for developers "being busy"

...prepping work to give them

...doing small group discovery upstream from their work

..."topping up" every sprint (or quarter, or whatever)

The hardest part? ... 1/n
...often the push to keep people "loaded up" comes from the engineering org itself. People want to feel useful. People want to have something to do

Output is rewarded.

If there is "no work", that is the product managers fault. People get grumpy

So how do you address this? 2/n
For many teams, it may mean having a list of small things people are passionate about. Things that preserve optionality, and that are relatively quick and low risk

When you need slack, you can draw from this list

This helps for the ppl who don't care for doing discovery

3/n
Read 5 tweets

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