Desperation-Induced Focus

The opposite of process is chaos, but an in-between is rapid adaptation, emphasis on rapid . Limit scope as much as possible, ship small things fast, and react to feedback quickly.

The design process assumes that dev time is the utmost priority, and this moves a bulk of labor into the design process. This is a faulty premise. The most valuable thing... See more

Necessary chaos embraces the uncertainty inherent to startups. Here are a few examples:

As growth accelerates and larger teams are needed, people stretch into new roles, teams scale and split, and new processes are formed.

After a promising call with a potential new customer, the product roadmap is re-prioritized to incorporate features that will hel... See more

Startups, being lean and mean, seem like the perfect place to eliminate documents, have no systems, and no processes…but that’s far from the truth. Without process it’s impossible to delegate, difficult to bring on a business partner, and easy to make mistakes. With processes in place it’s much easier to sell your product if/when you want to make a

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So when we’re in trouble, we often look for the next big idea that will fix everything. We get excited about big narratives that explain where we are, why we’re struggling, and what we need to do differently in order to fix it. We get hyped to embark upon a bold new chapter—only to realize later that our fortunes haven’t changed that much, the team... See more

Don’t worry if this feels familiar. The tendency to focus on processes over outcomes is actually a natural psychological operation: because we spend the majority of our cognitive resources on what is happening right now—which makes sense, since we do actually have to act in order to create change—we’re biased toward focusing on those immediate acti

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