On building of All Trades
The arrogance of improvement
Who are you to make things better?
How dare you raise your hand to help, offer an idea, take responsibility...
Perhaps it might be helpful to reframe that feeling as the generosity of improvement instead.
If not you, who? If not now, when?
Who are you to make things better?
How dare you raise your hand to help, offer an idea, take responsibility...
Perhaps it might be helpful to reframe that feeling as the generosity of improvement instead.
If not you, who? If not now, when?
The arrogance of improvement
Once you choose a project, you are confined to a relatively narrow band of impact (
Figure 1
B); barring an unexpected surprise, the solution to a mediocre problem will have incremental impact, whereas solving an important problem will have greater impact. Even if you execute well, it is hard to make the solution to a middling problem interesting. In... See more
Figure 1
B); barring an unexpected surprise, the solution to a mediocre problem will have incremental impact, whereas solving an important problem will have greater impact. Even if you execute well, it is hard to make the solution to a middling problem interesting. In... See more
Problem choice and decision trees in science and engineering: Cell
We’re in the business of being fundamentally different, not incrementally better.
Lenny Rachitsky • Be Fundamentally Different, Not Incrementally Better | Jag Duggal
Sometimes fuzzy needs require fuzzy solutions
Most projects have a right size and technology and communication networks have changed the best ‘right size’ for many organizations. If you’re struggling, it might be because you’re fighting the laws of organizational physics. Radically transforming the size of an organization changes more than we would think. We can begin to right size by asking... See more
What’s the right size?
On right sizing your org with better solutions
“Lots of folks have said to us, ‘You’re growing, you could grow faster if you hired more people.’ I think a lot of companies and investors overpitch growth at all costs, but sometimes that causes a ‘more people more problems’ issue .”
It should come as no surprise by now that Foster politely said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to these well-meaning... See more
It should come as no surprise by now that Foster politely said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to these well-meaning... See more
The Not So Cookie-Cutter Approach to Company Building — 8 Lessons from Zapier
“If done well, from a perspective of making everyone feel safe to share, to give themselves permission to fail or to not be perfect, virtual can potentially even nudge out face-to-face
Joshua Davies of Knowmium makes workshops feel like augmented reality with mmhmm
You walk down your high street. What do you prefer to see there? The economist will say: Walmart, Best Buy, the Gap. Scale economies — cheaper prices — better for “consumers”! But the human being will say: an independent cafe, a good bookshop, a boutique clothing store. Why? Because they offer many things that mega scale organizations don’t.
Sari Azout • 10 things worth sharing this week
Hindsight is 2020
I don’t mean “hindsight is 20/20.” I’m talking about the year 2020.
See, early in 2023, I wrote an article about starting and growing a business in 2023, and in that article I referenced this very same seismic shift in startup dynamics — a shift that, no surprise, began all the way back with the pandemic in 2020.
That’s the tricky... See more
I don’t mean “hindsight is 20/20.” I’m talking about the year 2020.
See, early in 2023, I wrote an article about starting and growing a business in 2023, and in that article I referenced this very same seismic shift in startup dynamics — a shift that, no surprise, began all the way back with the pandemic in 2020.
That’s the tricky... See more
Joe Procopio • Starting a Business Looks Drastically Different in 2024
How startups changed since 2020:
-Consumer fell out of love with technology
-Business & Venture OverIndexed on AI
-Money went from Tight to Scared
What’s happening now:
-self founded, funded & reliant
-Profitable out of the gate
-solving problems and building with slower burn rate
-Innovating strategically alongside technical innovation
How do generalists help? Taking a broad approach gets you further faster