Simon Joliveau Breney

Consistency just feels good to our system centric product/engineering/design brains. But it creates a huge coordination cost and prohibits local experimentation – everything has to be run against a single standard that multiplies in communication complexity as the organization gets larger.

It’s not just enough for me personally to be running a fast OODA loop—in a large group, everyone needs to be autonomously making frequent, high-quality, local prioritization decisions, without needing a round-trip through me. To get there, they need to be ambiently aware of:

1. what else is going on around them, so they can coordinate and update on new

A very basic three-category scale of Urgency could go something like this:

• “ASAP” represents the highest band of urgency. If we don’t deliver this ASAP, then the value (whatever total value that might be) will quickly evaporate – someone will get there before us or the opportunity (however big or small) will be massively impaired.

• “Soon”

It’s important to challenge yourself and your peers to cut even the good ideas if they aren’t perishable (can be done later), strategic (don’t directly support this plan’s strategy), or differentiating (set you apart from your competition). Instead, put those resources against the top priorities.

1. Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.


2. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short

You never had control; all you had was anxiety. And when you let go of that, even a little bit, what you’re left with is one of the most powerful reasons imaginable for taking any action that feels as though it might make life more meaningful or vibrant, which is that frankly, at the end of the day, you might as well.