Principles of Operations

Principles:

<aside> 💡 Over my career, I have collected and tested principles, beliefs, and values essential to building effective teams and great products. These principles apply to almost any company, team, and industry. I believe in them and aspire to follow them.

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Be Vision-driven. I believe in a vision-driven product strategy. Start with WHY**,** then develop HOW and WHAT (more: Start with Why by Simon Sinek).
A Plan is Not a Strategy. Strategy is an integrated set of choices that positions you on the playing field of your choice in a way that you win. Strategy is a theory of WHY we should be in this market, and here is HOW we will be better than anybody else in serving the customers in the selected market. It must be coherent, doable, and translated into actions. Strategy is a bet, and it's not guaranteed. Planning is just a list of things we plan to do (more: A Plan Is Not a Strategy).
Focus on customers and their experiences. Focus on customers and their experiences, and the outcome (KPIs/OKRs/goals) will take care of itself (to paraphrase Bill Walsh from The Score Takes Care of Itself).
Customers are always right unless they're wrong. Customers can tell you about problems/needs/wants, but it's your (company's / product leader's) job to develop optimal solutions. Customers are often wrong.
Data-Informed over Data-Driven. The most effective leaders/teams are making data-informed rather than data-driven decisions. Current data shows your past strategies, but new strategies are challenging to define with old data. “It's better to be roughly right than precisely wrong” — John Maynard Keynes**.** (more: Decisions Over Decimals by Frank, Magnone, Netzer).
Think in probabilities. Use probability as an expression of confidence to keep your mind open to changing environments or new data. For example: "I'm 75% confident that this new feature will be used by over 30% of the customers in the first quarter." (more: Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke and Superforecasting by Tetlock, Gardner)
Go-to-Market Motion. An effective product leader/team must understand all aspects of a go-to-market strategy, including marketing, growth, sales, consumer-centric design, customer success, and support.
Outcomes and Outputs. Focus on customer outcomes when it comes to planning but also on outputs when it comes to processes and product experimentation. When deciding what to build, focus on the outcomes you want to drive. But when you are going through the process of building, focus on outputs and following the process. For example, great product teams fail about 70-90% of product tests/experimentations. Therefore, it's better to focus on experimentation methodology, process, and frequency instead of the outcome of each test.
Trade-offs and Opportunity Costs. Effective product leaders/teams understand product trade-offs. What you don't do is as important as what you do. Removing features/functionality is as important as adding.
Do the right things over Doing things right. Focus on essentials (essentialism) and determine how to get the right things done. It doesn't mean getting more things done, and it doesn't mean doing less. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential (source: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown and The Essential Drucker or The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker).
SPEED is a competitive advantage, especially the velocity of decision-making. Teams/Leaders must optimize for quick, effective decision-making processes to ensure agile product discovery and delivery. A good decision today is better than a great one a year from now. Indecision can kill projects, teams, morale, and companies. Most decisions should be made with around 70% of the information you wish to have (more: What Sets Successful CEOs Apart).
Disagree, Debate then Commit. Great teams discuss, challenge, and disagree respectfully. And when the decision is reached, we fully commit (more: The Amazon Way by Rossman).
DONE is BETTER than Perfect. Effective leaders/teams are biased toward action. As previously stated, indecision can be deadly. Uncertainty is never eliminated. Understand whether it is a one-way or two-way door decision. Being vaguely right is better than being precisely wrong. Building great products is not a precise science. Yet neither is it random guesswork.
A problem well stated is a problem half-solved. Context is one of the most essential parts of understanding the problem, data, and customers. "We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than we get the wrong solution to the right problem." – Russell L. Ackoff.
Foster leadership on your team with the Leader-Leader model. Everyone is a leader. Leadership should mean giving control rather than taking control and creating leaders rather than forging followers. Give control over what people work on and how they work by relinquishing control while maintaining responsibility, nurturing competence, and establishing clarity (source: Turn This Ship Around! by L. David Marquet).

UPDATED: 7/28/2024