When I unexpectedly hit a day of no momentum, no inspiration, I looked at why I write and what I hope to gain. The answers were not unexpected, I write to test an idea. It was a beneficial and helpful process to explore my technique to approaching an idea and saying out loud what is most important to me.
It's natural to replace many choices with one simpler representation. This is called the Similarity Heuristic and helps consumers make decisions when faced with so many options. As a product developer, this same tendency exists and creates an Abstract Customer. We simply can't keep up with the variety of customers as we scale, and it can be dangerous when starting out to assume we understand our future customers.
Can we use this cognitive power to help us create better decisions? I think so and here is my idea on how to find success.
After struggling for years to get a better idea of how to define important work, throwing out mistakes, and questioning success I found a bit of clarity. Three simple questions before I get started on any new work has made all the difference.
It's very difficult to recruit top performing developers. There has been a measured 2.5 times performance difference between average and the best. If passion drives performance, how do you find passionate developers? This is what I've learned over the last 15 years working and hiring developers.
After struggling for years just over a coffee meeting, I tried a few ideas. What I found was something very simple that worked really well. It was so obvious to me but took a long time to discover.
The first rule helps the others: Humans first. The best meetings come from the human across the table.
I learned a lot about leadership, but I never understood it. My 7 year old son taught me how to understand leadership, and this is the story.
We can usher in amazing increases in productivity, quality and happiness. Yet we make a push towards Open Floorplans and other disastrous strategies because it's trendy. Let's stop these trends, start learning, and make real improvements. I lay out 3 of the easiest changes we can make to bring about positive changes, which will yield higher productivity and happiness.
Toyota created many brilliant methodologies to create the best and most innovative cars of the day. Kanban is the most famous amongst developers, but the lesser known Five Whys may be the best way to create better products.
Small steps in organization to improve clarity and ability
Improv can teach comedy, confidence and extemporaneous speech. Can it also usher in a culture that is more effective in promoting better ideas?
