Understand and Consider Different Perspectives

0:02 in product work particularly as it pertains to the very ambiguous work of what product to build in what order to build it how to sell it how to make macro and micro decisions whether to address a customer concern or not whether to drop something from our standard road map to address a customer ask if it's a large customer or a strategic customer whether to build a feature we know is not going to get used by users but will enable us to charge so

0:32 it's basically not a value feature it's a monetization feature these types of questions come up all the time for product people product success really is not just about getting things done cuz yeah it is important to get things done it's a necessary condition but it's not a sufficient condition because the sufficient condition is that you are getting the right things done which means that you're making good choices and often optimal choices when you're faced with these questions that I just

0:59 listed and one common challenge I see is that the higher iqe the person the more difficult it is for that person to appreciate and empathize with points of view other than their own personal points of view like with anything in life this is not a 100% guarantee that this will happen it's all about whether there's a high correlation or not when you work on these highly talented teams of Highly accomplished people you will end up with

1:30 a bunch of people that have extremely high IQs they're always correct when there is a factual question there are many people and up to certain extent I counted myself as one of those people I'm always correct right you give me a mathematics problem I'm always correct or you give me a question about some event in history I'm always correct or at least I'm always correct to the extent that the reference book validates it who knows what happened really in

1:56 history but at least the reference book says I'm correct so what ends up happening sometimes in teamwork is we are discussing some issue and maybe it's some urgent customer ask and there might be somebody on your team who's very high IQ they're just very clearly sharp and smart and they're also quick on their feet it's easy to shut something down through a very intelligent argument I see why they're asking for it but this is how I would do it and clearly this is

2:27 the smarter way to do it they should not be using SV uploads they should just be doing web hook integration and that's so much better that's so much simpler and this is so prone to errors it's manual and it's just not the right thing I'm just using some simple example but we all encounter these examples and we all encounter these individuals and sometimes we ourselves are those individuals I have been this individual in the past that gets in our way of

2:54 actually thinking about the problem more from a human comprehension problem which is yeah yes this might be the ideal way of doing things but organizations are not ideal teams are not ideal processes are not ideal and to get your customer to the ideal State you have zero to No Control it's fine to say this is an Antiquated way of doing things but if that's how your customer is used to doing things and that is part of their

3:21 mission critical process it is foolish to dismiss it as this is stupid if you're going after an Enterprise customer where the department who's going to be the recommender for your product wants to preserve his or her job or wants to make his or her job easier you are basically doing an anti- cell is please don't buy my product because it's going to require a lot of disruption we do these kinds of things on deciding what to build how to build it and then

3:48 how to Market it and all along we think we are doing the right thing so what's the solution here the solution is not to lower one's IQ like high IQ is a great asset the solution is to really understand that there will always be different perspectives on these situations of human comprehension as soon as a group becomes a group whether it's a group of three people four people five people human beings are not going to see the same situation in the same

4:16 way this is a fundamental reality that goes well beyond products and it goes into all sorts of things like geopolitics and Society so that recognition that people think differently than me and that is okay and also I need these people that think differently from me even if I might have some disdain for their Antiquated ways of looking at things I need them because they are a revenue source for me I am in service to them that humility becomes

4:45 very essential therefore establishing that sort of humility becomes an essential job of a Founder early on and it has to start early on it is not possible to do it after your 500th employee because by that time the organization the company has taken a life of its own it's like raring a teenager you can control them when they're little children when they're 11 12 but at some point when they're 15 16 17 18 it's not in your control the same

5:14 way with your company so a lot of these things have to start early