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How to lead by first principles
- zazen 11y agoApparently, the first "first principle" he reached for was the one that shone immediate light on the situation. If that's true, he got amazingly lucky. Reasoning solely from established facts is wonderful when you can do it; but I don't think this article is painting a realistic picture of the difficulties involved. Such reasoning may take time, with many false starts, and it may not get you all the way to the conclusion you need.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoMaybe they just applied the first principles thing afterwards; I'm sure major decisions like this seem to be a lot more "enlightened" years after the fact, after they've paid off. The computer club which Apple came from is revered as a turning point in history by now, but in reality it was just a fanclub in just a garage.
- zazen 11y agoActually, on re-reading the piece, the author isn't claiming he thought up this argument on the spur of the moment. I got confused because of the dramatic narrative, which started with the meeting already going on before the author started talking about his thought process. I now think the author is saying this "first-principles" reasoning is a good way to credibly explain strategic decisions, which makes a lot more sense than using it to deduce strategic decisions.
- solipsism 11y agoThese are not "first principles". First principles are fundamental and universal. All the things the author is calling "first principles" are actually "facts". Instead of "arguing from first principles" the author is "using logic".
- vacri 11y agoThey're not even 'facts', but 'strong opinions'. AT&T might have lucked out and hired some savants, for example. Or in another timeline, the company might have actually been able to handle both cloud and software vending had they tried. But ultimately, what the author is talking about is really "let's start with the basic blocks and build up".
- jadc 11y agoI quite liked the article but I agree with you that these are not really "first principles". Seem like the story was shoe-horned to fit the analogy. The author could have taken the same story and used it to illustrate the power of open questions such as "what do I know to be true" instead of first principles.
- lhnz 11y ago"I think its important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy." -- Elon Musk Maybe this guy is the next Elon Musk? Jokes aside, isn't reasoning from first principles about going deeper and deeper to understand the root causes of problems, before working back from them? This seems foundational to problem-solving, but not necessarily an element of leadership.
- adwn 11y ago> Maybe this guy is the next Elon Musk? More likely, this guy read the same quote by Elon Musk.
- lhnz 11y agoYes, I think so. I'm being unfair really, it's just that 'first principles' always makes it sound like somebody thinks of themselves as Euclid or Elon Musk. It's nice to hear somebody else's perspectives otherwise.
- meric 11y agoHey, I think it was a pretty obvious idea. In high school, preparing for physics exams, rather than memorising all the formulas, I worked on figuring them out based on some root principles, on the fly. So every exam I spent the first 10 minutes reading the exam and deriving all the formulas I gathered I needed on the back of the answer booklet. It was a lot more effective than memorising which type of questions needed which formula. Like maybe 15 years ago my dad wanted to teach me maths and he kept repeating the importance of learning the 'first principles'. I didn't get a word he was saying at the time, but looking back, he had the idea too.
- codingdave 11y agoRather than first principles, I've seen this work better when a company decides what their core principles are. These are not decided at a time of crisis or are a big decision, but early in the company's development. When you decide exactly what you are doing, why, and what your goals are. And you use those principles to drive your decisions, strategies, and plans from then on. Of course, at first glance, startups would seem to be against this kind of definition of principles, because they "pivot" to find a market - but that in itself is a core principle. You are not defined by your product, but by your final goal - large revenue and growth matter more than details of the product. The way to get to your core principles is to ask yourself what aspects of your company are so critical to its integrity that you would rather shut down the company than break those principles. Answer that, let those answers guide you, let those answers be known when hiring your team, and you will build a company that makes decisions easier, and with less internal conflict.
- amatic 11y agoI thought about a similar thing - principles should be more abstract then company goals or mission statements. In the event of crisis or conflicts, the principles can be called upon to guide the decisions.
- restalis 11y agoI hate to be cynical, but I somehow feel a duty to help (seemingly enlightened) people like you, so... "The way to get to your core principles is to ask yourself what aspects of your company are so critical to its integrity that you would rather shut down the company than break those principles." How would anyone know the quality of the principles obtained through such a rationale - that those principles aren't far-fetched, or don't impose unnecessary hurdles that may hurt the company and everyone in it, or are too unsubstantiated to mean anything, and so on? On the individual level such principles have at least the animal nature to start with - survive (which is not a choice) and replicate, and pretty much everything we do will contribute in some way or another to those two. But how can one come up with similar a reason for a company, the existence of which is in itself optional to start with? For companies I haven't found yet any hard principles (other than companies being a form of group effort to address in the end the same individual survival and replication, which as a goal isn't that often reflected in the actual organizational behavior).
- porter 11y agoI've noticed lawyers are good at this. They have a mastery of deductive logic and ask you to agree with what appear to be obvious statements. Then from those obvious statements they deduce an airtight conclusion. It's a brilliant move.
- restalis 11y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11161388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11161388 (in this page) It's not only lawyer's trick, it's actually something pretty basic in persuasion's toolkit.
- ThomPete 11y agoThese are not first principles. These are premises used to establish the logic that follows. As long as you can question the premise and dig deeper you are not reasoning from first principle. I don't even think it really applies to language but instead to science and means something very different.
- amatic 11y ago> These are not first principles. These are premises used to establish the logic that follows. Aren't those the same thing? It seems the author is referring to core beliefs or premises that the business was found on, as well as relationships in the team. The point is to get to 'truths' everyone agrees upon. Not unlike first principles in physics - you just assume because of the amount of evidence, that say, thermodynamic laws are true, and everyone can agree on that.
- ThomPete 11y agoWell the difference is the solidity of the premise. Scientific first principles are not necessarily objectively true but they are the best we know of. I.e. as far as we collectively know this is the first principle. This vs. I believe this and I am going to reason from here. Which is much more likely to be subjective.
- amatic 11y agoYes, I suppose I agree. Given the lack of scientifically proven first principles in management, psychology or social sciences, perhaps going to 'truth' agreed upon in the group is the best we can do in order to use this reasoning tool.
- restalis 11y ago"The point is to get to 'truths' everyone agrees upon." That is actually a psychological textbook trick - you are more productive in persuasion when you first manage to make your targets agreeing with you. From there you build upon whatever is on your agenda. The important part when doing so in the article's context is to make yourself look impartial, which in itself has an effect of preventing further group tensions.
- dsjoerg 11y agoThe art, the magic, is knowing which questions to ask.
- azraomega 11y agoI wonder what are the other arguments from his 2 advisers. They had a clear competitive advantage, and question should have been posted by both advisers as they have been described to be very qualified. So, what else do they know to be true?
- xyzzy4 11y agoWell if you use first principles to an extreme, you might decide that work is pointless (or even bad) and you'll decide to live in a small cabin instead like Ted Kaczynski. People who claim to use first principle are usually dishonest about it and have many assumptions they can't justify.
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- perseusprime11 11y agoThis is from wikipedia: "A first principle is a basic, foundational proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption." "We must pick one or risk failing at both" How is this first principle? Google cannot say we will do search and not android. Are these first principles unique to his business?
- restalis 11y agoEven assuming that there are such things that may be called "first principles", there usually is an awful amount of movement (leeway) around them which may not be always admitted openly and which makes the object of politics. (The problem in the example given, about a company faced with an important decision about how to respond to an external force, is an omnipresent problem that independent tribes, city-states, or nations had/have, and is nothing but a political decision - "do we fight or do we surrender?") Read again this: "Were we really destined to be a profitable company that nobody really cared about except for a few carriers? Is this what our team signed up for?" and say it's not a political rhetoric in every way? For the same situation different people can lead their audience to totally different "obvious" conclusions depending on how will they construct the decision rationale (what will they take into account or emphasize and what will they ignore or downplay). The real craft/trick here is how to appear like an impartial judge (i.e. neutral) in the process.
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