10 ms·

You Don’t Need Permission

216 points by rognjen 5y ago

shoto_io 5y ago
I don’t know. I think it’s not a bad idea to do some “stakeholder management”, especially if you’re in new country and/or organization that might be used to doing things differently. Also: > Given the ubiquity of Zoom, he could use it to rapidly get out of the building to the U.S. to test some hypotheses and gather some initial insights. This is definitely easier said than done. But yeah it’s the right thing to do. Maybe poor Suresh just wanted to vent a bit with an old friend? I wonder if he was aware that their conversation was turned into a blog post.
- asplake 5y ago
  I recognise a bit of Suresh (if that’s his real name) in myself but still agree with Steve’s advice. Suresh and his boss were already talking. “OK I’m on it and I’ll start sounding out some potential customers” would have done quite nicely I think, honour satisfied on both sides.
  - ksec 5y ago
    My gut feeling or guess is that Deep inside, Suresh knew it wouldn't work. Or it would take years and insane amount of effort to get it working in US. Because he knows medical in US is a bag of hurt. So may be telling his boss wasn't about permission, it is about getting the same level of understanding what the heck they are getting into. And setting some level of expectation ( Burning lots of money ). I am also reading his boss is overly excited on the idea. Mostly likely because of some stupid marketing research big number of TAM and potential revenue without thinking much about the consequences. And I have seen far too many of these people in charge of business.
    - shoto_io 5y ago
      On your last point: Yes, there is naive excitement around ideas. And it's easy to dismiss it. But then again: What is certain anyway? What would get started if you didn't systematically and naively dismissed risks?
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      Maybe his boss had already oversold it to the board, and was setting Suresh up as the scapegoat for its failure. Maybe Suresh knew this and was trying to limit the failure so that he has some kind of plausible justification when the shit hits the fan. The interesting bit is what Suresh does if his Customer Discovery process discovers that there's no way this will work in the USA. Does he go back to the boss and tell him that (and what does he do then if the boss insists on going ahead)? Does he re-invent the product for the USA without telling his boss? Does he just resign because he's been put in an impossible position? There's more to this story than this blog post...
      - ksec 5y ago
        >Maybe his boss had already oversold it to the board, and was setting Suresh up as the scapegoat for its failure. That was what I wanted to mention but didn't write it out. Cynicism are not always welcomed. I have been in far too many of these shit. It isn't things cant be done. But you need full trust and autonomy with lots of money. i.e Is the company willing to burn millions? Saying just go and do it is easy without giving them resources and budget. And that is precisely what the CEO should have done. CEO should have sat down and talk him through. Giving him full support. So they both know what they are getting into and they are in it together. This is more common with founders but not CEO or managers. And this happens a lot, I would even call it a norm outside of Tech industry.
- arbuge 5y ago
  > I wonder if he was aware that their conversation was turned into a blog post. To that, Prof Blank might reply that he didn't feel he needed permission! More seriously, I definitely agree that just because Zoom is available, that doesn't make this easy to do. Indeed one might have said the same thing 50 years ago slightly differently, Zoom or no Zoom: "Given the ubiquity of the telephone, he could use it to rapidly get out of the building to the U.S. to test some hypotheses and gather some initial insights." Definitely easier said than done...
HWR_14 5y ago
The article reads more as "you don't know what customer discovery is" and less "at your position you don't need permission". The title implies the opposite.
whatshisface 5y ago
There are two kinds of Steves in this world: Blanks and Klabniks. There are the Blanks, who write about not needing permission, and there are the Klabniks, who write about needing a borrow checker.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  That gave me a chuckle, thank you! I've known at least two other kinds of Steves: • The Steve who told me I would never be able to write a 6502 disassembler because "this is a microcomputer, and it operates on completely different principles than the mainframes you've worked on." (He was neither a programmer nor a hardware engineer.) • The Steve who threw out several months of my Python work and ordered it rewritten in C++ because "we need precision in our calculations, and C++ has both floats and doubles, where Python only has floats." (He had a Python certification at our company, but he didn't know that a Python float is the same as a C++ double, a 64-bit floating point value.)
  - adsharma 5y ago
    I've been having fun transpiling python floats into rust f64 and c++ double last few months. Sometimes the rust way of doing things is very detail oriented and breaks the smooth flow of thought to code that python enables. Probably best to make that zoom call (write python) and then have an evidence based conversation about how you didn't lose precision and performance is as good as rust or c++.
    - Stratoscope 5y ago
      Both of my Steves predated the pandemic, but yes, whether Zoom, face to face, or a phone call, that is excellent advice which I followed each time. Unfortunately they were both very strong-willed, and I didn't get anywhere with either of them. I ran into the first Steve at a natural food store in Palo Alto. We got to talking about this little computer company he was starting with a friend and how they needed a 6502 disassembler. We didn't have a business deal or anything, but I was curious about the 6502 and it sounded like a fun side project, so I got to work on it. He called me a couple of days later to tell me I wasn't capable of doing it. I tried to explain that I'd written code on a variety of computer architectures and the 6502 was a fairly simple one, but he said "I'm sorry, my mind is made up. You couldn't possibly do this." I said to myself, "who is this Steve guy telling me I can't program?!" I went ahead and wrote enough of the disassembler to be a good proof of concept. Our phone call hadn't gone well, so I decided to visit their office with a printout and show him the code. It was listed at 770 Welch Road, near the Stanford Barn. When I got there, nothing looked like a computer company, there was just a row of telephone switchboards. I told one of the telephone operators I was looking for Apple Computer, and she said "um, this is their answering service." So I walked out and told myself, "These guys are flakes. They're never going to make it." The second Steve was a little less interesting. I found out about his objection to Python floats near the end of a team meeting, and he had another objection too. Some of our code would need to be written in C++ regardless, and there was no way to call C++ code from Python. I told him about CLIF and SWIG, which were both widely used at our company, and I explained the float vs. double thing. But like the other Steve, he said "my mind is made up, we have to rewrite everything in C++."
disposedtrolley 5y ago
> If you’re in charge or part of a customer-facing organization, you don’t need to wait for permission to talk to customers to test hypotheses This is pretty important and seems to get overlooked. If you're trying to kick off an initiative that benefits customers, but not in a manner that can be quantified to business stakeholders (one we've struggled with is getting management support to build tools that improve API documentation for customers who develop on our platform), reaching out directly is a useful way to gauge the landscape and come back with a better understanding of who your target customers are and what they struggle with. That's evidence from the horses mouth that you can take to management to get sponsorship for your project.
hermanradtke 5y ago
I give this same response when a developer tells me their company does not agree that they should write tests.
- uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 5y ago
  Haha! Jokes on you, the tests are never merged and the code is updated without consideration of them. But I like the fighting spirit.
- em-bee 5y ago
  that only works if the whole dev team is behind it. if a single developer is writing tests when others aren't, it is more likely to earn a reprimand for wasting time.
- aliasEli 5y ago
  This is a very good sign you should be looking for a different employer.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
This just sounds like undermining your boss. I wouldn't be talking to my boss about this for "permission", but to get on the same page and build shared understanding.
- makach 5y ago
  What you "can" and "cannot do" should be formalized in the organisational structure. If it isn't you'll always run to your manager and ask for permission, this can be problematic if your manager is micromanaging, then you'll constantly have to meet expectations you don't anything about...
  - cottsak 5y ago
    set this https://management30.com/practice/delegation-poker/ https://management30.com/practice/delegation-poker/ up in Trello in 10m and then buy your boss a coffee to "get on the same page". Really useful!
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  It's clear the issue was about how that wasn't working. I'm sorry, but that sounds like pretty naïve. Many of us have worked for these kind of CEOs, with enough experience to think they know what they're talking about but not enough actual education to make the right decision. Managing someone is about enabling them, not bullying them. The CEO doesn't 'get to ' make the decision, they are tasked with making the correct decision. That means understanding from their experts all the issues. The CEO in question seemed to be ignoring their expert.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    I don't expect every CEO to do what I described, but if your CEO doesn't want to listen to you when you're supposed to be the head of sales and marketing why would you continue to work for them? The guy raised possible issues with the CEO's plan and was ignored. If he's worth his salt, why wouldn't he be looking to find another company where he's valued more appropriately for his role?
- 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nine_zeros 5y ago
You don't need permission but you need buy in. Lessons learned when you are not promoted because you did the right thing but without telling your boss, who only cares about their own visibility.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  Or care about looking like he is in control and knows what is going on in his department? (With the usual caveat that I of course no nothing about your particular situation.)
kfk 5y ago
Sound advice. I would add find allies. Executive types are very politically savvy and will listen to you more if you have other executives or influential people backing you up.
milkers 5y ago
`Customer Discovery` is always critical, and it is Product and Marketing people's job mostly. They need to discover something, a positive sign, BEFORE going to build the thing. They are scouts. They can use MVP's, small prototypes or even mocks to validate the path. However most of the time managers skip that step. They want to move the army of the engineers towards a path where the path is not scouted enough. They want to first build the thing then try to sell or do marketing about it. What they miss is people's time and money, or in ancient times it was people's lives. It is really bad for a C-level or a leader. What Suresh should have done is just doing it, because it is in his job description as a Sales and Marketing person. Besides producing marketing jargon, nice presentations or creating weekly reports to the C-levels; he should go there and discover customers, needs, potential sales. If he fails the discovery there is 2 outcomes. First he is a bad explorers, then you need to replace your P&M guy, sorry Suresh. Second, there is really nothing to discover. Then this is good, it can prevent a catastrophe, a potential bankrupt due to going to the wrong way. No offense C-levels, you should thank Suresh.
andi999 5y ago
The irony is that one statement "Worse, given how expensive clinical trials are in medtech, I’m concerned if we build a product that isn’t commercially viable, we’ll be out of business before we even start.” actually makes it clear the real problem is they need permission for the device. So it is more like 'you do not need permission except when you need permission' (no permission to ask your manager, but you still need approval by government agency)
Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
Isn't that for the CEO to decide, whether or not he needs permission? “We’re disruptors! Discovery is going to slow us down. We need to move quickly!” sounds like a pretty clear strategy statement. And in turn it's for the board to decide whether their CEO is making reckless decisions and needs to be fired for putting the entire company at risk. I realise that if you're dealing with incompetent and dangerous retards as bosses you have to sneak sound practice in under the radar. I'm sure that's how things like version control and automated testing made it into many software organisations. But it needs to be realised that this is an extremely toxic work environment and shouldn't be brushed off as easily as saying "you don't need permission".
- puchatek 5y ago
  Ideally yes. But i would be concerned that 6 months later the CEO asks me why sales aren't ramping up and doesn't want to hear that we were selling the wrong thing because of insufficient upfront analysis. Meanwhile the board might have heard a version of events from the CEO that subtly shifted the blame away from him.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    Concerned? That's the entire skill set of a CEO - spinning things. You can take it as a given that the board is hearing exactly what the CEO crafts to maximize their success. Nothing subtle about it.
ilaksh 5y ago
Article is nonsense. He's just found a way to dismiss a problem that guy has in a way that makes him feel superior. "You don't need permission" -- is a way to try to assert a higher status and pretend there is no real problem, rather than having to acknowledge a problem. The CEO needs to be onboard with something as critical and basic as customer discovery. If he doesn't like the idea then that actually could interfere, and is bad news for the organization. And actually could disrupt the process and cause a conflict with the boss if he tries to do it in the open. Of course he has to do it anyway, but the boss not buying into it is not something he can just ignore. Its a critical judgement error and also partly a rejection of the expertise of the employee and a failure to incorporate basic information into the overall strategy. So I hope he is successful in his discovery and the rest of his job, despite his boss's poor judgement. But as far as the article, I am not a fan of people that dismiss real problems and try to gain status by putting others down in a backhanded way, which is what the title is.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
HelloNurse 5y ago
It seems clearly implied that this quick-moving CEO is demanding a US product launch without giving Suresh the time and budget to do it properly, so priority changes from doing the job of a "head of sales and marketing" to not being blamed for taking a risk.
crdb 5y ago
"I think, says that everything you do illegally, you do efficiently. This, of course, is perfectly obvious. For one thing, you do not write at all because writing on an illegal project is suicide. For another thing, you work with whatever equipment you have on hand, and of course, you do everything on your lunch hour, which starts at 8:00 in the morning and finishes at 5:00 in the evening. Another thing, when it doesn’t work well and it is illegal, you drop it very quickly and kill the project." - Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake, Ron Westrum
- dfreire 5y ago
  Wow, is the rest of the book as good as this?
commandlinefan 5y ago
What is now called "agile" (which has been bastardized from the late 90's "XP") is specifically designed to stop this from happening: every day, you have to "stand up" and recite what you did yesterday and what you're going to do today. If "scrum" is being followed properly, there's somebody listening who's actually recording what you said you were going to do yesterday and compare it to what you say you did yesterday and call out any discrepancies. So no, you don't need permission to do something as long as it only takes an hour or so and you can hide it somewhere in your daily standup tasks. Anything that takes longer than this needs to be reviewed and approved - and this is entirely the point of the methodology and the only reason it's ever adopted.
- wellthisisgreat 5y ago
  > every day, you have to "stand up" and recite what you did yesterday and what you're going to do today. If "scrum" is being followed properly, there's somebody listening who's actually recording what you said you were going to do yesterday and compare it to what you say you did yesterday and call out any discrepancies. This is the best explanation of this metgodology I’ve ever read
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    > This is the best explanation of this metgodology I’ve ever read [emphasis added] I assume that is a typo, but if it is, it's my favorite typo of the week, because it reflects so well how I feel about that kind of daily standup: scrum masters who act like little tin gods. Most of the companies I've worked with take a more practical approach, but I have been involved with some who did it exactly the way GP described. It really rubbed me the wrong way.
    - wellthisisgreat 5y ago
      Absolutely a typo :) thanks for bringing it to my attention (obviously not fixing it)
  - Mauricebranagh 5y ago
Causality1 5y ago
As head of sales and marketing, Suresh didn’t need his CEO to buy into the process or give his permission to start the discovery process. He was in charge. Is this some kind of business rule I'm ignorant of? No matter what my title says I'm in charge of, if I start doing something I already know my boss doesn't want me to do I'm going to be in trouble. It's all well and good to say "Fuck you, the paper says that was my job" but that's not going to help you if the boss decides you need to go.

216 points by rognjen 5y ago

I don’t know. I think it’s not a bad idea to do some “stakeholder management”, especially if you’re in new country and/or organization that might be used to doing things differently. Also: > Given the ubiquity of Zoom, he could use it to rapidly get out of the building to the U.S. to test some hypotheses and gather some initial insights. This is definitely easier said than done. But yeah it’s the right thing to do. Maybe poor Suresh just wanted to vent a bit with an old friend? I wonder if he was aware that their conversation was turned into a blog post.

asplake 5y ago
I recognise a bit of Suresh (if that’s his real name) in myself but still agree with Steve’s advice. Suresh and his boss were already talking. “OK I’m on it and I’ll start sounding out some potential customers” would have done quite nicely I think, honour satisfied on both sides.
- ksec 5y ago
  My gut feeling or guess is that Deep inside, Suresh knew it wouldn't work. Or it would take years and insane amount of effort to get it working in US. Because he knows medical in US is a bag of hurt. So may be telling his boss wasn't about permission, it is about getting the same level of understanding what the heck they are getting into. And setting some level of expectation ( Burning lots of money ). I am also reading his boss is overly excited on the idea. Mostly likely because of some stupid marketing research big number of TAM and potential revenue without thinking much about the consequences. And I have seen far too many of these people in charge of business.
  - shoto_io 5y ago
    On your last point: Yes, there is naive excitement around ideas. And it's easy to dismiss it. But then again: What is certain anyway? What would get started if you didn't systematically and naively dismissed risks?
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    Maybe his boss had already oversold it to the board, and was setting Suresh up as the scapegoat for its failure. Maybe Suresh knew this and was trying to limit the failure so that he has some kind of plausible justification when the shit hits the fan. The interesting bit is what Suresh does if his Customer Discovery process discovers that there's no way this will work in the USA. Does he go back to the boss and tell him that (and what does he do then if the boss insists on going ahead)? Does he re-invent the product for the USA without telling his boss? Does he just resign because he's been put in an impossible position? There's more to this story than this blog post...
    - ksec 5y ago
      >Maybe his boss had already oversold it to the board, and was setting Suresh up as the scapegoat for its failure. That was what I wanted to mention but didn't write it out. Cynicism are not always welcomed. I have been in far too many of these shit. It isn't things cant be done. But you need full trust and autonomy with lots of money. i.e Is the company willing to burn millions? Saying just go and do it is easy without giving them resources and budget. And that is precisely what the CEO should have done. CEO should have sat down and talk him through. Giving him full support. So they both know what they are getting into and they are in it together. This is more common with founders but not CEO or managers. And this happens a lot, I would even call it a norm outside of Tech industry.
arbuge 5y ago
> I wonder if he was aware that their conversation was turned into a blog post. To that, Prof Blank might reply that he didn't feel he needed permission! More seriously, I definitely agree that just because Zoom is available, that doesn't make this easy to do. Indeed one might have said the same thing 50 years ago slightly differently, Zoom or no Zoom: "Given the ubiquity of the telephone, he could use it to rapidly get out of the building to the U.S. to test some hypotheses and gather some initial insights." Definitely easier said than done...

HWR_14 5y ago

The article reads more as "you don't know what customer discovery is" and less "at your position you don't need permission". The title implies the opposite.

whatshisface 5y ago

There are two kinds of Steves in this world: Blanks and Klabniks. There are the Blanks, who write about not needing permission, and there are the Klabniks, who write about needing a borrow checker.

Stratoscope 5y ago
That gave me a chuckle, thank you! I've known at least two other kinds of Steves: • The Steve who told me I would never be able to write a 6502 disassembler because "this is a microcomputer, and it operates on completely different principles than the mainframes you've worked on." (He was neither a programmer nor a hardware engineer.) • The Steve who threw out several months of my Python work and ordered it rewritten in C++ because "we need precision in our calculations, and C++ has both floats and doubles, where Python only has floats." (He had a Python certification at our company, but he didn't know that a Python float is the same as a C++ double, a 64-bit floating point value.)
- adsharma 5y ago
  I've been having fun transpiling python floats into rust f64 and c++ double last few months. Sometimes the rust way of doing things is very detail oriented and breaks the smooth flow of thought to code that python enables. Probably best to make that zoom call (write python) and then have an evidence based conversation about how you didn't lose precision and performance is as good as rust or c++.
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    Both of my Steves predated the pandemic, but yes, whether Zoom, face to face, or a phone call, that is excellent advice which I followed each time. Unfortunately they were both very strong-willed, and I didn't get anywhere with either of them. I ran into the first Steve at a natural food store in Palo Alto. We got to talking about this little computer company he was starting with a friend and how they needed a 6502 disassembler. We didn't have a business deal or anything, but I was curious about the 6502 and it sounded like a fun side project, so I got to work on it. He called me a couple of days later to tell me I wasn't capable of doing it. I tried to explain that I'd written code on a variety of computer architectures and the 6502 was a fairly simple one, but he said "I'm sorry, my mind is made up. You couldn't possibly do this." I said to myself, "who is this Steve guy telling me I can't program?!" I went ahead and wrote enough of the disassembler to be a good proof of concept. Our phone call hadn't gone well, so I decided to visit their office with a printout and show him the code. It was listed at 770 Welch Road, near the Stanford Barn. When I got there, nothing looked like a computer company, there was just a row of telephone switchboards. I told one of the telephone operators I was looking for Apple Computer, and she said "um, this is their answering service." So I walked out and told myself, "These guys are flakes. They're never going to make it." The second Steve was a little less interesting. I found out about his objection to Python floats near the end of a team meeting, and he had another objection too. Some of our code would need to be written in C++ regardless, and there was no way to call C++ code from Python. I told him about CLIF and SWIG, which were both widely used at our company, and I explained the float vs. double thing. But like the other Steve, he said "my mind is made up, we have to rewrite everything in C++."

disposedtrolley 5y ago

> If you’re in charge or part of a customer-facing organization, you don’t need to wait for permission to talk to customers to test hypotheses This is pretty important and seems to get overlooked. If you're trying to kick off an initiative that benefits customers, but not in a manner that can be quantified to business stakeholders (one we've struggled with is getting management support to build tools that improve API documentation for customers who develop on our platform), reaching out directly is a useful way to gauge the landscape and come back with a better understanding of who your target customers are and what they struggle with. That's evidence from the horses mouth that you can take to management to get sponsorship for your project.

hermanradtke 5y ago

I give this same response when a developer tells me their company does not agree that they should write tests.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 5y ago
Haha! Jokes on you, the tests are never merged and the code is updated without consideration of them. But I like the fighting spirit.
em-bee 5y ago
that only works if the whole dev team is behind it. if a single developer is writing tests when others aren't, it is more likely to earn a reprimand for wasting time.
aliasEli 5y ago
This is a very good sign you should be looking for a different employer.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

This just sounds like undermining your boss. I wouldn't be talking to my boss about this for "permission", but to get on the same page and build shared understanding.

makach 5y ago
What you "can" and "cannot do" should be formalized in the organisational structure. If it isn't you'll always run to your manager and ask for permission, this can be problematic if your manager is micromanaging, then you'll constantly have to meet expectations you don't anything about...
- cottsak 5y ago
  set this https://management30.com/practice/delegation-poker/ https://management30.com/practice/delegation-poker/ up in Trello in 10m and then buy your boss a coffee to "get on the same page". Really useful!
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
It's clear the issue was about how that wasn't working. I'm sorry, but that sounds like pretty naïve. Many of us have worked for these kind of CEOs, with enough experience to think they know what they're talking about but not enough actual education to make the right decision. Managing someone is about enabling them, not bullying them. The CEO doesn't 'get to ' make the decision, they are tasked with making the correct decision. That means understanding from their experts all the issues. The CEO in question seemed to be ignoring their expert.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  I don't expect every CEO to do what I described, but if your CEO doesn't want to listen to you when you're supposed to be the head of sales and marketing why would you continue to work for them? The guy raised possible issues with the CEO's plan and was ignored. If he's worth his salt, why wouldn't he be looking to find another company where he's valued more appropriately for his role?
5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nine_zeros 5y ago

You don't need permission but you need buy in. Lessons learned when you are not promoted because you did the right thing but without telling your boss, who only cares about their own visibility.

Ma8ee 5y ago
Or care about looking like he is in control and knows what is going on in his department? (With the usual caveat that I of course no nothing about your particular situation.)

kfk 5y ago

Sound advice. I would add find allies. Executive types are very politically savvy and will listen to you more if you have other executives or influential people backing you up.

milkers 5y ago

`Customer Discovery` is always critical, and it is Product and Marketing people's job mostly. They need to discover something, a positive sign, BEFORE going to build the thing. They are scouts. They can use MVP's, small prototypes or even mocks to validate the path. However most of the time managers skip that step. They want to move the army of the engineers towards a path where the path is not scouted enough. They want to first build the thing then try to sell or do marketing about it. What they miss is people's time and money, or in ancient times it was people's lives. It is really bad for a C-level or a leader. What Suresh should have done is just doing it, because it is in his job description as a Sales and Marketing person. Besides producing marketing jargon, nice presentations or creating weekly reports to the C-levels; he should go there and discover customers, needs, potential sales. If he fails the discovery there is 2 outcomes. First he is a bad explorers, then you need to replace your P&M guy, sorry Suresh. Second, there is really nothing to discover. Then this is good, it can prevent a catastrophe, a potential bankrupt due to going to the wrong way. No offense C-levels, you should thank Suresh.

andi999 5y ago

The irony is that one statement "Worse, given how expensive clinical trials are in medtech, I’m concerned if we build a product that isn’t commercially viable, we’ll be out of business before we even start.” actually makes it clear the real problem is they need permission for the device. So it is more like 'you do not need permission except when you need permission' (no permission to ask your manager, but you still need approval by government agency)

Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago

Isn't that for the CEO to decide, whether or not he needs permission? “We’re disruptors! Discovery is going to slow us down. We need to move quickly!” sounds like a pretty clear strategy statement. And in turn it's for the board to decide whether their CEO is making reckless decisions and needs to be fired for putting the entire company at risk. I realise that if you're dealing with incompetent and dangerous retards as bosses you have to sneak sound practice in under the radar. I'm sure that's how things like version control and automated testing made it into many software organisations. But it needs to be realised that this is an extremely toxic work environment and shouldn't be brushed off as easily as saying "you don't need permission".

puchatek 5y ago
Ideally yes. But i would be concerned that 6 months later the CEO asks me why sales aren't ramping up and doesn't want to hear that we were selling the wrong thing because of insufficient upfront analysis. Meanwhile the board might have heard a version of events from the CEO that subtly shifted the blame away from him.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Concerned? That's the entire skill set of a CEO - spinning things. You can take it as a given that the board is hearing exactly what the CEO crafts to maximize their success. Nothing subtle about it.

ilaksh 5y ago

Article is nonsense. He's just found a way to dismiss a problem that guy has in a way that makes him feel superior. "You don't need permission" -- is a way to try to assert a higher status and pretend there is no real problem, rather than having to acknowledge a problem. The CEO needs to be onboard with something as critical and basic as customer discovery. If he doesn't like the idea then that actually could interfere, and is bad news for the organization. And actually could disrupt the process and cause a conflict with the boss if he tries to do it in the open. Of course he has to do it anyway, but the boss not buying into it is not something he can just ignore. Its a critical judgement error and also partly a rejection of the expertise of the employee and a failure to incorporate basic information into the overall strategy. So I hope he is successful in his discovery and the rest of his job, despite his boss's poor judgement. But as far as the article, I am not a fan of people that dismiss real problems and try to gain status by putting others down in a backhanded way, which is what the title is.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

HelloNurse 5y ago

It seems clearly implied that this quick-moving CEO is demanding a US product launch without giving Suresh the time and budget to do it properly, so priority changes from doing the job of a "head of sales and marketing" to not being blamed for taking a risk.

crdb 5y ago

"I think, says that everything you do illegally, you do efficiently. This, of course, is perfectly obvious. For one thing, you do not write at all because writing on an illegal project is suicide. For another thing, you work with whatever equipment you have on hand, and of course, you do everything on your lunch hour, which starts at 8:00 in the morning and finishes at 5:00 in the evening. Another thing, when it doesn’t work well and it is illegal, you drop it very quickly and kill the project." - Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake, Ron Westrum

dfreire 5y ago
Wow, is the rest of the book as good as this?

commandlinefan 5y ago

What is now called "agile" (which has been bastardized from the late 90's "XP") is specifically designed to stop this from happening: every day, you have to "stand up" and recite what you did yesterday and what you're going to do today. If "scrum" is being followed properly, there's somebody listening who's actually recording what you said you were going to do yesterday and compare it to what you say you did yesterday and call out any discrepancies. So no, you don't need permission to do something as long as it only takes an hour or so and you can hide it somewhere in your daily standup tasks. Anything that takes longer than this needs to be reviewed and approved - and this is entirely the point of the methodology and the only reason it's ever adopted.

wellthisisgreat 5y ago
> every day, you have to "stand up" and recite what you did yesterday and what you're going to do today. If "scrum" is being followed properly, there's somebody listening who's actually recording what you said you were going to do yesterday and compare it to what you say you did yesterday and call out any discrepancies. This is the best explanation of this metgodology I’ve ever read
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  > This is the best explanation of this metgodology I’ve ever read [emphasis added] I assume that is a typo, but if it is, it's my favorite typo of the week, because it reflects so well how I feel about that kind of daily standup: scrum masters who act like little tin gods. Most of the companies I've worked with take a more practical approach, but I have been involved with some who did it exactly the way GP described. It really rubbed me the wrong way.
  - wellthisisgreat 5y ago
    Absolutely a typo :) thanks for bringing it to my attention (obviously not fixing it)
- Mauricebranagh 5y ago

Causality1 5y ago

As head of sales and marketing, Suresh didn’t need his CEO to buy into the process or give his permission to start the discovery process. He was in charge. Is this some kind of business rule I'm ignorant of? No matter what my title says I'm in charge of, if I start doing something I already know my boss doesn't want me to do I'm going to be in trouble. It's all well and good to say "Fuck you, the paper says that was my job" but that's not going to help you if the boss decides you need to go.