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But it's not just about people being different. It's also about how not everything people do has to be valuable to the customer. It can be valuable in the sense
by kqr 4y ago
But it's not just about people being different. It's also about how not everything people do has to be valuable to the customer. It can be valuable in the sense that the person stays in the organisation for longer if they get to do it.
This realisation hit me when I was in a heated debate with my (then) product manager about what did and did not provide value for our customers. Then suddenly he said, "I'm pretty sure almost half of what I ask your team to do is not because it's valuable to our customers, but because it's clearly important to your team, for whatever reason I don't have to care about."
I had no idea until that point, but it did make a lot of sense.
- wenholmes 4y agoThe thing that brought the same idea home for me is the idea that optimization is a destructive process. A business is a complex thing with many, many variables influencing its success. If you truly optimize "customer value" then you must give up everything else. A much more nuanced approach is to do what you did, and balance off various values against each other. Unfortunately this is very difficult to measure or "logic," it requires appreciating things like complexity, uncertainty, and indirection. But ultimately it produces better outcomes, and I'll take a manager who thinks like that over one that doesn't every time. P.S. Recommended reading on this topic, "Obliquity" by John Kay is excellent.
- kqr 4y agoSorry, I keep coming back to this comment. "Optimisation is a destructive process" is such a good way to put it. We frequently focus on the thing being optimised, not enough on all the things being sacrificed.
- Xcelerate 4y ago> the idea that optimization is a destructive process > balance off various values against each other This is still optimization. It’s just better optimization because it’s longer-term and considers more variables and their interaction effects.
- kqr 4y agoThank you for that recommendation! It ends up quite high on my to-read list!