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Strategy by design

Installing and Operating a DMO

Peter Kaufman on The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking: Transcript – Latticework Investing

Incredible clarity of thought from the great Peter Kauffman

Strategic Intent

Most leading global companies started with ambitions that were far bigger than their resources and capabilities. But they created an obsession with winning at all levels of the organization and sustained that obsession for decades.

McKinsey’s Three Horizons Model Defined Innovation for Years. Here’s Why It No Longer Applies.

It assumes that breakthrough innovations will take years to develop.

Famous Speeches: A List of the Greatest Speeches of All-Time

For the past year, I've been compiling a list of inspirational speeches. See my list of 20+ famous speeches and their transcripts here.

Outlasting - Signal v. Noise

Jason Fried on thinking long term

Position, Position, Position! - Signal v. Noise

Interesting piece on positioning using a spatial metaphor to help you think through your product's positioning.

On being lost. Chapter 1 | by swardley | wardleymaps | Medium

This is the story of my journey, from a bumbling and confused CEO lost in the headlights of change to having a vague idea of what I was doing. I say vague because I’m not going to make grand claims…

Talk: Dan McCarthy

Applicable to a wide range of applications

Why Competetive Advantages Die

Instant classic

Top Ten Qualities of the Best Project Managers — David C. Baker

PM guidelines

Business Lessons from Mark Leonard (Constellation Software) – 25iq

  Mark Leonard reminds me of Warren Buffett. Anyone who likes reading Berkshire shareholder letters will very likely enjoy Leonard's shareholder letters and his answers on earnings call transcripts. The Globe and Mail describes part of what Leonard has accomplished at Constellation software: “With an initial $25-million investment from OMERS and his old associates at…

Hunter S. Thompson's letter to Hume Logan (Letter)

Against Waldenponding

The Value of Grey Thinking

Grey thinking works. Reality is all grey area. All of it. There are very few black and white answers and no solutions without second-order consequences.

VAG_worksheet_2015.indd

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com)

What is Amazon? | Zack's notes

Sweeping treatise on Amazon and how it operates

Crony Beliefs | Melting Asphalt

Kevin Simler on, well a whole bunch of things

We Don’t Sell Saddles Here

We know that we have built something which is genuinely useful: almost any team which adopts Slack as their central application for communication would be significantly better off than they were…

Tickets for Restaurants

Kokonas is a clear thinker. Great post

Strategy and stewardship

Tom Critchlow. Move. Think. Create.

Complement

Incredible insights here. Essential Reading

Writing Docs at Amazon

Recently, Ben Bashaw published a good article about the way that Amazon (almost uniquely) uses written documents to make decisions. This was posted to Hacker News and a lively discussion ensued…

Project Horseshoe: Influences – Raph's Website

Understanding the "grammar" of art and form in the context of games.

The Resilience of Costco by MineSafetyDisclosures - Issuu

Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get them in front of Issuu’s millions of monthly readers. Title: The Resilience of Costco, Author: MineSafetyDisclosures, Name: costco_deck, Length: undefined pages, Page: 2, Published: 2018-06-14

Illegibility: The Margin Between What's Measured And What's Real

Illegibility: The danger is when you believe the simplified version is the full reality and not a simplification.

Operations and Internal Communication Strategies For Effective CEOs | Pulse

Learn how effective CEOs, and leaders in general think about internal communication and operations with real-life examples and practical tactics

The Rhetoric of the Hyperlink

Something like semantic analysis of the concept of the hyperlink.

Stock and Flow

Interesting metaphor for media (both creation and consumption)

The Genius Advantage: How Your Taste Shapes the Quality of Your Work | by Zat Rana | Personal Growth | Medium

Creativity is nothing more than emergence. Whether it’s producing a divergent mathematical system to ground a new approach to physics or simply making a new dish for the guests you have coming over…

How polarity management can help us balance seemingly conflicting goals and values | Kindling

Seemingly conflicting, but equally necessary truths are known as polarities. Polarities represent some of the fundamental tensions that come up in our organizations and in our lives as individuals.

A first lesson in meta-rationality | Meta-rationality

A first lesson in meta-rationality, or stage 5 cognition, using Bongard problems as a laboratory.

The Evolution of Trust

an interactive guide to the game theory of why & how we trust each other

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

Those who think they're unlucky should change their outlook and discover how to generate good fortune, says Richard Wiseman

Frictionless Design Choices | Learning by Shipping

No one wants friction in their products. Everyone works to reduce it. Yet it sneaks in everywhere. We collectively praise a service, app, or design that masterfully reduces friction. We also appreciate minimalism. We love when products are artfully distilled down to their essence. How do we achieve these broadly appreciated design goals? Frictionless and…

The Limits of Supply and Demand | Mises Institute

Despite its great appeal because of its simplicity, the supply-demand graphic as employed by mainstream economics is a tool that is detached from the facts of reality. The real-world economy is far too complex to be faithfully rendered on simple graphs that take no account of uncertainty, entrepreneurial speculation, and the ceaseless change of the market economy.

Kitchen Soap – On Being A Senior Engineer

UPDATE: I’ve added a short section on the topic of sponsorship. I think that there’s a lot of institutional knowledge in our field, especially about what makes for a productive engineer. But while there are a good deal of books in the management field about “expert” roles and responsibilities of non-technical individual contributors, I don’t…

How Will The Banking System Be Affected By Crypto?

Interesting POV on implications of cryptocurrency on the banking sector

The value in digitally transforming credit risk management | McKinsey

To withstand new regulatory pressures, investor expectations, and innovative competitors, banks need to reset their value focus and digitize their credit risk processes.

Four Fits To Growth From $0 to $100M

Brian Balfours deck on the 4-fits necessary (think an expanded product market fit) to build a $100M+ business

Hierarchy of Engagement, Expanded | by Sarah Tavel | Medium

Almost a year ago, I published a framework I called The Hierarchy of Engagement, that synthesized my thinking on how to build a product that endures. Since then, I’ve had countless conversations with…

Optimization and Innovation

Growth Expert & VC Andy Johns on Growth

The Growth Marketing Handbook

The in-depth guide to acquiring more users, writing landing pages, running A/B tests, and other growth tactics.

Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All (Revisited) | Above the Crowd | By Bill Gurley

Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All (Revisited) | Above the Crowd | By Bill Gurley

Lessons from Keith Rabois Essay 2: How to Interview an Executive

Keith Rabois' tips for interviewing

Paying Your Dues - AVC

There are no shortcuts

Why Your Brain Needs Idle Time

Research suggests that idle time, where the brain is wandering, is critical for complex mental processing.

Willpower, wealth, and the marshmallow test

Kottke writes about delayed gratification

Live versus Dead Players

This is an excerpt from the draft of my upcoming book on great founder theory. It was originally published on SamoBurja.com. You can access the original here. Whether you are examining past societies…

The Psychology of Money

Morgan is on point here

Lessons from Keith Rabois Essay 3: How to be an Effective Executive

Good summary on leadership

The Courage to Manage

Maister talks about finding the courage to really lead

The Calculus of Grit

Venkat goes off about generalist vs specialist and personal development

Exploration of Behavioural Biases in Project Delivery

Department of Transport study on OB

How Clients Choose

Maister talks about how to build client relationships

The Art of Powerful Questions

Deep dive into how to ask questions

How to Be an Expert in a Changing World

When experts are wrong

The Investing Meta-Game

Narratives, alpha relativism

Betting on Things That Never Change

Trends change, people don't

The Weird State of the State

Session 1 slide deck for Refactor Camp 2016, "Weird Political Economy"

Searching for Quality

What is quality in the world of investing?

How to Be a Good Board Chair

The key is to remember you’re not the CEO.

Exec 101 - First 30 days | sriramk.com

Exec 101 - First 30 days

NBA Hinkie Redact

Incredible note from Sam on vision, leadership and strategy

The Cook and the Chef: Musk’s Secret Sauce

Extensive look at how Elon Musk has been successful, and the difference between a Cook and a Chef.

The Knowledge-Creating Company

Editor’s Note: This 1991 article helped popularize the notion of “tacit” knowledge—the valuable and highly subjective insights and intuitions that are difficult to capture and share because people carry them in their heads. Years later, the piece can still startle a reader with its views of organizations and of the types of knowledge that inform […]

Schumpeter on Strategy | Reaction Wheel

Great summary on Schumpeter

The Knowledge-Creating Company

Editor’s Note: This 1991 article helped popularize the notion of “tacit” knowledge—the valuable and highly subjective insights and intuitions that are difficult to capture and share because people carry them in their heads. Years later, the piece can still startle a reader with its views of organizations and of the types of knowledge that inform […]

hawraf-main (public) - Google Drive

These are Amazon’s 38 rules for success

Two decades of credos, from, “Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy,“ to, “We prioritize work that results in measurable impact for our customers.”

To Build Great Products, Build This Strong, Scalable System First | First Round Review

As Co-VPs of Product at Reddit, Alex Le and Kavin Stewart manage a large team with multiple competing goals. Here's what they've learned about building effective product pipelines.

The Innovator’s DNA

Five “discovery skills” separate true innovators from the rest of us.

On Presentations

Great presentation on delivering great presentations

What To Do If Your Product Isn’t Growing | by austin chang | Initialized Capital | Medium

As a founder, product lead at Pinterest and PM for a couple products at Google, as well as a growth partner for Initialized Capital, I’ve seen many product teams struggle to grow. Many products start…

Ways to think about market size

Ben gives a good insights into Market Size

This is the Product Death Cycle. Why it happens, and how to break out of it at andrewchen

The answer is not "add more features"

A value creation checklist | Seth's Blog

Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

Reframing the problem. If your solutions are not good enough… | by Bettina D'ávila | NYC Design | Medium

I wrote an article earlier this year on how Design Thinking methodology can help you create and validate your design hypothesis within your product team. In summary, the process of generating and…

The Case for the Fat Start-Up - Ben Horowitz - News - AllThingsD

Much has been written and said about the current economic downturn and the resulting lessons on how to run high-technology companies. Quite famously, Sequoia Capital, the premier venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, held a mandatory all-CEO meeting in fall 2008 during which it advised them to "Cut spending. Cut fat. Preserve capital."

Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays at andrewchen

Andrew Chen's round up on marketplaces

The 4 Scenarios of Startup Timing | by Gabor Cselle | Gabor Cselle | Medium

The factor that determines most of the outcome of your startup is the one you have the least control over: Timing. Your startup’s fate depends on if and when there is growth in the market you’re…

Why Your Startup Doesn't Invest Sufficiently in its Differentiators by @ttunguz

There are three types of product features, a seasoned head of product told me recently. MMRs, neutralizers, and differentiators. MMRs are minimum market requirements; basic features that every customer expects and demands. Neutralizers mitigate competitive threat. Differentiators are your startup’s competitive advantage. As a product manager, I’d never thought about this type of roadmap segmentation before. But it made a lot of sense to me.When a startup has established product market fit, the differentiator is clear.

The Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds

an interactive guide to human networks

The Gary Halbert Letter

There is only one Gary Halbert

Nicole Fenton | Writing for Beginners

A good introduction to the writing process and its place in design.