It’s common in product and engineering circles to constantly ask people “what problem are you solving?” While this can be useful for focusing work on the right things, it also leads to solutions disguised as problem statements and self-referential arguments. Instead, ask “what’s the situation?”. This gives space between facts and the interpretation of those facts which makes it easier to understand and spot errors.
See also:
- This is worse with an engineering as delivery organization where problem definition is outsourced to a separate part of the org
- Taste might help to spot problems calibrated to what’s important based on the company culture
- A cathedral for creation a bazaar for growth
Links to this note
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Past Experience Is a Repetoire Not a Playbook
There’s a tendency for new people joining a company to immediately draw from their past and implement the things they’ve seen succeed but there is danger in treating experience as a playbook. It can be introduce prematurely and become too much process at the wrong time. It might not match the context of the new environment and cause more problems.
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Using Tools for Thought as a Founder
This is a reflection on using org-roam as a founder in the early stages of starting a company. It’s mostly a draft that I may or may not come back to.
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Writing is the much-discussed secret to building great remote teams. How do you write for a remote team?