What is OUR problem?
finding the answers of the hard questions, or something else?
a few days ago, i sent a tweet in which i criticized some people’s perspectives (including myself) on the “problem” and here, i will write more on this subject.
this is the tweet:
so let’s start with an example to get on the same page.
i've seen some people, especially in business, who have a lot of obvious faults. and i've wondered that “they know they're in a bad way or not?” after a lot of confusion, i concluded that they do, but not at that time. they do, only after someone nudges them.
over the past few days, my friends and i have been working on a product, and i noticed that my friend doesn't seem to care about the people we're developing it for. his comments were too biased, and he didn't realize that he was wrong.
but I can recall that he taught me about "customer obsession" about a year ago! he has talked a lot about it in the past, but he doesn't care about it right now.
how is that possible?
it was completely clear to everyone that we should be customer-obsessed. we even wrote it in our principles list! but he suddenly forgot, and if i wasn't there, he wouldn't have thought about it, and everything would have gone wrong.
it has also occurred to me many times.
so i reached the conclusion that our problem isn't primarily to find the answers to the hard questions. they're rarely for us. our main problem is to be focused on the answers we already have. the clearly proven and well-established principles that we know we must use in our work. that’s “all” we should care about. such as the “human-centric design thinking mindset” that i usually forget, despite having taught it several times!
i don't want to make a list of “must-take-care” principles, since they vary from person to person. my suggestion to almost anyone is to find your must-take-care principles, make them a picture, and set it as your wallpaper.
it's a simple yet effective way to keep them on the top of your mind. you should also take care of your teammates' must-take-care principles, but this can be more challenging. because they won't always accept it and you’ll gonna have a lot of discussions.
end.
sina
jan 21, 2024