Join 📚 Felicity's Weekly Book Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Felicity's read, .
Most businesses ask “how did the business do last week?” instead of “what did the customer experience last week?” If you ask the first question, you will have an implicit orientation towards internal, business-first metrics. Perhaps you might watch inventory turns, or track changes in free cash flow, or measure the performance of your warehouses. To be clear, these are all important metrics to track. But notice that if you ask “what did the customer experience last week?” you’ll measure slightly different things. And so it’s important to ask *both* questions, and to ask the ‘customer’ question *first* — it’s not for nothing that Amazon aims to be ‘Earth’s most customer-centric company.’
The Amazon Weekly Business Review
Commoncog
Planning
**Planning** is an
• Internally-focused,
• Analytical approach
Focused on making the most of things *within* our control:
• Our People
• Time
• Resources
With the goal of optimizing for *efficiency*.
To produce some end result we think *should* achieve our internal goals.
Strategy
**Strategy**, on the other hand, is a
• Client-centric,
• Creative
• Problem-solving framework
Focused on making choices to influence something *out* of our control:
**Customer behavior**
With the goal of optimizing for *effectiveness*.
In ways that mean success both for *our clients*, as well as for *our business.*
Starting With Planning Is the Best Way to Sabotage Your Product – Do This Instead
Mike Goitein
For this reason we built the Tabbed Inbox through a series of build-measure-learn loops, which are called Steps in GIST. There were usability tests, longitudinal studies, fishfood and dogfood, labs, and partial launches. Each step generated a more complete version of the product, but also gave us new evidence, which helped build our confidence in the idea and get more funding. We used what we learned in each step to course-correct and improve the idea. The feature we eventually launched was profoundly better than the one we started with.
Evidence-Guided
Itamar Gilad
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise