Join 📚 Felicity's Weekly Book Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Felicity's read, .
Often, in his work advising companies on the Lean Startup methodology, he meets executives at large enterprises who want to kill small experiments—saplings in this analogy—because they don’t yet “move the needle,” meaning they’re not generating, say, $100 million in revenue, enough to make a difference for the business. They’re not yet giant trees. Eric points out, sure, the experiment is not yet generating that level of revenue, but it’s impossible to know which new experiments will be the next big $100 million line of business. “If you knew which ideas would be hits, of course you’d only do those. But of course, nobody knows ahead of time, so you have to be willing to plant a lot of seeds and watch them grow.” When they start to sprout, don’t step on them, citing how small they are. Rather, water them and give them sunlight. Or, in corporate-speak, invest more.
Ask Your Developer
Jeff Lawson
*Take small steps.* Rather than trying to predict outcomes, aim to test, explore, and improvise. Consider each step or action you take to be a small, brief experiment. Try something, then step back and observe what happens. Then, try again. Remember that many small steps can add up to a great big change given a little time and persistence.
Make Life Possible
Mandy Brown
Often the data you want will be scattered across different systems and may take some serious software resources to compile, aggregate, and display correctly. Do not compromise here. Make the investment. If you don’t, you may find that you are flying blind with respect to some important aspect of the business.
Working Backwards
Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise